Page 3 of The Lucky Heart (Jamison Valley 3)
The next time I saw him, I would apologize for my behavior and tell him I’d like to build a friendship. We could put tonight, and all the other nights, behind us and move forward.
As friends.
Because this crazy idea that he’d ever love me back was just that.
Crazy.
Two days later, I was riding in the back of the new Suburban my brother, Jess, had bought his wife, Gigi. Mom was riding shotgun, my baby nephew, Ben, and six-year-old niece, Rowen, were safely buckled in the middle seats, and Gigi was with me in the third row.
We were all going downtown for Prescott’s annual trick-or-treating event. Kids paraded along the sidewalks collecting candy from the local shop owners while adults scurried along after them. Everyone in the Suburban was excited.
Everyone except me.
“What’s wrong?” Gigi asked. “The hole in your jeans has grown since we picked you up.”
I tucked my fingers under my legs to stop from picking at the denim frays. “I’m a little nervous,” I admitted. “This is my first public outing. You know the gossip mill is going to be churning and I’m sure I’ll be a hot topic.”
Returning home from Seattle after a decade and a half was juicy news and I could practically hear the whispers.
I heard she got dumped and came running home to lick her wounds.
Do you think she’s still a stuck-up bitch?
I bet she moved back because Wes is dead.
This was not going to be fun.
“I wouldn’t worry,” Gigi said. “You’ve visited a lot these last couple of years. The novelty of you has worn off.”
“I hope you’re right.”
I’d spent fourteen years away from Prescott, never visiting once. But two years ago, when I’d come home for my ex-boyfriend Wes’s funeral, Jess had asked me if I’d consider moving home. It hadn’t been an easy or fast decision to abandon the life I’d built in Seattle, but it had been the right one.
Mom was getting older, my brother’s kids were growing up, and I was missing it. So after a sixteen-year absence, I was back. Once again, I could call myself a bona fide Prescott resident.
“Aunt Lissy?” Rowen called, pulling me from my thoughts. I wasn’t particularly fond of the nickname my dad had given me as a toddler, but in Roe’s singsong voice, it sounded kind of wonderful.
“Yeah?” I leaned forward so I could see her freckled nose.
“Will you watch me tonight?”
I smiled. “Sure.”
I wasn’t exactly sure why she always wanted me to watch her, but whenever I’d come to visit, she’d ask me to watch something. Her new dance moves. How good she was at coloring. Her singing on a karaoke machine. And now I’d watch her trick-or-treat.
Having never spent much time around kids, they were still a bit of a mystery but I was doing my best to get to know my niece and nephew. Jess and I had grown up without an extended family and it had been lonely. I didn’t want that for Rowen and Ben, and since I was their only aunt, I was here to participate.
Besides, Rowen was a doll and watching her was no hardship. Tonight, she was dressed up as a fairy princess, looking more and more like Gigi every day. They had the same long, brown
hair and deep-blue eyes. One day she would grow to be a beautiful woman, just like her mother.
“Felicity, stop.” Gigi’s hand landed on mine. Absentmindedly, I had resumed picking at my jeans.
“Damn it,” I blurted, then caught myself as Rowen giggled. “I mean, darn it.”
Gigi smiled. “Jess cusses all the time. She’s heard ‘damn it’ before.”
“He cusses, but you don’t. I’m trying to be less like him and more like you.”
