So Wrong It Must Be Right

by Nicole Helm

  “Hey, that isn’t fair. I—”

  “I don’t mean you, Dinah, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  Kayla rubbed her fingers over her forehead. “You’re on your way. You’re on your way to giving everything to this, and I don’t like it for you, but most especially I don’t like it for me. I tried to tell you last night and . . . I can’t do this.”

  “Why are you giving him what he wants?” Dinah very nearly pounded a fist on Kayla’s desk, except just in time the gesture reminded her of her father. And Craig.

  She swallowed, cradling her clenched fist instead trying to figure out how Kayla could betray her like this. “How can you walk away?”

  “Because I care more about my sanity than a name on a building, Dinah. I don’t want to be them in twenty years. I don’t want to be them now. I want . . . a life. One that doesn’t require fighting my father every step of the way.”

  “That’s what he wants!”

  “I don’t care,” Kayla burst out in return, flinging her arms in the air. “You don’t seem to get it, and you get to keep fighting, I’m not saying you shouldn’t, but I’m not going to. I don’t care who wants what, I’m tired of being miserable for a building.”

  “It’s more than a building. It’s our family. Our birthright. Our blood and roots are in this restaurant.”

  “For you,” Kayla returned, firm and somehow hurt, or something very close. “I don’t feel the same way anymore.”

  “You did.”

  She shook her head sadly and Dinah felt strangely like crying. Kayla had always been her partner, her co-dreamer. They’d had plans. How could she walk away from them?

  “If I did feel that way, that feeling died, but I think mostly I just wanted to belong somewhere, and you were the only one willing. This was always the thing you wanted, so I convinced myself I wanted it too. But I never felt what you felt. Not really.”

  Dinah had to lean against the desk to keep herself upright. She couldn’t believe this. She couldn’t understand this. “Is something else going on? What aren’t you telling me?”

  Kayla rolled her eyes. “I’m telling you everything. I’m sorry if it’s not what you want to hear, but it’s a truth I’ve been ignoring for a long time. I’m tired of ignoring it. I’m most definitely tired of this.” She swept her hand around the office as if she didn’t see what Dinah saw.

  History and belonging and theirs.

  “I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell my father I’m looking elsewhere until I’ve secured something else,” Kayla continued, all polite businesswoman.

  Dinah swallowed, hurt not just at Kayla’s decision—wrong decision—but hurt she’d think Dinah would ever tell Craig anything they’d discussed. “I still love you, Kayla. I’d never hurt you.”

  Kayla smiled thinly. “Good. I hope . . . I hope it stays that way.”

  “Kay—”

  But Kayla shook her head, looking close enough to tears to make Dinah feel perilously close herself.

  “I’m going to go home. If Dad comes by, feel free to tell him I took off early. And you don’t have to worry about coming over tonight. I won’t be wallowing. I’m not wallowing anymore.” With that, Kayla reopened her office door and left.

  Dinah blinked, inwardly cursing herself for having forgotten she had plans with Kayla in the first place. Maybe Kayla was right and she’d gotten too deep in the Gallagher’s nonsense . . .

  Except how could that be? She was meeting with Carter tonight. Pretending she had two separate sides of her. Kayla’s estimation was wrong, and if she didn’t understand what Gallagher’s meant, that wasn’t Dinah’s failing or Dinah being wrong.

  She couldn’t believe Kayla had been lying to her all these years, or just convincing herself she cared about Gallagher’s; she was just scared. Craig was a bully, and he wasn’t afraid to bully his own daughter.

  Well, let Kayla look for a new job; Dinah was going to keep fighting. Even if she had to do it alone. She would prove to Kayla it was worth it, that Gallagher’s did matter, and when Kayla came to her senses, Dinah would welcome her back without one I told you so.

  Because no matter what was going on with Kayla or Carter or her father or Craig, Dinah would never, ever doubt Gallagher’s was hers. She’d fight until the bitter end—and the only acceptable end was her running Gallagher’s.

  * * *

  Carter cursed himself as he walked toward Gallagher’s in the quickly darkening twilight. Jordan’s visit had been a thorn in his side all day, one he couldn’t get out of his skin.

  Of course, that was exactly how Dinah—D—affected him too. Something about her had an unshakeable grasp on him.

  No, Jordan’s words were a thorn. Dinah Gallagher was a tick in the center of his back, a parasite who’d dug in and couldn’t be ripped off without help.

  He should be super charming and lead with that comparison.

  Except as he reached Gallagher’s imposing form and turned the corner to the back parking lot, Dinah was stepping out of the heavy door. Both the fading light and the orange glow of the parking lot lights bounced off the reds in her hair and made her look a little bit otherworldly.

  Witch or fairy was far more fitting. Something so beautiful and spellbinding, his brain and reason had gone completely and utterly missing.

  When she caught a glimpse of him and smiled, something inside of him shifted and lightened. She walked toward him, her legs looking impossibly edible in that tight knee-length skirt and killer heels.

  Nothing in his entire life had ever snuck under the defenses he’d built to keep himself moving forward to reach his goals. Nothing had ever wiggled through even a crack to take his focus from farm, farm, farm. There was no way to articulate why this woman was the person who made him forget.

  The biggest part of the problem was that when she was in his sight, he didn’t care. He didn’t care why or how she was in his life, he only cared about touching her. All rational thought died, and he was left with . . . D.

  “Good evening, C. Fancy seeing you here.” She grinned up at him and it was odd that after only few short encounters he could discern that despite the flirtatious greeting and the easy smile, something wasn’t quite right with her.

  “Rough day?”

  She turned her back on Gallagher’s and linked her fingers with his just as they’d done yesterday when he’d come over.

  “Yes, actually. It was not a particularly fun one.”

  She didn’t say anything more after that, and though he was tempted to ask her what had gone wrong, there was an invisible line between D and Dinah, between the woman he was having sex with and the woman who worked for Gallagher’s and wanted to buy his land.

  Her job had to do with his job, in a weird kind of way. Asking about work brought Dinah Gallagher into the equation, and that’s not who they were supposed to be in the dark.

  “It’s so weird working with your family. You think you know what they feel and you think you’re on the same page, and it turns out that you’re not.” She frowned, glancing sideways at him. “It’s weird for me to talk about work, isn’t it?”

  “Weird? I don’t know. Complicated, definitely.”

  She nodded, her eyebrows still all scrunched together.

  “But if you want to talk about it, you can.”

  “It isn’t anything that has to do with you, really. It’s just, Kayla’s always the one I talk to about stuff like this. She’s my best friend and my cousin and we were always on the same page, and suddenly she just wants to give up.”

  “Give up what?” He wasn’t sure he asked because he cared about what Dinah was upset about, or because maybe this meant her cousin didn’t want his land. But if Dinah ended up telling him something that could help him, how could that possibly be his fault? He wasn’t taking advantage. She was offering. So why did he feel so uncomfortably guilty?

  “She wants to leave Gallagher’s. My uncle—her father—took over when my father left under . . . less
than ideal circumstances. Craig Gallagher is not a particularly nice man, nor one who is too interested in the health of Gallagher’s, unless it equals the health of his pocketbook or, more likely, his ego.” She stopped briefly, pulling her hand away from his. “We shouldn’t be talking about this,” she muttered, returning to her breakneck pace toward his house.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” he returned gently, irritated with himself for feeling gentle.

  “Craig is crazy for thinking I’ll let him take my spot, and Kayla is crazy for thinking she should give up,” Dinah continued, and Carter could tell she was in her own little world, wrapped up in whatever had wound her up today. “How could she stop fighting? This was our fight. She won’t fight anymore, and I don’t get it. How could she just give up on us having Gallagher’s?”

  What she said was uncomfortably close to his experiences. His entire life he’d wondered why no one would stand and fight with him. Which he shouldn’t share with her, but that was all a long time ago. What did it matter if he told her? “Do you have any siblings?”

  “No.”

  “I have three sisters.”

  “Three?” She glanced up at him as they approached his gate. “You seem so . . .”

  He knew what she was going to say. Alone. Isolated. Because that’s exactly what he was. “My oldest sister moved to Minnesota when she got married. The younger two went in opposite directions—California, New York, and my New York sister took my dad with her. Everyone left.”

  They stopped at his gate and she rested her hand against the post, frowning. “Except you.”

  “Except me. I’ve been fighting for something of ours my whole life, and losing because I don’t have any power, but it’s never shaken my resolve. At least not enough to make me give up. But no matter how much my family loved the farm too, except maybe my oldest sister, no one loved it enough to hold on.”

  “Did you ever figure out why?”

  Carter shrugged. “My sister in California works at a flower farm. My sister in New York went in with Dad on a whole new farm, using what they got for selling our family farm here. I never understood how . . . how it could be the same anywhere else, if it wasn’t our dirt. I didn’t have to turn this place into my own little farm.” He gestured at all he’d built, the yard full-to-brim with plants and produce. “But it was the only earth in this whole world that meant something, that my ancestors walked on and tilled and planted things in—even if it was a little kitchen garden. I guess they loved the work, and I loved the land. But as for why?” He shook his head because this was all so damn personal. It was downright friendly, or relationshippy, sharing pasts and troubles.

  But he wanted to.

  He unlocked his gate and ushered her inside his yard. Instead of leading up to the walk though, he led her around back.

  The sun had completely set, but it was a clear night where the stars had started to shine and the moon was bright above. It was a nice night to sit out among the plants and . . .

  He paused for a second when he realized he’d been about to think it was a nice night to talk. Because for all the sexmails he and D had exchanged, they had also talked about their lives and their problems.

  They’d never gone into detail, but they had expressed their challenges. So much so he had the fleeting thought that she might have inadvertently told him something in those old emails that might help him in his battle with Gallagher’s.

  Jordan’s words about fighting dirty came back to him, and he frowned. He didn’t like it. Not the guilt it made him feel, and certainly not the idea she might have unknowingly given him the ammunition to hurt her.

  But maybe he’d done the same. Maybe he’d given her the ammunition to hurt him. It wouldn’t hurt to check, it wouldn’t hurt to look. As much as he enjoyed Dinah—D—whoever they wanted to pretend they were, she would never come before this place. Never.

  He weaved his way through the rows of plants to the little slab of concrete that served as his back porch. It was surrounded by an arbor that he grew his blackberries against, making it a mass of vines.

  He loved sitting here in the summer when the blackberries were ripe and he could just reach over and eat a few, but it was nice in the fall too, with the nights cool, surrounded by his handiwork.

  He guided her to a lawn chair he kept in the back for nights when he liked to sit out under the stars and remember his old life. The old farm. The old days. She sat and he pulled a chair he kept for the random visitor, usually Jordan or Jordan’s grandmother, next to her.

  “It strikes me that we actually have a lot in common. We just happen to be on opposite sides of things,” Dinah said.

  “In my experience, people on opposite sides of an argument usually have a lot in common—a lot of the same experiences, and a lot of the same feelings. But because people want different things and need different things, sometimes you find yourself alone, with a farm in the middle of St. Louis instead of where you wanted it to be.”

  “You don’t want to be here?”

  “Don’t read into that, Dinah.” He thought about correcting the Dinah to D, but he waited for her to do it instead. She didn’t.

  Everything was getting mixed together, though. Talking about land and what they wanted. What they were fighting for. It was all blurring the cross purposes that stood between them.

  They sat in silence for a little while, both looking up at the stars and enjoying the way the night air was cooling off after an unseasonably warm September day.

  Carter couldn’t help but feel a certain sense of loss that spending personal time together wasn’t possible long-term. Because no matter how often he told himself it was crazy to have developed feelings for the woman he was exchanging emails with, he had. It had been a fantasy, but that fantasy had been truthful, in that he’d given his honest self to it.

  He’d been maybe a better, more adventurous version of himself in the emails, but it was still him at the core. Based on the past few interactions with Dinah, he was starting to believe that she’d been herself too.

  Unfortunately, she was someone he could understand and admire. Even though she was fighting him, he got why. Much like when his father had decided to sell the farm, he had understood. He’d disagreed with Dad’s decision, but he’d understood why Dad didn’t have it in him to keep it.

  The farm was a struggle, and the price had been exorbitant, and Dad had missed Mom. The farm had gotten so much harder for Dad after Mom died, and even though Carter had done everything to help out, just as his sisters had done everything they could to help, it hadn’t been the same for Dad. He hadn’t been able to face those memories, especially when so much money was on the table. Dad had figured that farming was changing enough he would’ve lost it anyway to suburban sprawl, so why not lose it when it still had value?

  Carter had understood all of that in his rational, reasonable mind, but his heart had felt completely different. He’d known his mother would’ve wanted him to follow his heart. So he’d fought Dad and the girls and lost. He hadn’t had the power.

  Dinah was dealing with a similar struggle. No, she wasn’t in danger of losing Gallagher’s. It would always be there, and it would always have her name on it. But she was fighting for her place in it, and even though he could never sacrifice his land, it didn’t mean he didn’t understand.

  Since he was twelve years old, he’d understood life is complicated and getting what you want isn’t the same thing as being happy. He’d learned very quickly that right and wrong aren’t black and white.

  He thought perhaps Dinah had that black-and-white view of life. He doubted she’d be able to hang on to that simple view given all of the complexities life could offer.

  “You want a drink?” he asked, needing to move away from his thoughts.

  “As long as it’s alcoholic,” she returned with a smile.

  He dropped a soft kiss on her head, feeling protective. “I wouldn’t dream of anything but.”

  Chapter 9

&nbs
p; Dinah sat on Carter’s little back porch enjoying the cool fall evening and the twinkling stars and moon above.

  A light shone from the window of Carter’s kitchen, casting flickering shadows on the porch. It was a nice moment. Oddly comforting and warm. It felt like the right thing to do after a bad day. Unwind in this postage stamp of towering plants, the smell of earth overtaking the usual smell of the city.

  Despite the fact that nothing could make her not think about Kayla, this was comforting and relaxing as much as anything could be. Even more so when Carter came out and handed her a glass of wine.

  “It’s some two-buck-chuck shit. I’m guessing a little different than you’re used to.”

  “Long as it gets the job done.” She took a sip of the bittersweet liquid. Not the tastiest wine she’d ever had, but she wasn’t joking: As long as it got the job done, taste didn’t matter.

  She slipped off her heels and let them clatter to the cement below. She drew her legs up under her, and she settled in. Because she wasn’t Dinah right now, she was D. A woman with no worries and no concerns and certainly no obnoxious family members trying to drive her insane.

  Erasing the people she loved from her thoughts, even temporarily, offered little comfort.

  She blew out a breath, needing to get out of her head, so she turned to him. Focused in on Carter Trask. Well, C. Or maybe both. “How did you start the farm?”

  Carter had settled himself into an uncomfortable-looking chair, and he let out a breath and then took a drink from a can of beer before he answered. “Well, I’d moved in with my uncle on his farm after Dad sold out. A few years later, he was making plans to sell his place in north county. About the same time, Grandma started falling a lot. She was thinking of selling the house and moving into one of those assisted living type apartments.” He paused, clearly remembering his grandmother and feeling sad about it. So Dinah let the silence linger, paying attention instead to the odd sounds of insects in the middle of the city at night.