Page 41 of Suddenly Single
“Come with me, Jenny Turner,” Lorenzo said cheerfully, and threw his arm around her shoulders, giving her a hard squeeze before he forced her to march along with him once more.
He pulled her up onto the path that went around the lake and moved away from Edan.“That was so rude,” she said.
“Si,very rude,” Lorenzo blithely agreed.“And it will make this man crazy with want.”
“I don’t want to do that!” Jenny said, pushing away from Lorenzo.
“Don’t be ridiculous.All the women want to make all the men crazy with want,” he said, and winked at her.
Well.Maybe they did just a little.“Shut up,” she said, and glanced back at Edan.He was casting his line again.He looked relaxed.In the zone.He did notlook crazy with want.He looked quite content.
Jenny was the one who was crazy with want.She could still feel his body at her back, could still feel his breath on her cheek.She was falling.Tumbling, actually, cartwheeling down a hill for a Scottish guy she ought to leave the hell alone.
Twelve
There was so much work to be done to close the inn, and Edan was terribly busy.Certainly too busy to concern himself with the coming and going of Jenny and that fucking Italian, as he’d come to think of Lorenzo.And yet, against his better judgment and true nature, Edan found ways to interrupt them.When he found them in the lounge bent over that blasted computer, he’d walked in and announced the internet service would be down for the afternoon.
“But this email is very important,” Lorenzo pleaded with him, his palms together in a prayer pose.
“Sorry, lad.Canna be helped,” Edan said, and had returned to his office and pulled the plug on the Wi-Fi.
When he saw them strolling along the road like lovers in springtime, he found reason to put himself in Hugh’s motorized mule and drive up to disrupt them.Jenny laughed brightly when he honked his horn and startled Lorenzo so badly that he jumped two feet in the air.“What is the reason for this horn!” Lorenzo demanded.
“To move dawdlers along,” Edan said.“Looks like rain,” he added, squinting up at the sky.“Shall I take you back to the inn?” He made certain that Jenny rode next to him, and Lorenzo in the cage in back.
And still he couldn’t stop them.They are constantly whispering to each other and smiling.What could they possibly have to say to one another? They’d known each other for a whole of four days.
Edan realized, of course, that he’d somehow turned himself into a tragic mess.That kiss had taken on a life of its own in his head. As had the feel of her supple body against his.
He hated who he’d become these last few days. He hated that he was clinging to this idea of Audra who, really, when he thought about it, had shown him nothing but animosity in the last year. Oh sure, there had been sex and the dinners together, and quiet evenings—but there had always been an underlying current.And Edan was loyal to a fault, and he believed some things were worth fighting for, and he’d tried to make things right for her, tried to make Lake Haven up to her.
He should have known she’d hate this life. Audra had wanted a city, to be out of the Highlands.On his frequent trips home, Edan had convinced her and himself that she would be happy at Lake Haven.
She wasn’t happy.It was Scotland all over again, except in America—too remote, too far from life.
He was distracted by these thoughts one particularly sunny morning as he went out of the office to deliver paychecks. In the kitchen, he apparently was not responding appropriately to Rosalyn. She sighed and said, “You should take a few days off, Eddy. Go off and fish somewhere. You’re overworked, aye?”
“Is that your subtle way of telling me you want me to leave your kitchen?”
“No. If I wanted you out of the kitchen I’d bloody well say it.I say it because you’ve been such a bear. I donna think you really want to close the inn.”
Edan scowled as he handed her a paycheck.He walked out without a word because Rosalyn was right—he was disgusted with the world, feeling very uneasy in his skin, as if his parts weren’t fitting together properly.He’d lost his center in the last week.
Ah, well, it would be over soon enough.Jenny had booked room 215 for another week after he’d pressed her. She’d be leaving, as would Lorenzo, as would the Pettimores.The last guests for the Cassian Inn.
His infatuation would fade when he got on a plane bound for Scotland.
If anything, that thought made him feel even more restless.
He stalked down to the farmhouse Ned and Sandra shared with his restlessness and foul mood and their paychecks.He entered the kitchen through the mudroom as he always did—and stopped midstride.
“Well, good morning!” Jenny said.She was up to her elbows in a mixing bowl and there was a splotch of flour on her cheek.She was wearing a dress, covered by Sandra’s familiar apron, embroidered with a band of thistle around the edges.
It took a moment for Edan to make sense of what he was seeing and to check in with reality, and all the grand talk of how the infatuation would fade was smashed with a sledgehammer.“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Making nut balls.” She said it as if it were perfectly reasonable that she’d somehow found her way into Sandra’s house and kitchen.
“Does Sandra know you are here, then?” he asked, confused.
