by Meg Easton
He picked up his phone to text her good morning, and hoped a little that maybe there would be a text from her. But instead, his screen was filled with social media notifications. He just stared at them, confused, not really understanding why all these random comments were showing up on his screen. He chose one of them and went into it.
And then he wished he hadn’t. They were all comments on a post that his ex-fiancée had made. He scrolled up to Stephanie’s post, dreading reading it, but feeling like he needed to know what was going on.
Hey, everyone! You all know that my wedding with Parker Brockbank was supposed to be last week. I’ve had quite a few people check in, asking about it, so I thought I’d give an update. Most of you know that Parker and I called off our wedding a few months ago. I know. But don’t go clicking on that sad emoji, because there’s no reason to feel bad for me. I’d like to announce that I’ve met the most wonderful man on the planet. His name is Roger, and I feel so blessed to be adored by him. Sometimes we have to go through the pain of a catastrophic hurricane to get to the sunshine and blue skies and true love on the other side.
The picture she posted with it was of her and Roger on vacation together, and it looked like they were on one of the islands his honeymoon cruise with her was supposed to stop at. And now she was there with her “true love,” and feeling blessed that she was no longer with Parker, her “catastrophic hurricane.”
And of course, she tagged him in her post. That way he was sure to also see all the comments from her friends—people he used to call friends, too—about how she shouldn’t feel bad because Parker wasn’t good enough for her, and how glad they were that she had found someone better.
He un-tagged himself from the post and closed out of the app, his teeth grinding and all the muscles in his body tensing. Instead of heading straight to the shower like he’d planned, he got dressed in his gym clothes and shoes and took off for a run along the beach. He needed to do something constructive with his racing heartbeat so he didn’t do something stupid instead.
But running gave him too much time to think and question if he was even relationship material. Stephanie certainly didn’t think so. Dozens of people commenting on Stephanie’s post didn’t seem to think he was, either. And these were mostly people he had known. People who hadn’t given him any kind of indication that they thought he wasn’t worthy of Stephanie.
What made him think he could start a new relationship and be successful? Especially with someone as incredible as Kelli?
Even after showering, he still couldn’t shake the weight he’d been carrying since reading Stephanie’s post. Running usually helped, but since it hadn’t, he didn’t know what else to try. So even though he didn’t feel like it, he met up with everyone else in the family room to go make snowmen out of sand. It didn’t really sound possible, but maybe it had a chance of distracting him.
When he walked into the family room, though, his eyes immediately found Kelli, and her face lit up again just by seeing him. He couldn’t let Stephanie bring him down. Not when a relationship with Kelli was on the line. Kelli is different, he told himself. You’re different.
Since the storm passed, the weather climbed back into the sixties, and with the sun shining, the beach felt amazing. And, as it turned out, it wasn’t impossible to distract himself when Kelli was around, and it wasn’t impossible to make a snowman out of sand. It just involved creative stacking and packing of wet sand, the same way making a castle did. They were just making a “castle” that was taller than he’d ever made, so it took some extra good packing, which they’d found out the hard way. Joy and Thomas were working with them, and for the most part, they were having fun.
But something seemed off with Kelli, and his mind never drifted far from that fact. He kept wondering what was up, because she didn’t smile as easily as normal, and when he asked her if she was okay, she had responded with “I’m fine.” He was pretty sure that meant she was anything but fine. Maybe she had been coming up with her own list of things about him that annoyed her. Every time he worried about her even for a second, the weight of Stephanie’s post settled on him again.
They needed some wetter sand, so when Kelli grabbed a bucket and said she’d get some, he grabbed a bucket and said he would, too. Once they were away from everyone else, he said, “It seems like something is bothering you. Do you want to talk about it?”
She glanced toward everyone who was busy working in groups of four to make their snowmen, as if she was making sure they couldn’t hear, then let out a huge breath. “I logged in to work, just to check the numbers from my campaign that was running over Christmas. Now don’t give me any grief about being a workaholic, because you put as many hours at the office as I do, and I haven’t logged in the whole time we’ve been here.”
She shook her head, looking down at the bucket she was shoveling dirt into. “I don’t even know what made me log in this morning. I’ve been enjoying the trip and hadn’t even thought about work most days. I guess I was just feeling worried or unsettled or something, and I kind of just wanted that boost you get from seeing a job you worked hard on doing well, you know?”
He nodded. He knew exactly what she meant—it was one of the reasons why he was a workaholic, too.
She glanced up, looking even more worried that someone might hear, her cheeks flushing. Then she whispered, “It’s going terribly, Parker. So so so bad. I made a huge mistake and wasted a big chunk of our marketing budget. Liz probably doesn’t even know about it yet, but when she finds out, she’s going to fire me.”
“She’s not going to fire you.”
“She is! I took a big risk, thinking it was going to go well and knock everyone’s socks off, and it totally tanked. And then after she fires me, Graham and Merit are going to find out and they’re going to wish they never brought me on this trip.”
“Kelli.” He held onto her hand and pulled her to standing. “She’s not going to fire you. Taking risks is a good thing, especially with your record. Taking risks is also what gives the biggest return on investment. Liz doesn’t expect every risk to pay off.” Even as he said the words, he was hoping that she would be willing to keep taking risks—like taking a risk on him, specifically.
“I’ve been trying to be the perfect, model employee, because I really like working at ZentCube, and that mistake showed that I’m the exact opposite of a perfect, model employee. I’m not even sure if winning a weekly lunch for my team for a year is going to make up for a mistake that huge.”
The skin just under her eyes was turning pink, and he could tell by her erratic breathing that she was on the verge of tears but didn’t want to cry with everyone around. He wrapped his arms around her, enveloping her in a hug.
“Kelli, Liz has been your boss for how long now?”
“Two years and nine months.”
“Which is plenty of time for her to see your marketing skills. Besides, didn’t she have to sign off on the ad? She’s not going to fire you over bad numbers on one campaign when she’s seen everything you can do.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I’m positive. Everything is going to be just fine.”
She breathed out a huge breath, and then looked up at the sky, probably trying to convince her tears to go away. After a moment, she looked back at him and smiled before she gave him a quick peck on the lips. “I don’t know if it’s going to be fine or not, but thank you, Parker.”
He kissed her forehead, and then crouched down with her to finish filling the buckets. He knew this had been a difficult thing for her to share, and he liked that she was willing to share it with him.
But at the same time, it also felt like a test. Like maybe she shared with him to see how he would react to finding out she wasn’t perfect, and he wasn’t sure if he passed. Whether or not she was perfect had nothing at all to do with how much he loved her. He wasn’t sure he got that across at all. Or if he actually had comforted her in the way he should have. His mind had been so much
on his own issues that he didn’t know.
Chapter Seventeen
Kelli went to bed feeling like she had a lump of coal in the pit of her stomach, and she woke up feeling exactly the same. She kept checking her email on her phone, expecting one to come in from Liz at any moment that told her that she’d really messed up and that they needed to talk about her future at ZentCube as soon as she was back in town.
And to top that off, their group activity had been to bake cookies during the afternoon, and then go Christmas caroling down the halls of the main Royal Palm Resort guest quarters building, singing and delivering cookies to anyone who opened their door to listen to them sing.
All of that would’ve been fine, except that she had tripped on a rug and fell into Parker, spilling her plate of cookies on the floor.
Then, she sang the wrong verse of a song, and when she tried to correct, the words of both songs mixed and came out completely wrong and very inappropriately, much to the delight of most of the ZentCube employees around her and the older gentleman they were singing to, and to the horror of the man’s wife.
And if that wasn’t enough, things only got worse when she and Parker went on an actual date to The Green Olive, the fancy restaurant at the resort. She had gone to the restroom when they had first arrived, just as the nice man, Declan, had been showing them to their seats. When she was walking back, she stepped wrong on her heel, twisting her ankle. It hurt pretty badly, but she wasn’t about to let Parker know of one more thing she messed up on. A table with four women about her age had front row tickets to her missed step, so she just gave them a smile, the walked the rest of the way to her table, pretending her ankle was fine.
Within moments of sitting down, their waiter brought a cocktail drink to Parker and said, “This is from the ladies at that table right over there.”
Parker turned to look at the women who had just witnessed her twisted ankle, and were now looking somewhat embarrassed that they just sent a drink to a man who was with a date. Well, at least three of them were. The fourth made her hand into a phone and mouthed, “Call me.”
And then, the cherry on top of the cake was actually a stuffed cherry tomato they’d gotten as an appetizer. She laughed at one of Parker’s jokes at the worst time, causing her to choke on the tomato just as she had put it in her mouth. And choked badly enough that Parker had to do the actual Heimlich maneuver just so she could breathe.
She had never had so many embarrassing, less-than-perfect moments with one person before. Especially not within a time frame of less than three hours.
No, actually, she had once before. But the last time that many things had gone wrong on a single date, Parker hadn’t asked her out again for two and a half years.
When it came time to leave, she realized that although her ankle wasn’t badly damaged and would probably be fine in a day or so, it still hurt too badly to walk all the way back to the mansion in four inch heels. So she had to tell Parker about it after all. He was so sweet about it, though—he asked the host if he could arrange to have a golf cart drive them back to the mansion, and he even picked her up and carried her to the golf cart and set her down ever-so-gently on it, like she was a princess and he was her prince.
But still, though, she had worried all the way back to the mansion that he must’ve been thinking that he should’ve never asked her on the date.
They got back just in time to take a slow breath and grab some ice for her ankle before they met with everyone else at nine p.m. in the family room. “Welcome to our final gathering for this retreat!” Graham said.
They all cheered, and Kelli looked around at the group, feeling a sentimental longing for the group even though they were still together. After spending so many hours a day together for so many days in a row, they were feeling like family, and she was sad to see it come to an end.
“Please correct me if I’m wrong, and I do mean please correct me, because if I am, then your plane tickets are wrong. Most of us are leaving tomorrow on the ten a.m. flight back to Denver. The people who took us up on our offer to stay until New Year’s Day are Parker, Kelli, Addison, Davis, and Merit. And I think we all need to cheer for that last one, because he’s such a workaholic; you wouldn’t believe what I had to do to bribe him to come on vacation here during the summer.”
Everyone laughed and cheered, then Graham said, “Actually, Elise, stand up. This is who we really should be cheering for, or we probably wouldn’t have seen Merit here for more than two or three days. She’s in charge of the New Year’s Eve celebration here, and since she’s here, Merit’s here.”
Elise stood up as they all clapped and whooped, her cheeks blushing, but then she looked at Merit and Merit looked at Elise and Kelli sighed. The looks they gave each other were just so sweet and so like the looks she had been getting from Parker. At least they were before her disastrous last couple of days. She chanced a glance at Parker, and he responded by entwining his fingers in hers and giving her hand a little squeeze, which warmed her heart.
And also surprised her a bit. She figured he would be trying to back away by now. She hadn’t been good enough for her mom to stay, for her dad to want her in his new family, and probably to keep her job at ZentCube. And she definitely hadn’t been good enough for a brand new relationship to take hold. Maybe Parker was backing away, and the hand squeeze was just his way of setting her down very gently. That would be a very Parker thing to do.
Davis and Addison seemed happy to be having their own little love story going on, though. After the awkwardness at the dance, things had gone back to being easy between Davis and Kelli. And since he hadn’t spent the night claiming Kelli, he had actually danced with Addison quite a bit. Who knew the two of them would’ve hit it off so well? She was glad they were staying.
She was a little nervous about staying herself.
“We’ve taken down the point sheets, but I’ll say that we’ve got several people who are very close on points,” Graham said, “and we’re excited to announce the winners. Meet down here tomorrow at seven-thirty—I know it’s early, but we’re hoping that you’ve acclimated to South Carolina time a bit—and we’ll announce the winner and have a final goodbye. We’ll also have some breakfast items that you can just grab and go before the shuttles take you to the airport.”
Merit stood up next to Graham. “Okay, we are done for the night, so feel free to go get some beauty sleep, go out on the town, earn more points, enjoy the game room and theater downstairs, stay up all night, whatever you most want to do. And thank you for spending your Christmas with us. We hope it was as magical for you as it was for us.”
Kelli jumped to her feet along with everyone else and clapped for Graham and Merit. Then she walked up to them and thanked them personally. They had put so much into planning this for just the twelve of them, and her heart was practically overflowing with gratitude for them.
Then Parker came up to her and said, “So, how do you want to spend—”
But her phone was buzzing, so she pulled it out of her pocket, looked at the screen, and squealed. “It’s my dad! Sorry—I’ve got to—” He just smiled at her and nodded, and she answered as she raced up to her room.
“Daddy!”
“It’s so good to hear your voice, Candy Cane.”
“You, too, Daddy.” It had been too long since she had last talked with him, especially since it had seemed like she had been vacationing for weeks—or months—already. But she pushed her emotions down and said brightly, “How has your trip been?”
“Not the same without you. I’ve missed all of our traditions!”
“I’ve missed them, too,” she said, only partially able to keep the emotion from her voice. She brushed a knuckle just below her eye to keep a tear from spilling over. “And I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too. Once we both get back, we need to spend a good amount of time together.”
She held the speaking part of the phone away from her mouth as she let out a relieved breath t
hat came out choked with emotion.
“I know that integrating with this new family has taken a lot of my time lately, but I’m anxious to get things going smoothly there so that I can work on integrating you in with them.”
He had pushed her away, but he had a plan for bringing her back in. She was going to get her dad back, and eventually JoAnn and her stepsisters, too. She wanted to reach through the phone and give him a giant hug.
They were only able to talk for about five minutes before he had to go, but it was a really good five minutes and left her floating on a cloud of happiness. She couldn’t wait to tell Parker.
Chapter Eighteen
Parker didn’t know how long Kelli would be talking to her dad, so he decided to use the time to go to his room and look up things he could do with Kelli during their bonus four days at the resort. The resort had a lot to offer during the winter even when it wasn’t over Christmas and New Year’s, and they hadn’t begun to check them all out yet. The town of Myrtle Beach had even more things to do, and he couldn’t wait for the two of them to do it all.
He barely had time to look, though, before Kelli came into his room, alive with happiness. Her dad hadn’t seen her at all over Christmas, and all he could spare her was a five minute phone call?
“I just had the best phone call with my dad.”
“Oh yeah?” He met her partway into his room and wrapped his arms around her waist, then kissed her on her temple. “Tell me about it.”
He didn’t keep his arms around her, though, because she seemed too full of energy and excitement to stand still. So he sat on his bed as she moved about the room, telling him the story.
“So when my dad first said that they were going away for Christmas, and it was just going to be JoAnn and his new daughters and not me, I felt like I was being pushed away. No—more like left behind. Tossed aside. But I just told myself that it was temporary. It was only coming from JoAnn, not from my dad. Just like how she’d asked her three daughters be her bridesmaids at the wedding, but didn’t ask me. But then my dad asked me to be his best man, so everything was fine in the end.”