CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #2
“ Happy New Year to you too, Jagger. Fancy meeting you on one of our favorite trails. Isn’t it a nice day to go running?
Why, yes, Raina, it is a very nice day to go running.
How did you spend your New Year’s Eve? I spent my New Year’s Eve pining over you and thinking about more ways I could run into you.
” His grin was diabolical. “Did you now? Well, funny you should mention it, that’s exactly how I spent my New Year’s Eve too. ”
“Are you ever serious?” I asked, the pulse in my ears a loud, quick thud-thud .
“More often than I wish, actually. Did you have a nice New Year’s Eve?”
“We did. Thank you. You?”
“Quiet. Low-key. Did a Central Mountain Time celebration with the kids, so they went to bed at ten. Then the adults played a board game until midnight, and I was in my footie pajamas and donning my sleep mask by twelve-thirty.”
The image of Jagger’s enormous frame in footie pajamas and a sleep mask made me smirk.
“Anyway,” I said, flustered and sweaty, “I’ll … see you around, I guess.”
“You certainly will, Elsa. Enjoy your run.” He popped his earbud back in, and I did the same, then we took off in opposite directions, turning back to glance at the other person at the exact same time, and damn, if his smile didn’t make me nearly run right into a tree.
It was January 4, and so far, they’d been working on repairing the ferry terminal for three straight days.
The weather, while cold, was decent enough for the crew to work without significant risk of an accident or injury.
For now, the grocery store was getting stocked via a private barge company, and we were moving wine to the mainland via the barge, then through a third-party distributor.
The extra cost seriously cut into our revenue, but without a “completion date” for the terminal, we couldn’t risk the complete loss of revenue by postponing deliveries.
Especially since this year’s subscription service was our most profitable yet.
Five times a year, we sent out a box with six bottles of wine and multiple food pairings, all locally sourced from the island.
We partnered with Barrington’s Bees, the apiary on the island, and every monthly box had a different jar of honey in it.
Some months they might also get a beeswax candle or a few beeswax food wraps.
We also collaborated with a chocolate confectionary, and a local jam and preserve maker, as well as the bakery that provided us with various sweet or savory biscuits.
Even the butcher shop wanted to get in on the box and made sure they had a different cured meat for us to throw in every month too.
When Hugh Tapper, the local potter, heard about our subscription box, he wanted in, and offered to include a mug, bowl, pinch pot, spoon rest, or something else “nifty”—as he put it—for each month’s box.
How that man was able to turn out so many a month was beyond me, but I didn’t argue with him.
I just said thank you, and added him to the vendor list.
Once I got all of the contributors down on paper, I couldn’t contain my excitement over this new subscription box.
I advertised the ever-loving crap out of it for four solid months, had coupon codes for Christmas gift discounts, and even had an ongoing promotion from Black Friday to a week before Christmas where people could enter to win the first and last month’s boxes for free if they referred a friend and the friend bought a subscription too.
That promotion alone brought in nearly a hundred new subscribers.
I sat in my home office, with the futon and my dusty old piano keyboard that I never played anymore, and fiddled with the graphic design program I taught myself how to use.
To save on designer costs, I designed all of our logos and any stationary.
With each subscription box, we included a cardstock note thanking the subscriber, as well as letting them know exactly what goodies were in their box that month.
I tripled checked my checklist with the list of items on the stationary to make sure I didn’t forget any of the vendors. I had a prototype of January’s box on the floor beside me and every piece was labeled.
Wine, wine, wine, wine. Check. Check. Check. Check.
Honey. Check.
Salami. Check.
Rosemary and cracked pepper crackers. Check.
Plum and—
A knock at my front door broke my concentration.
This was twice now in the last week that someone knocked on my door. What the hell?
Marco was outside somewhere with Naomi’s son, Austin, and they were kicking the soccer ball around. They’d already come into the house twice for food. But they didn’t knock before entering.
Grumbling that I’d have to start my checklist all over again, I got up from my chair and stalked to the door. If it was Jagger McEvoy …
I swung it open and sure enough …
His grin dissolved all the remaining fragments of my agitation. “Elsa! How the heck are you?”
The way he casually leaned against my doorjamb, one hand in his pocket, ankles crossed, was so … “effortlessly sexy” was the only term that instantly came to mind.
I smiled before I could stop myself. “McEvoy. To what do I owe the unexpected visit?”
I hadn’t realized until now that his other hand was behind him, until he brought it out in front of me, holding another plant.
This time, it was a baby Pilea peperomioides—commonly known as a Chinese Money Plant or Pancake Plant, because the circular leaves looked like little pancakes.
I had a few around the house already, but they were one of my favorites.
“To add to your collection,” he said, holding the baby out for me.
I took it without hesitation, smiling down at the little darling. “Hello,” I whispered.
“Do you talk to your plants?”
“Maybe?”
That free and easy grin of his was going to turn me into a popsicle in a sauna—a puddle. “How have you been?”
“I’ve been okay.” I left the door open and wandered into the house, searching for the perfect spot for my new little baby. Pilea liked humidity and bright indirect light. So I had to stop in my living room and think for a second where she would be happiest.
A small vacant spot on my plant shelf in the corner called to me, so I took her over there. “All right, everyone, this is Eloise. Please make her feel at home.” I set Eloise down beside a bigger Pilea and smiled, turning around to find an amused Jagger watching me.
“You really do like your plants,” he said, taking in all my leafy loves, particularly my monstrous monstera in the corner and the seven-foot-tall ficus tree next to my credenza. “Is me bringing you plants like giving a beer to an alcoholic? Am I just feeding the addiction?”
I snorted. “If I was trying to kick the habit, I wouldn’t have half a jungle in here. Plants are always appreciated. But yes, you’re just feeding the addiction.”
“Could be worse. You could have a crippling affinity for crack,” he murmured, that playful smile only growing wider.
I plunked my hands on my hips. “What brings you by, Jagger?”
“Two things,” he said, shoving both hands into his pockets now. “One, do you have any interest in including a San Camanez Brewery beer or two in your subscription box?”
This question could have been a text message. An email. A phone call. And any one of the McEvoy brothers could have asked it. There was definitely more to his visit than asking me that. I smiled at the way hope—and trepidation—filled his gaze when he spoke.
“And two … if maybe you’d like to have dinner with me sometime?”
I wasn’t expecting either of those questions, but definitely not the second one.
He swallowed at the same time my jaw dropped.
“Are you being serious right now?” I asked.
I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. The last couple of times we ran into each other—the grocery store and the running trail—I’d been rude, and I mentally flagellated myself for that when I got home.
He was only being nice. As long as I kept him at arm’s length and didn’t give him an opportunity to double-cross my family or business, then why couldn’t I maintain this truce and be nice to him too?
I vowed that the next time I saw Jagger I would be pleasant.
“About joining your subscription box?” he asked. “Yes.”
“And your other question?”
“Us going on a date? Also, yes.”
Pressing my fingers to my temples, I spun around in my living room and took a couple of steps away. “What is going on right now?” I asked, facing him again. “I feel like I’m in the freaking twilight zone. You’re Jagger McEvoy.”
“I am.”
“I’m Raina Aaronson.”
“You are.”
“We hate each other.”
He lifted one finger in the air. “Correction, we hated each other. Past tense. I don’t hate you now. In fact, I quite like you. Which is why I’m asking you out.”
The earnest and open look on his face tugged so hard at the strings of my heart, I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from just blurting out a loud, “Yes!”
He exhaled and cocked his head to the side a little.
“I was wrong about you, Raina. You’re not the icy, mean-spirited person you want the world to think you are.
I know that’s just an armor you wear. But I feel like I saw the real you on Wayman.
The way you helped Lenora. The way you went to battle for her and slashed Walt’s tires.
” Even his snort of amusement was sexy. “I want to get to know that Raina better. And I want that Raina to get to know me better too.” He shrugged again.
“So, Thistle, what do you say? Can you let me take you out?”
“Thistle?”
He shrugged and flashed that crooked, sexy smile.
“I’m workshopping other nicknames. I thought about ‘Jellyfish, since they sting. But they’re not prickly—are they?
So that might not work. But pufferfish, sea urchins, crown-of-thorns starfish, and lionfish definitely have prickles and spines.
I could call you ‘ Pufferfish ?’ Urchin sounds mean though, right? ”