Love Redefined

by Delancey Stewart

  “I’ll let you know. I just wanted to prepare you for the fact that they stand a good chance of getting joint custody.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  I hung up the phone and felt my heart disintegrate.

  I couldn’t say how long I sat there, staring off toward the monstrous ski property hanging on my wall with nothing going through my mind except fragmented shards of fear, of worry, of heartbreak. And when Eva called back again, I considered ignoring her. But then she’d just get up and come back here, and she’d find me cowering in my big leather chair like a child. I straightened and picked up.

  “Yes?”

  “Chance Palmer on the phone.”

  Despite everything, my heart leapt at her words. “Thanks.” I waited for the line to switch and then tried to sound upbeat. “Hi Chance.”

  “Hey,” he said. “What’s wrong?” So much for sounding upbeat.

  “Oh, you know, just work.” I wasn’t even convincing myself.

  “Sounds like more.” His deep voice held concern.

  I let out a breath, not wanting to tell him anything—because he was a business partner, after all. Nothing more, right? But I didn’t have a lot of friends. There were very few people I actually talked to, and I needed to talk. “It’s not work. I mean, not entirely. My lawyer just called.” And the flood gates were open. I told him about the call. About Jeff’s bid for custody and his resort plans. I told Chance everything—almost. Not about the broken arm. I still hadn’t told anyone about that except my lawyer. Only she and Finn knew the truth.

  “Mike, I’m so sorry. What can I do?”

  I shook my head, “Nothing. There’s nothing to do.”

  “Bullshit. There’s always something you can do. Maybe I can’t help with the custody thing, but I can help with the resort. Can I look at his plans?”

  “Chance, no. I mean…that’d be a huge conflict of interest. You’re the competition.”

  “Send the other guy our plans for Kings Grove, I don’t care.”

  I laughed. “You know it doesn’t work like that.”

  “He sent them to you. That’s not normal either. If I just happened to see them when I was in your office…”

  “When will you be in my office?”

  “In two hours.”

  “Chance, no, I—” but he had already hung up. For a split second I was angry that he’d be so domineering, but the heat of my anger slid away quickly, and something else rolled into its place, wrapping me in a sense of comfort I’d rarely known. I felt relieved. Someone else was going to help carry this load I’d been struggling to bear for so long. Even if only for a couple of hours.

  I tried to keep busy for the next two hours, but every minute seemed to last an eternity. When Chance finally strode into my office, my mind stilled and I let his super power work its magic on me. Somehow Chance Palmer managed to make it feel like everything might be all right.

  Chapter 9

  Chance

  I’d fought off the urge to call Mike or text her since she’d left Kings Grove Saturday evening. She’d texted to let me know she’d gotten home safely, and I’d shot out a quick response, but I wanted to say so much more. Things I knew were totally inappropriate, things we weren’t ready for. Things I wasn’t even really ready to say, but it almost felt like Rebecca had opened a door inside me and now I didn’t want it to swing shut again.

  When I met Rebecca, I was a cocky, entitled ass—basically I’d been the guy everyone in Kings Grove thinks I am now. Big fish in small ponds tend to forget there’s a whole ocean out there, after all. I was going to learn that lesson one way or another, and Stanford’s competitive classrooms would have taught me some of it if Rebecca hadn’t stepped in to speed things along. But she had, and I was a better man for it. She taught me to listen—to really listen with my whole being—to other people. She taught me the best rewards aren’t things like trophies and praise, they’re the things you earn for helping other people get a win.

  Rebecca had made me a better man, and while it was still difficult to talk about her, I had come to terms with her loss. Part of me thought if I shared her, the memory of her might lessen somehow, so I kept her pressed close inside me and held on as tightly as I could to what was left. And I could feel that fragment of Rebecca pushing me forward when I was around Mike, I could hear her whispering in my ear that Mike was a good person, that she was worth the risk.

  And I couldn’t deny there was something else, something completely apart from the astounding love I’d felt for my late fiancée. There was a fierce attraction I knew was much more basic—chemical and raw. And it was that animal attraction and fierce desire to be near her, maybe to protect her, that leapt into action when I heard her voice on the phone Monday afternoon, sounding tired and desperate and hopeless. I wasn’t going to sit by if there was something I could do to help her. I was out of my desk and picking up my keys within five minutes of hanging up.

  “Where are you headed in such a hurry?” Miranda asked from her desk in the front office. “With cookies, no less?”

  “Yeah, Betty Crocker, I thought those were for us.” Sam appeared in his doorway, pointing at the plate of cookies wrapped in plastic in my hands.

  I glared at him, wishing he’d just stayed at his desk. “I left half of them at your house when I made them yesterday. They’re for Cam.”

  Sam and Miranda exchanged a look. “Cam?” she asked.

  I forced myself to relax for a second in my mad rush to get to Mike. “Yeah, I bumped into him yesterday on the trail and he looked pretty rough. We ended up talking a little bit.”

  “About Jess?” Miranda asked softly. Cam was Maddie’s older brother, and his wife Jess had died a couple years ago.

  “Yeah,” I said, remembering Cam’s drawn face, his haunted eyes. “Kind of. Not directly, but pretty much. He’s not over her loss, and he just seems like he needs something, some help or…”

  “Cookies,” Sam said, his sarcasm right at the surface.

  “A friend, maybe,” I suggested.

  Miranda smiled. “I think that’s great,” she said.

  Sam narrowed his eyes at me. “What’s going on with you?” he asked. “You’ve never really been the cookie-making type before.” He leaned in closer. “And, wait…are those Grandma Allie’s?”

  I nodded.

  “And you didn’t even tell me you were making them?”

  “I dropped half off at your house this morning, okay? I told you that.”

  “Grandma Allie?” Miranda asked, looking between us, confused at the odd turn of topic.

  “Our great grandmother made the perfect chocolate chip cookie,” Sam explained. “Like seriously, the best.” He stepped forward and reached for the plate, about to unwrap it.

  “These aren’t for you,” I said, moving away. “And I need to go. I’m heading to the valley to see Mike. She’s worried about the proposal for the property and I’m going to see if I can help.”

  “Want me to take those to Cam?” Sam asked. “I think he’s working out at Mrs. Teague’s place today.”

  It would save me time, but I didn’t trust my little brother around cookies. “Nope.”

  He let out a sigh and turned around, heading back into his office. “Was worth a shot.”

  “Drive safe, Chance,” Miranda said, sitting back down at her desk.

  I headed out the door and crossed to the diner, where I knew Maddie was working because Connor’s big white car was parked out front. She didn’t need her job at the diner anymore, since her photography business was taking off, but Connor had become so used to writing at the diner he talked her into keeping the job. Adele, the snarky owner, wouldn’t have allowed him to just commandeer a booth otherwise. Maddie said her entire diner salary was spent in Connor’s coffee and hamburgers as quickly as she earned it.

  “Palmer,” Adele said, eyeing my cookies as I walked in through the door. “You can’t bring outside food in here.”

  “It’s not going
to be consumed here,” I assured her.

  “Doesn’t matter.” She pressed her lips into a hard line.

  She wanted to play it like that? “What if I gave you one?” I asked her, lifting the plastic on one edge so the scent of brown sugar floated out. “They’re my Grandma Allie’s oatmeal chocolate chip.”

  Adele’s eyebrows shot up. Grandma Allie’s cookies were legendary in Kings Grove. “Two.” She held out a pudgy hand with rings adorning the back of each finger, and actually smiled at me as I placed two cookies on her palm. She accepted them and bowed her head slightly, allowing me entrance. I watched as she headed for the kitchen, and knew her negotiation for the second cookie hadn’t been selfish. Adele was a hard-ass, but she had a soft mushy center, and you could see it in action whenever she was around her husband, Frank. I heard him from the kitchen call out, “Thanks, Chance!”

  Maddie was behind the counter, so I slid up in front of her. “Hey Maddie,” I said, getting her attention.

  “What’s up Chance?” She grinned at me, then her eyes fell on the cookies. “I see we’ve been baking.”

  “Um, yeah. So, these are actually for your brother, and I wanted to talk to you real quick about him.”

  “Trouble with Cam at work?” Her eyebrows came together in concern.

  “No, nothing like that. Just… I’m worried about him. I bumped into him hiking, and it doesn’t seem like he’s handling things well. Jess, I mean.”

  She dropped my gaze and stared at her hands on the counter. “Yeah. I know. I don’t know what to do. I’ve invited him over lots of times, I drop in on him and hang out at the house… He just… It’s like he lost his smile.” She looked up at me again, so much emotion in her eyes it made my chest squeeze. “I don’t know how to help him.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. “Well, cookies probably won’t help, but could you get these to him? I have to head down to Fresno right now.”

  She nodded and smiled. “Thanks.”

  “And tell him I’m going to stop by soon.” I knew I needed to really talk to Cam, if he’d let me. Maybe if I finally talked to someone about Rebecca, it could help us both. We’d both lost part of our hearts, and I wanted him to know he wasn’t totally alone.

  I arrived at Mike’s office at almost five o’clock, and it definitely seemed like more people were heading out of work than in. When I reached her floor and the receptionist showed me back, Mike was sitting at her desk, typing furiously on her keyboard. She stopped the second I walked in and rose.

  “Chance.” Her voice was tight, but I saw her face relax a bit, and I had to fight off the urge to go straight to her, to take her in my arms. I had no idea where it had come from, but I wanted to take care of this woman, protect her.

  I stopped myself from reaching out, and stood in front of her desk instead. “Hey, how are you?”

  She laughed, but there was no joy in it. “I’m a disaster,” she said. “I’ve spent the whole time since I talked to you scouring the state for a ski property ripe for purchase and renovation, but I think Jeff found the only one.” She shook her head and shock slithered through me.

  “You’re not going to propose Kings Grove?”

  She laughed again, and again it was more of a bark of frustration. “I don’t know! I seriously don’t know what to do. Kings Grove is great, don’t get me wrong. But it just doesn’t…I’m not sure it can compete with…” She trailed off, and looked down for a split second as if deciding something. “Well, you’re here anyway. I might as well just show you.” She pointed behind me and I turned to find plans spread across the wall, pinned to a board.

  I moved closer and examined the property laid out there, whistling low. “This is ambitious.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your ex’s?”

  Another confirmation.

  I stood there looking at the plans for a good ten minutes, saying nothing. My mind was spinning. Mike stood next to me, both of us staring at the monstrous resort her ex was planning.

  “The guy’s an idiot.” I turned to face her.

  “What? Why?”

  “Has he built properties on this scale before?” I asked, seeing multiple potential problems with Jeff’s plan.

  “He’s never built anything before. He was in finance.” She sounded bitter.

  “Then I don’t think we have anything to worry about.” I did my best to make my tone light, to take the edge off the panic I heard in her voice.

  She shook her head. “How can you say that? This thing is incredible. He’s got it all planned in phases, he says he has the contractors lined up…” she trailed off, her voice rising.

  “Mike, you’ve done this before, right?”

  She shook her head again, and I could see panic beginning to light the dark eyes. “Right, but…”

  “Take a step back. Let’s look at this objectively.”

  Mike took a deep breath and I walked her through the building phases as Jeff had them lined up. There were a few key points where he’d put the cart way ahead of the horse, and they were small oversights only an experienced builder would think of, but they’d come back to bite him and end up sending the project way over budget. “This plan is a financial disaster waiting to happen,” I told her.

  “Jeff is a financial disaster,” she muttered. Then she glanced at the clock hanging on her wall and her face took on the panicked look again. “Oh my God, is it really six? I have to get Finn.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was being dismissed, but then she turned to meet my eyes.

  “Come on, you can tell me more in the car about how Jeff’s going to fail. It makes me feel better.”

  I laughed and followed her to the parking garage beneath her building, something warm in my chest growing and expanding there.

  We picked Finn up from his daycare, and his eyes grew wide when he saw me waiting in the passenger seat. He leapt into the back seat and grinned. “Hey, Chance.”

  “Hey, buddy.”

  “Are you coming for dinner?”

  I had no idea what came next. I hadn’t planned beyond visiting Mike at her office, but now I found myself hoping the answer was yes.

  Mike seemed to think for a minute and then a smile pulled up one side of her mouth, making her look innocent, shy. “I’d like it if you would,” she said. “It won’t be fancy.”

  “I don’t need fancy,” I assured her.

  We went back to my truck, and that was how, an hour later, I found myself in the center of a scene I would never have been able to predict. Mike’s house was small but overflowing with warmth and noise and love. Finn’s drawings hung on the walls, and his report card was pinned to the refrigerator. There were shoes scattered in the living room and a few stuffed animals on the couch that seemed to have escaped from Finn’s room.

  “I swear, I do try to keep the place clean, but during the work week…” Mike trailed off as she scooped shoes together and then disappeared down the hall. “Sometimes I think the cleaning staff doesn’t even show up when I’m at work.” She stood in the middle of the living room, her hands on her hips and grinning, and when Finn laughed and wrapped himself around her, saying, “Mom, we don’t have a cleaning staff,” I ached to join them. There was something so perfectly domestic here, so completely right. I got the same feeling I sometimes had watching Sam and Miranda, a longing pull inside my chest. I wanted that. I wanted it for myself.

  “It’s fine,” I assured Mike as she came back toward the open kitchen, Finn heading in the other direction. “I lived alone with my brother long enough to have a very high mess threshold. And this place does not even register.”

  She laughed, and the way her eyes sparkled and that dark hair shimmered around her shoulders made me want to pull her into my arms, but I forced myself to stay seated at the kitchen island where she’d directed me when we’d arrived. We’d opened a bottle of wine, and we both drank now, taking long pulls from our glasses as an awkward silence fell around us.

  “I had planned to make Finn�
��s favorite tonight,” she said, pulling open the refrigerator and taking out some ground beef. “Which is not all that exciting, and I really should have gotten the sauce going hours ago.”

  “Sauce?” I stood with interest and came to peer inside the refrigerator with her.

  “Spaghetti,” she said.

  “I like spaghetti,” I said. “I can help.”

  She set me to work chopping an onion and some garlic, and soon the house smelled like oregano, basil and tomatoes.

  “It’s not a complex sauce,” Mike said, coming to stand at the island again and finishing off her glass. “It’s also not super authentic Italian, I’m sure. My mom made it this way, though, and it’s one of the only things I can make from scratch without a recipe.”

  “I’ve never heard of allspice in spaghetti sauce.” I might have been revealing too much here. “I have an addiction to cooking shows.”

  “Me too!” She laughed. “And don’t tell anyone about that. It’s the secret ingredient.” She poured more wine for both of us and gestured to the living room couch. Finn had settled on his stomach on the floor with his tablet, and aside from occasional bursts of laughter from him, he was absorbed and quiet. “Do you like Top Chef?”

  “Am I really going to have to confess this?” I wondered if I might need to hand in my man card after this conversation. “Top Chef, Iron Chef, Next Food Network Star—is that one even on anymore? I used to love that one. There is one I like that I seriously won’t admit aloud though.”

  “Men who cook are sexy,” Mike said thoughtfully, her head tilting to one side as she stared at me over the rim of her glass.

  God, those eyes.

  I lifted a shoulder, unable to form a response because the way she was staring at me had my heart accelerating and I didn’t trust myself.