Page 109 of Love on Deck

My throat grew tight. “I’m not leaving you, Lauren.”

She took a step back.

I walked toward her. “I’m not. Even if I decided to take this seriously, I wouldn’t move right away. And Dallas isn’t that far. We could make a plan.”

She drew in a breath and let it out. “You’re right. There’s no point grieving our lost relationship yet.”

Yet. I didn’t like the sound of that. I took her hands and pulled her back in, breathing in the scent of her hair.

We stood like that for a minute, surrounded by floating dust mites and bits of ideas.

“You could probably create an event space in the backyard, you know.” Her voice sounded normal now, which relaxed me further. “Another stream of revenue. The view is unreal.”

It was a brilliant idea. I leaned back to look into her hazel eyes, the green bright in the natural light. “Not to sound like you or anything, but I kind of want to head back to my parents’ house and start crunching numbers.”

Lauren’s hands dug into my shirt, fisting it until it pulled taut across my back. Her voice was breathy. “Oh my gosh, please let me help.”

I laughed. “Maybe I can hire you to be my project manager. Then you can manage events once the place is ready to go. I think you’re right. This would make a great wedding venue someday.” I’d spoken facetiously, but truth laced each of those ideas, raising my heart rate with each one.

Lauren leaned up and pressed a kiss to my lips. “Don’t say things you don’t mean, because I just might take you up on it.” She chuckled, taking my hand and pulling me toward the back door again. “Come on. Those spreadsheets won’t fill themselves in. Have you utilized the graph options for Excel? They’re beautiful.”

I locked the door behind me, my heart free from burden for the first time in as long as I could remember.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

LAUREN

Not to brag, but my spreadsheet skills really were unrivaled, and since I no longer had a job to occupy my brain, I threw myself into helping Jack figure out his business plan with everything I had. Something about Jack following his dream made me hesitate to jump into a similar job to the one I’d left at Hunnam. The small event firm in Plano was kind when I told them I wasn’t ready to make a decision but informed me they were going to consider other applicants.

I took it as a good sign that my stomach wasn’t sick when I got off that phone call and turned my attention back to formulating Jack’s budget. Well, budgets, since there were plural. The house renovation was its own thing, the B&B as a business was a totally different form, and then Jack needed an idea of living expenses while he worked to get his business up and running. I was in data and calculation heaven.

It was a great distraction from the very real fact that my boyfriend was leaving me soon. Just like everyone else.

He’d delivered a two-weeks’ notice to MediCorp first thing Monday morning—much kinder than I had been when I quit Hunnam Hotels cold turkey—and served his apartment manager a 30-day notice. He was really doing it. He was moving to Arcadia Creek.

Needless to say, I had extremely mixed feelings about this. I didn’t really need to analyze them yet, because I was busy acting as Jack’s project manager. Today’s focus had been calling Arcadia Creek’s plumber and electrician to set up appointments for them to supply us with quotes and a basic rundown of what kind of work the house needed. Jack had done this when he first bought it, but those quotes were a few years old and needed to be updated. Jack’s trust in both of those men was crystal clear when he’d permitted me to give them the house’s door code so we wouldn’t have to be present during their inspections.

It was Jack’s last day with MediCorp, so I’d made dinner, and Amelia and Kevin were coming over to celebrate with us. They all happened to arrive at my apartment at the same time, which meant I’d have to fill Jack in on my progress later.

We clinked glasses over the slow cooked pork sandwiches and coleslaw. “To Jack, for following your dreams,” Amelia said, and each of us echoed her.

“We’ll miss you,” Kevin said before biting into his sandwich.

“Arcadia isn’t that far, man,” Jack argued for the millionth time.

I filled my mouth with coleslaw so I wouldn’t say anything to disagree. It wasn’t that far, not really, but it wasn’t feasible to see each other all the time, either. Jack’s weird disconnection from his family in recent years proved that.

Amelia gestured between me and Jack. “You guys are doing the long-distance thing though, right?”

I tried not to sound worried. “That’s the plan.”

Jack reached for my hand and squeezed it once before returning to his sandwich. “Until I can convince her she’s better off moving to Arcadia, obviously.”

I choked on the coleslaw, grabbing my ice water to wash it down. He hadn’t mentioned that to me yet. I would know; I’d been having daydreams about it. Honestly, wasn’t it the perfect solution? Jack restoring his furniture in the backyard while I cooked up breakfast for our guests and then spent my days coordinating the event space in our backyard. That view was legitimately unrivaled.

That dream also had a nice cushion-cut on my left ring finger and a few chubby babies crawling around, so it remained firmly locked in my mind.

Amelia pulled me from my daydream. “Cara and Lucas have gone out a few times since we got back from Miami. I think they might be a thing now.”

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