So Wrong It Must Be Right

by Nicole Helm

  “What are you talking about?” Dinah demanded, phone and Trask forgotten for a few seconds. “This has been our dream forever. It’s tradition. And the position you convinced them to create for you is great. We need sustainability, we need—”

  Kayla looked down at her silverware, a miserable frown on her face. “Sustainability manager for a restaurant where management won’t listen to a damn thing I have to say. Quite honestly, you’re not listening to what I have to say either. I don’t think building over Trask is right.” Kayla glanced up, meeting Dinah’s confused gaze with a certain bleakness and determination Dinah had never seen on Kayla’s face.

  “I don’t think it’s right,” Kayla repeated, lightly tapping her fist against the table. “I think we should fail at this and accept we are not part of Gallagher’s. There could be something else for us out there. Something real.”

  “Kayla, where is this coming from? This has been our life for . . . forever.”

  “Exactly. I am tired of the way our life is Gallagher’s. Maybe our life should be something else. Something that some jackass Gallagher man can’t sweep in and ruin.”

  “What happened?” Dinah demanded.

  Kayla looked as if she was about to burst into tears, and as much as Dinah knew that her cousin was more emotional than she was, Kayla didn’t get bent out of shape about silly things. Something was really, really going on. Dread settled in the pit of Dinah’s stomach.

  “Dad’s trying to eliminate my position,” she said on little more than a whisper.

  “What? He can’t—”

  “They had a secret board meeting last night—one I only found out about because Barb thought I should have a heads-up. She told me Dad had a big presentation about how you’re losing Trask, and without that, there’s no farmers’ market idea, and without that, there’s no point in keeping me.”

  Thank goodness for Barb, the only woman on the board. “Why would he do that?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Dinah. He doesn’t want us.” Kayla leaned across the table, tears glittering in her big blue eyes. “He doesn’t want a younger generation. He wants to hold on to Gallagher’s until he is dead, and then who knows.” Kayla shook her head, and Dinah knew that look well. Kayla tried so hard not to be hurt by her cold father, but always failed.

  Dinah reached across the table and grabbed Kayla’s hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “We can’t let him win this. We have to fight.”

  “You know I hate fighting. I always lose.”

  “No, that isn’t true, and I’m not letting you go down without a fight. If I get Trask to sell, Craig can’t get rid of you. So that’s what I’ll do, one way or another. You will keep your job, and I will become director, and then we can force him out. He’s not doing what’s best for Gallagher’s. He’s doing what’s best for Craig.”

  “I don’t want to fight my own father, and I don’t feel right about fighting Carter Trask either. He seems like a nice guy with a cool idea. I read this article about this group he has, some sort of inner-city program where kids come and work on the farm in the summer to keep out of trouble. He seems like a genuinely good guy, and I don’t want to be the one—”

  “You have a big heart, Kay. I understand. But he can do the same thing somewhere else. We can’t build this farmers’ market somewhere else and still help our business. A business that will revitalize this neighborhood. We’re doing good too, and... sometimes the world is good versus good, and one good guy has to lose. We have been here for over a century, Kayla. We belong here. It’s our name and our life and we cannot let one Gallagher egomaniac beat us. I need you with me on this. I need you fighting by my side.”

  Kayla looked away, and Dinah knew she hadn’t reached her. Kayla was lost in a world of personal hurt and emotional pain. Dinah didn’t know how to reach her or how to help her, but she wasn’t going to let Uncle Craig get rid of both of them. She wouldn’t stand for it.

  “I just want to go home. I’m sorry. I’m . . . I’m in no mood for girls’ night. I’m in no mood for . . . I just want to go home. Sleep on it. Maybe I’ll have a clearer head in the morning.”

  “Do you want me to come with? Make brownies? We can watch some terrible movie that we can make fun of. Ooh, Step Up.”

  Kayla gave the ghost of a smile. “I want to be alone. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologize to me for that.” Dinah squeezed her hand again. “If you really want to be alone, I will give you that. Tonight.”

  “Just tonight?”

  “Yes. Because I’m your cousin, and I love you, and you’re my best friend. I won’t let you wallow alone for more than one night. If you need two-night wallowing, the second night you get a visitor who will come bearing junk food and dance movies.”

  Kayla swallowed, and her smile was wobbly. “Thank you for being the best. But make sure you add wine to your list for tomorrow.”

  Dinah smiled in return, though hers didn’t feel any more jovial. “You got it, sister.”

  Kayla slid out of the booth and came around to Dinah’s side and gave her a quick hug. Dinah watched Kayla leave their little corner booth at Gallagher’s, her attempt at a smile morphing into a scowl as fury pumped through her.

  How dare that man do this? How dare both the men in their family just . . . She believed in Gallagher’s like a religion. It was a living, breathing entity of history and a tool that could revitalize this crumbling neighborhood. And the Gallagher men were just using it for their own devices. Their own egos and whatever else made middle-aged men go absolutely insane.

  Dinah couldn’t let them win. She wouldn’t let Kayla lose simply because Dinah hadn’t gotten through to Carter yet. She had to find a way.

  She slid her purse onto her shoulder and headed to the back. She’d go home and work all night if she had to, studying Carter Trask’s life until something gave. She’d been going too easy on herself the past few days, indulging in too many fantasies.

  That was over. Time to kick her own butt. She walked through the bustling back hallway next to the kitchen and exited through the back entrance. The employee parking lot was packed for the Friday night crowd, and Dinah didn’t think anything of the man standing next to her car. A lot of times employees smoked out here even though they weren’t supposed to, and she assumed it was just any other waiter on his break.

  Until she got close enough for the lights of the parking lot to highlight the dark beard around his mouth. It was crazy that her heart did a little jitter and her stomach a little flip. Not dread or fear or anything other than excitement.

  “You know we have cameras if you’re planning on kidnapping me, then getting rid of me,” she offered as dryly as her all-too-excited nerves would allow.

  “That should have been the plan, come to think of it,” Carter said in that dark, gravelly voice of his that surpassed any fictional voice she’d ever made up for him. “But thanks for the warning about cameras. I’ll keep it in mind should my intentions turn nefarious.”

  She shouldn’t want to smile. It wasn’t funny, but more importantly, he was the enemy. She couldn’t think about him as C anymore. He had to be Carter Trask, the man she had to break.

  But there was a certain bleakness to his expression tonight that reminded her a little too much of what she’d seen in Kayla’s eyes. Dinah had to swallow against the need to ask if everything was all right. Even if it wasn’t, even if he was having his own personal crisis, that had nothing to do with her.

  “I have written you about ten emails.” He said it in a whoosh, as though he hadn’t meant to confess that.

  Dinah went to pull her phone out of her purse, but he shook his head. “I deleted them all before I sent them.”

  “Oh.”

  “The other night . . .”

  “We agreed the other night didn’t exist.” She had to force her legs forward so she could grab her driver-side handle, but Carter stepped in the way, blocking her from her car.

  Yes, s
he had slept with this man, and she had written one million messages to him. But the bottom line was she didn’t know him, and there should be some sense of fear about the way he was blocking her from her vehicle. Except he wasn’t touching her in any way. He wasn’t threatening her. He was just standing in front of her. Looking a little too intensely lost.

  “The other night when you came to my place, you were having a crisis, right?” he persisted.

  “I guess you could call it a crisis.” Which she shouldn’t have said. She should have told him no and gotten in her car, but she stood there, desperately forcing herself not to reach out and touch him.

  “My grandmother died,” he said in another rush. “I knew it was coming. She’s been in the nursing home for a while. I’ve spent three days trying to wrap my brain around her not being here anymore. And I can’t. I can’t get out of my head. I am in crisis, and all I wanted to do was email you. Which is sick and pathetic, I get that. Trust me.”

  Her chest hurt. It ached. She was surprised she had tears for a man she barely knew and for his grandmother whom she’d never met. She should turn around and disappear back into the restaurant. She should tell him that it didn’t matter what crisis he was going through, they couldn’t come back to C and D.

  But she could remember the words he’d written about his grandmother’s garden, how she’d taught him to make a special sauce he’d never made for anyone, but wanted to make for her.

  They were there, unbidden, in her head, in her heart, and she wanted to give him what he’d given her last week. She shouldn’t, but she did. So she reached out and touched her fingertips to his chest. “When you lose someone you love, I think sad and pathetic is what you get to be.”

  His desolate gaze met hers, and she could feel a shudder move through him. So she slid her hand up to his shoulder, rubbing up and down in what she hoped was some sort of comforting gesture.

  She promised herself she wouldn’t do this again, but weren’t these extenuating circumstances? She would just be a comfort to him while he grieved for his grandmother. That didn’t mean she wasn’t still planning on getting his land, or that she’d given up on convincing him he was wrong. It just meant that, for a few hours, one more time, she got to be D instead of Dinah.

  She could be the kind of woman a man would go to when he needed comfort. The kind of woman a man could lean on. For just once in her life, she could be the soft woman inside of her that she was always afraid to let lead.

  It wasn’t so wrong. It wasn’t so bad. It was just a few hours of make-believe and pretend. That was all.

  “I can follow you home.”

  “As D?”

  It was her last chance to come to her senses. Her last chance to remember everything she’d just decided inside of that restaurant.

  But something about this man eradicated all that sense and all that determination. It crumbled the foundation of her drive and reminded her she was someone outside of Gallagher’s, outside of her goals. All of those things were so exhausting, so tiring.

  It was just too much to resist that for a few hours she wouldn’t have to worry or think too hard. She wouldn’t have to be perfect or have all the answers or save anyone.

  She could just be her, and he could just be him. That fantasy between them could give them what they both needed.

  “D. Just D,” she returned, her voice soft, everything inside of her soft and wanting, so the opposite of Dinah.

  He gave a little nod of acknowledgment, and then they were walking from the parking lot of Gallagher’s, toward his little farm oasis in the middle of the city.

  She knew they weren’t dating. They weren’t in a relationship, and they probably didn’t even really know each other, but she couldn’t resist sliding her hand into his and giving him a reassuring squeeze as they walked.

  * * *

  Carter was losing it. The last thing he should’ve done tonight was walk over to Gallagher’s. But it had been there, looming in the distance, staring at him—the blinking beacon of what he wanted.

  D. Fantasy. A life that didn’t hurt so damn bad like this one did.

  It was fucked up beyond belief that D was Dinah, and worse that they were pretending that they could set aside half their lives—no, more than half their lives—95 percent of their lives, and have this little 5 percent of messed-up sex.

  But he didn’t care. His heart hurt and he just had to get out of this space before all of that pain came crashing down inside of him.

  His family had left this morning after the funeral yesterday, and that was part of the pain. That they could come and grieve, and then just leave. The way everyone always did. Everyone always taking everything and leaving.

  But D’s hand was in his, warm and alive. Other than his farm, her words had been the only constant, living thing in his life in the past few months. Everything had centered on starting the farm, then growing it the past few years, and she’d been the only one to penetrate that focus.

  The fact she was real . . .

  Maybe some other day he could focus on the messed-up part of all this, how she was irrevocably Gallagher and the enemy, but today he didn’t have it in him. If he didn’t let some of this pressure go, he would explode.

  They reached his gate, having said absolutely nothing in the quick walk. He thought about offering her one last chance to back out. He thought about trying to affect some nonsense persona, someone who didn’t give a shit if she wanted to stay or not. He almost told her to just go, that this was all a mistake.

  But he didn’t see the woman who had tried to buy his land out from under him next to him tonight. This woman had her hair back in a ponytail, and her makeup must have smudged off over the course of the day. She had a silky shirt on, jeans, and yeah, those ridiculous fashion boots women were always wearing these days, but she didn’t look like Dinah Gallagher, ruler of her own little world.

  She looked like any other woman. Soft and warm and approachable. So he didn’t say a word, he just opened his gate, and she walked in ahead of him.

  He was hard just from watching her saunter through his rows of plants that led to the door. The soft curve of her ass in those jeans, the way it felt like she’d walked that row, sauntered toward his porch, a million times before.

  After all, how many times had he written this scenario? Coming home together, walking toward that house with sex on their minds. He’d imagined it in great detail over and over for months.

  She didn’t disappoint. Not in the least. He followed her at a leisurely pace, the pressure in his chest already unwinding. Sick. Pathetic. Sure. But if that’s what fantasy could do, if it could get him through this boiling, painful grief, then he would use it. He would use C and D, even if it was wrong.

  Hell, she’d started it. With her What if I said I wanted you to fuck me? that night, in his living room.

  It was his turn to have his way. She took the stairs of his stoop with that confident grace that never seemed to leave her. She was standing at his door, giving him one of those little arched-brow looks he imagined worked on a million men in a million boardrooms. She was a force. Powerful. He wanted some of that for himself, even knowing it was from the last woman he could possibly want anything from and survive.

  He took the stairs slowly, one by one, feeling something like a predator. And he liked it. He liked it because he could tell that she liked it. The way she inhaled sharply and gave a little sigh, the way she leaned slightly against his door, her breasts arching out as if they wanted to touch him.

  He didn’t stop. He kept going until he was pressed up against her pressed up against that door. Her palms were flattened against the rough wood and he pressed his on either side of her head.

  Her breath came in short puffs and her eyes all but glowed green in the porch light. She smelled like a mix of citrusy perfume and the greasy bar food of Gallagher’s. It was a strangely erotic combination because it was strangely revealing. Polished, pretty Dinah Gallagher in her pencil skirts and high hee
ls and probably expensive perfume, managing what really wasn’t much more than a glorified bar.

  Except that didn’t matter. Not the Dinah Gallagher part of her. He didn’t want that. He wanted D, this fantasy person.

  He didn’t move. He let the moment stretch out, drawing tighter and tighter as their gazes held. He ached for her, and there was something deliciously potent in that. Potent enough to make him forget what this was all about. Who she was. Who he was. All he could feel was the steady throb of his dick. All he could see was the lust in her gaze, and all he could feel was the sweet softness of D.

  He wanted to live in this moment. Soak it up. Stay here—right here in heady anticipation. But she moved, her hands coming off the door, reaching out, her fingers slowly curling under the waistband of his jeans. He could feel the slight scrape of her nails against the sensitive skin at his hips.

  The little sound of satisfaction she made flashed through him like a sweet burn. Her fingers edged toward the center and she deftly flicked the button open and then undid the zipper. Her finger traced the rock-hard outline of him. Again she made that little pleasured noise and this time he groaned too.

  She laughed, something sweet and bright about it that lifted him up out of the darkness he’d been struggling so hard to rise above.

  He shouldn’t do this. He didn’t deserve this, and yet he couldn’t walk away.

  “Do you remember the one where we started out here?”

  As though one of their little scenarios was a memory instead of a few typed words. But something about their exchanges had always been like memory.

  “I think I recall,” he said dryly. Because of course he remembered. He remembered all of it. Too much, too clearly, especially now that he had this vision of the real D to impose over all those old images. Now he could see it all, with her, as if it actually happened.

  Her finger trailed down the length of him and back up again, her eyes mischievous and bright. “Do you think your neighbor would mind?”

  “I’ll keep my eyes open for any window peepers.”

  “I think it’s only considered window peeping if you’re outside looking in.”