by Nicole Helm
“We’ve figured it out so far,” she continued. “You said it yourself, you keep working at it until it fits or gels or something.”
But Carter knew what it looked like when love came with impossible strings and impossible dilemmas, and shouldn’t he have known better with a Gallagher?
But she’d said I love you. They’d said it to each other. Surely this thing couldn’t be so bad.
“My grandmother gave me an ultimatum.”
Or maybe it could.
Chapter 17
Dinah had an idea. It had popped into her head sometime between his saying he cared about her and he loved her.
Loved.
She didn’t want to give this up. She didn’t want to sacrifice one dream for another, so she wouldn’t. Compromise. All it would take was a little bit of compromise, and phrasing this the exact right way.
“What kind of ultimatum, Dinah?”
“Let’s sit down. Do you want something to drink? I could—”
“Dinah.”
He wasn’t giving her any time at all to think, to plan, to prepare, but she couldn’t exactly leave him hanging either.
He loved her. Love. He’d offered her a hug and wanted to comfort and support her without even knowing what was going on. She owed him something, and she could think quickly on her feet.
She met his worried gaze, and it wasn’t hard to see the toll his heart had taken in a lifetime. Losing pieces of himself and fighting his family to keep them, he was braced for the worst.
She wouldn’t let this be the worst. “My grandmother doesn’t approve of you.”
“My shock, it is huge,” he intoned, sarcasm dripping from every syllable.
“She said if I would cut personal ties with you, she would recommend me for the director of operations position over Craig.”
Finally, he sat, reminding her of a big tree falling over after having been cut. Her couch even let out an audible groan at the sudden influx of weight.
“Well, you could have mentioned that before we started talking about love.”
“No, because they are two separate things,” she said firmly. Two different wells of love, and she would find a way to drink from them both, damn it.
He shook his head. “Dinah, come on. They are not two separate things. Not in your world.”
“We found a way to get around the whole buy-your-land thing. This will be easy compared to that.”
“No, it won’t. This is pretty clear. To get what you’ve always wanted, you’ve got to kick me to the curb.”
He seemed so certain, but he didn’t understand. If only he’d given her more time, she would have had the perfect spiel to convince him. She couldn’t give up, though. She had to keep trying to get him to understand. “You’re what I’ve always wanted too.”
He sighed, raking his hands through his shaggy hair. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes, it does. Despite everything that’s happened, I know there was a time when I was growing up that my parents loved each other. I saw my grandparents love each other.” No matter what Grandmother said. “I have seen love in action and I’ve always wanted that. I don’t believe I have to sacrifice one dream for another. I refuse to let that be true.”
He looked at her, not as though he believed her, or even as though he wanted to, but with a pained kind of expression in his dark eyes. “I know that you . . . God knows you can make miracles happen, but I don’t think this is one of them.”
“But I do. I believe that this is definitely one of them and I can accomplish exactly what I want to. You know why I keep being able to do that?”
“Luck?”
“Determination,” she returned firmly. “Because I don’t give up. Because I believe. All it takes is that belief, and hard work, and no matter what the setback, you can get where you want to be. I believe that. I have to believe that.”
“I don’t know how to believe that, Dinah. I have done those things, I have believed and worked my ass off and hoped so hard, but I have lost. Repeatedly.”
“Then you fell in love with the right person. I will believe enough for the both of us.” She knew he didn’t see it. He didn’t believe it. She could even understand that. He’d had a lot of crap happen to him and it hadn’t worked out.
But she had to believe that meant he hadn’t tried hard enough. He had given up too soon. She was going to make this work because she wouldn’t give up. Period. Nothing could stand in her way.
“How exactly are you proposing to get the director job and have a relationship with me when your grandmother gave you such a clear ultimatum?”
That was the tricky part, and she hadn’t quite worked out everything. With more time to think and plan she could make it sound better. She worried her hands together, trying to find the right words. The not-insulting words.
“You don’t have a plan, do you?” he said, his voice so quiet and so final. How could he be so easily discouraged?
“Yes, I do. I’m just working out how to explain it.”
He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously, and she almost couldn’t blame him for that. It didn’t exactly sound good. Maybe she should just say it instead of trying to find the perfect combination of words. “I guess the bottom line is that there’s no reason Grandmother has to know we’re together.”
“How is that a plan?”
“All we have to do is hide our relationship for little while. It doesn’t mean we actually have to be apart. She just has to think we are.”
“Your uncle followed you. I actually think we would very much have to be apart to convince anyone of our being apart.”
“But once I replace Craig, it won’t matter. They won’t re-replace me with him.”
“Why not?”
Frustration was starting to mount. It seemed he had a question for everything. Couldn’t he trust her? Couldn’t he believe? “Because they will see what an excellent job I’m doing and how much better I am than he was.”
“That is so incredibly optimistic.”
“You don’t understand the family dynamics here, and you don’t understand how important Gallagher’s is. Once they see what I can do in that position, they won’t want anyone else in it.”
“So, just to get this all straight, your plan as to how to get both things you want is to pretend like you don’t have one of them. And I’m supposed to go along with being your dirty little secret?”
She frowned. She wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to how easy it was for him to hurt her. She usually had a thick skin, but something about him, or love, made everything seem pointed. Harsh. “It’s not like that.”
Still, she couldn’t give in to that hurt, because that would be admitting some kind of defeat, and she refused. She kneeled in front of him, because he had to see. “It’s not about being a dirty little secret. It’s not about being ashamed. It’s just working around them because they’re wrong. Grandmother is wrong.”
He rubbed a hand over his face before looking down at her, and she knew that even though he wasn’t falling into line quite as she’d like, he was feeling all this too. It wasn’t easy for him.
“Is she?”
Another few words that seemed to lance hard and sharp, right where it would hurt most. “How can you tell me you love me and ask me that at the same time?”
He shook his head and looked away, and panic bubbled up, but she wasn’t going to let panic win. She was right. All of the things she’d accomplished were because she was right, because she had believed without a shadow of a doubt she was the correct party. If it had worked her whole life so far, how could she stop believing that if she felt it was right, she just had to keep pushing?
“I know my grandmother seems like this crazy and perhaps formidable person. But she’s just . . . wrong. She doesn’t understand everything. You don’t understand Gallagher’s itself, but you understand me. And how much it means. I wouldn’t be talking about compromise if you didn’t mean so much.”
“I know.
I’d go so far as to say your dedication to that place is one of the things I love about you. But, Dinah, if everyone there is going keep putting us at odds, I don’t know how we keep doing this. Eventually you’re going to have to choose. One or the other.”
He was so earnest, so sure in his defeat, but she refused to be. She refused to acknowledge defeat. “No, I do not. I’ll keep finding compromises and ways around it. I know I will.”
“I appreciate your optimism, I do, but I don’t know that I can match it. I don’t know that I can be . . . You’re asking me to believe our relationship is something you’re never going to walk away from. But I know the thing you’re never going to walk away from is Gallagher’s, and I wouldn’t want you to. But, eventually, you’ll come to that point. That’s how life works. You’ll have to choose between this life you always planned and this,” he said, gesturing to the distance between them.
He was so earnest, and she knew he was being honest and open, but he was wrong. Why couldn’t he see he was wrong?
“I’ve been where you are, Dinah. Maybe not with a romantic relationship, but I know what it’s like to go up against people you love and work with. You want to believe you can handle whatever comes, and I want to believe too, but I’ve been down the road too many times to actually think . . .”
She rested her hand on his knee and squeezed, hoping some physical contact would get through to him. “I will be in charge once this all goes through, and then I can do whatever I want.”
“You really think so?”
“Why are you being such a pessimist?” she demanded in frustration, letting her hand slide off his knee. She needed to ball it into a fist to try to keep her irritation at bay.
“Because that is who I am.” He reached out and touched her face and she leaned into that rough, gentle touch.
“I’m not giving up on this.” She couldn’t. It was . . . so wonderful to be in love. It was scary, but exhilarating. Hard, but just . . . the moments like this, leaning into him, talking, it was more than she’d imagined that love would be. It was big. It was a challenge, but damn, she was good with a challenge.
“I’m not saying I’m giving up either,” he said, rubbing his thumb back and forth across her cheek as he cupped her jaw. “I’m just saying if you ignore all of the complexity and challenges that are going to be put before you, it will not go well.”
“It’s not complex. All we have to do is have a secret relationship for a while. It won’t be all that different from when we were emailing and it was a secret even to us.” She grinned at him, but there was no humor in him, no lightening.
“Here’s the thing.” He looked her straight in the eye, the light graze of his fingers never wavering, and it made her heart flutter and dive, even though she knew—damn it all, she knew—it wasn’t going to be a good thing.
“I don’t want to go back to that,” he said, firm and sure. “If I wasn’t in love with you, maybe it would be fine to be a secret, or to pretend, but that’s not what I want this to be. It’s not what it should be.” He dropped his hand and stood, pacing away from her.
For the first time her heart fluttered in fear. She’d been so certain he would agree, but this seemed very close to him refusing. Flat-out.
“It’d just be for a little while,” she said, embarrassed at how weak and pleading she sounded.
“You say that, but if your grandmother doesn’t approve now, she’s never going to approve. That’s fine. I don’t need your grandmother’s approval any more than I need my own family’s approval, but I think you do.”
She got to her feet. “I do not.”
“If you didn’t, Gallagher’s wouldn’t be the thing you’ve been working for, your whole life. If your family didn’t matter, if their feelings didn’t matter, it wouldn’t be your roots. There has to be some love of family and wanting to please them, to be as completely consumed by it as you are.”
“I love Gallagher’s because it is my soul.” She fisted a hand to her heart. “Because I was born that way. Because it grew into my blood and into my bones. Gallagher’s is me, and how I handle that, how I involve myself in it, has nothing to do with making my family happy.”
“You were willing to buy my land even though you didn’t agree with your uncle about its use.”
“I was doing what I had to do to get what belongs to me,” she returned through gritted teeth. “What I always planned.” Why was he being so damn difficult about this?
“Good for you. Good for you for getting what you always planned, but it doesn’t always work that way for all of us. Some of us never get what we planned.”
“Is that what this is about? You’re jealous.”
She didn’t know how they’d turned this into a fight. She didn’t know why he was questioning her like Kayla had questioned her. Why he, of all people, couldn’t understand this was what she needed.
“You know what? Maybe I am. Because you have everything I didn’t get. Now you want me to believe in something while ignoring everything I know. From my experience. From my life. You’re not listening to me at all. You’re just marching on this path you have in your own brain and you won’t . . . Why should I stand here and compromise with you when you won’t compromise with me?”
“I am compromising. If I wasn’t compromising, you wouldn’t be here. I would’ve broken it off with you. I love you and I want to make this work, so here I am. Fighting.” Because I have an ounce of courage, asshole, she barely restrained herself from saying.
“Okay. Let’s say we do this. It’s a secret, you get your director position, and no one catches us. What about the next thing?”
She blew out an annoyed breath, fisting her hands on her hips. “What do you mean, the next thing?”
“In the few short weeks we’ve been together, we’ve run into two huge challenges that require you to choose between Gallagher’s and us. So, what about the next time? The time after that? What about the time when there is no choice, and there is no compromise? Who do you choose?”
“Both. I will find a way to have both.” How could he not see that she wasn’t going to lose this fight? She didn’t lose, not Dinah Gallagher. Gallaghers don’t fail. Grandmother’s words, which would prove to be the thing Dinah needed to win.
“Dinah . . .” He linked his fingers behind his head, looking at her with such pain in his eyes she almost forgot about her frustration with him. “I don’t know that I can put my heart on the line for another damn thing I know I’m going to lose.”
“What do you want me to say to that? That I would pick you? That I would give up everything I love and I’ve built, for you?” How could he ask that of her, when she was saying they could have both?
“I don’t want to ask that. I don’t. I don’t want you to choose me over Gallagher’s. I’d never in a million years want that for you.”
“But?” she demanded, because there was a but, and how dare he? How dare he care and love and be sweet, but not be willing to bend a little?
“But maybe this is impossible. Maybe there is no compromise. No answer. Because no matter how much we love each other, I don’t know that either of us would ever pick each other over the things we’ve built.”
“We won’t have to make that choice. I believe in us, in what we can do, if we try hard enough.”
“I don’t believe in that, Dinah. I can’t.”
It was Dinah’s turn to sink into the couch like a tree falling in the forest, because no matter how much she believed, if he didn’t, she didn’t know how to make this work.
* * *
Carter felt hollowed out. He’d finally fallen in love with someone, admitted it, and stood there ready to take that leap, and it had spiraled into this other place. A place he recognized all too well.
He wanted to be as certain as she was. He wanted to believe as firmly as she did, but that belief had been beaten out of him, and he didn’t want to do it anymore. He didn’t want to put his heart on the line when there was no chance he was g
oing to keep the thing he was risking it all for.
“I don’t know what you want me to say to that,” Dinah finally said, clearly hurt that he didn’t believe the way she did.
“I don’t want you to say anything. I just think we need to go into this with our eyes wide open.”
“And you refuse to believe?”
“I don’t know how to believe anymore.” Which was something maybe he’d known about himself but had tried to ignore, to push away. Leave it to Dinah to make him face it head-on, to make him say it out loud, to face the things he didn’t want to face.
She stood and grabbed his arms, her eyes too warm, too sure. He wished he could believe, for her. That he could get over all of these hurts and cuts and wounds that had never healed.
“If you just believed in me. If you just . . . I can do it. I know I can. All you have to believe is that I know what I’m doing and I can make this work.”
He didn’t know how to do it. Not for her. Not for him. Her hands dropped off his arms and she stepped away.
“But you won’t.” She swallowed, and when she spoke again, her voice was broken. “You refuse to.”
“I guess I do.” He shook his head, because how had this all gone so completely off the rails? But he didn’t know how to give her what she wanted. He didn’t know how to believe anymore, and he didn’t know how to give over all those feelings to her when he knew she would pick Gallagher’s over him. There was no question in his mind, and that was fine. He understood it. Would he choose her over his farm?
That he even paused, even questioned it for a second, was enough to know that love or not, this wasn’t what either of them needed. How could he ever question keeping the farm above all else?
Some weird bubble of panic squeezed his lungs, and he couldn’t do this. Couldn’t think these things, wonder these things. Couldn’t question himself like this, and mostly he just couldn’t believe. Wouldn’t, like she said. “I should go.”
“I guess you should,” she returned, her voice vibrating with all kinds of hurt as she raised her chin at him. “You might want to look up the definition of love when you get home, because this isn’t it. Maybe you like me and the sex is great, but I don’t think this is love.”