All I Want Is You (13 page)

“It is,” Christy confided. “Kind of. But I'll let you know if it starts looking promising.”

Another added benefit of hanging out with Anna was the opportunity to get caught up on all things Destiny.

“Amy and Logan are doing great, and the bookstore is still the town hotspot,” she reported.

“I'm so happy to hear that.” Amy had been another good friend to her. And Amy's husband, Logan, was a fireman who had felt a lot of unnecessary responsibility for her parents' deaths, so she hoped he was getting over that. “And how are your brothers?”

“Lucky and Tessa are both busy with their businesses, which are doing better than ever.” Lucky did custom paint jobs on motorcycles and Tessa was in interior design. “And as for Mike and Rachel—­well, my worst fear has come true,” Anna announced. “They had their baby and it's a girl! And Mike is so overprotective that I'm about ready to kill him, but I'm making it my personal mission to be sure he doesn't hover over her for her whole life, and to make sure she gets to have lots of fun—­whether he likes it or not.”

After Anna groused a bit more about her oldest brother's protective ways, Christy asked, “And everyone else?”

Anna tilted her head in thought as she peered out over the ocean. “Let's see. Sue Ann and Adam are always keeping busy with their work and the kids, and—­oh—­Jenny had her baby, too, an adorable little boy who's going to break lots of hearts someday. She seems so happy to be a mom, and Duke has gotten friendly with Mick and says he seems to be adjusting to fatherhood well.”

From there, Anna informed her the bed-­and-­breakfast she ran was doing a healthy business, but not so much that she and Duke couldn't take a week away to come to the beach. “Duke is building lots of custom furniture and has practically more orders than he can handle,” she went on. “Right now he's making new picnic tables for Edna's backyard at the apple orchard. And kitty Erik is still his clingy but lovable self.”

Then she took on a thoughtful look and said, “You know, saying all that makes me realize how lucky I am, how happy I am. And there was a time when I couldn't have imagined having such a perfect life. It can happen, you know, when you least expect it.”

She tossed Christy a speculative glance, and Christy understood that it was both encouragement and Anna wanting to know how she was doing. But when she didn't begin volunteering information, Anna went ahead and asked, “So, about this Jack guy. He's pretty hot, and he seems nice. But I didn't get the vibe that you guys are a ­couple. So what's the deal?”

And so then Christy told Anna the deal—­all of it, spilling her guts in a way you could only do with a close girlfriend. With Grandpa Charlie, she'd worked hard to sound like everything was fine, like even if she'd screwed up with Jack it was okay—­but with Anna she let her emotions flow. “I'm such an idiot!” she said. “Why did I tell him I needed a rich guy? Why did I admit any of that to him at all? Because even though I don't know for sure if that's what's standing between us, I'm pretty sure it is. And I don't know how I can possibly fix something like that.”

“You could just tell him,” Anna suggested. “The whole truth. Like that you thought you knew what you wanted, but that now you realize you want something else—­
him
.”

Christy sucked in her breath imagining that and felt a little nauseous. “But I have no idea if he's into me that much, like in a way that sounds so serious. After all, he's done a pretty great job of keeping his hands off me ever since we got here—­so maybe it was just a brief, fleeting physical attraction and he's really fine with just being friends. So to just put all that out there without knowing where his head is would be . . .”

“Scary, I know,” Anna said, her voice filled with understanding. “I took a risk like that with Duke.”

“And it clearly paid off,” Christy acknowledged, thinking how happy they were. “Not every risk does, though.”

“But . . . what if I hadn't taken it?” Anna asked, looking over at her. “That's why I did, you know? Because things were looking awfully grim between us, but I knew that if I didn't make it really clear to him exactly how I felt that I'd spend the rest of my life wondering if it would have made a difference.”

Christy couldn't help being in awe of Anna's courage. To put your heart on the line like that, to risk that kind of rejection, took nerve. “You're so brave,” she said. “I envy that.”

But Anna just laughed. “You're brave every day. I've known that since I met you. You've gone through so much loss and yet you're out there facing life, moving forward, not letting anything get you down for long.
I
envy that.”

Christy took in what Anna had just said. It wasn't new information—­she knew she'd been brave, because she'd had no choice—­but maybe she'd forgotten that lately. Maybe new challenges made it easy to forget past triumphs. “Somehow, though, with Jack it's harder than some other bravery-­requiring things have been. I'm not sure why.”

“Because you value him and you're afraid of losing what you already have with him.”

Ugh, she was right. When had
that
happened? When had she started valuing Jack so much?

From the start.

She didn't know where the words had sprung from inside her, but it was true. Almost from the moment she'd set eyes on his gorgeous, scruffy face. And then he'd kicked down her door, and been kind enough to repair the very damage she'd asked him to do—­and she supposed if she was honest with herself, she'd already been falling for him even then.

“So . . . nothing romantic or physical since you got here?” Anna asked. Christy had told her about their near-­sex at the Colonial Inn in Nowhere, Georgia.

“Nope. Though I feel it all the time.”

“It?” Anna asked, reaching for a bottle of sunscreen planted next to her in the sand.

“I guess it's . . . tension. And maybe it's just me, not him. But it's just this feeling . . . as we're moving around each other in the room, passing each other coming and going from the shower, or anywhere, this urge to touch. This . . . awareness of his body. I notice
everything
. The way a T-­shirt stretches across his chest. The way his hair falls across his forehead when he's just come out of the shower and it's still wet. I even like to watch him brush his teeth—­how wacky is that?”

Yet Anna only smiled wistfully as she replied, “Ah, I remember noticing that kind of stuff with Duke early in our relationship. How everything about him—­no matter what it was—­made me feel all dreamy inside.”

Christy sighed because Anna had nailed it—­Jack made her feel dreamy. “And in Georgia, when we stopped and didn't do it, and when he said we'd see where things went once we got here, I thought . . . I thought things would go somewhere. But it seems like that's not happening. Maybe I'm the only one of us noticing all those little things.”

She bit her lip, thinking it through. “Although I could swear I'm not. And it's breaking my heart to think he really doesn't want things to go any further, because I think we could be really great together in that way. But at the same time, I just try to be grateful for how much fun we have together and how good I feel when I'm with him. I mean, I feel more of that dreamy feeling just sitting next to Jack at the beach or in a restaurant than I have when I was making out with some guy I thought I was crazy about. And really,” she stopped, weighing it in her mind, “for a girl who's sexually frustrated and in love with a man I can't have, I'm actually pretty darn happy these days most of the time.”

And it was as Anna's eyes widened that Christy realized what she'd just said.

“Oh God,” Christy murmured. “Oh wow.”

“Yep,” Anna said, smiling. “Wow.”

“This is what it's like to be in love,” Christy mused.

And Anna nodded. “You got it, girlfriend. And it can be a double-­edged sword—­I remember. Crazy happy just because he exists and you're with him, but crazy sad because you're not with him
that
way.”

“That pretty much sizes it up,” Christy said, forlorn. In fact, she experienced the warring emotions even now. And she let out another heavy sigh as the revelation seeped into her soul as intensely as the rays of the hot Florida sun seeped into her skin. She was in love. With Jack.

And maybe she'd never really been in love with Kyle at all—­because that . . . that had been nice—­even wonderful—­but it had felt . . . so much more like a choice than this.

This . . . was a condition. One she already knew she couldn't fight. And even as Anna was advising her to be brave with Jack, she grew more fearful—­because she had no idea where this would lead, but it also felt doomed.

Because once you let a man think you were only about money—­could he ever really believe you were about anything else?

 

“And now, which of these finger-­posts

ought I to follow, I wonder?”

Lewis Carroll,
Through the Looking Glass

Chapter 12

J
ACK LEANED
back in a folding chair, the fishing rod he'd rented balanced on the pier's railing and held loosely in his hand. It was a damn beautiful day for fishing, something he'd done a lot of with his dad growing up, but not much in recent years. And it was a nice-­if-­mixed-­bag group of men he found himself out here with. Next to him, Charlie had already caught three healthy-­size snook in just the first ­couple of hours. And Duke had pulled in one so far—­but John Romo and Jack were striking out. Even so, it was a peaceful way to pass the time, and Charlie seemed to be enjoying himself, which made Jack feel good. He liked the old guy and found him easy to be with.

Until, that is, Charlie looked over at him and said, out of the blue, “My Christy . . . she's a good girl.”

Oh boy. What was
this
about?

Jack met the old man's eyes, but then felt forced to draw his gaze down—­in case he was about to be accused of something. “I, um, know.”

“What I mean,” Charlie said—­though now he looked absently out over the water, “is that she's got a good heart.”

“I . . . I—­she and I are just friends, Charlie, and I would never do anything to hurt her.”

“That I buy,” he said. “At least the part about not hurtin' her. I like you, Jack. And that's why I'm tellin' you that . . . if, out of concern for takin' care of me, she led you have any negative beliefs about who she is, they're wrong.”

Jack still wasn't sure he understood what they were talking about. But did it have something to do with Chisty's rich man hunt? And was Charlie trying to shove them together? As if Jack weren't already having a hard enough time keeping his hands off her, now her grandfather was giving him the green light?

“I . . . think the world of your granddaughter,” Jack answered. “I wouldn't be on this trip with her otherwise.” And he decided to just leave it at that.

“Well,” the older man said in response, “that's good then.”

Jack simply nodded and felt happier when they were quiet again, and happier still when a hard tug came on his fishing line and he could turn his attention to reeling in the bite he'd gotten. A few minutes later, after a slight battle and some encouragement from his companions, he pulled a small black sea bass up onto the pier and was thankful they now had something else to focus on besides Christy.

Not that his mind wasn't still on her. It was almost always on her these days.

But he didn't feel any closer to answers, and so he just tried not to think about it, as much as possible anyway. Which was easier when he had something simple to concentrate on—­like this fish.

As for what he'd do later, when he was with her again . . . well, he supposed it would be like every night lately—­he'd suffer and wish he was touching her, moving with her. And then he'd roll over and fall into an unsettled sleep fettered with frustration and hope all these complicated feelings just somehow went away.

He knew it wouldn't really be that easy, but maybe at this point he'd begun to think:
If I can just keep myself from taking her to bed until the trip is over, this will fade away. She'll start dating rich dudes again and remind me why it was good I held back. And I'll find a way to get comfortable being only her friend again. And maybe she'll even
marry
one of the rich dudes—­and then I'll know for sure it was best not to let myself go any further with her, and she'll be gone from my life.

But the funny thing was—­that whole line of thinking was supposed to make him feel
better
, and in fact, it made him even more miserable than he already was.

“If that bass is ruining your day or something,” Duke Dawson said from his place farther down the pier, “I'll take it off your hands.”

Jack flinched. Shit. Clearly he was standing there
looking
miserable, too.

“Nope, I'm happy as can be,” he claimed, trying to appear more normal.

But he caught Charlie's eye on him just then, and their gazes met for a second before Jack could pull his away, and he knew the old man wasn't falling for any of it.

A
FTER
Christy and Anna parted ways that afternoon, Christy showered and dressed in a pretty, flowy gauze skirt and a crocheted tank Bethany had given her for her birthday. Then she wrapped up the remaining pieces of jewelry she hadn't sold at the pier and put them in her straw bag. After which she looked in the mirror and said out loud, “You are an artist. You can do this.” And she realized, again, that she really felt that way. From the sales she'd made. From her Grandpa's belief in her. From Jack's belief in her. She didn't quite understand it completely, but she saw herself differently than she had before arriving in Coral Cove.

Of course, she also grappled with what she'd figured out at the beach a few hours ago about Jack. She'd known she was pretty wild about him, but falling in love . . . that was a whole other situation. And it meant a huge, monumental change in everything about their relationship—­whether he knew it or not.

Peeking back up into the mirror, she realized that now she looked . . . frightened. Shell-­shocked. And a little flushed.

Okay, you're in love with him, but you'll just have to deal with that later because right now you're setting out on a very important mission. And you can't let yourself be distracted. Or terrified. Or worried. About him or Grandpa Charlie or anything else. Right now is all about you. And maybe your entire future.

Departing the Happy Crab on foot, she headed north on Coral Street, the main thoroughfare that passed through the small beach town, along the short stretch laden with souvenir stores and ice cream shops. While some businesses like the Happy Crab and the Hungry Fisherman seemed to be suffering from the influx of large resort hotels up the beach, others that were more retail focused continued to thrive—­particularly in the evenings, she'd noticed—­when the tourists from the large hotels were drawn to this area for the Sunset Celebration.

She'd seen the storefront for Beachtique and thought it looked like a more upscale shop than most in Coral Cove, so now she decided to make it her first stop. She took a deep breath as she walked up and reached for the door handle.

Stepping into the air conditioning brought ­relief—­it was hot if you weren't right on the water this time of day—­even if at the same time her stomach swam with nervousness. Looking around the place, she caught sight of sophisticated-­looking sundresses and appealing beachwear—­as well as a sizable jewelry counter. Pay dirt. Maybe.
Take another deep breath. In. Out. You can do this.

It was then that an older woman, tall with a rather queen-­like air about her, entered the shop through a doorway covered with white curtains. “Welcome to Beachtique,” she said as she came up behind the sales counter. Her tone held a certain brashness—­like someone who wanted to be nice but didn't quite know how—­and Christy knew she had to draw upon her courage even more than she'd expected to.
But I can do it.

Arriving at the opposite side of the counter, she put on her best smile, the one she'd gotten used to using with shoppers on the pier. And she reached into her bag as she spoke in her most confident voice. “I've been admiring your shop and I'm wondering if you do any consignment.”

The tall woman bristled slightly, her back going more rigid as she said, “Oh—­no, I'm afraid we're not interested in that type of arrangement.”

And normally that probably would have sent Christy on her way right back out the door—but she'd already laid a rolled-­up swatch of velvet on the counter and begun to unroll it. So she paused at the woman's words, not quite sure whether to stop or proceed with only two bracelets currently visible on the dark velvet. The woman's eyes dropped there, as well. And as Christy stood waffling between pressing forward and just accepting defeat, the woman said, “But I suppose I'd be willing to look at your pieces.”

It felt like a flower blooming in Christy's heart—­the sweet relief of suddenly being welcome. “I take old pieces of jewelry and rework them,” she explained, then revealed the rest of what she'd brought. “I've been doing quite well at the Sunset Celebration, so I decided to start looking for consignment opportunities, as well. Your shop is the first one I wanted to offer my work to.”

“How much have you been selling them for?” the woman asked. “Because I'd need to take at least twenty percent, and I wouldn't feel comfortable pricing any of these any higher than one fifty or two.”

Crestfallen, Christy just blinked her disbelief. Was the woman serious? “A dollar fifty?”

And just when she thought the Beachtique lady never smiled, a loud peal of laughter tore from the woman's throat. “No, my dear, of course not,” she said. “
A hundred and fifty.
Which would make your profit one twenty.” After which the woman went all serious again. “But if you feel you need to make more, then I can't do it.”

Christy barely knew what to say. She'd been selling these same pieces for fifteen to thirty dollars apiece so far. And while part of her wanted to let her astonishment run free and ask the woman if she really felt ­people would pay that for them, instead she just smiled and made a joke. “Well, that's more like it.”

Now Beachtique Lady wore a big smile, too. “Of course, I'd also have to ask that you not consign elsewhere within the immediate area. I like to offer unique pieces and I don't want to compete with a neighboring business.”

“Of course,” Christy said, nodding, still amazed at this turn of events.

“Though,” the woman said, leaning closer, suddenly acting like Christy's new best friend, “I'll give you a tip. The shops at the resorts up the beach might be willing to work with you—­many of them like to showcase local artisans and handmade goods. And though I do share a customer base with them, my friend Louise works at a shop in the Sand Dollar Resort and we find that the tourists who shop within the resort tend to stay there, on the grounds, for the bulk of their visit. So we don't believe our shops compete directly, and I'd have no problem with you placing some pieces with them so long as you promise to keep my supplies up.”

Still trying to hide her shock, and still nodding profusely, Christy said, “Yes, absolutely, and I appreciate the insider info.” In fact, she was trying not to sound too excited about it.

A few minutes later, she and Beachtique Lady, whose name turned out to be Lydia, had worked out a deal and Christy left numerous pieces behind to be displayed in the glass jewelry case she'd noticed upon coming in.

And much to her continued joy and astonishment, after taking a cab a few miles up the road to the resorts, she soon had a similar deal with the second shop she visited there, which just happened to be inside the Sand Dollar—­and though she didn't meet Louise, the clerk she dealt with acted almost as if she felt the pricing Beachtique had suggested was too low.

Christy spent the cab ride back to the Happy Crab elated. She was an “artisan” now. And though there was no guarantee her jewelry would sell in either spot at the much higher prices, the confidence of the shop ­people left
her
feeling confident, too. Even if still stunned.

She couldn't wait to tell Jack! And her grandpa! And she'd have to call Anna!
Oh, please please please let Jack be back at the room when I get there.
It was all she could do to contain her excitement over the miraculous turn her day had taken. She'd hoped for a consignment deal or two, but she'd never dreamed her jewelry-­upcycling could be as lucrative as now suddenly appeared possible.

Her heart lifted—­she could have sworn she felt it rise physically in her chest—­when she paid the cab driver, then got out to find her car, which Jack had driven today to pick up Grandpa Charlie, back in the parking lot. It was fairly late—­dinnertime.

Digging her room key—­attached to the plastic crab-­shaped keychain—­from her bag, she shoved it in the door and burst in to see Jack standing near the bathroom in a pair of blue jeans, no shirt, wet hair.

“You won't believe what's happened!” she said, letting a big smile unfurl as she gazed on her oh-­so-­handsome roommate.

His eyes widened in curiosity, even as he teased her. “I was getting ready to say, ‘About time?' and ‘You could have at least texted me'—but I'll wait and decide how much to scold you based on what you're so excited about.”

She kept right on smiling, unable to contain her enthusiasm, as she said, “You're right—­I should have texted. But I didn't realize how long I'd be gone. And honestly, I'm not used to anyone caring where I am. But what happened today is—­I've arranged consignment deals on my jewelry with two upscale shops, and they both think they can sell my pieces for a ­couple hundred dollars. Each!”

She appreciated the wonder in his eyes as he blinked. “Seriously? Wow! That's . . . freaking amazing, Christy!”

If it was possible, she got even a little happier then—­simply because he was calling her Christy again instead of Alice. “I know,” she said, still gushing. “I couldn't believe it. And they both want more than I have on hand, so I'm glad I brought my tools and supplies and can make some new pieces while we're here. Of course, this means no more selling at the Sunset Celebration, but this seems like a much bigger opportunity and like it will be better in the long run, right?”

He nodded. “Absolutely.” And he tilted his head a little, and his eyes looked so very blue and so very . . . well, she couldn't think of a word for it, but she saw something in them that seemed deeper than ever before, seemed to show her some new part of his soul she hadn't yet seen. And her heart beat a little faster because of it.