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She was assuming too much. She didn’t know that he wasn’t the kind of guy to make a lifelong commitment to anyone, that he couldn’t trust another person to remain committed to him. He’d tried getting serious with one or two women in the past, but “serious” only marked the beginning of the end. As soon as heightened expectations entered the relationship, that was when the problems began.
But he didn’t correct her. The last thing he wanted was to give her a challenge. “We’ll see how that goes,” he said. “Have a great night.”
* * *
After having to do Glenda’s job the previous week, Jack was so behind that he called Patience at the crack of dawn and asked her to drive Ari to school. She didn’t mind. She was happy to take care of whatever their daughter needed. But she was a little leery of how her relationship with Jack might progress. Congenial co-parenting was one thing. She was all for it. But now that she was working for him again, he was likely to rely on her more and more—not only at work but to do all the things that Glenda had been doing in the parenting department—which would make it seem almost like they were married again.
Except she wouldn’t be sleeping with him. She hoped that would be enough separation… She didn’t want to continue to bounce between Jack and her father.
It was a damp, foggy morning, and a fender bender at the closest intersection to the school blocked traffic, making Ari a few minutes late to first period. Patience wasn’t happy about that, but at least Ari wasn’t the only student to get held up. The traffic jam had snaked around the block by the time they got there.
After Ari got out of the car and Patience escaped the congestion, she passed the church on her way to work where she could see the light in the office glowing through the fog. Her father was already there, where he probably thought she should be. She needed to go in, finish up a few things and bring him up to speed on what she couldn’t finish—maybe even help out part-time until he could find someone to replace her.
She’d make sure the transition went smoothly, would never leave him in the lurch. But with the festival right around the corner and trying to dig Jack out of the mess he was in because of the divorce, now wasn’t the best time to tackle that. There was nothing so urgent at the church that it couldn’t wait until after Christmas.
Pressing the accelerator, she watched the light in that window grow dimmer and dimmer in her rearview mirror. She loved her father and wished for peace and harmony between them. But the control he tried to exert over her life had created so much resentment. She wasn’t ready to speak to him quite yet.
When she arrived at the office, she found a box of chocolates on her desk with a note from Jack thanking her for jumping in to help him. She lifted it so that he could see she’d found it through the interior window of his office and smiled, and he nodded while talking to someone on the phone. Then she sat down and put her purse in the drawer so she could get to work.
He came out as soon as he was finished with the call. “Thanks for taking Ari to school for me.”
“No problem. Thanks for the chocolates.” They were mostly toffee and caramels—her favorites. Evidently, he remembered.
“Least I can do. I’m glad you were willing to come back to work for me. I don’t know what I would’ve done otherwise.”
“Don’t make me feel too essential, or I might ask for a raise,” she said jokingly.
He chuckled. “I’m hoping an occasional box of chocolates will head that off. What was it like staying in your new house all by yourself last night? Were you scared?”
Not at all, because she hadn’t been by herself. She’d been with Kanon—until midnight, anyway. Then she’d been so filled with the taste of his kiss and the smell of his cologne she couldn’t think about anything else. “I like having my own place. It’s great that I can do what I want without worrying about what my father will think.”
“Has he been over to see you yet?”
“No. We’re not speaking at the moment.” She hadn’t wanted to tell him about that, but since they were spending so much time together these days, and she didn’t know how long this rift with her father would last, she figured he’d probably find out about it anyway.
He picked up a photograph of all eight of his semis parked in a row—which Glenda had left on the desk when she grabbed her more personal things—looked at it and put it back down. “I sort of figured as much. It’s not like he’d let you go easily.”
“It’s probably my fault as much as his,” she started to say, instantly rising to her father’s defense. She was used to doing that with Jack, but he lifted a hand to let her know it wasn’t necessary.
“I get how much your father means to you,” he said. “I also understand that he’s the only family you have, and that makes it more difficult to push back whenever he crosses the line. But you’re good enough just as you are, Patience. You always have been. You shouldn’t have to prove anything, least of all to him.”
She’d disappointed her father terribly when she derailed her life at seventeen, and he’d never forgiven her for it. But maybe she had to be okay with the mistakes she’d made before anyone else could be. “I think I’m finally learning that it’s what I think of myself that really matters,” she said.
He nodded. “Now you got it. That’s all I’ve been trying to tell you.”
* * *
Kanon was working the front office when he saw Patience pull into the parking lot around five-thirty that evening. She’d told him she was going to stop by and see all the improvements he’d made to the motel, so he’d been expecting her at some point. He would’ve been excited, if not for the call he’d received from his former boss. That had changed everything in a matter of minutes. Now his stomach felt like wet cement, and he didn’t know how to break the news to her or Kelsey.
The bell went off as Patience blew in, wrestling with the door to get it to close behind her. “Whoa! I hate wind!” she said in exasperation. “I hope the weather isn’t this bad for the festival. I would have to pick one of the snowiest winters on record to start hosting a big town event.”
He cringed inside, could barely look at her. “Weather app says it’s going to be cold but dry the next few days. And not too windy.”
“Thank goodness!” She combed her fingers through her windblown hair as she glanced around. “You’re working tonight? Darn. I was hoping we could go to dinner.”
“I’d love that, but the dude Kelsey met online is visiting, and I said I’d stand in while they went out to eat.”
“You’re talking about the guy from Reno?”
