Chapter 26
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
EMMA
“Hey stranger!” Rita calls out as I carry a tray of coffee into her shop on Monday morning. I try to stifle a yawn – which is all Brooks Salinger’s fault because apparently the man can do phone sex almost as well as he can do it in person.
I fell asleep at four. And when I woke up our call was still connected. The man must have noticed the change in my sleep cadence because he murmured my name softly.
“Are you spying on me?” I asked him groggily.
“Yep.”
With anybody else that would be creepy. With him it’s strangely sweet.
But now it’s almost ten o’clock and I’m super late thanks to the stupidly late night. I’ve added a Danish to Granddad’s order to make up for it.
I pass Rita a cup of green chai tea which she holds in one hand while she hugs me with the other. “How was the wedding?” she asks.
“The wedding was…” I can’t help it, I grin.
“Oh my God, you need to tell me everything.” She flips the sign on the door around to closed.
“You can’t just close up like that. What if you get a customer?” I ask her. “And I have to give granddad his coffee before it gets cold.”
“We can do this in three minutes,” she tells me. “You just have to talk fast. You had sex with him, didn’t you?”
I start to laugh. “Um, yeah.”
“I knew it.” She goes to clap her hands together, and then frowns because she’s still holding her cup. So instead she does a little Rita-esque wiggle. “What was it like? Was he good?” Then her eyes drop to my hand. “Oh. My. God.”
Okay so I could have taken it off. Maybe I should have. But Brooks seems weirdly attached to me wearing it. I had to send him a picture of it on my finger last night.
“What does this mean?” she asks, lifting my hand up. “Is it a wedding ring?”
“It’s a borrowed ring. From a cowboy’s mom. A long story that won’t fit into three minutes,” I tell her. “It was a bit of a mess. Still is. I should have taken it off but Brooks wants me to keep it on until…”
“Until?” Rita prompts, her eyes wide.
“I don’t know. He’s asked me to give him a month to prove he’s worthy.”
“Oh!” Her mouth falls open. “So you two are a thing?”
I can’t stop smiling. “We are.” I bite my lip. “I know it’s way too soon but it feels right. He’s perfect.”
She lifts a brow.
“I know you’re sceptical,” I say. “But he has this whole other side to him.” I swallow hard. “I think I’m falling for him.”
Her eyes are as wide as saucers. “You’re right. Three minutes isn’t long enough. What are you doing after work?”
“Going out for a drink with you?”
“Cocktails. Small plates. Girls night,” she informs me. “Stop by here and I’ll choose you something to wear.”
“What’s wrong with this?” I ask, looking down at the outfit I pulled on this morning in a half-daze. A pair of baggy jeans and a white lacey tank.
“Everything. But don’t worry, your fairy godmother Rita will come to the rescue. And then you can tell me all about the size of Prince Charming’s?—”
“Gotta go,” I say quickly. “Talk later.”
She shakes her head but holds the door open for me anyway. I duck under her arm, the cardboard tray of coffees still in my hand. I put one on Mark’s desk in his entrance room – he’s nowhere to be seen so I assume he has a client. And then I use my elbow and ass in a combined move that a gymnast would be proud of to open the door to the bookshop.
“Granddad,” I call out. “I have your coffee.”
“Over here,” he calls out in a thin voice. When I look over I see he’s not alone. Next to him is a tall man, and though I can only see him from behind he’s tall with a broad back covered with a suit jacket.
“Oh sorry, I didn’t know you had a customer,” I say, offering the man a smile as he turns around.
He doesn’t smile back. He has gray hair and a thin nose and for some reason looking at him sends a shiver down my spine.
I put the tray of drinks down, because I feel weirdly off kilter. “Is everything okay?” I ask.
“Emma…” Granddad shakes his head. “This man says…”
“Miss Robbins. My name is Michael Smith. I work for Salinger Estates. For their legal team.”
“Hello.” I frown. “Is this about Brooks?” I’m a little weirded out if it is. He didn’t say anything about anybody from the legal team coming here. “If this is about the ring…”
“The ring?” he repeats. “What ring?”
Okay, so it’s not about the engagement.
“It doesn’t matter. What can we help you with?” I ask. Granddad is standing there, not saying a word. He’s as pale as a statue, and I don’t like it one bit. I need to get this guy out of here so I can send Granddad home for some rest.
I never should have left him for so long. Yes, it was just a few days, but he’s too old to be working here alone.
The suited stranger sighs, and then turns to fully face me. That’s when I see he’s holding some kind of leather folio. “I need one of you to sign this,” he says.
“Why? What does it say?” I walk over to where the two of them are standing. “Granddad, are you okay?”
“Miss, I need it signed so I can go see the other tenants.” He holds out a pen and a piece of paper.
“What am I signing?” I ask him.
“For the letter I just delivered to him.” He nods at Granddad.
“What letter?” I look around, and then I see it on the desk. The envelope it came in -- one of those big buff ones that always look official – has been torn open and the letter has been taken out. I recognize the letterhead. It’s the same one I saw the last time we got a letter from Salinger Estates.
The one I replied rather rudely to.
“Is this from Brooks?” I ask, picking it up. For a second – just a millisecond – I expect to see some kind of joke from him. I start to scan the words, frowning as I take it in.
At the beginning there’s some kind of legal preamble, but the intent of the letter is clear. It’s giving us a calendar month’s notice to vacate the property, or Salinger Estates will commence legal action against us.
My heart starts to hammer against my chest.
“You can’t do this,” I tell the man. “We have a contract. You can’t throw us out. I agreed to look at the alternative place. I didn’t commit to leaving.”
“What alternative place?” Granddad asks. “I thought you said we were all fine.”
My gut twists. I lied to him, but I really thought I had it covered. “Granddad…”
Before I can say anything else, Michael Smith butts in. “I have no idea what alternative place you’re talking about. There is no alternative. We found a contract that was signed in 1992 giving us every right to evict you with a month’s notice. There’s a copy inside the envelope. I suggest you take it to your lawyer. In the meantime, you should start looking for a new place to do business.”
I pull the second piece of paper out of the envelope, my chest tight as I skim read it. I start to feel sick, because as much as I hate it, the man’s right, it’s a contract. Dated September 1992. With Granddad and Grandma’s signatures at the bottom.
“It supercedes all other contracts,” Mr. Smith tells us. “And we are now giving you one month’s notice in accordance with the terms. Please sign here to acknowledge you’ve received it.” He holds his pen out, along with a copy of the letter, a little dotted line at the bottom for a signature.
“I’m not signing anything,” I tell him, trying to keep my voice from breaking.
He shrugs and scribbles something on the paper.
“Wait, what are you writing?” I ask him.
“I’m saying the tenant refuses to sign but the notice has been served.”
“But you can’t do this,” I say to him. Granddad still hasn’t uttered a word. “Wait, does Mr. Salinger know you’re here?”
I take out my phone and pull Brooks’s name up, hitting the call button. Because this has to be some kind of mistake.
It goes straight to voicemail so I hit it again. Dammit, answer the phone.
Instead I just get the recording of his voice. “Brooks Salinger. Leave a message.”
“Of course Mr. Salinger knows,” Mr. Smith tells me. “He’s the one who told us to come here today.”
My hands start to shake. “He sent you here?” I whisper. My throat feels so tight it’s getting hard to breathe. Why would he do that? Why wouldn’t he have let me know.
We spoke last night. We did more than speak. He had every chance to warn me.
“When did he tell you to come here?” I ask.
Mr. Smith frowns. “On Saturday.”
I really can’t breathe. Brooks knew about this all weekend? He let me sleep with him knowing that we’d be faced with eviction on Monday morning?
Was he trying to distract me? Keep me from stopping this? Was it all a ruse? All those phone calls he kept taking, was this what he was doing?
Mr. Smith folds up the paper I refused to sign and slips it into his folio. “Thank you for your time. Please ask your lawyer to get in touch with us.”
With that, he turns and walks out and I try to call Brooks again. And when it goes to voicemail for the third time, I open my mouth to ask him to call me back as soon as possible, but no words come out.
Because just before the beep sounds, Granddad crumples to the floor.
brOOKS
“You need to calm down, man. You look like you’re about to have a panic attack,” Linc murmurs, patting my hand. Abigail reaches out from the papoose, giggling as she runs her hand over my face. At any other time I’d capture her fingers and pretend to eat them, but I’m too busy trying to call Emma to do anything else.
“She’s not answering,” I mutter. “What do I do?”
“Leave her a message?” Eli says helpfully.
I love every single one of my brothers more than I can ever put into words. But right now I want to hit every one of them. “If we’d had this conversation in New York I could be on my way to Hollow Oak by now,” I mutter.
“Maybe it’s for the best that you’re not,” Myles tells me. Like always, when he speaks everybody goes quiet. Growing up he was more of a father to us than our dad was. When Dad was constantly traveling, making the next deal, Myles was reaming us for our bad school reports and sitting patiently with us while he tried to show where we were going wrong with algebra.
“Why would it be for the best?” I say. “Christ, I need to talk to Emma.”
“Because you’re not thinking straight. And you just called dad an asswipe,” Liam tells me. “You can’t call dad that.”
“He’s messed everything up.”
Liam sighs. “I know that. Or at least, I know you think that. But he didn’t know that you’d changed your mind. What would you have done in his position?”
“Waited for me to get back in the office,” I say, fury rushing through me. “I can’t talk to any of you right now. I need to talk to Emma.”
Holden, always the calmest of us, holds out his phone to me.
“What?” I ask him.
“I’ve managed to track down one of the other tenants. Mark, is it?”
“He’s on the line?” I frown, looking at the phone my middle brother is holding.
“Yes. Want to talk to him, or would you rather throw another ashtray against the wall?”
“Dad shouldn’t be smoking anyway,” I fume. “But fine. Give me that phone.”
“Hello?” A tremulous voice echoes down the line.
“Mark? It’s Brooks Salinger. Your landlord.”
“I know who you are.”
Well that saves some time. “I’m trying to find Emma Robbins. Do you know if she’s in the shop?”
“No, she isn’t,” he says shortly. “But while I have you, I have a bone to pick with you.”
I grit my teeth. “I don’t have time for this, Mark.”
“And I don’t have time to find another office within a month. What were you thinking? I have clients. They need me…”
“Mark,” I say, trying to push the annoyance down. “Is Emma’s granddad in the shop?”
“No, he’s not there either.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. “Do you happen to know where they are?”
“At the hospital, of course.”
His words blindside me. I look up and catch Linc’s eyes and he frowns. I try to breathe but I can’t get any air in.
“Why are they at the hospital? What happened?” I ask, my voice thick. Linc’s eyes go wide as he hears my words. All of my brothers crowd around me. “Is Emma okay? Is she hurt?” Linc whispers.
“She and her granddad just went off in an ambulance. That’s all I know. I have clients, I’m busy. And now I have to find somewhere to move to?—”
I pinch my nose. “Which hospital did they go to?”
“I don’t know,” he says, sounding almost whiny. “But the nearest one is Mercy.”
“Mercy,” I say to Linc.
“I’m on it,” he says, typing something into the screen on his own phone. From the corner of my eyes I see all my brothers doing the same. If I had a fucking beating heart right now, it would be full.
Because they’re trying to help me find Emma. Myles is barking directions down the phone to his assistant, while Holden calls the girls and fills them in. The others are busy doing whatever they can to help.
I think I’m about to scream. What if she’s hurt?
“If Emma or her granddad call you, you call me right back, okay?” I tell Mark. “I need to know what’s happening.”
“I don’t have your number.”
“It’ll be in your call history. For god’s sake just call me, okay?”
“You don’t need to be rude.”
I wince, because he’s right. But I’m on the edge right now.
I hang up and look at my brothers.
“The helicopter will be landing in the meadow in thirty minutes,” Myles informs me. Liam puts his hand on my back, his face full of compassion. “Let’s head out there now.”
“I just called Tessa,” Linc says. “She’s gonna come take the baby. So we can all go with you.”
And this is why I love every damn one of them. They’re pains in my ass but they’re the biggest support I’ve ever had. It’s getting harder and harder to remember why I’ve been pulling away from them for so long.
“I love you,” I tell Linc. Then I look at them one by one. “I love all of you. But I need to do this alone.”
Because there’s no way the first time they meet Emma is going to be like this.
Linc pouts. “Are you sure?” he asks. “Because I could do with a kid free night right now.”
“I’m certain,” I growl. “I gotta go. I have a helicopter to catch.”