If she was crazy about Grant, and they were having a fling that resulted in him staying at her place most nights, then she would be spilling to Zoe and Jane.
“Something is going on with you,” Jane said. “You love romance. Now you have a big, hot, rich guy whisking you away for the weekend and living with you… and you’re not saying anything? Come on. Did something bad happen in Chicago?”
Oh crap. Now they were worried. Jane looked sincerely concerned while Zoe was starting to look mad. “Seriously, Josie,” Zoe said. “Do I need to call Aiden? Do I need to go over there and yell at Grant myself?”
Josie took a deep breath. “I think I’m in love with him,” she confessed.
That took her best friends a couple of seconds to digest. Then Zoe blew out a long breath. “Thank God. Okay, that’s more like it.”
Jane agreed. “We figured you had to be by now.”
Josie couldn’t argue with that. She wasn’t the weekend-away type. Not only because she didn’t date guys who went away for the weekend—unless it involved camping and fishing. “We had an amazing time in Chicago. Very romantic. Fun.” She paused. And sighed. “Hot. Very, very hot.”
Jane and Zoe grinned. Then frowned. Clearly confused by what had to be a morose look on Josie’s face.
“Why don’t you seem happier about it though?”
“He… we’re very different,” Josie said. She was going to give them as much truth as she possibly could. She could use some advice, and she really did want them to know what she was going through. She could tell them everything without mentioning that she and Grant had already said I do. Probably. Though actually if it came down to it and she ended up spilling that too, she wouldn’t completely mind.
“You are,” Jane said. “But Dax and I are totally opposite and it’s great.”
“You’re not though,” Josie said. “Not in the really important ways. You both take care of people. Making the people in your lives happy and lightening their burdens is always what drives both of you. You do it in very different ways, but that’s the bottom line for both of you.”
“She’s right,” Zoe said to Jane. “Like Aiden and I—we’re very different in that I love tradition and routine and the comfort of the familiar, while he’s more of a big-picture thinker and a risk-taker, but deep down, we’re the same in the important ways. We both care about the people around us, our families and our community and serving others.”
Josie frowned as she thought about her two friends and their loves. “And the things that are different about you, make you each better,” she said. She looked at Jane. “Dax’s playfulness and adventurous nature makes you take things a little less seriously. While your serious side makes him buckle down when he needs to.” She glanced at Zoe. “Aiden has made you take some chances you wouldn’t have otherwise because he is the comfortable familiar that you need, and you’ve given him the roots and home that he needed to settle down.”
They both just nodded.
“Grant and I are just different.” She shrugged. “It’s not bad. It’s just… not going to last.”
“You seem different in that he’s serious and gruffer and more intense while you’re sweet and sunny and fun,” Jane said. “Is that true?”
“Yep.”
“But that should mean that you can make him take things a little less seriously—like what Dax does for me,” Jane said.
Josie sighed. “Okay, the thing is, he’s very into people being independent, self-sufficient, not at all dependent on anyone else. He thinks everyone, especially women, need to be able to completely make a life on their own. He’s not really into partnering up. And I’m, obviously, very into wanting a partner, someone I can lean on and share things with.”
“So he’s cool with dinner and sex and a weekend together in a hotel and stuff, but not full time?” Jane asked.
“Yeah. I think he’d be really happy if I had my own place, my own accounts, my own everything, and we just got together once in a while for… fun. Sex. Trips. Dates. I mean, he likes spending time with me. He’s sweet and takes care of me and likes to do things that make me smile. But he hates that I don’t like spreadsheets and don’t balance my checkbook every month”—actually, she hadn’t told him that part—“and that I’m kind of paycheck to paycheck.” She winced and looked at Zoe. “I don’t mean anything