Page 28 of The Story of Us
“Yeah. Maybe I should’ve told her when she was a hundred percent single. But now she’s not.” Rick severed a pepper neatly in half with a single, purposeful slice.
“Whoa. They’ve only just talked.” A conversation didn’t mean anything. He would be willing to bet that he and Jamie had exchanged more words lately than Lucy and Sweater Guy. “She’s still ninety-eight percent single.”
Worst case scenario, ninety-five percent.
“Whatever. What about you and Jamie?” Rick said, as if he could see straight inside Sawyer’s head.
Was he that obvious? “Wow, there was no effort at subtlety in that conversation pivot.”
“Nope.” Rick made quick work of chopping the peppers and added them to the bowl of sliced mushrooms and greens. “So? Have you talked to her since your cooking class disaster?”
Sawyer stood and paced a few feet, noticing for the first time that Rick’s kitchen sort of looked like an IKEA showroom, which of course reminded him of Jamie’s comment about his designs for Ridley. What were her exact words, again?
Nordic minimalism.
Somehow, he didn’t sense she’d meant them as a compliment.
“Briefly.” He took a seat at the kitchen table and cast a forlorn look at his messenger bag, containing the plans he’d worked so hard on. “Meanwhile, only one store in the business district is willing to sit down with me. Olga’s Dance Studio.” Even the people who’d shown initial interest at the meeting were now making excuses about being too busy to talk.
Rick shrugged one shoulder. “That’s the benefit of her having lived here longer than you. Jamie’s in mostly everybody’s ear.”
“Yeah, but my sort-of being from Waterford is one of the reasons why Ridley gave me this shot. If they hire me, I won’t have to travel so far for each project. And I might maybe eventually even be able to buy a house.” An actual home, where he could chop his own vegetables and make his own fancy salad.
Okay, probably not. Between the two of them, Rick was the only gourmet chef. Realistically, Sawyer would probably still get take-out most nights, but it was a nice thought. Still, if he had his own house, he might at least invest in some decent cookware.
“You need to reintroduce yourself to folks, and in a friendlier way,” Rick said, abandoning the meal to join Sawyer at the table.
Thank goodness. He needed all the help he could get at the moment. He could eat once he had an inkling as to how he was going to save his career.
Maybe Rick was right, though. Perhaps all he needed to do was remind the good people of Waterford that he wasn’t just some nameless, faceless stranger who worked for a development company intent on tearing everything down and rebuilding from scratch. Hecaredabout Waterford. He was the same Sawyer O’Dell they’d once known and loved.
How could he show them that, though?
He bit the corner of his bottom lip and stared blankly at the spread of food on the bar—the crisp green salad, bowls of bright, colorful veggies and a fragrant, crusty loaf of homemade bread. His stomach growled, and his spirits lifted ever so slightly at the thought of a home cooked meal. Thank goodness Rick’s restaurant was closed tonight.
Wait a minute. Wasn’t there an old saying about the way to someone’s heart being through their stomach?
“Embrace the community,” he said, as inspiration struck.
Rick nodded slowly. “Embrace the community.”
Jamie wasn’t the only one who could charm socks off her neighbors. With a little luck—and a little help from the best chef in town—he could fight fire with fire.
Jamie burrowed into the cushions of her sofa and took a warm sip of strawberry rose herbal tea, exhausted from the busiest single sales day in True Love’s long history. Gosh, if every day could be like this one, she wouldn’t have to worry at all about going out of business. Nor would Aunt Anita or any of the other business owners, since more foot traffic in the district was good for everyone.
But she couldn’t get ahead of herself. Right now, she simply needed take one day at a time while she battled Ridley. And Sawyer. Once the threat of a new development was no longer looming over her head, she could think about other ways to increase her bottom line. Today had been a raging success, by any standard. She deserved a few minutes of rest and relaxation with her favorite companion and the pitiful opening of her manuscript.
Eliot sat at her feet, meticulously licking his paw and rubbing it against his whiskers while a fire blazed in the hearth. Her laptop wasright there, opened and waiting, but Jamie looked past it, towardThe Story of Usbox sitting on the coffee table.
She and Lucy had only managed to string up about half of the Valentines in the box so far. There were so many—it would take hours to read them all.
Meow.Eliot switched paws and went to work grooming his other whisker. Completely ignoring the blinking cursor on her computer screen, Jamie ran her hand over his soft ginger fur and then set her tea down on the coffee table. She draggedThe Story of Usbox into her lap and opened it.
She still couldn’t believe it had been hidden in the store, right behind the pink piano, all this time. She wondered if Mr. Ogilvy had known about it, or if the Valentines had either fallen behind the piano or been deliberately placed there by the store’s previous owners, a married couple who’d opened True Love Books back in 1945. She didn’t know much about Harrison and Mary—just that Harrison sometimes went by Harris, and they’d built the bookshop from scratch and run it for decades until eventually retiring and leaving it to Mr. Ogilvy, a distant relative.
The whole thing was kind of mysterious. Mr. Ogilvy had always been something of a strong, silent type, parsing out bits and pieces of True Love’s history to her little by little, over the many years she’d known him. The secrecy surrounding the bookstore only added to the appeal for Jamie, and made it more romantic, somehow.
She gathered a stack of Valentines from the box, wondering if one of them might help unravel the secrets of True Love’s past. Then her gaze landed on a bundle of envelopes at the bottom of the box, tied together with a faded blue ribbon.
