like this about a girl. But then, as far as she knew, no girl had ever pulled a disappearing act on Jorge. If anything, it was always the other way around.
“Any time,” Gloria murmured. She’d teased him about finally growing up, but maybe, just maybe, there was something to it.
If so, she thought, Mama was going to be thrilled.
January 2 was a typical cold winter day.
Jane shivered as she made her way to Reading-Works’ front door. She was going to have to dip into her savings and buy another coat, she thought glumly. Wearing three sweaters, one on top of another, just didn’t do the trick.
Maybe her coat was still at the restaurant, she thought hopefully. She’d call over there during her first break and inquire.
And pray that she didn’t run into Jorge Mendoza.
Pushing open the front door, the warm air that met her was lovingly welcomed. At the same time, goose bumps formed all over her body.
Like the ones she’d felt when Jorge had kissed her New Year’s Eve.
What in heaven’s name could she have been thinking? Men like that didn’t give women like her the time of day—unless, of course, there was a bet involved, she thought sarcastically.
Served her right for being so naive.
With a sigh, she shook her head. Well, it was a new year and it was back to reality for her. Time to put impossibly foolish dreams behind her.
Walking into the lounge where all the teachers gathered for their breaks and lunch, she saw that a number of her coworkers were clustered around the main table. At first, she thought that someone had brought in cookies. But then she saw that what had captured their attention was a huge profusion of flowers, nestled in a large basket that was in the center of the table.
Someone had gotten flowers, she thought with a touch of envy. She had no idea what that felt like, to have someone care enough about you to send flowers and publicly acknowledge his attachment to you.
“Who’s the lucky girl?” she asked, trying to sound cheerful as she joined the group.
Sally Hillman turned to look at her, a huge grin on her lips. “You are.”
Jane stared at her, positive she’d heard wrong. “What?”
“Joyce couldn’t help herself,” Harriet Ryan, another tutor, volunteered. Embarrassed, Joyce, the general secretary, made a strange, disparaging noise. “She read the card. Why didn’t you tell us you knew Jorge Mendoza?” she wanted to know.
“When did you meet him?” another woman asked.
“Where?”
“Details, girl, give us details,” Sally begged. “The rest of us are dying to know.”
The questions all melded together into one cacophony of voices and noises as Jane leaned over the table and plucked the card from the basket. She felt as if she were moving in slow motion.
“New Year’s Eve ended much too soon,” the card said. “With affection, Jorge.”
“With affection,” Joyce echoed, looking over her shoulder at the card she’d already read. A huge sigh followed. “You’ve been holding out on us,” she accused Jane.
“Yeah,” Harriet chimed in. “Not very nice of you, Jane. Give.”
And five sets of eyes turned their eager faces toward her.
Chapter Six
Unlike her former beauty queen mother—or maybe because of her—Jane had never liked being the center of attention. It made her uncomfortable.
“There’s nothing to ‘give,’” Jane told Harriet.
The women exchanged exasperated looks with one another, as if they thought she was holding out on them.
“Oh, come on, Jane,” Cecilia Evans, the oldest of the group, pressed. “A man doesn’t send flowers and sign his name ‘with affection’ if something isn’t going on. Especially not a hunk like Jorge Mendoza.”
Cecilia drove the point home. “How does he know you work here?”
Jane looked back at the flowers. They would have had her floating on air—if she didn’t know what she knew. She almost wished she hadn’t overheard those boys gossiping.
Most likely, Jorge had sent the flowers because he’d had qualms of conscience.
But then, she backtracked, why should he if he didn’t know that she knew?
This was all getting very complicated. All she wanted to do was get to work, do what she did best, and forget about everything else.
Some people were meant to have romance in their lives and some weren’t. She belonged to the “weren’t” group and she was just going to have to learn how to deal with that and accept it.
More than anything, Jane didn’t want to talk about Jorge or the flowers or anything that had to do with why they might have been sent. But she had never learned how to be rude or cut people off. She’d certainly never learned how to tell them to butt out.
So she lifted her shoulders in a vague shrug and admitted, “I told him where I work.”
“When?” Joyce demanded excitedly. “When did you tell him?” The slender blonde shook her head when information didn’t immediately come spilling out of Jane’s mouth. “If I’d met Jorge Mendoza, every single last detail would have been up on my blog three minutes after I got home. Maybe two.”
“I don’t blog,” Jane said, seizing on the stray item.
“You don’t talk much, either,” Cecilia grumbled. Two of the other women chimed in their agreement.
Jane pressed her lips together, suppressing a sigh. It wasn’t her intention to seem secretive about the matter. It was just that she knew that these flowers, didn’t really mean anything and honest though she was, she certainly wasn’t about to tell her friends that Jorge had kissed her on a bet.
Some things you just didn’t talk about. To anyone.
Looking at the circle of eager faces surrounding her, she decided to give them just the bare bones and hope they’d be satisfied with that.
“I met him at the New Year’s Eve party I went to at Red, the one Emmett Jamison and his wife threw for the Fortune Foundation. I went representing ReadingWorks,” she added quickly, in case any of them thought she had a special in with the elite circle of people the Fortunes usually associated with. As the one who had worked at ReadingWorks the longest, she’d been the logical one to invite. “I was afraid if I didn’t go, it might insult Mr. Jamison.”
They all knew that the Foundation had given ReadingWorks sizable grants in the last couple of years, and it was largely because of the Foundation that ReadingWorks’ doors were opened to the children whose parents could not afford
