Christopher and Jaime (Pianos and Promises #1) by Jennifer Peel Page A

then. I already felt ill. I fast forwarded a couple of pages and found what I was looking for.
    Jaimes showed up this weekend. It was just what I needed. I’m glad she’s finally back in the states. My buddies all wanted to hook up with her. I noticed the way Beck looked at her especially, but I told them all to keep the hell away from her. They all want to know why I haven’t hooked up with her yet. I kept staring down at her while she slept on me Friday night, wondering the same thing. Maybe because I can get a girlfriend anytime I want, but real friends are hard to come by and she is the only friend I’ve ever needed.
    I don’t know why we watch movies together. She falls asleep every time and we always watch the same ones. She has some weird obsession with eighties movies. In particular, a film called Some Kind of Wonderful . I watched it after she fell asleep. I think it was the first time I noticed that the best friends ended up together. I wonder if that’s why she likes it. Maybe someday that will be Jaime and me, but she needs to finish school and I need to focus on grad school.
    And then there’s Bianca, she does something for me. She has her act together and the thought of her in a sexy suit in a courtroom drives me wild.
    I slammed the journal shut. I had my act together, too, just not in a way he always agreed with. I learned way more traveling the world than I ever did in a classroom. So what if I didn’t go to some expensive private college and get a degree in law, or if I didn’t wear sexy outfits every day? I got to help villages in Africa get clean water. I helped the Red Cross vaccinate children to protect them from measles. I toured Mozart’s home in Vienna and the Bach House is Leipzig. I experienced the beauty of the Louvre and picked pineapples in Hawaii. I played piano on a cruise ship. I met dozens of people that impacted my life and that I made forever connections with. I helped people raise their children. And I was raising his child.
    So maybe I would never make millions with my music and teaching degrees, but at least I was helping people and wasn’t consumed with myself or my career. He and Bianca were perfect for each other—two self-absorbed people that wouldn’t know what real love was if it bit them.
    And he was right, I did adore that movie because I thought maybe someday he would see I was the perfect woman for him. That what we had was real love. And when we first got married, I thought he had finally gotten it. But it was short-lived. I wasn’t sure he knew how to love anymore. He hadn’t always been that way.
    Deep down, I knew he had it in him. I had been the recipient of it. I saw how he took care of his aging grandparents with such tenderness and dignity. And there were moments when he read to Allie or played with her on the floor that I saw the man he could be. He was the man that held me all night long when my mom was diagnosed with cancer eight years ago. He didn’t hesitate when I’d said I needed him. He’d dropped everything on his plate and drove from North Carolina to be with me. He helped me have hope that it would all work out, and thankfully it had. He sent me flowers a year later when my mom got her first clean bill of health. The card read, I told you so. He was the man that spoon-fed his grandfather, wiped his chin, and kissed his cheeks.
    I wanted that man back. I don’t know why he was so consumed with success and making money. His grandparents had left him a nice nest egg from the sale of their estate and what they had in cash and holdings. Chris was set, but for some reason he felt like he had to prove he could be just as, or more, successful on his own. But didn’t he realize the success he was after was fleeting? Did he not see what his grandparents valued most was him and each other? Not their possessions or status. Was this really the legacy he wanted to leave Allie?
    Around six in the morning I decided to go home to shower and change. And I