Full Circle (15 page)

“Your reputation is in the dumpster,” Justin continued, his voice pained. “That’s why a lot of our regular clients have stopped coming in. It’s not my business who you’re seeing, but I’ve heard a few of them saw you at the Fourth of July party with both Alexis and Elisa. At that point you were interesting enough to cyber-stalk, so they looked you up and found the story about the girl at the university. Are you telling me you haven’t heard any of this?”

Liam was nauseous. He hated the way technology no longer let a person have a private life or leave anything behind. He began to understand why Elisa wasn’t thrilled with life in Windy Flats.

He plunged a hand through his hair. “I can’t say that I have. I’ve been in here most of the time, running the clinic while you’ve been away. You know things have been slow?” The guy didn’t need this when he had a newborn son in the hospital.

“I’ve seen the books. I know you and Elisa didn’t want to bother me, but I’ve been checking up on things.” Justin sighed and collapsed against the back of the chair. “This mess…it’s killing our business, Liam.”

His stomach dropped. “You don’t believe that garbage, do you? I told you the truth about what happened to me. And I’d never screw around on Elisa. I haven’t screwed around
with
a twenty-year-old since I was a kid myself.”

“It’s not that I believe the rumors. I don’t, actually. The problem is that everyone else in town does. People really think you could be some criminal who hurt that girl and got away with it. Most of the time this is a great place, but the people here are pretty conservative. You get on their bad side, and it’s…” He gestured an explosion in midair.

“All right, I get it. It’s fine if you want to hold off on legalizing the partnership until this blows over.”

Justin’s expression turned sick. “It’s not just that. I need you to… I need to ask you to resign.”

“What? For how long?” But Liam hadn’t even needed to ask the question. The look on Justin’s face said it all. “You want me to leave. For good.”

“I’m really, really sorry. Any other time maybe we could work something out, but I’ve got a wife and three kids to support. I’ve got a baby in the hospital and medical bills through the roof. We’ve lost more than half of our clients over the past few weeks and I just…I can’t afford that. I can’t put my family’s livelihood at risk. I’m sorry,” he said again.

The catch in his friend’s voice tempered Liam’s anger. He wasn’t mad at Justin, anyway. Justin
did
have a family to support and hospital bills to pay. Liam would have done the same thing. He was mad at the town and all the people in it for lacking any sense and going to such lengths to ruin his life.

“All right,” he answered. “Consider it done. I’m out of here.”

Justin held up a hand. “Wait. I’m not kicking you out within the hour or anything like that. You’re a skilled and well-respected vet. I’ll be happy to give you the highest recommendation possible. It won’t take you long to find another job.”

It pained Liam to see the hope in his friend’s eyes, and he knew this was hurting Justin as much as it was hurting him. But all he could say was, “I’ll be gone in two weeks.”

Justin frowned then nodded and left. When he was gone, Liam looked around his office—his for all of four days—with a heavy heart. So much for his small-town dream.

“What the hell was that?” Elisa burst in, her features twisted with anger.

“Your brother told you?”

“Of course not. I stood outside the door and listened.”

Through his pain, Liam had to smile. He loved her spark.

“I missed the last part, though, because I had to answer the phone. Wrong damn number. All I heard was something about you and me and Alexis.” She made a face.

He sighed. “Yeah. Apparently rumors are flying that I’m trying to have a relationship with both of you. It’s killing business. That’s why things have been so slow around here.”

“That’s ridiculous. What’s my brother planning to do about it?”

Liam pressed his lips together. She wasn’t going to like this news, and he wished he could explain why it was happening so she would understand. But he wasn’t ready to tell her he’d been arrested once for assault—for attacking a woman while she slept and getting her pregnant to boot. The accusations were completely false, but Elisa didn’t have to believe that, and her trust was something he did not want to break.

“I’ll be leaving the clinic in a couple of weeks,” he said, deciding against any explanation.

A pause. “What are you talking about?”

Her tone grew wary. She was going to explode regardless of how nicely he tried to word the announcement, so he just laid it out there. “Justin asked me to resign.”

As he anticipated, her jaw dropped open and she jumped like she’d been stung. “Is he insane?”

“It’s his decision to make, and he has to do what’s right for his family.”

She made a noise of disgust. “I can’t believe this! Why in the world would he let those nosy women control his life? Can’t he ignore them?”

“I’m afraid not. Their opinions have virtually stopped our customer flow. That means no income, and Justin has a family to support. Caleb’s bills are unbelievable.”

Her face fell. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Liam. This is all my fault.”

Chapter Eleven

Elisa knocked on her brother’s front door and racked her brain for an event that would have inspired Alexis’s mother to spread such a nasty rumor.
Sorry about my mom,
Alexis had said. Her mother, Pam, must have been the one who had started the spread of lies about Liam.

She recalled sitting on his porch, waiting for him to return home from the picnic. A car had driven down the street, its headlights giving her hope that Liam had come back until it passed his house and she’d returned to her moping.

The car. It had been a big, blue…some kind of SUV.

Like the one Alexis’s mother drove.

It was just like a Windy Flats woman to park down the street, turn her lights off and watch what happened when Liam came home. No doubt that’s exactly what Pam had done. God forbid she could have seen Elisa on the porch and continued on with her own business. That’s not what this town prided itself on.

At nineteen, she’d made a mistake—although, given her feelings for Liam now, she hated to use that word—and gotten the town’s attention. Justin’s business and Liam’s reputation were suffering because of it. Pam Hunter wouldn’t have cared what Elisa had been doing on Liam’s porch that night if she didn’t already have it in her head that Elisa was an irresponsible whore.

It seemed a little extreme, even for Windy Flats, to take that out on Liam. But at this point, nothing surprised her. All she cared about was making it right.

Justin opened the door, a suspicious look on his face. “Since when do you knock?”

“Since I thought Laura might be sleeping because she’s been at the hospital so much. I need to talk to you.”

He stepped back. “So come in.”

“Outside.”

With a look of annoyance, he joined her on the porch. “What’s this about?”

Elisa checked the windows to make sure they were closed and no one was eavesdropping from inside the house. Her parents, who were staying until Caleb was released from the hospital, didn’t need another reason to check up on her, and she didn’t want Laura worrying about anything but that baby.

“Was anyone planning to tell me I need to find another job?”

Justin’s eyes narrowed. “I knew it wouldn’t take you long to get the news out of Liam. You already found another job anyway, remember?”

“I have six weeks left. And what is this stuff about firing him? You’ve got a baby in the hospital. You can’t afford to—”

“I don’t have a choice, Elisa. People have stopped coming to the clinic because the rumors made them believe Liam is some kind of bad guy. I don’t want to let him go any more than you do, but it’s like you said—I have a baby in the hospital. I have bills to pay, and I need our clients back.”

Elisa was ready to explode. “How can you let people do this to you? The rumors aren’t even close to being true!”

“I know they’re not. It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters. Have you thought about what you’re doing to Liam?”

Justin stared at her. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? This isn’t about the clinic. It’s about Liam. You’re crazy if you think I don’t know you’ve got the hots for him.”

She rolled her eyes but an uneasy feeling settled in her chest. “Stay out of my personal life. I’m here because I think you’re making a big mistake. If Liam is gone, who’s going to run the clinic while Caleb’s in the hospital and you aren’t around? How is a clinic with no doctors going to help business?”

After a minute of silence, Justin sighed and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I’m closing the clinic.”

Elisa glared at him until her eyes hurt. “I know you didn’t just say that.”

“You heard me. For once, you’re right. Liam is leaving, and I can’t hire a stranger and entrust that person with my business while I’m away. To make matters worse, the landlord is tired of renting and plans to sell the building soon. I can’t buy it. I have no other options.”

She shook her head, her mouth open. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about this.”

“I figured you didn’t care,” Justin answered, a hint of bitterness in his tone. “You said you’ll be giving your notice soon. By the time I close, you’ll be all packed and headed to Nashville.”

“Stop it. Don’t put a guilt trip on me when you know why I have to go. I can’t believe you’d do something like this just to talk me into—”

“You think this is about you?” Justin’s voice rose to a volume Elisa rarely heard him use. “How do you think I’m going to support my family when the clinic is gone? How am I going to pay my baby’s medical bills? You think this is a big joke? Here’s an idea—try thinking about someone besides yourself for a change.”

He turned and reached for the door.

Panic filled Elisa’s chest. Her brother’s words ripped her to the core, and she knew he’d meant every syllable. She thought of Caleb, of the clinic being in danger. She wouldn’t need to worry about being kept under the Haley family wing anymore. There were bigger problems in Windy Flats now, and she was on her own.

“Justin, wait.”

He stopped but kept his back to her. “What?” he said flatly.

“What are you planning to do? Work in fast food?”

He turned to look at her. “I’m going to close the business and use what used to be my rent money to pay off everything I can. Hopefully that includes the mortgage. After Caleb is home and healthy, maybe I’ll look for another—”

“You’re going to give up everything you worked so hard for?” Elisa couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You’re giving up
your
clinic, that
you
opened and are
in charge of, and you’ll settle for ‘maybe’ working for somebody else someday? How can you do that?”

“What do you care?”

“Having your own clinic has been your dream since the day you went off to college!”

“So what?” Justin snapped. “Are you following the dream you had when you went off to college?”

That shut her up. She closed her eyes to block her brother’s accusatory glare. The moment Brett had laughed in her face and implied that her pregnancy would trap her into being a small-town nobody, she had pushed her dream of being a vet to a distant corner of her mind and that’s where it had remained. After losing Brett, Liam and her baby, it hadn’t seemed important. Nothing had. No one—not Justin, her parents, or even Laura—ever talked about the day she went off to college and could hardly contain her excitement at the prospect of attending her first biology class.

Justin had opened his clinic that same year, and she’d had big plans to wear a white coat right alongside him. But she hadn’t even come close to enrolling in graduate school. Brett had painted an awful picture of what her life in Windy Flats would be like, and its vividness hadn’t faded from her memory.

Despite his silence on the subject thus far, Justin obviously hadn’t forgotten about her lost dream.

“That’s different,” Elisa answered quietly. “I have nothing to do with this. You said so yourself.”

“It’s not different. Things change. You got screwed and your life changed, my clinic got screwed so my life is changing. Bad things happen to good people. In fact, since Liam is the only person in the world you might listen to, maybe you should ask him about that.”

Justin moved away again, but she grabbed his arm. “What? What happened to Liam?”

“Didn’t we just talk about this? The reason I have to ask him to leave?”

“I thought that’s because people are being nosy about who he’s dating.”

He stared at her, clearly aware of something she wasn’t. “You think people would boycott the clinic for—never mind. It’s not my place to talk about it.”

“That’s a lame excuse.”

“The point is, crappy things happen. It’s not the end of the world. Deal with it.”

He returned to the house, slamming the door behind him.

Elisa swallowed, a lump rising in her throat. Justin didn’t realize that when her life changed, it
was
the end of her world. Regardless of the way she’d chased a corporate job for the last few years, she’d be a million times happier if she had been able to realize her original goal. Trying to do something that wasn’t in her heart had been killing her inside for nine long years.

If Justin closed the clinic, that’s exactly what would happen to him.

Liam lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the sun and peered up at the roof of Elisa’s house, where she teetered near the top step of an aluminum ladder.

“What are you doing?” he called.

She slathered a brush full of white paint onto the house then climbed down the ladder and wiped her forehead with the back of her arm. “Fixing a few things. Mom and Dad have agreed to put the house up for sale next week, and I’m heading to Nashville over the weekend to find an apartment.”

“I thought you weren’t moving until September.”

“I think it would be better if I leave sooner.”

“Does this have anything to do with Justin letting me go?”