“How often do you go to Moonlight Cove?” Will asked, watching her intently, an odd wariness still in his eyes.
“Not so much anymore. Why?”
“I just heard a few stories,” he said.
“From my brothers, I’m sure. To hear them tell it, I was putting my virginity at risk over there at least once a week throughout my teens.”
“Were you?”
“Realistically, I suppose I did take a lot of chances,” she admitted. “It’s funny. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I always counted on Kevin or Connor to rescue me in the nick of time.”
“A pretty risky game, don’t you think?”
“I do now, of course,” she admitted, then shrugged. “But back then, I just wanted to connect with somebody. I was too young and stupid to realize that sex wasn’t the answer.”
Will looked genuinely surprised by her response. “You were lonely?”
Jess thought about the question. “Not exactly. I mean, our house was always crawling with people, you know what I mean?”
“I do,” he said. “I was one of them.”
“Did you ever happen to notice that none of them were my friends? Oh, I was tolerated because I was Connor’s kid sister or Kevin’s or Bree’s, but kids my own age steered clear. I got a reputation early as the kid who stirred up trouble in school, the kid who was always disrupting the classroom. No parent wanted their children around me, as if the ADD might be contagious.”
Will’s expression filled with sympathy, which Jess found annoying.
“Don’t you dare pity me,” she told him. “That’s just the way it was. By the time I hit my teens, I figured out how to compensate, at least with boys.”
“Sex,” he said, sounding unbearably sad. “Oh, Jess, didn’t you know that all of us hanging out at your folks’ place adored you?”
“Maybe you did,” she said. “The others, not so much. I think my brothers just put the fear of God into them so they’d tolerate me.”
Will’s expression changed, as if something had suddenly clicked for him. “And that’s why you don’t trust me when I say I care about you,” he said. “On some level, you’re still that little kid who’s wanting to belong but doesn’t think she ever will.”
Jess was uncomfortable, as always, when Will started analyzing her. She didn’t like it that he could see her so clearly, especially the insecurities she’d worked so hard to hide from the world.
She forced a smile. “How’d we get off on this tangent, anyway? It’s all old news. This sandwich is amazing. Thanks for fixing it.”
Will gave her a knowing look. “There you go, scurrying back into your shell. Why do you do that, especially with me?”
“You’re the shrink. You tell me.”
“Okay,” he said, clearly accepting her words as a challenge. “Here’s the way I see it. You’re scared to death to let anyone get too close. It goes back to your parents’ divorce. If the two adults who were supposed to love you could all but abandon you, then how could you possibly be lovable?”
The analysis, which so closely mirrored what she herself had said to Gram recently, gave her pause. It should have annoyed her to have Will hit the mark so accurately, but amazingly it felt oddly comforting. He actually got her…and, it seemed, liked her anyway.
Still, she wasn’t prepared to give him credit for it too easily.
“I’m not scared of letting anyone get close,” she insisted, mostly to be contrary. “I signed up for your dating service, didn’t I? Doesn’t that prove that I want to find someone to spend my life with?”
“All it proves is that Connie and Laila caught you at a weak moment,” he retorted.
She hated that he’d figured that out, too, but she couldn’t deny it.
“How many dates have you been on?” he asked.
“You only matched me up with one guy,” she reminded him.
“Have you gone out with him?” he pressed.
She sighed. “No.”
“Why not?”
“It didn’t feel right.”
“Tell me why.”
She stared at the fire, stubbornly silent.
“Come on, Jess,” Will said impatiently. “How about the truth? How am I supposed to make adjustments in my system’s criteria if you won’t be honest with me? What about this guy didn’t feel right?”
“So it’s all about you and your precious computer program?” she said, miffed and not really sure why. She didn’t want Will digging around in her psyche, did she? So why wasn’t she more relieved that all he cared about was how he could fix a Lunch by the Bay computer glitch?
Will’s gaze was unflinching. “You’re avoiding my questions.”
Jess sighed. “It was nothing specific,” she insisted. “Maybe it was just the timing. Maybe I was having an off day or something. Don’t make a big deal about it. I’ll go out with the next guy or the one after that. How many dates have you gone on?”
“Three,” he said.
“Including Laila,” she said, unable to keep a testy note out of her voice. “What was that about?”
“The computer program said we had a lot in common. We do, too,” he added, a surprisingly defiant tone in his voice.
“Then why didn’t you ask her out again?”
“No chemistry,” he conceded. “I haven’t figured out how to factor that into the program. I don’t even think it can be done.”
Jess chuckled. “Yep, those old pheromones can be a killer, can’t they? No telling when they’ll kick in.”
“Some would say that any two people who are well-suited on other fronts can develop a sexual attraction in time,” he said.
“But you’re obviously not one of the so-called experts who believes that,” she said.
Will frowned. “Why would you say that?”
“The Laila experience. If you believed that attraction can grow over the course of a relationship, why didn’t you ask her out again?” she pressed.
“Because, if
