Conditional Offer (Stewart Realty Book 5)

by Liz Crowe

  She brought her attention back to the crisis du jour at Big House Brewing. It was Summer Beer Fest week, and her entire staff had just fallen victim to food poisoning they’d gotten at an informal staff picnic they’d thrown for themselves. Now, she and her business partner got to do the honors for a giant beer fest.

  Going back to the basics of pouring beer for thousands of drinkers at the largest two-day beer event in the Midwest sounded daunting, but something in her craved that kind of direct contact with her beer-drinking public.

  “You and I have to set up and man the whole thing. I got it. I can get Craig.” Evan raised an eyebrow at her but she ignored him. “You bring Julie. Hell, see if Jack wants to help. God knows he knows as much about our beers as we do and he can run his fool mouth like a champ. We can do this.”

  She rose, feigning nonchalance but her ears were fuzzy and her chest was so tight she could hardly breathe. Craig was back, today, at his old condo. He had something to ask her. Evan leaned back in his chair and studied her. “Craig, eh?”

  “Yeah, what about him?” She threw her laptop in her bag and shuffled papers around nervously. Her hands shook, so she stopped and forced herself calm. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to snap at you.”

  “It’s okay. You deserve some happiness Suzanne. Go for it. But do us all a favor and don’t talk yourself out of it this time?”

  Her face got hot, but she had no response. Her brief and very intense relationship with Blake, Sara’s brother, had ended badly for them both—but at her insistence. She’d spent plenty of hours second-guessing that choice, but based upon how happy Blake seemed now with her old college friend, Rob, and their brew pub, she felt like he’d ended up better off.

  She hadn’t sustained any sort of relationships since. But being alone didn’t intimidate her. And after surviving a marriage that had turned abusive and very nearly killed her, then diving into an intensely passionate affair with Blake, she convinced herself the time alone was required.

  Since that last messy encounter with Craig in Nashville, she’d gone on a date with a man who had seemed promising. Marcus, a banker who'd relocated from the west coast and hence had zero knowledge relative to her own convoluted past. He was a stable, good looking, successful older man and made a point to hang out at the Tap Room on nights she was there. But the raw, physical connection she’d shared with Craig after they’d gotten to know each other as friends, through the Jack and Sara drama, had morphed into something much deeper for her. And she had been running from it ever since.

  But now, she needed to get a grip, as Evan reminded her. Not toss this amazing man away. If she could manage it.

  She drove downtown, hoping to catch him at his place now and break the news about the weekend that had devolved into a long one of beer pouring. She’d spent way too much time in denial about him and she knew it. Her continuous excuses about their age difference, her own emotional baggage, were all starting to sound pretty lifeless even to her.

  The fact that they’d spent the last six months ignoring each other, more or less, after that surprise visit she’d paid him, had been brutal for her. When she had gotten the email telling her he’d been matched at U of M for his ER residency, she’d burst into tears.

  Her heart pounded all the way up the elevator to his place. The door was open slightly so she tiptoed in. The place was a mess of boxes, furniture, his various guitars and computers.

  No Craig.

  Then she saw the one open box labeled “swim stuff” and smiled. She got back on the lift and went up to the top floor. The chlorine smell hit her hard and made her gasp with memory. Craig. Her brain and body both clamored for him.

  She eased into the steamy room, her eyes unable to make out much but her ears in tune to the soft splashes as he moved through the water. She took off her shoes and sat on one of the lounge chairs and watched the subtle play of his long, lean body cutting through the water, then flipping at the side and pushing off, coming up his arms slicing through the blue.

  You love him Suzanne. He’s an amazing man. Don’t ruin this with your bullshit. You deserve this. So does he.

  But a small, niggling, familiar voice of worry crept into her brain.

  He’ll want a family. You don’t even know if you’re capable of that.

  She shook her head ordering the voice quiet and just kept watching him—the man who’d befriended her, made her laugh, made her sing with pleasure, and was back in her life once again.

  After nearly thirty minutes of nonstop crawl, then breaststroke, he stopped, hanging on to the edge of the pool with one hand. He wiped his face, took off his goggles and the look of joy on his face when he saw her nearly made her weep again. But, she stood, holding out a Big House Brewing tee shirt.

  “Suit up hot stuff, we have work to do.”

  It was brutally hot at the festival, as usual. Something like a hundred and six degrees in the shade, but that didn’t stop the masses of beer fans. After a few mishaps getting the draft systems set up, Suzanne, Craig, Evan, and Julie were pouring, talking, and passing out temporary tattoos with the distinctive Big House logo to the thousands that descended on the event.

  Jack would be along later, he claimed, after he dropped Katie off at Sara’s. It was the little girl’s birthday tomorrow and Craig would be going to the party. Suzanne was determined not to let that bug her. The potential connection to Sara Thornton was one thing that hovered around Craig, like a sort of low-level haze, and she needed him to shake it off.

  Now that he was back, he’d get pulled back into that life, with the little girl who could potentially be his biological daughter. It did bug her. Kind of a lot. But she was determined to talk to him about it.

  She stopped at one point, heard a low rumble of thunder and wiped the sweat from her face. Craig had taken over the temp tattoo station and was flirting his adorable ass off with every young woman who presented her chest, or hip or face to him so he could press one of the damn things to her skin with a wet sponge.

  He looked over at her and winked. She rolled her eyes and resumed the pour-talk-pour-talk that was the main work of any beer fest. Lightning flickered through the tent, making the crowd gasp. The loud clap of thunder that followed made her jump, and as festival goers crowded into the three tents it got darker and darker.

  The rain, when it finally came, was a positive deluge as if the very heavens were pouring buckets straight onto them. She looked down at one point and discovered she was standing in nearly four inches of water.

  “Here.” Craig handed her a sample cup of beer. “Might as well drink.” He downed his and refilled it.

  The rain pounded on the tent, and continued to swirl around their ankles. The crowd got ever more raucous. The beer, heat and emotion she’d been suppressing for so long made her dizzy. The thunder and lightning headed east but the rain remained a steady downpour. She stared at it, took another drink, and set the cup down. She grabbed Craig’s hand. “C’mon.” She tugged him away from the festival bar. “Let’s cool off.”

  He tossed the temporary tattoos down and ran out with her. She splashed through puddles and mud, waved at all the various brewers and brewery owners calling out to her as she and Craig ran like crazy people towards the river that bordered the edge of the park. Her heart pounded in her ears but she was happy, honest-to-god happy, for what felt like the first time in years.

  She pulled her hand out of his and stood, lifting her face to the cool rain. Then looked down to find him staring at her, breathing heavy, the grey brewery shirt molded to his amazing torso. “You look like a centerfold,” she yelled out to him over the various noises.

  “You should get a load of yourself.” He nodded to her, laughing. She looked down. Her own thin tee and bra were soaked, and there was no disguising the hard peaks of her nipples underneath. She looked over and saw ten or twelve of her colleagues huddled under a tent and giving her thumbs ups. She flushed red, and then looked at Craig, his long blond hair dripping and his dark brown eyes glis
tening.

  “I missed you,” she whispered, and before she could say another word, he had her scooped up and tossed over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry to the hooting and loud applause of the nearby tent.

  He jogged along the Huron River shore, taking them some distance from the crowds. Then he put her down and laid a kiss on her that made tears spring to her eyes. She leaned back against an ancient oak tree, pulling him with her. The rain kept up and got even harder, but she didn’t care. His lips, his hands and body pressed to hers- that was what she felt, what she needed to be whole. He broke the kiss. She hooked her fingers in his belt loops and kept him close. “Kiss me like that some more.”

  “I will, don’t worry. But first, my question.” He propped his hands on either side of her and stared deep into her soul. “Will you marry me?”

  She gulped. Her entire body tingled with something she chose to identify as fear. “I can’t…I mean, let’s just …. Damn.” She looked away. He stood back up, glaring at her. The rain slowed to a drizzle. She grabbed his arms. “We have too much to sort out—we can’t jump into marriage. Not yet.”

  “No one is jumping into anything. I want this and so do you. Why wait? What’s the point of that?”

  “You still have feelings for Sara,” she blurted out, and then slapped her hand over her mouth.

  He ran a hand through his dripping hair and took a step back from her. She grabbed him again, kissed him with an urgency born of desperation. “It’s okay,” she said, muttering into his rough jaw. “You just need to get past it. Then…then we’ll talk more. Until you do, it won’t work. You’ll always be wondering ‘what if’ about her. She and Jack can’t seem to get their damn act together. She’s alone with Katie. And you—you could well be that girl’s father.”

  He tried to escape her grip but she held on and felt the anguish rise in her throat nearly choking her. She kept whispering in his ear. “Decide how you really feel about Sara now that you’re back and then come to me. I’ll be here.” She kissed him and ran, as fast as she could, splashing back through the puddles and mud, skidding to a stop behind her own bar again.

  She didn’t see him again for nearly a month. By then she’d decided to tell him everything, how she got the scars, about Blake, all of it. Then he could run away if he wanted. But at least he would know everything.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Their lives led them on different paths. Craig’s killer schedule as an intern at the busy University of Michigan Emergency Room led to stress that settled right between her eyes and would not let go. She’d done this. This forced retreat was of her own design and she knew it, but she also knew it was true. He had to get past whatever residual shit he had with Sara.

  In the month after the beer fest they talked a few times on the phone, exchanged some texts, and saw each other once. The exhaustion and anxiety in his eyes while he sat and drank a few beers at her bar made her heart ache.

  She was doing it again. Throwing away a perfectly good man thanks to her own … what? Inferiority complex? Inability to commit? She slumped down in the chair after he’d given her a noncommittal brush of lips and left, claiming he had early rounds in the morning.

  The day after that encounter her phone buzzed as she worked her way through some inventory problems. She frowned at it—why in the world would Sara be calling?

  “Hi Suzanne.” The woman’s voice was firm and clear. “I wanted to invite you and Craig up to the lake house this weekend.”

  “Oh, um, well…” She hesitated.

  “I know he has three days off and thought we would….you know, get together, all of us. Away from Ann Arbor.”

  “I don’t know….”

  “Listen, you probably realize better than anyone how I feel about Jack. You have to believe me when I say that is real. Anything with Craig was—is—gone. He’s a friend. But I want him to be happy.”

  She closed her eyes, let her brain visit the fact that it just might work. “I’ll talk to him. Thanks for the invite and for telling me that. It means a lot.”

  “I can’t think of two people who deserve happiness more. Take it from me—delaying that will only lead to disaster.”

  She hung up and sent him a text. “So about this lake weekend? You were going to mention that to me at some point?”

  He responded quickly. “Yes. But I need to go there by myself, I think.”

  Her heart sank as she typed. “Oh.”

  His reply was fast again. “It’s time for me to let her go, like you said. And I will, but want to talk to her first.”

  “Ok.” She decided to leave out the fact that Sara already considered it. Realizing the decision did have to come from him.

  Craig stood, his heart pounding, staring at Sara. They’d walked along the Lake Michigan shoreline together and he’d been about half-convinced that Suzanne had been right. He did harbor lingering feelings for Sara. They’d been through a lot, after all. And he might be Katie’s father.

  He’d been about two seconds from kissing her, but she’d stopped him, and he was truly grateful. “Go to her,” Sara told him. He nodded, turned, and sprinted up the beach, taking the steps up to the house two at a time not even hesitating at the thought of another three-hour trip back to Ann Arbor.

  The house was in chaos when he hit the door. The seven-year-old mini-Sara was screaming her head off. Blake was trying to stop blood that seemed to be coming from her foot.

  Craig picked her up, used his best doctor voice to calm her as he took the wet rag Blake held out to press to her foot. “I need to look at it honey, okay, so hang onto Uncle Blake’s hand for a second.” She hiccupped, nodded and did as he said while he pulled the sharp stick out of her instep. She flinched but didn’t cry, instead heaving a huge sigh when he smeared antibiotic cream on the wound and bound it with gauze and tape.

  She crawled up into his lap. He loved holding her small, warm body in his arms, and the natural caretaker in him tightened his grip on her as she resumed her hitching sobs. This could be his daughter. He shut his eyes at the force of it.

  “Uncle Craig,” the girl whispered. “I missed you. I’m glad you’re back.”

  He looked up and saw Blake. But instead of giving him his usual positive energy sort of look, he was frowning. He knelt down beside them. “Katie, honey.” He stroked her hair. She vacated Craig’s lap and launched herself at Blake. “What happened? Who was on the phone before you ran outside and hurt your foot?”

  “Uncle Jack…” She sucked in a hitching breath and buried her face in Blake’s neck. He stood, hanging onto her. “He’s not coming. I wanted to see him and he’s not coming out here like he promised.”

  Rob grabbed a phone and started dialing. Craig looked up, puzzled. “Hey,” Rob spoke into the phone. Blake and Craig both listened as they got one side of a difficult sounding conversation. When he hung up, his face was pale. “It’s Maureen, Jack’s sister,” he said to Craig. “Well, actually it’s her husband, Brandis. He’s, uh, he’s dead.”

  “Shit,” Blake muttered and walked out to the deck after handing Katie off to Rob. Craig stood. This whole thing had gotten very surreal but his need to get back to Suzanne was suffocating him. He walked out and stood by Blake. “Why are you even here?” The young man asked, keeping his eyes trained down to the deck.

  Craig frowned. Blake had always been in his corner when it came to Sara. The guy turned to him, his deep green eyes resigned but not completely unhappy. “I mean, why are you not with Suzanne?”

  Craig heaved a sigh. The ghostly memory of Katie in his arms, the almost-moment he’d shared with Sara all roiled around his head. But something else was stronger now—the vision of a petite, vulnerable red head who he wanted to see more than he wanted to drink water.

  Blake put a hand on his arm. “Go. I’ve got this.” He nodded back to the small lake house where they could still hear Katie snuffling her way through little-girl disappointment. Craig felt a shit-eating grin spread over his face. “Jesus, go alr
eady. What are you waiting for an engraved invite?” Blake waved him away.

  The wind whipped his face as he sped back the way he had just come, going east now, towards Ann Arbor. His heart was light, his body on fire, and he had one thing in mind.

  Going to Suzanne, being with her, and nothing else. The thoughts of Sara, the moment with Katie, then Blake’s sudden understanding of how it really should be between them all, it all pointed to one thing—he and Sara were well, and truly, over. And now he had to prove it to Suzanne.

  He screeched up outside her house, put his helmet on the seat and then saw her glowing like a beacon in a yellow sundress. “About time,” she said as he bounded up the steps, collecting her in his arms and diving right into her, unwilling to ever come up for air again.

  He sat, gasping for breath, his brain refusing to process what she was saying. Their bodies had connected, and Craig had never been happier even though it was immediate, quick and right on her front porch. Until words like “rape,” and “glass” and “steps” and “dead” rolled through him, as she recounted the whole story of what had happened between her and Mitchell Baxter.

  Blake had come along at precisely the wrong and the right time for her, and after Mitchell had delivered his final, brutal beating to the small, shivering woman he held in his arms, the young man had landed that asshole in the hospital.

  Craig clenched his fists, rose and paced, stared out into the dark. Her voice broke but she kept talking. His jaw ached. He forced himself to stop gritting his teeth. She pulled her legs up close, held onto herself as the story unfolded.