Battling the Best Man: A Harmony Falls Novel, Book 2 (Crimson Romance) (7 page)

“How about you go up?” Kory offered a reassuring smile. “I’ll stay here, finish my muffin, and then head home to let out the dogs.”

“Oh, that sounds like a good idea. In fact, I wish you would stay there.” Mom patted her shoulder. “Aunt Jeannie is heading over after work, and she can bring me back later tonight. You could use the quiet time to get your return flight in order.” She kissed Kory on the crown of the head. “You’ve worked so hard to get where you are. I hate to see you lose ground because of this. Daddy doesn’t want you sitting around wringing your hands like me when you can be finishing up fellowship and starting that fancy job.” She sniffed and kissed Kory again. Her next words were whispered. “We’re so very proud of you.”

Kory had no doubt her mother was crying. She reached up and set her hand on top of her mother’s, squeezing. “I know you are.” That pride had been propelling Kory away from Harmony Falls in the shape of academic camps and elite higher education for as long as she could remember, but sometimes that pride felt like a noose around her neck.

“Then it’s settled. You go. There’s no reason for your future to suffer.”

As much as Kory wished she was driven enough to hop a flight to Chicago and leave all of this turmoil behind, it didn’t feel like the right thing to do. But what was the right thing to do?

Kory wrapped the barely eaten muffin in a napkin as she watched her mother walk away. Mom thought the rational thing for Kory to do was stay through the end of the week and leave with her father stable and on track for discharge to a nursing home. But rational didn’t feel
right
. Kory squeezed the wrapped muffin until it crumbled in her hand. She couldn’t imagine her mother sleeping alone in the big farmhouse—without the dogs even.

An impossible brick wall stood between Kory and Chicago. Leaving at any time before her father was well enough to return home meant turning her back on the two people who loved her most while they suffered. She couldn’t do it.

Not when there was something she could do to make things better.

• • •

Will maintained the inhuman pace all the way to the five-mile marker. That was when he was finally too exhausted to think. Without his brain pumping out a never-ending list of negative repercussions as a result of the failed nursing home sale, all that remained was the crunch of trail mulch under his feet. This was what he’d come in search of. Peace.

He slowed down and turned around at the bridge, jogging back the way he came, noting each drop of sweat as it slipped down his cheek and pooled at the dip in his neck. It was an oddly satisfying state. Of course, the closer he got to the end of the trail, the more his brain anticipated the end of the run, and stressful thinking crept in. He was going to have to tell his mother soon. If she insisted on selling the nursing home on the open market, Will was going to challenge her. This wasn’t just about money. If they were going to sell, he wanted the property to remain useful to the majority of Harmony Falls residents. Few people would benefit from another piece of prime property outfitted with a diesel pump and parking for two-dozen eighteen-wheelers. And he wanted new job opportunities for the women who would be unemployed by the sale. It was a lot to ask.

Slowing his pace further when he reached the trail welcome sign and the empty dirt parking lot beyond, Will lifted the hem of his shirt and swiped it across his soaking forehead. Grime marred the white T. He could feel sweat dripping down his neck, so he ripped off the shirt and wiped his head and shoulders, and then hung the garment around his neck. The summer breeze felt good and his house was only a few yards away. Will slowed to a walk, hands on hips, face tipped to the clear blue sky. He had no idea what was going to happen, but something had to give. He didn’t want to be passing out pink slips to women whose paychecks were the only thing putting food on their tables.

Cutting across a patch of sprawling crabgrass, he headed for his house, wanting nothing more than a cold shower followed by an even colder beer. Instead, he found Ken Flemming’s pick-up truck idling in the driveway and Kory behind the wheel. Curiosity picked up the hairs on his damp skin. She was the last person he’d ever expect to find here.

The driver’s side window was down, and her elbow propped on the door. She glanced at him as he walked up the driveway, but then she looked away and rubbed the left side of her face in her hand.

“Hey,” he managed, despite a combination of lingering breathlessness from the run and pure shock at seeing her.

The engine rumbled. She gripped the steering wheel with both hands and stared straight ahead. He had the feeling she was seconds away from gunning it into reverse and driving away.

“Is everything okay?” he asked, hoping her father’s condition hadn’t worsened.

“What if I did stay…in Harmony Falls…for a little bit?” Her knuckles turned white. “Would you hire me, admit my dad, and let me run the place?”

Will opened his mouth to breathe, lifted the edge of the T-shirt hanging around his neck, and took another swipe at his face, still finding it hard to believe she was here when she’d walked out of his office so definitively the other day. Why the change of heart?

She
might
stay. For a
little bit
. “There’s a lot of ambiguity in those words,” he finally said.

“Stop it, Will.” She looked at him, and her gaze flashed from his face down to his bare chest and back up. That simple glance had him swiping at his face again to quell the fresh rush of heat.

She stayed quiet, staring at him with an open mouth, letting whatever was lingering between them fester until he felt like maybe he should put on his shirt—or kiss her again, which was completely inappropriate considering the conversation.

She blinked, gave her head a subtle shake, and looked away again. “Don’t give me a hard time right now.”

“I’m not. I’m just trying to figure out what this really means.”

“If
you
hiring
me
will get my father into Harmony Elder Care, then hire me. That’s as plain as I can make it.”

“Temporarily? Is that until he’s well enough to return home?”

Her frown deepened. “Ideally.”

“How long will that take?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about Chicago?”

She paused before answering. “It will still be there.”

Will saw the convulsion of her throat, the way she reached up with one shaky hand to calm the movement. He’d heard Kory’s medical career was so bright it was damn near blinding. She was making one hell of a sacrifice for her father, and Will found her willingness to do so even more impressive than the career she was walking away from.
Temporarily
, he reminded himself. As soon as her father was better, she’d be gone.

Was it wrong for Will to hope she would stay long enough to save his ass, too? If she was as good as everyone said, maybe she could get the home back in the black, and then hiring someone new wouldn’t be such a problem. Maybe. Hopefully. What else could he do?

“Okay,” he said, committing to the only plan that gave him any sense of hope.

She looked at him, her brows high on her forehead. “Okay? Just like that? I thought you’d make me beg.”

He coughed an awkward laugh as a bolt of lust sliced through him. He should’ve thought this through—all the way through. Working with Kory would be complicated. They shared a penchant for competition…and one hell of a kiss.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” he said.

“I know that.” Her brows dropped, twisting together at the top of her nose, and her mouth frowned. “Believe me. None of this is easy, but staying here, helping him, it’s the right thing to do.”

Confidence shone on her face, smoothing the worry lines and sparkling in her green eyes. She might be ambivalent about the decision to stay in Harmony Falls, but he got the sense it wasn’t because she couldn’t handle the job she was proposing to do. He sure hoped she could handle it. This was the most unconventional job interview he’d ever conducted. They hadn’t even talked salary, never mind Kory’s experience. Had she ever worked in elder care before?

Will would have asked if this wasn’t his only shot to save the nursing home. She’d been enough of a quick study in high school to step in and write a Model U.N. position paper that nearly sent her to the U.N. conference in his place. If she lacked practical experience where nursing homes were concerned, hopefully she was still a fast learner. Will pushed any concerns aside and said, “I’ll call Lance.”

“I can start tomorrow.”

He bet she could. If she were half as driven and determined as he suspected, she’d be up all night planning a whole list of things she wanted to change—or maybe just cursing the allegiance to her father that had brought her straight to Will.

This isn’t going to be easy.
They were his words. Maybe he should slow things down.

“Tomorrow is Saturday.” He smiled. “But we can do the paperwork for hire. Come by my office around ten. And if you change your mind before then, so be it. I won’t hold it against you.”

She inhaled and exhaled, her breath fluttering a strand of copper hair skirting her cheek, and then she tipped her head and narrowed her eyes. The look was more speculation than challenge. “This is weird.”

“What’s weird?”

“Us working together.”

After the kiss in the coat closet and the chemistry between them, he wasn’t sure he’d call anything they did together weird, exactly. He stepped toward the truck and slid his hand to the window ledge, curling his fingers around the vinyl, watching her lips part to breathe. “Maybe it’s not weird at all. Maybe it’s meant to be.”

She blinked, closed her mouth and yanked the gearshift. “I’ll see you tomorrow at ten.”

His hand slipped off the door as the car rolled backward. He watched her take the narrow road faster than necessary and wondered if it felt to Kory like she was fleeing as much as it looked like she was. Convoluted thoughts. Complicated situations. He was ready for that beer, because tomorrow he was going to have to face his mother, tell her about this turn of events, and then he was going to have to face Kory again, knowing all he wanted was to get her alone. And not so they could talk about high school antics, sick parents, or nursing homes. In fact, for what he had in mind, they didn’t need to talk at all.

Kory sat on the front stoop watching the dogs wrestle in the front yard drenched in the orange glow of setting sun. She glanced down the dirt road, wishing Alice was just a rocky five-minute walk away, but the house at the end of the street was empty. Then she remembered that even if Alice weren’t hundreds of miles away on her honeymoon, she wouldn’t be
there
. She lived with her husband on the other side of town. How things changed…

Normally, at this time of night, her father would be pulling into the drive after a long day of work, and her mother would be in the kitchen, the dogs clamoring for scraps at her feet. But that wouldn’t be happening tonight—or anytime soon.

The breath Kory let out pushed apart her lips and mixed with humid evening air. A bird squawked in the distance. Smith yelped, and Wesson bolted. Both dogs took off around the side of the house. Kory didn’t move, even when a mosquito landed on her hand above her wrist. She absently watched its body grow fat and red as her thoughts wandered. She’d been home exactly ten days, and already her life was unrecognizable. She didn’t even feel like the same person. Gone was her single-minded pursuit of professional success. And while that wasn’t a bad thing, considering her father’s heart-wrenching condition, it was a scary thing. Who would she be without the regimented schedule that kept her from the chaos that caused people to make poor decisions?

Aunt Jeannie’s car rattled on the dirt road, bringing Kory to her feet. She scratched at the spot where the mosquito had been—even though it wasn’t itchy. It gave her something to do with her nervous hands. A few hours ago, Will said working for him wasn’t going to be easy. Well, she knew something that might be even harder…telling her mother she was staying in Harmony Falls.

“Hi, Baby,” Aunt Jeannie called out her open window, waving her left hand, jingling an armful of bangle bracelets. “Can’t stay. Uncle Milt has poker, but love, love, love you!” She punctuated each love with the smack of her hand to her lips.

Kory opened her left hand and caught the last blown kiss, like she’d been doing for decades, and when she touched the same hand to her lips to blow a kiss back, she smiled. Next to Alice, Aunt Jeannie was the most exuberant person Kory knew. She’d forgotten how nice it was to be around people who smiled more than they scowled.

Aunt Jeannie’s baby sister, on the other hand, shuffled around the front of the car looking tired and old. It was further confirmation Kory was right to delay her return to Chicago until things were taken care of here, but that didn’t make the conversation she was about to have any easier. Mom had made it clear she wanted Kory to return to Chicago. The urging was wrapped in the context of pride, but it seemed misplaced. Why weren't they like most parents, thrilled to have their child home—especially their only child?

Memories rushed in, dragging Kory’s exhales back into her chest. She remembered all the times her mother and father pushed her away to camps and conferences in the name of achievement. She’d used their excitement over her achievements to compensate for the sadness she’d felt at being pushed away. Kory shook her head as she watched her mother pause and wave to Aunt Jeannie. It was one thing for them to encourage her absence when she’d been a fourteen-year-old questioning whether or not she wanted to spend the summer abroad, but after her father’s stroke? It didn’t make sense.

The dogs returned, tumbling in the green space at Kory’s feet.

A few yips and growls, and Mom sighed. “Can you get them settled? I have a terrible headache. I need to lie down.”

Kory nodded and cleared her throat. She never liked to hear her mother complain of head issues—not since the seizures. Worry rid her mouth of the words she intended to launch, and instead she called, “Smith. Wesson. Inside.” With a sweep of her arm and a point to the door, the dogs beat Kory to the porch.