Home is Where the Heart is (16 page)

Cassie approached the counter from her previous position at the espresso machine, placing her hands on the edge of the countertop.

“What can I help you with?” she asked, getting straight to the point.

“Well, you are right. I’ve never been here before, and I’m trying to find someone. Can you help me?” She searched through her oversized Chanel handbag and pulled out a slip of swanky notepaper with an address scrawled across it, showing it to Cassie.

“Do you know where this is?”

Cassie showed little countenance on her face the moment she was shown the paper. Of all the coincidences,
she
just happened to breeze into town, strutting into the very shop where Cassie worked. Could she really be the same gal Jordan was casually seeing in Miami? Cassie doubted Nick knew any women who wore three-inch stilettos passing through town. She knew him too well to know his busy workload had kept him in town throughout the past couple of years with little time to venture outside of Texas to meet pretty women. However, Cassie didn’t press her for information, or substantiate she knew whom she was meeting up with in Yellow Valley. Obviously, she didn’t even know who Cassie was.

When Cassie rattled off directions to the address written on the paper, and the woman left with a home-baked cream pie, Cassie turned to Gabby, whose facial expression appeared almost identical to Cassie’s at that moment. For the first in a very long time, both women were speechless over what just happened.

Gabby was the first one to speak. “Do you think that was her?”

Cassie shrugged her shoulder. “I really don’t know. It has to be her, right?”

“Well, she is looking for Nick’s address, which is where Jordan is currently residing right now. If she doesn’t know Jordan, then Nick has certainly been holding out on us about the women in his life.” Gabby drummed her fingernails against the countertop. “So what are you going to do?” she asked her best friend. “Do you think Jordan was telling you the truth when he said he wasn’t in a serious relationship with anyone?”

“Honestly, I don’t think he had any reason to lie to me. I don’t think they’re that serious right now, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to be something more than what they already are. But I’m not worried about how his current relationship status is going to affect Jake. Jordan wouldn’t do anything to threaten his growing union with our son anyway.”

Jake was her biggest priority in her life, and although Cassie didn’t think she had anything to worry about with Jordan and his relationships, she also didn’t want to let on to her best friend that buried deep down inside, there was a tiny bit of her worrying about how it might affect her own relationship with her son. She was Jake’s mother, and no woman would come into Jordan’s life and worm her way into Jake’s world in an attempt to build something he’s already got.

Cassie would simply free it from her mind, refusing to struggle over the concept that Brielle might mean something more to Jordan than he was letting on, and hoped Jake meant more to her ex-boyfriend than his sexual frustrations.

Repetitive knocks on the door startled Jordan out of his power-nap on the plush sofa in the middle of Nick’s living area, making him jump up from his position and rush to the door, where he was surprised by the visitor standing on the other side.

He was shell-shocked and speechless. He didn’t know what to say, prompting his visitor to say something first.

“Is that any way to greet someone who’s travelled as far as I have to see you?” Brielle struck a pose with one hand on her hip as if she was slightly offended by his lack of words. “It’s good to see you too, babe,” she prompted, looking him up and down with a seductive grin on her face; the distance between them had made her eager to see him again.

Jordan wrapped his arms around her in an affectionate encirclement. “I’m surprised to see you. I wasn’t expecting you to visit me here.”

Brielle and Jordan pulled apart from each other. She peered past him, glancing around at the apartment she was standing in. “I know. I wasn’t expecting to visit you either, but I thought it would be a nice surprise, and I missed you. Now, is your roommate home?” More importantly, her body missed him and the way he did things to her that no other man had come close to doing to her.

Jordan shook his head. “No, he’s working. Why? What did you have in mind?” Jordan was still stunned by her spontaneous visit to Yellow Valley. She certainly hadn’t said anything about visiting him when they spoke on the phone, nor were they an exclusive couple. He did, however, appreciate what they had in the form of being friends with benefits. She had definite sex appeal, and it was very easy to focus his attention on her.

Brielle brought her gaze back to Jordan, giving him a wink as her slender, caramel-colored arms snaked their way around his neck.

“I don’t know. I’m sure we can think of something. We always do when we’re alone together.” She licked her lips and hinted at something almost too dirty for words. She knew how to get what she wanted, and usually Jordan was eager for a quick rendezvous with Brielle, except he wasn’t today. People could call him crazy to turn down the advances of an incredibly sexy woman most men would kill to be with. He just wasn’t feeling the same way he usually was when he received a visit from her.

Brielle tried desperately to entice Jordan into a little bit of fun with her. After all, she had taken time out of her busy schedule as a model to hop a flight out of Miami to come see him in Yellow Valley, the town that looked like the tiniest speck on the map, and he couldn’t even greet her properly. Had she known how much of an unwelcome feeling she would receive, she would have never come in the first place.

Jordan pulled her arms from around his neck, and he knew he wasn’t fooling her. She could probably see right through him. He didn’t want her here—that much was obvious—and for Brielle, it was a strange feeling to know Jordan didn’t want her right now. In the six months she had known Jordan, she had never known him to turn her down for sex. She was hot and she knew it; men practically threw themselves at her, hitting on her every chance they got. Of course, she was flattered by the attention she received, and in most cases, there was no harm in a little casual sex and a date or two with the opposite sex when she was single and unattached, but there was also a tiny piece of her that itched to be closer to Jordan in more ways than just sex. She wanted to know he felt as strongly about her as she did for him. Was that too much to ask for?

“What’s the matter, baby? You’re not happy to see me?”

Brielle stood in the doorway, unsure whether or not she was welcome inside, watching Jordan’s expression and stance as he ran his hands over his head. She would have given anything to know what he was feeling right now.

“It’s not that. You know I’m always happy to see you,” Jordan said with a half-smile, and for a second, Jordan believed his own words, hoping she did too. It wasn’t a complete lie. His body did get turned on by her, begging him to do things he knew they both enjoyed, but after everything that had happened between him and Cassie, he couldn’t find enthusiasm in being with Brielle at this moment. If he let himself get physical with Brielle, a part of him felt as if he would be betraying Cassie, even though she had made it perfectly clear there was nothing between them anymore.

Brielle wasn’t buying his excitement. She hadn’t even gotten past the threshold of the front door as she crossed her arms over her hot pink spaghetti strap top and plastered a frown on her face.

Then her eyes looked past Jordan toward a framed picture sitting on a narrow table near the front entrance. She was a fair distance away from it, but she instantly spotted something familiar about the two people in the picture, which was obviously of a mother and child. Brielle realized she knew the face; it belonged to the woman with the lovely blonde hair she had met at the bakery when she stopped to ask for directions.

“Who’s that?” she asked to get Jordan’s attention. Her question made him follow her gaze to the picture, and he rubbed his chin with one hand.

“Do you know her?” Jordan asked, although he didn’t know how she would have.

“Well, no, not really,” Brielle said, shaking her head, “but I did meet the woman at a shop when I was asking for directions. It’s obvious though that either you or your roommate knows her, so who is she?” Her eyes were wide as she waited for details, and she slipped her slender fingers through her black hair, smoothing out the knots casually.

Jordan sighed heavily, and Brielle took it as him knowing who she was.

“As you can probably see just by driving through town, Yellow Valley doesn’t have a big population, so you know almost everyone in town. Cassie and I grew up together. We went to the same school,” Jordan detailed.

There was more. She could see it in his eyes Jordan wasn’t finished. Brielle knew that much. She only wanted him to open up to her. She wanted him, and to mean more to him than just someone he hooked up with when he was feeling horny. If he still had feelings for Cassie—it was obvious she had meant something to him in his past—then she ought to know about it before she put her heart in the firing line for heartbreak she always hoped she would never feel.

“Cassie and I were a couple in high school. We dated for several years until after graduation when we decided to go our separate ways. I haven’t had an opportunity to come home since I left, so when I came home this time, I discovered I’m a father. Cassie and I share a son together.”

Wow! Brielle certainly wasn’t expecting to be told the guy she was kind of seeing was suddenly a father. What could she make of this news? She wasn’t ready to take on the role of a stepmother.

“You’re a dad?” she practically screeched. She hadn’t meant to say it like that, but it just came out. She was very surprised, to say the least.

Jordan gulped and nodded his head. “I am,” he said while scratching the back of his head. “I know
I
never expected to find out I’m a dad, but now that I’ve had the opportunity to get to know my son, I can’t imagine not being in his life.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

“You asked me if I knew her. Well, that’s how I know her. She was my first love.”

“Do you still love her?”

Jordan couldn’t answer that question, when he wasn’t even sure of the answer himself, even though he was sure part of him already knew.

So he responded as best as he could. “I guess there will be a part of me that will always love Cassie. She was my first real relationship, and because of the child we share together, she and I will forever be in each other’s lives. I’m going to be a part of my child’s life.”

“I guess why I’m really asking is because I want to be a part of your life too. And I want to know where I stand with you. Do you see me in your life too?”

Brielle desperately needed to know she meant something to Jordan as much as he meant to her. Could she ever be meaningful to Jordan like Cassie obviously was?

“You are a part of my life.”

He wasn’t getting what she meant.

“No, you don’t understand,” Brielle said, shaking her head as she took his hand in hers, and to her, they simply fit together like they were meant to be, but did Jordan feel the same way? “I like you. A lot. I guess I want us to be more than acquaintances who happen to hook up every so often. I want to go out on an actual date with you.”

She watched as Jordan quickly looked away from her, taking in a deep breath before turning back to her.

“Well, I guess we can go out on a date. I’m just not sure I can handle anything else right now. At the moment, my life is hectic enough as it is. I’m not really looking for a relationship.”

“Okay,” Brielle agreed, despite her response obviously being a lie.

Even though it wasn’t the answer Brielle was really hoping for, she knew she shouldn’t push the matter any further. And she certainly wasn’t going to question meeting his son at the risk of pushing Jordan away permanently. For now, she would be happy to simply go out on a date with the guy she was seeing.