by Cindy Kirk
When Marigold mentioned the women were going to check out the barn, he was glad the guys decided to tag along.
On the way, they picked up Fin and Lindsay. Though no one said anything, it was obvious both women had been crying.
Jeremy had gone immediately to his wife’s side. Fin leaned against him as if drawing strength from the embrace.
Lindsay accepted Dan’s hug but remained stiff until he stepped away.
From the outside looking in, it appeared Eliza was going to need to locate a replacement couple for the wedding competition.
“The barn has such a nice feel.” Eliza moved farther into the structure and did a three-sixty. “It can be dressed up. Or made casual.”
“I assume you’re looking to do something creative with the reception.”
Eliza turned toward Lindsay as if thinking the question had come from her, then shifted her gaze to Marigold when she realized her error.
“It’ll be easier to do something fun and creative here, rather than at the Bayshore.”
“I’ve been to some nice events at the Bayshore,” Fin demurred.
“Eliza isn’t looking for traditional or nice. She wants a venue that will pop.” Marigold inclined her head, her gaze moving to Eliza. “Right?”
“Exactly.” Eliza studied the large space. “Though white lights, tulle and linen tablecloths on round tables are common, I’m envisioning something different.”
“I like white.” Dan spoke slowly, casting a questioning glance at Lindsay.
“I don’t care. Do what you want.” Lindsay shifted her body, refusing to meet her fiancé’s eyes.
“What are you thinking?” Kyle tried to visualize different and unique but came up empty.
“If we carry through the vintage theme, we could hang chandeliers from the rafters. Fill the barn with antique furniture pieces from the store in Sturgeon Bay.” Eliza’s gaze grew thoughtful. “We could display family wedding pictures in a nod to the continuity between generations.”
Fin’s eyes lit up. “You could rent colored stemware and serve—”
“—the food off mismatched china.” Marigold finished her sister’s sentence, and the two exchanged high fives.
“The reception is coming into focus.” Eliza’s gray eyes snapped with excitement. “A little more brainstorming and we should be there.”
“I need to leave.” Lindsay slung a bag the size of Montana over her shoulder, her eyes as unsettled as the turbulent waters of Green Bay.
“You haven’t eaten all day.” Dan moved to her, his dark eyes radiating concern. “Stay a little longer. Jeremy has already fired up the grill.”
Lindsay gave her head a little shake. “I-I need to go.”
“Give Owen some space.” The minister might have kept his voice low, but everyone heard anyway.
Lindsay clutched the bag to her in a death grip. “I don’t want to talk any more about the wedding.”
At her fiancé’s quizzical look, she continued. “Making all these plans seems so frivolous.”
“No more wedding talk tonight.” Fin cast Eliza a warning glance.
“What’s on the grill?” Eliza asked in a tone nearly as cheery as Fin’s.
“What else?” Jeremy smiled, though his eyes held confusion. “Burgers and brats.”
Marigold moved to Lindsay’s side. “I’m thinking of putting a planter box of flowers outside my shop. Do you have a minute to run through some possibilities with me?”
Lindsay hesitated for a second, then nodded.
When Lindsay started to sit down at one of the tables in the barn, Marigold shook her head. “Let’s talk on the terrace. Who wants to be inside on such a beautiful day?”
“Need some help with the grill?” Kyle asked Jeremy.
“I can help, too,” Dan hurriedly volunteered.
As Kyle made his way to the house with the guys, he noticed Fin and Eliza hanging back. Though he couldn’t know for sure, it appeared their feelings for Lindsay and what had happened to Mindy was the glue holding them together.
“Lindsay has been spending a lot of time at Owen’s house.” Dan tossed out the words in an offhand way when they reached the grill.
Though Kyle didn’t know the minister well, he remembered how it felt when you realized your fiancée just wasn’t that into you.
“She and Owen go way back.” Jeremy leaned over and made a couple of adjustments on the monster grill.
The area where they stood seemed more like an outdoor kitchen than a patio. The grill was part of a stylish island, complete with granite countertops and storage underneath.
“Do you think he’s putting the moves on Lindsay?” Jeremy’s tone was matter-of-fact.
“It’s not like that between them.” Exhaling a breath, Dan raked a hand through his hair. “They’re just friends. That’s what she tells me. And that’s what I tell myself.”
The minister seemed poised to talk, but discussing a man’s fiancée and her relationship with another guy was a slippery slope. Perhaps there was a roundabout way to do this without getting too personal…
Kyle turned to Jeremy. “Wasn’t Fin involved with someone when she arrived in Good Hope last fall?”
A muscle in Jeremy’s jaw jumped. “She and Xander Tillman had been dating for nearly a year.”
“You were able to resume your relationship with her, and in the end, she chose you.” Kyle thought the analogy was going to make sense, but as he spoke the words, he realized something had gotten lost in translation.
“Your point?” Jeremy flipped a burger with extra force.
Kyle shrugged. “That when it’s right, it’s right.”
Dan took a long pull of beer.
“I was engaged last year.” Kyle set the plates on the table and kept his tone easy. “I thought Jessica was the one. But as time went on, it became obvious we weren’t a match made in heaven.”
Dan’s gaze narrowed. “You’re saying Lindsay isn’t the one for me?”
Kyle bit back an expletive. This was really not going the way he’d planned. “Not saying—”
He paused when Dan’s phone rang.
The minister identified himself, then listened for a minute. “I’ll be right there.”
Dan turned to Jeremy. “Can you see that Lindsay gets home? They’ve scheduled Joe Lyle for emergency surgery. His wife wants me there.”
Concern blanketed Jeremy’s face. “I hope everything is okay. Joe is a good guy.”
Dan set down the Corona he’d barely touched and strode off without saying another word.
Kyle shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “I didn’t mean to imply he and Lindsay—”
“You didn’t say anything he hasn’t been thinking.” Jeremy’s gaze turned assessing. “You were right. Sometimes a relationship simply doesn’t work. Like me and Eliza. She’s a good friend and a wonderful woman.”
“She’s amazing.” Kyle tightened his fingers around his bottle of beer.
Jeremy smiled, and the tension in the mayor’s face eased. He pointed the spatula at Kyle. “That’s why you’re the one with her.”
“I’m not really…we’re not really together.”
Those blue eyes, so like his own, turned cynical. “Don’t even try to tell me you’re not sleeping with her.”
“Not as often as I’d like.”
The laugh that burst from Jeremy’s lips surprised them both.
“I’ll be returning to Kentucky soon.”
Jeremy stopped in the act of flipping a burger. “Will Eliza go with you?”
Kyle felt a stab in the location of his heart. “She loves it here.”
“But if she loves you—”
“She’s never said she loves me.”
The gaze Jeremy shot him was a take-no-prisoners one. “But you love her.”
Kyle opened his mouth to deny the assertion, then shut it without speaking. How had he not realized this before? He’d arrived in Good Hope with one goal—to discover if Ed Rakes was his father.
>
Instead of staying focused, he’d bid on two jobs, hired a local crew and bought a house.
Now he’d gone and fallen in love.
Kyle didn’t even want to think what he might do next.
“You’ve been acting strange since we got back from the farm.” Eliza tilted her head and studied him. “What happened?”
Was that worry he saw in those gray depths?
“Nothing.” Kyle sat at a massive rolltop desk in the far corner of the parlor. His laptop remained open to the bid sheet he was preparing for a job his father desperately wanted to secure in Baltimore.
With her gaze on him, Eliza gracefully dropped into her chair. When she showed a little skin as she crossed one long leg over the other, Kyle realized what he’d told Jeremy was true. It had been too long since he and Eliza had made love.
“You look really beautiful tonight.” He blurted the words, feeling like a sixteen-year-old in the throes of a first crush. But he—and now Jeremy—knew his feelings went far deeper.
She studied him for a long moment, her lips turned up in a cynical smile. Then she smiled fully. “That lovely compliment doesn’t get you off the hot seat.”
“What hot seat?”
Though at the moment they were the only two in the room, she leaned forward and lowered her voice. “What happened to my groom?”
Kyle’s heart froze. “Groom?”
“Dan. Why did he really leave in such a hurry?”
The band around Kyle’s chest eased. “He got a call from the hospital. One of his church members was having emergency surgery.”
“That’s what Jeremy said, but things seemed tense between Dan and Lindsay before that.”
“You noticed that, too?”
“I notice everything.”
That, he knew, was also true.
“That’s all I know.” Kyle relaxed back in the desk chair. “He got the call and said he had to leave.”
“All these calls seem suspicious.”
“Give the guy a break. The man is a minister. If anyone wants out of that relationship, it’s your friend.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I don’t,” he conceded. “But watching her today, she just doesn’t seem that into him.”
“You may be right.”
Her easy acquiescence took him by surprise. Before he could say more, Lolo bounced into the room.
“Guess what we’re going to do?” Before he could ask, his sister held up a deck of cards. “Want to join us?”
What had Eliza called them? Ah yes, relationship cards.
Thankfully, he had the perfect excuse.
“I’d like to, Lo.” Kyle gestured with one hand toward his still-open laptop. “But I’ve got to finish this bid sheet.”
His sister didn’t argue. She’d grown up in a construction household and knew that keeping everyone in the company employed required winning bids.
“My brother is really good at bidding on jobs.” Lolo turned to Eliza, her voice filled with pride. “Dad says even if Kyle wasn’t his son, he’d still say he was the best.”
The compliment, said with youthful ignorance, was like a stab to his heart. He caught Eliza’s quick sidelong glance but simply smiled.
“What exactly is involved in bidding?” Eliza asked, sounding genuinely interested.
Even though Jessica had worked in the corporate offices, she’d had little interest in anything to do with his life. She’d confided that working for Kendrick had been the only marketing job she’d been able to get.
“Tell her about it, Kyle,” Lolo urged, then slanted a look at Eliza. “She really wants to know.”
Eliza nodded. “I do.”
“You start with the online construction bid system. Although most systems include a database for job costing, I believe—and my father agrees—that having our own database allows us to more accurately reflect local costs and price fluctuations in the market.” Kyle paused and waited for her eyes to glaze over. Instead, interest flickered in the gray depths.
When she made a go-ahead motion, he continued. “We use a design-bid construction method, which combines architect and contractor as a unified team.”
“Sometimes businesses have to get bids for both the design and the construction of the building.” Lolo spoke up, sounding much older than twelve. “Our company has architects on staff. We bid both.”
Eliza cocked her head. “You seem to know a lot about the construction business.”
Lolo flushed. “Daddy likes to take me to the office with him. It’s really interesting.”
“Are we ready to play?” Katherine called out from the doorway. “Have you recruited these two?”
“My brother is busy working,” Lolo told Katherine, then shifted her gaze to Eliza. “But you’ll play with us, right?”
When Eliza hesitated, Kyle wondered if she was thinking that this was the first time, since Mindy’s death, that Lolo had looked happy. After a second, she lifted a shoulder in a careless shrug. “Sure. I can play.”
Despite the nonchalant tone, Kyle wasn’t fooled. Eliza might be crusty on the outside, but she had a soft, gooey center.
He loved that about her.
Katherine held up the deck and spoke like an announcer at a baseball game. “Let’s…play cards.”
He smiled and settled into his chair. For once, he had the perfect seat in the house. And he couldn’t wait for the show to begin.
Chapter 22
“Did you read through the questions?” Eliza asked Katherine when Lolo excused herself to get a soda.
Katherine nodded. “I removed the racy ones as well as those more couple-focused. The ones still in the deck are G-rated.”
“This is going to be a blast.” Lolo plopped down on the sofa next to Katherine. Her gaze shifted automatically to Eliza. “What are the rules?”
Eliza gestured to the older woman. “Katherine is the card expert, not me.”
Lolo smiled expectantly.
“It’s quite simple.” Katherine shuffled the deck with the skill of a Las Vegas dealer. “Each of us picks a card from the deck and we all answer the question.”
Lolo’s dark brows drew together. “How do you score points? How do you win?”
Katherine chuckled and patted the girl’s arm. “It’s not a win or lose kind of game. The cards help us get better acquainted.”
The skeptical look on the child’s face told Eliza that Lolo wasn’t convinced the game was worth her time. Eliza understood. She wasn’t keen on playing, either.
Kyle was the lucky one. She slanted a glance in his direction. Instead of focusing on his laptop and the important bid, she caught him staring. At her.
When she narrowed her eyes, he grinned.
Eliza couldn’t help it. She smiled back.
“I want to pick the first card,” Lolo announced.
Katherine glanced at Eliza. When she nodded her agreement, the older woman fanned the cards and held them out to Lolo.
Catching her upper lip between her teeth, Lolo scrutinized the cards as if a lottery win was at stake.
Eliza was on the verge of telling the girl to just pick one when Lolo slipped one from the deck.
She held it up. “Now what do I do?”
The smile Katherine offered her was indulgent, one a grandmother would bestow upon an adored granddaughter. “You read it.”
Lolo straightened and read, “What beliefs about being a female did I absorb from my father?”
Though the question appeared fairly straightforward, confusion blanketed the girl’s face. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“This is a more difficult one.” Once again, kindness infused Katherine’s voice. “How about Eliza and I answer? I believe you’ll understand once you hear our replies.”
Lolo hesitated, obviously reluctant to give up the chance to answer first. Finally, she nodded.
“Katherine, you go first.” It was a demand, not a request. Eliza needed time to formulate a G-rated reply.
Her father wasn’t exactly at the top of her favorite-people list. Heck, he wasn’t even on the list.
“My father was very old school.” Katherine’s hands knotted together in her lap. “But we have to understand, that was partially due to the era he grew up in.”
Eliza waited, not about to let her cousin get away with skirting the question.
“He believed strongly that a female should be a wife and mother,” Katherine said finally.
“But you’ve never been married.” Lolo paused. “Have you?”
Katherine shook her head. “Being a wife and mother wasn’t my path to travel. Because of my father’s beliefs, it took me a long time to realize that the path I’d taken was the right one for me.”
Eliza was as surprised as Katherine when Lolo rested her head against the woman’s shoulder for several heartbeats. “I think you’d have been a fabulous mother.”
For a second, Katherine’s eyes swam with tears before she blinked them back. “Thank you, Lolo. Coming from you, that means a lot.”
When their gazes shifted to her, Eliza felt the burn from the hot seat. She could basically repeat what Katherine had said—and it would be true—but that felt like stealing someone’s answer.
She tapped her fingers against her lips. “My father had impossibly high standards, not only for me but for my brother as well.”
As Eliza said the words, she realized it was true. She wasn’t the only one Donald Shaw had pushed to excel. Ethan had felt the pressure, too.
“My dad believes females are innately inferior to men in the business world. Because of that, they have to work extra hard to succeed.” Out of the corner of her eye, Eliza saw Kyle look up from his laptop, obviously listening. She ignored him. “For as far back as I can recall, I was taught not to cry or show emotion. Those are signs of weakness. Even now, if I start to get too passionate about a topic, he shuts me down.”
Sympathy skittered across Lolo’s face. “I’m so sorry.”
Eliza shrugged. “It toughened me up.”
“My dad thinks girls are as smart as boys and that I can do anything I want.” Lolo studied her brother. “Isn’t that right, Kyle?”
“That’s right,” Kyle called out from across the room
“He sounds like a good man.” Katherine gave Lolo a supportive smile.
