“So you’re not. Too bad.”
“I didn’t say that. I’ve had some success.” More than some but he wasn’t going to admit that to this strange woman.
“Have I heard of any of your apps?”
How the hell would I know?he wanted to say. “I don’t know.” Goaded, he named a couple of his better-known apps.
“Sorry. Haven’t heard of them.”
“Now there’s a shock.”
“Why? I like apps as much as the next person.”
She might be beautiful but she was just plain weird. He cast around for something to say. “How long have you been away from Whiskey River?”
“A long time except for occasional visits. I left when I was eighteen.”
He guessed she was in her late twenties, since he knew Damaris wasn’t thirty yet and Jedidiah was the youngest of the Walker clan. Good God, he’d never met anyone so difficult to have a conversation with. “Why is Gabe introducing you to single men? Obviously you don’t need any help.”
She laughed. The first spontaneous and pleasant reaction he’d seen from her. It made her even more beautiful. “I’m pretty sure my brothers and hell, Damaris too, have got a pool going about how long it will take me before I leave again. Gabe figures if I meet someone I might stay longer.”
“Didn’t you say you were in the process of moving? And they’ve already got you leaving?”
She shrugged. “I was always unequivocal about not wanting to live here.”
“So what happened?”
“I changed my mind.” She looked over his shoulder. “There’s a very pretty woman headed your way. I’ll leave you to it.” She walked away, giving him a good look at her gown’s low-cut back. Damn. Weird or not, she was a knockout.
No ‘nice talking to you’ or anything else. She just walked away. He wondered what it said about him that he was much more intrigued by her indifference to him than if she’d been easy to talk to. Like the woman who’d just walked up to him.
Marcy Belton gave him an enthusiastic hug and would have kissed him if he hadn’t turned his head. He liked Marcy. They’d even dated for a while. But he wasn’t looking for a relationship and she totally was, so that had ended quickly.
Before long he felt compelled to dance with Marcy and he breathed a sigh of relief when he finally got rid of her. There was definitely something wrong with him that the only woman he’d found interesting at this event was one who had absolutely zero interest in him.
*
Jedidiah wasn’t surewhy she’d been so unfriendly to Trevor. Partly because he was at least the fifth man Gabe had dragged her to meet and her feet hurt and she was tired of being around so many people. When she wasn’t working, she was a bit of a recluse. And she liked it that way. Maybe it was a mistake coming home. After all, she hadn’t lived in Whiskey River in nearly ten years. It didn’t appear to have changed much. Same friendly but nosy people. Gossip still ran like a river, she’d already discovered. Basically the same Square. It had changed a little, but other than having a few more or different stores than when she was a kid, it wasn’t much different. So while Whiskey River hadn’t changed a lot, she sure as hell had.
You couldn’t be an undercover agent with a secret government organization for years and expect it not to change you. Even after she quit, she still—at heart—lived in the shadows. Not that she wanted to. Hell no, she didn’t. But retiring hadn’t changed her back to the girl she’d been. Nothing would.
Still, she’d made up her mind. She was done with the shadow-world life. That life had died for her when her partner and lover was murdered. She’d stopped doing undercover work and taken a desk job. Even that had been too much for her. Everything reminded her of her lost love. So she’d left it and come…home. Why was she resisting picking up the pieces of her old life? Her old, boring life. That was what she wanted now, wasn’t it?
No, she didn’t want boring. What she wanted was uneventful. Safe. Not dangerous or exciting. Damn, maybe she did want boring. She wasn’t an adrenaline junkie. Her taste for danger had left her the day her lover had been murdered.
Other than a few months when she first left Whiskey River, Jedidiah had been either in training or working for a little-known and mostly secret branch of the DEA. She’d liked it. Hell, she’d loved it. Her work had been challenging, exciting, and ultimately, fulfilling. That she’d fallen in love with a fellow agent hadn’t been a problem. At least, not until the end. But Noah was gone and had been for more than two years. She didn’t want to live the rest of her life longing for her dead love.
She’d actually liked Trevor. He was hot, but not full of himself as far as she could tell. And he was funny. If she hadn’t been so annoyed at Gabe, she might have made more of an effort to talk to the man. He’d been interested in her. At first, anyway. Probably not anymore.
She felt a twinge of regret. The guy was an app designer. Probably the exact type of man she should be interested in. If she was really looking for a man, which she wasn’t. Oh, well. If he’d been that easy to discourage then he wasn’t worth worrying about anyway.
