Page 21 of Snowflakes Over Starr's Fall
Jenna frowned as she dropped her hand, her gaze moving over him curiously. “Do you?”
“More than you might realize.” He paused before admitting a little uncomfortably, “Before I moved here, my venture capital firm was my life. Itwasmy personal. I didn’t have anything else. So if someone criticized it, it felt like a personal attack. I didn’t always take it well. I, ah, have been known to have something of a temper.”
Jenna gave a small smile at that, before eyeing him thoughtfully. “That must have been hard, when you had to retire.”
“It wasn’t ideal.” He felt an alarming thickening in his throat, and he gave her a quick, brisk smile as he nodded toward the rest of the house. “How about that tour?”
* * *
Jenna followed Jack out of the huge kitchen—Liz would have definitely enjoyed a photo of the soaring space, with its marble island as big as a putting green, not that Jenna even knew how big those were—and wondered about what Jackhadn’tsaid. He’d moved the subject on pretty quickly, and it was obvious he didn’t want to talk about having to retire.
Jenna had to respect that. She didn’t particularly want to talk about the painful episodes inherlife, and it must have been a massively wrenching change for Jack, to exchange the high-powered world of business for small-town life in Starr’s Fall. She still didn’t completely understand why he’d made such a move—surely he could have stayed in the city if he’d really wanted to—but maybe he would tell her in time.
She was starting to appreciate that Jack Wexler might not be the stereotypical, overprivileged rich guy she’d first made him out to be. At least, he was more than that.
And, it had to be said, she’d enjoyed the way his eyes had widened at the sight of her when she’d arrived. Zoe had been totally right about the sweater. It was a particularly empowering feeling, to know she could make a man like Jack Wexler look at her in such obvious and undisguised admiration. It didn’t mean anything, of course, and she was pretty sure this still wasn’t a date.
But… her feminine confidence had taken a bruising over the last few decades, and it was nice to get a little of it back, however briefly. She’d also appreciated just how nicely Jack Wexler cleaned up, but then he pretty much always looked good. When she’d caught sight of him looking so freshly ironed and fantastic, and yet with that little nick on his jaw that made her think he must have cut himself shaving, which made her like him all the more—well, she’d reacted with a fizzy sense of expectation. This might not be a date, but it was starting to feel like one.
“This place is pretty huge,” she remarked as Jack led her through the enormous foyer, complete with a massive chandelier, marble floor, and a double staircase curving up to a landing. “Do you get lost in it?”
“I only go in a few rooms, to be fair,” Jack replied. He opened a pair of bi-fold doors that led to an equally huge living room, with white leather sofas scattered artfully in front of a massive stone fireplace laid with a few tastefully varnished logs. Everything about the house was built on a grand scale—it was a cross between a castle and a ski lodge, and it could probably sleep twenty, if not more. Jenna thought she would feel lonely, rattling around in all those rooms, beautiful as they were. Did Jack?
“Why did you buy such a big place?” she asked curiously. “Do you have six kids tucked away upstairs, or are you just planning on hosting huge house parties?” She smiled playfully. “Invite your jet-setting friends over every other weekend?”
He laughed wryly, although his eyes suddenly looked sad, the corners drooping, and she half-wished she hadn’t made the joke. “Nope,” he said as he ushered her out of the room. “No kids and no house parties. And”—he paused as he closed the doors with a click—“no jet-setting friends, as it happens.”
“What about all your city friends, though?” Jenna pressed, wanting to know more about him. “They must like to travel, even if it’s just to northwestern Connecticut.”
“The funny thing about those,” he told her as he walked across the foyer to the dining room, which was equally impressive with a table that looked like it seated sixteen, “is that they tend to becityfriends. Once you lose your status there, they’re not so interested.”
Ouch. “Is that what happened?” Jenna asked quietly. She was surprised to feel a stirring of pity as well as sympathy for him. She certainly knew what it felt like when someone dropped you. Hard. She just had assumed Jack, with all his success and self-assuredness, didn’t.
He stared at the empty table, a stretch of ebony that was made for dinner parties it didn’t seem like he would ever have. “Pretty much,” he replied with a shrug, his gaze sliding away from hers. “I’ve become irrelevant in that world, now that I’m retired. I get it, because when people left Wall Street, I treated them the same way. When your work is so intense, and it’s basically your whole life, well, it’s hard to remember the people who got out of the rat race.” He sighed and then smiled, although it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m trying not to take it personally.”
“Still…” She thought of his remark when they first met about how small towns were supposed to be so welcoming, and a sharp pang of guilt assailed her at how nasty she’d been. Had he still been reeling then, from such an abrupt change in his life? “You know, now I really feel like a big meanie,” she confessed suddenly, the lightness dropping from her voice. “Being so rude to you before. It sounds like you could have used a kinder welcome. I should have been more understanding.”
Jack shrugged. “I think I deserved it. Well, some of it, anyway. Besides, clean slate, remember?” He smiled down at her, his eyes crinkling, and when Jenna breathed in, she inhaled the scent of his cologne, which smelled citrusy and expensive and made her head spin. Jack moved past her to step out of the dining room. “Next up is my study, which is a room I actually use, so it might be a little more interesting than these set pieces.” He gestured similarly to the room they’d just left.
“Well, now I’m really curious,” Jenna teased. She was flirting, she realized, and she didn’t mind.
Jack led her down a narrow hallway to the study, a classically male room, all leather and mahogany, with nautical maps gracing the walls. Jenna stepped closer to study one. She’d assumed the whole place had been decorated by some anonymous interior designer, as Jack had intimated; it had that feel, elegant but somewhat soulless. But these maps, she saw, were well-used and wrinkled, with routes outlined in red marker.
“What are these?” she asked as she turned around to glance at him. “They don’t look like they were chosen by some woman in a white silk pantsuit named Helena, or whoever did your interior decorating.”
He laughed softly as he stepped closer to her. “Actually, her name was Pippa, and I don’t remember what she wore.” His shoulder was almost brushing hers, and Jenna felt a tingle up her arm as if it was. “These are maps of the sailing trips I’ve taken over the years, with my dad.”
“You sail?” she asked, before wincing at how dumb a question that obviously was.
“Yep, although not too much recently.” He grimaced. “Too busy.”
“But with your dad…?”
A shadow came over his face as he glanced back at the maps. “Yeah, my dad and I used to go on a sailing trip every summer. We started with day sails and then moved up to some bigger trips. When I was little, I loved it. Highlight of the whole year, hands down. But then I became a teenager…”
“And you didn’t love anything,” Jenna filled in gently. She remembered those angst-filled days.
“Yeah, especially not something as boring as messing around on a battered old boat with my old man.” He sighed, his eyes still shadowed with regret. “He died when I was in my twenties, and I always regretted not having gone on one more sail with him. I’d always said I would, but then I’d put it off. I started sailing solo, kind of in his memory.” He nodded toward some of the other maps. “Not too often, but I liked taking the time out.”
