Chapter 10

Isaiah spent most of the rest of Sunday in a horrible enough mood that the guys all stayed away from him. Which was both good and bad. The little room he’d taken at Serenity’s hotel was just quirky enough to fit him and it provided much needed sanctuary from both the heat of the day and his own revelations.

He hated the thought of Aria being with Marchande. Where had that come from?

He’d like to say it had been born out of seeing how his friend had acted at the movies yesterday and thinking that Aria deserved better. But Isaiah was afraid he’d started enjoying her company a little too much. When she’d hemmed and hawed about another rooftop session, basically rejecting an activity that had ranked high on his list of favorite experiences, it had cut deep.

So she wasn’t feeling anything special between them. Good. It was better that way.

She wanted Marchande. That much was clear, especially with the make-him-jealous routine. As if Marchande had ever been threatened by another man in the whole of his life. It was nearly laughable in a not so funny way that Aria had assumed Tristan would somehow register Isaiah as competition. Fortunately, she’d bought the deflection he’d cooked up on the fly.

It was true that his friend would definitely step aside if he thought Isaiah had his sights set on a woman. But that wasn’t the reason he’d killed that plan.

There was no way he could touch Aria like she’d suggested without something coming unhinged inside him. No way he’d have done it in a church in front of witnesses either. Because if he got Aria into his arms like she seemed to be suggesting, he would have a very difficult time stopping himself from kissing her and he had no interest in testing his will.

Instead he’d fallen into a whole other battle of wills, the kind where he had to push her toward his friend, but he’d done it. She’d take his suggestion to show Tristan her multifaceted personality and that would be that. And Marchande was a good guy. Mostly. Deep down inside, where it counted. He was loyal and had charm to spare. Everyone loved him.

The problem lay in how Isaiah wished this one time, a woman might overlook Marchande and settle her sights on someone a little less obvious and flashy. Like Isaiah. Thank goodness she hadn’t. Imagine that mess, when he was already halfway down the road. Except, it had been a while since he’d thought about leaving. He should do something about that.

He sprawled on the bed and tried to watch something inane on his iPad but he’d had to route the internet connection through the hotspot on his phone and the buffering speed was so lousy there was literally no point in even trying to decipher the broken dialog.

A knock at his door saved him from the game of Solitaire he’d just started. Bad mood aside, he welcomed the interruption.

Caleb Hardy stood outside, hands in his back pockets in a misguided attempt to appear casual, but his former team leader had forgotten to remove the all-business glint from his eye. “Got a sec?”

“Depends. How serious is it?” He was only half-kidding. Whatever Hardy needed, Isaiah would try to do, no question.

“I need you to take over managing the PR campaign for Superstition Springs.”

Except that. He laughed at what was surely meant to be a joke. “Is that how you lead up to the real thing you need? So the real thing doesn’t seem so bad?”

Hardy waved that away, clearly not joking. “You’re the only one I would trust with this. You have a knack for figuring out what people need to hear. It’s awe-inspiring sometimes how you get the guys motivated.”

The praise should have hit a couple of warm-fuzzy buttons inside but instead it just made his stomach turn. “Yeah, maybe in the Navy. Not so much anymore.”

Hardy eyed him curiously. “Still. Even just recently. At the diner, you always smooth over the rough spots with ease. Marchande has a big mouth and you keep him in check before Rafferty takes him apart. You always have kind words for Rowe and I appreciate how you make sure he hears everything being said.”

Only because Marchande didn’t always understand how he came across and Rafferty needed no encouragement to take care of something that irritated him, usually with very permanent results. Hardy’s brother, Rowe, couldn’t help that he’d lost most of the hearing in his left ear. It was no trouble to watch for pitfalls. Rowe would do the same for him.

Isaiah would shuffle his feet in an aw-shucks kind of way if any of the above would have made an ounce of difference. It didn’t. He was the wrong guy for this. “Managing Marchande is already a full-time job. I don’t have time for anything else.”

“I’m not asking you.” Hardy hadn’t moved from his stance outside the door but it sure felt like the mayor was standing on his chest as his gaze drilled through Isaiah. “I can’t handle the PR piece right now, and it’s critical to start drawing people to the town. Superstition Springs needs people. New businesses. A doctor, like yesterday. The development company gave us six months to do three years’ worth of work. Figure out how to motivate people to relocate here. Come on daytrips. Something. Just get them into the town.”

The enormity of what Caleb was asking him to do just about broke him. He could scarcely handle the responsibility of the barn renovations. Had spent a lot of time working out how to get the four people doing it to ditch work and go the movies yesterday. Most of his remaining energy went toward keeping his lungs from seizing up and even that wasn’t going so well.

Like now. “I can’t.”

Hardy pushed into Isaiah’s room and shut the door, turning immediately to put a concerned hand on his shoulder. “What’s going on with you? Stop feeding me BS lines about Marchande and be real with me. You’ve been a little off-kilter since we hit town. Do you hate it here?”

“No!” That had burst out of its own free will and had the benefit of being the truth. “This place is great.”

“Okay. I know I have a tendency to push people into things they aren’t ready for. But I think you’re tailor made for the PR job, and I need someone who will do it well. Plus, being honest here. You’re floundering.” Caleb’s warmth bled through his arm straight to his heart. “Tell me I’m wrong. I thought out of anyone, you’d be first in line to take a permanent role. Show the other guys how it’s done. When you didn’t—”

“You’re not wrong.” No point in denying it. The jig was up. Caleb had figured out he was broken same as Tristan had. “You know you’re not. That’s why you shouldn’t be here asking me to do something you just labeled critical. I can’t do it.”

“You can. Or I wouldn’t be here. Sit down.”

Isaiah dropped to the bed instantly without question. He’d followed Hardy through some pretty rough circumstances, and it came automatically to do as ordered in the heat of the moment. If only he could conjure up some of that same will when stepping up to the plate Hardy had thrown down in front of him.

Looked like Isaiah should have hit the road sooner. Before the mayor came looking for someone to fill a spot on his roster that felt too huge for someone who was indeed floundering.

Hardy sat on the floor, back against the wall, a deliberate move that put him physically lower than Isaiah so it was obvious this was a chat and not his former team lead trying to pull rank. That’s why Hardy was a great mayor—he knew how to handle every situation, no fear, no hesitation. It was near poetic to watch sometimes.

Not right now though. Because Isaiah had a feeling he knew what was coming.

“Syria messed us all up,” Hardy threw out gravely. Yep. Exactly the script Isaiah had expected. “You included.”

“Not a news flash. Naming it and claiming it doesn’t change facts. I led everyone into that crapstorm. Me,” he stressed but only because Hardy had to be crystal clear on this point. “You say I’m good at motivating. Well, I did my job pretty well that day, didn’t I? Rafferty questioned the intel. He knew it seemed fishy. What did I do? I brushed it off because when had Rowe ever been wrong before?”

That was a pretty bland recitation of the things that haunted his nightmares and sometimes his awake hours. They’d called Rowe The Ghost well before he’d turned into a shadow of himself. The man could become darn near invisible when the situation called for it, which made his intel-gathering skills legendary. Why would anyone question the coordinates?

But Rafferty had. And Isaiah had told him to shut it because he didn’t want anyone balking right before a critical op.

“It’s not your fault,” Hardy chided gently. “Did you have the authority to call off the raid?”

“No, but that’s—”

“It is the point. You did your job. I did mine. I could have called it off. Trust me, I spent months replaying those last few hours with a different ending, where I figured out in time that we had the wrong village. But that’s not how it went down. We have to move on, embrace this town that took us in when the Navy kicked us out. Find a new future.”

“I’m doing everything I can,” he cut in fiercely.

“Are you?” Caleb’s brows arched in counterpoint. “I see someone pulling away. Totally get it. But that’s what you’re doing.”

“I’m not…” He was. Hardy knew him better than anyone, had easily sniffed out Isaiah’s defense mechanisms. “This is not going to last, Hardy. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

Nothing ever lasted. That’s why leaving was what he did best. And he’d failed at that too because Syria had turned him into a waffler of the highest order on top of breaking him into little pieces. Decisions were not his forte right now.

Frustrated, Isaiah shut his eyes and massaged his temples for as long as he could, mostly so he didn’t have to see the disappointment in Hardy’s expression. Isaiah wasn’t stepping up to the plate like he should. Like he’d have sworn he would, given the opportunity. But this was the one time Isaiah couldn’t keep the team together. Didn’t deserve to. Didn’t have the will to, not anymore.

“The thing is,” Caleb said quietly. “I’m putting one hundred percent of my energy into making sure it lasts. I was hoping you’d do the same. Thought maybe giving you something that would bind you to this town might help. Because if you want it to last, the best way to do that is to stop pulling so hard in the other direction, slow down and work for it. The better you are at this PR job, the more successful the town will be and then there’s no danger of it evaporating before our eyes. Make it happen for all of us, Elmer. I’m counting on you.”

He let Hardy have the last word and nodded as the man climbed to his feet to leave.

Slow down. It was Serenity’s prediction all over again, but with much broader implications than solely on his love life. Had he missed a critical piece of what she’d seen in his future?

It didn’t matter. He couldn’t do what Hardy was asking. This was the line in the sand. The mayor needed to hear that Isaiah wasn’t the person he thought and that sticking around this place wasn’t on the agenda. Except he’d promised Aria something that he hadn’t done yet. And he’d promised to get the barn done. He couldn’t leave yet. But neither could he pretend that everything was going to work like Caleb hoped.

At the door, Hardy turned for a final parting gift. “Start with one small thing. Build on that.”

One small thing. Like what? Design a new town logo? Pick a theme song?

Instantly, ideas unrolled in his head. While he’d kind of meant that last part sarcastically, he couldn’t deny he knew music well enough to figure something out that might be a catchy way to build an advertising campaign that would convince folks they wanted to visit.

Maybe he could handle that. The barn project was moving along. It might be nice to have something else to occupy his time. He could use it as the stake in the ground. As soon as he had that done, he’d make sure Aria had gotten her chance with Marchande and then he could go with a clear conscience once he’d told Hardy his plans. No matter how difficult all of the above would be.

Oddly, as soon as Hardy left, Isaiah’s mood improved. He pulled out the slip of paper where Serenity had written his prediction.

You must slow down a bit to find love. Seek a romantic retreat to heal and nurture your soul while connecting spiritually with a like-minded soul that shares your need for depth.

What if he was supposed to love this new job as the PR guru of Superstition Springs? Maybe that’s what the prediction meant. It was an opportunity to find a new way to function within the team, only the team would be a much bigger pool of people. Who would be counting on him to keep the town together.

That was the rub. He didn’t trust himself to stick. To breathe. To motivate others.

The worst part was how much he longed to do it. How great it sounded to be a part of something, filling a spot that had his name on it. If he did it right, he might not have to leave this time and that was the thing that was tripping him up. Because he didn’t want to. But neither did he deserve to stay.

If nothing else, this new assignment was a great excuse to ask a long-time resident for some advice.