“You’re freaking me out, Luce.”
“Good! Don’t you remember what happened to Ruby and her mom? It’s not just big cities that have creeps and weirdos, and if there’s one lurking around here, I don’t want you becoming a victim.”
“You watch too much Investigation Discovery Channel,” I muttered, then picked up my abandoned glass and swallowed the last of the wine. “I’ve had enough fun for tonight. Is the pullout ready in the guest room?”
“Yeah.” Lucy waved her hand toward the hall. “I put the sheets on it before you got here.”
I walked around the back of the couch and planted a kiss on the top of her head. “Love ya, Luce.”
She grunted but didn’t look up at me. “Same, bitch. Make sure you don’t get dead, okay?”
I laughed because it was ridiculous that she thought I was in any danger. “Promise, hun. I’ll be careful.”
Chapter 19
Olivia
“… The new tile for the kitchen will arrive next week so I want you to do some live social posts about that. People are loving the behind-the-scenes pictures, so keep them coming.” Jo paused, and I watched her dig through some papers on her cluttered desk. We’d been on an update call for the last half hour, and all the details were blurring together for me.
“Ah! Here we go!” Jo held up a pink sticky note. “The AMA with Reddit has been rescheduled for October at your request, and the people at This Old House are interested in a feature with you for next spring.”
“Woah,” I said, and looked up at Cal and Fab. “This Old House? That’s like the big time, isn’t it?”
Both men laughed. “Yeah, we’ve been trying to work something out for a long time,” Fab said. “But they wanted us to get some more experience under our belts. I think your house is opening doors for us, Liv.”
Even as I felt pride for my house and the two men across from me, a tiny part of me worried this would mean they’d leave sooner. We’d barely had any time together—not just working—I wanted to keep Cal around Eagle Creek just a little longer.
“Anything else?” Cal asked Jo.
“One last thing. I did that task you asked me to do.”
“Why so secretive, doll?” Fabian asked.
Jo laughed. “I’m not ruining the surprise.”
I tilted my head and looked at Cal. His eyes were practically sparkling with devilment. “What’s going on?”
“I’m keeping out of this,” Jo announced. “Have fun!”
The screen went blank, and I turned back to Fab and Cal. “Well?”
“Look at the time,” Fab said and looked at his bare wrist and popped up from the conference table. “I’m late for an important appointment.”
Cal grinned. “You’re getting a massage at the spa in Garrett.”
“Right,” Fab said, as he packed up his computer and papers. “An important appointment.”
“Wait, you booked a massage appointment without me?” I asked. “You promised me we could hang out together at the spa next time you went.”
Fab’s smile was soft as he came around the table and kissed me on the top of my head. “Another time, babe.”
“But—”
“Adios kids!” He yelled as he jogged out the door.
I spun back around to Cal. “What the hell?”
He was standing with his bag in hand. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“We—We have meetings with contractors today,” I sputtered. “Plus, you’re supposed to shoot B-roll of the area with Fab.”
Cal’s grin was wicked as he walked around the table, picking up loose papers and pens, stacking them neatly into piles. I loved he understood I needed the table put back to rights before I could move on to anything else. He closed the lid to my laptop and held it out to me. “Don’t you ever play hookie, sweetheart?”
I grabbed the computer from his hand and held it to my chest. “Not when people are counting on me.”
His smile remained on his face as he leaned down so we were eye to eye. We’d made love twice the night before, but I felt my blood heat and awareness prickle my skin. Would I ever get enough of Callum Waite?
“Play hookie with me, Olivia,” he said softly.
“But the—”
Callum cut off my protest with a kiss that made my scalp tingle. “Come with me,” he whispered again as he peppered kisses along my neck.
A small part of my brain still argued that I didn’t have time for a day off, but Cal’s mouth and his whispered pleas were too tempting. “Okay,” I agreed. I threaded my fingers through his soft hair and tugged his mouth back to mine. “Just for today.”
* * *
Callum
“When I agreed to playing hookie, I kind of thought we’d be enjoying the day in bed.”
I lifted our interlocked fingers to my mouth and kissed Olivia’s knuckles. “I know, and we can do that later. Right now, I want to have fun.”
She rolled her eyes but couldn’t hide the grin that spread across her face. “And fun is the lumberjack show?”
I stopped just outside the door to Paul’s Lumberjack Experience and dropped Olivia’s hand. “Olivia Van Ess, are you mocking one of our most sacred institutions?”
Even as she rolled her eyes at me, I realized how gorgeous she looked in a pair of faded jeans and a butter yellow tee. The flush on her cheeks and the smiles she’d been giving me ever since we’d arrived in the neighboring town of Pine Isle had made all the juggling of our schedules worth it.
“It’s for kids, and tourists,” she said. “I haven’t been here since I was seven.”
“Then you’re overdue for the best pancakes in the state,” I argued, and grabbed her hand again as I moved to the large wooden door.
Inside, the owners had styled the large restaurant slash arena to look like an old timber lodge with a stage and pool in the center of the room where performers would go through a series of challenges while they served all the pancakes and bacon we could eat. It warmed my heart to see that one of my favorite childhood places had changed little in my absence. It was a nice reminder that not everything in the north woods had caused me pain.
“I can’t believe they still use tin plates and cups,” Olivia grumbled as we sat in the seats the host lead us to.
“Just like the lumberjacks, ma’am,” he quipped. “We pride ourselves on an authentic experience.”
“When’s the show start?” I asked the kid before he could leave.
“Fifteen minutes, and you’re in luck because today’s a showdown between our two best lumberjacks. Val the Impaler and Quinn the Red.” He looked at Olivia. “Val’s our first lady lumberjack.”
“Oh,” she replied in a dry tone. Her sarcasm went over the kid’s head, and he scampered off to the front to greet more people.
“Be nice,” I warned.
“I could be reading through endowment submissions, but instead I’m going to eat dry pancakes and watch the same lumberjack show they’ve been putting on for the last forty years.”
I covered her knee with my hand to stop the nervous jiggling she was doing. “This is about fun, Olivia. You remember what fun is, right?”
“I do. But—”
“No but’s,” I said and squeezed her thigh. “Just have fun and be silly with me for today. I promise to tell no one you’d let the bad ass businesswoman persona slip for a few hours.”
A young woman came by dressed in a red checkered shirt and suspenders like all the other employees and filled our drink orders and promised the pancakes and bacon—served family style—would start coming out as soon as the show had started.
“Peter didn’t like doing silly things,” Olivia said quietly as soon as we were alone again. “He and his parents were always too concerned with how they appeared to others in public. Kinda like dear old dad, but a hundred times worse.”
I held my breath, too afraid to make a sound. Olivia didn’t talk about her past, ever, and I was desperate to know more about what it had been like behind the perfect pictures on social media.
“At first I didn’t mind going to quiet business dinners and boring charity events. It made me feel grown up and sophisticated, and Mary Beth spent a lot of time making sure I had the right clothes, makeup, and hair.” She chuckled, and it sounded hollow. My heart ached at that sound. “I didn’t notice till it was too late that women from their social circles had replaced all my friends, except Lucy.”
“I’m glad to hear Lucy stuck it out,” I said.
“Yeah, she was like a cockroach. She refused to be exterminated by the MacPhersons.” Olivia sighed and took a sip of water, then continued. “After the divorce I went a little wild. Hit the bars with Lucy, partied in college towns, and did everything opposite of what I’d been doing in my married life.”
“Sounds like a good time,” I said.
“It was. Until I realized I was a divorce with no job living off her alimony payments and partying like she was in college. Rose was disappointed in me. Pris and Pru worried I’d get hurt. Liam even called to check in. In an attempt to get my shit together, I told Rose about my idea for the house, and she loved it. But she told me I needed to have something solid to fall back on. So I got the real estate license and started working and planning for the future.”
“And you decided that fun was something you’d do later?”
She grinned sheepishly. “It seems silly now, but yeah. I figured I’d get around to it after I settled everything with Primrose, Pine, and Promises.”
The music started, and they lowered the lights, making my response impossible. For the next hour we watched as a tall, muscular blonde woman beat her massive ginger opponent at every challenge before them. It erased any concern that remained about taking Liv to the show the first time I heard her laugh when the giant ginger lumberjack fell into the pool.
After the show we walked through downtown and do a little window shopping. Olivia was on the lookout for odds and ends to fill the bridal suites, even though we were weeks from them being completed. She insisted that there was no harm in looking, and since I was the one that insisted she relax, I had to put up with whatever she wanted to do.
It wasn’t a hardship to follow Olivia through the stores, alternately holding her hand or whatever items she’d purchased. Even In Pine Isle, Olivia was popular, and former clients or friends of her family stopped us to talk. In each interaction she introduced me as her friend and coworker, and it cut me every time.
I wanted to be so much more to this woman, but I was bound by the agreement we’d made. And if I told her how I was feeling, I knew she’d end things between us.
What could I do?
Chapter 20
Olivia
I hated feeling out of sorts.
I had an agitated and itchy feeling started after my girl’s night two weeks ago with Lucy. I could admit in the light of day that she’d spooked me with her conspiracy theories and demands for me to admit to more feelings than I was ready to name. Of course, it didn’t help that Callum and Fab had left to fix some emergency on an old job, and they didn’t have an expected return date yet.
They’d been reluctant to leave me in the red cottage alone, but I’d convinced them everything would be fine. And everything was fine, mostly. The renovation of Van Ess House was progressing. And trees for the nursery were arriving every day. Progress was visible all over the grounds.
If only the progress on Rose’s endowment would move just as fast. Pris had looked over our first round of submissions and agreed they all stunk. We’d scheduled another meeting for next week to go over another set. We rescheduled the town hall to vote on the municipal projects until after Callum returned, which gave me more time to prepare for all possibilities.
With the last of my real estate clients finally assigned to other agents, I’d thrown myself fully into the next phase of Promises. Gavin and I worked day and night, overseeing the reno and reviewing resumes. We had to find kitchen staff, assistant planners, an office manager, and nursery staff. The sheer volume of applicants was astounding. Neither Gavin nor I had ever imagined there would be that much interest in the business.
“Where do we start?” I said in despair as I picked up another application and glanced at the bulleted qualifications. “Half of these aren’t qualified, and the other half are, but I’m worried I can’t afford them.”
Gavin rubbed a hand over the stubble on his jaw as he read the resume in his hand. “We have time, Liv,” he said in that calm Georgia drawl of his. “There’s no rush to hire everyone.”
“I always hated the waiting game when I was applying for jobs. I want to get people’s answers as soon as possible.”
“Okay, well, it’s easy to weed out the rejections,” he replied and tossed a paper in the trash. “That one was looking to be the head chef but only ever had experience working as a server. So, obviously not chef material.”
“But she could be!” I said, and pulled the paper from the trash. “Experience doesn’t always equal talent.”
Gavin sighed. “I know you want to be a good boss, Liv. And no one is questioning your integrity here, but being an employer means you’re going to have to make tough decisions. Some of the toughest will be about hiring or firing employees. Instead of reading these with that big ole heart on your sleeve, you’re going to need to practice being tough but fair.”
Gavin had always cut through my bullshit, even when we met on the first day of freshman sociology. Neither of us was interested in the required class, but we’d formed a bond in that enormous lecture hall that had sustained us through our college careers and well into adulthood. Though we hadn’t lived in the same city for years, Gavin had seen me through some of the roughest times of life.
When I spoke to him about my plan for the house, and he asked about a move to start over after the sudden loss of his wife, Heather, I was happy to support him as he had supported me. Our friendship was a solid foundation for our working relationship, and I was sure we would be successful. If only we could just get through the hiring phase.
“Look, I’ll take all the resumes for the nursery home over the weekend and weed out the obvious rejections and bring them back Monday for you to go over,” Gavin said as he stood up. “It’s after five on a Friday in June. Go out and have some fun this weekend.”
I could say the same to him, but I knew the loss of Heather was still too new for Gavin. “I have too much work.”
“Isn’t your boyfriend back yet? He looks capable of showing a girl a good time,” Gavin said with an evil smirk.
“You’ve been giving me crap about him all week. How many times do I have to tell you he’s not my boyfriend?”
“This may be a sore subject, but why exactly is the hunky Callum only your summer fling?”
I huffed out an agitated breath and began picking up the stacks of resumes. “He’s not my type.”
“At the risk of sounding like the typical friend in a rom-com, I have to say: honey, that man is everyone’s type,” Gavin said in an over-the-top voice complete with dramatic hand gestures. “I mean those eyes against all floppy curly hair? And the swimmer’s body? What could you possibly have against him being more than a fling?”
“Well, for one, he doesn’t live here. He lives in Brooklyn and travels most of the year for his job. Then there’s me not wanting the typical happily ever after anymore. I tried the white picket fence, remember?” I shoved my laptop and the papers in my bag, frustrated we were dancing around old pain.
“I remember. I also remember warning you that Peter was not the man for you,” Gavin said, sounding all too reasonable.
“I know.” My jaw muscles tightened, and tears pricked the back of my eyes as I pulled the straps of the bag over my shoulder. “
But it doesn’t change the damage he did.”
“No,” Gavin agreed. “Sometimes, there’s just no way to heal a hurt like that except to move on.”
I narrowed my eyes and fought the urge to growl. I ignored the smug look on Gav’s face while I smoothed a hand over the front of my skirt and adjusted the belt at my waist. So the clasp sat dead center. These slight movements helped me cope with my rioting emotions and gave me the space to regain the control that had been slipping.
“I know that moving on would be healthy, and I have. I haven’t lived the last few years like a cloistered nun.”
“You also haven’t been forming lasting attachments.” Gavin stood up from his spot at the table and tossed his stack of resumes into his ancient leather bag. “Maybe if you admitted you’re feeling something more than sexual chemistry to Callum, his response would surprise you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Like having feelings for each other will solve all the other problems that would lie between us.”
“Would sharing feelings be so bad?” Gavin shouldered his bag, and the look in his eyes seemed distant and sad. “There is nothing better than being loved by someone. Trust me, I know what it feels like to have a partner that lives to love you.”
I walked around the library desk and hugged my friend around his middle. “I know, Gav, and if I was the type of girl that believed I could return that kind of feeling, I’d be the first in line to receive it.” I stepped back and rubbed my hand over his shoulder. “But I gave up on romance a long time ago.”
Gavin frowned and shook his head. “Not every man is like Peter. There are still good men out there.”
“I know,” I replied. “You’re right. I need to go out and relax on my own more often. So, I promise I’ll do some of that this weekend.”
He smiled and kissed my cheek. “See that you do.”
Chapter 21
Olivia
It wasn’t until several minutes later that I realized the house and grounds were silent for the first time in days. The late afternoon sun dappled the forecourt and carriage house in a golden glow. The sounds of the forest were the only things I heard as I stood with keys in hand and marveled at all the changes.
To Be With You Page 15