Page 118 of Save the Date
“Tell me.”
“You’ll think I’m being ridiculous.”
“Probably. Tell me anyway?”
“I don’t know. This just… it feels so nice. And normal. Walking down the street holding hands with a cute boy…”
“A boy? You make it sound like we’re teenagers.”
“All of a sudden, I feel like a teenager. I’ve truly had the most appalling day in a most appalling week, and then Jack Finnerty shows up at my door, wearing a starched dress shirt and polished loafers, and smelling like aftershave. And he’s taking me to dinner… and for a few minutes there, it made me forget my troubles. It made me remember what it’s like to have somebody to care about.” She blushed. “I told you it was silly.”
“C’mere,” Jack said. He pulled her into the darkened lane between Charlton and Jones and pressed her back against the wall of a pink stucco town house. “I’ll make you feel like a teenager.” He ran his hands beneath her shirt and slipped his tongue in her mouth.
Cara gave a very small, very feeble squeak of protest. She kissed him back, twined her arms around his neck, pulled him closer. Emboldened, he worked his thumbs under the band of her bra, teasing her nipples until she gasped and gave him a gentle backward shove.
“I amnothaving sex with you in an alley,” she said, smoothing down her rumpled tunic.
He chuckled and kissed her again. “We don’t call them alleys in Savannah. We call them lanes. Anyway, you’re the one who said you liked feeling like a teenager.”
“I didn’t say I liked being felt up like a teenager in public,” Cara countered. “There’s a time and a place for everything.”
Jack sighed and straightened his own shirt. “Same old story I used to get in high school.”
***
They’d just given the waiter their dinner order when Jack’s cell phone buzzed. He took it from his pocket, read the text message, and gave a loud grunt of exasperation before putting it away again.
Cara raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Zoey. I’m not answering her because I don’t want to encourage her.”
“Just out of curiosity, what does she want?”
“She claims her car won’t start. Wants me to come give her a jump. Okay, poor choice of words. Her battery is dead. Or so she claims. It’s all a ruse.”
Cara leaned forward. “Can I ask you something? What’s Zoey like? How did the two of you end up together in the first place?”
“How does anybody end up together? Dumb luck. I was dumb, she was lucky. Or the other way around. How about we talk about something else? Anything else? You said you’d had a bad day? Tell me about that.”
Cara looked around the dining room. She was glad they had come here tonight. This was good. A nice distraction. The tablecloth was pale yellow linen. There was a candle in a glass jar, and a small clear bud vase held a stem of pink alstroemeria that was a day past its prime. Perhaps she should talk to the owners about doing flowers for them. Her eyes rested on Jack. With a start she realized she might never get tired of looking at him. He had a tiny spatter of white paint on his left earlobe. His sunburnt nose was peeling. She looked at his big hands. His left hand was resting on the tabletop and he was clutching a glass of red wine in his right hand, and she noticed his thumbnail was blackened.
Her day?
“Where do I start? The Colonel continues to hound me about my bad debt and bad business decisions. Also, another contractor showed up at the shop this morning, all set to come in and look around on behalf of Cullen Kane.”
“That guy,” Jack said.
“And on top of everything else, I fired Bert.”
“For real?”
“He left me no choice. He’s been coming in late, leaving early, just generally slacking off. I figured he had some new boyfriend, but he kept pushing the limits. And this thing with Lillian Fanning’s missing epergne, he kept acting as though I was the one accusing him of stealing it. I never accused him. Whatever else he might be, Bert is no thief. Finally, today, I’d had it. I told him if he left early he could stay gone. So he did.”
“Nothing else you could do,” Jack said.
“Not long after that the second contractor showed up. He had a key to my place. He let himself in the back gate. That was the final straw. I was so mad, Jack, I couldn’t even see straight. Who the hell does this guy think he is?
“I drove over to his shop-—I mean, excuse me, Cullen Kane Floral Design Studio. And you’ll never guess who was working as Cullen’s new receptionist. Bert. My Bert!”
