Chapter Fifteen
Twilight slipped into night over the hills of Waterford Farm by the time everyone had left for the evening. As it grew darker, Jessie and Garrett walked across the expansive lawn to the kennels. He’d taken Lola over after dinner, but Jessie still wanted to say good night to her.
“What did you and Dad talk about?” he asked, taking her hand in his.
“This and that.”
He shot her a look. “Long time behind closed doors for this and that.”
“Are you worried, Garrett?”
“Should I be?”
Maybe. They had talked about many things that wouldn’t ever make it into her story, but they’d definitely hit her heart. Daniel Kilcannon still missed his wife so much, it was palpable in the air around him. Almost every topic led back to her. Every memory in his office was connected to the many years he spent married to the love of his life.
“Mostly, we talked about your mom,” she told him.
“Oh. Yeah. That’s where he goes.”
“He’s young, you know. Not even sixty.”
“Are you suggesting…” He shook his head, stopping himself from where he was going. “We all know it, but no one really wants to go there. Yet. I guess if my dad started dating, it would be really weird.”
“Now that would be a story, if he beat all six of his kids to the altar.”
He gave a dry laugh. “At the rate things are going…”
“It’s important to him that you all find what he had.”
Garrett opened the doors to the kennels, which were freakishly quiet at night. The occasional bark, a lot of snoring, but nothing like the echo chamber it was during the day.
And it was dark—on purpose, she knew, to encourage the dogs to sleep.
“What they had was special,” he finally said. “A one-in-a-million thing.”
“Still, he wants it for all of you.”
“Anything else?”
“Just…stuff.”
He threw her a look. “This and that and stuff. Sounds like a riveting conversation.”
Actually, it had been. Daniel had opened up quite a bit more about the changes in Garrett since he’d come back from Seattle. Pinpointed the time as when his company sold and, of course, when his mother died.
He’d even asked Jessie if she’d found out anything about his months in Seattle, which she had to admit she hadn’t.
He turned the corner to Lola’s kennel, and she got up, barked three times, and came to the gate to greet them.
“Jess-i-ca,” Garrett said. “I think she’s saying Jess-i-ca.”
“You think her owner had a three-syllable name?” They slipped inside her kennel, and Jessie immediately got down for some love and licks. “You’re so smart, baby girl,” she cooed. “I wish I could take you home with me. No dogs at the Bitter Bark Bed & Breakfast. I even asked the owner.” She smiled at Garrett. “She wasn’t completely opposed but said she didn’t have the right licensing.”
“You could bring her home,” he said, sliding down to the ground next to her. “My home.” He put his arm around her and pulled her in. “And you could stay, too.”
“Ahh, the game of Manhunt gets kicked up a notch.”
He laughed a little, turning her for a kiss. “I’d like it if you would stay with me, Jessie.”
“I would, too, but…”
“Crosses a professional line for you?”
“Not really,” she said. “I mean, I’ve never been intimate with a subject of an interview before, that’s true. But it isn’t what’s stopping me.”
“What is?”
She didn’t answer, preferring to kiss in the dark with Lola lying next to her. Jessie reached around his neck, angling her head for the taste she’d come to love, curling closer.
“Just like old times,” he joked as he trailed kisses down her throat.
“Not really.”
He inched back. “Right, we would never have talked about you spending the night, though have I ever told you how incredibly horny I was that night? It was like trying to sleep with a tree between my legs.”
She laughed at that. “Sorry.”
“No, you’re not. So why isn’t this like old times?”
“Because…” She wet her lips, biting down a bit. “You’re different.”
“Seventeen years and a lot of miles.”
“But you’ve actually changed. It’s noticeable. You’re much more protective and defensive.” That’s how his father had described it. “And that’s why I’m not going home with you tonight.”
“Jessie, how am I protective and defensive? I’m all yours. I’m an open book. I want to sleep next to you all night. I want to sleep with you. That’s pretty…open.”
She nodded. “I do, too, but I don’t think you trust me yet.”
He scanned her face, hurt registering in his eyes.
“Because if you did trust me,” she said. “Then you wouldn’t avoid that one thing…”
Hurt shifted to something colder and cut off. “What one thing?”
“The thing I’m missing in my story. The spark. The life. The…truth.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Maybe after we spend the night together, you’ll have all the spark you need.”
“Maybe after you tell me what happened in Seattle, I’ll believe that you trust me.”
His jaw unhinged enough for her to know she’d nailed it. Not that it was any surprise. “Nothing happened…” He closed his eyes. “Why?”
“That’s usually my question.”
“Why is it so important? You can’t tell my story or write my profile without four and a half months of my life spelled out in detail?”
There was enough of a sharp edge in his voice to make her draw back to keep from getting sliced. “Only because it’s pivotal.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I do this for a living. I break down walls and get to people’s hearts, and you have one last layer of brick I can’t get through. When I do, I know I’ll have the soul of my story. And when I do…I know you trust me enough to take down my last wall.”
He looked at her long and hard, silent, emotions in his eyes, but every one was unreadable.
“Sex is your last wall?”
“Connection. I told you, I struggle with that.”
He still stared at her, thumbing her cheek and eventually brushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “I need some time,” he finally said.
“Then so do I.”
He nodded. “I’m going to Virginia tomorrow to deliver Rudy to his new owners. That mixed breed you were playing with the other morning?”
“He’s been adopted?”
“Yep. But it’s about a two-and-a-half-hour trip each way.”
“Lots of time for talking.”
“Or just being together.” He leaned in and put his forehead against hers. “That’s what I want.”
And what he needed, she guessed.
“Okay, but I have to take all day Tuesday to write. So by tomorrow night, I have to know everything about you that you’re willing to share.”
“Ticktock,” he whispered, kissing her one more time before they said goodbye to Lola and promised to take her to Virginia with them.
* * *
If Monday night was his imposed “deadline,” then Garrett was obviously taking every minute of it. The trip to Virginia was glorious, and Jessie didn’t have the heart to mar their day by pressuring him.
Not when he so ceremoniously donned his “doggone hat,” and all of the staff took pictures and said goodbye to Rudy, wishing him well in his new home. The delivery of an adopted rescue was such a joyous day, it brought out everyone who worked at Waterford.
Sun poured over the little yellow Jeep as they drove off with Rudy curled on the backseat and Lola as close to Jessie as she could get without actually sitting on her lap.
“She’s really bonded to you,” Garrett mused, looking at the way Lola kept her snout on Jessie’s thigh.
“No word from Rhode Island?” she asked.
“The vet still can’t reach the owner. Thinks she’s on vacation.”
Jessie sighed. “Maybe she’s driving all over looking for her dog.”
“Then she’d call her vet back when he has a lead.”
So true. So maybe they were wrong about Lola’s owner. Jessie stroked the dog’s soft head and closed her eyes, listening to country music Garrett had turned on, and feeling the wind, and loving the day so much she couldn’t ruin it with a stupid interview.
Tomorrow.
Hours after they left, Jessie and Garrett delivered Rudy to a couple who lived in a spacious home outside of Roanoke. They had everything as prepared as if they were bringing a baby home from the hospital, and both had tears in their eyes when they first saw Rudy.
Jessie and Garrett stayed and had lunch with them, and afterward, Garrett gave them some training tips while both of the dogs romped in a huge yard. When she was exhausted, Lola ambled back over to where Jessie was and lay down in front of her. For a moment, the dog looked up with a plea in her big brown eyes, and Jessie could swear she read what Lola was thinking.
You’re good, but you’re not…my number one.
Her throat closed a little. “I know, baby girl,” Jessie whispered. “I mean, I think I do. Were you left by her? Or…”
Or what?
The question still troubled her on the way home, when she decided to try and answer it.
“Garrett, I have an idea,” she said.
He tipped his doggone hat, obviously in an expansive and happy mood. “Anything you want.”
Whoever had described this man as a son of a bitch had never spent an hour in Rin Tin Tin delivering an adopted dog. “What if we stop at a rest stop and leave Lola in the Jeep with the windows open?”
He shot her a look of pure incredulity.
“We’d be right there, just out of sight. I want to see if she’ll jump out.”
“To what end?”
“If she doesn’t jump out, then she’s content, but if she does, maybe that tells us she was trying to get away from the person who had her.”
He angled his head in pure skepticism, but pulled into the next rest stop. “I predict she’ll stay,” he said as he opened his door. “She’s too pleased with her life now. She has her person.”
Did she? She didn’t want Lola to have the wrong person. Or for Lola’s person to be suffering without her. She wanted to be sure.
At the next rest stop, they parked and stood behind the Jeep. Lola put her face out the open window, stared, and waited for Jessie to come back.
“Not exactly sure what that proved,” Garrett said when they climbed back in. “But I love that you love her so much.”
“I wish I could be her person,” she said wistfully. “But the more I think about taking a dog to that apartment, the more I imagine myself homeless.”
“You can’t move?”
“Wouldn’t I love to. But New York is expensive, and I have a nice place. Nice and small, a third-floor apartment with a big window in my bedroom that looks down on the street.” But then she looked out at the breathtaking foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, spread out like a massive blanket of rolling green and her walkup in Brooklyn seemed inadequate. “It won’t be like this, which is home to me. This part of the country is in my blood.”
“Then why leave?”
“Um…work?”
“You’re a writer. Can’t you do that anywhere?”
“I guess, but I’m so used to going into an office and working for a company.”
He made a face. “Working for a company is overrated. You should freelance. Write books. You know who you should profile? Dogs.”
She laughed. “The Story of Lola. I feel a bestseller coming on.”
“I’m serious.”
She reached over and put a hand on his arm, loving the thickness of it, the feel of a dusting of hair, the warmth of his skin. “I love the idea, but if I get the anchor job, I’ll get a raise. A big one. Maybe enough to afford another apartment where I could keep her. Would you bring Lola to me in Rin Tin Tin and your doggone hat?”
“Yeah, of course,” he said, but there was a hitch in his voice she’d never heard before. Certainly not when he talked about that doggone hat. And definitely not when he was wearing it, like now. “Can I give you a little advice, Jess?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve lived places that weren’t—how did you say it?—in my blood. Well, one place.”
She swallowed. “Seattle?”
He nodded once. “And all the success, money, and job stuff in the world won’t make it home. Hate to be a cliché, but home really is where your heart is.”
“And that’s it?”
“My advice? Yeah.”
“Your story about Seattle.”
He looked straight ahead, and she could see behind his sunglasses that his eyes narrowed on the road, and his jaw tensed like it did every time they neared this topic.
She leaned a little closer. “You’re aching.”
He glanced at her, the look hidden by the sunglasses. “What the hell does that mean?”
Did he notice how edgy and short he got when the subject came up? That was why she kept going back there.
“It’s from a poem I read years ago,” she told him. “I think it’s called ‘The Invitation’ and, I’m sorry, I don’t remember the author. But the first line is something like, I don’t care what you do for a living, I want to know what you ache for. I’m paraphrasing, but…this subject makes you ache.”
“Which makes it like catnip to you.”
True enough. She started to wind up her next question when her cell phone rang, and she reached into the side pocket of her bag to get it. “It’s my boss.” Which was really a buzzkill, but she took the call anyway. “Hey, Mac, what’s up?”
“I need a profile, Curtis. I need a freaking profile now.”
“I have until Wednesday.”
“Broadcast is making the decision tomorrow. Something’s come up.”
“What?” She choked. “My deadline was Wednesday. I have forty-eight more hours.”
“A third party has scooped the holy shit out of us. Remember I told you they had one other person besides you and Mercedes?”
“Yes? Someone from the network.”
“Well, that someone from the network got the effing Prince of England. The redheaded one.”
“No!” That was a get for ITAL On Air.
“All about his dead mother, too.”
“You mean Princess Diana? Have a little respect, Mac.”
“Yeah, that one. And you want to know who’s dead? We are if you don’t have something better.”
She hated to ask, but she had to. “What about Mercedes?”
“In the same boat as you, only I’m pretty sure she’s going to sink.”
Well, there was that. “I have some pages, but nothing…not what I want to send.”
She felt Garrett’s gaze on her. He knew what was missing. And yet he held back.
“You can kiss this opportunity goodbye if I don’t have something I can edit the crap out of by tomorrow morning. Even your first draft. Gimme eight or ten thousand words so I can confidently plan on the story.”
Ten thousand words? “All right. I’ll work all night. I’ll have something in your inbox in the morning.”
“Don’t give me a bio, Jessie. I want secrets. I want emotion. I want a side of this guy that no one has ever seen before. Our only hope is that the prince interview goes south and yours sings. Got it?”
She glanced at Garrett, studying his profile. If only he’d let her. “Got it.”
When she hung up, she let out a noisy sigh. “My guess is you gleaned enough from that conversation to know what we have to do.”
He put his hand on hers. “Why don’t we get some dinner, take it up to your room, and pull an all-nighter together?”
Seriously? Now? “Garrett, I’m not sleeping with you tonight.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
He exhaled slowly and noisily before answering. “Bring your pickaxe, wall-breaker. I’ll tell you everything.”
“Everything?”
“You can’t use it, you can’t print it, and you’ll understand why when I tell you, but it’ll give you the, you know, the beat thing.”
“The beat thing.” Like her heart was doing right that minute.