The waiter cleared their empty plates and rattled off the dessert offerings. They ordered a second round of drinks, and a slice of cheesecake to share.
Vicki stared at her nearly empty wineglass. “I was thinking about it earlier at the shop. You’re right. It won’t be the same. Janelle is a happily married woman now, and we’re single. It’s a different mind-set.”
Sandra nodded. “Her life will revolve around her husband, and before you know it, the babies will start coming...” If their friend didn’t return home from her honeymoon already pregnant, she thought, downing the last of her first martini.
“Well, hopefully, love, weddings and lots of babies are in our futures, too.” Vicki’s tone softened along with her gaze. “Sooner rather than later.”
Sandra coughed, nearly choking on her drink.
“S-speak for yourself,” she sputtered. “I’m not in the market for a husband, and my nephew is enough baby for me.”
“Oh, come on. Aren’t you tired of having no one to come home to at the end of a long, hard day?”
“Nope, it’s why I moved out of my parents’ house and into one of my own as soon as Swoon became profitable.”
The waiter returned bearing their drinks and dessert. Sandra immediately reached for the fresh cocktail, its sugary rush reminiscent of a milk shake. However, if she thought the decadent slab of New York cheesecake at the center of the table was going to dissuade her friend from pursuing the current topic of conversation, she was mistaken.
“Well, aren’t you sick of wasting your time on meaningless dates with guys you know would never make the cut for Mr. Right?”
“Nope. At twenty-eight years old, it’s called being young and having fun. In fact, I have a date Friday night with a cute Mr. Let’s-Just-Have-a-Good-Time lawyer. We’re going to a Halloween party in Boston.”
Vicki sighed. “I’m all for fun and good times, but I want to start having them with a special someone. Janelle already has her Prince Charming. I’m ready for mine and my happily-ever-after.”
“Not me. I have goals to achieve.” Sandra picked up one of the two forks that had accompanied the cheesecake. “They don’t include being sidetracked by a needy Prince Charming and a drudgery-filled, so-called happily-ever-after spent catering to him.”
She shoved a forkful of cheesecake into her mouth.
Already a die-hard romantic, Vicki was simply swept up in the romance of Janelle’s wedding, Sandra thought. No wedding, or for that matter, no man was going to sway her from her dream of taking Swoon Couture beyond Wintersage.
If next week’s election went the way she hoped, and her design was selected by the governor-elect’s wife, it would garner her design business statewide, perhaps even national, attention.
Vicki dug into the cheesecake with her fork. “A man who’s truly your Prince Charming won’t divert you from your goals. He’ll want to be there to cheer you on as you achieve them.”
Sandra rolled her eyes. “Maybe in fairy-tale land, where Mr. Right and Prince Charming reside, along with the fictitious Knight in Shining Armor.”
Her friend helped herself to another bite of cheesecake, staring at her as she chewed. “If you say so,” she said.
“I do.”
Vicki shrugged. “Back in the day, I’d have bet money you would have been the first one of us to say ‘I do’ and start living a happily-ever-after, with your high school sweetheart.”
Isaiah.
After years of not giving him much thought, Sandra found his name popping into her head for the second time that day. Again, images of the tall athletic boy with the dreamy eyes washed over her. They’d been so in love and had made so many plans for the future.
Plans that years later seemed as absurd as the notion of her cooking Thanksgiving dinner.
“That was a long time ago, and we were just kids,” Sandra said.
“Yeah, but you two seemed so perfect for each other. Do you ever wonder how things would have turned out if Isaiah hadn’t left?”
For the entire summer after he’d gone to the naval academy, Sandra had stayed awake nights asking the same question. What if... But back then she’d been a naive seventeen-year-old girl who hadn’t known squat about real life.
“Isaiah was just a high school sweetheart, who I haven’t seen since he left Wintersage,” she said. “I think about him as much as I do Mrs. Sterling’s chemistry class or after-school cheerleader practice, which is never.”
Sandra took a sip of the sweet martini. Isaiah’s mother, Cecily, was one of her private clients, but she hadn’t seen much of her lately. When she did come into the boutique, neither of them brought up the subject of her son.
Isaiah had come home to see his parents from time to time over the years, however Sandra hadn’t run into him during those brief visits.
Vicki exhaled, one of those drawn-out, dreamy, love-conquers-all sighs. “After all these years, I still remember the way he used to look at you,” she said, “like you were the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.”
Sandra rolled her eyes again. It was time to shut down the subject, otherwise her friend would continue on the path of blowing a long-ago adolescent infatuation totally out of proportion.
“I’m sure Isaiah Jacobs is somewhere on the other side of the world, with his choice of beautiful women,” she said, picking up her fork again to dig into the dwindling slice of cheesecake.
“You’re probably right,” Vicki agreed.
“So my brainpower would be better utilized thinking about the here and the now, like how I’m going to catch up on a backlog of work and get out of turning Thanksgiving into a fiasco.”
Her friend scrunched up her nose. “Especially the part about Thanksgiving.”
Sandra laughed and reached for her drink. Then a man standing at the dining room entrance caught her eye, and she froze, martini poised in midair.
The shoulders beneath the leather bomber jacket were broader, the once lanky body packed with lean muscle, but it was his face, those familiar eyes.
Isaiah.
It couldn’t be. Sandra blinked, and whoever she’d thought she had seen vanished.
“What’s the matter with you?” Vicki asked. “You look like you saw a Halloween ghost.”
“It was nothing.” She put her martini down and picked up her water glass instead.
She’d obviously already had more than enough to drink. Too much alcohol, the spooky Halloween ambience and out-of-the-blue thoughts of Isaiah today had wreaked havoc on her imagination.
They’d simply stirred up the devil, that’s all. The sexy devil who’d broken her teenage heart.
* * *
One glimpse confirmed it.
After all these years, Sandra Woolcott was still the most beautiful woman Isaiah had ever seen.
He’d left before she’d noticed him standing at the entrance of the restaurant’s dining room, watching her.
Spellbound.
Drinking in her familiar, yet now mature, features like a man who’d stumbled across an oasis after walking the desert for days.
Isaiah slowed his truck at the entrance of Martine’s Fine Furnishings’ headquarters and punched a pass code into the keypad to open the gate. His plan had been to sidestep another one of the macrobiotic meals his mother had delivered to the house