“Yes.”
“The Farmers aren’t the only family you and B.J. have,” she reminded him.
She thought she saw some of the tension in his shoulders ease at her words.
“You have no idea how much I count on that,” he said.
She grinned at him. “Doesn’t need to be legal to be real,” she told him. “But I sure am hoping that one of these days it will be.”
“If that is your gentle way of nudging me into marrying your granddaughter, I think you can rest easy on that score. I think we’re heading in that direction.”
“How soon?” Cora Jane demanded eagerly, all pretense of disinterest vanishing.
Boone laughed. “When we’re ready,” he said. “And no amount of meddling from you will make it happen one minute sooner.”
“Duly noted,” she replied. “But don’t think that’ll stop me if I think you two are taking too long.”
“Never doubted that for a minute,” he said.
Cora Jane watched him leave, then allowed herself a full-blown satisfied smile. Things were progressing very nicely, indeed. Now she just had to find some way to make sure that Jodie Farmer didn’t get in the way.
18
Emily was standing in the middle of the construction chaos at the safe house, trying to convince the foreman that the deadline for completion wasn’t a joke, when her cell phone rang.
“Excuse me,” she told him. “I have to take this. Look over your schedule and see what you can do to meet that deadline. There are women with kids who need to be in here before Thanksgiving. Do you really want to tell them they’ll have no roof over their heads for the holiday?”
Andy Crawford gave her a hard look, then walked away shaking his head.
“Gabi, hey,” Emily said. “Sorry to take so long, but I was in the middle of something. How’s everything in the world of public relations?”
“Insane,” Gabi said. “But I called to check on you.”
“Why?”
“You don’t seem to be back in Sand Castle Bay yet. I thought you and Boone were working things out, but it’s been a while since you’ve shown your face. And, yes, you can thank Grandmother for passing along that tidbit of information. She’s getting anxious, and I’m supposed to ferret out the information she wants.”
Emily explained about the deadline pressure on the safe house. “Plus Boone’s in-laws are there raising a ruckus about him letting me anywhere near B.J. I figured it’s best for me to lay low until they go back to Florida.”
“It might be better for them to spend some time with you so they can conclude you’re not the devil,” Gabi suggested.
“I doubt I have enough charm to pull that off,” Emily said candidly. “Given how they treat Boone, I’m more likely to say the wrong thing and cause even more trouble.”
“When are they going home?” Gabi asked.
“That seems to be the question of the year,” Emily admitted. “They haven’t given Boone a date. It’s making him a little crazy. Having them underfoot isn’t easy, but he feels he owes it to B.J. to make an effort.”
“Well, whatever you do, don’t let them keep you away indefinitely,” Gabi advised. “If they realize their presence has chased you off, they might never go back to Florida.”
“That is not going to happen,” Emily insisted. “Not that I intend to admit this to Boone, but in a way, it’s been a relief to have the extra time here. The deadline on this renovation is a killer. If I take off, it’s going to be a lot harder to convince all the people working on the project that the deadline is written in stone.”
“I’m just saying, don’t let the Farmers ruin this for the two of you,” Gabi said.
“We won’t. Now tell me about you. Everything okay at work?”
“Same old craziness,” Gabi said.
“And your guy?”
Emily thought she detected a faint hesitation before Gabi finally said, “Paul’s okay.”
“Gabi, is something wrong? Have you broken up? Was he upset about you being gone so long?”
“No, nothing like that,” Gabi said.
Despite her sister’s reassurances, Emily didn’t like the way she sounded. “Gabriella, what aren’t you saying?”
Gabi laughed, though it sounded forced. “You only use my whole name when you’re annoyed with me, just like Mom.”
“It always got answers for her, so I thought I’d try it,” Emily admitted.
“There are no answers,” Gabi insisted. “Not even any questions. I guess I’m just a little down. I miss being with you and Samantha.”
“It was fun being together again,” Emily agreed. “Like old times.”
“But in other ways I realized you can’t go back again,” Gabi said, a mournful note in her voice. “We’re adults now, with all the complications that go with that.”
“Gabi,” Emily began, determined to get to the bottom of her sister’s odd mood.
“Gotta run, sweetie. Take care. We’ll talk again soon.”
Before Emily could protest, Gabi had hung up. “What on earth?” Emily murmured, staring at her phone. She was about to make a call to Samantha to see if she had any insights, but Andy Crawford was in front of her, his displeasure evident. She forced a smile.
“What have you worked out?” she asked.
“If I bring in a few guys on overtime for a couple of days, we can maybe pull this off,” he said.
“Maybe’s not good enough.”
“Four days of overtime and I can guarantee it.”
“Then four days it is.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “You got the budget for that? I thought we were doing this on a shoestring.”
“And out of the goodness of our hearts,” she confirmed.
“I can’t pay my men with a lot of holiday cheer,” he groused.
“I’ll see that they’re paid,” she promised. Even if it came out of her own pocket. “Want me to put it in writing?”
For an instant she thought Andy was going to pull out a pen and a scrap of paper, but then he shrugged. “Nah. I trust you.”
She nudged him in the ribs. “Thanks so much for that ringing endorsement.”
That finally drew a smile from him. “I’ve never seen you so worked up about a project before. You usually just roll with the punches and use a little smooth talk to pacify the clients.”
“This job really matters, that’s why,” she explained. “Think about it, Andy. This could be the first time in who knows how long that some of these families have had a Thanksgiving meal without worrying about being slapped around or worse.”
He blinked at her words, clearly shaken. An angry glint appeared in his eyes. “It’s been that bad for them? I guess I didn’t realize that. I mean I knew this is supposed to be a safe house, but for some reason it hadn’t sunk in what that meant.”
“Well, it has been that bad and that’s why we’re going to make this deadline, no matter what,” she told him.
He nodded, clearly on board a hundred percent now. “With maybe a few days to spare,” he promised. “Leave it to me.”
She grinned. “I knew I could count on you.”
He blushed furiously. “Well, just don’t get any ideas about taking advantage of my good nature with any sob stories for your usual clients, you hear?”
Impulsively, she gave him a hug. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Stop that,” he grumbled. “You’re messing with my tough image.”
Emily chuckled as he walked off barking orders at his men, as if to contradict the scene some of them might have witnessed.
“This is going to work,” she said to herself as he went. This place was going to be finished, and it was going to be beautiful and, far more important, a place where at least a
few more battered women would be safe from harm.
* * *
Boone walked into his house after work and found a pile of luggage in the foyer and Jodie and Frank waiting for him in the living room. They were side by side on the sofa, clearly anxious to make some sort of announcement.
“You’re leaving?” he asked, working hard to hide his elation.
“Not exactly,” Frank said, casting a resigned look at his wife.
“We’ve leased a house for the winter,” Jodie said. “We want to be here for B.J.’s school play and for the holidays. In the spring we’ll decide if we want to come back permanently.”
“I see,” Boone said, his spirits sinking. “Where’s the house?”
“Just a few blocks away. B.J. will be able to come to our house after school now,” Jodie said, a triumphant note in her voice. “You won’t have to worry about where he is or what he’s doing.”
“I haven’t been worried about it,” Boone said tightly. “He comes to the restaurant with me some afternoons, goes home with his friends some of the time, and is involved in after-school activities a couple of times a week. I don’t see that pattern changing.”
Jodie frowned at his response. “You intend to keep him from spending time with us?”
“Of course not. It just won’t always be right after school,” he responded, determined to keep control of his son’s activities and whereabouts.
“How can you be so inconsiderate and ungrateful?” she demanded. “After we did this to help you out?”
“If you were really doing it to help me out, you’d have discussed it with me first,” Boone replied mildly. “Don’t get me wrong, Jodie. B.J. will love having you here through the holidays. It’s great that you’re going to stick around. We’ll just have to work out the details about when he’s going to spend time with you. Even at his age, he has things he’s committed to doing, things he enjoys.”
Of course, they all knew that the real goal was to ensure that none of those things involved time with Emily. And with this plan in place, there was little chance they wouldn’t cross paths with Emily and find an opportunity to make things more difficult for her and Boone.
Still, in an attempt to pacify them, he said, “As soon as you get settled in the rental, we’ll sit down and work out a schedule of times you can have with B.J. Since things come up, we’ll probably have to do it on a week-by-week basis.”
Jodie opened her mouth to argue, but Frank put a hand on her arm. “That’ll be great, Boone. Come on, Jodie. We’d better take our things over to the new place and get settled. Since we didn’t come prepared for a long stay, we’re going to need to spend a little time shopping for warmer clothes than we brought, too.”
“Don’t forget you left a few boxes of winter things here just in case you came back up here this time of year,” Boone reminded him. “They’re in the garage.”
For an instant Jodie’s eyes lit up. “That’s right, we did do that. Frank, put those boxes in the car right now. I’d like to have another word with Boone.”
“Jodie, now’s not the time,” Frank said, his expression distressed.
“There’s never going to be a good time,” she argued. “I might as well get this out there now.”
Frank looked as if he wanted to argue, then shrugged and gave Boone an apologetic look before heading out to load up the car.
“What is it, Jodie?” Boone asked, his stomach in knots and his antenna on full alert.
“You should know that if we don’t like how things look the next few months, Frank and I are considering legal action,” she announced.
“So, that’s what this is really about,” Boone said flatly. “You want custody of B.J., and you intend to snoop around looking for excuses to file for it, is that it?”
She nodded, not even bothering with a phony attempt to deny it. “I think it’s what Jenny would want,” she said piously.
He gave her a pitying look. “Then you didn’t know Jenny at all,” he said quietly. “Jenny would want our son to be right here with me. She would want you to play an important role in his life, which is what I’ve been trying my best to allow.”
He held her gaze. “But if you insist on making threats like this, I will keep you away from him, Jodie. And I’ll happily go to court to make that nice and legal, too. I doubt your threats to rip him away from his only remaining parent just because you’re being spiteful will sit well with a judge, not when it’s balanced against my efforts to make sure his grandparents remained in his life.”
She blinked at his quiet resolve. Apparently she’d expected a different reaction, perhaps an explosive one she could use against him. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“I can’t lose that boy, Boone. He’s all that’s left of Jenny,” she whispered brokenly.
“Neither of us needs to lose him, Jodie,” he said more gently. “It’s up to you how ugly this gets.”
She stood up shakily and started for the door. Boone followed. He saw then just how much she’d aged since Jenny’s death and for the first time really understood the toll that death had taken on her. It allowed him to feel sorry for her, rather than focusing on his anger over her threat.
Outside, he touched her shoulder. She glanced up at him.
“What?” she asked.
“I loved her, too,” he said softly. “No matter what you think, I did, and I tried to make sure every day I had her that she knew that.” He knew he’d failed some days, but it was never for want of commitment.
Jodie merely nodded. When she was in the car, Frank glanced over at her, then back at Boone. He lifted his hand in a wave.
“Talk to you soon,” he called out.
“If you need any help over at the new place, let me know,” Boone said.
Frank nodded, then pulled out of the driveway.
Boone watched them go, wishing he could breathe a sigh of relief, but something told him there were plenty of problems ahead. First on the list was how on earth he was going to tell Emily about their decision to stay in town.
* * *
“Oh, boy,” Emily said when Boone informed her that the Farmers intended to stick around for a few months. “How’s that going to work, for you and me, I mean? Am I banished?”
“Absolutely not,” he said at once.
“Then what? You want to rub their noses in our relationship? That’s a surefire way to make trouble for yourself.”
“I was thinking once they got to know you, they’d see that you’re not a threat.”
“Oh, you wonderful, sweet man! You’re as naive as Gabi,” she said. “She said the same thing, that I should show them I’m not the devil.”
“Exactly,” Boone said.
“But I am a threat to life as they knew it,” she said.
“But life as they knew it is no more,” he argued. “Jenny’s gone. That can’t be changed.”
“No, but right now there’s no other woman in her place. Jodie can think of herself as the most important woman in B.J.’s life, stepping in for her daughter. Maybe she’d be able to accept some other woman in that role eventually, but me? Not a chance, at least if what you’ve told me about her disapproval of our past is true.”
“Oh, it’s true,” he admitted with obvious reluctance. “I’m not going to let them ruin this for us, Em. We’ll all have to find a way to coexist. And I think the sooner we do, the better.”
“Meaning?”
“B.J. wants you here for his Halloween play. I think you should come.”
“That’s next week,” she said, trying to envision how she could juggle her schedule to make it work. She owed it to Boone to try. To B.J., too.
“Can you do it?” he pressed. “Maybe I can keep the peace by offering them a chance to keep B.J. over the weekend and you and I can have some time alone.�
�
Emily laughed. “There’s that optimism I love. You’re using B.J. as a consolation prize.”
“No, I’m not,” he protested. “We’ll all be getting exactly what we want. It’s a win-win.”
“And you don’t think Jodie will store that away as fodder for her suit if she ever files one against you? She’ll tell the court you couldn’t wait to get rid of your son so you could spend time with me.”
Boone sighed. “I see your point. Okay, no sleepovers for B.J. or for you and me, while you’re here,” he said, sounding resigned. “Please, Em, come anyway. I need to see you. I need to remind myself that what we have is worth fighting for.”
She heard the frustration in his voice and knew she needed to find a way to be there, if only to be supportive. “Let me see what I can work out.”
“But you will find a way?” he pressed.
“I will find a way,” she assured him. “But I am going to expect one very big reward, even if we have to hide in the walk-in freezer at Castle’s.”
Boone finally chuckled. “I’ll keep you warm.”
“Never doubted that for a second,” she said. “I’ll have my schedule by the time we talk tomorrow.”
“Love you.”
“I love you, too,” she said, even though there were times, especially lately, when she was having more and more trouble figuring out if love was nearly enough to make their complicated relationship work, especially with one person so intent on sabotaging it.
* * *
B.J. was bouncing up and down with excitement. “Grandma Jodie, are you sure I really look like a ghost?”
She chuckled. “You’re the most impressive, scary ghost I’ve ever seen,” she assured him. “Don’t you think so, Frank?”
“Absolutely,” Frank confirmed.
“Have you thanked Grandma Jodie for making the costume?” Boone asked. “And for helping out with the others for some of your classmates?” He had to give Jodie credit. She had pitched in to make the play a success by taking on a task that too many mothers hadn’t had time for.
“Thanks, Grandma Jodie,” B.J. said dutifully. “Mrs. Barnes said thanks, too. I gotta go. She’s waving for us to take our places. I’ll see you after, right?”
Sand Castle Bay Page 24
