Long Shot (28 page)

“No. I’m . . . I have to go back to New York.”

Now his eyebrows formed one long strip as he lowered his chin. “Right. Tomorrow. When we said we’d drive south together.”

“I mean today.”

He just stared. And stared. “After the closing ceremonies?”

“No. Now.” She drew up her shoulders and held up her phone like it could magically provide proof. It might have been the wrong thing to do because he looked at the thing with immediate wariness. “My boss, my real boss, called. There’s an emergency back in New York. If I don’t get back tonight and fix it, I’ll lose a really big client and possibly the promotion I’ve wanted since the day I started working there. I need to leave as soon as possible.”

He wiped at the corners of his mouth with a forefinger and thumb. He took several breaths before finally getting out, “Now. You’re leaving now. Before the games even get going.”

She put her phone away and her hands felt terribly empty. “It’s my actual job, Leith. My real one. The one that pays the bills.”

Lips tight, he nodded. “I thought you had an assistant.”

“She’s the one who fucked everything up and now it’s on my head.”

“It’s Saturday. Can’t you fix it Monday? You know, during
normal
work hours?”

She breathed steadily through her nose. She’d expected this, she reminded herself. “I don’t work normal hours. Neither do you, as I recall.” As she stepped closer to him, he didn’t reach for her. “I’m not a superhero. I can’t be two places at once. I’ve been standing over there, wracking my brain trying to figure out how to do both, but I just can’t. I have to choose. And, yes, my heart is telling me to stay, but my brain and my duty are pulling me back to the city.”

Over Leith’s shoulder she glimpsed one of the athletes starting toward him, until Duncan stopped him with a hand to his chest.

Leith’s hands slid to his hips. “I was supposed to go back to Connecticut this weekend, you know.”

“Yes. I do know.”

“It was the only weekend Rory’s husband was going to be in town to approve my plans. She moved up my complete date by three weeks. I can’t really afford to be here either, but I am. I stayed. For them.” He nudged his chin at the pockets of people he’d grown up with, and many more he hadn’t. “For Da’s memory.”

“I understand what you’ve done,” she said. “What it took to make you stay. But really, what made you stay—your past, your roots—is the very same reason why I have to go. There were things you needed to do and finish here. There are things I need to do and finish there.”

He seemed to barely hear her. “I also stayed for you, remember.”

She started to fidget, shifting from foot to foot. “I know. I don’t want to go. I told you. I had to make a choice. But we’ll see each other next week, when you get to Connecticut. Then we’ll figure everything else out.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “You really aren’t seeing this? The similarities? How this looks to me? How it
feels
?”

“Similarities to—? Oh.” She closed her eyes. “Shit. I’m sorry. I really am.”

“I mean, I understand that what happened ten years ago was when we were kids, that you had legitimate reasons for not staying, but right over there”—he jabbed a finger toward the fairgrounds and his voice rose—“is where I told you how I felt, and then watched you walk away right after. And today I’m standing in almost the exact same spot, watching you leave again. After I told you
exactly
how I feel now. I fucking hate watching you walk away. I can’t change that reaction, and I won’t apologize for it.”

“You shouldn’t have to apologize. I should. And I am.”

“I’m not pissed off because you’re going after your dream. I told you I get you, and I do. What you told me in New York, about your mom and Iowa and coming here . . . it’s powerful stuff that I totally understand. But if we’re being honest, I’m pissed off because I sacrificed something big to be here for Gleann and for you, and you’re turning away. I’m scared for what this could mean to us, that this is a sign of things to come.”

His unspoken question: When will
you
sacrifice for
me
?

But she had, by pushing aside her larger goals for a time to be here in the first place. So in essence she already had sacrificed to be reunited with him. Why did she have to sacrifice more to keep his faith? It wasn’t fucking fair. The whole thing was all too convoluted and didn’t make any sense. This was supposed to end perfectly.

She reached up to take his face. He let her, but his reciprocal touch—light fingers at her waist—lacked his usual warmth.

“I told you we would try,” she said. “I meant it.”

“Don’t go,” he whispered, his frustration coming through loud and clear. His hands at her waist suddenly bit in.

“I have to,” she whispered back, then tried to step out of his arms. He held fast. “I’m so sorry.”

He kissed her, swift and light, like she’d already slipped away. Like it was their last time. Like he was saying good-bye. She forced herself to ignore the sense of foreboding it caused.

“Call me tomorrow from the road?” she said.

Leith did not look at her as he replied, “Why don’t you call me? Hopefully it’ll go better than the last long-distance phone call we had.”

Ouch. “It will.”

But he’d already turned, and right then she knew exactly what he’d meant about hating to watch her walk away. The sight of his stiff back and shoulders, and the heavy plod of his boots on the grass thundered through her body. It shouldn’t have made her worry that this might indeed be the last time she’d see him . . . but it did.

Numb, she walked to the edge of the field and lifted the flag rope without feeling its plastic snap at her skin. She wove her way through the crowd without sensing the other bodies. She’d gotten halfway across the parking lot before she realized she’d left the Hemmertex grounds and the new world of the Gleann Highland Games she’d helped create. Blinking into the sunshine, she knew she had to do what she’d always done: Go forward. Not back.

Doing so had just never hurt this much before.

As she opened the unlocked door to 738 Maple, her phone rang again, jangling her from thoughts of Leith. The little black thing she practically slept with, the inanimate object she usually clung to, she now wanted to chuck across the driveway, like the athletes did with those massive weights.

With a roll of her eyes that felt a little wet, she picked up the call from the guy who’d loaned her the tents as a return favor. Of course they couldn’t provide replacements within a timeframe that would do the Gleann Highland Games any good. And of course he wanted payment for any damages. That was to be expected; she’d demand the same thing if she were him.

Jen dug into her purse and pulled out her wallet. “After you come get the tents and inspect them, send me an itemized list of the damages, then charge them to my personal credit card.” She read off the series of numbers on the piece of plastic in her hand. “I don’t want you to charge Gleann a thing.”

* * *

L
eith knew the AD was staring at him.

“What was that about?” Duncan asked, and when Leith didn’t answer, he added, “Everything okay with the athletic events?”

“Yeah,” he mumbled. “Events are good.”

“Ah.” Duncan drew out the single word in a way that didn’t need explanation.

After a few long moments of pretending to examine the sheaves Duncan had brought for the toss, Leith finally turned back to see Jen moving slowly away through the gathering crowd. Past her sister who just watched her go. Past Mayor Sue, who shook her head. Even past Shea, whose mess of a tent was nearly cleaned up thanks to the swarm of rugby players. Though Jen walked with her head high, she clutched her giant purse to her chest and Leith knew she was protecting herself using that green leather piece of armor which held her mighty weapons: the laptop and her phone.

That goddamn phone.

If she was so affected by her choice, if she questioned it so much—and she did; her excuses weren’t fooling him—why the hell wasn’t she staying? There were a million more things he’d wanted to say to her, but knew it would’ve done no good, and they might have sprung more from frustration than true reason. She didn’t respond well to that. And besides, he’d made his argument.

She’d forgotten that he knew her, that he’d glimpsed what her life was like back in New York, what sort of world she’d built up around herself. Maybe the threads of that world had loosened since she’d come back to New Hampshire, but once she crossed the bridge back into Manhattan, she’d be swallowed so fast by those jaws of fast-talking, fast-moving events that meant nothing in the grand scheme of things, that she wouldn’t even realize she’d shut him out again.

He didn’t know if his heart could take that. Not twice.

He wasn’t looking for a woman to stay back at home while he went out and worked to bring home the paycheck. Hell no. No, Jen was smart and driven and it wasn’t his place to change that. Those were just two of the reasons why he loved her. He loved her for who she
was
, but he was worried about who she was striving, or even pretending, to be. Doing something to escape pain and heartache wasn’t the same as doing something because it spoke to your heart.

He wanted to be assured she wouldn’t disappear again. But most of all, he just wanted her.

You want her because she was right, boy
.
Women usually are.

Ah, Da. Leith could hear the old man’s chuckle, the same low, secretive laugh that always came out when he used to talk about his beloved wife. Leith closed his eyes and bowed his head. In the distance, beneath everything else, Chris struck some warm-up notes on his fiddle. Though unamplified, the song still traveled, and Leith wondered if he was hallucinating, because it was Da’s favorite folk tune, the one he used to play over and over on the wobbly record player.

Right about what? Leigh almost asked. But he knew.

I know, I know,
came Da’s ethereal, accented voice.
The last time you competed you threw like shite in front of me. I get it. But if you really think that ever mattered to me or to anyone else, you’re a fool. You’re also not a father yet. These things are almost impossible to explain to a man who isn’t.

“It does matter,” Leith mumbled. “It matters to me.”

“Huh?” Duncan asked, looking up from his clipboard with a frown.

Leith gave him an awkward smile and shook his head. Duncan ambled away with the clipboard to go check on the high school volunteers.

She was right,
Da whispered in Leith’s ear,
what she said to you about failure and what’s holding you back. Failure’s only in your mind. To so many others, it’s success.

Jesus. Leith couldn’t breathe. His head snapped up and he scanned the crowd again, but Jen’s dark hair and white dress were long gone.

Boy. Just get in there and throw already. You cleaned out my house. Now clean out your own head.

And just like what had happened in the music tent last night, some people shifted on the other side of the flags—a dad trying to wrangle his five wild kids—and there was Da, sitting on the edge of the scrappy lawn chair, pipe between his teeth, cap on, walking cane upright between his knees. He nodded once. Leith blinked twice. When two of the kids started wrestling, the image was obliterated.

Leith whirled toward the center of the field, where Duncan was mingling with some of the competitors. A few handshakes were going around, a few friendly challenges.

A Braemar stone sat all lonesome off to one side. Twenty-two pounds of black rock calling Leith’s name. With a purpose he hadn’t felt in at least four years, he stomped over to the stone. Picked it up. Rolled it between his hands. Warm and smooth, a little bit of home in his palms.

He could hear the murmurs starting, the building roar of the crowd, his name spoken in several voices he recognized and just as many he didn’t. The sound followed him like he approached a waterfall, building and building the farther into the field he walked. Out of the corner of his eye he could see people hurrying over to the field, beckoned by family members or strangers. A few whistles and scattered applause filled the air.

“Do it, Dougall!” someone yelled.

But that wasn’t why he took his place behind the trig, got his feet set into position. Wide. Steady. No, this didn’t have to do with them. This was for the man and the woman who weren’t even here. And for himself.

“What’re you doing, Dougall?” Duncan this time, loud and clear, for all to hear.

Leith swung out his left arm, finding his balance, assuming the form Da had taught him. He raised the Braemar stone and tucked it between his chin and shoulder. A few deep breaths. A crouch. Then he launched that sucker up and into the field, not really caring where it landed. That wasn’t the point.

All of Gleann seemed to erupt in cheers.

He walked away from the trig. Duncan’s round face was split by a massive grin, that missing tooth making an appearance. His huge arms were thrown out wide and he was laughing. “What the hell are you doing?”

Leith stomped over and snatched Duncan’s clipboard from his hands. “What’s it look like?” Leith scrawled his name at the bottom of the list of competitors. “I’m fucking throwing.”

Chapter

24

L
eith sat on the edge of the motel bed, cheap polyester bedspread sticking to his thighs, cold air rattling out from the window unit but just barely filling the room. The second floor window overlooked a parking lot near Stamford, Connecticut, off I-95.

Beyond that lay one hell of a challenge.

How much had changed in his life in the last twenty-four hours. Most of it not good.

His phone jumped from where it sat by his hip, buzzing and blaring Jen’s name. He hated to admit he’d been waiting for her call all day, but the truth was, he had been. He’d left Gleann early that morning, heading south, high on how throwing in the games had made him feel, even if he hadn’t thrown that well.

Now he looked down at her name and realized that if she’d stayed at the games, chances were he wouldn’t have picked up the stone or the sheaf fork or the caber again. He wasn’t quite sure how that made him feel.

He ran his thumb over her name then touched
Answer.
“Hey, you.”

“Hi.” It came out in a sigh, and he was thrown back two nights, to the sounds she’d made in the back of Da’s Caddy, her exhalations in his ear.

“How did it go last night?” he asked, because he felt like he should. “Everything squared away?”

“Um, yeah, pretty much. Saved the event. Retained the client.”

“Your superhero cape looks good fluttering in the breeze.” He’d meant it as a joke, of course, but she didn’t laugh. Neither did he. He wondered if Jen had heard about him throwing. “Have you talked to Aimee today? Or anyone back in Gleann?”

“No, I haven’t. She, ah, isn’t picking up my calls or answering my texts. Listen, can I take the train out tonight? I need to see you.”

He rose from the bed, his heart pounding with hope. “Absolutely. Hell yeah. I’m just in a shitty motel, but—”

“I don’t care.”

She was doing this, coming to him. She’d heard what he’d said about trying, about not running away. He started to pace, a strange brand of excitement pumping through him. On a day that had had such turbulent ups and downs, this was definitely an up.

“Can’t wait to see you,” he said. “I have a lot to tell you.” So, so much.

There came one of those pauses that lasted a beat too long, but still he could have sworn she was smiling. “Good. So do I. Pick me up at the Stamford station at 6:44.”

Two hours. He couldn’t wait to tell her face-to-face about throwing, how incredible it had felt—how she’d been right. She wouldn’t gloat. Not his Jen. She would look at him with those sparkling eyes and she would be happy for him. She would slide her arms around his neck and then they’d talk about his Da, how Leith had finally been able to let him go.

Then he would tell her that he’d lost the Carriage job.

* * *

H
e parked his truck in the Stamford train station lot and got out, leaning against it, waiting, unsure if he should go inside to the platform like they did in the movies and immediately drag her into his arms. It seemed like a month since he’d seen her, not a day. In the end he chose to stay in the lot, his weight shifting from foot to foot. But when her familiar figure—
not
carrying that purse with the laptop—finally exited the building and crossed the street to him, he pushed away from the truck.

She looked incredible. Just . . . phenomenal. Black pants that fit her thighs and ass perfectly. Black high heels he’d never seen before but would kill to see on the ends of her bare legs right before she wrapped them around his neck. She wore a short-sleeved top that might have looked demure on anyone not as achingly sexual as her.

Turned out he didn’t have to drag her into him. She came willingly, a great magnet pulling them together across the barren Sunday commuter parking lot. She wasn’t smiling, but that was okay because her eyes were filled with an apology. He folded her into his arms and she gripped him tightly, her hands splayed on his back, reminding him of how she’d clung to him naked.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

This time he was ready to hear it. Ready to accept it. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” he whispered, and then he took her mouth in a kiss that burned with slow fire.

After he’d pulled his mouth away but kept his hands on her face, she didn’t look so sure that he’d accepted her apology. Or maybe it was something else. He couldn’t quite tell. But at that moment he didn’t really care. She was here.

“So this is Connecticut.” She smiled. “Your new home.”

He coughed. “Never been here?”

“I have. Just not with you.”

They got into his truck and he rumbled slowly out of the lot. “Are you hungry? Need a drink?”

“Sure, I guess.” When he pulled in front of a little cafe on a busy street whose narrow outdoor patio was dotted with orange umbrellas, she peered out at it and asked, “What’s wrong with your hotel?”

“Motel,” he corrected with a grin. “It’s a sad, sad place not fit for a superhero.”

Plus, he knew she would likely head back to the city tonight, and if they went back to his motel he would, without a doubt, have her naked for the next few hours. Believe it or not, he couldn’t afford that. He had things to tell her. Things he needed to say, to get out in the open, period.

She responded with the same weird pause he’d heard over the phone two hours earlier, only now he saw the accompanying facial expression. Jen, who always looked people in the eye with confidence, now turned her face to her lap, brow furrowed, that beautiful mouth drawn in a tight line.

“Superhero,” she murmured with a little shake of her head.

His heart turned over. A sick feeling bubbled up in his throat.

“Oh, no.” He wrenched off the ignition and turned in the seat toward her. “What.”

She licked her lips and met his eyes. “Do you want to get out of the truck? Go sit down?”

“Something tells me I don’t want to be in public for what you’re about to say. We already did that once yesterday and I didn’t really care for it. Just say it. That’s why you came, right? To tell me to my face that you don’t want to try after all?”

“No!” She stretched for him with both hands, placed them on his chest, and he was powerless against their pressure and heat. “That’s not it at all. But I have some news that I know you won’t like.”

With the air off, the cab was starting to get stuffy, so he gave the truck half power to lower the automatic windows. Sweet summer air rushed in. It even smelled different than Gleann.

“What is it,” he said.

Another lick of her lips. “I’m going to London.”

That’s it? Really?
“London. Okay, when?”

“Tomorrow.”

Ah, okay.

“And”—her hands pressed harder into his chest—“I’ll probably be gone for a month. At least.”

Ah,
shit
. “Let me guess. Work?”

Now her hands slid off him as she nodded. “Tim’s co-owner, the guy who’d been running the London branch of the company, had a major heart attack early this morning. He survived, but he’s old and Tim’s pretty sure he’ll want to retire after this. Tim wants me in London ASAP to oversee everything while they figure things out and find a replacement.”

“And that replacement will be you.”

She blinked. “Well. No. I’m temporary.”

He scrubbed a hand over his cheek, unshaven since yesterday morning. “You said you’ve been gunning for a big promotion, a partnership. An owner gets sick and retires. This is it. You can’t see that? Tim will send you over there under the pretense of everything being temporary, on a ‘trial basis’ or some such, and then he’ll spring the promotion on you. He’ll want you to take over in London.”

He really didn’t know what he’d do if she tried to deny it again. She wasn’t stupid; she was just being thickheaded and trying to soften things for him. He didn’t need softening. He just wanted the truth. He wanted her to admit it.

“And then you’ll accept it,” he went on, “because that’s what you do. That’s what you’ve convinced yourself you want. This would put you at the top, and you’ll proudly plant your flag up there and take a picture to send back to Iowa.”

“I haven’t accepted anything.” She glanced away when she said it.

“Look.” He stabbed fingers into his hair. “I’m not telling you not to take it. I’m not telling you to quit and buy a little Connecticut house with me and make dinner every night, or some other dumb idea that doesn’t serve either of us well. All I’m asking you to do is reevaluate what you really want. Because sometimes what we’ve been
conditioned
to want isn’t really what’s best for us.”

She looked at him askance but said nothing.

“I’m talking about your mom,” he added. “I’m talking about Iowa.”

“I heard you. I know what you meant. I think I need some air.” She opened the door and swung her feet out. She was so composed he couldn’t tell if she was angry or hurt or bothered. Or anything.

He jumped out from behind the wheel and jogged to catch up as she entered a little park bisected by defunct railroad tracks. She took a seat on a wooden bench.

“Can I finish?” He kept his tone even and low as he sprawled next to her. She just looked at him, her hair swinging next to one ear. “I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to make the same mistake I did. I want you to be bigger than your childhood because you are utterly special in ways you haven’t even defined for yourself. I’m telling you this because I . . . care about you.”

She winced at that, at the fact he didn’t use the
L
word, but since she hadn’t said it to him, he wasn’t even sure if it was the right word to use at all.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You think you’ve escaped Iowa, that you got away from your mom by getting to the top of your field, but she still rules you. In fact, I think she has a bigger power over you now than she did ten, fifteen years ago.”

She made a pleading gesture to the sky. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Damp strands of hair tickled his forehead and neck. The evening was almost unbearably hot.

“I miss my da more than anything,” he said, “and you were right, I never processed his death. Never said good-bye. Part of what made it so hard, the biggest part, was grief, but a much smaller part of it was resentment.”

She let out a little gasp. “Resentment?”

He shrugged, then reached down to pluck a few blades of grass and roll them between his fingers. The scent of his future always made him feel better.

“He was my best friend. My hero. When he started to weaken when I was in high school, I had to do more and more for him. I didn’t mind; I loved doing it. To carry him the way he’d carried me my whole life. But then you left and went to college and, even though I wanted to get out of Gleann, too, I had Da and he only had me. His health went downhill fast after you left, so I stayed. I had to make do.”

“I don’t understand. You love landscape design. You told me so yourself.”

“I do. But even when I knew my business was dying in Gleann, I felt the compulsion to stay. For Da’s memory and the roots he laid down. He always told me that home and family was the most important thing in the world, and to him, that family was me and Gleann. I felt like I had to stay for the people who cheered me on and looked up to me. I felt like I had to stay, even though I knew I should have ripped out those roots years ago.”

He tossed down the now-shredded grass blades. When he turned his head to look at her, those green eyes were huge.

“So Da dies. I’m lost. The only thing I have left is my business and the people who love me. Then Hemmertex closes, and I feel obligated to stick around as their billboard whatever and their replacement MacDougall. Meanwhile my business goes in the shitter.”

She sat straight-backed, but he saw how her fingers dug into her thighs.

“Do you see what I’m saying? Do you get it?” He heard his voice rising but couldn’t bring it down. “You’re climbing and climbing, but for what? For who? Your mom, or for you? Honestly, I would love for you to say it’s what you really, truly want, what really, truly fulfills you, but I just don’t think that’s the case. I’ve never heard you say you love your job, only that it drives you and that you’re good at it. I
want
you to love what you do
and
the end product. I don’t want you to get caught up in something you can’t twist yourself out of down the road.”

“You twisted yourself out of all that stuff you just told me about. You’re starting over here.”

He wasn’t sure she was hearing him. Maybe she wouldn’t; at least, not tonight. Not in front of him.

Their eyes met. Now would have been the perfect time to tell her how Hal Carriage had called him shortly after he’d left Gleann for Connecticut. How Hal had told him that because Leith hadn’t come down that weekend—the only weekend he’d be in town for a long while—Hal had met with and hired another landscape company. A bigger one, an established one. One that could guarantee to have the work done by his daughter’s September wedding.

Yep, now would have been perfect. Except that she’d take it that he was trying to guilt her into staying. She’d think he was trying to make her feel bad for asking him to stay for the games. So he kept his mouth shut and let his points about her mom and Iowa do their own work.