Free Meeting Miss Mystic by Katy Regnery Page B

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    Juxtaposed against his feelings were hers, as he perceived them. The time or two that he’d mentioned a visit before Christmas, Holly had changed the subject or put him off with reminders about how busy the beginning of the school year was for principals and teachers. She was right, of course. There was no way Paul could pick up and leave Gardiner now. But his mind turned often to the Columbus Day break. A weekend plus Monday and Tuesday, the four days would be enough time to make it to Connecticut and back. While he generally used that weekend to prepare for Homecoming activities, surely he could leave those preparations to his excellent faculty, along with a group of student and parent volunteers.
    The very question had come up in conversation at the Prairie Dawn last night. He’d been sitting at the bar with Maggie when a tourist took the seat beside him. The thing about living in Gardiner? You knew everyone who lived there, so a new face stuck out like a sore thumb.
    Turned out she was from New York, her name was Jane and she was working on the photo shoot for Trend magazine that Lars was handling. After talking about the supermodel, Samara Amaya—who also happened to be Jane’s cousin—for a few minutes, the conversation shifted back to what Maggie and Paul had been discussing prior to Jane’s arrival: Miss Mystic and whether or not Paul should go for a visit.
    After Maggie and Paul shared the whole story with an interested Jane, she turned to Paul with a smile. “You must have liked her a lot out of the gate, to get to know her from so far away, once you realized the distance.”
    He thought of the picture of Holly, so fresh and lovely at her cousin’s wedding. “You could say that.”
    “ I could say that?” asked Jane in her deep, Eastern-accented voice. “Look at you. You’re a goner.”
    “I like her,” he confessed softly. “I look forward to her e-mails and texts. I love talking to her on the phone. We talk about our lives, work, whatever, you know? I tell her everything lately. She’s a teacher and I’m a principal so we talk about our students, our families, what we like to do on the weekends. Yeah, I like her.”
    “You like her a lot . Sounds like you’re ready for the next step,” said Jane. “When’re you going to meet her? Up close and personal? You know, in person ?”
    “Heck, I’d love to meet her. But, I can’t just pick up and go to Connecticut. I have commitments here.”
    Jane took another sip of her warm cinnamon milk then looked up at Paul again.
    “You really like her?”
    Paul nodded.
    “Time to visit Connecticut,” said Jane definitively.
    “You think?”
    Jane shrugged. “Don’t you have a break coming up? In the fall? A few days off when you could make a quick trip?”
    “Columbus Day’s a four-day weekend.”
    “There you go.” She had smiled then wrinkled her brow as if remembering something unpleasant. Her low, throaty voice had a hint of sadness in it when she continued, “Probably best not to invest anymore of yourself until you meet her, you know? Anyway, that’s what I think.”
    “Aye, the lass has some good advice, I think.” Maggie had winked at Jane.
    “May as well put your cards on the table, Paul.”
    Paul had walked home slowly, thinking about Jane’s advice. He appreciated having fresh eyes on the situation, and he couldn’t help but feel Jane had a point. And once he really started thinking about meeting Holly in person, he couldn’t get it out of his head. Leave it to a virtual stranger to show Paul something right under his nose: it was time to book a trip to Mystic.
    When he got home, he’d logged into an airline website only to discover that there were available flights that would have him in Hartford by Saturday afternoon and home by Tuesday night. He wouldn’t miss a minute of school and he had plenty of time to delegate the Homecoming preparations. It just felt…right. Right to buy a ticket. Right to go see