Dark Falls
Ava McNair smiled as she watched the couple leave her store. She loved seeing couples find the perfect engagement ring to start their lives together. These two were young, but she could see the devotion in the way they looked at each other.
He’d come in ahead of time to choose a ring, then told his girlfriend he needed to swing by and pick up a watch his mom left to be repaired. The look on her face was priceless when he dropped to one knee after Ava passed him the ring box.
“Nice,” Kirsten James said, winking at Ava from her spot by the door. The woman might look harsh in her guard uniform, but she was as much of a softy when it came to that kind of thing as Ava was.
Ava grinned and turned to go to the back to check on her sister, but the door chimed again. What she saw when she looked back was anything but expected.
The man entering her family’s jewelry store had filled out. His face was different, worn in a way, but in a good way. At least, she thought it looked good on him. His eyes were the same, though.
John Sevier’s eyes trapped and held her, his light brown gaze doing things to her just like they had years before when she’d been stupid enough to walk away from him.
To say he was the one who got away was an understatement. She’d been so naïve and focused on all the wrong things at that time in her life. She never realized what she was losing until it was far too late for her to do anything about it.
Not that she would have been able to hold on to him anyway. Halfway through college, her life had changed drastically, and she’d had to drop out to help her dad and sister. She would have lost John then, anyway. Still, an eighties rock ballad was playing in the back of her head somewhere as she thought about not knowing what you had ’til it was gone.
Kirsten stiffened and looked ready to move into action if Ava didn’t say anything. It was no wonder. A six-foot-one man who looked like he could eat glass for breakfast if he got the craving, was standing frozen in their showroom. And Ava probably looked like a deer in headlights.
“John.” Ava breathed the word out, then shook herself to clear the fog. She waved a hand at Kirsten. “It’s all right. John’s an old friend.”
She thought she saw something flicker in his eyes at the words, but if it had been anything more than her imagination, it was gone.
“Um…” Ava looked around the showroom. One of her salespeople was on the other side of the store helping an older gentleman pick out a bracelet for his granddaughter. Kirsten was still staring at her and John.
Ava swung a hand in the direction of the workshop and offices at the back of the store. “We could, um…”
Thankfully, John nodded, seemingly unconcerned at the fact she couldn’t seem to get a sentence out that didn’t include “um.” Scratch that, she hadn’t actually gotten a complete sentence out, period.
She went to the back, hoping to pass right through the workshop where her sister, Janna, designed most of the jewelry they carried. They had other artisans who worked for them, repairing jewelry and watches and such, but Janna was their only bench jeweler. Anything in their cases that her sister didn’t make was ordered from jewelry wholesalers or outside artisans.
Janna stood at her bench, the spotlights that surrounded her all aimed at a four-inch square space in front of her as her hands worked with small samplings of metals and gems. Janna had a habit of getting lost in her work, but today when Ava hoped she might do just that, her sister looked up.
Janna’s eyes went from Ava to John and back to Ava in a comic demonstration of her surprise at seeing a man with Ava.
Yeah, it was somewhat of a shock to Ava, too.
“John, this is my sister, Janna. Janna, John and I were friends in college.” Ava watched as Janna’s eyes went wide.
John smiled and nodded. Whether he remembered Ava mentioning Janna’s issues with anxiety when they dated, or he just read people really well, she didn’t know. But for whatever reason, he didn’t offer his hand to Janna to shake. That was good. It was what Janna was more comfortable with.
Janna looked to Ava. “Big John?”
Oh Lord.
Ava’s cheeks flamed hot, and she knew they must be red. She and Janna shared everything, which meant Janna knew all about the John Ava had dated in college. She just hadn’t expected Janna to put the man standing before her together with their conversations about John in college. And yes, Janna had truly nicknamed him Big John in college, but it wasn’t for the reasons one might think.
Not that he couldn’t have earned the nickname that way. Back in the day, one of Ava’s friends had described John’s body as “call him if you need your house moved over a few inches” kind of big. She wasn’t wrong.
Ava put her hands to her cheeks, and a small semblance of a laugh slipped from her lips. She dodged John’s smiling eyes and Janna’s impish grin without answering and led the way back to her office.
She could try to explain to John that Janna had given him the nickname because that was how he’d seemed to her at the time. Ava had talked about John so much when they were dating that Janna had labeled him “big” in Ava’s world.
She didn’t know how to say all that without making the whole situation worse, though, so she clamped down on her lips, imprisoning them between her teeth as she shut the door behind them.
The look he gave her told her he was enjoying this far too much.
“For your information,” she said, crossing her arms, “Big John is another John. Not you. It’s…” she didn’t have any ideas… “someone else.”
“Uh-huh.” He matched her crossed arms and let a smile cross his face.
