“Lissa, you have to come down,” he said reasonably.
She shook her head again.
“Come on,” he urged. “I’ll help you.”
“What if we fall?”
“We won’t.”
But she wasn’t convinced, and pressed farther into the corner of the tree house.
“I’ll get you down.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
With a little whimper, she slowly scooted forward on her bottom. Once at the edge, though, she moved away again.
“Come on, Liss.” He held out a hand. “You can do it.”
She bit her lip and studied him for a moment. Then she moved back to the entrance. He went down a couple of steps to give her room. “Okay, now turn around and put your foot out.”
That produced another whimper but she turned around. Then she stuck out her foot.
Jonathan breathed an inward sigh of relief.
Until she pulled her foot back. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. You’re brave. You climbed up here all by yourself.”
“I didn’t think about falling then.”
“Don’t think about it now,” he advised. “Here, I’ll make sure you find the step.”
Once more, she risked sticking out her foot. This time he guided it to the step. “All right! You did it. Come on, next foot.”
And so it went, one foot at a time until he got her down to solid ground.
Once there she threw her arms around his neck. “You saved me!”
It made him feel like a superhero. It was also a little embarrassing. What if the guys saw? He pulled away. “No big deal.”
“It was to me,” she said. And then she did something that forever changed his life. She kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Jonathan.”
He could feel his whole face burning. The other boys would tease him mercilessly if they got wind of this. Not knowing what to say or do, he ran off toward home and those root beer floats, Lissa right behind him.
* * *
His mom had not only made them floats, she’d made popcorn, too, and they’d spent the rest of that Saturday afternoon playing Yahtzee. It had been a perfect day and it had been the beginning of what turned out to be a lifelong, one-sided love affair.
Did Lissa remember that day? She’d never mentioned it again. Although one afternoon when they were walking home from middle school she’d told him he was her best friend.
She’d been talking about Danny Popkee, on whom she had a crush, asking Jonathan for advice on how to get his attention. That had been torture. Jonathan hadn’t wanted Lissa to get Danny’s attention. She already had a boy’s attention. His.
“I dunno,” he’d mumbled. “Either he likes you or he doesn’t.”
“Well, that’s no help. What would you do if you wanted someone to like you?”
Walk her home from school, help her with her math and hope I can get up enough nerve to ask her to the eighth-grade dance. He’d shrugged. “Just be nice.” That was never hard for Lissa. She was nice to everyone. “Like you always are,” he’d added.
“Aw, Jonathan, you’re so sweet,” she’d said, making him blush. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re my best friend.”
He was her best friend, but she had a crush on Danny. She’d decided to bake Danny some cookies and that was all it took. They went to the eighth-grade dance together.
But she’d made cookies for Jonathan, too—to thank him for all his good advice.
In fact, she’d made cookies for Jonathan a lot, always trying out new recipes. Baking became one of her favorite ways to express her creativity. And to do something nice for her high school pals.
“What do you think of these?” she’d asked, setting a plate of cookies in front of him. He’d come over to her house to help her with algebra, a subject that was threatening to ruin her sophomore year. “They’re called kitchen sink cookies.”
“Kitchen sink cookies?”
“Yeah, ’cause you put everything but the kitchen sink in them. They have oatmeal and raisins and butterscotch chips and chocolate chips.”
Sounded great. He’d taken one off the plate and bitten into it. In spite of all that good stuff they weren’t very sweet. This wasn’t one of her better efforts, but he didn’t want to tell her that.
There she’d sat, looking at him expectantly. “Not bad,” he’d managed.
He hadn’t mastered his poker face yet and she’d known immediately that something was off. She frowned and chose a cookie from the plate, took a bite. “Eeew.”
“Well, they’re not your best. But they’re okay.” He’d valiantly taken another bite.
She’d set hers back on the plate, then took his out of his hand and put it back, too. “You’re an awful liar. They’re terrible. I refuse to let you eat another bite. I must have forgotten the sugar. How could I do that?”
“Thinking about something else?” he’d suggested. More like someone else. Lissa was always falling madly in love—with everyone but him.
He’d watched her take the plate to the garbage can and dump the ruined goodies in. “You know, those weren’t totally bad,” he’d said.
“Yes, they were.” She’d sat down at the kitchen table and smiled at him. “You’re a super friend. But you have terrible taste.”
Not in women.
He should have said that out loud. Why didn’t he? Why hadn’t he ever said anything?
Of course, deep down he knew the answer. He’d been afraid of how she’d react. He’d chosen to keep his mouth shut then and during the years that followed in order to avoid the agony of rejection.
Still, all those years of cowardice had produced their own brand of suffering. He was tired of suffering.
He and Lissa had been best friends when they were kids. They could be best friends again, maybe even more than that if he turned himself into the kind of man a woman like Lissa would notice.
He only had a ghost of a chance.
But he believed in ghosts. So tomorrow he’d read about the Viscount Vampire and the Cursed Cowboy. Then he was going to go online (where no one would see what he was buying) and buy a bunch more romance novels. He had a lot of research to do.
Chapter Four
Mother’s Day dinner at the Gerard residence with Jonathan’s sister in charge was a culinary adventure. To say that the meal didn’t measure up to the fancy table setting and fresh flowers would have been an understatement. The roast was done well enough to qualify as jerky and the asparagus was scorched. The cake...well, it wasn’t cake, at least not like any Jonathan had tasted—since the last time he ate Juliet’s cake. Wasn’t cake supposed to be...taller? And, whoa, what was that bitter taste?
Juliet made a face, too. “I shouldn’t have added the baking powder at the last minute,” she said.
“It does need to be sifted in, sweetie,” her mother said gently.
“But I’d forgotten it. And I knew I had to add it.”
“But since you did add it, the cake