It’d finally come to her while she, Will, and Mac had been sitting on the back porch after supper. And the real kicker was that she couldn’t do this on her own—she needed Nat to pull it off.
After tucking her girls in and promising them both waffles in the morning, she locked herself in her bedroom and paced from one end to the other. She stared down at her phone, running her thumb up and down over the blank screen. She’d been here before, not too long ago. Locked away in her room, insides in knots as she’d tried to work up the nerve to call her sister.
This time, she was fairly certain Nat would answer. Okay, fifty percent sure. Twenty?
“You’re not gonna know until you call,” Rory said to herself. “And if she doesn’t answer, you’ll… Well, you’ll just keep tryin’ ’cause that’s what you do.”
Pulling in a lungful of air, she cued up Nat’s name, squeezed her eyes shut, and pressed send.
Four painfully long rings later, Nat answered. “Look, I know we’re talkin’ now or whatever, but twice in one day is a little much. Baby steps and all that. Maybe we can try once a month to start? You’re kind of a lot.”
Rory breathed out a laugh, her shoulders relaxing. “I wasn’t sure you’d answer.”
“Almost didn’t. But I like to be artful with my bitchiness, you know? Gotta keep people on their toes. This better be important, though. And if you tell me it’s about some kind of nonsense like—”
“It’s about Nash.”
“What’s wrong?” Nat asked, her teasing tone vanished. “He okay?”
“He’s fine. Or I think he is, anyway. We’re still not talkin’—or, well, I haven’t called him. He’d probably answer, but—”
“Rory.”
“Sorry.” She waved a hand in front of her face to try to cool herself down, her cheeks overheated thanks to the nervous energy zinging around in her body. “I’m not used to askin’ for help, and apparently it makes me a little stupid when I need to.”
“Wait,” Nat said. “You’re askin’ for help? Fromme?”
Rory breathed out a laugh. “First time for everything, right?”
“You do know I’m on the opposite end of the country from you, right? Not a whole lot I can do from two thousand miles away.”
“You can do this. If you want to help me, I mean.”
“If it helps my best friend not be such a mopey bastard—and, okay, if it helps you be happy too—I’ll do what I can.”
That was exactly what Rory had been hoping she’d say.
Nash didn’t believe in luck. Could’ve been his childhood or his upbringing or any number of things that’d happened to him over the years, but when it came down to it, he believed in hard work and determination over everything else.
But he couldn’t discount how things seemed to be falling into place over the past two weeks on the business side of things. Days after his dad had practically handed over King Construction to him on a silver platter, he’d received a call from a writer for a national magazine. They wanted to do an interview regarding the work he and Rory had done in Havenbrook.
He’d been working so hard—they’dbeen working so hard—and things were finally happening. Somewhere along the way, Nash had stopped looking at it as his and had started looking at it as theirs.
And Rory wasn’t even by his side for this milestone.
His texts and calls to her went unanswered, and it was pissing him off. He’d promised to give her space on the relationship front, but this was for the business—theirbusiness—and she was nowhere to be found.
“I think I got everything I need, Nash. Thanks so much for taking the time to meet with me.” Lucy, the interviewer, packed her things into her bag. “I’m so excited about this series. I’ve been pitching something like this to my editor for months, but we just hadn’t found the right town to spotlight yet. Once Rory sent over those pictures of your projects and I started digging more, I knew Havenbrook was our town.”
Nash cocked his head to the side, his eyes narrowing. “Did you sayRorysent you the pictures?”
She laughed. “Yep, kicked off this whole thing with her email. Never knew so much tenacity could reside in such a small package. Didn’t matter that she only knew me through my sister, she wouldn’t take no for an answer.” She closed the flap of her messenger bag. “But I’m glad she reached out. It was at the perfect time since I’ve been angling for something like this for a while.”
“Yeah,” Nash managed while his brain churned over the new information. Rory had set this up? Rory had contacted the magazine to get this spread for him—forthem—and she wasn’t even here for it? None of it made sense.
“I’ll be sure to send a few copies of the magazine once it’s printed.” Lucy stood and offered her hand to him. “Thanks again for your time.”
Nash stared down at the tabletop after she’d left, his brain cranking a mile a minute. The more he thought about it, the more pissed he got. He understood Rory wasn’t ready for a relationship with him, and he was finding a way to deal with that. He hadn’t pushed once.
