Finding Jack, page 20
“Come up here.”
The words burst out of him so fast I wasn’t sure his brain knew what his mouth had said yet. “Excuse me?”
There was a long silence, then I could hear him take a deep breath. “Come up here. On your comp days, I mean. It’s quiet. And pretty. And I want to see you.”
“Jack…”
“Just think about it.”
As if it hadn’t suddenly become the only thought in my brain. Go see Jack? I tried to clear my head of the only image it was interested in projecting: me sliding my hands up his shoulders while he leaned down for a—
I cleared my throat. “I don’t think that would be a friendly visit. Friendish. Friendlike?” I stopped talking before it turned into nervous chatter.
“No,” he said, his voice quiet. “It wouldn’t be.”
I bounced on the balls of my feet, glad he couldn’t see all the nervous energy suddenly spilling out of me. “It’s a moot point if I don’t meet this deadline.”
“Then I’ll let you get back to work.”
“Coming to Oregon, that’s borderline crazy.” I bounced faster.
“Think about it anyway.”
“Like I’m going to think about anything else now.”
“I hope not. I can’t.”
Chapter 32
And I didn’t. I managed to keep my mind running down two tracks, but even at my most focused on work for the next three days, there was an underlying script running in the background. Come to Oregon. Come to Oregon. That’s crazy. Think about it anyway.
Tuesday night near midnight Ranée wandered out to the kitchen for some water. “Whoa,” she said spotting me at the table. “You still working? I thought you guys were set.”
“We are. Everything came out fine in QA. I’m just refactoring a few code smells.” When she blinked at me, I said, “It’s like dotting I’s and crossing T’s.”
“Got it. So it should be fine tomorrow?”
“Should be.”
“How are we going to celebrate you surviving your first major project as a manager?”
I shrugged, still distracted by Jack’s invitation. “I don’t need any more shoes.”
“Meet me at Sarno’s after work. Drinks are on me.”
“I might be too exhausted for that.”
“But you have to do something.”
Yeah. Like go to Oregon. I shifted in my seat. I hadn’t told Ranée about Jack’s invitation because I didn’t want to hear her input. I wanted to make a clear-headed decision about it. Unfortunately, Ranée had learned to read me too well.
“Something’s not right.” She sat and peered at me. “What’s going on? Work got you down?”
I shook my head. “It’s been good. Hard, but this was my first of our biannual hell weeks and I’m getting through it fine.”
“So what’s up? Why not celebrate?”
“Because…”
She crossed her arms in a way that said she wasn’t moving until she got an answer. “Talk to me.”
“I’ll get a couple of comp days if the rollout goes well tomorrow, which it will.” I flicked a glance at my checklist, which I was going through for the fourth time. “I’ll get an extra-long weekend. So Jack asked me to come up.”
Her jaw dropped, and she gaped for two whole seconds before it shifted into a slow smile. “Well, well, well. When do you leave?”
“I don’t think I’m going.”
That wiped the smile off her face. “Why not?”
“For all the same reasons as before. Sean says Jack is buried under some sort of avalanche of guilt, and I’m not the rescue crew. It’s not my job to save him from himself. I don’t have the skills for that.”
“The skills? Girl, what do you think it takes to pull someone out of a rut?” She held up one hand, turning it this way and that. “This is all you need. All he needs. A hand up. This doesn’t take special training or equipment.”
“But this isn’t a simple rut. I’m worried if I pull him out that I’m going to have to keep carrying him. I’m not that strong.”
“You can’t carry the weight or you won’t carry the weight?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“It does. And what’s more, I think you’re being overdramatic. Let’s imagine you go to Oregon. What’s the best-case scenario?”
“Jack and I have perfect chemistry and fall madly in love and he leaves everything behind to live in San Francisco. But you know that’s not how my brain works. I’m already thinking ahead to the problems, so I can solve them, but I see no good solutions.”
“We’ll get to that. Tell me the worst-case scenario.”
“I go to Oregon and we don’t have any connection.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “You think that’s a possibility?”
An image of him smiling while he pushed his hair out of his eyes flashed in my mind. “No.”
“Tell me your real worst-case scenario.”
I knew it too well. “That Jack and I have perfect chemistry and fall madly in love but we both stay exactly where we are, and I get to deal with ‘what might have been’ for the rest of my life.”
“Aren’t you there yet?”
My forehead wrinkled. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that if you don’t go to Oregon, aren’t you going to wonder what might have happened if you had gone?”
There was no arguing with that. She was right.
She leaned forward and rested her hands on my knees, squeezing them to make her points. “You like him”—squeeze—“and he’s into to you”—squeeze—“and I think you already fell for him”—squeeze—“so any other story you’re telling yourself is a lie”—squeeze—“and so what if he needs a little rescuing? Whatever else you guys may be, you ARE”—squeeze—“friends, and you’d do the same thing for me. But I won’t make out with you, and he will, and you should definitely”—squeeze—“get on that.”
She sat back and crossed her arms again. I rubbed my knees.
She made a good point. If I tried to escape life too long, Ranée would come looking for me. And I would do the same for her. Jack was my friend. He’d become a really good friend. Shouldn’t I do the same for him? Because the thing she was most right about was that I’d always wonder if I didn’t go.
I rubbed my eyes. “I can’t even think about this until we push out the update tomorrow.”
“But you’ll think about it as soon as the update goes live?”
“I’m going to be dead tired when work is done.”
“Emily.” It was a tone of warning.
“I’ll make a decision after work tomorrow.”
“You better, or I’m going to decide for you. Spoiler alert: my decision involves kidnapping you and driving you to Oregon.”
“Go to bed, Ranée. I still have work to do.”
“And decisions to make,” she sang as she obeyed and disappeared down the hallway.
I worked until I napped on my keyboard. Then I put myself to bed for a few hours and headed into the office early. The update was scheduled to go live at 3:00 AM so that computers could do automatic updates overnight, but I wanted to be there when the East Coast opened for business to track any issues in real time. I was at the office by 6:00 AM, and by mid-morning it was obvious we’d executed the update successfully.
Peter, my boss, tracked me down in the developer’s workroom mid-morning. “Just the person I was looking for. Raj,” I asked one of the junior developers, “could you bring in two chairs from the conference room, please?”
When Raj returned with the chairs, Peter climbed onto one and held up his hands. “We’ve been running for seven hours with no error reports, guys. You killed it!”
A cheer went up from my team. Peter turned and extended a hand. “Take a step up, Emily. Let’s hear it for your fearless leader,” he said, when I climbed on the chair beside him. He high-fived me, and they cheered even louder. “I know you guys have been putting in a lot of overtime to make this happen, so Emily, put together a skeleton crew and take the next two days off. You’re not allowed to be on it. The crew will get their comp days next week. If there’s anyone on your team that you think deserves longer than two days, consider it approved.” That won the loudest cheer of all.
“Really great work. You can take the chairs back, Raj,” he said, climbing down.
“Not yet,” I said. Peter looked up at me questioningly. “Not until each of them also stands on the Chair of Glory for a high five. Hop up, Raj.” Grinning, he did as ordered, and I slapped him five while the other developers scrambled to get in line for theirs.
“This is why you’re going to go far, Emily Riker.” Peter saluted me before heading back to the executive suite.
I let the developers with the most overtime leave at lunch and hung around with the skeleton crew until the day officially ended at five. We only had two issues come up, and both were user error, easily solved.
A few minutes after five, Hailey stopped by my office. “Someone said you got here at six. You must be wiped. Go home and sleep.”
I shook my head. “I know I should be exhausted, but I’m not. And I have a couple of things left to do.”
“All right, but I’m out of here. I better not see you back in here before Monday.”
“You won’t,” I promised. I picked up my phone as she shut the door behind her. I had an important call to make, and I couldn’t help smiling as I tapped in the Portland area code.
Chapter 33
I slung my suitcase into the trunk of the rental car at the Portland International Airport and settled into the driver’s seat, but I hesitated before starting the engine. I took a calming breath. Once I put this car in gear, I would be on the road to Jack.
He didn’t know it yet. Sean had offered to pick me up from the airport when I called him to tell him I was surprising Jack and that I needed directions to the clinic. But I wanted my own transportation so that…
Well, so that I could leave the second I wanted to if things didn’t go right.
I slid the key into the ignition and took one more deep breath before turning it. Time to do this.
My phone guided me to Highway 26, and I settled in for the drive. Focus on the journey, I told myself. I tried to pay attention to the pleasing contrast of modern buildings against the lush Portland greenery, but my attention kept jumping ahead to my destination. What would happen when I got there? How would Jack react?
My lips quirked as I replayed Ranée’s prediction when I told her why I needed a ride to the airport. “Yes, girl! You are Princess Charming. He’s going to swoon when he sees you.”
I tried to focus on the Oregon scenery again, but it was useless. I spent the next hour imagining all the ways this could go wrong or really, really right until I wasn’t sure which one had twisted my stomach into an impossible knot by the time I signaled for the exit in Featherton.
Sean told me that Jack took lunch every day around 1:00. That was an hour from now. I drove to the only motel in town, checked in, and freshened up my makeup and hair. And then there was no more stalling. It was time to find Jack.
I found the clinic without any trouble. It was a block off the main street in a low, squat building, but it was covered in new siding and bore a neat little sign reading, “Featherton Health Clinic.” I opened the door to a small waiting room. There was no one at the receptionist desk but a sign scrawled in marker read, “Ring bell if you need the doctor,” next to a silver call bell.
The only other occupant was an elderly woman sitting in the corner. She had a pile of knitting in her lap, but she wasn’t doing anything with it. She smiled at me and massaged her hand absent-mindedly. Maybe that was why she wasn’t knitting. “Dr. Hazlett said he’s running a little behind, but isn’t he always?”
I made a sound that suggested I sympathized.
“Anyway, he’s been back there awhile, so he should be out soon. I just need a steroid injection, so I’m sure he’ll be with you in no time.”
“I’m not in a rush,” I assured her. It was the truest thing I’d ever said. Now that I was here, I could see how insane my plan was. I should have told him I was coming, not shown up at his place of work. Or better yet, not come at all. What was I thinking?
I needed to get the heck out of here and at least call to let him know I was in town, so we could decide when and how to meet up. I was halfway out of my chair when the door leading back to the treatment rooms opened.
“—fill this over at the Sandy pharmacy and you’ll be—” He caught sight of me and stopped talking.
I offered a tentative smile while I drank in the sight of him. He wore gray jeans that were almost dressy enough to look like business slacks, and a button down blue shirt but with no tie, open at the collar.
He looked delicious.
Um, perfect. I meant he looked perfect.
“Doctor?” The middle-aged woman at his side stared at him expectantly.
He cleared his throat. “Uh, yes, get this filled and you should be good as new in a couple of days.”
She coughed into the crook of her arm, thanked him, and left. Jack leaned against the doorframe. “Hi,” he said quietly.
“Hi.” I gave him a tiny wave. His voice was as warm as it had always sounded over the phone and FaceTime but richer, somehow.
A smile had started working on the corner of his mouth. “Mrs. Castille, I’ll take care of you in just a minute. I’ve had an urgent case come in.”
She tilted her head and studied me. “You do look feverish, honey. Your color is high. Go right ahead.”
If my cheeks hadn’t been hot before, they were flaming now. Jack didn’t even try to hide his grin. “This way, Miss Riker.”
He led me to a room that was bare of anything except for a desk and his medical license hanging on the wall. There weren’t any photos or personal effects. He pulled a couple of chairs to the same side of the desk and waved me into one before taking the other.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” he said.
“I can’t either. Is it…um, are you okay with this?”
“So okay with it. I mean not okay with it. Happy? I’m happy about it.”
It sounded almost like a question, and I wondered if I had made a huge mistake in surprising him this way. “Sorry, I should have called.”
“Wait, why are you apologizing?”
“You don’t seem certain you’re happy to see me? Like it was kind of a question?” I hated the insecure way my voice rose at the end of each sentence, but I couldn’t seem to stop it from happening.
His eyes widened. “I messed this up. I was trying to think of a way to tell you how happy I am that you’re here without completely freaking you out. Um, but the answer is super happy.”
“Oh. Good.” Relief spread through my chest in a gentle billow, like the soft puff of a newly washed sheet tossed to settle on a bed.
Er. Maybe I needed to focus on different analogies.
“Could I get a do-over?” he asked.
“Sure?” I had no idea what it would entail, but he rose and opened the door, waving me through it.
When I stood on the other side of the open door, he stood in the office and gave me a sudden look of delight. “Emily? Is that you? Are you really here?”
“Yes, Jack. It’s me. I’m really here.”
“Come right on in,” he said, stepping aside so I could pass him. But this time when I walked into the room, he shut the door behind us and gave me a slow smile.
“Hi, Emily Riker. I’m going to kiss you now. What do you think about that?”
I reached out to catch the edge of his lab coat and tugged lightly. “That’s what I’m here for.”
He backed me against the door and framed my face with his hands. They were warm and steady as he leaned down and brushed his lips against mine, and I slid my hands up to his shoulders to pull him closer. “Hi, Jack Hazlett.”
He kissed me again, a real one this time, and I melted into him as he tangled his fingers through my hair. My lips opened beneath his, an invitation to explore, and he took it, turning the kiss deep and long. I clasped my hands behind his neck for support and disappeared into the wave of heat breaking over me. I didn’t even want to come up for air. For long minutes we didn’t, until he finally broke away to trail kisses along my jaw.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he whispered. I tilted my head to give him better access to my throat, and I managed a soft, “Me too. But wait.”
I pushed against his chest, the lightest pressure, but he immediately gave me space. “I just wanted to inspect this for myself.” I reached out to touch the hair gathered at the nape of his neck.
He wound a strand of mine around his finger. “I like yours. It’s lighter than it looks onscreen.”
“I like this enough,” I said, touching his lips, “to overlook any opinions I have about your crowning girly.” And I kissed him before his grin could even spread all the way.
He kissed me breathless, and just as I felt the kiss turning hungry, he pulled away to rest his forehead against mine. “I’m so glad you’re here. But I still have to take care of Mrs. Castille.”
I blinked at him and then his words registered, and I slipped out of his arms with a gasp. “Oh my gosh, I forgot about her.”
“I don’t want you to go.” He groaned and reached for me, but I stepped out of range.
“No, you’re right. Poor thing, sitting there in the waiting room. What time are you done today? Maybe I can meet you after work?”
“It’ll take me a few minutes to treat her then I’m free for lunch. I’ll call in an order to a place called Annie’s and we can eat here.”
“Tell me where to pick it up. It’ll keep me busy while you take care of your patient.” I pointed to the door before he could sweet talk me. “Now you should probably see to Mrs. Castille.”
He reached for the handle. “Okay, but you promise you’re coming back here?”
I darted over and laid another kiss on him. “Only because you asked nicely.” Then I slipped under his arm and headed out to the reception area.
Mrs. Castille glanced up at me. “Now you’ve got a rash all over,” she said, pointing to her mouth. “I hope Dr. Hazlett fixed you up with something good.”
