I finished my run—four miles in twenty-nine minutes with time outfor the cat, not bad—thumped up our front steps and into the house. Meg was in the kitchen making a salad while Amy set the table.
I grabbed a pitcher of water from the fridge.
Amy wrinkled her nose. “Get away. You smell.”
I ignored her. “Guess what? I just met our new neighbor.”
“You mean Trey?” Meg asked. “Seriously, Jo, you should take a shower before dinner.”
“Oh my God, he’s so gorgeous.” Amy sighed dramatically. “Like Edward Cullen.”
“Language,” Meg said. The Reverend Ashton March’s girls did not take the name of the good Lord in vain. Leastways, not when anybody could hear.
I lowered the pitcher. “Wait, you saw him?”
Trey’s hair was black, not bronze. But I could see how myTwilight-obsessed little sister could compare him to a sparkly vampire. There was that golden skin. That tall, lean build. Those almost black eyes, like he was hungry for something.
“He stopped by while you were gone,” Meg said. “To drop off Beth’s cat.”
“Oh.” I felt oddly deflated at having my big news scooped. “Well, good.”
It wasn’t like Trey was my exclusive property or anything.
But the following Monday at school I discovered that we were in the same grade. We took the same classes—Mrs. Ferguson for AP English, Mr. Clark for chemistry—even if Trey never exerted himself the way I did.“Suck-up,”he’d tease when he came over to our house to study.“Slacker,”I’d retort. We both went out for the school play, both ran cross-country in fall and track in spring. We werefriends.
Which was why it was such a mistake to complicate our relationship with sex.
I saw that now. Why couldn’t Trey?
CHAPTER 2
Meg
When we got married, I promised John—I promised myself, really—I wouldn’t go running to Momma with every little thing. I didn’t want John thinking I depended on my mother for advice. Anyway, we both agreed a married couple should solve their own problems.
Not that we were having problems. Every day I told myself how lucky I was to be living the life I’d always wanted. The life my parents had.
I buckled the twins into the big white Ford Explorer John insisted we needed. They looked adorable in their car seats, all dressed up in matching red-and-white outfits like little Prince George and Princess Charlotte.
“Juice,” DJ said.
I kissed his smooth head. “Not now, honey.” Even the lidded cups with straws I used in the car were no guarantee he wouldn’t dribble all over his tiny jacket. “We’re going to the fire station.”
Daisy bounced in her car seat. “See Santa!”
“That’s right.” I adjusted the barrette holding down her hair, suppressing a sigh over the loss of her pretty baby curls. “Santa will be there.”
Along with half the population of Bunyan. Every November, the volunteer fire department and rescue squad held a fund-raiser with free blood pressure checks and a Fire Safety House and Santa riding in on a shiny red fire truck. The early visit gave parents a jump on their children’s wish lists and the local merchants a jump on the mall.
When we were first married, we’d gone together. John and me. Not to see Santa, of course. But on weekends when he didn’t have a wrestling tournament—or a meet or a practice on Saturday morning—we wandered the stalls at the farmers’ market, holding hands and sampling cider. Part of the community. Everybody knew and liked the Caswell Cougars’ wrestling coach.
I’d always known I wanted a family, to share the kind of love my parents had. When I binge-watchedPride and Prejudicewith my sisters growing up, we all accepted that book-loving Jo was destined for Darcy. But that was okay. One day, I knew, my Bingley would come. I waited patiently while my girlfriends from high school all paired off, while my sorority sisters went out to bars and created online dating profiles, fell in love, and got engaged. In the two years after college, I bought six bridesmaids’ dresses with matching shoes, shopped for shower gifts and wedding presents, organized bridal luncheons and bachelorette weekends in Myrtle Beach and Charleston.
And then John walked into my life. Into the bank, actually, where I was working as a loan officer. One look at him—those warm, brown eyes in that comfortably handsome face, that too-short hair with the adorable cowlick—and everything else faded to gray while Shania Twain sang “From This Moment On” with all the violins. It was love at first sight.
“No such thing,” Jo scoffed when I called to tell her. “It’s a biological construct. Chemical attraction to promote pair bonding.”
For an English major, she could be awfully dense sometimes. I knew better. This was the man I was going to marry.
