The Bachelor's Sweetheart

by Jean C. Gordon

  Josh had read about sober support in his Al-Anon literature and the slogan, “I can’t stay sober, but we can.” Although he hadn’t seen anything to the contrary yet, Josh didn’t think his father could stay sober for good, singular or with a whole regiment of others behind him.

  “You told him no.”

  “No, I’m considering it.”

  Josh gripped the edge of the table. “You can’t. You don’t really know him. I told you, he ruins everything he gets close to. And I can think of only one way he can ruin you.”

  “You mean ruin your vision of me.”

  “No.” He lifted the table a half inch and dropped it. “Dad will start drinking and drag you down with him, like he did to us, only worse. He’ll steal your sobriety.”

  “You don’t trust me.” Tessa’s voice was barely above a whisper.

  “No, don’t you see? I don’t trust him, and neither can you.”

  “I have to until he proves otherwise.”

  “And he will. Tell me you won’t be his sober support.”

  “I can’t. I’m praying on it and have to go with His answer.”

  Josh turned to leave.

  “Will you be here to work Monday evening?” Tessa asked. “I’ll be viewing the new movie trailers.”

  He spun back around and surveyed the work Tessa and his father had accomplished today. “I don’t know that you and Dad need me to be.”

  “Come on, Josh, grow up.”

  He knew he was being childish and petty. But it tore him apart that Tessa couldn’t see the truth, his truth. His father and his father’s problem were overshadowing his life again, soiling the good he’d worked for and found once he’d finally gotten free of him.

  “I’ll let you know about Monday,” he said.

  Once outside, he leaned his forehead against his forearm on the top of the driver’s-side door of his truck. Maybe Tessa had hit the nail on the head. As much as he wanted to, he didn’t trust either one of them—or himself and his feelings, either.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tessa wrestled with Jerry’s request to be his sober support and Josh’s urging against it most of Saturday night and all day Sunday until she finally fell asleep Sunday night praying. She woke Monday morning no closer to an answer than when she’d gone to sleep, and headed over to the Majestic to meet Jerry. The minutes ticked by, eight-ten, eight-twenty, no Jerry. She started the wall spackling she could do herself, not wanting Josh to be right about depending on his father.

  Her cell phone rang, and she dropped the spackling knife. “Hello,” she said.

  “Tessa. It’s Jerry. I need your help.”

  Her heart leaped to her throat. Did his words sound slurred?

  “I’m at Ray’s. I called my sponsor and didn’t get through.”

  She swallowed.

  “Ray’s in bad shape. The emergency squad just took him to the medical center. He called me before he passed out and hit his head on the corner of the kitchen table. He didn’t want his daughter to find him like this. I called her, and she’s meeting the ambulance at the hospital.” Jerry stopped. “There’s an open bottle of vodka on the table.”

  “Hang on. I’ll be right there.” She sprinted out of the theater without stopping to lock up. Ray lived on the side street behind the Majestic. She’d get there faster on foot. Her phone chimed Josh’s ringtone. She answered automatically without breaking her stride. “Hi.”

  “Hey, I’m not going to be able to make it tonight,” he said.

  Her urgency to get to Jerry diluted her disappointment. “I can’t talk. Your dad. He’s at Ray’s. I have to get over there. I’ll call you back.”

  “I’ll be on my way to Boston. Tessa, don’t let him suck you in. Please. I care... I la...just don’t. Okay?”

  Tessa’s heart tore in half. “I’m there. You have to understand. I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up and flung open the side door, the door she guessed opened into the kitchen.

  Jerry sat at the table, staring at the bottle, his hands gripping the table edge so like Josh had Saturday at the theater, except Jerry’s knuckles were white and his breathing harsh. She stood for a moment and felt his longing. No, her own longing, although wine had always been her poison of choice.

  “Jerry. Pick it up and dump it down the sink.”

  “Tessa.” He looked over his shoulder. “You came.”

  “I said I would. Pick it up and dump it.”

  Jerry stood, turning his attention back to the bottle. He picked it up and held it in front of him.

  Tessa sucked in a breath. She’d come. It was his choice.

  Jerry closed the distance between the table and the sink with one long stride and, hand shaking, tipped the bottle upside down. Tessa released her breath in a whoosh. He rinsed it out.

  Tessa steadied her own hand before reaching toward him. “I’ll put it in the recycle bin by the door.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “You don’t know how much I appreciate you coming.”

  “Of course I do.” She sloughed off his words.

  “Yeah, you do.” He dropped back into the chair by the table.

  “What’s this?” She gestured toward him, palm up. “We’ve got work to do.”

  “Right.” He pushed himself to his feet and followed her out, turning the lock on the inside door handle before he closed it.

  “We’ve got a long day ahead of us,” she said as they rounded the house to Jerry’s truck in the driveway.

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  “Not that. I talked to Josh on my way over.”

  Jerry frowned.

  “I didn’t call him. He called me. He’s on his way to Boston and won’t be able to work on the theater tonight. I don’t know how long he’ll be gone. I didn’t get the details, said I’d call him back.”

  “I don’t want to come between you two,” Jerry said as he backed the truck onto the street.

  “You aren’t.” She slumped in the passenger seat. “But if he can’t reconcile with you, he can’t truly accept me, and I can’t be with him.”

  Jerry’s arms tensed. A minute later he parked the truck behind the theater. “I’ll get started on the work. You go ahead and call Josh. See if you can drill some sense into him. He’s kind of hardheaded. Something like his old man in that.”

  “Kind of? I’ve frequently wondered if his skull is made of titanium.”

  Jerry laughed. “Don’t give up on him. Even titanium isn’t impenetrable.”

  Tessa left him and went to the lobby to call Josh. She sat on the chair behind the snack counter and listened to his phone ring.

  “Hey,” Josh finally answered. “I had to pull over to talk. I don’t have my Bluetooth.”

  “Hi, your dad’s okay. He went to help Ray and called me for backup.” She gave Josh a brief recap and the line went quiet for so long she thought one of them had lost reception.

  “I see,” he said.

  From Josh’s tone, Tessa knew he didn’t see at all. But now, on the phone, wasn’t the time to rehash that. “What’s up in Boston? More training?”

  “No, the project manager I shadowed for training who was supposed to be on vacation came down with spinal meningitis. He’s going to be out for weeks, so I volunteered to fill in for him. I can finish off my CAD projects there as well as in Ticonderoga or have the drafters at the Boston office finish them.”

  “So you’ll be there awhile.”

  “Yes, but you’re good for the theater opening, what with Dad there finishing up everything. I wouldn’t have volunteered if I thought it would put you in a bind.”

  She heard the silent “you don’t need me,” behind his words, and it stung like a wasp bite. “This isn’t some choice I’m making between you and your father.” />
  “Feels that way to me. You’ve decided to be his support, haven’t you?”

  A weight lifted off Tessa as she realized she had. “I haven’t told him yet, but I am.”

  “I’m not going to watch you destroy your life saving him like Mom did all those years. There’s a permanent project manager position for me in Boston if I want it. You know that was my long-time goal before my father showed up or Anne created the new position here. Maybe I should stick with that plan.”

  Tessa shook her head in disbelief. “Is that some kind of threat? You’ll run away to Boston if I associate with your father?”

  “No.” Josh’s voice sounded old and weary. “You could come to Boston. GreenSpaces is going to have an opening for a civil engineer soon, or you could get involved with a theater here. We could make a fresh start. I know that I’m asking a lot. But I think I’m falling in love with you. Could you consider coming with me?”

  Tessa’s heart choked her. She knew she was in love with Josh, which made answering him all the harder.

  “Never mind. If it takes you this long to respond, I know your answer. I’ve got to get back on the road.”

  “Wait,” she said, but he’d already hung up.

  Could she give up the theater for him? For all she loved the theater, she could for Josh’s true acceptance and love. But unless he could give up protecting her from his alcoholic father, protecting her from herself, she’d never have that. And if she couldn’t have Josh, she needed the Majestic.

  * * *

  The tracking page of the trucking service supposedly delivering the new stage lights read Departed Syracuse. In transit, the same as it had last night, first thing this morning and an hour ago when Tessa had called the destination office in Ticonderoga. She’d arranged for her and Jerry to pick them up there so they’d have them a day earlier than waiting for delivery to the theater. The truck from Syracuse had arrived in Ticonderoga, but not the lights. The Syracuse warehouse was checking to see if the lights were on another truck, although the woman Tessa had talked with had said no other trucks were scheduled for Ticonderoga today.

  Tessa cradled her head in her hands. She should have gone with the in-stock lights instead of back-ordering the ones Josh had recommended. It was Wednesday. The lights had to be in tomorrow. The building inspector was coming by Friday morning to sign off on the last of the work. She couldn’t cut it any closer for the Memorial Day opening.

  Her cell phone rang and she jerked, almost knocking her iPad off the theater café table. Josh. “Hello.”

  “Hey, how’s it going?”

  How’s it going? Just like that, just like he hadn’t taken off for Boston a week and a half ago and called her only once, the next day, to say he’d contacted the attorney who’d drawn up their contract to use the termination clause to dissolve it. Josh had assured her she wouldn’t owe him any royalties on the Majestic’s future profits, and the attorney would have a check for her for the back rent on the apartment, as they’d agreed to in the contract if he couldn’t complete the work for any reason. His assurances did nothing to alleviate her feeling that he was dissolving much more.

  “Good,” she said, putting up her guard. In contrast to today, he’d been cool and businesslike on his earlier call. She’d accepted that as of a week ago, they’d ceased to be partners in any way. Still, she’d had to stop herself more than once from calling him over the days following—about the work, something she’d seen that she knew he’d be interested in...just to hear his voice.

  “Anne said Neal did the kitchen wiring for you.”

  The wiring you didn’t do. “Yeah, last Friday for a summer subscription to the theater for him and Anne, and your brothers and father put up the wall board Monday. I finished the painting this morning.

  “Everything’s done?”

  She was probably imagining it, but his voice sounded wistful. Or was he skeptical that she and his father had completed the work without him? “Except the stage lights. They go in tomorrow. Remember, I had to back-order them?”

  “Once you have them installed, you’re going to see they were worth the wait.”

  If they ever arrived.

  Josh launched into all the reasons he’d recommended the missing lights. “I’ll be there this weekend to see it all finished. I wouldn’t miss your opening.”

  Before Tessa could process his excitement, her phone signaled another call, from the trucking company. “I’ve got to take this,” she said. “I’ll see you this weekend.”

  She took the other call. “Tessa Hamilton.”

  “Ms. Hamilton, we’ve located your shipment. It went to our Saratoga facility.”

  “Thank you. We’ll be down in an hour or so to pick them up.”

  She phoned Jerry and, while she waited for him and his truck, she replayed her conversation with Josh and what bothered her so much about it. Josh had been his usual jovial self. That was it. Josh had talked to her in the verging-on-superficial flirty way he talked to everyone else. She slumped in the chair. They really were finished.

  * * *

  Josh thought he’d pulled off his conversation with Tessa the other day. He’d been upbeat, friendly, kept it light—all while he was dying inside, thinking about his dad helping Tessa with the work he should have been doing. From what Connor had told him, his dad had been there for Tessa when he wasn’t. The two weeks he’d spent in Boston earlier in the month training had been fun. He’d known he was going back to Tessa. The past week and a half had been torture, thinking he wouldn’t be. Was he ever glad he’d cooled down and not put in for the project manager position in Boston.

  If he could only figure out what he needed to do to prove to Tessa he did love her. He could take the bad with the good. His evenings alone in his hotel room had given him lots of time to think about him and Tessa and about the rest of his family. They’d had good times with their father when they were young and older, too, Josh had to admit. And Mom’s choices had been hers. She’d never asked him and Jared to run interference for her. That had been their own doing. She’d accepted her husband, failings and all, and her choices. Mom was happy. Josh rubbed his chin. He didn’t need to protect Mom now, hadn’t for years, maybe never. It had been his need, not hers, and he’d transferred it to Tessa as soon as his father had returned. He’d held on to his anger at his father. He loved Mom so he’d tried to shield her. He loved Tessa so...he bowed his head, right there at the desk he was using.

  Dear Lord, I know it’s taken me a while. Thank You for finally prying open my eyes and my heart.

  “Donnelly, I thought you were out of here,” the engineer he’d been working with said. They’d finished the critical jobs, so Josh was free to leave at noon, rather than after work on Friday.

  Josh lifted his head. “Cleaning up.” He made a show of closing his laptop and putting an extraneous pen in the desk drawer. “It’s been great working with you and your team.”

  “Same here,” the engineer said. “Anytime you want to come back, give me a shout.”

  “I appreciate it.” Josh stood, tucked his laptop under his left arm and shook hands with the engineer.

  Four hours later, he hopped out of his truck at the Majestic, whistling the Resurrection Light song that had been on the radio. On his way to the apartment, he’d seen his father’s truck and figured he and Tessa must still be at the theater, probably celebrating the building inspector’s sign-off on the work. He wiped his hands down the sides of his pants and flung open the door, anticipating the look of happy surprise he hoped to see on Tessa’s face. What he saw stopped him dead. They were celebrating all right.

  Tessa and his father sat across from each other at one of the café tables, his father’s back to the door. An open bottle of wine and a glass stood in the center of the table. They each had a hand around the bottle.

  Rage consumed
Josh. He stormed over and yanked his father’s chair around toward him. “How could you? Haven’t you ruined enough in my life?” he shouted in his father’s face before looking across the table at Tessa. She held fast to the wine bottle, an odd sheen in her eyes. “Didn’t I tell you he’d do this?”

  Tessa dropped her head, but not her grip, refusing to meet his gaze.

  Josh swallowed to stop himself from being sick to his stomach. He’d seen that look before on his father’s face.

  “Son.” His father placed his hand on Josh’s forearm.

  “Don’t Son me. You’re no father to me, to any of us.” Josh grabbed his father’s shirtfront and pulled him out of the chair. “Go, get out of here. I don’t want you near Tessa or me ever again.”

  “Stop!” Tessa screamed. “Just stop. It wasn’t your father. It was me.”

  Josh released his father. “What?”

  She released the bottle. “I bought the wine after Jerry left. He came back for his watch and found me...”

  Josh stared at her in disbelief.

  His father’s nod confirmed what she’d said.

  He closed his eyes, needing to black out the picture of Tessa he was seeing. “You were helping Tessa. Sober support.” Josh’s voice trailed off. His father... Tessa. A long-blocked-off spot inside him opened. “I’m sorry, Dad. I saw you. I lost my temper.”

  “I understand,” his father said with tears in his eyes.

  Josh did, too, seeing his father in the present, not the past. He offered his hand and when his father took it, Josh pulled him into a bear hug. “Thanks.”

  His father hugged him back. “I owed you.”

  Josh had a feeling he owed Dad more. “But why?” he asked, looking from his father to Tessa and motioning to the wine bottle. “Didn’t the inspector sign off?” He glanced around the room, unable to think of anything else that could have pushed Tessa over the edge.

  “No, he did sign off. That was the problem,” she said.

  Josh’s insides churned with confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  His father reached by him and picked up the wine bottle. “I’ll put this over here.” He placed it on another table. “You can take care of it after you talk. Tessa, we’re on for the Saranac meeting tonight?”