And for the first time in two months, she’d slept like a baby.
Now she finally located her spare key in the back of the junk drawer. Good. Though it was a Monday, her usual day off, she had some new inventory she needed to catalog and price, and decided getting to it would be the pick-me-up she needed. Slipping her grandma’s rattle into her pocket for luck, she left the condo she rented and caught traffic on the 210. By the time she got to Montrose, the small touristy spot where she leased a storefront, the sun was valiantly trying to peek out from the morning’s mist. A good sign of things to come, she figured.
Even so, she had to park down the street and around the corner, but parking in Montrose on any day was an exercise in frustration. Walking down the narrow street lined with spring flowers, meandering oaks, and lots of shoppers, Jade got an unwelcome surprise.
Tomas’s empty forest-green Jag was parked right out front of her shop. Parked behind him was a black truck, not empty. A man sat behind the wheel. He had a lean, rugged face with light brown hair that looked as if it’d been combed by nothing but frustrated fingers. His eyes locked with hers and held, and the oddest thing happened.
She couldn’t look away, and the intensity of the connection confused her because she was certain she’d never seen him before. But then she was jostled by a couple of joggers. Staggering a few steps on her heels, she caught her balance and started walking again, but couldn’t stop herself from taking one last look. The sun bore into the truck’s windshield now, distorting her view, and distracted by Tomas’s empty Jag, she turned away.
Tomas couldn’t be waiting inside her shop; he didn’t have a set of keys. She unlocked the deadbolt and let herself in the glass door with the pretty wooden welcome sign. With the hanging bells tinkling, she inhaled deeply the scent of cedar and lemon oil, and much of her tension drained away. God, she loved it in here, the one place she’d ever given her heart and soul to.
The front room was filled with furniture she’d found and carefully placed, and all had one thing in common. They were lovingly cared for, fully enjoyed, and old. She was certain a psychologist would have a field day with her need to surround herself with things that had all existed through time, giving comfort and the feeling of roots.
She ran a finger over a chest of drawers, open and filled with lace and linens, but went still when from behind the sales counter, from the large back room where she held all her uninventoried items, came a rhythmic squeaking she couldn’t quite place. Setting her purse behind the counter, she moved past the curtain of beads and flipped on the light.
Taking up most of the room was her newly requisitioned Queen Anne bed, and on it was Tomas’s bare ass pumping up and down on top of . . . “Jody?”
Jade didn’t realize she’d staggered backward until she felt the light switch cut into her back. The light flicked off, and then back on as her knees started to give before she locked them. Jody and Tomas. Together. Doing the horizontal tango on her bed.
“You’re going to ruin the silk comforter,” she said in a shockingly normal voice. “Get off.”
And then she walked out. Grabbing her purse off the counter, she headed out of the store and into the morning sunshine, blinking like an owl because there were still flowers blooming, still people walking around, as if everything were normal, perfectly normal.
Her eyes locked on the Jag. She had a sudden and vicious need to break the precious windshield or scratch the paint. Missing keys, her ass. Tomas had stolen her keys! She kicked his tire and then hopped up and down as pain shot through her toe. “Damn it, damn it.”
She hobbled all the way back to her car and drove home on shocked, numbed autopilot. Inside, she tossed her purse down and went to her fridge for an ice pack. She sat right there on the kitchen linoleum, put the ice on her toe, and thunked her head back against the fridge. And then, went still.