Wish I Might (Wishful 5)

“I’m sure Leo’s just fine, but I’m on a man diet,” Brooke declared.

Cecily turned back to the table. “A man diet?”

“I’ve had seriously craptastic luck with the last several guys I’ve been out with. The dating pool is not that big here, as you well know, and it’s shrinking. Leo Hamilton is one of the last unknown quantities out there in our age bracket. I’d hate to go out with him and find out there’s no chemistry, or worse, that he’s some kind of closet asshole.”

“Leo’s not an asshole,” Jessie assured her.

“Maybe not,” Brooke agreed, “but I’d rather enjoy him just hanging out on the horizon as a very pretty possibility than get confirmation he’s a frog instead of a prince.”

That was an attitude Cecily could get behind. Wasn’t that exactly what she’d done with Reed? It was just too damned bad that she’d kissed him. Now there was no erasing that first-hand knowledge that Reed Campbell’s poet’s mouth knew exactly how to drive her crazy.

She cursed her traitorous body for glancing back at him. One kiss. It was one kiss. So why the hell couldn’t she get it out of her system?

Naturally her friends noticed.

“Now that’s a prince I thought for sure would take,” Avery said. “I was positive you and Reed would hit it off, or I wouldn’t have dragged you both to the lake.”

Victims of Avery’s less than subtle matchmaking, Reed and Cecily had been invited as the lone singles to a couples weekend at a cabin up at Hope Springs. According to Avery, a weekend away was just the thing to finally ignite the slow burning fuse of attraction that had been sizzling between them during months of casual flirtation. And she’d been right. That latent spark of fun and humor had burst into something a whole lot hotter. Which was part of the problem. Because then he’d opened his mouth and ruined everything.

There’s no such thing as a woman raised in the lap of luxury, who has even the remotest grip on reality. Ivory tower princesses, all of them.

He hadn’t been talking about her at all. Cecily understood he’d been badly burned by his ex. But his casual and sweeping indictment proved he could never handle the truth about who she really was. Cecily had no desire to get more attached to him before the inevitable train wreck, so she’d politely but firmly put on the brakes.

She jerked a shoulder. “There’s no sense in me starting some kind of relationship when I’ll be leaving whenever I land a new job.”

Jessie arched a brow. “And that merited avoiding him for the last three months?”

“I haven’t been avoiding him.”

“Really? So the fact that you conveniently had other plans or had to work late every time a social occasion came up where he’d be there is just a coincidence?”

Cecily fought the urge to squirm beneath Avery’s gaze.

“Why don’t you give him another chance, honey?” Jessie suggested. “He really is a good guy.”

“I’m not arguing that he’s not a good guy.” He was one of the best ones she knew, which had made her disappointment all the keener. “He’s just not for me.” She was saving them both a lot of grief by acknowledging that on the front end. “And, as I said, I’m leaving, so the whole thing is an entirely moot point.”

But as the conversation finally turned to other topics, Cecily couldn’t resist glancing back toward him and thinking how much she was going to miss this place.

~*~

The new issues of M & S arrived on Monday. Reed had almost forgotten about Christoff having bought them all, but the mystery came flooding back as he pulled them out of the box. Since Brenda was manning the register, he paused in the midst of racking the rest of the shipment to look it over. The cover story was about billionaire philanthropist Cecil Davenport. Like the Vanderbilts or Rockefellers, Davenport was a household name—the kind of name that spoke of old money and breeding. People who lived stratospheres above the normal world. But unlike many of his contemporaries, Davenport was more often in the news for the good things he did with his wealth. Reed dimly remembered having read something about an enterprise he’d entered into with Warren Buffet last year. Something to do with trying to correct the latest debacle in public education.

As he studied Davenport’s picture on the front of the magazine, Reed couldn’t shake the sense that the guy looked familiar. Probably from having seen him on the news. He began to flip through, skimming articles and by-lines, wondering what had prompted Christoff to wipe out the local supply. Reed turned the page and suddenly he knew exactly why Cecil Davenport looked familiar. Because his gray eyes were staring out of the smiling face of…Cecily. Her picture was right there on the page of this national magazine.

“What the hell?”

Reed hurriedly turned back to the start of the Davenport story—a photo essay and interview designed to humanize the man by introducing the rest of his family.

Holy shit. Cecily was Cecil Davenport’s granddaughter?

Reed tried to imagine her in that privileged, private world and absolutely failed. She was

so…real and normal, without a shred of pretension.

What the hell was she doing in Wishful working for an hourly wage at City Hall? She could be doing…anything…anywhere. And yet she was here, hanging out with the likes of his small town, not giving off a single inkling that she was so much more than a displaced Yankee with a beautiful smile and a brilliant mind. Of course, that was making the gross assumption that the family fortune trickled down. For all he knew, she was having to work to get by the same as anyone else.

Reed started to rack the magazine, then stopped, whipping it back to beat against his thick skull as he realized, with an abrupt clarity, exactly what he’d done to earn her ill opinion.