Chapter Fifteen
“Heard from Miles?”
Riley blinked. She’d been watching the crews put up the Christmas lights along Main Street, wondering how on earth they’d gotten to December already. But now she stared across the small Java Time table at Nic.
“What?” she asked.
“Just wondering. Jackson hasn’t heard from him since he was here for Jeremy’s birthday, and it’s been two weeks.”
“Why would I have heard from him?” Riley asked, puzzled.
“I thought you two kind of hit it off,” Nic said, pausing in sipping her latte to focus on Riley.
“He seems like a nice guy,” she said carefully.
Nic laughed. “I didn’t think you’d slotted him into the ‘nice guy’ category. Smart, honest, successful, loyal, and oh yeah, downright sexy, now that’s where I figured you’d put him.”
Riley grimaced. Because Nic was right on every one of those. Especially that last one. But that was territory she could not walk.
“You forgot the one that says I’m too old for him,” she said dryly.
Nic grinned and tilted her cup as if in salute. “See, I knew you’d been thinking about it. Why else would you be worried about that?”
“You,” Riley said with a sour expression, “are a troublemaker, Nicole Baylor. Just like you were when you were five and I used to babysit you.”
Nic just kept smiling. “Jackson invited him back this week. He thinks Miles needs a longer break from the crazy. And since Tucker’s living at Emily’s place now, my old place is empty, and he can stay as long as he likes.
Jeremy’s going to work on him staying through Christmas. He’s Miles’s soft spot.”
“Jeremy Thorpe is a lot of people’s soft spot,” she said. She knew it was a dodge, but it was also completely true.
“Including you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good, because he quite likes you, too.”
“He’s a sweetheart.”
“So,” Nic said pointedly, “is Miles.”
Riley tried for distraction. “Well, compared to Swiffer…”
Nic laughed. “Yes, compared to him a grizzly would be a sweetheart. But it only makes Miles more of one.” She took another sip of her latte. “You know, Miles wanted to buy Swiffer out, after the first season, because he was such a pain in the backside.”
“He did?”
“Yes. He didn’t have quite the financials he does now, so he couldn’t, but he wanted to. Then when he could have, Swiffer refused because Stonewall was a huge hit.”
Riley remembered that day at Jeremy’s birthday party, and the interaction between Miles and the apparently detested partner. “How on earth does a guy like that get people to work with him?”
Nic rolled her eyes. “It’s Hollywood. The bottom line is the be all and end all, and he’s good at picking projects that will make him richer.”
“You’ve learned a lot about that world,” Riley said.
“Not,” Nic said wryly, “because I wanted to.”
“But because you love Jackson.”
“Yes,” Nic said simply.
She could not be anything less than deliriously pleased for her friend. She would not. “And in three weeks, it’ll be for life,” she said.
Nic giggled, in a way Riley hadn’t heard from her since those babysitting days.
A sound of utter, total happiness. She reached out across the table and grasped Nic’s hand, the left hand that held the decidedly restrained engagement ring.
She knew Jackson had wanted something bigger, more impressive, but had admitted that would not be the best choice given Nic spent her days wrangling horses and tack.
“He loves you so much, Nic. You’re going to have a great life together.”
“Yes, we are.” Nic sighed. “My only problem is wanting all my friends to be as happy as I am.”
Riley laughed, purposely making it light, cheerful. “You’re a great horse trainer, Nic, and you’re going to be a great wife and mom. But you’re not a miracle worker.”
Nic tapped her finger lightly on the table. If her friend had one nervous habit—good horse trainers didn’t lean toward nerves—that tap was it. And Riley guessed she was trying to decide whether to say something.
“Out with it,” Riley said resignedly.
When Nic did finally speak, her voice was soft and held a note of sadness that startled Riley. “So you’re going to let him win?”
She blinked. “What? Who?”
“Derek. You’re going to stay alone because he was a blind jerk?”
Oh. Riley winced but kept it inward. “You were only a kid when that happened.”
“I was eighteen. And I was at the chapel for the wedding that got called off,” Nic reminded her.
Riley didn’t say the first thing that came to mind, which was that to her, eighteen was a kid. You’re definitely getting old, Garrett.
But thirty-four wasn’t a kid. Too young for her, but not a kid.
Not that it mattered—this particular thirty-four-year-old was not for her. Talk about being tethered to a big city…he was tethered to one of the biggest of all, and one of the top two she would never, ever want to live in. And in a business she didn’t even want to understand.
Although it—and he—certainly produced things that reached her, touched her. Some of her favorite shows, with stories she loved to follow. But how much of that was him, and how much the storytellers he hired?
Although that had to count too, didn’t it, that he knew which ones to pick to tell the story the way he wanted?
Abruptly she realized that Nic simply talking about her rather sad romantic history had immediately catapulted her into thinking about Miles Flint. That she’d subconsciously connected the two was a warning she would do well to listen to. And listen she would.
“He’s a good man,” Nic said softly. “Jackson says he’s considered a bit of a rebel in the business, because he wants the people who work on his projects happy as much as he wants a successful show.
When he says his door is open to anybody on the roster, he means it. Down to the lowliest errand runner.”
Riley didn’t bother to deny that she was thinking about the man. Nic would know better anyway. Even as that little kid she used to babysit, Nic had been very perceptive, especially about people’s moods.
“That’s…hard to believe, in that world.”
“I thought so, too. But Jackson told me about this young guy they hired as just that, an errand boy, but about three months in he started calling in sick. The brass wanted to just can him, but Miles…he wanted to know why. Turned out the kid’s mother was really sick, maybe dying, and they didn’t have insurance and couldn’t afford the help she needed, so he was trying to do both his job and see to her. Want to know what Miles did?”
Riley had the feeling this was only going to make things worse, but she did want to know. “What?”
“He not only got them some in-home daily help, he got her referred to a specialist. Thanks to that she recovered. That kid is now one of Miles’s top assistants, and in charge of the crews on all his shows, with instructions to see to them the way Miles had seen to him.”
Ridiculously, Riley felt her eyes start to sting. She lowered her gaze to the mug in her hands, only realizing then that she was holding it a lot tighter than she needed to. She consciously relaxed her tense fingers.
“Why did you tell me that?” she asked, her voice sounding a little rough even to her.
“So you would know what kind of man he truly is.”
“Why?”
“You know why, Riley.”
She looked up then, into the eyes of the woman that child she had taken care of had become. Wise eyes, eyes that had gentled a great deal since the love of her life had arrived.
“Give him a chance,” Nic urged.
“What makes you think he wants one? With me, I mean.”
“Because he’s asked both Jackson and me a lot of questions about you since Jeremy’s birthday.”
Riley blinked. “He has?”
Nic brushed back a strand of blonde hair that had escaped her usual braid. “He has,” she confirmed. “And Jackson said he’s usually about as wary as you are, if not more so. Because he has to be, given his position.”
“So, what, you two are conspiring now? Starting a matchmaking business? I mean first his sister and Logan, then Tucker and Emily…”
“Maybe we just want the people we care about to be as happy as we are.”
“And here we are, back at square one,” Riley said.
Nic laughed and held up her hands. “Yeah, yeah. Okay, hands off from here on. You know the important part, so now it’s up to you two.”
“That looked like a surrender,” came a voice from behind Riley.
She recognized the voice, so she was smiling when she looked up to see petite, golden-eyed Sydney Rafferty.
She was thankful for the interruption, and she’d come to know and like the woman who had been a large part of the success of a certain item that was carried on her website.
Riley also knew that Nic and Sydney had become friends since the successful entrepreneur had arrived in Last Stand and ended up married to Keller Rafferty.
Simultaneously they offered the free seat at the table to their friend, but Sydney reluctantly shook her head. “I have to get back to my office. This is my craziest season, and I have to keep on top of things.”
Riley could only imagine how busy The World In a Gift kept its creator. The online marketplace had a huge reach, and this time of year, as Christmas got close, it had to be like wrangling a cyclone.
“I just wanted to tell Riley that as usual, there’s a certain item that’s topping the lists.”
She was smiling widely, and Riley shook her head ruefully. She didn’t understand the ins and outs of that kind of business, but Sydney clearly did. And after their friend had departed, Nic gave her a teasing look.
“Good to know, huh?”
“I suppose,” Riley said.
“You should be proud.”
Riley laughed out loud at that. She was still chuckling when her phone chimed a notification. She grabbed it, saw a text from her father, and tapped the screen.
“Damn. Dad took a tumble with his crutches. I have to get home.”
Nic set her mug down sharply. “Is he hurt?”
“He says no.”
“So would my dad, even if he’d broken something,” Nic said. “He’s home, let me call him and have him head over. He’ll beat us there by at least fifteen minutes.”
“Thanks,” Riley said gratefully, meaning it.
And as she drove home as fast as she could manage, she thought once more about how much she loved this place, and its people, and the history that held them all together. How much they all cared about and took care of one another.
No, she thought as she made the turn onto the Hickory Creek Spur, headed for home, Last Stand was no Hollywood.