Page 13 of Return to Lovett Cove
“Ooh, he’s coming over, huh?” Jasmine heard her sister’s smirk through the phone.
“I dunno, maybe.”
“Don’t screw this up. When was the last time you went out? Jas, seriously, your dating life isawful.”
Jasmine’s phone buzzed, indicating an incoming email. While Magnolia prattled away about her nonexistent love life, Jasmine read the subject line.
“Mags, I gotta go. Work emergency.” She abruptly ended the call with Magnolia and dialed her assistant’s number.
“That was fast,” Kennedy greeted her.
“Well, when you label the email ‘Emergency S.O.S.’ I drop everything.”
“Good point. What do you think?”
Less than a minute after reading the subject line? Jasmine didn’t have time to think. She put Kennedy on speaker while she scanned the rest of the email. All the work for this latest account that they had painstakingly scheduled to work around her visit to Lovett Cove just got moved up.
Non-negotiable.
“We—we’re not ready.”
“I’m pulling an all-nighter, don’t worry,” Kennedy’s voice shook. Even with her in the office, Kennedy couldn’t complete the work left to complete the portfolio for the account.
Panic set in. Jasmine’s breath came out short and quick. She wiped sweat from her forehead. Pain flared from her belly button upward.
Oh, no!
She was getting another ulcer. Her doctor had warned her about keeping her stress low. She thought she had enough time to secure her promotion. The added pressure of selling Mom’s inn…
The room spun. Kennedy rattled off the items she had rescheduled since they started the call. Kennedy asked if Jasmine wanted her to book a flight back to Philadelphia; it would be expensive, but there was room on a late flight.
“If you got back tonight, we could pull an all-nighter on the rest of the briefs and have a plan of attack ready by tomorrow,” Kennedy suggested confidently. “The partners stressed they wanted to hear from you on this.”
Jasmine heard the layer of uncertainty her assistant tried to obfuscate. Kennedy’s plansoundeddoable, but the nausea bubbling in Jasmine’s stomach told her she’d have a hard time getting to the airport.
And an even harder time if the ulcer burst. That meant a hospital stay for at least a few days, if she was lucky. Well past the partners’ timeline.
And her mother’s inn? She wasn’t ready to sell yet. There was paperwork to sign to get it on the market. Could River take an electronic signature for an agent agreement or did her mother make him promise to make that difficult for her too?
“Jasmine? Jasmine, are you there?”
“Yes,” came Jasmine’s weak and breathless reply.
“What do you want me to do?”
Jasmine stumbled onto the front porch. She gripped the doorframe and felt herself sliding down. “Wait. Just wait,” she whispered.
“Wait? Wait for what? Do you mean wait on booking the flight? Or…”
Jasmine heard the roar of an engine. She squinted past the haze in her eyes to make out River’s truck. “River…” Her bottom hit the porch. Pain diffused across her abdomen and made it difficult to focus on Kennedy’s appeal for clarification.
River jumped down from the truck. “Jasmine!”
He sprinted across the lawn and leapt up the steps. As darkness descended, warmth cradled her close. Jasmine felt her lips curve up as she heard her name softly spoken.
CHAPTEREIGHT
River thought no pain could be worse than his marriage ending, but seeing Jasmine collapsed on the porch threatened to take first place. When he couldn’t rouse her, panic set in.
