A Hero for Tonight (21 page)

He shook his head. “No way. She’ll see it as you pushing her out and bringing in a younger woman to do the work. She’ll be devastated. Remember, this is
her
business. She started this shop with your mother.”
Why doesn’t she get this?
Krista wasn’t an idiot, she was a very intelligent woman, and yet as usual, she was letting her emotions run her head. Somehow, he had to make her see this for the disaster it would be.

“Your mother and I are equal partners. I’m every bit a part of this as she is. What kills me is you think I want to hurt her. That’s the worst part, that you think after all these years I’d do anything to upset her.”

“I can’t believe you claim to know her so well, yet think that she’s going to let you fly solo.”

“Your mother trusts me. She knows I can do this.”

“It’s not that she doesn’t trust you to do it on your own. She won’t want you to
have
to do it alone—what don’t you get?”

Krista threw up her hands. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. I don’t know why I’m arguing this with you. It has nothing to do with you.” She headed for the stairs. “Forget the trunk. I don’t want it anymore.”

“Typical, first you want it, then you don’t. Only another reason you shouldn’t try to do this...you don’t even know what you want!”

She ignored him as she headed down the steps. He heard her talking to Karen and Dave, and then the front door opened and closed.

Dave came up. “Krista left.”

Shane’s gut clenched. Should he go after her? What would be the point? They’d just keep arguing, or worse, they’d stop arguing, make love, and then wake up tomorrow and start the cycle all over again with nothing resolved. Better to let her leave. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t find her later once her temper cooled. Maybe she’d be more apt to listen to him if he tried a different approach. For now, the priority was this damn trunk.

He bent to grab the handle. “Just as well.”

Karen stood there waiting for them as they awkwardly reached the bottom of the stairs. “After we eat, you two can load it in the truck.”

“She said she didn’t want it.” Shane wasn’t eager to hoist the trunk again.

“Krista wants it. She’s just stubborn; like someone else I know.”

He held her stare. “If you’re talking about me, there is nothing wrong with knowing exactly what I want, and what I don’t want.”

“I’ve never met two more bullheaded people in my life.” Karen twisted her lips then walked down the small hall toward the kitchen.

Shane glanced around wondering where Dave had gone. He followed her to the kitchen, but his buddy wasn’t there. “Where’d Dave go?”

She opened the refrigerator and handed him a beer. “I think he thought I was going to have a talk with you, so he disappeared.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. I know Krista’s your frie—”

“
You’re
my friend, too,” she interrupted.

“Sure, but women stick tighter, and you’re just going to tell me how bad I am, and that I should give in and let her do whatever she wants.”

“I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that maybe you should back out of this and let your mother and Krista handle their business like they have all these years. The relationship you and Krista have or don’t have is a separate issue all together. Why can’t you just focus on that and leave them to handle the shop?”

“I’m simply trying to keep my mother from doing too much, especially now.”

“I would think that’s your father’s job, not yours.”

Shane took a long drink of the cold beer. “My father is wrapped completely around her finger. Whatever my mother wants to do is fine with him.”

“If she did insist on helping Krista at the shop, don’t you think your father would be there for both of them?”

Shane ran his hand through his hair. “Yep, and have you forgotten
his
health issues? Krista doesn’t seem to realize how their lives are going to change with this pregnancy. My parents are going to be busy.”

His friend sank to a chair at the table and took a long drink from a bottle of water. “You’re there too, right? I mean, when it gets busy in the fall, you don’t seem to mind helping out.”

He hated the way Karen was manipulating the conversation, but he couldn’t argue with her facts. “Yeah, I drive the tractor or whatever, some of the heavy lifting. When I was a kid, I resented having to help out, but no, it doesn’t bother me now. It’s not the business I don’t like, Karen. In fact, I told Krista keeping it open year round was a great idea, but that was before my mother’s health issues.”

“You act like this is a terminal illness. She’s having a baby. Yes, she’s an older mother, but she can still handle this.”

Shane tipped up his beer and took a long drink, wishing Dave would get back here so he could stop being interrogated.

“It was really busy there this weekend,” Karen murmured.

“Exactly, and I don’t see why Krista doesn’t understand that my mother is never going to let her go it alone
because
it’s so busy.”

“But it
was
busy this weekend,
and
she let her go it alone.”

“Mom was fine knowing Melissa and I were there helping Krista, so of course she was putting the pregnancy first because she had a choice.”

“The doctor made it very clear that she had to rest. Your mother is going to protect that baby at all costs.” Karen pushed back her chair and walked to the stove to stir a large pot of what smelled like stew.

“But once the baby is born, then what? She’ll be trying to take care of a new baby
and
run the store.”

“Not if she thought
you
were there for Krista.”

Shane frowned. “What do you mean?”

Karen set the wooden spoon on the spoon rest and faced him, leaning back against the counter and crossing her arms on her chest. “Do I seriously have to spell this all out? If you and Krista became partners, if you were to go to your mother and ask to buy her out so
you
could do this with Krista, what do you think she’d say?”

Shane scoffed. “She’d be over the moon thinking we were going to play nice together, finally.” He did air quotes with his fingers.

“Exactly.”

“So, besides my job and the reserves, I should now try to run the Apple Basket?”

Karen shook her head. “Nope. You should keep working there the way you have all these years and Krista can hire Melissa to help on a regular basis. Your role won’t change at all, except in your mother’s eyes.”

“You forget one crucial piece here.”

She tipped her head. “What’s that?”

“Krista and I don’t get along. We can’t stand to be together.”

She gave an evil laugh. “You’re full of crap. You just got scared and let the first fight stop everything in its tracks.”

Pushing to his feet, he moved to the counter and set his empty beer bottle in the sink. “Doesn’t that tell you something? A fight like that and we walked away tells me there’s no foundation.”

“You have to work on the foundation. Just because you two have known each other your entire lives doesn’t mean you know each other as a couple. You have to learn to fight and make up, and not let it destroy you.”

Dave walked through the back door, and glanced from one to the other. “How’s it going?”

When Karen crossed the room and lifted her face to her husband, his buddy dropped a kiss on his wife’s lips.

She stepped back. “I think we’re making some progress.”

“Really?” Dave raised an eyebrow, then turned to pull out two beers from the refrigerator.

“Karen thinks I should offer to buy out my mother’s half of the partnership and go into business with Krista.” Shane leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest.

Dave nodded and twisted the top of his beer. “That would be great if you were together, or even got along. But you two can’t be in the same room together without fireworks.”

He handed Shane an open beer.

“Exactly. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell your lovely wife.”

Karen reached into the cupboard and pulled down bowls. “And I said it would be fine because they would make it work. You and Krista are meant to be together, Shane. I think even you know it. You just don’t know how to make it happen.”

Shane reached for the loaf of bread next to him and picked up the knife to begin slicing it. “I think the pregnancy is making you a bit crazy.”

“Maybe the reason you’ve had such a poor track record with women is because none of them were the one you wanted,” Karen stated.

“That doesn’t mean it would work with Krista.”

“I think you’re wrong. I think that whatever you two had going was better than anything you’ve had before, and you both got scared.” Karen set knives and spoons on the table.

Dave handed the utensils to Shane who picked up a slice of bread and buttered it. He was suddenly famished. His mind whirled, wondering if there was something in Karen’s theory.

Buy his mother out? Could he do that? Did he want to? He knew his mother would be absolutely fine if he went to her and offered to buy her half of the business. She’d have no qualms at all. But what if Krista didn’t want him as her partner? What if she didn’t feel the same as he did?

What did he feel? Was Karen’s theory about the two of them just as on point?

“What are you thinking? I can see the wheels turning.” She set a bowl of steaming stew in front of him.

“Do you really think Krista wants me? I mean, in business with her?”

Karen sat down next to him at the table. Her hand slipped over his. “Krista is head over heels in love with you. I have no doubt she would love to be in business with you.
And
in bed with you.”

His heart skipped a beat for a moment, thinking maybe Karen was right. Then he remembered how angry Krista was, and how determined she was to do exactly what she wanted no matter how he felt about it. That didn’t sound like someone who loved him. Wouldn’t she want to work things out?

Krista asking him to help her figure out options filtered back through his memory. Maybe she
was
interested in having him in her life.

Karen shrugged and picked up a slice of bread to butter it. “Trust me, women know these things.”

Dave joined them at the table. “When you two are together, even I can feel the tension. And I’m usually pretty oblivious.”

Shane tipped a grin at Karen’s emphatic nod of agreement, then added, “But sex isn’t enough to build a relationship on.”

“Did you really just say that?” Karen laughed outright and turned to her husband. “What do you think about that?”

Dave winked. “Sometimes it’s the best way to start.” He leaned over and kissed his wife, but this time it wasn’t a chaste peck like before, but a kiss that had Shane looking away.

He cleared his throat. “Just suppose all this works the way you say and we become partners, and we work things out and then we end. What then? We’re stuck as business partners with someone we can’t stand.”

“That’s an easy fix. Marry her.”

Chapter Eleven

Shane’s spoon stopped midway to his mouth.

Karen nodded. “Yeah, not to say it’s foolproof, but when you’re married and have a business, you have far more riding on making it work, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’m not marrying Krista.”

“Why not?”

“We’ve had a relationship built on our intense dislike for each other for years—practically our whole life. We only slept together for two weeks. Does that sound like the start of happy ever after to you?”

“I’m not saying get married tomorrow, but why not think about it? If you have something to work at, something to really make you want to make this work, then maybe you can get over some of the small things.”

“I think what Karen is saying is when you’re just dating, if something pisses you off, you walk away no strings attached. But once you’re committed to each other, married or whatever, you have a whole new sense of wanting it to work. You look past the stupid stuff.”

“Dave and I have been together since we were teenagers; do you really think there’s nothing he does that doesn’t get on my last nerve?”

“Hey!”

Karen reached for her husband’s hand and smiled. “And there are things I do that he can’t stand, but at the end of the day we love each other enough to know those things don’t matter.”

“Don’t give me some corny ‘don’t go to bed mad’ line.” Shane tucked into his stew. His friends were crazy. That’s all there was to it; they were insane.

“Actually, sometimes the best thing you can do is sleep it off. In the morning, you wake up and feel like a fool for even being mad about something so stupid. Like you and Krista; I bet you’ve been wondering what happened and how that one disagreement ended up like this.”

Hadn’t he been thinking just that earlier? How the hell a simple disagreement had erupted into this still had him scratching his head. One minute they were laughing and loving each other, and the next, she was asking him to leave.