The Bachelor Takes a Bride (Those Engaging Garretts!) by Brenda Harlen Page B

morning.
    “Didn’t you close last night? Why are you up already?”
    Jordyn shrugged as she stirred sugar into her cup. “Couldn’t sleep.”
    “Something on your mind?”
    Jordyn lifted her cup to her lips, drank deeply. “Nope.”
    “Marco show up at O’Reilly’s last night?”
    “Nope.”
    “Ahh.” Tristyn set her empty mug in the dishwasher and picked up her bag. “That would explain it.”
    She scowled. “Explain what?”
    “Your mood this morning.”
    “There’s nothing wrong with my mood,” Jordyn snapped.
    Her sister just raised a brow.
    Jordyn swallowed another mouthful of coffee.
    “You know—you could go see him.”
    “Who?”
    Tristyn snorted.
    “If you’re not interested, tell him you’re not interested—don’t string him along.”
    “I’m not stringing anyone along,” she denied. “And I have told him I’m not interested.”
    “And then you kissed him,” Tristyn reminded her.
    “
He
kissed
me
.”
    “Because the man is seriously smitten with you,” her sister warned.
    “He is not.”
    If he was smitten with her, he wouldn’t have stayed away from O’Reilly’s for five nights. Not that she was counting. And certainly not that she would ever admit to her sister.
    “He is,” Tristyn insisted. “And if you’re not careful, you’re going to break his heart.”
    “He asked me out, I said no, and I haven’t seen him in five days—I don’t think his heart was broken.”
    “He hasn’t given up.” Tristyn paused on her way to the door. “Five days?”
    Jordyn clenched her jaw shut. Obviously she’d already said too much.
    “Maybe he’s not the only one who’s smitten,” her sister mused.
    Before Jordyn could formulate a reply, the door closed behind Tristyn’s back.
    * * *
    He came into the bar that night—just when Jordyn had convinced herself that he wasn’t going to show up. And when she looked up and saw him, her heart started to race.
    Maybe he’s not the only one who’s smitten.
    She shook her head, refusing to consider the possibility. She didn’t get smitten. In the more than three years that had passed since the death of her fiancé, she hadn’t even had a second date. More importantly, she hadn’t been on a single date with Marco. How could she possibly be smitten with a guy she hadn’t gone out with even once?
    The simple and obvious answer was that she wasn’t. Okay, yes, she was attracted to him. The way her heart was bouncing around inside her chest made it impossible to deny that fact, but her head—the protector of her heart—refused to let that attraction lead to anything else.
    His usual seat at the bar was vacant, but before he made his way to it, he stopped to exchange a few words with some of the regular customers. He asked Ed about his job, then chuckled over something Bobby said. He was good with people—all kinds of people. She might have nicknamed him “Charm Boy” because of his flirtatious manner, but the truth was, he made friends with everyone. Even Carl, who preferred hanging out at the bar to being home with his wife and didn’t make conversation with anyone, had exchanged half a dozen words with Marco the previous weekend.
    She knew he worked a lot of hours at Valentino’s—not just behind the bar but wherever he was needed. And yet somehow he’d found the time to stop by O’Reilly’s to see her. And why would he do that unless he was, as Tristyn suggested, smitten with her?
    And while she was flattered—because what woman wouldn’t be flattered to have a man like Marco interested in her?—she knew that she couldn’t continue to encourage his flirtations. Her sister was right: she owed it to Marco to be honest about what she wanted—or didn’t want.
    “I haven’t seen you in a while,” she said, when he settled himself at the bar.
    He winked at her. “Did you miss me?”
    She had. She wasn’t willing to admit it, but it was true. “Carl did,” she told him. “He could barely pick his chin up off of