Chapter 23

Tuesday morning, Jasper walked into the dining room to find his dad, having purposely skirted the admin office. Yes, maybe he was being an ass, but his brain was such a muddled mass of crossed wires right now that he didn’t know what would come out if he tried to speak to Emma.

He hadn’t called her back last night—had just taken the message from Milo at the café and had headed straight from Bette’s to the hospital. And granted, by the time they’d worked Archie up and determined he could use better anxiety meds, but not heart surgery, it had been after midnight, so calling could have easily been construed as rude.

But the fact was, she’d left his bed on Sunday morning, and it was now Tuesday, and he hadn’t spoken a word to her.

He really needed to talk to her.

And as soon as he figured out what to say, he would.

“Mornin’, Junior.” Dad smiled up from his table by the window. “Good news—substitute cook today. We can eat.”

Jasper smiled. “Where’s Horace?”

“Dunno. Cooking school, maybe.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m serious.” Dad ate a bite of eggs. “Emma threatened to send him back to school if he didn’t learn to cook.”

“What?” That didn’t sound like Emma. Not at all.

“Well, she might have phrased it differently. Maybe asked him if he’d ever wanted to go to school. Maybe offered to reimburse him a couple of weeks at the culinary place in Bozeman if he wanted to give it a shot. It might have been something like that.”

Jasper sighed. “Well, that’s a little bit different, Dad.”

“I know. But it’s a better story, the other way.” He grinned. “Plus, it lets me get your gander up about Emma, which tells me more than if I just came right out and asked how it’s going with you two.”

“Again, what?” Jasper put down his fork. How did his father know there even was a “you two,” if, in fact, there was?

“Oh, I don’t know. Somebody mighta seen her car parked outside your place Saturday night…and Sunday morning.”

Jasper shook his head. The Shady Acres rumor mill was worse than a junior high school’s, and after all these years, he still hadn’t figured out how this crowd stayed so informed about what was going on in town.

“Well, just so you know—and you can let the rumor squad know—her car died there on Saturday.”

“Oh-h.” Dad nodded, spooning in more eggs.

“So that’s why it was still there Sunday morning.”

“Gotcha. And the fact that the café didn’t open on Sunday morning, for the first time in four years? That was—coincidence, maybe? You forgot to get up?”

Jasper sighed, pushing away his plate. “I don’t need this abuse, you know.”

“Yep, I know.” Dad smiled. “But who’s gonna give it to you if I don’t?”

“Oh, I don’t know—Liam, Cole, Gunnar, Hayley? The list is long.”

Dad set down his fork, sitting back and studying Jasper as he sipped his coffee. Then, in a quiet voice, he said, “Not sure which way’s up right now?”

Jasper looked at him, surprised. “Little bit, yeah.”

“Big step. It’s been a helluva long time.” Dad shrugged carefully. “You’re bound to be a little rocked. Especially since it’s somebody like Emma.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the way I see it, you’ve had more than your fair share of offers over the years, right? I mean, even half the nurses here threatened to leave their husbands for you, so it’s not like you haven’t had opportunity.”

Jasper rolled his eyes. “They weren’t serious.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure about that. But you never took anybody up on it, and to my knowledge, you haven’t gone out looking.”

“No. Obviously, no.”

“So then this girl swings into town, and she’s sweet and smart and downright adorable, and suddenly your brain goes to mush and you’re taking her home. So it’s gotta make a man wonder, right?”

“Um…”

Jasper had no idea where Dad was going with this, but it appeared the man had a plan, so it would probably be better to just shut up.

“Here’s the thing, Jasper. You’ve had plenty of sweet,and plenty of smart cross your path over the past few years. And you didn’t give even one of them a second glance. Meanwhile, at the same time you’re preaching to everybody that they should embrace life and live in the moment and all of that yogi crap, you’ve sentenced yourself to some solitary prison sentence whereby someday, if you’re alone and miserable long enough, maybe it’ll be enough to atone for Bridget.”

“It wasn’t just—”

“I know it wasn’t just Bridget. But you know what? I don’t think you’ve ever stepped back far enough to realize that Bridget owns some of what happened to your marriage, too.”

“Not fair.”

“Totally fair.” Dad leaned forward. “Tell me something—was law school ever your dream?”

“Of course it was.”

“You wanted to be a teacher, Jasper. You wanted to be a teacher from the first time you met Miss Sweet in kindergarten, all the way through to senior year. You were—what—sixteen credits shy of your education degree when you switched over and signed on for however many more years it took to do law?”

“Things change, Dad. Reality intrudes. Hard to make a living as a teacher.”

“Would you have been happy with a teacher’s salary?”

“That’s kind of irrelevant, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think it’s irrelevant. I think it’s just the opposite. I think Bridget had a certain life she envisioned for herself, and she loved you, but what she didn’t love was the idea of settling for what you would have been happy taking in.”

“She had a job, too, Dad. You’re way oversimplifying this.”

“Maybe, but here’s what I’m not oversimplifying. She should have told you.”

“Oh, God. Don’t go there.”

“She should have told you. She should have given you a chance, and she didn’t.”

“Well, she gave me plenty of chances, Dad. You know it, and I know it. But I was so busy living the champagne-and-courtroom life that I never saw just how many of those chances I blew.”

“She didn’t give you a chance at this.”

Jasper sighed miserably. “Why would she have? I mean, really? In her mind, I’d already proven to be no more than a paycheck, so what in the world would make her think I had the chops to be more? Who could really blame her?”

Dad leveled him with a stare. “She never, ever should have kept that information from you.”

“I know.” Jasper’s words were so low he barely heard them.

“You’ve done your time, son. You’ve done your penance, and it’s time to stop killing yourself with this guilt. You made a fresh start here in Carefree. You brought me here to live out my years, and you’re here every damn day. You’ve been more of a son to Bette than her own son is, and Archie’s still threatening to saddle you with his millions.”

Jasper closed his eyes. The last thing he needed right now was a list of all the things he’d done for other people. He hadn’t done them because he wanted them recited at his funeral. He’d done them because in Carefree, Montana, he’d seen a chance to redeem all of the crap decisions he’d made before he got there. And he was far from done.

Didn’t feel like such a celebratory list when you looked at it that way.

“So what are you planning to do about Emma?” Dad’s voice was soft as he refilled his coffee mug from the carafe on the table.

“I have no idea.”

“Well, you could come at it from two different angles. One? You tell yourself she’s just out here for a few months, and the two of you are good together, and maybe you can help each other be a little less lonely for a while before she goes back home.”

“What’s the other angle?”

Dad paused, studying him over the rim of his cup. “You remember the religion we raised you with, and you allow the thought that maybe there’s a reason somebody put this woman in your path right exactly now. And maybe that somebody’s got a plan for you, and maybe it has a happy ending, if you do it right.”

“That simple, huh?”

“Could be, if you let it. And before you give me any bullshit about how she’s from Florida and she’d never move here permanently and all of that, just take another little drive out to Whisper Creek and ask those guys how many of their women hail from here in Montana.”

“None of them.” Jasper rolled his eyes. “I know.”

“Let me ask you this—if that mountain right there blows its top tomorrow morning and buries this town in molten ash, are you going to wish you had gone all-in with Emma? Or wish you’d run the other way?”

“That mountain isn’t a volcano, Dad.”

“Not my point.”

“I know.” He sighed, thinking about Emma, curled up in his robe Sunday morning, feeding the kittens. He pictured her laughing as they rode the Whisper Creek trails, shaking as he held her tight in the tree, quivering under his every touch Saturday night.

Then he pictured his place in November—cold, gray, and empty of everything except furniture and memories.

He’d touched her, he’d tasted her, and in his darkest moments over the past twenty-four hours, he’d tried to convince himself that it was all part of a consequence he deserved. He couldn’t have her, but he could damn well want her, and that was kind of the most perfect punishment ever.

“Knock, knock.” Jasper’s deep voice startled Emma late that afternoon, and she spun around in her chair, almost losing her balance. “Thinking deep thoughts?”

She shoved her bare feet back into her sandals, mortified to have been caught with her feet up on the sill, staring out the window.

“Always.” She cleared her throat. “Um, hi.”

“Hey.” He looked sheepish. “Can I come in?”

“Of course.” She shuffled some papers, trying to look like she’d been doing something besides spending the last two days trying to figure out why in the world he’d gone AWOL. “How’s Archie doing? I, um, heard you stayed most of the night with him.”

Yeah, Archie. That’s what I want to talk about right now.

“He’ll be back here driving you crazy by morning.”

“Excellent.” She breathed a sigh of relief. “I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.”

“He’s too ornery to go anywhere for a long time.” Jasper sat in the chair facing her desk, but he looked decidedly uncomfortable, and only partly because the thing was too small for his frame. “So…”

She tipped her head. “So…”

“I have an apology to make.”

“Okay?” Emma crossed her arms.

“I’ve been busy the past two days—you know—since you left. But I haven’t been too busy to check in.”

“You don’t owe me a check-in, Jasper.”

“Yeah. I do.” He tipped his head. “I most definitely do. And I’m sorry that I made sure to stay busy enough that I could convince myself that that’s why I hadn’t called you, or stopped by.”

Her stomach squeezed. Well, this was going nowhere good.

“I’m not sure how to respond to that.” She shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry I did whatever I did to send you running. Obviously that wasn’t my intent. But please don’t apologize. We had a good time. It was fun. We’re adults. Things—happen.”

“I don’t regret anything. Not one bit.”

“Well, I didn’t, either, but then you scurried for the hills, so then I did.” She uncrossed her arms, leaning on her desk. “Wait—you don’t regret anything?”

“No.” He sighed. “I tried to, I’ll be honest. I’ve spent the past two days kicking myself for falling for you, kicking myself for taking you home, kicking myself for allowing myself to believe this could be anything more than temporary.”

“That’s a lot of kicking.”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes. And none of it worked. A huge part of me feels tremendous guilt for letting things get this far this fast, but another part of me just wants to sit back, view you as an incredible gift, and see what happens.”

“Oh.” Emma swallowed nervously. “Which part of you is winning?”

“I’m…not sure.”

Her chest squeezed. Great. “Okay. I get it. I do.”

“It’s just—our lives are a continent apart, practically. That’s the reality, and I don’t want to be that guy standing at the airport two months from now, singing some sad country song as he watches a plane take off, knowing his heart is in it.”

“Wow, Jasper. That was kind of poetic.”

And could you repeat the part about your heart, please?

“Thank you.” He shook his head. “I’m serious, Emma.”

“Oh, I get that part. Loud and clear.” She crossed her arms again. “Want to know what I think?”

“Absolutely.”

“I think I’m scared out of my absolute gourd, because you make me feel things I do not want to feel. I think I’m scared that I’ll have to get on that plane in way too few weeks, and I’ll hate leaving you behind. But mostly? I’m scared that I could feel either of those things so quickly. So either I’ve become embarrassingly desperate in my spinsterhood, or there’s something about us that maybe deserves some exploration. Either way, one approach here would be to just pretend I’m not temporary and see what happens.”

“Is there any chance you could ever see yourself leaving Florida? For real?”

Emma sat back. She’d been pondering that same question for a week straight now, and still hadn’t come to a conclusion.

“The romantic in me, who’s thinking only in flowers and rainbows and Whisper Creek trees, wants to say of course I’d move somewhere else, if there was somebody special enough to move for.”

“Okay? I like her.”

Emma smiled. “The realist in me, though, has spent ten years building a career at Galway Health and is one step from a director’s or vice president’s position. Those positions don’t exist out here in Montana. They exist in Florida.” She shrugged slowly. “It’s all I know, Jasper. It’s what I went to school for, what I’ve always envisioned my ultimate career looking like, and it’s a little tough right now to say, ‘Heck, yeah. I’d give it all up.’ ”

“I get it.” He looked down, and she felt the air shift. “I headed out to Whisper Creek this afternoon and took a long ride, hoping—I don’t know—I guess hoping I’d figure it all out.”

“And did you?”

“I—I think I did.”

Emma looked up, meeting his eyes. And then her stomach sank, because the way he laid those four words out in the space between them told her everything.

“I can’t do it, Emma. I can’t do it to you. I went down this path once before, and”—he shook his head—“I’m not yet in a space where I can do it again. I hate that I’m not, and I hate more that I opened a door I never should have opened the other night, but I don’t want to be a regret for you. I can’t be. I’m so, so sorry.”

Emma sat back, feeling like she’d been slapped silly. That was not what she’d expected, after his intro. Not at all.

She felt a distinct prick behind her eyes, and knew she had about thirty seconds before tears erupted.

She was not going to cry.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Thank you for being honest.”

“Ah, hell, Em. I feel terrible.”

“Well, good news. You look terrible, too.” She took a deep breath, trying to tamp down the stupid tears. It had been one night—just one night. She wasn’t a starry-eyed twenty-one-year-old. She was a grown woman who was fully capable of both understanding the reality of their current situation…and accepting that Jasper was right.

Because he was. She knew he was. The only thing she’d have had at the end of this—whatever it might have been—was a broken heart.

“Thanks for coming back from the hills to talk to me.” She tried to muster up a smile. “And thank you for a fantastic weekend, Jasper. I’ll never forget it.”

“Neither will I.” His voice sounded miserable as he scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I promise you that.”

“Well, that makes it all better, now, doesn’t it?”

Aw, dammit. Her voice sounded all choked.

“No.” He shook his head as he stood up. “No, it doesn’t. I’m sorry, Em. I wish—hell—I just wish it could be different.”