all her anger back. “They turned me down, all right?”
Jared tried not to let that piece of news affect him. “Then go to your parents. I’m sure they’d be only too happy to help you out.”
“No,” she said with such finality that Jared knew it would do no good to push her.
“Sell that damn car.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “That car was Steven’s.”
Jared hadn’t known. For the second time that morning, his eyes flashed to her left hand. Jenny would no sooner get rid of Steven’s car than she’d take off his ring. At the thought, an unexpected flare of jealousy blindsided him.
Christ. Jealous of his dead friend. He really was a bastard.
“Then we’re back to square one. Sell the plane. The land. I don’t care, you pick.”
Jenny stared at him for a long moment. “This property has been in my family for over a hundred years. My great-grandparents homesteaded this land. My grandfather expanded and remodeled the house. Put in the original dock. This land is as much a part of me as my heart. I will never”—she paused for emphasis—“never sell. I have four months in which to pay you back, and I plan on using every last bit of that time.” She walked out of the living room and out of the house. The screen door banged shut behind her.
He started to follow her. This was ridiculous—she was being ridiculous. Running away solved nothing. But before he’d even gone half the distance, he stopped.
The ties he thought Jenny had here—the ones with Steven—were easily healed compared to her family’s history on this land. He’d seen the pictures in the family room; he should have known. But somehow, the still images failed to capture the emotional connection he’d heard in her voice.
He looked out through the mesh on the screen door. Jenny was on her knees in front of one of the flower beds, a garden caddy full of hand tools by her side. All around her flowers bloomed in a riotous rainbow. While she might be the world’s worst cook, she could work miracles with flowers.
He watched her turn over the fertile dirt, pulling out weeds, snipping off dead blooms. No matter where he was on the property, he could always smell the flowers.
My great-grandparents homesteaded this land.
I will never sell.
For just a moment, Jared wondered what it would feel like to belong to a family with that kind of history. Permanence.
He rubbed his hand across his eyes and through his hair. Jenny would never sell this land; he could see that now. And a part of him couldn’t blame her. Once, he, too, would have held on just as tightly. But now he knew the truth; it didn’t matter how hard you held on. Some things . . . someones . . . would never stay.
Jared pushed open the screen door and made his way across the lawn to the hangar. He didn’t look at her . . . he couldn’t. Understanding what this land meant to her changed things. It made what he had to do all that much harder. But he wasn’t giving up. There was always a next step. Another way. He just had to figure out what it was.
Anna had been at her new job for less than a week, but she already knew that with her promotion had come an even crazier, more hectic whirlwind of a schedule. And she loved every minute. From the moment she’d arrived at the hospital at six thirty (a full hour earlier than she normally started) she’d been going nonstop. She’d thought the extra hour would give her a much-needed head start on everything she had to accomplish, but it was already three in the afternoon, and there were still a full five hours of work ahead of her.
She grabbed a cup of coffee and headed into her office, desperately needing a break, no matter how short a one. Shutting the door behind her, she drew in her first easy breath of the day. Through the closed door, she could still hear the supercharged energy of the hospital. She sat down at her desk and took a drink of her coffee. The hot caffeine went a long way toward perking her up.
All day she’d been trying to find a spare moment to call her mom. But somehow the hours had slipped away. Anna knew if she didn’t make time now, the day would fly by, and by the time she got home, it would be