Megan seemed taken aback by the invitation, but there was a pleased note in her voice when she responded. “Give me twenty minutes, okay?”
“Perfect. See if Heather can get away, too,” she suggested, since Heather’s quilt shop was right next door to the gallery. “Maybe she can ride over with you.”
“Will do,” Megan promised.
She called Bree and Shanna next. Shanna said she couldn’t leave the bookstore on such short notice, but Bree sounded ecstatic about having an excuse to get away from Flowers on Main.
“It’s been a zoo in here this morning,” she complained. “Half the town’s apparently sick and the other half is sending flowers. I’ve been desperate for a reason to escape. My employee’s pretty new, but she can handle it for an hour. I’ll have to bring the baby, though.”
“No problem,” Jess assured her. Cuddling her new niece might be just what she needed.
The more the merrier, in fact. Hopefully in all the commotion, she’d be able to forget about the disastrous, frustrating way her own day had started.
Will knew there was something going on with Jess. She’d been unusually quiet all evening. The mere fact that she’d shown up at his office with dinner was proof that she wasn’t herself. After that one visit weeks ago, she hadn’t willingly come inside the place.
Once they’d finished the excellent beef stew and biscuits she’d brought and had a good start on a bottle of excellent red wine, he set his glass down on a corner of his desk, leaned forward, and looked into her eyes.
“What’s going on, Jess?”
She gave him a startled look. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He gestured around. “You came to my office.”
“I figured you’d be working late. I brought you dinner. What’s the big deal?” she asked defensively.
That defensive note in her voice only confirmed his suspicions. Of course, calling her on it might not have been his smartest move. It might fall into that category she despised, evidence he was analyzing her. Still, he hated seeing her like this. Whatever was going on, she needed to get it out.
“Something happened today, and you’re trying very hard not to talk about it,” he guessed.
“True,” she conceded, though she didn’t look especially pleased that he’d hit the mark. “And I’m still not a hundred percent sure I want to talk about it with you.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I’m not sure if you can separate being my boyfriend from being a shrink.”
“Are you worried about me not being able to differentiate, or are you the one with that problem?”
She looked vaguely startled by his suggestion, but then to his surprise, she nodded. “Me,” she admitted.
“Okay, let’s attack this from a different direction,” he suggested. “If I were just your boyfriend, what would you expect from me if you brought me a problem? Sympathy? Understanding? Advice?”
Her expression turned thoughtful. “Sympathy and understanding, for sure.”
“No advice?” he asked, trying not to smile.
“I think that sneaks over the line into the whole shrink thing.”
“Well, to be honest with you, I don’t give a lot of advice in my business. I just help people to work through their problems. They do all the hard work. I pretty much keep my opinions to myself.”
She regarded him with surprise. “Really?”
“Most of the time,” he confirmed. “Does that help?”
“Yes, I think it does.”
“So, what happened today?”
She launched into a description of all the mistakes she’d made, the litany filled with the kind of self-loathing that made him want to gather her in his arms, but she didn’t need consolation. She needed to find a way to restore her faith in herself.
“Why did this hit you so hard?” he asked when she’d finally wound down. “You’ve handled much tougher slipups. Look at the whole foreclosure episode when you had to get Abby to bail you out. This was nothing by comparison.”
“I guess I’d gotten used to thinking that my system for managing things was perfect,” she admitted. “When Gail came to me about the order, then reminded me of all the other things I’d let fall through the cracks recently, it shook me up.”
She met his gaze. “More than that, it made me start to think that I need a new challenge, that I’m never going to be satisfied just to have the inn open and running smoothly. I’m always going to need something else to tackle.”
Will had some idea where she was headed with this. “By extension, are you thinking that applies to your relationships, as well? Do you think I won’t be enough for you once we get into some kind of a routine?”
She looked startled by the comparison. “After yesterday, how can you ask that? I think you’ll be able to keep things fresh and exciting for a very long time.”
He smiled. “Good to know,” he said, though he doubted it would be that easy. He imagined that making love, even spectacularly, could drift into a familiar pattern after a while unless a couple really worked to keep the sparks alive. He’d never been with anyone long enough to test that theory, though. Neither had Jess.
He looked into her troubled eyes. “Jess, what’s really going on in that head of yours? This isn’t just because you forgot to place a couple of orders or messed up a reservation.”
“Probably not,” she admitted. “I guess it made me realize that I’m never going to grow out of the ADD. It’s always going to be with me.”
“More than likely,” he agreed.
“How can you put up with that?” she asked plaintively.
“Because it’s just one piece of who you are. You have to stop defining yourself by your ADD. You’re Jess O’Brien, owner of a successful inn. You’re beautiful, smart, funny, impulsive, just a little crazy and quite possibly the most exciting woman on the planet.”
She finally allowed herself to smile. “You’re just saying that because you want to get lucky again tonight.”
“I got lucky enough yesterday for a week, though I certainly wouldn’t say no to a repeat
