Homecoming Reunion

by Carolyne Aarsen

  As she held his narrowed gaze, she felt a surprising touch of regret at the shift in emotions. For just a few moments, when they were talking to Pete, she felt an accord between them. Now, it was swept away by the waves of frustration and anger washing over them both.

  “Maybe I should talk to my father about the renos,” she returned, refusing to be intimidated by Garret’s increasing anger. “See what he thinks we should do.”

  “You don’t have to go running to your father with every problem. Like I said, you have some control in this situation too. You have the power to make decisions.”

  She just stared at him, ice flowing through her veins in reaction to what he said.

  “Running to my father?” she asked in a deliberate voice as her own anger grew. “What do you mean by that?”

  Garret held her gaze, seemingly unintimidated by her fury. “I heard you talking to your dad after Pete left. I heard what you said.”

  “Last time I checked, he’s a partner in the inn as well.”

  “Of course he is, but last time I checked you have some control and the power to make decisions as well. For now I think we need to take small steps. Maybe in time we can change the windows and do all the things you want, but for now we need to do things inexpensive and simple. And you can make that decision as easily as your father.”

  On one level Larissa heard what he was saying and felt assured by his confidence in her, but his comment still rankled and harkened back to some of the many discussions they’d had about her relationship with her father. “Now you resent my father’s involvement, but when he stepped in years ago and offered you money to leave town, you were happy enough to take it.”

  As soon as the words left her mouth, Larissa wished she could recall them, but it was too late.

  Garret only stared as the words fell between them, heavy as stones.

  Yet as the silence between them grew and filled the room, she felt as if she had let go of a weight dragging her down for too many years. Finally, the whole reason for his leaving and her subsequent disillusionment was now out in the open.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Larissa drew back at the controlled fury in his voice, but she held her ground and his gaze. She was seeing this through to the end. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  Garret shook his head. “No. I do not.”

  Larissa wavered in the face of his decisiveness, but she also knew what her father showed her and forged ahead. “Are you telling me you didn’t take the money my father gave you?” Her father had shown her the cancelled check with Garret’s scrawling signature on the back. “I know my father offered you money to leave. To leave me.” She hated the way her voice broke. Why, after all these years, could that still bother her? “You took the check, you cashed it and then you left. Don’t tell me that didn’t happen.”

  The silence stretching between them was fraught with tension, hurt and sorrow.

  “Then I have nothing to say to you. Because it didn’t happen.”

  “So you didn’t meet with my father at Mug Shots?” Larissa felt a quiver of uncertainty. Garret seemed so sure of himself.

  “He met with me. Bit of a difference,” Garret said, planting his hands on his hips. “Remember how we went to your parents place to tell them about our relationship?”

  “I remember you were uptight,” Larissa said her mind casting back to that evening. The two of them sitting side by side on the leather settee in front of the fireplace, holding hands while they faced down her father. Garret had told her father that he cared for Larissa and that he wanted to let them know they were dating. Jack had said nothing at first. Then he nodded and looked directly at Garret. All he said was that he understood the situation and appreciated being told. As if he had been approached with some business decision.

  “That was the first time I was ever in your parents’ house. Of course I was uptight, but I was more uptight when he called me two days later and wanted me to meet him at Mug Shots.”

  “Was that when he gave you the check?” She didn’t want to ask, but the words were drawn from her.

  Garret frowned, as if thinking then his mouth curved in a cynical smile. “That’s when he gave me a check.”

  His words were like ice to her heart. To hear him admit that extinguished the final, thin ray of hope.

  “And you took it and cashed it.”

  “Of course I did. That check was for my wages and holiday pay. A thousand dollars. Your father essentially fired me and told me not to come back to the mill again.”

  Larissa blinked, trying to assimilate this information, but her mind caught on one detail. “But the check he made out to you was for ten thousand dollars, not a thousand.”

  “I wish,” Garret snorted. “I wasn’t that valuable an employee.”

  Larissa couldn’t wrap her head around this information. “He showed it to me. I saw the figure. Ten thousand dollars. A one a zero, a comma and then three more zeros, a period and two more. Ten thousand.”

  She remembered how the amount had felt like an insult. Was that all she was worth to her father and to her old boyfriend. Ten thousand dollars?

  “I guess I would know how much money I put in my bank account,” Garret said. “And it was only a thousand.”

  Larissa frowned, unable to pull this all together. She would have to talk to her father about it. And what? Ask him how much the check really was for? He showed it to her. She saw the figure.

  “You don’t believe me,” he said.

  She shook her head in confusion rather than to negate what he had said. “I’m not sure what to think.” Then she looked up at him, her confidence returning as the old emotions washed over her. “I just know you left. Does it matter how much money you had in your pocket?”

  “It matters that you thought your father paid me to leave you alone.”

  “You still left,” she insisted.

  He tapped his fingers on his arm, his eyes flashing. “And you wouldn’t talk to me after I did. I came to the house and you closed the door in my face.”

  They were going around in circles. Part of her wanted to forget the whole conversation and leave it buried in the past. Move on. But as she held his gaze older emotions swirled around them like a gathering storm and she knew they couldn’t walk away from this. If they were going to work together in any kind of harmony, they had to put this out of the way.

  “I didn’t talk to you because I thought my father paid you to leave.”

  Garret slowly lowered his arms, heaving out a sigh. “Would you have talked to me if he hadn’t shown you the check?”

  She tried reaching back to what she had felt before she thought Garret had betrayed her. Then she nodded. “I cared for you. A lot,” she said. “You meant more to me than anyone I’ve ever met.” Too late she realized how that sounded. As if he’d been the only person in her life that had mattered to her.

  Well, it’s true, isn’t it?

  She stifled that errant question. Didn’t matter. That was over. “So why did you leave?” She continued. “Why didn’t you stay and fight for me? You could have worked somewhere else. We could still have been together.”

  Garret eased out a long, slow sigh, running his hand through his hair.

  “When your father met with me at Mug Shots, he not only fired me, he told me exactly what he thought of our relationship. Nothing. He told me I wasn’t good enough for you. Trouble was, he didn’t have to tell me that. I knew that myself. Especially after I sat in the ‘drawing room’ of your parents’ home.” He made quotation marks with his fingers around the words “drawing room,” his voice taking on a sardonic note.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Garret folded his arms over his chest, his legs spread as if bracing himself, the light from the window behind him throwing his face into shadow. “I grew up in a small house on a ranch out in the boonies. I was working as a lumber piler, driving an old beat-up truck my grandfather and I would be fixing
at least once a week because there was always something wrong with it. I was never ashamed of who I was or where I came from until I stepped inside your parents’ house. I never fully realized how much you had grown up with until I saw that place.”

  “It’s just a house,” Larissa protested.

  Garret shook his head. “It’s a showpiece. Sitting in your parents’ drawing room with its huge stone fireplace, leather furniture that probably cost what I made in a year, knowing there was still a family room, living room and library in the house, let alone the bedrooms and bathrooms. It reminded me of how far apart you and I really were.”

  “That didn’t matter to me. I told you that.”

  Garret released a cynical laugh. “It mattered to me. I was a naive and stupid young man, thinking I could take you from that and expect that you would be happy living out on the ranch, and getting by on what I made working at the mill.” Garret took a step closer. “I left because I knew I had to make some changes in my life. When your father gave me my severance pay, he told me I wasn’t good enough for you and that I wouldn’t be able to provide for you in the way you were used to. After I saw your house, I knew he was right.”

  “Why didn’t you ask me what I wanted?” she asked.

  “You told me what you wanted. You wanted to stay in Hartley Creek and you wanted me to work for your father. I thought you wanted me to become like your dad. Take care of you like your dad did.”

  His words nudged open a door to her past and she knew that, to some degree, he was right. She had hoped he would stay here and slowly become a part of the company and work his way up the business.

  “What made it harder to stay—” Garret continued, “—was the fact that your dad told me if I didn’t quit my job and leave town, he would fire me and make it difficult for anyone else to hire me. I knew I couldn’t take care of you after he said that. So I didn’t have much choice but to leave. Try to make something of myself somewhere else. I had always planned to return and had come to your house to tell you, but when you chose not to talk to me, I knew there was no reason to come back to Hartley Creek.”

  Larissa frowned, trying to assimilate what she knew about her father with what Garret was telling her. Had her father really threatened Garret?

  Doubts and second thoughts fought each other in her mind. Her old feelings for Garret and the relationship they had rose to the surface, adding more fuel to the fire burning in her soul.

  “Would you have come back if I had talked to you?” she finally asked.

  As soon as the words left her lips she regretted the needy tone that slipped into her voice. She wasn’t that girl anymore. She was independent. She’d dealt with huge things after Garret left. The illness and subsequent death of her mother. She’d kept the inn going in spite of her father’s unwillingness to make any changes. She’d shown herself she didn’t need anyone to complete her.

  Then, to her surprise, Garret took one more step, closing the distance between them. He reached out and touched her cheek, his finger surprisingly rough against her skin.

  “Once I felt like I could have taken care of you the way you were used to, yes. Yes, I would have come back.”

  His touch sent a tingle down her spine as his words cocooned her heart. Then, before she could stop herself, her hand came up and she wrapped her fingers around his, his skin warm and rough. They stood this way for a moment, past melding into present. Old fears and hurts being displaced by current feelings.

  “Did you think about me while you were gone?” Her words slipped out, fueled by the lonely months that she had endured after he left. Moments fraught with anger and sorrow and the idea that she had meant so little to him.

  He said nothing for a few long, silent seconds. Then he drew in a slow breath. “I never forgot you, Larissa. I thought of you all the time.”

  Garret’s fingers tightened for a moment, but then he lowered his gaze and stepped away.

  A flush warmed her cheeks and her heart did a slow flip in her chest as his words seeped into her soul. Had he really thought of her all the time?

  Get a grip, she reminded herself glancing around the room again, focusing herself on the job at hand. That was in the past.

  Even as she tried to focus on what needed to be done, she knew she wouldn’t forget his words.

  “So, what should we start with in this room?” she asked, forcing herself to get on task.

  Garret was silent a moment as if acknowledging the move to a safer topic, then walked around the room looking at it with a critical eye. “I really think if we do some superficial stuff for now—painting and new covers for the beds, maybe some cheap prints for the walls—we can go a long way with low financial output.” He stopped at the window, his features in profile to her. Then she caught a hint of a smile as he rested his fingertips on the window ledge. “I think if we get rid of the curtains, the view can make up for a lot.”

  Larissa thought of the long hours he had put into maintenance the past week. “A view that, I must say, is improving every day,” she added.

  He nodded, one corner of his mouth tipping up in a smile. “It’s been fun seeing the improvement.” He flexed his arms and gave her a quick grin. “Though my arms and legs have been complaining.”

  The tone in his voice and the gentle lift of his lips as he looked out the window was almost as heartening as what had just happened between them. Was he learning to love the inn as she had come to? If so, that meant she had hope for the future.

  Hope for the future of the inn, that is, she reminded herself.

  * * *

  Garret hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair, linking his hands behind his head as he heaved out a frustrated sigh.

  “Doesn’t sound like you had any more luck than I did,” he said, glancing across the table at Larissa.

  She set her cell phone down, scratched another name on the pad of paper in front of her and shook her head. “Not quite a shutout, but close.”

  For the past hour they’d been trying to find someone, anyone who could do the job on such short notice. And even worse, Garret had a hard time concentrating on the conversations he was having with Larissa right across the table from him. He couldn’t dismiss the moment of connection he’d felt upstairs, that feeling that things were right when he was with her.

  Yet the entire time they worked upstairs, measuring and taking notes then coming down here and making phone calls, the idea that she thought her father had paid him ten thousand dollars was like an itch he couldn’t scratch. How could she have thought that? What had Jack done to make her believe that?

  He wished Jack were here so he could confront him and even as the thought was formulated in his mind, he pushed it back. And what purpose would that serve? He wasn’t here to dig up past dealings with Jack Weir. He was here to establish himself in this town. To make a name for himself. Right now that meant trying to find a way to get the inn up to snuff in time for Pete’s inspection trip.

  “What do you have?” he asked, leaning forward.

  Larissa tapped her pen against her mouth as she looked down at the paper. “The closest I came to success was with Benny Alpern,” she murmured. “He said he had only enough time to do the prep work on all the rooms and the first coat on fifteen of them, so that’s a start.”

  “How long would that take him?”

  “About five days and he can come tomorrow.”

  Garret pulled at his lower lip, thinking. “Doesn’t seem to be much point getting him to come period if he can’t finish the job.” Things weren’t looking so positive and the job seemed daunting.

  Larissa’s only reply was to tap her pen harder, twisting her hair around her finger with her other hand. Just like she always did. He smiled at the sight, remembering how he used to tease her that if she didn’t quit that habit, she’d end up bald.

  “I still don’t think we’ll need all thirty rooms like Pete thinks,” Larissa said. “Lots of people who come to these things double up to save money.”r />
  He pulled his focus back to the job at hand, surprised at the even tone of her voice.

  The moment they had shared upstairs still clung to his soul and echoed in his mind.

  He swept the tangling thoughts aside. He had no headspace to deal with that now.

  “Doesn’t matter what we think we need,” he said, hunching over the papers with their endless rows of figures and numbers. “We need to get two coats of paint on those walls and that’s just the beginning”

  His head was growing tired, trying to work his way around this problem. It seemed insurmountable. “All that work and no one who can do it. It’s hardly worth starting.”

  “Don’t be such a Debbie Downer,” Larissa mumbled, chewing on the end of her pen. “There’s got to be a way to solve this.”

  “Debbie Downer?”

  “Television character. Always looking on the dark side of life. You’ve never heard of her?”

  “I never watch television.”

  “Not even those long, lonely nights in hotel rooms?”

  He shook his head, the memory of those long, lonely nights in hotels still too recent. Sure, he lived in an apartment now, but coming here every day filled the space in his life that had been emptied when he moved away from his grandparent’s ranch and Hartley Creek.

  “I was always too busy to spend time watching television,” he said.

  “Busy doing what?”

  “Working. Writing up reports, crunching numbers and scenarios, emailing, doing proposals, conference calls, chasing down paper trails. Sitting through endless meetings.”

  “No dates? No evenings out on the town?” She was smiling at him, but he sensed a puzzling undertone. As if she vaguely hinted at something else. “No girlfriend to keep company?”

  “A few. Here and there. I had a girlfriend for a few months, but it didn’t take.” Why did he think she needed to know that? And why did she seem to want to know?