When she walked into the meeting room at Town Hall, she felt confident and sexy. As soon as she saw the appreciative gleam in Tom’s eyes, she realized she probably should have opted for dowdy. This selection was clearly giving him ideas. She swallowed hard, forced a smile for Tom, then chose a seat on the other side of Ronnie.
“You can’t hide from him forever, sugar,” Ronnie whispered in her ear. “The man has it bad.”
“No, he doesn’t,” she insisted. “I’m a challenge, nothing more.”
Ronnie chuckled. “Wishful thinking. You got something against handsome and rich?”
“Nothing at all,” she assured him.
“Then why are you avoiding him?” he asked, still in an undertone.
“I’m not,” she said.
“That’s not what his half-dozen, increasingly worried calls to my house yesterday suggested.”
“He called there?” she said, dismayed. “I’m so sorry.”
“He was freaking out because he couldn’t reach you. It didn’t help that Dana Sue hadn’t been able to reach you, either. It took some serious persuasion on my part to keep the two of them from racing over to check on you. I swear, if you hadn’t walked in here just now, there’d be a posse out looking for you before lunchtime.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I never meant to involve everyone else in my drama.” Not that there was much drama involved. In fact, she was trying very hard to prevent drama.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Ronnie assured her. “I told ’em you probably needed a little space to absorb the fact that you’d taken such a big step. Buying your first house is scary business. It is your first, isn’t it?”
Jeanette nodded. “And it all happened so fast that I’m absolutely terrified I might have made a mistake. I called the bank this morning to make an appointment to apply for the loan and hung up before anyone said hello.”
“Buyer’s remorse, cold feet, whatever you want to call it, is perfectly normal,” Ronnie assured her. “You’ll get over it. And you need anything, you have all of us as backup.”
“Thanks.”
He studied her closely. “Other than being scared silly over committing to apply for a thirty-year mortgage, everything else is okay?”
She gave him her brightest smile. “I’m fine.”
“Okay, then, that’s good enough for me.” He grinned. “Word of warning, though. Just your assurance about that might not be enough to satisfy Tom or my wife.”
She glanced at Tom, who was watching her exchange with Ronnie intently. “Yeah, I get that.”
A moment later Tom called the meeting to order and then ran through the agenda in record time. It was obvious he wanted this meeting over with, much to Howard’s annoyance.
“Where’s the fire, son?” Howard demanded when Tom cut his report short and called for adjournment. “I thought we could discuss where we’re going to get the town Christmas tree this year.”
Tom barely contained a sigh. “Where do you usually get it?”
“We’ve found most of ’em on the outskirts of town,” Howard said. “Up until recently there was a lot of heavily wooded property nearby, but development’s had an impact on that.” He cast a hard look at Ronnie as if the construction boom was all his fault. “I think we’re going to have to go a different direction this year. There’s a farm that raises Christmas trees just outside of Columbia. I think we should go up there and take a look around. It’ll probably cost us a little more, but I think we’ll find a better selection.”
“Okay, I designate you to go,” Tom said. He was about to gavel the meeting to a close, when Howard spoke again.
“This is a committee decision,” Howard protested, then added with enthusiasm, “I say we all go next weekend. There may not be a chill in the air yet, but we’ll play some Christmas music in the car, take along some hot chocolate, really get into the spirit of things.” He beamed at them. “We can make a day of it.”
Jeanette and Tom groaned almost simultaneously.
“I can’t go on Saturday,” she said. “It’s one of my busiest days at the spa.”
“Saturday’s no good for me, either,” Mary Vaughn said. “I usually have an open house going that day or, if I don’t, I’m out showing properties. Same with Sunday.”
Howard frowned at Ronnie. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that the hardware store does too much business on Saturday for you to get away, too.”
Ronnie shrugged. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
Howard shook his head. “Okay, then, we’ll make it a weekday. Tuesday suit everyone? That’s a week from tomorrow, so you have plenty of advance notice. Jeanette, can you make that work?”
Knowing that one day was no better than another for doing something she absolutely did not want to do, she nodded. “I’ll reschedule my appointments. Tuesdays are usually pretty light.”
“Good,” Howard said approvingly. He turned to Tom. “And nothing much happens on a Tuesday around here, am I right? No big meetings.”
“None,” Tom conceded with obvious reluctance.
“Tuesday, it is, then,” Howard said with satisfaction. “We’ll leave from here at 7:00 a.m. We can even skip our regular Monday meeting. That ought to make everyone happy.” He turned to Tom. “Now you can end the meeting if you want to.”
“Thank you,” Tom said. “Meeting adjourned. Jeanette, could you stay for a few minutes so we can discuss the vendor situation?”
“I need to get to the spa,” she said, not anxious to be alone with him.
“Ten minutes,” he said.
“Okay,” she agreed reluctantly and followed him into his office.
Tom closed the door behind them and clicked the lock. He gestured toward a chair, but Jeanette remained standing. He shrugged.
“Everything okay with you?” he inquired mildly.
“Fine.”
“You’re not mad at me for some reason?”
“Not at all.”
He regarded her with bewilderment. “Then could you explain
