and his mother, she’d sacrificed everything—including her own dreams and having kids and time she should have spent with her family.
If she hadn’t, her family might not have ended up the way it had.
And while she didn’t know much about Ian, she did know that he worked for his father. To her, that meant that meeting his boss’s requirements wasn’t something he could leave at the office. It meant that his father held two major positions of importance in his life, and that gave his father double the power over him, double the influence over him, double the reason for Ian to factor in his father’s opinions, desires and goals, and try to please him above and before all else. Above and before everyone else.
For Jenna, that raised red warning flares.
In her experience, a family tie that strong ended up taking the number one priority.
And getting lost in the dust of accommodating that wasn’t something she was ever—ever—going to do again. The cost was just too high.
“So we don’t care whether or not Ian Kincaid’s jaw drops tonight,” she muttered to Abby, who was trying to pull a stocking cap over her own curly hair and again paid Jenna no attention.
But still it would be a really nice ego-boost if his jaw did drop, she couldn’t help thinking.
And it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have a bit of an ego boost after this winter.
It just wouldn’t change anything, Jenna swore.
She had set a new course for herself, for her life. An unwavering course.
Ian Kincaid might be drop-dead gorgeous, a pleasure to sit on the porch and drink lemonade with, sexy enough to have had her fantasizing about him all through the night, on her mind this entire day—or not—but he was also a guy to stay away from, even if she wasn’t intent on sticking to her own new path.
So an ego boost was honestly all she wanted from him. All she would allow.
But if his jaw dropped when she walked in tonight?
She’d be glad for that ego boost.
Then she’d go on about her business and never give him another thought.
The grand opening of Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs was by invitation only; Jenna had helped Meg address them and knew that over two hundred of them had gone out.
The main house on the compound—the house Meg shared with her husband Logan and Tia—was being used as the babysitting center. Manned by four teenage girls, that was where Meg’s three-year-old stepdaughter and several other children and infants were being left.
Abby was not altogether good with strangers and clung to Jenna when the babysitters tried to take her, but after a moment of watching Tia—whom Abby treated like a big sister—Abby motioned to be let down. She crawled over to where the three-year-old was playing. Since Tia welcomed Abby and let her play with the train set, too, Jenna felt free to leave her and went through the house and out the back door.
Directly behind Meg’s home was a large two-car garage. Over that was the studio apartment where Jenna knew Ian was staying. There weren’t any lights on there, so she assumed he was already at the party.
A shiver of excitement ran through her at that thought, the thought that she was on her way to seeing him again.
Then she got furious at herself.
She was also on her way to seeing potentially two hundred other people, she reminded herself. Why was it only Ian Kincaid she was thinking about and getting excited over?
Take it down a notch, she warned herself.
But still she walked a little faster to get to the party.
It was being held next door to the garage, in what had once been the property’s barn. The top half had been converted into a loft where Chase Mackey lived with his soon-to-be-wife, Hadley, and Ian and Chase’s nephew, Cody.
The lower half of the barn was devoted to Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs. The rear portion was work space, while the front half had been turned into showcases that displayed the furniture to best effect. Those showcases had taken from December until now to finally complete.
As Jenna neared the big barn doors that were open for the event, she could see light spilling out and hear the sounds of the guitarist and singer Meg had hired, as well as laughter and many, many voices.
As hosts and hostesses, Meg, Logan, Chase and Hadley were positioned at the entrance to greet new arrivals. The mayor and his wife were taking up their attention as Jenna got there, so she motioned to Meg to let her know she was just going to go in, and then she moved around them, headed for the sea of people.
She spotted several of the Perrys and the Pratts she’d grown up with, and she took a moment to chat with them. She said hello to the Graysons, who were new to town but whom Meg had introduced her to. Logan and Hadley’s half siblings were there—although Jenna didn’t see Dag and his new wife Shannon, Ian’s sister. All of the other business owners in town were there, along with the entire town council and even a few people who looked familiar, but whom Jenna couldn’t quite place.
The one person she didn’t see was Ian Kincaid.
Not that it made any difference, she told herself. She knew almost everyone there, she was looking forward to talking to many people she hadn’t yet had the chance to reconnect with, and it didn’t make any difference if she never encountered him tonight.
Except that somehow in her scenario of making her entrance, she’d imagined him alone in the distance when he caught his first sight of her and being bowled over by it.
Silly. It was just so silly….
When it struck her just how silly it was, she shuddered a little at having had such an adolescent pipe dream and vowed to put Ian Kincaid completely from her mind. This was a party she’d been looking forward to before she’d even met him, and she was determined to dive into it, to enjoy herself and not to have another thought about the man.
Starting now!
Since Logan, Chase and Hadley—who worked with Logan and Chase as their upholsterer—had been busy decorating the showcases, Meg had taken charge of the party planning, and Jenna had helped her friend wherever she could. Part of that help had involved deciding where to put the bar, the hors d’oeuvres table and the guitarist and singer. So even though she couldn’t see any of those things through the crowd, she knew what direction to go to get to them.
It took time to move through the mass of people, because she did know most everyone, and there were so many more greetings to exchange along the way.
Then she finally made it to her destination, and that was where she found Ian Kincaid.
He was standing alone near the bar, rather than in the middle of the showroom floor, and his jaw didn’t drop when he first caught sight of Jenna. But his striking pale blue eyes did widen, and that supple-looking mouth of his stretched into a slow, appreciative smile that still managed to send the message she’d been hoping for.
“This is not the look of a farmer’s daughter,”
