by Alina Jacobs
"I can't—"
"Let me be perfectly blunt with you," Hunter said sharply.
"Aren't you always?" I joked.
"No. Quite often I temper my thoughts because I know your weak little minds can't handle it."
I glared at him.
Hunter ignored me. "Let's look at the facts. You have a weirdly large family, personality quirks that would send most sane women running, and enough money to attract all the crazy ones. You don't date. You don't play the field, yet someone basically perfect just fell in your lap. You think you're going to find someone else just like her but who doesn't have a checkered past? You won't. Never mind the fact that you grew up in a polygamist cult in the middle of the desert."
I scowled.
"Josie is the best you're ever going to do," Hunter said. "In these types of situations, pride is not your friend. If you don't go after her, you will regret it every day of your life. Trust me. And when you find her, get on your knees and beg her to come back."
63
Josie
When I returned to the Svenssons' estate house, my tiny house was already parked out front and hitched up to my truck. Sobbing, I moved my bag and box to the front seat of the old truck.
"I'm so stupid," I whispered to myself. How could I let this happen?
I didn't know where I was going to go. In a daze, I trundled down the driveway. Thunder boomed. It was going to rain soon. I looked up at the hole in the roof of the truck.
"Mace put that hole there," I sobbed.
My phone rang, and I put it on speaker phone. I hoped I didn't get a ticket. "I can't talk long," I said, my voice shaking with emotion.
"Aww, Josie." Marnie's voice came out of the phone.
"Josie, what happened?" Willow asked.
"I screwed up!" I said, choking out another round of sobs. "He fired me and kicked me out."
Marnie said sympathetically, "It seems like an overreaction. The Svenssons were furious. Just give them a bit to calm down. You didn't do anything wrong. You even went to the FBI."
"I lied, and I let Anke around them," I sniffled. "She was going to kidnap Henry."
"Do you know where she is?" Willow asked.
"No and I never want to see her again. She ruined everything good in my life."
"Look," Willow said. "There's a tiny house village about an hour's drive east. You remember Homer? I told him you were coming. He says they have a spot for you to park the house."
"Thanks," I told Willow. "I have to go. I'm not supposed to use the phone and drive."
I hung up, and my phone beeped. I set Google Maps to the address Willow had given me. But it had barely calculated the route before the battery died.
"Crap!"
I had been relying on the phone Mace had given me since it was brand-new and could run for a day on one battery charge. My old phone could not. And of course the ancient truck had nowhere to plug in an adaptor.
"Okay, Josie," I pep-talked myself. The sky was dark overhead, and thunder rolled. "The village is… that way. I think." After driving for over an hour, I didn't find it.
I pulled into a gas station.
"Oh no," the attendant said when I told her the address. "That's the opposite direction. You need to go back through Harrogate and keep driving east."
"Thanks," I said dejectedly. I bought a few gallons of gas then slumped in the truck.
"Why does this have to happen to me? Why?" I whispered, banging my head on the steering wheel. I grabbed a handful of candy from the jar, trying to forget about all the times I had teased Mace about eating my candy.
My heart ached from missing him. I hated myself for hurting him. The cold anger on his face when he had looked at me and said I was fired was going to haunt me every night for the rest of my life.
My nose ran as I headed back toward Harrogate. I knew I looked like a wreck. I was an ugly crier on a good day, and I had been crying nonstop since this morning. My face was puffy and swollen. I rolled down the window to bring the cold air in. All I got was a face full of dirty water from the windshield.
"I hate my life!" I screamed as I drove at a crawl down the road. The tiny house was swerving dangerously, like there was something heavy on top of it. Maybe the tiny house would actually kill me. But I didn't want it to flip over. Then I would be a jobless, homeless disgrace.
As I drove, a car came my direction and blinked its headlights at me.
"What the—my lights are on! Why is everyone out to get me?" I screeched.
As the car passed, I looked out the window to yell at the driver, and I jerked the wheel in surprise. "Mace?"
"Pull over!" he called out to me. I navigated the truck and tiny house to a wide shoulder on the road and sat there, the spray from the rain coming into my car through the window and dripping from the plastic garbage sack I'd stuffed in the hole in the roof. I half wondered if I was hallucinating. The only thing I'd had to eat that day was candy. Maybe my sweet tooth was about to do me in.
But Mace was very real as he ran up to the driver's side of the truck and opened the door.
"What are you doing here?" I asked. I wanted to cry, but I was so exhausted. Mace pulled me out of the car, bundling me in his arms.
"You're freezing," he said.
"Why did you come find me?" I asked and sneezed pathetically.
"Come into my car. You're going to get pneumonia. You shouldn't even be driving this truck. You could have had a wreck and died," he said, ushering me to his car.
As I sat in his car and sipped the water he'd given me, I stared out the front windshield at the back of my tiny house.
"I am so sorry, Mace," I said, turning to him.
"No, I'm the one who's sorry," he said.
This time I did start crying. "Stop being so perfect! I screwed up," I cried.
"Yes, but not as bad as Adrian, and I didn't fire him." Mace swept a hand through my tangled, wet hair.
"I'm a mess," I said.
"Yeah, but it's adorable," he said with a smile.
"No," I shook my head. "I'm really a mess." I took a deep breath. Time to come clean. "Anke cost me all of my life savings. She convinced me to pay for all our expensive stuff like hotels and her clothes and fancy restaurants. I went along with it because I wanted to finally, for once, live a glamourous life. At the end of it all, I had maxed out all of my credit cards, and I had a lot of credit cards. I had to start paying off the debt, and I used up my life savings just to keep the credit card companies from taking me to court. I'm still up to my tits in debt."
"I could have helped you," Mace said, stroking my arm. "That's what family does—we help each other."
"I'm not after you for your money," I snapped. "I really like you. In fact I think I love you. That's why you really should find someone better than me. I love you, but I don't deserve you. You are a good man. I'm a mess."
"But was it real?" Mace insisted.
"What?" I was confused.
"I don't know, all of it—being with my brothers, with me, going out, joking. Was it real?"
"Of course it was real!" I said, insulted he would think I would fake that.
"Then it will be okay," Mace insisted. "Henry's fine. Adrian will hopefully be fine if I can keep Garrett from throwing him down a trash chute or something. I told you I didn't want to lose my family." I nodded, and he stroked my cheek. "You're part of my family. I don't want to lose you."
"I'm going to screw up," I said. "I always screw up everything. I don't want to mess you up."
"Josie," Mace said. He sounded a bit exasperated. "Have you met my family? I think I'm already messed up. But you make me less messed up. Just come home. I miss you. Also my brothers miss you, and I think there will be a Lord of the Flies style revolt if I show up without you. So either we're both going to wherever you were going to take that horrible little tiny house, or you have to come back with me."
The look on his face was so open. I couldn't help but smile, and Mace leaned in to kiss me. He pushed me b
ack into the seat. "I love you, Josie," he murmured as he broke the kiss.
"I love you, Mace," I whispered.
Motion caught my attention, and I looked past his shoulder. The door to the tiny house shook, then the lock popped, and the door opened.
"What the—" Mace turned around, and we gaped as Anke shut the door, saw us in the car watching, then sprinted to the pickup truck cab.
"My purse is in there!" I shrieked.
"And apparently your keys are too," Mace remarked as the truck roared to life, and the tiny house groaned as Anke took off down the road.
"She's stealing my house! Where's your phone? I'm calling the police!" I hollered.
"There's no need," Mace said.
"She'll get away," I insisted as Mace drove after Anke.
"No, she won't," he said. "Look." He pointed up ahead. I could see flashing lights in the distance. "The FBI set up roadblocks on the main roads leading into and out of Harrogate to try and catch Anke and Payslee."
Anke saw the roadblock, but I knew from experience that there was no way she was going to turn the tiny house around on the highway. Instead she gunned the engine.
"She's going to ram them," I gasped.
"She can try," Mace said grimly.
There was a pop and a screech. "They shredded her tires," Mace said. Sparks flew as the axles on the truck and the tiny house trailer scraped against the asphalt.
"You mean they shredded my tires," I groaned.
64
Mace
"I can't believe they confiscated my house!" Josie complained when we returned home from giving our statements at the police station. "All my worldly possessions were in there."
"Not everything," I said, nuzzling her neck. "I still have your shelf bra and your shoes."
"As hot as that was, I can't make dinner in that outfit," Josie said.
"All your conference clothes are here too," I offered.
"Are any of my yoga pants here? Or my comfy T-shirts?" Josie asked. "No. Why the FBI needs all of that is beyond me. Where do they even store a tiny house? And they have my purse! My driver's license is in there. And all my candy."
"Your priorities seem a little out of whack," I told her.
"Josie!" my little brothers yelled when we walked into the kitchen.
"We have everything chopped for pizza," Henry said proudly.
"And we took the extra dough you made out of the freezer," Adrian said.
"Oh, Adrian, I'm sorry," Josie said, hugging him. "I never should have let Anke near you. She hinted that she was after a Svensson brother, but—"
"You just thought it was one of the awesome ones and not one who has no common sense and can barely function in society?" Archer interjected from his spot at the large island.
"Stop being mean to Adrian," I told him, "or I can scrounge up that vegan bread, and you can eat that for dinner."
"Is that still around?" Josie asked, grimacing. "I thought we threw that away."
I watched as Josie washed her hands and started making pizzas. Her clothes were kind of wrinkled, and her hair was frizzy from the rain and then air drying in the Harrogate police station. She was messy and amazing.
Hunter came and stood beside me. "I told you so."
"Ever think about taking your own advice?" I asked him.
He scowled. The doorbell rang, and Otis and Peyton raced to answer it. "The mayor is here!" they exclaimed, racing back into the kitchen.
"Mayor Barry?" I asked.
"No, the pretty one!"
Hunter's scowl got even deeper.
"Something smells good," Meg said as she entered the kitchen.
"I'm making pizza," Josie replied, waving a floury hand.
"Stay for dinner?" I offered. "There's plenty of food."
"Is there?" Archer asked.
"You can have some of Hunter's pizza," Garrett said casually.
You could freeze something with the look Hunter shot Garrett.
"I came by to bring you your purse," Meg said, holding out Josie's bag.
"Did you get her tiny house out?" I asked Meg.
"Unfortunately, the FBI is impounding it."
"What are they going to do with a tiny house?" Archer mused.
"Agent Donley is probably going to take his love interest there," Josie said as she rolled out the dough.
Meg laughed. "He is quite attractive, isn't he? He has that whole dangerous-yet-protective FBI aura going on."
Garrett was struggling to maintain a straight face, and Hunter was quietly dying of unrequited love beside me.
"I think I'll take my hot blond guy though," Josie said, winking at me.
Meg leveled her gaze at Hunter. "I suppose blonds do have more fun."
65
Josie
I wondered what was going on with Meg and Hunter. She seemed a lot more relaxed with a glass of wine in her at dinner. I might have to drag her out to a bar one night and make her spill. I loved a good story. From the way Garrett was looking between the two of them, he must have thought there was something there too. If he was going to push those two together, or back together, whatever the case may be, I wanted in.
But first I needed to fix my own love life.
"I thought Mace said he forgave you," Willow said as we bounced along in the school bus. One of Mace's brothers had commandeered my car, and Remy was nice enough to chauffeur.
"He did, but he's such a sweetheart, and I still haven't forgiven myself. Hopeful this will fully redeem me. I also don't want his brothers to think badly of me."
"I thought you were going to be doing some work with Weston and Blade though, right?" Willow asked. "So they can't think you're that bad."
"I need to do this for me," I reiterated.
"And me," Adrian said, piping up from a seat behind us.
"Did they recover the money?" Willow asked.
"Apparently Anke's trying to include the return of the money in a plea deal," I explained.
"She always has a scheme going," Willow said, shaking her head.
"It doesn't matter. My brothers think I'm dumb. I should have known better," Adrian said dejectedly. "If Josie needs to redeem herself by convincing all of Ida's crazy old friends to sell their property, then I want some of that goodwill to run my way."
"No promises," I warned. Adrian had snagged my presentation off the PharmaTech servers. I was feeling confident when we walked into the bingo hall.
"You're here!" Ida exclaimed, hugging me. "Art brought cider, and I brought snacks and wine. They're nice and marinated for you."
"I hope not too much. I need them to actually remember the presentation," I joked.
"Mrs. Ida." Remy greeted the elderly woman with a big hug then headed off to fill up a plate with cheese and fruit.
"Now there's a man!" Ida said.
"What about Bert?"
"Oh, lassie, I'm just looking. He's too young for me. Couldn't keep up! Speak of keeping up"—her voice went into a stage whisper—"I saw the car chase on TV. So much drama for Harrogate! It was on the national news and everything."
"I hope it wasn't too salacious," I said with a grimace. "There is such a thing as bad publicity."
"Can we get this show on the road?" complained a tiny older woman wearing a neat suit.
"Judge Edna, also known as my sister," Ida said, rolling her eyes. "We're waiting on the lieutenant mayor."
"I'm here," Meg said. She shook my hand. "As much as I like fucking with Hunter, we should try and come to a resolution."
Ida elbowed me as Meg went off to shake hands with the judge and other attendees. "Fucking Hunter, eh?"
"You have a filthy mind," I told her and walked to the front of the room to start the presentation. There was one word on the screen.
Heritage.
"Harrogate's heritage is fundamentally about working people," I began. A picture of smiling factory workers from decades ago flashed up. "It is also about a heritage of industry and development." A sepia picture of two of t
he Harrogate men in top hats and waistcoats standing in front of a factory came up on the screen. "Harrogate's architecture reflected these values." I showed a picture of one of the restored buildings on Main Street.
"Even in its heyday, there were still issues." The next slide was a picture of the old town dump, a haze of smog in the air.
"Things changed. Factories closed," I continued and flipped to an image of the closed chocolate factory.
"New families moved in, and the dump was turned into a new research complex with factories and jobs for a new type of resident." There was a drone picture of the Svensson PharmaTech facility. "And this, too, is part of Harrogate's heritage." I clicked to the next slide.
"But part of Harrogate's heritage is the land." There was a picture of Mace spinning Henry around on the large meadow where he wanted to build the new facility. "We don't want to lose that either," I told the gathering. "You don't want that, and the Svenssons don't either. They're willing to put non-noxious, light industrial factories, research facilities, and office space in downtown Harrogate. While strides have been made to not just restore Harrogate to its heyday but to surpass it, there's still a number of vacant lots. The Svenssons would like to redevelop those lots, obviously keeping any historical structures," I said, nodding to Meg.
"But they need a large assemblage of land on a rail spur." I put up a satellite photo of the parcels Adrian had outlined. "This is where you come in. The spirit of small towns is working together. I know we all want to preserve the green space. This is a viable solution." A few people were nodding along.
"However, while the Svenssons will buy the land at a fair market value, you can't inflate the price a ridiculous amount," I warned them. "Or they won't go for it, and they'll just build their new factories and facilities on the land they own."
Meg nodded and stood up. "Full disclosure—the city can stall the project, but eventually the woods and meadows will get torn up to make way for the new buildings."