Jane Austen Girl (30 page)

“It seemed like the best thing,” she said softly.

“The best thing for who?” he asked.

“For both of us,” she said.

He set the coffee and bags on the desk in the corner of the room and then turned to look at her. “Did I imagine—”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Then why would you go without saying anything?”

“Because I knew if I saw you, I couldn’t leave.”

Unconcealed hurt crossed his face. “I don’t want you to leave.”

“My life is in New York,” she said, and even to her ears, her explanation sounded pitifully inadequate.

“Life doesn’t happen in a place. It happens when you’re with people who love you. What exactly is there for you other than your business? Is there someone in your life you haven’t told me about?”

“
No.
”

“Then what?”

“A life I created for myself.”

“When you ran away from here the first time,” he said.

The words struck their intended mark. She glanced away, closing her eyes. “I didn’t really have a choice,” she said.

“I know you didn’t. This time you do have a choice. But the truth is until you’ve made peace with things, really made peace with them, it won’t matter if I love you. Or if anyone loves you. First, you’ve got to love yourself.”

“You don’t understand,” she began.

“I think I do,” he disagreed. “I’ve been left before. And I don’t want to be left again. If you want me in your life, you come find me. Okay?”

He walked out then and closed the door behind him.

“Bobby Jack,” she called out. She wanted to go after him, but her feet wouldn’t move. She stood cemented to the spot, knowing in her heart that he was right.

She didn’t love herself very much right now. And if she were honest, she didn’t know when or if she ever would again.

“It’s only through the passing of time that we gain perspective, insight. What once seemed impossible

becomes infinitely possible.”

Grier McAllister – Blog at Jane Austen Girl

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

Two months and the city still didn’t fit right.

Like a once perfect outfit that had been tossed in the dryer by mistake, the size was no longer hers. Grier’s infatuation with it seemed to have lost its shine.

Even Amy saw that she wasn’t the same. She had long ago become more friend than assistant and she sat for hours at a time just listening to Grier talk about her mother, Bobby Jack and how unexpected the homesickness she now felt was to her.

Grier still loved her business. Loved working with clients who appreciated the boost of confidence her suggestions often fostered. That was still rewarding in much the same way. But the difference now was that it no longer made her feel complete.

Before going back to Timbell Creek, there hadn’t been this hole of awareness inside her. Awareness of a piece of life she had given up thinking would ever be hers.

She missed Timbell Creek.

She missed Bobby Jack. Missed what had been between them. The laughing and hand-holding. The kissing and the way he had looked at her as if there were no possibility of any other woman making him feel what she made him feel.

And what she’d begun to realize in the couple of dates she’d ventured out on since coming back to the city was that she didn’t want to see that in anyone else’s face. Only his.

She’d come to realize a few other things, too. Things that didn’t require sessions with her therapist to figure out. For the rest of her life, there would never be a day when she did not regret leaving things unresolved with her mother. She would have to live with that. She had finally accepted it. With resignation if not peace.

She wanted love in her life. Real love. Pure love. The kind she had seen in Bobby Jack’s eyes when he had told her that last morning that he’d been left before and he never wanted to be left again. That if she wanted him, she would have to be the one to reach out.

And so, late one evening as she stood on the balcony of her apartment, holding Sebbie in her arms and looking out at the lights of a city that no longer felt like home to her, she made the decision to take the risk. Go out on a limb, fully aware that it might very well break beneath her.

“There’s no limit to how much I can love. That means I have more than enough room in my heart for you both. Love isn’t a competition.”

Andy to Priscilla and Bobby Jack during a dinner she fixed for the three of them.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

New York City was everything Andy had imagined it would be and more.

She and her dad and Kyle had landed at LaGuardia at ten that morning. They’d taken a taxi to the Plaza Hotel, her dad deciding the splurge would be worth it since the Jane Austen Girl Ball was being held there.

It felt like something out of a dream. That she and Kyle were actually here in this city, a place she had always imagined being larger than life. And it was. They spent the afternoon walking street after street where shops held the most incredible clothes she’d ever seen.

Her dad was less than enamored with her darting in and out of store after store, but he didn’t protest and followed along patiently.

They had just passed a Starbucks when he said he was going in for a coffee.

Standing in the middle of the sidewalk, Andy dropped her head back and stared up at the multiple skyscrapers within her view. “Can you believe this place?” she said, bringing her focus back to Kyle.

He had moved in close to her, standing right in front of her now, so close that her chin nearly bumped his chest. She put a hand out to steady herself. He slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her a little closer.

“I can’t believe you,” he said, looking down at her with an incredibly appealing smile.

“What?” she said, her voice coming out a little raspy.

“How beautiful you are.”

She started to disagree, but her response dissolved beneath Kyle’s lips.

He kissed her the way she always imagined him kissing her. Like she was the only girl he ever thought about, ever wanted to hold this way. And she kissed him back. In the very same way. Because it was exactly what she felt.

No one else knew her the way Kyle knew her. No one else looked at her as if she were the answer to every question he’d ever asked.

And that was what she wanted to be. Here in the middle of a busy Manhattan sidewalk, Andy realized that whatever she decided to pursue in life she wanted it to include Kyle. Knew in her heart that none of it would be the same without him.

She looped her arms around his neck and deepened the kiss, telling him all of that without words.

“All right, you two.”

Andy and Kyle pulled apart to find her dad looking at them with not very convincing disapproval. “I can’t leave you alone for a minute.”

“It was just a kiss, Daddy,” Andy said, reaching up to give him one on the cheek as well.

“Sorry, Mr. Randall,” Kyle said, trying to look properly chastised.

Andy slipped one arm through her daddy’s and the other through Kyle’s. “Come on, we’ve got more shopping to do.”

They both groaned as she led them down the street, one on either side of her.

“When something really, really good

finds you, welcome it, embrace it.”

Grier McAllister – Blog at Jane Austen Girl

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

One of the grandest ballrooms of the Plaza Hotel provided the setting for the Jane Austen Girl Ball.

Grier arrived on her own, a car service dropping her off at the front.

Butterflies had taken her stomach hostage, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this kind of nervousness. All day long and while she’d been getting dressed, she could think of nothing but what it would be like to see Bobby Jack again. If he would even want to see her.

She honestly didn’t know.

Her dress was a long, full, flowy thing, fitted at the top and strapless. A light silvery blue, it made a nice contrast to her hair and eyes. She’d searched the city for the past week, not once finding the right thing, until yesterday afternoon, when she’d pretty much given up before spotting it in a boutique window display.

She instantly knew it was the one, a dress to rival any she’d dreamed of as a girl.

Now, walking through the lobby of the Plaza Hotel in four-inch heels that cost nearly as much as the dress, she felt like a newbie going to her first freshman dance. What if Bobby Jack ignored her, didn’t want to see her or talk to her?

It was a very real possibility, and one she wouldn’t exactly blame him for. But if there was a chance. . .even the smallest chance that he might feel differently, she had to try.

At the entrance to the ballroom, Grier stopped, a little awed by the room full of beautifully dressed people. The music was hip and loud, instantly defining the ball as anything but stale and boring. Tables to either side of the room were filled with incredible displays of food that might have rivaled a Roman feast.

She forced herself to go in, glancing around for a familiar face. She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to find George looking down at her with a charming grin.

“Wow,” he said. “It’s too bad you weren’t one of the girls I got to choose from.”

Grier laughed and felt some of her tension ebb away. “You’re very kind.”

“I’m very honest.”

“I want to thank you again for inviting Andy and her dad tonight.”

“I was happy to.” He looked at her for a moment, a teasing expression on his face. “Am I to assume you have a crush on Mr. Randall?”

Blushing, she said, “Maybe a little one.”

“Cool.” He took her hand and started pulling her through the crowd. “They’re right over here.”

“Ah, wait. George, I’m not ready to—”

Either he didn’t hear her, or deliberately wasn’t listening. Holding onto her hand, he merged her right through the center of the room, and when they came out on the other side, there stood Bobby Jack.

Her heart rate dipped and then set off like gunfire.

Bobby Jack. In a black tux. Stark white shirt. His dark hair tamed into stylish appeal with some kind of gel that made it gleam. Oh. Dear. Heavens.

Then he looked up. Met her no doubt wide-eyed gaze. And he couldn’t hide his reaction to her. She saw it on his face. An instant of absolute longing, so intense that she felt the heat of it ignite through her.

Just as quickly, he dropped shutters over all of it and pasted a polite smile on his incredibly good-looking face.

George walked her right up to him and said, “I believe you two have been waiting for one another.”

“I wasn’t—” Bobby Jack began.

“I didn’t—” Grier started in at the same time.

“You two should really work this out,” George said. “And I’d better go find my date.”

With that, he left them alone.

Never in her life had Grier felt so incapable of putting a sentence together. Her mind seemed to have blanked itself of all verbal capability.

Bobby Jack stared at her, equally silent. She didn’t look away, but let her eyes say what her mouth could not. All around them, people talked and laughed and danced and ate. And they just watched each other, as if they were the only two in the room.

“You look incredible,” he said, his voice low and not quite steady.

“So do you,” she said.

“How have you been?”

“I’ve been all right. And you?”

“Okay,” he said, and it was clear that his answer was closer to the truth than hers.

And just like that, she decided she could no longer hide it from him. Her eyes brimmed with tears, and he made a sound of something almost like pain, reaching out to brush his thumb across her cheek and smooth them away.

He cupped his hand to the side of her face, and the connection between them melted all the doubts and yearning of these past months.

“I’ve missed you,” he said.

“I’ve missed you,” she said on a broken little sob.

He reached for her hand then and tow-boated her around the edges of the crowd and through a glass door to a terrace that looked out across Central Park. He led her to the far wall, not letting go, not even once looking at her until they had reached the shadowed edge outside the lights from the ball.

He slid his arm around her waist and reeled her in quickly, deliberately so that there wasn’t an inch of space between them when he finally lowered his head and kissed her.

No slow reintroduction, either. But an open-mouth, full out I-want-you-now kiss that threatened to melt her silver blue dress to liquid.

And she kissed him right back. As if she had been thinking of nothing else in the two months since they’d last seen each other. As if she needed him to breathe. To think. To exist.

She couldn’t deny that she did. Because now, only now that she was in his arms, did she feel complete again. Bobby Jack was the piece missing in her life, a vital piece that she not only wanted, but no longer wanted to live without.

His mouth found the side of her neck and then the soft spot just beneath her ear. She exhaled a sigh of sheer pleasure. “I. . .love. . .the way. . .you. . .kiss me.”

The words came out as if she had no control over them, and really, she didn’t.

He pulled back to run his thumb along the curve of her jaw. He looked down at her dress then, lowered his head and kissed the indention at the bottom of her throat. “Grier. If you don’t mean this. . .I’m asking you. Don’t give me hope. Letting you go the last time. . . I don’t want. . . I can’t do that again.”

“I mean it,” she said, placing her hand to the side of his face and drawing his sincere gaze to hers. “I so, so mean it.”

He lifted her off the ground, one arm under her bottom, the other at her waist. And this time when he kissed her, she could feel the difference in him. A relaxed relief that freed him to show her everything he felt for her. And he did, setting her onto a rock wall well inside the shadows, shimmying her long dress up her legs until it was high enough that he could step in between, his hands at the base of her back.