Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(24)

And they’d come full circle. Even though she could tell Show understood, he still wanted her to go. She could feel the love and concern in his stubbornness. But she couldn’t go. She wouldn’t. “I’m not ready to go. If you throw me out, I’ll just move into the B&B or something. I have money.” Her money from her mom, but she’d use it if she had to. And she could get a job, maybe.

“I’m not throwing you out, Adrienne. You have a place with us as long as you want it.” He huffed heavily and shook his head. “But no Badger.”

“It’s not your call.”

“That one is. You’re not safe around him. You know it’s true. Who knows what he would have done to you if I hadn’t been there.”

“But he was strung out or whatever, right? It wasn’t him. And you guys got him detoxed or whatever, right? So he’s him again?”

“Today. Just today he’s out. He is still f*cked up. I’m telling you, Adrienne. He’s not good for you.”

“And my dad says you’re not good for me.”

“He’s right!”

“No, he’s not! You are good and kind, and I always feel calm to be here, with you and Shannon. You are good for me. I love you.”

Something changed in Show’s blue eyes. It wasn’t that impression of shuttering that he got when she came too close to something he didn’t want to think or talk about. It was more like he was searching for something. “You love him?”

“I think so. Yes.” First time she’d said that out loud.

He was shaking his head before she’d finished speaking. “No. I will not get out of the way of that. No.

He doesn’t get another chance to hurt you. No, Adrienne. No.”

“It’s not for you to decide, Show.”

“Watch me.”

With that, and without another word, he stood, kissed the top of her head, and left the room.



oOo



A few days later, Adrienne was at the B&B with Shannon. They only had four guests, two occupied rooms, so there wasn’t a lot of work to do, but they were sitting in her office, going through sample books for an upcoming wedding. Adrienne loved to help Shannon with this kind of stuff. Making a beautiful wedding was a little like making beautiful art—especially, as in this case, when the bride gave the planners nearly free rein to create the event, without a long list of must-haves and never-evers. For this event, scheduled for early June, with sixty guests, the bride had said only that her favorite color was yellow, and that she was allowing the bridesmaids to choose their own dresses with that in mind.

While that last was a nice gesture that suggested a general lack of control-freakiness in the bride, it could be a visual disaster, really. There were a lot of different kinds of yellow, and they didn’t all look great with each other. But Shannon had pinned Allie, the bride, down to a particular yellow (Pantone Lemon Zest) and had then asked her to send a swatch to her three bridesmaids.

Now, they were considering a complementing color for floral arrangements and decorations.

“What about lilac? Purple and yellow is a nice summer combination, maybe with a thread of grass green? Or even an orange with enough red in it.” Adrienne tipped the color book Shannon’s way.

“Not the orange—too close, with the red and yellow tones both. I want something cooler. The green could work. Yeah. I like that. A more vivid green to brighten the soft tones of the lilac and yellow. Good eye. Nice to work with an artist.” She winked. The past couple of days, Shannon seemed to be feeling better than she had been. She looked more rested and healthier, and she was definitely more centered emotionally.

Adrienne had spent the couple of days right after their big talk avoiding Show. She didn’t want Shannon to see any tension between them, and she was really angry. Hurt, too, even though she knew that his problem with Badger was coming from a place of love. It still really hurt to have him disregard her like he was, and lay down the law or something, as if he had a right.

But he did, sort of, because she was living under his roof. That had to change, she thought. Not ready to go back to New York, not sure when or even if she’d be ready to go back to New York, she had to come up with another option. The B&B could only be a short-term solution. If she wanted to stay for any real length of time (Was she thinking about living here? She didn’t know.), she would need to find a place and a job.

The place probably wouldn’t be that hard. There were still empty houses around outside of town. But she’d need to afford it, and the job was another story.

For now, though, she was ready to dip into her inheritance a little. Her father would be furious, but she’d gotten full control of it on her birthday in January, so he didn’t have a say.

None of the men in her life had a say over her life anymore.

“Hey, Shannon? What would you think about me taking a room here for a while? I mean, I’d pay—I just wonder if you’d mind if I did.”

She dropped the cake brochure she’d been leafing through and stared across her desk at Adrienne, clearly shocked. “What? Ade! Why?”

Not about to tell Shannon anything that had happened, Adrienne smiled. “Nothing bad. It’s just—you have the baby coming, and I know the room I’m in will be for her—or him—and you bought that stuff over the weekend, and it’s piled in the dining room because you have no place to put it.”