LITMIR.BIZ

      5

      Laura had spent most of the night wrestling with the covers and her confusing thoughts after spending the evening with J.C. To her surprise he’d fit right in with her friends from school. Once the teasing remarks had quieted down, they’d all cheered themselves hoarse as Serenity had managed to prevent a tying touchdown in the final seconds of the game.

      Outside the stadium, he’d offered her a ride back to her car, but she’d insisted that Nancy could drop her off. He’d looked vaguely disappointed, which had surprised her after his insistence earlier in the evening that she wasn’t to construe his dinner invitation as anything other than a chance to discuss Misty and the problems she was having at school.

      On the way to the parking lot by the medical practice, Nancy had had a million questions, which Laura had managed to sidestep fairly deftly, she thought.

      “The man just offered to bring you over here himself. What is wrong with you?” Nancy had asked, regarding her with dismay. “I know his company has to be far more scintillating than mine.”

      Laura had laughed. “Despite what he said at the game, we were never on a date, Nancy. Scintillating doesn’t enter into it.”

      “Well, it should,” Nancy told her. “He’s the most available bachelor in the entire town, a doctor, no less. The competition has been fierce for years, and you’re the first woman I know of, at least locally, that he’s been out with.”

      “Well, I happen to know for a fact that he has a date with a nurse practitioner in the morning,” she said, hoping to silence any more uncomfortable speculation about the two of them. J.C. might be a mystery she wouldn’t mind unraveling, but it simply wasn’t in the cards. One bit of wisdom she’d taken from past experience was an understanding of when to cut her losses.

      “He told you he has a date tomorrow?” Linda asked. “What kind of man brags about a date when he’s out with someone else?”

      “The kind of man who wants to make it clear he isn’t on a date with me,” she told her. “Do you get it yet?”

      Nancy shook her head mournfully. “Well, I say it’s just sad. You looked cute together, and there were sparks. I could feel them.”

      “Because you have a vivid imagination. It’s all those romance novels you read.”

      “True, I want sparks like that,” Nancy admitted wistfully. “I have this sinking feeling, though, that I’ll never find them in Serenity. You know what slim pickings there are in this town. There are a few decent guys our age, but finding the whole package—intelligence, a sense of humor, good looks and a solid career—that’s all but impossible. Those guys get snapped up the minute they cross into the city limits. And now you already have the last man standing in your clutches.”

      “Will you quit saying that?” Laura begged, though she couldn’t argue with Nancy’s premise that exciting, stimulating men were hard to find in Serenity.

      “Only if I never see the two of you together again, which, if you want my opinion, would be a crying shame.”

      “Thanks for the input, and for the ride,” Laura told her, quickly climbing out of the car. “See you on Monday.”

      Unfortunately, even though she thought she’d managed to curb Nancy’s wild imagination for the moment, once she was curled up in bed, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from daydreaming about all sorts of scenarios that could play out between her and an intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate man like J.C. He was everything Rob Jefferson hadn’t been. Of course, Rob hadn’t really been a grown man when Laura had fallen for him. He’d been an irresponsible bad boy, which had been the allure for the quietest girl in school.

      Don’t go there, she warned herself. Thinking about the disaster that relationship had become and the repercussions that haunted her still would keep her awake the rest of the night.

      After banishing thoughts of both J.C. and her past, she’d finally fallen into a restless sleep around three in the morning, only to be awakened at six by the ringing of the phone.

      “Yes, what?” she murmured sleepily.

      “Not a morning person, are you?” a man’s voice inquired with a hint of laughter.

      “Who is this?”

      “It’s J.C.”

      “At six o’clock in the freaking morning on a Saturday?” she grumbled, all of the kindly thoughts she’d had about him fleeing.

      This time there was no attempt to hide his laughter. “Definitely not a morning person. Good to know. I was hoping to persuade you to go for that run with me.”

      Sufficient blood finally reached her brain for her to comprehend what he was asking. “You woke me up to ask me to go for a run?”

      “That’s the invitation,” he confirmed. “Breakfast after.”

      “Was there absolutely anything in our very brief acquaintance to suggest that I run?”

      “Nope, but I don’t mind if you’re a beginner.”

      It suddenly dawned on her what he really wanted. “You’re looking for a buffer to warn off that other woman.”

      “Congratulations! For that you get a giant mug of coffee to chase away the rest of those cobwebs.”

      “You’re certifiable, you know that, don’t you?” She felt totally within her rights to declare that. No sane man made the sort of request he’d just made.

      “But you’re considering this, right?” he pressed. “What’ll it take to push you over the edge? Danish? Croissants? An omelet?”

      Since she was awake by now and surprisingly hungry, she gave up the fight. “I’ll take the omelet,” she said decisively. “With hash browns. And I need an hour to get ready.”

      “Nobody needs an hour to get ready for a run,” he said. “I’ll give you fifteen minutes, twenty if you insist on me stopping to pick up that coffee.”

      “I insist,” she said fervently. “I’m going to need a lot of coffee.”

      She hung up without waiting for a response or offering him her address. If he couldn’t figure out where she lived, so much the better, but something told her he wasn’t the sort of man to leave a detail like that to chance.

      * * *

      J.C. pulled to a stop in the alley behind Sullivan’s. Half the town knew that sous-chef Erik Whitney was there at the crack of dawn and that he always had a pot of the best coffee in town brewing. Thanks to the occasions when they’d hung out at the gym and the frequency of late-night calls when Erik and Helen’s little girl had earaches, he allowed J.C. to take advantage of that from time to time.

      “Sarah Beth’s next appointment is free if you’ll give me three cups of coffee to go,” he told Erik.

      Erik grinned. “You sound like a desperate man. Late night with the pretty schoolteacher? And exactly how does that third cup of coffee fit in? Sounds mysterious.”

      “It wasn’t that late a night,” J.C. admitted, figuring there was little point in denying that Laura was involved. “But apparently by her standards, it’s an early morning. I convinced her to go for

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