Janelle Taylor

“Do you really think so?” Jordan asked, looking up at him.

He couldn’t allow himself to answer her truthfully.

Instead, Beau found himself reaching toward the errant strands of hair that grazed her cheekbone. It wasn’t a conscious gesture; it was as though his hand belonged to somebody else, as though he had no control over the movement.

He dared to let his hand linger there against her cheek, allowed his thumb to trace her jawline downward. When he tucked his thumb beneath her chin and lifted her face so that he could look into her eyes, he found something utterly unexpected in them.

A smoldering spark of attraction.

She was as drawn to him as he was to her.

He closed his eyes briefly, knowing that when he opened them it would be gone, that the shared passion would prove to have been his imagination.

But when he looked down at Jordan again, there was no denying the electricity that darted between her gaze and his. Before he knew what he was doing, Beau dipped his head and kissed her.

It was a fleeting, blazing kiss, one that told him all he needed to know.

Jordan Curry was dangerous.

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“Hi, this is Beau Somerville again, calling for Jordan. I got your message last Friday canceling Saturday night, and I hope you got mine rescheduling for tomorrow night. Unfortunately, I have to take a rain check on that. Give me a call and we’ll reschedule again, hopefully before I leave on vacation next week. Sorry. “Bye.”

Jordan Curry sighed as the Creole-accented male voice signed off and her answering machine beeped twice, signaling the end of today’s second message.

The first had been a farewell call from her parents, reminding her that they were off on their Alaskan cruise for three weeks.

Newly retired from the social-studies teaching department of Jordan’s hometown high school, Clark Curry had vowed to spend the rest of his life seeing the world. Naturally, her mother was gung-ho for the plan. After
three blissful decades of marriage, she was gung-ho about just about everything Jordan’s father did.

Jordan sat on the edge of the rose-and-cream-colored couch and bent over to remove her low-heeled navy leather pumps.

So Beau Somerville was postponing their blind date yet again, she thought, as she flexed her aching feet. Maybe he had a legitimate excuse.

Maybe not. Maybe he was as reluctant to go out with a total stranger as she was, despite his being newly relocated to Washington and not knowing a soul.

Jordan had done her best to resist Andrea MacDuff’s efforts to fix her up. But the wife of Louisiana Senator Harlan MacDuff—and Jordan’s most high profile client—wouldn’t take no for an answer, basically assuming that her wish was Jordan’s command.

With her conservative Deep-South upbringing and old-fashioned values, Andrea refused to accept that Jordan wasn’t husband hunting, or that running a successful Washington catering business was as fulfilling as marriage would be.

So Beau wanted her to call him back to reschedule again?

Maybe she would—later. If she was in the mood to talk. Right now, she just wanted to trade the fitted navy business suit and pantyhose she had worn to meet a new client for a pair of shorts and a T-shirt suitable for lounging around with a Lean Cuisine and the latest issue of
Martha Stewart Living.

Gathering her pumps in one hand and picking up her bulging leather briefcase in the other, Jordan rose and padded across the plush ivory carpet toward the stairway leading to the bedroom, flipping on lights as she went.

It wasn’t yet dusk on this muggy June evening, but the sky outside had grown dark with the threat of an impending thunderstorm.

On the second floor, she paused in the hall to adjust the central air to a lower setting. When she had first stepped in from the ninety-five-degree humidity, the town house felt cool. Now it was bordering on stuffy.

This was her third steamy Georgetown summer, but Jordan still wasn’t used to keeping the windows closed and the air on.

She had grown up in a leafy Pennsylvania town nestled on a hillside in the Allegheny foothills, where only the supermarkets and the local hospital had central air-conditioning. Jordan had always liked falling asleep on summer nights to the sound of crickets chirping, occasional breezes stirring the wind chimes, the hushed, distant chatter of her parents, and the front porch glider creaking gently under their weight.

There was something decidedly sterile about closed windows and the faint hum of the air conditioner—but it was a necessity in this part of the country.

In the bedroom, Jordan couldn’t help admiring anew the pale yellow-on-white sponge-painted walls and white crown moldings. The redecorating job had been completed by her painting contractor only last week, replacing blue walls that made even this spacious room feel closed in.

She had chosen to redo everything in shades of springtime. Her new moss-green-and-yellow floral-sprigged Ralph Lauren comforter and imported Egyptian sheets were still in their zipped plastic packages on the floor beside the king-sized bed. A just-purchased area rug to cover a portion of the polished hardwood floor remained rolled up at the far end of the room.

Jordan yawned, wondering if she should get busy opening the packages, laundering her new purchases, and unrolling the carpet.

Nah.

She was too exhausted to finish the redecorating job tonight, as she had been every night this week. Maybe she would get to it tomorrow, now that Mr. Beau Somer-ville had canceled their date. Again.

It was just as well. She shouldn’t be dating in the first place.

She reminded herself that she was perfectly content to spend her evenings solo right here at home. In fact, she would welcome the chance to indulge in the domestic hobbies she had loved since childhood: baking, decorating, gardening, needlework …

Then again, she had to admit that some of those hobbies might be better suited to a different lifestyle.

After all, one person could only eat so many homemade fudge brownies and cutout sugar cookies before wishing there were other mouths to feed.

Decorating the unspectacular rooms of a Georgetown duplex wasn’t the same as redoing a real house—a lived-in house with a nursery, a playroom, children’s bedrooms.

Although every available inch of Jordan’s square brick patio and wrought-iron rails bloomed with colorful annuals in terra-cotta pots, and the railings were draped with fragrant boxes of potted herbs, container gardening on a small town-house terrace didn’t compare to landscaping a backyard.

And after stitching countless needlepoint samplers as gifts for friends’ weddings and babies, even the most content single gal could find herself growing a little wistful for what might have been.

After stripping off her suit, Jordan opened the double closet and deposited the jacket and skirt into a wicker hamper half filled with clothes that were bound for the dry cleaner. As she pushed the hamper in again, it caught on a plastic-draped garment hung in the very back of the closet.

Jordan frowned, moving aside the billowing length of plastic-shrouded white silk organza.

Her wedding dress.

Every time she tugged the hamper forward or pushed it back, it bumped into the garment, reminding her of a day she would much rather forget.

“Why don’t you just get rid of the damn dress?” she grumbled to herself, firmly closing the double closet doors.

Because that would be even more painful. Then she would actually have to remove the wedding gown from the recesses of the closet and carry it downstairs, put it in the car, take it out again, and hand it over to …

Well, to whomever one presented wedding dresses that had been worn for exactly forty-five minutes.

Forty-five minutes.

That was how long it had taken for Jordan, the would-be bride, to ride in a limousine from her parents’ house to the flower-bedecked country church nearby.

To pose for several pictures outside, alone, and with her parents, and with Phoebe, her maid of honor.

To stand, grasping her father’s arm, at
the
foot of the aisle while the minister stood poised behind the pulpit and the organist played Pachelbel’s Canon in D four times through, and the expectant gazes of the congregation volleyed from Jordan to the vacant spot by the altar.

Finally, Kevin’s tuxedo-clad younger brother, David
Sanders, the best man, materialized in the doorway leading back to the rectory and hurried over to whisper to the minister.

As Jordan watched, her heart pounding and her bouquet of white lilies trembling, David hastily retreated.

The minister, now somber, walked slowly down the aisle toward Jordan.

Of course she knew, before he told her, what had happened. It was obvious. Maybe it was even expected, somewhere in the part of her mind obscured by denial.

Kevin, whom she had loved since they were seniors in high school, had changed his mind.

Kevin wasn’t going to show up.

Kevin wasn’t going to marry her after all.

Jordan winced even now, remembering the pain and humiliation that had coursed through her, remembering the pity clouding the familiar faces that filled the pews.

Phoebe had put her protective arms around Jordan, tears of sympathy shimmering in her eyes. Mother had bolted from her front row aisle seat and came scurrying down the aisle, determined to shield her jilted daughter from the curious gazes as Daddy ushered them all back out to the limousine.

Jordan’s younger brother Andy and a couple of the other groomsmen had already tied old cans to the bumper and propped a big “Just Married” sign on the back window. The cans made a hollow, scraping sound on the asphalt as the limo transported the silent bridal party back home, There, Jordan discarded the white silk organza dress in a rumpled heap on her bedroom floor before collapsing in despair.

It was thrifty Phoebe, the product of a threadbare, impoverished household and newly married herself,
who promptly rescued the dress, returning it to its padded hanger and covering it in plastic. “It cost hundreds of dollars and it’s still brand-new. You can always sell it,” Phoebe said, when Jordan informed her that she’d just as soon toss the gown into the nearest Dumpster.