“Are you looking for company?” Bobbie asked politely, with a pointed look over at Jen’s mostly uneaten breakfast. “Sometimes it’s easier to eat with someone across the table.”

Is that why Jen barely ate? Because she was alone all the time?

“Thanks, but I’m heading over to the Thistle.” Jen gestured to the bright-green and orange website pulled up on Bobbie’s laptop and smiled. “I checked out your site. It’s excellently done.”

Bobbie looked delightfully surprised at that, sitting back against the booth cushion. “Thank you. Although, forgive me if I’m wrong, but you don’t seem like the type of person who’s into crafts and scrapbooking.”

Jen chuckled. “Nothing to forgive. You’re right. But it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a great business model and terrific design. You do it all yourself?”

“Yes. I was an interior designer for years in Boston, and when I retired I turned from the big picture to the small details.”

“I saw you have a huge online following. Almost half a million between social media and your blog? That’s really incredible. I mean, do you know that? Do you realize that most Internet entrepreneurs would kill for those numbers?”

Bobbie’s smile shifted from polite to genuine, widening as she bowed her head. “I do. But don’t sound so surprised. You’re starting to give me a complex.”

“I’m not surprised. I’m impressed as hell. There’s a million blogs and sites out there that just talk, talk, talk, but you’ve managed to create a pretty tight-knit community.”

At that, Bobbie’s smile faltered. She turned her head to the window. Across the street, a few doors down, stood the empty storefront that had once housed her shop. Jen had removed the old poster of Leith in order to put up her own newly designed promotions, but she’d rolled up the old one and brought it back to Mildred’s, intending to throw it away. Someday. When she got around to it.

The old Picture This sign swayed over the sidewalk, its color faded. Even the vines trailing up the stone facade looked a little forlorn.

“So why did my store fail?” Bobbie asked, almost to herself. She laced her fingers on the tabletop. “I thought the big virtual community would translate to something like a pilgrimage here, where I could talk to people one-on-one and work on projects. It wasn’t about money; I’ve got plenty of that. I really wanted to help out Gleann, too. I love Rob, but when I came here, I fell in love with this place almost as hard. So much character and history. Too much to be lost.”

Suddenly Jen’s fingers itched to get to a keyboard and translate all the words and tangents and ideas that were pinging around in her brain. A single concept could do that sometimes. A bare kernel of a notion or intention.

“I think you had the right motives,” Jen said, “about the pilgrimage. I’m just not sure that a single store was the answer. It wasn’t enough.” It would take a lot to make Gleann enough, too, but she left that part out.

“So what would you suggest?” Bobbie let out a soft, short laugh that others might have taken as snobbishness, but that Jen understood as a quiet challenge, from one smart woman to another. It was something she’d seen often on the face of Tim Bauer when she’d brought him a new concept and he would say, “Okay, lay it all out, get me the numbers, and then show me you can do it.” It was a look Jen relished, that charge to prove her worth, her acumen.

“Let me get back to you.” A warm glow bloomed in Jen’s chest, spreading out through her body, coming alive with possibility. She beamed at Bobbie. “I have an idea. Or fifteen.”

Only when she reached the gate of the Thistle and stopped short, looking up at the sweep of Tudor eaves, did she realize that back in the Kafe talking to Bobbie, she hadn’t thought of Iowa or her mom once. 

Chapter

14

Leith had been back in Connecticut for two days, since Friday. He hadn’t exactly told Chris the truth when he’d fled Gleann last Thursday. Before Connecticut, he’d meandered through Vermont, checking out the location he’d been considering before Rory Carriage’s call had come through. It didn’t feel like he belonged in Vermont, maybe because it was too similar to Gleann, or because it didn’t have the energy and potential that Stamford had. Or maybe because Vermont was simply too far away from New York City.

Here, in Connecticut, the city—Jen’s home—was a bridge away. A highway drive. A train ride.

He leaned against the driver’s side door of his truck in the motel parking lot, holding his phone and staring to the southeast.

Duncan called then, gloating about how much he’d bench-pressed earlier that day. He sounded slightly drunk.

“You working okay with Jen?” Leith asked him.

There might have been a little laugh in Duncan’s voice; it was hard to tell over the mobile line. “Jen. How did I know you’d bring her up? Yeah, she’s all right. A bit intense, but really smart. Really organized. Not bad to look at, either. I think everyone in the valley is breathing a little easier this weekend, though.”

Leith’s stomach did a little flip. “Why?”

“I guess she went back to the city for a few days to take care of some things. Supposed to be back on Monday. You still driving around New England looking for new roots?”

He pushed away from his truck. “The city. As in New York?”

“No. Phoenix. Of course New York.”

Jen had texted him once Thursday afternoon, after she’d likely heard he’d taken off. Just wanted to make sure you’re OK, it had said. What a shit he was, to not have at least told her himself that he’d gone.

M OK, he’d texted back. Sorry I left. Promise I’ll call later.

“Dougall?”

“What? Sorry, man. I gotta run. I’ll give you a ring when I get back.”

The second Duncan disconnected, Leith called Jen. His leg bounced as he waited for her to pick up—because she never let that thing go to voice mail—the thick sole of his work boots thump thump thumping on the pavement.

“Hey there.” She sounded a little out of breath, like she’d scrambled to pick up. It made his heart jump. In a good way. “Are you back in Gleann?”

“Wouldn’t you know that, if you were there, too?”

“I’m not. I’m in New York for the weekend to take care of a few things.”

“I know. That’s why I called. I’m still in Connecticut. I want to see you. If I hopped on a train, would you go out with me tonight?”

All this was happening incredibly fast. He hadn’t known this was what he wanted to do when he’d called, just that the thought of her being so close to him, away from Gleann, was alluring beyond words, and a chance he didn’t want to miss.

“You mean like a date?”

He was bounding up the outdoor steps to the crappy motel room, tugging his dingy T-shirt out of his jeans to get ready for a shower. “Exactly like a date.”

“What do you have in mind?”

He unlocked the motel room door and toed off his boots. “Don’t care. You pick. I don’t know the city that well.”

“All right. You trust me?”

Going still, he caught his reflection in the generic mirror and noticed he was smiling. “Implicitly,” he said, and meant it.

“Good.” He glanced at a schedule and told her which train he’d arrive on, then she gave him instructions where to take a cab to meet her. Even though he was going to see her shortly, he didn’t want to get off the phone, and he wasn’t a big phone talker at all. She said good-bye and he hated it.

“Wait. Jen?”

“Yeah?”

“I just want you to know, that if it wasn’t highly illegal, I would have killed Olsen for interrupting us the other night.”

She exhaled in a way that had him picturing her lips in a beautiful O. “See you in a few hours.”