Chapter Eight
Caleb spent the morning on the part of his business he hated—at the tax accountant’s talking about receipts and deductible expenses and operating costs. The sheer tedium of it drove Jane from his thoughts for a few hours, which was a relief. But as soon as he left the midtown office building, it all came flooding back.
He had to see her. He had to find out if he’d screwed things up between them. He’d know the second he saw her.
He had one more obligation to get through first: a lunch date with two former clients. They’d fallen in love on one of his expeditions, and they insisted on treating him to an overpriced meal once a year.
Today they met at an Italian place on the Upper East Side. The food was good and the conversation was pleasant, but he was glad when the meal was over and he could flag down a cab.
The snarl of midtown traffic made him want to tear his hair out, but eventually they made it through. It was three o’clock when the taxi pulled up in front of Jane’s bookshop. He paid the driver, slammed the door, and strode across the sidewalk to the store.
Once inside the warm, quiet space—an oasis of peace after the street noises outside—he looked around for Jane and didn’t see her.
Where the hell was she? Finding Jane in her shop on a weekday afternoon was as sure a bet as finding snow in the Alps or pigeons in the park. Was something wrong? Had she gone home?
Jane had created a few hidden nooks here and there for leather chairs and reading lamps. It was in one of those spots that he found her.
She’d taken off her shoes and pulled her feet up on the chair. Her legs were bent, her arms were wrapped around her shins, and her forehead was resting on her knees.
She sat so still that he froze, as though he’d come upon a woodland creature he didn’t want to startle.
There was a lamp with a rose-colored shade beside the chair. It cast a soft pool of light over Jane, making her brown hair shine like polished wood.
He wasn’t sure how long he would have stood there in silence, wondering if he was the reason she looked so sad and wishing he could go back in time and stop himself from calling her last night. But then her assistant, manning the register, called out to a customer, “You forgot your purse!”
Jane glanced up, startled, and caught Caleb staring at her.
“Hey,” she said, blinking.
“Hey.”
A beat went by.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I just, uh, wanted to check on you.”
“Check on me?”
Check on us, he wanted to say. Is everything cool?
But asking that would make her think about last night, and he didn’t want that. What he wanted was proof that last night hadn’t changed anything between them.
Which meant he needed to come up with something else.
“To see if you’d read those books I bought. And if you’re ready to come hiking for Sam’s birthday.”
She blinked again. “Oh.” She took a deep breath and let it out, and he had a feeling she was coming back from someplace far away. “No, I haven’t read the books, and no, I have no desire to go hiking. Sorry.”
“What were you thinking about just now?” he asked abruptly. It wasn’t the kind of thing he usually asked, and the question sounded strange coming from him.
Jane’s eyebrows went up. “You want to know what I’m thinking?”
“You look sad,” he said, a little defensively. “Is everything okay?”
Sitting like that, with her arms wrapped around her knees, she looked younger than she was.
“Oh, sure. Everything’s great.”
He shook his head. “Come on, Jane. Tell me what’s going on.”
She was quiet for a second. Then: “I met Dan for lunch, and I lied to him.”
“Lied to him? About what?”
“About Sam.”
“But that was the plan, wasn’t it? You were going to tell him she’s seeing someone.”
“Yes, that was the plan. But I didn’t stop there.”
“Meaning?”
She rested her chin on her knees. “Meaning I went full Cyrano de Bergerac.”
He looked at her for a moment. Then he went into one of the other reading nooks, grabbed the chair from it, hoisted it over his head, and carried it back. He set it down right in front of Jane and sat down.
“I don’t know what that means,” he said.
She frowned at him, and her skin was so smooth, the crease between her brows was like a ripple on a still pond.
“Cyrano de Bergerac is a soldier and a poet with a really big nose. He loves Roxane, who’s an intellectual like him but beautiful. She falls in love with Christian, who’s handsome and in love with her, but he’s afraid to woo Roxane because he has no intellect or wit and can’t write love letters. So Cyrano speaks for him, giving him the letters he wants to write Roxane himself and giving Christian the words to win Roxane’s heart.”
“I’ve heard of Cyrano, Jane. But what does he have to do with you?”
She sighed. “I met Dan for lunch, and he was so . . .” She took her arms from around her knees and waved them in the air. “So perfect. Funny and charming and smart and . . .” Her hands fluttered down and settled on the arms of her chair. “Totally infatuated with Sam. I told him she was seeing someone, just like I’d planned, and he was okay with it. Disappointed, of course, but he said she might be single again someday and he wouldn’t give up hope. Then he asked me to tell him about her. What she’s like, what she’s interested in, what her passions are.”
She stopped.
“And?” Caleb prompted after a moment.
“And I told him what I’m like. What I’m interested in. What my passions are.”
He was starting to understand.
“Oh.”
She spoke quickly. “He doesn’t live in New York. I’ll probably never see him again. I just . . . I just wanted . . .” She trailed off and shrugged. “I don’t know what I wanted.” Then suddenly she sat up straight. “No, that’s not true. I do know what I wanted. I wanted him to fall in love with me.”
As suddenly as she’d jerked upright, she slumped down in her chair again. “And he did,” she said softly.
A sick tug inside his gut. “He did?”
“Well, not with me. With a hybrid.”
“A what?”
“My brain in Sam’s body. A hybrid, like Cyrano and Christian. A person who doesn’t exist.” She paused. “I watched it happen, Caleb. All the while I was telling him about Sam . . . about me . . . all my stupid ideas about the world . . . I could see him falling in love.”
She took a deep breath. “I babbled to him. I never babble. But it didn’t seem to matter, you know? He’s not going to be with me, and he’s not going to be with Sam, so what difference did it make what I told him?” She took another breath. “But it did make a difference. Because he’s crazy about the woman I made up.”
Something strange was happening inside him. Watching her talk about Horn-Rims like this made him tense and angry and—okay, jealous. What the hell had this asshole ever done to deserve a woman like Jane?
But at the same time, he wanted her to be happy.
He slid his hands into his pockets.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it seems like there’s a pretty obvious solution here. If this guy liked what you told him, if he’s in love with the woman you talked about, then all you have to do now is tell him it was you.”
She gripped the arms of the chair. “I can’t. Don’t you see? I can’t do that. Because here’s the truth about men—and maybe women, too. Faced with a choice between the inside and the outside, we choose the outside every time. Oh, you might say you wouldn’t. You might say it’s the inside you care about, the beautiful personality, the mind and the heart and the soul. But you don’t see a lot of Miss America Beautiful Soul pageants, do you? Or Miss USA Beautiful Mind? No, you do not. You see swimsuit competitions. And it’s not your brain you show off in a bikini, Caleb, in case you didn’t know.”
“Jane—”
As suddenly as she’d burst out with all that, she stopped. She slumped down in her chair and sighed.
“Oh, it’s fine. It sucks, but it’s fine. I’ve read a lot of books, you know?”
Nope, he didn’t. If by you know she meant I’m sure you understand what I’m driving at, Caleb.
“What does that have to do with—”
“All the books I read, and I think I know so much and understand so much and that’ll keep me safe or something. But it doesn’t. I’m still just a younger sister, the plain one in the family, and no matter what they tell you, that’s what people notice. I’ll never be as pretty as Sam is, and men like Dan will always want her and not me even though I’m the one they’d really like.” She slid down a little farther. “I’m still just as small and petty and jealous and pathetic as I was twenty years ago.”
He remembered something he’d told Sam once. He’d said that trying to keep up with Jane when she was on a roll made him feel like a big galumphing dog trying to follow some small, darting creature through a maze she knew perfectly because she lived there.
“That’s a good description,” Sam had said. “I like that. I know it’s irritating, but that’s just Jane. You have to just tune her out when she gets like that. Chances are she won’t even notice. Just nod a lot.”
But it didn’t irritate him. He liked it. He liked chasing after her, trying to follow her thought process, even though he knew he was missing at least half of what she was trying to convey.
In this case, he was sure of one thing Jane was conveying: she was running herself down.
He responded to one of the words she’d used. “You’re not pathetic.” He grabbed onto another word. “And you’re not plain. You’re—”
Beautiful. He was going to say beautiful. But the word stuck in his throat, full of implications he couldn’t speak out loud.
It stuck long enough for Jane to take a deep breath, sit up, and put the conversation behind her with a quick shrug.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. It’s fine. I mean, it’s just life, you know? Stupid and sad and predictable. Just like me, I guess. But—”
The little bell above the shop door tinkled, and Jane looked over Caleb’s shoulder to see who was coming in.
The expression on her face made him twist his head around, and there was Horn-Rims standing at the door, peering around the shop until he spotted Jane.
Before he had time to think, Caleb surged to his feet, shoved his chair out of the way, and stood in front of Jane as Horn-Rims approached.
“What are you doing?” Jane hissed in his ear, which meant she was on her feet, too.
Protecting you, he thought—but from what? Horn-Rims wasn’t dangerous. He was just an idiot who thought he was in love with Sam, and he was hurting Jane in the process.
And that’s what he was protecting her from, of course. Or what he wanted to protect her from.
Being hurt.
“Get out of the way,” Jane muttered, smacking him on the arm as she stepped forward.
“There you are,” Horn-Rims said, an eager smile on his face as he strode toward her. He was holding something in his right hand, and when he stretched it out toward Jane, Caleb saw that it was a letter in a cream-colored envelope. Miss Samantha Finch was written on it in elegant script.
Horn-Rims came to a stop and handed the letter to Jane. “I came to give this to you. For your sister.”
Jane took the envelope and looked down at it for a moment before looking back up. “A letter for Sam?”
Horn-Rims nodded. “Yes. A love letter. I know she’s started seeing someone, but if it doesn’t work out, will you give it to her?”
“I . . .” Jane paused, took a quick breath, and continued. “Of course I will.”
He grinned in relief. “Good. Wonderful. Thank you, Jane.” He glanced at Caleb for the first time, still smiling broadly, but Caleb didn’t even try to muster up a smile in return.
“That must sound crazy, right? Writing a love letter to a woman you just met?”
“Actually, yeah,” Caleb said. “It does sound crazy. In fact, if you want my honest opinion—”
Jane elbowed him in the ribs hard enough to make him grunt.
“You don’t want his opinion,” she told Dan. “Caleb’s not exactly a romantic.”
“He just hasn’t met the right woman yet,” Dan said, smiling once more at Jane before turning to go.
When he was at the door, he turned back. “I’m leaving the city in a few days. When you give the letter to Samantha, would you . . . put in a good word for me?”
Jane didn’t say anything for a moment. When the silence stretched into more than a few beats, Caleb nudged her arm with his.
“Sorry. A good word. Yes. Absolutely.”
“Thank you, Jane.”
And then he was gone.
Jane stared down at the letter in her hand, tracing over the script spelling out her sister’s name with the tip of a finger.
Caleb reached out and grabbed the envelope.
“Give me that damn thing.”
She tried to snatch it back, but he was too fast for her. He stuck it in his back pocket and folded his arms.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Give that back!”
“You were looking at it like it’s the Holy Grail.”
“You don’t even know what the Holy Grail is.”
“God, you’re a snob.”
“What?”
“Because I wear a cowboy hat, you assume I’ve never heard of the Holy Grail or Cyrano de Bergeron.”
“Bergerac.”
“Whatever. I’ve heard of him. Books aren’t the only way you hear of things.”
She was glaring at him. “Fine. I’ll never assume you haven’t heard of something ever again. Just give me the letter.”
“It’s not for you.”
“It’s not for you, either.”
“I can give it to Sam. I’ll go give it to her right now.”
“But he gave it to me to give to Sam. And anyway, why do you care? Why won’t you let me have it?”
That was a damn good question. Why wouldn’t he?
He pulled the letter from his pocket and handed it to her. “Fine. Here it is. But try to keep some perspective.”
Jane kept her glare going as she took the letter. “Perspective on what?”
“On the moron who wrote this thing.”
“You don’t even know what it says.”
“Sure I do. I love thee, Samantha, even though I don’t know one damn thing about you except what your sister told me, which is actually about her, and the fact that you have blonde hair and a great rack and—”
“Hey!”
He looked down at her. She was still shooting daggers at him with her dark blue eyes, all furious indignation.
“I’m just repeating what you said,” he told her.
“What?”
“You were the one who said men will choose the outside over the inside every time.”
“I didn’t say anything about anyone’s rack.”
“You talked about bikini competitions. I extrapolated.” He paused. “Or am I not supposed to use words like extrapolate? Since I’m stupid.”
Jane looked startled. “I don’t think you’re stupid. You know I don’t think that, Caleb.”
“Yeah? You sure make a lot of digs for someone who thinks I’m intelligent.”
Her eyebrows went up. “I didn’t realize you were so sensitive.”
That sounded a little more like the Jane he knew, and he felt himself relax a little. “Well, now you know. And while we’re on the subject, I’m also hurt that you don’t think I’m a romantic.”
Jane folded her arms. “When did I say that? It’s true, but when did I say it?”
“You told Horn-Rims my opinion doesn’t matter because I’m not a romantic. Exact words.”
“Okay, so I said it,” she conceded. “Are you saying you are romantic?”
“Sure I am.”
“When’s the last time you sent a woman flowers?”
“Sending flowers isn’t romantic. It’s an empty gesture.” He pointed a finger at the letter in Jane’s hand. “Like that thing.”
Her fingers tightened around it. “This isn’t an empty gesture. It’s romantic. A man pouring his heart out to a woman he fell in love with at first sight.”
Caleb pulled off his hat and dragged a hand through his hair. “Jesus. That’s not romantic; it’s insane. And it’s bullshit, because you said yourself the woman he fell in love with wasn’t even Sam. It was you.”
“It was me in Sam’s body.”
“Great. So all you need is a body switch, and you’ll be all set.”
Before she could respond, her assistant popped her head into the nook. “Jane? There’s a customer up front with a question I can’t answer. It’s about Dante’s Inferno.”
“No problem,” Jane said. “Considering I’m actually living there at the moment, I should be able to provide detailed directions.”
She walked briskly away to help her customer, and Caleb put his borrowed chair back where he’d found it. Then he strolled up to the front of the store and waited until Jane had finished special-ordering a British edition of Dante.
“I have a suggestion,” he said when she was free.
He rested his forearms on the counter between them. She did the same, mirroring him, and they looked at each other.
“What?” she asked.
“I think you should give me that letter. And then I think you should forget all about it, forget the idiot who wrote it, and go to a bar tonight to practice flirting with real guys.”
A wave of color rose up into her face, and he wished he’d left the last part out. He’d come here to make sure that last night hadn’t changed anything between them, and using the word flirting would only remind her of their conversation.
“Dan is a real guy. He’s not a fantasy I dreamed up.”
“Sure he is—just like whatever version of Sam he’s got in his head. You don’t know anything about him.”
“I know more about him than I do about some random guys in a random bar.”
“Okay, maybe. But at least out in the wild you’d have a chance to meet someone who’s actually attracted to you.”
Jane looked down at her clasped hands resting on the counter, but not before he saw the hurt in her eyes.
He winced. “Sorry. I mean, since Horn-Rims has the bad taste to not be attracted to you, wouldn’t it make sense to mix it up with other men? They can’t all be stupid. Some of them will look at you and see—”
What I do when I look at you.
She looked up again, frowning. “See what?”
He cleared his throat. “A woman they’re interested in. Come on, Jane. You know you’re not a troll. Horn-Rims is a moron, but that’s no excuse to feel sorry for yourself. There are plenty of guys out there ready to fall for you.”
He turned his right hand over and held it toward her, palm up. “Hand over that letter.”
She shook her head. “I’m going to give it to Sam myself. And I’m going to tell her to give him a chance.”
He straightened up and stared at her. “Are you serious?”
“Yes,” she said firmly. “I mean, who am I to play God? Maybe they’d be good together. I’ll tell Sam what I did, and give her the letter, and tell her to meet him before he leaves the city. Just to see if there’s something there. She can explain to him that all that stuff I told him was about me, not her, and tell him who she is. It’ll be an icebreaker. Not that Sam needs an icebreaker.”
“That guy is the opposite of Sam’s type. You know that.”
Jane nodded. “Of course I do. He’s my type. But he doesn’t want me, so . . .”
She shrugged.
A knot of frustration tightened in his gut, and he pushed himself away from the counter. “Fine. I think you should give me that stupid thing and forget all about the guy who wrote it, since he doesn’t live here and you’ll never see him again, but whatever.”
He started to turn away and paused, looking back at her. “If Sam actually spends time with this guy and they actually hit it off, you know you’d be totally miserable, right?”
She lifted her chin. “If Sam’s happy, I’ll be happy.”
“You’d have to sit across from them at family dinners.”
As he said that, a sudden memory of the last Finch family dinner he’d been to surfaced in his mind. It had been a year ago, and Jane had brought a date.
He’d spent the night trying not to glower at the guy and resisting the urge to challenge him to an arm-wrestling match.
“What’s wrong?” Jane asked.
Only then did he realize he’d been staring at her for a minute without saying a word.
“Nothing,” he said. “I got distracted. There’s some stuff I forgot to do. See you later,” he said, turning abruptly and leaving the shop.
Shit. He had a thing for Jane, and it wasn’t going away.
But what the hell could he do about it? Jane wasn’t a one-night stand person, and he wasn’t a relationship person.
He’d given it a shot a few times, but it never worked out. Women started out saying they were fine with him trekking around the world, but they all gave him the same ultimatum in the end: cut the travel way down or call it quits.
He always called it quits.
The fact was, he loved his lifestyle more than he could ever love a woman. He craved the freedom and the adventure. Sam said he was addicted to it, and maybe that was true. But if so, it was an addiction he had no desire to overcome.
And he could never put Jane in a position where she came second.
Of course, that assumed a relationship with her was even an option. As arrogant as he could be when it came to women—at least according to Sam—he wasn’t arrogant enough to assume Jane would want to be with him. Hadn’t she said last night she couldn’t even imagine being attracted to him?
He’d love to believe she was just protesting too much. That she was fighting the same chemistry he was, and for the same reason.
Because she knew they’d be crazy to cross that line.
A woman with a cane and a service dog stepped out of a shop in front of him, and he paused to let them cross the sidewalk. While he waited for them to pass, he glanced at the store window and recognized the display.
WEAR THIS AND YOU’LL FIND HIM:
THE MAN OF YOUR DREAMS.
Did women really fall for that bullshit? With ads like that in stores and magazines, not to mention all the romantic books and movies out there, it was no wonder women like Jane had their heads full of fantasies.
But Jane deserved more than a fantasy. She deserved more than him, too—but at least the attraction he felt for her was real. He could make her feel things she’d never dreamed of, no matter how good her imagination was.
If he had her in his bed, he could make her forget her own name.
The woman with the dog was long gone. Yet here he still was, standing in front of a store window, staring at a dress the exact color of Jane’s eyes.
And then he realized he’d made a decision.
Jane might not be a one-night stand person, and he definitely wasn’t a relationship person. But he was sick of playing what if. He had to find out if Jane felt what he did.
And if the answer was yes?
Then they’d figure out how to deal with it.