Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
FRANKIE
My best friend gazes back at me from my laptop screen with an expression like an executioner who’s sorry she has to lead me to the gallows.
“Well, if you’ve only got your two-month sabbatical to make that place solvent,” Paige says, “I’d forget it, cut your losses, and take one of these two offers.” She waves her finger at me, or rather at her screen, where she presumably has both offers to buy the property positioned next to my face.
She also has the last three years of accounts that I sent her when I realized yesterday, the day after I got here, that the donkey sanctuary is in deep, deep shit. Whether Grandpa doesn’t realize it or he didn’t want me to know, I have no idea.
But within twenty-four hours of arriving here it was obvious that something wasn’t right.
The hay stocks are dangerously low, some of the barns are in such disrepair that one looks like the back wall might collapse at any moment, and I’m pretty sure the fence on the east side is only still standing out of a sense of nostalgia.
The guilt is almost paralyzing. This is all my fault. I haven’t paid close enough attention these last few years while I’ve been all about building my own career and just visiting Grandpa occasionally to help with big annual events like the Christmas festival, where we do donkey sleigh rides.
I’m pretty good with numbers, but Paige, who’s an accountant at the home furnishings company we both work for in Chicago, is even better. So once I’d looked over the spreadsheets, I sent them straight to her.
“You look tired,” she says.
I wrap both hands around my mug of lemon and honey tea.
“Well, this isn’t quite what I was expecting.
I thought I’d show up, keep things ticking over while Grandpa’s safely ensconced in the rehab unit where he can’t overdo it, maybe have a bit of fun larking around with the donkeys, then come back to my desk in Chicago and everything would be fine.
Kind of like going on one of those volunteer vacations where you help to clean up a dirty beach, or protect endangered breeding turtles from predators, or something. ”
“There are vacations where you protect turtles?” Paige is skeptical.
“No idea, but you know what I mean. Just thought it would be a little worry-free break from work. Not that this is the best time for me to take a break.”
“Frankie, you’re thirty-one years old and your nose has been nowhere other than pressed firmly to the grindstone since you graduated from college. A few weeks in the country is exactly what your life needs.”
“Not when I’ve just applied for the VP of digital marketing job. And Dickish Darren thinks he should get it.” I rub my eyebrows. “If I were there, working on the launch of the new mirror collab with that cool British designer, they’d be more likely to see that I’m the one they should give it to.”
“You’ve been proving yourself right for that job for two years. Do you really think the next few weeks will change their minds about you?” Paige always pushes me to look at the other side of things, no matter how hard it is.
The day I was fuming that Dickish Darren ate the lunch that I’d left in the staff kitchen fridge, she asked me to consider that maybe he’d mistaken it for his own, even though she knew very well my food was in the Rugrats lunchbox that she’d given me for my birthday, so there was no plausible way he could have thought it was his.
Not least because his is always wrapped in a paper bag that disintegrates a little more each day.
“At least I’ll get to see you when you come back for a quick visit for the job interview,” Paige says.
“I was hoping to do it remotely,” I say. “Because there’s no one else to take care of this place if I’m gone for even twenty-four hours.”
“When will it be?” Paige asks.
“All they’ve said is early December.”
“Ooh, who’s that?” she asks as the black and brown furry face of Grandpa’s cat replaces mine in front of the camera.
“Moody old Thelma.” I peer over her back. “She’s been grumpy ever since her sister, Louise, passed away about three years ago.”
“Aw, she’s cute,” Paige says.
“Looks can be deceiving. She’ll take my eye out if I so much as breathe on her.
She hates everyone except Grandpa.” There’s no way I’m going to take my life in my hands and attempt to move her out of the way.
“One of many reasons that being here isn’t exactly the away-from-it-all, restful luxury spa experience you might think it is. ”
I look around the worse-for-wear kitchen, from the scuffed cabinets that have been there my whole life, to the fridge with its handle swinging loose, and the dripping tap that seems to be ticking away the time I have left to get this place sorted out and sustainable again before Grandpa comes home.
“Would your grandpa be okay with selling?” Paige asks.
“Is one of the donkeys going to cook me dinner? You know why this means so much to him. And to me for that matter.” I take a sip of tea as Thelma wends her way between me and the laptop camera, then hops off the table onto a chair and curls up, looking like the friendliest, least-likely-to-kill-me-once-my-back-is-turned kitty imaginable.
“If he refuses to sell, I’m not going to make him,” I tell Paige. “The opposite, in fact. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure he keeps it.”
I lean back in the chair and cradle my tea. “Grandma always told me to choose my own adventure.” A heavy sigh has fallen from me before I notice it’s happening. “But I would never have chosen this financial nightmare.”
“And are you happy with the parts of your life you have chosen?”
I stare at her over my mug. “Of course. Do I not seem happy at work?”
“I mean, because work is the only place you ever are. You probably barely remember what the inside of your own apartment looks like. So, yeah, I’m wondering if working sixteen-hour days and choosing men who’re bad for you seem like the best adventures you could have picked.”
“I called you for your financial expertise, not your relationship advice.” I huff. “And it was only one man who was bad for me.”
“Yeah, and he was bad enough that you haven’t touched another one since.”
“How the hell am I supposed to know who I can trust when Bastard Brandon lied about almost everything about himself? And I was too dumb to notice.” My blood pressure rises at the memory.
“If I hadn’t shown up to meet him at his office as a surprise and bumped into the woman who told me he was an assistant there, not a lawyer, I would never have known. ”
“He was so full of shit,” Paige says. “All that crap about going to Yale law school.”
“I don’t think he’d ever even been to Connecticut.” I laugh, but it’s not a happy one.
If only I could see the funny side. But eighteen months later, all I still feel is foolish and embarrassed that I let myself get so caught up in him that I didn’t spot a single red flag.
Not even that he always had an excuse so as not to pay for anything more than a couple of coffees.
Or that he never invited me back to his place that he claimed was an apartment with a private terrace in Lake View.
And that despite apparently having this spectacular home, he was pushing to move into my perfectly ordinary one-bedroom condo after just a few months.
It took a while after I ended it for the penny to drop that he had some serious financial issues and was just using me for free food and housing. It was never actually about wanting to be with me every available moment like he’d said.
“Maybe Brandon thought you wouldn’t like him if he didn’t have a fancy degree and an important job,” Paige says.
“I couldn’t have cared less about that. But I sure as hell fucking cared that he’d made up a whole fantasy life and that I fell for it.” I’m not sure I’ll ever shake off the twist in my gut every time I think about it.
“You’re going to have to start trusting your judgment again sooner or later,” she says. “Or you’re going to be married to your job for forever.”
“It loves me back, though. More than any guy would.”
“Sure, if you consider a great paycheck and bonuses to be love.”
“Love doesn’t pay the rent or the bills.” I shake my head.
“Oh, but it feels like it does.” Paige’s eyes go all dreamy.
“Yeah, yeah. Just because you and Sean are wallowing in the first flush of gooey love. I get it.”
“Oh, we are so not. I can’t bear the way he chews.” She taps her pen against her chin. “But if you’d had it, you’d know. Don’t you want to find out?”
“This is really not the time for me to be thinking about finding my soulmate and losing myself in a puddle of love. This is the time for me to make the sanctuary solvent, get Grandpa back on two functioning knees, recruit some decent volunteers, and then get my ass back to Chicago before Dickish Darren convinces management he’s a better choice for the promotion than I am. ”
“No one could do that job better than you. Dickish Darren would never have come up with the idea of having a muddy pig roll around on the pink velvet Spotless Comfort Meridian Loveseat to prove how easy it is to get stains out.”
I have to admit, that did go well. “Anyway, as far as the bosses are concerned, I’m sure it’s out of sight, out of mind. Dickish Darren’s in front of their face and I’m not. And that’s all they’ll care about.”
There’s a tapping on the kitchen window.
“Oh, hang on.” I look up. “Dave’s here.”
“Who’s Dave?”
“The donkey who mysteriously escapes the paddock and opens the kitchen window to ask for snacks.” I get up and head toward the big gray face that is, indeed, sliding the window open.
My heart melts at the sight of those huge, soulful eyes and the smarts inside the brain that figured out long ago that if he perfected this trick he’d get a carrot every time—Grandpa keeps a stash in a jar by the sink for this very purpose.
“How does a donkey open a window?” Paige’s voice says behind me.
“With his nose, of course.”
Dave takes the carrot I hand him, and the adorable crunches begin. He looks so innocently happy.
I give his nose a big rub and tell him what a gorgeous guy he is.
Once the crunching’s done, he withdraws his head from the window and wanders off, satisfied with just his one carrot. He’s not greedy. But he will undoubtedly be back for another later.
Man, I have to save this place.
“Apart from anything else,” I call back to Paige as I close the window to keep out the November chill, “where would all these amazing creatures go if we sold?”
“Isn’t the whole point to find them new homes?”
I return to my seat. “Most of the ones here right now are unadoptable for one reason or another. Grandpa can’t resist the oddballs.”
“But if you take the emotion out of it,” she says, “and look at it in a purely academic, based-on-the-numbers, completely unsentimental, fiscally responsible kind of way, my advice is to sell it.”
I pick up my mug, the surface of the tea trembling. “It’s not unemotional, though, is it?” I take a sip of the warm, comforting liquid and swallow it past the tightening of my throat.
There’s another tapping noise.
“Is that Dave again?” Paige asks.
“Nope. The door.” I put down the drink. “It’s probably the hay delivery guy. Back in a sec.”
“Is he hot?” Paige asks.
“Last time I saw Barry, he was a five-foot-two, sixty-five-year-old bald farmer with not as many teeth as nature intended.”
The chair catches on a cracked tile as I stand up, and Thelma opens her eyes just far enough to throw me a look of utter contempt.
“And don’t worry,” I respond to Paige’s obviously worried expression. “I bought the hay with my own money, not the sanctuary’s.”
“You’d have to.” She raises her voice as I walk away to answer the door to Barry, ready to ask him to put the hay in the usual barn. “There’s barely enough money for a handful, never mind a bale.”
I drag the heavy door open on its rusting hinges. “Hi, you can—”
The surprise of seeing a man the exact opposite of Barry stops me mid-sentence.
“Hi.” The tiny two-letter word comes from the dazzling smile of someone who looks like he just stepped from the pages of a Garden & Gun article about the season’s chic new farmwear trend.
“Hay?” is the only word I can force out.
“Hey,” he says, tipping his head to one side, giving the cool fall sun the chance to sneak around and highlight his cheekbones.
“What? Oh, no.” I shake my head as much to pull myself together as to affirm the negative. “I meant, are you here with the hay? The hay delivery I ordered?”
His eyes widen with his smile, his chin tipping up on a chuckle to reveal a perfect line of perfect stubble.
“God, no.” He sounds unreasonably horrified by the idea of hay. “I mean…no. It’s just me.”
He spreads his arms and looks from side to side then behind him, demonstrating there is no hay anywhere in his vicinity.
“Right, sorry.” Heat blooms in my cheeks. “It’s just that I was expecting the hay guy and—”
“I’m here about this.” He produces one of my volunteer recruitment flyers from the pocket of his tan work jacket—a jacket that looks like it hasn’t seen a second of work in its life and might even still have the tags on it.
“Oh, you want to volunteer?” Wow, that was quick.
My chest lightens. Maybe this won’t be the impossible task I thought it would be after all.
“I do.” He says it in a velvety voice more appropriate for appreciating warm chocolate cake than mucking out a donkey stall.
I stare at him and swallow hard, concentrating with all my might on fighting the urge to let my eyes drift over his tall, broad-shouldered form.
“Did you forget about me?” Paige’s voice comes from the kitchen table.
“Shit.” I tear my eyes from the smooth-voiced stranger. “Hang on.”
I swiftly return to the kitchen table and bend down in line with the camera. “Sorry. Got to go.”
“I’m guessing they sent a different hay guy,” she says.
“What? Why?”
“Because I haven’t seen that flush that creeps down your neck since that actor you like, Chase Cooper, walked past our table at the Orange Parasol.”
“I do not have a flush.” I say way too loudly, while sensing the heat from my cheeks race to my collar bone. “And it’s not a hay guy.”
“Ooh.” She waggles her eyebrows. “Who is it?”
“Someone who wants to volunteer. And I’m desperate for a volunteer. Got to go.”
As I start to lower the laptop lid, she tips her head in an effort to not disappear. “Totally flushed,” she shouts.
I shut it completely, straighten, tuck some hair straggles behind my ears, and head toward the man standing on the doorstep. He now has his back to me, his hands on his hips, silhouetted against the sun. He looks like a still from an art house Western movie.
And goddamn her…Thelma is rubbing herself around his boots as if she just met her soulmate.