Jeremiah was instantly grateful he hadn’t had a card trick ready for Shannon the moment she opened the door. He’d thought about it. Even had the cards in his hand, but he slipped them into his back pocket when he saw the other woman open the door.
A blip of irritation ran through him. Would he ever get Shannon when he knocked on her door? And were they eating brunch with her mother?
“Hello,” Jeremiah said, turning on the charm. “I’m Jeremiah Yeates.” He extended his hand, and her mom took it. “You must be Shannon’s mother.”
“How do you know that?” she asked, and even her voice sounded the same.
“Well, she obviously gets her beautiful black hair from you,” he said with a smile. “And I think it’s the eyes.” He squinted as if he couldn’t see her yes. “Yeah, I definitely think so. Cheryl has them too.”
“Them?”
“Dark brown. Same shape. Lovely.” He smiled again, nearing a victory when her mom flashed him a tight-lipped smile in return.
“Tell me your name again,” he said, unsure if Shannon had told him her parents’ names.
“Stephanie,” she said, and Jeremiah finally pulled his hand out of hers.
“That’s right. Stephanie,” he said. “Well, can we come in?” Hercules didn’t mind small talk, but Jeremiah didn’t want to do it on the front porch, without air conditioning and with any witnesses who happened to walk by.
“Sure,” Stephanie said. “I was just leaving. Just here to help Shannon with brunch.”
“Oh, I’m sure that wasn’t necessary.” Jeremiah hadn’t told Shannon that he usually only drank coffee for breakfast.
Stephanie coked one hip and looked at him. “I’m so glad she’s going out with you. For a while there, I didn’t think she’d ever get over Richard and what happened with him.”
Jeremiah had no idea how to respond, so he just stood there and blinked, his smile stuck in place. “We had a fun time last night,” he managed to push through his dry throat.
“She loved him so much.” Stephanie shook her head. “Anyway, I’m sure the eggs are getting cold. Come in, come in.”
Before Jeremiah could get his mind to work enough to tell his legs to take a step, Shannon appeared. “Mom, why are you making him wait on the porch?” She glanced from her mother to Jeremiah. “It’s boiling hot out here. Come in, Jeremiah.”
She stepped back, and Jeremiah tugged on Hercules’s leash to get the dog to move. They both entered, and Shannon murmured something to her mother, who then left.
“Sorry about that,” Shannon said with a big sigh. “My mom is funny sometimes.”
“Funny,” Jeremiah repeated, thinking of the magic cards he had in his back pocket. He turned from surveying Shannon’s house to find her right behind him. “Oh.”
She eased into his arms and tipped up on her toes to kiss him, the scent of her perfume mingling with something much sweeter. The doubts that had been swirling through Jeremiah’s head about whether she was ready to have another boyfriend dried right up. She certainly kissed him like she was ready to move on, ready to love someone else. And for now, that would be enough for him.
She pulled away and said, “So I made butterscotch sticky buns. And Mexican baked eggs, but it’s the first time I’ve used the recipe, so I have no idea if they’ll be good.”
“I’m sure it’ll be delicious,” Jeremiah said. He was taking his secret about eating breakfast to the grave with him. Besides, this was brunch, and he listened to Shannon chatter about her family and work while she dished up the food.
He followed her out to the deck at the back of her house, and it was shady and beautiful. “This is so great,” he said, sitting at the smallest patio table on the planet. His knees didn’t really fit underneath so he sat a bit sideways. He took a bite of the butterscotch sticky bun, the salty and sweet combination partying in his mouth. “Wow, this is amazing,” he said around a mouthful of bread.
“Yeah?” Shannon’s whole face lit up, and Jeremiah nodded.
He didn’t really like the eggs, and Shannon didn’t either, so he didn’t have to pretend. She took the plates back inside, and he enjoyed the tranquility of her backyard. When she returned, he pulled the cards from his pocket.
“So, I may have brought a couple of tricks to show you.”
Shannon paused and then clapped her hands. “Magic. Yes.” She sat at the table, her attention on him rapt.
He chuckled. “Oh, boy. I have a feeling you’re going to be extremely disappointed.” A flicker of nerves ran through him. Maybe this would make him seem like an idiot. Immature. Unworthy of his award—and her.
Swallowing, he said, “So I don’t use face cards in the office. So, these have cartoon characters on them and numbers. There are four colors. It’s a Go Fish deck of cards.”
“How very child psychologist of you,” she teased.
Jeremiah wanted to close the distance between them and kiss her. Kiss her until he couldn’t breathe, and then kiss her some more. He wanted to go to the beach with her and lie in the sand, their fingers entwined, while they learned everything about each other.
Instead, he started shuffling his cards. “So, it’s the basic trick. You pick a card and I tell you which one it is.”
He spread the cards out, and her eyes didn’t leave his as she selected one. He liked how they sparkled at him with just the right amount of mischief, and how she grinned at her card and slipped it back into the deck.
Jeremiah marked the one on top of it quickly; the oil on his hand would show up in a minute or so. He kept it in the bottom half of the deck, and had Shannon cut it twice, keeping track of approximately where it was.
Starting with the top card, he started turning them over one by one, at a rapid pace. “No, no, no,” he said as each one came up. He paused the way he did with his patients and said, “Maybe?”
He looked at her, then started laughing. “Nope, not that one.”
The marked card came up, a pale-yellow blip in the corner no one had ever seen but him. “Hmm, almost.” It was a blue six with a brown bear riding a bicycle.
He flipped the next card, revealing a red ten with a rabbit reading a book. “Yep. That’s it.”
Shannon shrieked and started laughing. “How did you do that?” She grabbed the card before he could sweep it into the pile with the others. She examined it carefully from all sides and angles before handing it back to him. “You really are magic.”
“Well, let’s not go crazy,” he said.
Her phone rang from inside the house, and she turned that way, the joy and flirty smile sliding right off her face. “Oh, no. That’s Hope’s ringtone.”
“You better get it,” Jeremiah said, seeing his afternoon on the beach with her slipping right through his fingers.
“She’ll call back if it’s a real emergency.” Shannon watched the house until the phone stopped ringing, and she’d barely swung her head back to him when the device started singing again.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, and she looked like she was too.
“It’s fine,” he said. “We’ve already eaten and done magic. Go get the phone.”
So she got up and practically sprinted inside—and in jeans that tight, Shannon had just accomplished something amazing. He heard her talking in a low voice in the kitchen, and he got up and stood at the railing.
“Don’t worry, Herc,” he told his yellow lab. “We’ll still go to the beach, okay?”
Hercules gave a soft snort and laid his head back down. A moment later, Shannon returned to the deck and stood next to Jeremiah. “I have to go into work for a little bit.”
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Shannon, I said it was okay.” He looked at her, the apprehension plain to see on her face. “What’s the big deal? Tons of people get called into work.”
“Yeah,” she said, breaking her gaze from his and looking up the hill. “Hope said it should be a couple of hours. We have a wedding next weekend and something fell through.”
“Then go fix it,” he said. “Herc and I will go to the beach at the yacht club. You can come down when you’re done.”
“You have a membership to the yacht club?”
“Yes,” he said simply. The longer she stared at him, the squirmier he felt. “Lots of people have memberships to the yacht club,” he added.
“It’s just…only rich people have those.”
“Do they?” he asked. “I had no idea.”
“Most of us just go to the public beaches.”
“Yeah, well, they get a little crowded for me in the summer.” It wasn’t like the yacht club membership was expensive. A few hundred dollars a year, and he could get their surfing, sailing, and swimming lessons at half price too.
Shannon cocked one eyebrow at him, and he stared steadily back at her. “You’re a beach diva.”
“Maybe I am.” He nudged her with his elbow. “But you’re going to be late for work, so get going. I’ll text you when Herc and I get to the fancy, divas-only yacht club.”
Shannon laughed, and Jeremiah held onto the sound during the quick drive home. Without her at his side, his doubts returned, and he wondered if he should be pursuing a relationship with her quite so aggressively. He could’ve let her come to him when she was ready to kiss him. Instead, he’d asked.
He sighed as he changed into his swimming trunks and made sure he had sunscreen in his backpack. Shannon hadn’t seemed to mind any of his advances—except that very first time he’d tried to hold her hand. So maybe her mother just didn’t know Shannon as well as she thought she did.
But if there was one thing Jeremiah had learned over the past fifteen years as he’d worked with a variety of children, it was that their mothers knew what was best for them. They wanted what was best for their kids, and they had gut instincts that never let them down.
So if Stephanie thought that Shannon would never move on from her past, Jeremiah had to listen to that. Didn’t he?
He wasn’t sure. Shannon wasn’t a minor child. She lived alone and did a lot her mother didn’t know about.
In the end, he packed the collapsible dog water bowl and a gallon-sized bag of dog food into his backpack and headed for the yacht club. The ocean would tell him what to do, and he was glad for the sparser population inside the club’s private beach area.
More room to spread out. More room to think. More room to hear what the waves were trying to tell him about Shannon and her past.
A week went by, and Jeremiah saw Shannon in the mornings and usually for lunch. There were a few days leading up to the wedding where she was so swamped with work that she couldn’t even take fifteen minutes to meet him.
He had a full client load that week too, and life settled into a normal rhythm for him. Working out, sleeping, eating, talking to clients, kissing Shannon. The receptionist at Your Tidal Forever didn’t sit and twitter over him anymore when he came in, and he was grateful for that.
Sunday evening found him lighting a candle that would make his house smell less like dirty laundry and dogs, because Shannon was coming over for dinner.
No, he hadn’t cooked. Jeremiah could make a few things, but why bother when he could call in an order and take twenty minutes picking it up?
His doorbell rang, cutting off after the first ding and then just making a loud, electrical sound. Hercules lifted his head and then hopped off the couch in favor of trotting over to the door to see who it was.
“It’s Shannon, bud,” he said, nudging the dog back so he could open the door. Sure enough, when he pulled open the door, Shannon stood there, looking radiant in a black shirt that fell off one shoulder and a pair of jeans that seemed like she’d painted them on.
“Hey, stranger,” he said, leaning into the doorway. Hercules went all the way out onto the porch to greet her, and she crouched down to pat him and say hello. She’d never been inside his house before, and Jeremiah held his breath for a moment, reminding himself that his place didn’t need to be exactly like hers.
She straightened, and he held perfectly still while she stepped into his house, into his personal space. “Hey.” She kissed him, a slow union of their mouths that made Jeremiah’s heart fire like a cannon and his blood ignite.
She walked past him and went inside, and still he stood there stupidly. Oh, he had it bad for Shannon Bell, and his heart wailed a warning at him not to fall too hard. Hearts shattered when they fell the way his felt like it was going to.
“Nice place,” Shannon called, getting his muscles to thaw, and he closed the door and turned to join her in the kitchen.