“No, no,” she said hastily, “you don’t have to thank me for this, this was to thank you. Oh, geez, I sound like those chipmunks who are always trying to outdo each other in politeness. After you. No, after you, I insist.”
He laughed at her great impression. “And then they end up fighting!” he reminded her.
And then they were both laughing at the absurdity of it.
“Come on,” he coaxed her, “what’s on your New York wish list?”
“Oh, no, I—”
“It’s an order.”
“Now you sound like Beast.”
He cocked his head at her.
“As in Beauty and the Beast?”
“I’m not familiar with it.”
“You are so! Belle is the town bookworm.”
“Like you?”
She blushed. A man could live to make her blush. He made her tell him the whole story, pretending it was all new to him.
“I can’t believe you’ve never seen that movie,” she said when she had finished.
He laughed and sang, “‘No one’s as slick as Gaston, no one’s as quick as Gaston—’”
She scowled at him. “Why did you let me go on and on about it?”
“You were so earnest. My sister made me watch that with her, over and over again, when she got chicken pox, not long after my dad died.”
Jessica looked at him, and the loveliest smile tilted her lips. A man could live to make her smile. “And you think you failed in some way?” she asked softly.
And a man could live for that, too. For a sense of his flaws being filtered through a gentler, more forgiving light than the one he held on himself.
“Pick something,” he insisted, now more determined than ever to give her some precious memory to take home with her, since, of course, he had no intention of giving in to the desire to do everything he did for her—for her blush, for her smile, for that light that came on in her eyes that made him feel ten feet tall and bulletproof.
She hesitated. “You’ll think it’s corny.”
“Cornier than my apron?”
“Maybe.”
“Try me.”
“I wanted to go on the horse-drawn carriage through the park.”
“You know, I’ve lived here all my life, and I’ve never done that.”
“I told you, corny.”
“I think it’s about time I did,” he told her softly. If his sister could see him pulling out his phone to check availability for the carriage ride tonight, she would no doubt repeat what she had said to him when he had texted her that first night that Jessica had arrived.
Who are you and what have you done with my brother?
He shushed that voice and pushed a single button to book the carriage ride. An hour later, Jamie watched, amused, as Jessica introduced herself to the horse. She blew into his nose, and despite her beautiful clothes, she didn’t even step back when he blew back on her. In fact, she threw back her head and laughed.
Jamie thought a world without her laughter to look forward to was going to feel empty in a way he had not realized the world could be empty just forty-eight hours ago.
“She knows horses,” the carriage driver said approvingly.
“Do you?” Jamie asked Jessica.
“Oh, sure. Timber Falls is rural. I always had a pony when I was growing up. Horse-crazy teenager, all that stuff.”
A reminder, as she settled in beside him, of what she was. Wholesome. Ponies and pies. Not the kind of woman a guy like him should tangle with any further than he already had. But what was he going to do? Jump off the carriage and tell her to have a good time, he had just thought of something he needed to do?
Surrender, he told himself.
This was about her. Not about him. She was here only a short time more. And then what?
Was she leaving forever? Or was she coming back? Would she be working with him, day in and day out?
He took his place beside her in the carriage. He tried to keep some distance between them, but she shivered, and tonight he didn’t have a jacket to put over her shoulders.
He surrendered yet again. He moved closer to her, throwing what he hoped was a companionable arm over her slim shoulders.
“What are your thoughts about the job?” he asked. It was a desperate and pathetically late effort to keep all of this in some way businesslike. That already seemed hopeless. But he had to try.
Jessica felt like Cinderella, with Jamie’s arm around her shoulders, the steady clip-clop of the horse’s hooves, dusk falling over Central Park. She felt as exquisitely alive as she had ever felt, as if the night air was creating tiny explosions of sensation against her skin.
She wished Jamie wouldn’t have mentioned the job!
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “There’s a lot to think about. It’s not just my own business, though of course that is part of it. Who would look after it? And a big part of it is my mom and dad. They aren’t old—both in their late fifties—and they’re in good health and active, but they rely on me quite a bit.”
“In what way?”
“Technology baffles them. I think I get a call or a visit once a day at the store with questions about their television, or their phones. Don’t even get me going on their recent purchase of matching tablets!”
He laughed.
“My mom has taken to social media, though,” she said ruefully.
Even as she said it, she realized these sounded like weak reasons to put a life on hold.
“I think they would want you to do what is best for you,” he said.
“You’re right, of course. If you met them, you would see that instantly.”
Jamie Gilbert-Cooper meeting her parents? She couldn’t imagine what circumstances that would cause these two very different worlds to collide.
A wedding, something sighed within her. She instantly banished the thought as both embarrassing and ridiculous. Despite feeling she knew Jamie, the truth was she did not. This sense of intimacy was because he had rescued her. He had invited her into his life. He had treated her like a princess. Conversation flowed easily between them. They
