Room at the Inn (Novella): A Loveswept Contemporary Romance (11 page)

“I commit to all kinds of things. I just don’t commit to this town, and it’s all that ever mattered to you and Mom.”

“Your mother was proud of you.”

“But you aren’t.”

Martin leaned forward. His face had flushed red, and his hand trembled as he tapped his finger on the table for emphasis. “This is where you’re from. It’s where you belong, with her. I’ve never understood why you’re so set on denying it. This town is your future.”

Carson slammed his fist down on the table, making the salt and pepper shakers jump. “This town is
dying
.”

“So was your mother.”

The comment landed with a slap. He had to take a deep breath before he could answer.

“Julie can’t rescue Potter Falls.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. She could rescue you, though, if you let her.”

“I don’t need rescuing.”

“You need love.”

“Love turns people into idiots.”

Martin’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what you think?”

He did, but he hadn’t meant to say it. “No.”

“So I’m an idiot, and your mother was an idiot, and everybody who’s ever gotten married and had children and made sacrifices because they loved them—we’re all idiots?”

“No.”

“And you’re the only one who has the answers. You. A thirty-six-year-old man who lives out of a backpack and plans to spend Christmas on an airplane. You’re what we should all be doing.”

“Drop it, Dad.”

Martin stared at his hand gripping the edge of the table and shook his head. When he lifted it, he fixed Carson with an expression full of the same contempt he’d always directed at him, no matter what he did or who he tried to be.

“If you believe that, you really are a fool.”

Martin got up from the table and made his way awkwardly down the short hall to the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

Carson left.

He walked.

The snow blanketing the cemetery’s gravel path squeaked under his boots. When he reached the vicinity of his mother’s grave site, he veered off and stood at the base of her stone.

VANCE

Gloria

1952–2011

Beloved wife and mother

And beside his mother’s name, his father’s.

Martin

1935–

A blank waiting to be filled in. That’s what his father’s life amounted to.

It didn’t make any sense to construct a life so narrow, the death of one person brought an end to it. Carson needed to be more. He’d left this place behind and made something of himself. Seen the world. Built things, structures that would last long after he was gone.

The world needs you
.

She’d meant to slap him with it, but it was true. All you got was sixty or eighty years, and what was the point of it, if not to make your mark in the world?

This was where Julie would end up. It was where he would end up, too, if he stayed in Potter Falls and became what everyone seemed to expect him to be.

Carson Vance. Beloved husband and father.

A man who built his world around a woman. A man who could lose everything at any time.

He couldn’t do it.

It took him less than ten minutes to pack.

Julie watched him stuffing clothes into his bag, and she wanted to take it all back.

I’m sorry I told you to make up your mind
.

Don’t go
.

Come back
.

I’ll be here whenever you want me
.

Her weakness disgusted her, and she said nothing.

He zipped the pack shut and dropped it on the floor by the door. Then all that was left was the tricky business of negotiating some kind of farewell.

Travel safe. Don’t get shot. You’re killing me, and I hate you for doing this
.

I love you
.

You bastard, I love you
.

He pulled her into his arms, and it wasn’t all that difficult, after all. He was so far away already. His shirt smelled like someplace she’d never been, and he was in the air, on a jet that would take him to places Julie couldn’t imagine.

Places she’d never wanted to go.

He kissed her forehead instead of her lips.

“I’ll be back in a few months, Jules.”

She couldn’t wait for him anymore.

Chapter Twelve

It got dark and started to snow, and the cab Carson had hired to take him to the airport slipped on bald tires and plowed into a snowbank next to the interstate on-ramp.

He tried to push it out while the cab driver reversed, but the car wouldn’t budge.

Carson climbed back in. Four miles outside of Potter Falls on Christmas Eve, and he was stuck in a car with a stranger who’d told him this was his first winter in Upstate New York—a stranger who hadn’t understood the importance of either snow tires or carrying a shovel in the trunk.

An infant of a man.

At least his name wasn’t Jesus. According to the ID card, it was Bahdoon.

Carson didn’t think he’d be able to find another ride to the airport. This wasn’t cab country. It had taken him almost an hour to scare up Bahdoon and convince him to come down from Fenimore to drive eighty miles to Albany on a holiday.

He sat in the cab, staring out at the falling snow as the engine ticked cool and the driver spoke what might have been Somali into a cell phone.

Leo Potter’s Mercedes approached at a crawl and pulled to a stop on the opposite side of the road. In the pool of light beneath an arc lamp, Leo got out of the car in his dress coat and wingtips, looking as though he’d just emerged from a menswear ad. He crossed the road and peered in the back window, then tapped with one knuckle. The driver must have pushed the button, because the window lowered with an electric whir.

“You need a ride?”

Carson stared at him, but he couldn’t seem to pull his thoughts together.
The wise man?
he wondered,
Or the ass Mary and Joseph rode into Jerusalem?

“I don’t know,” he said finally.

Leo opened the door. “Scoot over.”

Carson did, and his oldest friend and worst enemy tucked himself into the car, a blast of cold and wintergreen riding over the warm-maple-syrup smell of the cab’s heater.

“So you’re leaving?” Leo asked conversationally.

“Trying to.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Dubai.”

Leo whistled. “What’s it like there?”

“I don’t know. Never been.”

They fell silent.

“I’ll drop by to see Julie,” Leo said. “After you leave, I mean.”

Carson’s hands made fists on his lap. “Let her alone.”

“Just to see if she’s okay. I’ve got a girlfriend, Carse. And even if I didn’t, Julie’s not … I get it. She’s yours.”

“She’s not mine.”

“Oh, she’s yours, all right.”

Leo draped his gloved hands casually over widespread knees. “Was she ticked about the shoe factory?”

“She’s livid.”

“I told the paper not to print it. I’m not going to take the offer. It’s a salvage firm that wants it. Apparently there’s a market for some of the raw materials—those big limestone blocks and steel beams and whatnot.”

The black thing in Carson swirled around, fogged up his head and made him incautious. “That would be a desecration.”

Leo pinned him in place with one of his all-knowing green-eyed glances. “I know.”

He looked away. The driver paused, then spoke to whoever was on the other end of the phone. A tow truck, Carson hoped. A friend. A brother.

Not a wife or a girlfriend. Now that it was too late, he didn’t want to be responsible for taking this man away from his family tonight.

“I have a theory,” Leo said.

“No theories.”

“Okay.”

A few seconds of silence. Then Leo again. “Did you ever meet my dad?”

“Of course I did.”

“Well, sure, everybody met him. But did you ever
talk
to him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“He was a ruthless bastard.”

Carson had known that. Everyone in town knew it. Carson and Leo had never played at Leo’s house, and Glory virtually adopted Leo when they were boys. These things didn’t happen for no reason.

“I loved your mom,” Leo said. “She was the nicest lady I ever met. You know what she told me once? ‘You’re a good boy, Leo. And you’ll be a good man. Don’t mind your father. He’s unhappy, and it makes him cruel. You have a good heart.’ ” He glanced at Carson. “We were ten. I thought, ‘How does she know I’ll be a good man?’ But after that, I wanted to be.”

His mother had been able to do that. She had that kind of magic that could lift people up, make everyone pull together.

Julie’s magic.

“You have great parents,” Leo said.

“I know that.”

“You’re from a great place. You’re in love with a great woman.”

“Knock it off.”

“Are you ready to hear my theory yet?”

“No.”

Leo twisted sideways and draped his arm along the back of the seat, watching Carson with those eyes that saw too much. “Okay, here goes. I think you decided at some point a long time ago that small accomplishments don’t count. Only big, impressive stuff. And you didn’t think you could ever impress anybody in Potter Falls because of the way your dad is, so you made up your mind to leave.”

“I don’t even like you,” Carson muttered.

“Of course you like me. You can’t quit liking somebody after you grow up being best friends with him. It doesn’t happen. You stopped being my friend because I disagreed with you, and you found it threatening.”

“Is that the whole theory?”

“Pretty much.”

“It’s dumb.”

Leo smiled. “Maybe.”

The driver finished his phone call. Leo leaned forward and put his elbows on the back of the front seat. “I’m Leo,” he said. “You want a lift back home?”

“No, thank you. The tow truck will come.”

“All right. Keep warm.” Leo turned to Carson. “What about you?”

Even if he grew wings and flew, he was going to miss his flight.

He couldn’t muster up the energy to care.

“I guess so.”

They clambered out of the car. Carson retrieved his backpack, which seemed to weigh three hundred pounds, and they crossed the slick road.

After stowing his pack in the trunk, Carson got into Leo’s car, and the engine came to life with a purr and a blast of heat.

“Where to?”

“My dad’s, I guess.”

In silence, they drove through downtown Potter Falls. The lights were out at the diner.
Three of the storefronts were boarded up, one with windows that had been soaped opaque back when Carson was a teenager.

It hurt him to look at it.

Leo turned right on the far side of the bridge and drove down to the water to park beside the factory.

“What if I gave it to you?” he asked. “Would you stay?”

“I don’t want it.”

“You want it.”

He wanted it so badly, he ached.

He didn’t want it nearly as much as he wanted Julie.

“You couldn’t just give it to me.”

“I’m Leo Potter. I can do anything I please.”

Carson made a choked sound that was supposed to be a laugh and came out more like a sob. God, what was
wrong
with him? He felt like he was being crushed, pressed flat by an enormous weight. He’d stayed here too long, gotten himself in too deep, and now he was drowning, and no one had told him the water would be so heavy. No one had told him it would
hurt
this fucking much.

“I can’t fix it.”

“I’ve seen the projects you’ve worked on. Bring in the right architect, find the right contractors, and you’re perfectly capable of handling it.”

“I can’t be who you want me to be.”

He meant any of them. His parents. Julie. Leo.

“You already are,” Leo said mildly. “You just have to talk yourself into believing it.”

Carson got out of the car. He didn’t know where he was going. He just needed to move.

He walked toward the water, gazing up at the empty windows of the factory.

This town is dying
.

So was your mother
.

Julie had given her a kidney and another fifteen years.

Leo was trying to give him the factory.

A second chance.

You decided small accomplishments don’t count
.

But of course they
did
count. Julie’s counted. There was nothing small about what she did—she healed people and fixed things. Julie Long had planted herself in Potter Falls sixteen years ago, and here she flourished. She’d opened an inn, and the world came to her.

Whereas Carson kept flinging himself out into the cold, alone, barking orders in an effort to make things happen. To make things better.

Only it didn’t ever get better. What had he accomplished that someone else couldn’t have done just as well?

Leo’s stupid theory—it was the truth. He’d needed to get out of Potter Falls because of his dad. Because a fierce ambition and a desire to prove himself to Martin Vance had pulled him out into the world.

It had been so long since he felt that pull. That wanderlust. Years since he woke up in the morning excited to build something. He’d never been to Dubai, and he didn’t give a damn.

But the factory—he wanted to see the goddamn factory fixed up.

He wanted to see Julie’s house in the spring, to put a new coat of paint on the shutters in the summer, and to risk his ass on her steep roof cleaning out the gutters in the fall.

He wanted to hold her in the morning in her deep, soft, warm bed and smell her coconut shampoo and feel that belonging, that rightness he’d only ever found with her.