True North

by Amy Knupp

  The TV mounted up high in the corner of the room was off, and when his brothers weren’t talking, it was eerily quiet in the alcove that was removed from the main hallway. As footsteps approached their waiting room, the likelihood that someone was coming to address them was high, and Gabe and Mason both straightened on their separate vinyl-upholstered couches. Drake opened his eyes and raised his recliner a few degrees as a willowy woman in green scrubs entered the waiting room.

  Cole searched her face for a sign of what news she brought, but her expression gave nothing away.

  “Faye North’s family?”

  “That’s us.” Mason stood, took a couple of steps toward her, looking intense as always with his suit jacket still on, eyes direct, business face intact. His only concessions to the hour and situation were the tie he’d taken off and tossed on a side table and the uncharacteristic five o’clock shadow. “How is she?”

  “I’m Dr. Beacham. Let’s sit down.”

  Cole’s alertness doubled and he watched her face to see if her refusal to answer that question meant there was bad news. The doctor still gave nothing away as she lowered herself to the coffee table in front of Gabe’s couch. The four of them gathered around her, the tension in the room stretching taut for the few seconds it took them.

  “The surgery was a success,” the doctor finally said, and there was an audible collective exhale in the room. “Faye is holding her own.”

  Cole was fairly certain he remained sitting at attention between Gabe and Drake, but inside he went limp with relief and heard only a fraction of the rest of the doctor’s report—it’d take their mom a while to wake up, they could see her in a couple of hours, she’d likely be in ICU for two days…

  He stared at the doctor’s face as she spoke but was lost in his own thoughts, knowing Mason was paying full attention and could fill him in later if necessary. All that mattered right now was that she was okay and her heart was fixed.

  After the doctor had answered a dozen questions from Mason, Gabe, and Drake, she left them alone again. The four of them remained where they were—Cole in between Gabe and Drake on the couch, Mason on an adjacent chair he’d pulled close, all of them with their long legs stretched in front of them—and they talked, all four of them. They shared Mom stories, laughed, predicted what kind of patient she would be for the next week plus, started discussions of post-hospital care, joked about who could cook Sunday dinners that would meet her approval. Easy answer was no one.

  For those minutes that stretched into a couple of hours, Mason stopped directing, Gabe quit worrying about everyone, Drake turned off the eternal charm button and was just their brother, and Cole managed to quit acting like an asshole. They rehashed dozens of times they’d gotten into trouble over the years, reminiscing about their mom’s reactions to the shit five boys could pull. She’d never hesitated to discipline them, both before and after their dad’s death, and there were times when she’d lost her cool, so many times, but what it came down to was that she was the best mom anyone could ask for. As different as the North boys were, they could all agree on that.

  Mason brought up the time in grade school when Zane and Drake had pulled off keeping a squirrel from the yard as a pet in their walk-in closet for nine days. They’d fashioned a litter box out of a shoebox, fed it Planters nuts from the family snack stash in the pantry, and only gotten caught when their mom had gone in their closet to put something away and discovered that squirrels do not take to litter boxes. She wasn’t sure what kind of critter infestation they had until the squirrel, who’d been nesting down under a pile of dirty clothes, dashed out of its hiding place and scared the daylights out of her. The hours-long attempt to get the animal out of the house had elicited their mom’s most creative, epic streams of swear words that any of them had ever heard. As the four brothers held their abs and wiped their eyes from laughing, a tall, built male nurse came in to tell them they could visit their mom one at a time. That sobered them up quickly, and Cole straightened, his mind filled with images of breathing tubes and wires and IVs and all the other crap the doctor had warned them about.

  Mason stood, obviously thinking to go first, as was his way, but Gabe moved forward to the edge of the couch and held up a hand. He eyed Cole, then addressed Mason. “Let Cole go first.”

  Mason’s brows crinkled together at Gabe, then he looked at Cole and shrugged. “Sure. Don’t wear her out, Cole. The nurse said two minutes.”

  Cole didn’t understand what had prompted that, and he didn’t care. He let Mason’s directive—the guy just couldn’t resist—roll off and stood, nodded. As his brothers discussed the order of visitation, Cole followed the nurse through the maze of hallways to a private room with a large bank of windows to the outside. The curtains were drawn and the room was illuminated dimly.

  His heart lurched when he laid eyes on his mom, intubated, surrounded by a dozen machines and monitors, her eyes closed. When he came up next to her, they slowly opened, met his gaze, took him in. Though she was drowsy, his mom was in there.

  He’d been warned she couldn’t talk because of the breathing tube, but he would swear one corner of her lips twitched slightly upward when she recognized him. He took her cool hand in his and leaned down and kissed her forehead, that baseball-sized lump lodged in his throat again. He cleared his throat, willed the lump down.

  “You scared the ever-loving crap out of us,” he said. His voice was hoarse, thick. “Everybody’s here, well, except Zane. We only have a minute each because you need to rest but…I love you, Mom.”

  She gave his hand a weak, almost imperceptible squeeze, and despite her condition, her love was there in her cloudy eyes. After several seconds, her lids lowered, as if she couldn’t hold off the drowsiness any longer. Still holding her hand, he took in the room, the equipment, the wires, the sounds, and it struck him again how close they’d come to losing her.

  But she was okay. They were lucky as fuck. And he was going to do his best to remember that. Not just today or this week or over the next few months as she recovered. This was his wake-up call to get his head out of his ass and be a better son, a better brother, a better person. He didn’t know how to do that, exactly, but as he stared at his mother’s lined, pale face, he vowed to figure it out.

  Chapter Nine

  Monday morning, Cole was nearly running late for his seven o’clock meeting with Sierra at the office. The thought of sitting across the table from her and acting as if nothing had changed, as if he hadn’t revealed shit he never, ever revealed, turned his stomach, but that was exactly what he would do.

  After the harrowing all-nighter Saturday and an emotional, exhausting Sunday split between seeing to his mom, interacting with his brothers, and fighting off thoughts of his boss, Cole felt raw. His energy reserves were bottomed out, his defenses down. Just when he needed them most.

  He locked his apartment and thundered down the narrow interior stairs to the street. He climbed into his truck, which was parked at the curb out front, started the engine, switched the music from country to the loudest, hardest metal he could find, and cranked it up until his windows rattled. That was his only hope of keeping his mind blank on the drive in, and he needed blank like a deployed soldier needed a blow job.

  At this hour, traffic wasn’t an issue, and he was pulling up behind the office in no time, ready or not.

  He allowed himself thirty seconds once the engine was off to close his eyes, consider the Draper project, where they’d be replacing the plumbing of the 1920s French-revival-style home later today. The day’s work was sure to turn up yet more challenges, as hundred-year-old buildings always did, but that sounded preferable, by far, to facing the woman who’d taunted his dreams all damn night.

  “Nothing to do but do it,” he muttered as he gathered his bag and his travel mug of strong-ass coffee from home and left his tool belt behind the driver’s seat.

  He entered through the side door into the kitchen area and instantly discerned two things—Sierra had
already brewed her god-awful more-sugar-than-caffeine “coffee,” and she’d cranked up the furnace. He could see from the entryway that she was in her office with the light on. He went there directly.

  “Morning,” he said from the doorway, taking in the sight of her sitting, as usual, at the table instead of her desk, dressed in her standard cargos—dark gray today—a fleece quarter-zip Dunn & Lowell pullover, and scuffed dark brown work boots. Her silky hair was in a high ponytail, and her pretty face radiated her typical early-morning optimism with a bright smile as she looked up at him and returned the greeting.

  He shoved down the zap of lust when their eyes met and averted his quickly as he crossed the room to the chair opposite her.

  “I didn’t expect you to make it this morning,” she said.

  “We have a meeting, don’t we? Seven o’clock?”

  “We did, but your weekend—”

  “Everything ended up okay,” he said dismissively. She’d texted yesterday for a report on his mom and he’d filled her in, so she knew the emergency element was past and what was left was a lot of healing and life revamping for his mom.

  He set his canvas bag on the table, yanked his sweatshirt over his head, because, shit, she must have the heat set at about eighty degrees, and then took out his notebook and sat down. “How’s that application coming along?” he asked. The Eldridge competition was the reason for their meeting.

  She narrowed her eyes at him—he didn’t look up from searching for a pencil to see it, but he could feel it—and paused for a second, as if she was debating with herself whether to force talk about the weekend and his mom or jump to business mode.

  Business, he urged silently. He was grasping to it by a thin thread himself, fighting off images and memories of Saturday night.

  Another few seconds ticked by before she made up her mind. “It’s done. I finished it late last night so you can go over it.” She held out a packet of multiple pages.

  “Deadline is a week away?” he asked as he took it from her.

  “Yep. We can submit it online, though I’d prefer to do it early.”

  “Lot of pages,” he said as he sat back and leafed through them.

  “Multiple essay questions. It was worse than a college app.”

  “Wouldn’t know. Didn’t go to college,” he said, maybe trying to highlight a difference between them. The first part was a lie though. He’d filled out multiple applications, essays and all, just never sent them in.

  “See, I know that but I don’t get it,” Sierra said, and he realized his error in bringing it up. “You’re smart, Cole. Wicked smart. I’ve never seen you use a calculator on bids, but they’re always correct. I check,” she admitted.

  He glanced up at her because he hadn’t realized that—that she’d noticed or that she double-checked his math.

  “It’s my name on the door,” she said with an unapologetic shrug, proving that she, too, was smart.

  He nodded in acknowledgment, turned his attention to the application, ignoring her probe for more info.

  The first few pages were short answers, facts, dates, numbers, records, and then there were a couple of pages of three-line answers, and then the long ones. “You handwrote it all?” In turquoise ink, no less.

  “I think better that way. I’ll type it in after you’ve read through it.”

  “S. Lowell,” he read in the first response. “You think they’ll hold your gender against you?”

  “Always a possibility. They’ll figure it out soon enough if we advance.”

  That they would. While Cole could work up a good panic attack at the thought of being on a weekly TV show, Sierra was born for it in every way—with her confidence, her knowledge and experience, and her looks. But he’d seen firsthand more than once where she’d lost a bid because of those looks, because someone didn’t think a woman could do this job. Dumb fucks, every one of them.

  Cole read over the basics quickly, more interested in the longer answers, as those would be what the people judging the entries would focus on. A lot of the questions in the middle section were about past projects, gathering information on the company’s breadth and length of experience. Then it got serious with the essay questions, and so had Sierra. He leaned back in his chair to read while she worked on something on her laptop. Most of the questions were about problems and challenges and how they’d overcome them, with some asking for details on successful renovations as well. She’d exceeded the space given for multiple questions, her precise, left-tilting, scripty print spilling onto the backs of the pages.

  “Your content is spot-on,” he said a good twenty minutes later after reading every word.

  “Thanks,” Sierra said, sitting up and closing her laptop to give him her full attention. “It sounds like there’s a but.”

  “Is there a word limit? Either stated or constrained by the online form?”

  “Not stated. I didn’t check the form for limitations. You think I rambled too much?”

  “I wouldn’t call it rambling.” He blew out a breath, considering how to say what he wanted to say. “What you wrote is straightforward. The details are good. They show you know your stuff.”

  “But? Cole, just say what you’re thinking. You’re not going to hurt my feelings.”

  “What’s missing is the marketing.”

  Her brows dipped. “It’s not supposed to be marketing. Just facts.”

  “Marketing is facts presented in a different way,” he said. “You know this.”

  Though she’d hired Kennedy, who freelanced as a marketing consultant in addition to being part owner of Sugar Babies bakery on Hale Street, Sierra was still closely involved in all the promotional work. Kennedy helped her set budgets and choose which media to focus her time and money on and guided her in overall branding, but the nitty-gritty of the content still fell on Sierra, who regularly garnered input from Cole. It was a team effort, and they were the experts on their business, something that Kennedy wasn’t. Cole had zero formal training in marketing, but he’d read books on it from the first time Sierra had asked for his assistance. That’s how he operated—need to know something? Read a book. There was always a book out there that could teach you what you needed to learn, and he was a fan of knowing what he talked about, whatever the topic.

  “It’s an application, not an ad,” Sierra said, running her hands over her face, which told him she was trying to understand his point instead of arguing outright.

  “You can present the facts while highlighting your strengths. You want to win, right?”

  “You know the answer to that.” Her voice teemed with frustration.

  “Let me take this home. I’ll take a stab at it.”

  “You want to rewrite them?”

  “Not rewrite. Refine. You’ve got the meat in there. It just needs a little subtle, strategic horn tooting. If you don’t like what I do, you can go back to what you have.”

  Sierra exhaled loudly, nodding. “Have at it. If you really want to try, I’m open to changes. I trust you.”

  The way her eyes pierced into him with that statement felt suddenly personal. Too personal for comfort. He’d fought hard to become what she needed on the job since the day she’d hired him, had given it more effort than just about anything, because, as his history showed, he could fuck things up with the best of them, and he was loathe to let her down. He strived to be her go-to guy at work, but anything beyond that would be unwise on her part.

  “I’ll make a copy,” Cole said.

  He launched out of his chair and headed into the front room, where the copier was. He flipped the lights on as he entered, stuffed the packet of paper in the copier, set it to duplicate the whole bundle, and leaned against the wall to wait, relieved to have a couple of walls between them. Normally he enjoyed being with Sierra, working with her, solving problems at her side, but everything felt different today. Their normal had been shot to shit.

  The copy machine was behind the desk, which was seldom used and more for
show and storing their various promotional pieces. Sierra’s friend Hayden, who owned an interior design company, had helped her set up the rectangular room, originally a living room, to welcome customers and potential customers.

  It was cooler in here due to an ancient HVAC system that didn’t distribute heat evenly. A relief today, between the air temperature of the office and the underlying tension between him and Sierra. She was itching to ask about his mom and probably his brothers too, he was sure, but he needed to keep it business as usual.

  He let out a scoff, because his thoughts Saturday at the reception, his dreams last night, they were anything but business as usual. You’d think his mom’s health emergency would be enough to override his lust for his boss, but it seemed his lack of sleep and the resulting edginess had only made him more incapable of getting her out of his head.

  Once the copier stopped, he took out the new pages, found a stapler in one of the desk drawers, and stapled the packet. He picked up the originals and headed back into the office.

  “Anything else?” he asked. It was a little early to leave for the Draper site, but that’s exactly what he was going to do.

  “Tell me about your mom. How’s she feeling? When are they moving her out of ICU?”

  He stacked the papers on top of his notebook and slid them into his bag, threw his carpenter pencil in.

  “She’s tired and weak but upbeat, all things considered.”

  “Any idea when she might get to go home?”

  “Maybe this weekend. Depends.”

  “And she’s still in ICU?”

  “Until tomorrow.”

  “Are you in a hurry?” she asked, eyeing him as he stood there while she still sat across the table from him.

  “Ready to get started on the day’s work is all.”

  “Cole.” She shot out of her chair and came around the table.

  He crossed his arms and leaned his butt on the table, which put him closer to eye level with her but also added a little extra space between them. Much-needed space, because her feminine fragrance filled the air, and it was nearly impossible for him not to be affected by it, not to let it take him back to holding her in his arms as they danced, close enough for her wisps of hair to tickle his cheek, her breath to flutter over his ear when she spoke. He’d told himself he’d be back to strictly professional today, that he’d shove Saturday night aside by now, but that was turning out to be a monumental struggle.