Arriving at his hotel room early had allowed J.C. to call Jessica English and catch up on the day’s business. She’d sold the Anthony Primo chandelier in the gallery and had commissioned six more for a new restaurant in Philadelphia, in addition to finding a buyer for the Atroshenko ballerina who had so captured J.C.’s imagination before it had been stolen by Les Bijoux Jolis. He gave Jessica permission to sell it for a tidy sum and complimented her on her sales skills.
“It’s hard to say no to a pregnant woman,” said Jess, laughter thick in her voice.
“And even harder to say no to beautiful pregnant women,” said J.C.
“You’re a terrible flirt,” she said, “but I’m immune. I married the worst of them and lived to tell the tale.”
Alex English, Jessica’s husband of almost two years, had once been one of J.C.’s biggest rivals, though J.C. was three years Alex’s senior. They’d both dated casually, bedding the same women for sport without an iota of conscience or commitment. But Jessica Winslow had tamed her husband’s wild ways…in much the same way that Libitz appeared to be taming J.C.
“Speaking of Alex…can I ask you something?”
“Sure. Anything.”
“Were you ever scared about your feelings for Alex? Didn’t you worry? About his reputation, I mean?”
“Of course,” said Jess, laughter thick in her voice. “It was a problem at first. We had to move to England for a year because it felt like he’d screwed half of Philly.”
And I screwed the other half, thought J.C. with a grimace.
“But you got over it?” he asked.
“You have to understand. I’d loved Alex since I was a little girl,” she said, her voice tender. “I wasn’t going to let him go when I was finally old enough to marry him.”
“What about Alex?”
“What about him?”
“How did he…I mean, how long did it take for him to realize…to know that you two…”
“Asking for yourself or a friend?” asked Jess with a touch of sass, and he would have sworn she made mimed quotation marks when she said “friend.”
Why lie? He was curious about how Jess and Alex had managed to mesh their lives together. “Myself.”
“Ooo! Honesty!” she exclaimed. “How refreshing! And who is the lucky lady?”
“None of your business, petite.”
“Fine,” Jess grumbled. “Well…I can’t speak for Alex, really. I can only tell you this: once we were together, there was no one else. I knew I wanted him the second I saw him. I think he’d say the same. We danced around it. He fought it to preserve my reputation. I backed away when I saw that the streets of Philly were littered with his conquests. We almost walked away from it, but we couldn’t. In the end, we had to have each other and no one else. There was simply”—she sighed—“no other option.”
Her words, albeit about her own marriage, resonated so strongly with Jean-Christian, he battled the urge to sigh along with her. Catching himself just in time, he straightened in his hotel desk chair. “What if it hadn’t worked out? Wouldn’t you have been devastated?”
“Yes,” she said. “Shattered. But it did work out.”
“What if it hadn’t?”
“It did.”
“What if—”
“We could go on like this all day,” said Jess, her voice edging into exasperated, “but the fact will always remain: it did. And we’d never have known if we didn’t take a chance.”
It suddenly occurred to J.C., in blinding clarity, that while it felt like he was taking the bigger risk of the two of them, it was actually Libitz (by a thousand miles), and it made him profoundly grateful that she’d somehow been able to see through his bullshit and smarmy come-ons and daddy issues, and find something worthwhile underneath. He needed to do everything he could to convince her she wasn’t wrong…and that meant staying in New York a little longer.
“Invite me to the wedding,” said Jess. “But make it next summer, so baby English is here and I can wear something cute.”
“No wedding on the horizon, Jess,” he said.
She chuckled indulgently like Mad and Jax did when they knew he was wrong about something but they didn’t have the heart to call him out. “Whatever you say, boss.”
“Speaking of being your boss, how do you feel about staying on for a little while longer?”
“Great,” said Jess. “I love it here. I was sure I’d miss the museum, but I don’t. I love this side of things, and it’s keeping me off my feet, so Alex can’t complain.”
“Then get comfortable,” said Jean-Christian, staring out the window at the traffic of Columbus Circle. “Because I just might open another gallery in New York.”
***