Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jasper
On Monday, I got out of my pickup at Alder’s place. Daisy was on the porch while little West toddled on the walk. A furry puppy romped at his feet. A mutt of some sort.
“He’s in the shop with Laila,” she said when I approached. “Send her this way so I can get her a snack.”
“Will do.” Most likely, Daisy was making sure I got some privacy with my brother.
My visit was sudden, just like my urge to harvest wisdom from a man who fucked up with his wife and won her back again.
I didn’t have much to say that Laila couldn’t hear, and she’d cheer me up.
But maybe there was a chance to pick his brain.
Alder could have all the advice in the world, but I’d burned the most important bridge.
He couldn’t rebuild it. Sheridan didn’t trust me when it came to being serious about her.
She slept in her office Saturday and Sunday.
Today, she claimed that she was just going to sleep there instead of using guest rooms when they were empty.
She’d use the bathroom and it would be less cleaning for her.
The woman owned the damn place, yet she was living in the office.
I found Alder in the shop, building what looked like a doghouse. “Getting a dog now?”
Alder glanced over his shoulder and grinned. “The dog has already been got.”
“I saw that.”
“His name is Roger,” Laila said, holding a child-sized hammer.
I held in my laugh. “Roger? Where’d you get that name from?”
“I dunno,” she said. “He looks like a Roger.”
I smiled, lighter than I’d been for days.
Alder considered me. “Laila, wanna go see what we have for a snack?”
“Daisy told me to send you over,” I said to her. “Roger misses you.”
She darted off, the dog taking precedence over Uncle Jasper.
“Trouble in paradise?” Alder asked, leaning against the workbench. The place was meticulous. He was a man who had his shit together. He’d been like that growing up. All but for a few years when he got a taste of independence and partied away his first marriage to Daisy.
He had spent years cleaning himself up, finishing school, and climbing the corporate ladder until he was in a position to win his ex-wife back.
Now they had the house Grandma Annie left him, he was Laila’s favorite stepdad, as he liked to say, and West looked like a more serious mix of him and Daisy.
An envy I’d never experienced roared up inside me, clogging my vision until green filled it. Did I have to work on myself for fifteen years like he did? Seemed like a waste of time when I could be buried in her instead.
“How did you do it?” I wandered around the small doghouse that had both a living room and a bedroom.
Would I ever be this guy? Making my kids whatever they wanted to spoil their pets?
I had thought that time had passed. I had let it go.
Why again? I was only thirty-five. “How’d you get all this?
She divorced you, and now look at it all. A fucking doghouse.”
“Hard work and determination.”
I scowled. I’d worked hard my whole life. “What if that’s not enough? You and Daisy hit one rough patch, and she was gone.”
Irritation flickered across his face. “And she was right to leave. I was an irresponsible dick. I thought since I wasn’t cheating on her or abusing her, I could do whatever the hell I wanted. She deserved more, and she showed me that.”
I stopped and leaned against his riding lawn mower.
It was five years newer and fifty percent larger than the one at the resort.
If I had this, I could take hours off lawn care.
I had a lot of ideas for that place. It had to succeed.
Not just for Sheridan, but because it was a part of the community. “Sheridan showed me that too.”
“What happened?”
“I didn’t marry her.”
“Okay.” When I didn’t elaborate, he blinked. “Wait—does she know? About the stipulations?”
I nodded, the gut-wrenching anxiety from that day curdling the acid in my gut.
“It was important for her to be successful in her own right, so I didn’t ask, but our sisters so helpfully filled her in on everything at the kickball game.
Sheridan had been trying to talk to Aunt Linda about the land, but she couldn’t get an answer, and I never told her. ”
Understanding dawned in his eyes, and he grimaced. “And she didn’t take ‘Hey, I don’t want this property or you enough to marry you’ very well?”
Exactly. Unease crawled over my shoulders at the memory. “Have you heard of REG?”
“It’s familiar. Don’t they want to gentrify the bay?” He nodded like the whole picture was clear. “She’s afraid of being put out of business.”
“It was a concern before she learned REG has been snooping around Aunt Linda. They came to the resort too.”
“Heavy-handed?”
I shook my head, growing more dismayed as I described them. “Decent, well-meaning people who don’t understand what the locals really want.”
“It’s not the locals they’re catering to.” His lips thinned. “Okay. Now you want to see if Sheridan will marry you?”
“She won’t.”
“You asked?”
I nodded, glaring at the floor. A minute of silence ticked by. “Kind of falls flat when I just told her why I didn’t ask her to marry me. Which was for her own good.”
“I’m sure she swooned.” When I glared at him, he narrowed his gaze on me. “Jasper, do you want to marry this girl for real?”
“I hardly know her.” I stubbed the toe of my boot into the floor and spun to put my back to him. I knew how hard she worked. I knew what she cared about. I knew how she looked when she climaxed and when she was snuggled into me, fast asleep.
“Shit,” he uttered. “So you told her about the trust—”
“She understood, but she was hurt. I proposed a deal anyway, like what you all did.”
“Her pride won’t let her?”
Her lack of confidence in me. “Her pride. The fact that I can’t hold a job. Now she thinks we’re just messing around, and she has this idea that she’s gotta do it all. I’m not a good bet, and she has to make sure she doesn’t rely on me or anyone else.”
“Show her you are a good bet.”
I huffed. “As if it’s that easy.”
“It’s not.”
“Time is running out for me to get the cabin. I could help her a lot more if she’d marry me and gain another cabin to rent out and the water access she needs to expand.”
“There’s the swoon I mentioned.”
My glower deepened. “I like her, okay? I like spending time with her. I like hearing her laugh. I like…” I couldn’t spill our private business, but from the astonishment on his face, he filled in the blanks. “Yeah.”
His nod was knowing. “Have you told her how you feel?”
I shook my head. I was trying to figure that out for myself.
He picked up a rag and wiped his seemingly clean hands off. “You’re talking about getting married and regrets. You sure you just like her?”
I ground my molars together. “I care about her.”
“If you can’t admit you love her, then maybe she’s right not to gamble on how you really feel.”
“But you and Daisy—”
“You’re not me, Jasper.” His voice was hard. The stern older brother. The guy I came here to talk to. I snapped my mouth shut. “I fucked up when I got out of high school. You went to college and did everything right. Now I’ve got it together, and you’re figuring it out.”
“I’m a mess.” No wonder Sheridan had alarm bells going off around me. Orgasms would only go so far, and she was too smart and driven to allow me to hold her back.
“You’re not.” He said it with such conviction that I could almost believe him.
“You’ve never been a mess. So you’re living off your retirement when you should be building it?
Not the best financial decision, but you’re working and you have a place to live.
Your fiancée left you when times were tough, and that’s made you more than a little gun-shy of relationships.
Admit that you’re in love with Sheridan, and you might be able to get closer to your goals. ”
“She’s more than a goal.” Way more. My throat closed up just thinking about it.
He held his hands up, the rag hanging from one. “Don’t tell me that. Tell her.”
How did I do that? Catch her in the office one night and say, By the way, I think I love you. How about we get married now? “She won’t believe me. She’ll think that I don’t believe in her, or that I just want the cabin. Most likely she’ll think I still feel bad for her and want to help her.”
“Fuck, Jasper. You’re talking circles around everything but what’s obvious.
You need to woo her. You need to quit thinking about the future and logistics, quit worrying about the motivation or what she thinks is the motivation, and just date her.
Romance her. You’ve got the rest down, so maybe you need to make her feel like there’s more to life than guests and gentrifying and bottom lines. ”
Romance her. Hadn’t that been what I was doing? I’d gotten her out of the office. I cooked for her, and we’d gone to the brewery.
Romance. Her.
I’d been missing the romance. Damn. Had I been out of the game that long?
Yes. But Sheridan wasn’t a game.
Sheridan
Office living was getting really damn old.
Everyone who worked at the resort knew I was overnighting in my office and stealing showers from empty rooms or between guests.
I had cleaned more bathrooms in the last week than I had in my entire life.
I should be ashamed to be the boss who did that, but both Maria and Paola had pulled me aside.
Each of them had asked what they could do to help, renewing my determination each time.
No one wanted REG to take root in Bishop’s Bay. They didn’t trust that more money for the same job would come with more loyalty or flexibility.
I could not fail my staff.
I didn’t see any guests in the hallway, but that wasn’t unusual this time of day on the weekend, so I rushed three doors down to my office, clutching my toiletry bag. Damp hair hung on my shoulders. It was easier to explain that than to get caught with a towel on my head.
When I got into my office, I closed the door behind me.
I had folded up my cot and stacked the bedding on a chair.
That corner looked more like storage rather than a place where I was living.
In one of the drawers of my desk, I had a mirror, my facial moisturizer, and my hair supplies.
As I was rounding the desk, I stopped. A gorgeous bouquet of lilies was sitting on the desk.
A little carved wooden figure of a flower sat next to it.
I looked around like I was going to find someone sitting in the other corner of my small office. Of course, I was alone. I plucked the little card out.
Can’t get you out of my head. ~J
A smile stretched my mouth wide. He got me flowers?
I bent to smell them, and my eyelids drifted shut. Divine.
Flowers. Why?
I sat, and it took me twice as long to comb out and braid my hair than it would’ve. I could not take my eyes off the bouquet, and I kept stopping to smell it. When had I last gotten flowers?
I had just put my brush and hair ties away when there was a knock on the door. “Come in.”
Jasper opened it, but he didn’t enter, only leaned against the frame. Could he just do that every day? Give me a double shot of hot man to take in before I opened my spreadsheets and inventory forms…
“Got a question for ya,” he drawled.
I danced my fingers over the soft lily petals. “I’ve got a question.”
He grinned. “The answer is always yes.”
The devastation of that smile was stronger when I knew what he looked like naked and what he felt like moving inside me. “Thank you.”
“My turn. Will you go out with me tomorrow night?”
There was another wedding at the resort, but it was even smaller than the last one and would be over by three in the afternoon. The bride and groom had an early flight Sunday morning, but I was grateful that they filled the resort for a few days. “Sure. Why not?”
“I’m not asking for a dinner partner. I’m asking you out on a date.”
I sat back, stunned. Elation rose inside me, but I stomped it down. “A date?”
“Yep.”
“A date?” I asked again. “And the flowers?”
“Something I should’ve done earlier.”
“But we’re not dating.”
“Also something I should’ve rectified earlier.”
Air leaked out of me. I woke up in my totally normal disarray, intending to keep on working hard and getting one day closer to stability, but this threw me. “What’s going on?”
He didn’t flash me a charming smile. He didn’t laugh off my question.
He stepped farther inside, placing himself dead center in the room, like I’d called him here to give him a talking-to.
“I like you, Sheridan. A lot.” He flexed his jaw.
“Both of us have been burned, but what’s going on between us?
It’s different. And I can see now that I have to show you I’m serious. ”
“But we’re just messing around.” We had to be. I couldn’t juggle and fail at one more thing.
“And now I’m asking you out.”
Oh. I blinked and tensed like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. He was serious, and… I wanted him to be. I wanted to be wanted by him. Only by him.
He ran his thumb over the tips of his fingers. Was he nervous?
If he was, that made this real. He was asking me out, and he was anxious about my answer. He’d gotten me flowers, and instead of letting me wonder what those meant, he popped the question.
Not that question, but it had the same sense of significance.
So what did I say? If I said yes, then would he want another one? Would I?
Worse—what if I said no and that was the end of us? If I said no, I’d have a hole in my chest that was the size of Jasper. Did I come this far to write off what could be a really good thing? He was the best man I knew. I did not want to reject him again.
“Yes.” I swallowed. I wasn’t going backward, but moving forward scared me. Yet I’d come this far. I’d won over Maria. Landon wanted to come back and work next summer, and he’d asked about Christmas break. And my mom’s old place was fully booked. Fear didn’t have to stop me. “What time?”
His grin was wide. “Since it’s a proper date, I’ll pick you up at six. We can eat and then the street dance starts at seven.”
I stiffened. Of all the things he had to pick, it was something I truly sucked at. “I don’t dance.”
“I do. I’ll teach you.”
I made a squeaking sound. I trusted him, but I was tired of looking inept around him. “If I try it and I don’t like it, will you let me sit out?”
“Always.”
Gah, this guy. “Would you sit with me?”
He scoffed. “Sheridan, I’m only going to be by your side, fancy feet or not. No matter what, it’ll be fun. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Okay, then. It’s a date.” I couldn’t believe I said that.
“Can’t wait.” He left, and I sat stunned.
I was no longer killing time with a guy who wasn’t going to settle down with me. I was going on a date with a man who had acted pretty damn serious about me. And it was terrifying.