Jilted: Promise Harbor, Book 1 (14 page)

He blinked. “Wow, Devon,” he said slowly. “Um. Nice dress.”

“You saw it before.”

He didn’t say anything, seeming speechless. “Er. Yeah. You look beautiful.”

“Thanks. Are we ready to go?”

“Sure.”

They drove to the restaurant in mostly silence—not an awkward silence, but the car was certainly full of awareness. “I’m kind of sad to leave tomorrow,” Devon said. “It’s so beautiful here.”

“Yeah.”

“The weather’s been great. We were really lucky.”

“Uh-huh.”

Inane chatter.

She was going to be sad to leave Josh.

There. She’d admitted it. Only to herself. No way in hell would those words get dragged out of her.

Josh had called for a reservation, and they were shown to their table right away.

“This is lovely,” Devon said, looking around. Located on the second floor of a gray-shingled building, the restaurant’s low ceiling created an intimate atmosphere. The walls inside were shingled as well, painted a soft yellow, and windows lined two walls. An antique oak buffet in one corner held glasses and napkins and cutlery, and more antiques were arranged throughout the space.

The hostess seated them at one of the window tables. Outside, tree branches tossed in the wind that had picked up late that afternoon. Through the other window they could see the ocean, now gray and choppy, the sky low with heavy clouds that were making it prematurely dark. Inside felt cozy and warm, though.

She glanced at Josh as they both looked over their menus.

“Order a nice bottle of wine,” Josh said. “Since it’s our last night here. You pick something. I don’t know anything about wine.”

Devon studied the wine list. She’d never known anything about wine, either, growing up, and when she’d started her job at Englun and Seabrook, she’d taken a series of wine appreciation courses so she could appear knowledgeable at business dinners. She spotted a wine she’d had before and liked, but it was sixty dollars. She looked at Josh through her eyelashes. “I don’t suppose you’d let me pay for the wine?” she said.

He lowered his menu. “That expensive, huh?”

She grinned.

“You don’t need to pay for the wine,” he replied with a faint frown. “I know I’m just a lowly firefighter, but I have money. I can afford a nice bottle of wine.”

Her mouth dropped open. “A lowly firefighter? Are you freakin’ kidding me?”

They faced each other across the table. “I know what I did was never good enough for how you wanted your life to be,” he said quietly.

Her jaw dropped. That was just so stupendously wrong, she couldn’t even speak. She tried to find words. “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say,” she finally managed.

He frowned.

“How could you think that?” she demanded in a low voice, mindful of the hushed atmosphere in the small restaurant. She leaned closer. “That is ridiculous.”

“Can I assist you with a wine choice?” The server appeared at their table.

Devon looked down at the menu again, lost for a few seconds, unable to focus. Did he really think that she thought he wasn’t good enough? Her eyes burned.

“Um, no,” she finally said. She skipped the expensive wine and randomly selected a bottle of Sangiovese from Italy that was half the price.

“Excellent choice,” he said. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

“It’s okay, Devon,” Josh said, also leaning forward. “I’m not being critical of you. We all want different things from life. So how much did I just spend on a bottle of wine?”

“I didn’t order the expensive one.”

His eyebrows drew together again. “You could have.”

She shook her head. “No. It’s not important.”

“I know you like nice wines.”

“You think you know a lot about me,” she said quietly. “It’s not really fitting with how I see myself. And I’m not sure who’s wrong.” She lifted her gaze to meet his eyes.

For a long, drawn-out moment they looked at each other as if transfixed.

The server returned with the wine, uncorked it, let Devon taste it and then poured it into glasses. “Do you need a few more minutes with the menu?” he asked.

She glanced at him. “Yes. Please.” They’d barely looked at the dinner menu.

She tried to focus on food, but her skin felt like it was burning, her thoughts scrambled. The menu was mostly seafood with a French influence. She didn’t know what to have. She didn’t care. Eventually she settled on the yellowtail sole amandine and closed her menu.

When she’d ordered her sole and Josh had ordered his steak au poivre and they were again alone, she said, “I thought we knew each other so well.”

“Devon. We did.”

She shook her head, still feeling pinched by his comments. “Apparently not. I never knew you thought that. And I still don’t know why.”

“Is this when we’re going to do it?” he asked. “This is when we’re finally going to talk about things?”

Her bottom lip tried to push out, and she sank her teeth into it. “You’re the one who wanted to talk.”

“It’s not that I really want to,” he muttered, pushing a hand into his thick hair and looking away. “I just think maybe…we need to.” He looked back at her. “All week long I’ve been feeling like…” He paused, and her mind raced to finish his thought. Was he feeling something between them too? Her heart started thudding as she regarded him across the table. “Like things aren’t really finished between us,” he finally said.

She lifted her wineglass to take a sip, hoping her hand didn’t tremble. She nodded.

“Let’s do this later,” he said, meeting her eyes. “When we’re back at the hotel. For now, let’s just enjoy our last dinner.”

Again she nodded, trying to figure out what he meant. When he said things weren’t finished between them…what did that mean? Did he want more? Did she? Oh god. And then wanting to enjoy their
last
dinner…apparently he
didn’t
want more. This was going to be it. And their “talk” was going to be the closure they’d never really had on their relationship.

With a rock in her stomach, she pasted on a smile and talked about the wine, the decor, the weather. They ate their dinner, but she didn’t even taste hers, struggling to actually swallow it. When they were offered dessert, they both shook their heads.

“Looks like there might be a storm brewing,” Josh commented as they drove back to the inn. Dark clouds gathered out over the ocean, and the wind had picked up, buffeting tree branches back and forth.

“Yes.”

Once inside the suite, Josh crossed to the small refrigerator beneath the desk and pulled out another bottle of wine. “I picked this up earlier,” he said. “For our last night.”

Last night
. He’d said it again. It was their last night. Forever.

Cold hands gripped Devon, a feeling of dread and abject fear. It had been so hard losing him last time. Thinking back to her months of utter misery, her insides tightened into painful knots. Now after just this one week together, she was going to lose him again.

But he wasn’t even hers to lose. What had possessed her to think she could do this without her feelings for him getting all stirred up again? She shouldn’t have come here.

But he’d poured the wine and now handed her a glass. She took it and watched him cross to turn on the fireplace, then sit on the couch, stretching one arm along the back and crossing one ankle over the other knee. He looked at her. Oh. He expected her to sit beside him. Her feet in her high heels felt glued to the floor, her legs stiff. But she managed to somehow walk toward him and sit down. She sipped the wine.

Then she took a deep breath and asked the question that had been burning inside her all evening. “Josh. How could you possibly think I thought you weren’t good enough?”

He tilted his head. “I knew the kind of life you wanted. You had your big investment banking career in a big downtown office. You wanted the clothes, the shoes, the dinners in fancy restaurants. I was just a firefighter from a small town who didn’t know anything about designer clothes and gourmet food.”

“You’re a firefighter,” she whispered, her throat tight. “You put your life on the line to save other people. You’re smart and brave and strong. You were like a…a…” Her throat closed up and she swallowed hard. “You were like a superhero to me. How could you think I thought something like that?” She really, really didn’t get it.

His eyes shadowed. “A superhero?”

She looked down, afraid of what he’d see if he looked into her eyes. “Of course,” she said. “Jeebus, Josh.”

“I’m not a superhero.”

She peeked up at him through her eyelashes. He shook his head, his eyebrows slanting down.

“I’m just a guy,” he continued. “A guy trying to do the right things. Trying to figure out what the right things are.”

Her heart swelled up so big she couldn’t breathe. “Tell me. Tell me why you left. Why you came back to Promise Harbor.”

“I did tell you, Devon.” He rubbed his forehead. “My mom was in bad shape. Allie’s family was in rough shape. I had to be here.”

She bent her head, so many things coming to mind she wanted to say but couldn’t
. I thought they could survive without you. I didn’t think you should have to give up the job you loved. I needed you too.

“My mom went into a depression,” Josh continued. “Not just a…funk, or a blue period, or whatever, which would be normal after someone you love dies. She was clinically depressed. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen someone you care about like that, but it’s scary.”

She met his eyes and watched him talk, watched the emotions cross his face, and her skin went cold.

“The same thing happened when my dad died,” he continued, voice low and gruff. “That time, she was worse. She was almost suicidal.”

Devon let out a small gasp and lifted her hand to her chest.

“If you can be ‘almost’ suicidal,” he continued grimly. “She talked about doing it, so she obviously thought about it. But she didn’t have a real plan to carry it out, and I think it was just the idea of abandoning me and Greta that kept her from doing it.” He held her gaze searchingly. “That’s why I’ve always felt like I have to be there for her. When she started going down into another depression, I was terrified, Dev.”

“You never told me that before,” she whispered.

“I know.” He let out a short breath. “I guess I should have. But Mom doesn’t like to talk about it, and she never wanted people to know about it. Everyone just thought she was grieving. I really felt like I had to be there.”

Devon nodded, her throat aching, pressure building behind her cheekbones. Damn, she was not going to cry.

“And there were problems with the business,” he continued. “I keep trying to tell my mom to sell it, but she doesn’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not sure. She’s never been really involved with it. Maybe she just feels it’s a link to Dad. Or she feels some sort of obligation to him to keep it going. But Jesus, I’m lost when it comes to that stuff. And I seem to spend all my spare time working there. Trying to turn things around. Hell, sometimes I even go out and dig up flowerbeds and plant shrubs.”

“Do you have trouble finding staff? Is that why you’re doing that kind of work?”

“Yeah. We do.” He lifted one big, bare shoulder. “Finding skilled staff has always been a challenge.”

“What kind of recruitment system do you have?”

He snorted. “We hire anyone with a driver’s license, basically. It’s not much of a system.”

She pursed her lips. “Hmm. Well, that might be part of the problem.”

“I know.” He sighed.

“I’m not a human resources expert,” she said. “But there are different strategies you could try. I assume you advertise in the paper.”

“Yeah.”

“What about advertising directly to building trades? You’d find people who already have skills.”

“Huh.”

“For winter when you do snow removal, you could look to industries that don’t work in that season. Like farmers. Agricultural workers would be looking to pick up winter work.”

“True.” He turned his head and looked at her. “What else you got?”

She grinned. “There are other places to recruit from. Government job banks.”

“Yeah. We do that.”

“Craigslist, Kijiji. Take advantage of the way the world has moved online.”

“Never thought about that.”

“And maybe hire early for the summer. Before your competitors hire. Pay a few extra weeks of salary to get good people.”

“Huh. That’s a good idea.”

“Maybe you just need better management.”

Once again he made a face. “That could be. Bill’s been around for a long time, but he’s not exactly up on cutting edge technology and management techniques. He knows landscaping, for sure. But use the Internet to recruit staff? Ha! But once again…I don’t have time to spend looking for someone else, plus it’d be hard to cut him loose.”

Now it was Devon’s turn to sigh. She wished her employer had felt that kind of loyalty toward her.