“Uh, Cam?”
Cam stabbed his shovel into the pile of mulch and flung it into the newly planted bed before turning to Steve. “Yeah?”
“It’s five-thirty.”
Cam looked reflexively at the horizon, registering the bleed of colors and the fading light. His crew should’ve knocked off half an hour ago.
“You want us to start clearing up?”
“Yeah. Sorry about that. I wasn’t watching the time. Y’all go ahead and take the gear back to the nursery, check in with Violet. I just wanna finish up mulching this bed.”
“You want us to help?” Dewey offered. “You’d finish quicker.”
That was exactly what he didn’t want. “No. I’ve got this. Y’all have families and dinner to get on home to. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
His crew exchanged looks but did as they were told. Fifteen minutes later, Cam was alone with the mulch and the lowering sun.
As a rule, Cam oversaw the initial phase of execution for any of his landscape designs before turning over the final wrap up to his more than capable crew. His duties at the nursery made that a general necessity. But since he got back from Chicago, he’d thrown himself into the physical labor, leaving the running of the nursery to Violet so he could work himself to the bone in an effort not to think. Not that it was helping to distract from the epic hole in his life.
He hadn’t talked to Norah in four days. He’d spent twenty-eight years of his life without her, and after less than a week away from her, he felt like he was missing a limb. A sensation made all the more unendurable by what he’d overheard.
She was hurt. That much was obvious in her increasingly shorter messages. And he hated it, hated hearing that pained thread in her voice. But even as he knew it made him a coward, Cam couldn’t bring himself to take her calls. He couldn’t bear to give her a chance to break things off over the phone. If he did, she might not come back at all. Having to come back to Wishful and talk to him in person might change her mind. It had to change her mind. And yet how could he and his small town compete with the career she’d devoted everything to?
While she’d been here, it had been easy to see how it could work. After a bumpy start, she’d taken to small town life like a duck to water. The people loved her, and she’d made connections all over town in her work with the coalition. But was it real or had he just been seeing what he wanted to see? She thrived on the challenge. Now that the challenge was over—and unsuccessful—would Wishful still hold appeal? Would he?
He spread the last of the mulch in near darkness and headed back to the nursery. If he finished the paperwork associated with this job tonight, Violet might not ream him in the morning. Then maybe he’d pick up burgers from Dinner Belles on the drive home as a treat for Hush since she’d been cooped up all day.
Silence lay thick and heavy in the main building of the nursery, interrupted only by the faint buzz of the fluorescent lights. Cam realized he’d been braced for an ambush by Violet or one of his meddling family members. He knew one was coming at some point. It was their modus operandi. They’d poke and prod and harass him until they got to the bottom of his piss poor mood instead of leaving him alone to stew and think. Since he’d rather cut out his tongue than talk about what was happening with Norah, he’d done everything in his power to avoid all of them. As no one had hunted him down, he could only conclude that Norah hadn’t been talking to any of them either.
After stowing the last of his equipment and washing at least some of the dirt off in the bathroom sink, Cam holed up in his office to update the inventory and log his hours and those of his crew. Seeing the stack of messages on his desk, he accepted he was going to have to actually come in during business hours tomorrow to deal with the bulk of them. He was calculating how much he could accomplish while Violet took her lunch break, when someone knocked on the outside door.
His gut tightened. It was long past closing time. Anybody out here at this hour was coming expressly to talk to him and it wasn’t likely to be about business. For a fleeting moment, he considered just staying where he was, letting whoever it was knock until they got bored and gave up. But given his truck was parked out front, they’d know he was doing just that, so it wasn’t like that’d do anything but delay whatever confrontation was brewing.
What if it was Norah?
His heart gave a leap that was somewhere between elation and dread. Her last message hadn’t said she was on her way back. But she’d said she missed him. She hadn’t told him she was leaving in the first place, so maybe she’d adopted the same policy for the return trip. And for that moment, it didn’t matter what was going on, didn’t matter about the job or where they stood, because he just needed to hold her.
Cam was halfway across the retail space before he realized it wasn’t Norah. His steps slowed as he saw his mother through the window.
Crap. Looked like he was getting ambushed after all.
But when he unlocked the door and pulled it open, he saw she wasn’t alone. Edgar Falk was with her.
“Hey baby.” Sandra stepped into the store without invitation. Cam automatically bent to accept her kiss on his cheek. “Do you have some time to talk?”
Company was the last thing Cam wanted, but if Ed was here, it probably had something to do with city business. “About?”
“GrandGoods.”
That just made him think about Norah and his mood, already black, darkened further. “What is there to talk about? The special use permit already passed.”
“Could be we’ve still got an option.” Ed rocked back on his heels and crossed his wiry arms.
Cam found that highly unlikely. “How’s that?”
“Well, I’d forgotten about this. It’s been forty years since it came up last.”
Ed was the closest thing they had to institutional memory in city government. He’d been a representative off and on for the last fifty years. He unfolded his arms and passed over some rolled up papers. “There’s a law on the books that’ll let us initiate a ballot referendum on any law passed that the public disagrees with. Makes it a public vote, so you get a true democratic answer to the issue.”
Cam unrolled the papers, which turned out to be Xerox copies of city statutes. He read through the pertinent section. “We can overturn the special use permit?”
“If we can get enough signatures on a petition. It has to be a majority of registered voters,” Sandra said.
“And it’s gotta be turned in within thirty days of the original decision,” Ed added.
Which meant they were already seven days down.
“How many signatures are we talking?”
“There are about three thousand people registered to vote here. Unfortunately, unless they submitted the paperwork or unless we get notice from some other jurisdiction, that doesn’t eliminate anybody who’s moved and doesn’t live here anymore,” said Sandra. “Updating the records hasn’t been a priority since we’ve had to cut city staff the last five years. We need fifty one percent of that number to initiate a referendum ballot.”
“Can people not currently registered to vote register and sign the petition?”
“Yes, though that’ll make the overall total of registered voters bigger and raise the number of signatures we’d need as well,” Ed said.
Cam needed something, anything to distract him, so he jumped at the chance. “Then I reckon we’ve got a lot of work to do. Why don’t you get up with Molly, get the coalition going on all this?”
“Will you call Norah, see what she suggests on getting the word out?” Sandra asked.
Cam hesitated. If he called her, told her this, she’d probably come back. She’d set aside whatever her personal stuff was for the good of the town, and he might have a chance to win her back, convince her to stay. But there was still the issue of her reputation to fix. She was where she was in part because she’d ignored things up there to deal with stuff down here. If she’d known about the smear campaign from the start, in time to counter, she might not have been so susceptible to the job offer.
He didn’t have the right to be selfish and potentially open her to more problems.
“No. She’s got her own stuff she needs to take care of in Chicago right now. I don’t want to distract her from that. Let’s see what we can do with what we’ve got before I involve her.” And maybe when she came back, they’d have some good news to share. News that would make her realize she hadn’t failed, that she still had a place in this community and with him.
After hashing out a few more details, Ed headed out, leaving Cam alone with his mother. He made a valiant effort to shoo her along, but she wouldn’t be shooed. Sandra Crawford had something to say apparently. Damn it.
“You’ve been hiding.”
“Just working.” He shrugged. “There’s lots to catch up on that I let slide the last several weeks.”
She cupped his cheek and tilted his face down to study it.
Cam endured her scrutiny for a few moments before jerking his head back. “I’m filthy, Mom.”
“You miss her.”
“Do you expect an award for noticing the obvious?” He got The Eyebrow. “Yeah, I miss her.”
“When’s she coming home?”
Maybe never? “I don’t know. Her ex-boss was supposed to get served a couple days ago.” She hadn’t left another message saying how that went.
“It’s hard when people we care about have to deal with stuff without us. Hard on you in particular.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you want to fix things for everybody. Like you dug up the evidence to prove Norah wasn’t at fault in Morton.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t fix this. There wouldn’t even be anything to fix if I hadn’t talked her into staying in the first place.” That was the other thought that had been swimming around beneath his misery.
“You don’t know that. Besides, as tough as this is for her, I don’t think Norah would trade you to avoid it.”
Don’t be so sure about that, Cam thought. Some of the doubt must’ve flickered across his face.
“She wouldn’t. I don’t know what has or hasn’t been said between you, but she loves you. Anybody with eyes can see it when she looks at you.”
“For someone like her, love isn’t always enough.”
His mother frowned. “I don’t think that’s fair to either of you.”
“Maybe not. But it’s been a possibility from the beginning. I’m just trying to be a realist.”
“How about focusing less on realism and more on having some faith.”
It was such a Norah thing to say, Cam felt a stab beneath his breastbone. Because he couldn’t take any more of this, he said what he knew she wanted to hear. “I’m sure you’re right. I’m just out of sorts.”
“You’ll feel better once she’s home. Meanwhile, why don’t you put off that paperwork until tomorrow and head on home. You can call her up on FaceView.”
“FaceTime, Mom.”
Sandra waved a hand. “Whatever. Call her.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Cam walked her out, locking the door behind her and waiting until she’d driven away before pulling out his phone. His thumb hovered over contacts before moving to open the friend finder app. Her name was at the top of the list. He selected it, watching the screen flip to a U.S. map. But instead of zooming in to Chicago, the view shifted west.
To Denver.
~*~
“Welcome back.” Tucker didn’t come around his desk to hug her as she expected.
Norah shrugged it off as a product of him being in lawyer mode. “Thanks.”
She’d never been so glad to see Wishful. Between the lawsuit and the trip out to Colorado, then the second round powwow with the attorney handling her case against Helios, she’d been away for nearly two weeks. It felt like a year.
“Have you seen Cam yet?”
Norah shook her head. She’d wanted to go straight to him and assure herself that things were all right between them, but there was business to tend to. “I came here to sign the paperwork first.” Something in Tucker’s expression set her on edge. “Is he okay? We haven’t really talked since I left.” Or at all. When he hadn’t returned any of her calls in the first week, she’d stopped trying. And she’d avoided the rest of the family as well.
“He hasn’t exactly dealt well with your absence.”
Yeah. Got that.
Looking back, riding her wave of fury halfway back to Chicago without seeing him first hadn’t been the best way to handle things. But he knew what her professional reputation meant to her. She could hardly open her own firm with that in tatters. Now, more than ever, she needed to be able to rely on a job and income.
“Then let’s get this done so I can go find him.”
“You should also know that there’s been a development with the whole GrandGoods thing.”
“What kind of development? Is there some kind of problem with this?” Dear God, if this fell through after everything she’d done…
“No, nothing to do with this. Cam will fill you in. But we’ve got a chance at a Hail Mary.”
A Hail Mary in conjunction with what she already had planned? Maybe things were finally turning around. “I like the sound of that.” She picked up a pen. “Now, where do I sign?”
The paperwork was minimal, given the nature of the transaction. As she left Tucker’s office twenty minutes later, Norah almost felt like clicking her heels together. Now that the deal was finalized, she was excited to find Cam and tell him what she’d done, what she planned. God knew she needed some good to balance out all the bad of Chicago.
This time of day, she figured he’d be at the nursery, so she drove out to the edge of town, mentally rehearsing what she might say.
Listen, I know I handled things badly, but I missed you, and I love you, and oh, by the way, I liquidated every asset I had to buy the land you love to keep the Big Bad Box Store from ruining it.
Surely he’d get over whatever his issue was after that.
Violet looked up from arranging a display of potted daffodils as Norah strode in. “Praise Jesus, you’re finally back. Nobody’s had had any peace. He’s been in a Mood since you left. I had to banish him to the propagation house to keep him away from customers.”
“That bad, huh?” Norah winced. “Hopefully I’ll be able to improve his mood. Which one is the propagation house?”
Following Violet’s directions, Norah made her way around the back side of the nursery to the farthest of three green houses, outside the public space. The thump of bass greeted her even before she tugged open the door and stepped into the damp heat. She stood just inside, feeling her hair frizz and her skin prickle as the driving drumbeat seemed to reach out and resync her heart. Cam was working at the far end of the space, the gentle motions of his hands as he transplanted tiny seedlings into larger pots a strange counterpoint to the angry music. Five Fingered Death Punch. “Bad Company.”
It felt like an omen or a wall. So she didn’t run to him and slide her arms around him from behind as she wanted.
Hush saw her first, leaping up from where she’d been contentedly chewing on a rawhide to barrel down the aisle. At least one of them was happy to see her. Norah crouched and braced for the impact of Hush’s greeting, burying her nose in the big dog’s soft fur. By the time she came up from the hug, Cam was looking her way. Looking, but not moving.
Okay, this was a damn sight worse than weird. Norah felt the pleasure at her homecoming leeching away, replaced by wariness.
His expression was shuttered as she approached. Other than using a remote to turn down the music, he didn’t move, didn’t even put down the pot in his hands, as if he needed a physical barrier to keep her from touching him.
“You’re back.” Could he sound any less enthused?
“Yeah.”
Cue awkward silence. Norah could no more spew her news into that than she could fly. She drank him in, taking in the t-shirt that stretched across his broad chest, the well-worn jeans with stress points faded almost white, and the dirt smudge on his cheek she wanted to reach out and brush away. She was hungry to touch him, to taste him. To tear down whatever this wall was between them. She curled her hands to fists instead.
I’m happy to be home. I missed you. She ached to say it. But not when he stood here like a stranger.
So she defaulted to business. “What’s going on with GrandGoods? Tucker said there’s been a development?”
He lifted a brow, the biggest shift in his expression since she’d arrived. “You’ve already seen Tucker?”
“He’s taking care of some business for me. I needed to sign some time-sensitive paperwork.”
Cam grunted at that.
“So the development?”
He sighed and finally set the pot aside, immediately crossing his arms, as if she hadn’t already gotten the message of hands off.
“Ed Falk came to see me a week ago. He’s old as dirt and is the closest thing we’ve got to a walking law book for city government in this town. There’s a statute on the books that says if we can gather signatures from a majority of registered voters within a month of the passage of a law, the issue becomes a popular vote and can be overturned.”
A week. They’d had this development a whole week ago, and he hadn’t even emailed her about it. Norah absorbed the sting of that and tried to focus on the news itself. She did the math. “So you’ve got a little over two weeks left to gather petition signatures?”
He nodded. “Molly’s been coordinating teams, getting the coalition out on the streets.”
“That’s great.”
“If we can get enough signatures for a ballot referendum, we’re not only seeking to overturn the special use permit but also to implement a store size cap. There is absolutely no reason for any business in a town this size to be bigger than 40,000 square feet. That’s less than a third of the size of the store GrandGoods proposes. We think they’d pull out rather than scale down. And a store cap would protect the town from future incursions.”
“That’s brilliant! What recourse does GrandGoods have while the petition is going around? Is it something they can try to stop?”
“While the issue is up for vote, no action can be taken. GrandGoods can try to influence voters against the idea of a size cap but they can’t move forward even with the purchase of the land until this is settled.”
Did GrandGoods even know that the land was off the table entirely? Probably not since she’d literally just finalized the purchase. This was as good an opening as any for her to tell Cam about it, at least.
Norah took a breath. “I have something to tell you.”
The tension in the space between them ratcheted palpably higher. “I already know.”
“You…what?” Tucker had sworn to keep his mouth shut. Had Abe said something? If Cam knew, why did he seem so pissed?
“I know about Denver and Peyton Consolidated and the job.”
It was the last thing she’d expected him to say, and it took her a moment to recover. She hadn’t told anyone here about that. Not even Miranda. Unless someone had overheard Gerald’s offer. “How did you—”
“I came to Chicago.”
He wasn’t making any sense. “What? When?”
“Right after you left.”
“I don’t understand. I never even saw you.”
“No, you didn’t. I overheard you talking to your friend.”
What friend? Who had she seen other than her attorney? Cecily. Of course. And they had talked about the job when they’d met for coffee.
“And you were just…what? Lurking? Why the hell didn’t you come to me?”
“Like you came to me before you left?”
She flinched. “Look, I already explained that—”
“Yep, you did. I was under the impression when I left that we still had something to talk about, but you already made up your mind. Without me. Again. So I came home.”
Norah’s brain scrambled, trying to remember the conversation, what exactly he’d overheard, to understand what it was he thought was going on here.
Cam flashed a bitter smile. “The thing is, I don’t blame you. Not really.”
That stopped her. “You don’t blame me?” What was he accusing her of?
“You tried to warn me from the very beginning. It’s my fault for pursuing this, for believing you’d be able to change. For thinking I could make you happy.”
He thought she’d taken the job. He believed she’d made the decision to walk away from him without even giving him the courtesy of talking about it. That she was capable of being that selfish after everything they’d been through. The insult of that robbed her of words.
But Cam had no trouble jumping into the silence. “So I don’t need whatever pretty speech you’ve prepared to justify all this.”
He didn’t even want to grant her an opportunity to explain. He was so goddamned certain he knew what was going on. So positive he knew what she would say and do. And none of those views of her were positive.
“Well, if you know everything, then I suppose there’s nothing left for me to say.” Except that you’re an idiot.
“Doesn’t look like it.”
Hush, standing between them, whined and butted her head beneath Norah’s palm. Automatically, she threaded her fingers through the dog’s fur, using her as an anchor as the world listed hard to one side, the man she loved turning into a stranger before her.
“I won’t say anything to the family about this. I don’t want to do anything to damage your relationship with them. You can handle that however you want.”
Was he patting himself on the back for that? Thinking that meant he was still putting her first, even though he clearly thought she was callous and horrible?
“Listen, I know you’ll need to be packing up and going soon, but I hope you can stay long enough to help set up something to get the word out about this referendum. The coalition can use your expertise. It’s the last shot we’ve got, and I know that this, at least, is important to you.”
The implication that he wasn’t important hung in the air between them.
She could fix this. Could clear it up with a few minutes of explanations. But did she really want to be with a man whose opinion of her could so easily turn? She needed time to think, to get past the insult and the hurt before she decided what to do next.
“Of course, I’ll help. I’ll get in touch with Molly and see what she needs me to do.”
“Thanks.”
He picked up another pot, and Norah realized she was dismissed. Bleeding from more wounds than she could count, she turned and walked out, without another word.