Chapter Ten
“SO I SAID, DEANNA, we had a party when you married the bastard. We should have a party for cutting him loose,” Wendy declared. Or was it Jasmine? Pru had lost track.
“The divorce was officially filed this morning, so here we are,” the newly single Deanna announced.
Pru topped off the woman’s wine. “Congratulations on your new freedom.”
The group of ten women from Nashville had arrived mere minutes after they’d finished prepping the rooms. Flynn had appointed himself bag boy and cheerfully hauled luggage up to the assigned rooms, chatting and flirting the whole way, while Pru and Ari were plating hors d’oeuvres and uncorking some wine. At least three of the women practically swooned on the spot. Not that Pru could blame them. Flynn was sexy as hell on an average day, and when he laid on that Irish charm, no woman could resist him, as evidenced by the fact that Deanna had tried to invite him to drop by her room later.
“Sorry about propositioning your man,” she said. “If my ex had been anything like him, we wouldn’t be having a divorce party this weekend. Came right out and said he was engaged and started singing your praises. You are one lucky woman.”
Pru couldn’t stop the smug smile that curved her lips. “I certainly am.”
“I hope you won’t be offended if we look,” one of the others added.
“He’s so very pretty,” another sighed.
Pru laughed. “Yes, he is. And look all you like. There will be a few other handsome faces available for your ogling pleasure in the next little bit. Flynn and a bunch of other local musicians will be having a jam session out back this evening.”
“Yeah? What sort of music?” Deanna asked.
“A little of this, a little of that. Bluegrass, country, Irish…a lot will depend on who happens to show up this week.”
“Oh, is it a regular thing?” Wendy asked.
“We’re trying it out this summer. Feel free to take your wine and canapés outside to enjoy.”
Ari stuck her head in the room. “Hey Mom, we have incoming.”
Pru froze in the process of uncorking another bottle of wine. Mom. Ari had just called her Mom. Emotion swelled in her throat ’til she thought she might just dissolve into a puddle of goo.
Ari frowned. “You okay?”
Pru swallowed. “Fine. I’m fine. Incoming what, baby?”
“Locals. Looks like word got out about our jam session. People are parking along the drive and hauling in coolers and lawn chairs.”
As the Nashville girls began to make their way outside, Pru headed to the front of the house and peered out.
“Good Lord. They’re all the way to the street.”
Ari peeked out the sidelight on the other side of the door. “Well, at least they’re bringing their own snacks. I don’t think we have anywhere near enough to feed that many people.”
“Indeed, we do not.” If they continued to make this a regular event, she really needed to find out if there were any kind of special permits they needed. “But people are good.”
“People are good,” Ari agreed.
By the time the musicians began the opening set, the entire backyard looked like a giant picnic. People sat in chairs or sprawled on quilts around the makeshift stage. Flynn had finally taken down the lights from the wedding and strung them across the yard, lending a festive feel to the gathering. Pru circulated, greeting locals, chatting with guests. The whole thing felt more like a party than work.
“We’re about to take a little break shortly, but I wanted to end this first set with a song for our lovely hostess. Can we get a round of applause for Pru Reynolds?”
The ripple of applause was punctuated by a few whistles and whoops. Pru felt her cheeks heat and was grateful the sun was fading.
Flynn swapped his fiddle for a guitar and looked right at her. “I’ve been working on turning what I feel for you into a melody. I don’t know as this quite does it justice, but it’s the best I’ve got.” He began to strum.
Pru curled a hand around the porch rail as she felt her knees go weak. His voice wrapped around her like velvet, and everyone else melted away as he crooned the sweetest words she’d ever heard—words of love and home and forever. Words that embodied everything she wanted, everything she needed. He kept his eyes fixed on hers. She couldn’t read them from this distance, but her heart stumbled nonetheless.
Was he saying he really loved her? God, it felt like it. It felt like this performance was for her and her alone. With a pang of grief, Pru dismissed that as wishful thinking. He was a performer. An exceptionally gifted one, who was only playing the part they’d agreed on. He wanted these people to believe that he loved her and wanted to marry her. That’s all it was.
But she wanted. As the last notes died way, as his eyes lingered on hers, she felt the pull between them. She felt the undeniable connection she’d forged with this man. On some level, despite the extraordinary circumstances, it was real. Wasn’t it?
“Well that’s it. I have to hate you.” Deanna’s voice broke into Pru’s reverie.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“There’s just no justice in the world. There is a man like that out there and you’re the one who’s going to marry him.”
“You’re going to what?”
Pru whirled to find her sister and Xander standing half a dozen feet away, mouths agape. Oh shit. “Kennedy! You’re back! We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.” She knew her voice was way too bright, but she couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but stare. This was not how she’d wanted to present the news.
Kennedy zeroed in on her left hand, lifting it to study the ring. “Lucy, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.” The joking words did nothing to lighten the serious expression.
“I—” Jesus, what could she say?
Flynn had worked his way through the crowd. “Welcome back.”
The hand he slid around her waist settled the explosion of nerves in her belly. They were in this together. They’d get through it together. Even if Xander was looking at Flynn’s hand like he was considering taking it off at the wrist.
“Why don’t we take this inside?” Flynn suggested.
Ari came flying across the porch. “Kennedy!”
Kennedy absorbed the enthusiastic hug. “Hey baby girl. Missed you.”
“Missed you, too.” Ari stepped back to slip an arm around Pru, beaming up at Flynn. “Isn’t this awesome?”
“It’s something,” Xander said.
“Love is in the air,” she sang. “Flynn’s teaching me to play the fiddle. And check it, everybody loves the new Friday night jam session. Isn’t it great? You should sit down and listen.” Her words came in a torrent of enthusiasm that could only be managed by a teenager.
Pru laid a hand on Ari’s shoulder. “I’m sure they will after the break. We need to step inside for a bit to give them the update. Could you keep an eye on things out here, sweetheart?”
“’Kay!”
None of them spoke as they wove their way through the crowd and into the house.
As soon as Pru shut the door to the family study, Kennedy rounded on them. “What the hell, y’all? Engaged? We’ve been gone for two weeks. Two weeks. Half a month. Fourteen days. A fortnight, even. Are you insane?”
Hearing the timeline hammered on like that was epic splash of reality. They’d been living in this fantasy world, where everything felt like it had taken much longer than it really had. Put like that, in a tone just shades away from outrage, Pru remembered anew why this scheme was nuts.
“It’s not what you think,” she began.
“Then please, tell me how you haven’t both lost your freaking minds.”
“Watch it, deifiúr beag.” A faint edge rode beneath Flynn’s easy tone.
Pru took a breath and decided to say it fast, like ripping off a Band-Aid. “It all started when I decided to seduce Flynn.”
Kennedy stared. “When you did what now?”
“You heard me.”
“I heard you, but I’m having trouble believing it.”
Pru bristled. “Is it so hard to believe I have interest enough in an attractive man and the confidence to do something about it?”
“Well, I just…I never thought—”
“Right. You never thought. No one ever thinks about me because I’m the responsible, dependable one, who can always be counted on to do anything anybody needs because I have no life.”
Kennedy paused in her pacing, distress interrupting her disbelief. “We don’t think that, Pru.”
“You do. All of you do. And why shouldn’t you? That’s been me most of my life. That will be me for most of the rest of it, probably, because Ari will come first. She does come first, and I don’t regret that choice for a second. But I just wanted one thing for myself. I wanted Flynn.” Seeing Xander’s ears turning red, she rolled her eyes. “I’ll spare you the gory details, Xander. Suffice it to say we have an adult relationship.”
He held up a hand. “None of my business. But how the hell did you get from an affair to marriage in two weeks?”
“There were…extenuating circumstances.”
Xander narrowed his eyes in the cop stare meant to intimidate. “Tell me what kind of extenuating circumstances lead to a proposal.”
“It wasn’t a proposal,” Pru said. “Not exactly. It was very bad timing with the arrival of Ari’s new social worker.” As Flynn slipped his hand into hers, she filled them in as succinctly as possible.
“Why didn’t you just say you wouldn’t be getting married until after the adoption was finalized, and he’d be living elsewhere in the meantime?” Kennedy asked.
Pru opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. That possibility had never even crossed her mind.
“We panicked,” Flynn said. “And either way, we’re much too far down this road to back out now.”
“Who else knows the truth?” Xander asked.
“Athena,” Pru said.
“And Maggie?” Kennedy asked.
“Athena thought she’d handle the long-distance relationship version better.”
Kennedy pinched the bridge of her nose. “I am way too jet lagged for this conversation.”
Pru just wanted a chance to regroup. How could she have gone from that glorious, heady feeling of being swept away…to this? “I’m sure you’ll want to discuss it more later, but we have guests we need to see to.”
“I need to be getting back out there for the second set.”
“Go ahead. I’ll be along in a minute.”
Flynn’s eyes lingered on hers, a silent question of whether she’d be all right alone with them. That was very much debatable, but she needed to face this, and someone had to deal with their guests. She squeezed his hand. With a faint nod, he slipped out the door.
Across the room, Kennedy dropped into a chair. “Pru, I don’t even know what to say about all this.”
“Look, I know it’s a shock, and it’s not ideal, but—”
“Ideal? No. It’s a clusterfuck. We’re going to have to lie to the social worker. If she finds out…”
Xander laid a hand on her shoulder. “Hey.”
“I am aware of the stakes, Kennedy,” Pru snapped. “If you think I haven’t worried myself sick over the whole thing, you’d be wrong.”
“It’s not just that she could take Ari away. It’s the situation. Honey, I’m worried about you. Flynn is the kind of guy you’ve spent your whole life avoiding for very good reasons. What’s this going to do to you when it’s over? You’ve been down this road before, and it damn near killed you.”
Pru opened her mouth to say it wasn’t the same, but the door swung open and Ari barged in. “Flynn’s going to stick.”
She was too speechless at the utter conviction in Ari’s voice to chastise her for eavesdropping…again. Fresh worry bloomed. They hadn’t talked about this, not since the beginning. Maybe that was a mistake on her part. Maybe she should have kept reiterating the transient nature of their circumstances instead of letting herself get carried away by the fantasy.
“Honey, you understand that this is temporary, right?” That felt more real now that Kennedy and Xander had burst their happy little bubble. “As soon as things are finalized, Flynn’s going to leave.” Because that’s what men like him did. Like her father. That’s what Kennedy was implying. The idea of it had a pit yawning in her stomach.
Ari shrugged, apparently unimpressed with the argument. “Maybe. But his first reaction to this whole thing was to marry you. Think about that.” And on that note, she walked back out.
~*~
Flynn had never wanted a performance to be over with more than the jam session that night. So, of course, it ran long, with guests and townsfolk lingering and socializing. Kennedy and Xander stuck around for a bit, listening, visiting with locals, and Pru had been a little bit dimmer for their presence. Now that he’d had the chance to see her without it, he recognized the shell she’d worn when he first met her—or maybe it was really armor. She’d pulled into herself in the face of Kennedy and Xander’s disapproval, and Flynn hated it. He hated seeing the worry back in her eyes.
At the end of the night, after Ari had crashed and the Nashville girls had been poured into bed—literally in the case of a few of them—Pru still moved around the kitchen, putting together a massive casserole for the next morning’s breakfast. “Deanna’s booked a massage tomorrow, and I need to get up with Abbey to see if she’s willing and able to come in for a group facial for the Nashville girls. We’ll need to clean up from tonight’s shindig, of course.” She continued to ramble on about anything and everything except how things went with Kennedy and Xander.
At last, Flynn simply stepped into her path and wrapped his arms around her. “Breathe.”
On a shuddering breath, Pru burrowed in, leaning against him. “God, Flynn. This is not how I wanted this to come out. I wanted to explain it to them in a controlled fashion, make them see the logic of it. And instead…”
“It will be all right.” If it was within his power to grant, he’d make sure of it.
She tipped her head up to look at him, those dark eyes brimming with anxiety. “How will it? For our plan to work, they have to agree to it. They have to be willing to lie for us. You saw them.”
“They’re worried about the situation—rightly so. And Kennedy is legitimately worried about you.” Flynn hesitated. “What did she mean you’ve been down this road before?” Pru stiffened, and he rushed to explain. “I saw Ari hiding and started to come back to talk to her about it. I heard the last bit of your conversation when she went into the room.”
Her expression shuttered and she stepped away from him. It was such a contrast to the warmth he’d grown used to with her, he almost rubbed his arms as if against a chill. A new knot of anxiety curled in his gut. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“It was forever ago. It doesn’t matter now.”
“Obviously Kennedy thinks it does. What’s she talking about, agra?”
“My father.”
Whatever he’d expected her to say, it wasn’t that. “Your father? I don’t understand. What does that have to do with me?”
Pru sucked in a breath and let it out in a gush. “Because you’re exactly his type. The type I have spent my entire life avoiding getting involved with.”
“What type is that?”
“A born gypsy. He was an actor with an on-the-road theater troupe. Handsome, a brilliant performer, with the itchiest feet you’ve ever seen. And I worshiped the ground he walked on. So did my mother—until she got pregnant. I don’t remember her. She’d been an actress with the troupe, or so I was told. My coming along ruined an up and coming career. As soon as she was able, she disappeared and left me with my father. I was barely more than an infant.”
Jesus Christ. He’d heard the sad story of Kennedy’s birth parents and how her own mother had abandoned her when she was little. There were, she’d told him, a lot of similar stories among her sisters and foster siblings. No one ended up in the system without a sad story. But a baby. How could a woman be so cold?
“Daddy loved me, in his way, but being a parent was never his first priority. It often wasn’t even his last. The only reason he managed to keep me as long as he did was because the entire troupe sort of shared care-taking duty of me. But people rotated in and out of it, depending on the show. Some were more kid-friendly than others. Most agreed the road was not the best place for a child. Eventually, there was no one willing to look after me but Daddy.”
She paused, knitting her hands together in a restless gesture that betrayed far more upset about this than her matter-of-fact tone conveyed. “I was left behind twice before social services got involved and took me away.”
“Left behind?” Flynn demanded.
“He forgot me. The first time was only a couple of hours. I’d been playing in the theater dressing room, and he thought I was already on the bus when they rolled out. The second time, I fell asleep during the after party. It was late, after midnight, and I’d found a quiet spot to curl up and sleep. I didn’t wake up until morning, and the theater was dark and empty.”
“How old were you?”
“Seven.”
Appalled, Flynn wanted to gather her up, but he sensed she needed the distance, just now. “You must’ve been terrified.”
“Beyond. I made it up to the front lobby and beat on the front doors until my hands were bruised.” She looked at them now, as if she could still see the bruises. “Eventually, a woman walking her dog saw me and called the police. The bus rolled up about the time they got the door open. My father was beside himself. They wouldn’t turn me over to him. Social services was called. They set up a court date to establish his fitness as a parent, and I was put into my first foster home.”
As she spoke, her voice went flatter and flatter. He’d only thought she’d been shut down before. “It was just supposed to be temporary, until the hearing. The troupe had to move on. They had a show scheduled and couldn’t afford to miss it. He went with them because his understudy was ill, and no one else could play the part. Everybody’s paycheck depended on it. He promised me he’d come back as soon as it was done. But as it happens, at that show, he finally got the big break he’d been waiting for all those years. So, he didn’t show for the court hearing, and I came to Joan.”
“And that’s it? He didn’t fight for you?”
“Oh, he made a few grand gestures over the years. Promises he usually broke. But he always left in the end. His dreams were more important than me.”
“He sounds a right bastard. What kind of a man walks away from his child? What kind of man forgets his child?” Ari had only been in his life for a matter of weeks, and he couldn’t fathom not thinking of her every day for the rest of his life.
“A selfish one.” The matter-of-fact tone held no judgment. This was her truth. She was simply stating it. Flynn could see her struggling to pull herself back from whatever dark place the recitation had dragged her to. “You’re not selfish. My father would never have done what you’re doing. He’d have found some excuse, some way of slipping out of it. You may have a gypsy’s soul, Flynn, but you’re not like my father. You’re a far better man.”
“I’m not sure the bar’s too high for being a better man than he was. I’m sorry for how he hurt you.” The words felt wholly inadequate in the face of what she’d endured. He could see now why she was so fiercely determined to put Ari first, to maintain the home that had been given to her by Joan, and he felt himself slide a little deeper in love with her.
Pru shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. I’m a grown woman, and I made my own choice to be with you. I don’t regret it.”
“Kennedy seems to think you will.” That stung. They’d been friends for years, and he’d thought she knew him better than that.
“She’s not factoring the most salient point.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t expect you to stay.”
The words, her obvious belief in them, were a slap in the face. Flynn wanted to argue, to make the declaration he’d been trying to make with the song he’d sung before the entire night had gone off the rails. But in her current frame of mind, would she believe him? She had reasons, good ones, not to trust people to stick around. Both her parents had left her. Kennedy had left for years, and though the reasons hadn’t been what Pru and her sisters had thought, the emotional toll was bound to be the same. Even Athena and Maggie had gone off to their own lives across the country, trusting that she’d be what she’d always been. The one who stayed.
She needed someone to stay for her. Flynn wanted to be that man. Above and beyond the untenable position they were in with the phony engagement, he wanted a life with her. This life. But he understood that Pru was a woman who’d put little stock in words and promises. Too many people had broken them. He needed to prove himself through actions, and that would simply take time.
So instead of making professions, Flynn stepped into her, cupping her face in his hands. “I’m here. Whatever may come, I’m here. I won’t leave you to face any of this alone.” I won’t leave you.
When she sighed, some of the tension seemed to leech out of her. “Take me to bed, Flynn.”
If this was all she’d take from him for now, he’d give her everything he had. He led her back to the bedroom, where they quietly undressed. Here was tenderness and a bottomless well of patience as he took her up and over the first peak. And if, as they slid over the edge together with sighs and moans, he gave her the words in Irish, she was too lost in sensation to ask. But he held the words, and her, close to his heart, as they both drifted off to sleep.