Chapter 14 #2
“There is nothing to discuss.” Frankie’s voice gets louder as they approach.
“Well,” Skinner says, “there is this beautiful old barn.”
Thank Christ Oliver called and I’m not still in there running the sander and don’t hear them coming.
I dart around the back of the shed so they don’t see me when they pass.
“Why would you care about the barn?” she asks. “Even if we did sell to you, which we will most definitely not, you’d demolish it for your ugly townhouses anyway.”
“I just want to be sure you understand something about it,” he says.
There’s the sound of a few sharp kicks against wood.
“See?” he says. “Rotten.”
“It’s fine,” Frankie says. “And it’s also none of your business.”
“But it’s rotten at the bottom. Look.” I imagine he’s now poking at it and peeling bits off.
“What is this? Are you now performing some kind of public service rot inspections?” Frankie’s tone is sharp and rich with dislike.
I can’t help but give a little fist pump at the fact that she might hate him as much as I do.
“I’m just saying,” Skinner’s oily voice says, “that it’s not safe.”
Oh fuck me sideways and hit me with a baseball bat. Is this what he’s doing?
My heart thumps faster, pumping furious hot blood through my veins.
What an absolute shit fucker.
“Like I said”—Frankie pauses to take a long inhale, clearly trying her best to hang on to her temper—“it’s fine. And none of your business. And you are trespassing.”
That’s my girl.
My girl?
I shake my head to bring it back to the point.
“But it’s a hazard, Miss Channing. Can’t possibly be to code. Would definitely fail an inspection.”
These are mobster tactics. Nice barn you got here, little lady. Be a terrible shame if something happened to it.
“Are you threatening me with an inspection?” I can picture her blue eyes wide, horrified, but also furious and defiant.
“I’m just saying,” Skinner says again, “that it’s a danger to both people and animals. And if this barn is in this state, I imagine the stables are too. No animal welfare official would want donkeys kept in a structure that could collapse on them at any moment.”
He has never given even one iota of a shit about any living creature other than himself.
“Look, just—” There’s a tremor in her voice that makes me want to run out from behind this shed and flatten Skinner once and for all.
“You’re supposed to be saving the animals here, Miss Channing,” he slimes. “Not endangering them.”
“We do not endan—” Frankie’s shouting now, but she stops herself, seeing that she almost took his bait.
To have the presence of mind to spot that he’s trying to goad her and to pull back takes willpower of steel—I know because I’ve been exactly where she is with this guy—and I am so fucking proud of her.
Not that she is mine to be proud of. Or ever would be.
I shake my head again.
“If you are not off my property in the next ten seconds, I’m calling the cops,” she manages.
“Just something to think about.” Skinner’s voice moves across the gap between the barn and the shed.
“It would be unfortunate if you missed out on the chance to sell to me but were then forced to close down anyway due to unsafe structures. Or spend goodness knows how many hundreds of thousands rebuilding them.”
“We’re selling to no one,” she calls after him. “Not you or the other people.”
Skinner’s footsteps stop, and there’s silence for a moment.
“Other people?” he asks. “You’ve had another offer?”
Not going to lie, it’s just the tiniest bit satisfying that he didn’t have a clue about our offer—my office is watertight.
“Yes.” She sounds calmer now, more in charge. “And it’s better than yours.”
Oh, fuck. No, Frankie, no. My head drops into my hands. Don’t tell him that.
“Who from?” Skinner’s tone is short and clipped.
“None of your business. None of it is any of your business. See this phone?” There’s a moment of silence where she presumably holds it up. “Thirty seconds, or I call the cops.”
“I’ll find out who it is,” he says. His voice fades out as he passes the front of the shed and gets louder when he reemerges on the other side. “You mark my words. You will regret not selling to me.”
My hands are shaking now. How dare Skinner fucking threaten Frankie like that.
If I hated him before, I now detest, despise and loathe him to the very marrow of his repulsive bones.
And I’m absolutely fucking certain he wouldn’t be taking this approach if Frankie were a six-foot-seven, three-hundred-and-fifty-pound guy.
He’s such a fucking coward.
I close my eyes and flatten my back against the shed, taking long, slow breaths to try to calm my anger and slow my enraged heart until the sound of his tires crunching on the driveway fades away.
First priority, check if Frankie is okay.
When I walk around to the front of the shed, I can’t see her. Perhaps she’s already gone back to the house. Then my attention is caught by movement inside the barn. She’s coming down the stairs.
My heart skips at the thought her first instinct after being treated like that was to come look for me. It’s me she wants to tell. It’s me she wants to lean on. And that makes me feel like the king of the fucking castle.
It takes a few seconds for me to register that it would also make her more likely to trust my advice on which offer to take—and that that’s the thing I should have thought of first.
The lead weight of guilt I carry around in my stomach is suddenly twice as heavy.
As I approach the barn entrance, Frankie sinks onto the bottom stair and slumps forward, burying her face in her hands.
I pause for a second to take her in.
This successful, driven woman who has a great job in Chicago is sitting on the bottom step of a staircase inside a beautiful, but probably not entirely safe barn, just feet from where her grandfather cradled her dying grandmother.
How torn she must be—between the city with the job she’s worked her whole life for and this place with all the memories surrounding her. This place that she has just two months to save for her grandfather and, likely, herself.
It’s a dichotomy I sure as hell wouldn’t want to have to cope with.
And as she lifts her head at the sound of my slowly approaching footsteps, the weight of it is written all over her perfect face.
Her eyes are almost gray, her brow heavy, and it looks like it’s taking every ounce of energy she has to lift one corner of her mouth into that now-familiar half-smile.
Meanwhile, all my willpower is being channeled into forcing myself to take deep breaths and keep my pace snaillike so I don’t just lunge at her, take her in my arms, bury my face in that glossy, herb-scented hair and tell her that if Skinner ever shows up here or talks to her like that again I’ll mulch him into Waldo’s next dinner.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, getting closer. “Has something happened?”
I join her on the stairs. They’re so narrow I have to squish right next to her to stop my butt cheek from falling off the side.
Her thigh is crushed against mine, creating a stirring low in my abdomen as I twist to face her and rest my arm on the step two stairs above us.
“One of the developers was just here.” She drags an arm across her eyes from elbow to wrist. “He was even worse than Grandpa said he was.”
Skinner did this. He made her feel like this.
My rage at that vile man throbs in my head.
I thought I already had enough reasons for hating him.
He ruined my young adulthood—I had to work every possible hour of the day to keep a roof over my family’s head because of his actions.
And after failing to ruin my development career, he’s never ceased to snipe at me at every opportunity, whether it’s in city council meetings, at real estate awards dinners or, hell, even once when I was stuck in traffic next to him.
And now I have another reason to hate him. He’s upset Frankie.
But if I bought this place, wouldn’t I be doing that too?
Fuck. This was supposed to be so fucking simple—just come here, buy the land and leave. But I’ve made it all so fucking complicated and confusing.
“Christ, I’m sorry I wasn’t around.” I let out a frustrated sigh. “What did he say?”
She sniffs. “Basically told me if we don’t sell to him, he’ll have us closed down because this barn is unsafe. And he assumed the stables are too.”
I know for sure the stables are. I’ve done enough site visits with structural engineers to see at first glance that they’re not one hundred percent sound.
“Vindictive asshole.” I definitely don’t have to pretend anything when I say that.
“But I bet you sent him packing with his tail between his legs.” I grip the edge of the stair to keep from reaching for Frankie’s ponytail and brushing it back over her shoulder so the brown hair falls down her spine.
She rests her elbows on her knees and stares down at the step between her feet. “I did my best. But it’s all talk. All bravado. All bluff. I have no idea if I can do this.”
She tips her head to look up at me. Those shadowy eyes are rimmed with red now. “My friend, who’s an accountant, says we should sell. You, with all your investment knowledge, hinted the same thing.”
This is my opportunity. My big chance to tell her yes, the very best decision she could make is to take the bigger offer from my company.
This is what I came for. This is the whole reason I’m here.
But it also reminds me of Oliver’s words about selling Schumann, maybe sometimes you have to go with your gut, not the spreadsheet.
Are the Boston Commoners my donkey sanctuary?
I can’t stand not touching Frankie any longer. Some part of me has to be in contact with some part of her.
So I reach for the fallen chunk of hair again and unstick it from her damp cheek.
“Hey.” I tuck the hair safely behind her ear. “I know we don’t know each other that well, but you seem like one tough cookie to me. Whatever happens, I’m sure you’ll figure it out so everything’s the best for your grandpa.”
That’s it. That’s all I say.
I just uttered sentences that are more likely to come from the world’s favorite Mr. Nice Guy, Chase Cooper, than Boston’s Condo King, Miller Malone.
Miller Malone would slide in there with a smooth, “And maybe the best thing is selling. Let’s go inside and have a drink. We can look over those offers together and see if I have any suggestions.”
But I didn’t.
Who the fuck am I?
“That’s the only important thing,” Frankie says. “Grandpa. Well, him and the donkeys. And that my grandma would be proud.”
She shifts on the step to turn toward me as much as the cramped space allows.
“I’m just worried I might not be up to it.
” There’s a tremor in her voice, like she’s reverted to the child who used to spend her summer breaks here, who’s being asked to play the role of grown-up and take care of everything.
She sniffs. “And I’m kidding myself if I think being here won’t affect my chance of getting the promotion in Chicago. And the other guy will probably get it. And he’s a total jerk. And then I’ll have failed at both things, and—”
“Whoa.” Half my ass falls off the side of the stairs as I turn to try to stop the flow of her tears.
She grabs my arms to keep me on the step.
I grab her back.
We’re holding on tightly to each other’s upper arms, staring into each other’s eyes.
Hers glisten with moisture caused by a potent mixture of anger, hurt, and overwhelm.
Mine are on fire with desire—desire for the last woman on the planet I should want, the woman standing between me and my life’s mission of seeking revenge on Skinner.
But this is the third time this has happened. The third time we’ve locked onto each other like this.
There were sparks when I bumped into her in the kitchen that first day.
There were sparks and a groundswell of longing inside me last night before we were interrupted by the window-opening donkey.
And now…now it’s sparks and longing, topped with a desire to cheer her up, a need to protect her from the Skinners of the world, a rocket fired to my groin, and the desperate, yearning need to taste her mouth.
Once could be an accident, twice a coincidence, but three times? That’s…something…
I don’t know who leans in first.
All I know is, my lips are on hers.
And it’s stupid, and a mess, and I have no idea how I’ll ever explain myself to her.
But my gut tells me I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.