“I’m coming. I just told you I’m coming.”
Frustration knotted her stomach. “You told me you were coming to think, not coming to see Jonah.”
“Of course I’m coming to see Jonah. Why would I have to say that?” She heard him blow out a breath with all the frustration she felt. “What is it you want from me, Jean?”
* * *
What is it you want from me?
That was a dumb question to ask Jean. He knew exactly what Jean wanted from him. She’d never come out and demanded it—just as she’d never expressed her true needs when they were together—but at least this time he knew what she wanted. What she needed. Jonah’s father had to be all-in, or not in at all.
All-in. Suddenly everyone wanted “all-in” from him. It shouldn’t irritate him; complete commitment had been his style for years. The Murphy bed that pulled down from the wall of his office and the barely lived-in state of his apartment offered evidence of that. Hadn’t each of the few women he’d dated since Jean said the same thing? “Expensive gifts aren’t attention” the most recent one had shouted at him as she tossed a costly bracelet down on his desk—his desk because he hadn’t shown up at the restaurant for their dinner reservation—two months ago. He’d gone “all-in” on lots of things, but never with the people in his life. And where had that gotten him?
And now, Hal Braddon wouldn’t put his money behind SymphoCync unless he got to buy the firm, and without Josh contractually declaring himself “all-in” for the next four years. Turning down Braddon’s offer would be denying the best opportunity for growth SymphoCync had, hobbling the company and the dozens of people who had given their “all-in” to get it this far.
How was he supposed to be two different Joshes on two different coasts? “No either, no neither,” as his father was fond of classifying impossible choices.
Jean’s silence on the other end of the line told him they were verging on an argument he didn’t want to have. “I’m still figuring out how to do this. Aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Her voice was quiet.
He leaned against the fridge, one finger running down the waxy crayon of Jonah’s drawing. He wanted to be all-in for Jonah—foreign as that desire was given his own history. It felt beyond frustrating to be denied it, even if he could see Jean had that right. “So I don’t see why I can’t figure it out as Jonah’s father.”
“Because fathers are forever to someone his age.” It was all there in how she said the word; she doubted he had forever in him. Wow, that stung.
And rightly so; he doubted he had it in himself. But he really, really wanted the chance to try.
“We can make this work.” He knew the insistence was rising in his voice, but he couldn’t seem to help it.
“How?”
“I don’t know that yet.” I had an idea how to make this work before Hal Braddon decided to start giving ultimatums. That still threw him—ultimatums were Dad’s weapon of choice, not his. Two weeks ago the concept of being legally bound to SymphoCync—his technical baby—for the next four years would have been a no-brainer. Braddon was his professional idol, Josh’s first choice for the man to finance SymphoCync’s launch to the next level. Now his world strained to hold Jonah and SymphoCync at the same time. And this pull back to the valley? Josh was at a total loss for how to handle that.
That sleepy little town wasn’t his world. This was. So why couldn’t he sleep? Why couldn’t he think? Why did the long hours suddenly seem like a burden and Braddon’s price of commitment so high?
Jean’s sigh on the other end of the line brought him back to the moment. “I know I haven’t called. That’s exactly why I want to come back again. I want to see him.” Before he even recognized it in himself, he heard the words “I want to see you” leave his mouth with the startling surprise of truth. He did want to see her again. Very much. The strong, tenacious woman she’d become fascinated him. She seemed so centered, so grounded, despite the huge risk she’d undertaken with Matrimony Valley.
He, on the other hand, felt like he was living in a pinball machine, wildly bouncing from one force to another, racking up points that did nothing but rank him on some list that never really mattered. “I need to figure something out, and I want to figure it out with you.”
He imagined Matt rolling his eyes at the gooey nature of his words. He normally worked out company tactics like this with Matt. Any problem, actually—Matt was his sounding board for all things personal and professional. But Josh hadn’t even told Matt about Braddon’s counteroffer of purchase. He told himself it was because information like that ignited rumors in a heartbeat, but that wasn’t the entire reason. He hadn’t told anyone about any of this.
Part of it was how Braddon’s “no you, no deal” insistence made him feel oddly and uncomfortably indispensable. That was weird in itself, seeing how he’d built his career to be exactly that: synonymous with SymphoCync. He should want SymphoCync to need him. He should be dying to stay, excited to keep on. The eighty-two people who worked at SymphoCync needed him to stay on, because growing at a spectacular pace was the only way anyone stayed alive in the hyperspeed world of technology. In this world, you paused, you died.
“What are you saying, Josh? What are you looking for?”
A pause. The words pinned him to the wall. He wanted to hit the pause button on the rocket ride that had been his life since school, and that was all kinds of wrong.
Wasn’t it?
“Can I come back now?” It was a ridiculous question. He didn’t need permission to hop a plane back to Matrimony Valley. He was obligated to return there in less than a week as it was, given Violet’s impending wedding. His question wasn’t really about location, though; it was about proximity to Jean and to Jonah. He wanted to figure out why she invaded his thoughts. He wanted to know if the pull he felt toward her was nostalgia or something different. Something new, something he’d been missing for too long. None of it made sense except the weird notion that it made even less sense here than there.
Silence dragged between them. Her hesitation pressed against him.
“Be careful, Josh.”
Careful? He’d never been careful, ever. He’d bushwhacked his way through life, cutting down resistance in front of him with little regard to what fell in the process. It struck him, as he mulled over the warning in her voice, that he didn’t really know how to be careful.
Jean knew that. Even before he knew it, she’d recognized the damage he might do. Not out of spite or malice, but out of sheer blunt force and power. “Can I come back now?” he asked again, astonished to hear pleading in his voice.
Her answer told him a lot about the both of them. “I can’t stop you.”
“I’m asking, Jean. Not telling, asking.” She had to know what strange territory that was for him, didn’t she?
There was a long pause before she said, “Yes.”
He sank against the refrigerator in an unexpected feeling of relief. For a man who was used to moving mountains to get what he wanted, the art of the request was a foreign language. This new, weird world where “apply more force, skill or money” wasn’t the path to a solution was going to take a lot of getting used to.
“Thank you,” he said softly.
“Be careful,” she said again. The fact that she had to repeat it punctured whatever confidence he had left. Could he do this? Get to know his son, and Jean, in a way that added to their lives instead of just complicated them?
He gave the only answer he could, and one that rang insufficient in his ears for hours after he hung up: “I promise you, Jean, I will try.”
Chapter Thirteen
Matt looked predictably stunned after Josh gave him the entire explanation as they sat on the rooftop deck that evening. “You can’t leave. You just got back.”
“I was already taking time off for Vi’s wedding. Just think of this as add
ing on a bit more.”
“It’s not like that at all,” Matt countered.
“Well...” That was the best and the worst thing about Matt. He never let Josh get away with anything.
Matt ran his hands through his hair. “You sure this isn’t some kind of wunderkind-is-about-to-turn-thirty identity crisis?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You said you’d never sell SymphoCync. I mean, you are SymphoCync. You’ve always been SymphoCync.”
Matt began pacing the deck, his brain already starting the calculations that made him so valuable to the company. “That’s some serious cash. You’ve been chasing Braddon for months, and now you’ve got him. I don’t like the sale part, granted, but if he’s saying it really will be hands-off and you’ll still be at the helm, I think we can live with that—provided the contract’s airtight.”
“I know,” Josh agreed.
“You know what that kind of cash can do for us.” Matt began pacing faster. “Get legal on it, lock down your position and authority, draw lines around his, and we can make it work.”
“I know,” Josh repeated.
Matt stopped and looked at Josh. “We can launch the video platform with that kind of capital. It’ll mean we’ll be running flat out for a few more years, but we know how to do that. We do that better than anybody.”
The thought of “running flat out” for a few more years soured Josh’s stomach. I used to be the flat-out-give-150-percent king. Now I want to go fishing. What’s happening to me?
Matt walked toward him. “This isn’t just about SymphoCync and whether or not you’re ready to sell, is it.” He didn’t phrase it like a question. “Look, I know this whole Jean-and-the-kid thing is weighing on you.” It struck Josh that while Matt had been pacing the deck furiously for the whole conversation, Josh hadn’t moved from his seat. “You can figure out how to be in his life. From here,” Matt urged. “There are ways to make this work. Jean’s obviously figured out how to make it work without you, so anything you bring to the table’s just an improvement, right?”
When Josh didn’t answer, Matt went on. “I mean, when you do this deal, you’ll have enough money to give that kid whatever he needs and then some. He’ll have access to anything, thanks to you.”
But he won’t have access to what he needs most of all—me. After all, wasn’t it true that his own father had access to endless resources and had never given him what he truly needed? The dual forces tearing at Josh seemed to rip him right down his spine. “I want to be a father, not just a support check.”
“Okay, so let’s figure out how to do that.”
“I can’t figure it out here!” Josh shouted, his frustration boiling over. “I can’t...think here. Not right now.”
“What? Suddenly now your brilliance doesn’t work on this coast?” Matt threw up his hands. “What’s gotten into you? You’re letting this derail you, and derail maybe the biggest deal of your career.”
“I know the timing’s lousy, but I need to go. I know you don’t understand why, but that doesn’t change that I need to go.”
Matt started for the door. “Fine. Go. Go hang out in your mountains and get whatever this is out of your system so you can come back and make this work. I’ll cover for you. I can’t believe I’m saying that, but maybe it’s something I’m going to have to get used to, isn’t it?”
“Matt...”
Matt jabbed a finger at him. “Don’t. Don’t even try. Let’s just hope Braddon’s offer didn’t come with an expiration date. ’Cause he doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who’s going to sit around and wait for you to wrestle with your conscience.” With that, Josh watched his partner and friend of eight years stomp off down the hall.
* * *
The mountains. Jean knew there were mountains in other parts of the country—other parts of the world, for that matter—but her mountains never ceased to amaze her. To soothe her and grant her the perspective that so easily slid from her life. Did city people realize how much they didn’t see? Did people in plains states know how many shades of purple could outline the mountains as they spread out before you in the afternoon? How they changed and shifted like an ocean as the sun sank?
Josh pulled in a deep breath beside her. He’d looked wound up and exhausted when he came into town this morning. The distance that had been their undoing seemed to loom again. Neither of them ever reached out when they ought to have, and she feared those old mistakes would doom this new relationship, whatever it was becoming. There was so much still unresolved. Josh hadn’t spoken of what had happened in California, even though she could see it weighed on him.
So she did what she always did when things weighed on her. She took him up into the mountains while Jonah had a playdate with Lulu at Kelly’s. If they were going to make their way to a solution, here was the place where it could most easily happen.
It hadn’t started out easy. They’d been sitting for almost an hour in silence until Jean felt the stress slowly slough off both of them. She wanted to let him be the first to open up.
“I used to think,” he said finally, “that ‘purple mountain majesties’ was just a song lyric.”
She laughed, glad to hear the vista had the same effect on him that it did on her “You have mountains in California. You have cliffs and crashing seas. And I’m sure there are loads more song lyrics about the California coast than about the Smoky Mountains. I mean, just the Beach Boys alone...”
“Well, yeah, but I didn’t expect this. I mean, I remember how you used to talk about this place, but I didn’t expect it to...to stick to me like this. The peace of it all. The place is thick with peace, you know that?”
Peace. Isn’t that what they both needed? Peace over their past and peace about how they’d craft their future? She gave him a smile. “And what’s California thick with?”
“Smog. Ambition. Drama.”
“Oh, we’ve got drama here. One town council meeting here could take on a month of West Coast power lunches, I assure you.”
He pounded one fist on his forehead, as if he could shake the right words loose. He was wrestling with something huge. “It’s not the same. That place is thick with...whatever the opposite of this place is.”
She knew what he was trying to say. What he was trying to articulate was much of the reason she was here and not there. Still, she understood his grasp for the words, seeing as she’d never really found a suitable way to explain it herself. “But you love it there, don’t you?”
He didn’t answer, just let out a groan of frustration. The wonderful and terrifying thought that he might be catching the affection for the valley—the affinity that ran through her veins—hitched her breath.
Close the distance. Don’t make the old mistakes, she told herself. “Josh, what’s going on? Why are you here, now, looking like you do?”
He leaned back against the tree, the weariness seeming to double in his eyes, as if he suddenly needed the ancient trunk to hold him upright. “Hal Braddon.”
“Who’s he?”
That made him laugh. “The fact that you have to ask just underscores the whole thing.”
That had been one of the things that grew the distance between them—he would make a problem sound like it was above her ability to help. She wasn’t going to let that happen anymore. “I never liked it when you were condescending, Josh.”
He sat upright, his elbow on one knee. “Sorry. That’s not how I meant it.”
“So explain it to me.”
He shifted to face her. “Everybody in my business knows Hal Braddon. If I’m a big fish, Braddon’s a whale. Everybody knows what that man can do.”
“Which is...?”
“That whale can throw his very considerable capital behind businesses so that they take off into the stratosphere. Everybody in my corner of the world wants Hal to get behind their busine
ss. It’s pretty much the golden ticket. I’ve been courting the guy for two years. He finally came through earlier this week. Made me a very pretty offer.” He looped his finger in the air. “Lots and lots of digits that could do lots and lots of things for SymphoCync.”
She could understand that. What she couldn’t understand was the lack of victory in his eyes. “That’s what you always wanted, isn’t it? Build a big company? Be the legend who launched SymphoCync?”
He slumped back against the tree. “Hal exceeded all expectations, I’ll give him that much. His offer is a full thirty percent above what I was hoping for.”
Jean pulled her knees up to hug them. “So? I don’t get it.”
“Hal doesn’t want to back my company, he wants to buy it. He wants to own SymphoCync.”
“Are you interested in selling?” she asked as carefully as she could. Selling SymphoCync would enable Josh to start over anywhere in the world. Including someplace far closer to here.
“Braddon’s big funding comes with a high price tag. One that’s become a bit higher than I was expecting.”
“Help me understand.” She paused, then made herself ask, “Does it have to do with me and Jonah? Is that why you’re here?” She hadn’t expected to be so frightened of the answer.
“Selling to Braddon will double SymphoCync’s assets, but only if I sign a four-year contract to stay on as CEO.” Only Josh Tyler could give a look that could throw a woman off balance when she was already sitting on the ground. “Under any other circumstances, the ink would already be dry on an offer like that. It’s a dream setup.”
“But?”
He held her gaze. “But I’d be running full tilt in San Jose for the next four years if I sign.”
“And?” The whole mountainside held its breath alongside her.
His Surprise Son Page 12
