Chapter 18 #2
“Now you have to come in. It’s too cold to sit out here. I’ll call Deke and ask him to bring jumper cables and take a look at it,” Luke said kindly.
“You mean the real Deke?”
“Huh?”
“How much is an Uber to the nearest airport?” she asked as they laughed.
She was utterly, completely serious.
“If it comes to that,” Luke said as she gave up and opened the door, grabbing her bag, “I’ll personally drive you there. And it’s Portland or Manchester. Right now, Rachel, come inside. Have a drink. Eat. Talk.”
Resigned to her fate, she got out of the car. Halfway to the main door, she stopped and asked, “Kell’s not in there, is he?”
“No,” they said together.
“I really don’t want to see him. Not after what just happened.”
“How about you tell us what happened and we’ll interpret our brother for you?” Colleen suggested with a little smile.
“Interpret?”
“Kell is like a foreign language. If you’re fluent, you know the quirks. If you’re new to it, you feel like an idiot speaking. If you’re somewhere in between, there’ll be a lot of misunderstanding,” she elaborated, making Rachel let out a dark laugh.
“I think I’ll have that drink after all. Fifty-fifty chance I can’t drive that stupid car tonight, anyway.”
“Tell you what, Rachel,” Luke said. “I’ll make sure you don’t have to drive tonight. Someone will drive you to the trailer, even if I need to get a fellow officer.”
A guy in a suit, his shirt collar open, was waving at them.
“Anyone but Rusty,” Colleen murmured as they sat down.
“Hey, Rachel! I’m Moore.” The guy stood and held out his hand, their shake simple and perfunctory over a cluttered table.
“Nice to meet you. Bad circumstances, but that’s not your fault.”
“Whose fault is it?” he asked with an open expression that made her want to spill her guts.
“Mine. Kell’s,” she began.
“No one’s,” Luke cut in. For brothers, they didn’t look much alike, Kell’s coloring and shape different. Where they were similar was in their demeanor, matter-of-fact and practical. Salt-of-the-earth men. Stable, kind, giving, and…
She began crying again.
“Hey, no! You haven’t even had a drink yet. You’ll dehydrate yourself at this rate.” She wasn’t sure if Moore was joking or not.
“I’m a mess.”
He pushed a basket of tortilla chips and salsa at her. “Talk.” Then he handed her a glass of water.
She took a mouthful, the icy liquid clearing her mind a bit.
“Not much to talk about. Kell thinks I lied to him again.”
“Why?” Moore asked.
“Because of you,” she said softly to Luke, whose stunned expression made her heart sink.
“Me?”
“Remember that day I ran into you at the old camp?”
“You were scouting it, weren’t you? For Markstone’s?” Luke asked, a low, disapproving sound in the back of his throat following his words.
“Um, I can’t technically answer that.”
Anger made Colleen’s nostrils flare. “You knew how important it was to Luke and our family, and you still–”
Rachel interrupted her. “And I decided on the spot to, well...”
“Tank the deal,” Moore said in a tone that was half admiration, half disgust. She could tell he was a businessman and yet he was a townie, too.
A blank look covered Colleen’s face, her mouth still open, but her words stopped.
Rachel looked at Moore. “I can neither confirm nor deny that. My employer–soon to be ex-employer–could sue me easily for it.”
“Ex-employer?” Moore prodded.
“I’m about to be fired. That I can talk about freely. This is my third small-town candy company deal I couldn’t close, and my boss’s boss is trying to become an executive VP. I’m making his department look bad, so there has to be a scapegoat.”
“Why did the other ones fail?”
“Basically, because I liked the owners and knew my company wasn’t giving them what they deserved. My heart wasn’t in it.”
“You almost closed the Love You Chocolate deal.”
“Almost gets you nothing.”
“Intentions aren’t nothing,” Luke said in a slow, meaningful tone.
“There’s no line for them on a balance sheet.”
“Human beings aren’t balance sheets,” he replied.
“Tell that to my boss and her boss.”
“Why don’t you quit first?” Moore asked, as if reading her mind, their shared smile making Rachel really, really wish she could move here and have friends.
Real friends. The kind who had conversations like this, even if Colleen glared at her a lot.
“I was about to when Luke and Colleen tapped on my car window.”
Her phone buzzed.
It was Dani: I’m so sorry, Rachel. If you need anything, use my personal phone. Not sure how much longer your work phone will still be in operation. Doug is on a rampage because the family with a lot of land up where you are told him there was no way they’d sell. He thinks you blew the deal.
Rachel read the text aloud to the group. Moore and Luke let out low, sad whistles. Colleen wrinkled her nose.
“That’s got to hurt,” she said, her voice holding more sympathy than Rachel had a right to expect.
“Not as much as it should.” Cradling her chin in her hands, she sighed, then stood. “I am going to have that drink after all.” She pulled out her wallet, reached for the corporate card, then slid out her personal credit card instead.
Crowds weren’t her thing, but there was no choice on the evening of February 12 in this town. She felt like a piece of Play-Doh being squeezed, but finally made it.
At the bar, she waved to Rider, who walked over, drying off a glass.
“Yeah?”
“I’d like a white cosmo with Meyer lemon and Reyka vodka.”
His eyes narrowed. “We’ve got well vodka and red cranberry juice. What the hell is a Meyer lemon?”
“Okay then, bourbon, neat. Paddy’s. Make it a double.”
“Pfft,” he said, followed by a low whistle. “You think we carry Paddy’s?”
“What’s the best you have?”
“Makers.”
“I’ll have that.”
He nodded with approval. “That’s a power drink.”
“It’s what my father drinks.”
“You got daddy issues?”
For the first time all day, Rachel barked out a laugh.
“Just give me the damn drink, Rider.”
A tight quarter-grin twisted his lips. “No problem, Rachel.”
Instead of taking it with her, she threw it back in one big swallow, enjoying the burn. Tangy and hinting at something not quite sweet, it was a sensation that she could fixate on instead of her heartache.
When she made it back to the table, Moore looked up at her and said, “You know, the director of business development job is open here in town.” He ignored a glare from Colleen.
“I know. Tom asked me to apply.”
Colleen nearly knocked over her beer. “He did?”
“Yes.”
Moore peered at her intently. “Would you ever consider staying?”
“You mean moving here? Of course not. Why would I move to Maine?”
“For love.”
They all turned to see Deanna and Dean, both holding beers, Deanna grinning wickedly.
“Love?” Rachel repeated stupidly.
“It’s a feeling. Remember? Maybe what you’re looking for is a feeling, not a goal?” Deanna said it softly, with such kind eyes, Rachel almost started crying again. The fire in her belly seemed to almost restart her tears.
Forget the almost. No more almost. Rachel was crying.
“I’m sorry about Kell’s temper. He gets an idea in his head and can’t listen to reason when he’s in that state,” Deanna said.
“I know all about it. This wasn’t the first time I’ve seen it,” Rachel said forlornly.
Every Luview studied her keenly.
“That’s right,” Dean muttered. “D.C. We only heard Kell’s side of the story.”
“I don’t really have a side,” she said. “He just wouldn’t let me explain what happened.”
“What did happen?” Luke asked.
“His ex-girlfriend really did use him to get access to your uncle.”
“We know that. Ted told me,” Dean said.
“And she sent me an email that said she was getting a job at MonDex. I jokingly asked if she’d help me get one.
I was being sarcastic and kind of trying to score points with her.
Be edgy. Funny. Never did I ever imagine she was actually planning to work for them, and using Kell to get access to a government official.
When Alissa showed him the email, Kell assumed we were both using him.
It did look that way if you didn’t know I was joking. ”
“And it hurt him more that you’d do that than Alissa,” Deanna declared.
“What?”
“Honey, he got over Alissa quickly. Wrote her off and never talked about her. But you? He mourned you.”
“Then why does he think I’m like her?”
“Because he knows, deep down, that when he walked away from D.C., he walked away from you. If he’d stayed, it would have been so messy and tense.
He was twenty-three and as green as he feared.
Walking away meant leaving all the potential between the two of you behind, too.
He had to justify that by thinking you’d hurt him. ”
“But I didn’t!”
“I know that. You know that. But you were both so young. I saw you take him on today in that conference room–hoo, girl! You told my son off!”
Colleen and Luke looked at Deanna like she had a second head.
“And he deserved every word of it. Now let me ask–did you do that in D.C.?”
“Tell him off?”
“That, or tell him how you felt?”
“I–uh, I tried.”
“Try isn’t the same as do.”
“Mom sounds like Yoda,” Colleen said to Luke, who clamped his palm over her mouth.
“Deanna, he was so upset,” Rachel protested.
“You could have pushed.”
“No–I couldn’t. He was just–it was–I didn’t know what to do.”
“Because you were young and it was new and you didn’t know how to act.”
Deanna’s words hit her.
“Just like Kell,” she whispered.
“Just like Kell.” Deanna left Dean’s side and gave Rachel a huge hug.
“You two don’t just need to talk. You need to forgive yourselves and each other.
You are so obviously right for each other, but you’ll never know because you’re so hard on yourselves.
Loosen up. Forgive. Move on–and move forward. ”
“Excuse me!” said a man’s deep voice, muffled by the crowd noise, people being jostled. “COMING THROUGH!”
Rachel pulled away from Deanna. She knew that voice. Great.
What else was he going to yell at her about?