“Getting an education can’t hurt. What are you going to do when the show is over?”
Stephen put down the fork and leaned toward her. “I don’t want to fly.”
“I don’t understand. You want to drive back to Alaska?”
He laughed. “No. I mean I don’t want to be a pilot, like my brother. I don’t want to go into the family business.”
“Oh.” She knew all about family expectations. Despite the fact that she was nearly thirty, she had never once been able to please her mother. “Is that what Finn wants? He expects you to go into the family business?”
“It’s implied.”
“Have you told him how you feel?”
“No. He doesn’t care about that.”
Aurelia shook her head. “You’re talking about a man who flew a thousand miles to make sure you and your brother were okay. I think he cares a lot about you.”
“That’s different. He wants me home so he can control me. If I were to tell him that I wanted to be an engineer, he’d fly me up to ten thousand feet and kick me out of the airplane.”
“Now you’re talking like a kid.”
“Hey!” He straightened. “Where do you get off saying that?”
“Look at your actions. You’re not willing to sit down and talk to Finn. Instead, you ran off. How is that mature?”
“You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I’m a disinterested third party.” Disinterested probably wasn’t the right word. Embarrassingly enough, she found herself more than a little interested in Stephen. Why couldn’t he have been thirty instead of twenty? Life was nothing if not karmically cruel.
“Besides,” she continued. “If you’re one semester away from graduation, he already knows your major.”
“The major isn’t important as long as I come back home.” He shook his head. “When our folks died, things were bad. Finn took care of us. Now he can’t let that go. He thinks we’re still the little kids who needed him.”
“You should talk to him,” she said. “Why wouldn’t he be happy that you wanted to be an engineer? It’s a good, solid job.”
“I’ve known him all my life, Aurelia. You’re going to have to trust me on this. Finn would never approve.”
She wanted to argue but didn’t. After all, there were plenty of people who would tell her to simply stand up to her mother. From the outside it seemed so easy. But from the inside, everything was different. She couldn’t seem to survive the waves of guilt every time she tried. It was as if her mother had been given an instruction manual on how to manipulate her and had memorized every page.
Stephen had been one of the few people to accept her limitations. “I do trust you,” she said.
In the square, someone called their names. She and Stephen turned toward the sound of several people running. One of the production assistants hurried up to them.
“There you are,” Karen said, sounding breathless. “We’ve been looking everywhere. Geoff is furious. We’re all packing up and going home. You have to come right now.”
Aurelia looked at Stephen, who shrugged. “I guess we’ll get something to eat at the airport,” he said.
“Hurry,” the production assistant said. “We have to get to the airport. Geoff is furious that there wasn’t a date.”
Aurelia and Stephen walked out of the restaurant. As they followed the production assistant to the elevators, he leaned close.
“Geoff was wrong,” he whispered in her ear. “There was a date and I had a great time.”
Deep inside of her, she felt her heart give a little tug. “Me, too,” she whispered back.
He smiled at her and took her hand in his.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DAKOTA OPENED HER FRONT DOOR to find Finn standing on her porch. It was a little after seven in the evening. She and Finn had managed to catch the four-thirty flight out of Las Vegas, which meant she hadn’t even been home an hour.
“I know, I know,” he said, shuffling his feet. “You have stuff to do. I shouldn’t bother you.”
“Yet here you are,” she said with a smile. “It’s okay. I didn’t have any hot plans.”
She wasn’t sorry to see him. As for hot plans, he certainly qualified.
He stepped inside and handed her a bottle of wine. “I come bearing gifts, if that counts.”
“It does.”
“I’m spending so much time at the wine store, the guy there wants to know if he and I are planning to run off together.”
She laughed. “You know he was kidding, right?”
“I hoped he was. People don’t joke like that in South Salmon.”
“Then people in South Salmon need to work on their sense of humor.” She led the way into the kitchen and set the wine on the counter. “Is wine enough or do you want something to eat, as well?”
“You don’t have to feed me,” he told her.
“That wasn’t the question.” She walked to the refrigerator and pulled it open. There were salad fixings, some yogurt and a few raw almonds in a bowl. Not exactly man food.
She turned to him. “I’m going to have to take back my offer of food. I don’t have anything you’d like. Want to order a pizza?”
He’d already opened the drawer where she kept the corkscrew. “Pizza sounds good. I’ll even let you put something healthy on your half.”
“You’ll let me? How magnanimous.”
He shrugged. “I’m just that kind of guy.”
“Lucky me.”
She ordered pizza, then they took their wine into the living room and sat down. She ignored the fact that she liked having Finn in her house. That was a road without a happy ending. Instead, she focused on why he’d shown up.
“There wasn’t a date,” she said. “So Stephen and Aurelia are in danger of being voted off. It doesn’t make you happy?”
“Yes, as long as he goes back to college.”
“You can’t follow him around for the rest of his life. At some point you have to let him be an adult.”
“When he acts like an adult, I’ll treat him like one. Until then, he’s just a kid.”
Dakota leaned back in her chair and studied him over her glass. He still wasn’t getting it. How his brothers acted had everything to do with how they had been raised and nothing to do with his presence in town. Whether he stayed or left, the twins’ actions would be the same. But how to get him to believe that?
“Except for them going back to college without you dragging them, is there a win in this?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I guess there has to be. What if they never go back to college? I need to know they’re okay and that no one is taking advantage of them.” He picked up his glass. “Something I don’t want to think about. Let’s change the subject. Are you sorry we left Las Vegas early?”
“I won’t cry myself to sleep tonight, if that’s what you’re asking. But it would have been fun to stay. There’s plenty to do. I heard there was great shopping at the hotel.”
“You like shopping?”
She laughed. “I