Chapter Fifteen
Sinclair took a sip of wine and glanced around Beau and Savannah’s apartment, well aware her sister was giving her the eye from across the table. Hoping to maintain control of the conversation, she pointed to the wall behind Savannah and said, “I love that painting you picked up on your honeymoon.” The small watercolor from Bora Bora fit in well with the eclectic mix of art in her sibling’s large and uniquely varied collection.
Savannah didn’t even bother glancing behind her. She nudged her dinner plate away, rested her elbows on the table, and propped her chin across her linked fingers.
The blown-glass pendant lights suspended overhead showered gold highlights in her blond curls and made her look like a younger version of their mother.
“Well, that about covers all your topics, right? We’ve talked about how the baby’s coming along, how your trade show went, and what you have lined up for the jewelry expo next week in New York. You’re up-to-date on Beau’s schedule—he’s sorry he’s missing tonight, by the way—”
“Me, too.” Something told her she was about to be really sorry, because Savannah shared more with their mother than looks. She would only be put off for so long. Sinclair had held her sister’s curiosity at bay for almost a month, thanks to her ability to dodge phone calls and keep her texts short and baby-focused.
“Now it’s my turn. For my topic, I choose you and Shane. You decided to give things a second chance, and it’s going well.”
“Um…is that a question?”
“Not really. Your face tells me as much.”
“What’s up with my face?”
Savannah laughed. “Have you seen yourself lately? Nobody glows like you unless they’re getting it good. I don’t care how well the trade show went.”
At one point in her life, she’d managed to keep a big secret for a pretty long time. When had she become such an open book? Seeking to stall, she got up and cleared their plates. “I can’t discuss this without pie.”
Savannah pushed back from the table and stood, smoothing the flannel shirt she’d obviously stolen from Beau over her stomach and unconsciously giving Sinclair a glimpse of baby bump. “I’ll supply the pie.” She walked to the small, galley-style kitchen. “You supply the details.”
“There’s really not much to tell,” she demurred and put the dishes in the sink, while Savannah cut generous slices from a home-baked Dutch apple pie. She handed one to Sinclair, took one for herself, and led them back to the table.
“Your perma-smile says different.” She settled herself in her chair and waited until Sinclair did the same. “Soooo, what’s the deal?”
Sinclair raised a forkful of pie to her lips. “We’re taking a second chance. So far, so good.” There was really nothing else to add, so she took a bite of the warm, lattice-crusted treat. Savannah’s Dutch apple was her favorite.
“He’s staying in Magnolia Grove?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Interesting answer. Why not a simple, ‘Yes’?”
The pie turned to dust in her mouth. She wasn’t qualifying anything. Was she? “I don’t mean it that way.” She concentrated on scooping up another bite.
“You trust him?”
The second bite stuck in her throat. She put down her fork and managed to swallow. Just. “Ever since he’s been back, he’s done nothing but keep his word. He does exactly what he says he’s going to do…”
“But?”
She winced. The few bites of pie now sat like bricks in her stomach. “It’s not Shane I don’t trust. It’s fate. We both had the best intentions last time around, but first he couldn’t follow through, and then I couldn’t.”
“Sinclair…” Savannah spoke around a mouthful of pie. “You were teenagers last time around. Neither of you had the kind of control over the direction of your lives you have now, as adults. Do you love him?”
The room suddenly felt small and sweltering. She eased her plate away, because the buttery, cinnamon-y smell of the pie was starting to turn her stomach, and searched for some pat answer that would get her sister to back off. What spilled out instead was, “I do.”
She clapped her hands over her mouth, but it was too late. The words rang with truth, and she couldn’t take them back even if she wanted to.
“You love him,” Savannah repeated. “There now. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Slowly, she lowered her hands. “Oh, God, I do. Not just old, unresolved parts of my heart, but the whole enchilada, and…what the heck are you doing?”
Savannah turned away, but the move did nothing to hide a very audible sniffle. “Don’t mind me. It’s the hormones. I tear up at the drop of a hat. I can’t help myself. Anyway”—she wiped her eyes and looked at Sinclair—“that’s wonderful. I’m happy for you. What did Shane say?”
“Uh…”
“Wait. Have you told him you love him?”
“Hell, no.”
“Why not?” Frustration had her picking up her fork again and stabbing it toward Sinclair. “You just told me you trust him, and everything’s going well—”
“It scares the crap out of me, okay?”
“For heaven’s sake, why?”
“It’s almost too easy this time around. I keep waiting for fate to lob a grenade and blow us up. Again.”
“Wow. Welcome to the Beau Montgomery School of Emotional Risk Aversion. You know what finally got Beau over the dread?”
Under the table, she pressed a hand to her stomach. “What?” She really did need to know, because something was seriously wrong with her if she couldn’t even talk about being happy without giving herself indigestion.
“He realized even if it all turned to shit tomorrow, he wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on us. Everything we already had, everything we’d already experienced, made all the uncertainty worth the risk.”
Was she there? After everything had turned to shit the first time, she’d spent plenty of time wishing she’d never met Shane. Wishing she could remove him like shrapnel from her fractured heart and move on. But she couldn’t. She’d gathered up the pieces and put herself back together, but he’d left scars that had never faded. Not fully. Maybe because she’d always secretly hoped they’d get a second chance, or maybe she was just a masochist, but if things went wrong for them now, there wouldn’t be a third chance. And that made the stakes feel dizzyingly high. If her heart broke again, would she be able to put it back together? A wave of nausea washed over her, leaving her sweaty and shaking.
“Are you okay?” Savannah stared at her, a frown creasing her brows.
“I don’t feel so good.”
“You don’t look so good.”
“I’ll be okay.” The nausea subsided a little, and she mustered up what she hoped was a smile. “For some reason, the pie turned on me tonight.”
“Here, try this”—Savannah got up and returned with a large glass of something cloudy—“it’s lemon-ginger water.”
She raised the glass and gave the concoction a sniff. The citrusy scent didn’t turn her stomach, so she took a sip. Then another.
“I hope you’re not coming down with something. Maybe you should skip New York and take it easy for a few days instead?”
Sinclair shook her head. “I can’t skip the expo. I’ve already paid, scheduled appointments, meetings… I’m hand delivering a bunch of orders. I’ll be fine. I’m probably just dehydrated. Spent all day setting up my booth, manning it, breaking it down, and didn’t drink enough water.”
Savannah returned to her seat and laughed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were pregnant. That’s my cure for morning sickness you’re sucking down.”
“Ha. Ha. We both know that’s not possible.” Not without an in vitro specialist involved. But as she took another drink—the darn stuff was actually calming her queasies—she consulted her mental calendar and choked a little on her swallow. She was late, and she was never late.
“Yeah, yeah. I know what they told you. But be warned.” She pointed to her own belly. “Mother Nature loves surprises.”
“I know. She already surprised me once. Based on how that turned out, it would take more than a surprise now. It would take a miracle.”
Did she want a miracle? Did Shane? Does it even matter? She tossed the question at the expanding balloon in her chest that felt a lot like hope. If you have somehow managed to conceive, you’re virtually guaranteed another ectopic pregnancy.
She took a more careful sip, ran the math again in her head, and came up with the same answer. Miracle or not, if she didn’t get her period by tomorrow, she’d be making a stop at the drugstore on her drive home.
…
“Light a fire under the civil engineer, Haggerty. They told you they’d expedite the surveys, and it’s been over a month since I requested the report—”
“And expedite means, ‘within six weeks,’ Shane, which they are. Nonetheless, I followed up earlier today when I got your email. Raj had a family emergency and had to fly home to India. He’s due back in a few days and will complete and send the report first thing.”
Shane paced the hotel room. “They don’t have wifi in India? He can’t finalize and transmit a report from there?”
Yes, he was being a hard-ass, and no, it had nothing to do with work timelines. It had to do with his whole fucking life being on hold while he waited for a report. He wanted to tell Sinclair he loved her, but this time around he needed to back the words up with actions. He’d promised to protect her home, and he had a decent plan for doing it, but all his discussions with the structural engineer and the architect were purely hypothetical until he had the water displacement information in the report…and knew what the city planned to do about it. They could deny the permit, but he wasn’t holding his breath. On the other hand, the barn could only be raised so far, and there was no point going to the expense if it didn’t sufficiently reduce the risk.
“I think the problem is personal, not technological.”
“I don’t have a personal problem,” Shane replied, automatically on the defensive.
“Not you. Raj. He’s a tad busy right now with his father’s funeral. I guess he could balance his laptop on the casket…”
Fuck. “All right. Fine.” He ran a hand through his hair and stared out the window of his hotel room at the magnolias lining the town square. “Sorry for his loss.”
“We’re sending flowers. Why the panic? I thought you said everything was going smoothly?”
“It is.” Tight muscles at the back of his neck ached as he tipped his head toward his left shoulder, and then the right. “I’m not panicked. I’m annoyed. Everything’s on track, but the city planning commission is holding off on making a decision about the resort’s golf course until they get the report. We’ve got a meeting tomorrow morning, and I wanted to put something in front of them.”
“One more week, tops. Is Pinkerton getting fidgety?”
“No more so than usual.” Less so, actually, and that was also a problem. The last couple times he’d seen Ricky, instead of hammering at him for an update, the guy had given him a shit-eating smirk. The little prick was up to something. Shane didn’t like it. “Even if he is, he’ll just have to jack himself off a little longer. It is what it is. I’ll explain the situation at the meeting tomorrow. One more week won’t kill him.”
“Make sure the same is true of you,” Haggerty said drily. “Don’t go off on this guy during the meeting if shit goes sideways.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Credit me with a little self-control.”
“I credit you with plenty of self-control, but when you call me ready to tear some engineer a new one when he’s still within the timeline, I sense you’re wound tight. No surprise. This one’s more than just a job to you. You’re back on your home turf, and your ego’s involved. You know as well as I do, most politicians just want to check the box that shows they did a passable amount of due diligence on stuff like this and then approve whatever garners them the most votes. Piled on that, the same whiny asshole responsible for your inglorious departure ten years ago is on the other side of the table, and he’s an even bigger asshole now. You can bet your left nut he’s going to try and put you in his crosshairs. So, yeah, I’m cautioning you, because one thing I know about assholes, Maguire, is they’re full of shit.”
“Acknowledged, but it’s a nonissue. In a week, I’ll have the report, and the city can make an informed decision. In the meantime, I’m not going to give him the opportunity to take any shots at me.”
“As it happens, I have a plan to guarantee he can’t take any shots.”
Shane turned away from the window and crossed to the desk. “What’s your plan?”
“Take you out of his line of fire for a few days.”
“How’re you going to do that?” But he already knew. Not the specifics, but the general concept. Some client was in need, but for the first time in his career, he wanted to tell Haggerty to send someone else.
“There’s an off-season storm gathering steam in the Pacific. If you can believe the weather forecasts—and you can’t, half the time, but that’s another issue—it’s going to hit the islands later this week.”
Shane leaned over the desk and tapped his laptop to bring up the latest radar. Then he took another second to squint at the screen. “I don’t know. Looks like a big, disorganized swirl right now. I don’t see how anyone’s extrapolating a path from this.”
“You have talents I respect, but predicting the weather isn’t one of them. Even if it was, we have a world-class hotel chain entrusting us with their emergency planning, and they’ve got a brand-new, five-star property on the tip of Kauai bracing for the first real test of their disaster readiness. As the architect of those plans, they want you there. This is where we put skin in the game, Shane. I can’t tell them we think the forecasts are bullshit. That’s not going to fly.”
No, he was. And that had to change. He wanted to build a home, a life, and most importantly, a future with Sinclair. He wanted predictability in his schedule, and he couldn’t get it while being the first guy on speed dial whenever a client needed a hand to hold. That wasn’t going to work for him anymore. And the Seattle project still loomed in his future. He had to have a conversation with Haggerty…just as soon as he carried this project over the finish line. “I’ve got the meeting tomorrow. I can’t leave until Friday, at the earliest.” Sinclair flew out Sunday for New York. If he was right about the weather, he’d be back by the time she returned from her convention.
“That works. I’ll let the resort know. Expect a text from Barb with the flight details. As long as the forecast holds, plan on a weekend in Hawaii.”