by JoAnn Ross
“I need to leave,” she told Mary.
“I understand,” the older woman said. “I’ll walk out with you.”
Since you could have heard the proverbial pin drop, Tori wasn’t going to create a scene by arguing. She just walked out the door, Mary following close behind.
“He didn’t mean to lie,” the older woman said.
“He certainly did a good job of it.” Tori’s blood was cold. Her heart was colder. Which was a good thing, she decided. If it was frozen, it couldn’t bleed all over the ground and humiliate her further.
“He didn’t lie about his name,” Mary said. “He just didn’t tell anyone about his family.”
“That man, Doug, knew.”
“Doug is an ass. He enjoys pulling people’s chains. I don’t know when he figured it out. And I didn’t realize he knew about Mike until he hinted at it at the tree house building party.”
“Finn knew how I felt.” Tori clicked the fob on her keychain, opening the rental car’s door.
“Which is probably why he was having a harder time telling you the longer it went on,” Mary pressed his case. “It was obvious to anyone in town that he’s over the moon for you.”
“I appreciate your feelings for him,” Tori said. “But I really don’t want to talk about him anymore.”
The sound of an engine got her attention. Glancing up, she saw the red-and-white plane approaching the landing strip.
Telling herself that she was not running way, Tori got into the car, started the engine, and drove out of the parking lot.
She did not look back.
26
Damn. Finn cursed himself all the way out to the cabin. Mary had been right. He should have told Tori before she’d found out from someone else. Before he’d made love to her. Hell, he should have told her right off the bat.
Though, he argued, what was he supposed to do that night in the Del? Introduce himself and say, “And by the way, I just happen to be Colin Brannigan’s youngest son”?
When he’d spent his life trying to be anything but the old man’s son.
And yet…
He thought about what his brothers said about his father having always loved his mother from when they’d first met as teenagers. Then later, when they’d reconnected, the bond had been strong enough to marry and have a family. A loving family, he realized. He couldn’t remember that night she’d died. The Monopoly game or that week she’d spent in a coma and he hadn’t been allowed to visit her.
It had all been gone in a heartbeat. The sunshine and happiness that, every once in a while, he thought he could remember. More since he’d been with Tori. And not just because there were times when she reminded him of his mother. No, it was more than that.
She made him feel like Kathleen Hayes must have made Colin Brannigan, who’d been orphaned himself as a boy, feel. She’d made his father whole again. Filled those cold, empty places in what had to have been a lonely heart.
And then she’d been taken away from him but, according to his brothers’ stories this past year, he’d never forgotten. Enough that the others all believed that when their father had sent them out on that quest to find themselves, he’d also intended them to find a love that completed each of his sons the way Kathleen had completed him. The way Tori had Finn. And he knew that he’d done for her.
“You can fix this,” Finn assured himself as he drove up to the cabin. “You can make it right.”
Because failure was not an option.
* * *
Tori had known he would be coming. She’d thought she’d been prepared, had steeled her ripped-to-shreds heart against him. A heart that disobeyed her command and leaped in joy at the sight of him standing in her outer doorway.
“I can explain,” he said, his hands shoved deeply into his pockets.
His handsome face looked drawn. As if he hadn’t gotten any sleep. Which, to be fair, because of having spent the night with her and that early phone call, he probably hadn’t. And it had to have been stressful, trying to find that missing family, with those little children, and fighting the mountain weather, and…
No! Stop feeling sorry for him! He’s a liar who doesn’t deserve it.
She lifted a shoulder in what she hoped would look like an uncaring shrug. “Mary already told me.”
“Did she tell you that I love you?”
“No.” Stop that! she told her foolish heart that had switched from jumping for joy to practically melting into a little puddle.
“I do.”
“Well, thank you. That’s nice to hear. But it doesn’t change anything.”
“Change anything from when Doug decided to stick his finger into something that had nothing to do with him? Or change how you felt with me this morning? Or yesterday? Or two nights ago when I was painting your toenails to match your fingernails because you hadn’t wanted to spend the extra bucks on a pedicure at Midnight Sun?”
Now, dammit, her toes joined in with her heart and began to curl at the sensual memory.
“And you know what?” he said. “I know you love me, too.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“Because neither of us is any good at this.”
“What?”
“You don’t let anyone in. Neither do I.”
“You’re wrong. I let you so far in I can’t tell where you leave off and I begin. We’re like this.” He lifted his hands, linking his long, dark fingers together. Then tugged, showing they wouldn’t separate.
“Yet you wouldn’t tell me who you really were.”
“I let you know everything about who I was,” he countered. “Hell, more than I’ve shared with anyone. Ever. Even my brothers. The only thing I didn’t tell you was my name.”
“And that you’re rich.”
“My father was rich. I’m not.”
“Yet for some reason, your Wikipedia bio doesn’t show you’re Colin Brannigan’s son. Why is that?”
“That’s an easy one. When I was flying over Afghanistan, I had to eject to avoid getting blown up by a missile. While I was alone out in those mountains for two very long nights, hoping to get rescued before the bad guys got to me first, the military called my brother, James, who I’d listed as my PNOK, which is militaryspeak for primary next of kin. He used the Brannigan media contacts to make sure no one leaked my name. Then the military sent some high-level hackers in to scrub any Internet citation, because everyone thought I’d make a too valuable captive target that could be used for propaganda.”
“I hate the idea that happened to you.” She might be hurt and feeling humiliated, but comparatively, what he’d been through out there in that hostile land, had to have been much, much worse.
“I came back,” he said. “A lot of guys didn’t.”
She had to give Finn reluctant points for not playing a hero card. But that didn’t change the fact that he’d kept so much from her. “Who owns Osprey?”
“I do,” he admitted what she’d already guessed on the way home from the airfield. “But I don’t want it. I inherited it when my father died of cancer last September and tried to give it to Mary, but she refused. She insisted that Dad left it to me for a reason. But she runs it like she always has, because I don’t want anything to do with the goddamn business,” he said on a flare of frustration she’d never witnessed from him.
“I just want to fly… And spend the rest of my life with you. Here in Caribou or California or Timbuktu. It doesn’t matter. If you want to keep traveling the world, that works for me. Because anyplace will feel like home as long as you’re there with me.”
She was so tempted. He was offering her everything she’d ever wanted. Love, a family. A home. But the simple fact was that she didn’t, couldn’t trust it.
“I can’t.” She shook her head. “I let myself care too much, Finn. You’re right. It wasn’t a hookup. Or even a fling. It’s something deeper. More complicated. And neither one of us does that.”
“You do
n’t know that we can’t.”
“And you don’t know that we can.”
“So that’s it?” He ran a hand over his short hair. “Here’s your coat, Sailor, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out?”
It wasn’t just fatigue etched into his face. It was frustration and something else she couldn’t quite define. Desperation?
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t feel like the Lone Fucking Ranger,” he shot back. “What do you want me to do to make this right, Tori? Do you want me to beg? I’ll get down on my knees right now.”
Amazingly, he did drop right down onto them in that small outer foyer. Which, while she enjoyed reading about the hero groveling at the end of a romance novel, before the couple walked hand in hand into their sunny happily ever after, only made her feel worse.
“Finn…”
“Do you want me to strip naked and crawl down Front Street at high noon? Because, hey, just say the word, and I’m there. Hell, Barbara Ann will probably be happy to sell tickets.”
“Please. I don’t want you to do anything like that. I’m not even angry anymore.”
He got back onto his feet and looked down at her. “I’m not giving up,” he warned her. “Also, this is lousy timing, but I have something for you. It came yesterday Fedex. I was going to give it to you earlier, then Mary called about that crash.” He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out an envelope and held it out to her.
“What’s this?” she asked suspiciously. But she did take it.
“A letter from Kevin Osborne, CEO of Pegasus Records, which happens to be a subsidiary of Spotlight Pictures, which is, yes, another Brannigan company. He bought your contract, but before he re-releases your songs, he wants to negotiate another, better contract. Apparently you got robbed, which isn’t that much of a surprise, since if your old company had been any good, they probably wouldn’t have gone under. You need to have your agent call him.”
“I don’t know what to say.” He’d gone behind her back. But how could she be angry at him for handing her her dream?
“You don’t have to say anything. Hell, you can toss it away, if you want. But I think you’re too damn smart to let any feelings for me get in the way of reclaiming your career.
“Meanwhile, I’m willing to give you some space, because I don’t know what else to say. Well, I did think of something driving over here, but it sounds as if I’m cribbing from Hollywood to win you over.”
He gave her a long look that settled on her lips, which took on their own mind and parted slightly, totally undermining the point she’d been trying to make.
“You complete me, Tori Cassidy. And yeah, it sounds phony and sappy and clichéd. But it’s fucking true.”
Having made his point, he turned and walked away.
Just as she’d done at the airfield, he did not look back.
27
“What the hell are you thinking?” Zoe asked when Tori had called to tell her what had happened. “From what you’ve told me, he’s perfect.”
“I thought he was. But he’s rich.”
“Oh, boy. That would sure as hell be a deal breaker for me. Not every rich guy is like Carter Covington IV. Look at John F. Kennedy, Jr.”
“He’s dead. He died in a plane crash. Which could happen to Finn.”
“So, that’s the part that’s keeping you from committing?”
“No. It’s dangerous. But people can get hit by a bus crossing the street.” Or by a drunk driver coming home from a luau. Or by a teenager while you were out getting ice cream for family night. Life, she’d learned, could be cruelly random.
“It’s not the money. Because you said he doesn’t want it. Do you think he’s lying about that?”
“No.”
“And let’s not forget here, he went to the trouble to salvage your career from what was a flaming dumpster. And from what I can tell, he didn’t do it to make you forgive him, because he already had the letter from Pegasus. Which, if you weren’t my BFF, I’d be really jealous about, because that’s like hitting all the Powerball numbers. You are going to accept it, aren’t you?”
“I’d be a fool to turn it down.”
“Of course you would. And you’ve never been a fool. A little misguided, perhaps, when it came to IV the douche, but you’re not stupid. So, what’s the problem?”
“I’m scared, okay?” Tori heard herself shouting. It was the truth she hadn’t wanted to face. She was terrified of being broken. Which she knew, deep in her wounded heart, Finn would never do.
“Well, then,” Zoe said. “That’s an easy fix.”
“How?”
“Get over it. And since you’re going to be rich, I’ll expect first-class tickets to come up there and play maid-of-honor for this wedding. Now go make his day and tell the poor guy you forgive him.”
With that tough-love advice, she hung up.
* * *
Finn hadn’t been in any mood to leave the house and go down to the Gold Gulch. After taking a long, hot shower to take the nervous sweat stink off, he’d put on a pair of sweats and was planning to get slowly and methodically drunk.
Then tomorrow, he’d war-game how to get Tori Cassidy to marry him. Because damned if he was going to be the only Brannigan brother to end up alone.
But before he could even finish the first glass of whiskey, Barbara Ann had called to tell him that all the power had gone out in the bar. When he suggested she call an electrician, she told him the one in Healy couldn’t get to her for two days. And there was no point in him telling her to call the hardware store, because she currently wasn’t speaking to Doug after what he’d done.
So, he’d driven to town and walked into the Gulch, where the older woman had said she’d be waiting on him. The place was as dark as she’d told him. He might not be an electrician, but anyone could check some circuit breakers.
“Anyone here?” he called out into the darkness.
“Just me,” a voice said.
A moment later, a single spotlight turned on, revealing Tori perched on a stool, dressed in a short black denim skirt that revealed a mouthwatering amount of smooth, long leg and a sweater that fit like it had been sprayed on.
“I realized after you left that I hadn’t played you my new song,” she said.
“Okay.” Finn wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, but he wasn’t going to complain that she was talking to him.
She strummed a few chords on her Taylor. Then began to sing.
Love has never been an easy game,
I always lose the final round.
Home has never been a certain place,
It always moves when I start to settle down.
As it always did, her voice went straight from her lips directly to the center of his heart.
I have sailed to every distant sea,
I leave love before love can leave me.
It feels much easier to lose than keep,
These dreams of home.
Afraid to spook her but unable to keep his distance, he began to move across the room, weaving his way through the tables.
Carry me home, carry me home,
Carry me home, carry me home.
She slid off the stool and stood there bathed in that sole spotlight, looking straight at him as she moved on to the next verse.
My foolish heart is like a gypsy wind,
A lonely ship, a skipping stone.
Tossed by lovers’ lies and promises,
Fated to wander and to roam.
He’d nearly reached the small stage when Tori put the guitar down and began walking toward him.
Then I found you in the wilderness,
You melted years of ice with just one kiss.
Beneath the tough skin of our surfaces,
We found a home.
Carry me home, carry me home,
Carry me home, carry me home.
They’d met in the middle, just as they’d done in life. Two lost souls, Finn thought, seeking their other hal
f. And amazingly, finding it in this remote place at the near top of the world.
You feel like the sunlight,
Of my childhood days.
She went into his arms and wrapped hers around his neck, going up on her toes to bring her lips a whisper from his.
When love filled up my family,
And family kept me safe.
Her lips brushed against his. “Carry me home, carry me home,” she sang softly as she pressed kisses over the seam of his mouth. “Carry me home.”
Although, like his mom, he’d never been accused of being able to carry a tune, Finn sang along with her. Because the song wasn’t just Tori’s song. It was his, as well. In her, he’d found his true home.
“Carry me home.” Their joined voices carried over to the doorway to the café, where Barbara Ann and Mary stood in the shadows, their eyes misting.
“You did good,” Mary murmured, keeping her voice low. Not that it mattered, since she could have been shouting at the top of her lungs, and the couple swaying in the center of the Gold Gulch couldn’t have heard her, lost in their own world as they were.
“I’m mayor,” Barbara Ann reminded her. “It’s my job to take care of my people. Plus, I wasn’t about to lose a great performer. I think I’ll put that ad back out for a new cook. She’s too good to be stuck back there in the kitchen where no one but John Black can hear her sing.”
“Carry me home. Carry me home.”
The last note hung in the hushed air like a prayer. A promise.
Finn drew back his head and brushed the moisture from her cheeks.
“I thought you never cried,” he said.
“I don’t.” She smiled up at him through her tears. “These are happy tears. I’m so sorry, Finn—”
“It’s done. We’ve weathered our first storm. Had our first fight. Now what would you say if I carried you home to my place where we can spend the rest of the day in bed making up? And, since I want to spend the rest of my life with you, checking out how soon we can get married?”