“What is he doing here?” Evelyn stared at the tall, lumbering predator of a man who entered her store front. His storm gray eyes caught hers. She dropped her gaze to the counter and rearranged the menus.
“That stack is straight enough.” he said. His voice, like a honeyed whiskey that burns all the way down, had more than a hint of amusement in it.
Evelyn straightened up and pulled out her most saccharine smile. “How can I help you, Mr. Morgan.”
“You know I prefer Jack.”
As if she cared. “What do you want, Mr. Morgan?” A sprig of the temper she struggled to control sprayed through her words.
“I want to hire you.” He smiled. She wanted to run away and hide from the beauty of it, and the memories she could never bury of his long, slow kisses with that mouth.
She stood up straighter, refusing to let him see he could still affect her. “You know I only do plant- based catering.”
“There’s very little I don’t know about you, Evie. And what I don’t know, I want to.” He placed his hands on the counter and leaned in closer.
She ignored his breath on her cheek and the way her heart decided to thump out of control. Note to self, find a cardiologist. My heart is not working right. “You want vegan food at the hunting lodge?”“Wouldn’t that be interesting, but no. It’s for my sister’s graduation party.”
“How can you and Jean be from the same family?” She liked Jean, who walked her dogs and attended all her vegan cooking classes.
“She asks me that all the time.
Evelyn couldn’t stop a smile from turning traitor and kidnapping her face.
“You should smile more often.”
Something peaked out of his eyes for just a second, but he caught it so fast, she wasn’t completely sure she hadn’t imagined it. Sadness, she realized. She never associated sadness with Jack.
“What do you want to order” She handed him the menu.
Jack sighed and skimmed through it. His blue-black hair fell into his eyes. Part of her wanted pull it out strand by strand and delight in his screams of pain. The other part of her wanted to glide it back behind his ears, feel the silk pour over her fingers.
“How’s the menagerie?” His voice pulled her back to reality.
“Out of your rifle range.”
His eyebrow lifted and he put the menu down. “We had something once.”
“You left.”
“Yes, but I didn’t leave you. I had to try, see who I was, what I could be.” His eyes turned stormy, as if his emotions were at war.
She wished he’d stop looking hurt. Who was this, Jack? “The entire town watched you in New York. So many women, Jack.” He leaned over the counter. She stepped back.
He blew out a breath. “None of them were you.”
“No, they were stunning, and glamourous and everything I’m not.” She glanced down at her ripped jeans that hugged her curvy hips and her battered sneakers stained with beet juice. Definitely not me.
“Don’t do that, Evie. It’s not fair to either of us.”
“I’m not that Evie anymore. Haven’t been for a `while. But you wouldn’t know that because you haven’t been here.” Her voice raised. Heat crawled up her cheeks. “We’re from different planets, Jack. Maybe we always have been.” She looked away to center herself. “Find another caterer for Jean’s party.”
A hand touched her chin, gently pulled her face toward him. “Ask me why I’ve come back.”
She shook her head.
He pulled what looked like a pamphlet out of his back pocket and handed it to her.
She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Please. If I ever meant anything to you…” He flashed that killer smile at her. The one that showed up on every newspaper. The one she once thought was only for her.
“Put that smile away. You never did play fair, Jack Morgan.”
He laughed, and it spiced the air and sent shivers down her spine. She had always loved that laugh that shouted to the world how much joy he was capable of and willing to share. She realized in that moment, how in their last months together, he hadn’t laughed like that, how much less of himself he’d been. She’d been so caught up in her own confusion, she never saw that he’d been wearing his pain like clothes. They had been so young. For that she owed him. She picked up the pamphlet.
“An adventure lodge? Ziplining, mountain hiking, rope bridges, sleeping in tree houses, and moose sightings?” She looked into his eyes and smiled.
“No more hunting,” he said.
“This is why you came back.” Warmth gathered in her belly, threatening to overcome her.
He nodded. “That’s some of it. I came back because I left part of myself here. The best part, the part that belongs to you.” He pulled something out of his jacket pocket. A long box and handed it to her.
Her hand shook as she took it and opened it. A charm bracelet. Each charm had an animal with a different mineral as an eye. She picked it up, fingered each one. “All local animal and minerals,” she said.
“It’s a prototype. Merch for the lodge. It was you I thought about for the design, you who inspired it. You whose values I honor. I made this one for you.”
She put the box down. “We can’t start off where we left off. But maybe we can start again.”
He nodded. “That’s fair. I can do that. Dinner tonight?”
“Welcome home, Jack.”
Photo Credit: Pavel Danilyuk from Pexels
Shari Garmise