Page 13 of A Heart to Find
Keira locked the door of her bathroom, even though she was the only one with access to her room. Nothing was going the way she had imagined, so she wouldn’t put it past Jared to have some sort of unearthly ability to charm his way past the deadbolt on her hotel door.
They had an hour to prepare themselves for the oh-so-special date they had won. Under normal circumstances, an hour would be overkill. But an hour wasn’t nearly long enough to prepare her heart for another encounter with Jared. Contrary to the beliefs of the delusional women running this matchmaking chaos, a swipe of lipstick and a fresh splash of perfume would not change the fact that this whole thing had been the biggest mistake of her life.
No, the biggest mistake had been believing that Jared could have been the one for her the first time.
Without thinking, she reached for the locket that nestled between her breasts, under her shirt. She rubbed the smooth heart, channeling her loving grandparents. Her grandfather had given this locket to the love of his life when they had only known each other for two days. That two days had stretched on to become the greatest love story in history and had only ended in death.
Scratch that thought.
No way was death strong enough to sever the bonds her grandparents had forged.
Her beloved grandmother had been a big believer in following the signs and in fate leading you where you needed to be. How many times had she sat across the table from Keira with a cup of hot cocoa between them and told her that even though things were difficult at that moment, fate was preparing her for the big payoff?
More times than Keira could count.
And she had always been right.
Keira owed it to the memory of her grandmother to allow fate to play out the way it was meant to play out. If going along with this farce of pretending Jared could possibly be her soul mate was the thing that would lead her to her real, true, honest-to-goodness soul mate, then so be it.
The tension in her neck released, and the headache that had been growing since she first read Jared’s name on the card vanished.
Grandmotherly intervention? A reward for paying attention to the signs?
Whatever it was, Keira breathed a sigh of relief.
How hard would it be to smile? To enjoy whatever this resort had to offer? To catch up with Jared? Heck, she had decided a long time ago not to hate anyone. She had forgiven him for not being able to love her the way she had wanted to be loved way back then.
Two weeks. Two weeks of committing to the process. And then she could honestly say she had given it her best shot. Hannah had promised to give her another opportunity if this one didn’t pan out. Hopefully, she could get a spot in one of the summer sessions if Hannah took pity on her so she wouldn’t have to miss more work.
The only thing Keira had to prove was that Jared was not her match. Her match was out there. She would have a love like the eternal, all-consuming love her grandparents had shared. She’d make sure of it.
Her grandmother would help guide her there. She believed that more than she believed in anything else.
By the time Jared knocked on her hotel door, she was ready. Not just dressed and freshly made up, but she was ready to dive in and give it her all.
She could do anything for two weeks.
Jared didn’t know what he had expected when he picked Keira up for their date, but it certainly wasn’t the glowing, smiling, cheerful face on the other side of the door.
She practically bounced down the stairs to the sleigh awaiting them outside.
He couldn’t say what the horses looked like or who was driving the sleigh, but he could recount every detail of Keira’s sparkling eyes as she cupped her hands over her mouth in pure glee upon seeing the sleigh. He knew it was adorned with white Christmas lights because he admired the way the light danced on the bendy curls in her hair. The urge to put his arm around her to protect her from the bitter breeze was strong, but he dug his hands into his pockets to keep from moving too fast and terrifying her while they waited for the driver to open the sleigh door for them.
She climbed aboard the sleigh with the excitement of a child. He couldn’t help but feel a rush of giddiness himself, especially when the driver placed a wool blanket over their laps. The intimacy of knowing their thighs were under a shared cover and only inches apart made his stomach jolt in a way it hadn’t jolted since he was a teenager.
“We lucked out with the weather. Cold enough for a winter night, but not so cold that we’ll become ice sculptures.” She turned her face into the breeze as the horses led them down the plowed path.
“Couldn’t be better,” he agreed.
They chatted about the rooms they had each been assigned, the majesty of the lobby in the hotel, and she shared a mishap that had occurred on her drive to Maine from New Hampshire involving an issue with her debit card at a gas pump and a friendly trucker who had helped her out.
An unexpected and unwelcome twinge of jealousy at some other guy helping her and earning her positive words gnawed at him.
Best to keep that feeling buried far beneath the surface. Jealousy was never an attractive feature. She had taught him that the first month they had dated.
Through their friendly, benign conversation, he understood the subtext.
No talk of the past. No talk of anything too serious.
