“A couple of years ago, I met a guy online,” she admitted, embarrassed. “He was from Europe. We met for the first time in Copenhagen. It was a disaster.”
She was telling him it wasn’t love she was after, after all. It should have been a relief to hear it, and yet...
“So when the invitation from JHA came, 95 percent of me said don’t be ridiculous and 5 percent said just go see. And here I am.” She smiled at him. “Seeing.”
In the darkness her eyes seemed luminous, and her lips lush. He could smell the scent of her above the scent of the pizza.
It felt as if he was seeing something, too.
He had every trapping of success, and yet she was making him aware, again, of some dangerous emptiness. There was something about her that was fresh and tantalizing and as foreign to his world as all this was to hers. He felt a pull to see where the merging of their two worlds could lead. It felt utterly dangerous.
And irresponsible, as well.
It must just be the lateness of the hour making him think these uncharacteristic thoughts. The lateness of the hour, the oddness of having a stranger in his space, in his T-shirt, munching pizza with a most delectable mouth.
He glanced at his phone. “It’s gotten very late,” he said. “Would you be more comfortable if I got a hotel for the night?”
“No, of course not!”
He considered the possibility that he might be more comfortable, and then dismissed it. He found her refreshing and attractive. Disgracefully, there was something he wanted to challenge about her belief in that teenage love. One taste of adult passion—the wilder, the better—could break her out of that almost childish loyalty to old memories.
Jamie drew himself up short. He could handle her under the same roof for one night. He was not a Neanderthal, not a me Tarzan, you Jane kind of guy, at all. And there was nothing he could teach anyone about the complexity of human relationships.
“I had some things arranged for you for tomorrow, but I’m going to have to rearrange them,” he told her, all professional, again. “Getting you a few necessities and getting your paperwork in order seems like it should be a priority. I’ll look after it first thing in the morning.”
“Thank you,” she said.
There, he congratulated himself, very businesslike, indeed.
The moment of temptation had passed, and he would hand her off to his sister and other assistants so that another moment of temptation did not rise up to take its place.
“Good night, then,” he said, got up and quickly went back inside. He dispensed her laundry to the lobby with an urgent tag on it, and had just gotten in his bedroom and closed the door when his phone lit up, an incoming text from Sarah.
Sorry, it’s late.
It’s okay. I’m up.
Jared’s sick. He was at a birthday party. I think he might have overdone the cake and ice cream. All the evidence points in that direction.
If he encouraged her, he was going to get a picture of the evidence, so he typed in:
Spare me the details.
Not going to be able to make the shopping trip tomorrow. Take her to Hennessey’s on Fifth. Ask for Meredith.
He contemplated that. He’d been planning on turning Jessica over. Getting away from her.
How is she holding up?
Fine.
And then, before his sister could ferret out the fact Jessica was staying here, in the same apartment as him, Jamie quickly typed in that he was sure Jared would be okay.
You always promise that.
He stared at the phone, thinking how odd it was she would say that when he had thought of it today for the first time in a long time.
And you’re almost always right.
That part surprised him. Had those paltry words he had offered his family really brought anyone any comfort? He focused on the almost. It was a good reminder, in the emotional support department, he had nothing to offer.
A case in point: thinking that kissing a young woman, who still held a torch for a long dead young man, could somehow bring her back to life, like a princess who slept.
Jamie shook his head. Fairy tales, now? It wasn’t the Brontë sisters, but it was evidence that the small-town bookstore owner who had invaded his apartment really was a bad influence on him.
He contemplated the unfortunate turn of his life: he was going shopping at Hennessey’s. No, he wasn’t. He was turning Jessica over to some capable shopping person named Meredith, presumably an expert. Then he was walking to his office, which was just off Fifth, and he was assigning one of his assistants all things Jessica-related: police report, passport replacement, a little New York sightseeing, meetings with a few selected clients. He would make sure it was on the assignment list that as soon as she had replaced her ID, they would get her into her own hotel room.
But at the same time Jamie was making plans to distance himself from his guest, he was aware of a little voice in the back of his mind, warning him: from the first moment he had laid eyes on Jessica Winton not one single thing had gone according to his plan.
CHAPTER FIVE
JESSICA SAT OUT on the deck for a while longer, drinking in the sumptuousness of the night. She wasn’t quite sure what had just happened. Jamie’s departure had seemed abrupt.
Had she said or done something? She shouldn’t have told him so much about Devon, about her personal life. It was the long and eventful day that had encouraged uncharacteristic confidences from her.
And yet even with Devon freshly in her mind, she could not help but wonder if Jamie was just as aware as she herself was, that as unlikely as it seemed, there was a chemistry between them.
After a long time of thinking about that, she got up and went to bed. She was still on Canadian time, and it wasn’t that late in British
