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“That would be fine.”
“Let’s have dinner on the boat with a sail afterward. Would chicken piccata and pasta primavera suit you?”
She wanted to scream “No!” but nodded agreement. “Sure.”
“Then I’ll pick you up at four on Saturday afternoon. With any luck this great weather will hold out another few days.”
Perhaps Jordan thought they could be friends…friends with possible benefits; if so, she’d have to disabuse him of the idea. It might work for some people, but she wasn’t built that way.
* * *
JORDAN FOLLOWED NICOLE into Moonlight Ventures so he could say hello to his sister.
He waited while Chelsea finished a phone call.
In the short time since she’d come to Seattle, she had grown so much. The move had been good for her and he had Nicole to thank for a lot of that.
Suggesting dinner on the boat had been a spur-of-the-moment idea. It would be a private place to consider how to…uh…make a garden grow. The image made him smile since it held an unusual note of whimsy—nobody had ever called him a whimsical guy. Pragmatic, sardonic and hardheaded were the usual adjectives applied to him.
That night he lay awake until the sun began rising. He finally dropped off and woke after nine. The rest of the day and part of the night, he worked on the pieces for PostModern, emailing his first draft on Saturday morning. An hour later, Syd called.
“I knew you could do it,” she said sounding smug. “This shows the complexity of modern life when things aren’t always clear-cut.”
He’d been frank about aspects of his history with Nicole and the challenge of being objective with his sister working for Moonlight Ventures. He hadn’t mentioned spending a night with Nicole, and had only alluded to the tension between their families, leaving everyone’s privacy intact. At the beginning he’d also planned to interview her partners, but had decided that since Nicole was largely running Moonlight Ventures by herself at the moment, the focus should stay on her.
“Syd, this is just a first draft,” he cautioned. “There might be other developments.”
“It hardly looks like a draft to me, but I know what a perfectionist you are. Anyhow, congratulations. I’m looking forward to seeing more than your short, snappy columns in the future.”
“I’ve got a few ideas,” he admitted.
“Good. Gotta go.” Syd ended the call and he tossed the phone onto his couch.
Jordan glanced around his minimalist condo with dissatisfaction. He’d bought it six years ago and if he’d ever felt cramped, he’d just jetted off to another part of the world. When asked, he always said he was living the dream life.
Now the thought of making a garden thrive with Nicole seemed far more attractive.
He wasn’t good husband material, something Nicole clearly knew. She’d even made a few ironic references to it.
But surely the kind of spouse he’d make was a choice. He didn’t have to repeat his parents’ history. They’d been weak and had taken their problems out on each other. In high school he’d done the same thing in a way, making Nicole a target of his frustrations, but since then he’d tried to be a better man.
And Nicole wasn’t weak, either. She’d taken responsibility for her life; she didn’t whine about it or hold grudges. Instead, she had a generous, loving spirit. It awed him that she had let go of the negative parts of the past so effectively.
Restless, he decided to call his sister and ask if she’d like to have lunch with him.
“Hello?” she said, her voice sounding unusually high.
“Hey, sis, how about having lunch together?”
“I have already made plans. Barton and I are going on a hike.”
“That’s new, you going hiking.”
“Isn’t it great? I want to try camping, too, and sleeping under the stars and all sorts of things.”
“You sound as if you’ve got a lot of adrenaline going.”
“I just told Ron that if he didn’t leave me alone I’d get a restraining order and make sure his boss heard about it. You’ve never heard a guy backpedal so fast. I think he may have been losing interest anyhow, but I was tired of it and decided this might work.”
