Her mother had said it forever. When she was just a little girl, practicing her cello by the window of the conservatory in her parents’ home, listening to the laughter of the children outside. Every time her mother drove by the park where her friends were playing on the way to practice, and as a teenager, when the other girls were going to homecoming football games and dances and she longed to be included.
The best cellist ever.
She looked around the table at her new friends’ worried faces. The women who, without even having all the details, had heard bits and pieces of her conversation, read her body language, and instantly came to her defense. She considered Jamie and how her world was brighter with just the thought of him, and she wanted all of it. She wanted these friends, she wanted Jamie, and she wanted to be around Vera, to play their music together, drink coffee, talk, and sit by the pool.
She pulled on the reserves she’d relied on through Juilliard, when getting down on herself wasn’t an option, and when she was in the middle of playing for a huge audience. She drew her shoulders back. Coming to Wellfleet and finding her father’s baseball might have started as a diversion, but now it seemed like it was part of a path to a door to her new life, waiting to be opened.
“So, if Theresa doesn’t see us,” Jessica asked. “Can we drink wine when we go chunky-dunking?”
Chapter Fourteen
JAMIE SCRUBBED HIS hand down his face, trying not to show the depth of his worry. No wonder Mark had been so upset. He’d arrived at Seaside two hours earlier, armed with files and data that painted a much darker picture of the issues than Jamie had assumed they were dealing with.
They were sitting on the back deck of the cottage with four laptops set up on the table, open files and initial investigation reports laid out on the extra chairs.
“Mark, I had no idea it was this widespread.”
Mark sat back and exhaled loudly. He’d dressed casually for their meeting in a pair of khakis and a white polo shirt. His thick dark hair and brows gave him a brooding look. Jamie had seen him at his best and his worst. Mark was a workaholic. Jamie’s weekends at the Cape had always seemed like a luxury compared to Mark’s stringent work schedule. When Jamie first brought up that he’d be working remotely and spending the summer at the Cape with Vera, Mark had nearly had a heart attack. He’d spent three weeks trying to convince Jamie it was a bad idea, and not for selfish reasons. He had valid points about employees easing up on their work if the boss was gone and giving division directors more leeway to make decisions than they already had. Jamie, however, couldn’t be swayed. Vera wasn’t getting any younger, and if his employees worked a little less diligently, that wasn’t the end of the world. They worked their butts off every day of the year, just as he did. And now, having met Jessica, he realized that coming to the Cape had been the best decision he’d ever made.
“I figured you didn’t realize it, and I forgot about the ridiculous cell phone reception out here. Can’t you do what normal millionaires do and go to the Hamptons?”
Jamie silenced him with a no-way stare.
Mark held his hands up in the air. “Fine, whatever. I get it. Your grandma’s place, family ties and all that, but, Jamie, you’ve taken sidetracked to a whole new level.”
“Yeah. I get it. I’ll be more on point. I got a little lax.”
“A little lax?” Mark laughed. “Dude, a year ago you would have driven back to Boston the second I said the word issue. You built OneClick with nothing more than your brain and those talented programming fingers. Don’t mess it up.”
He’d never allow anyone else to talk to him that way, but Mark had stuck with him when he first opened the doors to OneClick and could barely pay him a tenth of what he should have. Days when Jamie wasn’t sure the hard work was worth it, Mark had talked him off the ledge. He owed Mark the respect of answering his emails in a timely fashion.
“I’m not messing it up. It looks like our team has a handle on it.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve taken care of it all as best I could, but you’re the best programmer there is, Jamie. Interpreting code is in your DNA. But these reports?” He slid a stack of papers across the table to Jamie. “You used to go over these with a fine-tooth comb. If you’d looked at them you might have caught this before it blew up.”
He hadn’t reviewed the trouble reports in a week. Mark was right. He’d messed up.
Jamie turned at the sound of Amy’s car pulling into the driveway across the road. He peered over Mark’s shoulder as the girls got out of the car. The first thing Jessica did was look over at his cottage. He watched her beautiful eyes skim over his car, to the front deck, then around back. Their eyes caught, and he felt her gaze all the way to his gut.