Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Denver opted to do the final assembly of the arbor on-site at the barn of the inn.
That way, he could do everything himself and not have to actually talk to anyone.
Talking was the last thing he felt like doing.
After six years in this town, keeping his head down and out of the local gossip, he’d managed to put himself right, square in the middle.
He’d resorted to glaring his employees into silence and otherwise avoided everyone else by sticking to his tiny office in the back, catching up on the books.
He thanked God for the fact that he owned a tavern, otherwise he’d have been forced to actually go to the local market and face the masses or starve.
In his current mood, starving was the more appealing option.
He backed his truck up to the barn doors and quietly dropped the tailgate.
There were multiple cars in the gravel lot, among them Kennedy’s.
But he knew her sisters had made it into town, so he was hoping she stayed tied up with them long enough for him to get in and out. His plan held for about half an hour.
“Oh my God, it’s gorgeous!”
On the ladder, Denver closed his eyes and repressed a curse. Five more minutes and he would’ve been gone. Instead of looking at Kennedy, he continued to tighten the nut that held on the elaborately carved front lintel. “Glad you like it.”
She circled around and looked at the thing from all sides, and all the ooing and ahing was gratifying to his ego.
He’d done a damned good job on this thing.
She stayed silent as he attached the cross pieces that lined the top.
When he was finished, he climbed down and they both stood taking in the finished product.
“I can’t thank you enough. I had no idea you were this talented.”
Denver shrugged. “You’re welcome. The whole thing has been weather sealed, so after the wedding, if you want, you can use it somewhere in the yard—here or at your place.”
She clapped her hands and grinned. “That’s brilliant!”
He thought about saying something about how Misty had said they could plant some kind of flowering vines to train up it, but that would be opening the very subject he wanted to avoid, so he just nodded and began to gather up his tools.
“Now that’s out of the way,” she said, “what the hell’s the matter with you?”
His hand tightened on the socket wrench and he chilled his voice down to a glacial tone that had cowed lesser men. “Excuse me?”
Kennedy was no man. “What did you do to Misty?”
“I didn’t do anything.” Well, he’d run like a coward and avoided her for a week. That left a bad taste in his mouth, but he just couldn’t deal with what she’d told him. How could he look at her now and not think about the reason his father was dead?
“You hurt her.”
Damn it. Was this going to be some kind of girl code ass kicking?
Denver turned away, putting his tools back into the box.
He knew he’d hurt her, and it made him feel like an asshole.
But what could he say to her? Hey, now that I know this thing about you that you can’t actually change, you remind me of the worst time of my life, and I can’t look at you anymore?
No. She deserved better than that, and he hadn’t figured out what the hell that was.
Kennedy moved to the opposite side of the truck, right in his line of sight so he couldn’t fail to see the pinch of disapproval on her face. “I saw you two together. Things were good. Y’all were happy. So what changed?”
She wasn’t gonna let this go unless he gave her some kind of a reason. “I found out something about her past that I’m having trouble dealing with.”
“What? Did she kill somebody?” Sarcasm fairly dripped from her voice, but something must have shown on his face because Kennedy sobered. “Wait, did she?”
“No. No she tried to help.” She’d tried to help, but it hadn’t been enough.
Kennedy frowned, clearly trying to work through his logic without him spelling it out. “Did she do something in trying to help that directly caused someone to die?”
“No. It wasn’t directly in her hands. Not really.
” Misty had done her job. Gone above and beyond, actually, trying to find some way to get Judy what she’d needed.
She hadn’t set the rules she’d been bound by, and she’d broken them trying to do the right thing.
It was more than anyone had done for his father.
Would things have been different if they’d had someone like her on their side?
“Then it’s in the past. Speaking as someone who’s spent a lot of her life being driven by the past, it’s best to let it go. Unless whatever it is she did fundamentally alters who she is for you. Does it?”
Someone else would have stayed in the job.
Someone else wouldn’t have acted in the first place.
Someone else would simply have said, “Sorry, this is the policy,” and left it at that.
Denver had dealt with those someone elses.
Endlessly. But Misty had quit. And she’d changed her whole life to build something beautiful to honor a woman whose life had touched hers.
The whole thing had made her into the woman he so admired.
The woman he couldn’t stop thinking about.
Arms braced on the side of the truck, he dropped his head.
“I know I need to apologize.” And if he wasn’t such a chicken shit, he’d have done it already.
But finding the words to explain wasn’t exactly easy.
It would rip him open to tell her the whole thing, and he didn’t know how long it would take to scab over again.
Or if it would heal at all with a fresh reminder every time he saw Misty.
Kennedy nodded. “I have it on good authority she’s working late tonight prepping stuff for the wedding.”
“What the hell am I going to say?” Denver muttered.
“The truth,” she said simply. “Whatever it is, it’s better to get it out there. Trust me on this.” When he said nothing, she shot him a piteous look. “Don’t waste the chance Cayla and I bent over backward to create for you.”
Denver met her gaze. “We aren’t talking about that.”
“Are you going to go talk to her?”
“Yeah.” His conscience wasn’t going to give him a choice.
He didn’t know if he actually could go back to thinking of her as the clever, intriguing woman who made him feel connected again for the first time in years.
But he owed it to her to apologize for blowing her off without an explanation.
And he owed her the damned explanation, even if it meant baring things he’d kept buried for years.
“Then we won’t talk about how it took two nosy women to get you over your own inertia.” She slapped the truck. “Go on. Go fix this.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said and slipped into the driver’s seat.
The wire frames had been a pain in the ass to build, but Misty thought she’d finally managed what she wanted.
The pair of them ought to give the structure she needed to hold up the massive sprays she intended to mount to either side of the arbor.
She’d be doing most of the rest on-site the night before and the day of the wedding, but having this piece finished was a load off.
Her supplier had dropped off the flowers earlier in the day, and the entire massive lot of them were currently residing in the big walk-in cooler, waiting to be stripped and prepped.
She’d get started on that tonight before heading home.
Someone knocked on the front door of the shop. She’d been closed for more than an hour. Thinking it might be Cayla with some last-minute wedding emergency, Misty went to answer. But it wasn’t the slim blonde darkening her door. It was Denver.
Misty’s heart leapt at the sight of him, but she hesitated near the register. She didn’t know what to think or how to feel. Why was he here? Knowing he could see her in the dim light, she went ahead and opened the door.
“Can I come in?” His face was back to that stony expression that she knew now was the front he put on for everyone.
Misty stepped back to let him in, then locked the door behind him. “I’m working.” Without waiting for a reply, she went on to the back, knowing he’d follow.
“The arbor is finished and set up over at the inn.”
“Good. I need to get started tomorrow night.”
As he came around the counter, Moxie leapt up from her bed and all but vaulted into his arms. He chuckled softly, scooping her up and scratching her behind the ears while she bathed his face in kisses.
Impatient and ridiculously envious of her dog, Misty pulled the first batch of flowers from the cooler.
Better to keep her hands busy. She spread them out on one of the tables and began the process of stripping lower leaves, ignoring Denver as he loved on Moxie.
Was this it? Was he just here to talk about the wedding or was he working his way up to something resembling an explanation?
“My father was diagnosed when I was twenty.”
Whatever she’d expected him to say, it wasn’t that. Her hands stilled on the flowers, but she didn’t look at him.
“He was already stage three by the time they found it. Went in for something else, had some scans or whatever, and bam. Everything changed. We were suddenly charting food and meds and bathroom habits. He was still functional, could still do the job, but everything else revolved around keeping his kidneys functioning as long as possible. Then we ran into problems with his insurance. Probably the same kind of shit you dealt with. And while we were waiting for them to sort it out, he slid into stage four.”
Misty’s heart clenched. Because she knew this story. She’d dealt with this story so many times, with so many people. It was one of the core reasons why her job had been slowly sucking her soul away.
“That’s when I started taking over stuff.
He had a hard time concentrating. Wasn’t sleeping for shit and hurting more often than not.
And when the numbness hit his fingers, he couldn’t do the work a lot of the time.
He started losing out on jobs because he couldn’t get them done fast enough.
Some of them he just couldn’t do, and I wasn’t good enough yet.
He’d started dialysis, gotten on the transplant list. Things just kept getting worse.
And the insurance company didn’t give a good damn about it.
He wasn’t a person to them. Wasn’t a face.
He was just a name. A file. A string of eventually denied claims.” Denver’s voice was flat, but she could see the strain in his face as he spoke.
She wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around him, give him whatever comfort she could.
But she didn’t know if she’d be welcome, so she stayed quiet, listening, as he continued to stroke Moxie.
“I was twenty-five when they basically told us he’d maxed out his coverage.
I spent so many hours on the phone arguing, trying to get him taken care of.
He had a fucking chronic disease. What did they expect us to do?
Nobody had an answer. And there wasn’t someone like you on the other end even trying to find one.
” He lifted his gaze to hers. “I lost my father because the system is broken. And I despise them for it.”
Misty thought she understood now. “And telling you my story brought everything back for you.”
He gave one short, sharp nod.
Regret sliced through her. He’d been so close to his dad.
That had been obvious in nearly every conversation they’d had.
She hated that she was a reminder of the worst parts of losing him.
Hated, too, that the part of her life she’d tried to leave behind was tarnishing something she’d come to value so much.
Misty spread her hands. “I can’t change my past, Denver.”
“I wouldn’t want you to. You aren’t the system. You aren’t the one who denied my father’s claims. And I was an asshole for acting like you were.”
Something in his tone let her know that he had more to say. “But?”
“No buts. I’m sorry for walking out on you when you were struggling. I’m sorry for shutting you out this week. And I’m sorry I didn’t have the stones to just explain what was going through my head. You deserve better than that.”
The better than me was implied.
Misty wanted to wrap her arms around him, offer some kind of comfort.
But he still held Moxie and looked very much as if he wanted this conversation to be over.
Maybe he needed all their conversations to be over.
Even now, he didn’t seem to quite be able to look at her.
She wished, more than anything, that they could go back to last week, before she’d told him.
But it would have come up eventually. And if this was a deal breaker for him, it was better to know now, before they got in any deeper.
“Thank you for telling me.” What else could she say? If he still wanted a relationship with her, he had to say so. She wasn’t going to force her company on him—wouldn’t want to if that company came with a permanent reminder of his loss.
Denver’s throat worked and he set Moxie down. “I know you’ve got a lot of work to do. I’ll let you get to it.”
She wanted to stop him, to press for more. Instead, she followed him to the door. “I guess I’ll see you at the wedding.”
“Yeah.” He glanced her way, just once, then slipped out the door and clearly out of her life.