Rescuing the Bad Boy (Second Chance #2)(7)
Unfortunately, Caroline, his grandmother’s chef-turned-Alessandre’s-chef, and Donovan’s one saving grace, also had a very big mouth. She’d mentioned the mansion inheritance, and the fact that Donovan was ignoring it, to her wealthy boss.
The bed-and-breakfast kingpin pressed Donovan about his plans—Was he moving? Was he renovating? Was he going to sell it?
He’d replied honestly, telling Alessandre, “I’m bulldozing it.”
That’s when his friend’s face had gone ashen.
Apparently, one man’s House of Pain was another man’s treasure, and Alessandre D’Paolo envisioned the mansion as his latest bed-and-breakfast acquirement.
And it would be. Just as soon as Donovan disentangled himself from this contract.
“This my copy?” he asked Scott, standing abruptly.
“It is.”
He turned to leave the room.
“It’s only three months,” Scott called behind him. “Not an eternity.”
“Still too long,” he answered, and shut the door behind him.
Despite the late hour, the interior lights were on at Make It an Event, making it one of the only shops still lit on Endless Avenue.
Endless. Like this trip.
Donovan had driven a few blocks until he found the shop, realizing he’d overlooked it the first time he’d come through town. If the owner was in, he’d insist they talk about the contract now rather than wait. Shouldn’t be too much trouble to get the venue moved. In a wealthy town like Evergreen Cove, there were plenty of hoity-toity places to hold a charity dinner. He parked next to a meter he didn’t have to feed since it was after six p.m. and got out of Trixie, who had done him a solid and started up without complaint.
He hadn’t known what to expect an event planning company to look like, but once he was inside, he concluded this wasn’t it. The shop wasn’t filled with frilly wedding shit, nor was it corporate and bland.
What it was, was orderly.
Clean white shelves lined with silver metal mesh trays and baskets were stacked with papers. Alongside those stood an army of black binders with neatly typed labels on their spines. The shelves and their implements made up the entire rear wall behind an equally neat desk. Save for the huge desk calendar covered in scribbly handwriting.
He studied the loopy scrawls without reading the words. A woman. Most definitely. He put a hand on one of two patterned lavender guest chairs in front of the desk and read the card on a fresh vase of purple flowers. Courtesy of Fern’s Floral Shoppe.
He wondered if Fern, one of his grandmother’s former Bridge buddies, was still alive. Clearly, her business was.
“Be right out!” a woman called from a back room.
Without answering, he meandered to the other side of the small shop where a metal table stood, not unlike the one where he prepped scallops and deveined shrimp when he worked at the Wharf.
He flipped open a photo album on its surface, recognizing the ballroom immediately, the huge chandelier with its dangling teardrop crystals, the navy walls, the gold sconces lining the walls.
Pate Mansion.
He closed the cover to see if the album was titled. It was. With a tag that read USO FUNDRAISER, PATE MANSION and last year’s date. He opened the book again and flipped through a few pages, spotting his grandmother in one photo, looking about a hundred and eighty years old instead of seventy-six.
Gertrude Pate had died spring of last year, and he wouldn’t be surprised if this was the last photo taken of her. Her ashen skin and sunken, hollow eyes were a far cry from the eagle-sharp gaze and tightly pursed lips he’d grown up around. She’d reached out to him at the end. Too late. How could someone live their life horribly for seventy-some years and think they could make up for it with a phone call? There was nothing she could’ve said he wanted to hear, so he ignored her olive branch and continued working.
Caroline, who up until Donovan turned sixteen had lived in the cottage at the back of the mansion’s property, had gone to Gertrude’s funeral. She expressed her concern when he didn’t fly back to the Cove with her. But then Caroline was an all-around good person, and Donovan wasn’t. So, there was that.
He started to close the album when a cute brunette in one of the photos caught his attention. Her familiar smile beamed, her arm wrapped around Gertrude’s frail shoulders. Sofie Martin’s sweet expression was an odd match for Gertrude Pate’s cold demeanor. Seeing her close to his grandmother was startling, if not irritating, but the smile gracing the brunette’s face wasn’t startling at all. She’d always smiled.
Right up until the moment he’d drawn out of her warm, mostly nude body and told her to get dressed.
She hadn’t smiled then.
“Sorry, I was…”
He turned to face Sofie as her words died in the empty air between them. Every detail of her smacked with familiarity, a thundering slam into the center of his chest like it’d been seven minutes since he’d held her in his arms instead of seven years.
Her wavy chestnut hair, cool green eyes that hadn’t lost a bit of their shine, and parted pink lips he could still taste on the tip of his tongue. Unbidden, his mouth watered as he recalled snagging that bottom lip with his teeth a long time ago in a mansion not so far away…
They hadn’t parted under the best of circumstances. Understatement of the millennium. His fault. He knew what he was getting into, and once he’d gotten into her, he should have stopped. He hadn’t.