Chapter Nineteen
Seth
“Y OU’RE GOOD FOR BUSINESS , Seth!” Ian exclaimed, as another woman left the hardware store, having just purchased a couple of tester pots of paint I was sure she didn’t need. I managed to paste on a smile, but, in truth, my head was anywhere but on work right now.
“I’m going to do inventory,” I told him, as I headed through to the back of the store. “Call me if you need anything, okay?”
“I need you to stand outside and bring in all these girls,” Ian joked. “I don’t think we’ve had so many people in here in years!”
I grinned, but I didn’t really feel like it. He was right—it had been busier in here today than I had ever seen it before, as the stragglers who hadn’t been able to make it to the store yesterday scouted me out wherever they could find me. Normally, I wouldn’t have minded, but I was distracted by my phone—or, rather, the complete lack of activity on it.
I hadn’t heard from Jorja all day, and it was starting to worry me. She was usually quick to get back to my messages, but we were drawing up on the end of the working day, and there was nothing from her—not a word. What was going on?
I thought things had been going well, especially after everything that had happened the day before. She had seemed so relieved to bring in all that money, and more than that, to see the way the community had banded around her. Had something happened? I couldn’t help but wonder if Wharton had stuck his nose in again and starting causing more trouble, but I wasn’t sure how he would have pulled that off, given that she had the cash to silence him now.
I checked my phone again, and fired off another text to Jorja before I turned my attention back to work. It was Christmas Eve, and normally, I would have been winding down for the Christmas season once and for all today, but Ian had called me in and I had decided it would be best for the sake of my new job to stay on his good side. In reality, when I had gotten here, his wife had interrogated me about my modeling work and floated the idea of me doing another signing in the hardware store, which I hadn’t agreed to yet, but I hadn’t shut down either. If it brought a little more business to the small town, it was probably a good thing, right?
I would head over to the bookstore at the end of the day to make sure there was nothing going on with her, I told myself, no point in hanging over my phone like this, waiting for her to get back to me. I had to accept that she had her own life, and, no matter how well we had been getting along lately, there were going to be times when she needed to stay focused on it.
I finished up my work for the day, and, as soon as I had wished Ian a Merry Christmas, I headed out toward the bookstore. It had snowed heavily the night before, and a soft blanket of white rested over the town, virtually undisturbed aside from the sidewalks. It looked beautiful, and I wished I could have just relaxed and taken it in, instead of letting my mind run away with me.
When I reached the Mastin Bookshelf, I grinned as I spotted a few customers leaving the store with bags. Good, so there were still people visiting, even after everything that had happened yesterday. I didn’t want there to be a drop-off. I needed her to see that people really appreciated this place, and appreciated her for keeping it open, too.
I stepped inside, and Jorja glanced up as soon as she heard me come in. But, when our eyes locked, she quickly looked away, and turned her attention back to the customer she was serving.
Okay, that was kind of strange. Not even a smile? She must be really busy. I flicked through some books, watching her out of the corner of my eye as she worked, and waiting until the line had finally started to peter out.
Making my way over to her, I grinned in greeting. She gave me a tight smile in return, putting the cash in the till from the last customer before she closed it again.
“Is everything okay?” I asked her, and she nodded.
“Yep, everything’s fine,” she replied, though I could tell she wasn’t exactly telling the truth.
I frowned. “What’s going on?” I demanded. “You haven’t replied to any of my texts today.”
She wiped down the counter, and looked up at me with a sigh. “I’m sorry, Seth,” she murmured. “I’ve just... I’ve just been busy. That’s all.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” I pointed out. Why did she sound so down about it?
“Yeah, it’s always busy on Christmas Eve,” she replied. “People need last-minute presents, I guess.”
“Or they just love the store,” I reminded her.
She snorted, though there wasn’t much humor in it. “Not sure about that,” she replied. “Excuse me. I think I’m going to close up for the day.”
She headed over to the door and started locking up, and I followed her. I didn’t know why she was acting this way with me, so formal and uptight, but it was throwing me off.
“Did you have a chance to count the money?” I asked, changing the subject.
She sighed, then nodded. “Yeah, Seth, I did,” she replied, turning to me and crossing her arms over her chest. “But I... I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to keep it.”
“What are you talking about?” I replied, nonplussed.
“It’s your money,” she shot back. “You’re the one who made it. I wouldn’t feel right, taking it from you.”
“I did it for you, Jorja,” I reminded her. “For the store. I don’t want it, I don’t need it—”
“It wouldn’t sit right with me,” she repeated again. “My grandmother would never have wanted someone else paying off her bills like this. And neither do I.”
“It’s not someone else paying off your bills,” I pointed out. “I wanted to do it for you. If it hadn’t been for your books, the books you stock, nobody would have recognized me in the first place, I—”
She looked up at me, and the expression on her face stopped me in my tracks.
“I don’t want it, Seth,” she told me. “And I can pay off the bills with the new customers who’ve been coming in. I think, anyway.”
“And those donations,” I reminded her. “You were so worried about the community not supporting you, but look at how they came around to help you when they heard the store might be in trouble.”
“That’s my grandmother’s influence, not mine,” she replied, as she made her way back to the counter. I followed behind her, frustrated. Couldn’t she see how much people loved this place? Why did she seem so intent on running it down every chance she got? She was better than that, I knew she was—better than to just believe outright that she wasn’t important to this place or this town.
She pulled the lockbox from under the counter, and pushed it toward me. “Here,” she told me. “This is the money from the photos. It’s yours.”
“I don’t want it.” I pushed it back toward her, but she didn’t move her hand.
“Jorja, why are you doing this?” I asked her, incredulous. “You know I wanted to help you.”
“You don’t get it,” she told me, her voice hitching slightly as she spoke. “I...I should be able to do all of this by myself. But I couldn’t. I let my grandmother down. She was the one who got this place up and running, she was the one who convinced people to come here over and over again, but I’m just so... so stuck in my own head, I haven’t been able to do the same thing.”
“It’s not your fault, Jorja,” I assured her gently. “You’re just—”
“No, I don’t need you to tell me how it is,” she interrupted me. “I appreciate all your help, I really do, but I know you’ve got a different life to go back to.”
“A different life?”
She gestured to the pictures on the book covers that were showing, the ones with my face on them. “That life,” she reminded me.
“That life is behind me now,” I told her. “It was fun while it lasted, but it was never what I wanted, not for my whole life, I have other things in mind. Better things. That’s why I came here, because I wanted a fresh start.”
I reached over the counter, planting my hand on hers. “And I think I found it with you, Jorja.”
She gazed up at me, and, for a moment, I could see something in her wavering—something wanting to give in to this connection between us, this feeling that had risen from the first moment we had laid eyes on each other. But then, she drew her hand back.
“You’re not going to want to stay,” she replied. “You’re going to move on. And when you do... when you do, I’m still going to be here, just like I always have been, and nothing is going to change!”
I stared at her in disbelief. How had she managed to convince herself of all of this? It just didn’t make sense to me, none of it did. I felt like we had gone from being exactly where we needed to be, to crashing down and falling apart right in front of my eyes. Was it because I had paid too much attention to other women yesterday? Surely, she understood that I had been doing it for the good of the store. Though, judging by the way she was looking at me right now, I wasn’t certain.
She headed to the back office, where the exit to the store was waiting for her. I followed her.
“Jorja, can we just talk about this?” I replied. She had invented a fiction about me in her head and decided that was how I was going to be, and I wanted at least a chance to disprove her.
“I don’t have anything to talk about with you,” she told me, her voice cracking as she unlocked the door. Outside, the snow had begun to fall heavily, whisking this way and that in cold flashes of wind.
“After everything that’s happened...” I began, but she lifted her hand to stop me in my tracks.
“No, it’s not like that,” she replied. “I know you might be on the cover of all those romance books, but... but that doesn’t mean that the world is going to play by those rules. Real life doesn’t work that way.”
Before I could follow her out into the cold, she rushed off toward her car, leaving me standing in the doorway, too stunned to speak, and desperately trying to wrap my head around what the hell had just happened.