Free Marking Time by Marie Force

across the room at Jamie, who held Olivia as he chatted with Jack and Andi.
    “I finished the journal,” Clare said. “It was quite a story when Jack met Andi and you and Jamie got together.”
    Frannie smiled. “That was one hell of a week.”
    “Tell me about it, Frannie. I read about it, but I want you to tell me.”
    Frannie raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Really?”
    Clare nodded. “This is the first time I’ve seen them together. It’s made me curious more than anything.”
    Frannie took a deep breath. “Well, it was late August, and Andi came from Chicago to do a site visit in preparation for decorating the Newport hotel. At the time, she was the director of interior design for Infinity. Jack took her around to the mansions, Hammersmith Farm, and some of the other highlights. We went out on the boat and had a cookout at the house for all the designers. It was the first party we’d had at the house since everything happened, and it was fun.”
    “Your journal said that’s when things between you and Jamie heated up, too.” Clare noticed Jack and Frannie’s parents, Madeline and John, had arrived, and Clare looked forward to visiting with her former in-laws.
    Frannie waved to her parents. “That’s right. There’d been this thing between us forever , and neither of us ever admitted it to each other or anyone else.” Her gaze softened when it landed on her handsome husband.
    Clare smiled. “I always wondered.”
    “Did you? We were so surprised to discover we’d both had all these feelings for each other for years .” Frannie still seemed astounded by it, even more than two years later. “I guess when we saw Jack rejoining the land of the living, it felt like the time was right for us, too.”
    “You guys seem so happy together.”
    Frannie smiled. “We are.”
    “So what happened with Jack and Andi?”
    “You’re sure you want to hear this?”
    “It’s okay,” Clare said with a wave to her mother who was across the room with Jill and Frannie’s son, Owen.
    “Well, Jack said later it was love at first sight. It was quite overwhelming for him, because he’d only recently given up trying to find help for you and had just been back to work for a month or so at that point. I remember something he said to me that week. I never forgot it. He said, ‘I wasn’t expecting to meet someone who’d make me want more.’ There was this helplessness to him. He worried about what people would say, and he was concerned about the girls.” Frannie shrugged. “It was tough for him, Clare. He agonized over it. Don’t think he didn’t. But he’d suffered so much that I remember being relieved to see a spark of life back in his eyes.”
    “She went back to Chicago, right?”
    Frannie nodded. “But he talked her into coming back to visit for a weekend. They had a wonderful time, but she decided that because of the distance and all the complications it just wasn’t going to work out between them. We tried to be supportive and to give him some space, but it was awful. He was so sad again. Strangely enough, it was right around then that Jamie proposed.”
    “I’m so sorry I missed that part.”
    “I was, too. I needed you to be my matron of honor.”
    Clare’s eyes filled as she hugged her. “Oh, Frannie.”
    “The girls did a wonderful job as my bridesmaids, but I never missed you more than I did during the months before my wedding.” Frannie dabbed at her eyes and shook off the melancholy. “Anyway, Jack moped around for a week or so after Andi left. Then my mother apparently gave him a talking to about life being too short to miss out on a chance to be happy. The next thing we knew, he was on his way to Chicago. I never heard much about what happened out there, but whatever he did must’ve worked. They started spending weekends and holidays together. She came with Eric when Quinn got married,” Frannie said, referring to Jack’s longtime assistant at work. “Then we had a hurricane that kept