At the moment, she hadn’t the foggiest idea what she would say. She merely nodded.
He hesitated, as if there were many things he wanted to discuss. But obviously he could see that she simply wasn’t up to that conversation yet. He took a step toward her and rested his hands on her shoulders as he bent his head to kiss her. He didn’t immediately move away when he released her mouth, but looked at her with a serious expression.
“I want to see you again, Jenny. I think that goes without saying. But even if you decide you don’t want to take another chance on us, don’t let anyone else try to change you to suit them. Trust me, I’ve been there. It doesn’t work. It only makes you miserable.”
“You should go now, Gavin,” she whispered. Her eyes felt suddenly hot and she did not want to cry in front of him. She needed desperately to cling to what little self-control she had left. “We will talk. But not tonight.”
“Take all the time you need,” he said gruffly, taking a step backward. “I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”
She merely nodded. With a last brush of his hand against her face, Gavin left. Only then did she allow herself to sink into a chair and bury her face in her hands.
Everything had changed tonight. All her carefully laid plans had shattered beneath Gavin’s kisses. No matter what happened with him, she knew she couldn’t accept Thad’s proposal now.
She couldn’t tell Thad over the phone, of course. He deserved a face-to-face answer to his offer. He would be disappointed, though in all honesty she doubted he would be heartbroken. Nor would he be angry; in all the months they’d dated, they’d exchanged no more than a few cross words. In all likelihood, he would wish her the best, maybe try one more time to convince her how good they’d have been together, and then he would graciously accept her answer.
Thad had a plan that would remain intact despite her decision. It wouldn’t take him long to implement it with someone equally suitable as his partner. Another attorney, perhaps, or a professor or marketing executive. He had no interest in vacuous young arm candy. He claimed to be attracted to intelligence, competence and poise. She’d been pleased that he’d set his standards so high and that he thought all those flattering adjectives applied to her.
As for herself—maybe she’d known all along it would turn out this way. Not that she would find Gavin again, of course, and certainly not that the powerful attraction that had always existed between them would draw him to her bed. But maybe when she’d taken off for the woods to consider and deliberate, she’d secretly known she would be unable to commit to Thad in the way he wanted.
As Gavin had pointed out, her joy lay in the business she’d built for herself, the plans and goals she still had for it. Maybe that should be enough for her. Maybe, like her mother and grandmother before her, she was destined to be single and self-sufficient. Maybe, unlike them, she’d been fortunate enough to come to that realization without the agony of losing someone she loved and with whom she’d planned to live out her lifetime. The dread was still there, still sharp and discouraging.
She had to admit now that she didn’t love Thad enough to be happy with him. But she still feared she loved Gavin entirely too much.
* * *
She had almost forgotten she’d made plans to have breakfast with Tess late Sunday morning at a new café they’d both wanted to try out. Tess sent her a text asking if they were still on, and after a brief deliberation, Jenny agreed, hurrying to get ready in time.
After a near-sleepless night in her now memory-filled bed, she wanted to get out of the apartment for a while. Tess’s serene, soothing presence could be just what she required to calm her jangled nerves. She definitely needed calming before she joined her mother and grandmother for their regular Sunday dinner later that evening.
“Well?” she asked as they sat at a little table in the cute but crowded café. The tables were arranged so close together that she was almost elbow to elbow with one of the three prim-looking elderly ladies at the nearest one. From their conversation, conducted in a volume meant to compensate for the noisy room and their own poor hearing, she determined that they were indulging in a nice brunch after early church services. She wasn’t interested in eavesdropping, however, choosing instead to focus on her breakfast companion. “Did you handle the big work emergency last night?”
Tess looked up from her spinach, tomato and feta quiche with a rueful grimace. “Eventually. It took me a while to reach Scott. He’d let the battery run down on his phone and I had to make half a dozen calls to finally track him down at a client dinner. He took care of everything after that.”
Tess probably would have been called on even if Scott were easily reachable, Jenny thought with a slight shake of her head.
During the year and a half she’d known Tess, she’d figured out a few things about her friend’s relationship with her boss. Scott Prince was a brilliant businessman who’d built his commercial construction business into a successful and rapidly growing enterprise, but the day-to-day details were left to others, usually Tess. Twenty-nine years old, she had worked for Scott for six years. He’d been just striking out on his own when he’d hired her. She’d worked her way up till from clerical assistant to office manager. No one got to Scott except through her, and everyone who worked for him was more invested in keeping her happy than him.
Tess was fiercely loyal to her employer, but the first to call him out when he got “too full of himself,” as she phrased it. If she had ever had romantic feelings toward her unmarried boss, she’d never said.
At the moment, Tess apparently wasn’t thinking about her own hectic life. “So,” she said, deftly turning the conversation around. “Gavin drove you home last night?”
Jenny took a quick sip of her coffee to delay answering, nearly burning her mouth because of her inattention. She set her cup down carefully. “Yes.”
“He seems nice.”
“He is.”
“I think Stevie was trying to fix me up with him, but I could tell pretty quickly that it wouldn’t work even if I were interested in pursuing him.”
Jenny dug a mushroom out of her omelet with her fork. “I don’t really see you with Gavin.”
“Considering he’s still head over heels in love with you, neither do I.”
Jenny’s fork clattered loudly against her plate, drawing a disapproving glance from the nearby church ladies. Ignoring them, she frowned across the table at Tess. “He’s not still in love with me. Until last week, we hadn’t even seen each other for ten years.”
“Maybe he wasn’t pining for you those whole ten years, but I think seeing you again brought his feelings for you back to the forefront,” Tess mused aloud. “The way he looked at you last night...well, the hair on my arms stood on end. Talk about chemistry.”
Jenny swallowed a groan in automatic reaction to her friend’s words, which so eerily echoed the way she’d always privately described her own reactions to Gavin. “I’ll admit there is still an...attraction between us.”