Chapter 2 #2
“This guy who came into Miller’s Mercantile,” Annie said, and Jenna tried not to wince at the sound of her friend’s voice ringing out through the whole restaurant. “What was his name, Jenna?”
“Umm…” Fine, the die was cast, and he really did deserve it. “Jack Wexler.”
Annie nodded solemnly. “He’s some blowhard from the city who complained about Miller’s Mercantile because it didn’t have smoked salmon .
” She rolled her eyes, her salt and pepper curls bouncing around her flushed face.
Two sips of gin and tonic and her friend was already well on her way to a serious buzz, Jenna noted with affection.
Annie had never been able to hold her liquor, and Jenna suspected she needed a bit of liquid relief at the moment.
“Jack Wexler…” Rhonda mused. “I’ll make a note of it if he comes in here. If my eggs Benedict isn’t good enough for him, then I don’t know what is.”
“He gave Jenna’s store a one-star review online because of it,” Annie continued boisterously, and this time Jenna did wince. She didn’t really want that information spread around, for the sake of her store, rather than Jack Wexler.
“Now that does sound like a jerk,” Rhonda agreed, her eyes narrowing.
“Of the first order. I know how much a one-star review can hurt, trust me. I had some jackass in here once who one-starred me because I didn’t give free refills on wine .
” She planted a hand on one bony hip, her peroxide-blonde ponytail flipped over her shoulder.
“Maybe I should ban this Jack Wexler from the premises. If he’s going to be the type to look down his nose at every joint in this town?—”
“He is,” Annie insisted, taking another sip of her drink. “He certainly sounds like it.”
Jenna was starting to feel slightly alarmed.
As much as she’d disliked Jack Wexler, she didn’t want to be accused of blackballing him in all of Starr’s Fall before he’d barely set foot in the place.
Plus, she had a feeling that would just make him double down on trash-talking her store. “I’m not sure—” she began.
“No Jack Wexlers allowed!” Rhonda crowed with a cackle that ended in a smoker’s cough, and Annie actually applauded.
She had good friends, Jenna thought, dear, loyal friends, but maybe they’d taken this a touch too far, both for her sake and because Annie was clearly in desperate need of a distraction, and Jack Wexler was it.
“Well, he has moved here, so maybe we should be a little…” she began feebly, only for the words to die on her lips as she caught who was coming through The Starr Light’s swinging doors, his ice-blue eyes narrowed in now-familiar derision, sunglasses slipped up onto his forehead just as before even though it was nearing dusk.
Oh, no.
“What?” Annie asked, taking in the undoubtedly horrified expression on Jenna’s face. Then she followed her frozen gaze to the man still standing in the doorway, surveying the diner like a king might survey his domain.
“Oh,” Annie breathed. “That’s him ! It must be. He looks like a jerk.”
“Is it?” Rhonda craned her neck to clock Jack in the doorway, her eyes narrowed in preemptive scorn.
“Well, I’ll tell him right now what I think of him.
” She started to sashay over to him, and swiftly Jenna grabbed her arm.
She could not be responsible for running a new resident out of town, even one as odious as Jack Wexler.
“Rhonda, he’s a customer ,” she hissed. “And if you antagonize him, he’s just likely to give you a bad review, too?—”
“I’d like to see him try?—”
“Plus,” Jenna whispered as a flush crawled up her throat, “I might have been a little rude to him. Just a little.”
“You?” Annie scoffed disbelievingly. “Rude?”
Rhonda, however, hesitated, which was a little humbling. “Well, I’ll see what he’s like,” she groused. “But he’s out on his ear if there are any complaints, let me tell you.”
Jenna watched, feeling a jumbled mixture of anticipation and trepidation, as Rhonda strode toward her newest customer.
He’d changed from his ensemble earlier and was now wearing a gray quarter-zip fleece that looked expensive and very new, paired with similarly crisp-looking jeans.
He’d also exchanged his boat shoes for a pair of hiking boots, also clearly new.
He’d probably taken the price tags off that morning, Jenna thought cynically.
He was so much of a city boy, it was kind of ridiculous.
He was, she noticed, still gazing around the diner with the same narrow-eyed assessment to which he’d subjected Miller’s Mercantile.
“May I help you?” Rhonda’s voice rang out, sounding more than a little aggressive, and Jack jerked back a little, clearly startled by her tone.
Oh, dear. Jenna knew Rhonda was a little defensive of her.
Years ago, when she’d first limped back to Starr’s Fall with a broken heart, wounded pride and a soul-deep cynicism that all men had to be lying cheats, Rhonda had commiserated with her over a bottle of wine late at night in this diner, the sign flipped to closed.
Jenna couldn’t remember half of what she’d blubbed to Rhonda two or three glasses in, and she cringed a little now to think of it, because she tended to keep her emotional cards close to her chest. Rhonda, however much a gossip she liked to be, hadn’t let Jenna’s secrets slip. At least, Jenna hoped she hadn’t.
Just like she hoped Rhonda didn’t make Jack Wexler Starr’s Fall’s public enemy number one, even if he deserved to be.
She’d told herself she was going to rise above his slurs and sneers, but right now it was feeling like she hadn’t at all.
She might have even brought the whole episode a little lower.
“I was hoping for a table,” Jack told Rhonda in a voice that bordered on arctic. “If that’s not too much to ask?”
“And will you give me a one-star rating if it is?” Rhonda returned in the same aggressive tone, and Jenna closed her eyes. Rhonda was known for refusing customers service, it was true, but she usually waited until they’d first done something objectionable.
Sensing someone’s gaze on her, Jenna opened her eyes to find Jack Wexler staring right at her, his narrowed gaze like a laser, freezing her in place. Jenna felt as if her heart had stopped beating, the whole world had stopped moving, as they stared straight at each other for several long beats.
Then Jack snapped his gaze back to Rhonda, and Jenna tried to remember how to breathe.
“I don’t think I’ll bother,” Jack replied, his cut-glass tone carrying through the whole diner, and then he turned on his heel and walked out, the door banging behind him.
“ Well ,” Rhonda announced, like his behavior proved everything she’d thought about him and more.
There were only a handful of customers in The Starr Light, but they were all buzzing with speculation about the scene. Jack Wexler had clearly made his name in the town, and not in a good way. The question was, Jenna wondered morosely, how much of it was her fault?
She didn’t want to be the kind of person who created drama.
She’d had enough in her life, heaven knew, and she was trying to keep things on a more even keel, especially since she and Zach had had a falling out.
They’d managed to recover their relationship, and Jenna hoped it was on its way to being stronger than ever, but this…
? She really didn’t need a Jack Wexler in her life.
Jenna glanced once more at the diner’s door, firmly closed, dusk settling over Main Street. It seemed, she reflected, she didn’t have one. Jack Wexler was nowhere to be seen.