The Last in Love (Ardent Springs Book 5)

by Terri Osburn

  “You do it enough,” he said. “Just go home, Victoria. And consider getting yourself some help.”

  “You’re going to miss me,” she snapped, clicking up the sidewalk on her pointy heels.

  “I’ll do my best to muddle through,” Justin murmured. Leaning forward, he wiped the sweat from his eyes on the bottom of his T-shirt. When he opened them again he spotted Abby crossing the street toward him. “This is not my freaking day.”

  Abby hadn’t been able to hear what they were saying, but the look on Victoria’s face indicated a less-than-friendly encounter. She’d nearly chickened out, hiding behind a sandwich sign in front of the Latte Love Café until the former fiancée had moved on. The only reason she forced herself to cross the street at all was the echo of Mama’s words in her ear.

  You’re the only hope your brother has.

  Which meant Cooper had very little hope at all. She would attempt to reason with Justin. Ask him not to buy the land, but remembering his comment about redeeming himself, she assumed her pleas would fall on deaf ears.

  Still. She had to try.

  The moment she stepped onto the curb, his eyes locked with hers. She’d been too busy avoiding traffic to realize he’d seen her coming. The sight of him released butterflies in her stomach, and for a second she hoped he might grace her with one of his smiles. The wicked ones that curled one side of his mouth higher than the other and always let her know how happy he was to see her.

  But Justin didn’t smile. “What do you want?” he asked.

  Drawing on the bitter taste of betrayal, she said, “I need to talk to you.”

  “I’m talked out,” he said, driving the shovel in his hands deep into the planter.

  Determined, Abby stepped closer. “This is important.”

  “You know?” he jeered. “There were things that were important to me. Like trust. Loyalty. Respect. But every woman I meet throws those things back in my face. So forgive me if I’m not real interested in what you think is important.”

  Abby felt her chance slipping away. “I know I hurt you, Justin, but we need to talk.”

  “Dammit,” he exploded. “What is it with you women? What part of not interested is so hard to comprehend?” Lifting the shovel from the planter, he slammed it against the sidewalk with a clang. “I don’t need to listen to anything. I heard all I needed to hear when you revealed how little you think of me. Now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do.”

  Catching several curious stares from passersby, Abby backed away, choking on humiliation and regret. Lies. The promises and the sweet words had all been lies, and she’d fallen for every one of them. As she walked away, the butterflies felt more like a swarm of killer bees, angry and painful and fighting to get out.

  By the time she reached her car, the tears flowed unheeded, blurring her vision. Abby found napkins in the glove compartment and wiped her eyes. Both Haleigh and her mother had told her to fix this, and not only had Abby failed, she’d let Justin make a fool of her in the middle of the street. Starting the engine, she merged into traffic with a new mission in life.

  To stay single for the rest of her days.

  Chapter 24

  By five o’clock, Justin had hit his bullshit limit for the day. As if his drive with Q and the sack-kicking visits from Victoria and Abby weren’t enough, two of the new garden planters fell apart the moment he poured the dirt, making a mess all over the sidewalk.

  This Monday could go suck a lightbulb. Justin was going home.

  “Despite the setback,” Thea said, catching him as he loaded the shovels into Pop’s truck, “things are looking quite promising.”

  These planters had been special ordered and taken two weeks to come in. He didn’t have two weeks to replace the defects.

  “I’m glad you think so,” he spouted, too tired to be polite. Sleep had been fitful at best since he and Abby had fallen apart. “If any more planters collapse on us, this street will be far less colorful than we’d planned.”

  “There are always compromises,” she replied, seemingly unconcerned. “I saw you chatting with Abby earlier. She didn’t look very happy when she walked away.”

  So far, Thea had maintained a professional distance. Justin didn’t see any reason to change that now.

  “She wanted to talk,” he explained. “I didn’t.”

  Removing her flower-covered orange gloves, Thea shook her head. “I thought you kids were going to make it, but I guess this was inevitable, with you sweeping Cooper’s land out from under him like this.”

  “Excuse me?” Justin said, certain he’d misheard. “Me sweeping what?”

  “The whole town is talking about it. At first most folks thought that bit of trouble who’d been asking about you was to blame for the breakup, but then we heard about you buying Tanner’s land and forcing Cooper to move his business, and the truth was easy to guess.”

  Justin ripped off his gloves. “I’m not buying anything.”

  “There’s no sense in denying it.” She shrugged. “Your name was right there on the paper, next to that troublesome Culpepper fellow’s. No one in town knows what to make of that boy.”

  Rubbing his face, Justin struggled to keep up. “Thea, I’m not buying anything, and I told Quintin this morning that he needed to go home and never come back.”

  “Really?” she said. “Are you sure?”

  Sucking on his teeth, he nodded. “Yeah. I’m sure. What paper are you talking about? And what trouble is Q causing?”

  Thea leaned on the truck bed. “Other than him being part of buying that land,” she said, “he’s taken up with Becky Winkle, who had been seeing Frankie Beckham until your friend came along.”

  Now Justin knew his ears were failing. “Frankie was dating Becky Winkle?”

  “He quite liked her, too. Just this weekend he had a little too much to drink at Brubaker’s Bar and let all in attendance know that if he caught Mr. Culpepper—he didn’t refer to him so politely, of course—in a dark alley, he’d show him what happened when a fellow jumped another man’s claim.”

  If Q did make the mistake of wandering into Frankie in a dark alley, he deserved whatever he got. Provided Frankie could see him. Justin was more interested in the land deal.

  “The paper, Thea. What paper is my name on?”

  She tapped the gloves against her leg. “The official offer on Tanner Drury’s land. It’s a shame he’s having to sell. That farmland has been in his family for five generations.”

  This must have been why Abby came to see him. She thought he was putting her brother out of business.

  “Did you see which way Abby went? Did she go to the bookstore?”

  “She drove down Main, darling. I assume she went on home.”

  Justin raised the tailgate on the truck. “Thanks for the information,” he said, swiping the keys from the truck ignition and locking the doors. He needed to reach Abby in a hurry, and the way he planned to drive would turn the shovels into weapons of mass destruction. “I’ll move this later.” Two steps toward the bookstore, where his Infiniti sat in the alley, he turned around. “Do you have Tanner Drury’s number?”

  “Oh, I don’t . . .” she started.

  “I never agreed to buy that land, Thea. Help me make this right.”

  She nodded. “I’ll text it to you.”

  Justin gave a wave of gratitude as he sprinted past gawking pedestrians. He felt the phone vibrate in his pocket and kept on running.

  “I tried,” Abby pleaded for the third time. “He wouldn’t listen to me.”

  Haleigh threw her hands in the air. “You should have made him listen.”

  “Well I didn’t. So now what do we do?”

  Cooper had returned to the garage more than an hour ago, and Mama had gone back to the bookstore to talk to Bruce. Her brother may be too prideful to accept charity, but family backed family, and in less than two weeks, Bruce would be part of theirs.

  “What if we helped Tanner out?” Abby asked. “If we c
an get them money some other way, then they won’t have to sell the land.”

  “Short of buying the land ourselves, I don’t see how we could do that,” Haleigh said, pacing her kitchen.

  Maybe that was the answer. “Then that’s it. We’ll buy the land.”

  Brown eyes pierced her to the wall. “Do you have a quarter million dollars sitting around?”

  Abby’s house didn’t even cost that much. “That’s what Justin is paying him?”

  Haleigh rolled her eyes. “He has investors,” she spat. “This deal won’t cost that little pecker a penny.”

  Name-calling seemed a bit much, but then her friend had every right to be furious. Cooper’s whole life was on that land, including a collection of old cars he’d planned to restore. They would likely be the hardest items to relocate.

  “What about an injunction?” she asked. “Shouldn’t the town have a say in what they put out there?”

  “Tanner’s land is beyond the city limits. They’ll need permits through the county, but that’s only once they start building. They can buy any land they want if they have the money.”

  Her fallout with Justin had been a heartbreak for her alone. Abby had dealt with loss before and survived, and she would do so again. But this was an attack on her family. An outsider invading their territory and taking down one of their own.

  With every fiber of her being, Abby wished that Justin had never come back from Chicago.

  Haleigh continued to pace as Abby’s phone chimed from her purse. Assuming it was Mama with an update, or possibly a solution, she checked the screen.

  “It’s Justin,” she whispered, as if he might hear her.

  “Give me that phone,” Haleigh growled, snatching it from Abby’s hand and accepting the call. “You listen to me, you little two-bit weasel. You’ve screwed with the wrong family. And if you think you’re going to call my best friend just to make her cry again, you’re more of an idiot than I thought you were. We’re going to fight you on this, and we’re going to win. So piss off.”

  In shock, Abby stared at her cell spinning where Haleigh had thrown it on the floor. “We’re going to fight him?” she said.

  “Of course we are.” If she paced any harder, Cooper would need to replace the kitchen tile along with his garage.

  “How are we going to do that?”

  “I don’t freaking know,” Haleigh said, taking a seat and dropping her head onto the table. “That was the anger talking. Gah!” She snapped upright. “I want to punch him in the throat for doing this to Cooper. I mean, I’d kick him in the balls for you, but that noise they make when you get a good blow on the windpipe is really satisfying.”

  Abby opted not to ask how Haleigh knew that.

  “I wouldn’t mind kicking him myself, but daydreaming about the way we could inflict pain on Justin Donovan isn’t getting us any closer to an answer.”

  “I know. Still,” she said. “I’d like to snatch a knot in his ass.”

  Patting her friend’s hand, Abby sighed. “We all would, sweetie. We all would.”

  Thanks to Haleigh—at least that’s who Justin believed had called him a two-bit weasel—intercepting his call, Justin still had no idea where to find Abby. He’d been on the way to her house and wasn’t surprised to find the place empty. Since Haleigh was a doctor, he tried the hospital, but once he arrived, Justin had no idea where to look for them.

  A quick check of the cafeteria turned up nothing, so he’d asked a passing nurse for the maternity floor. When he arrived at the desk, a chipper nurse in Disney-themed scrubs let him know Dr. Mitchner was not on duty.

  Running out of time, he changed tactics and pulled up Thea’s text. One touch and he waited through four rings before Tanner Drury picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Drury, this is Justin Donovan. I understand my colleague, Mr. Culpepper, had been in touch with you.”

  “Yes,” responded a creaky voice. “He has.”

  “This is going to seem like an odd question, but are you sure you want to sell your land?”

  A weighted pause echoed down the line. “I don’t know that ‘want to’ plays into it much, Mr. Donovan.”

  Exactly what Justin figured. “What would have to happen for you to turn down Mr. Culpepper’s offer?”

  “I thought the offer came from both of you.”

  “Not quite. Please, Mr. Drury, what would make you change your mind?”

  A hum traveled down the line. “We need the money, plain and simple. I’ve got diabetes now, and the medicines aren’t cheap. Diana needs that knee replacement . . .”

  Ah, yes. The good old American health care system. “What if you received another offer? One that wouldn’t result in the land being developed?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, understandably skeptical. “What are we talking about here?”

  Justin did some quick math and guessed at what Q had offered. “Would two hundred thousand cover it?”

  Another hesitation. “That’s fifty thousand less than the other offer.”

  Damn. Still ridiculously low compared to the other plot for sale, but just out of Justin’s price range. Unless he found a way to come up with a little more money.

  “I might be able to match that. Mr. Drury, can you give me twenty-four hours?”

  Indecision was clear in his voice as he said, “I’m supposed to sign with Mr. Culpepper in the morning. Not sure I want to jeopardize the deal.”

  “Just twenty-four hours,” Justin bargained. “I know that Mr. Culpepper is very anxious to take your land. Tell him that you want one more day to think it over. If I don’t call you by this time tomorrow evening, you can sign the papers Wednesday morning and nothing changes.”

  Justin held his breath.

  “And you say if you buy it, nothing gets put on it?”

  “That’s right,” he agreed.

  “Then what do you want it for?”

  “A gift,” Justin said, watching the sun set behind the hospital. “I want to buy it as a gift for someone.”

  “Well,” chuckled the man on the other end. “That’s a mighty big gift, but if you’ve got the money, I sure would like to see it stay the way it is now.”

  Eyes closed with relief, he said, “You and me both, Mr. Drury. I’ll be in touch.”

  Ending the call, Justin leaned on the steering wheel, exhausted as if he’d been running a marathon. His savings didn’t quite measure up to the funds needed, and twenty-four hours wasn’t much time to find another investor. Of course, he’d then have to explain to said investor that he or she would never see a return on their money. Not likely to go over well.

  Sitting back, he stared at the shiny Infiniti symbol pressed into black leather and knew what he had to do.

  The mood over dinner was somber, at best. In a show of unity, Bruce closed the shop early so that he and Mama could join Abby, Haleigh, and Cooper for dinner at her brother’s house.

  “This is good chicken,” Mama said, repeating the sentiment for the second time.

  “Thanks,” Haleigh replied, the same response she’d given five minutes earlier.

  Watching the people she loved most in the world act as if the apocalypse were imminent, Abby set down her fork and took charge.

  “We’ve moped long enough,” she said, drawing everyone’s attention. “Yes, this sucks. Cooper’s going to have to move his business. But this isn’t the end of the world. We can handle this.”

  “We aren’t handling anything,” Cooper argued. “This is my problem to fix.”

  “Horseshit,” Mama said, startling them all into silence. “We’re a family, and families stick together. Back when you bought that garage, we all had a hand in cleaning it up. Organizing and making it yours. And we’ll do it again.”

  “That’s right,” Abby said. “And now we have two more family members to join the team.”

  Cooper dropped his fork with a loud clang. “I shouldn’t have to move in the first place. I spent two hours this
afternoon searching for a new location, and there’s nothing.”

  “What about the old gas station way up Fifth?” Bruce asked. “On the corner there, right before it turns into Hillsboro. That’s been empty for a couple years now.”

  Shaking his head, her brother said, “They razed it. I drove by there today.”

  “Then maybe you can build there,” Haleigh suggested.

  “Maybe,” he said with little enthusiasm.

  Abby hit her limit. “Is this what I’ve been like for the last two years?” she asked, pointing at Cooper. “And if it is, how did you all not smack me before now?”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass, Abbs,” growled her twin.

  “Language,” Mama corrected.

  Cooper’s face turned red. “You said horseshit two seconds ago.”

  Stabbing her chicken, his mother said, “That was different. You made me mad.”

  “And she made me mad,” he stated, channeling his inner toddler.

  “Let’s all get a grip,” Haleigh shouted, tapping a fork against her glass. “Fighting isn’t going to help.” When the Ridgeways fell silent, she continued. “Abby is right. At the risk of sounding clichéd, it doesn’t matter if you get knocked down. It only matters that you get back up. Moving a business happens all the time. It’s the reality we’re facing, and we’ll deal with it.”

  A hush fell over the table as everyone returned to eating.

  “Have you contacted Ronnie Ottwell yet?” Bruce asked, referring to a realtor they’d all used before. “He might know a place.”

  Cooper nodded. “I’m meeting with him tomorrow afternoon. I was hoping Tanner would call and say he’d changed his mind, but that was wishful thinking on my part.”

  “With all this going on,” Mama said, “maybe we should put off the wedding.”

  “Oh, Linda, no,” Haleigh cut in, followed closely by Cooper.

  “Nothing is getting in the way of this wedding. Besides, I’ve already bought twenty pounds of ribs, and Spencer is bringing another twenty pounds of pulled pork. No sense in letting it go to waste.”

  It was Bruce’s turn to drop his fork. “Son, that’s a lot of meat.”