Jack drove into town, realizing only once he’d gotten to the center of the four-square blocks that comprised Oyster Bay, that he hadn’t even had to check the route this time. Landmarks were becoming about as familiar as the people here, and despite not being able to blend into the crowd as he usually preferred, he liked that.
He parked across the street from the bookstore, recalling the food market he’d spotted across the street on that first morning he’d walked through town.
What a difference a week made, he thought, as he slipped four quarters into the meter and, grabbing a basket, entered the store.
A week ago he’d been stressed and anxious, and now he was shopping for ingredients for dinner…for a woman. He almost laughed out loud at the mere thought of it.
Knowing from the lasagna dinner Bridget made that she liked Italian food, he decided on a simple pasta that even a bad cook like himself couldn’t mess up, too bad, and a fresh pesto sauce. A good bottle of wine and something with chocolate would round out the meal, not that he was exactly sure what would happen after dessert.
He knew what he wanted to happen. He wanted to kiss her. Again. Just like he’d wanted to on Saturday, after the festival. And this time, if she let him, he would.
He wouldn’t over think it, or dwell on the past. He’d lived there too long, and now, being in the present, he actually dared to look at the future for the first time in too long.
His phone rang, and he glanced at the screen, pulling him out of this town and back to his life in New York all at once. He considered not answering it, but knew there was no dodging it anymore.
“Lance!” His agent of twelve years and friend for just as many used to be someone he looked forward to hearing from, until everything started to unravel. Then his calls became the source of tension, and pressure, and often he tried to avoid them as much as possible.
“You sound suspiciously happy to hear from me,” Lance replied in that gruff voice of his.
Jack stopped in front of the wine aisle, feeling guilty. He’d turned his back on more than just himself in recent years. He’d shut out the world. But he’d always shut out people who still cared about him.
“I take it that means you’re making progress?” Lance asked, almost nervously.
Here, Jack grinned. “I’m happy to inform you that, yes, I have had a breakthrough.”
Lance whistled under his breath. “How’d it happen?”
Jack opened his mouth to start to explain and then, because he couldn’t help himself, he said, “I guess it’s sometimes just as simple as boy meets girl.”
“So you stopped over thinking things!” Lance said, and Jack could hear the smile in his voice. “I knew a change of scenery would do you good.”
“You were right,” he said. As always. After all, wasn’t it Lance who told him to slow down, take Erin on a vacation, live his life so he’d have experiences to tell?
“When are you going to figure out that I’m always right?” Lance joked.
The conversation was coming to a close, but Jack had one more thing he needed to say first. “Let’s grab dinner when I get back. Like old times,” he added, hoping that Lance would still be up for that sort of thing. Lately all their interactions had resorted to business talk. Slowly, without even noticing, over time their friendship had faded into a professional relationship only.
“I’d like that,” Lance said.
“Met too,” Jack said, and disconnected the call.
The familiar sense of anxiety that had followed him around for years started to rear, but he pushed it aside as quickly as it appeared. Enough. He had lived that way for too long. And that hadn’t been living at all, had it? He’d been getting up, eating, going to bed, but that was no life. Here, in his brief stay in Oyster Bay, he had dared to live.
One day at a time, he told himself. He’d enjoy today. He wouldn’t let worrying about tomorrow ruin it.
And maybe, he thought, when he pictured Bridget’s sweet smile and that easy way she drew him out of himself, he wouldn’t have to worry anymore.
***
The day after a big weekend was always the busiest, Bridget had found. Sometimes, it felt even busier than the day the guests all checked in. Now there were rooms to clean and beds to change. Vacuuming. Laundry. Inevitably something always spilled and needed to be cleaned up. Once, a shower curtain had been ripped. Another time a perfume bottle had broken and the entire upstairs had to be fumigated, with the windows up, even though it was February and freezing and the heating bill had skyrocketed. Bridget had lived with a five-day low-grade headache, but by the weekend, when guests checked in again, the air was clear and nothing was amiss.
Still, ever since, Bridget got twitchy when she noticed a guest wearing cologne.
But today, for the first time since perhaps her first month since opening the inn, when the novelty of having actual guests had worn off, she didn’t mind the laborious chores. In fact, she was happy to have them. They easily passed the time between now and…dinner.
Her stomach rumbled just at the thought and she had to force herself to focus on the task at hand, which was laundering the towels and making sure that she didn’t accidentally slip in a red sock. Pink guest towels didn’t fit the design of the house, which was light and airy with shades of blues, teals, and greens.
She started the load and checked her watch, pleased and nervous all at once to see that it was already two o’clock. She hadn’t even stopped to eat lunch, she’d been so busy going room by room, all six guest rooms except Room Four, of course. When she’d been upstairs earlier, the DO NOT DISTURB sign was hanging from the knob and she could hear the faint tapping of fingers on a keyboard through the wall.
Normally, she would be hurrying to finish up this latest round before she had to go pick up Emma, but an hour ago Ryan had called and offered to take her to that movie. Monday nights were his easy nights, when people were tired and broke from the weekend and eager to eat in, not hang out in the pub. Any other time, Bridget would have pointed out that it was a school night, not a good time to be out late for a movie, but not tonight.
Tonight was, in fact, a perfect night for Ryan to have Emma. And Emma would surely be excited to sleep in that tent again…on a school night.
A tent. Bridget could only shake her head.
Bridget finished folding the load of towels she had just pulled from the dryer and carried the basket down the hall and up the stairs. When they were stacked in the linen cabinet just outside Room Two, she paused and wondered if she could run the vacuum or if the noise would distract Jack. She chewed her lip, at war with two sides of hospitality, and was just about to go to the closet where she kept the vacuum when she saw that, for the first time since Jack had checked in last weekend, there was no sign hanging from his door.
Now, this was strange…
She walked over to his door, checked the floor, searching to see if it might have slipped off. Frowning, she stood completely still and listened for any sound that might be coming from the room, but the typing had stopped.
Did he want her to clean the room? That would make sense, if it hadn’t been for the fact that he seemed so determined not to have any service until now.
She tapped on the door, and waited.
No response. He must have gone to the store, she realized, as another swell of nerves ripped through her stomach. Really, this had to stop. She was acting like a teenage girl about to go to prom!
But oh, it was nice to feel like a teenager again, she thought with a grin,
Fishing her keys from her pocket, she turned the locked and let herself into the room.
Or…the mess.
She stared, not blinking, at the room. It was east facing with a view of the lawn and the ocean beyond, and painted a soft teal blue. It was, without a doubt, one of her favorite rooms in the house, even more so than Room Three, which had been her bedroom growing up.
Margo and she had decided to give this particular room all white furniture, with a pale blue and white print duvet cover. They’d put a desk under the window, framed by heavy drapes, and added glass lamp bases to the bedside tables.
But you couldn’t see those lamp bases now. Or the desk. At least not its surface. It was too littered with papers and paper cups and pens. And as for the beautiful duvet cover…half of it was on the floor, and the pillows on the bed were all bunched up. In fact, if she looked close enough, she could almost make out the imprint of Jack’s head!
The curtains were open, but the blinds were drawn, and the room felt dark, when it was meant to be light and airy.
In all the months that Bridget had run the Harper House Inn, she had never seen a room in such a state. Had it been any other guest, she probably would have cried. But because it was Jack, she laughed. She laughed and laughed until she had to stifle the sound with her own fist, just in case he came back from the store and heard her.
Well. This was certainly a task that would keep her busy up until her date—make that dinner—tonight.
She started with the bed, stripping it, tugging fresh sheets into place—with hospital corners—and fluffing the pillows. She spread the duvet over the mattress, trying not to think that in a matter of hours, Jack would climb into this bed and…
No. No more thinking that way. Really, she didn’t like to think about what any of the guests did in these bedrooms. It was too weird.
She moved onto the bathroom, where towels were on the floor or barely hanging from their hooks and gathered them up into her arms, resisting the urge to take a sniff.
Okay, so maybe she didn’t completely resist. Maybe, just maybe, right before she dumped them into the laundry basket that had just held fresh, folded towels, she took a discreet…breath.
Musk. Woods. Man.
Oh, Bridget.
She dropped them into the basket and turned to look at the room. It was so much better, she could only begin to imagine what Jack would think when he returned. Would he be embarrassed, or relieved?
She just wouldn’t mention this. Maybe she’d pretend she had a maid who came in. Spare them an awkward moment in what should be an otherwise…special evening.
The man was stressed, after all. And he was on vacation. Maybe he had been waiting for service every day, and that service had never come, because of the sign, and maybe he hadn’t even realized that there was a sign, and…
Oh, here she went. Making excuses again. The man was a slob. There. If that was his worst quality, she’d take it.
She was just turning to go when she eyed the desk. She chewed her lip, not wanting to pry, but curious all the same. At the floor was a waste paper basket, overflowing.
Of course! She still had to empty the baskets! She gathered the one in the bathroom first and then, more slowly, walked toward the desk. She didn’t open any notebooks, or light up his computer, tempting as it was. She simply bent down, picked up the trash can and saw something that made her promptly drop it.
“What?” she said aloud. Her heart began to hammer in her chest and she suddenly didn’t even remember that she was standing here, in a guest’s room, staring at his personal belongings.
The notebook was open, the first page filled, from top to bottom, overwriting every margin, and squeezing in words between spaces, but one thing was crystal clear. The name. The series name. Her series. Her favorite series. The series that had given her comfort and joy and hope.
Jack Riley. J.R. But…it couldn’t be.
She looked down, peering closer at the words that were scribbled on the page. The characters’ names were familiar; names she had come to know, their stories ones she had anticipated. And here it was. The next book, unfolding before her in her very guest room. Only the story was familiar for another reason too. A bookstore. A wedding. A kiss. An innkeeper.
Bridget stepped away from the desk, her mouth completely dry.
None of this made any sense, but wasn’t that how life went? Things were what they were, and sometimes you chose to believe them or sometimes you tried to make them fit what you wanted them to be.
And no matter how much she could hope that this wasn’t what she thought it was, it was. Jack was J.R. Anderson. And she was his material.
Nothing more.
***
Bridget was waiting in the kitchen when the front door opened an hour later, and there was Jack, two bags from The Corner Market in his hands, a cheerful grin on his face.
It slipped the moment he saw her. “Something wrong?”
“I cleaned your room,” she said, and immediately his eyes went round.
“Oh, God. Oh. You know, wow. I usually don’t live like that, but this deadline was getting to me and I wasn’t coming out of the room much and…”
She pulled in a breath. It wasn’t the messy room. It was so much more.
“I saw the notes to your new book, Jack,” she said. “Or should I say, Mr. Anderson?”
He closed his eyes, his jaw setting as he set the bags on the counter. “Look, I can explain.”
“Explain what part?” Bridget cried. “That you listened to me go on and on about how much I love your books and you didn’t think to mention to me that you are the author?”
“I use a pen name for a reason,” he said.
“This isn’t the same,” Bridget said, holding firm. She willed herself to stay strong, to get out before she fell in. To spare herself the way she hadn’t before. It was always excuse after excuse with Ryan, and she’d listened, because it was easier that way. And look how that had turned out.
“It’s not the same, but it is. I’m Jack. J.R. Anderson is…my career.” He pulled in a breath, stared at her as if he was debating whether or not to say something. “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like the author of those books.”
She thought of what he’d told her about the writer’s block, part of her wanting to sympathize with him as much as the other part wanted to punish him. He’d lied to her. Listened to her go on and on! “You could have told me. Hell, I was your number one fan.”
He frowned at her use of the past tense.
“Bridget, listen to me, please. It’s been a really long time since I spent time with anyone, or opened up to anyone. I didn’t want you to know me as the person behind those books. I wanted you to know me as me.”
She folded her arms across her chest, willing herself not to feed into the flattery, the words that would have otherwise made her heart swell and fill her with a sense of possibility.
“Why were you getting to know me, Jack?” She swallowed the emotion in her voice, but it was there, she couldn’t hide it.
“Because I like you!” he exclaimed.
“You do, huh?” She shook her head. “You like the bookstore meeting and the kiss at the wedding you crashed. Maybe you even really did like that Flower Fest…if it made for a good scene in your book.”
His eyes flashed. “Bridget.”
“You used me, Jack,” Bridget said, all emotion and hurt now gone from her steely voice. “You led me on, you used me, and now…” Now, he’d broken her heart.
And stolen from her. Stolen all those stories that had brightened her dark days. They were all a joke. Fantasy.
“I think you should leave,” she said, turning away from him. She couldn’t look at that face, at those eyes, not for another second.
He was still there, in the room, she could sense him behind her. But he didn’t say a word. She stood, staring out onto the water, where she imagined her own wedding someday, back when she was just a little girl like Emma, and her entire world felt so full of wonder.
But it was just a yard, and the sand, and the ocean. Nothing more.
And those dreams…would never come true. And shame on her for ever thinking they would.
Her eyes were hot with tears, preventing her from turning around even if she wanted to, and a part of her did. A part of her wanted this to be made right. To find an explanation that was somehow enough.
“I didn’t use you, Bridget,” Jack said softly.
And then…he was gone.