Homecoming Reunion (11 page)

Homey.

He let the thought settle, a part of his mind shifting to the woman sitting in the office. At one time he and Larissa had talked about where they would live. She had always said she wanted to live here. She said it was the best place in the world.

Now he was here after all, a part of the place and a part of the history.

Why not keep it? Why not be involved in something with roots? Why not be involved in something with Larissa?

He let the errant thought rest, trying to imagine what that would look like. At one time it would have been all he wanted.

The door to the office was still open and he could hear Larissa talking. He moved into the doorway, but Larissa no longer sat at the table. Instead she stood by the window with her back to him, holding the telephone.

“I’m not sure what to do, Dad,” she was saying. “We put a huge dent in the operating loan on the kitchen renovations, which I wasn’t crazy about...I know. I didn’t agree with that either.” She eased out a sigh. “No...I didn’t bring it up.” A long pause followed this. Obviously her father had a lot to say. “Of course I’ll let you know what Garret wants to do. Hope the rest of the trip goes well. Thanks for the advice.” Then she hung up.

She held the phone in one hand, resting her fisted hand under her chin as she looked out the window. From this angle Garret caught the troubled look on her face and while one part of him wondered what she was thinking, the other part of him felt a jolt of annoyance that she had wasted so little time contacting her father. Couldn’t she make her own decisions? Was she still Daddy’s girl as Emily had intimated?

He waited a moment, cleared his throat then stepped into the room.

She whirled around, puzzlement twisting her features. “I thought Pete wanted to see the grounds,” she stammered, a flush creeping up her neck. “I thought you wouldn’t be back for a while.”

Obviously. Hence the call to Daddy to see what she should do. He wanted to be angry but a growing part of him felt sorry that she didn’t think she could make her own decisions.

But for now they had business to discuss and one thing was certain—he knew he didn’t want to do that sitting so close to her.

Letting his foolish thoughts take him places he could never go.

Chapter Eight

H
e looked angry, Larissa thought as Garret plucked a pad of paper from the desk. Had Pete said something to make him look so upset?

“Take your cell phone and some paper along,” he said, his voice brisk and businesslike, his dark eyebrows pulled together in a frown. “We need to see who can do what for us in two weeks.” Garret rolled up his sleeves, ready for work. “I’ll meet you at the first room on the second floor,” he said, then abruptly left.

Larissa picked up her phone, puzzled at the sudden shift in Garret’s attitude. While Pete was here it felt as if she and Garret were moving to a better place in their relationship.

Well, as good a place as could be expected for a couple of exes who had parted on bad terms. But still.

Once in a while she had caught him looking at her and his smile had a warmth to it that hadn’t been there before. She sensed something had changed between them and while she wasn’t sure what it was, she didn’t mind the shift in the constant tension humming between them.

She hurried up the stairs and found him standing in the middle of the first room, holding a tape measure, frowning at the room. “So we need to make a plan,” he said. “We’ll need quick and cheap.”

Larissa pulled her pen from behind her ear and blew out a sigh. “Do you really think we can fix up the rooms in two weeks?”

“Not the way you’d like to, but we could probably do some superficial stuff. Some paint. Maybe some new bed coverings.”

“Superficial seems like a waste of time and money,” Larissa said. “Some of the walls need to be re-drywalled. The carpets need replacing. I really hoped we could redo the windows and install new doors. The bathrooms could use new fixtures.”

Garret held his hand up at her list. “Unfortunately superficial is all we can afford right now. We don’t have time to do everything you want in time for Pete’s conference.”

“So forget about Pete,” Larissa snapped. “Do the work right and we can look for other business once we’re done.” She caught his frown and sensing his resistance, toned her anger down, trying to sound reasonable and professional. “We both want the same thing. We both want the inn to turn a profit and Pete just pointed out exactly what I’d been saying all along.”

“If we don’t get Pete, we might not get other business. I can’t afford to put my own money into this business to buoy it up until things turn around,” he retorted. “I’m not as well off as your father.”

His words held a lash of anger that was unexpected and surprisingly hurtful.

Her mind ticked back to another time Garret had shown his anger with her over her father. They had fought about telling her parents about their relationship. He wanted things out in the open, but she was still afraid of what would happen when her father found out that she was dating Garret. Her father had never made any secret about his plans for her. He wanted her to go to university. Make a success of herself. He didn’t want her to get married for a while. And she knew he certainly wouldn’t want her to get married to someone who was working for him as a laborer.

As she held his narrowed gaze, she felt a surprising touch of regret at the shift in emotions. For just a few moments, when they were talking to Pete, she felt an accord between them. Now, it was swept away by the waves of frustration and anger washing over them both.

“Maybe I should talk to my father about the renos,” she returned, refusing to be intimidated by Garret’s increasing anger. “See what he thinks we should do.”

“You don’t have to go running to your father with every problem. Like I said, you have some control in this situation too. You have the power to make decisions.”

She just stared at him, ice flowing through her veins in reaction to what he said.

“Running to my father?” she asked in a deliberate voice as her own anger grew. “What do you mean by that?”

Garret held her gaze, seemingly unintimidated by her fury. “I heard you talking to your dad after Pete left. I heard what you said.”

“Last time I checked, he’s a partner in the inn as well.”

“Of course he is, but last time I checked you have some control and the power to make decisions as well. For now I think we need to take small steps. Maybe in time we can change the windows and do all the things you want, but for now we need to do things inexpensive and simple. And you can make that decision as easily as your father.”

On one level Larissa heard what he was saying and felt assured by his confidence in her, but his comment still rankled and harkened back to some of the many discussions they’d had about her relationship with her father. “Now you resent my father’s involvement, but when he stepped in years ago and offered you money to leave town, you were happy enough to take it.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, Larissa wished she could recall them, but it was too late.

Garret only stared as the words fell between them, heavy as stones.

Yet as the silence between them grew and filled the room, she felt as if she had let go of a weight dragging her down for too many years. Finally, the whole reason for his leaving and her subsequent disillusionment was now out in the open.

“What do you mean by that?”

Larissa drew back at the controlled fury in his voice, but she held her ground and his gaze. She was seeing this through to the end. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Garret shook his head. “No. I do not.”

Larissa wavered in the face of his decisiveness, but she also knew what her father showed her and forged ahead. “Are you telling me you didn’t take the money my father gave you?” Her father had shown her the cancelled check with Garret’s scrawling signature on the back. “I know my father offered you money to leave. To leave me.” She hated the way her voice broke. Why, after all these years, could that still bother her? “You took the check, you cashed it and then you left. Don’t tell me that didn’t happen.”

The silence stretching between them was fraught with tension, hurt and sorrow.

“Then I have nothing to say to you. Because it didn’t happen.”

“So you didn’t meet with my father at Mug Shots?” Larissa felt a quiver of uncertainty. Garret seemed so sure of himself.

“He met with me. Bit of a difference,” Garret said, planting his hands on his hips. “Remember how we went to your parents place to tell them about our relationship?”

“I remember you were uptight,” Larissa said her mind casting back to that evening. The two of them sitting side by side on the leather settee in front of the fireplace, holding hands while they faced down her father. Garret had told her father that he cared for Larissa and that he wanted to let them know they were dating. Jack had said nothing at first. Then he nodded and looked directly at Garret. All he said was that he understood the situation and appreciated being told. As if he had been approached with some business decision.

“That was the first time I was ever in your parents’ house. Of course I was uptight, but I was more uptight when he called me two days later and wanted me to meet him at Mug Shots.”

“Was that when he gave you the check?” She didn’t want to ask, but the words were drawn from her.

Garret frowned, as if thinking then his mouth curved in a cynical smile. “That’s when he gave me
a
check.”

His words were like ice to her heart. To hear him admit that extinguished the final, thin ray of hope.

“And you took it and cashed it.”

“Of course I did. That check was for my wages and holiday pay. A thousand dollars. Your father essentially fired me and told me not to come back to the mill again.”

Larissa blinked, trying to assimilate this information, but her mind caught on one detail. “But the check he made out to you was for ten thousand dollars, not a thousand.”

“I wish,” Garret snorted. “I wasn’t that valuable an employee.”

Larissa couldn’t wrap her head around this information. “He showed it to me. I saw the figure. Ten thousand dollars. A one a zero, a comma and then three more zeros, a period and two more. Ten thousand.”

She remembered how the amount had felt like an insult. Was that all she was worth to her father and to her old boyfriend. Ten thousand dollars?

“I guess I would know how much money I put in my bank account,” Garret said. “And it was only a thousand.”

Larissa frowned, unable to pull this all together. She would have to talk to her father about it. And what? Ask him how much the check really was for? He showed it to her. She saw the figure.

“You don’t believe me,” he said.

She shook her head in confusion rather than to negate what he had said. “I’m not sure what to think.” Then she looked up at him, her confidence returning as the old emotions washed over her. “I just know you left. Does it matter how much money you had in your pocket?”

“It matters that you thought your father paid me to leave you alone.”

“You still left,” she insisted.

He tapped his fingers on his arm, his eyes flashing. “And you wouldn’t talk to me after I did. I came to the house and you closed the door in my face.”

They were going around in circles. Part of her wanted to forget the whole conversation and leave it buried in the past. Move on. But as she held his gaze older emotions swirled around them like a gathering storm and she knew they couldn’t walk away from this. If they were going to work together in any kind of harmony, they had to put this out of the way.

“I didn’t talk to you because I thought my father paid you to leave.”

Garret slowly lowered his arms, heaving out a sigh. “Would you have talked to me if he hadn’t shown you the check?”

She tried reaching back to what she had felt before she thought Garret had betrayed her. Then she nodded. “I cared for you. A lot,” she said. “You meant more to me than anyone I’ve ever met.” Too late she realized how that sounded. As if he’d been the only person in her life that had mattered to her.

Well, it’s true, isn’t it?

She stifled that errant question. Didn’t matter. That was over. “So why did you leave?” She continued. “Why didn’t you stay and fight for me? You could have worked somewhere else. We could still have been together.”

Garret eased out a long, slow sigh, running his hand through his hair.

“When your father met with me at Mug Shots, he not only fired me, he told me exactly what he thought of our relationship. Nothing. He told me I wasn’t good enough for you. Trouble was, he didn’t have to tell me that. I knew that myself. Especially after I sat in the ‘drawing room’ of your parents’ home.” He made quotation marks with his fingers around the words “drawing room,” his voice taking on a sardonic note.

“What do you mean by that?”

Garret folded his arms over his chest, his legs spread as if bracing himself, the light from the window behind him throwing his face into shadow. “I grew up in a small house on a ranch out in the boonies. I was working as a lumber piler, driving an old beat-up truck my grandfather and I would be fixing at least once a week because there was always something wrong with it. I was never ashamed of who I was or where I came from until I stepped inside your parents’ house. I never fully realized how much you had grown up with until I saw that place.”

“It’s just a house,” Larissa protested.

Garret shook his head. “It’s a showpiece. Sitting in your parents’ drawing room with its huge stone fireplace, leather furniture that probably cost what I made in a year, knowing there was still a family room, living room and library in the house, let alone the bedrooms and bathrooms. It reminded me of how far apart you and I really were.”

“That didn’t matter to me. I told you that.”

Garret released a cynical laugh. “It mattered to me. I was a naive and stupid young man, thinking I could take you from that and expect that you would be happy living out on the ranch, and getting by on what I made working at the mill.” Garret took a step closer. “I left because I knew I had to make some changes in my life. When your father gave me my severance pay, he told me I wasn’t good enough for you and that I wouldn’t be able to provide for you in the way you were used to. After I saw your house, I knew he was right.”