The Return Read online

  “I’m sorry,” Belinda said, her cheeks flushing. She might be blunt and kind of pushy, but she was also a good-hearted person, and she would never want to talk bad about someone and have them hear. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t back down now,” Fitz drawled, raising his bushy eyebrows at her. He had surprisingly pretty eyes, if you could get beyond all the hair. Bluish gray. “What’s the point of a high horse if you jump off as soon as your target appears.”

  Belinda sucked in a breath, staring at the man in astonishment. Slowly the surprise turned into outrage.

  Ria had to hide a giggle. Belinda had spent most of her life bossing other people around. She wasn’t used to people talking back to her.

  Skye snorted and covered her mouth with her hand.

  “What did you say?” Belinda asked in a hushed tone that Ria was very familiar with. It was her sister’s most dangerous voice.

  “There’s the high horse again,” Fitz said with a satisfied nod. “Knew it couldn’t be gone for long.” He turned toward Ria before Belinda could do more than sputter. “These them?” He gestured toward the arrangements in the cooler.

  “Yep. Those are them. They’re all tagged, and here’s a printout of the addresses. I also sent it to your phone.”

  “I saw it. I’ll take care of these.”

  “Thanks.”

  Belinda was glaring at Fitz’s back, but the man was evidently completely oblivious to her outrage. He ignored her with perfect indifference as he loaded the arrangements into the back of his car—an old Thunderbird in an ugly shade of sandy yellow—and took off without another word.

  “I really don’t like that man,” Belinda said, clearly able to find her words now that the cause of her peeve had departed.

  “He’s harmless.”

  “Harmless? He’s the rudest person I’ve ever met!”

  “Well, I’ll warn you when he’s coming by to make deliveries so you don’t accidentally run into him again. I’m not going to find someone new. We use Fitz, and that’s not going to change.”

  “Fine,” Belinda said with a sniff. “It’s your business, so you can do what you want.”

  “Why did you come over here anyway?” Ria asked, realizing the purpose of Belinda’s visit had never been revealed.

  “Oh. Yeah. I got distracted by mannerless jerks. Apparently Mr. Worth is leaving everything to Jacob in his will.”

  “Oh. I guess that’s to be expected. He doesn’t have any other relatives.”

  “Yes. But Jacob is going around this afternoon checking out all the property on Main Street.”

  “Checking it out? Why?”

  “I don’t know. Sizing up his inheritance or something?” Belinda shrugged.

  “Maybe he’s going to fix some of the buildings up,” Skye suggested. She’d been surprisingly quiet for a while now.

  “Oh. Maybe.” Ria felt a little flicker of interest. That would mean Jacob was planning to stick around. “Huh.”

  “Anyway,” Belinda went on. “I thought I’d warn you so you could take off if you need to. I can cover the shop while he’s here.”

  Ria smiled at her sister, surprised by the thoughtfulness of her offer. “Thanks. But I’ll be okay. I’d just decided I was going to talk to him, so this will be my chance to go through with my plan.”

  “Okay. I do think that makes more sense than constantly running away from him.”

  “I haven’t been running away!” Ria insisted. Then her innate honesty caused her to add, “I’ve just walked away once or twice.”

  “Three times,” Skye corrected.

  “Shut up.” Ria couldn’t help but laugh at herself, and she felt better as she did.

  It was a good thing because the bell on the door chimed just then.

  “I’ll check,” Skye whispered. “You two pretend to be busy!”

  Skye might have been teasing, but Ria figured it was good advice. She grabbed the flowers she’d sorted out earlier for an arrangement she needed to design that afternoon and laid them out on the table.

  “Ria,” Skye called from the front of the shop. Without waiting for a response, she pushed the door open and said with gracious poise, as if this were new information and not something they’d just been discussing. “Jacob is here. He’s checking out the buildings on this block. Can he look around?”

  “Of course.” Ria was grateful to her friend for laying the groundwork and grateful to her sister for giving her warning. She was able to smile with casual ease as Jacob appeared, towering over Skye in the doorway. “You can look around all you want. We’re not very busy this afternoon.”

  Jacob wasn’t smiling. His eyes rested on her face with an observant gravity that was very unnerving. “Thank you. I’m going to check out the front first, and then I’ll be back here.”

  When he disappeared again, Ria and Belinda shrugged at each other.

  Belinda was clearly planning to stay until this unexpected visit was over. She’d propped herself against a table and pulled out her phone.

  Jacob spent about five minutes in the front of the store. Then he tapped on the door and came in when she called out an invitation.

  He looked at her again. Didn’t say anything. Then he turned to scan the room and snapped a few pictures.

  She watched him. He wore old jeans, work boots, and a heather-gray T-shirt. He’d filled out a lot since he’d been a teenager. His shoulders were impressive. So were his arms. The contours of his ass and thighs were set off by his jeans.

  He’d always been in good shape. He’d been great at soccer and baseball. But he’d never looked like this before. He’d been doing a lot of manual labor. Commercial fishing up in Alaska. She knew this from local gossip, and the proof of it was right in front of her eyes.

  She could see it in his tanned skin. The strength of his stance. The scars on his hands and forearms. And one scary-looking one from his ear to his neck.

  Who was this man? He was big and hard and tough and kind of dangerous.

  He wasn’t the sweet boy she remembered.

  He was the kind of man who might screw a woman hard and fast in a dark corner of a bar.

  This wasn’t a good line of thought for her, so she pushed it out of her mind. “What exactly are you looking for, if you don’t mind my asking?” Ria was relieved that her voice was easy and natural.

  “Mostly just checking the condition. Seeing what shape these old places are in.”

  “Well, this store is pretty good, since my dad fixed it up for a long time, and Fitz has been doing it lately. But some of the other places on this block are pretty run-down.”

  “Yeah. Grandpa couldn’t really keep them up, I guess.”

  “So are you going to fix them up?” Ria was genuinely interested in this topic, so she forgot to be nervous about the fact that she was talking to Jacob Worth.

  He shrugged, glancing at his phone and then snapping one more picture. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Well, if you want to sell, I think we could probably afford to buy this building now. We’re doing pretty well.”

  “I know. I’ve heard. What y’all have done is damn impressive.”

  His face was still serious, so she had to assume he was being sincere. “Thanks. So if you want to sell...”

  “I’ll probably have to. Even if I fix these buildings up, I’d still be hard-pressed to find anyone to rent the empty ones. But I can’t sell this one unless I can sell the rest of them.”

  Ria frowned. She started to ask why, but then she figured it out for herself.

  Of course he wouldn’t want to sell one building—right in the middle of the block. He’d never get buyers for all the individual buildings. If he was going to sell, he’d need to sell all of them.

  “You’re not going to hand them off to a developer or something, are you?” she asked, the chill she was feeling reflecting in her voice.

  “I don’t know.” He wasn’t meeting her eyes, and that gave her the answer she
needed.

  “You can’t!”

  He turned his head. “What?”

  “You can’t, Jacob. You can’t come strolling home and sell out this town. A developer would tear down this whole block and put up a Walmart or something! All the local businesses would die. You can’t do that to us.”

  “I’m not going to do it on purpose.” The quiet, controlled demeanor he’d displayed since he’d arrived was fading into visible impatience. “But what exactly do you expect from me? This place is a money pit. My grandpa hasn’t made anything on these properties for years. I can’t hold on to it to indulge your nostalgia.”

  “Nostalgia!” She was so angry now her cheeks had flushed. She could barely take a full breath. She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but she’d gone from nervous and shaky to full-blown rage in no time flat. “Nostalgia?”

  “Well, whatever it is.” He still looked more sober than anything else, but there was an edge of bitterness in his tone that wasn’t at all like the boy she used to know. “I can’t pour money I don’t have into a lost cause just for sentimental value. What the fuck do you want from me?”

  “I want you to think through all your choices and not take the easy way out because you’re too scared to face something hard.” She hadn’t intended the words to mean more than the current situation, but she suddenly heard the resonance underlying the words.

  Years old now.

  Jacob obviously heard it too. He froze. His hands were fisted at his sides, and he was almost shaking from reined-in tension. Anger. Resentment. Frustration. And who knew what else.

  It took a minute, but he finally controlled himself enough to speak. “I’m not taking the easy way out. I told you I haven’t made any decisions yet. But I have no good options here.”

  She was about to cry. She could feel the tears burning behind her eyes. But there was no way in hell she was going to let them fall in front of Jacob.

  She straightened up to her full height and met his gaze. “Well, start looking for more options. Because a decent man would never throw out like garbage a town that did nothing but love him.”

  She’d said too much. Too much had come out with her words. But at least she hadn’t cried.

  She turned and gave Belinda a pleading look.

  Belinda didn’t let her down. “Oh, Ria, I forgot to tell you that Missy Grady wanted to talk to you about the flowers for her daughter’s wedding this afternoon. If you want to run over and see if she’s home, I can finish up with Jacob.”

  “That sounds good. Thanks.” Ria took off her apron and grabbed her purse before she turned back to Jacob. She opened her mouth to say something. Anything.

  Nothing came out.

  So she gave up trying and just walked away.

  Three

  “SO WHAT DO YOU THINK we should do?” Ria asked, having just laid out the building situation for the third or fourth time that day to Skye and Madeline.

  They were eating dinner together in Madeline’s cute little kitchen in a loft apartment over an empty storefront in downtown Azalea that three different people had tried unsuccessfully to turn into a coffee shop. She rented the apartment from old Mr. Worth just like everyone else on the block.

  “Okay,” Skye said, after swallowing a bite of the chili Madeline had made in her slow cooker. “Worst-case scenario. Jacob sells the block to a developer and they turn it into a big box store or a row of expensive town houses or something. We’re making plenty of money to lease or buy a different site for the shop.”

  “Yeah,” Ria said rather woefully. “But that would be terrible. My parents were there for—”

  “I know. I know.” Skye frowned at her. “I was just saying the worst-case scenario. It wouldn’t be good, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.”

  “I guess, but it would feel like a betrayal of my folks. I can’t believe Jacob is even thinking about doing it.”

  “Let’s take Jacob out of the equation for a minute.” When Ria was about to object, Madeline went on quietly, “Just for a minute. We can’t control what he does. We can only control what we do. So let’s take him out of the equation for just a minute and consider our options. One option would be what Skye said. We don’t want it to happen, but it might, and we could still make it work. Right?”

  Ria nodded, pushing down the emotion so she could think reasonably. “Yes. We could make it work if we had to. I’m not sure anywhere else in town would work for a business like this, but we could get a place in a bigger town nearby. Stafford or somewhere.”

  “Yes,” Madeline said while Skye nodded solemnly. “So that’s one option, if we really don’t have any other choice. But there might be other options. We don’t know what Jacob will do next. He might not end up selling.”

  “He will.” Ria knew this for sure. “You didn’t see his face. He’s going to sell it. The whole thing is painful to him, and we all know what he does when something’s too hard or hurts too much. He runs away.”

  “So maybe we can buy the buildings on the block,” Madeline continued, evidently knowing there was no good in arguing with Ria about the earlier point.

  “What? How?” Skye demanded.

  “We can’t afford all that,” Ria said at exactly the same time.

  “Hold on. You haven’t let me finish. I’m not saying we should fund it out of our own pocket. But what if we put together a plan to revitalize the whole block with some cute loft condos and a real coffee shop and maybe a couple of antique shops or craft stores or something appealing and small townish. The location here is really good. We’re less than an hour from the beach and less than an hour from both Norfolk and Richmond, and we’re less than three hours from DC. This town has potential. Our business can be the starting place. Maybe we can find some investors or at least some folks to buy the other buildings. There are some other options other than hoping Jacob won’t sell.”

  Ria had never for a moment considered any of that, although she’d dreamed of someone else doing something similar for years now. But Madeline was right. Why should she sit around and hope for someone to save her when maybe she and her friends could save themselves? “So what do you think we should do?”

  “Start thinking about it. See if we can put together a few different plans. I’ll talk to Matthew and see if he’ll help.” Madeline gave Skye a significant side-eye as she said that last comment.

  Matthew Jenkins was Madeline’s older brother, and Skye had had a crush on him all through her childhood until he had gone to college and then moved to Richmond to work for a successful architecture firm.

  Skye rolled her big blue eyes. “Don’t give me that look. I’m not still goo-goo about him. If you can get him to help, that would be great.” Then she paused. “Oh! I almost forgot. I can’t believe I forgot to tell you!”

  Ria shook her head at her friend’s characteristically quicksilver change in topic. “Forgot to tell me what?”

  “Billy Perkins.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s going to ask you out!”

  Ria blinked. “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s going to ask you out. Tim told me.” Tim was one of Skye’s older brothers. “He’s interested in you, so he’s going to ask you out.”

  “But he just got divorced a few weeks ago,” Ria wailed. Billy had been two grades above her all through her school years. She knew him pretty well, and they’d always been friendly, but he’d gotten married at eighteen, so he’d never been on her romantic radar in any way.

  “It’s been at least three months,” Madeline murmured, her peaceful demeanor calming Ria’s rising nerves, as it always did. “And you don’t have to say yes when he asks you.”

  “I know that. But I’ve never even thought about him like that. It would be weird. I still think about him as married. Taken. And even if I didn’t, I’m not sure I...” She sighed. “He doesn’t give me flutters or anything.”

  “So tell him no,” Skye said. “I just wanted to give you warn
ing so you’d be prepared.”

  Ria groaned. “It feels so awkward. Why do the only guys who ask me out have to be the ones I’m not interested in? I just want someone to give me a few flutters now and then. Is that so much to ask for?”

  “No. It’s not. If Billy doesn’t give you flutters, then tell him no and wait until someone comes along who does give you flutters. It’s as easy as that.”

  It didn’t feel easy to Ria. She honestly couldn’t remember anyone other than Jacob giving her those particular flutters. She’d been so long without them that she was starting to wonder if she just wasn’t cut out for a romantic relationship or marriage.

  She wanted it. But it felt like Jacob had somehow hijacked that part of her mind and heart and sabotaged them from wanting it with anyone but him.

  It was enough to make a girl scream.

  But she wasn’t going to go out with a man she knew she wasn’t interested in—and that included Billy. If he asked her out, as awkward as it felt, she should probably just tell him no.

  THE NEXT DAY, ON TUESDAY afternoon, Jacob sat in his rental car and stared down at a text on his phone that had come in that morning.

  It was from Ria.

  Hey—if you get a chance, could you stop by the shop in the next few days? I wanted to talk for a minute.

  That was all it said.

  Ria couldn’t have sent him a text more designed to make his head explode if she’d been trying to do just that. She wanted to talk.

  Talk to him.

  About what?

  His brain told him the obvious answer to this was the situation with the building she rented. That was what they’d just argued about yesterday. She’d been really upset, so it was likely that she wanted to continue that conversation. Convince him not to sell out when he inherited the property.

  But she hadn’t said she wanted to talk about the building. Maybe she wanted to talk about something else. She was obviously still angry with him. Maybe she wanted to settle things between them.

  Maybe she wanted to make up.

  No matter how much Jacob tried to convince himself otherwise, the truth was pretty obvious to him. And if Ria told him that she wanted them to give it another go, he wasn’t sure he was strong enough to say no to her.