required for a woman to look fashionable, there didn’t seem to be any graceful way to take everything off.
“Here’s my sister’s copy of Forever Amber,” her friend Ginny had advised, handing over a dog-eared volume. “I took it from under her mattress. Ten descriptions of women undressing in front of men, according to the attorney general of Massachusetts.”
“He was paying awfully close attention considering he said the book was obscene,” Jordan had observed.
“He also noted there were seventy references to sexual intercourse. I only found sixty-two, but I was reading in a hurry before my sister missed it.”
In the end, Forever Amber hadn’t been terribly useful. Undressing hadn’t been problematic, after all; there hadn’t turned out to be any art to it, as long as clothes hit the floor as fast as possible. It had all been awkward, but even if there weren’t any waves of bliss, there had been lots of laughing, enough to ease them both past anything uncomfortable. And it hadn’t hurt horribly, which some of her girlfriends said was the case. Maybe neither books nor girlfriends should be relied on for sex advice, Jordan reflected now, squirming away from a twig poking her back through the blanket as Garrett stripped his shirt off. Girlfriends, if they knew more than you, said completely conflicting things (“Men just like it better than us” or “It’s wonderful when you’re in love!”) and books either said nothing at all (the hero and heroine disappeared into some all-encompassing ellipses) or promised automatic, vaguely worded ecstasy.
Still, this had to be the seventh or eighth time, and she and Garrett had things nicely worked out. A lot of pleasant rolling about on the blanket, sunlight dappling Garret’s hair as he lowered his head to kiss along her collarbone, then a brief fierce tangle of limbs and gasps and sweat, and they broke apart smiling.
Jordan sat up, reaching for her blouse. “Garrett,” she said, laughing as she looked over one shoulder. “Do not fall asleep.”
“I won’t,” he said, eyes closed, stretched out on the blanket.
“You are.” She planted a kiss on his ear. “Put some clothes on! I’ve got to open up the shop.”
He sat up, yawning. “Anything you say, Mrs. Byrne.”
“Don’t say that till September, it’s bad luck.” Jordan straightened the diamond sitting on her knuckle, watching it sparkle in the tree-filtered sunshine. It looked so dainty, but it was a heavy bit of rock. Who knew a half-carat ring could weigh down a hand like a boulder?
THE BELL OVER the shop door tinkled not ten minutes after Jordan flipped the sign to Open, ushering in a harried-looking woman blotting her forehead. “Welcome to McBride’s Antiques, ma’am. May I offer you some refreshment?” She poured ice water into a long-stemmed Murano goblet, proffering lemon wafers on an Edwardian calling-card salver. During winter it was peppermint wafers and hot tea in flowered Minton cups. Customers like to feel welcomed, Anneliese had said. One of her quiet notions that had made its way into the shop to good effect, or at least Jordan assumed it was to good effect considering how much more stock her dad had been buying. “There’s no reason you can’t be the most prosperous antiques dealer in Boston,” Jordan’s stepmother often said.
“We do well enough as it is,” he pointed out, but Anneliese kept quietly making suggestions, and neither Jordan nor her father could deny her instinct for the little things that turned a profit. She never took shifts behind the counter—Jordan’s father was proud that his wife didn’t have to work—but she had her own ways of helping.
The first customer walked out with a japanned tray and a Georgian table clock, and the bell tinkled again almost before the door closed behind her. Jordan’s welcoming expression became a smile as Ruth raced in, blond plait bouncing on the back of her school jumper. “Hello, cricket.”
Ruth flung her arms around Jordan in a hug—eight years old now and a little chatterbox, not the silent big-eyed scrap she’d been at four. My sister, Jordan thought with a squeeze of love, and it was true now: Ruth Weber had become Ruth McBride. “Can I look around?” The shop was Ruth’s treasure box, her favorite place in the world.
“May I look around,” Anneliese’s voice sounded. “And yes, you may.”
Jordan greeted her stepmother with a smile. The smiles between them had been awkward ones for a while—the Thanksgiving after that first horrible one had not exactly been a tension-free evening, everyone knowing exactly what everyone