“I agree,” the other client said. “It could have happened with any other service or in some online chat room. There are sleazy people in the world.”
“I know that,” Will said. “I should have figured out some way to weed them out.”
Jess could see from the deeply troubled expression on his face that he’d taken this incident to heart and placed all the blame squarely on his own shoulders.
Having Laila close by was more fun than Jess had anticipated when she’d made the offer. And, though she didn’t want to admit it, Laila also made a nice buffer between herself and Will. The intensity of their relationship needed to cool down, though she had to admit she missed some of their more impulsive escapades.
“You’re using Laila as an excuse not to spend time alone with me,” Will accused a week into the arrangement. “Why is that?”
“I’m not,” Jess denied automatically, then winced at his penetrating look. “Okay, maybe I am.”
“Why? Were the feelings getting too scary?”
Though she hated to admit to being afraid of anything, she nodded. “I hate that you can read me so darn well.”
He laughed. “I know. It’s a curse, isn’t it?”
“You’re joking, but it’s not that funny,” she retorted. “I wonder sometimes if it wouldn’t be easier to be in a relationship in which I could remain a woman of mystery.”
“You’d go ballistic the first time some man didn’t know intuitively what was going on in your head.”
“Maybe so,” she said. “But I doubt it.”
“Want to test it?” he asked, regarding her with a challenging look. “You could always date a few guys, then report back.”
“I assume you wouldn’t be the one fixing me up with them,” she said, then realized the implication of her remark. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, as some kind of knock on Lunch by the Bay.”
Though he’d stiffened, Will said, “I knew what you meant, and no, I was most certainly not going to fix you up. I was just offering you a time-out, if that’s what you really want. Go, test the waters.”
Jess was more shaken by the offer than she’d thought she would be. “Do you want to get rid of me? Is that what you’re saying?”
Will’s tense expression immediately fled. He reached out and pulled her close. “God, no,” he murmured in her ear. “It’s the last thing I want.”
She relaxed into his embrace, feeling secure once more. “Good, because it’s the last thing I want, too. As for all this time with Laila, she needs our company right now, and maybe it is good for us to let things simmer for a bit, instead of turning the heat up so high we burn out.”
Will laughed. “Our relationship is not going to burn out, Jess. I don’t see it happening.”
“It could,” she said, wishing she could be as certain as he was. She was close. It sometimes felt as if forever was within her grasp, but then panic set in.
One of these days, though, if Will remained steadfast long enough, she hoped to be exactly where he was, knowing that their future was as inevitable as breathing.
Even though his relationship with Jess seemed to be progressing nicely, Will still found himself walking on eggshells when they were together, especially lately with Laila as an almost constant companion. Much as he liked Laila and understood the reason for her presence, it occasionally grated. He and Jess were almost on the cusp of having it all. Adding a bystander to the mix was slowing things down too much for his taste.
Still, he did feel good about the progress he and Jess had made. And ever since their conversation about losing their privacy, she’d made an effort to ensure that they had at least a few stolen moments of alone time every evening. Or maybe that was Laila’s doing. She seemed to sense Will’s frustration in ways Jess did not.
Despite the ups and downs of the past ten days or so, Will was still stunned when he arrived at the inn to pick Jess up for a scheduled date and discovered that she’d apparently gone off on an overnight trip for the inn without bothering to mention it to him. His heart sank.
“Did she leave a message for me?” he asked Laila, who was on her way out to spend the evening with Trace, Abby and the twins.
“Sorry, no,” she said. “I thought for sure she’d called you.”
“Any idea where she went?”
“She got a call earlier, something about some real estate or something, and took off right after she made sure I’d be with Trace and Abby tonight.”
“Okay, thanks. Enjoy your evening. If she happens to call you, tell her I stopped by.” He had to wonder, though, if even that would trigger her memory and remind her that she’d blown off a date. Was this her ADD, or was she sending him a message about how truly unimportant he was in her life? With Jess, especially recently, it was impossible to say.
An hour later, he was reluctantly matching couples on the Lunch by the Bay website and debating whether he shouldn’t be calling it quits and shutting down the site for good, when his cell phone rang: Jess, according to the caller ID.
“Hey,” he said quietly.
“I am so, so sorry,” she apologized. “This trip came up at the last second and I completely forgot to check my calendar. Laila called me to tell me. Why didn’t you?”
“I figured something important must have come up,” he said. “I understood.” And he did. For someone with ADD, keeping track of details was a constant struggle. He was actually surprised something like this hadn’t happened sooner. Of course, it had at the inn, but those things hadn’t directly affected him.
As if she’d read his mind, she immediately snapped back, “Dammit, Will, this isn’t about the ADD. I forgot to check my calendar, period. People do that kind of thing
