by Lowe, Fiona
She breathed in but it seemed hard work, as if she was pushing air against a heavy weight on her chest and she realized the weight was immense sadness for him. She recalled the few times she’d been lucky enough to go camping with her dad—just the two of them—and she treasured those special times when she didn’t have to share him with her mom or brother. “So tonight’s the time to start. It will help you all get closer, which can only be a good thing.”
“Annika.” He spoke her name on a warning growl. “I know you have this thing about helping, but don’t even think about getting involved in this.”
But she already was. With every passing day she was getting more and more involved with the Callahans.
* * *
Annika had slept with the blinds and windows open, allowing for the cross ventilation of fresh air and better sleep. The downside was the slivers of the dawn light and the cacophony of early morning birdsong woke her. Not that she minded. Between her excitement about setting up the thermography machine, thinking about Finn at the campout, and her arms constantly reaching out across the bed only to find a cold and empty mattress, she was done with sleep. Or to be more accurate, she was done with what had passed as sleep, and she was happy to start her day.
The sound of running feet and a slamming door launched her out of bed.
“Annika, are you here?”
“Be there in a minute.” Wondering why on earth Bridey was on the island so early, she quickly pulled on the nearest clothes, which were a pair of her shorts and an old long-sleeved T-shirt of Finn’s. She caught her elbow on the doorjamb as she walked into the main room and found Finn’s sister in the kitchen rummaging through cupboards.
Unlike Finn’s chaotic curls, Bridey’s hair was smooth, sleek and neatly pulled back in a ponytail. It swung around her face as she spoke. “Does Finn have eggs?”
Annika tried to focus beyond the fact that Finn’s scent filled the T-shirt and the cotton was stroking her body, reminding her that she’d missed him last night far more than was sensible. “Why eggs?”
Bridey levered herself to standing. “They’ll want a big breakfast after sleeping on the beach and I thought I’d cook it.”
Annika stifled a yawn with her sleeve and found herself breathing in deeply again. She gave herself a shake. Last night at their girls’ night in, Bridey had been overly bright as if she was trying to enjoy herself but was falling short. It was odd given that it had been her suggestion to do the pedicures.
She pulled up a stool. “They took food with them and besides, burning breakfast on a campfire is part of the whole camping experience. Surely you don’t want to deprive them of that.”
Bridey slumped against the counter and sighed. “You’re right. I know you’re right. It’s just I haven’t seen Hank in two weeks and his visit is super short. We’ve got wedding things to work out but instead of spending time with me, he’s off camping with my brothers and father!”
“I’m guessing you didn’t sleep so good last night.”
Bridey leveled a knowing look at her. “Did you?”
“Sure. With Finn gone, I got to sleep in the bed.” She didn’t want to talk about Finn, especially not to his engaged sister. It was her experience that all brides-to-be viewed the world in terms of future couples, and she and Finn were not a couple. They were just two people sharing amazing sex for a short time. She rounded the counter and banged her hip. “I’ll make us some coffee.”
Bridey moved out of the way and sat on the couch, hugging a cushion to her chest. “I’m sounding like a rich, spoiled brat, aren’t I?”
Annika liked Bridey a lot. She could have been a spoiled rich girl given how much her father was worth, but she wasn’t. Instead she was warm, funny and down-to-earth. None of the Callahans seemed to view their wealth as a right, but rather as a privilege. “No, not a brat. You’re sounding more disappointed.”
The sunlight caught the facets of Bridey’s enormous diamond ring which sent a shower of reflections dancing across the walls. “I had such hopes for this family vacation and none of it’s turning out how I pictured it.”
Annika thought about her own far-flung family. “You’ve actually got your family all in one spot.”
“That’s true. Even Mom’s here, which hasn’t happened since the divorce.” She spun her ring on her finger. “But I don’t have Hank.”
Something about the way she said her fiancé’s name made Annika look up from the coffee machine.
Bridey gave her an overly bright smile. “What I mean is, Hank not being here wasn’t part of how I saw the summer. I especially wasn’t supposed to be planning the—” she made quotations marks with her fingers, “—‘Wedding of the Year’ on my own either, but that’s happening too because Hank’s consumed by work.”
Annika scooped the fragrant coffee grounds into the filter and set the machine to drip. “I would have thought growing up in your family, work was part of the territory.”
Bridey grimaced. “Very true. AKP dominates everything but Hank isn’t like Finn or my father.”
The comment spiked Annika’s interest, especially as Bridey was a striking woman and Hank, with his glasses and serious expressions, came down more on the side of ordinary. “Is that part of the attraction?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” A slow wave of red crept up Bridey’s neck and washed across her cheeks. “All I know is that from the moment he smiled at me, I was his if he wanted me.”
Annika’s heart hitched in her chest at the idea of that sort of love and the fact it was being returned. “And obviously he wants you because he proposed and now you’re getting married.”
But Bridey didn’t reply. She didn’t even sigh in the blissful way engaged women tended to when they got lost in thought about their future with their soon-to-be husband. Instead, she chewed her nail and then started fiddling behind the cushions until she pulled out a rectangular board. “I was blaming Finn’s lumpy couch for being uncomfortable, but it’s this.”
“Sorry, that’s mine.” Annika crossed the room to take the board.
“What are you drawing? Is this the view from the cabin?” Bridey glanced out the window and back again, before taking a closer look at the two pieces of paper clipped to the board. “Oh, and this looks like a vine of hearts entwining the letters J and D.”
Annika avoided commenting on the lake sketch which she wasn’t happy with. “It’s an idea for a wedding invitation monogram. I’ve already done the one the bride wants but I was playing around with this idea.”
Bridey’s eyes lit up. “Can I see the other one?”
“Sure.” Annika flipped over her satchel and carefully removed the first fully completed monogram which was more traditional with fleurs-de-lys surrounding the initials.
Bridey jumped off the couch to study it on the table. “Annika, this is beautiful. It’s classically elegant, but if I was the bride, I’d want the other one.”
“Really?” When she’d been doodling the hearts she thought she might have gone a bit overboard on romance-kitsch.
“Totally.” Bridey moved back into the kitchen and poured two coffees. “Do you have any other examples of your work? I’d love to see them because I’m in the market for a wedding invitation designer.”
Embarrassment tangoed with pride. Annika wasn’t certain how much Finn had told his sister but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out she was currently homeless and lacking in funds. Bridey was being kind but she was also planning a lavish
society wedding and Annika was only a small-town calligrapher.
“Bridey, please don’t feel you have to use my services for your invitations. You have plenty of time to check out other designers.”
Finn’s sister’s mouth took on one of a few familiar Callahan looks—mulish and determined. “I want distinctive invitations that represent Hank and me, and at the same time set up the excitement and expectation of our fabulous wedding. You’ve met both of us and there’s not a doubt in my mind you’re brilliant with pen and ink. I was thinking oversized hand-torn, champagne parchment with a gold monogram.”
Annika instantly pictured the glorious heavy paper. “Rolled, wrapped in gold-and-silver ribbon and hand-delivered in tubes.”
Bridey grinned. “I like the way you think.”
Annika’s brain whirred. Bridey had already mentioned three well-known Chicago wedding venues and Annika doubted she would consider Whitetail despite the town pinning their hopes on the Callahan-Neiquest wedding launching Whitetail—Weddings That WOW.
Still, if she invited Bridey to visit the main wedding office then she’d have done her part as acting mayor. She could show her some invitation samples and Nicole and Melissa could take their shot. Melissa might even be able to weave some dress magic although she had her doubts because she was pretty certain Bridey Callahan would be going haute couture all the way.
Annika sipped her coffee and tried to sound casual. “I’m going to my studio this morning to set up the thermography machine and print some save-the-date cards. Seeing as we’ve no clue what time the guys are getting back, and texting them isn’t in the spirit of camping, why not come with? You can tell me your ideas and we can go from there.”
Bridey raised her mug and smiled. “It’s a date.”
* * *
“You’re burning those eggs.” Sean poked the fire with a stick.
Finn’s hand gripped the panhandle. “You think you can do a better job?”
“Happy to try.”
“Take a shot then.” Finn rose from his crouching position and stretched his back. His sleeping mat hadn’t been designed for comfort but to insulate him from the chill of the ground. Who knew sleeping on sand was like sleeping on cold concrete?
It had been a long night, made even longer by knowing that Annika was sleeping alone in his bed only a couple of miles away. It might as well have been a thousand. His father had snored half the night and Logan had kept rolling into Finn. At 2:00 a.m. he’d given up moving Logan back to his mat, and instead had clamped an arm around him and accepted that an elbow in the head was part of the deal. Only Hank had slept as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Finn didn’t get it. Hank had known Bridey long enough to know she could sulk when things didn’t go her way and that she was probably going to give him hell when he got back. Yet the quiet engineer didn’t seem worried or in any hurry to return to Kylemore. He’d risen early, got the fire going and had then taken Logan out in the canoe with the fishing poles and a promise of catching breakfast.
“You want toast?” Sean shoved a piece of bread onto a stick.
I want out of here. “One.” He poured them coffee from a blue enamel pot he’d never seen before. “Since when did Kylemore have camp equipment?”
“I bought it for this summer.” Sean shoveled the eggs and toast onto plates and handed one off to Finn before sitting down on the sand with the other. “I’m glad you came. It gives us a chance to talk.”
A prickle of something he couldn’t name made him hot and he gulped coffee. “We talk every day when I give you the daily report.”
“I meant talk about stuff other than AKP.” His father’s intelligent eyes bored into him. “It is possible you know.”
“Yeah, it’s possible.” He bit into the toast. Work was the only thing he and his father had in common. Over the years it had become their sole connection and he was very happy to leave it that way. “Thing is, I don’t want to.”
Sean stared out at the lake. “I know I was a lousy father to you.”
Finn choked on his eggs as the unexpected words snagged him. Words he might have wanted to hear at seventeen but he sure as hell didn’t want to hear now. “Lucky for me I had Grandpa.”
Sean was quiet for a moment and when he spoke, regret was clear in his voice. “It’s part of the reason I took off this summer.”
“How do you figure that?”
“I thought if we spent some time together it might help make it up to you.”
He thought of his father’s bizarre invitation the other day and every part of him froze. “Like going fishing?”
Sean nodded. “And camping.”
He spoke slowly as pieces of a puzzle started clicking together fast. “Stuff that fathers do with their kids?”
“Pretty much.”
The words melted the veneer of cool indifference he’d spent years cultivating so he could deal with his father. “Fuck, Dad. I’m not twelve.”
Sean flinched. “I’m well aware of that, Finnegan.”
Are you? Sean had been an absent father with a wake of broken promises trailing behind him and Finn had covered his childhood disappointments years ago by schooling himself to think of his father only in terms of the business and as an entrepreneur he could learn from. Sean had no right to try and change the rules on him now.
“Yeah? Well, your timing sucks.” He stood up, his plate falling to the sand. “You’re twenty-one years too late.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t try.”
The consummate businessman, the legend who controlled an empire, rose to his feet looking every minute of his fifty-seven years, and a foreign aura of uncertainty hovered over him.
Finn’s grip on the world as he knew it slipped slightly. His father was never uncertain about anything and a slither of alarm snuck in, unsettling everything he understood about himself. His anger instantly scorched it. “I don’t want you to try. You want to be a redux dad, Sean, count me out. You’ve got Logan to get it right with now.”
Sean’s mouth that had charmed so many so often, kicked up at the edges in a grim smile. “Being a parent is fraught with mistakes, Finnegan.”
“And you’ve got a hell of a diploma in that. Fishing and camping just isn’t going to do it, Dad.”
“I didn’t think it would.”
Sean met his gaze and Finn saw something in it that he didn’t want to see and it sent out malignant tendrils that took hold like cancer. “Me running the company this summer isn’t about gaining experience at all, is it? You’re holding me fucking hostage so you can sleep at night.”
Sean ran his hand across the back of his neck. “The two things are not mutually exclusive.”
Finn’s chest burned so hot and tight he could barely breathe and all he wanted to do was get the hell away from his father. “What deluded planet are you currently living on? Did you think getting me here and saying sorry was going to be enough? It’s too late, Sean. Hell, it was too late years ago. I hope you get your absolution from the great outdoors, because you’re sure as hell not getting it from me.”
“Dad! Finn!” Logan’s excited voice hailed them from farther down the beach.
Every part of him wanted to turn and go but Finn could see the boy running as fast as he could toward them with sand flying, and clutching an enormous fish. A flash of memory—him as a boy with his first big catch—stayed his feet. In the distance, Hank pulled the canoe from the water.
His father hesitated a moment as if he wanted to say something more but he turned toward Logan’s excited voice.
Breathless and breathing hard, Logan held his catch aloft. “Look at the size of it, Dad.”
Sean’s face split into a quiet and proud smile and he slapped Logan gently on the back. “That’s quite a fish. We better take a photo to show Mom.”
“Finn, can you take the photo of me and Dad on your phone?” Logan asked.
He’d had enough of pretending to play happy families but he thought of the prized photo in the cabin of himself with his grandfather as he held up his first big fish. Every boy needed a record of their first catch and he’d do this for Logan before he left. The only thing that had been good about last night was his little half brother’s infectious enthusiasm for everything they’d done, and Finn had enjoyed his role in teaching him how to make a fire.
As he framed his father and younger brother in the viewfinder, his throat closed. Logan stared up at Sean with adoration shining in his eyes. Sean had his absolution.
* * *
Annika had an aching wrist, gold embossing powder on her face, sticky ink in her hair and five sample invitations for Jessica to choose from. Working out the speed of the conveyor belt to move the paper through the thermography machine had taken some tweaking, but she’d only had one invitation go up in flames. She was excited to hear Jessica’s response to the samples and she couldn’t wait to get to the post office on Monday morning to mail the samples. The save-the-date cards had been laser-printed on pretty card stock that Finn had suggested from the AKP catalogue.
