Jane and Austen (24 page)

I breathed a sigh of relief. Austen’s eyes sought mine. “Do you want me to finish him off?” he asked.

“Aren’t you curious to see what he comes up with?”

Austen didn’t look amused. He made a low guttural sound in his throat to show his irritation and stood to search the dance floor. “Where did Ann-Marie go?”

Heads bobbed around me, making a wall that obstructed my view. The force of my gaze did nothing to part them so that we could find her. Austen’s hands found mine, and he steered me back to my barstool. “Stay put,” he said, and he let the crowd swallow him so he could hunt for our friend.

I waited for about five minutes. Another five made me wonder if Austen had been kidnapped by Ann-Marie. I checked my cell phone for a text. Nothing. Even if I tried to call Austen, he wouldn’t hear it in this noise. My hand went to my aching head. I had to get out of here soon or Bigley might find me again. I hopped off the barstool.

The second I did, I ran into Junie. She grunted in surprise. Whatever she’d been holding toppled to the floor. “Oh, I’m sorry.” I landed on my knees and gathered fistfuls of the napkins she had dropped. I noticed one of them had been scribbled on. Before I could see what it said, Junie plucked it from my hands, holding the napkin over her stomach. I knew better than to ask her what it was. It was clearly a secret, as usual.

Junie avoided my eyes. “I’m going home,” she said. “I’m tired. I’m tired of all of this!”

I noticed deep circles under her eyes. Her eyes glistened, and I realized she had been crying. “Junie? What’s happen—?”

“Don’t ask me!”

“Junie?” Austen pulled from the crowd, and she burst into tears and fell into his arms, clinging to him in a long hug that made me uncomfortable. She broke away just as dramatically and rushed away. Austen watched her go, looking helpless.

“What did you do to her?” Austen wasn’t asking it. It was Redd. He towered above me, his body tense with indignation.

“You were with her last!” I shouted through the noisy crowd. “What did
you
do to her?”

“Hey,” Austen held up his hand. “Knock it off. Both of you!”

Redd’s eyes didn’t leave mine. “Junie was just fine until she saw you, Jane, and that sobered her up real fast. Then she ran off.” Because she had seen me with Austen? I turned to him, but he just stared worriedly after Junie.

Redd wasn’t through with me. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself. That won’t make you too many friends.”

“What is wrong with you?” I shouted. “What do you have against me?”

“Someone has to stop you from ruining everyone’s life.”

“Who is
everyone
?” I asked.

Austen’s arms wrapped around my waist and he pulled me back from Redd. “Sorry, Captain.” Fury laced through his words as he fought yet another battle for my honor. “We don’t have time for this. This happens to be
my
night with Jane.”

Redd’s cold expression froze his jaw into a chiseled and arrogant line. He dipped his head at us in farewell. “I wish you both the best. No doubt you deserve each other.”

Austen didn’t look back at Redd’s offended departure. Instead, he headed for the exit with me in tow. The weird techno music cut out when the door slammed shut behind us. Fresh air hit my face in a blast of wind that rushed through the garden of swaying California poppies. The flowers only reminded me of Taylor.

Redd’s accusation burned in my ears:
You don’t care about anyone.
If he was talking about Taylor, his words held some truth to them. I should’ve been a better friend or I’d know what was going on now.

Austen headed for his car in the crowded parking lot. “What happened with you and Redd? If you say that you only broke up with him and ignored his texts, I won’t believe you.”

The shock of our encounter wouldn’t leave me. “I’m cursed. I wanted romance and now I’m getting flooded with it.”

“What’s really going on?” Austen asked.

“My life is playing like a book, and I don’t like it!” Judging by the sound of irritation that escaped his lips, he’d drill me with more questions to get to the root of this. I beat him to it. “Do you and Junie have a thing going? Was she running from you? Is that where you disappeared for ten minutes?”

He went silent and pulled the keys from his pocket when we reached his jeep. “She hasn’t been acting like herself the last few days.”

I leaned against the door, crossing my arms. “Have I?”

“You always act strange, but . . . not more than usual, not like . . . everybody else.” He groaned, his keys clanging against his sides along with his hands. “Five guys? Seriously. I never liked Chuck—but I had never been so close to a barroom brawl. And Crawley? No offense, Jane, but I just don’t understand why every guy is after you.”

“It’s not my fault. Try being a girl sometime.”

“Who’s the fifth guy?” Austen asked. “You’ve got Dancey, the captain, Crawley; Colin’s after you, too, I’ve seen it myself; but who’s the last guy?”

Austen. He was the
only one
who counted. And he had the least interest in going after me. His eyes were on mine as he waited for me to say his name, and I struggled to answer. “Use your imagination,” I said.

He sighed and took the other side of me, leaning back against the jeep door. He crossed his arms in imitation of me. “Chuck was flirting with the waitress,” he said in a quieter voice. “According to your theory, that shouldn’t happen. It’s out of character.”

“But we never knew Bingley intimately in
Pride and Prejudice
!” I tried to work it out. “We never saw him behind the scenes. We only had Lizzy’s perspective the whole time.”

“No, no,” Austen said. I felt the pressure of his fingers as he gently took my arm and looked me in the eyes to show me that he was serious. “I’m trying to prove that we’re not in a book. Don’t you get it? Losing the family business to Colin? That’s reality. Seeing the groom cheat on your friend two days before her wedding? That
is
life, Jane.” It was like a dam had broken inside of Austen’s mouth and he was spilling everything that he’d kept back from me. “There’s nothing more real than jealousy and disappointment and heartache. Now you see things for what they are. Just accept it: life sucks.”

Dark clouds rumbled threateningly in the sky. A few stray drops of rain spat down on us. “You think this is normal?” I asked. “If anything, the whole Bigley thing turns us into a bad soap opera—because, Austen, real life is full of laughter and love and feeling happy.”

“And then it’s gone.”

I was stunned. My ideals got me hurt a lot, but they had also cushioned my falls because I hoped for the best. Austen’s logic would never help him the same way. No wonder he didn’t take risks. “Is that why you won’t fight for North Abbey?” I asked. “I just thought you didn’t want it, but . . . are you afraid of losing?”

His lips curved up like he thought that was ridiculous. “Afraid? No, I’m not
afraid.”

“So you just don’t care? Do you care about anything? What about me?”

He actually looked hurt. “I may not be as passionate as you are, Jane, but that doesn’t mean I can’t feel.”

“Show me.” It came out before I thought too much about it, and then I wriggled uncomfortably. I might as well have dared him to kiss me. I felt like I was in fiction again, and I held up my hand. “No, no, don’t, I don’t want to add to the drama going on right now.”

“Good,” he said, “because I’m not going to kiss you just because you challenged me.”

“No, that’s something that I would do.”
I would . . . if I had no pride.
Plus, I didn’t want to scare Austen away. He meant so much to me now—like he was part of my family, a part of me. My pride didn’t matter.
“Oh, forget it,” I said and turned to him to slide my hands through his curly hair. Austen froze as I stood on tiptoe to plant my lips over his.

Austen responded almost immediately. He pulled me closer and made me forget all my wild fantasies about the perfect kiss, because this felt real. The rain beat harder on us as his breath became mine. His intentions mine. His loudly beating heart was mine, too. I fell back from the kiss, trying to catch my breath.

“That’s what it feels like to be crazy,” I managed to get out.

“That’s nothing.” His hands cradled my throat; the water from the rain made his fingers slip down to my shoulders. “You want to know what it feels like to be practical?” He gently touched his lips to mine, giving me a kiss that felt like he was breathing me in.

I stepped back again, my heart ready to explode. “How was that practical?”

“Because it came from me.”

Yes, practical. All of my confused thoughts from the day centered and made me realize how wrong all my Jane Austen talk was. I had something better than a fantasy written in the pages of a book. I didn’t want to believe that this spark between Austen and me had happened because of some curse. It couldn’t be . . . because I’d do anything to make it real.

The rain pouring over Austen’s face glistened under the street lanterns. He regarded me for a long moment before holding me close and kissing me again.

Chapter 20

“But he told you that he loved you?”

“Yes . . . no . . . never absolutely. It was every day implied, but never professedly declared. Sometimes I thought it had been–but it never was.”

—Jane Austen,
Sense and Sensibility

I practically skipped
down the hallway on the way to my room, my heart singing. Kissing Austen felt so right. We belonged together. He was the Yin to my Yang. He was logical. I was emotional. Together we made
Sense and Sensibility.
The superstition that I was caught in a Jane Austen novel was far behind me now. I had something real to hold on to. My smile felt too big for my face.

I passed Taylor’s room and heard crying. I stopped, my heart settling back to its normal place. Poor Taylor. While I was on cloud nine, she was feeling all alone. Now that I knew about Bigley, I realized why. This time I would be a better friend. I took a deep breath and knocked on her door.

“Just a minute.”

I knew Taylor was trying to put her face back together, but I didn’t want her to hide her feelings from me, so I just pushed open the door. Elly sat on the bed next to Taylor, rubbing her cousin’s back. “Hi Taylor,” I said. “Uh, how is everything going?”

Taylor motioned me inside, and I closed the door. The moment I did, she gave a long, shuddering sigh. “My parents are in the middle of a cold war, Jane. My dad said that he can’t take being stuffed into a tiny room with my mom and he’s going to the Randall Bungalow.”

I panicked. “But it’s in the middle of renovation.”

“My dad doesn’t care. He just packed up his bags and left to go camp out in the middle of all that plaster and wet paint.”

“But . . . but . . . but . . .”

“You don’t want to get in the middle of that war, Jane. It’s cold. You should see my parents fight—they’re nothing like Chuck’s parents. They don’t need words—just looks and sighs. It freezes the room. If I could’ve given them separate places to sleep without being too obvious, I would’ve. They can’t spend longer than two days together without my dad running off on business.” Taylor groaned and turned to her cousin, who watched her with a look of sweet concern. “Why am I surrounded by dysfunctional relationships, Elly? I just want a good marriage like yours.”

The cute little redhead wrapped her arms around Taylor in a tight hug. “You can. You will.”

My heart started to race when I realized what they were saying. This was my cue to tell Taylor about her jerk of a fiancé, but I took one look at the tears streaming down her cheeks and lost my nerve.

“Chuck means everything to me,” Taylor said. “If I lost him, I wouldn’t have anything.”

I forced my hand up. “I have something to say . . .”

Elly’s expectant eyes were on me, as were Taylor’s red ones. I opened my mouth to let it all out:
Bigley is a mean drunk: he tried to pay me to go out with his brother, he flirts with waitresses, he thinks his best friend is a louse and still asked him to be his best man.

It would break Taylor’s heart, but we were running out of time. Taylor looked so vulnerable, so sad. It made me wonder if she already knew about Bigley. “I know it hurts you a lot that your parents are fighting,” I said, “but is there anything else bothering you?”

The tears came anew and she scrunched up her pillow. “I’m trying to put my heart back together, Jane; trying to look at everything logically so I can move on. I look at my parents’ wedding pictures and I see . . . they were so in love. They had one of those fairytale weddings, you know. But . . . but fairytales aren’t real. I know that now.”

She did know about Bigley.

Taylor reached for my hand and squeezed it. “I don’t want you to make the same mistakes that I have.”

“I won’t,” I said, “but Taylor, you’re not married yet. It’s not too late.”

She looked confused. “What are you saying? Chuck has his faults, he does; but I wouldn’t throw it all away on a dream. Love isn’t a magic wand that fixes everything.”

No, it wasn’t. As she talked, I couldn’t help but think about Austen. It made things exciting that we were so opposite, but it could also work against us. Still, our differences weren’t as serious as Taylor’s problems with Bigley.

“Even if love isn’t a fairytale,” I said, “you can still expect certain things—”

“No.” Taylor sat up. “No man will change for you. It isn’t fair for either of you to expect that. You have to see him for how he truly is.”

Everything that Austen had ever told me came spilling back into my mind. Austen said that best friends didn’t fall for each other. And kissing, hugging, handholding, romance in general? It didn’t mean as much to him as it did to me. Did that mean I was settling like Taylor was?

“My mom knew exactly what my dad was before they got together,” Taylor said. “When they traveled all over Europe and made all those big plans to change the world, she knew that he really lived for business. He always put it before her. There were warning signs, Jane.”

I was all about signs—if a guy couldn’t stop looking at me or was too nervous to talk to me, he liked me. Usually the signs worked for me, not against me. As much as I wanted to enjoy the memory of my first kiss with Austen, I examined it through his eyes of logic. I had kissed Austen first. Sure, he’d responded, but what did that mean to him, anyway? He was still planning on selling North Abbey and getting out of here.

“Do you really want to live your life in denial?” Taylor asked.

I glanced over at her, confused. Even if her words fit my situation, we were talking about her situation with Bigley, not mine. “Taylor.” I eased down on the bed to sit down beside her. I couldn’t let her turn this on me again. “We’ve got to talk about this.”

She gave me a look of longsuffering. “This is about Dancey, right?”

That caught me off-guard. “No, not Dancey . . .” I remembered something significant. “He’s a part of this, isn’t he? Bigley said that Dancey liked you. Wait, did you two have a thing?”

“A thing?” She gave me a stern look. “Dancey plays people, Jane. Sure, he’s a really great guy, but he’s always going to be Dancey, you know?”

“And you don’t like that?”

“You can’t go for him,” she shouted. She clapped her hands to her mouth as if she had shocked herself. She lowered her voice, “I mean you shouldn’t go for him. He might like you now, but oh, just seeing that he’s doing the same thing to you that he does to every other girl makes me so mad! He won’t change for you.”

“What? Wait, I wasn’t talking about Dancey before. Were you?”

“Yes!” She looked furious. Elly’s lips twisted in worry. Our previous conversation flashed through my mind and it made a lot more sense. Taylor had thought that she was warning me against Dancey the whole time. She didn’t know about Bigley.

I took a steadying breath. “Taylor, this is about your fiancé, not Dancey. He was drinking tonight.” Seeing her confused look, I hurried through my words. “I mean, he drinks a lot! Did you know that?”

She started to laugh . . . hysterically. “Oh no you don’t, Jane, don’t turn this on me.”

I made another desperate attempt. “He’s not very nice when he drinks.”

“Chuck? Oh, I can’t believe that I’m hearing this.” Taylor’s eyes met the ceiling. “Patient, good, kind Chuck? Did Dancey put you up to this?”

“No. What? No! I can have my own opinions. Tonight, Bigley tried to pay me to go out with his brother.”

Taylor exchanged glances with her cousin, and Elly cracked a smile. “Well,” Taylor said. Her lips turned up, too, and she swiped three tissues from the boxes and dabbed them all over her face in an attempt to clear off all the moisture. She was no longer crying. “I’m sorry, Jane. I might have put Chuck up to that. I told him that I was worried about you and Dancey. I’m sorry.”

“What?” Now I was angry. I couldn’t believe that Taylor would mess with me like that.

“Crawley’s nice and cute,” Taylor said. “Why wouldn’t you be interested in him?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” I practically shouted. “He said some really creepy things about Bella. He said she was too easy.”

“So, he’s observant.”

“Bella is your friend!”

“Yeah, but Dancey is Chuck’s best friend and it doesn’t mean he trusts him. We know our friends, Jane. I would never wish Bella or Bertie—or Mary, for that matter—on Chuck’s brother.”

“But you would wish him on me?” I asked.

“Yes; I like both of you very much.”

That was very sweet but completely unnecessary. “Well, even if you thought this was the perfect set-up, I’m taken. Austen and I were in the middle of a date.”

“Austen?” Taylor sighed and brought her fingers to pinch the bridge of her nose like she had a headache. “Jane. You have a talent for going for the wrong guy every time. Austen isn’t interested in you. We all know that. Have you seen him with Junie? Do yourself a favor and actually go for someone who likes you.”

I couldn’t believe that I was hearing this. I stood, feeling my emotions curl into pain. “That was harsh, Taylor.”

“As harsh as telling me that Chuck is up to no good two days before my wedding? What did you expect would happen if I listened to you?”

My mouth flopped open. I wanted her to know the truth. Bigley had also been flirting with the waitresses, too, but it seemed trite to bring it up now, as though I wanted revenge. Taylor had officially shot the messenger.

Taylor put her hands on my arms. “What you saw tonight was Chuck trying to make me happy. He probably warned you off of Dancey too?”

“Yes,” I mumbled. “He wasn’t very nice about it.”

“That was also my doing. I’m sorry, Jane.” She hugged me and I took it, feeling stiff. “I’m the one who isn’t the nice one,” she said. “It’s not Chuck’s fault. I told him to scare you away from his best friend and I didn’t care how he did it. I was worried about you. We only did it because we care. Can’t you see that I care?”

“Yes, but Dancey and I . . . we don’t have anything going on right now. Austen and I . . .”

Taylor sighed and deserted me for her dresser. Her restless hands went to an assortment of flowers in a vase—they were leftover from the bridal shower. “Can’t you give anyone else a chance?” she asked. “You did this to Redd, too. You’re letting your crush on Austen stop you from getting into a real relationship.”

“Hey, what we have is real.” I wasn’t planning on sharing the intimate details of my romance because I wanted to keep it to myself and savor it for a while, but I was in a crunch. “Austen and I kissed tonight.”

Taylor’s sharp gaze pinned me. “Did he say he was going to stay here with you then?”

“Oh c’mon, like he’s going to change all of his plans because of one kiss?”

“You said it.” She took my hands in hers again and rubbed them. “Jane, it was only a kiss. Of course, Austen would want to kiss you—it’s you. You’re amazing. But that doesn’t mean he’s changed or anything has changed between you.” She turned to her cousin for support. “Tell her, Elly. Tell her to go for the man who might actually take this somewhere.”

“Elly married the man she loved,” I interrupted before Taylor’s cousin could say anything. “Of course Elly would want me to go for that too. She found true love.”

“And I haven’t?” Taylor asked in chilly tones. “Elly? Tell her.”

Elly looked uneasy. “I think, Jane, that the more sensible you are when you follow your heart, the better off you will be. But, I also think that the choice is yours. No one should make it for you, because you’re the one who has to live with it.”

I didn’t want to think about tomorrow, but what if I got so caught up in today that I threw my tomorrow away? The fact that I didn’t want to make a choice wasn’t good. I groaned. If Taylor couldn’t see Bigley for what he was and I couldn’t see that Austen wasn’t taking this anywhere, did that just mean that love made us stupid? I wanted to enjoy the moment that I had with Austen, but it was hard now that the moment was breaking apart. I was mad, mad that Taylor had a point. Austen had a point too. So did Bigley and Redd and Elly. They all had a point.

Don’t go for Dancey. Don’t go for Austen. Go against your heart.

I pulled away, fighting to remember why I had come. I still had to help Taylor see the truth, even if I had a hard time facing it myself. “If you knew that Bigley was a jerk, would you still marry him, Taylor?”

“No.”

At least that.

But maybe Bigley wasn’t a jerk. Taylor lifted a brow at me as if making a point. She was the strong one who sent her fiancé on impossible tasks and he did them. And I was the one holding on to a dying relationship because I was desperate to make it real. I couldn’t argue that I knew more about love than Taylor did. She was the one getting married, not me.

The only thing that I knew was that Crawley was a jerk. Okay, maybe I wasn’t so sure of that now that I was armed with important backstory. I’d have to peel back the layers of confusion to see the truth, and I wasn’t there yet.

I wished that I had the ideals of Jane Austen to fall back on. Everything was so clear when I could open a book and read it all in black and white. Then I could know who was good and who was bad; but Austen had taken that away from me. Now that I had to look at everything logically, including Austen, it was ruining my relationship with him.