40
Clara was distracted all week, multitasking like crazy at her desk, working quietly on her phone the whole way to and from work, and if she wasn’t spending her evenings at Yoli’s with all their girlfriends, she was working on the wedding dress itself. She had taken over the front living room, apparently finding her own bedroom too small, and had no fewer than three dress dummies partially clad in white lined up under the front window.
Jesse was grateful for her distraction…mostly. It wasn’t easy on a man’s ego to go from her new best friend to a mere blip on her radar, but he knew it was for the best. He had his ticket for Friday afternoon on the same plane he’d come in on three weeks before. He’d miss Yoli’s wedding, but they’d pretty much just met, and it was starting to look like she had a million relatives anyway, so they probably needed all the space they could get.
The reception was going to be at the Wilders’. The Victorian mansion in town that housed the doctors’ office was much prettier, but the first floor was divided into millions of tiny rooms. The Wilder house was not as picture-perfect but it was just as grand and far more spacious.
All that only meant that the Colonel and Dr. Wilder were nearly as busy as Clara was, and Jesse was largely left to his own devices. This was good, he told himself. He could fade into the woodwork all week, and they would hardly notice when he left. There wouldn’t be any tearful, clinging goodbyes or questions about his plans to return.
And he was starting to think returning wouldn’t be such a good idea, not while Clara lived there. Things were getting a little too cozy for his peace of mind.
When they got home from work Clara went to her dress dummies and he went to let Greer out. When she’d done her business, he put her on a leash and they walked slowly over the property, visiting the horses on their way back.
By then he had missed dinner, so he ate alone, read or watched Netflix on his tablet for an hour or two, and went to bed.
This worked pretty well until Friday, which made him a little nervous. Maybe it had all been a mistake. Maybe she had forgotten that he was going, and would cause a huge scene at the last minute.
But she didn’t.
On Friday, she came into his office near the end of the day, sat in the chair across from his (her mother’s) desk, and crossed her legs comfortably.
“Leaving today,” she remarked.
“Yeah.”
“Need a ride to the airport?”
“No, I figured you wouldn’t have time. Asher’s giving me a lift. He wants to show me his truck.”
She nodded as though she had expected as much. “Excited to get back?”
“I don’t really…get excited about stuff. The way you do,” he said cautiously.
She grinned. “You’re so cool.”
Well, at least she wasn’t crying. “It’ll be nice to get home,” he allowed.
“I bet Margo misses you.”
“Maybe,” he said doubtfully. But why would she miss him? He just made more work for her to do.
“Gotta water those houseplants,” she suggested.
He was starting to feel irritated. “Did you need something?”
“No, I just wanted to hang out for a minute. I’ve hardly seen you all week.”
“We’ve been living and working and commuting together,” he pointed out.
“I know, it’s just been kind of crazy.”
“How’s the wedding coming along?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Fine. What about Greer’s stitches?”
“I told your mom she can remove them on Monday or Tuesday. I don’t think they’re ready to come out yet.”
“Oh.” She sat there for a moment, quiet. “What if they’re not ready on—”
“They will be.”
“Oh, good. Thanks.”
“Yeah.”
She got up abruptly, walked across his room, and shut the door.
He was filled with foreboding. “Clara—”
“Shut up for a minute,” she requested, putting her palms on the desktop like she meant business. “I just want to say that I’ve been thinking, and you were right.”
He leaned back in his chair, considering. What was it about a woman in a pencil skirt leaning aggressively over a desk that made a man feel like he had reached some kind of milestone in his life? He took a mental snapshot and tabled the issue for later.
“About what?” he asked calmly.
“I shouldn’t have made you kiss me. I feel like that crossed a weird line for you, and now you’re going to leave and never come back, which will make my parents sad. Therefore I am apologizing very contritely, and I’ll never, ever do it again.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What happened to ‘Do me a favor and don’t regret it too hard?’”
“As I said, you were right and I was wrong,” she replied simply.
“Uh, huh.”
“Accept my apology. Don’t be a jerk.”
“Okay, I accept.”
“Good,” she said, straightening. “Now, I think maybe we can undo it by kissing one more time.”
“Get out,” he ordered.
“Just kidding!” she assured him, going for the door. “I just said that last part to make you smile. And it worked!”
He stopped smiling immediately, but she didn’t look back. He was actually going to miss that ridiculous woman. There was no one like her in Austin, and that was the sad truth.
Not too long later, he looked up when someone knocked on his open door. “Dr. Wilder,” he said, rising. “I was just shutting all this down for the night.”
“I came to say good-bye,” she said, entering. She was using a cane now instead of a walker.
“You taking me to the airport?”
“No, but Asher brought me with him. He’s waiting out there. Clara can take me home. I just thought, I didn’t really get a chance to talk to you last night. Didn’t want you to go home feeling neglected.” She smiled.
He had been feeling uncertain about her, but this unexpected visit reassured him: she was up to something after all, and had waited until the last minute to spring it on him because she didn’t want him to have time to consider his options.
She sat down in the chair her daughter had taken.
“Is something on your mind?” he asked, resuming his seat.
“I don’t want to be a helicopter parent, but I hope I’ve made it clear that I would like to see more of you in the future,” she said. “You know, you can visit whenever you like. For a weekend, for a month. We’ll expect you on holidays.”
“I work most holidays,” he hedged.
“I know how it is. I was a young surgeon once, too.”
He’d forgotten about that. Before she’d moved to a tiny town with no doctor, she’d been in demand at George Washington University Hospital in D.C. “Why’d you move here?” he asked curiously.
“More space for the kids to run around,” she said with a shrug. “Asa needed it, too. You’ve probably noticed that he spends most of his time outdoors.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“I grew up in an affluent suburb of Sacramento,” she went on. “My father was a judge. Clara comes by her expensive tastes honestly—I was very spoiled by parents who were too busy to spend time with me.”
He understood. “So you raised your kids way the heck out here, where you wouldn’t be too busy to see them grow up.”
She nodded gracefully.
“What next?” he asked.
“What are you referring to?” she asked.
“Retirement?”
“I haven’t thought too much about it.”
Uh, huh. Here it comes. “Oh, really?”
“All I want now is to get back to normal after this knee surgery,” she confided. “I think I’m afraid to retire while I’m not at full steam—it would feel too much like the end. Maybe in a year or two I’ll talk to Asa about it.” She smiled self-consciously. “He sometimes understands what I want before I do.”
He was still waiting for the other shoe to drop when she got up from her chair and leaned on her cane once more.
“You’d better get going,” she warned. “Give me a handshake or a hug or something.”
He stood slowly. She hadn’t offered him the practice. She hadn’t put down a guilt trip.
He looked down at her hand, and took it in his own. After a slight hesitation, he pulled her closer, and they hugged, and he pretended for a few seconds that she was his mother.
She kissed his cheek, smiling. “I can’t thank you enough, Jesse.”
“Hey, don’t mention it,” he said as they stepped apart.
“Have a good flight. Don’t forget what I said.”
“About what?” he asked blankly.
She looked a little exasperated. “ Visiting .”
“Oh, right. Yeah, I’ll visit.”
She didn’t really look like she believed him, but she didn’t give him a hard time about it.
He grabbed his duffel and followed her into the waiting area, and Clara jumped up from her desk.
“Hey, wait,” she exclaimed, and stepped awkwardly over her sprawled-out border collie (no easy feat in a pencil skirt) to come around the big counter. “Wait, I have to hug you. Come here.”
He set his bag down again and she drew him into a warm hug.
People didn’t really hug him in Austin, he thought, frowning as he put his arms around her slender body.
Big mistake, holding her. Now he knew how it felt.
He let go and put her away from himself. “See you, Clara.”
“Hey, if I text you, you gotta answer,” she instructed. “Learned my lesson last time. I will hunt you down like a dog.”
“Understood.”
“Oh, I almost forgot!” she said, and just as he bent to pick up his duffel bag she reached into her purse.
“Is that one of my dish towels?” Dr. Wilder asked.
That was his only warning, and it came too late.
Asher had spent the forty-five-minute drive talking his ear off about the truck and the police department, and Jesse had grunted occasionally in agreement and wondered how long it would take to stop thinking about Clara.
Now he sat in the municipal airport with only six other people, waiting for permission to board his flight. He scowled at the guy behind the ticket counter: Earl Keplinger, who’d been mooning over Clara the day Jesse had arrived.
He hadn’t known who was picking him up that day. He’d expected the Colonel, which was why he’d felt free to check out the woman at the ticket counter. Long legs, great figure, great hair. Then he’d caught sight of her profile and almost tripped on his own feet when he realized he’d been looking at Clara’s body for the first time in his life. He was a dog.
Add to that the way she had encouraged Earl to come and see her, and it was no surprise that he’d pretty much snarled at her. He remembered the look of total surprise on her face.
He’d discovered a lot about Clara in the days since then. Contemporary Clara. Not the old Clara, who’d been cruising through adolescence without any acne or self-doubt, but the modern version who rescued dying dogs and generally did a lot of stuff for the people around her and could snap a towel with the finesse of a middle-school bully.
She’d avoided the pitfalls waiting for small-town teens and he was glad of that. It would have been depressing, for example, to come back and see her with a drug problem and a string of baby daddies. The thought made him glare at Earl again. Earl noticed, and nervously averted his eyes.
The next episode of The Clara Show would have her marrying some local and settling down to start a family. He’d be a good guy—the Colonel would see to that—and Clara would be happy.
Jesse had to be fine with that, but he didn’t have to be part of the live studio audience.