Authors: Melanie Jacobson
Not My Type (30 page)
Nice. Tanner might be dumb enough to stick with me, even when I wasn’t smart enough to see what I had when I had it, but at least he understood the function of the caps lock key.
Then again, maybe troll boy had it exactly right. Maybe Tanner had wised up and run as far away as possible.
The office stayed quiet, even though it was a fuller house than usual. My little black rain cloud must have expanded to include the rest of the staff. How nice of me to dampen the mood for everyone. What started as a day of promise and possible new beginnings had become a sad, sorry footnote in the wreck of my love life. I checked the time again. Two hours before everyone cleared out and I could quit pretending I was being productive. Two hours until I could drive home and collapse.
Two hours had never felt so long.
Ellie left first, off to a “meeting” with one of the magazine’s “investors.” Chantelle and I had decided that these meetings probably translated into shopping with a girlfriend or eating with a young, eligible male power broker at one of the downtown venture capital firms or law offices.
An IM alert popped up from Chantelle at the bottom of my screen.
Investment meeting with a shadowy Russian?
It normally entertained me to trade IM guesses with Chantelle about what Ellie was really up to but not today. Today I struggled to wade through even the simplest tasks, and they grew harder as the day wore on without a word from Tanner.
I got nothing
, I typed back.
Chantelle left an hour later with a murmur of encouragement and a squeeze on my shoulder. The ad girls left by five, and Denny and I had the office to ourselves. Usually, it was the most productive time of the day for me, but I knew it was hopeless. I stood and looked down at my blouse, a gauzy lavender confection I had paired with a denim pencil skirt this morning when I woke up deluded that I would reunite with Tanner.
“I’m out,” I said to Denny. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Sorry,” he said, and I knew he was apologizing that my roll of the dice had come up snake eyes.
I shuffled my laptop and a few loose papers into my bag and slung my purse over my shoulder. For the first time in a while, I found myself wishing again that I didn’t share a room with Rosemary. I badly needed to burrow and ignore the world for the rest of the night, and then maybe, just maybe, I would find the energy to hatch a new plan to make things right with Tanner. The thought left me desolate though. Today’s major plays had been the biggest and boldest new plan I could think of. I had hoped that by publicly quitting the column, I could say in words and actions that I was sorry and I was ready. There was no way to mistake the message. That left only one option.
He had rejected it.
I trudged downstairs to my car in the small strip mall parking lot and stopped short. A box sat on The Zuke. It was the size of a shoebox and wrapped in newspaper comics. I glanced around the parking lot, and then I saw him, leaning on his Honda at the other end of the lot.
“Open it,” Tanner called.
Inside was a copy of the
Bee,
folded in half to fit the box and bound with a red ribbon tied in a slightly squashed bow. I lifted it out and untied it then opened the paper and spread it flat on The Zuke’s hood. A huge block headline screamed “Tanner Graham Finds Love.” Underneath it was a full color picture that Courtney had snapped on our trampoline double date. The rest of the paper was blank, but this had definitely been done on the
Bee’
s printing press. I jerked up in surprise and stared at him, eyes wide with shock. Tanner smiled and pushed himself away from his car, in no hurry as he strolled toward me, hands in his pockets.
“Wha . . . how . . .” I stammered, trying to process everything.
“I know people,” he said, reaching me and stopping a few feet away.
“But . . . you didn’t call me.” I was bewildered. Two minutes before, I had walked out of my office convinced that our relationship was on life support. Now Tanner stood there smiling like nothing was wrong. Which was great, except . . . “You made me wait all day!”
He laughed. “I had to wait until my buddy came on shift this afternoon to pull this together. Besides, you made me wait. For months.”
“But we’ve only been dating for a few weeks.”
“A few weeks is all it took me to fall in love with you,” he said softly. “I’ve been feeling this way for months.”
My jaw dropped. I stared at him for nearly a minute, attempting to form a response a few times and failing miserably. He reached over and, with the lightest touch of his index finger, pushed my jaw back up. Then he took a step closer and kissed me, his hand sliding through my hair and cupping the back of my head like he was making sure I wouldn’t slip away.
I’d sampled a lot of kisses from Tanner over the last month. Hello kisses, good-bye kisses, just-because kisses, you-look-cute kisses, the-Jazz-just-scored kisses, I-hate-that-it’s-time-to-go kisses. But this kiss . . .
It wasn’t even on the same planet as those kisses.
This kiss staked his claim. And I returned it because I fiercely wanted him to be mine.
“You were saying?” he asked, taking a step back. I heard the hitch in his breathing.
“When did you know?”
He smiled. “I figured there might be potential when I figured out that you had left that thank you note for Courtney. I’d seen the feisty side of Pepper Spicer, and then, in that note to her, I realized what was underneath.”
“What’s that?” I asked, my voice barely audible over the hum of passing traffic.
“A woman with the biggest heart I’d ever seen, hiding behind jokes and insults.”
I swallowed. “Was I really insulting?”
“I deserved it.”
“No, you didn’t!” I said. “You deserve so much better than what I’ve dished out over the last month.” I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
“Forget it,” he said. “I triple forgive you. But there’s one thing that’s killing me.”
“What is it?”
He reached out and pulled me into his arms. “Please tell me you didn’t quit the magazine for me,” he said, his breath tickling my hair. “Please? Because I might kind of hate myself if you did.”
There would be time enough later to explain that getting out of the column owed a lot to Landon. I had a feeling Tanner might write a thank you note of his own to Landon since the interview freed me from a stream of dates with strangers.
“I didn’t,” I said. “I know that’s never what you wanted.”
“No,” he said, leaning back to take my face in his hands and dropping another soft kiss on my lips. “All I’ve wanted since you limped out of my life the first day I met you was to have you back in it. Does that scare you?”
I stood on tiptoe to return his kiss. “Not even a little bit. Thank you, Tanner Graham.”
He smiled. “For what?”
“For being patient. I’ll make it worth it.”
“You’ve always been worth it,” he said, punctuating his opinion with another kiss. He broke it off when a hoot from the balcony sounded, and we looked up to find Denny standing there, grinning and waving. He disappeared back into the office.
Tanner smiled down at me, tightening his hold. “Thank
you
.”
“For what?”
“For being you. I love you, Pepper.”
I squeezed back. “You’ll do.”
He leaned back to look at me, his eyes twinkling. “I’ll do? I read your column this morning. You don’t have any secrets anymore.”
I wound my arms around his neck and pulled his lips down to meet mine again.
“I love when you go all investigative journalist on me,” I said.
He captured me with another kiss that overloaded my senses so completely that I knew Tanner had just single-handedly rewired my central nervous system. I broke away to draw a breath and stare into the eyes that captured me like nothing had before.
“Here’s an exclusive, Tanner Graham. I love you like crazy.”
“My favorite kind of story,” he said. “I already know how this one ends.”
“How?”
“Happily ever after.”
Dear Mom and Dad,
Thank you seems inadequate, but it’s the only way I know how to tell you what’s in my heart. There are a million things I could thank you for, like all your help with the wedding. Mom, the bridesmaid dresses came out beautifully. When Ginger wants to keep hers, you know it’s true! And Dad, the chest you made is going to have a permanent place of honor in our new home. We’ll keep our most precious things inside.
But thanking you for the gifts and the help is the easy part. Finding words for what you’ve given me beyond that . . . that’s the impossible part. Thank you for loving me enough to challenge me to become better, grow bigger, and be more. Thank you for teaching me the most valuable lesson I’ve ever learned: the power of gratitude. You were right, Dad. A thankful heart has let me witness daily all the blessings in my life.
You two are the most amazing parents a daughter could hope for.
Love,
Pepper
About the Author
Melanie Bennett Jacobson is an avid reader, amateur cook, and champion shopper. She consumes astonishing amounts of chocolate, chick flicks, and romance novels. After meeting her husband online, she is now living happily in Southern California with her growing family and a series of doomed houseplants. Melanie is a former English teacher and a popular speaker who loves to laugh and make others laugh. In her down time (ha!), she writes romantic comedies for Covenant and maintains her humorous slice-of-life blog. She loves to hear from readers at www.melaniejacobson.net.
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