The Dating Intervention: Book 1 in the Intervention Series (27 page)

“I’m Doctor Baker,” he said.
 

“Delaney Collins.”
 

As she drove home a few minutes later, Madonna blasting from the speakers, she wondered if she should have introduced herself as Doctor Collins. She wondered if she should have gone in on a less windy day. She wondered if she should have worn her doctor’s coat. Any one of those things may have swayed Doctor Baker’s opinion in her favor.
 

But once she’d told him why she was there, he told her—with unerring kindness—he wasn’t hiring.
 

“You’ve got to get some experience, sweetheart,” he’d said after looking over her resume. “No one who is hiring will hire you unless you get some experience in an office.”
 

Close to tears, Delaney shrugged. “And therein lies the problem. I can’t get experience if nobody will hire me. Somebody’s going to have to take a chance on me, here.”
 

Doctor Baker’s expression softened then. “You’re right,” he’d said. “And I’d probably do that myself if I had enough work to keep us both busy. But the fact is, I’m getting old. I’ve been decreasing the size of my practice the past few years and I just can’t justify putting another body in here.”
 

“I understand,” Delaney muttered.
 

They shook hands again, and Doctor Baker made a show of holding down the papers on the counter while Delaney opened the door to leave.

Now, the flood gates wide open, Delaney bawled and sang along with “Papa Don’t Preach” as she sped home.
 

***

As Delaney prepared for her third official date with Jake Saturday evening, she marveled at how much she enjoyed having something to look forward to in terms of the manhunt, especially since the job hunt situation felt so dire. If she weren’t a slave to The Dating Intervention, she thought as she put on fresh mascara and lip gloss, she would invite Jake over for a pizza and a movie.
 

But pizza and a movie always included wine. And pizza, a movie and wine always led to the bedroom. Or the couch. Or the kitchen counter. Once, it had even led to the coat closet. Knowing this, her two best friends had banned her from inviting Jake Rhoades to anyplace within one hundred yards of her house.

So, she’d get out. Jake had asked her to meet him in front of the gallery where his furniture was on display. She arrived at five p.m., as instructed. He thundered up to the curb in an ancient Jeep.
 

He jumped out, jogged up to her and folded her in a long hug. She inhaled, drooled, wished for the living room couch. Or the coat closet.

“Hey,” he said.
 

“Hey.”
 

“I have a surprise for you.”
 

Within thirty seconds, she fell in love with the Jeep. It had everything: the old car smell, a good rumble and fresh air. She could feel the evening sun on her skin and the spring breeze in her hair.
 

“This is awesome,” she said as he drove them out of town and toward Pine Mountain.
 

She watched in the side view mirror as the houses fell away below them.
 

“Here we are,” Jake announced a few minutes later as they rolled to a stop at the Pine Mountain trailhead. “Hop out.”
 

When she saw him pull a pizza, a picnic basket and a bottle of wine off the back seat, Delaney felt a rush of pleasure.
 

“There’s a blanket, too,” he said. “Would you mind grabbing it?”
 

Why did she always feel like swooning when she was in the company of Jake Rhoades?
 

The picnic spot was a good half-hour’s hike uphill. Delaney was starving by the time they reached it. Jake took the blanket, spread it on the ground and set the picnic basket on it.

“What a view, huh?” he said.
 

They were perched on the Western side of the mountain, and the City of Juniper sat below them, tucked neatly into the valley. She could see the downtown square, the big trees just starting to leaf out and her own tiny house just a couple of blocks up from there.
 

“I bet you bring all the ladies up here,” she said.
 

She’d meant it as a joke, but simultaneously remembered that Brittany character, the photos on FriendZoo
and
that she was supposed to tell him she wasn’t seeing anyone else. She wished she hadn’t brought it up. She clamped her lips together, hoping her joke hadn’t brought fresh memories of Brittany to his mind. They sat on the blanket and Jake opened the picnic basket.
 

“All the ladies,” he said. “Yeah, I bring ’em all. Actually, this is where my parents used to bring my brothers and sisters and me when we were younger. I’ve never brought an actual
lady
up here.”
 

Delaney was grateful he was so busy unloading plates, napkins, wine glasses and bottles of water that he couldn’t see the relief on her face.
 

“How many siblings do you have?” she asked.
 

“Seven. Four sisters and three brothers.”
 

He opened the wine, poured each of them a glass.
 

“No way,” she said.
 

“Way. How about you?”
 

“One of each.”
 

She took a couple of sips of the wine and felt it go immediately to her head.
 

“Pizza?” he said.
 

“Oh, yeah.”
 

“So what was it like growing up with all those kids in the house?” Delaney said between bites.

“Crazy. It was crazy, and fun, and exciting. All those things. You know, people worry about giving their kids enough attention, but when we were growing up my parents always had time for us. It was so much fun. Even now, when we all get together, it’s so much fun. I want a whole gaggle of kids.”
 

What guy says that?
Delaney wondered.
 

“You’d have to get a lot of pizzas,” she said.
 

“True. We always had to get, like, four or five pizzas. When we were teenagers my parents started having pizza parties at home so we could make our own. We all liked different stuff, you know? For a while, when we still went to pizza parlors, my mom would be like, ‘We’ll get four large pizzas, please. One half cheese and half pepperoni. One half combo and half anchovy.’ And then it would get complicated. ‘The third one should have onions on the whole thing, but half of it should have bacon and sausage and the other half should have pineapple, ham and what was it, honey? Oh, right, roasted garlic. Oh. We ordered one more, didn’t we? Okay, the fourth one should have …’ You get the picture.”
 

Delaney pictured the chaos of a bunch of kids sitting around the table giving orders to their mom. “So do you all still see each other often?”
 

“Oh yeah. I mean, we’re all over the place, but we see each other often, considering.”

“Where do you fall in the birth order?”
 

“Second. I have an older sister and the rest are younger.”
 

He refilled her wine glass. In the easy silence that followed, Delaney thought,
this would be a perfect time to tell him I’m not seeing anyone else
.
 

But she couldn’t muster up the courage. Instead, she sipped her wine and listened to Jake’s stories about Allie, his four-year-old niece, and their antics at family get-togethers. Because she was an adventurous tomboy, he employed her for all kinds of shenanigans, like putting a frog in her mom’s water glass or starting an all-out water balloon fight in the middle of dinner.

The sun began to set, and the sky looked like a watercolor painting, huge swaths of wispy gray clouds on a backdrop of candy pink and fire orange. Streaks of sunlight shone through the clouds, sending out ethereal beams of light.
 

“This is beautiful,” Delaney said. “I’ve always missed this time of day – for so long, I was behind the bar at Rowdy’s during sunset. And when I wasn’t working, I couldn’t be bothered to actually step foot outside.”
 

Jake chuckled. “It is beautiful, isn’t it? Sometimes I wish I’d pursued painting instead of woodworking. But I’m terrible at it.”
 

“How’s that all coming? Your woodworking, I mean.”
 

“It’s coming,” he said. “I found a gallery space I really like. Maybe I can show you next time.”
 

Speaking of next time, this is the perfect opening to tell him I’m not seeing anyone else.
 

Instead, she said, “That’d be great.”
 

“How’s the job hunt going?” he asked.
 

Delaney cringed. “Not great.”
 

She explained the nobody-will-hire-you-without-experience-but-you-can’t-get-experience-until-someone-hires-you malady.
 

“You know, I never thought about it like that,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll find something.”
 

As he spoke, Delaney thought she saw a thought flicker through his mind. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it made her uneasy. Probably he didn’t want to date a long-term bartender. Someone with no prospects for a real future.
 

“It’s getting pretty dark,” he said then, sending her hopes plummeting. “I guess we should pack it up, so we don’t kill ourselves getting back down the hill.”
 

As they walked back to the Jeep, Delaney was surprised to realize that even though they hadn’t kissed or hugged or even held hands, she felt closer to him than she had to anyone in a long time. And, even though a tinge of worry had started gnawing at the back of her mind, she felt something else she hadn’t felt in a really long time: contentment.

The crowd at Umbrella Coffee was unusually chatty today, Delaney noticed as she waited for her mom. She twirled the straw in her iced tea. The shop’s buy one, get one deal made Wednesdays busy. But typically the people were quiet as they read, studied and worked on their laptops. Probably it was the weather, which had warmed to a balmy seventy-five. Delaney had trouble believing the forecast, which predicted another massive snowstorm in a couple of days.
 

“I ordered you a latte,” Delaney said when her mom walked in.
 

“Thanks, honey,” she said. “Sorry I’m late. I was at the travel agent’s, booking a trip to Australia for our fortieth anniversary.”
 

“Wow. Forty years,” Delaney said. “And Australia. I didn’t even know you were thinking of going there.”
 

“I know. It’s wild, isn’t it?” Camille sipped her drink, sat back in her chair. “It’s last minute. You know your dad, he got a wild hair and now we just
have
to do it.”
 

Delaney experienced a quick flash of envy. Her parents operated in their own world. Completely satisfied with one another, they didn’t need approval or feedback from anyone else. They were perfectly content to go about their lives together. And they’d done so for forty years. She couldn’t even maintain a relationship for forty weeks.

“So how’d your last date go with that dreamy Jake guy?” Camille asked.

“You ran into Summer again, didn’t you?”
 

“Yeah. So how’d it go?”

Delaney remained silent, but the look on her face gave her pleasure away..
 

“Say no more. It was great, wasn’t it?”
 

“It was. He’s great, Mom.”
 

“You’re all aglow.”
 

“Am I?”
 

“You know,” Camille said, “when I first met your dad, I was so smitten. He was so … different. He seemed shy, introverted. So much so that I didn’t even know he was interested until one of his students came over and told me, ‘Miss Wilcox, Mister Collins really likes you.’”
 

“I didn’t know that.”
 

“It was so cute. She was this precocious little thing, nine or ten, you know, fifth grade. Susie. I’d had her for first grade and I had her sister the year I met your dad. She had this awful haircut and teeth that were way too big for her face. Adorable. She had that very grown-up affect, you know. She says, ‘I think you should go in and talk to him.’ I thought, you know, he is really cute. I’ve just never heard him say more than a word or two. But the kids love him, the other teachers love him. Maybe there’s something to this guy. He later told me that whenever Susie mentioned my name, he’d blush. Uncontrollably. Susie was mature for her age, so she picked up on the cues.”
 

Camille shook her head.

“So, you know how it goes from there. I went to talk to him, asked him out and that was that. The rest, as they say, is history.”
 

Delaney loved the story of her parents’ courtship. Her dad was still quiet, a little eccentric, a little introverted. Pretty much the opposite of her mom. But when they were together, they made the perfect pair. Roger had the vision, the big ideas, the energy. And Camille had the systems, the practicality. She kept things grounded.
 

“And now, forty-something years later, you’re going to Australia.”
 

“That’s right. Beaches, snorkeling, warm sun. It’s perfect.”
 

“What made you choose Australia?”
 

“Oh, you know. It’s a whole different hemisphere. At certain points in your life, Delaney, you realize you have to turn everything upside down.”
 

***

The next day, Delaney parked on the street in front of her house and jogged the short distance to Rowdy’s for Happy Hour. Even as she rushed along, she noticed the bright pink blossoms on the cherry trees, the happy chirping of the little birds that had returned to Juniper for spring and the scent of newly-planted flowers in hanging pots on the street lamps. Smiling, she dashed into the bar.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said to Josie and Summer, who were already sipping on their drinks. “This job hunting stuff is killing me! I’ve been sending resumes all day.”