Hold on My Heart (2 page)

“What possessed you, Dad? Even if you had the money for the building, what about the other stuff? Contractors and permits and furniture and ice-cream paraphernalia? Just updating the wiring in this place alone is going to cost a fortune. Mom is going to have a heart attack.”

This was much worse than his buying a couple of sheep.

Her father shuffled on his feet like a sixteen-year-old caught between guilt and defiance. “I am my own man, Liberty, and I make my own decisions. I don’t need to clear everything through your mother. I’m not some kind of… some kind of anglerfish!”

She’d regret asking. She knew that before the words even formed in her mouth, but it was like watching a car crash. “What do anglerfish have to do with anything?”

He puckered his lips for a moment and squinted at her. “Do you know how the anglerfish mates?”

“Oh, geez, Dad.” Her hands turned to lead and dropped to her sides.

Peter Hamilton was fascinated by reproductive anomalies of the animal kingdom, and because of that, Libby and her sisters had grown up hearing all about how the banana slug has a penis as long as its body, and that bonobo monkeys have a proclivity for face-to-face copulation. And that bedbugs engage in something called traumatic insemination, which is apparently every bit as unappealing to a lady bedbug as it sounds.

“Just hear me out. It’s fascinating stuff,” he said, stepping closer. “When the male anglerfish chooses his mate, he attaches himself to her. Then he stays there. Forever. His digestive system erodes since he can’t get his own food, and then the rest of his body is slowly absorbed into hers. Even his heart and his brain get sucked in because he doesn’t need them anymore. Eventually there is nothing left. He literally just… fades away. As if he’d never existed at all.” Her father’s hand flitted against the air, a feather on the wind.

“Dad, you’re not going to fade away into nothingness just because you retired. And you’re not too reliant on Mom, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

He shook his head. “It’s more than retiring, Liberty. A man wants to leave his mark in this world.”

“You left a pretty big mark in the football field over at Monroe High School when you crash-landed that hot-air balloon. Wasn’t that enough?”

He frowned. “They were going to lose that football game anyway. And you know that’s not what I mean. That’s not the kind of legacy I want to leave for future generations.”

“And an ice-cream parlor is?” She wanted to be supportive, but this pile of rubble was not the solution to his anglerfish issue.

“This building is the legacy.” His voice grew louder and more certain. “It’s a piece of the past, a one-room schoolhouse. It’s pre–Civil War, you know.”

“I know my history, Dad.”

“Then you should understand it’s a travesty to let these old buildings crumble to the ground. I’m not the only one who thinks so. We talked
about it on the town council, and everyone agrees we should invest in this whole area.” He gestured to the street, his eyes bright, his cheeks flushed. “You could join me, you know.”

A butterfly of eagle-sized proportion flapped in her stomach. Her father could be persuasive to the point of hypnotic, but she did not want to get drawn into one of his adventures. She had her own troubles to worry about. Namely, finding a new job and working things out with her boyfriend, Seth. Things between them had been strained ever since she’d lost her job, and she had to fix that. She did not have the time or energy to get sucked into some vortex of her father’s.

“Join you in what way?”

“Be my business partner.”

She might have laughed at that little bit of absurdity, but surprise squeezed every bit of air from her lungs, leaving her breathless.

Still, her father stared at her, nodding with encouragement. “Think of it, Liberty. You’ve got the time right now. You can keep looking for another job, of course. I know you want to get another corporate job and move back to Chicago, but until you find something, I could sure use your help and expertise.” He gazed at her expectantly.

She found some breath and used it to laugh this time. “My expertise? Other than loving ice cream, I have no expertise that could help you.”

“Sure you do. You’re a details person. The perfect complement to my vision. You can help with getting permits and ordering supplies and keeping things on track. And when the place is ready, you can plan the big grand opening. It’ll be glorious.”

Rock. Libby. Hard place.

She was currently living at home, sponging off her parents like a deadbeat dropout. They wouldn’t accept her money for rent or food because they pitied her. It was beyond humiliating. This was the first thing either of them had asked of her since she’d moved back. How could she say no? But how could she say yes?

“I just don’t know, Dad. You have to let me think about it, okay?”

Her father’s smile tightened. “Okay. I understand. But this could be really fun. Remember when we built the birdhouses together? We had a great time, didn’t we?”

“We forgot to add holes, and the birds couldn’t get in.”

He shrugged. “Sure, but they enjoyed sitting on the roofs. And crapping all over them.”

Why did she have a feeling that she was about to get crapped on herself? This was a lose-lose situation. Her mom was going to be mad, her dad was going to be disappointed, and adding carpentry skills to her current résumé was not going to help Libby find a job or fix things with Seth.

Her father reached over near her shoulder and caught a drifting cobweb with his fingertips, flicking it away. “It has a bell, you know.”

“What?”

“A school bell, up on the roof. The rope is gone, but come upstairs with me, and I’ll show you.”

She didn’t want to climb some rickety old steps to see an old bell. “What I need right now is functional plumbing. Does this place have a working bathroom?”

He shook his head. “Not currently. You’ll have to go outside.”

“Outside? It’s broad daylight. Can’t we just go home?”

Her father frowned. “Give me ten more minutes. I want to show you the bell tower. And the cellar. We have more exploring to do.”

“Dad, I really need to pee.”

“Well, there’s a Dumpster out back. Just go cop a squat behind it. No one will see you.”

Few things in life are more distasteful than urinating next to a Dumpster. Unless it’s hearing your father tell you to cop a squat next to one. But nature was calling too loudly to ignore.

“If I get poison ivy I will never forgive you.”

She stepped out the back door and spotted the Dumpster. A cluster of overgrown forsythia shaded most of it and might provide her a modicum of privacy. Plus her father was right. There were run-down old buildings on either side but certainly no people. Just the sounds of traffic rumbling in the distance.

Libby chose her spot and, with a final look to the right and left, shimmied her black shorts down her legs to assume a most undignified position. Nearly assaulted by a frisky weed, she shuffled forward to avoid its advances, her motion complicated by the restriction of the spandex bike shorts. Cop a squat, indeed. This was ridiculous. Her bladder thought so, too, and resisted—but at last, relief.

Except that she was peeing on her foot.

“Damn it!” She moved too abruptly, lost her balance, and fell back with a
whoosh
, whacking her arm against the side of the Dumpster. It was filthy and foul, and with nothing to grab on to, she fell to the ground with a
whoof
and a
thud
. Breathless, she lay sprawled out in the dirt and weeds, her shorts twisted at her knees. “Damn it!” she said again, louder this time.

“Hello?” A masculine voice floated around the corner of the old schoolhouse, followed by the six-foot-plus-something man who came with it.

Libby gasped and flopped like a fish on a hook as she tried to twist and stand up while simultaneously pulling up her resistant shorts.

He caught sight of her, his brown eyes going wide before he turned away and blocked his vision with his hand. “Holy—Oh, uh, sorry. Are you okay?”

Libby managed to scramble to her feet and yank up her shorts, but she could feel bits of gravel and weed fragments stuck to her ass. Her face burned with humiliation. Couldn’t a girl get a moment to herself around here?

The man glanced through his splayed fingers. “Are you okay?” he asked again, his voice solicitous but edged with humor.

“I’m fine!” She smoothed the waistband of her shorts. “I just fell down. What are you doing back here? This is private property.”

“Not that private,” he murmured, a smile tugging at his mouth.

“Excuse me?”

“I, ah… nothing. I was just looking for Peter Hamilton. Is he here?” His cheeks flushed under tanned skin.

She slipped her hand inside the back of her shorts discreetly to dislodge a pebble ingrained in her skin. “That’s my father. He’s inside.”

He looked at the door, then back at Libby. “Should I just go in?”

“Oh, come on,” she said with more growl than she intended. “I’ll show you.”

It couldn’t have been some sweet little old lady with bad eyesight who found Libby splayed out in the weeds without her pants. Oh, no. It had to be a guy like this. A macho type… with wavy chestnut hair and shoulders as wide as a doorframe.

A little smirk played around the corner of his mouth. She frowned. That smirk was at her expense.

“Dad,” she barked as they stepped inside. “There’s somebody here to see you.”

Her father appeared from a doorway, wiping a cobweb from the front of his shirt. “Oh, hello there!” He extended his arm. “Are you Tom Murphy?”

Peeping Tom was more like it.

The man nodded and shook hands with her father. “You must be Mr. Hamilton.”

“I am. Proprietor of this fine establishment. I see you’ve met my daughter.”

The man nodded once, not meeting her eyes. “Sort of.”

Libby sighed audibly. “Dad, you didn’t mention you were expecting someone.”

“I wasn’t sure when he was coming. But how lucky that you caught us here,” her father said.

Libby winced. She was the one who’d been caught.

Her father continued, the smile on his face bright. “Tom, this is my daughter, Liberty Belle Hamilton.”

Insult, meet injury.

It wasn’t bad enough this stranger had seen her floundering with her pants down next to the Dumpster, now he also knew the full extent of her ridiculous name, courtesy of her history-loving father.

“Just Libby,” she corrected.

Another single nod and a fast flick of the man’s big brown eyes completed the introductions.

“Tom is a builder. And a restoration specialist,” her father said. “He’s going to help us get this place back to her former glory, isn’t that right?”

Tom tipped his head. “I’ll try. Let’s have a look around and see what we’ve got to work with.”

The men started walking toward the other side of the room, leaving her behind.

“There’s a lot to be done, but I’d love your ideas on where to start,” Libby heard her father say.

The man chuckled as he answered, “I think I’d start with a Porta-John.”

T
he Hamilton clan, minus one, was gathered in the sage green dining room for their once-a-month-you’d-better-not-miss-it Sunday dinner, the invitation for which was as binding as a subpoena. Beverly Hamilton, Libby’s mother, sat at one end, presiding judiciously, her red-gold hair held back from her face by a brown barrette. A sturdy platter piled high with succulent roast beef surrounded by steaming vegetables was in the center of the table, smelling delicious and ready to be eaten, but as usual, they were waiting for Libby’s youngest sister.

Libby shifted on her wooden chair and tried to sneak the corner from the dinner roll in front of her.

Her father glanced down at his watch, his forehead creased in annoyance. “Beverly, let’s just start without her, or this will all be too cold to eat.”

“Thank goodness. I’m starving.” Libby’s older sister, Ginny, reached for the mashed potatoes and plopped a huge mound onto her plate. “Doesn’t she realize when she makes us wait, she’s making the baby wait, too?”

Ginny was older than Libby by thirteen months and four days, and wore the crown of that achievement regally on her strawberry blond hair. Libby was forever trying to catch up. It wasn’t a race, of course, but thanks to the recent setbacks in Libby’s personal and professional life,
Ginny was a career, a husband, and a pregnancy ahead of her. Libby needed to get her life in order soon, or she’d be lapped by a sweet-smelling newborn baby.

Ginny smoothed a hand over her expanded belly, the fabric of her pink-striped shirt taut and nearly giving up at the seams, before she reached for the gravy. She was round and plump and serene, one half of a picture-perfect couple. Her husband, Ben, sat next to her, his arm draped around her chair and his sandy-blond head tipped close, just in case Ginny should need to whisper some sweet little something into his ear.

Looking at them, Libby felt the twinge of missing… all of that.

She hadn’t confided in anyone about the status of her relationship with Seth. How could she, when she wasn’t entirely certain of it herself? They’d lived together for a year and a half and dated for two before that. And not once in all that time had they talked about any future beyond the next weekend. They’d never discussed getting married or having children, except in the most abstract way. And she hadn’t minded. Much.