Chapter Twenty-Five
Erin was more flustered than she cared to admit. A long walk with Buzzy, a hot shower, taking her time getting ready for work—none of her usual routines calmed her. She felt giddy. It wasn’t a word she would ever have used about herself. It was a word used in novels where young ladies met their beaux and all common sense flew out the window until they had a ring on their finger and their happily ever after was just around the corner. But there wasn’t a better word for how she felt. Giddy . As though her world were spinning and the ground didn’t seem quite stable under her feet. She was in love with the world and wanted to giggle.
And Erin Davenport had never been a giggler.
Under all that lightness, though, something seismic had happened. She had never been casual about sex, and after her incredibly wild night with Jay, she’d never felt so vulnerable either. She’d given him everything. Did he have any idea? Since she knew perfectly well he had a lot more experience in that area than she did, did their night mean anywhere near as much to him as it meant to her? She needed a little time to make sense of what had happened. Of her feelings. Because right now she felt head over heels.
And she couldn’t quite believe it was with Jay Malone.
She couldn’t concentrate on her article at home, so she decided to head into work with Buzzy, where the office atmosphere might do her some good.
By the time she arrived, she was still feeling disoriented. Only a couple of minutes passed before Pat Sinclair, who had obviously been on the lookout for her, came out of her office and perched on the edge of her desk. “That handsome film agent, Jay Malone, dropped by this morning to see you. Since you weren’t in, he left you a note.”
Erin hoped she had sufficiently controlled her expression at the mention of Jay’s name. Inside, it felt like a little bird was tap dancing in her stomach. Not much got past Pat.
“Thanks.” She took the envelope with her name scrawled across it in Jay’s looping handwriting. Even the sight of his handwriting made that little bird dance a little faster. Oh, she had it bad. Pat shot her a knowing look and then went back to her office, leaving Erin to stare down at the envelope, almost afraid to open it. Had she offended Jay by making her escape while he was on the phone to her brother?
Because at the mention of Archer’s name, it had all become too real. There was zero chance of her brother approving of the match, and she wasn’t ready to face the rest of her family with all their big opinions. She needed to get her own thoughts straight first. Hopefully Jay knew her well enough to realize that was what was going on—not that she had any regrets about the night they’d spent together. In fact, she wished they’d had some hot morning sex before she left.
She fiddled with the envelope, still not tearing it open. Maybe it was just a crush. The kind that teenage girls got sitting in dark movie theaters watching Smith Sullivan in some role where he was heroic and gorgeous and spoke lines that had been written for him by experts. Maybe it was that kind of crush and it would pass quickly.
But somehow she suspected that wasn’t true. She had to face facts. This went far, far deeper than that.
She took a breath and opened the note.
Dear Ms. Davenport,
Thank you for leaving me a note before you departed. I will grant your request, as I shall be leaving for LA shortly and will be there for the next few days. I’m bringing Nelson this time. If I weren’t leaving, however, I would do everything I could to convince you that what we have together is every kind of right.
With fondest regards,
Julius (Jay) Malone
P.S. I know you’ll miss me, but you’ll survive. I just hope I will, because I’ll be missing you like crazy the whole time.
Erin sat back in her chair. She read the note again, slowly, as though savoring the best kind of chocolate. She’d felt a momentary spike of despair when she read that he was leaving, and taking his dog with him so she wouldn’t even have the pleasure of being in his home. But every kind of right ? So he had felt it too. And she really loved the part where the charming formality dissolved. I’ll be missing you like crazy.
She resisted the urge to kiss the note, and instead tucked it into its envelope, then into her bag. Somehow, his note had calmed her. She would have some space to process this new development between them, now that she knew she was as much on Jay’s mind as he was on hers.
But right now she had work to do, so she would have to put those sumptuous, sexy thoughts in a box and get back to it.
When she finished her article, there were a few obituaries to update. She loved how the elder residents of Carmel-by-the-Sea liked to keep her updated on all the goings-on in their lives, ostensibly so that at the time they passed, their obits would be pretty much written and approved by themselves. But also she thought they sometimes liked to boast to her about their newest grandchild or the latest family marriage.
Finally, when she was on top of her work and it was time to break for lunch, she composed an email back to Jay. She could have texted, but somehow email felt more formal.
Dear Mr. Malone,
Thank you for letting me know you will be out of town. I suspect I shall be very busy with my duties at the newspaper and will not have the time to miss you. But I will definitely miss Nelson. Give him a scratch between the ears for me, please.
Wishing you great success in Los Angeles and a safe and speedy trip back to Carmel-by-the-Sea.
Your friend (with some quite breathtaking benefits),
Erin Davenport
She paused. It felt very bold to have written breathtaking benefits , but she decided to leave it in. She hit Send.
Then she tried to put Jay Malone out of her mind and took herself out to lunch. She loved to treat herself to a fancy focaccia sandwich from time to time, and this was the perfect day to allow herself that distraction.
She walked out into the brilliant sunshine, trying to keep her hands from pulling out her phone every five minutes. It was a gorgeous day. A nice, long surf out on the waves was what she really needed to clear her mind, but that would have to wait until evening. Maybe she could text Mila and see if she wanted to join her. But then Mila would want to know what had happened with Jay, and Erin wasn’t sure she was ready to talk about it yet. Not until she had her thoughts clear.
As she stood in line waiting for her mortadella sandwich, her fingers twitched and again she resisted checking her phone.
But by the time she’d left the sandwich place and strolled to a nearby bench to enjoy lunch in peace and quiet, she couldn’t hold out any longer. She slipped her phone from her pocket and then felt a huge grin spread across her face.
Jay had already replied.
Dear Ms. Davenport,
I assure you that you will miss me. I also assure you that I will miss you. Very, very much.
With loving regards,
Julius (Jay) Malone
A series of tiny shivers shimmied across Erin’s entire body. She couldn’t believe how sexy these semiformal, ridiculous notes felt. With loving regards ? That was a million steps higher than fondest regards , which was how he’d signed the previous note.
She sighed and bit into her sandwich, which oozed happily with fragrant herbed oil and cheese. She was torn about Jay’s trip to LA. On the one hand, she wished she could spend every second with him (in his bed for the bulk of it, thank you very much), but on the other hand, it wasn’t so bad that he’d gone away for a few days. She needed to sort out her feelings, which were still jumbled.
She couldn’t be in love with Jay Malone, could she? Sure, the sex was off the charts and he’d surprised her by not being brash and pushy in bed, but instead giving and looking after her needs. But now that she’d had the best sex of her life, she wanted more. So much more.
But what was there beyond that for the two of them? Could he possibly be good for her? And what was she going to do when he got tired of the girl next door and wanted to go back to his hot and glamorous models?
Besides, he still didn’t know about her past run-in with a bad man, a past that had hovered over her like a dark cloud since college. Maybe Mila was right and she should tell him. After all, he’d told her his own dark secrets. It suddenly didn’t seem right that she hadn’t done the same thing for him, because whether or not they became a couple, they were definitely already friends. In order to be a true friend to him, and to have any possibility of a lasting partnership, she needed to come clean about her own demons.
Even telling Mila, putting what had happened out in the open instead of tucked away in some shamed part of her, had made her look at that awful relationship with the eyes of an adult. She felt a lot more forgiving toward her nineteen-year-old self, who had been so innocent, so trusting. The downside of coming from a family like the Davenports, if there could be one, was in believing that people were good and a man and woman wouldn’t become intimate if they didn’t truly care about each other. But luckily, she had big brothers who had let her know that it was a tough world out there, and they’d made sure to teach her some pretty useful self-defense skills. Still, deep down, she’d always believed that she’d brought that horrible near miss on herself. And the awful things that guy had said about her in private and in public had suggested that he’d believed it too—that she was at fault for leading him on.
She shook her head and tried to clear those awful memories from her mind. She was older now, much wiser, and sitting on a bench in the world’s most beautiful town with her favorite sandwich. And an email inbox containing sexy notes that made her feel like a character in a Jane Austen novel.