All that was not a reason to start humming someday my prince will come, even if she was riding in a horse-drawn carriage!
It probably was showing her that Aubrey and Daisy were absolutely right: Jessica had made her world too small. Her reaction to this close proximity to such a confident, charming, gorgeous man was a result of not having nearly enough encounters with men of any sort.
Not since Devon had died. Not since the fiasco with Ralph in Copenhagen. Ralph should really serve as her lesson: her romantic notions could get her in trouble.
Though, a voice insisted on pointing out, Jamie was the opposite of Ralph. Her illusions about Ralph had collapsed as they had spent more time together. The more time she spent with Jamie, the more enamored she felt!
“You must be leaning one way or the other, though,” he said. “The clients you met today loved you.”
“Did they?”
“Unequivocally.”
She wanted someone else to love her unequivocally! She ordered herself to stop being so teenager-with-a-crush.
She realized, in terms of the job, she didn’t have any idea what was best for her. It was all too heady, like trying to make a decision when you were full of champagne.
“I need to go home,” she said. “I have a place, beside the Falls, where I like to sit when I have a decision to make. It’s free of distractions. No phones, no computers.” Of course, she didn’t have those things now, but she did have the biggest distraction of all: Jamie.
“The right answer always comes when I’m there.”
“I envy you having a place like that.”
“You could come one day, and see it.” What was she doing? Trying to keep him in her life, even if she said no to the job? Trying to see what they would have left if they did not have this fabulous backdrop behind them?
“I could,” he said, and she scanned his face. Was he placating her? Being polite? Or would he really like to see Timber Falls? She felt as if she would genuinely like to see him on her home ground. It would help her know if the strength of her feelings for him were real.
But it was complicated, because if he did meet her parents, if he did ever come to Timber Falls to see her, her mom and dad would jump to the conclusion it was serious. Knowing her parents, they would start picking names for grandchildren, and sharing them with him!
She’d known the man two days. Yes, she had to go home and get her head on straight. There would be no making a rational decision under these present circumstances.
So she might as well just enjoy the experience while it lasted!
When they got in, it was late, and yet Jessica could not help but notice that he was as reluctant to say good-night as she was.
They cleaned up the kitchen together, and then went into his living room. He put on music, and then patted the couch beside him.
“So little time left,” he said. With relief? Or regret? Or some combination of both? “Tell me everything there is to know about you.”
She laughed. “I wouldn’t know where to start. And it’s not interesting.”
“Start at the first day of school, when you told me you met your guy. And let me decide if it’s interesting.”
And so she found herself telling him about growing up in a small town, surrounded by people who knew you and were related to you. She told him about swimming in mountain lakes, and decorating the trees in their teachers’ yards with toilet paper rolls, and picking huckleberries on hot summer days, riding their horses down tree-shaded trails.
She told him of her and Devon, always together, best friends.
“It was such a perfect life,” she said, and heard the wistfulness in her own voice. “And then when he died, there was an awareness I had never had before. That life was not safe, that everything you loved could be taken from you in a blink.
“The bookstore was my grandmother’s. I had never considered owning her bookstore, though I had always worked there. But then she wanted to retire, and Devon had died and it seemed like a natural choice.”
“A way to make your world safe again. Predictable.”
Trust him to see that, so quickly, and so completely.
“Yes,” she said, with tears forming in her eyes. “Yes, I’ve played it very safe ever since Devon died. And it seems every time I’ve tried to step away from that safety net, all my fears about life are proven entirely correct.”
“Tell me about that.”
“I’ve hinted about my online dating disaster. The truth was, I didn’t really feel ready to meet anyone. I think it was a reaction to everyone in town suggesting it was time to get over it. One of the joys of small towns is that everyone knows your business, and weighs in on everything about your life, usually without an invitation.”
“So, you met a guy online, which takes the pressure off. Shows people you’re getting on with things, without really changing anything.”
“Quit being so astute! Anyway, it was a catastrophe. I finally decided to meet him. At the Annual Ascot Music Festival. Have you heard of it?
“Oh, yeah.”
Of course he would have heard of it! He was cosmopolitan.
“Well, I hadn’t. But I decided to meet him. It was all on the up-and-up. I paid my own way, and insisted on my own room.”
“He let you? Pay your own way?”
“I insisted!”
“Okay,” he said in a tone that let her know that’s not how it would have happened with him.
“And anyway, I was glad I did, because then I didn’t owe him anything. And in person, he was an absolute jerk. Full of himself and self-centered. There was a lady at the music festival who had lost her dog and was hurt, and he acted as if he was more important than that. As if it was a big inconvenience to him. I made a decision, on the
