Chapter Six
She didn’t intend to lay up all night thinking about everything that had happened.
But it was kind of difficult not to, when everything that had happened seemed so wild and impossible.
Not to mention mildly mortifying, in about ten different ways.
She had seen Jack Jackson half naked, after almost ten years of only ever seeing him fully clothed, from a distance.
Then crashed her car, gotten all weird about him kneeling at her feet and wrapping her ankle, and finally wound up giving him a bunch of books she liked.
The latter of which seemed like the least of her troubles.
But maybe slightly more so when she started thinking about what was in those books. The exact contents of them flashed behind her eyes at somewhere around three in the morning. All the quivering and the caressing and the heaving—oh god, there was so much heaving.
Her face scrunched up into a wince, just going over it all.
And she couldn’t help putting her hands over her eyes.
He probably won’t read them . Plus, even if he does, it’s unlikely you’ll see much of him ever again , she tried to tell herself, as she reassured Popcorn that there was nobody at the window the way he always seemed to think, then closed the blinds just in case there was something there, entirely irrationally.
Before finishing the thought, while making her way down the narrow staircase to the store, After all, it’s not as if he wants to be buddies.
But unfortunately for her, her friend Cassie didn’t seem to agree when she explained it all to her a few minutes later.
“Honestly, I think it sounds like he’s just about desperate to be your buddy,” she said, midway through an unusually early phone call that Nancy was more than a little suspicious of.
They’d only kindled this friendship a month ago, when Cassie had moved back to Hollow Brook after a decade away.
But she already seemed to have an almost sixth sense for when Nancy was distressed.
It was the reason she kept overpaying for books, despite Nancy’s best efforts at making her stop.
And why she kept hinting at remedies she could make for various problems, in the apothecary she was apparently planning on opening.
A few of my special muffins could really help you find that certain someone you’re hoping to , she’d said the other day.
Even though Nancy hadn’t told her a thing about the state of her love life.
The most she’d mentioned was about feeling a little lonely lately.
But nothing close to the truth—that she’d grown so weary of waiting for her prince to come along, she was actually starting to think she should settle for Murray Walker.
Because, sure, he talked endlessly about himself.
Yes, on their last date he’d called her Susie.
And he always smelled like mushrooms for some reason.
But he had a job.
In accounting.
And he only sort of thought she should be grateful for his attention.
Surely, she thought, if she said something about it, Cassie would agree.
Even though she never agreed about stuff like this.
She was still not agreeing about Jack Jackson.
“I mean, he came into your store. He asked you for your recommendations. And he took them, even though they were romance novels. Do you know how many dudes like him would accept romance novels? From a woman? That sounds like, bare minimum, he likes and respects you.”
“Or he just wanted to get the hell away from me and my yammering.”
“I’ve told you, you don’t yammer half as much as you think. And even when you do it’s adorable. As soon as I knew you were sincere and earnest and this is just how you are, I was all in. Remember?”
She thought of it then. The invite over to Cassie’s house, like she had always dreamt of as a kid.
That hallowed place Cassie’s grandmother had owned, where rumor had it there were cookies as big as your head and milk from a real cow.
And there had been no cows, but there was the cottagecore kitchen of her dreams, and mugs the size of her head, and tea that made her feel so warm and welcomed.
The way friendship was supposed to feel.
The way she had always hoped it would with a dozen different vague semi-friends over the years.
The way it had sort of seemed with Jack Jackson.
Or at least the way it could have if she weren’t probably hallucinating half the things that had happened the day before. “But he’s not like you, Cass,” she said, as she shook her head at herself. Cassie wasn’t having it, however.
“Hey, I can be pretty ornery.”
“Not the way he can. And especially after I gave him so many reasons to be mad. I crashed my car on the road he probably owns. It’s probably still there, overturned, in a ditch. Then after that, he had to drive me home, while I sat there babbling at him about stuff.”
She bustled around the store as she spoke, not thinking much about what she’d revealed.
The counter needed tidying, and she still hadn’t put away the first aid kit from yesterday.
Plus she had some books to unpack—a cute series of spooky novellas, a selection of new romance novels, a few more items for her Try Me section, which was basically a witchy cauldron in the center of a table, full of different spooky ornate keys that correlated to a mystery book.
Fun, in a way she knew Cassie appreciated.
She almost mentioned it to her, in fact.
But then came Cassie’s sharp tone through the phone she’d cocked between her ear and her shoulder. “Honestly, I don’t think the babbling is the important part there.”
“Well, I don’t see what else could be, really.”
“The thing about you rolling your car, Nance.”
Oops , she thought, and stopped what she was doing so she could at least attempt to say something more sensible and well thought out. “That wasn’t a big deal. He got me out of it easily.”
“He got you out of it. As in, he rescued you from it. With his bare hands.”
“Well, I think he felt obliged to. Because he got angry when I saw him nude.”
“Wait, what ?” Cassie gasped, at which point Nancy had to face facts:
No amount of concentrating was going to make her case.
Now it was all just damage control.
“That doesn’t sound like what it was, Cass. I didn’t mean to do it.”
“It doesn’t matter if you did or not. What matters is all the things you’re leaving out. You crashed your car, he saved you, and he possibly did all of that while naked? How naked? The whole thing? Just from the waist up? Are those shoulders as hot as they look? I bet they are, right.”
“Hey, now,” she heard Seth, Cassie’s boyfriend, protest in the background. And loudly enough that it almost felt like being saved. Until Cassie put her hand over the phone, and whispered to him, “Like you don’t think the same thing.” After which Seth grumbled, but eventually gave in.
He gave in.
She had two people now talking to her about how sexy Jack’s shoulders were.
And the worst part? They were both right. They were very right. She was thinking way too much now about how right they were. Even though he was practically a spoken-for man, who undoubtedly thought she was annoying.
“You guys aren’t helping me at all here,” she protested, just as the muffled hand-over-phone sounds stopped, and Cassie returned, full of irritation.
“It’s hard to help when I feel like you want me to say something untrue.”
“But it’s not untrue. He doesn’t like me at all, and he doesn’t want to be my friend, and even if he did want to be at some point, I said so many embarrassing things yesterday that I am definitely never going to see him agai—” she said.
Then she happened to look up, just as she was finishing the last word, and the sight she saw sliced it in two.
Because it was Jack Jackson.
Standing outside her store, a whole half hour before opening.
He practically had his face pressed against the glass. He caught her gaze and had to straighten, and make himself look a little less like someone who definitely did want to see her again, for whatever weird reason he had.
Suddenly something across the street looked very interesting to him.
He needed to check a watch he didn’t have on.
There were crumbs on his rumpled shirt that he had to swipe off, even though she knew his shirt never had crumbs down it at all.
He might have looked like he had gotten dressed inside a dryer as it ran, but he was always, always clean.
She even remembered that hint of freshly washed laundry under that struck-match scent.
The softness of his hair at the nape of his neck.
The glisten of the water all over his half-nude body, from the shower.
“I gotta go, Cass,” she managed to get out.
Then hit end call just as Cassie started to say, “He’s there now, isn’t he.”
Because what was she going to say, no? He still hadn’t moved on.
He was now studying her Halloween window display strewn with pumpkins and witch hats like his life depended on it.
Like he couldn’t leave, but also didn’t know how to stay.
He didn’t know how to admit that he had something he wanted to say.
And it was this idea that forced her to the door.
But casually, as if she was just opening up.
As if she didn’t even know he was there.
She just had to unlock the door, turn over the OPEN sign, and haul her sandwich board out onto the sidewalk—that was all.
Nice and casual, no big deal , she thought.
Though of course she couldn’t resist peeping at him a little.
Just from under the veil of her curly hair, so he wouldn’t notice.
And he didn’t.
He was too busy watching her struggle with the sandwich board. She managed to heave it out and saw him glance her way, before hurriedly looking away. Then the rusted hinge wouldn’t let her open it, and he couldn’t seem to resist looking again. Jaw clenched now. Hands bunched into fists.