Page 49
She laughed. “I’ll bet. You used to be such a bad boy. There has to be a lot of satisfaction in showing people what you’ve accomplished, pretty much all on your own.”
“I wasn’t that bad.”
“Maybe not for a big city, but for Wishing Tree?” She grinned. “My parents were very nervous.”
“I won them over.”
“You did, and they were grateful that you didn’t start a trend. You were my one and only bad boy.”
He leaned against the fence. “Why did you want to go out with me?”
“Is that a serious question?”
“Yes.”
She thought about how he’d been back then. So good-looking, with an irresistible swagger. All the girls had wanted to go out with him, but he hadn’t been the type to date much. Still, when she’d caught him watching her, she’d decided to pursue things.
“You were irresistible,” she admitted. “You had to know that.”
“I was pretty hot,” he said with a grin.
He still was, not that she would be mentioning that.
“We were both young,” she said instead. “Funny how things turn out. I never would have thought you’d come back.”
“Judy’s getting on in years. I couldn’t ask her to move somewhere else. She’s lived here her whole life.”
Which spoke well of him, she thought.
He checked on Harrison and Belle, then turned back to her. “Jake? Really? My nemesis?”
“Oh, please. You were rivals on the football team. You both wanted to be captain. That hardly makes him your nemesis. So don’t put that on me.”
“Fair enough. So, Jake?”
She laughed. “You’re not going to let it go, are you?”
“You never had a thing for him in high school. You were into bad boys.”
“No, I was into you. And you’re right. I barely noticed him back then.” Once she’d given her heart to Toby, she hadn’t been interested in anyone else. “Our relationship was unexpected. He’d moved here to be assistant manager up at the resort. I was home, visiting my folks. We ran into each other. Literally. I was coming out of Jingle Coffee and he was going in. My drink and Danish went flying, and we started talking, and then we went out.”
“You were going to marry him.”
She wasn’t surprised he’d heard about that. It had happened about the time Toby had moved back, so there would have been chatter.
“He proposed on a Friday, we had a party to celebrate on Saturday and he dumped me on Sunday,” she said, careful to keep her tone light. It had been nearly a year and—She paused. “Oh, wow. It was a year ago this weekend.”
“He proposed the Friday after Thanksgiving?”
“He did. At the Lighting of the Trees.”
“Way to make it memorable.”
“I don’t think the day really mattered after the other stuff.”
He looked at her. “Are you over him?”
“Yes, and that happened more quickly than it should have. It makes me think I didn’t love him as much as I thought I did. Sad, but true. I wish him well, wherever he is.”
