A Coldwater Warm Hearts Wedding

by Lexi Eddings

  “You’re a better woman than me,” Heather said. “If I were in your shoes, I’m not sure I could forgive him.”

  “I had to. For my sake. Carrying around that load of bitterness would have broken me.” Glenda sighed. “Besides, love isn’t like a light switch, you know. You can’t just cut it off. Even when you want to sometimes.”

  “And that’s why I’m avoiding it like a flesh-eating virus,” Heather said.

  “Yeah, you let me know how that works out for you, honey,” Glenda said, morphing from nervous coworker to confiding friend in a few blinks. She waggled her eyebrows and grinned at someone to the left of Heather’s shoulder.

  Heather turned to see Michael Evans striding toward her with a ridiculous stuffed bear in tow.

  Chapter 17

  “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you,

  live peaceably with all men.” That’s the lesson

  Pastor Mark tried to teach us last week.

  Obviously, he’s never met Michael Evans.

  —Heather Walker’s take on the Book of Romans

  “Think I’ll go check on the Bugtussle boy in 208. According to his chart, he’s responding well to treatment. Last night, Doc Warner said he might remove his IV today and start him on antibiotics by mouth if the fever is under control,” Glenda said, and skittered down the hallway, leaving Heather to the wolves.

  Wolf, she corrected herself. There was a feral glint in Michael’s eyes as he approached. Almost a proprietary gleam.

  “Hi.” He propped the stuffed animal on the counter between them like some furry peace offering. The words “I care beary much” were embroidered on a stupid little heart sewn to the middle of its chest. “I want to—”

  “Are you here to see someone?” she interrupted.

  “Sure am. I’m here to see you, beautiful.”

  If she could trust a word coming out of his mouth, she’d have blushed more deeply than Glenda had. She dropped her gaze. He’s too darn hot for my own good. “I’m busy.”

  “I can see that. This won’t take long.”

  “It’ll take no time at all. If you aren’t here to visit a patient, you have to leave. Hospital policy.”

  “Heather, I’m trying to apologize.”

  “‘Trying’ is the operative word. I haven’t heard anything that convinces me you’re even a little sorry for leaving me hanging.”

  “You haven’t let me get a word in edgewise.”

  “So this is my fault?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You haven’t said anything.”

  His mouth lifted in that guaranteed-to-make-a-girl-forget-her-own-name smile. and he leaned an elbow on the counter. Then he jerked a thumb toward the stuffed bear. “I thought I’d let Yogi here do the talking for me.”

  Heather glared at the bear and then back at him. “Yogi says you’re an idiot.”

  Something passed behind Michael’s eyes. It flashed and was gone, like sunlight glinting on Lake Jewel and then disappearing when clouds roll in. Heather was attuned to reading her patients’ micro-expressions. She recognized pain when she saw it.

  Stricken, she realized her words had hurt him. That wasn’t like her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

  “Yeah, you did and you’d be right. I was always the class idiot.”

  “Don’t try to change the subject,” she said. No way he was going to trick her into defending him. “You might have called, you know.”

  “You never gave me your number. I had to follow my sister home to find out where you lived.”

  “You could have called Lacy.”

  “I didn’t have cell service.”

  “Where were you? Outer Mongolia?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute, but first, let me say I’m sorry. Truly, deeply sorry,” Mike said, his gray eyes sincere. “I didn’t mean to stand you up, but it couldn’t be helped.”

  Heather drew a deep breath. If Glenda could forgive Lester, whose sins were legion, she ought to at least hear Michael out over his one and only screwup. “OK. Where were you last night when you were supposed to be with me?”

  * * *

  Michael had hoped he wouldn’t have to tell Heather about MoreCommas. At least, not yet. In his experience with women, money was always a game changer—and not for the better. He could never be sure if they wanted to be with him or his credit score. He counted on Heather being different.

  Moment of truth time. “I was probably at about 35,000 feet.”

  “Come again?”

  “Flying in the company jet, somewhere over Ohio, on my way back from New York.”

  Heather scoffed and shook her head. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. I have work to do.” She sat and focused on the terminal in front of her, ignoring him completely.

  “Honest. I rode hell for leather to Tulsa after I left your place Wednesday night. Then I flew to New York so I could make a breakfast meeting with an investor group,” he said, figuring he’d better not explain that he’d put his employees’ interests ahead of her. “After that, we had an issue with the flight crew not having had enough rest, so we had to delay the return trip.”

  “We? Is that the royal ‘we’ you’re using or do you have a mouse in your pocket?” Heather said without looking up.

  “Look, I’m trying to explain—”

  “Mmm-hmm, so you’re saying you actually have a job that lets you flit around in a jet.”

  “No, I actually have a company,” he said, louder than he’d intended out of frustration. “I’m the CEO and owner of an app development group called MoreCommas.”

  She met his gaze for a long moment. “Obviously, you think I’m gullible, but I didn’t figure you took me for a fool.”

  “I’m telling you the truth.”

  “And I’m telling you to leave, Michael. Don’t make me call security.” She stood and pointed to the elevator. “Old Mr. Leland is getting up there in years and he doesn’t need the aggravation.”

  * * *

  Fighting the urge to swear the air blue, Mike kick-started his Harley and roared down the street. He turned onto the highway, barely slowing enough to make the curve. Beyond Lake Jewel, the road rose steeply into the hills. Michael leaned into each twist and turn, hoping the rush of air and the whine of the engine would settle him down.

  It didn’t help.

  He was still angry with himself. He should have found a way to tell Heather he wasn’t going to make it when he’d first learned about the glitch in his plans. But once he hit the ground running in Manhattan, there’d been dozens of people clamoring for his time. MoreCommas didn’t run itself. He couldn’t spare a moment to think about anything or anyone else until he was wheels up and flying west again.

  By then, it was too late.

  Even if he had been able to call her, she probably wouldn’t have believed him. He’d kept such a low profile, outside his company very few people realized he was “Mr. MoreCommas.” He valued his privacy. The corporate website didn’t have a directory listing him as its owner and CEO. He didn’t even carry business cards. They weren’t his style.

  Unless he could spirit Heather away to New York and show her the office, he had no way to prove himself to her.

  Michael pulled off the highway and rode up the dirt track that wound through deep forest to the Ouachita Inn ranch house. Designed like an outback station house, it was a long, low structure. Though it had been built in the late nineteenth century, the ranch house and the outbuildings had been updated about ten years ago. The structures retained their rustic character, but the plumbing and electrical panels definitely belonged to this century. It even offered access to satellite Internet.

  Mike got a twitch between his shoulder blades. It reminded him of how he’d felt when he first came up with the Bubble Wrap app. An idea started to gel.

  He put through a call to his assistant.

  Jadis answered before the second ring. “So, you arrived alive.”

  “Pre
tty much.” This thing he was trying to get going with Heather was DOA, but that only meant it was time to try something different.

  “Everyone here is still excited about the investment group’s decision to back us. The legal team projects that we’ll be ready for our IPO in eighteen months.”

  Michael paid his people well, but an IPO meant a windfall for all of them. They’d be able to pay off student loans, buy first homes in the insane Manhattan market, or squander their newfound wealth in riotous living, if that’s what they chose.

  Michael massaged his temple. If he’d learned anything about money since he started making boatloads of it, it was that it couldn’t fix everything. Just the thought that he now had a legal department gave him a headache. But it reinforced that he was doing the right thing by delegating his company’s expansion to people who understood how the financial and regulatory wheels turned.

  Michael was an idea guy. A code guy. A “stay up all night to get it done if you have to” guy.

  He could no more slog through the reams of legalese needed for the IPO than he could perform brain surgery.

  But he did know how to put together a winning team.

  “We can keep things humming here for a while,” Jadis said. “But when do you plan to return?”

  “That’s just it. I don’t think I can break away from Coldwater again until December at the earliest.”

  “I thought your mother was doing well.”

  “She is. As well as anyone on chemo and radiation treatments can be.”

  “Did she receive the wigs?”

  “She should have. I’ll make certain. She’s going to love them, but . . . I need to stay close for a while.” Jadis didn’t need to know he was also staying so he could get closer to Heather Walker. And she sure didn’t need to know he was willing to sing in any number of sorry choirs to make it happen. “Here’s what I’m thinking. Why don’t you and the design team come out here for a month or so?”

  “A month?”

  “Yeah. We can get a lot accomplished in that length of time, and then you can all go back with plans laid out for the next few quarters to come. After that, you can send out the marketing group for a couple of weeks. Then graphics, then HR, you get the idea. We’ll rotate whatever team needs my attention.” Even as he said it, he realized that plan would put him in Coldwater Cove well past the time he’d agreed on with Heather. It didn’t bother him a bit, but he knew his dad would have a different take on the situation.

  “Michael, have you thought this through?”

  He looked around the ranch house great room. If he half closed his eyes, he could see the place transformed into multiple work stations, with space for brainstorming sessions around the big fireplace, a break and snack room in the massive kitchen. “It’ll work. Look, I’ve got a big place rented where we can set up shop. Plenty of rooms for everyone to stay.”

  “I hate to break this to you, but your employees do have lives outside of work, even if you do not.”

  “Really, Jadis? What do you do but doodle in your sketchpad and wait beside your phone in case I need you?”

  Silence. Their relationship was more than boss/employee. Jadis was his best friend. His sounding board and confessor. The sister he wished Crystal had been. But Jadis didn’t give her confidence easily and held herself apart. It was partly how she was wired. And partly what had happened to her. Michael never wanted to add to that old hurt.

  “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

  “The truth requires no apology,” she said in her maddeningly calm tone. “But as for the others, you cannot ask them to leave their families for that long.”

  “Bring them all—wives, husbands, kids. Call it a corporate retreat/family vacation,” Mike said, getting more excited by the second. The Ouachita Inn had several bunkhouses that had been turned into guest rooms. He could take over the whole thing if he had to. Heck, now that the investors were on board, he could buy the place using funds from MoreCommas’ petty cash and not blink twice.

  “Very well. We will see what we can do. But some people will not be able to uproot for that long.”

  “Make it optional, then. We can accomplish a lot with video chats and e-mail. It’ll be good for the teams to learn to work together remotely.” The thought of bringing part of his life in Manhattan to Coldwater Cove gave him hope. It was his best chance to show Heather he was telling the truth. And maybe convince his dad that he wasn’t a waste of skin after all. “Get as many of the design team as you can to head this way as soon as possible, say a couple of weeks to give them time to make arrangements.”

  It would take him that long to transform the ranch house into his command center. His sister Lacy had been itching to stretch her design muscles.

  Maybe I can hire her away from the Gazette so she can help me with it.

  “MoreCommas will likely double the population of Coldwater Cove,” Jadis warned in mock seriousness. “We will most certainly eat up all the bandwidth available in several neighboring states.”

  “Come on.” Mike laughed at her exaggeration. “I’m the only one who can dis my town.”

  “I thought the Big Apple was your town.”

  “It was. It is,” he corrected himself. It will be again. “Let me know when you’ve got everything arranged for the MoreCommas migration. It won’t be forever.” He knew better than to try to lure his people permanently out to the back of beyond. For most of them, there was nothing between the East and West Coasts of note except for Vegas. “For now, I need to be close to home.”

  Even though they came out of his mouth, the words surprised him. Years ago, he’d stopped thinking about Coldwater Cove as home. Not since that day at his grandmother’s graveside.

  If a guy is very lucky, God will give him someone who believes in him no matter what. Gran was my gift. Wish I could have called “no take backs.”

  “All right, boss.” Jadis’s voice in his ear pulled him back into the moment. “I hope you know what you are doing.”

  “So do I.”

  Then she hung up. She always seemed to know when he’d drifted away from the present to rehash something in his head. She was clairvoyant like that.

  Mike almost called her back. Anything to keep the memories of that last day from washing over him afresh. It had happened about four months after he’d graduated from high school. And like all life-changing events, he remembered every detail with knife-sharp clarity.

  The air was crisp, the sky cloudless and blue.

  It was like a bad dream.

  But Michael wasn’t going to wake from this one. On this heart-breakingly beautiful fall day, he was burying his grandmother.

  Gran had been his rock. The one person in the world he could count on for unconditional love. Even when she developed dementia toward the end and stopped recognizing him as himself, he visited her every day. Everything about her was special, from her spicy gingersnaps to the kind, encouraging words that always dropped from her lips.

  Gran was love in an apron.

  Now she was gone. And the sun was so bright, it hurt his eyes. Of course, that might be because he was hung over, but there was no excuse for the irrationally cheerful sunshine beating down on him.

  How could the world be so uncaring? Where was the leaden sky he expected? It would be so much more fitting if the slight breeze sending fallen leaves skittering across the cemetery was strong enough to rip through his rumpled suit and tear his heart out.

  The crowd around him began to thin as mourners placed their floral tributes on the polished casket and returned to their cars at the bottom of the hill. Mike could hear them, speaking in soft tones to each other as if regular speech would disturb those sleeping in the graveyard. He strained his ears, but none of the words made sense.

  His mother kissed his cheek, and, with his sisters at her elbows, she began walking away. Only he and his father remained at the graveside. After a few silent minutes, the last of the other mourners was well out of earshot.

/>   “How could you come to your grandmother’s funeral drunk?”

  “How could you come sober?” Mike shot back.

  That was probably unfair all around. They were both hurting. His father grieved in his way, surrounded by his church and family. Michael grieved with his best friend, Jack Daniel’s. Neat.

  “This whole thing about her being . . .” Even standing over her grave, Mike couldn’t bring himself to say the word “dead.” “It’s just . . . obscene.”

  “Yes,” his dad agreed. “It certainly is. And it’s the last straw. I’ve had it with you. I want you out.”

  “Fine.” His bag was packed. He’d already made arrangements with one of his buddies at the construction company where he worked to couch surf at his apartment for a few days. “I’ll find my own place.”

  “No. Not just out of the house. Out of town.”

  “What?”

  “I always said you’d get into more trouble than I could get you out of someday.”

  When the sheriff’s cruiser had showed up the morning after Jessica’s death, Mike’s dad had used all his lawyerly skills to keep him out of jail. Even when the sheriff said they’d found Michael’s pocket knife in the submerged car, his father defended him and found a way to get his wounds stitched without drawing public attention to his injury. Through his father’s legal and law enforcement connections, the fact that Michael had been somehow involved in the tragic death of a teenaged girl was swept under the rug.

  It had been months since the car went into the lake. In that time, no blame had been laid at Michael’s feet. Jessica’s death had officially been ruled an accident, but there were still a few rumblings. His father pulled every string and called in every favor to distance Mike from Jessica’s death. In private, he never bothered to conceal his loathing for his son on account of it.

  “She was pregnant, Mike,” his father said, tight-lipped. “The lab in Tulsa has been backed up for months, but the results came in this morning. The sheriff told me before your grandmother’s service. Did you know?”