by Tina Leonard
“I’m not blind. I can see that,” he snapped. “I’ll be sending Tyler Anderson to oversee its completion. It’s not your concern anymore, Constance. Pack. I want you here by morning.”
“But—” She heard a strange noise on the other end of the line and found herself talking to dead air. Her father had terminated the call.
Frustration flared through her. “Damn,” Connie muttered to herself as she continued to stare at the now silent phone in her hand.
There was a quick knock on her trailer door and the next moment, Finn stuck his head in. “Hey, we’re sending out lunch orders to Miss Joan’s, and I just wanted to ask what you wanted to eat today.”
That was when he saw the shell-shocked expression on Connie’s face. Lunch was forgotten. Finn came all the way into the trailer and crossed to her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
And then he noticed the cell phone in her hand. His mind scrambled to put the pieces together. Had she just gotten bad news? Was that what was responsible for that completely devastated look on her face?
“What happened?” he prodded again. “Did your father just call?” She raised her eyes to his but still wasn’t saying anything. “Talk to me, Connie. I can’t help if you don’t talk to me.”
“You can’t help even if I do,” she answered quietly, staring unseeingly straight ahead of her. She felt as if everything was crumbling within her.
Taking hold of Connie’s shoulders, he gently guided her to a chair and forced her to sit down.
“It was your father, wasn’t it?” It was no longer a guess. Only her father could make her look like that. After a moment, Connie nodded. “What did he say? Because no matter what that man said, you know you’re doing a damn good job here and—”
Her quiet voice cut through his loud one. “He wants me to come home.”
Finn tried to make sense out of what she had just said. “When you finish?”
Connie slowly moved her head from side to side. “No, now.”
That didn’t make any sense. From what she’d told him, her father was obsessive about projects being completed on time, under budget and to reflect everyone’s best work to date.
“But the hotel’s not finished. You still—”
Connie turned to look at him, focusing on his face for the first time. She was struggling very hard not to cry.
“He’s sending someone else to finish overseeing the job. He says he has another project for me. Seems there’s a museum going up on the east coast he wants me to be involved in.”
“The east coast?” Finn echoed. That was half a continent away. She’d be half a continent away, he thought, something twisting in his gut.
“The east coast,” she repeated numbly.
“Are you going?” he asked, doing his best to suppress his anger at this unexpected, sudden blow.
Connie released a huge sigh that felt to her as if it went on forever. “He’s my boss. I have to.”
Finn wanted to argue that, but he knew he had no right. All he could do was ask questions. “Did he say why he wanted you off this project?”
Connie shook her head. “He’s the boss. He doesn’t have to explain anything. He never has before.”
Finn told himself that his feelings about this unexpected turn of events, his feelings about her, didn’t matter. That he’d known all along that this day was coming. It had just arrived a little sooner than he’d anticipated.
The important thing here was Connie. This was what she’d wanted all along, to have her father recognize her ability to helm projects. The man clearly wouldn’t be sending her to begin another one if he didn’t feel that she was good when it came to setting things up and getting them rolling.
“How soon?” he asked her, the words tasting bitter in his mouth.
Her eyes shifted to his. “Soon” was all she said in reply. She couldn’t bring herself to say “immediately” just yet. She knew that she would break down if she did.
“Well,” Finn began, doing his best to sound philosophical and supportive instead of angry and exasperated, “this is what you’ve been hoping for all along, right?”
“Right,” she answered without even attempting to sound enthusiastic.
She slanted a glance at Finn. Why wasn’t he as upset about this as she was? Did he actually want her to go? Didn’t he care that she wasn’t staying?
Finn was doing his best to find his way through this emotional maze he suddenly found himself in. “In his own way, I guess your father’s telling you that he thinks you’re capable of representing him, of helming an important project. He’s not asking you to accompany him but to go to the location without him. This means that he’s admitting that you can fly solo,” he said with as much enthusiasm as he could summon—all for her sake. But then he looked at her closely. “You’re not smiling.”
“Sure I am,” she responded evasively. “On the inside.”
“Oh. Sorry, I left my x-ray-vision glasses in my other jeans,” he told her sarcastically. The next moment, he told himself that wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He ditched the attitude. “So how much time do you have?” he asked, acutely aware of the minutes that were slipping away, out of his grasp. Quite possibly his last minutes with her.
“He wants me to be in Houston in the morning. That means I have to leave by tonight at the latest.”
She was saying the words, but they still hadn’t sunk in yet. She was leaving. Leaving Forever. Leaving crews who weren’t just crews anymore; they had become her friends. Leaving a man who had her heart in his pocket.
“Tonight?” Finn questioned, his voice echoing in his own head. “He really does want you back immediately, doesn’t he?”
Don’t cry. Don’t cry, she kept telling herself over and over again. “Looks that way.”
“And he didn’t give you a reason for all this hurry?” Finn pressed. He really hated things that didn’t make any sense.
“I already told you,” she said, bone-weary, “he’s the boss. He doesn’t have to explain himself or give reasons. He just gives orders.”
Connie kept looking at him, silently begging Finn to tell her not to go. To come up with some lame excuse why she just couldn’t pick up and leave right now. Any excuse.
But there was only silence in the trailer.
“The men aren’t going to be happy,” Finn finally said, speaking up.
“They need the money,” she reminded him. That was what he’d told her at the outset of the job, that most of the people being hired were taking this on as an extra job. “They’ll adjust.”
Finn snorted. “Not readily.”
“But eventually,” Connie countered sadly.
She knew she was right. Within a few months, nobody would even remember that she had been here, Connie thought sadly. She felt as if someone had dropped an anvil on her chest. The upshot was that she was having trouble catching her breath as well as organizing her thoughts into a coherent whole.
Most of all, she was trying to deal with the realization that Finn seemed to be all right with the thought of her leaving. He hadn’t said a word of protest, just asked her a few questions about the situation, that’s all.
Well, what did you expect? That he’d fall down on one knee and beg you to stay? That he’d ask you to marry him because he just couldn’t live a day without you? Get real, Con. This was a nice little interlude as far as he’s concerned, but now it’s over and it’s time for him to move on. You move on, too. Move on, or become a laughingstock.
Connie raised her head and glanced in his direction. “If you don’t mind, I’ve got a lot of things to do before I can leave, and I can do it faster if I’m by myself.”
“Sure,” he told her. “I’ll get out of your hair” were his parting words as he left.
Connie nodded
numbly in response.
But how do I get you out of my soul? she asked him silently, staring at the closed door.
With no need for restraint any longer, she allowed her tears to fall.
* * *
“HEY, WHAT THE hell happened to you?” Brett asked when Finn walked into the saloon a few minutes later.
Murphy’s didn’t officially open for another few hours although the doors weren’t locked and even if they were, all three of the brothers had keys to the establishment since it belonged to all of them.
“You look like you just lost your best friend,” Brett said, concerned when Finn didn’t answer him.
Finn shrugged his shoulders, leaving his brother’s question unanswered. Instead, he went behind the bar, took out a shot glass and then grabbed the first bottle of hard liquor within reach.
When he went to pour, Brett pushed the shot glass away. The alcohol wound up spilling onto the bar.
“I can always pour another shot,” Finn said.
“And it’ll land on the bar, same as the first shot,” Brett informed him, “so unless you plan to lick yourself into a drunken stupor, put down the bottle and tell me what’s going on with you.”
“Always the big brother,” Finn said sarcastically.
“Yeah, I am, so deal with it. Now what the hell’s going on with you? You’re not going anywhere until you tell me,” Brett declared with finality.
Finn’s throat felt incredibly dry as he said, “She’s leaving.”
“When the hotel is finished,” Brett said, reviewing the facts as he knew them.
Finn’s expression darkened further. “No, now. Today,” he snapped. The hotel had a ways to go before it was completed. He still felt that Connie’s abruptly leaving for a new project didn’t make any sense. Though, he could admit he was more invested than he’d thought.
“Why? Did you two have a fight?”
“No, we didn’t ‘have a fight,’” Finn retorted angrily. “Her father decided he wanted her working on something else.”
“What does Connie say about it?” Brett asked him quietly.
Finn blew out a shaky breath, angrier than he could ever remember being. “She isn’t saying anything about it. She’s going.”
Brett continued to study his brother as he responded. “Did you ask her not to?”
“No,” Finn bit off. It wasn’t up to him to ask. It was up to her to want to stay, he thought, totally frustrated.
Brett gave up standing quietly on the sidelines. “Why the hell not?”
“What am I supposed to say?” Finn demanded.
“How about ‘Connie, don’t go. I love you.’ From where I stand, that sounds pretty simple to me,” Brett told him.
Didn’t Brett understand what was at stake here? “I’d be asking her to give up everything, that big house, the future she’s been working toward all these years. Give it all up and stay here in Forever with me.” The inequality of that was staggering, Finn thought.
Brett nodded his head. “Sounds about right.”
“Damn it, Brett. I haven’t got anything to offer her,” Finn cried angrily.
Brett looked at him for a long, long moment. And then he shook his head sadly. “If you think that, then you’re dumber than I thought you were.”
Finn gritted his teeth and ground out, “You’re not helping.”
“You’re not listening,” Brett countered. “Connie grew up in pretty much the lap of luxury from what she said—and she didn’t seem able to crack a smile when she first got here. After working in Forever—and associating with your sorry ass—she’s a completely different person. She looks happy. That’s what you can do for her. You can make her happy,” Brett emphasized. “That’s not as common a gift as you might think.”
Finn waved a hand at his brother. Brett was giving him platitudes. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Ask her to stay,” Brett urged. “Honestly, what have you got to lose?”
“Face,” Finn retorted. “If she turns me down, I can lose face.”
Brett raised and lowered his shoulders in a careless, dismissive shrug. “It’s not such a great face. No big loss. Might even be an improvement,” he told Finn, keeping a straight face. And then he turned serious. “And if you don’t ask her to stay, you’ll never know if she would have.”
Finn shook his head, rejecting the suggestion. “If she wanted to stay, she would.”
Brett threaded his arm around his brother’s shoulders. “Women operate under a whole different set of guidelines than we do, Finn. You should know that by now.” Brett suddenly pushed his brother toward the front door. “Now stop being such a stubborn jerk and go tell her you want her to stay. That you need her to stay.”
“It’s not going to work,” Finn insisted.
Brett pretended to consider that outcome. “Then you’ll have the satisfaction of proving me wrong for the first time in your life.”
Finn opened his mouth to argue that rather unenlightened assessment, then decided he didn’t want to stay here, going round and round about a subject he felt neither one of them could successfully resolve.
Instead, he shoved the bottle he’d pulled from the shelf earlier back on the bar and stormed out of the saloon.
“Make me proud!” Brett called after him.
* * *
HE DIDN’T KNOCK this time. Instead, Finn burst into the trailer, swinging the door open so hard that it hit the opposite side, making a resounding noise.
In the middle of packing, Connie jumped and swung around. “Finn, you scared the hell out of me,” she cried, her hand covering her heart, which was pounding hard for more than one reason. Hope began to infuse itself through her—hope that maybe, just maybe “happily ever after” wasn’t completely off the table. A hint of a smile broke through even as she held her breath.
And prayed that he would say something she needed to hear.
“Well, then we’re even,” he replied. “Because the thought of you leaving Forever is scaring the hell out of me.”
She let the shirt she’d been folding drop from her hand as she regarded him. Just what was he up to? “You certainly didn’t act like it did.” It was an accusation more than an observation.
“No, I didn’t,” he agreed. The temper he’d been grappling with since he’d left her trailer was only beginning to come under control. “And you used the right word—act. I was acting like it didn’t bother me because I knew that was what you’d wanted since you got here, to show your father that you could handle a project on your own, to show him that you were damn good for the company and deserved to be treated with respect instead of being treated like a lackey.
“And I knew that once you were finished building the hotel, you’d leave. I figured I was okay with that. But just now I had to act as if I was—because I wasn’t. I wasn’t okay with that. I wasn’t okay with you leaving.”
“You weren’t?”
“No, I wasn’t. And I’m not,” he told her, changing his tenses to make her understand that his feelings were still ongoing. “Look, I know I don’t have the right to ask you to stay, and I don’t have anything that’s close to measuring up to what you have waiting for you back in Houston. I don’t even—”
Connie cut him off. “Ask me to stay,” she said softly.
Finn was desperately searching for the right words to convince her to stay. When she interrupted, his train of thought came to a screeching halt. He couldn’t have heard her right.
“What?”
“Ask me to stay,” Connie repeated. “Say the word.”
He stared at her in disbelief for a long moment, stunned into silence.
“Stay,” he whispered quietly, certain that she was seeing how far she could get him to go. He honestly didn’t know his
limits right now.
And then he thought he was dreaming when he saw the smile that blossomed on her lips. It almost blinded him with its brilliance.
Connie stood on her tiptoes as she reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Okay,” she replied, the word all but ringing with immeasurable joy.
“You’re serious?” he asked.
Her eyes never left his. “I am if you are,” she answered.
He hadn’t known that a person could be this excited and happy while struggling with shock, all at the very same time.
“I love you,” he told her. “You know that, right?”
He could have sworn that her eyes were laughing. “I do now.”
“Don’t you have anything you want to say to me?” he prodded. He’d laid himself on the line here, opened up his heart to her—and she hadn’t told him how she felt about him. He held his breath, hoping that it wasn’t all going to blow up on him.
“Kiss me, stupid,” Connie responded, doing her best not to laugh.
He tried again. “Don’t you have anything to say to me besides that?”
The smile slid over her lips by degrees, widening a little more every second. “Oh, yeah, right.” And then she said in the most serious voice she could summon, “I love you, too.”
“Now I’m going to kiss you stupid,” he vowed. “As well as senseless.”
She was ready and willing to have him try. All in all, it sounded like a lovely way to go.
“You have your work cut out for you,” Connie warned him.
Finn’s arms tightened around her a little more, bringing their bodies even closer together. “I sure hope so,” he told her.
And he was prepared to love every second of it.
Epilogue
“And you’re sure you’re up to this?” Brett asked Liam for what seemed like the umpteenth time since yesterday morning when the wedding was given the green light by all concerned.
Standing beside him, Finn and Liam exchanged looks. In their joint recollection, they couldn’t remember ever seeing their older brother look anywhere so nervous and unsettled. But then, Brett had never been in this sort of a situation before, either.