by Devney Perry
“I have—”
“Don’t you dare say Randall and Jimmy.”
Damn it. That meant I couldn’t list Rayna either. “Okay, fine. I’ll try to make some new friends.”
“Thank you.”
“When I invite my new girlfriends into the restaurant, you can’t get all jealous. This was your idea.”
She crossed her heart. “Promise.”
“Okay. Let’s talk about something else. Want to gossip about Finn?”
“Always.”
I grinned. She was his sister, but like she’d said, she was mine too. And Poppy loved to gossip about her brother.
“He broke up with Brenna.” If she’d known, she would have told me already. I wasn’t sure why he hadn’t told his family yet—it was bound to come out sometime—so I was simply fast-forwarding that announcement.
“What?” she gasped. “When?”
“Last weekend, I guess. After he mowed the lawn last night, the kids and I invited him in for pizza. I asked him if he had plans with Brenna and he said they broke up.”
“Wow.” Poppy sat back in her chair, shocked. Then she grinned. “Finally. I’ve been looking for an excuse to take down that photo in the office.”
“What?” Now it was my time to be shocked. “I thought you liked Brenna.”
“She’s a nice woman and I got along with her okay. For Finn’s sake, I tried. That’s why I put up that picture, even though I knew you hated it in there.”
“You did?”
“Like I said, I notice things. I should have taken it down but . . .” she trailed off.
“You were supporting your brother.”
She nodded. “I mean it. I like Brenna. She’s just not right for Finn.”
Because she isn’t me.
I pitied the women Finn introduced to Poppy. They had a brick wall to crash through if they wanted in her good graces. Because no matter what, they’d be compared to the ex-sister-in-law who was also the best-friend-sister. Even Brenna, someone who’d gone over to Poppy and Cole’s many times in the year she’d dated Finn, hadn’t come close to cracking that wall.
“Finn already beat you to it. The picture’s in the office trash can.”
“Uh-oh.” She sighed. “Is he okay?”
“I think so. He told me they didn’t have anything in common.”
“She seemed nervous around the kids. And she hated hiking.”
I winced. “That would do it.”
Of course Finn wouldn’t stay with a woman who wasn’t good with Kali and Max. But on top of that, Finn loved hiking. Before the kids were born, our Sundays were spent exploring new mountain trails. After we had Kali, the hikes were shorter and smoother, but we still went with a baby strapped onto his back.
“I’m glad he started hiking again,” I told Poppy.
“Me too.” She gave me a sad smile.
Finn had stopped hiking after Jamie had been killed. Instead, he’d spent his free time at Poppy’s house, coaxing her out of bed or into the shower. Even after she’d worked her way out of her depression, he hadn’t hiked much. He’d worked.
It wasn’t until we’d been divorced for a year that he got into it again. On the mornings when he didn’t have the kids, he went hiking for an hour. The man would climb to the top of a ridge, then jog down. In the winter, he went snowshoeing instead because he loved to get outdoors.
“Do you think Finn’s happy?” Poppy asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I hope so.”
“I want you both to be happy. I don’t—” She shook her head. “Never mind.”
“What?”
Her blue eyes glistened with tears as she looked at me. “Sometimes I feel like if I had handled Jamie’s death better, if I hadn’t been such a wreck, you and Finn wouldn’t have gotten divorced.”
“Poppy,” I whispered. “No.”
She blinked a few times, clearing the tears. “May always makes me think.”
May. There were too many anniversaries in May. It was the month she and Jamie had married. It was the month he’d been murdered, right before their one-year wedding anniversary. She’d spent five Mays wondering why he’d been taken. Wondering why his cold-blooded killer had gone free.
It wasn’t until Cole came along and solved Jamie’s murder that she was able to put those questions to rest.
Poppy hadn’t been depressed, she’d been destroyed. Her heart had been shattered, and she’d become a shell of a person, walking around like a corpse.
For months, Finn had gone to her house first thing in the morning. He made sure she was okay for work. He made sure she was alive. All those mornings, I kept my phone close, because I never knew what he’d find when he got there.
She’d been on the verge of dying from a broken heart.
“Please don’t think that, Poppy. What happened with Finn and me doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“I want to believe that. I really do. But the thing is, he held me together. You both did. Completely. If it wasn’t for you two, I don’t know if I would have survived.”
“You would have been fine.” Tears welled in my eyes. “I can’t bear to think of this world without you.”
“Those first few months are a blur.” She folded her hands in her lap, looking down. “But I know how bad it was. I know the stress it put on Finn to watch out for me. And you.”
“But that was years before we started having trouble.”
She shrugged.
“Poppy, look at me,” I ordered, waiting for her blue eyes to find mine. “You are not the reason we divorced. We fell apart because we forgot to watch out for one another. Not because we were watching out for you.”
“Promise?”
I stole her gesture and crossed my heart. “On my life.”
A tear dripped down her cheek and she brushed it away, then forced a smile. “Sorry. That got really heavy. But I’ve been thinking about it because—”
“It’s May.”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “Cole knows it’s been on my mind. He told me to ask you because you’d be honest. I love my brother, but I don’t think he’d tell me the truth. He still thinks he has to protect my feelings.”
Finn had always looked out for his younger sister, even before Jamie had died. But she was right. If Finn thought Jamie’s death had impacted our marriage in any way, he’d never tell Poppy. “He loves you.”
“I love him too.” She stood up and took her salad jar to the industrial dishwasher, spraying it out and putting it in the rack.
I followed, doing the same with mine while she plucked her special apron off its hook and tied it around her waist.
“I’m going to work the counter for a while,” I said, “roll some silverware for the dinner rush. Do you need anything?”
“No. I’m going to make a batch of banana bread. We went through a lot of those this morning.”
Banana bread in a jar, sprinkled with chocolate chips. Behind her daily quiche, it was our number-one breakfast seller. It never ceased to amaze me the things Poppy came up with to make in a jar.
“Okay. Holler if you need me.”
“Molly?” She stopped me before I pushed through the swinging door. “Love you.”
I smiled. “Love you too.”
I didn’t care what she said. I didn’t need new friends.
Not when I had her.
“What’s Dad’s truck doing here?” Max asked as we pulled into the cul-de-sac.
“Uh, I’m not sure.”
I’d left the restaurant at four thirty to pick up the kids from their after-school program. Then we’d stopped by the grocery store to pick up a few items to make BLTs for dinner—it was Kali’s choice tonight.
In all the hours since he’d left the restaurant this morning, I hadn’t heard from him. So why was he back at my house?
I parked the Jeep in the garage, and the kids barreled out before I even shut it off. I hurried to catch up and was just stepping into the front
yard when Finn rounded the far side of the house pushing a wheelbarrow and wearing different clothes than he’d had on at the restaurant this morning.
The front of his white T-shirt was streaked with dirt and his biceps strained against the hem of the short sleeves. His skin glistened with a light sheen of sweat.
He was wearing an old baseball cap, one I recognized from a decade ago. Its bright blue brim was frayed because whenever Finn took it off, he rolled it up and shoved it into the back pocket of work pants like the ones he was wearing now. They were tan except for the permanent smudges of dirt and grass on the knees and thighs.
I’d probably washed those pants a hundred times, but they seemed to fit Finn better with each wash. The curve of his perfect butt had imprinted on those pants. The canvas had been molded around his thick thighs.
A flush crept up my cheeks as I remembered all the times I’d stripped those pants from his body before joining him in the shower. A dull throb settled between my legs. I fought the urge to fan my face, taking a few deep breaths and chastising my traitorous body for such a reaction.
I mentally chastised Finn too. The sexy jerk. I’d gotten along quite well these last six years satisfying myself. At least I’d thought so. But then he’d reminded my body how it felt to have a decent orgasm.
How long was it going to take me to forget about that too?
“Dad.” Kali reached him first.
“Hey, beautiful.” He grinned, setting the wheelbarrow down to push up the black sunglasses from his face. Then he shucked off his leather gloves and bent to kiss her cheek before giving Max a high five.
“What are you doing?” Max asked, inspecting the empty wheelbarrow. “Can I help?”
Finn chuckled. “Sure. But you have to change out of your school clothes.”
Without another word, both kids sprinted for the house. Max tore off his T-shirt as he ran.
“Hi.” I waved and crossed the yard. “Did I miss a mention of you coming over again?”
“No. We said Monday. But then I got stuck on an idea.” He spun his baseball hat backward, probably because he knew it would make me go weak in the knees and instantly forgive him for the massive hole in the front of my yard.
My brain caught up to my eyes. There is a massive hole in the front of my yard.
I’d been so distracted by Finn, I hadn’t noticed the ruin that had once been the landscaped border that separated my yard from Gavin’s.
I took a step closer to the wreckage. The hole was in the same place where a large bunch of Indian grass had been when I’d driven away this morning. Not only was the ornamental grass gone, but a long section of the curbing had been ripped out too. The landscaping bark that I’d spent hours replenishing this spring had been carted away.
“What. Is. Happening?”
Finn planted his hands on his hips. “This lawn is a fucking pain in the ass to mow.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I’m fixing it.”
“Say that again?”
He picked up the wheelbarrow’s handles and wheeled it over to where he was working. “I know I should have asked you first. I’m sorry. I came over to look around a bit, one thing led to another, and I got carried away.”
“You think?”
“Here’s what I’m planning. I’m going to rip all of this out, grade it flat and seed it with grass. Then you won’t have to use the edger over here at all.” He turned and pointed to the opposite corner of the yard next to the driveway. “I’m going to leave that bed as it is, but I’m going to redo the edging into a wider curve so the mower can hit all of the grass. Same with the beds along the porch. What do you think?”
“What do I think? I, uh . . . okay?” It came out as a question. On the one hand, I hated mowing this yard. The prospect of not having to use my edger gave me nearly as much joy as one of the orgasms I’d had last night. But on the other hand, this was my yard. “You should have asked.”
“You’re right. I should have. If you want it all put back to how it was, I’ll do it right now.”
Did I really want that Indian grass? Not even a little bit. “No, it’s fine.”
“We can walk through the plans for the backyard too, but I wanted to start with the front. I can guarantee it’ll get done in short order. The back might have to wait a bit. All my crews are slotted into my schedule for the summer and it’s slammed.”
“It’s fine. If the front is easier to mow, that’s good enough. Keep your crews where they’re scheduled.”
He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. I can’t send a crew out, but I’ll make time to do it myself. I’ll probably have the front done in a couple weeks. I need to draw up a couple of ideas for the back, and I can get you a timeline on that.”
Timeline. That word was always paired with another: budget.
“I can’t afford a huge landscaping bill right now.”
He frowned. “I’m not charging you. This yard is a pain in the ass because I was too busy experimenting to make it functional.”
My jaw dropped. Who was this man and where had the real Finn Alcott gone? “Are you being serious? You’re really fixing my yard?”
“I’d like the chance to try.”
Before I could agree, the front door to the house burst open and the kids came rushing down the porch steps.
Max was wearing the garden gloves Finn had bought him last summer. He clapped his hands together twice as he smiled. “Okay. Where do I start?”
Finn chuckled. “How about we start by taking a walk through the backyard? I’d like to ask your mom how she wants it to look.”
That statement sent my chin to the dirt. When Finn had done the landscaping here, he hadn’t asked me what I wanted. Not once. I recovered from the shock quickly, knowing exactly what I wanted for my yard. “I’d like a lilac bush.”
“What color?”
“Deep purple.” I’d always wanted one so I could cut blooms in the spring and put them in the house to enjoy their smell. But with the other bushes and shrubs, there wasn’t room. Lilacs expanded rapidly and there was enough trimming to do each year as it was.
“You got it.” Finn led the way to the backyard, the kids skipping along at his side.
I trailed behind them.
Finn was fixing my yard. Personally. What the hell is happening?
He wasn’t just tossing a side project to one of his foremen to manage. He wasn’t delegating this down the line to a crew of college kids who’d come over to my house and track dirt inside whenever they needed to use the bathroom.
He was putting in the effort to do this on his own.
The three of us walked around the perimeter of the backyard as Finn asked me questions about what I wanted to keep or ditch.
“What about the fountain?”
“I don’t want it,” I admitted. “It takes forever to clean and is always full of leaves.”
He nodded. “Then it’s gone.”
If not for my heart swelling to three times its normal size, I wouldn’t have believed this was real.
“We’re having BLTs for dinner tonight,” Kali said when we’d made the full loop of the yard. “Want to eat with us?”
He looked to me for permission. His blue eyes were bright in the sun. He smelled like the spring air and fresh grass. His square jaw was dusted in light scruff from the day. He looked so handsome, a small smile pulling at one side of his mouth, that I forgot all about my plans to ignore last night and keep my distance from Finn.
“Stay. Please.”
His eyes flared at my words. I’d said the same thing last night when he’d had me pressed against the hallway wall outside my bedroom. His lips had been trailing down my neck. His hands had been cupping my breasts.
Dinner wouldn’t just be dinner.
- LETTER -
Darling Molly,
I’m proposing to you tomorrow.
I’m so damn nervous I can’t sleep. I’m not good at telling you how I feel.
I get the words jumbled and nothing comes out right. I’m terrified I’m going to mess it all up and you’ll say no. Maybe I’ll keep this letter as my backup. If I start to say something stupid, I’ll just hand this over. Not that you can even read it. My hands are shaking so bad I can barely write.
I love you, Molly.
I love that you, above all else, are honest. I love that you have an old soul and still bug me to write you letters. I love that you said no when I asked you to move in with me because you wanted to save that experience for married life.
I love that we have the same birthday. There isn’t a person in the world that I’d want to share my cake with besides you. And tomorrow, when we blow out the candles, I’m wishing for you.
Please say yes.
Yours,
Finn
Chapter Five
Finn
“Finn, are you here?” Bridget called from her office.
“No.”
She laughed as the wheels of her desk chair rolled over the wood floors. Gliding backward, she appeared in my doorway. “You snuck in while I was on the phone.”
“There was no sneaking about it. You were shouting so loud you didn’t hear me.”
Bridget’s lip curled up. “I was talking to that asshole, chauvinistic salesman from the nursery.”
“You mean you were yelling at that asshole, chauvinistic salesman from the nursery. What did Chad do this time?”
“He screwed up my order. Again. He sent Colorado blue instead of Norway spruce and he knows how much I hate the blue with those sharp-ass needles. He didn’t include our bulk discount, he sent two extra chokecherry bushes, and to correct his own mistakes, he said it will be another two weeks. My crew is ready to plant tomorrow on the Nelson project.”
“Shit.” I rubbed my forehead. “I’ll call the owner.”
“This is the third time. Chad always gets your orders right. Always. He’s batting zero on mine, and we both know it’s because I’m a woman.”