Beauty and the Black Sheep

She realized that Gray would be thirty-six this year. His birthday bash, held every year at the Bennett estate, was one of the highlights of the social season although it wasn’t as if she or Frankie were invited. The Moorehouses had once mixed with the Bennetts regularly, back in Grand-Em’s day, but with the declining fortunes of Joy’s family, the two had ceased moving in the same circles.

That didn’t mean she couldn’t picture a different scenario, however.

A favorite daydream of hers was to imagine going to that party, dressed beautifully, floating among his guests until he noticed her and saw her as she really was. As a woman, not some child. He would take her into his arms and kiss her and then they would go off somewhere quiet together.

In real life, their encounters were a lot less romantic. In the summer months, if she saw him around town, she’d plant herself in his path. He would stop and she’d hold her breath, willing him to remember her name. He always did. He’d smile down at her and sometimes even take off his sunglasses as he asked about her family.

From the left, she saw a BMW approach and she leaned forward. It was the wrong kind.

As she settled back against the seat, letting Grand-Em natter on about the opening of the town library back in 1936, she couldn’t ignore how one-sided her attraction was.

She looked down at her bare ring finger. If she kept up the teenage fantasy, she knew she was on the winding trail to spinsterhood. She’d probably end up weird Auntie Joy who’d never married and smelled like mothballs and denatured perfume.

Now there was a picture.

If they could only leave White Caps and move somewhere with more people her own age, she might be able to get Gray Bennett off her mind. Maybe it wasn’t his fantastic good looks or his dark, sexy voice or those pale blue eyes.

Maybe it was just a lack of viable alternatives.

“Did you know that my fourth great-grandfather built that gazebo?” Grand-Em inquired. She wasn’t looking for an answer. It was an invitation for a prompting.

“Really. Tell me about it,” Joy murmured, putting her hand down in her lap.

“It was in 1849. There had been a terrible winter that year and the old one had collapsed because of the snow. Great Grand Pa-Pa declared the structure unsafe….”

Grand-Em spoke with a proper intonation, her words carefully considered as if they were a gift to the listener and therefore must be chosen with respect and affection. And Joy usually found them fascinating. She loved listening to the old stories, particularly about the balls and the clothes.

But not today.

After nearly a decade of pining for a man she couldn’t have, Joy was struck with how pathetic her attraction to Gray was. Pinning hopeless dreams on a fantasy was like feeding yourself with chocolate. A great short-term buzz with no lasting value.