Be My Valentino. Sandra D. Bricker
going to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and you’re going to start a whole new life.”
Like in most things, Piper had been right. Against all those horrifying odds.
Beside her sat Amber. If Piper was the driving force to begin the climb up the mountain, Amber was the pickax that helped clear away the clutter.
“I’m your girl,” Amber had said to her when they met for the first time to talk about the future. “I’m available today. Do you want to take me home with you and show me your closet?”
What if she hadn’t gone into the ladies room that night, at the precise moment that she did? She might never have crossed paths with Amber Davidson, Force of Nature.
Next to Amber sat Courtney Alexis, the raven-haired angel who had taken a turn at carrying Jessie’s backpack up the side of the treacherous mountain when it became too heavy to bear. Jessie’s first guest blog for Courtney had garnered more than 200,000 views . . . and roughly 87 new Adornments customers. After Amber’s first blog and Jessie’s second, six designers had sent inventory to the store in the hope that Adornments’ new stylist might introduce them to a demographic they might never have known otherwise. Just a few weeks from the adoption of her bouncing baby girl, Courtney’s gut feeling about Jessie had changed the course of her life . . . and taught her what it meant to renew a dream.
After a full day of painting the nursery and laughing over trying to assemble a Bellini crib on their own—and finally summoning the big guns with a call to Danny—Courtney had reached across the floor and jiggled Jessie’s hand. “You’re going to be doing this for your own nursery, Jessie. I just know God’s heard your secret dreams and will bring you the babies you yearn for.”
Far too soon in her relationship with Danny to start talking about babies, but still . . . the hope of becoming a mother had been rekindled in her, and she felt a joyous assurance in Courtney’s words that day.
Jessie continued her survey of the table. Next to Courtney, Antonio—the owner of Tuscan Son—smiled and gave Jessie a little wink.
“Okay, the truth is,” he’d told her that very afternoon when she’d arrived, “I have been blessed beyond measure in my life. This kind of blessing is not meant to be hoarded. I may have encouraged Piper to help out with the furnishings and a couple new appliances. Just to give you solid footing to make your leap to the next phase of your life. Did I tie a big red ribbon on a used car for you? Yes. I admit it, carissima. I’ve been found out, and Danny insists that I tell you. But you needed transportation. You are famiglia to Piper and me, Jessie. This is what we do for famiglia, for the ones we love.”
Next to Antonio sat Aaron Riggs. She’d had no idea when he offered one of the vacant apartments in the building he owned that he would become the rope-and-pulley for this climbing expedition her life had become. As she watched him, Riggs leaned into his chair, tossed back his head, and unabashedly laughed. That was something she’d come to love about Riggs. There wasn’t a false bone in the guy’s body. He lived in a van, for crying out loud; and made no excuses about it either. He did whatever he had to do in order to provide everything his daughter needed in life; lending a helping hand to others came second on the list; he was a distant third.
And Danny.
Jessie’s heart melted a little as she looked at him. If life had moved a mountain before her, Danny was the summit she had finally reached. When he glanced up and met her gaze, he narrowed his steel eyes and smiled at her . . . and the world stopped rotating in that moment; everything in it fell away. There was only Jessie and Danny, and her chest squeezed with heartfelt emotion.
How did this happen? she asked herself in wonder. How did this man happen to me?
She’d found so many things to love about Danny, so many qualities that made him the most unique person she’d ever met. Laid-back and cool, sweet and funny, a warm and golden heart encased by a Christian faith that she both admired and feared, wondering if she might find something like it for herself one day. Her Grampy had faith like that—completely confident and utterly submissive at the same time—but for some reason, she’d largely dismissed it in younger days. But now . . . after everything . . . it tugged at her from somewhere deep inside.
Nearly everyone at that table with her had a deeper faith and followed some invisible guide; a guide that had somehow led them straight to her, equipped them with the net she would so desperately need, and the tools to make them ready to catch her when the moment arose. Even while chastising herself for the cheesy sentiment, Jessie suddenly imagined that back room of Tuscan Son restaurant—filled with the helpmates without whom she might never have triumphed—as some consecrated place and moment where everything she needed had intersected sublimely.
She almost laughed out loud at her own dramatic emotion. Instead, however, she picked up the Toscana glass tumbler of tea sitting in front of her and stood. “I need to say something to you all.”
The various pops of chatter faded away, and all eyes nestled sweetly on Jessie.
“When the tsunami came and washed me out of the life I had known,” she began, pausing for a moment to form the words. “Well, I didn’t think there was anything left for me. But what I’ve learned because of each and every one of you at this table is that . . . new beginnings aren’t possible until old obstructions are destroyed. Bit by bit, every one of you has helped me stand up again and move forward, and because of you I’ve found something I never thought was possible for me. I’m not sure there are words adequate enough to thank you.”
Danny stood and rounded the table, finding a place beside her. He kissed the side of her head and placed his arm loosely around her shoulder. When she looked up into his eyes, Jessie evaporated a bit under his warmth.
“Raise your glasses,” he told them all. “Let’s drink to the new future of Jessie Hart.”
Glasses of wine, tea, and club soda were lifted all around the table. Jessie felt as if a shower of joy had begun to rain down on them as she raised her own glass.
“A new future,” she repeated. “I love that.”
And just as the last clink of glasses was heard, another voice chimed in.
“Hello, Jessie.”
As she turned and looked into the familiar gray eyes of Jack Stanton, a horrified Jessie dropped her glass and it crashed on the floor.
She’d seen it in the movies, but never felt it for herself. That moment where the live wire of horrified shock meets the damp floor of reality and the sizzling begins. The background moves toward a person until it becomes more sharp and clear than the foreground, and something far behind begins to swirl—around and around until they can’t stand to focus on it any more. The eyes of the movie character usually rolled back in their heads about then, and a slow-motion shot dollied along with them as they fell to the ground, unconscious.
“What are you thinking?” Piper exclaimed as she jumped to her feet and blocked the way between Jack and the table. “You have no right to come here. Not after all you’ve done.”
Jack had long ago dubbed Piper as a “mama bear,” and Jessie could see from the somewhat amused expression in his eyes that he remembered why.
Raising both his hands in a mock surrender, he told her, “I just came to talk to Jessie for a minute.”
Jessie’s dinner rose halfway to her throat on a wave of burning acid.
“I don’t think so,” Piper said. “Do the police know you’re here? Maybe we should call them and let them know where to find you.”
Jack lifted his pant leg to reveal what looked like a large, square-faced watch strapped around his ankle. “As you can see, the authorities know where I am every minute.”
“And yet you’re roaming around anyway.”
He shifted his eyes from Piper to Jessie as he said, “You have nothing to worry about here.”
Jessie jerked toward Danny, looking