Chapter 3 #2
He unlocked the back door of the lake house he’d bought after one look online and strode through the yawning mudroom to the even bigger kitchen.
It was far too big a house for one person, although he’d always liked airy spaces, and the floor-to-ceiling picture window overlooking the lake, so close you almost felt as if you were walking on water, had been a definite selling point.
Still, it wasn’t like he was going to host parties or even have anyone over. There was no one to have over; the friends and colleagues of his old life had already forgotten him. As for his new life? Well, his welcome to Starr’s Fall had not exactly been heartening, to say the least.
Jack tossed the pizza on the kitchen table that seated twelve and had been carved out of a single piece of oak—he’d hired an interior decorator to furnish the entire place, giving her carte blanche because he hadn’t cared—and glanced longingly at the empty drinks cabinet.
Strictly no alcohol for the foreseeable, his doctor had said, unless he wanted to wind up on the operating table again.
Jack had obeyed him so far, but what he wouldn’t do for a single malt whiskey right about now…
With a sigh he turned to the picture window, taking some small solace from the view of the lake, an evening mist settling onto its placid surface in ghostly shreds, the shoreline across the stretch of water dense with dark evergreens.
Loneliness swept through him like an empty wind, rustling and rattling and leaving nothing behind but a deep, painful longing for what was… and what would never be again.
Improbably as well as irritatingly, his mind drifted once more to Jenna Miller.
Back at the diner she’d been seated in a booth with another woman—Jack hadn’t taken in the details, but he’d seen that much.
Clearly enjoying roasting him to all and sundry, too.
She was probably the toast of the town, he reflected sourly.
Born and bred here, loved by everyone, defended to the death, yada, yada, yada.
Flipping the lid of the box and reaching for a slice of pizza, he wondered what she was doing now.
* * *
By six-thirty, Annie needed to get back to her mom and Jenna was heading back to Miller’s Mercantile, feeling disconsolate and a little restless.
No matter how much she kept telling herself that Jack Wexler had made his own bed, and he could now darned well lie in it, she still felt…
not guilty , no, but uncomfortable. A little, at least, although she wasn’t even sure why, because he really had been rude.
And good-looking. For some reason, she kept remembering just how much.
But it wasn’t even Jack Wexler who was making her feel this way, Jenna knew as she let herself into the empty house behind the store where she’d lived for most of her life.
It was the loneliness that she’d kept at bay for the last few years but was always crouching at the door, waiting to rush in and take up all the space if she gave it a second’s chance.
Whenever she felt this way, she trotted out the laundry list of reasons why it was unreasonable to do so.
She had good friends, a great brother—even if they’d been at odds occasionally—and, well, not a thriving business, but at least one that was limping along, and that she enjoyed.
Many people had less, a lot less, and she had never been one for self-pity.
At least not overt self-pity; like the loneliness, it could creep in by the back door and take up irritating residence.
But she didn’t want to do that now, even if Jack Wexler—and yes, this was about him, sort of—had as good as held a mirror up to her own life and forced her to stare at her reflection. Look at you, you rude, washed-up shrew of a woman. Who would ever love you, never mind like you? You’re pathetic.
All right, he hadn’t said all that, but he might as well have.
He’d certainly been thinking it, and now Jenna was too, which felt pretty miserable.
She’d spent a lot of time doing her best to stop thinking these kinds of thoughts, back when she’d come back to Starr’s Fall, emotionally bloodied and bruised and trying her hardest not to show just how much.
Ryan Taylor hadn’t just broken her heart, he’d crushed her confidence, her sense of self.
She’d done the one thing she’d sworn she wouldn’t and tried to make a man her everything, searching for that stupid fairy-tale romance that growing up she’d watched from afar.
Her parents might have had it, but she didn’t want it, and she wasn’t going to go looking for it ever again.
Neither was she going to talk about it or confess her feelings of loneliness to any of her good friends, because that would be pathetic and make her feel worse.
So here she was, in a dark kitchen, pulling her laptop toward her and stupidly clicking on TripAdvisor to look at that review again. Why was she torturing herself this way? Not that there was much else to do…
With a sigh, Jenna read through it again—she had it practically memorized by now—and noticed, glumly, that there were two new likes. Who had liked such a piece of vindictive garbage? Was it someone who had been to her store? Someone she knew ?
The prospect was even more dispiriting. She’d made Miller’s Mercantile her whole life for the last few years, since her parents had retired.
She and Zach had been running it together, but she’d put her soul into this store in a way he never had.
Maybe because she hadn’t let him, but still.
Reading those words of Jack Wexler’s, even knowing they must have been fired off in a temper, hurt .
And they also made her wonder if maybe she was doing something wrong.
The store’s profits had been slipping for well over a year.
They didn’t get the tourists in Starr’s Fall to justify turning it into some high-end gift shop like they had in Litchfield, and now that Instacart delivered to the town, it was only the old-timers and loyalist townspeople who bought their groceries here.
What could she do? What did she want to do?
Sometimes, in her bleaker moments, Jenna considered jacking it all in.
Selling her share in the store and hightailing it to Bermuda or the Bahamas or one of those places.
The money would last at least a year or two, and after that, well, maybe she’d have an epiphany.
Or she’d open a surf shop or something, not that she’d ever surfed, or had even wanted to.
Jenna let out a gusty sigh as she closed her laptop. How could she be thirty-eight years old and still not know what she wanted to do with her life, or even who she was ?
Bizarrely, and uncomfortably, her thoughts drifted back to Jack Wexler.
Again. Why on earth had a guy like him moved to Starr’s Fall?
And those new hiking boots and fleece… They kind of screamed midlife crisis.
Had something happened to him? Maybe that was why he’d been in such a mood, because now that she thought about it, he’d seemed irritable coming into the store, even before he’d asked about the smoked salmon, and she wasn’t sure it had been just run-of-the-mill snobbishness.
Or was she giving the guy too much credit?
Remember what guys like that are like, Jenna , she told herself. They’re ruthless. Heartless. Liars…
She didn’t usually need the reminder. In fact, Annie would say that she thought about Ryan way too much, considering it was ten years since they’d broken up.
Or, to put a finer point on it, since he’d ruthlessly dumped her when she’d been forming the word yes , thinking he might propose after waiting with bated breath for two years, tying herself into knots to be the woman he wanted, to absolutely no avail.
Yes, it still hurt, even if it shouldn’t. Maybe it always would.
As for Jack Wexler? Jenna was determined not to give him another thought.
She pushed her laptop away and headed into the store that adjoined the house, treading the old wooden floorboards in the dark, breathing in its familiar smell of dust and wood polish, pickles and popcorn.
Not the most tantalizing aroma, but Jenna loved it.
Maybe she would get the popcorn machine working again, she thought.
The machine smelled enough as it was, and it was a cute and unique thing to offer.
Maybe she’d even stock smoked salmon, like a joke, and advertise it in the window. Goes great with toasted sourdough!
The thought made her snicker, and she decided she felt better.
The Jack Wexlers of the world were not going to bring her down, she told herself. Not back then, not now, and not ever.