Page 64 of You Had Me at Chocolate

But now, in the confines of the car, her chest felt tight and the air was suddenly stuffy.

“Yes.” She nodded enthusiastically ignoring her body which was being utterly ridiculous. “I’d buy it in a heartbeat.”

He chuckled. “You would, huh?”

“Yep.”

“And then make me cook something out of it for you?”

“Of course. What’s the point in having one of the country’s most well-known chefs as a friend if I can’t use it to my advantage?” she teased, lightly. But it cost her. Pricks of pain stabbed her at her chest, like pins being driven into her heart.

“It’d be a great project to work on while I’m getting the inn established.”

“It’d be perfect,” Clem agreed.

They chatted a bit more about that while Clem finished her crane. When it was done she popped it in the pocket of her hoodie for safekeeping. He was going straight from the Graff to the rental tomorrow so she’d give it to him in the morning before she left for work.

Which she was not going to think about now.

They’d been traveling for almost half an hour when Jude saw the sign indicating the next small town was five miles away. “Not far now. It’s just a mile or so outside of Emigrant.”

“Do you know which side of the road?”

“No.”

Up ahead, through a small thicket of trees on the right-hand side of the road, Clem glimpsed two red gables. She pointed. “That must be it there.”

Jude slowed and crossed to the other side, coasting to a halt in front of the prominent for sale sign. Goose bumps broke out along Clem’s scalp as he switched off the engine and they both just sat and stared.

It was nothing big or spectacular or grand and it clearly needed some TLC but there were snow-covered mountains behind in the distance and it was surrounded by trees—bare for now, but they’d be back come spring. Garden beds lined the neat front path. They needed some loving also as did the wraparound porch and the roof and the blue front door could do with a lick of paint. Hell, it all could.

But everything about the building beckoned. Clem felt its welcome right down to her bones. “Oh, Jude,” she murmured.

He nodded and turned his head to face her. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

Then he opened his door and disembarked, not even grabbing his jacket from the back seat. Clem picked it up as she retrieved hers—it was freezing outside today. Catching him in the middle of the path, she handed it over to him. He didn’t say anything as they shrugged into their jackets, just stood and stared with a faraway look in his eyes.

She had the feeling he was in Texas somewhere, caught in a memory and even though her heart throbbed in her chest and she wanted to slip her hand into his and be in it with him, she also didn’t want to disturb.

Zipping his jacket, he finally moved on, up the path then up the front porch steps, stopping to look around, putting his hands on the railing and surveying the large front area as if he was already making plans for it. Then he moved to the door, fishing in the front pocket of his jeans for the key then sliding it in.

The door opened easily and the tears came again as Clem stepped into the large open room, wide oak floorboards beneath her feet, decorative ceilings soaring overhead and light flooding in from the line of French doors opposite.

This was it, she realized. She was standing in it—right in the middle of Jude’s dream. And the truly wrenching part of it was that she wanted to be in it with him so bad she could barely breath.

Oh, dear god… what was happening to her? This wasn’t her dream. It was Jude’s. She did not want to live in a freaking inn in the middle of nowhere. New York beckoned. Japan beckoned. The world beckoned.

So why did it feel like her heart was trying to thump its way out of her chest?

Luckily, Jude was oblivious to her inner turmoil as he trailed from room to room trancelike, his hand absently running over surfaces, his eyes darting over windows and ceilings and floors as if he was already mentally furnishing the empty spaces. Everything was old and a little neglected but that feeling he’d talked about—it was in every inch of this place.

Clem knew it and she knew he knew it, too.

When he was done inside and, still without a word passing between them, he headed for the French doors, unlocking the catch on the middle set and pushing them open. Clem followed him as he stepped out onto the back porch and repeated what he’d done on the front porch, placed his hands on the railing and inspected the land.

There was a large area of what would just be lawn when the weather grew warmer before several boxed garden beds, which were currently fallow. Beyond that was some more lawn, a greenhouse that needed work and then about a dozen trees, probably only as tall as Jude and mostly bare of leaves. They looked old though—the branches all gnarled and intertwined.

“Oh, my god,” Jude said, pushing away from the railing and hurrying to the porch steps.

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