Chapter Four #2
She picked up her purse and opened the door. “Hey. Did you get some serious writing done?” She caught a whiff of his cologne—something slightly woodsy with a hint of vanilla—and wanted to drag him into the cabin for a long make-out session.
“I did,” he answered. “I’ll have to do some light editing, but I’ll get it to the publisher a couple of weeks early when I turn it in on Friday. How about you? Did you finish the picture?”
“Not that one, but I did put my signature on another one that I’m titling Hope,” she answered as she locked up behind herself.
“When can I see it?” Wyatt asked.
“Not when but if—if you come to the galley showing in Houston,” she answered.
“Just tell me the date and I’ll be there.” He rushed ahead of her and opened the truck door for her.
“I can open my own doors. This is not a date,” she reminded him. Sure, she felt that she could trust him, but she wasn’t the one that said they were just going into town together.
“No, but you are a lady, and my mama would rise up out of her grave if I didn’t treat you as one,” Wyatt said.
“I’m sorry for your loss, but she sure raised you right,” Jillian said, and inhaled to catch another whiff of his cologne. Even if nothing romantic happened between them, she would never forget him or the way he made her feel.
“Thank you, and yes, she did,” Wyatt agreed.
“We had a wonderful relationship, probably because it was just the two of us. Dad was gone a lot of the time and was a workaholic. Mother said I got that from him and my charm from her. She used to tell me that my good looks would take me far in life, but charm would get me anything I wanted. Back in those days, I was such an introvert that I didn’t believe a word of what she said. ”
“Well, you are fairly good looking, and you are charming, but most of all, you aren’t above admitting when you are wrong,” Jillian said.
“Only fairly?” Wyatt was definitely flirting. No doubt about it.
“For a start,” Jillian said with a smile.
“Well, beautiful lady, what happens after the start?”
“You use your charm to take the fairly to the next level,” she answered.
“Now, back to shopping.” She changed the subject before the blush on her cheeks got any redder, and her heart jumped out of her chest. He had called her beautiful, and she had always felt like she was a plain nobody. “Did you make a list?”
“I didn’t remember mine the last time I left my hermit cabin, and I forgot half a dozen things,” he answered. “Is it too warm in here? I can always turn on the A/C.”
“It is a little bit warm,” she answered. “Could we just roll down the windows a little to get some fresh air? And what’s that about being a hermit?”
He hit a couple of buttons, and the windows came down a few inches. “Isn’t that what all artists and authors are at heart? Have you ever gone to one of your shows and felt like you were the only person there?”
“I never thought about it, but usually I’m checking my watch every five minutes in hopes that the showing will be over soon,” she admitted. “Look!” Her finger shot across the console, pointed out the side window, and brought it back to grab her phone.
Wyatt slowed the truck to a stop. “That’s a bald eagle. I’ve never seen one before.”
She snapped pictures of it floating in the sky like a living kite, and then of it when it perched on an old wooden fence post. “It’s majestic,” she whispered, and kept taking pictures until it flew away and became nothing but a dot in the sky.
“Are you going to put it on canvas?” Wyatt asked.
“I was thinking about doing a phoenix rising out of ashes next, but I like this idea better. I can see it in my mind, a white head shining among all the grays and blacks. Maybe I’ll do it two ways, one in charcoal, and another with him flying into a rainbow.”
“You’ve got quite an imagination.”
“So do you if you can write two books a year. Yes, I looked you up,” she said as she flipped through all the pictures on her phone.
“Confession.” Wyatt chuckled. “I looked you up, too. Nothing much about your personal life, but a lot about your art. You’ve been doing this as long as I’ve been writing.”
“My first showing was when I was twenty-five,” she said. “Your first book came out that same year.”
“Yep, and it’s been a whirlwind ever since,” he said.
Whirlwind.
The word stuck in Jillian’s mind. The past few days could easily be described just like that.
She had met someone who seemed to understand her, and after that first big blowup over his music, was becoming a friend.
But a person could be a friend for one minute and do a one-eighty the next second, couldn’t they?
She wasn’t really sure where she stood right then, but she really, really liked Wyatt.
“What are you thinking about?” Wyatt asked.
“Are we hermit-cabin friends?”
“I like to think so. We have broken bread together, so to speak, survived an argument, and had coffee more than once,” he answered. “Are you going to friend me on Facebook?”
“I don’t get into that social media drama,” she answered. “My assistant takes care of all the promo that goes on those sites. I barely even look at any of it.”
He turned into the parking lot of the café. “I’m the same, but to be honest, I have lots of acquaintances, but not many friends. How about you?”
“We’re rowing down the river in the same canoe.”
“If we both have an oar, we should reach our destination pretty quick,” he said as he opened the truck door and jogged around to help her out of the passenger side.
He escorted her inside with his hand on her lower back, and she liked the warmth spreading throughout her body.
What if this goes to the next step and he breaks your heart? the pesky voice inside her head asked.
She smiled at the idea. She was thirty-three years old, and she wasn’t Humpty-Dumpty sitting on a wall. She was Jillian, the woman who had overcome too many obstacles to let another doubt ruin what could be.
Her stomach growled at the food smells that greeted them at the door. “I’m starving,” she said, “and I love this kind of food.”
“Another thing we have in common,” Wyatt said. “This is my favorite.”
“What comes in second?” Jillian asked when the waiter motioned for them to follow him.
“Italian and then plain old American,” Wyatt answered.
“Switch the last two and we’re in agreement again.”
“We may be besties before we make it back home,” he teased.
“After the beginning we had, and how far we’ve come, we very well might be. But remember this. I’m a cat person. You are a dog person. That might keep us as just friends.”
Wyatt went back to his earliest memories and couldn’t remember a single person that ever really understood him.
Not even the ones he had built a friendship with over a matter of months.
His parents came close, but even they couldn’t understand how he could spend so many hours in his room with books or notebooks where he outlined future stories.
“Do you believe in love at first sight?” he asked as he parked in front of her cabin.
“Not just no, but hell no!” she answered.
“How about friends at first sight?”
“I’m not sure about even that. If you are talking about me and you, then we were about a million miles from being friends when we first met.” She got out of the truck without waiting for him and opened the back door to take out two bags of groceries.
He picked up the microwave and toaster boxes from the bed of the truck. “How about on second sight?”
“Why are you asking?”
“Because I’ve never had a friend like you, Jillian,” he answered. “There’s something that’s connecting us. I’m not sure what it is or even how to explain it, but I feel it. I’m forty years old, never had a lot of real friends, and …”
She unlocked the door and led the way inside. “I understand, Wyatt, but you sure don’t look forty.”
His laughter echoed off the walls, chasing away any ghosts that might be hiding in the shadows. “I was as serious as I’ve ever been and all you got out of that was my age?” he asked when he could catch his breath.
Jillian reached up and laid a hand on his shoulder. “I feel it, too, and I’ve always been a loner, so I didn’t know what to do with the emotion. What do we do now?”
“I suppose that we admit that we like being around each other and having someone to talk to that understands us,” he answered.
He set the boxes down on the floor. “The end table beside your bed will work for the microwave, and the toaster and coffeepot can sit on top of it. But then, I have a dog, not a cat who could knock it onto the floor.”
“There’s room beside the sink for the coffeepot,” she said.
Jillian nodded, and a puzzled look crossed her face.
“If you don’t want it there …”
“No, that’s fine. I was simply wondering how we could switch from a serious conversation about what friends really were to each other to talking about kitchen appliances.”
“That’s because we are friends.” Wyatt smiled.
“I forgot to tell you I read the first chapter in the book you gave me. I liked it so much, that I ordered two more to read on my phone. If we’re going to be friends, I should tell you that I’m blunt and honest.”
“I’ve already found that out.” He chuckled.
“Someone once told me that my thought pattern is like a bunch of squirrels running around in my head. One minute I might be talking about coffeepots, and the next a squirrel will run past. I either have to grab it or lose the idea. So, anyway, could you move that nightstand for me, please? And if you don’t want to be friends with a woman whose thought pattern is all over the place … ”
Wyatt put a hand on each of her shoulders. “I understand where you are coming from, and yes, I want to be friends with a woman who has squirrels in her head. So you read the first chapter?”
“Yes, I did. It’s well written, made me want to keep turning pages, and I enjoyed it, but …”
“You were building my ego. Why did you have to throw in that but?”