Secretly Smitten (12 page)

He tried to take her hand, but she jerked it away. “Tess, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Isabelle told me, okay? You don’t have to pretend any longer. I know you’re only dating me to find a mother for Sophia.”

“Isabelle said that?” He still sounded bewildered.

“I know all about Candace’s infidelity. I’m sorry about that, but it’s not okay to—to . . .” She ran out of words and out of strength.

He knelt in front of her. His dark curls gleamed in the wash of lamplight. The earnestness of his eyes drew her. “Tess, do you really think everything I’ve said has been a lie? Have you seen evil in me, Tess, have you?”

Her shoulders sagged. “No,” she whispered. “I’ve seen only goodness and mercy in your life.”

His lips smiled, but his eyes were serious. “Part of what Isabelle said is true. It’s hard for a man to admit he wasn’t enough for his wife. And I wasn’t enough for Candace. She was never happy at home. She craved bright lights and adulation.” He ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled. “Some of it was my fault. I was working a lot of hours. She told me she wanted a divorce just before Sophia was born. We argued, and she went into labor early. Forty-eight hours later she was gone.”

“I’m so sorry.” She could hear the heartbreak in his voice and longed to heal his pain.

“So am I.” When he smiled again, the humor reached his eyes. “But I’m ready to love again. It sneaked up on me. I finally realized I was going to the bookstore for me, not for Sophia.”

She dared to cradle his face in her hands. His cheeks were smooth. He must have shaved tonight before he came to pick her up. “Can you say that one more time? I can’t quite grasp it.”

His hands circled her shoulders and he drew her close enough that his breath mingled with hers. “How about I make it clear, Miss Tess? I love you. I’m not quite sure when it happened. Maybe when you came into the store in that ridiculous clown suit. I knew then that you were a woman who would always be herself. Good, true, honest. And so very beautiful.”

When he pulled her toward him, she went willingly. His lips were everything she’d dreamed of: firm and warm and oh so tender. The feelings that washed over her weren’t motherly at all. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back with all the passion she could muster. Which was quite a lot.

She lost all sense of place and time with his warm breath caressing her face. She could spend the rest of her life in his arms. And she had a suspicion that was exactly what he was planning.

CHAPTER ONE

Z
oe Thomas perched herself atop the metal ladder and straightened the wooden sign that read
Cupid’s Arrow Matchmaking Services
. She looked down at her older sister, who stood on Main Street’s brick walkway. “Better?”

“A little higher on the right,” Clare called up. Zoe wondered if it would ever be straight according to Clare’s exacting standards.

She pressed upward and peered down again to the brick sidewalk. “Now?”

“Perfect,” Clare confirmed.

Zoe breathed a sigh of relief, amazed that Clare hadn’t produced a level from the overalls she wore. Clare could survive in the woods for an eternity with all that came out of those gardener pockets of hers. Zoe jumped from the ladder and brushed her hands together. Seeing the hand-painted calligraphy announcing her business made everything so real.

“Can’t you just feel the love? Imagine Smitten being bitten by its own love bug. And Nat’s marriage to Carson was the perfect kickoff to my new business.” Zoe’s heart filled with possibilities, seeing the fruits of her labor. The tired storefront looked fresh and inviting with its newly painted wood-paned windows and a gold-framed “services offered” announcement. She’d draped two small crystal chandeliers in jewel tones to bring attention to the services menu, and with a little specialized lighting, the display would emanate romance.

Clare grimaced. “This is still Smitten. If the men here have been bitten by anything, it’s something closer to a mosquito carrying malaria.”

Zoe’s shoulders slumped. Poor Clare, never looking for the spontaneous. “Life is too short to be so serious, Clare. We can’t exactly claim to be the romance capital if we don’t believe our own slogan. Romance should start here; we shouldn’t simply import it.” She blew her bangs off her glistening forehead. “It’s hot already today. I’m glad we started so early.”

Clare wouldn’t allow her to change the subject. “The point is, Smitten is a romantic
destination
. The couples bring the love with them. We just warm the embers of the fire they’ve already built. I’m worried, Zoe. You could lose everything with this.”

“We have plenty of single men and women in Smitten. Why shouldn’t we start a spark of our own? Remember that song we sang at church camp?” She struck a pose and started to sing. “It only takes a spark to get a fire going . . .”

“Fire, and a bit of dynamite might get things going.” Clare’s ponytail bobbed as she spoke, which was a lot of passion coming from her serious older sister.

“Now you’re just being surly.” Zoe knew Clare’s words came from a deep need for security. In Clare’s mind, one didn’t just willy-nilly up and decide to start a business. It took expertise like Clare possessed in gardening, and then accountants with ten-year forecasts for the math skills the sisters hadn’t mastered. “If I lose everything, I’ll let you be the first to say ‘I told you so.’ How’s that?”

“I’m only saying”—Clare spoke in her soft, motherly tone—“I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that I’m worried about you. You’ve worked so hard for what little you have. Why not forget all this and go to college? Smitten will be here when you get back.”

Zoe waited out the recycled warning. Advice that had already come from her cousin Natalie, from her mother, and from most everyone in town whom she’d ever been straight with in her long history of not being able to keep her opinion to herself. People had a nasty way of enjoying telling her their predictions of imminent failure, which only made her want to succeed more. Not to prove them wrong, but because she believed so strongly in what she was doing.

“Not everyone has a big family like we do, Clare. People are lonely. I see it every day when I deliver dinner to the shut-ins. Human contact is what makes life worth living. If I can make that happen for one person, it will be worth it. Okay, I guess it would be two people . . .”

Clare rubbed her head as if the conversation gave her a migraine.

“Smitten needs a matchmaker. Dating in a small town is never a secret, so folks keep to themselves rather than risk public humiliation on a relationship that might fail. This way it’s my failure, and no one is the wiser. Do you see?”

“Not really, but somehow the Lord always looks out for you. I’m going to pray he works extra hard this time.”

“We have different ideas of success, Clare. If all it takes for people to be less lonely is a little initiative on my part, that’s worth my time and money. Don’t you think? The failure is in ignoring my calling.”

“Everyone in town already knows each other,” Clare protested.

“That’s true, but with the neighboring towns, the seasonal employees, and even with the locals, they need encouragement. They need a chance to get to know one another without the pressure of everyone knowing their business. Maybe they think love is not in the cards for them, but it’s actually right in front of them if they’ll only take this small risk.”

“And pay the small membership fee.” Clare shook her head. “Zoe, I love how you care for people. I really do. I’m only worried there’s no money in this as a business. Your heart is so huge that you never think of details like cash flow. Trust me, it matters.”

Clare ran a seasonal plant nursery, and she worried each winter that this was the year she wouldn’t make it to spring.

“I know you’re good at discerning people who might belong together, but does that mean there’s a business in it?”

“Maybe they won’t pay,” Zoe said. “I’ll make you a deal. If I haven’t turned a profit within the year, I’ll apply for college next fall.” She regretted her words the minute they tumbled out of her mouth, but it only meant Cupid’s Arrow had to work.

Clare exhaled audibly. “All right, Zoe. I don’t understand it. I never have understood that romantic view of life you’ve got, but if this is what you want, I’ve got no choice but to support you.”

Zoe had heard that her whole life, about her romantic dreams and magical, dreamy way of thinking.

“Why
didn’t you go to college, Zoe?”

“Smartest
girl
in
town, but you’ve got no ambition.”

“There’s an entire world outside of Smitten if you’d only go search it out
.”

But she wasn’t as starry-eyed as everyone thought. She simply had no interest in a world bigger than Smitten. She had everything she needed right here: good friends, people she loved and cared about deeply, a ministry with the town’s senior citizens. Now that she’d started her own business, her family should finally feel the same way.

The screech of metal punctuated by an awkward
clank
seized their attention. Zoe rushed to the wobbly ladder and caught it right before it hit her storefront window. She braced the ladder against the clapboard wall and pressed her back against it to hold everything steady, but a spray of nails rained down around her. She glared at the stranger who had mistakenly walked into the obstacle, and tried to make sense of what just happened.

The first thing she noticed was his eyes. They were a color she’d never seen before, a watery mix of gray, blue, and green—like a rare marble she might have fought over as a child. Against the man’s tan skin, their intensity was heightened. She searched for something rational to say but kept getting lost in his gaze, which was like a mystery she needed to solve.

She finally snapped out of her dreamy state and realized that he was bleeding.

“I’ll call you back.” The man, dressed in a fancy dark city suit with a look-at-me sheen, pressed at his ear, and she assumed that he was disconnecting from some type of innerear Borg device. He took her hands into his own. “Are you all right? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

He dropped one of her hands and touched her hair—a touch she felt to her toes. He showed her a long silver nail that he’d removed from her hair and smiled in a way that felt so intimate she clutched the collar of her T-shirt to protect herself.

“You’ve got a small cut,” she managed. “C-come in the back and I’ll clean it up.”

He rubbed his right temple where he’d run into the ladder. She could see the red mark developing. Selfishly she worried she’d have her first lawsuit before she opened the doors for business, but she quelled the thought.

The mystery man pulled a handkerchief from his suit jacket and dabbed the side of his head. “I’ll be fine. I’m not sure how I missed that ladder.”

She looked at the rusted ladder and pondered the same thing, but she didn’t want to say anything to incriminate herself further.

“I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, but it’s against city policy to obstruct the sidewalk during business hours without a permit. Do you have a permit?”

“I . . . uh, what?”

“A permit. You can obtain them at city hall. Soon you’ll be able to download an application off the Internet, but you need to give me at least a month for that.”