THE TANNERS’ BACKYARD had filled with neighbors and friends as Donny manned the grill. He held up a hand in greeting as John entered the backyard. “Jo says to take food into the kitchen. Then help yourself to a beer from the cooler and help me with these steaks. That is, if she doesn’t find another job for you to do first.”
John went inside and found Jo in the kitchen. She was directing several people about where to put food they’d brought to the barbecue. She smiled at him as he placed a cherry pie on the end of the counter, where someone else had placed a whole watermelon. She searched drawers and sighed. “Why Donny’s brother couldn’t cut the watermelon before bringing it, I don’t know.”
John glanced down at the whole pie. “I didn’t cut the pie yet, but if you’ve got another knife I can.”
She handed him a knife. “Please, and thank you.” She turned to someone who asked a question about where to put salads. “They go over there by the window.” She started to cut into the watermelon, but she didn’t have the strength to make it through the thick rind.
“Here. Let’s trade.” He handed her his knife and took the larger butcher one from her and plunged the knife into the melon.
“Thanks.”
As they sliced the pie and fruit, Jo looked up at him. “Did you hear from Cassie?”
Eight calls, and they had all gone unanswered. He shook his head. “She’s off licking her wounds, I think. Don’t take it personally.” Not that he’d followed his own advice.
“She’s got nothing to be ashamed of.” Jo looked around the kitchen. “She made this beautiful place for us.”
“All she knows is that we lost.” And he’d lost her. He motioned to the watermelon. “Do you want this in slices or cubes?”
“Slices. Let me find you a platter to put them on.” She rummaged through cupboards and, finally finding what she wanted, handed him a tray. “We’ve been here almost a week, and I’m still searching for stuff.”
“I’m surprised you got everything unpacked in a week.”
She shook her head. “We haven’t. Just don’t look in the media room. I told Donny that if we were having company on Sunday, we had to get the kitchen unpacked and ready. Everything else could wait.” She paused, a soft smile on her lips. “Well, the kitchen and the boys’ rooms.”
Just as she mentioned her sons, one of them zoomed through the kitchen on his way outside. “Milo, slow down.” She shook her head. “He’s only got one setting. Fast-forward.”
She positioned the wedges of watermelon on the platter. “I don’t see how we lost. I know the judges decided on the other team, but you and Cassie are winners in my eyes. The way you transformed this house is spectacular. People should see the work you did.”
“We’ll get some regional recognition. It may not be national television, but it’s something.”
She smiled and patted his arm. “You didn’t bring your mom?”
John grimaced. “Biggie said he would pick her up and bring her himself.”
“That’s so sweet.”
He could think of other words for it, but he had promised his mother that he would be polite. He was happy that his mother had finally moved on from his father. And as for her choices, she could do worse. But still. Biggie Buttucci?
Speaking of Buttuccis, Tiny entered the kitchen and handed off a large vegetable tray with ranch dip to Jo. He nodded to John. “I didn’t get a hold of Cassie. Did you?”
“I think she’s avoiding us all.”
Tiny sighed. “That’s what I was afraid of. The contest gave her a sense of purpose.” Tiny eyed John. “Can you think of a new project we could bring her in for?”
John shook his head. “I was hoping you’d know of something.”
“I’ll keep an ear out.” He started to leave the room but then turned back to face John. “Someone who loved her wouldn’t give up on her.”
“I’m not the one who gave up.”
“Just saying. If I were in love with her, I wouldn’t stop pestering her. I’d camp out on her front porch if I had to.”
The idea tempted John.
Tiny went to join the group outside on the patio. Jo handed John a cantaloupe. “Might as well cut this, too.” She watched him slice into it then scoop out the seeds. “I had always thought you and Cassie were a couple.”
“I’m not even sure if we’re friends anymore.”
“I saw the way she looked at you when you were dancing the other night. There was more than friendship there.”
He mulled that over as he finished cutting the melon into wedges.
Later, in the backyard, he joined Donny, who stood at the grill with another man. When John approached them, the other man acknowledged him. “Donny told me you were here. John, right?”
John nodded. “Yes. And you are?”
“Ian Murphy from next door.”
John smiled and nodded. “Of course.”
“When Donny said you’d be here today, I had to meet you.” He looked behind him. “Is your girlfriend here?”
“Girlfriend?”
Donny leaned in. “He means Cassie.” He shook his head as he used tongs to turn over hot dogs on the grill. “John keeps insisting that they’re just friends, but we know what we see. There’s something there.”
“She’s not coming.”
“Oh.” Ian looked disappointed but gave a shrug. “She doesn’t know what she’s missing. And I don’t mean Donny’s burnt hot dogs.”
“They’re not burned.” Donny peered at the meat, wincing. “They’re just a little darker than normal.”
Ian laughed and slapped Donny on the back, but John had a difficult time putting a fake smile on his face. He started to ease away and turned to find Miss Loretta handing him a bottle of water. “You look thirsty.”
He accepted the bottle but didn’t open it. “Thanks.”
“You’re also looking a little lost.”
He guessed that he was. With the contest, his days had been filled with working on the house. Now that it was over, he felt a little at loose ends. A friend of his mother’s had asked him to come look at her house and give an estimate of what it would cost to update the kitchen. But he didn’t know anything about that. That was Cassie’s domain. He could recommend ways to paint and decorate, but completely redoing the kitchen wasn’t his expertise. “I’m mulling over my career options now that the contest is over.”
Loretta peered at him, but shook her head. “No, it’s about that woman.” She looked around the backyard. “Cassie didn’t come today?”
“She hasn’t answered any of my calls, and I left her about eight voice mails about today.” He gave a shrug. “She doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“Have you given her a chance?”
“Eight voice mails, Miss Loretta.”
“So call again and leave her a ninth. And a tenth.” She put a hand on his arm. “Do you want her to be a part of your life? If so, you don’t give up after eight calls. And you don’t depend on a phone call to do what you should say in person.”
John cracked open the bottle and gulped the water. In person? Trying to talk to her over the phone seemed a safer option. He couldn’t be made a fool of that way. “I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know? Do you have doubts over her feelings?” She peered at him. “There comes a time in everyone’s life where they have to decide whether they let the doubts rule their lives or if they make a grand gesture to get what they want. Is this the time or not? Only you can say.”
The doubts were loud in his head, but if Miss Loretta was right then it was time for the grand gesture. Whether Cassie accepted him or not, at least he’d know for sure.
IT HAD BEEN days since she’d lost what she saw as her future. It sounded a bit melodramatic, but there it was. As she sat waiting for her father in the visiting room of the county jail, she felt as bleak and hopeless as the dull gray walls and hard metal tables and chairs there. She had tried her best, and she had still lost.
Her mother had reminded her that she would bounce back. That she had an unwritten future ahead of her where she could do anything she wanted. Well, she’d done what she wanted, but she hadn’t been good enough.
She guessed that was what all this gloom was about. She’d never be good enough to run her own company. To be her own boss.
To finally earn her father’s praise.
The door opened, and her father shuffled in behind two other inmates. She stood as he entered, surprised how old and feeble he’d become in such a short time. He frowned when he saw her and ambled to the table where she sat. “Cass, why are you here?”
“I promised I would come.” She took a seat across from him, wanting to reach out and give him a hug or touch his hand, but she’d been warned by the guards that touching wasn’t permitted. “How have you been?”
Her father gave a shrug. “Fine, I guess. The food stinks. The cot is hard and uncomfortable. But at least I get my hour outside every day.”
Sad to find that her dad’s life had been reduced to what he ate, where he slept and how he enjoyed an hour. She longed to give him some comfort. Maybe he’d adjust in time. She feared what would happen to him if he hung on to this defeated attitude.
And what about your own? She brushed away the thought and held out an envelope, pushing it across the table toward him. “Mother and Andromeda asked me to bring you their letters.”
He nodded and pulled the envelope to him. “Nice of you.”
“Biggie and Tiny also asked me to tell you they’re thinking about you.”
“What are those brothers up to now?”
“Since we lost—” She choked on the word. It still hurt to talk about it. “They’re talking about retiring.”
“Those guys won’t retire. They’ll find another contractor eventually. They can’t help working.”
She nodded and dropped her gaze to her hands. “Tom Watterson is buying Mother out. The house. The last of the company’s assets. All of it.”
Her father was only inches away from her. So close, yet he still seemed so far away. “He’d be a good man to work for. You should approach him about a job.”
She raised her head at his words. “I don’t want to work for Watterson.”
“He could teach you a lot.”
“I learned everything I needed to know from you.” She scowled at him, rising to her feet despite a nearby guard’s warning. She glanced at the guard, then took her seat again, dropping the volume of her voice. “Because of you, I know how to run my own company. How to bid on and negotiate contracts. How to plan a project and keep a team on task.”
He held out his hands. “So then why aren’t you working for yourself?”
“You know why.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “It takes money to start a company. And where am I going to find enough to do that?”
“By starting small and building from there. How do you think I did it?”
She laughed and looked around the visitors’ room. He grimaced. “Okay, so I’m not a stellar example of how to run a business. But you know plenty of people who are.”
“Because of my last name, no contractor wants to talk to me.”
“I meant the Buttuccis. The three of us started Lowman Construction together. Biggie may not say much, but his words of wisdom helped us get off the ground those first few years.” He leaned forward. “Have you even talked to them about this?”
“Dad, we lost the contest. We came in second place, but they might as well have plastered big capital Ls on our foreheads.”
“So you lost one contest. You move on to the next.”
She let her head droop forward. “I can’t.”
“Why not? Cass, you said it yourself. You know everything you need to know to succeed in this business, so what’s really stopping you?”
Her eyes watered, and she couldn’t bear to face him. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do, Cass. Tell me.”
She shook her head, but he reached out and touched her hand. A guard approached the table and rapped his knuckles on the metal surface. “No touching, Lowman. You know the rules.”
Her father nodded and sat back in the metal chair. “What are you afraid of?”
The tears now streamed down her cheeks as she faced him. “What if I can’t do this without you? What if I’m not good enough to do it on my own?”
Her father stared at her silently as she batted away her tears. She hated to cry, especially in front of him. Ashamed of the tears, she glanced away.
“You’ve always been good enough.”
She jerked her chin up at those words. He’d never said them to her. He’d always criticized her work, pointing out the faults and making her start over again. Her father sighed. “First off, you wouldn’t have made it into the contest if you hadn’t been good enough.”
“But we didn’t win—”
“And are you going to let that define you?” He wearily eyed the room. “I know it’s pretty ironic coming from me as I sit in jail, but you can’t let that one moment determine the rest of your life. Don’t let it be a stop sign. Turn it into motivation to win the next one. To go out there and prove to everyone that you’re good and that you believe in yourself.” He swallowed hard. “Better than even your old man.”
She closed her eyes for a moment. She wanted to believe that losing wasn’t the end of her dream. That it was just a small dip in the road, rather than the bottomless canyon it seemed on her trip to success.
Her father continued, “So do you have the courage to try again?”
Could she reach deep down and find the strength to try once more? She might have spent years trying to be more like her dad, but she had pieces of her mother inside her, too. Her mother wouldn’t give up after losing. She’d figure out a way to come back even stronger than before. Maybe it was time to accept her father for who he was and to become more like her mother.
She opened her eyes, and he smiled. “That’s my girl.”
CASSIE PULLED INTO the driveway of her house to find John sitting on her front porch, a rolled newspaper in his hand. He looked good. More than good. The warm weather had lingered into September, and he wore a T-shirt and jeans that highlighted how fit he was. He’d called her several times a day since the contest, but she hadn’t answered the phone once. Being with him only reminded her of the loss. She took a deep breath before opening the door and getting out of the truck. He stood as she crossed the lawn to the front porch.
She looked him over. “Hey, there. What are you doing here?”
He held out the newspaper to her. “I thought you might like to see the article on page three.”
“I don’t.”
He lowered his arm, the paper still in his hand. “You haven’t been returning my calls. I got tired of waiting for you to pull yourself out of this hole you’ve put yourself in.”
“I didn’t put myself there. Losing did.”
“You’re not going to win everything, Cassie. And the point of all this is what you do when you fall. Do you stay down or do you get back up?”
“John—”
“Please, hear me out.” He paused, then dove right in as if taking a leap of faith. “You drive me crazy. But then I guess when you fall in love with someone, the things that make you love them are the same things that get under your skin.”
Her heart skipped a beat before resuming. He still loved her even after all this? “I know what you’re going to say, Cass. That it’s too soon and not right that I’m in love with you. But you’d be wrong about that, too.” He sighed. “When I first met you, I didn’t realize I was seeing my future. And I don’t mean just the construction and design business. But everything.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m messing this all up.”
“I’d say you’re on a roll.”
He put the newspaper in her hands. “Page three. It says it much better than I ever could.”
She unrolled the paper to find it was the local Detroit newspaper’s real estate section. She looked up at him. “Page three?”
He nodded and sat on the porch while she turned the pages. Page three showed pictures of the Tanner home as well as an announcement of the grand opening of the CJ Construction and Design Company. In bold letters along the bottom, it read: Cassie, be my partner in business and in life. Let’s design a beautiful life together.
“Wow.”
He looked nervous. “Too much?”
She smiled and shook her head.
He stood and put his hands in hers. “Then say yes, Cass. The Tanner house proves that we’re better together than apart. I can’t make this work without you. I don’t want to.”
She looked into his eyes. “If, and I mean if, we do this, it doesn’t mean I’m always going to agree with you. Or that I’ll get my way all the time, either. It means we’re partners. Fifty-fifty.”
“Agreed,” he stated emphatically.
Chuckling, she squeezed his hands.
“So does this mean what I think it does?” he asked.
She took a deep breath. “I love you, John. And you’re right. It’s time I wasn’t down. It’s time I got up.”
He bent and kissed her long and passionately until she felt it down to her toes. When they broke apart, she felt dazed. “And one more thing,” she said.
He narrowed his eyes. “Yes?”
“The Buttucci brothers will always have a job with us as long as they want one.” She gave him a look. “Even Biggie.”
He sighed. “Agreed. But if he hurts my mother, I have the right to kick his butt.”
“Agreed.”
They kissed once more. She felt joy, relief and excitement all rolled into one. Slipping her arms around his waist, she hugged him close. “Oh, and I don’t like long engagements, either”
She could feel him kiss the top of her head. “Agreed.”
Keep reading for a sneak peek at
Beckett and Andie’s romance
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