Chapter 4
— chapter four
“Everything okay, boss?” Fanny, Nelson’s personal assistant, asked as he entered the office in the back of Alliance Millworks on Tuesday morning.
He slowed his steps. No, he wasn’t doing okay. He was still reeling from Jenna’s words the night before. He wasn’t going to share that, though. Instead, he hoped and prayed there was a major crisis that he had to deal with.
Okay, maybe he didn’t need a major crisis. Something minor would be enough to get his mind off his hurt feelings. “As far as I know, everything’s going well. Good enough. Why?”
“Because you look like you either got stung by a bee or missed out on your usual pot of coffee,” she replied with a hand on her hip.
Fanny was never one to pull punches. When he first hired her, he was a little shocked about how outspoken she was, but he supposed he should’ve been prepared for it. After all, Fanny wasn’t just his PA, she was his cousin.
Now he kind of looked forward to her banter. She kept him on his toes and made him laugh. In addition, her straight-to-the-point observations were usually right on the money. If something wasn’t going right at Alliance, she’d tell him.
Unfortunately, today was no exception. He hadn’t thought he looked that bad when he got ready for work that morning. He’d hoped his hurt pride was carefully hidden. Obviously, he was wrong.
“I look that bad, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” he called out as he strode across the reception area.
Just as he was about to enter his office, Fanny called out to him again. “What’s wrong, boss?”
She might be his cousin and astute about a lot of things, but that didn’t mean he was in a hurry to share his personal problems with her. “Nothing you need to worry about. But . . . thanks for asking.”
“Thanks for asking?”
Great. Now she was in a snit. “Fan, stop.”
She glared at him. “Just for the record, I thought you were going to try to call me by my given name from now on.”
“No, I said I’d think about it.”
“And?”
“And I did. But I just can’t do it. I’ve been calling you Fanny my entire life.”
“Frances sounds much better.”
He didn’t think so. “I’ll try and remember to call you that more often.”
“That’s what you said last month.”
“I know.”
“Nelson, come on. You promised.”
It was hard, but he was able to not grin.
“For the record, I actually never promised to call you Frances. Only that I heard your request.” The truth was that Nelson didn’t like calling her Frances.
It was a mouthful and didn’t suit her. “I don’t know why you hate Fanny.
We’ve all been calling you that for most of your life. ”
“Stop. You are way too old to pretend that you don’t know that ‘fanny’ is what some people call their . . . backside.”
He couldn’t help it, he burst out laughing. “Frances, if you’re going to find fault with being called Fanny, then you shouldn’t be afraid to at least say ‘bottom.’ Or ‘butt.’”
She groaned. “Just stop calling me Fanny so we never have to have this discussion again.”
“This means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”
“Kind of.” She lifted her chin. “I’m twenty-eight, Nelson. I’m not a kid. Plus, I have a very important job being your personal assistant. All that means that I grew up and I need a grown-up name.”
“Fine. I can’t argue with you there. Now, moving on . . . do I have any messages?”
“Yep. I talked to three people at Welco Trucking about an incoming shipment and a”—she looked down at her notebook—“Mr. Arias about his order.”
Nelson frowned. Hank Arias had hired Alliance Millworks to finish out several of the rooms in his mansion with hand-carved custom cabinetry and trim.
He was one of their most important clients at the moment.
If he loved their work, it was going to open a lot of doors for them throughout the entire Midwest. “Does he have a problem?”
“I don’t think so. It was more a matter of him being excited about all the work Big John’s going to be doing in his house.”
“Okay, good.”
“He left you a phone number.”
“I’ll call him first. Thanks.”
She smiled. “You’re welcome.” She tapped her fingers against her thigh. “I also went into your office and finished unpacking the last of the samples you ordered and put them on the back table with all the cards next to each.”
He hated doing stuff like that, and she knew it. He was beyond blessed to have her by his side. “Once again, you’ve made my life way better. Thanks, Fa—I mean, Frances.”
“You’re welcome.” She looked embarrassed. That was his cousin.
He loved his uncle, but her father had always been too hard on her.
He hadn’t been there for Fanny when she needed him most and had even gone so far as to ask Nelson not to hire her.
Nelson hadn’t wanted to start a family argument, but he wasn’t willing to hurt Fanny’s feelings just because Uncle Darien didn’t want to listen to his daughter.
“I mean it. I’m really glad I hired you. ”
“Thanks, but you don’t need to say that.”
“I think differently.”
Taking the messages she’d written down, he was about to enter his office when she called out, “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me what’s wrong?”
“Yep. It’s personal. Not work.”
“I know, that’s why I’m asking.” She leaned against her desk. “I probably know more about how things are going around here than you do . . . and I know that everything here is great.” Turning more serious, she added, “Nelson, you’ve got to talk to someone, right?”
He sighed. As much as he wanted to ignore her words and hide in his office, he was pretty sure she had a point. “Jenna asked me to stop visiting her on Monday evenings.”
“Why?” Fanny looked just as surprised as he felt, which gave him some amount of comfort.
“I don’t know. She gave me a lot of reasons, but I think it’s that I got on her nerves.”
A line formed between her brows. “Are you sure?”
“I’m pretty sure. I don’t know what I did that bothered her so much.” He shrugged. “Maybe I was trying too hard to be her friend?”
“No one gets upset when a friend tries their best to make them happy.”
Nelson wasn’t all that sure about that. “In any case, she asked me to stop coming over.”
“After you got her a kitten?” she asked with a new thread of outrage in her voice.
“I got Katie the kitten, but yeah. Even after that.”
“That seems hurtful.”
“I don’t think she thought it was. I guess I shouldn’t have done it.”
His cousin stared at him for a long moment. “Do you think she’s still missing Jimmy?” she asked in a quiet voice.
“Probably. But I wasn’t trying to take his place, Fan.
Nothing like that.” He drew a breath. “I . . . I was just trying to be her friend. And, you know, make sure she had everything she needed.” Okay, maybe he’d been secretly hoping for something more one day.
But that was his problem, not Jenna’s. He would’ve never pushed that on her.
After glancing at the door, Frances said, “Do you ever think that Jenna should know exactly what happened the day of Jimmy’s accident?”
Glimpses of Jimmy’s brash words, his cocky grin, his impatience . . . the way more than one person on the line was always annoyed with his attitude . . . bloomed fresh.
No matter how hard he tried to lock the memories away, he never completely succeeded. Like always, he shut them down as quickly as he could. Remembering faults of the past didn’t change how people viewed the present.
“You know, it could be that Jenna is imagining you’re partly to blame for Jimmy’s accident, but nothing could be further from the truth. He’s the one—”
“Stop, Fanny. I’m sorry. I know you mean well, but I think that talking about the accident feels wrong. It’s over.” Nelson didn’t want to relive that awful day.
She folded her arms over her chest. “I’m sorry, but everyone talks about it anyway.”
“Really? Who?”
“Don’t get yourself in a snit, Nelson. Just because half the workers here are Amish doesn’t mean they aren’t as human—and as fallible—as you and me. People gossip. Talk about things that bother them.”
“They shouldn’t, though. Jimmy died.”
“Okay, how about this? Everyone also remembers. Not the pretty, clean, easy-to-understand version. But the real one. There’s nothing wrong with doing that either . . . except that one day Jimmy’s lovely widow is going to discover the truth.”
He hoped not. “The truth is that he’s dead, Frances. Jimmy is dead, Jenna is a widow, and Katie is going to grow up without a father. That’s the plain, unvarnished truth. Talking about that day, dwelling on the details, won’t change the facts.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right.”
His cell phone beeped. “I gotta get to work,” he said before he hurried into his office, shut the door, and sat down behind his desk.
Only then, when he was completely alone, did he dare face the truth: He was devastated by Jenna’s rejection.
He was devastated and he was hurt . . . because he’d been secretly falling in love with her.
Somehow, some way, he was going to have to shut those feelings down. Just like he’d tried to shut down all the talk about Jimmy being mostly at fault for his own demise.
Unfortunately, Nelson feared he wasn’t going to be any more successful at removing his infatuation with Jenna than he’d been at removing the talk about her husband’s death.
Some things were determined to be out of his control.