12. Gavin
TWELVE
GAVIN
“You sure you’re feeling better?”
“I’m well.” My mom coughed, belying her words, and chuckled after. “I’m well enough, anyway. I promise. Bring Josie over anytime you’d like.”
“Okay, if you’re positive.”
“Gavin Kelley. If I wasn’t up to it, I’d tell you. When have you known me to hold my tongue on anything?”
Fine. She had a point. Opinionated was one of my mom’s top five main character traits. “All right. But if it gets too much or you get worn out?—”
“We have animals and a new puppy for her to chase in the snow. That isn’t likely. I could sit and do nothing, and Josie will find a way to stay busy all day.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Fine. I’ll see you soon, and then I’ll be back after I go help Bryce.”
“I’ll have chicken and dumplings ready for dinner.”
“Thanks, Mom. See you soon.”
I ended the call and stared out my back door. It was early, the sun starting to crest over the horizon shooting off pinks and oranges that made the fresh snow sparkle. It was peaceful. Perfect. It was a much better start to the day than last night’s ending had been, anyway.
Today would be busy, filled with some of Josie’s favorite things—animals and helping my mom in the kitchen—that I was hoping it’d be enough to soothe over yesterday’s pain. I also needed to get moving because Bryce had texted me before I was awake, asking for some help at his brewery.
I turned to go head to Josie’s room to get her up and moving, only to come to a stop. Penny’s dishes were packed in her shopping bag, sitting nicely on my island.
I still had to get that back to her, along with the leftovers.
Shower first. Then Josie. Then Penny. The rest of the work I had to do would come after.
Fortunately, Josie was easy to wake and as soon as I mentioned going to see Goldie, she bounced out of bed like last night’s event hadn’t happened at all. I showered while she got herself dressed.
Twenty minutes later, I had her at the kitchen table with a steaming bowl of oatmeal and an extra helping of brown sugar to heal any lingering hurts.
“I need to go return Miss Pesco’s things to her. Will you be okay here for a few minutes?”
“Sure, Dad.” She scooped her oatmeal into her mouth and then spoke over it. “That’s fine.”
“All right. Be good and stay inside, okay?”
“Yup.”
I turned on the television and gave her the remote so she could find one of her favorite shows. My boots were at the door to the garage, so I gathered Penny’s things before slipping into them and grabbing my coat. It was morning, early enough she could have still been sleeping, so I hesitated at her door before knocking, but the hum of what had to be a vacuum filtered out from inside, so I took my chance she was awake and rang her doorbell.
The vacuum sound stopped immediately.
I should have done a better job preparing myself. Should have thought about the crestfallen look on her face last night when I kicked her out or the pitiful expression she wore when Josie began shouting about wanting a mom.
I should have taken a second and considered my apology and explanation that was required.
And I definitely should have remembered how gorgeous the woman was.
The door flew open and there she was, hair piled on her head, held back with a band of fabric in a red and white swirl. Her large doe eyes blinked as she took me in and her full, pouty lips pressed together.
She wore an oversized T-shirt that was so large that if she was wearing shorts beneath it, I couldn’t see them. All of it exposed her legs, tanner than I’d expect them to be and beautifully shaped.
“Good morning, Mr. Kelley.”
Ahhh… so we were back to that. Couldn’t necessarily blame her.
The sadness in her tone sparked me to action, to the memory of why I was there. I forced myself to stop thinking about her legs and how gorgeous she was, without makeup, in a completely natural and relaxed state.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted, and she jerked back in surprise. “About last night. Asking you to leave so quickly like that was rude.”
Her head tilted to the side. I tried hard not to notice the way the sunlight caught her eyes, making them brighter. “How’s Josie?”
I didn’t miss that she didn’t accept my apology. Perhaps she’d run out of forgiveness for all my screwups in the few weeks since we’d met.
Couldn’t blame her.
“She’s fine. Better.” I held out the bag. “Would you like me to take this in for you?”
“Oh.” She huffed a laugh. “Sorry. No, that’s fine. I can take it.”
Her hands brushed against mine as she took the bag. Her fingers were soft and cold, but that gentle brush had me fighting off a shiver that had nothing to do with the cooler weather.
“I also put the number in the bag for the garage. If you call, ask for Ryken. It’s his garage and he’ll be able to let you know when your car will be done. If you need help getting there, I don’t mind.”
“Thank you, but I think I’ll call Faye.”
Of course she would. That made sense. My delivery was done, and I’d done the right thing. However, like the last time I’d landed on her front step, I couldn’t bring myself to walk away.
“Listen.” I sighed and shoved a hand through my hair. “About Josie…”
“You don’t need to explain. I think last night made things clear. Had I known that was where her mind was at, I wouldn’t have come or suggested it.”
“It’s my fault, for not seeing it. And I know I haven’t been kind to you, but I did want to apologize. And maybe… maybe since you’re my daughter’s teacher and our neighbor and everything, we could try being friends?”
There was a boulder growing in my stomach with every harsh breath I took. I was back in kindergarten, trying to call a girl pretty for the first time all over again. Talking to this woman shouldn’t be this hard, but there we were. Me, once again, awkwardly standing in front of her, unsure of myself.
Her brows arched into two perfect curves. “Friends?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “I mean, we could give it a shot.”
She chuckled. “Okay. Sure, Gavin. We can be friends.”
“Great.”
“Wonderful.” She grinned. “Is that all?”
Right. Because I still hadn’t moved. “Actually, no. Thanksgiving is next week. Josie wanted me to ask if you had any plans.”
“Oh…” Her smile fell. “I would think that might not be a good idea?”
“My parents invite people from all over town who don’t have a lot of family, or any.”
A polite smile returned, along with a blush on her cheeks I hadn’t seen since last night. “Well, tell Josie thank you, but my sister will be in town next week, so I think we’ll be busy here.”
“Daddy!”
I jumped and faced the echo of Josie’s shout from down the street. She was on the front porch, leaning over our rail, waving her arm wildly in the air. I lifted my arm in a wave back and turned back to Penny.
Her smile was soft as she smiled at my daughter, hugging last night’s dinner and fixings to her chest. “You should go see what she needs.”
“Right. Have a good day, then.”
“You too, friend,” Penny said, and there was a tease in that tone.
I shook my head, chuckling, and trotted down her stairs. “Bye, Penny.”
I hustled across the street, careful of ice on the sidewalks, and back to Josie. “What’d you need, munchkin?”
“Nothin’.” She shrugged. “I want to go see Goldie and you were taking too long.”
I scooped low and grabbed her waist, then threw her up into the air. “All right, kid. Let’s go see the puppy.”
She threw her hands in the air. “Yay! Thanks, Daddy!”
“How’s everything going out here?” I scanned the brewery and the gated and fenced in animal pen outside Bryce’s brewery.
He’d started it earlier this year, after Dalton and our dad loaned him some land. His dream, unlike mine, had always been to stay as close as possible to the land and work it, but we all knew Dalton would be the one in charge someday, and he wasn’t an easy man to take instruction from. I loved my brother, but the saying a man is set in his ways didn’t figure into Dalton’s personality. He was so far set in his ways his feet were buried in concrete. The man was unmovable when it came to change.
Bryce wanted the land, but he also understood the public’s fascination with our family. Given our brothers making names for themselves in their professional careers, that attention only grew over the last five years. Bryce wanted to work the land but give the people somewhere to come nearby where they could see the family, see the land. His brewery, so far, I figured was doing decently well considering he’d only opened it this summer.
“Good. Ava’s been helping me with some marketing strategies and things to help keep business coming over the winter. I was hoping we could have built more of the fence today, but the snow might make it difficult.”
“Eh. Posts have been in, so it should be fine. Unless you’re too much of a baby to spend all that time in the cold.”
“Jackass. I’m no more of a baby than you are.”
“Ah. But as the actual baby of the family, you’ll always be more of a baby than me.”
“Shut up or nut up, Gav, and prove you’re not all talk.”
“Please.” I snorted. “You know this is what I do for a living, right?”
“Then you should have no problem taking care of it.”
I sighed dramatically, purely for effect. After all, this was exactly why I was there. “Let me grab the tools. Where’s the wood?”
Bryce was doing a simple fence surrounding the animal petting area. He’d planned for it to originally be a smaller space, but it was such a crowd pleaser he wanted to extend the area, giving the goats more access to roam and adding more feeding stations for next spring. While he’d set the posts before he faced the risk of the ground freezing, he’d only added horizontal wood beams in between them along the side that met up with the gravel parking lot. Once the beams were all set, we’d wrap it with chicken wire to make sure the animals couldn’t escape.
“Out in the barn. Goats are penned right now, though. Need some help?”
“And have you possibly break a nail? I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Shut up.” He chucked a coaster at me from the bar like it was a frisbee. It landed three feet in front of me, making both of us laugh.
“Nice, kid. Really nice.”
“How’s the cute teacher doing?”
Oh, now he was trying to rile me as only a baby brother could.
“I’m not falling for that,” I told him and headed out of his bar and out to my truck where I grabbed my tool belt and chest from the bed of my truck. Bryce was in the barn when I reached it, already grabbing and stacking the boards. The goats, excited for company and because they were obnoxious, if not cute, little things, were braying so loud the noise bounced off the walls and rattled my ears.
“So we’re not talking about the cute teacher?”
“Can you stop calling her cute?” I grumbled and went to the other side of the barn to grab the wood there.
“Is it because you don’t like other men looking at her or because you don’t think she’s cute?”
“Goddamn, Bryce, you know how to needle something to death, don’t you?”
“Just trying to figure out if you’re interested or not. Ryken stopped by here last night, said you went feral over the thought of him helping her out.”
The wood dropped from my hands with a clatter and a clang and yet, the only thing I now heard was the roar of wind and anger rushing through me. “What’d you say?”
Bryce glanced at the wood at my feet and back at me. “So you do think she’s cute.”
“She’s not cute. She’s gorgeous and sweet, and she also spent last night having dinner with Josie and me because Josie insisted and then halfway through, Josie lost her mind when she started suggesting Penny could be her new mom, so yeah… Bryce, I’m a little pissed at the idea of someone thinking she’s cute. And last night only proved how careful I have to be because Josie gets that shit in her mind and her little heart is going to shatter if something doesn’t work out.”
Bryce stood there, a handful of boards piled in between his hands, towering over his six-foot frame, blinking at me.
So maybe I went a little bit feral over the idea of another man liking Penny.
“You want to explain that again?”
“No.” I bent down, grabbed the boards I’d dropped, and hauled them out of the barn to the fence post farthest away. I’d start at the back, work my way forward, and possibly by the time I finished up helping Bryce, I’d have my shit back together.
Bryce stacked his boards next to mine on the finished fence line and wiped a gloved hand across his forehead. There might have been snow on the ground, but the air was quickly heating, so I stripped out of my coat and down to the sweatshirt I was wearing beneath.
“Leave it, Bryce.”
“I’ve never heard you say a woman was gorgeous before. There’s nothing wrong with that, you know?”
“I don’t need advice.” I needed to have a life where I didn’t have to always consider all possible worst-case scenarios before acting.
And this thing with Penny, whatever it was that made me all twisted and tight, didn’t feel all that great at all.
I headed back to the barn, grabbed my tools, and double-checked the battery on my drill. By the time I returned to the fence, I expected Bryce to be back in the brewery, leaving me to my pouting alone, but instead, he had his own belt on and his own drill in hand.
“Thought you weren’t helping?”
“Shut up. Like I trust you to do this by yourself.”
“Right. Because it’s not what I do for a living.”
We worked together, putting up the first four boards to the posts without any problem, without any talking. Bryce leveled and held. I drilled and screwed. We worked together in sync, a talent born from years of growing up two years apart and always having to help our dad with the cattle and fences and everything else life required.
We were lining up the beams on the second set of posts when Bryce had to ruin it. “It’s not a crime to find a woman attractive or date someone, you know?”
“Josie thinks every woman I see is her next mom. I can’t do that and break her heart if it doesn’t work out.”
“Gavin…”
“Stop, Bryce,” I spat out. “I get you’re trying to help, but you didn’t see her last night. Hell, you didn’t see her the night before when we went to the diner and she practically lunged at Penny in the booth where she was dining alone, and then we were stuck eating together.”
Bryce huffed a laugh and shook his head.
“What?” I asked.
“You weren’t stuck. You have no problems saying no to your daughter and even if Penny said it was fine, if you didn’t want to be there, you would have left.”
“Josie—”
“Stop with the excuses, Gav. I know you, and I know you’re as stubborn as Dalton is, and you have rules and boundaries for your daughter. The only reason you stayed at that table at Millie’s... and yeah, we’ve all heard about that... is because you wanted to be there. Stop lying to yourself. You probably wanted to look at her gorgeous face all night. You’re just too scared to put yourself out there.”
“You don’t know shit.” I turned back and drilled the beam into the post.
Bryce was wrong. Except…
“Josie’s already half in love with her, Bryce. You didn’t hear her last night, talking about Avery’s mom this and Avery’s mom that and how awesome it would be if we could always have dinner together. It was a mess.”
“She wants a mom, so give her one.”
I barked out a laugh. “You and Josie. You both think I can snap my fingers and a wife will appear like magic.”
“It’s not magic if she moved in next door. Listen.” He held up his hand, and I snapped my mouth closed. Fine. He wanted to lecture me when my brother barely dated himself. I’d listen. “All I’m saying is that you like this woman. There is no harm in seeing if it could go somewhere, or hell, you don’t even know if she likes you. But what’s the harm? You don’t think you could keep it from Josie until you’re more certain?”
“I don’t need another woman leaving her. She’s been hurt enough.”
“And so have you, but what are you teaching your daughter if you don’t take risks every once in a while?”
“Sometimes better safe than sorry is the right step, too. And before you keep giving me shit, I’m barely at the point where I might be okay with being friends with this woman. Let me go at my own pace to figure this out.”
He snorted and turned to grab the next beam.
“What was that for?”
He handed it to me, smirking. “What was what for?”
“That sound you made.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’re a Kelley. We’re stubborn as hell. You figure out what you want and there won’t be a slow speed. Hell, look at Caleb and Cameron.”
“Whatever.” I took the board from him, lined it up, leveled, and drilled. So my brothers found women and fell head over heels in moments. Well, Caleb did. Took Cameron years to get his head on straight and he was lucky Ava was single when he did, and they were still new, still figuring things out. But they hadn’t been burned like I’d been. They didn’t have a kid to think of like I did, even if Caleb getting together with Emily was because of a kid he didn’t know about for four years.
The risks were different.
So were the potential losses.
But the rewards? Well, hell. Having what they had and giving Josie what she wanted more than anything in the entire world was pretty damn okay, too.