Chapter 16

“You will show him you remember that he is Mr. Incredible, and you will remind him who you are.”

Edna Mode, The Incredibles

From the second Hope looked up and realized who Ronan was charging toward on the dock, everything inside her flew into a state of panic, followed immediately by a crashing wave of guilt. She’d read Luka’s email this morning and had loved the idea that the last guest of the season was going to be a long-lost relative, because that’s what the Buoys was all about: family.

But if she’d known that long-lost relative was actually Maggie O’D—wife…Damn that Luka.

No, Hope fumed. She couldn’t lay this all on Luka. Most of it, yes, but if Hope had been more focused on the job and on researching the guests instead of dreaming about how long she’d have to wait to get Ronan naked again, she would have found out who Peggy Flynn was. She should have dug and dug until she’d found out everything there was to know about Peggy, and then, Luka be damned, Hope could have warned Ronan.

But it was too late, and the second she realized that, the only thing she could think to do was to block him from getting close to Maggie, because she stupidly believed if she could keep him away, it wouldn’t hurt him so much.

She couldn’t have been more wrong, not only because his emotional wounds ripped open the second he saw Maggie standing there but also because Hope had something to do with it. And with everything happening so fast, and the cameras constantly rolling, there wasn’t time or space for Hope to talk to him. Even if she could have, he was making it pretty clear he wanted nothing to do with her. He wouldn’t even look at her.

The rest of them weren’t much friendlier.

The whole thing was so far out of Hope’s grasp, she didn’t know what she should do. She knew what she wanted to do—she wanted to march into the kitchen and force Ronan to listen to her, to somehow make him believe she hadn’t known that Peggy Flynn was Maggie, that all Luka had told her was that Peggy Flynn was family from Dublin.

Was she an aunt? Grandmother? Cousin? Which side of the family was she from? Had the O’Donnells ever met her before? These were all questions Hope should have asked but didn’t, because she’d chosen to spend all her research time running her tongue over every inch of Ronan.

So she couldn’t blame them all for freezing her out the way they did.

Every time Liam or Finn walked by Hope, she wanted to grab them and try to make them listen, but she couldn’t—not only because they were doing their very best to make out that everything was normal, even though the entire lodge had heard Ronan yelling, but because the simple fact that their mother had shown up the way she did was more than enough for them to deal with.

They didn’t need Hope desperately trying to explain anything, no matter how much she wanted to and no matter how much it killed her to know that Ronan was standing in the kitchen, trying to deal with the most painful thing in his life.

And because it pained him, it pained her. He must hate her; he did hate her. It poured off him like steam down on the dock when he told her to move, and every second that had passed since that moment was another knife through Hope’s heart. So many times she’d started toward the kitchen and then stopped because the only thing that would make all of this worse was if she dragged more of Ronan’s private life into the open, and that’s exactly what she’d be doing by going in there.

Everything would be caught on film, and God only knew what Luka and the editors would do with it.

She couldn’t even have it out with Luka, because Luka had gone down to Hope’s room to work, and Chuck and Kevin needed Hope upstairs with them. She didn’t want to go downstairs anyway; she needed to be close to Ronan, even if he didn’t want anything to do with her.

Time had never moved so slowly. Finn, Liam, and a still-pale Kate had been mingling with the guests for over an hour when Jessie came out of the pub and said something to Kate that sent her downstairs. A minute later she was back, chasing Luka through the lobby toward the kitchen, and shortly after that, Kate was leading both Luka and Maggie toward the front door.

Liam and Finn looked up, then at each other, but neither left the guest he was talking to.

“I…” Hope shoved her mic into Chuck’s hand. “Here…just…”

She didn’t even finish, just left him there as she turned and started for the kitchen. Her heart was about to beat out of her chest, and if it didn’t, she was pretty sure she was going to throw up, but she kept moving. Cameras or not, she needed to talk to Ronan.

And the only thing standing in her way was Jessie.

“Leave him alone.” Jessie’s smile never faltered, not while there were guests nearby, but her voice stayed low, eerily calm, and lethal.

“I didn’t know it was her, Jessie.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, clearly not believing a word Hope said. “Okay. Well, we can all discuss that later, can’t we?”

“No,” Hope said. “I want to discuss it with him now.”

Finn came in behind her and positioned himself between the door and both of them. In all the time she’d spent around him, she’d seen a lot of different sides to Finn, from the funny to the annoyed, but she’d never seen this Finn before.

He didn’t smile, like Jessie did, and he didn’t pretend everything was okay. He just fixed his cold hard glare on Hope and repeated what Jessie had already said.

“Leave Ro alone. You’ve done enough.”

“I haven’t done anything,” she said, trying desperately to keep her pleading voice down. “I didn’t know Maggie was the one coming; all I knew was that Peggy Flynn was some kind of relative who—”

“You knew she was a relative.” Finn’s expression seemed to get colder by the second. “You have a show to film, and we’ll be damned if we’re going to let you send it into the shitter on the last episode, so go do your job, Hope. We’ll look after Ronan.”

It felt as though everything inside her was being ripped out. Nothing made sense. Why wouldn’t they listen to her?

“Hope.”

Great, Liam was there, too. Now she was sandwiched between them.

“Look, Liam.” Choking on each word, she turned to face him. “I didn’t—”

“I don’t care.” He cast a quick glance over his shoulder at the guests eating their dinners. “All I care about right now is my brother, and I’m telling you he’s not ready to deal with you, so leave him alone. Let him deal with what he can deal with, and that’s feeding a lodge full of guests. When that’s done and they’re settled, then maybe we can sit down and figure this out, but right now you’re not going anywhere near him, d’you understand me?”

“No, I don’t. I—”

“Hope.” Liam’s voice was rock-hard. “Ronan’s hurting like you can’t even imagine right now, and no matter what you say to him, seeing you is only going to make that worse. So you’ll understand that we don’t give a shit how desperate you are to explain anything to him; our priority is Ronan, not you.”

“But—”

“Go do your job, Hope, and let us do ours.”

What the hell is happening?

Hope had come to love the way Ronan and his brothers always had one another’s backs, but that was before they thought she was the one they needed protection from. She couldn’t even begin to grasp what any of this meant.

Ten hours ago she’d woken up with Ronan’s body wrapped around hers, his warmth seeping into her skin, his lips tickling her neck with feather-light kisses, and now…now she was being frozen out.

Someone’s hand wrapped around her wrist, not hard, not jerky, just lightly enough to tug her out of the pub and back into the lobby.

“Kate?” Stumbling, Hope had to shake her head clear. “What are you…Where are we going?”

Kate stopped, took both of Hope’s hands in her own, and squeezed.

“Listen to me,” she said. “You need to give him time.”

“But—”

“No! You’re an outsider still, Hope, like I was, and the only way to get through to him is to let him sort through the muck in his mind first.” Shaking her head, Kate spoke quickly, as if they were running out of time or something. “It doesn’t matter if it was you or Luka or the pope himself who brought Maggie here. In Ro’s mind, you’re guilty for two reasons. First, it’s your show, so how could you not know who was coming? And second, you’re a woman, you’re his woman, and by default, that’s who he blames when he’s hurt. Liam and Finn were like that, too.”

Hope had spent her entire adult life making sure she was prepared for any situation that came up, but there was nothing in her bag of tricks to prepare her for this, for having the man she loved blame her for something she wasn’t at fault for. Not entirely anyway.

How was she supposed to deal with that? She had no idea, but the only person making any sense at all was Kate. She’d been on the outside, too, she had experience with how the O’Donnells thought and reacted, so she was Hope’s only chance of getting through this.

“Let us talk to Ro,” Kate said. “If anyone can get through to him, it’s Liam and Finn. But for now the best thing you can do is to make sure this last episode is the best it can be. Show him that your priority is this, the Buoys, and maybe that’ll help him see past everything else.”

No. Hope wanted him to see past everything right now, not a couple of hours from now or, worse, a couple of days or weeks. Or months.

“Trust me,” Kate said. “This is what he needs right now.”

Hope didn’t know how she managed it, because every muscle in her body had gone numb, but she somehow forced her head to nod, then stumbled back to Chuck in the great room, who was already flagging her with the mic.

Like she gave a single shit about what anyone in that room had to say.

“It’s been three days, Ro. You need to talk to her.”

“No, I don’t.”

Liam was wrong. It hadn’t been three days. It had been three days, seven hours, and fifteen minutes, and each one of those minutes had been more painful than the last, but he’d pushed through because he knew each passing minute was one minute closer to Hope leaving.

Eight hours, that’s all he had left to get through, and then she’d be gone and he’d be able to think clearly again. Eight hours.

So many nights she’d come into the kitchen after everyone else had gone to bed and they’d talked about everything, from how to make the perfect grilled cheese to how she’d beaten out eight other people to get the Hooked job, her first as the field producer, and she was going to do whatever it took to prove herself.

Well, she’d proved herself, all right. She’d proved that she’d do whatever it took to get the ratings, because everyone knew that viewers loved watching shit like this. One man’s sorrow was another man’s joy, that’s what Da used to say, and Hope and Luka had proved that with this stunt.

And that was why instead of her sitting at the table talking to him into the early hours of the morning, it was Liam and Finn.

“She says—”

“For fuck sake, Liam, I know what she said—you’ve told me a thousand fuckin’ times. Just leave it alone, okay?”

He shoved the muffin tins into the oven and slammed the door.

“Okay,” Finn said, drawing the word out. “So what are we gonna do about Ma?”

“Wasn’t planning on doing anything,” Ro said with a grunt. “Just because she’s cleared her conscience doesn’t mean we have to forget the last twenty-odd years.”

“Jesus, Ronan,” Finn muttered. “You can be a real asshole when you want to be, you know that?”

Of course he knew it. He also knew it was the only defense he had to help himself deal with everything.

“Tell me how it’s any different than Da.” Liam leaned back in his chair so the front legs lifted off the floor and the back of the chair touched the wall. “She was sick, too, Ro, only in a different way, and Da was either too ignorant or too stupid to notice. We can’t hold her illness against her.”

In a perfect world, no, they shouldn’t, but if Ro didn’t have that to use as a blocker, he was going to have to find another way to explain everything to the kid inside him who’d never understand. Besides, he’d spent far too many years shielding that part of himself to simply let it go now.

“Do you remember the night Da sat us down and—”

“ ’Course I fuckin’ remember it,” Ro barked. “This is different.”

“No, it’s not. It took us a while, but we all forgave him for what he did to us, because we got the help we needed to understand that it was his disease that turned him into that. We’ll never forget what he did, but we still forgave him. It was Ma’s disease that made her do what she did, so why can’t you try to forgive her, too?”

“Because.” There was too much bubbling up inside Ro; he wasn’t going to be able to stop it.

“Because why?” Finn asked, pushing, the way he always did. “It’s not like she ever took a swing—”

“Because…” The only thing Ro could do was grab the nearest thing to him—a glass mixing bowl—and hurl it across the room. It splintered against the wall behind Finn, who didn’t so much as flinch. “Because she fuckin’ left us, Finn! Instead of trying to get better, she walked away from us. She just left us here—with him! And Da might have been a fuckin’ prick, but at least he was here.”

“Yup, you’re right.” That look, right there on Finn’s face, was the reason Ro was fighting this so hard. No kid deserved to have his heart broken like that. “I heard what she said, remember? She wanted to take you and Liam with her, but Da wouldn’t let her. And you should be fuckin’ thankful for that because, as bad as we had it with Da, imagine what it would have been like for you two living with her—in and out of the psych ward all the time, living on the streets…You and Liam would’ve ended up in foster care—probably separated—and who the hell knows what would have happened from there? It’s a safe bet Liam probably never would’ve picked up a baseball, and I doubt very much the three of us would be here right now.”

“Right,” Liam said, snorting. “ ’Cause being here right now is so much fun.”

Finn smirked, and after a few seconds Ro gave in and chuckled, too.

“Look, you guys do what you want; it’s fine.” With a sigh, he pulled the broom and dustpan out of the mudroom and set to cleaning up his mess. “If you want to talk to her or go visit her, go ahead, fill your boots. I’m just not up for it yet.”

“Yet?” Liam rocked forward on his chair again. “The word leaves room for possibility, which begs the next question: what to do about Hope.”

Ro froze in mid-sweep, inhaled deeply, then pushed everything into the dustpan, but he didn’t say a word.

“She says she didn’t know, Ro, and I gotta tell you, I believe her.”

“How many more times are you going to say that?” Ro barked.

“Well, I don’t know,” Liam scoffed. “How many more times is it gonna take for you to stop being a dick and believe it, too? You saw her, Finn; tell him.”

Ro glanced over at Finn, who didn’t look happy about it, but he did eventually shrug.

“She was pretty upset, Ro, and I don’t think she’s that good of an actress. Otherwise she’d be working in front of the camera instead of behind it.”

“But?”

Finn frowned. “But when Liam asked her about guests for the last two shows, she said they were working on a lead, remember?”

Besides her saying she’d do anything to prove herself, this was the thing that Ro couldn’t get past.

“We’ve got a lead on one for the finale.” That’s what Hope had said. We.

Those few words had been playing on repeat in his head ever since he saw Maggie standing on the dock, and they continued to play—no, to blare—all through that last night and into the morning. The only thing that finally drowned them out was the sound of the Helijet lifting off the dock, taking Hope and her crew away from the Buoys for the last time.

She didn’t return on Saturday, like she normally did, which meant they had to crowd around Jessie’s computer in the office to stream the latest episode after it had already aired.

None of them said much, there was no pizza, and the only one drinking was Jessie.

The whole next week was about as shitty as it could have been, starting with Ronan filling the salt shakers with sugar and then forgetting to order fresh strawberries to go with the shortcake he’d made. He broke three plates and two wineglasses and banged his head twice on open cupboard doors.

By the time the guests all left on Saturday, Ro was in no mood to watch the final episode of Hooked, especially if it meant they’d all be crammed in around Jessie’s computer again.

“So this is weird,” Kate said, walking into the kitchen with her hand open. There on her palm was a black flash drive. “The pilot brought this up with him. Shall we?”

No, Ronan didn’t want to see it, but the harder he protested, the harder the rest of them insisted they all had to watch it together, so he poured himself a fresh cup of coffee and flopped down in the same chair he always sat in. Alone, except for JD sitting at his feet.

The episode started the exact same way it always did, with shots of the Buoys and all of them, but then everything changed.

Instead of the story editors focusing on something funny that Finn or Liam had said, they’d gone straight to the footage of Ro and Jessie stopping on the dock, and as they all watched in horror, the entire thing played out in front of them again. This time, though, the only voice was Maggie’s, narrating over the video.

“What the fuck?” Ronan shoved off his chair, but the rest of them shushed him.

“Just sit down and watch,” Jessie said, her usual bossy tone even more commanding than usual.

Without going into all of the details she’d shared with them in the kitchen, Maggie explained to the viewers why she’d left, how she’d found her way back to the Buoys, and why she’d finally come back after all those years. There were shots of them all in the kitchen, of Maggie sobbing, and of the three of them looking so…not angry.

What? Ro distinctly remembered being furious. Why didn’t any of them look it? Why did they all look wrecked?

Because that’s what they’d been, standing there listening to Maggie, and no matter how much Ronan wanted to deny it, it was the truth. Yeah, he was pissed off, and he’d tried to hide behind that, but the truth was staring back at him from the TV. Hearing what Maggie had been through had crushed the three of them all over again.

To Hooked’s credit, they’d left in the audio clip where Maggie told Luka to shut her mouth, something that made them all laugh a little, and then the shot panned to Luka and Maggie climbing into the Helijet and leaving.

There wasn’t much left of the episode after that, but a good deal of it was spent showing Ro, Liam, and Finn all walking by the table and staring down at the note Maggie had left. And as much as Ro hated that everyone knew he’d done it that many times, it was at least a bit comforting to know that the other two had done it that many times, as well.

It was Jessie who’d finally picked the note up and pinned it to the corkboard in her office.

The episode ended with a split screen showing Liam, Finn, and Ro all looking up as the sound of the Helijet lifting off played in the background, and then the screen split one more time to show Maggie’s face as she looked out the Helijet’s window.

And each one of them wore the same heartbroken yet hopeful expression.

As the credits rolled, a banner came up along the bottom of screen with a 1-800 number, a website, and a message:

IF YOU OR A LOVED ONE IS SUFFERING FROM SIGNS OF DEPRESSION OR OTHER MENTAL ILLNESS, PLEASE CALL.

There were too many things banging around inside Ronan’s head for him to make sense of any of it. He was still pissed that Hooked had used the video footage of what was clearly an intensely personal time, but at least Luka hadn’t included any of the audio and for that he was grateful.

He didn’t say much when it was over, just grabbed the bucket of cleaning supplies and headed down to the cabins to get them ready for the next batch of guests. In all the times he’d gone into the white cabin over the years, he’d usually made a point of not looking at the pictures, but tonight…tonight he couldn’t look away.

He pulled the frame off the wall and sat down on the bed with it, staring down at that god-awful picture of Maggie. Jessie was right, it was the best one they had, and that should have told them everything they needed to know twenty-one years ago.

Her frown, set so deep across her forehead, and the way her shoulders slumped made her look tired and worn down, and that was exactly how he remembered her. He could probably count on one hand the number of times he remembered her laughing—really laughing, not the fake one she did so often.

The answer to everything was right there in that picture, and none of them had bothered to realize it. Ro rehung the picture, pressed his hand against it for a few seconds, then sighed and walked back to the lodge. There was no sign of the others, which didn’t surprise him, given the hour, and that was probably a good thing. He went into Jessie’s office, slid the door closed, and picked up the phone.

It only rang twice before her sleepy muffled voice answered, her Irish accent both ripping him open and soothing him at the same time.

“Aye? Hello?”

Ro squeezed his eyes shut as tight as he could and swallowed hard. “Hi, Ma.”

A second—that’s how long it took before she spoke again and his dam broke.

“Oh, my Ronan. Hello, my boy.”

This was bullshit, that’s what it was. It had been two weeks since that awful day at the Buoys. Two weeks since Ronan had last said a word to Hope, and two weeks since she’d taken Kate’s stupid advice and backed off.

It was also two weeks since she’d snuck into Jessie’s office in the middle of the night and called Luka. Hope had never been one to yell a lot, but that night…whew…even Ronan would’ve been proud of her.

The only reason Hope hadn’t walked off the show right then and there—and she’d come pretty close to doing that—was that after everything she’d been through with the O’Donnells and getting Hooked to the place it was, she wasn’t about to let Luka or anyone else control that last episode. Hope owed it to them to make it the best she possibly could.

Immediately after handing the flash drive to the Helijet pilot yesterday, Hope drove straight back to the studio and sat in front of her computer, taking in all the feedback as it came in. And, boy, did it come in. There were always a few naysayers, but Hope focused on the bulk of the responses, which were overwhelmingly positive.

Viewers were touched by the honest emotion in the episode, by the vulnerability shown, and by the way the O’Donnells, Kate, and Jessie were somehow able to still show their guests an amazing time with all that going on in their lives. There was compassion for Maggie, offers of help to all of them, and even one message from a man who logged on to say that after watching the episode, he’d called the 1-800 number on the screen and was finally getting help for his own depression.

Hope condensed all of it into one document and emailed it up to Jessie. When that was done, she typed up her resignation and left it on Luka’s desk.

She loved her job, and she knew she was good at it, but there was no way in heaven or hell she was going to spend one more day working with someone who would even think to undermine her the way Luka had.

And that was why she found herself on Sunday afternoon sitting on one of the lawn chairs she used as furniture in her apartment, thumbing through the classifieds. One ad blurred into the next, because Hope’s mind could focus on only one thing.

And that was that the whole thing was bullshit.

She hadn’t really done anything wrong, and she was tired of being blamed for it. So Ronan James O’Donnell could yell all he liked; he could even throw things or push her off the dock if he wanted to, she didn’t care. She was going to say her piece. And if she hurried, she could catch the charter flight with the rest of the guests going up this afternoon.

She grabbed a couple of granola bars and her phone, dumped them into her bag, and wrenched her door open, only to run smack into—

“Ronan?” Stumbling back, she lifted her bag and clutched it against her stomach. “What are you—I was just on my way out. I mean up. To you. To yell.”

“Yeah?”

Oh no, he wasn’t going to smile at her like that and expect her to fall into his arms like in some stupid chick flick, so she straightened her spine and glared at him with all the anger and hurt she’d been holding on to for the last two weeks.

“Yeah.” Great job on the comeback, idiot.

“Okay.” He crossed his arms over his chest and nodded. “Have at it.”

“What?”

“You said you were going to yell at me, so yell. I’m pretty sure I deserve it.”

“You’re damn right you deserve it, you arrogant asshole!” She shoved forward, jabbing her finger into his chest until he stumbled backward into the wall. “What the hell is wrong with you? I didn’t do a damn thing to you except make the stupid mistake of falling in love with you, and this is how you treat me? You’re right—you’re really not good at this shit, are you?”

Hope heard a door open down the hallway, but she didn’t have to look to see who it was; she just held her hand out flat to stop the old woman in her tracks.

“Mind your own business, Mrs. Burt.”

“If you don’t want an audience, maybe you shouldn’t be yelling out in the corridor.” A second later the door clicked shut, and as much as Hope wanted to throw something at her neighbor’s door, she knew the old lady was right.

“Go!” she said, pointing Ronan inside her apartment.

He moved into the middle of the small living area and stood there, looking about as uncomfortable as he could be.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m a total dick and I don’t deserve you.”

“You’re damn right you don’t!” Oooh, she was mad; for the last two weeks she’d been a heartbroken, mixed-up ball of anger and fear, but now she was just pissed. And if he didn’t cough up a damn good reason soon…

“I’m sorry.” His voice barely above a whisper, Ronan paled as he rubbed his hand over his mouth and tried again, his voice stronger this time but still a little unsure. “Fuck, Hope, I don’t know what…I’m…I’m so sorry. I saw Ma standing there, and then you…you looked so…and everything sort of collapsed in on me. I don’t know how else to explain it. I was—”

He stopped, twisted his mouth, and looked away from her for a few seconds.

“I was scared.”

“Yeah?” Hope snapped. “Well, guess what, Ronan? So was I! For God’s sake, I can only imagine what that must have been like for you, seeing Maggie show up the way she did, but you blew me off like I was nothing, like everything we had together, everything we meant to each other, was nothing. Like it was shit.”

She dropped her bag on the small coffee table and started rooting through it, until she found a package of tissues. Not that it much mattered, because by the time she got one out, her mascara was already running down her cheeks and her nose was nothing but a ball of snot.

And she didn’t care one bit.

“Hope.” He reached for her, but she jerked away and moved behind the patio lounger so at least there was something between them.

“You didn’t even give me a chance to explain anything, Ronan. You just walled yourself up in that damn kitchen and then stuck your security guards at the door so I couldn’t get in.”

“My what?”

“Oh, don’t play stupid with me. Your brothers and Jessie might as well have barred the door, for God’s sake. Anytime they thought I was getting too close to their precious Ronan, they stormed in like it was the bloody Crusades, swords drawn, ready to slay the bitchy Hope if she got too close.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, looking honestly confused. “I never told them to keep you away from me, Hope. I mean, no, I wouldn’t have been very nice to you if you’d have talked to me then, but I never once told them to do anything.”

“Well, they did.”

“Okay.” He huffed out a loud breath and paced the six feet of empty space on his side of the couch. “You know what? I can’t…I can’t be mad at them for that, because they know what I’m like and they probably knew that if I talked to you before I got my shit together, I’d say things I’d never be able to take back.”

“So you chose to not say anything. And you chose to not let me say anything.”

He sucked his lips in behind his teeth and nodded.

“What gives you that right? Just who the hell do you think you are?”

“Hope, I—”

“No, Ronan. You don’t get to make those decisions for me, not now, not ever. And if you think for one second I’m ever going to let you treat me like that again, you’re out of your goddamn mind.” The whole time she’d been yelling, she’d been pointing her finger at him, only this time it was wrapped in a dirty tissue. “I’m sorry for what you went through, I truly, truly am. And I’m sorry that it all got dumped in your lap the way it did, without any warning, but you’re not a kid anymore, Ronan, and it’s time you decided what it is you want.”

He mumbled something, but she wasn’t done, so she just rolled over whatever it was he’d said.

“If you want to keep living in fear, never trusting another human being, and expecting that everyone in the world is going to abandon you, then you need to walk out that door right now.” She pointed toward the door, never once letting her glare falter. “But if you’re going to stay with me, you need to trust me when I say that by God I love you and I’m not going anywhere. But know this: I’m not putting up with that kind of shit again. We’re either a team or we’re not, so you decide. Right now.”

He’d started to smile as soon as she said she loved him, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small stack of…were those recipe cards? No, not recipe cards.

“Flash cards?” she bellowed. “Are you freakin’ kidding me right now?”

Ronan’s smile turned into something more like a grimace as he shrugged. “This chick once told me it was a legit way to communicate.”

“Yeah, well, she was stupid.”

“No, she wasn’t. She’s the smartest person I know.” He turned the first one around for her to see, and it almost did her in right there in the living room.

In the center of the card was a horribly lopsided hand-drawn oval surrounded by different-colored equally lopsided flowers, and in the middle of the oval he’d simply written I love you.

He dropped that one to the floor and showed her the second one, similar to the first except this one read I’m sorry. There must have been half a dozen or so of them, all flowery, all saying something different, from I can’t breathe without you to Please come back and Please forgive me. And then the last one had a single flower in the corner, and that was it.

He let it fall to the floor with the rest and then lifted his hands in surrender.

“I was a mess, Hope, and I took it out on you. I don’t have any good excuses for it and I can’t offer any kind of defense for it. All I can do is tell you that I was wrong, and I regret it more than you’ll ever know.” He looked away for a second, and when he turned back, he pressed his fist against his chest and choked as he tried to speak. “It’s like…there’s this huge fucking hole inside me that’s eating me up, and you’re the only one who can stop it. You’re the only one who can fill it, Hope. I…I…”

He looked as if he were crumpling in on himself, something Hope recognized, because it was exactly how she’d been feeling for the last two weeks.

“Oh, Ronan.” She rounded the lounger, took his face in her hands, and sighed. “I do love you.”

His whole body heaved as he released a huge sigh.

“I don’t know why,” she said, trying not to smile as she smoothed her thumb over his bottom lip. “Because you’re driving me crazy.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

“No, you’re not.”

Finally a smile and a short shrug. “No, I’m not.”

God, she’d missed that beautifully handsome face of his. And those eyes. And, yes, she’d especially missed his mouth, the way a single kiss from him could leave her stupid, as it was doing right now. Slow and gentle, lingering and teasing, he tugged her over to the footstool and pulled her down on his lap.

“Tell me something,” she said, curling up against his chest.

“Anything.”

“What made you suddenly realize I wasn’t the horrible bitch you thought I was?”

“Hey.” He tipped her face up to his and shook his head. “I never once thought you were a bitch.”

His steady gaze and solemn look told her he wasn’t joking about that—not even a little bit.

“Okay,” she said, squirming back down into the cradle of his arms. “What you made you suddenly realize I wasn’t the one who brought Maggie up?”

“Well,” he said, “to start with, Liam and Finn must’ve told me a couple hundred times that you swore you didn’t know who she was, that you thought Peggy was just a long-lost relative.”

“I did.”

“I know. I mean, I didn’t then, but I do now, because I finally realized something.”

“What’s that?”

“You say ‘we.’ Right from the very beginning, whenever you talked about the show or the production team, it was always ‘we,’ never ‘me’ or ‘I’ or ‘them,’ always ‘we.’ ”

“Well, duh,” she scoffed. “A team consists of more than one person, so that would be a ‘we,’ but what the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“I just never thought about it before.” He threaded his fingers through hers and pressed a kiss against her knuckles. “So when you said, ‘We’ve got a lead on one for the finale,’ you didn’t really mean ‘we,’ as in you and everybody; you meant Luka.”

“Yeah, so what?”

“So that’s what tripped me up.” He paused and snorted quietly. “Okay, there was a bunch of other shit, too, but I thought you meant you were in on it.”

“I tried to tell you,” she said. “But you wouldn’t even look at me.”

“I’m sorry.” He pressed a soft kiss to her forehead, then tipped her face up again so he could kiss every inch of it, and between each one, he repeated his new mantra. “I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” she laughed. “I get it.”

He kissed her one more time, then tightened his arms around her. “Is there something you want to tell me about your job?”

Hope snorted against his neck. “What job? I sort of quit.”

“Yeah,” he drawled. “So we heard.”

“What?” Hope sat straight up on his lap. “How did you hear already?”

“Well, our good friend Luka called this morning to ask about the new contracts, and during that conversation—where there may or may not have been a few f-bombs dropped—she let it out that you’d quit. So…”

“So what?” Hope asked. She wasn’t so sure she liked the sly look on his face.

“You left copies of the contracts for us.”

“Yeah.”

“And one of them had the network guy’s card stapled to it—you know, that Edgar What’s-His-Name.”

“Makepeace?”

“Yeah, him. We called him.”

“You called Edgar directly?”

“Yeah.” Ronan shrugged dismissively, as if he called network executives all the time on their days off. “Anyway, we told him we’d sign on for another two seasons, but only if you’re the one running the show. If Luka so much as sends us an email or a text, the deal’s off.”

Hope couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“But…but I quit.”

“So un-quit. Edgar said he’d call you tomorrow to talk it over.” Ronan traced his finger down the side of her face and smiled slowly. “And just so there’s no misunderstanding, whatever you decide to do, I got your back, even if it means you go to Tuk. But if my opinion counts for anything, I’m voting for you to take your job back and come home.”

“Home?” The word knotted in her throat until she barely managed to squeak it out.

“To the Buoys.”

“You want me to move up to the Buoys.”

“Well…yeah,” he said, blushing a little. “JD misses you.”

“Oh, does he, now?”

“Well, maybe not him so much,” Ronan said, grinning. “But I do.”

“Is that right?”

“Fuck yeah,” he breathed. “So much.”

“Me, too.” She smiled a kiss against his mouth, then froze there as questions started piling up faster than she could spit them out. “But what about work? I can’t not work all winter. I’ll need to find something, but then how am I going to get there? Flying in and out is expensive and boating is too slow, so do you think I should keep my apartment here until we figure it out or—”

“Hope, sweetheart, you gotta stop, ’cause there’s only two things I can think about right now. Number one is you. I need to get you home, and I need to do that soon, because I can’t go another night without you in my bed.”

“It was actually my bed,” she muttered, laughing when he growled at her. “But, okay, what’s number two?”

Ronan’s eyes crinkled at the corners as his grin widened. “There’s going to be fifteen guests landing at the lodge in a couple hours, and they’re gonna be some pissed if they don’t get supper.”

“Oh my God,” she cried, scrambling off his lap. “I wasn’t even thinking about that—you need to get back before Finn starts serving them all mac and cheese!”

She grabbed his wrist and tugged him up, but instead of following her to the door, he stopped in the middle of her tiny, sparse living room and pulled her to him.

“Ronan, you have to go or you’ll miss the charter taking the guests in.”

Panic raced through Hope’s veins. If Ronan missed that flight, Finn really would feed the guests macaroni, and then…and then Hope forgot what she was worried about, because Ronan slid his fingers through her hair and tipped her face up to his. Her pulse thrummed in her veins as she fisted her hands around his T-shirt and held on.

Ronan leaned closer, brushing his mouth against hers with the barest of touches, then breathed a soft kiss against her jaw.

“Mmm,” she purred, tipping her head to the side so he’d kiss her neck and maybe flick his tongue against her earlobe just like…that. “Um…how many boxes of macaroni d’you think they have up there?”

His lips curled into a smile against her neck. “Enough.”

“Okay, good,” she laughed. “The bedroom’s down the hall.”