His dad smiled up at him before Elizabeth wrapped him in a warm embrace. Andy stepped back to allow them the moment. He knew how difficult it must be for his mom to visit day after day and rarely find his dad in such a good mindset.
“I can’t begin to tell you how good it is to see you,” she said quietly.
“I missed you too, sweetheart. It’s good to see both of you. Is it my birthday?”
Elizabeth took his hand and squeezed it. “No, we just wanted to see you. And we wanted to talk to you about something.”
Eldon’s forehead creased as he looked between Andy and Elizabeth, “Is everything okay? What is it?”
Andy took a deep breath and tried to quickly choose the right words. He couldn’t think of a way to sugarcoat it, so it was best to just come out and say it. “Eddy is going to take over your boat.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I have a furniture business, Dad. We make all the pieces by hand and customize things when requested. Josh White is the only employee I’ve got and we’re both overworked. I can’t do both any longer. If I try, there’s no doubt I’ll fail at both,” Andy explained.
He began to worry when his dad didn’t say anything for a very long moment. He needed his dad to be lucid. He couldn’t handle a repeat of his last visit. With everything that had recently gone on, his emotions were already hanging on by a thread.
“So, Eddy on the boat, huh?” Eldon finally broke the silence.
Andy nervously glanced at his mom before he looked back at his dad and gave a hesitant nod.
“That’s good. He’s always done a good job on the boat. He knows what he’s doing.”
Andy stole another surprised glance at his mom before turning his attention back to his dad. “So, you’re okay with it?”
“It’s your boat, you can do with it what you please,” his dad said with a shrug.
With tears stinging his eyes, he got up and wrapped his arms around his dad in a tight hug. A huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He took it as a sign that he was meant to tell his dad at that moment instead of waiting a moment longer.
“Don’t be so surprised, son. I signed everything over to you because I trusted you to make the right decisions. Eddy will do just fine.”
Elizabeth stood and placed a soft kiss on Andy’s cheek. “We won’t stay long. We don’t want to tire your dad out too much.”
Andy agreed before suggesting he go out to the car ahead of her. He wanted his mother to have a few minutes in private to visit with her husband. The visit gave him some closure after the last one. He was happy to leave things on a high note.
As much as he wanted to run to Samira and tell her the news, he would give her the space she needed. It wasn’t Samira’s fault he didn’t have his life together. It all came down to that. He wasn’t in the position to ask her to take the risk and stay with him. She had no reason to believe things would work out any better than they had the first time. And that was on him.
“Aren’t you glad you listened to your mother?” Elizabeth asked as soon as she joined him in the truck.
He looked at his mom and chuckled. “That definitely went better than I expected it to. Thanks for dragging me with you. I needed to pay him a visit anyway.”
“Well? Are you going to go get your girl now?”
“If only it was that simple. I think I need to just focus on myself. Figure out where I want to go with the furniture business and work on that, and then, hopefully things will fall into place. I know where to find her, and she knows where to find me.”
Chapter 18
Samira kicked her shoes off as soon as she walked through the door of her loft. Her feet were sore even though she had spent nearly the entire day behind a desk. She was probably just tired of clothes in general. She was finishing up her second week in her new position, and each day was worse than the last. She blinked back tears as the nagging voice in the back of her mind suggested she made a mistake.
She went straight upstairs to her bedroom so she could get out of her work clothes. Blue plaid flannel pajama pants and a long-sleeved cotton shirt were just the warm hug she needed. She wasn’t sure why her new position seemed so much more grueling than her old job. Being behind a desk all day was nothing new. She was used to paperwork. She was used to making decisions.
The vibration of her phone in her purse jolted her from her thoughts. “Hello?”
“Samira? It’s Wendy. I know it’s getting late, but I haven’t heard from you, and you really need to sign that purchase agreement. Rosalyn called again today and is threatening to pulltheir offer if they don’t receive the signed purchase agreement soon.”
Samira groaned, removed the pins from her hair, and shook her curls free. It had been a week since she verbally accepted the offer. She knew she needed to sign the agreement, but there just never seemed to be enough hours in the day.
“Will you be in your office tomorrow? I can swing by and get those papers signed. I know tomorrow is Saturday, I’ve just been working a lot of hours during the week.”
