“Brody!”
He set his glass on the table. “Here’s the thing. I needed an excuse to be with you, or at least I thought I did. But a miracle happened. After we went through that first stack of boxes together, somebody moved that box right back to the front where we’d already looked.”
He had confessed. Now she had to, although he obviously knew the truth. “All right, after our first trip to the attic, Mrs. Grant told me where to find a house key and gave me a description of the box I was looking for. So I took out a couple of quilts and moved the box back to the front, so we wouldn’t find it when we were together. Of course I didn’t know that you—”
He put his arm around her and pulled her close. “Jo, do we still need excuses to be together? Do we need more time talking about our views on art or literature, about your job or mine, more snowballs and ice skating? Because it’s all been great. We could be best friends, I guess, if we really worked at it.”
She went into his arms without hesitation, shifting so her face was close to his. “But we were never destined just to be friends, were we?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Brody, just tell me this isn’t about the season....” Her voice caught. “And it’s not just nostalgia for lost youth.”
“It’s about never being able to forget you,” he said, just before he kissed her.
He was right, there really was no more need for conversation. And there was certainly no need to invent ways to entertain each other. There was no need to move into the bedroom, either. The fire was warm, the pillows were soft, and their clothes slipped away as easily as their painful past.
Later, lying against him, skin-to-skin, heart-to-heart, Jo stirred a little. “If Santa Claus comes down this chimney tonight, he’s going to get a big surprise.”
Brody pulled her close again. “Not to worry. Santa knows he doesn’t have to come. I already have my Christmas present.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
JO LOVED THE handcrafted bracelet Brody had given her for Christmas. One of his friends made jewelry, and the bracelet was a chain of sterling silver leaves and tiny amethyst beads arranged like clusters of grapes. It was now two days after Christmas, and she had only removed the bracelet to shower. In turn she was afraid Brody might wear the cashmere hoodie she had given him until high summer.
Because he was making sales calls to three distant restaurants that he hoped to interest in his wines, she was back at Hollymeade for the day. She had turned down an offer to accompany him and was taking the day to catch up with email. Like clockwork she had monthly cramps and a headache that she knew would subside in a day, and she was just as glad to be alone.
Now she nestled into a comfortable chair and remembered the one time in her life when her period hadn’t come the day it was expected. She had been a sophomore in college, and two weeks before she had visited Brody at Cornell for homecoming. He was graduating that year, and more than once the conversation had turned to their future. She was taking more than a full load at M.I.T., hoping to graduate early.
Brody was already fielding offers from vineyards in California and Washington State. With no experience, he wouldn’t make much money at first, but his intention was to gain experience while Jo finished school.
At some point the discussion had turned to having children. He wanted several, he’d said, and sooner rather than later so he had the energy to enjoy them. She had to finish school, of course, and settle into her career, but wouldn’t it be wonderful when they could be a real family?
Jo was less enthused. Since her father’s death she had been a mother to her own mother, and now she was anxious to become financially stable and independent. Having children sounded like another obstacle to both, but she was sure she and Brody would eventually come to a compromise.
Except that a week went by, then two, and her period didn’t start. Jo was never late, not by so much as a day, and suddenly she was frantic. The reality of children, their constant care, constant needs, overwhelmed her, even knowing this child would be Brody’s. She was so irrational she refused to buy a test kit because she was terrified what she might learn.
During the second week of waiting, her schoolwork suffered. She was late turning in an important paper, and she failed a quiz. Then, just as she geared up to discover the truth, her period started.
Just like that, only, by then her whole life had changed. She had learned something important. Her past and overcoming it were more important than a family of her own. At least for the foreseeable future.
She had been searching for a way to tell Brody that she wasn’t ready to have children—might not be for some time—when he’d made a surprise appearance in Cambridge to end their engagement. Later, when she surfaced from the deep pool of anger and regret, she had been able to focus on one bright spot. She could go forward with her life plan without interference or demands. With nobody in the way, independence and security were now in reach. Like a drowning woman she had grabbed for both and hung on tightly.
Until now.
Ten years had passed, and she was both independent and secure. She was also locked into a life with few other rewards. She wasn’t sorry to have a career. She loved what she did. But these days she could see that combining a career and a family was possible. With more perspective she could also see that raising children was completely different from caring for her mother. Raising Brody’s children? The thought was sweet.
Her cell phone rang, and she was so lost in thought that she answered without checking the caller’s identity. The voice on the other end was unmistakable, Frank Conner having his daily snit. She sat back and listened to her boss’s latest explosion, buffing her nails against her sweater as he shouted about a project she had only a small part in, until she realized her hands were shaking so hard she was now clenching her fingers. That was the moment when she interrupted him.
“Frank, you know what? I’m fed up with this, so I’m hanging up. Don’t call back unless you can speak to me the way one intelligent adult speaks to another. You can stop using me as your punching bag, or you can fire me, but I won’t let you abuse me another minute. And you’d better be careful, because, you know what? I might just start punching back.”
The only thing she punched, of course, was “end.” Then she turned off the ringer, shoved it back in her purse and for good measure covered the purse with a pillow.
Or at least she tried to. The pillow took two tries because she was still trembling so badly.
She had finally done it. Now, despite a stomach in turmoil, she couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t confronted Frank Conner sooner. It was quite possible she’d just lost her job, but did she care?
For the first time in years she could see how much more there was to life than financial security. Sure, it was nice to have investments and her own condo, to be able to take great vacations if she wanted them, to wear designer suits every day. But nobody visited the condo. She didn’t take vacations because she didn’t have time and she didn’t want to go alone. The suits were boring even if they sported famous labels. And the investments? What were they for? An early, supremely dull retirement?
She loved what she did, but surely there was a better way and a better place to do it. If she was fired for standing up for herself, did she care?
The answer was surprisingly easy. No, she really didn’t.
Something sweet and wonderful swept through her. She thought it might be freedom. Freedom from her spiteful boss. Freedom from a life that required all work and no play. Freedom from responsibility for Sophie, because even in the unlikely possibility that Sophie’s new husband gave up on her, Jo had saved enough and then some to take care of her mother’s future needs.
Freedom from loneliness.
Job security was great, but she was good at what she did, and she had contacts. If she needed another job,
she could find a good one. But what if she didn’t want to work for somebody else? What if she wanted to stay here, with Brody, and run her own business? What if she wanted to work for the little guys, the small businesses like his that needed her help so they could make a decent living, not so they could make millions more each year?
She could help put businesses like that on the road to financial security, a road that didn’t sacrifice their employees’ welfare or old-fashioned customer service. The very same road she planned to put Brody on. Because she could, and now she realized she needed to. Maybe it was too late to make updates to his system a Christmas present, but she didn’t think he would mind.
She went to her laptop and brought up the Ryan Vineyards website. It was just as pathetic as she remembered. Website design wasn’t her strong suit, but figuring out what was wrong and getting somebody else to make it right certainly was.
She pulled up another program and began to make notes and lists. She knew a woman, a brilliant designer who was now a stay-at-home mom, who could develop a website for a reasonable fee. And while the designer worked on that, Jo could start in on all the other things Ryan Vineyards needed. She would put together a software package and a list of hardware. The vineyards needed a brand, starting with a more sophisticated logo, and that logo needed to be prominent on everything they produced. She would find good prices for everything and vendors willing to work with her at substantial discounts.
She was so excited she could hardly sit still. Brody might look at all this as charity, a gift he hadn’t asked for and couldn’t afford to pay back, but when she convinced him it was the start of a new portfolio for the consulting business she hoped to inaugurate, she thought maybe he wouldn’t mind.
Maybe he would even see that she needed Ryan Vineyards and Brody Ryan for more than a portfolio. Because she saw it now. Freedom was all well and good, and she was happy she had found it, but she was becoming more and more sure she didn’t want to be free of Brody ever again.
* * *
AS BRODY PARKED his car in front of his house he told himself that one restaurant out of three wasn’t bad, particularly since he wasn’t much of a salesman. He hated to twist arms. His wine should speak for itself, but unfortunately he didn’t have fancy brochures to go with it or anything more than his home phone number to process orders. The generic label on the bottles didn’t help, either. Even if the wine was good, and so reasonably priced that his only real profit would be loyal customers, his presentation screamed “amateur-on-the-premises.”
Gargoyle, the aging collie from the neighboring farm, was waiting on his porch. Gargoyle wandered over from time to time, as if to make sure Brody wasn’t too lonely, but he never stayed. Brody’s house was too cold for a good nap when his own was much warmer.
“Hey, fellow.” Brody reached down to ruffle the collie’s neck. “Nice afternoon for a walk.”
Gargoyle’s tail beat time to his words. The dog rubbed against his leg, then, as if he’d done his duty, he headed for home.
Brody figured it was a sad state of affairs when he felt even more alone because someone else’s dog was disappearing up the hill. Winter was never easy. Most of the time the old house felt like a deserted barn, cold and drafty and utterly empty. He closed off what he could and heated the rest of it just enough to keep the pipes from freezing.
Except when Jo was there.
Of course Jo was more than just a hedge against loneliness. He was deeply in love with her, had been since the first time they met. All the years apart hadn’t changed that, although the reasons for their separation hadn’t really changed, either.
He still had nothing to offer her. He was on the brink of losing Ryan Vineyards. There was only so much one man could do. Among other things, two late spring freezes had diminished their crop, and for someone already in debt the outcome looked grim, even if this year’s crop was a roaring success.
And even if he could somehow salvage the family home and business, there was nothing in Kanowa Lake for Jo. She loved her work, even if she didn’t love the man she worked for, but there was little industry here and nothing in her field.
How could he ask her to give up the work she loved when he faced almost certain failure anyway?
As he walked up to the house he remembered the day a decade before when he told her that marriage was out of the question. He hadn’t been honest, of course. Had he told her then that he had just learned that his father was dying, a diagnosis that promised a long, slow decline, she would have told him that his father’s condition made no difference. She was a woman who did what she had to. Of course she would pitch in and help with nursing care, just the way she had cared for her own mother most of her life. They could live through the dark years together.
Of course, the health issues would have been different, but Jo had sacrificed enough of her life to Sophie, and even then Brody had seen it and been unwilling to ask her to sacrifice more.
Now he knew that if he told her the true state of his finances she would offer to help, to stand beside him, no matter what.
He let himself in and took off his boots in a foyer nearly as cold as the outdoors. For a moment he let himself form a different picture. Jo, waiting to find out how his sales calls had gone. Hot soup waiting for lunch, maybe a fire in the fireplace, new curtains at the windows, pillows on the sofa. She would have done what she could with very little money to make his childhood home their own.
And just as likely, if she wasn’t happy in her new life, she would go on that way forever, because it wasn’t like her to hurt anybody. She not only did what she had to, but she also never complained.
There was only one way to make everything come together, of course. A real estate agent had contacted him last month. His company was looking for land to build vacation homes. Brody’s wasn’t ideal since he wasn’t directly on the lake, but the lake was visible from many places on the property. The agent was fairly certain he could buy access for a private road down to the water and a portion of the shore beyond for a beach. He wanted to build twenty homes, efficient small summer cottages, with community tennis courts, a pool, a recreation area. He had talked about a price that would cover the mortgage and other obligations, but with little left over. If nothing else, they would be debt-free at last.
Brody could find a job somewhere else, maybe help his mom buy a little condo in Arizona near his sister, where she would be happy. He would be free to pursue a different life with Jo.
And Brody Ryan would be the last of the Ryan line to live on these acres and struggle to bring them to life. The Ryan who finally gave up and gave in.
The Ryan whose only other alternative was to ask the woman he loved to give up her dreams for his.
The telephone rang, but he went upstairs without answering it to take a hot shower. There was nobody he could talk to about his life or his decisions. For years he had been forced to make them alone. As much as he longed to, he couldn’t involve Jo, because she was at the center of every one of them.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NEW YEAR’S HAD come and gone, and Jo was still at the lake cottage taking vacation time—sort of. She worked in the mornings, communicating with her colleagues on projects they shared, but since their phone call, she had only received two terse emails from Frank Conner. Apparently he had taken her warning to heart. There hadn’t been any tantrums for a week.
The rest of her days were more fun. There was time with Brody, of course, magical time, particularly New Year’s Eve, when another year stretched ahead of them with all its possibilities. But Brody wasn’t the only person she socialized with.
She hadn’t intended to make friends in Kanowa Lake, but somehow it had happened. A young woman she met at the Trading Post had told her about the county’s quilt group and invited her to what she called a circle meeting for half a dozen quilters who sewed together every Wednesday ni
ght. Since Brody was busy that night doing paperwork, and she wanted advice on whether to group similar colored stars together on the border or scatter them throughout, she had attended.
Warmly welcomed, her hand stitching admired and advice given to mix the colors for a scrappier effect, she’d had a wonderful time. Since then she’d been invited shopping by one woman in the group and out to lunch by another. She was on her way into town for the lunch when her cell phone rang. She pulled over and checked the ID. Frank Conner was waiting for her to answer, most likely impatiently.
Juggling the phone from hand to hand she considered, but in the end she touched the screen and put the phone to her ear. She had demanded that Frank treat her like an adult and, even harder for him, that he act like one himself. He’d had a week to consider her ultimatum. Now she would learn his decision.
When she put the phone back in her purse a minute later, she knew.
She hadn’t been fired. Lord, no, he had assured her in honey-sweet tones. It was only that the company was going in a new direction, and her talents were no longer needed. She was fortunate, though, because Frank was a generous man. There would be a hefty compensation package to help her make the transition to the world of unemployment, as well as a flattering recommendation. The phone call had been the briefest and most cordial they had ever shared.
She suspected he had taped every word, in case she sued.
Her services were no longer required.
She was free.
Now that the shock was over she examined her feelings the way she might examine her limbs and joints after a bike accident. She had one regret. She had allowed Frank Conner to make the decision. Still, just this once her former boss had done her a huge favor. Because despite feeling she’d been walloped from behind, the blow had thrust her into a whole new world where she could determine her own future.
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