Can't Hurry Love

by Molly O'Keefe

  “You’re right.”

  “How about other family?”

  “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

  “Just making conversation with my trusted architect.” She grinned, and Amy took off her glasses as though she were laying down arms, surrendering her sword.

  “No, I don’t have any other kids. Gavin started working for me when he was pretty young, and he’s about the closest I have to family now.”

  “That’s too bad. Eli could use a little brother or sister.”

  “You say that like he’s eight.”

  “In a lot of ways he is.” And whose fault is that? She didn’t say the words, but they were there, between them. Amy’s face went still, as loud a sign of pain as a scream, and Victoria hardened her heart.

  Jacob ran down the steps, grinning at her, his big backpack flopping against his back. Her heart hurt with love for him. And she couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t continue to lie to Eli, who had already gotten hurt more than anyone should.

  “You have one more day, Amy. You tell Eli, or I will.”

  Eli opened the brown bag and spread the food out across his father’s hospital table. Uncle John grabbed his grease-stained paper carton of fried rice and a plastic spoon and sat back in his chair.

  His dad’s bed was empty; the old man was getting physical therapy down the hall.

  “You’re looking awful dressed up for a Thursday night,” Eli said, taking in his uncle’s clean red shirt with its pearl buttons. His good white Stetson sat on the table by the window.

  “Just got back from Galveston. Had to impress some folks.” He waggled his bushy eyebrows and Eli smiled.

  “How was your meeting?” Eli sat down in a chair next to his father’s bed and cracked open his carton of lo mein.

  Green onions again, crap! How many times does a guy have to ask for no onions?

  “Good. We’re gonna start drilling outside of Galveston at the end of October. I’ll be down there a chunk of time. Till the New Year, at least.”

  They ate quietly for a few minutes, Uncle John using that spoon as a shovel and showering his shirt with rice and bits of egg.

  For some stupid reason, Eli could not stop thinking about Victoria. Not just the sex, though that had kept him preoccupied for over a week. But the way she’d described that damn spa. The way she saw it.

  Victoria had a vision and it impressed the hell out of him.

  Or maybe it was the sex; he couldn’t tell anymore.

  Either way, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  But as he picked aside the mini-corn-cob things he hated, he thought about that money she needed. He could tell Uncle John that Victoria wanted to sell him five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of land and John would hand that money over without blinking.

  But Eli didn’t want that land. Not anymore. A month of being his own man and he was happier than he’d been in years. Hell, maybe his whole life.

  “What’s on your mind, Eli?” John asked, watching him across Mark’s empty hospital bed.

  “Victoria sold me that land across the river.”

  John put down the Chinese food. “I thought you said she wasn’t ever going to sell you any land.”

  “Guess I was wrong.”

  “She going to sell you any more?”

  Eli shook his head. “I got all the land I need.”

  John stared at him for a moment and then swore under his breath. Eli tried not to let it get to him. He’d let his father down enough over the years—it was about time his uncle started getting disappointed in him, too.

  They ate for a while in silence, waiting for Mark to be brought back, watching the shadows grow across the room.

  “Heard something crazy the other day,” John said.

  Eli grunted around a mouth full of noodles.

  “There’s some work being done over at the Crooked Creek. Big work.”

  Eli’s heart pounded once, hard in his chest. Lying to his uncle was new to him, and not easy. So, instead of revealing his knowledge, he kept his mouth full and shrugged.

  “You know anything about that?”

  “I got fired,” he said after he swallowed. Sorting through the noodles for a piece of chicken became very important. Paramount in his life. “Not much reason to go back.”

  He thought of Victoria in the car looking up at him, her hand pressed to the window. He’d felt her through the glass and steel. He tucked the memory away someplace safe, where his uncle’s knowing eyes would never find it.

  “I suppose not,” Uncle John said. “That woman, that whole family, is trouble, son. You remember that.”

  “Don’t worry.” He smiled into his lo mein. “I remember plenty.”

  By Friday, the brunt of the demolition had been done. The whole west wing of the house—the dining room, den, living room, TV room, and four unused bedrooms—had been stripped down to studs.

  Victoria and Amy walked through the space, delineating rooms and walls.

  “We’ll have a men’s locker room here.” Victoria pivoted in a small corner. “Women’s over there, with showers and a steam room.”

  “Five treatment rooms,” Amy added, pointing along the wide hallway where the bedrooms had been. “If you want to add that other room, then we’ll need to take down the far wall.” It was a decision that needed to be made, and Victoria wished that Celeste were here. She had a better gut for the questions that would impact the future, not just their bank account.

  “No,” she said, hoping she wouldn’t regret it. “I think we’re good with five.”

  Amy nodded as if the decision had been a wise one, and Victoria felt better.

  “I’m going to need more money,” Amy said.

  “I know.” Victoria sighed. “I’ll talk to Celeste.” Celeste had wanted to put off calling Luc until it was completely necessary. And they’d reached that point.

  “I can’t believe how fast you guys did this,” Victoria said, stepping through what used to be the dining room wall.

  “Tearing it down is easy,” Amy said. “Tomorrow we’ll get the frame up, and after that, the trades will come in to rewire and plumb. That process is going to take a lot longer, and it’s going to seem like nothing is getting done, but you have to trust the process.”

  Amy arched a ginger eyebrow and Victoria nodded like a good student. “Trust the process, got it. But when you say a while … what exactly are you talking about?”

  “A project this size, all our guys on it, it’s going to be six to eight weeks. It’s going to get trickier with your saunas and mud baths.”

  “Okay, but you still think we’ll be all right for the New Year’s opening?”

  “It’s the beginning of October now, so if everything goes according to plan, we should be okay.”

  Everything had gone so well, Victoria didn’t even want to think about the plan not working. Plans were already in motion for the opening-night party.

  “What could go wrong?” she asked.

  “Tori!” a voice yelled from the front door, and Victoria’s heart stopped in her chest. Only one person called her that. Icy prickles of panic ran over her skin, settling in her bones.

  “Who is that?” Amy asked.

  In an instant Victoria lost her illusions. The lies she’d told herself to keep the guilt at bay vanished and she smacked headfirst into what a huge mistake she’d made by not telling Eli about Amy. Believing foolishly that Amy would do as she said and that Victoria didn’t owe Eli the truth was about to destroy them all.

  “Your son,” she whispered, and Amy’s face went white.

  chapter

  14

  Eli pushed aside the plastic sheeting and stepped into the kitchen, just as Victoria stepped in from what used to be the dining room.

  Truthfully, he felt foolish being here. Not that he didn’t have logical reasons, but the real reason had nothing to do with logic—he wanted to see her.

  And because of that he found it hard to look
at her, choosing instead to take careful note of the studs revealed by all the demolition.

  “You didn’t waste any time, did you?” He kicked at a nail in the pine subflooring and couldn’t believe that it had only been a month since he’d been in here. So much had changed.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He blinked at her tone, surprised by her panic. Especially since he’d been so excited to see her. “I’m picking up the breeding equipment.”

  She stepped forward, her arms extended as if he were a spooked cow and she needed to herd him out of danger. Which was weird, but he got distracted by those jeans she was wearing again. And a green T-shirt that made her blue eyes glow.

  “How about you let me deliver it to you?” She smiled, but it was false—everything about her seemed false—a light turned up too bright. “Tonight.”

  “You need a truck,” he said, sidestepping her outstretched arm, suspicious. The woman was a terrible liar. “Why don’t you show me around real quick? Let me see this vision of yours.”

  Her look was so pained, so horrified, that he instinctively reached out to touch her, to smooth the panic on her face, but she grabbed his hand, squeezing his fingers. “What’s going on, Tori?”

  When she closed her eyes, he was struck by the absurd impulse to brush his lips over the feathery lashes, the thin blue veins in her eyelids.

  “I’ve been a coward.”

  He laughed, and her eyes opened.

  “I think you’ve been pretty gutsy.” He kissed her knuckles, reeling her in so he could get to those eyelashes. “What you did in the car isn’t for the faint of heart.”

  There was movement behind Tori, and another person entered the kitchen. A tall woman in canvas work pants with a long red braid over her shoulder. He stepped back, sheepish. Tori didn’t want to make out with some guy in front of a contractor. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Why don’t we go on outside.”

  He turned his back on the woman, but Tori didn’t move. She stared up at him as if waiting for something to happen. Something bad.

  “Eli?” The woman, the redhead, spoke and Eli stopped, his body, his blood and muscles, the bones that held him up, all twitching at the sound. Like a memory. A half-forgotten dream.

  Eli? Time to come in for dinner.

  Eli? Can you come over and help me with this horse?

  Eli? Who is my favorite little boy?

  No, he thought, pushing away the thought, the dark demon, that’s crazy.

  “I’m so sorry,” Tori whispered beside him and the ground under his feet went soft. His knees buckled and he put a hand up against what was left of a kitchen wall.

  Don’t be sorry. He resisted the tide, fought with every muscle the pull of the truth. Don’t. Don’t do this to me. Don’t let this be happening.

  “Look at me, Eli,” the woman said. “Please … just … look at me.”

  Stiffly, his body uncooperative, his brain in cloudy denial, he turned to face the woman. The stranger. With red hair.

  And his eyes.

  “No.” He said it this time. The word falling into the silence of the room, shattering it into a thousand pieces that cut and tore at him.

  His mother. That was his mother right there.

  Forcing himself to feel nothing, to close down and block off whatever reaction was happening in his brain, he turned on his heel and walked out the way he’d come in. Dimly, through the wild open roar in his head, he heard Tori follow him and behind that, he heard the heavier footsteps of his mother.

  His mother. What the hell?

  He stepped onto the porch, the sun so bright the world went white, and for a moment he stumbled, lost in the landscape. And Victoria’s hand held him, braced him against the sensation of falling.

  “Eli—”

  He shook her off, pushed her away, and took the steps down toward his truck two at a time.

  “Stop, please, Eli.” Tori’s voice clung to him, pulled at his clothes, his pride, what remained of his control.

  Eli kept walking, the chrome of the truck’s door handle hot in his hand.

  “Eli. I’m sorry.” Another voice, his mother’s voice, cut through the distance, through his skull, and the scream escaped. The anger ignited and blazed out of control.

  The cruelty of her being here spun him around and he ran back up the steps, right toward her, unsure for a wild moment of what he was going to do. He knew what he wanted to do, how he wanted to shake her. Scream at her.

  But he stopped inches from her, confronted by the familiarity of her face, aged but the same. Those eyes, the freckles, the sad set to her mouth. It was her. His mother.

  “I don’t know why you’re here—”

  “Because of you,” she said quickly, definitively, as if she’d only been waiting for the chance to say those words. “I’m here for you.”

  His skin crawled at the thought. “I don’t want anything to do with you.”

  When she started to shake her head, he pointed his finger at her, barely controlling the wild impulse to poke her as hard as he could. He wanted to hurt her. This woman who once used to kiss him good night, who taught him how to whistle and ride a bike and lay tile.

  Who broke his heart into so many pieces he still couldn’t find half of them.

  “Stay away from me. I mean it. You are nothing to me.” Her lips went white, but those eyes of hers, like looking in the mirror, stayed dry. Defiant. All but telling him she would do what she wanted.

  He turned to Victoria. Nothing dry about her. Tears flowed from her eyes. “You knew who she was?” he asked through numb lips. Slowly, tears making fresh tracks down the snow of her cheeks, she nodded.

  Bile soured his stomach, flooded him with disgust. And he wished it was all directed at her, the liar, but mostly he was disgusted with himself. He had thought, like an idiot, that Tori was safe. That this thing between them was without risk. That there was no way she could hurt him.

  But holy shit, how much more sparse did his life need to get so he wouldn’t be betrayed by the few people left in it?

  Because he’d liked Tori. He’d liked her. Liked who he was with her.

  And she hadn’t just lied to him. She’d lied to him about his mother.

  He drove away from the ranch, directionless. Unable to go to his home, the one he’d shared with his mother for eight years, unable to see all the changes he’d made in an effort to chase her ghost from the walls.

  The memories he’d tried to forget, that he’d torn down and sanded and repainted, that he’d fixed up and cleaned, were there, unbidden. Unwanted. And he was just a boy, suddenly, lost and grieving. Wondering what he’d done that was so wrong that his mother had left him behind. Wondering why he was so unloveable that she hadn’t chosen to take him with her.

  By rote, unconscious of the decision, he found himself on the road leading to The Elms, his father’s nursing home. The shell of his father—the familiarity of his face, his voice—pulled him here like a magnet, even though he knew the father he needed wasn’t in that building. Wasn’t in the body in that bed.

  And really, never had been.

  But with his aloneness making him feel foreign in his own skin, making him itch and ache with everything he wanted to forget, he got out of his truck and went inside to sit beside the father who didn’t even know who he was.

  Victoria watched Eli’s truck kick up dust as he sped away from the ranch, the air still smoking from his pain, acrid and terrible.

  “Well,” Amy sighed, blowing out a big breath. She put a hand to her stomach, her throat, and then, as if forcing herself to be okay, as if swallowing whatever emotion had surfaced at the sight of her son, she turned to Victoria, her face placid. Her eyes clear. “That could have been worse.”

  “How?” Victoria gasped.

  “I …” Amy stopped, shook her head. Her composure gone, she looked like those pictures of people standing in the wreckage of their homes after a tornado. “I don’t know.”

  That Victoria ha
d been a part of this made her sick, made her wish she could go back in time and scream a warning to him: Don’t trust me. I’ll hurt you so badly and you’ll never see it coming.

  “What do you want from him?” she asked.

  “You have a son. What do you think I want?”

  As if all the sand were running out of her, all the courage and determination, Amy crumpled, her hand finding the edge of the rocking chair where she collapsed.

  “I wouldn’t leave my son,” Victoria said. Honestly, now she wanted to take the high road? After the damage had been done? Where had her righteousness been last week?

  “It’s easy to judge me,” Amy said, a willing bull’s-eye. “I deserve it. Trust me …” She blinked up at the sun, as if sending Morse code. “I know what I deserve.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell him last week! You said you would!” The wind kicked up, making the plastic sheeting flap around them—it sounded like a protest, and her voice got lost in the wind.

  “I know. I just … I just fail him, every time.”

  Amy shook her head, bowing it over her clenched hands. Victoria, always unsure around these Turnbulls, didn’t reach out. She kept her hands to herself and stared at the edge of the woman’s muddy and frayed canvas pants.

  “I should have told him myself,” Victoria said, shaking her head.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Same reason as you. I was scared.”

  And she sat there, the sun beating down against her skin, the wind blowing into her eyes, waiting for the next thing, the right decision to present itself. But there was nothing except the decision she’d already made, the work that she’d committed to at the ranch. That she believed in.

  Was she supposed to fire Amy? Would that make this better? Because that wasn’t something she was ready to do.

  Amy swore, breaking the silence, and pushed herself up out of the chair and down the steps.

  “What are you doing?” Victoria asked.

  “Something,” Amy said, shrugging. “Anything. I can’t just sit here and feel like shit. I’ve done that my whole life. My whole life. And even if he doesn’t talk to me—even if he hates me—I gotta try to do the right thing for once.”