Baby, Don't Go (23 page)

34

M
arcus was so disoriented, he made it back to the construction office on muscle memory alone. His entire body ached with pent-up emotion. His mind sprinted ahead, to how he was going to explain to his brothers that he’d been so hoodwinked by a pair of brown eyes that he’d divulged the one secret that would ensure they would lose Sweetness forever.

He’d failed his father…he’d failed his brothers…he’d failed an entire town.

When he walked into the office, the desk phone was ringing. He picked up the receiver, then slammed it down again.

He opened the copy of the article and scanned her picture. She looked overconfident…powerful…cold. Self-recrimination coursed through his blood. How could he not have seen through her? She hadn’t even told him her real name…from there he guessed it was just one lie after another. How she must’ve been laughing at him for his awkwardness around her, how she must’ve laughed at them all. Rachel had said she was from Manhattan. Sweetness had probably seemed pathetically backward and dull in comparison.

She probably thought he was a hayseed, easily manipulated.

And he had been.

The desk phone rang again. He picked up the receiver and slammed it back down.

There was a rap on the door.

“Marcus?” Porter asked. “Can I come in?”

His brother rarely knocked and certainly never asked if he could come into the office, which meant he knew what had happened and thought Marcus was in here crying his eyes out. He pulled his hand down his face. His brothers didn’t know the half of it.

“The door’s open,” he called. He might as well tell them everything.

The door opened and Porter came in, looking wary. Kendall was behind him, for reinforcement, he assumed.

“We heard,” Porter said, gesturing to the article that Marcus held.

“So let the jokes begin,” Marcus said.

“Hey,” Kendall said, his voice serious. “We wouldn’t do that.”

“We just came to say that we’re sorry,” Porter said. “And if it’s any consolation, I thought Alicia really had feelings for you.”

“Amy and Nikki said the same thing,” Kendall said. “We all liked her.”

“Did she offer an explanation?” Porter asked.

“Did she apologize?”

Marcus sighed. “She said after she got here she changed her mind about the story and tried to stop it.”

“But you don’t believe her?” Kendall asked.

The desk phone rang. Marcus picked it up and slammed it down again. “I think she’s an expert at saying whatever needs to be said at that moment.” Like
I love you,
after her lies had been revealed.

“I’m sorry, bro,” Kendall said.

“It’s no big deal,” Marcus lied. “I just regret telling her some of the things I told her.”

“Well, don’t be embarrassed for our sake,” Porter said. “We don’t have secrets from each other.”

Marcus wanted the floor to open up and swallow him. The gold nugget in his pocket felt like lead.

“There’s plenty of time later for getting drunk,” Kendall said. “The D.O.E. team is outside—they want to talk to us.”

Marcus pinched the bridge of his nose. Because this day wasn’t bad enough already. “Sure,” he said, gesturing to the door. “Let’s get this over with.”

They probably already knew about the gold, and were going to give the Armstrongs the courtesy of briefing them on just how the government was going to rape the land.

Kendall opened the door and invited the team inside. Marcus had met most of the six-member team—four men and two women. Dale Richardson appeared to be the spokesperson because he’d been around for so much of the Sweetness project.

Marcus moved to stand behind his desk. “Please sit,” he said, gesturing to chairs Porter had arranged.

“That won’t be necessary,” Dale said, confirming Marcus’s fears that they’d lost the grant.

His chest filled with dread. His mind rewound over the journey that had brought him and his brothers to this point: the day they first surveyed the abandoned, overgrown land and formed a pact to undertake the massive project, creating a master plan for the resurrection of a town, recruiting an army of strong men to get them started, importing a group of feisty women to move them forward, fighting back when Mother Nature had threatened to destroy everything. It had all come down to this moment.

“What I mean,” Richardson continued, “is that it won’t take me long to say. I don’t know how you did it, but you pulled off a miracle, with time to spare. Congratulations, gentlemen, the town of Sweetness, Georgia, is yours.”

Marcus fell into his chair with a thud. Two years of stress and aggravation and setbacks drained out of him like toxins leaving his body.

His brothers were whooping like fools…and he let them. Porter and Kendall came over and hauled him out of the chair for a massive manhug.

“We did it,” Porter said.

“We did it,” Kendall said.

“We did it,” Marcus agreed.

“Everything about this town impresses us,” Richardson said. “But nothing more so than the people in it. If we hadn’t been here yesterday to witness the effort of your men putting out that fire as if their very lives depended on it, and the determination of your residents to clear the ravages of the tornado, we wouldn’t have believed it. You’ve created something very special here. We expect big things out of Sweetness.”

Marcus shook Richardson’s hand. “Just watch us.”

After the team left, Kendall removed a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet, and three shot glasses. “I think it’s time for a toast.” He poured the shots, and passed them around. “And I’ll let you, big brother, do the honors.”

Marcus lifted his glass. “To Dad.”

Porter nodded. “To Dad.”

Kendall clinked his glass to theirs. “To Dad.”

They tossed back the shots, and Marcus sighed, thinking it hadn’t been such a bad day after all. Except for that little matter of getting his heart stomped on.

The phone on the desk rang and Porter reached for it. “Since you obviously don’t want to talk, let me get this.” He put the receiver to his ear. “Armstrong Construction.” He frowned in Marcus’s direction. “Yes, he is…who’s calling?” His eyebrows shot up. “Just a moment.”

He handed the phone to Marcus. “Nina Halleck. She says she’s Alicia’s boss.”

Marcus frowned. “I don’t want to talk to her.”

“She said she was going to keep calling until you did.”

He scowled. “Bossy Northern women.” He took the receiver. “Hello?”

“I’m Nina Halleck, and I’ll have you know I was taught to be bossy by a Southern mama. May I have a moment of your time, Mr. Armstrong?”

“The clock is ticking,” he said.

“I assume your brother told you I’m Alicia Randall’s boss. I just talked to Alicia and I know she’s making plans to leave your town. I just thought you should know that the blog series was originally scheduled to be released Monday. I received a voice message this morning from Alicia asking me to halt the publication. She said she’d fallen in love with you and didn’t want it to go forward. She had no idea the series had already been released.”

Marcus swallowed hard. He wanted to believe that he hadn’t simply imagined the connection their hearts had made. “Why should I trust you?”

“Because, as my mother would say, I’m shooting myself in the foot by telling you this. I could lose one of my best staff writers.”

He was silent, mulling.

“Look, I’ve known Alicia since she graduated college. She’s one of the smartest, most independent women I know, but she’s always withheld her heart. I’ve seen her change over the duration of this assignment. You did that…and your town did that. If you let her get away, you’re an idiot who doesn’t deserve her. Goodbye, Mr. Armstrong.”

He frowned at the disconnection, then settled the receiver back in its cradle.

35

A
licia could barely see the road in front of her for the tears clouding her eyes. Even so, every time a car passed and the driver waved and honked, she did the same.

She was, officially, a Southerner.

Just in time to go back north.

At least the road leading out of Sweetness was flat and straight. In her rear view mirror, she caught a glimpse of the white water tower soaring over the town, with its graffitied
I
Nikki
and
I
Amy
. She knew now that Porter and Kendall had left those messages, a public and shameless statement of how they felt. It was immature and silly…and impossibly romantic. She was envious of what Nikki and Amy had.

She’d had it for a few hours—Marcus’s love and adoration. And now…he would never speak to her again. Fresh tears flooded her cheeks.

A truck came up behind her and flashed its lights. She squinted, thinking it was probably some kind of Southern Morse code, but all she knew to do was pull over to let the truck go around her. She saw the covered bridge up ahead and decided to pull off there.

The driver started honking and she looked again, blinking for focus. Her heart jumped to her throat. It was Marcus. He probably wanted to give her another piece of his mind. And she deserved it, she conceded. She’d arrived in Sweetness only to be embraced with open arms and folded into the community as if she were one of its own. And she’d repaid that friendship—and love—by holding them up to the world as buffoons.

She didn’t blame them for hating her…she hated herself right now.

The area around the covered bridge was full of tourists’ cars, so she had to drive a little farther, but finally found a spot to ease onto the shoulder. When she realized the edge dropped off into a ravine, she hugged the road. The truck pulled in behind her. Marcus got out and strode toward her, his face serious, his jaw rigid.

He wanted the last word, obviously. Maybe he’d threaten her with a lawsuit if she told anyone about the gold, or let her know she was never again welcome south of the Mason-Dixon line.

He stopped in front of her window and looked so angry, she was tempted to just drive off. Instead she swallowed hard and zoomed down the window.

He leaned over and put both hands on her door. His blue eyes pierced her like arrows. “Was it a lie?”

She bit into her lip. “Unfortunately, you’ll have to be more specific.”

His mouth tightened. “When you said you loved me—was that a lie?”

Her heart fluttered with hope. Why would he care, unless… “No,” she said. “Not that one.”

He was still for a moment, then he wet his lips. “In that case…baby, don’t go.”

Her heart leaped for joy, and she couldn’t get out of the car fast enough. She flew into his arms and he kissed her hard, lifting her off her feet.

“I know I have a lot to do to regain the trust of everyone in Sweetness,” she said.

He traced a finger down her cheek. “You have plenty of time for that because I’m never going to let you go. I can’t wait to see how we grow the town together.”

Her eyes widened. “You got the grant?”

He grinned. “We got the grant.”

She shouted with elation and they held on to each other. God, she loved this man. She wanted to build a legacy with him.

“There’s one thing I need to do,” he murmured.

She pulled back. “What?”

He reached into his pocket and removed the gold nugget, then wound up and threw it like a bullet out and over the infinite ravine.

Epilogue

6 months later

“B
e quiet over there,” Marcus said.

Alicia looked up from the notebook she was writing in. She was sprawled on a warm, flat rock near his favorite fishing hole. “I didn’t say anything.”

“I can hear you thinking,” he said, then pointed to his motionless pole in the water. “You’re scaring off the fish.”

She picked up a pebble and tossed it in his direction. “I’m almost finished, then I’ll come over there and look at you.”

He grinned. “You figured me out.”

“A long time ago,” she said, then looked back to the entry for her new Engaged Feminist blog series. The words had been pouring out of her since she’d moved to Sweetness. The little town, as it turned out, was the perfect place to study all kinds of relationships.

Take her parents, for example. They had moved to Sweetness and remarried. Her father was the Justice of the Peace and happily referred to himself as a kept man since Candace’s line of jewelry had taken off.

It was interesting to watch the way relationships between the men and women in Sweetness continued to change as the town evolved. More people relocated to their little spot on the mountain every day. It had become a trendy “it” destination for scientists and creatives…and singles of all kinds.

It was true that in some ways the roles of men and women in Sweetness were defined along traditional lines. But just like when the residents had pulled together to clean up after the tornado, most of the time no one stopped to consider what was “women’s work” and what was “men’s work.” If someone saw something that needed doing, they did it, without expecting credit or accolades. The rest of the world could take a lesson from what was happening in Sweetness.

The place was, as far as she was concerned, a Southern Utopia.

She closed her notebook and sat up. From this vantage point, she could see the white water tower, which now sported a third graffitied message:
I
Alicia
. The sight of it always made her smile. She hoped it was still there when she and Marcus had children and their children grew up to have children of their own.

She felt the sweet pressure of Marcus’s mouth on her neck. “You look so good, baby, I decided to come over here instead. Reminds me of the first time I saw you…?.”

Alicia rolled her shoulders, knowing what ecstasy was to come. She still considered herself a feminist, but she didn’t mind submitting to her man once in a while…?.