It takes him a minute and I can see his mind working as he decides what his next move should be. Every second that passes causes my unease to multiply until I feel like I’m going to climb out of my skin.

“I said your grandma would not be disappointed.” The stoicism in his tone is alarming, but do I ever listen to warning bells?

“And how, exactly, would you know that?” I can barely hear myself as I ask the question I’m not sure I want the answer to. I wish I could reverse time, go back to before this conversation ever happened.

Before Jasper happened.

“Because I knew her before she passed.” Even though I had a feeling this is where he was going, hearing him confirm it steals my breath away. Pain I never thought Jasper was capable of causing ricochets through me, hurt turning to anger and then back to hurt again.

I feel like a masochist, but I can’t stop the word as it falls from my lips. “How?”

He nods like he’s coming to terms with something I have yet to understand before he opens his mouth and tells me what I know is going to ruin what little is left of me.

“It started like all requests I get from small bookstores. But you know Alice, she didn’t like email, so she ignored all my emails, leaving me voice mails until I called her back.” He sounds so detached from the story that it takes me a moment to focus on what he’s saying, not how he’s saying it. “And when I did, she told me about the Book Nook. She explained how she had a group of devoted customers who read my books and would love it if I could do a live event, but then, as she was telling me about that, she also mentioned having a granddaughter I would just love.”

My heart cracks inside my chest. I have to close my eyes as memories of Gran swirl through my mind, the ones where she was so worried about me and tried to set me up with every single man she crossed paths with.

I don’t say anything, so Jasper keeps talking.

“She told me you had a bit of a tough shell, but you were a softie at heart. She told me about how talented you were at photography and that you were on your way to doing big things. And she told me that you were beautiful. ‘The most beautiful girl in the entire world, inside and out, still not sure how we got so lucky.’ But before I could make it into the store, she passed away. I didn’t hear anything until Mona reached out to me all those months later.”