“Nothing, please. Let’s just consider it a gift from an old friend.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure, I’m sure,” I answered in an overly bright voice, knowing that I would never be able to work the register in my present state of agitation. “Least I can do, right?”
“Shit. Well, thanks. I don’t have anything to do for you in return. But we should get together before I leave, you know? We should do some catching up. Maybe I can buy you dinner or something, or what passes for dinner in this place.”
“Yea, if you have time. That might be nice.”
“All right, good. I’ll see you around, Fay.”
I nodded at him, feeling both relieved and sad when he was finally out of the diner and getting back into his truck. It was a nice enough offer, his idea of us going to dinner, but I wasn’t an idiot, or at least not a total idiot. Not as far as I could tell.
The dinner suggestion had been his way of getting the hell out of dodge as fast as he could. Nothing less and nothing more. For all the things that appeared to have changed about the guy, there was something other than his eyes that seemed to be the exact same as it had been when he’d gone and never looked back.
His desire to be as far away from little old Ashville as he could get was exactly the same as it had been when we were still teenagers. Although I wouldn’t have thought it was possible back when I was still an eighteen-year-old girl, Neil’s dislike of Ashville seemed to have grown instead of decreasing.
I’d heard the saying “absence makes the heart grow fonder” plenty of times. Everyone had. For Neil, the opposite seemed to be true. Absence seemed to have made his heart grow colder, towards Ashville as a whole, and undoubtedly towards me. I was nothing more than some silly little townie, and there was no way seeing me again was on his agenda.
My hand flew back up to my locket, and for just a minute, I could see the Neil that had been mine. The Neil that I had loved so completely. Then my hand dropped back to my side, and that image was gone, leaving in its wake the version of Neil I had just seen. This man was all work and no play for sure. If I saw him again before he left, I would be so stunned, someone could knock me over with a feather.
My guess was that seeing me again would only drive him to get his work done faster so that he could leave his past behind for good and get on with whatever fancy life he’d created for himself out there in the wide world.
“Well that was a trip and a half, am I right?” Courtney asked.
I turned to look at Courtney, who was beginning to look a little blue from all of her time in the massive refrigerator. I shrugged my shoulders in a gesture I hoped looked at least a little bit nonchalant. Not only was I not sure what to say, but I also wasn’t sure that I could trust my voice. Whether I wanted to be or not, I was kind of bowled over by what had just happened, and I needed some time to regroup.
“Come on, Fay. Don’t be mad, all right? I know you just wanted to hide from him, but really, why the hell should you? This is our diner. Not his.”
“I know. I’m not really sure why I was hiding, to tell you the truth.”
“Because you were surprised? Or who knows? Maybe he’s just like one of those guys in your books. What do they always get called? ‘The one,’ or some shit like that? Maybe he’s that, and your body just reacted.”
“Um, doubtful, Courtney.”
“No shit, it’s doubtful. Now come on, pour a girl a cup of coffee before she freezes to death. I swear, I can’t even feel my nipples anymore!”
And just like that, the strange and unexpected appearance of Neil was behind me. My real life came rushing back with full force. If there was one thing Courtney was good for, it was reminding a girl where she was. I poured her coffee, handed it to her, and the reached out and gave her an impulsive hug. It was something she would normally have shrugged off with a string of curse words, but this time, she let the hug slide. It wasn’t until we got an actual customer that I let her go. By that time, I was starting to feel a lot better. It had been a fluke, seeing Neil, and one I was sure I wouldn’t have to repeat.
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SNEAK PEAK: Mine Forever
Blurb
Jess White is trying to keep it all together. With a child to care for and only her sister to help her do it, she most certainly has her hands full and her job as a flight attendant doesn’t make keeping it all together any easier. When a gorgeous new pilot joins the team for one eventful flight, Jess can’t help but notice him but all of her warning bells go off. The last thing she needs is the complications that come with a hot shot pilot, especially one as good looking as this guy.
Drew Larson is all business, almost all of the time. He takes a no nonsense approach to his job as a pilot and doesn’t hesitate to implement it when he meets a less than responsible pilot. He has his life pretty well figured out, except for the hot blonde flight attendant he can’t seem to get out of his head. The last thing he wants is to get involved with a woman, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t interested in doing some very inappropriate things to the very sweet attendant on his plane.
As the tension begins to build, will Drew and Jess find a way to navigate their intersecting worlds or will everything come to a head and blow up in their faces?
Chapter 1: Jess
“Red light, Mom! There’s a red light coming up!”
The yellow light about to turn was something I had seen with no problem at all, but I hadn’t been prepared for the sound of my daughter's yelling. I slammed on the brakes of my little white Volvo, throwing both Emma and me forward in our seats. The seatbelt tightened, making me feel like I was suffocating, and I heard Emma make a little strangled sound as her own belt struck her across her throat. When I glanced back at the light, I saw that it was just, at that moment, turning from yellow to red. There had been no need whatsoever for the rapid stop. I rolled my eyes and glanced up at the rearview mirror, where I saw my beautiful ten-year-old girl smiling devilishly.