Page 61 of A Heart to Find
“Did you find your grandma’s necklace yet?”
Keira shook her head and reached for her own teacake.
Megan frowned. “I was hoping you’d come across it today. No word from Lost and Found?”
Keira shook her head again. “I’ll check with them again later. To be honest, I’ve been trying not to think about it too much. It makes me think that I’m on the wrong path when I’m trying desperately to go with my heart instead of superstition.”
“I want you to find your necklace because of its sentimental value, but I can promise you that your grandmother led you here to this place to be matched with this man. It’s way too coincidental to have actually been coincidental.”
“I think you’re right, Megan. I hope you’re right, anyway.”
After tea, they rode a heated trolley back up to the resort so they could get ready for the sledding double date they had planned with the guys.
And though Keira kept trying to get her mind to focus on what could go terrifically right, her gut kept telling her that something was about to go terribly wrong.
Chapter 15
“Good thing they make snow for the sledding hill, because otherwise we’d be sliding on mud and ice at this point,” Matt commented as they trudged down the street in thick snow pants they all rented from the resort. “Why does it feel like it’s fifty degrees out here?”
“I still say a storm is coming. I feel it in the air,” Jared interjected, bumping his arm playfully into Keira’s shoulder.
“You’ve been saying that for days,” Keira taunted back.
“My snowstorm hunches aren’t specific. I just know it’s coming.”
“I hope so.” Keira turned her face to the afternoon sun. “There’s something so magical about fresh snow falling from the sky.”
Jared watched the sun stream onto her face like a beacon to his heart. He couldn’t pinpoint when exactly he had become so corny, but she brought out the warm fuzzies in him and, well, he liked it.
Elizabeth would be proud.
Seemed weird to think about his deceased wife cheering him on from the afterlife, but they had long ago realized that getting married just to have a steady someone was a dumb idea. They’d been best friends from early in his travel journeys, and when he couldn’t stand how much he missed what he had with Keira, she was the first woman he could imagine making a life with outside of Healing Springs. At first, it had seemed easy. They loved each other deeply.
But it didn’t take long for them to realize that the love they had for each other was the love of best friendship, not passion. Not soul mate love. Not well-matched love.
Divorce had been Elizabeth’s idea. She didn’t want to be married to a man who clearly loved someone else. Who belonged with someone else. And she felt the same—she had an old love that somehow felt timeless but whom she had walked away from. Her old love had remarried and had a kid before she realized he was the only one for her.
They promised to co-parent together and to raise Hailey—the greatest love of both of their lives—to know she was revered by both parents.
But then her diagnosis came. And there was no way Jared would divorce her when she needed him the most, no matter how much she insisted.
So if he wouldn’t willingly leave her to pursue his own happiness, she’d make the arrangements for him.
A sense of calm he’d never known settled in his chest. How Elizabeth had managed this, he’d never know. But he knew he had her to thank for reuniting him with the one woman he knew he could be happy with, no matter what compromises to his vagabond lifestyle he’d have to make.
“You’re deep in thought. Whatcha thinkin’ ‘bout?” Keira studied his face as they approached the lift to the sledding hill.
“Just thinking how lucky I am to have found you again after all this time.”
“You’re crazy.”
He was. But he was crazy about the way her cheeks turned that lovely shade of red. How she lowered her chin to her chest and shook her head ever-so-slightly.
And how she made his world brighter with her presence.
Laughing and joking with Megan and Matt felt strangely natural as they were pulled to the top of the hill by the resort’s unique Magic Carpet Lift. He had never been a double date kind of guy, but he had also never been quite so enamored. Watching her interact with others was almost as much fun as having her all to himself. Almost.
“I’ll see you at the bottom of the hill!” Keira shouted over the rush of wind as she climbed onto an old-fashioned wooden sled.
