of another life, and no matter how pleasant—and frustrating—it was to see her again, he had to remember to leave her in the past. Where she belonged.
Daisy didn’t think she’d be able to sleep, after everything that had happened in the past twenty hours, but after Jacob dropped her at home she slept amazingly well. She dreamed about the kiss, which was very annoying because in her dream that kiss didn’t end too soon. In her dream she got a lot more than a kiss from Jacob. She woke with a start, sweating and shaking and most of all angry with herself for allowing her badly neglected physical needs to wipe away every ounce of common sense. First the kiss, then the dream. Where was her self-control? Why couldn’t she just be angry with him and leave it at that?
She should’ve bolted when he’d moved in for a kiss. She could have. Should have. But she’d wanted that kiss so much, and at that moment the want had been a lot stronger than her sense of what she should do.
Her dad had always been philosophical. Everything happened for a reason, he’d said on numerous occasions. There was a purpose in every heartbreak, in every decision, in every coincidence. She’d dismissed that way of thinking for a long time, because she hadn’t been able to believe that her parents had died for some lofty reason that she didn’t understand.
But as she walked to work she convinced herself that Jacob had returned to Bell Grove for a specific purpose, that Miss Eunice had lost her mind to put Daisy in this very position. Why? Easy. So she could get over Jacob once and for all and move on with her life.
They’d never had it out, had never really ended their relationship. They’d simply drifted apart, fallen into lives so different there was just no way to make them mesh. If she ever wanted to move on she had to get over Jacob, once and for all. Oh, she’d insisted to anyone who would listen that she’d gotten over him years ago, she’d even convinced herself, for a while. But now she knew that was a lie. If she’d really gotten over him, the unfortunate kiss wouldn’t have affected her the way it had. Looking at Miss Eunice’s wedding dress wouldn’t have given her shivers. As well as a bout of unexpected nausea, if she were being completely honest.
She should have a few days to come up with a plan. As bad as her memory was these days, Miss Eunice had surely already forgotten about chicken and dumplings and lemon cake. What were the odds that she’d also forget that her grandson and Daisy were “engaged”? Daisy could hope, but the engagement seemed to be a thing Miss Eunice had grabbed on to, and she likely wasn’t going to let it go easily. There was such joy on her face as she planned a wedding that would never take place.
Jacob seemed to think he was humoring his grandmother by playing along—and by dragging Daisy into the family mess—but what would happen if Miss Eunice’s fantasy didn’t fade? Did he really expect that she would go through with a fake wedding ceremony at his family reunion? No, something had to break before that happened. This charade couldn’t go any further.
Much as she wanted to get Jacob out of her heart once and for all, Daisy knew very well that pretending to be his wife would shatter that heart beyond saving.
The morning was an easy one, until her eleven o’clock cut and color started talking about Jacob. She supposed it was inevitable that everyone would find out he was back, but you’d think people would have better manners! Not Amanda Williams, who had never met a silent moment she liked.
She started while Daisy was applying color to her hair.
“I hear Jacob Tasker is in town.”
Daisy made a noncommittal humming noise that sounded affirmative enough to her.
“I also heard that he was in your shop yesterday. Did he need a haircut or did he just stop by to chat? I’m sure none of the Taskers handles their own engine repair—they have people for that sort of thing. And really, why on earth would he want someone from Bell Grove to cut his hair?” She laughed, not realizing that she’d just insulted Daisy—Daisy, who had scissors and a variety of interesting hair dyes within reach. “Oh, you two were such a cute couple, back in the old days.” She barely took a breath, much less leave spaces in the conversation for Daisy to actually respond. Which was just as well, in Daisy’s opinion.
“Everyone always knew Jacob would light out of town as soon as he got the chance. He was always so smart, so driven to succeed. I didn’t think he’d go without you, though.”
Well, he did. Daisy wondered if it was too late to add some purple to the color she was putting on Amanda’s honey-blond hair. Maybe a Mohawk …
“I hear he looks good. Is he married, do you know? Still working for that same company that hired him right out of college? I haven’t heard much about him for a couple of years, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
He looks damn good, I don’t know for certain if he’s married or not but I don’t think so and last time I checked he was still working for that soulless money-hungry company that stole him out from under me. “I need you to sit under the dryer, now,” Daisy said.
Sadly the noise of the dryer didn’t shut Amanda up. She raised her voice and continued, thankfully moving on to the other Taskers. Sure, a beauty shop was a great place to gossip, but Amanda’s rambling made Daisy wonder what the residents of Bell Grove had been saying about her lately. All gossip concerning Daisy Bell probably began with “That poor girl, bless her heart …”
She didn’t want to be a poor girl, didn’t want people to bless her heart behind her back. What the hell had she done to herself? Mari and Lily didn’t need her anymore. Well, they needed her as a sister and she’d always be there for them, but her years as guardian were behind her. She loved Bell Grove, loved her job and her friends, but she no longer had her sisters as a barrier keeping her from pursuing romance. Maybe there wasn’t exactly a glut of handsome, available, appealing men in town, but not every man in the county was an ogre or a jerk. Why was she alone after all this time?
Jacob’s return was making her question everything! Just what she didn’t need: a man to screw with her head.
But she did need a man in her life. That was becoming clear. She wanted to be kissed, wanted to have sex outside of a dream, wanted to marry and have kids and make a life for herself. Maybe that would happen here in Bell Grove, and maybe it would have to happen somewhere else. She should make more trips to Atlanta, broaden her horizons.
But it wouldn’t happen at all until she ended things with Jacob once and for all and allowed herself to start over.
Jacob left his grandmother’s room with a frown on his face. Great. Just great! Her memory issues were pretty damn selective. And inconvenient. She had told Lurlene to prepare chicken and dumplings for supper, and she’d already started talking about how much she was looking forward to Daisy’s lemon cake.
Daisy couldn’t cook. She was good at a lot of things, but cooking wasn’t one of them. Maybe he could drive to Atlanta and buy a lemon cake. Not that a store-bought cake, even a spectacular one, would fool Grandma Eunice even on her worst day.
It had been seven years since he’d been with Daisy, and in that time she’d raised her sisters, taken over the family business, basically grown up. Maybe she’d learned how to cook. Maybe she did know how to make that lemon cake. He called the shop, and she answered with a sharp,
“Bell’s.”
“It’s me,” he said.
“Me? I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific, sir.” Her voice was sweeter, now, a little lower and calmer, but with an edge he couldn’t dismiss. “Would you like to make an appointment for a haircut? I do have an opening this afternoon.”
“Dammit, Daisy, it’s Jacob.”
“Oh, so sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry at all. “I didn’t recognize your voice. You sounded a little bit like Old Man Johnson, but I was afraid to assume …”
“We need a lemon cake,” he snapped, without arguing that he sounded nothing like Old Man Johnson, who was ninety-seven years old and had the