Page 81 of Last Chance Cowboy
But she didn’t know what to do to combat the foolishness. She was just a girl. A girl who was having her first grand affair, and how could thatnotbe obsessing?
She was so focused on that that when Jackson Carey walked in, she felt like she was having an out-of-body experience.
“Morning,” he said.
She blinked. “Good morning.”
“You weren’t here a couple of weeks ago,” he pointed out.
“Oh no. I… I sprained my ankle, and I took a little bit of time off. But I’m feeling good now.”
“Bad timing. I came in to see you, you were gone, and then I was out of town doing some work for my dad.”
“Oh.” Of course, they probably had some kind of family business. They were that kind of wealthy. He wasn’t very much older than her, but he had a professional job, thanks to his dad.
“But now that we’re both back, maybe it’s a good time for us to make plans for a dinner date.”
The wordnohovered on her lips, but for some reason, shedidn’t say it. Maybe because this could be a solution to the obsession. Maybe leaving the door open for another person was the solution to dealing with the intensity of her feelings for the current one.
“Um… maybe let’s talk about it next week? I have a lot going on right now.”
She wasn’tdatingZane.
Maybe she should go on a date with Jackson. But then… She wasn’t going to sleep with two different men. That was not something she was prepared to do, but she kind of wanted the experience of going out, and since Zane was a total secret, it wasn’t going to happen with him.
Of course, it would be more convenient if the whole thing with Jackson had happened after Zane, but…
She just couldn’t give an answer right now. Partly because she was standing in the middle of her bakery, with a line of customers beginning to form, and her employees scrambling as quickly as they could to fulfill orders. And being rude to a customer by saying she never wanted to go out with him was probably not the thing to do at the moment.
But also partly because she wasn’t sure that shutting the door entirely was smart. Not for the future.
Because she didn’t want to have this experience with Zane and then have all of her self-discovery just end.
“I just got a really big order for a family reunion, and I’m recovering from my ankle sprain and…”
“Sure. Whatever works for you. But as long as we have a date pinned somewhere in the future.”
“Somewhere,” she said.
He gave her a cocky smile and then walked out of the bakery without buying anything.
She mused about him while she cleaned the tables out in the dining area. It wasn’t that he wasn’t handsome, he was, there was just nothing about him that was really veryinteresting to her. Which wasn’t fair. How could you know if a person was interesting or not just by having a few scattered conversations, a little bit of small talk while you were on a work shift? You couldn’t. For all she knew, he was a totally interesting guy. Water that appeared shallower than it actually was.
She sighed, and walked back into the kitchen, and stopped.
The roll was gone. And in its place was a flower.
She walked over to the counter and picked it up, held it delicately in her hand, and sniffed it deeply.
He had left her a flower.
She had a smile on her face for the whole rest of the day, and it was still there when Zane walked in at closing time. He came in the back like he always did. She had his flower tucked behind her ear, and she turned to him and smiled. He did not smile back.
There was nothing she could do because her staff was still here, and he still wanted things to be a secret.
“I’ll finish everything up,” she said.
Annabelle and Joseph looked at each other, and she had a feeling they were canny enough to realize that she wanted them to go so that she could have some alone time with Zane, but she supposed as long as she didn’t say anything, it was still a secret.
