This Can't Be Love

by Maria Geraci

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Hey, Dad, it’s me, your daughter Sarah.”

  There was chuckling on the other end of the line. “Since you’re my only daughter I pretty much figured that out when you said, ‘Hey, Dad.’”

  “Oh, yeah.” She was nervous, which he immediately picked up on.

  “You okay, honey?”

  “Yes! I’m fine. Really. I just got off a cruise with mom yesterday. We had a great time,” she said lamely.

  And the man I’m in love with told me he loved me. I’m in love, Dad!

  She wanted to share the news with her father, but it seemed so personal. She hated that they didn’t have the sort of relationship where things like this came naturally between them. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t hers, either.

  “How’s your mom doing?” he asked.

  “Good. Dating someone, but not serious enough for me to meet yet. How are Melissa and the boys?”

  He spent the next few minutes catching her up on his family. “Greg is taking a cooking class and he’s making these amazing desserts already. Culinary talent must run in the family.” She could hear the pride in his voice.

  “That’s great. He’s, what, fourteen now?”

  “Next week. Speaking of which, happy birthday, honey. It’s the big one, huh?”

  She smiled. “So they tell me. That’s one of the reasons I called. Thank you so much for my card and the check. You shouldn’t have, you know. I’m a grown woman and it’s way too much money.”

  “It gives me pleasure to know that maybe you can use it for something extra. Something that you might not be able to buy for yourself.”

  You know, sweetie, money is the only way your father has ever been able to show you how he feels about you.

  She didn’t want that sort of impersonal relationship with her father anymore. After so many years, it would be hard to change things up between them. But not impossible.

  “That brings me to the other reason I called. I have some big news. I’m going to buy a café! Well, I’m going to buy half a café. There’s this great place in Whispering Bay, that’s a little town between Destin and Panama City in the Florida panhandle,” she explained. “And the owner is selling and it’s just too good a deal to pass up.”

  “Honey, that’s fantastic! Do you need money? I could—”

  “No, no, that’s all taken care of. I just wanted you to know, and to see if maybe you and Melissa and the boys could come out for the grand reopening. It wouldn’t be for a couple of months probably, but the weather should still be warm and the beaches here are beautiful. And it would be nice to have…family here.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Dad? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here,” he said, his voice quiet and thick with emotion. “Just tell me when, and we’ll be there.”

  “That’s great,” she said, trying to keep her voice from cracking. “And, Dad? In case I never told you before, I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Sarah. I always have.”

  * * *

  Luke should have probably just spent the night at his condo in Atlanta, but he’d been gone already for three days and he’d promised Brad that he’d come look at a proposal to build a new science lab for the high school and they’d scheduled the meeting for eight in the morning. As principal, Brad wanted Luke’s input on the fund-raising, and now that Luke was returning to Whispering Bay permanently, he also wanted Luke to run for the local school board.

  That last part wasn’t going to happen. Mimi was the politician in the family, not him. He didn’t mind offering up advice, but he was going to have his hands full opening his company’s new branch. After his meeting with Brad, he’d start scouting out possible office sites.

  He pulled the truck onto his street then swore under his breath. Damn tourists. Didn’t they know summer was over? There were at least a dozen cars, all with Wisconsin license plates, parked along the street and in front of his house and driveway. He vaguely remembered hearing something about a couple of houses in the neighborhood being rented out for a family reunion.

  Luke drove around the block, found a space to park, then trekked to his dark, empty house. It was after one in the morning and the residents of Whispering Bay had long since gone to sleep. He unlocked the door, grateful to be walking into a cool house. He was going to turn on a light, but he knew the layout by heart, so there was really no need. He was too tired to do more than crawl into bed, anyway.

  He opened the door to his bedroom and froze. It was dark but his vision had adjusted enough that he could make out a lump in his bed.

  His heart began to pound.

  Luke flipped on the light switch. Sarah stirred, then sat up in his bed and arranged the sheet demurely around her breasts.

  “I really hope you’re naked under those sheets, Goldilocks,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes. “Naturally.”

  He smiled at the sauciness in her voice, but then he got serious. Because while finding her in his bed made him happier than hell, he realized that if she didn’t love him back, then this was never going to work between them. “Sarah—”

  “No, it’s my turn to talk,” she said, wetting her lips like she was nervous. “I don’t want you to be here waiting for me, Luke. I don’t want either of us to have to wait for each other. I’m buying The Bistro. Well, that is, Lucy and I are buying it together. I want to live here permanently. With you.”

  “Because?”

  “Because I love you,” she said simply.

  He took a deep breath. “I see. So, what’s in it for me?”

  She made a face. “Are you serious?”

  He nodded.

  “A woman who loves you with all her heart. A real home that you can come back to at the end of the day. And…all the macaroni and cheese you want.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. This woman who’d somehow managed to sneak into his house and into his heart was everything he never knew he wanted, and now knew he could never live without. Marriage and kids, they were definitely on the horizon for Luke Powers.

  He and Sarah had a good life ahead of them. Correction: They had a great life ahead, one that he could have never dreamed possible before her.

  THE END

  Want to find out what happens to Jenna Pantini? She might not have won Luke’s heart, but that’s okay with her because Jenna has a little secret. As an added bonus I’ve included Chapter One of CAN’T STOP THE FEELING, available now!

  Can’t Stop the Feeling

  Jenna Pantini knew she had a bad temper. She’d inherited it, along with her red hair from her Nana. But over the years she’d learned to master it. She could be calm, cool and collected under the most grueling of circumstances. It was one of the reasons that at the tender age of thirty-one she’d earned the much-coveted city manager position in Whispering Bay, a well-established beach community in Florida’s growing panhandle region.

  She stopped writing mid-sentence and laid down her pen. Her fingers felt oddly numb. This newest development in the Earl Handy estate had to be a coincidence. Because fate couldn’t be this cruel.

  “Did you say the attorney representing Earl’s daughter is named Ben Harrison?” It couldn’t be her Ben Harrison. Although, technically, he’d never been hers.

  “Why? Do you know him?” asked Pilar Diaz-Rothman, Whispering Bay’s attorney. As the new city manager, Jenna had worked with Pilar for almost a month now. The Cuban-American lawyer was petite with chin-length dark hair and fierce brown eyes. Before Jenna could answer, Pilar said, “Of course you know him. Everyone in Florida has heard of Ben Harrison.”

  The mayor, who up to now had been silent, leaned back in her chair. “I’ve never heard of him.” With the palm of her hand, Mimi Grant began to rub soothing little circles over her beach ball of a belly. Being seven months pregnant with twins in the late September Florida heat had to suck.

  Jenna reached across the table and poured her a glass of water. “Y
ou need to stay well hydrated. At this point in your pregnancy, your body has fifty percent more blood to circulate.”

  Lifelong friends, Mimi and Pilar exchanged a look. “How on earth do you know that?” Pilar asked Jenna.

  “Yeah,” Mimi said. “This is my third pregnancy, and I couldn’t have quoted that as easily as you just did.”

  “I must have picked that up somewhere.”

  Where she’d read (or heard) that little pregnancy tidbit, Jenna couldn’t say. She only knew that she knew it. As a child, she was always blurting things out without thinking. Growing up, she’d learned to curtail her instinct, but every once in a while, her inner-know-it-all escaped to create some damage before she could lock her back up.

  Mimi repositioned herself in the chair, then let out a long sigh.

  “Why are you making that face?” Pilar eyed Mimi like a protective mama cat would her kitten. “You’re not having contractions, are you? Because it’s way too soon for that.”

  “Nope. No contractions. It’s just that ever since the twins have declared themselves, it’s like they’re trying to one-up each other. I can’t tell who’s on top and who’s on the bottom.”

  In what had been the most talked about event in Whispering Bay history (at least in the past month), Mimi and her husband, police chief Zeke Grant, had hosted a gender reveal party only to discover that they were having not one, but two babies. A girl and a boy, bringing their brood up to four children.

  Jenna inwardly cringed. It wasn’t that she didn’t like children. She had two nieces that she adored more than life itself. Children were perfectly wonderful. As long as they behaved and belonged to someone else. Maybe one day she would have a child of her own. If the circumstances were right. But she wasn’t one of those women who believed her life would be incomplete without a husband and kids. Nope. Her personal happiness would never depend on someone else.

  “It’s a good thing you’re not having contractions because we need to keep those babies in the oven for a couple more months,” Pilar said.

  “That’s the plan,” Mimi said serenely. “Now, back to city business. Who is this Ben Harrison? The way you say his name makes him sound mean.”

  “Mean isn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe him. More like he’s a total bloodthirsty shark. No emotion involved. The guy functions on pure cold instinct. He’s a partner with the Miami branch of Martinez and Martinez and he’s rumored to never take a case he can’t win.”

  Mimi frowned. “You mean the law firm with all those scary billboards along the highway?”

  Jenna knew exactly which billboards Mimi referred to. Their trademark ads featured Jack Martinez, the founding partner’s son, wearing an expensive-looking coat and tie over a pair of boxer shorts while he glared down at the little people of Florida with slogans like, Let’s Sue The Pants Off Everyone!

  “But isn’t Martinez and Martinez a personal injury firm?” Jenna asked, genuinely confused.

  “Traditionally, yes,” Pilar said. “But Jack Martinez has been branching the firm out into a bunch of different things, including wills and probate.”

  Earl Handy, the elderly grandson of one of Whispering Bay’s founding fathers, had passed away a couple of months ago, leaving the bulk of his estate, which included miles and miles of pristine, white-sand beachfront property, to the city to be used solely for public access. It was an extremely generous gift. One that his only daughter, Nora, and her husband, Vince Palermo, were now contesting.

  “So what do we know about this Ben Harrison person?” asked Mimi.

  Jenna tried not to show anything more than a mild professional interest in Pilar’s answer.

  “I don’t know him personally. It’s not like all the lawyers in Florida know one another, but Ben Harrison was in all the papers and a bunch of legal articles last year when he represented Tiffany McAdams.”

  Mimi sat straight up in her chair. “The woman whose dead husband supposedly had the airtight prenup?”

  Jenna was vaguely familiar with the case but she’d been too wrapped up in work to pay attention to what had basically been a reality TV show. If she’d known Ben had been the attorney, she might have been interested in reading an article or two. Only because it was good to keep up with the news. Right?

  “That’s the one,” Pilar said gloomily.

  “Refresh our memories,” Jenna said.

  Pilar went on to give them all the juicy details of the case. Tiffany McAdams, a former Playboy centerfold, had married south Florida billionaire Arthur Clendenin at the respective ages of twenty-four and seventy-nine. Clendenin might have been an old fool, but he’d made sure to have a supposedly airtight prenuptial agreement limiting the amount of money Tiffany would inherit in the event of his death. They’d been married a little over a year when Arthur had his now famous heart attack while dirty dancing with Tiffany in a Miami South Beach bar. The whole thing had been caught on cell phone video and replayed on TV dozens of times.

  Afterward, a beautifully tearful Tiffany had claimed that Arthur had changed his mind about the will and that he wanted her to have half his estate. No one believed her. Especially Arthur’s two grown children from his previous marriage. So Tiffany hired hotshot attorney Ben Harrison and after two years of legal battles, she’d done the unthinkable, or rather, he’d done the impossible. He’d broken the prenup and gotten Tiffany not only half the estate, but he’d also sued Arthur’s children for all the legal fees. And won.

  “Oh my God,” Mimi said. “I remember that case. That’s who we’re up against?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Pilar shuddered. “I still have nightmares of that video showing poor Arthur dancing and having his heart attack.”

  Jenna had never seen the video. “It’s pretty graphic, huh?” she asked sympathetically.

  “I’ll say. There should be laws against eighty-year-old men twerking in public.”

  The three women sat around the table looking at one another dejectedly. Jenna was the first one to speak again. “Let’s not panic. Just because this Ben Harrison was able to break some Miami billionaire’s will doesn’t mean he can do the same thing here.”

  “True.” Pilar perked up. “I have more than enough witnesses to claim that Earl was perfectly lucid when he had his attorney write up his will.”

  Mimi looked at Pilar thoughtfully. “Is that what you think Vince and Nora are basing their case on? That Earl wasn’t in his right mind when he had his will made out?”

  “You tell me. He was your cousin. Or was he your uncle?”

  “Neither exactly.”

  This was news to Jenna. “You were related to old Earl?”

  “Honey, half of Whispering Bay was related to Earl. He was my momma’s second cousin. Or something like that.”

  “Small towns,” Pilar muttered. “Gotta love ’em.”

  “It’s true that Earl had dementia,” Mimi said. “Everyone knows that. But it was only bad in the last year or so. Up to then, he’d been sharp as a tack.”

  “I’m not sure exactly what Nora and Vince are claiming,” Pilar went on to say. “Only that they plan to contest the will. Frankly, I wouldn’t be worried, except I know enough about Ben Harrison through his reputation that he would never take this case if he didn’t think he had a pretty good shot at winning. My probate skills are decent, but I’m no expert. I’m already drowning in work as it is, so we’ll need to hire more legal help. And I’m pretty sure our resources are limited.”

  Thanks to years of prior mismanagement, the city coffers were in trouble. If Nora and her husband wanted to drag the city through a messy legal battle, Whispering Bay wouldn’t have the funds to fight them. They had Pilar, and she was top notch, but she was right. They would need more than one already overworked attorney to fight a firm like Martinez and Martinez.

  “I went to college with someone named Ben Harrison,” Jenna said before she could stop herself. “We were both freshmen, although he was a few years older than me, but we, uh, lost track
of one another.”

  “How well did you know him?” Mimi asked.

  “Hardly at all,” Jenna lied.

  “Did your Ben go to law school?” Pilar asked.

  He’s not my Ben!

  “He talked about going to law school, but like I said, we didn’t keep in touch.”

  “Let’s check out the Martinez and Martinez website and see if this is the same guy you knew in college.” Pilar pulled out her laptop. “Those firms always have these big bios on their lead attorneys. If he’s an old college friend, maybe we can work that to our advantage and—” She sat back in her chair and blinked. “Oh my.”

  “What?” Mimi snatched the laptop to take a look. Her brows nearly hit her hairline. “Mmm… Yeah. I see what you mean.”

  Jenna was almost afraid to ask. “What? Does this guy have horns or something?”

  “Look for yourself.” Mimi handed her the laptop where the image of a man in a crisply tailored blue suit with dark hair and achingly familiar brown eyes stared back at her. Broad shouldered, with his arms crossed over his chest, the look on his face said he ate little children for breakfast. And he liked it.

  Jenna fought the urge to run into the bathroom and scream. She’d secretly been hoping that there were two Ben Harrisons in the legal world. But no. This was her (not her) Ben, all right. What were the odds that the two of them would be involved in a case together? Thank God his firm was located eight hours away in Miami. In this day of emails and Skype, they’d almost certainly never have to come face-to-face.

  This immediately cheered her up.

  “He’s kind of good-looking, I suppose,” Jenna conceded coolly. “If you like that corporate pirate look.”

  “Kind of good-looking?” Mimi muttered. “I love Zeke to death but I wouldn’t mind seeing this guy in his boxer shorts.”

  Pilar giggled. “Don’t tell Nick,” she said, referring to her husband, “but I wouldn’t mind seeing him without them. Let’s read his bio.” She cleared her throat in a dramatic fashion. “Ben Harrison, a north Florida native, graduated high school and immediately enlisted in the US Army. He served two tours in Afghanistan and was awarded the Silver Star for bravery in combat. With the aid of the GI Bill and a full academic scholarship, he earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting from the University of Miami, going on to earn his J.D. at Harvard University. He is a member of the Florida Bar, blah, blah, blah. The rest is the usual flowery accolades.”