Jordan stared at him, unsure how to respond. She’d had no inkling of his fears. It sounded as though he hadn’t been aware of them back then, either, and had only come to realize them recently.
“You’ve changed, too, you know,” Clay added, casting her a meaningful glance.
“How so?”
“To be honest, back when we were together, I thought you were rather naïve and needed someone to take care of you. Namely me. But I can see you’re doing all right on your own. I didn’t give you enough credit.”
“Thanks.” She was proud of herself, too; after relying on her two former husbands, she hadn’t been sure she could manage without them.
Clay offered a soft smile, making her heart trip. She barely noticed they had pulled up by the McGovern house.
After parking the car, Clay turned to her, resting his arm on the back of the seat.
“Do you remember the day we first met?”
“Of course,” she said, the memory leaping to her mind in an instant. “The poetry meeting. You were with Amy White.”
“Amy—that was her name.”
“What about Amy?”
He shook his head. “Nothing about Amy. I keep thinking, you look exactly the same as you did that evening.”
Jordan laughed. “I doubt that. I’m hardly a teenager anymore.”
His eyes held hers with a dark warm look. “I know. But you still take my breath away.”
Jordan felt colour erupt in her cheeks. She would never forget the first time she saw Clay McAdam, the strikingly handsome young man seated beside her who kept casting surreptitious glances her way. On his other side, Amy looked increasingly annoyed. Jordan hadn’t given much further thought to him, however, until he called her a few days later and asked her out. She was relatively inexperienced with men at the time, having dated only casually in high school without ever getting serious with one boy. It didn’t take Clay long to win her over. Unlike the frat boys who usually asked her out, he was clever and strait-laced, but with a roguish glint in his gray eyes that fascinated her.
She remembered the first time he held her hand, tentatively but with exquisite tenderness, as they sat close together in a tiny, crowded student café where the music was so loud they could barely speak to each other. And she remembered the first time he kissed her, after they got caught in a rainstorm returning from a party on campus and dashed into the Engineering building for shelter; she’d looked up at him to exclaim at how wet they both were, but before she could speak he bent to cover her mouth with his, his lips moist with rainwater. And she had thought, at the time, that it was the sweetest sensation she had ever experienced.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to embarrass you,” Clay said, drawing her back to the present.
Jordan smiled. “No, it’s fine. Thank you for saying that. A newly divorced woman can usually use a little boost to her self-image.”
Turning her head to hide the blush in her cheeks, she opened the passenger door and stepped out into the warm sunshine.
* * *
Only after Jordan had bought three large boxes of books did it occur to Clay that he should have borrowed Sheryl’s mini-van rather than taken his sports car. Thankfully, with some creative arranging, they managed to fit all the books into the compact trunk. After slamming down the trunk lid with satisfaction, Clay checked his watch, noting with surprise that it was after one o’clock.
“Are you hungry?” he asked Jordan.
“I could eat a horse,” she said. She was leaning against the car, her hand raised to shield her eyes against the sunlight that set her hair alight like spun gold.
Clay grinned, remembering how much food she could manage to pack into her slender frame. “In that case, maybe we shouldn’t go back to the house. Your sudden appetite for horsemeat could ruin the girls’ riding outing. We could grab a bite in Ganges.”
Uncertainty flickered through Jordan’s eyes. “Isn’t everyone expecting us back for lunch?”
“I’m sure they’ve all eaten by now. Come on, there’s a great little pub in town. Best salmon chowder you’ve ever had. You still love salmon, don’t you?”
She looked at him with a sly smile. “Go ahead, twist my arm,” she said lightly. It was an expression she’d used frequently years ago, and hearing it again sent an unexpected jolt through Clay, as though for an instant the last decade had simply melted away.
It was a short drive from the estate to the town of Ganges, a tourist haven crammed with shops, art galleries and restaurants. Clay took them to a pub near the harbour, where they found a table on the outdoor patio, which afforded a gorgeous view of the marina.
“It’s really rather sad,” Jordan remarked between spoonfuls of chowder. “Poor old Mr. McGovern has just passed away, and there we were pawing through his things, only thinking of how we can profit from them.”
Clay observed her across the table. She scooped up another spoonful of hot chowder, pausing to blow on it before raising it to her lips, apparently unaware of the enticing sensuality of the gesture. He hadn’t thought it was possible for Jordan to become more beautiful than she had been, but somehow she was. A petite young woman when he’d known her, she had gained a few pounds, which only served to accentuate the pleasing curves of her breasts and hips. Her round green eyes were as striking as ever, but her gaze was more direct, the appealing girlish shyness now supplanted by a more alluring self-assurance.
Clay cleared his throat, dabbing his mouth with his napkin before he replied. “Think of it this way,” he said. “In your bookshop, those books have got a chance of ending up in the hands of someone who will really treasure them. Otherwise, they may have ended up in the dump.”
The side of Jordan’s pretty mouth lifted into a half-smile. “I suppose you’re right.”
“I sometimes felt a similar way on archeological digs,” he went on, setting his empty coffee cup on its saucer. “Sad, I mean. You can find the most poignant things. The little things, the personal items that people used every day. Hair combs, dolls, belt buckles. They remind you that no matter how much we advance technologically, at its core humanity has always been essentially the same. And then, occasionally, there are the objects related to human sacrifice. Sacrifice of children, sometimes.”
Jordan’s response caught him off guard. “You know, I sometimes wonder what I missed by not going to Peru with you. I mean, it would’ve been an incredible adventure.”
Unsure how to respond, Clay just looked at her for a moment. Then he said, “I never did understand why you refused to go.”
“Clay, I’d never been out of B.C. in my life. Two years in a foreign country! It all seemed so … reckless.”
“That surprises me to hear,” he said. “You were always such a spontaneous person.”
“Do you mean irresponsible?” She smiled, obviously thinking of her last-minute assignments and incurable lateness. Lowering her gaze, she began scraping the sides of her bowl with her spoon, although there weren’t more than a few scraps of chowder left to retrieve.
“I mean you weren’t a worrier,” Clay explained. He gave himself a swift mental kick—their morning together had been so close to perfect, and he had to put his foot in it. “You had this unbending confidence that everything would work out for you.”
“Remember, I lived with my parents back then,” she reminded him. “I was incredibly sheltered. Everything did tend to work out for me, but only because I knew they’d take care of me if I got into trouble. But when you wanted to take me to South America, where I’d be responsible for myself, I panicked.”
“You wouldn’t have been alone,” Clay added evenly.
“I know.” Jordan gave up on the chowder, leaving her spoon in the bowl as she folded her hands on the table and gave Clay her full attention. “But it was still the great unknown. As much as I didn’t know what I wanted out of life, I knew I needed a sense of security. You couldn’t tell me whether this job would lead to something somewhere else, where we’d end up settling down, whether you’d ever want a family. You could make no promises about anything. That scared me to death.”
Clay was silent for a minute, dropping his gaze to the gingham tablecloth. Of course she was right. One of the last things he’d told Jordan before leaving for Peru was that he wasn’t sure he wanted children at all. Of course he’d always known that was a deal-breaker for her, but he’d also sensed there was more to her reluctance to go with him. Now she was finally answering the question that had lingered in his mind all these years, and as understanding seeped in, he felt any remaining resentment of her drain away.
“We might have found a compromise,” he said at last, “but I suppose I wasn’t interested in looking for one.” More than that, he’d been stubborn and arrogant, and completely self-absorbed. “From my perspective you were trying to deny me the career I’d dreamed of since I was a boy.”
“That isn’t it at all,” Jordan said firmly.
“I know that now.” He paused again, gathering his thoughts into words. “But you know, once I found myself in that Peruvian jungle, immersed in the realization of that childhood dream, it really felt rather empty. Without you there it didn’t seem to mean that much. And by then it was too late.”
Jordan swallowed the last of her coffee. When she looked up her cheeks were pink, the edge of her lip firmly clamped between her teeth.
“All water under the bridge now,” she said softly.
“That’s right,” Clay agreed, though he didn’t want it to be. He wanted to carry on the conversation they had started; he had a million more questions. He wanted to ask how she felt about him now, and whether she saw a future for them once the dust settled from her divorce. But before he could ask any of those questions, their waitress arrived at the table to clear their dishes.
“Can I get you two anything else?” she asked brightly.
Clay looked at Jordan, raising his brows in question.
“No, thank you, I’m stuffed,” she told the waitress, and then said to Clay, “We should get back to the house.”
“Just the cheque, please,” Clay told the waitress, and by the time she moved away from the table he’d lost the nerve to ask Jordan anything.
Chapter Seven
Back at the house, the girls had finished their lunch and were immersed in an informal game of croquet on the back lawn—or rather, lining up the wickets in a row and seeing who could whack the ball farthest through them. When Clay appeared the girls swarmed him, reminding him that he had promised to take them out in his kayak that afternoon.
Pink-cheeked and excited, Molly wrapped her arms around her mother’s waist and beamed up at her. Her ponytail was askew and she smelled strongly of horse, and Jordan hadn’t seen her so happy in ages.
“Mom, you should’ve come riding with us! It was great. My horse was beautiful, all black and sleek. He was such a good horse, he did everything I asked.”
“I’m glad you had fun.” Jordan brushed errant wisps of her daughter’s hair back from her face with her fingertips. “So you’re going kayaking now?”
“Yeah, come on. You should try it, too.”
“No, thanks, but I’ll watch.”
Easing out of her mother’s embrace, Molly paused and then asked quietly, “Mommy, did Clay used to be your boyfriend?”
“What makes you ask that?” Jordan asked in surprise.
The little girl shrugged, glancing back at the girls still gathered around Clay. “Alice says he’s been making gooey eyes at you.”
Jordan gaped, her face growing warm. “Is Alice an expert on these things?” she asked, her voice suddenly an octave higher than normal.
“Are you avoiding answering my question by asking me questions?”
Jordan uttered a short, nervous laugh. “You’re very perceptive.”
Molly lifted her slim shoulders, adding casually, “I think Clay would make a very nice boyfriend for you.”
“Thank you for thinking of me.”
“Well, you know, I guess you’ve been lonely lately.”
“I’m okay, really. Don’t worry about me,” Jordan said, though she was touched, and gave Molly’s shoulder a brief squeeze in appreciation.
Once Clay had retrieved his two-seater kayak from a shed by the house, the girls followed as he headed off with it toward the beach, Alice clutching the paddles while the other girls carried lifejackets.
Following a few yards behind Clay and the girls, Jordan came upon a little cedar gazebo midway between the house and the beach. Built atop a small hill, it afforded a splendid view of the shoreline. She climbed onto the slatted floor, where she could see Clay setting the kayak onto the water. Alice, who was to go first, was zipping up her lifejacket in preparation.
A head of dark curls poked into the gazebo, startling Jordan.
“May I join you?”
“Sure. Of course.”
“Bless his heart for taking all those girls out one by one.” Stepping into the gazebo, Sheryl lowered herself carefully onto the bench opposite Jordan. “He was a bit uncertain with Alice at first, not having seen a lot of her the past few years, but he seems to be really getting into the uncle role row.”
“Yeah, he told me how much he’s enjoying spending time with her,” Jordan agreed.