Page 45 of Any Luck at All

Her brows knitted together a little, her concentration look. “Are you sure you want to bring him back? He kind of seems like he fits. And wearenaming a beer after him. Maybe he can be our Buchanan mascot.”

He smiled a little, liking the thought of seeing Hops on a T-shirt—it would surely be better than their current selection—but he shook his head. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, although it hasn’t stopped Maisie from trying. She thinks everyone needs a dog, or three. Soul companions, she calls them.”

“Have you fostered for her before?”

“No, but I’ve kept a couple of dogs here overnight in emergencies.” He glanced over at Hops and couldn’t help but laugh. The little guy was really going at it. “I guess something about this one just clicked.”

“You said you helped Maisie at the shelter before. Was that what you were doing before you started at Big Catch?”

It felt a little like cold water had been splashed on him. He didn’t like thinking of those days. The Lost Days, he thought of them.

“Sort of,” he said. “To be honest, I didn’t have much…direction back then. Maisie helped me. She’s a good friend. She actually started the shelter from the ground up. Her parents passed away and left her the property and some money. She’s always known what she wanted to do.”

Unlike him.

“That’s pretty amazing,” Georgie said. “I wish I could say the same.”

He laughed and shoved his beer back a little. “Really? You strike me as the kind of woman who knows what she wants.”

His comment hung between them for a moment, heavy with possibilities, and he saw a flash of something in her eyes. Finally, she said, “Wanting something isn’t the same thing as going for it. Sometimes you can’t.” She cleared her throat, her cheeks flushing a little. “You know, my dad had always told us kids he’d finance us if we had a good start-up idea. So after I graduated business school, I spent weeks putting together my proposal for Moon Goddess. I had a whole hour-long presentation planned. Do you know how much of it he listened to before refusing me?”

He reached across the table and put his hand over hers, needing to touch her, to comfort her. “I can tell from the look in your eyes it wasn’t long.”

Which made him want to pummel the stuck-up asshole for being too blind to see his own daughter.

“Seventy seconds. That’s how long he gave me. He said it would never work, that he was ashamed his daughter would ask for help with something like feminine products. He thought it was a disgrace to the family name.” She looked at her hand, that little crease appearing between her eyebrows, but she didn’t pull away. “He gave Lee a job as soon as he graduated. I was never offered one. I’ve never had an interest in real estate, but for a whilethatwas what I thought I wanted. Or I guess I wanted him to want it. But Georgie Buchanan stopped being his replacement son the second he got a real one.”

“Well, you showed him,” River said, because she had, and then some. “If Mr. Big Britches was such a good businessman, shouldn’t he have recognized a multimillion-dollar opportunity when he saw one?”

“Did I, though?” she asked, looking up to meet his eyes. “I’m not going to lie, River. I wanted him to grovel at my feet. My therapist would probably have something to say about it, but I sent him the article about the sale. He never acknowledged it. Still hasn’t. I’m a joke to him, and he treats Adalia even worse. The only reason he ever took any notice of us was because my mother insisted. After she died, we were beneath his notice. And Jack…”

“And Jack was always beneath his notice. It’s none of my business, but do you still see your father? I mean, outside of the will reading.”

Her expression held not a little bit of bitterness when she nodded. “He summons us sometimes. For family photo ops, that kind of thing, and we usually spend the holidays at the family house. I always tell myself it’s just to see my brother and sister, and because my mother would want it that way, but a part of me always hopes it will be different. Even though I’m old enough to know better. I don’t know if he’s ever talked to Jack at all. As far as I know, he hasn’t.”

Because she’d told him something private about herself, something he doubted she shared with many people, he found himself wanting to do the same.

“I understand Jack a little. Or at least I think I do. I never knew my father either.”

She shifted her hand, and for a moment, he thought she was pulling away, but instead she turned it around and wove her fingers through his. Her grip was firm and assured, and it felt like a lifeline.

“Oh?” she said, giving him the opportunity to talk but not insisting on it.

He squeezed her hand back. “I still don’t. I don’t know who he was or where he was from, but I suspect he might be Chilean. My mother was traveling through Chile before I was born.”

“Is that a picture of your mother on the mantel?” She winced a little after she said it, like she couldn’t believe she’d asked him, or maybe she was just mortified that she’d called herself out for snooping.

“Yeah,” he said. “I can’t seem to get rid of it. Funny, isn’t it, how you can still care about someone after they’ve treated you like you’re nothing?”

“No,” she said, “it’s not funny at all. But you, River Reeves, are not nothing.”

And then she leaned across the table and kissed him.

Chapter Seventeen

Georgie hadn’t meant to kiss him, but everything had been too perfect. Making beer, River’s eagerness to teach her, and his affection for the puppy. The way he’d opened up after she’d spilled her embarrassing truth about her father, something she’d told no one in so much detail. Her head told her that this couldn’t happen, but her heart…oh, her heart. Her heart was smitten with him—no, more than that, it was enamored. Those eyes of his seemed to see the real her through the put-together image she tried so hard to maintain—not Georgie Buchanan, businesswoman, but Georgie the woman, who wanted to love and be loved. But it was more than that. Her heart recognized that River was a truly good man—loyal, trustworthy, fun. He had a way of taking a bad situation and making it better. So her heart rebelled, and for the first time in her thirty-three years, she let it take the lead, reason be damned.

Her lips pressed lightly to his—the kiss a question for him to answer. She was technically his boss, and he might think this was as bad of an idea as her head insisted, only he didn’t pull away. He leaned closer, only an inch or two as his hand lightly cupped her cheek.

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