She glanced over and saw the way Will was looking at her, the barely banked desire in his eyes. Her pulse kicked up several notches. She revised her thinking. Maybe it was a little scary after all, the impact he had on her senses. One of these days very soon, she was going to have to decide. Until then, perhaps she could get away with acting like a very young teenager and restricting their dates to things they could do with a crowd. Just imagining Will’s reaction to her self-protective strategy made her smile.
The demand for Lunch by the Bay superseded anything Will had anticipated. Even if he’d wanted to go on a date himself—with Jess or anyone else—he was too busy to schedule one. At least that’s the excuse he’d given himself for not asking anyone out after the disastrous date with Anna Lofton a few weeks ago.
Okay, that and the fact that things actually seemed to have taken a turn for the better with Jess. He knew she couldn’t be rushed, so he was trying to wait for her to reach the same conclusion he had, that they deserved a chance.
Occasions like the chance encounter at the festival and the relaxed evening they’d spent that same day at the inn seemed to be easing her defenses. He just needed to be patient. Of course, years of being patient should have been sufficient practice, but it was getting harder.
A few days after his late-night stop at the inn, he was hunched over his computer keyboard at the office when the door opened and Jess walked in. He stared at her in surprise. It was the first time she’d ever crossed the threshold into his professional domain. Come to think of it, it might be the first time she’d ever sought him out, period.
She stood looking around the room, her gaze filled with curiosity. “No couch,” she noted.
“Not all shrinks have them,” he replied, diving into the conversation cautiously as he tried to figure out what had brought her into enemy territory. “Most people prefer sitting in a comfortable chair.”
“Did you try the whole sofa thing?”
“For a while. Then I redecorated.” He grinned. “Did you really come here to discuss my decor?”
“Honestly, I don’t know why I’m here.”
“Did you want a session?” he asked, enjoying the quick flush of color the question brought to her cheeks.
“You’re the last person I’d want poking around in my psyche,” she claimed. “You do that enough when we bump into each other.”
“Jess, contrary to whatever goes on in that head of yours, your psyche is the last thing on my mind when we run into each other.”
She perked up visibly. “Oh?”
Since he didn’t intend to lay his heart at her feet only to have her trample on it, he asked again more pointedly, “Why are you here?”
She moved around the office, picking up a magazine here, a piece of sculpture there. When she retrieved a seashell from a shelf behind his desk, she held on to it, studying it curiously.
“Did you find this around here?” she asked.
“On the beach by your house, as a matter of fact.” He met her gaze. “Don’t you remember?”
“There are probably thousands of seashells, Will. Why would I remember this one?”
“You cut your foot on it when you were about fourteen. You were bleeding all over and trying not to cry. I carried you back up to the house so Nell could bandage your foot.”
“And you saved the shell?” she said incredulously.
He shrugged, feeling ridiculous. “At the time I thought I was taking it away so it couldn’t pose a danger to you or anyone else again. Then it just sort of stayed with me.”
“To remind you of playing Sir Galahad?”
“Something like that.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“I wish you would.”
“Had you ever thought about kissing me, I mean, before that night at Brady’s?”
He smiled at her solemn tone. “All the time.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He laughed at that. “You never seemed to want me to. In fact, you’ve been nothing but prickly around me practically from the day we met. And after I became a shrink, forget it. Just like earlier, you act as if you’re terrified I’ll see something inside you that you don’t want anyone to know.”
“I don’t really have any secrets,” she said. “I think everyone in town has always known all my business.”
“Then I shouldn’t scare you, should I?”
“Probably not,” she said, then met his gaze. “But you do.”
Will felt as if the earth had suddenly shifted under him. “Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Sensing that he was teetering on the edge of a precipice that could forever alter their relationship, he asked casually, “Want to go to dinner tonight and see if we can figure it out?”
“That sounds an awful lot like a session to me,” she said warily.
“I don’t take my clients out to dinner,” he said. “It’s unethical.”
She regarded him with a penetrating gaze. “So if you ask me a question, it’ll just be because you want to know. You, Will.”
He nodded solemnly. “Just me.”
“Okay,” she agreed at last.
Will mentally shouted a few choruses of hallelujah, then stood slowly, feigning nonchalance. “I’ll get my jacket.”
As they walked outside, Jess slanted a sideways look at him. “So, when you know me better, will you fix me up with another one of those Lunch by the Bay clients of yours?”
Will stopped dead still and stared at her incredulously. Thankfully, before he uttered the first indignant thought that came to him, he saw the definite twinkle in her eyes. He deliberately held her gaze until she shifted uneasily, then licked her lips nervously.
“Well?” she prodded.
He smiled. “Not if tonight goes the way I’m counting on it going.”
She swallowed hard. “Then that kiss a few weeks ago, it wasn’t just a fluke?” she said as if not quite sure she could trust her
