Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

Evie

“There you are.” Kitty motioned to the chair across from where she sat on the couch. “Come sit with me, sweetheart.”

“I was just going to ask if you’d like me to make you some tea.”

“That would be nice. But sit first. I want to talk to you, and we don’t have much time.”

I sat. “I’m not leaving until tomorrow, Kitty.”

“Oh, I know. I meant much time before my grandson gets off the phone. He just went outside on the lanai to call the airline about his luggage again.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Do you trust me, dear?”

“Of course, Kitty.”

“Even though he’s my flesh and blood, I would not steer you into something I thought would cause you any harm. I know he can come off as an ass sometimes… Let’s face it, a lot of the time, but he’s a good man. When he loves, he loves with his heart and soul.”

I shook my head. “I’ve never doubted that he was a good man. Well, maybe he wasn’t so friendly during our first meeting. But since I’ve gotten to know him, I can see he’s not as impenetrable as he wants you to think he is.”

She pointed to me. “You hit the nail on the head, sweetheart. Of course you did. You’re a smarty pants. Merrick is a roaring lion on the outside, but inside he’s a kitten. He thinks the way to protect his heart is by acting like he doesn’t have one.”

I smiled sadly. “He’s been through a lot. We have that in common. People respond to trauma in different ways. I’ve baked and snacked my way through the last six months, and Merrick has thrown himself into his work more than ever.”

“Has he told you about the twit?”

“Amelia?”

Kitty nodded.

“I don’t know the whole story, but I know Merrick was hurt and she died.”

Kitty nodded again. “I knew she was a twit the day I met her. I regret minding my own business and not telling him so. Which is why I’m meddling now. At my age, you can see things that fit, often before a person tries them on. It’s a gift you get in exchange for your memory, teeth, and hearing.” She leaned over and patted my hand. “Can I be frank, dear?”

“Oh boy. You mean all of these years you were holding back?”

She smiled. “He carries a lot of guilt for things he shouldn’t feel guilty about. You both have a lot of baggage, but you were meant to help each other unpack.”

“I don’t think Merrick sees me in that way, Kitty.”

“He’s different when he’s around you—calmer and more at peace.”

“That might be because he finally took a break from the office.”

She shook her head. “It’s not. And that’s not even how I know he’s falling for you.”

“Okay…”

“He smiles because of you. Whether he’s talking about you or to you, I haven’t seen him smile this way in forever.”

“I think maybe that’s because he’s laughing at me. You did hear me tell the story about last night, right? How I attacked him with a toilet bowl brush and wound up with a piece of glass in my ass?”

She smiled, but ignored my comment. “You know what else I think?”

“What?”

“I think you feel the same way. But both of you are too chicken shit to do anything about it. Often the things that scare us the most are the ones that have the potential to change our lives. But if you open your heart and believe your happiness can happen, it will.”

I wasn’t so sure about manifesting happiness, but she wasn’t wrong that something about Merrick terrified me, and not the way he wanted to keep people at a distance. But I thought she was off base that Merrick had feelings for me—well, the feeling of lust, maybe. That’s all it was.

Kitty smiled. “You don’t believe me, even though a part of you wants to. I’ve had my share of gentleman friends over the years, but there was only one love of my life. You know how I knew my Redmond felt the same way?”

“How?”

“I kept catching him watching me when he didn’t think I was paying attention. My guess is you might have already noticed it once or twice with my grandson, but you haven’t been ready to let yourself consider the meaning.”

I had caught Merrick watching me once or twice, but he was an attentive man. It was a large part of the reason he was so successful.

When I didn’t say anything, Kitty patted my hand. “Humor me. Next time you’re in the same room with him, don’t pay him any mind. Then look over at him when he doesn’t expect it. I’d bet my house that you’ll find him already looking at you.”

Our conversation was interrupted by the sound of Merrick grumbling from the other room. “Damn airlines.”

Kitty lowered her voice and leaned forward once more. “One more thing—I’ve changed his diaper. You won’t be disappointed. Sometimes zigging and zagging not only finds you a new path to take, but it makes getting there a hell of a lot of fun, too.”

• • •

Merrick swiped his cell phone off. That was his third call to the airline since this morning, and it was now going on three in the afternoon. “They finally have my luggage in Atlanta.”

“Oh good. Are they delivering it?”

He shook his head. “Not if I want it sooner than one to three days. They’re backed up, so I’m going to have to go to the airport to pick it up.”

“Oh, that stinks. Do you want me to take a ride with you so you don’t have to park? I can drop you at the terminal and circle while you pick it up and come back.” I looked through the sliding glass doors that led to the lanai. Kitty was sitting with Marvin, both her casted and booted feet up on his lap. They laughed about something. “I think her stud muffin can take care of her while we’re gone.”

Merrick groaned. “Please don’t use the words stud and grandmother in the same sentence.”

“Oh yeah. Of course.” I grinned. “Do you prefer I call him her rocket ride or boy toy?”

“You’re going to be over my knee again in about two seconds.”

Does he think that’s a deterrent? Just the opposite.

Marvin slid the glass door open. “I’m going to cook the four of us some dinner tonight—a stick-to-your-ribs, southern meal.” He looked back and forth between us. “You’re not those types who only eat rabbit food, are you?”

I smiled. “No, neither of us is vegetarian.”

“Good.”

“Marv, are you planning on staying here this afternoon?” I asked. “Merrick needs to run to the airport to get his luggage, and I was thinking of taking the ride with him, but I don’t want to leave Kitty unattended.”

“I’ll be here taking care of my girl all day. She’s got a Zoom call with one of the new relatives she found on Ancestry later, and I like to read the Sunday paper from cover to cover. So take your time. It’s a beautiful day out there.”

I nodded with a smile. “Okay, thanks, Marvin.”

A little while later, Merrick and I borrowed Kitty’s car and headed to the airport. He drove while I looked out the window, feeling a lot of emotions. When we came to the Buckhead exit, I pointed. “I would be living somewhere out there if things hadn’t derailed between me and Christian.”

Merrick’s eyes slanted to me before returning to the road. “You were going to live down here?”

I nodded. “Christian is from Atlanta. I think I told you we met when we were both students down here. We moved up to New York so he could work for a few years at his family’s corporate headquarters, and I did my internship there. But he wanted to move back after our wedding. His company has a huge research-and-development facility down here that he was being trained to run.”

“Is that what you wanted? To live down here, I mean?”

I shook my head. “Not really. I like it down here, but I love New York, and I wanted to be near my sister. I always imagined we’d have kids at the same time and they’d grow up together.”

“Yet you were going to move anyway?”

I shrugged. “Christian hated New York. He hated apartment life and not having a big yard, and he absolutely loathed public transportation and busy sidewalks. Both his parents are originally from Atlanta. They divorced when he was five, and he mostly lived with his mother after that. His father relocated to work in the family business in New York, so he went back and forth. I think part of the reason he hates the city so much is because of what it represents to him—his family being torn apart. It’s easier to blame something other than your parents.”

“How long were you two together?”

“Three-and-a-half years.”

Merrick nodded.

“What about you? Did you always live in the city?”

“I spent a week every summer down here with Kitty and my mom. But yeah, born and raised in New York. My mom went to college in the city and never came back. She was one of the few women on the trading floor in her day. She passed away six years ago of breast cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“What about your dad?”

“He retired to Florida last year. Never remarried after my mom. My sister lives down there and has kids, so he moved not too far from her.”

“You were…engaged once, too, right?”

Merrick’s eyes flashed to me quickly before returning to the road. His lips pursed. “You like to dig around, don’t you?”

“It’s an occupational hazard. I ask questions and try to fit the pieces together to see the whole puzzle.”

“Oh yeah? What pieces have you managed to put together about me?”

I didn’t want to mention the comment Will had made—that his fiancée had annihilated him—so I was vague. “I’ve heard around that you were engaged to your business partner and it didn’t end well.”

Merrick stared at the road. I thought maybe that was the end of our discussion, but then he cleared his throat.

“You’ve shared a lot about your life, stuff that wasn’t easy to live through. Yet you seem to have found a way to make peace with it. I have a harder time talking about things.”

I nodded. “We all handle things in different ways. That’s okay. I didn’t mean to pressure you into discussing something you aren’t comfortable talking about.”

Merrick went quiet for a long time. It surprised me when he started to talk again. “Amelia and I started the business together, though she didn’t want to be an equal partner and didn’t want her name on the door.”

“Why not?”

He drummed his fingertips on the steering wheel. “She said she wasn’t a people pleaser. She wanted nothing to do with any personnel or dealing with a board of directors. Used to say she wanted to play Monopoly for a living but didn’t want to own Hasbro.”

“Why be a partner at all then?”

Merrick frowned. “I pushed her into it. She was smarter than me and understood people more, even though she didn’t want to get involved with most. Plus, she out-earned every trader in the industry her first year, so she deserved more.”

“Wow. Sounds like she was some sort of a whiz kid.”

“She was.”

He didn’t offer more, so I debated whether to push. But I was curious. I knew she’d died, but I didn’t get the feeling it was her death that had annihilated Merrick.

“Can I ask what happened between the two of you?”

The exit for the airport was coming up, so Merrick put on his blinker to get into the right lane. Our eyes caught briefly as he looked over his shoulder before changing lanes.

“My story isn’t that different than yours. I found out I never really knew the person I thought I was going to marry.”

“I’m sorry.”

We exited the highway to the road leading to the airport. Merrick pointed up ahead. “There’s a cell phone lot right over here. Customer service said to follow the signs to passenger pick up and go into the office in the baggage claim area. Hopefully it won’t take too long, but why don’t you drive around and wait in that cell phone lot. I’ll text you when I have it.”

“Okay.”

I wanted to ask more questions, but I thought Merrick might have intentionally changed the subject.

“How’s your ass today?” he asked. “That shard was in there pretty deep.”

“It’s sore. But I looked this morning, and it’s not too red or anything.”

“If you need a second opinion, just let me know.” He winked, and it set off a flutter low in my belly.

Lord, crushing on this man was such a dead-end road. Not only was he my boss, but we’d both had disastrous relationships with people we worked with. And my sister had been right to remind me that Merrick’s battle was harder. He had to move on from a ghost. Yet the more time I spent with him, the more I liked him, and even worse, the more frequent my fantasies became. Could there be something to what Kitty had told me?

We pulled up at the terminal. I walked around to the driver’s side to take the wheel, and Merrick went in. Before I could even get back to the cell phone lot we’d passed, he’d called to tell me he had his luggage. So I headed back.

“That was fast,” I noted when he opened the passenger door.

“Yeah, it was pretty painless. The office was empty, and my bag was sitting to the side with a few others.”

“Do you want to switch places and drive?”

“Not unless you want me to.”

“No, I’m good.”

Merrick clicked his seatbelt on. “I was thinking, since Marvin is at the house, why don’t we take a little detour?”

I shrugged. “Sure. Where to?”

“You said your Airbnbs aren’t too far from here, right?”

My eyes widened, and I smiled. “They’re only about a half-hour drive. Part of it is on the way back to Kitty’s, but I get off the highway earlier and head east for a bit.”

“Let’s check ’em out. I’ve never stayed in a treehouse or a campsite.”

“That’s glampsite.”

Merrick smiled. “I stand corrected.”

I shifted the car into drive and started on my way. “I’m so excited. I’m not sure if they’re rented or not, but I can check the website when we get there. If they are, I’ll just show them to you from the outside.”

“Sounds good.”

For the entire drive, Merrick let me rattle on about all the different things I’d done to make what I thought was the perfect rental experience. “Both the treehouses have two large skylights, so there’s a ton of natural light during the day, but it’s absolutely incredible at night. The property is sixty acres, so there isn’t too much light pollution, and on a clear night you can lie in the bed and see the stars.”

I felt Merrick’s eyes on my face, so I looked over. “What?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head with a warm smile. “You just light up when you talk about them.”

“I do? Well, then I must look like a Lite-Brite because I’ve been chewing your ear off for the entire drive.”

Merrick chuckled. “It’s alright. I enjoyed it. It reminds me a lot of when I started my company. I talked about it all the time.”

I pointed to a road coming up. “This is it. The entrance is a mile or so down there. Then there are dirt paths that lead to the different rentals.” I put my blinker on. “I’m just going to pull over once I turn and check the website to see if they’re vacant.”

“Sounds good.”

I don’t think I’d ever been so excited to see two of the places not rented today. Both the glamping site and one of the treehouses had guests who’d checked out this morning. I nearly squealed as I put the car into drive again. “There’s one treehouse open and the glamping site. Which one do you want to go to first?”

“Whichever you want.”

“The treehouse, definitely.”

After we arrived at the property entrance, wooden signs with arrows pointed the way to the different rentals. Merrick looked around. “This must be tough to find at night.”

“Yeah, definitely. We always tell people it’s best to get here during daylight. If not, they have to go slow and use their high beams to see the signs on the trees.”

As we approached the first site, I pointed up. “This is the first one.”

Merrick ducked his head to get a better look out the windshield. “That’s pretty awesome.”

We parked, and I showed Merrick around the site. A freshwater stream ran through a few of the acres, and I’d selected the spots for the treehouses so they’d be nearby. Today it was running fast and loud.

“There’s no better sound to fall asleep to than this.”

“You can hear it from up there?” Merrick asked.

“Yep.”

“Nice.”

I pointed to a dirt trail that ran away from the stream. “If you follow that, it loops you on a nice hike through the adjoining state land. There’s a small lake about two miles off the trail. We have a map on our website, but there’s no clear trail to follow.”

“Is that who mostly rents these? Hikers and nature enthusiasts?”

“That and city people who need to get away for the weekend.” I waved for him to follow. “Come on, let’s climb up to the house.”

Once we were inside, I held my pointer to my lips in the universal shhh sign. The window had been left open, and you could hear the sound of the stream running. Every ten seconds or so, the wind blew, causing the leaves to rustle in perfect harmony with the water.

I smiled proudly. “What do you think? Magical, right?”

He looked around. The treehouse was only about two-hundred-and-fifty square feet, but it had all the essentials: a small fridge, cooktop, sink, bathroom with shower, and a bed with one nightstand. The floors were Pergo, but I’d picked it to match the outside of the tree, and the interior was painted a pale yellow.

“It’s pretty incredible,” he said. “People pay for soundtracks like that to fall asleep to at night. I’m not sure what I expected. I guess maybe dirt floors and a cot or something. But this looks like an efficiency in Manhattan.” His brows pulled together. “Wait… How is there electricity and plumbing in here?”

“Ah, it’s hidden. All of it runs down the back of the tree. You don’t see it when you climb up the ladder, and it’s camouflaged with all-weather paint to make it less conspicuous. The pipes run from the base of the tree under the ground to a small generator next to the storage shed behind the bushes in the back. I actually got all the electric done for free. When I was in school, I bartered home health care for an electrician’s sick mom for some electrical work my grandmother needed done. So I called the same electrician when I was building these. I was planning on paying him, but then he asked if I wanted to trade for some counseling sessions for his daughter who has OCD.”

“Damn. And you could only get me cat biscuits for my sperm. I think I’m kind of insulted.”

I snort-laughed and gave him a shrug.

Merrick scanned the room again. “This is a little fancier than the one in your grandmother’s yard. Although I don’t see a rhinestone phone or pink plastic fridge anywhere.”

“I know. But it does have this…” I walked over to the bed, laid down, and patted the spot next to me. “Come. You need to get the full effect.”

Merrick looked amused, but played along. He laid back on the bed, the two of us side by side, and stared up at the skylights. The trees blew in the wind around the edges, but most of what we could see was simply blue sky.

“Close your eyes,” I said.

I heard the smile in his voice. “Okay.”

“Now, imagine it’s nighttime. There’s no light coming from anywhere, except the stars twinkling above you.” I was quiet for a moment as I pictured it. “Now imagine those twinkling stars and listen to the sounds all around us.”

We were quiet for a long time. When I finally opened my eyes, I looked over and was surprised to find him watching me.

“You’re supposed to be looking at the Big Dipper,” I said.

Merrick’s eyes dropped to my lips and lingered before returning to meet mine. My belly did that little flutter it often seemed to do around him.

“You’re pretty amazing, you know that?”

“Does that mean you like my treehouse?”

He chuckled softly. “I do. But I’m referring to the whole package. You’re smart and funny, didn’t think twice about hopping on a plane to help Kitty, and you seem to care deeply for your patients’ well-being. But more than that, you’re probably the most resilient person I know. You grew up around abuse and anger. Most people would have carried that with them like a shield and used it to keep people at a distance. But instead, you built sanctuaries where people can come and escape life—with all of the profits donated to a domestic violence shelter.” He paused and looked away. “Your ex was a goddamned coward who couldn’t handle the woman you are, so he acted like a boy.”

Merrick’s words seeped into me, making my chest feel full. I shook my head. “No one has ever said anything so nice to me. I’m not even sure what to say…”

Merrick smiled almost sadly. “If that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to you, then your ex was more than just a coward. He was also a fucking idiot.”

I rolled onto my side to face him, tucking my hands under my cheek. “Can I ask you sort of a forward question?”

He raised a brow. “I’m intrigued…”

My heart pounded, and I shook my head. “You know what? Let’s just forget it.”

“You can’t pack a question like that back in the box. Spit it out, Vaughn. It’s not like you to tiptoe around something.”

“Well, Kitty sort of… Well, she thinks you’re attracted to me.”

Merrick smiled. “My grandmother is a wise woman.”

I hadn’t expected him to admit that. I thought maybe I’d misunderstood. “Are you saying she’s right?”

“I think you already know the answer to that.”

I nodded and looked away a moment. “So how come you…”

He lifted a brow. “How come I haven’t mauled you?”

I laughed. “Yeah, that.”

Merrick slipped a curled knuckle under my chin and tipped my head up so our eyes met. “Because while I think the attraction might be mutual, I get the feeling it might be something you’d regret after. Am I wrong?”

I looked into his eyes. “It’s not you. I have some big trust issues, obviously. Not to mention, you’re my boss, and I really like my job. And you…you lost someone you loved.” I shook my head. “With all of that going against us, of course I’m nervous.”

Merrick smiled sadly. “If it’s meant to be, you’ll come around when it’s time.”

“How will we figure out if the time is right?”

His eyes darkened. “I guess we’ll know when my tongue is down your throat—or better yet, something else.”

I laughed and play-smacked his chest. He sat up from the bed and offered his hand. “Come on. We better get out of here before it’s too late.”

“Oh, there isn’t anyone checking in today.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Why do we need to rush out of here then?”

“Because five more minutes of lying on this bed with you, and I’m going to have your clothes on the floor.”