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“I’d say it’d fit four, comfortably,” I replied.
“So, that table’s fine. We need another one. Think we could score one from a thrift store if we looked hard?” Maria pursed her lips. “I don’t like that we’d only have one.”
“Well, it’s more than enough for the jewelry. I think we’ll want a larger, six-person table for all the purses if we can help it. And maybe a coat rack. I mean, think about it. We take a small piece of cardboard or wood to stick under it to keep it balanced on the grass, and we’ll have a great place for extra merchandise to hang,” I suggested. “And I have one that stands already. I don’t use it, but it’d be great for here.”
“You’re right,” Maria said. “Well, it’s all something to think about later. Let’s get you home.”
I nodded. I’d been excited for this fundraiser. It was such a great opportunity to do something great for the community while also getting a boost for our new store. But I was ready to be done with having to have Jesse watching us. He wasn’t doing a very good job. And I could tell he was not happy about it by the way he kept bringing up the vacation rules. It seemed that he had found a way around having to help at all with the fundraiser in past years. I wasn’t sure that was a good idea now, but perhaps he should have planned a little more carefully this year.
I shook my head free of these thoughts as Maria and I walked out to the parking lot. She locked up the store, and then, we got into her car. It was a cozy little car, especially now that all the purses were out of the way.
“Something else is on your mind,” Maria said as she pulled out of the parking spot. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”
“Jesse disappears like that a lot,” I responded. “He’s always leaving to go do something. I wonder what he’s doing. I know that he has a second job, but it sounds like he’s careful about how often he goes. It’s another physically demanding job. What on earth could be demanding his attention so often that he’s rarely home? He must have another place to sleep…”
I pursed my lips. Though I didn’t usually like to pry, this was bugging me. Something had to be going on in his life that he wasn’t ready to share. As much as I was trying to respect that, I still wanted to ask all those questions.
“Well, if he’s not home often, he may have a girlfriend and simply not be ready to share that with you. He may be trying to get a read on whether you’ll get jealous or not before he says anything,” Maria speculated. “I know a lot of men who wouldn’t dare move a woman into their home unless she was their significant other.”
“That’s always possible. But would his girlfriend be all right with it? What if she’s the jealous one, and telling her that he’s going to be helping us out with the booth is how he’s found that out?” I shook my head. “That doesn’t sound quite right.”
“In any case, it doesn’t surprise me that he’s got a house. The Delaney last name is well-known around here. I’m not sure what they did to get so well-known, but it’s always been like that,” Maria continued. “I don’t know what he does that gives him the kind of income I think he’s got, but that house is not cheap. If he’s able to rent it out that low to you, either he’s already paid off the mortgage, or his mortgage payments are a lot lower than the average for the area right now.”
This information intrigued me.
“I could always look that information up when I get home,” I said. “After all, house sales and such are public record. Usually.”
“That’s very true,” Maria confirmed. “I hadn’t thought to do that. You’ll have to let me know what you find out, because now I’m curious.”
I laughed a little. Maria and I were always curious, and it had been good as nurses. It didn’t appear to be a good trait right now, at least when it came to Jesse. Perhaps he just wasn’t used to people wondering what he was doing.
Maria dropped me off at the curb in front of the house. Jesse’s truck was not in the driveway, or parked on the street. Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t here. That left me alone to do a little snooping.
“Drive home safely, Maria,” I said as I watched her drive off.
Then, I went inside. The first thing I did after kicking my shoes off was head upstairs to see what I could find out about the sale of this house to Jesse Delaney. My computer took a few minutes to boot up thanks to upgrades that had decided it was time to install themselves, but after that, I didn’t have to search very hard to find the information I wanted.
The information about how much he paid and what the property was worth now were indeed public. I even learned what the asking price had been. What startled me was that Jesse had been able to pay almost ten thousand more than the asking price. It didn’t appear that he had even had to take out a mortgage. That information – his mortgage and his liability for that – was not public, but what I found gave me a pretty good idea of what had happened.
“How in the world did he pay so much? And without a mortgage?” I pursed my lips after wondering this aloud. “And if he could pay that much up front, how did he get it? I didn’t think being a firefighter paid that well.”
I compared the price to what houses in the area were going for nowadays. He’d actually overpaid enough that the market hadn’t yet caught up to the value of his house. It was close, but I wasn’t sure how much longer it would be before I couldn’t even afford a house at all in Lantana.
If I hadn’t been jealous of Jesse Delaney for owning this house before, I certainly was now that I had looked up this information. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it.
Chapter fifteen
Fifteen: Jesse
My grip on the steering wheel only relaxed when I was at least twenty minutes away from the little shop. The traffic was not heavy today, thankfully. Perhaps my father was right. The work I did for the firehouse, as fulfilling as it was, had made me distrustful of a lot of people. I’d met so many people who would swear up and down that they would never be that kind of person. Then, I’d see them on the news for something that I would have to stop: arson, house fire, even doing something as incredibly stupid as going down into a confined space that didn’t have enough oxygen.
How could they do those things after I had warned them not only of the consequences, but of the often-awful outcomes of what I had to see at work?
Though Jade expressed empathy for what I did, as I was sure she had seen some scarring burns in the hospital as a nurse, I couldn’t open to her. Not for any reason.
As beautiful and sweet as she was, I couldn’t risk allowing her to disappoint me too. Perhaps because if she were to disappoint me too, it would break more than my trust in her. It’d break my heart.
That thought surprised me. Why did I care so much about keeping my emotions away from Jade Santana? Why was I so afraid?
