“You’ve never had to make an effort to get a girl. Do you even know the meaning of the word effort?”
He thought her statement was absurd. He looked over the paper at her. “Are you referring to the woman I took on a hot-air balloon ride? Or the one I flew to New York for a three-day weekend? Or—”
Addy waved her head. “Yes, I know. You’re Mr. Charm personified. Women take one look at that overly pretty face of yours and you delight in driving them crazy by reinforcing their dreams about you.”
Tristan put down the newspaper and looked at Nell. “Do you have any idea what your mother is talking about?”
At the time, Nell was only six, but she’d always been a little adult. Solemnly, she nodded. “My teacher says you’re the most beautiful man she’s ever seen, and she asked me to give her your cell phone number.”
“See!” Addy said. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
Tris was still looking at his niece. “Do you mean the teacher with the red hair or the one with the long dark hair?”
“Dark,” Nell said, biting into her toast.
“Oh,” Tris said and picked up the newspaper again. “Smile at her but don’t give her my number. If the redhead asks, give it to her.”
“Nellonia!” Addy said. “Don’t you dare give your uncle’s number to anyone. And you, Tristan, if you don’t stop playing around, you’re going to end up as some fifty-year-old bachelor living with a bunch of cats. Don’t you want a family of your own?”
He put the paper down again, but this time he was serious. “I’m open to suggestions, so please tell me how I find a woman who can see past her own dreams of marrying a doctor. That woman you liked so much? She didn’t want to live in Edilean. She strongly suggested that I move to New York City and take up plastic surgery so I could make some real money.”
“Oh,” Addy said as she sat down at the end of the table. “She didn’t tell me that part.”
Tristan drank his orange juice and told Neland toll to do the same. “Addy,” he said, “I’m more than willing to solve this problem. But I can’t seem to change me. Contrary to what people seem to believe about me, I like smart women, ones I can actually carry on a conversation with. But every woman like that I’ve dated tells me to leave this one-horse town and start making a lot of money.”
“I didn’t know any of this,” Addy said. Her head came up. “All of which makes what I said more true. You need to find a woman who doesn’t think that you are the answer to all her problems. Find a woman who doesn’t want you, then go after her.”
“But if she doesn’t want me, why would I pursue her?” he asked in bewilderment.
“Look at me,” Addy said. “When I met Jake, he was the last person I wanted. A car mechanic who wanted to be a soldier? Never! But now look at us.”
Tristan looked at his beautiful niece and thought how much he envied his sister. She and her husband were as happy a couple as he’d ever seen. “I’m willing,” he said, “but how do I find her?”
“Wear a mask,” Nell said, and when the two adults looked at her, she said, “Wear a very ugly mask, Uncle Tris.”
Addy and Tris laughed so hard at what she’d said that the tension broke.
A few weeks later Tris met another woman he liked. He thought he’d made an effort with her, but maybe his sister was right because he’d never felt he was struggling to win her. The breakup came when he found out that she wasn’t taking her birth control pills.
Tris looked back at the photo. Through everything, Jecca had stayed in the back of his mind. Maybe their few moments together on Kim’s parents’ patio had meant nothing to Jecca, but it had meant a great deal to Tris. She hadn’t been impressed by his occupation, hadn’t been swept away by his looks. She had seen through him, into him, had asked about him as a man. It occurred to Tristan that it wouldn’t have made any difference to Jecca if he’d been disfigured.
Addy said that Tris never made an effort to win a woman, and that’s all he’d done with Jecca. But he’d failed. Every attempt to meet her again had fallen through.
So what the hell was this about Reede Aldredge? What did he have to do with Jecca? And why had Kim kept whatever had happened—the “thing”—a secret all these years?
With disgust, Tris looked at his arm in the cast. How was he to win a woman’s affections with this albatross around him? Reede went around the world saving people in spectacular ways. How could Tris compete with that? He knew from experience that incapacitated men tended to bring out the nurse in women. But Tris didn’t want a nurse, he wanted—
He wanted to meet Jecca as a man, with all his faculties in good working order.
He’d lied to Kim when he said he didn’t remember about the cruise his parents were planning. His father had bellyached about it enough. Tris had loved the idea. If his father left, that meant Tris could return to his own practice, even if his arm was still in a cast. But Tris hadn’t heard that his mother—he was sure she’d done it—had contacen 2;had cted Reede and got him to agree to return.
Tris picked up his cell phone and touched the calendar to check the dates. He had little time between when his father left and Reede arrived. But cast or no, he was going to meet Jecca on the day she arrived.
And this time he’d make sure she remembered him!
Two
As Jecca drove down the winding road that led into Edilean, the overhanging trees made it seem that she was going through a dark, secret tunnel. It was as though she was about to enter an enchanted place, somewhere not quite of the real world.