by Nicole Helm
Even just leasing a house would feel something like . . . true belonging.
This whole ordeal was going to be a struggle. Seeing Will every day was definitely going to poke at her, and if she had something of her own, something that felt like independence and solitude, she might be able to hack it.
She walked down the street. The house next to the green one on the corner was a pretty, buttery yellow. Normally Tori would’ve had no interest in it. Girly, sunshiny, colorful stuff wasn’t in her wheelhouse. But something about this house had her stopping and staring.
Maybe sunny cheerfulness was out of character, but what if it was exactly the kind of thing she needed? Even though joining Mile High had been the plan all those years ago, returning to that plan didn’t mean this wasn’t a fresh start. Far away from Toby and his lies and his reputation-ruining scandal.
She could start over in Gracely. Yes, it would mean dealing with some of her past, a past she’d begun to think wouldn’t ever have to be dealt with, but the minute she’d been fired and turned down for every ski instructing job in the area, she’d known she had to come here. Facing the past was pretty much the only road to take.
As a teenager, she’d run away from one family. It had been necessary because her brother’s violence had started to center on her, and so she’d always known she couldn’t go back. She tried to pay off her parents’ debts, but that was all her relationship with her family was ever going to be.
But she’d created a family with Brandon, Will, and Sam all those years ago, and this was a family rift she could fix. She could deal with it now that time had matured her, and completely eradicated her problematic feelings for Will. Completely.
“Hello!”
Tori turned toward the cheery feminine voice that rang out. A young blond woman was coming out of the green house next door.
“Hi,” Tori offered carefully, wondering if the woman thought she was a burglar or something. “I was looking at the For Lease sign there in the yard.” She pointed at it.
“It’s a great house. At least I think it is. Ours is great and we’ve been here quite a few months now, and the people that were living there were like this cute little old couple who took such good care of everything.”
“Oh, well, thanks,” Tori said as the woman approached. “I guess I’ll check it out.”
The woman stuck her hand out between them. “I’m Cora.”
There was something a little familiar about the woman, but Tori couldn’t place it. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Tori wasn’t sure what to do with cheerful, overly exuberant neighbors. Still, she didn’t want to be rude, so she took the woman’s outstretched hand and shook it. “Hi, I’m Tori.”
Cora cocked her head. “Oh. Tori. I know you!”
“You do?”
“You were at the wedding! My sister is Lilly. You know, she married Brandon, and you were there. An old friend of the Mile High boys, right?”
Tori tried to smile, though she was uncomfortable with the connection. She’d only met Lilly briefly, and she’d seemed nice enough, the perfect woman to stand up to Brandon’s bulldozer tendencies, but leasing a house was supposed to give her a break from all those old connections.
“Anyway, this is a great house and I’m a great neighbor. You can even ask Lilly.” The woman’s wide smile faded a little. “Well, don’t ask her too many questions. Lilly has very high standards.”
Tori usually found overexuberance obnoxious, but something about the honesty in Cora’s retraction was endearing.
A boy, probably not quite a teenager, flew out of the house Cora had come out of. Tori remembered him from the wedding. A blur of edgy energy combined with a kind of surly exterior that reminded Tori a lot of herself when she was a kid.
“Mom! Where’s my Xbox controller?”
Cora rolled her eyes, looking far too young to have a son that old. “Duty calls,” she said brightly. “But if you do end up leasing it, stop by and let me know. It’s hard to find friends around my age here.” She started walking back toward her house. “And now that Lilly’s married to Brandon, it’s just me and Micah.”
Tori had never been very good at making female friends. She tended to be too abrasive and suspicious of women who knew how to dress or fix their hair. Growing up with brothers and a poverty-stricken mother on a farm and then in a trailer park, she’d never quite acquired the art of femininity. But something about Cora and her cheerful prettiness wasn’t off-putting at all.
“Yeah, I’ll look into it. It was nice to meet you.”
Cora waved and disappeared inside with her son. Tori took a step back to examine the house. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and typed the address into her notes.
It would be nice to have friends. It would be nice to have a connection and a house and all of the good things a new start could be made out of.
For nearly the first time since she had stepped foot into Gracely, knowing a showdown with Will was imminent, she smiled without an ounce of sarcastic gleam behind it.
* * *
Will Evans knew that getting drunk didn’t solve problems, but it certainly diffused the messy tangle of emotions currently existing in his chest.
Tori was here to stay. To stay.
Will squinted out into the thick pine forest that lined the back of Mile High Adventures. The dusky green, murky and thick, reflected his mood.
He’d much rather be in his own cabin, but hell if he could swallow Brandon and Lilly’s love fest. He was happy for them. More power to them. In his current mood, he’d rather gouge his eyeballs out than have to witness them.
Damn, but he had to get himself together. It usually wasn’t so hard, pretending as though nothing bothered him. Hell, he’d learned to live more than half his life that way, ignoring the way his father treated him, pretending the family secrets didn’t bother him, acting as though the end of his marriage was no big deal.
He had convinced everyone he was a good-time guy, and he’d barely been cognizant of doing it. Until the past few weeks, when everything seemed to be unraveling, including his usual façade.
He’d been an ass. To just about everyone. His brother, his new sister-in-law, his best friend, his half sister. Hell, he’d been a prick to Skeet, Mile High’s grizzled, old secretary of sorts.
He was in bad shape, and he didn’t know how to fix it.
The door to the porch opened, and Will didn’t have to guess it was his brother. Brandon was too quick to speak for it to be anyone else.
“I won’t let you turn into an alcoholic, if that’s your plan.”
Will took a deep breath. He didn’t want to be an asshole to Brandon. Or anyone. “Don’t you have a pregnant wife to flutter around?” Oops.
“I do, and I’d much prefer to be doing just that, but everyone is worried about you.”
It was new, people being worried about him. It was uncomfortable, all in all. He much preferred everyone thinking he was fine. He liked people coming to him for a laugh or a joke or a fun night on the town.
He didn’t know what the hell to do with people caring about how he was doing or how he felt. Except, when he was this edgy and tense his trying to get rid of people just sounded like fury.
“And you drew the short stick, eh? Pull up a chair. I’ll drink to your—”
“Will.”
Will stopped, if only because he hadn’t heard that kind of grave note to his brother’s voice since Brandon had delivered the news Dad had died.
“I need you,” Brandon said simply. Baldly. In away that had Will squirming in his seat. “I need you healthy and whole. A lot of changes are happening, and Gracely is still dying, and we are, in fact, its only hope that I can see. Mile High needs all of you.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Will you be? Because you seem to be hitting the bottom of those bottles a little too often for anyone’s comfort lately.”
“You want me to stop drinking? Fine, I will.” He held out the bottle, and when Brandon to
ok it, Will did his best to shrug. Yeah, he’d been drinking too much lately, though he was an adult and that was his choice to make, but if Brandon wanted to play moral police, Will would let him. No skin off his nose.
“I know you don’t want to talk about it, but if this is all about Tori, you need to tell me.”
All of Will’s attempts to be unaffected fluttered away like ash in the wind. That’s what he felt like, actually. His marriage was over. His brother was happily married and procreating. Mile High was doing well, and maybe that hadn’t trickled down to Gracely yet, but it would.
And Tori was back.
“Don’t worry about me. Don’t worry about . . . her.”
“You’re not hearing me. If it’s about her, you need to tell me.”
“Why?” Will demanded, all that edginess leaking into his tone no matter how much he tried to bury it.
“Because I will tell her to leave.”
Will whipped his gaze to his twin brother. “You outvoted me,” he said, pushing down the clawing temper trying to free itself. Brandon and Sam had decided they wanted Tori back and Will had been outvoted.
“I will change my vote if it brings my brother back.”
Will swallowed. Hell, wasn’t that tempting? Say the word and she’d be gone. He could go back to pretending that night seven years ago never happened. That Tori never happened.
But somehow it wasn’t a relief, in the least. It settled all wrong in his gut. “You don’t want to do that,” he managed to say, though it sounded far more strangled than he wanted it to.
“I don’t, no. But I can get her a job somewhere else. I can give her money to leave. If you simply cannot coexist with her, then I will fix it.”
“You can’t fix everything, Brandon.”
“Yeah, so I’m learning.” Brandon let out a long-suffering sigh, and Will had to admit for a newlywed the guy looked tired. And not for the right reasons. “But I do have some control over this.”
Will looked back out at the quickly darkening mountain forest in front of him. “You outvoted me,” he repeated, because, well, because it had hurt. Even if that hurt was his own damn fault for not explaining things to Sam and Brandon. But who would want to relive ancient history? He certainly didn’t.
“I thought . . . Well, I thought whatever happened between you two . . . Look, I thought if you got over your initial reluctance you’d be fine, but she starts tomorrow. She’s been around for a few weeks, and you are decidedly not fine. I would love to include Tori in Mile High, but you rank, brother. So, if you need her gone, I’ll do the dirty work.”
Because Brandon never hesitated to stand up and do the work. Will might not always agree with what the work should be, but he’d always, always admired his brother for a myriad of reasons. That being one of them. Not that he’d ever told Brandon.
It would be wrong to take him up on this. Not because he thought Tori belonged here. By his way of thinking, she’d made it very clear she didn’t. That she’d desert all of them if things didn’t go her way.
Something tightened in his gut. A familiar old something he’d spent a lot of years ignoring. Refusing to identify.
“Lilly’s having twins.”
That jerked Will out of any past feelings. “Twins.”
Brandon raked his fingers through his hair. “Yes, twins. She had some bleeding, so we went in and . . . Anyway, found two in there. Then they started in about all the risks and terrible things that could happen and I . . . I can’t control any of that shit. Even if I could wrap her up in bubble wrap and tie her to a bed, she wouldn’t let me. So, I need you one hundred percent, because God knows I’m not going to be for the next six months.”
Will’s chest tightened with concern for his brother, for his sister-in-law, for his future nieces or nephews. An odd, blanketing grief that he’d never had a chance to have that kind of worry, because Courtney had ended their chance before . . .
“I need to know you’re present. I need to know you won’t snipe at Sam and Hayley. That you won’t dump on Tori. That—”
“I’ll handle it.”
“I need—”
Will stood, forcing every last swirling emotion inside of him down and away. He clapped Brandon on the shoulders and gave him a little shake. “I’ve got it. You can trust me. I’ve been off a little, I get it, but consider it fixed. I’ve got your back.”
Brandon let out a sigh of relief, and Will realized Brandon wasn’t just exhausted, he was sick with worry.
“Mom gave birth to us just fine. Lilly’s made of sterner stuff. She’ll be a freaking Wonder Woman.”
“Do you not recall Mom’s dramatic accounts of you being in the NICU for months?”
Will managed a smile, a real one—for the first time in weeks, he thought. “And look at me now.”
Brandon was quiet for a while, too long really, studying Will with that assessing hazel gaze.
“And Tori?”
Will tried not to tense, but he probably failed. “I was caught a little off guard, and I’ll admit I’ve been wallowing in it. But I can put all that in the past.” For Brandon, he’d do anything.
“You sure?”
“Positive. Go home to Lilly. Do whatever you need to do. You can count on me. You can trust me.”
Brandon let out another sigh, something shuddering that had his shoulders slumping. Will wasn’t sure he remembered ever seeing his brother quite like this. There’d been a grimness to him when he’d figured out Dad had been cutting corners at Evans Mining Company, an exhausted certainty when Dad had died and Brandon had had to clean that all up.
Brandon had been shoulders-back determination since he’d gotten it in his head that Mile High Adventures could save Gracely from its near ghost town status. He’d been humorously felled by Lilly Preston earlier this spring.
But Will had never seen him wilt under all the pressure.
This was why you didn’t go falling in love and shit. All it did was make your life harder, scarier, and far more full of hurts.
“Thanks,” Brandon said, giving him a back thump, which was about as close to a hug as they ever got.
Will watched Brandon go, back to the family he was building. Will stood on the porch of Mile High Adventures, which was his future. He’d do whatever it took to make sure it kept succeeding.
Even if that meant forgetting everything that had ever happened with Tori Appleby. One way or another.
So Wrong It Must Be Right
“You’re not still emailing with that guy!”
Dinah looked up from her phone and blinked at her cousin. It took a minute to get her bearings and remember that Kayla was waiting on her to get started.
“Actually, I was reading up on Trask. I found an article that might explain his reluctance to sell.”
Kayla snatched her phone away, then frowned at the screen. “It is sick that you get the same look on your face reading those pervy emails as you do reading stuff for work.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dinah replied primly. Okay, maybe she did know what Kayla meant, and maybe it was a little sick, but Gallagher’s Tap Room was Dinah’s blood. The Gallagher family had moved to St. Louis over a century ago, and built a little pub on the very land beneath the concrete floor under her feet. It was everything to her, and if she got a little excited about that? It was fine.
Kayla gestured toward the back door and Dinah stood to follow. Meeting with Trask was going to be it. The moment she finally proved to Uncle Craig and the board she was ready to take over as director of operations.
Being Uncle Craig’s “special assistant” had turned out to mean little more than being his bitch, and while she’d worked to be the best damn bitch she could be, she was ready for tradition to take over. From the very beginning, the eldest Gallagher in every generation took over. These days, the title was director of operations, but it was all the same.
She was the eldest Gallagher of the eldest Gallagher. She’d been told her whole life
that this would be hers when her father retired, or, as it turned out to be with Dad, abandoned everyone and everything in the pursuit of his midlife crisis.
It was time. Dinah was ready, and getting some crazy urban farmer to sell his land next to Gallagher’s for the expansion was going to be the final point in her favor. No one would be able to deny she was ready.
Director of operations was everything she’d been dreaming about since she’d been old enough to understand what the job required. Long after she’d understood what Gallagher’s meant to her family, and to her.
“So, you finally stopped emailing creepy Internet dude?”
Dinah walked with Kayla down the hallway to the back exit. “He’s not creepy.” The guy she’d somehow randomly started emailing with after she’d tipsily commented on his Tumblr page one night wasn’t creepy. He was kind of amazing.
“Dinah.”
“I’m sorry. No way I’m giving that guy up. It’s some of the hottest sex I’ve ever had.”
Dinah thought wistfully over how he’d ended his last email. And when you’re at the point you don’t think you can come again, I’ll make sure that you do. It might be only through a computer, but it was far superior to anything any other guy had ever said to her.
“It’s fictional.”
“So?”
“He’s probably like a sixty-year-old perv. Or a woman if he’s really as good as you say he is.”
“As you pointed out, it’s fictional. Who cares?”
They stepped out into the lingering warmth of late September. The urban landscape around Gallagher’s was a mix of old and new, crumbling and modern. Soon, Gallagher’s was going to make sure the entire block was a testament to a city that could reinvent itself.
“What does he do, send you pictures of models? Oh, baby, check out my six-pack. Then suddenly he’s claiming to be David Gandy.”
“We don’t trade pictures of each other or any personal information that might identify us. I mean, he knows I have freckles. I know he has a birthmark on his inner thigh, but that’s about it. It is pure, harmless, sexy, sexy words.”