by Stacy Gail
“Right.” Like that, the power cord was pulled on her renewed energy, and she looked at her feet without seeing them. “I’m going to have to get back to you on that, Sharon. I’m kind of liking it here in Texas.”
“What?” There was a beat of confused silence. “Sorry, I don’t understand. Are you saying you’re going to take a vacation down there? I can tell your next job that you need to decompress, if you can let me know how much time you need.”
“No, it’s not that.” She took a deep breath and dived in headfirst. “I’ve met someone.”
“Ohhhhhh.” Somehow the single sound got broken into three significant syllables. “Now I get it. So...you still need some vacation time to, um, wrap things up?”
“I don’t know that I will wrap things up.”
“Wow. This sounds serious.”
“I have no clue whether it is or not,” she admitted, trying to find the words to explain that her heart was now with a man who didn’t know he had it, and might not want it. “I used to believe everything in life is temporary. Where you live, the people you meet, the scenery—everything can and does change. But now a whole new concept has appeared on the horizon—like belonging in one place, with one person. And wherever this one person is, that’s where home should be.” Then she put a hand over her eyes when she heard the corniness of her words. “Wow. That sounds so crazy.”
“No,” came the surprisingly patient replay. “That sounds like a woman in love. This has to do with what you were talking about earlier, doesn’t it? About what makes a home?”
“I guess, though that question coming from an architect is kind of ironic. I do know that’s why I went into this business—I’ve always been obsessed with creating the perfect structure that would shelter a family, a heritage, for all time. I didn’t know how to sink roots any other way.”
“But now you get it?”
“I’m getting there. I think.” Then she rolled her eyes. “There are still some things I need to iron out here before I even think about taking on the next job, Sharon. I’ll call you when I’ve made a decision on when I’ll be ready to hit the Loire Valley project.”
She’d have to make up her mind pretty damned soon. The thought brought Parker’s brows together as she ended the call and headed for the laptop and Sharon’s anticipated email. Now that the mystery architect of Thorne Mansion had been unveiled, there wasn’t much left for her to do, except to make sure historically accurate supplies were used by the building contractor, and the salvaged pieces were settled back in their original place. But that’s what blueprints, building material lists and project managers were for. Her physical presence was no longer required.
Her stomach curled in on itself, a crazed, panicked sensation she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t leave. The mere thought of it destroyed something vital inside. And she sure as hell wasn’t going anywhere when she’d left things on an off-key note with Chandler. His decision to redact the name Weems from what was an otherwise accurate historical account bothered her, she wasn’t going to lie about it. As much as she respected him for extending the same courtesy to Mayor Weems that he had with the other descendants in town, she had high hopes that he’d eventually recognize he had a duty to all the citizens of Bitterthorn, not just the mayor. He had the facts at his disposal of how an offshoot of European royalty came to be living in a town so small it wasn’t on most maps. Moreover, he’d done an exemplary job exposing the sordid details of his ancestors’ secrets for the sake of setting Bitterthorn’s rich history straight. He’d sacrificed the Thorne family’s golden reputation for the sake of accuracy, yet he refused to force Patricia Weems to do the same.
Which proved what a genuinely good man he was.
Her frown melted into a reluctant smile as the work site horn sounded, signaling the end of the day, and she rose to tidy the office before heading for the door. No matter how much her reverence for history was insulted, there was no denying what an amazing man Chandler Thorne was. Not once had he hesitated in his decision to reveal his illustrious ancestors had been less than perfect. Hell, he had so much swagger going on, he’d been proud of it. He was confident in his identity, comfortable with his own power, and didn’t need to lean on any past glory of the Thorne name in order to feel good about himself. When confronted with Weems—who was more or less in the same boat that he was—he’d been big enough to take pity on her when she was clearly too weak to do the same.
Damn. No matter how much her love of history hurt, her love and admiration for Chandler was greater. She was such a sucker for a pretty face and unshakable integrity.
As she headed down the mobile trailer’s steps, her phone chirped again with Chandler’s tone and this time she reached for it. No sense in fighting the inevitable. “Hiya. Have you been as busy today as I was?” There, that should explain dodging his calls.
“Turn around and head back into the office. I want to talk to you in private.”
Parker blinked and looked up, only to find Chandler coming across the work site toward the trailer. His locked-on pace ate up the ground like a heat-seeking missile, and she’d have to be blind to miss the leashed anger behind it.
Automatically she disconnected the call and shoved it back into her satchel as he approached. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Tight-lipped, he put a heavy foot on the stairs. “Inside.”
Yikes. “Let me guess. Somehow the mayor has canceled our building permit, or she’s found a way to legally reallocate your hard-won building funds to go to a government study of the boll weevil.” After all Chandler had done to keep that woman happy, Parker was positive she’d pop a blood vessel if Weems so much as sneezed in his direction.
“No.” Chandler followed her back up into the trailer and closed the door behind him with more force than necessary. “This isn’t about Thorne Mansion, but it is about the mayor. What did you hope to gain?”
“What did I hope to gain?” Baffled and more than a little defensive at the accusation in his granite-hard tone, she crossed her arms. “It’d be helpful if you were more specific, since I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Somehow I find that hard to believe. I know you don’t like Mayor Weems. From the first moment you hit town it was obvious she rubbed you the wrong way. Which is understandable, since just about everyone has that reaction to Weems to some degree. But I really thought better of you, Parker. I know you’ve got a temper, but I never thought you’d be so vindictive.”
Now she was really lost, and that temper he mentioned started to do its rapid-fire flash at what sounded like a character slur. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Louisa Weems, the mayor’s kidnapping, drugging, child-peddling ancestor. The whole town’s talking about her, and the only person who knew her full name besides me was you.”
Chapter Sixteen
Silence exploded in the wake of Chandler’s words as he watched Parker’s mouth drop open. For his part, he had only one thought in his head—not to lose his shit. The phrase echoed like a mantra to keep the anger from erupting like Mount Vesuvius. At the very least he had to take a shot at letting her explain. Maybe Parker had let the Weems cat out of the bag by accident. She didn’t know the power of the small-town grapevine, after all. He had to be calm and not lose his shit.
But, if this was a matter of her thinking he wasn’t ambitious enough to go for splashing Weems all over his paper, then Mount Vesuvius would have nothing on him.
For her part, Parker appeared to be on the verge of losing it herself, if the dangerous narrowing of her eyes was any indication. “You want to run that by me again? Especially that vindictive part? I’d really like to hear how you managed to jump to some wild-eyed conclusion that I’m vindictive.”
“The Herald’s phone has been ringing off the hook with people demanding to know if Miss Louisa’s last name rea
lly was Weems, and why didn’t the paper report that.”
Her eyes widened in an impressive display of shock. And damn it, he couldn’t tell if that’s what it was—a display. “If some people question the integrity of what you wrote, all they have to do is refer back to how you treated those whose family history is tied to the beginning of Thorne Mansion. The only difference between those people and the mayor is that Weems took advantage of the anonymity you offered.”
“You sure as hell were singing a different tune this morning. You acted like I was committing some atrocity by not revealing the mayor’s name.”
“I’m not going to apologize for that, and you shouldn’t be surprised people are questioning your decision to not print Weems’s name now that they know about it. But I understand why you did it,” she added when he opened his mouth to blast her. “From a personal perspective, I admire the position you took to protect the people in present-day Bitterthorn from a past that might embarrass them.”
“If you admired it so much, why reveal who Louisa Weems really was?”
Her hands curled into fists. “Listen to me very carefully when I speak. Ready? I didn’t reveal anything.”
“Do you know what Mayor Weems is doing right now?” Chandler demanded, his temper inching up into the red at the denial. The one thing he’d been prepared for was Parker copping to the information leak with stubborn pride, not an insistence of innocence. “She’s calling a press conference within the hour. Apparently she’s making noises about stepping down from office—a ridiculous overreaction if there ever was one. But that just illustrates how big this piece of ancient history is in her mind. When I saw how twisted up she was about this whole mess, a part of me was actually happy to keep her name out of it. She may be insufferable and she might throw her weight around like a spoiled brat when she doesn’t get her way, but overall she’s been good for Bitterthorn. Sharing her family’s checkered history benefited no one.”
“I agree, which is why I didn’t say a word.”
“Yet everyone in town knows about it. How else could anyone have known about this if you didn’t say anything?”
“I don’t know!” The ferocity of her yell was something else in the enclosed space. “Did it ever cross your mind that we could have been overheard when we were at breakfast this morning?”
“It did.” The angrier she got, the more determined he was to keep it on an even keel, and as he did he couldn’t help but do a quick reevaluation of the situation. Parker was the obvious source of the information leak; she knew all the facts that were now flying through town faster than an F5 tornado. But she wasn’t the sort of person to lie about it. Wrong or right, she had enough integrity to stand by her actions. For her to deny it so vociferously had him looking for another possibility. “It’s possible that happened, I’ll admit it. Though how anyone overheard our quiet conversation in a restaurant bustling with the breakfast rush is a mystery to me, unless they had bionic hearing. But even more than that, a couple of callers asked me to confirm that Buford was, in fact, Louisa’s son.”
“So?”
“I never mentioned the name Buford in my article. It only showed up in Declan Junior’s letter, a letter that only you and I have read. Unless you decided to show it to someone else before you gave it to me?”
“No, of course not. Who would I show it to, the construction workers? They wouldn’t know or care about any of this. Hell, I don’t even care about this. As you reminded me earlier, this isn’t my home or heritage, and I sure as hell wouldn’t be vindictive enough to out your mayor’s secret simply because she’s been a pain in my ass. I’m just passing through, remember?”
“Believe me, I haven’t forgotten that. How could I?” A vicious lightning stroke of pain plowed through him, so quick and devastating he couldn’t place its origins. All he knew was that misery had come to crush him, and he had no idea how to get out from under it. “From the beginning you’ve made it clear you never saw Bitterthorn as anything other than a project for you to get through—nothing more than a quick stop on your way to somewhere else. Once you leave, you won’t even bother to look back, will you? So hey, why give a shit about all the drama you’re leaving in your wake?”
She stared at him as if she couldn’t understand the language he was speaking. “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m to blame for this so-called drama. All I did was the job you paid me to do. This mess could have been avoided if the mayor possessed an actual backbone and came forward with the truth straightaway.”
“She has to live here, Parker. So do I. We have our roots embedded in this town, while you’re just what you said—passing through. But who cares, as long as that precious historical record’s intact? You must be thrilled.”
Her face flushed a furious scarlet. “Do I look thrilled to you, you idiot? You’re accusing me of something I didn’t do, and now apparently I’m also a vindictive bitch who’s single-handedly trying to tear at the foundations of Bitterthorn with yesteryear’s news. Nice opinion you have of me.”
“You think I’m exaggerating? Someone like you—someone who’s like the wind that blows—can’t possibly grasp how much damage can be done to a small community like this over something that might seem trivial to an outsider like you. But it does do damage, Parker. Your actions can upset the whole apple cart in a town this small.”
“Someone like me.” She repeated the words, and it was an ominous sound. “Is that why you’re so quick to believe the worst of me? Because I’m not from here? Because I’m an outsider? How small-town of you, Chandler.”
The words struck like knives into a raw nerve he’d almost forgotten he had. “You’re the only one who knew all the details. All the evidence points—”
“Evidence? What the fuck, am I on trial now? I may not come from here and yeah, I’ve never stayed in the same place for more than a handful of years, but you should know me better than this. You should know how much I value what it takes to build a town like Bitterthorn, and that I wouldn’t do anything to undermine it.”
“You value the buildings, not the people.”
In the span of a heartbeat, her red face turned white. “That’s not true.” She shook her head while the flame of anger flickered out in her eyes. It was almost like watching the life drain out of her. “You know that’s not true.”
“I know you don’t seem to have any problem heading off to your next project. You obviously don’t care about anything here, least of all—” Me. He bit down hard on his lips before the self-pitying word could pop out. He’d be damned if he’d beg her to stay. Fuck that. He’d hold the goddamn door open for her, if that was what she wanted.
“Is that what this is about? My next project?”
“It’s about you preparing an exit for yourself. Maybe you didn’t deliberately go out of your way to spill the truth about Miss Louisa’s skeleton hiding in the mayor’s closet, and maybe I was wrong to say you were vindictive. But I think in your own way, you’re doing whatever you can to cut your ties here so you can get out clean. Not that you have any ties here,” he added, and the words tasted bitter on his tongue. “Do you?”
“Apparently not.” Her expression was colder than a glacier as she picked up her satchel. “Thanks for the reminder. Now, if you don’t mind, I need you to get the hell out of my office so I can carry on with all that tie-cutting I’m supposed to be doing. You’ve got to cover a mayoral meltdown over an imperfect family tree and I’ve got to get ready for a huge chateau project that’s going to take me far away from here. As far as I’m concerned, the Thorne Mansion project is complete.”
* * *
Before today, Parker had never imagined a breakup could happen that quickly. She felt like she was the victim of a hit-and-run, and she didn’t know how to stop herself from reeling from the impact.
Functioning on autopilot, she went through the Honeymoon Suite’s
drawers and closet, slamming things as she went. She made such a racket she almost drowned out the energetic couple next door who were obviously making the most of their after-work “happy hour.” Parker hated them, whoever they were. The mere thought of anyone enjoying their significant other made her want to stab something.
“Chandler’s an asshole.” She was so upset she didn’t even care she was muttering to herself as she moved to the bathroom and flung a shampoo bottle into a toiletry bag. It boggled the mind, how he could think she was petty enough to sink the mayor of a town just because she didn’t like the old biddy. Maybe, when she wasn’t so furious at the character slur, she might admit his evidence cast her in a bad light. But he should know her. He should have believed she’d back his decision to protect Mayor Weems’s name, in spite of not fully agreeing with it. He should have believed in her.
He should have. But he didn’t.
Lotion and conditioner followed the shampoo, and she zipped the bag up without organizing the jumbled mess. She even managed to make it back into the bedroom before the full weight of reality crushed down on her hard enough to make her shudder. The bag dropped from her nerveless fingers, and she just made it to the edge of the bed before the strength left her legs. She slid down the satin sheets covering the mattress and wound up in a ball wedged between the nightstand and the side of the bed, staring at her hands as they began to shake.
How strange. Any time that she’d left a place to which she’d become attached, it had hurt, certainly. But not like this. This sensation was like no other. This was awful, a bitter poisoning, but not by anything she’d ingested. No. She’d been poisoned by words. It coursed through her, a vicious, acidic agony that ballooned up through the veil of anger that had kept her insulated until now. The enormity of it was enough to take her breath away, only to return in the form of dry, shaking sobs. Somewhere in her mind, where she was still capable of thinking, she wondered if she might even die from it. In that needle-sharp moment it would have been almost preferable. But she wasn’t that lucky, and there were still things she needed to do.
