Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Kell
“I was wrong,” Kell said, earning raised eyebrows from both Boyce and Lucinda, making him instantly see the resemblance between the two. After everything that had happened with Rachel the last few days, he’d come to one conclusion: He needed to own up to his mistakes and make amends.
Withdrawing his entirely unfair “untrustworthy” accusation against Rachel was a start.
Here he was, at Love You Chocolate, righting a wrong. When he walked in the door, he’d texted Rachel, to tell her what he was doing.
No response.
He knew she was planning on working from his place, so he wondered why she wasn’t answering his texts. Maybe she was deep into work. Excited to see her, he wanted to do the right thing, then go home to spend time with her.
In bed.
Exactly where they belonged, finally.
“Wrong about what? Rachel?” Lucinda asked with a sly smile Kell did not like one bit. It was one thing to recognize the error of his ways.
It was quite another to have his nose rubbed in it.
“Yes.”
“At least you’re man enough to admit it,” she added as they stood in the midst of the store’s organized busyness.
The last couple of days before Valentine’s Day were always a madhouse, every register with lines ten customers deep.
Temporary workers were walking around holding iPhones, ready to swipe credit cards for simple purchases.
Red foil-covered hearts were selling by the pound, thousands per hour.
High school students picked up shifts here in the weeks before Valentine's Day, working hard to earn money while they could.
An unofficial agreement reduced extracurricular activities and sports at the local high school to a minimum the first two weeks of February.
That meant that the high schoolers all got a chance to work at one of the stores in town and feel like they were part of the Main Street efforts to keep the economy going strong.
The centerpiece of the store was an enormous chocolate sculpture, a work of art made of pink, red, and white chocolate, depicting Cupid with red gummy heart wings and a white chocolate diaper.
Lollipops, small, flat versions of the sculpture, stuck up from displays, disappearing faster than staff could replace them.
Flat boxes of chocolate letters that spelled out LOVE YOU, with the centers of the O’s shaped like hearts, were flying off the shelves.
Everyone had a sweetheart to buy for, and when Kell was done talking to Lucinda and Boyce, he planned to load up a basket and join the lines at the cash register.
Tomorrow was the first time as a grown man that he would have his very own reason to celebrate Valentine’s Day, and go to the Love Games–with Rachel.
The thought made him grin.
“I know you have some Luview blood in you, Miss Lucinda, because that’s exactly the kind of thing my grandmother would have said. ‘Always be man enough to admit when you’re wrong, Kelly,’ she used to say,” he remembered. The childhood nickname brought back memories.
“No Luview blood that I know of, but you live in this town long enough, you pick up plenty from the Luview family,” she said, laughing.
She edged them over to a corner, away from the hullabaloo.
“Rachel is a smart, forthright woman with a good heart and a vision for making things better. I don’t need anyone’s input to know this, Kell.
Whatever you used to think about her, her time here has proven her to be quite worthy of trust.”
“Which is why I think you should sell to Markstone's,” he stated firmly. “Her deal is a good one. She’s not a cutthroat city woman coming in to skim profits off the town. Rachel obviously cares about what happens here.”
“I saw,” Boyce said. “She really helped when the electricity went out at the flower shop.”
“And she helped cut down a skydiver.”
“She also alienated half the town,” Lucinda said with a sniff, a disapproving look on her face that slowly turned to a sly smile. “That takes guts.”
“Then sell. You’re in good hands with Rachel. Your lawyer can probably help you negotiate an even better deal, but other than details, I think it’s best to–”
A loud sound made everyone turn to look, a display of red hearts falling over, hundreds of chocolates spreading on the ground in a reflective wave.
“Mom?” Kell said, surprised to see a very flustered Deanna bending down, scooping the hearts back into the clear plastic bowls of the display. Boyce and Kell dropped to help her, the mess easy to fix, but her nervousness didn’t sit well with him.
“What’s wrong?”
“You’re encouraging them to sell?”
“Yes. I was wrong. I think the deal could be good for the town. Why are you here? You look upset.”
Deanna looked at Lucinda and Boyce. “Could we talk in private?”
“Sure.”
As Deanna smoothed her brown hair off her face, static electricity impishly making her long hair stand, Kell’s gut tightened. Why would his mom show up like this?
And so agitated?
“Mom, this is weird.”
“I agree, Kell. But don’t worry. It’s about to get even weirder.”
Images of his date with Rachel rushed through him as Boyce closed the conference room door. His pulse quickened, and he stroked the fading lemur henna tattoo with his thumb, smiling.
Deanna cleared her throat. “There’s been a… development in the sale of this business. Lucinda, Boyce, you can’t sell.”
“What?” they all gasped, Deanna looking at Kell like she really, really wished he weren’t there.
“Mom, why are you doing this? What’s going on?”
She turned to Lucinda and Boyce. “I just talked to the Louis family. Joanie and Paul had someone contact them. A law firm out of L.A., asking about the property.”
“Why would someone contact Joanie and Paul about our chocolate business?” Boyce asked.
“Sorry,” Deanna said, shaking her head. “I’m frazzled. I mean they called Joanie and Paul, offering to buy their camp.”
“WHAT?” Kell barked out, utterly stunned.
“Joanie got really weird when I asked if anyone else was interested. She said it was supposed to be confidential. But it looks like Markstone's wants to buy Love You Chocolate, the old tool and die land down the street, and the camp.”
“All of that?” Lucinda asked, perplexed. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Deanna confessed, wringing her hands, eyes darting away. “I just know it’s all part of a larger plan.”
“Rachel never said anything about this to me,” Kell said, wheels turning fast. “And she knows we want to buy the camp–knows how important it is to Luke. We ran into her at the camp!”
“You did?” Lucinda asked, eyebrows high.
“What was she doing there?” Kell muttered, trying to fit all the puzzle pieces in place.
“Scouting it out for her employer?” Boyce asked.
“She told me her GPS went out. That she just got lost.” A sick feeling grew deep inside him, stretching back five years and five hundred miles.
All the way to Washington, D.C.
“Awfully funny coincidence,” Boyce remarked.
“Damn it. She lied to me. Again!” Kell struck the table with the heel of his hand, hard.
“No, Kell,” Deanna said, eyes wild. “She didn’t lie.”
“She did! Ask Luke! He heard it all, too.” Pressing his palms against his face, he felt exposed. Childlike. The beard had given him cover. Wearing his emotions on his face was a lot easier when people couldn’t see much of it.
“I meant that she didn’t intentionally lie. People in Rachel’s position have to balance all kinds of complexities we can’t even imagine.”
Lucinda shot his mom a very sharp look, but said nothing.
“Markstone's is the kind of corporation that will come in here and slowly take over the town. What’re they doing with the tool and die company? We’ll get parking lots.
Condos. Timeshares. All the things we don’t want.
Soon, they’ll control the town and we’ll just be a Markstone's profit center. It’s everything we didn’t want, and exactly why I warned Lucinda and Boyce about her in the first place! ”
“No!” Deanna argued. “You have a personal vendetta with Rachel, and you crossed a very serious line when you did that, Kellan.”
“Warning them had nothing to do with my personal feelings about Rachel, Mom!”
“I knew you were stubborn, but I had no idea you were delusional, too,” she argued, making Kell feel even worse than he did two seconds ago.
“Rachel fooled me again,” he said through gritted teeth.
“I did not!”
Everyone turned to find a red-faced Rachel breathing hard in the doorway, her red coat wide open, the belt hanging at uneven lengths aside her thighs. She looked at Deanna, who shook her head slightly, like they had some kind of nonverbal code Kell wasn’t part of.
“Bullshit!” he threw back. “Mom just told us all about how Markstone's wants Camp Wannacanhopa. You knew!”
Rachel slowly made eye contact with him, Deanna, Lucinda, and Boyce, before turning her attention back to him.
“I am here because you texted me that you were coming to encourage Lucinda and Boyce to sell.”
“I was–I’m not now, now that I know you–good grief, Rachel, how could you do this?”
“I’m not doing what you think I’m doing, Kell.”
“You sound just like Alissa!”
“Would you stop thinking about her and think about me, for once?”
“I don’t think about her!” he yelled back, thrown by her reply. “Never!”
Deanna and Rachel snorted at the same time.
“You do!” Rachel said. “She got under your skin and hurt you, and you can’t let it go.
You moved five hundred miles away but you’re still stuck back there.
You lump me in with her and I’m not her, Kell.
I won’t be in a relationship with someone who can’t trust me fully, and especially with someone who lumps me together with a schemer like her.
She hurt you. She hurt me. Don’t associate me with her! You just Will. Not. Let. It. Go.”
“I have! The last week, all I’ve done is fall for you all over again, Rachel. All the pieces of you that attracted me when we were in D.C. are still there, better than ever, but this one–the part that lies to me–that’s where I draw the line.”