Page 18 of The Story of Us
“She’s not happy about the project,” Rick said nonchalantly.
Sawyer’s jaw clenched. He wondered if Aubergine carried ibuprofen. Doubtful. “Yeah, I get that already.”
“And she’s single.” Rick shot him a smile and rounded the corner toward the produce section.
Sawyer paused. So Jamie Vaughn was single? Now this was the sort of pertinent information he was most interested in.
Not that it mattered. Whatever he and Jamie once shared had been over for a long time. Fifteen years, as she’d been so quick to remind him.
He chased Rick down and found him contemplating a purple cluster of radicchio. “So what happened with the dentist?”
Rick abandoned the radicchio in favor of something that looked sort of like grass clippings. “He moved to Texas last year.”
Sawyer let out a breath. “So they weren’t that serious.”
“Oh, no. They were serious.” Rick picked up another bundle of weeds, smelled them and added them to his pile. “But he got some job offer that he couldn’t turn down. He asked her to move with him. She declined.”
“Why?” Sawyer’s throat grew tight.
He couldn’t help comparing himself and the mystery dentist who had asked her to move with him across the country. It was more than Sawyer had done when he’d left for Columbia.
But they’d been kids. It would’ve been crazy to make such a serious commitment at that age. Right?
He found it more and more difficult to swallow while he waited for Rick to respond.
“You’ll have to ask her,” he finally said.
Sure, because that would go over really well. Jamie probably couldn’t wait to have a good old-fashioned heart-to-heart with the man who wanted to tear down her precious bookstore and put something “hideous”in its place.
“Given how she reacted when she found out I was working with Ridley, that feels highly unlikely.”
He couldn’t even blame her. The plans for the new development definitely didn’t include keeping True Love in its present form. But how could he have known the bookstore belonged to her now?
Her words from their walk in the courtyard spun round in his mind, taunting him.
I bought it a few years ago, just like I always said I would.
Maybe heshouldhave known. Once Jamie made up her mind to do something, she usually made it happen.
“Does she date anyone now?” he asked, dreading the answer. Rick had said she was single, but Sawyer had a hard time believing it.
“No one.” Rick tossed a lemon in the air, caught it and shrugged. “She’s on a ‘romantic hiatus.’”
Sawyer laughed. “That does sound like something she would say.”
“Lucy thinks that, instead of dating, Jamie pours all her heart into the bookstore.” Rick gave him a grim smile. “The very one that you’re trying to tear down.”
Yeah. Thanks for the reminder.
Rick slapped him on the back, but it was hardly reassuring.
It’s not like that, he started to say. But then he stopped and sighed. The throbbing in his temples grew worse, until the ache was almost unbearable.
It was exactly like that.
With hours to go until closing time and not an inkling of a plan to save the store, Jamie passed the afternoon by dusting.Aggressivelydusting, if such a thing were possible. Her feather duster flew across book spines in a furious effort to not only clean, but somehow whip up an idea—anyidea—to push back against Ridley.
Which obviously meant pushing back against Sawyer too. They shared a history together, but that didn’t mean she was going to play nice. She couldn’taffordto play nice. Her entire livelihood was at stake, plus decades of True Love history as a Waterford landmark.
