Cara #2
He looked at me for a moment longer than was comfortable, that almost-smile still sitting on his face. Then he nodded once, easy and unbothered, turned and walked to the door.
He held my gaze for one more beat. Then he gave me a small nod—satisfied, settled, the nod of someone who has gotten what he came for—and turned and walked toward the front of the shop. At the door, he stopped and half-turned, one hand on the frame.
“I’ll see you around, Cara.”
“Please don’t come back here unless you are buying a book,” I said it as calmly and clearly as I could. I had already told him no once. I was going to keep saying it in every way available to me until one of them landed.
Something moved behind his eyes that I could not name and did not want to. “Sure.”
The door opened. He left.
I stood at the counter, frozen. More than a little bit freaked out. I should have told him never to come back. But something, maybe it was fear, held me back.
The shop was quiet. My heart was about to pound straight out of my chest, and my hands were shaking—not badly, just a fine tremor I could see if I looked at them straight on.
I watched them without moving them, because I did not want to curl them into fists, and I also was not sure I trusted myself with anything fragile.
Nothing had happened. Eric had stood in my shop for a few minutes, said things that were technically polite, and walked out.
He had not touched me. He had not raised his voice.
He had not said a single thing I could hand to someone else and say, here, look at this.
And yet something in me had understood—with a cold, quiet certainty—that this had been a message.
Deliberate, careful, and intended only for me.
He had looked at my mouth.
He had known about the dinner.
He had walked in specifically to let me know he knew everything.
I stepped out from behind the counter and crossed to the front door, turned the lock, pulled the small paper shade down over the glass, and flipped the sign to CLOSED.
Saturday afternoon. I had never closed the shop on a Saturday afternoon in my life.
I walked back to the counter and stood there with my phone in my hand, thinking about who to call. My sisters would form a hunting party and kick his ass. My grandparents would be at the inn, working. Paige—
Paige would react badly, but she would also react well.
She would be furious on my behalf, and she would also know what to do next, because Paige always knew what to do next.
Out of everyone I loved, she was the one who could be furious and practical at the same time.
That was what I needed. That was exactly it.
I called her.
She picked up on the second ring. “Hey.”
“Paige.” My voice came out wrong.
A short silence. “What. What’s happening? Are you okay?”
“Can you come to the shop. Right now.”
“I’m grabbing my keys.” No hesitation, no questions, just the sound of her already moving. “Ten minutes. Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Hurt?”
“No. He left.”
“Who left?”
“Eric.”
A sharp exhale. “Lock the front door right now.”
“I already did.”
“Of course you did. You’re the smart one. Rude of me to say it, but true all the same.” The sound of a car door. “Ten minutes. Don’t open it for anyone but me.” She hung up.
I set the phone face down on the counter. I walked to the back of the shop and sat in my armchair in the reading nook with my hands in my lap. I did not cry. I felt hollowed out, waiting for my sister to come fill me back in.
Paige arrived in nine minutes.
I heard her car in the alley, her boots on the sidewalk, and the sharp knock at the front door. I got up and let her in. She came through fast, grabbed both my hands, then dropped them to put hers on my face, tipping it up like she was checking me for damage.
“Let me see you.” Her eyes moved over my face, quick and thorough, the same look she had been giving me since I was seven and had fallen out of the oak tree in the backyard.
“Okay. You’ve got color.” She dropped her hands but did not step back.
“You look like you’ve been hit by a truck. You are fully freaking out.”
“Uh, thanks.”
“I’m being supportive.” She held up one finger.
“Getting the lay of the land. I have to know where to start, don’t I?
” She was already looking past me into the shop, clocking the closed sign, the pulled shade, cataloging the situation with the same brisk efficiency she brought to a Saturday night bar fight.
“You’re being a menace.” I felt myself relax as I said it. “But I knew you would. I want you to go full menace. Maybe do a little plotting with me. Perhaps plan a murder or something. I don’t know what to do.”
Paige’s expression shifted into something that was almost a smile but was really more of a war face. She put both hands on my shoulders. “I can do all of it.” A small squeeze. “I contain multitudes—”
“Aww, you quoted Whitman—”
“Duh.” She dropped her hands and pointed at me.
“This is exactly why you chose me to call.” She was already moving past me into the shop, pulling off her jacket, looking around for somewhere to put it, settling on draping it over the nearest shelf with the confidence of a woman who owned whatever room she walked into. “Come on. Where are we sitting?”
I locked the door back up and threw the deadbolt, and we walked back through the shop to the reading nook and sat across from each other in the two armchairs with the small wooden side table between us.
She sat forward with her elbows on her knees, her hands loosely clasped, and looked at me like she was going to keep staring me down until I talked.
“Tell me what happened. Start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”
I told her. Eric walking in. Long time. The dinner we had together.
Him knowing about the dinner I had with Jasper.
Him knowing where I was, which meant he had been keeping track.
His eyes dropping to my mouth in that smarmy, icky way.
You look different today. The nod at the end, that settled, satisfied freaking creeptastic nod.
Me telling him not to come back unless he was buying a book.
Paige listened without interrupting once.
Her jaw tightened at the part about his eyes.
Her expression went flat and cold when I said he had known where I was.
When I finished, she was quiet for a moment, turning it over, and I watched her work through it the way I had watched her work through things our whole lives—methodically, without panic, arriving at the place where she could be useful.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I need to tell you something.”
I waited.
“When you went out with him, I didn’t think much of it.
You told me after that you weren’t feeling it, and I let it go.
And then he started showing up places—the Coffee Cabin, Mystery Night, here.
The first time I heard about it, I got a bad feeling.
The second time, I got a worse one.” She paused.
“I should have said something sooner. I kept telling myself I’d keep an eye on the situation, I dropped the ball, I wasn’t worried enough, and I’m sorry for that. ”
“Paige—”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to grovel. I’m just going to say it, and we’re going to move on.
” She looked at me steadily. “There’s one more thing.
I trust Jasper. I want you to know that.
I’ve had enough conversations with him to know that he sees what’s happening with Eric, and he is not going to let it go.
You haven’t been walking around this town alone, even when it felt like you were. ”
Surprise sent my eyebrows up. “Okay.”
“Okay.” She sat back. “I’m staying tonight. Hunter has the kids. I am on your couch, and we are going to sit, drink wine, eat snacks, and talk about everything, and I am informing you of these plans, not asking you.”
I almost smiled. “Okay.”
“Good. Now. Jasper is going to call you later, right?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “You’re going to tell him you had a long day and you’re tired. You are not going to tell him about Eric tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Because you are currently in a state I am going to describe as kissed stupid, and people in that state should not be having serious conversations over the phone. You’re also freaked out, and a man like Jasper will take action for that. We’re not there yet.”
“Am I that obvious?”
“To me? Always.” She stood up and pulled me up after her. “Let’s go upstairs.”
Wentworth had climbed Paige the moment she sat down. Knightley wound around my ankles. Darcy watched from the back of the couch, and then—in an act of grace I could not have predicted—jumped down and pressed his head once against Paige’s shin.
Paige looked down at her wine glass, genuinely moved. “Aww, Darcy.”
“Stamp of approval. Finally.”
Paige laughed and tucked her feet further under her on the couch.
I’d poured us each a glass of wine and quickly put together a tray of whatever I could find—cheese, crackers, some olives I’d been meaning to use—and now we were settled into the amber quiet of the late afternoon, the light coming through the windows soft and golden, and the cats distributed around us with their usual authority.
I told her about the dinner. About The Hearthstone, the corner booth, the way the room had felt completely different from the last time I’d been there, like the space had been returned to me and made into something new.
About Jasper arriving at my door with the book wrapped in brown paper and kitchen twine.
“Eric took you to The Hearthstone,” she said flatly.
“He did.”
“And then Jasper took you to The Hearthstone.”
“He didn’t know. And then when we pulled up, and I told him, he asked if I wanted to go somewhere else, and I said no, I was reclaiming it.” I took a sip of wine. “And I did.”
Paige looked at me for a moment. “Good,” she said. “That’s exactly right.” She shook her head once, filing Eric away somewhere, and moved on. “Tell me about the rest of it.”