11. Followed Directions

11

FOLLOWED DIRECTIONS

" J esus!" Van shouted when he pushed back from the desk he'd been sitting at a week later while he tried to make heads or tails of the information Kyle had sent over.

He'd spent all day Saturday reading up on summaries of the hotels. What they offered, how many rooms, how many employees. There were incident reports he'd caught up on too. Everything in the past year but knew there was more.

He was happy to go to work on Sunday, then came home and read some more. He did that every day this week.

What he hadn't done once was open up the envelope with the personal information in it from his grandfather.

Nope, not ready.

He'd admit it. He was a coward.

The battle of wills he had about reaching out to his father had been great enough that he almost put his fist through a wall.

Almost.

He stopped himself just in time.

The bastard didn't even know his son had left the area.

He was positive if Adam Harlowe knew where he was and what was left to him, he'd see the man on his doorstep trying to make amends.

When there was a knock at his door, he got up to see who it could be.

Kelsey's car was in the driveway. He hadn't told her where he lived but figured she got the information from her father.

He opened the door.

"It's a week," she said. She looked at her watch. "Almost exactly. I got out of work early."

Since she was in shorts and a T-shirt, he figured she'd gone home to change first.

"I take it this means you want to try to move forward with this?"

She walked past him into the foyer. "Do you?"

"Yeah," he said. Might as well be honest. It was the one thing he'd done most of his life.

"I was going to reach out earlier. It was hard. My mother told me to give you the week. My father said not to. I had to go with my gut that you'd appreciate I followed directions."

He snorted. "Thanks."

"I wasn't sure what to expect of Barry's house. I've never been here before. He normally was at my parents' house."

He wasn't sure why he didn't think of this part of it. "You knew him?"

"Fairly well," she said. "For a man his age, he was lonely." She held her hand up. "I don't say that for anything more than it's a fact. What I say about Barry is what I know. Not trying to pile guilt, make judgments, or even throw excuses out there. I only know what I know."

"Got it," he said.

"Why don't we start simple? How about a kiss? Don't you want to know if the spark is still there?"

She'd been the one to pull him in the last two times. He figured the least he could do was make that move even though she'd brought it up.

He grabbed her arm and yanked her playfully into his chest. Rather than make it hot and fast, he lowered his head slowly and kissed her softly.

She didn't rush it. She didn't change it.

She only wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him.

He wasn't sure the last time someone hugged him or that he was craving it so much.

"I'd say the spark is there in many forms," he said, moving back out of her arms.

"Yep," she said happily. "I like to be proven right."

"You're much more cheerful than I thought you'd be about this."

"I'll apologize," she said. "I should. I had no right to get angry or upset. Everything you said was spot on. You owed more to my father than me, but you made sure you told me rather than letting him do it."

"I wouldn't let anyone else do my work for me," he said.

"You've got integrity," she said. "I like that in a man."

He snorted. "Do you want to stand here and chat or move into the house?"

"Why don't you show me around? This is a beautiful location. Nice and modern too. Though I remember my father said Barry had a bunch of work done a few years ago. I found it odd, but maybe he knew he'd be leaving it to you. To live in or sell. Almost like he wanted it in good shape."

Van hadn't thought of it that way. "No clue," he said. "It's pretty open, as you can see. The house is about seventy years old. No way it always was open like this when it was built. I will admit when I opened the door the first time I wasn't positive what I was expecting. The furniture is all his too."

She was scratching her chin. "You know. It's like this was staged. Some of it looks new."

"I thought the same thing," he said.

"My father would know, but it probably doesn't make much of a difference."

"No," he said. But maybe it would have been nice to have something that was his grandfather's.

Then he wondered why he was thinking that way.

"Do you have a bedroom down here?" she asked. "I remember my father saying the stairs were hard for Barry."

"I'll show you," he said, leading her to the back of the house.

"Nice," she said. "My room is on the first floor too. I've got two rooms upstairs with a hall bath. It's not a huge house, but it's mine. It's hard to find property on the island and I wanted something easy to maintain. It's got a few extra rooms that never get used. I always figured if I had kids someday I'll decide if I stay there or not."

"This house is more than I need," he said. "The downstairs is twice the size of my last apartment. There are four more rooms upstairs and two full baths plus a loft over the garage. I go up once a month and just kind of look for dust. Not much to do."

"Is it all furnished?" she asked.

"Yes. Almost staged. I guess I didn't notice it before."

He wasn't sure why. Just more thoughts to clog his brain.

"You'll notice things when you are ready to," she said.

"Can you really be this cheerful?" he asked.

She shrugged. "I've had a week to calm down a bit. You didn't do anything to me personally. The events and situations around it suck, but it's more in your life than mine. It was selfish of me to think otherwise."

"How long did it take you to rehearse that?"

She turned to look at him. "Phew! I'm glad you could see that. Now I don't need to pretend I wasn't annoyed."

He laughed. She did have the ability to make him do that.

"I knew you were annoyed. I said you would be."

"I think most would be. As I said, you kind of wound me up by saying I would be."

"Where do we go from here?" he asked.

"How about dinner? Then you can tell me what you've been doing for the past week. Have you thought of me at all?"

"More than I want to admit. It was a nice break while I was trying to figure out the stuff your father sent me about the hotels. I never really felt like an idiot much in my life but do now."

"If you want, I can help. I wouldn't be seeing anything I haven't seen before. You should know that."

He sighed. He wasn't sure why that didn't cross his mind.

"Are you sure you want to spend your time doing that when you aren't working?"

"I won't bill you," she said. "Don't worry."

It was the laughter in her eyes. "If you don't mind, maybe a crash course in things would help."

"Sweet," she said. "You order pizza. Or anything else you want. Then we can go into your office and you can ask me what you want. I'll answer the best I can on the finance part. The operations you might need to ask my father."

"I will."

She turned to look at him. "Are you going to keep the hotels and learn the ropes or sell?"

"The easy thing to do is sell," he said. "Your father brought that up."

"I don't think you take the easy way out of much," she said.

"I moved here," he said.

"And that had to be the hardest thing for you to do. Nothing easy about picking up your life and starting over. More so if there is a mystery full of emotions and doubt behind it."

"There is that," he said. "What kind of pizza do you want?"

"Whatever you order, I'll eat. Then once we are done, maybe we can get some wine and sit on the deck and look out at the water and just talk about life."

"We can do that," he said.

"You didn't look at the envelope from your grandfather, did you?" she asked.

"How do you know?" he asked. "And no, I didn't."

"Because I don't think you were ready to seek out my father. I think me coming into your life pushed it and maybe that was some frustration you had to work through too."

He didn't think someone could know him this well that he'd just met.

"There was that too," he said.

"When you're ready to open that envelope, I can be there for you too. But I won't push."

It was said so softly. So sweetly.

Almost loving.

The complete opposite of the funny sarcastic woman who knocked on this door and all but barged in saying that she'd waited her week.

"I appreciate that," he said.

"Woohoo," she said, doing a fist pump. "I'm batting a thousand today with my decisions and words. I haven't sworn once. Mark the calendar. Guess I am learning."

She flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder and strutted out of the room, leaving him to follow like a puppy wanting some cuddles.

"Hey," he said. "Where's Frankie?"

"I figured it'd be best if he stayed home," she said. "We don't need the distraction."

"No," he said. "We don't. But you can bring him next time."

"See," she said. "A keeper."