Jeremiah had no idea what to do to fix things between him and Shannon. She’d been playful and flirtatious only moments ago. Why had he reached over to hold her hand?
Just because he saw his trainer, Brandon, do such a thing this morning didn’t mean Jeremiah could do the same thing. Brandon was tall and built and worked out for a living. Every female who came into the fitness center looked his way, and as far as Jeremiah knew, Brandon went out with a lot of them.
But Jeremiah didn’t need a lot of dates. He just wanted one with Shannon.
“We have to make a stop,” he said.
“Oh?” she asked, and he was grateful she was able to speak.
“Yeah, I need to pick up my dog.”
“Dog?” Her voice definitely held some alarm now.
“His name’s Hercules, and he’s the most gentle dog you’ll ever meet. He’s a therapy dog, for the kids.” He glanced at Shannon and watched her physically relax. “Look, I’m sorry about that. I just thought we were getting along so well, and I really like you.”
Horror struck Jeremiah, finally rendering him mute. Why had he said that? What was wrong with him this morning? Maybe his crush on this woman was too big to contain now that he’d opened the top flap of the box where he’d kept it all this time.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I have—I mean, my last boyfriend—”
Jeremiah heard panic and anxiety in every word she said, and he hated it. Wanted to erase it all. “It’s really okay,” he said.
“I don’t want you to judge me,” she said. “Or you know, try to get inside my head.”
Jeremiah pulled into the driveway of Maribel Martin and put the car in park. “Is that what you think I’d do?”
Shannon lifted one shoulder in a small shrug, which meant yes, that was exactly what she thought.
“I have to go get Hercules.” He suppressed a sigh as he got out of the car, and shock travelled through him when Shannon did too, meeting him at the front corner of the car.
“Look, I just have to tell you something,” she said. “And—” Her mouth stayed open, but her voice muted as if someone had pressed a button.
She was jittery, and Jeremiah hated that his touch had transformed her from the flirty fun woman he was crushing on hard to this scared shell of Shannon. He was extraordinarily good at waiting for people to talk, so he stuck his hands in his pockets, and did just that.
Shannon raised her chin, and Jeremiah made the mistake of looking right into her eyes. He lost himself for a time and he didn’t even know how long.
“My last boyfriend,” she started and that brought him back to the moment. She cleared her throat, but she did not look away from him. She possessed some serious strength and that only made her more attractive to Jeremiah.
“My last boyfriend assaulted me,” she said, the last thing Jeremiah had been expecting.
His eyebrows went up, and then immediately down into a frown. “You mean…he….”
“He was my boss, and he tried to force himself on me.”
Rage and fear struck Jeremiah right in the heart. “Shannon, I’m so sorry.” He wanted to reach for her hand, hold her and tell her everything was all right. But it clearly wasn’t. His brief touch had scared her, and he loathed that he’d done it.
“So I was just a little jumpy,” she said. “In the car. I wasn’t…expecting you to hold my hand.”
“It won’t happen again,” he promised.
Shannon tilted her head, some of the anxiety bleeding out of her expression. “I just need, I don’t know, maybe some warning next time.”
Jeremiah lifted his eyebrows again, aware that Hercules had his nose pressed to the front window. The dog wouldn’t bark; he was much too trained for that. But he’d clearly seen Jeremiah and wanted to come out. Now.
“Next time?” Jeremiah asked anyway, sure Hercules could give him a few more seconds.
“I mean, I wouldn’t—” Her eyes flew to the door as it opened, and Jeremiah turned that way too.
“Hello, Maribel,” he said, lifting his hand in a wave. “Be right in.” The older woman hobbled out onto the porch, followed by Hercules, who came down the steps like the elderly canine he was. Jeremiah pointed at the ground, which told the dog to sit down at his feet. Hercules complied, which always made Jeremiah a little proud.
He faced Shannon again, but her attention was on Hercules. “Can I pet him?”
“Sure,” Jeremiah said. “Herc, say hello.”
Hercules hauled himself to his feet again and went closer to Shannon, who ran her hand along his head. The dog was in complete bliss, and his tail whipped back and forth to show it. Jeremiah chuckled as he tried to muscle his way between her knees.
“He has a sensitive spot right at the base of his tail,” Jeremiah said. “Herc, knock it off. Come on. Let’s get loaded up.” He took a step toward the car, and Hercules came with him. He used to jump right up over the door into the back of the convertible with the top down, but now he waited for Jeremiah to open the door before he got in.
Jeremiah opened his door too, watching Shannon round the hood and go back to her side. They got in together, and he started toward the beachfront properties where they worked, his mind whirling and twirling with what she’d told him.
I mean, I wouldn’t—
How would she finish that sentence? She wouldn’t what? Ever want to hold his hand? Ever want him to think he had a shot with her?
But she’d said next time too, so Jeremiah didn’t know what to think. He parked, got the dog out, and started down the sidewalk that led to the boardwalk that passed in front of his office.
“No coffee this morning?” Shannon asked, and Jeremiah froze.
“I forgot, with all the…with picking up Herc.” He picked the dog up from someone almost every morning, and he’d never forgotten his coffee run at Roasted. No, he’d forgotten because of Shannon. The nearness of her addled his brain, and he couldn’t make his thoughts line up.
He turned around. “I’ll get yours too. The line’s sure to be out the door by now.” He took a few steps backward. “Maybe you can take Herc into your office with you? What do you get?” He’d seen her order caramel mochas before, but sometimes she got the Chai green tea, and sometimes the dark roast blend with extra cream.
She looked from him to the dog and back. “I’ll just come with you,” she said, and Jeremiah didn’t want to argue with her. So he didn’t.
They all loaded up in the car again, and this time, as soon as he’d turned onto the road that led back to the coffee shop, Shannon reached across the console between them and laced her fingers through his.
Surprise and joy twisted together and rose through him. He looked at her, and said, “So this is okay?”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Like I said, I just wasn’t expecting it.”
Jeremiah squeezed her hand, happier now than he’d been in a long, long time. “So, you’ll just tell me what’s okay and when it’s okay,” he said. “Is that fair?”
“Is that okay with you?”
Jeremiah eased to a stop at the intersection and looked at her instead of checking both ways for oncoming traffic. “Shannon, of course it is.” He did check for that traffic now, feeling some more word vomit coming up. “I’ve, uh, maybe had a little crush on you for a while. So yeah. You tell me what’s okay, and when, and that’ll all be fine with me.”
“A little crush?” she echoed, pure delight in her voice now. “Is that so?”
“Yeah, that’s so,” he said, grinning at her and making the turn onto Main Street and heading down toward the other bay and Roasted. “Coffee’s on me today. But none for you, Herc.” He looked at the dog in his rear-view mirror and then cut a glance at Shannon. “The caffeine makes him cranky.”
He was rewarded with the sound of Shannon’s laughter, and it was more beautiful than he’d even imagined.
“Mom?” Jeremiah called that evening, having put in a long day at the office and not getting to drive Shannon home. Her car had indeed been fixed, and she’d caught a ride with a friend at work to the tire shop.
“In the kitchen,” his mom called, and Jeremiah smelled the slightly burnt scent as he moved through the living room. He glanced around, but there was no evidence of anything scorched. No smoke.
“What’re you making?” he asked, infusing a lighthearted note into his voice, still looking for that charred something-or-other—and now his father too. “Where’s Dad?”
“Oh, he nearly burnt the house down making toast, so I sent him out to the garden. He’s out there talking to the roses.” His mother gave Jeremiah a smile. “And this is my homemade chicken noodle soup.”
“You know it’s almost summer, right, Ma?” Jeremiah smiled at her and pressed a kiss to her wrinkly cheek.
“Gertie is sick, so I’m taking most of it to her.”
A lifelong neighbor, Gertie had been friends with Jeremiah’s mother for probably fifty years. Maybe longer. Even he had a soft spot for the widow who’d crocheted him hats as a child, though he’d never needed one on the island.
“Should I see if she needs her lawn mowed tonight, too?” he asked, already tired but determined not to show it. He let his dad putter around in the rose garden, but he’d forbid his parents from using any sort of power tool a couple of years ago. They both still had driver’s licenses, but they didn’t go to town much.
Jeremiah had turned them onto the grocery delivery service, and he stopped by several times a week too. There was an open invitation for them to ask for anything, and he’d bring it to them.
He came over every Tuesday night to get their lawn done, and he put their trash out before he left. He stopped by on Wednesdays to get the can back up the driveway and make sure they had everything they needed.
Truth was, Jeremiah loved his parents, and he didn’t mind the huge time investment they required from him. After all, he didn’t have much else going on in his life except his practice and his workouts.
“Her son is coming this weekend,” his mom said. “So she’s probably fine.”
“All right,” he said. “You and Dad are still coming to the dinner next weekend, right?”
“Of course,” she said. “We wouldn’t miss it.”
Jeremiah nodded, wondering how to phrase his next sentence. “I got a date.”
She didn’t even turn from the stove, so the soup was definitely more interesting than his love life. “Oh? Who did you ask?”
“This woman named Shannon Bell. She works in the building next to my office.”
“Shannon Bell,” his mother repeated. “That name sounds familiar.”
“Does it?” Jeremiah didn’t know much about Shannon’s family, but she had said they’d lived on the island for decades. So maybe they knew his parents, though surely they were younger than his almost eighty-year-old mother and father.
“I don’t know,” his mom said. “Last night, your dad asked me what my grandmother’s name was, and I couldn’t remember it.” She gave a light laugh, but Jeremiah knew his mother’s memory loss bothered her. A lot.
“It was Susana,” he said, giving her a quick kiss. “That’s why you named Suzie, well, Suzie.”
“Ah, yes,” she said. “Susana Laura Blockly.”
“Yep.” Jeremiah gave her a quick smile. “Don’t give away all of that soup. I’m going to go talk to Dad and get the lawn done. Then I want to eat.”
“Okay,” she called as he went out the back door, and Jeremiah got hit with the stunning beauty of Hawaii in his parents’ backyard. From the lush trees, to the emerald green grass, to the brilliant blue sky.
Well, the sky was currently undergoing a gorgeous sunset, and the scent of flowers replaced the burnt-toast smell from inside. Sure enough, his father shuffled among the rose bushes that hadn’t quite bloomed yet. But they would soon.
“Hey, Dad.” Jeremiah lifted his hand in a wave and continued toward the shed in the back corner of the lot.
“Hey, Miah, come here for a second.” Only his father called him Miah, and he actually liked it. He changed direction and paused on the threshold of the rose garden.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t let your mother take that soup over to Gertie’s,” he said. “She twisted her knee this morning, and she’d not stable enough to go down all our steps and up all of Gertie’s.”
“Twisted her knee? She didn’t say anything about it.”
“That’s because she doesn’t want you whisking her off to the hospital.”
“Dad,” Jeremiah said. “I had to take her last time. She needed stitches.”
“I know, I know.” He clipped something for a reason that escaped Jeremiah’s intelligence. “But just volunteer to take the soup over.”
“All right,” he said. “Can I mow the lawn first?”
“Sure,” he said. “There’s plenty of time.”
Jeremiah had learned that his parents did have plenty of time for anything they wanted now that they were retired. So, he got the lawn mowed and his hands washed, and then he said, “Ma, I’ll take that soup over on my way out.”
“Oh, thank you, dear.” The fact that she didn’t argue indicated that she had indeed hurt herself.
He collected the jars of soup for Gertie and went down all the steps at his parents’ place and up all the ones at Gertie’s. After ringing the doorbell, he listened to the breeze blow down the street, almost imagining the roar of the waves as they crashed against the shore. But he knew he couldn’t really hear them from here.
“Jeremiah?”
He turned at the familiar voice that was nowhere near old enough to be Gertie’s. “Shannon?”