by Taylor Hart
"Ah."
"I met her son."
The side of her lip tugged up. "Sam's a cute kid."
Ryan fell into an “at ease” position. "He sold me some raffle tickets."
Star lifted both eyebrows. "Yes, Sam is good at selling stuff."
Ryan snorted. "He is his father's son, for sure."
Star cocked her head to the side. “Think so?"
Ryan couldn't do this, so he said the one thing he knew would end the conversation. "I'm here for my company, Star."
She looked at him, expectantly. "Right. A big commercial real estate company has some big business in Hidden Falls."
He opened the back door, but continued to face her. "I'm buying the Talon Ranch."
Her mouth dropped. It dropped the way it did in movies. It was the kind of drop that signaled Star Haven had not been expecting that. "But—"
"I have to run." He took off into the cool night, doing the only thing he knew would make him feel better—getting away.
Chapter 7
Charlotte scanned the carnival. It never disappointed. Since it was always held in the city park right off Main Street, across from her store, it had plenty of room for the dunking booths, fishing booths, throw the rings, and throw the balls. There was even a guess your weight booth. The gym teacher, Mr. Moore, did it, and he got a little too much pleasure from guessing just a little high. The crying housewives seemed to bring a bit of joy to his life.
Charlotte pulled down the sheet Angela had installed so she could have some privacy while reading people’s fortunes.
“Hey!” Angela tugged back the sheet, wrapping it against her like she was naked in the shower. She turned to poor Henry, town drunk, who probably wanted to know details about his mom’s death last year. “Sorry.”
“I need to talk to you.” Charlotte frowned at Henry. “Sorry, I’ll give Ang back in just a minute.”
Angela stormed out after Charlotte. “What’s your deal?”
Charlotte tried to compose herself and think of how to explain everything. Since running into Ryan last night, she’d been on edge, fussy and not at all her new “I’m strong, I’m a business owner, and I can kick your butt” self.
Angela didn’t wait for an explanation. She picked up Charlotte’s hand and stretched it, palm up over her own. “Ah.”
Charlotte tugged her hand back. “Stop it!”
Her eyes flicked to Charlotte’s. “He’s here, isn’t he?”
This was crazy. Her pounding heart was going to completely pop out of her chest. “What do you see in my palm?”
Charlotte hadn’t even known Angela when he’d left, and she’d never told Angela her history with Ryan Hardman. So how, exactly, had she known? “Who told you he was back?”
Angela pulled back and a yippy laugh came out.
Charlotte got closer to her and put her hand over Angela’s mouth. They couldn’t start with this. Not right now. Not here in the middle of the whole dang town. “Stop it!”
Which, of course, didn’t make Angela stop at all. It made her worse. The five piercings up her ear shook with her vibrating laugh.
Charlotte let go and pushed away from her. “Never mind.”
“Charlotte,” Angela said and gulped some air. “Come back.”
Charlotte searched for Sam. He’d said he would hit up people to buy tickets on the way to her mother’s pie booth, and he would meet her over there in ten minutes. Technically, he was supposed to be staying the weekend with his father, but Nathan had asked if Sam could stay with Charlotte while he focused on his campaign. In Nathan speak that meant he had a date with another young, good-looking blonde, and he didn’t want Sam around. That was fine with her.
Charlotte shuffled through the hordes of town people, waved, said hello, and made sure not to walk on all the little kids that were running around in a sea of country music heaven. She looked for her son and her mother’s booth and tried not to think of Angela’s hysterical laugh.
Her rock and roll phone ring sounded into the air.
Charlotte pulled it out of her bra. Her son always asked why she kept her phone inside her bra, and she continually told him for its safety—no one would ever touch it there. He would always shake his head, laugh, and say, “I don’t get it, Mom.”
She spied Sam just as she answered. “Hello.”
“Hey.” Star’s voice sounded breathy.
“Are you here?”
“No, I’ve been prepping for my date. I’m picking up Angela in ten minutes. Did you see her?”
At the mention of Angela’s name, Charlotte frowned. “Yes, and she’s on one tonight. Good luck.”
“Oh yeah?” Star sounded intrigued.
Charlotte stopped before getting to the pie booth and scanned the area. An ache pressed into her gut. Nathan stood ten feet away from her by the candy apple booth.
“Charlotte, I have to tell you something.” Star’s voice on the phone vied for Charlotte’s attention.
Distracted, Charlotte tried not to watch little Miss young and dumb take a caramel bite and then let Nathan take a mouthful from the bite already inside her mouth. “Ah. That’s just disgusting.”
“Charlotte, focus.”
“Star, you just missed Nathan’s new little Miss Foo Foo getting French apple kissed in front of everyone.”
“What?”
“It was totally disgusting. I think I may have to have Angela give me one of her dream swipes or whatever she does.”
“Okay. Charlotte.”
“What?” She mimicked Star’s business tone.
“I have to tell you that someone from your past came to stay at the inn last night.”
The dull pain that had permanently settled into her since she’d seen Ryan yesterday flared like it’d been double kneed.
“Charlotte.”
“Ryan Hardman’s in town. I know.” She turned away from watching Nathan and made a beeline for her mother’s pie tent. She didn’t know how news got jumbled up so fast in this town, but she didn’t want to talk about it with Star. No. It had been okay to ask Angela because she didn’t know the past, but Star knew. She knew everything and Charlotte didn’t have the strength to hide her vulnerability from her.
“I know you know.”
“All you need to know—Wait, how do you know I know?"
"He said he saw you at the store."
"You talked about me?"
"Not exactly."
Charlotte wasn't going to do this. "Look, I’ve got it handled, okay. It’s not a big deal. It—we didn’t even talk. Sam sold him raffle tickets. It wasn’t a big deal, and if Angela ever makes some psycho prediction like that again, she is going down. Got it?”
“Charlotte, I think you should talk to him.”
“What? No.”The kind of no that has to wait for the very clichéd pigs to fly. Charlotte entered the pie tent and saw her mother scrambling to run the cash register as pie after pie was shoved to the front and taken by another customer.
Her mother saw her and, making no bones about her exasperation, waved her over.
“Look, I’ve got to go.”
“Charlotte.”
“What?”
“He’s here for the land.”
“What?” Charlotte paused next to the cashier.
“You better talk to your mom. She’s selling the ranch. Good luck. I’ll talk to you later.”
Star hung up.
Charlotte stared at the phone in her hand. This couldn’t be right. A million thoughts swirled through her mind. Her mother loved the ranch. It was their dream. It was the way they would give Charlotte some roots. A town. A place to call home. It had consumed her father. He ran the workers hard, but they worked hard because he worked just as hard as they did. The Talon Ranch had a name for high quality cattle and hay. It had even become famous for growing organic vegetables that were shipped and sold to the finest health food stores in South Carolina. This couldn’t be right.
A pie was shoved onto the table. Mrs. Pearl, who fit he
r name perfectly by wearing a pearl necklace and matching bracelet, smiled pleasantly. “I need this pie, Charlotte. Actually, why don’t you give me two, so I’ll have an extra one for Sunday dinner.”
On autopilot, Charlotte reached behind her, grabbed another pie, rang them both up, and processed a debit payment with her new phone app for credit card purchases. “Thank you, Mrs. Pearl.” She placed the boxes into a bag and handed them to her.
Mrs. Pearl nodded and walked out.
Charlotte’s mother hustled though the wide tent, a smile fixed in place. Her rose-colored summer dress and boots matched beautifully. She looked happy, light, like she had the energy of five women her age. She gently slid the pies in her arms onto the table and began arranging them. “Thanks for helping, sweetie. If I had known the rush would be like this, I would have hired those two Benson girls to help me make even more pies.” She turned and began fixing and arranging some of the pie samples and plastic bags for customers. “I just can’t believe they sell like this. What would you think if I took out an ad in Charleston, too? Maybe even had a shop there and sold pies on weekends. Hmm. . .”
“Mother,” Charlotte said softly.
Her mother couldn’t focus. “And if I did Mt. Pleasant, too. I mean, if I can push two hundred pies over the weekend here, think how many I could sell there. True, those places are a little bigger, but they’re still aware of Sara Talon pies. I mean, people from all over go to the fair, and I’ve won every time for the past few years, and now—”
The pit of Charlotte’s gut felt the same way it had when she’d heard six months ago that her father had had a heart attack. Empty. Nauseated. Woosy. “Mother.”
Her mother immediately stopped talking, and looked at Charlotte. “Baby, what’s wrong? Come sit over here for a minute.”
Charlotte moved to one of the folding chairs behind the counter.
Her mother finished a sale for two pies and then swung back to her. “What is it?”
Charlotte focused on her mother’s long, black hair. Her father had called her his raven-haired beauty. It was a striking contrast to her white skin tone. When Charlotte was little, sometimes she’d pretended that her mother was Snow White. But, of course, she would never eat the apple. This had been a long-held fear her mother had routinely dispelled by taking an oath promising she would never eat the apple.
“You’re selling daddy’s ranch?” Charlotte’s hesitant voice was the extreme inverse of what she really felt.
Her mother abruptly stiffened. She looked around to see who was in the tent and pulled one of the folding chairs closer to Charlotte. “Baby, we have to talk later.”
More customers shuffled into the tent in a herd of little old ladies.
Her mother moved toward them. “Hello, ladies.”
Charlotte moved with her mother. “Now.”
Her mother waved her away. “Later.”
Before Charlotte could continue the battle, Nathan stepped into the tent.
The one thing her ex could still do was shut her up.
She stopped moving.
Nathan was pissed. She could see it in the way his eyebrows stretched to crease the middle of his forehead. The middle that he, though he would never admit it, had already botoxed. Star always called him Ken Barbie because, Charlotte admitted, he did look a lot like Barbie’s Ken. He held his phone up in the air like it was proof of something. He frowned when he saw Charlotte and beelined it for her mother. He shook his phone. “What’s the meaning of all this, Sara?”
Her mother, who was in the middle of the old ladies, turned an exaggerated look of disgust at him. Then she put on her polite smile and winked at the ladies. “Just a minute, ladies. I have to contend with my rude ex-son-in-law.” She’d never kept quiet about her disgust for Nathan, much to his chagrin. Her mother flicked a wicked grin to Nathan and threw back to the ladies, “Make sure you don’t vote for Mayor Love this season, will you?”
Nervous laughter echoed behind her.
Nathan glowered, and Charlotte instinctively shot between him and her mother. She threw her face into his. “What’s your problem?”
Nathan lifted an eyebrow and shifted his stance back. Charlotte had never been aggressive when they’d been married, and he often told her he didn’t like the new her. “Lippy, aren’t we?”
The top of his lip sneered.
Her mother stepped shoulder to shoulder with her. “I raised her to be lippy.”
Nathan looked between them then held his phone up accusingly. He pointed it at Charlotte. “So I suppose you know your mother’s selling?”
All the breath went out of Charlotte. How did he know?
“I just got a call from the title company’s office informing me that an outside developer has requested a copy of the deed on the Talon property.”
Even though Charlotte wanted nothing more than to put her mother on the spot and demand answers, the fact that Nathan stood in front of them demanding his own answers, hit a nerve.
Charlotte pointed her finger back at him. “Get out.”
The righteous indignation on his face cracked. “Charlotte.” The volume of his voice dropped. It dropped to that level he’d used their entire marriage when he wanted to talk sense into her. That offensive and patronizing tone that told her he thought she needed his guidance and coddling. She wanted to shove that tone somewhere that would be more than a little painful.
Charlotte squared her shoulders. “I mean it.”
He shifted his gaze to her mother. “You can’t do this to this town. Selling that property would change everything.”
Her mother let out a light hum. It was the note she used when she did yoga in the morning as she hit the different beats of each stretch. The note said she was done with this exercise. She turned back to the old ladies. “Did you decide on a pie?”
The look on Nathan’s face, the look that said he wanted to crush something extraordinarily sweet, almost satisfied Charlotte’s need, want, and desire to punish him.
“Did you know about this?” he demanded.
Charlotte lifted a shoulder. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing she hadn’t known. Of course, the code of family unity demanded her silence.
He squinted and then squeezed his phone into his fist. “I’m taking Sam tonight.”
Charlotte didn’t react. He wanted her to react and she wouldn’t.
“And he can’t come to the Halloween party tomorrow.”
The part of her gut that had always hurt when she’d been married to him knotted. “You can’t do that.”
“It’s my weekend.”
“You said you were going out of town.”
He mimicked her shoulder lift. “I changed my mind.”
She couldn’t stop herself. “What about the new . . .” She almost said ‘little Miss’ but stopped herself. “Won’t your girlfriend be upset?”
He took a step closer to Charlotte, and his eyes flicked to her mother. “This is a bad, bad idea. Talk to her.”
Charlotte recognized what he was doing—managing the situation. That’s what made him a good politician, his ability to manipulate people and situations.
Charlotte did the thing she hated doing with him. The only thing she’d been able to do in their seven years of marriage—not react.
Nathan’s forehead tried to wrinkle. “You’re going to get screwed in this deal. Earl told me that they are undervaluing that property by quite a bit. Talk to her.”
The smell of his cologne, mixed with his breath, assaulted her, nauseated her, made her want to vomit. Charlotte wanted to slap him, but if there was one thing that she’d practiced in all her years of marriage, besides not reacting, it had been the art of giving him a small amount to get what she wanted the most.
“I’ll talk to her if you let Sam stay the weekend with me.”
Nathan smiled. He’d been anticipating this, of course. “I’ll let him go to the Halloween party only if you come in and talk to me about the details of this tomo
rrow.”
Every nerve in her body screamed no. “Where?”
“Come to the house.”
“I’ll come to your office. Eight sharp.” She wouldn’t let him have that much control. Not anymore.
The side of his lip lifted. “Fine.”
“Fine.” She pointed to the tent door. “Now please leave.”
Nathan set his stance and folded his arms. “Not until I’m good and ready.”
Charlotte wanted to filet him with the serving knife that sat on the table. “Nathan.”
He smirked. “Maybe I want a pie.”
Her mother stepped next to Charlotte. “Get out or I’ll call the cops.”
Nathan put on the face that said he would torment Charlotte because he could. “Go ahead.”
“I believe the lady asked you to leave.” Ryan Hardman stepped around the flap of the tent.
Chapter 8
Ryan wore a white button-down shirt with black jeans and the same black dress shoes from yesterday. City slicker. That’s what he would have called himself seven years ago. His voice was controlled. “I wouldn’t make the lady ask you twice.”
Sam burst into the tent behind Ryan and pulled up short when he saw his father. “Dad!”
Nathan’s face turned into his politician’s mask. He opened his arms. “Hey, son.”
Sam rushed into him. “Dad! I’m going to win the raffle. I am.”
“Oh yeah?” He was only half interested and smirked up at Ryan.
“I sold the most tickets! I did it. He bought one hundred tickets.” Sam pointed up at Ryan.
The smirk changed to a frown. “Who?”
“Me.” Ryan steadily answered.
“You?” Nathan’s borderline crazed look focused on Ryan.
Sam pointed to Ryan. “He bought one hundred tickets.”
Her mother rushed to Ryan and pulled him into a hug. “Ryan, you came.”
Charlotte watched Ryan let himself be hugged. He held her mother for a second and then relaxed back. “Good to see you.”
Sam tugged at his grandma’s sleeve. “You should invite him to the Halloween party tomorrow night.”
Her mother smiled and touched Ryan lightly on the arm. “Of course he’s invited.”