But there was that other thing going on between them, too, just below the surface. Awareness of each other. A desire to touch—to brush hands, to graze shoulders. He tried to avoid looking at her lips, because every time he did he was nearly swamped by the memory of that taste of them.
So, how could they revisit her coming to work for JHA? He would be her boss. He didn’t want to be her boss.
He wanted to be...
He was stunned by the word his mind filled in. Lover.
He wanted to be Jessica Winton’s lover. He wanted her eyes to rest on him with hunger, and he wanted his touch to make her long for him. He wanted to taste her all over. He wanted to possess her in every way it was possible for a man to possess a woman.
And he wanted her to possess him the same way.
“What?” Jessica asked him, turning back from the door to look at him. She had just ushered the last customer out, and put out the closed sign.
“Nothing.” Too sharply, too quickly, too defensively.
“You were looking at me oddly.”
“Was I?”
She gave him a quizzical look. “Never mind. We have time for a quick dinner, and then I have a group coming in tonight.”
They left the store, and she locked the door behind her with a code. “Don’t tell my dad,” she told him with a laugh. “I’m supposed to be able to lock it with my phone. I don’t have the heart to tell him it’s not working right.”
Her dad, he reminded himself. She was not the kind of girl a man could give himself over to having lascivious thoughts about!
But even with that stern reminder to himself, dinner was a torture of being aware of her. A hamburger! Not pheasant under glass, not Le Bernardin, not anything special at all. But that little speck of mustard at the corner of her lip made awareness of her snap along his spine as though he was touching a live electrical wire.
This was what life would be if Jessica was in it: everything would become special, every moment lit from within. That was what she had done with that bookstore. She had infused it with her spirit and her sparkle and people were drawn to that.
As he was.
He had to get out of this place, and he had to get away from her. From the very beginning she had been an enchantress, waving a wand, and not changing the world, but changing the way he looked at it.
Back at the bookstore, she tried to use her phone to unlock the door, but it didn’t work. She used her key and they went in.
Moments later, a woman arrived in a flurry of breathlessness.
“You must be our guest!” one of them—she reminded him, unfortunately, of Debbie of Gidgets Widgets fame.
“Your guest?” he asked.
“I’m Bailey Turnbull, president of the Smitten Word. We’re a group of women who meet to discuss our favorite topic—romance!”
His mouth fell open. He shot Jessica a look, only to see she was smiling gleefully.
“That’s a topic about which I know nothing,” he said firmly.
“Nonsense. Have a seat here at the head of the table. The rest of the girls will be here shortly.”
There wasn’t a girl among them, naturally.
“This is Jamie Gilbert-Cooper,” Bailey introduced him. “He’s here from New York City and he’s going to speak to us tonight on the topic of romance in the city.”
He shot Jessica another look. She was busy setting up a table by the counter with stacks of the current Harlequin bestsellers, but her shoulders were shaking with mirth.
He’d like to show her a thing or two about romance.
“I haven’t really prepared anything,” he said, hoping for a short meeting.
“Oh, well just tell us what you would do if you were wooing a girl,” Bailey encouraged him.
He narrowed his eyes at Jessica. “I’d eat pizza on a deck overlooking Central Park with her,” he said slowly. “I’d take her shopping. We’d watch the kids float boats in the Conservatory Water in Central Park. I’d take her out for a nice dinner, at a restaurant in the Theater District called Le Bernardin. Then I’d take her to see Phantom of the Opera after. It has some scary surprises in it that practically guarantee a woman will be clutching your hand. We’d see some sights in New York, but there would definitely be a horse-drawn carriage ride.”
“Oh,” the women seemed to sigh in unison.
But Jessica had gone very still.
Possibly he and Jessica were both asking themselves the same question. It was supposed to have been a job interview.
But when he looked back over their time together, he didn’t remember much about the business parts of it. Only the wonder of being with her. Was that wooing, then?
And why was he really here?
It occurred to him: I can’t stand the thought of a life without her in it.
The ladies had lots of questions about New York City, his marital status, what he did for fun, what his ideal woman looked like—wasn’t that her standing over there—and he did his best to be funny and engaging without revealing one personal thing about himself.
Thankfully, after the heat of the day, a terrible thunderstorm was brewing, and it knocked out the power. They were quite willing to wait and see if the power came back on, but Jessica insisted they go before the rain started.
Jessica had to usher the reluctant ladies out the door into the pitch-blackness of a town that did not have a single light burning in it except for the headlamps on cars.
When she closed the door, it made a loud clicking sound, and they both looked at it to see the dead bolt turning on its own.
“Good grief,” she said, trying the handle, “I think we’re locked in.” She tried to
