Only the quaint, historic building separated her from Sebastian, and she felt her tenuous resolve slip away. What if he refused to see her? What if he was still angry about the past? What if he agreed to see her but simply wouldn’t listen to reason? She might not be able to get him to talk to Miles or anyone else from Harrington Media.
She pressed her fingertips to her temples. The spiral was gettingher nowhere. Miles had faith in her—why didn’t she have it in herself? And if she did fail, it wasn’t like she was going to be fired... right? Oh no. What if she was? She couldn’t afford to lose her job. She still had a loan and credit cards to pay off from trying to help Logan and Lydia—
Thump. Thump.
She jumped at the sound on the driver’s side window. When she turned, she could see only the beltline on a pair of well-worn khakis. “Can I help you?” she asked through the glass. Years of living in a big city had taught her to be cautious.
“You can’t park here.”
Jade froze, recognizing the man’s voice before he bent over and peered at her. And when she raised her gaze—oh...my—she was face-to-face with Sebastian Hudson.
* * *
Seb blinked as he stared at the auburn-haired woman in the car. When he saw she’d taken his reserved parking space—the only perk he allowed himself as publisher and editor in chief—he was irritated. Everyone in Clementine knew not to park here. Then he saw the Illinois plate on the back of her car, and he settled down. He couldn’t blame an out-of-towner for stealing his spot. He parked in the next space, got out of his thirteen-year-old red Nissan Altima, and knocked on the window. When she turned and faced him, he froze.
She looked familiar—so familiar that he... no. It couldn’t be her. And for a minute he was sure she wasn’t. The Jade Smith he remembered had a short pixie cut, and this woman had long hair with luxurious waves that fell past her shoulders. Yowzah. Green eyes too, but green eyes and red hair weren’t a rare combination.Besides, there wasn’t a single reason on earth for Jade to be in Clementine, much less Arkansas. She’d shaken off the dust of the state over a decade ago. This must be her doppelganger—
Honk!
He jumped and pressed his body against the woman’s car as an old truck almost hit him. He spun around and saw the vehicle slow down, hitch and jerk, and finally park crookedly in one of the last empty spots in front of the news building. He peered at the truck. Hold up. That was one of Bo’s junkers. But his friend wouldn’t drive like that unless he’d been drinking, and that was impossible. Bo had been a teetotaler all his life.
Knock. Knock.
The woman seated in her car now at his back tapped on her window a third time. Oh, right, the Jade look-alike. He stepped aside as she opened the car door. “Lady, I know you’re new here, but this is my—”
“Hey! Are you Mr. Hudson?”
Seb turned as a very young woman advanced toward him. So Bo wasn’t driving the truck, thank goodness, and this must be Kalista, Viv’s stepdaughter—
“Sebastian?”
Slowly he turned. This was no doppelganger. This was Jade.HisJade. He shook off the thought. She’d never been his.
“Mister?”
Kalista’s high-pitched question pulled his attention away again. He glanced at her, seeing her tapping one sandaled foot. How did he manage to get sandwiched between these two?
“Excuse me, we were talking before you pulled up,” Jade said, peering around Seb.
“Whatever.”
Seb’s gaze bobbed between them as they stared each otherdown. Jade’s cool-as-an-ice-bath expression had met its match in this high-and-mighty teenager. He’d seen Jade in this mode plenty of times at work. Business Jade was all business, and she could be a bit intimidating.
Kalista was undeterred. “I have an interview.”
“I have a meeting,” Jade responded.
Meeting? What meeting?
“And I was here first,” Jade added.
“Beauty before age, right?”
“Excuseme?”
Unnoticed, Seb slowly backed away, hurried into the building, and went straight to his office, quickly shutting the door behind him. He sank on the chair behind his desk. Now that he’d met Kalista, he wasn’t impressed. She was haughty, and he wasn’t about to subject any of his employees to her entitlement. Besides, she probably wouldn’t take a lowly delivery job anyway. Then there was the fact that she seemed to be a terrible driver, at least with Bo’s truck. He’d go through the motions of the interview for Bo’s and Viv’s sakes, then move on to finding someone else.
But he had no idea what Jade was talking about. Surely, she wasn’t here to meet him. But who else would she be meeting with? Evelyn Margot was working from home this morning— something she did fairly often. She could call advertising leads from her apartment just as easily as she could from her office here.
