by Katee Robert
Kendall went pale. “Is it my friends? Did something happen?”
Alex could see that the guy was about to give another vague answer that wouldn’t do a damn thing but stress her out more, so he cut in. “Let’s find you some shorts with ties and we’ll get some answers.” He hesitated. “Unless you don’t want me to come with you.”
“I do.” She accepted the shorts he handed her and pulled them on, barely pausing to cinch the waist in tight. He had a spare pair of flip-flops stuff in his suitcase, so he handed her those as well. For his part, Alex finished getting dressed in record time.
He followed Kendall to the door. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 13
A thousand and one horrible scenarios went through Kendall’s mind as she and Alex followed the cruise employee to a private room. He passed them off to a Latino woman in clothing that spoke of management. She didn’t blink at Kendall’s clothing or at Alex’s presence at her back. “Ms. Barnes?”
“Yes, that’s me.” She twisted the hem of her shirt—of Alex’s shirt—between her hands. “What’s going on? Did something happen to one of my friends?”
“As far as I know, everyone who accompanied you on this trip is fine.” She hesitated. “But there seems to be a family emergency.” She passed over a quickly scrawled note that was obviously written by someone taking a message.
Ethan in hospital. It looks bad. Gretchen is a wreck. Get your ass home.
- Marley
“I have to go.” She hadn’t realized she spoke aloud until Alex tensed at her back. She couldn’t focus on him, though, not with her plans unfurling before her. She met the manager’s gaze. “I’m going to need to book a flight from the island.”
“We can help arrange that.” Another hesitation, the woman obviously didn’t want to be a dick, but that didn’t stop her from saying, “Of course, we cannot facilitate a refund at this juncture.”
As if Kendall cared the least bit about that. She waved the woman’s words away. “I’m not concerned about it. I’m going to pack.”
“Of course. I’ll send one of our people to collect you and help you book the flight.”
Every moment she stood there, she wasted time. “Thanks.” She turned and nearly ran into Alex. For a second, she’d actually forgotten he was in the room. She started to say—she didn’t know what. It didn’t matter in the end. Alex shifted back to let her pass and fell into step behind her as she hurried back to her cabin. She barely glanced at him as she started shoving clothing into her suitcase.
“Kendall.”
She didn’t look up. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
“Kendall, look at me.”
If she stopped, she’d start thinking about the implications of Gretchen’s husband in the hospital, about how serious it must be in order to be called home, about what it meant that Marley knew before she did and was the one to contact her instead of Gretchen. Bad, bad, bad. No matter which way she looked at it, it was bad.
She turned and nearly ran into Alex. Again. “I have to pack.”
“Kendall.” The snap in his voice slowed her down long enough to look at him. She expected some kind of judgment or anger. He just looked worried. “What do you need from me?”
“I need to go,” she repeated. “I… I’ll call you.” She would. Once she knew what she was dealing with and could think straight.
Alex looked at her for a long moment and finally nodded. “Okay, sweetheart. Like I said—whatever you need.” He walked to her nightstand and scrawled a number there. “I’ll be home the day the ship docks. If you need me before then, call anyways.”
“Okay,” she whispered, already knowing she wouldn’t.
Another of those long looks, as if he could already see her wavering on the future of them. “Talk to me, Kendall. I know this shit isn’t about me, but you don’t have to shoulder the burden alone.”
Kendall didn’t share burdens. It wasn’t how she operated. She had to focus on her sister and the crisis requiring her presence, not the man standing in front of her. She stripped quickly out of his clothing and dressed in the first pair of shorts and top she found. “I don’t know what I’m walking into, Alex. I just know my brother-in-law is in the hospital, and that it’s serious or I wouldn’t have had a call while I was on this trip. My little sister isn’t even living in Oregon right now, so the fact that she is the one calling me in speaks volumes.”
“I understand that.” A hint of frustration slid into his tone, and she resented the hell out of it.
She shoved the rest of her clothes into her suitcase, not bothering to fold them. “What if it’s a prolonged illness? What if I have to stay there for weeks and eat up the rest of my vacation time? I don’t get more until the new year.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “What are you saying?”
She didn’t know. She couldn’t think. “I’m saying that I can’t make promises to you, and it’s not fair to ask you to wait for me. Nine months before I can see you again? Or nine months where you’re the one who has to fly to me? This is the first vacation you’ve taken in years. You’re not going to leave your beloved bar more than absolutely necessary, and we both know this is hardly necessary.”
“So when you say you’ll call me, what you’re really saying is not to wait by the phone because this shit isn’t going to happen.”
“I really don’t want to do this now.”
He didn’t move. “We don’t dock for another twenty minutes. You can’t do fuck all until then.”
Maybe not, but it would still feel good to move. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to leave it like this.”
“Maybe not, but you’re sure as shit doing it.” He took a slow step back. “It’s fine, Kendall. I hear you loud and clear. Good luck with your family. I truly hope your brother-in-law is okay.” He picked up his clothing that she’d discarded and walked out the door of her cabin, letting it close softly behind him.
Kendall couldn’t breathe past the pounding of her heart. Every atom in her body wanted to chase Alex down and beg him to understand where she was coming from. She was worried and scared and didn’t know what kind of situation she would walk into when she got back to Oregon. She wasn’t in the same position to make promises the same way she had been last night.
She forcibly put the thought of Alex from her mind. He didn’t need her. Her sister did. In the end, that was what it came down to.
She tried to knock on her friends’ cabin doors, but either they were sleeping too hard or none of them were in their rooms. Another time, that thought would make her happy, the realization that they were all enjoying their vacation despite the setbacks. Now all she felt was frustration that she didn’t know where to find them. Kendall scrawled out a quick note explaining what had happened and where she’d gone and pushed it under Grace’s door.
Then there was nothing else to do, Kendall headed for the manager’s office to figure out how she’d get on a flight out of Nassau to Oregon. Once she was there, she’d figure out her next steps. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it seemed.
Kendall desperately hoped it wasn’t as bad as it seemed.
It took Kendall two days to get to Oregon. She ended up stuck in the Dallas airport and then flown into Portland and had to rent a car to drive up the coast to where Ruby Creek was nestled. Through it all, the only information Marley gave her was that it was bad and to hurry.
She hurried.
She found her sisters in the hallway of the hospital, huddled together and talking in low voices. Gretchen looked up first and, Kendall knew in that moment that Ethan wouldn’t make it. Her sister didn’t look like herself. Pain was written over every inch of her face, her shoulders were stooped, and there was a numbness in her blue eyes that reached out and kicked Kendall right in the teeth.
Gretchen didn’t even smile. “You’re here.”
“I’m here.” She glanced at Marley, their little sister, the one who always looked like sunshine and rainbows. Her blond hair was p
ulled back into a simple ponytail and she had on jeans and a plain white T-shirt. More indicators of the severity of the situation, as if Kendall needed them. “What do you need?”
“We were just going to go home for a little while to rest.”
Gretchen shook her head. “I’m fine.”
“You are not fine.” Marley turned a pleading look at Kendall, and that was all she needed to snap out of her shock and into planning mode.
She stepped up and took her sister’s elbow. “Let’s get showered and eat something and we can come right back here. You have to take care of yourself, Gretchen.” Before her older sister could protest, she had guided them downstairs to the front door and out into the parking lot.
An hour later, she closed the door on her sleeping sister, her heart breaking at the way Gretchen curled around what was obviously Ethan’s pillow. Just as she’d hoped, exhaustion caught up with her sister the second she stopped moving. It wouldn’t slow her down for long—not knowing Gretchen—but it would help.
Kendall went and found Marley in the kitchen. “Tell me.”
“He had a stroke.”
“A stroke? Ethan’s barely thirty-five.”
Marley transferred scoop after scoop of coffee into the filter. “Yeah, I know. Kendall… It’s bad. Really bad. Like he isn’t going to make it bad.” She took a deep breath. “And Gretchen is pregnant.”
“What?” She twisted to look back at the room where she’d left her sister. “I didn’t know.”
“No one knew. They had a miscarriage a few years ago and so they weren’t going to tell anyone until she had her first ultrasound.” Marley gave a sad smile. “I only know now because she passed out and had to tell me to avoid me dragging her to a doctor, too.”
Marley had been here for days holding down the fort. Kendall pulled her sister into a tight hug. “You’ve done a great job, Marley.”
“There’s more.”
How could there possibly be more? She braced herself. “Okay.”
Marley didn’t release her. “She and Ethan scraped up everything they had to secure a loan. They bought Mom and Dad’s old restaurant. Construction is supposed to start the week after next.” She hesitated. “They put a lien on their house to do it.”
Oh, Gretchen. “We’ll figure it out.
“I’m scared for her.”
“Me too.” She gave her sister a last squeeze and stepped back. “I’m here now. You don’t have to do this alone.”
It was only later, when she finally got her bags into her old room to unpack, that she had a moment to mourn the loss of Alex. Because it was a loss. From what she’d been able to glean from the doctors, the chance of Ethan waking up decreased with every hour. The stroke had created a pressure in his brain that they weren’t able to release.
Gretchen was going to be a widow. A pregnant widow. A pregnant widow who had just risked everything to secure a loan to buy the old restaurant that had belonged to their parents once upon a time.
Kendall had thought she had a strong path in life. She’d worked hard in high school, gotten into the college she wanted, graduated with as little student debt as she could manage, settled into a job that was supposed to be her forever career.
It all felt like so much bullshit now.
She called the hotel, her heart in her throat. “Please put me through to Valerie.” She and the current general manager didn’t often see eye to eye, but surely they would on this. Family was everything.
A few seconds later, Valerie answered with a brisk, “Hello?”
“Hi Valerie. It’s Kendall.”
“Must not be enjoying your vacation that much if you’re calling work in the middle of it.”
She closed her eyes and strove for patience. “I was called away from the vacation because of a family emergency. That’s actually why I’m calling now. I need more time.”
“No.”
She actually took the phone from her ear and looked at it, sure she’d heard wrong. “What?”
“We can’t spare you. I haven’t had a chance to fill the sales manager position, so we need you here.”
Kendall could feel her patience slipping through her fingers, but she tried to keep her tone bright. “Valerie, I sent you a short list of the applicants.” Including hers. There was no reason Valerie shouldn’t have scheduled interviews for this week, even if she wasn’t going to give Kendall the job.
“I saw that you put yours in. Again.” The bite disappeared from Valerie’s tone. “If you take time like this, it’s going to negatively affect your career, Kendall. I can’t have a sales manager who disappears for… how long are you requesting?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.” Valerie echoed. “You must know I can’t approve that.”
She guessed she did. “You were never going to give me that position, were you?”
“You’re very good where you’re at. I have to manage my assets accordingly.”
That answered that, didn’t it? She looked back over all the wasted years of breaking herself in that job to prove her worth. For what? So her boss could keep her pigeon-holed and then not even have the empathy to allow her to take time off for this family emergency? Was that really the company she’d sacrificed so much for?
In the end, there was no choice at all. A weight she’d been carrying for far too long fell away and she stood straighter. “I quit.”
“Excuse me?”
“I. Quit. Expect my emailed resignation in the morning.” She hung up and sank onto the bed. Holy crap, she’d done it. There was no safety net. No backup plan. She’d just have to make it work.
She reached for her phone, driven by the urge to call Alex and tell him…
And stopped.
She’d just quit her job. Her rent was paid through the next two months, but she’d have to get back to New York and figure out what to do with it since she didn’t have an income any longer. The very last thing she’d expected when she rushed to her sisters’ sides was that she’d be… moving back to Ruby Creek. That’s what was happening. No point in side-stepping it. Gretchen needed her, and there wasn’t a timeline on when that would stop. It would take a miracle for Ethan to recover, and even then he wouldn’t be able to be the partner on this renovation project like they’d planned. A renovation project that would overlap with her sister’s pregnancy and the birth of her new baby.
Kendall pressed her hands to her chest, the echoes of Gretchen’s pain nearly sending her into a fetal position. She couldn’t put a timeline on her older sister finding her feet again. She wouldn’t. Gretchen had been such a force of nature, a steady point to guide her life. No, her path had never been Kendall’s, but her presence and confidence had grounded Kendall when she needed it time and time again.
Realistically, she was looking at years in Ruby Creek. Once the restaurant was done, it would have to be opened and run.
She might never leave this town again.
It was one thing to try for a long-distance relationship when she had a job and an income and a hell of a lot of vacation days saved up. In the course of a few hours, her entire life had been derailed. She couldn’t ask Alex to shoulder the burden of flying to see her—or paying for her flights to him. If they were both occupied with running businesses…
No time.
There was simply no time.
She set her phone down and nudged it away. It hurt so much to think of never seeing him again, but it was the right choice for both of them. It had to be. Better to let them mourn the idea of what could have been now, rather than drag it out and sink emotions and money and time into something that was destined to fail.
No matter how much it hurt now to contemplate never seeing him again.
Chapter 14
It took two weeks for Alex to fully give up hope of hearing from Kendall. Two weeks of jumping every time his phone rang, quickly followed by sour disappointment. Two weeks of trying to convince himself that maybe his worst fears were wrong.
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He prowled around Pop’s, aggressively cleaning until everything shone, going over the menu for the specials over the next month, reconfiguring his filing system. Doing everything in his power to stay busy so he didn’t have to think too hard about what he’d lost. Who he’d lost.
Kendall.
It shouldn’t be possible to have his heart broken after less than a week with a person, but he couldn’t deny the truth ticking beat by jagged beat in his chest. Lust didn’t hurt like this. It didn’t leave him feeling bruised and battered and still wanting to see her more than anything else in the world. It didn’t tip his entire life upside down and shake it for all it was worth until he questioned the priorities and rules he’d lived by for a decade.
Only love did that.
He didn’t look up as someone walked through the door to his office. “I’m busy.”
“Really? Because it looks like you’re moping.”
The gravely voice was so unexpected, it took Alex a few moments to process it. He looked up and, sure enough, it was Pop standing there in his office. He stood a little straighter than the last time Alex had seen him, his skin browner from spending a lot of time in the sun, and he wore a Hawaiian shirt similar to the ones he’d insisted Alex don for the cruise.
Alex blinked again, but the old man didn’t disappear. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard you got your head turned by a woman on the cruise and you’ve been unbearable ever since.” Pop walked into the office and shut the door behind him. “I’m here to save you from yourself.”
“I don’t need saving.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.” Pop sank into the chair across the desk from him. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”
The change in subject about gave him whiplash. “We get a lot less bar fights now.”
“Suppose it was time for a change.” Pop gave a rough smile. “Nostalgia only takes a person so far.”
“Yeah, though I made sure to create a place for the regulars.” He shifted, not totally comfortable with the close way Pop watched him. Historically, every time the old man did that, Alex ended up confessing whatever the fuck he’d been up to lately, despite his best efforts to keep silent. Even as he told himself to shut the hell up, he found himself speaking. “Just because I met a woman doesn’t mean I need an intervention.”
