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“It was perfect. Listen, I want to apologize for whatever Jax did.” He seemed to read my mind and a blush crept up my cheeks at his earnest look. “He’s normally a really great guy. I don’t understand why you got off on such a bad foot, since in my opinion, from knowing him so long, you two are right up each other’s alley.”
I shook my head, trying to work up a breeze to cool my heated cheeks. “No, you have to be wrong. We’re complete opposites.” Hopefully I was successful in playing it off as nothing.
He looked at me long and hard. “Yeah, that’s exactly what Jax would say. But you two have more in common than you think.” He snickered, nodding over toward Harper, who was chatting animatedly with one of her clients. “She got it all wrong trying to set us up.”
“Right?” I asked with a laugh.
He joined in and I wished him a safe flight back. It was a shame I’d crashed and burned with Jax, but I was always glad to make a new friend.
“I’m sure I’ll see you again,” he said with another long look.
I wasn’t sure if he meant because he loved the town so much that he’d be back, or if there was more to it than that. I shook off my useless pondering and reading too much into every little thing that was remotely about Jax.
After it was just me and a few of the caterers left, I added up the ticket sales, donations, and auction numbers while they packed away their trays. The amount wasn’t close to what I hoped for, but it was a start. I was nowhere near giving up on the theater yet.
One thing I knew I had to finally give up, though, was mooning over Jax.
Chapter 17 - Jax
The whitewater rafting trip wasn’t the same without the guys, but it did rejuvenate me somewhat, and I was looking forward to getting back to normal now that it was over. The arctic water repeatedly splashing onto me and the intense physical labor of helping to keep my group’s raft from tipping over mostly prevented me from thinking about useless regrets and poor choices. When we climbed, I kept my eyes on the rope or my next handhold, never wavering. Every night when we set up camp, I fell into an exhausted sleep in my single-man tent the moment my head hit my rolled up jacket. There was no room for daydreaming or disappointment on a wild river or when hanging by your fingertips from a nearly vertical rock face. Basically what that sort of activity was perfect for.
On the flight home, the captain’s soothing voice came over the airplane speakers, telling us we’d have to make an unexpected layover in Richmond, but assuring us we’d barely be late in arriving back to New York. I didn’t have any meetings scheduled until the next day so it wasn’t worth getting upset over. I fastened my seatbelt as we descended and kept my eyes on the book I was reading on my Kindle.
When we touched down and taxied to a stop, I leaned over to look out the window, wondering if there would be time to get out and get a cup of coffee and stretch my legs. Then I took out my phone, wondering how far from Loblolly I was. Luna had sent me one last invitation to her fundraiser a few days earlier and I had quickly put the message out of my mind, but now that we were in her home state, maybe just an hour or two drive away, she was front and center again. It wouldn’t hurt to see how far away it was, would it?
I had just taken my phone off airplane mode and entered Richmond to Loblolly by car when a woman sat in the vacant first class seat next to me.
“This is annoying, isn’t it?” she asked mildly, giving me an up and down look as she smiled.
Her silver blonde hair was in a sleek bun, making me think of Luna looking like an angelic schoolmarm that day at the theater. Which only made me think of what happened next, which was certainly heavenly, if not exactly angelic.
“Could be worse,” I said.
She looked expectant and clearly had no intention of returning to her own seat anytime soon so I introduced myself. Her smile grew and she told me her name, and also that she was a lawyer on her way home from a meeting in Denver.
“I’m a contract lawyer as well,” I said, putting my phone in between my seat and my leg.
Trying not to wish she would just leave so I could see if it would be worth it to hop off this plane and rent a car was useless, but I at least tried not to show it. She was pretty in a cool, sophisticated way, with ruby-red lips and cheekbones that could cut glass. Nothing like the sunny, natural beauty of Luna’s dark curls, rosy cheeks, and stunning blue eyes that rivaled the sky over Loblolly. But maybe she was just what I needed right now. The distraction I couldn’t find in a nightclub. The more we chatted, the more we had in common. Both lawyers based in New York, both worked for tech corporations, though I didn’t share I was also part owner of mine. It was very possible she already knew that, and since I always had to be on the watch for people who were only interested in my finances, I tended to be paranoid.
She was interesting, good looking, and lived in the same city as me, and yet, all I could think about the whole time she sat next to me was Luna. It was like Miss Loblolly was haunting me. When the pilot told us we were getting ready for takeoff, my new lawyer friend handed me her card before returning to her seat a few rows behind me.
“We’ll have to meet up for drinks in the city,” she said.
It was obvious she wanted me to ask her to stay in the empty seat next to me, but I acted like I had a lot of work left to get done before we touched down in New York.
Nothing more than finishing up the current novel I was reading, and once we were back in the air, I couldn’t even concentrate on that. Being so close and yet so far from Luna had planted her firmly back in the forefront of my mind.
It was clear that the woman had come over solely because she wanted to meet me, and she should have been the perfect distraction. Damn the layover for making me think of Luna, although it was only a matter of time until she popped into my thoughts again. It pissed me off that she couldn’t let me have two minutes of peace or be interested in an attractive woman who I had to be far more compatible with than a small town nurse with a penchant for lost causes.
I dug the phone out from where I’d wedged it and scrolled through the multitude of pictures I’d taken on my first, failed vacation. Remembering the clean, fresh air as I smiled down at the beautiful vistas I’d managed to somewhat capture, my smile froze when I came across a picture of Luna. She was surrounded by trees, leaning down to look at a fallen bird’s nest. There were a few close-ups of the nest, but I ended up scrolling back to the picture of Luna and zooming in on her profile. She had the slightest of smiles on her face, and her wayward hair fell forward across her cheek. I reached out and touched the screen as if I could push it behind her ear.
I wondered how her gala went, and found myself going to her last message. It would be imbecilic to message her out of the blue asking if it was a success after I ignored her invitations. I put my phone away and looked down at the card the woman had given me, finally angrily crumpling it into a tiny ball and stuffing it in the magazine holder in front of my seat. Waving down one of the nearby flight attendants, I ordered a neat whiskey, hoping the burn of the strong alcohol would sear Luna out of my brain.
After we landed in New York and I made my way out of the airport, I headed straight for the office. There was nothing scheduled until the next morning, but it was only early evening, and I didn’t want to be alone in my massive apartment. Far too many rooms for just me, but I’d bought it when our company first hit it big, and I was feeling pleased with myself, able to make it on my own without using any of my family’s money. I’d never felt lonely there before.
There was always something that needed to be done at the office. Maybe throwing myself into work would finally pry me out of Luna’s phantom grip.
Chapter 18 - Luna
