Natalie Groves eyed the bag of gingerbread M&M’s on the other side of the office meeting room and prayed for a divine intervention of Red Sea proportions.
In forty-five minutes, two goons from the head office of Potted Plants 4 Hire would walk through the door and give her fifteen minutes to convince them not to close the Charlottesville branch—the last in this half of Virginia. In forty-five seconds, she might topple out of her office chair, curl up in a ball under this wobbly table, and hide.
“Natalie.” Frank, one of the salesmen, plugged Natalie’s five-year-old laptop into the projector. A muscle jerked in his sandpapery cheek. Was that meant to be a smile? Hard to tell. “Those corporate idiots won’t know what hit them.”
Natalie manufactured a smile in return. “Thanks, Frank.”
He opened the laptop lid. “You look like you’re about to throw up. Just get it over and done with before the presentation.”
She took a deep breath and ignored the Mexican jumping beans in her stomach. Nothing mattered now except her presentation notes.
Suck it up, buttercup. This isn’t about you.
No, it was about eight coworkers’ jobs and her ability to pay Dad’s medical expenses. The bills kept coming, and between her parents’ increasing copay and dwindling savings, money was beyond tight. The past seven years had been a never-ending Monday morning.
Ever since Dad’s doctor said, “It’s cancer.”
By rights, their boss, Maria, should have been giving this presentation—not the girl who answered phones. But Maria had an epic case of food poisoning, and Natalie was the one who’d written a business plan to save their office-plant hire service. It was amazing what she’d been able to piece together with half a business degree and a bucketload of desperation. And in return for all that effort, she was the one condemned to public speaking.
Frank pressed a button on the laptop. Natalie waited for the familiar whir of the fan. Nothing happened.
Uh-oh.
She peered over at him. “Did you press the right button?”
He picked up the computer and shook it. “Three times. Why do you have such an old laptop?”
Because this week’s budget was down to whatever coins she could scrounge from the back of the sofa. But he didn’t need to know that.
She dropped the notes on the table and walked toward him, smoothing her borrowed business jacket as she went. She’d hoped a power suit would boost her confidence. She’d even donned black pumps and straightened her rebellious hair. Though it’d started to frizz again when she spent her first hour of the morning scrubbing graffiti off their business sign. Kids always found it hilarious to black out the “ted” in their name and draw illustrations of just what kind of plants they’d prefer to hire.
But who needed perfectly straight hair when you had bulldog determination?
Her cell rang, vibrating against the chipped wood veneer of the table. Probably Mom. She paused, tempted to ignore it. Mom knew how important this morning was—someone had better be dying.
Her mind’s eye flashed to her father’s once strong hand trembling as he’d waved goodbye to her from his patchwork-covered bed yesterday morning. He was technically in remission, but even the Three Blind Mice could see the way he’d deteriorated this year.
Had that been their last farewell?
Fear punched her in the chest as she lunged for the phone, swiped a finger across the cracked screen, and hit the voice-message icon. Unfamiliar number, but that did nothing to soothe the throat-closing sensation that enveloped her. She set the phone to speaker. Her normal speakers had decided to take a vacation this week, but her speakerphone remained loyal.
An unfamiliar male voice glitched in and out, poor reception chopping the message. “Gregory . . . looking for Natalie Groves . . . here, called . . . ambulance . . . corner of Harding and Davis Streets.” Beep.
She froze. It had to be about Dad. No one would call her about anybody else. But why had a stranger called? Where was Mom? Had something happened to her as well?
“Natalie.” Frank’s deep voice rumbled across the room. “You should go.” His tone carried a heaviness that told her he, too, assumed it was her father.
Most folks in this town had heard of her evangelist father. Everyone also knew that each unexpected phone call could be announcing very bad news.
Or just another false alarm. And those head-office guys would be here in forty-one minutes . . .
Frank placed a hand on her back and pushed her to the door. “We’ll be fine. It might be nothing, and you’ll be back in time. If not . . .” He paused, having maneuvered her to the threshold, and met her eye. “There’s more important things than this store. Go.”
She reached into her pocket for her keys. If she missed saying goodbye to Dad, she’d never forgive herself.
“Thanks, Frank.” She sprinted from the room.
“And don’t take that hunk of junk you call a car,” he shouted after her as she reached the end of the corridor.
She paused, and he tossed her his keys.
“Good luck, Nattie.”
She nodded and darted out into the parking lot. The muggy late-summer air triggered an instant sweat, and the morning sun made her squint. She hit the beeper and ran past her rusted VW Bug toward flashing headlights. Thank heaven for Frank. He knew her car was as likely to break down as not.
Natalie jumped into the driver’s seat of Frank’s SUV and pulled a fast-food bag off the dash before she threw the vehicle into reverse. The scent of stale fries lingered in the air. She twisted in the seat to look out the back window, and a flash of color caught her eye. Discarded Happy Meal toys lay in a child’s car seat, strapped in next to a baby seat. Frank must’ve had his grandkids for the weekend again.
She rocketed backward, then out of the parking lot and onto the road. She’d go to the address the mystery man mentioned first—it was just around the corner. She might even beat the ambulance.
If there was nothing there, she’d head to Martha Jefferson Hospital.
* * *
A man lay splayed out on the footpath ahead. More than six feet of pale skin and freckles. Unmoving.
The sharp twist in Natalie’s gut eased as she slowed the SUV and flashed her turn signal. That man definitely wasn’t her seventy-one-year-old father.
Thank you, God.
She swiped a stray tear that had gathered in the corner of her eye, then squinted at the figure on the ground. It sure looked like . . .
Movement caught her eye. An older man, standing behind the guy on the footpath, holding a baby with one arm as the other flagged her down.
She whipped the car into a parking space fifteen yards from the man prone on the ground. She couldn’t see his face from this angle. But recognition tickled the edge of her mind. Mouth dry and stomach on spin cycle, she jumped out.
The older man rushed toward her, Colonel Sanders without the smile. She tried not to stare.
“Natalie?”
She gestured to the man on the ground behind the colonel. “What happ—”
He dumped the baby into her arms. It squirmed and squealed, and she recoiled half a step as the child wobbled in her tenuous grasp. She clutched a handful of blue jumpsuit while the baby arched his back against her, kicked his chubby legs, and reached toward the man on the ground. “What is going on?”
“You know this guy, right?”
The Colonel Sanders look-alike blocked her view, so she couldn’t confirm or deny.
“He was jogging from that building there, back to his car with his kid.” He pointed to the wriggling child in her arms. “And whacked his head against that.” His finger indicated a tree branch that stretched six feet above the sidewalk. “I stopped to check he was okay, but the cut on his forehead bled and he got dizzy and passed out. Guess he hates blood. I called an ambulance, but there’s a crash on the other side of town, and they’ve been held up. So I grabbed the emergency contact card in his wallet.”
He paused for breath as he held up the card. It was misshapen and discolored with age, like he’d pried it from the depths of a wallet that should’ve been retired last decade.
Colonel Sanders finally stepped aside so she could see who lay on the sidewalk. The man on the ground shifted, groaned.
Natalie’s brain begged her eyes to admit they were lying. She scanned the man from head to toe. Brown hair with red highlights that caught the sunshine. Boyish freckles. Broad shoulders.
Jeremy Walters, her ex-fiancé.
I’m outta here.
Fumbling with her keys, she turned to the colonel to return the baby. Instead she encountered his retreating back. “Wait! You can’t leave me.”
The man spun to face her but kept walking backward toward a truck parked by the roadside. “You have no idea how late I am. He’s only been out for a minute or two. Take him to the emergency room if you’re worried.” With those words, he hauled himself into his vehicle.
“You can’t go.” Desperation edged her voice as Natalie stepped toward him, trying to hold out a crying handful of baby.
His revving engine drowned her plea. A puff of exhaust fumes tickled her nose as he pulled out, and she sneezed. The truck drove away as she watched.
Turn back, turn back, turn back . . .
It rounded a corner and disappeared.
Unbelievable. Natalie huffed a breath and swiveled with the enthusiasm of a vegetarian at Outback Steakhouse.
Jem hadn’t crumpled to the ground. He lay flat on his back, long limbs stretched in every direction. One hand lifted to rest on his bleeding forehead, and his eyelids twitched but remained closed.
No one would call him a bodybuilder, but neither did he have that gangly look anymore. He’d grown his hair longer than the military-style cut his dad used to do at home every month, and his face sported more freckles.
But it was him.
She ground her teeth against the warm rush of memories that poured into her mind. Sure, she hated his guts, but he wasn’t just the guy who’d broken her heart seven years ago. He was the tang of lemonade after they raced their bikes down the street. He was the crinkle of comic-book pages as they hid from his dad under the back porch. He was the smell of lavender in Mr. Holbert’s jewelry shop, where her nineteen-year-old self had pointed to a diamond and said, “That one.” He was every good memory before life got complicated.
So much had changed—though not all. Blue ink still smudged his palm. Jem without a pen was like a Saturday night without chocolate. Had he fulfilled his journalistic dreams?
She scrubbed a sleeve across her face. Time to focus. The man burned faster than forgotten eggs on a stove, so she should get him out of the sun.
Or better yet, leave him there.
God, what did I do to deserve this?
Running into the guy who’d dumped you ten weeks before your wedding was always bad, but especially like this. She was broke. Single. Going nowhere.
He’d take one look at her and thank his younger self for leaving.
She shifted on her feet. She’d give up anything, even pumpkin-spice M&M’s, to jump in the car and meet the head-office representatives. She had a store to save.
But there was a baby in her arms, and she couldn’t plop him on the ground and leave.
Jem lurched to a sitting position. “Oliver!”
Natalie jolted.
The motion seemed to catch the corner of Jem’s eye. He swung his head toward her and squinted into the sun. When he jumped to his feet, he swayed.
“Whoa.” Stepping forward, she grabbed his arm with her free hand, then dropped it.
Jem leaned back against the tree trunk—the one supporting the branch that had put that red gash on his forehead. After a few seconds, he raised his gaze and did a double take.
“Natalie?”