AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 12
Seeing her like that—no makeup, barefoot, everything around her so her—this realness of hers again made him want her even more.
But meeting her daughters proved yet again how delicate this thing was and he wasn’t the gentle type. Luke’s warning, which had felt redundant at the time, came in handy now. He almost congratulated himself for not pressing the send button on his phone a million times like he had almost done during that week. Finding her number hadn’t been difficult, and he had typed and deleted so many versions of texts until he had ended up not sending a single one. Unusual failure for a man who wrote public speeches for others.
His silence was even worse. Yet another proof that he was shit at what really mattered.
Then he stood in front of her and had to recruit every shred of willpower left in him not to kiss her by that front door. He had begun explaining, but she had reality-checked him. Good.
After calling in a plumber, who had taken half a day to find and fix the leak, Jordan went downstairs to help Deidre clean up the bookstore.
He pushed the heavy counter, which she had already emptied, exposing the original color of the floor.
“It must be very dull here for you after D.C.,” Deidre said, mopping the area before he pushed the counter back into place.
“It’s not dull. It’s different. In a good way, actually.”
“I guess there are enough politicians in California if you want to work out here.”
“Oh, there are,” he scoffed.
They put everything back in place on the counter, working quietly as he handed her stacks of books, and she put them in the right order. He then cleaned the remnants of ceiling plaster that had fallen onto the floor while Deidre wiped the bookshelves. Luckily, the water hadn’t damaged most of the books on them.
“It’s funny that you and your brother both came back at the same time. Him, I remember well. He used to come here a lot with Liberty when they were kids, and it’s wonderful they live up here together. Well, except this,” Deidre said, pointing toward the wet circle in the ceiling. “But that’s not their fault. These buildings are old. You, your mother had to drag you to buy books for school. How did you end up in Cornell?”
“I read newspapers instead of books.” He chuckled. “I had a lot of catching up to do later. Though I wanted to be a policeman, not a politician.”
“At least they both start with the same syllables.” She chuckled.
When they were done, Jordan stalled next to the car. His fingers clutching the driver’s side handle, he tried to convince himself that going back to Hope to return the keys was a bad idea. The logical thing would be to keep them until Libby and Luke were back in case the leak continued, but his mind kept sifting through excuses to go back to her. He found none. If he went to give it back, it would only be because he wanted to see her again.
He couldn’t, and shouldn’t, and wouldn’t … for many reasons. The recent one was the fact that she was seeing someone. A teacher.
For the first time, Jordan regretted not becoming one as his mother had once offered.
