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“What do you mean? What other reason could you have for staying away from a woman you’re so clearly attracted to? Everyone knows the feeling’s mutual,” Andrew said, with a glance at Jack, who nodded.
“Listen, I’ll tell you this once and then you guys need to drop it. Got it? Drop it for good. I don’t want to keep having this conversation.”
Jack and Andrew exchanged looks but then nodded at Chad.
“I did try to see where it would go once. I kissed her. And, it was...” He huffed out a harsh breath at the memory and plowed through his explanation. “It was amazing, just like I knew it would be. But, then I looked in her eyes and all I saw was sorrow. The kind of sorrow that rips you up inside. It killed me to see that look on her face, especially knowing I put it there. I walked away and we haven’t talked about it. And we won’t. Ever.”
He didn’t look at his friends. Just kept his eyes on the ground as he leaned on his truck and waited for Jack and Andrew to say something.
“That’s ridiculous. Jennie’s one of the happiest people I know,” Jack said.
Chad understood what Jack meant. They all saw Jennie the way she wanted them to see her. She was brash and saucy and didn’t take crap from anyone. She was also always there with a smile or a joke when you needed one.
He looked up to meet his cousin’s eyes. “I know how she acts, but I know what I saw. I don’t ever want to put that look on her face again and I’m not going to. So drop it, guys. It won’t ever happen with me and Jennie.”
The day he kissed Jennie, he had known. She wasn’t over her husband. She didn’t know he knew about the husband. Nobody knew at Sutton. But, he did. He ran the background checks for all of Sutton Capital employees before hiring. He’d been stunned when Jennie’s security check had shown she was a widow at such a young age.
He hadn’t ever asked her about it and he hadn’t shared that part of the report with Jack or Andrew—there hadn’t been any reason to. But he suspected the look in her eyes the day he kissed her had a lot to do with her late husband. And, it was a look he never wanted to see again.
“Yeah, okay,” Jack said, and then he surprised the hell out of Chad by pulling him into a hug. “I just want you to be happy.”
Chad wrapped an arm around Jack’s back and squeezed tight. He loved his cousin like a brother.
He pushed back after a minute and shook his head. “You’re sweaty and nasty, man. Don’t be lovin’ on me like that.”
Jack huffed out a laugh and shoved Chad back, pushing against his shoulder.
Andrew was shaking his head at them. Chad and Jack exchanged a look and then pulled Andrew into them, smothering him in a sweaty three-way hug. They might be in their thirties, but listening to Andrew fuss as he tried to squirm out from under their onslaught didn’t fail to bring a grin to Chad’s face.
Jack and Andrew watched Chad pull out of the lot and stood without speaking for a long, drawn out moment. It was Andrew who broke the silence first.
“I think we fucked up.”
Jack didn’t have to ask what Andrew was talking about. He knew.
He planned to spring the undercover resort job on Chad and Jennie on Monday morning, explaining that the two of them were set up to go undercover as newlyweds for two weeks.
Jack knew Andrew was wondering the same thing he was. Was it really smart to send those two into something like that given what Chad had told them?
“I’ll ask Kelly about it. She’ll know if it’s a good idea or not. We’ll leave it up to her. If we need to, I can cancel the plan and just go over the papers Peter sent to help him make a decision.”
Andrew nodded, but looked as though his gut were churning over what Chad had just told them, too. Jack wasn’t used to feeling unsure. He got the facts, made decisions, and acted. But right now, he was as unsure as he’d ever been. One thing his gut did tell him, though, was that if he made the wrong call here, he could hurt two people he cared about very much.
Chapter 6
Jennie hopped out of her car, grabbed Zeke’s leash, and cut across the lawn to her parents’ front door. Since she lived an hour and a half away from them now, she didn’t make the trip home every week, but she tried to get there once a month or so.
She let herself in the front door, slipped off Zeke’s leash, and called out.
“Mom? Dad? You home?”
She heard a muffled answer from the backyard and made her way through the house and out the screen door to the back patio. There she found not just one set of parents, but two. Kyle’s parents, the Evans, still lived next door to Jennie’s parents and she still considered them her family. She’d kept Kyle’s name after he died so she shared their last name now rather than Davies, her maiden name.
Within minutes, she was surrounded by four pairs of hugging arms pulling her in tight.
Kyle’s mother, Anna, spoke first. “We didn’t know you were coming! What are you doing here?”
Jennie shrugged and grinned. “Just thought I’d surprise you guys. Maybe stay for the weekend.” The truth was, seeing Kelly so close to delivering her baby and Andrew and Jill so happily married had begun to hurt more than Jennie realized it would. She was happy for her friends, but she needed to escape for a bit. She needed to regroup.
