Chapter 9 #2
She shrugged as if it had been no big deal to sacrifice a good night’s sleep for him. “I had a lot of time to think while I waited.”
Oh please don’t let her say she doesn’t want to see me again. He really would lose his will to live if he couldn’t lose himself in her once in a while. Or every day. Every day would definitely be preferred to once in a while. He held his breath while he waited to hear what she had to say.
“You fired the woman who runs the retail business.”
He released a deep sigh of relief that she wasn’t telling him they were over. “You heard that, huh?”
“I think the whole bar heard it.”
The reminder of the new challenge facing them made Alex feel even more exhausted than he already was.
“I’d like to help you.”
He was shaking his head before the words were even completely out of her mouth.
Her hand on his arm stopped him cold. “Hear me out. I have an MBA from Wharton, and I have extensive retail experience. I put myself through college managing a clothing store. I don’t know a thing about plants or greenhouses or horticulture, but I could probably fake it well enough to lend a hand. If it would help you.”
Touched by her offer and her sincerity, he said, “You may not know much about horticulture, but you grow—and throw—a mean tomato.”
Jenny’s laughter filled him with an unreasonable amount of happiness. Similar to a limb reawakening, the feeling bounced through his body like a bad case of pins and needles. It’d been so long since he’d felt anything resembling happiness. “It’s really nice of you to offer.”
“I want to help.”
Those four simple words packed one hell of an emotional punch. He was a fucking mess this morning if that was all it took to unravel him.
“And for what it’s worth,” she added. “This,” she said, gesturing to the greenhouses and retail store in front of them, “has nothing to do with what happened last night.”
“Sure, it does.”
“Well, that’s not why I offered. You and your brother are going through a tough thing.
My grandmother had dementia, so I know how difficult it is.
I’d like to think that while we were frying each other’s brain cells, we might’ve formed the start of what some people call friendship.
That’s what I’m offering you—friendship and professional assistance.
No strings, no ties, no obligations. If it would help. ”
He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “It would help tremendously. Sharon came to us with management experience. The rest of the staff is made up of college kids, so it’s not like there’s someone else who could easily take her place.
” Glancing at her, he said, “If you’re serious, I gratefully accept your offer, but only temporarily until we can get someone permanent.
I don’t expect you to upend your life to help me. ”
“I’m not upending anything, but I’m happy to help you in the interim.”
“I’ll need to run it past Paul. The hiring and firing are usually his department.”
“Of course, that’s fine. Let me give you my number, and you can call me if you want my help. If you don’t, no worries.” She recited her number, which he programmed into his phone.
“Isn’t that a New York area code?”
“I used to live there.”
“I’ll talk to Paul this morning and give you a call later.” He leaned across the console to kiss her. “Thank you.”
She cupped his cheek. “Try to get some sleep.”
“Not seeing that on the day’s agenda.” Because she was so gorgeous and sweet, he took one more kiss. “It means a lot to me that you waited and that you offered to help. Thank you.”
Her smile was lovely and potent. “That’s what friends are for.”
“I’ll call you later.”
“Okay.”
As he walked into the house to shower and change before going back to the clinic, Alex’s thoughts were full of Jenny.
He couldn’t deny their amazing physical connection, which was unlike anything he’d ever had with another woman, but more significant all of a sudden was the emotional connection.
She’d touched him deeply this morning, and he couldn’t wait to see her again.
Jenny drove home in a daze, stunned by the way Alex had looked at her when he told her it meant a lot to him that she’d waited for him and offered to help.
She’d be a fool to deny that something powerful was happening between them.
What started off as a purely physical thing had taken a turn toward something far more significant in the last twenty-four hours.
If she were being honest, what she’d found with him was exactly what she’d been hoping for when she told her friends she was ready to start dating again.
The connection she felt with him was one she’d experienced only one other time, and it had been just as immediate with Toby.
They’d met in an accounting class and commiserated over the relentless pace of the class and grad school in general.
She’d talked to him exactly once and had known he was someone special. It hadn’t taken long for them to be inseparable. They’d stayed that way for three incredible years until they were forced apart by horrible tragedy.
For a long time after Toby died, she’d expected never to feel that way again, and she hadn’t until she met Alex and knew right away there was something different about him. At first she’d thought it might only be physical, but now she knew it could go beyond that—if they wanted it to.
Did she want it to? Yes, she thought without a doubt.
Yes, I want it to go beyond the physical.
Seeing him in pain over his mother’s condition had made her hurt, too.
She’d felt elated when she had the idea in the middle of the night to help him and his brother at the store.
It might not be much, but it was something she could do to relieve their overwhelming burden.
Jenny returned to the lighthouse and went straight up to bed. Every muscle in her body was sore and stiff from the sexual gymnastics of the night before. Despite the merciless heat, she slept for a couple of hours and actually felt worse when she woke up.
“If I was looking for proof that I’m not cut out for nonstop sex, here it is,” she said to herself as she sat on the edge of the bed.
Shuffling to the bathroom, she decided it wasn’t possible to feel this bad from having too much sex.
This felt more like the flu—with an overdose of sex thrown in to make it worse.
She swallowed some painkillers, took a long, cool shower and emerged feeling barely human. The thought of eating made her want to vomit, so she went downstairs for some water and returned to bed.
Lying in bed, looking up at the ceiling, Jenny could only hope that Alex didn’t get whatever she seemed to have. That was about the last thing he needed at the moment. Her cell phone rang, and she checked the caller ID, delighted to see her mom’s number.
“Hi there.”
“Hi, honey. How’s it going?”
“I’m actually lying in bed wondering if I might have the flu.”
“Oh, too bad. What’re your symptoms?”
“Achy all over and nauseated.” She didn’t mention the unreasonably sore muscles or the reason for them, even though her mother would probably be delighted to hear that Jenny had found someone special to spend time with.
“That doesn’t sound good. Is it still hot?”
“Crazy hot.”
“I wish I was there to take your temperature and bring you ginger ale the way I used to.”
“I wish you were, too.” Jenny missed her family in North Carolina, but the opportunity to go somewhere new, where no one knew what’d happened to her, had been greatly appealing when she’d read about the Gansett Island lighthouse-keeper job in the newspaper. “What’s going on there?”
Her mom regaled her with news about her sisters and their families, including a funny story about her nephew Tyler being scolded at preschool for kicking his friends with his new boots.
“Needless to say, Emma took the boots away from him until he can play nice with his friends,” her mom said of the younger of Jenny’s two sisters.
“Poor Tyler. He loves those boots.”
“I know, but as Emma said, who knew they came with attitude?”
Jenny smiled as she pictured her pint-size nephew with hair so blond it was nearly white.
She and Toby had planned to eventually move back to North Carolina after they got their careers off the ground.
They’d also hoped to wait a few years to start a family, so their children should’ve been growing up alongside her nieces and nephews.
The sheer unfairness of what had happened to him—and to her—was never far from her mind, especially when she was around her sisters and their families.
“Are you and Dad still hoping to come visit?”