“How did I manage what?” she asked.
“How did you manage not to trip over all the tongues that were hanging out when you walked through the room?”
Jenna felt her face heat, and she knew her cheeks were most likely matching her dress at this point. How did he dothat? How did he manage to compliment her in the most creative and flattering way to catch her completely off guard? It was unnerving and unfair. How was she going to survive tonight?
“Funny,” she said dryly.
His eyes lifted to hers, and all the oxygen left her lungs at the intensity in them, even as his lips curled in a playful grin. “I’m serious. I need to go tell Niko they should put down some of those yellow plastic A-frames that say ‘Caution: Wet Floor’ in case anyone slips from all the drool.” He started to walk away as if he was going to do exactly that, but she grabbed his arm.
Her cheeks flared with even more heat as she warned, “Stop.”
“Why?”
“Because,” she gritted out.
He stepped closer. “Because why?”
“Because it’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not ridiculous. It’s fun. Do you remember that? Fun?”
She did remember that. Fun was what ended up with her pregnant and married to a good man who loved her till he didn’t. Then fun ended up with her in bed with her neighbor, who then cheated on her with her best friend, which she deserved because karma…
Actually, James was never fun, scratch that.
“Yes, I do remember fun. I had my fun. If fun is what you are looking for, you should go look somewhere else.”
He shook his head. “Oh no. That’s where you’re wrong. You areexactlywhat I am looking for.”
Warning.Liar. Warning. Liar.
Those were the alarm bells going off in her head. So why was her heart melting? Why was her inner Scarlett O’Hara going full swoon?
The whys don’t matter, she told herself. The swoons and the heartmelts don’t matter. Nothing mattered but raising Blake to be the strongest, badass young woman exposed to the least amount of trauma possible. Jenna had already fucked that up big time.
First, by cheating with the neighbor. Then, by marrying the cheater, trusting the cheater, building a life with the cheater on cheating sand, and exposing her daughter to being traumatized once again when she walked in on her stepdad cheating with her “aunt,” a year before Jenna found out and her having to make the decision of whether or not to tell her mom.
It had weighed so heavily on Blake, which is why she’d started acting out, she went joyriding in a car drunk, and began flunking her classes. It nearly destroyed her. It all turned out okay. Asher ended up back in her life. They were all in Hope Falls, but Jenna put them in that situation. She’d exposed Blake to that.
Unaware of the internal turmoil going on in Jenna’s head, Deacon offered her his arm. “Shall we?”
She looked at him and bit the inside of her lip.
He leaned down and whispered in her ear, “I would tell you I don’t bite, but you know better.”
“Stop,” she warned him again but took his arm. Mainly because she rarely wore heels, and seeing Deacon in his tux had the effect she’d been worried about.
Her fingers wrapped around his bicep, and he guided them to table 45. She was surprised that she wasn’t familiar with the people at the table, then she realized it was because they were people from his world.
She met St. Claire’s co-CEO Mikayla Parsons, who looked exactly like Blake’s favorite actress Lauren London, who then introduced her to the rest of the table, the men all sounded like very important people with veryimportant titles. After she was introduced, she leaned over and asked Deacon how he knew them.
He said, “I don’t. It’s a fundraiser, I told Mikayla to invite people with deep pockets that got loose when they drank.”
Right. That made sense. If she had bought a table, she would have invited her friends. That showed how much she knew about his world.
Jenna was sure as soon as she sat down, Deacon was going to bombard her with questions, starting with why she hadn’t responded to him sending her the dress, or he would be giving her more…instructions. Neither of those things happened. Instead, he was justnormal.
He asked her about her day at the salon, figuring it must have been busy. He showed her, then sent her, a really cute video of the girls doing a cheer. He asked Mikayla to tell Jenna about her green initiatives, childcare, maternal/paternal leave, higher education for employees, and the four-day work-weeks that she wanted to model after Scandinavian companies. She was so passionate when she spoke, it was inspiring.
