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“I don’t understand what that has to do with anything.”
“You wanted full custody, or to share custody. But when you didn’t get that, your attorney should have turned around and insisted on visitation rights. It would have been fairly easy to prove that there was a pre-existing relationship between you and Daisy, something the courts refer to as “engendered a bond”, meaning that the bond between the two of you should be protected and that regular visitation is in the best interest of the child.”
She hadn’t known that was an option. It hadn’t crossed her mind that she could do that. She wasn’t sure why. And yes, she could blame Cormac but what was the point? The blame game wasn’t working well for either of them.
“I don’t know,” she said frankly. “It would have been an option, probably a good one.”
“It would have given you some legal rights.”
She struggled to smile even though her heart felt unbearably heavy. “I could have used some.”
“It’s not too late, Whitney. If you were living in the same state, living close by, we could look at the visitation issue, see if we couldn’t address it properly—”
“But I have to be living in Marietta?”
“She can’t be hauled across state lines. She’s too young, too vulnerable. She needs people who are there for her, committed to her.”
“You know if I went to Montana I’d be going for the necessary sixty days and leaving. I have no intention of remaining in Marietta. Denver is home now.”
“What’s in Denver?”
She opened her mouth to say friends, but then closed her mouth abruptly realizing she didn’t actually have a lot of friends in Denver. She worked with great people. She respected her team and was friendly with her assistant, Andi, but she didn’t really do much of anything but work. “It’s where I belong.”
“You’re in Denver for your work. Your work is your passion. It means everything to you.”
Her lips compressed. He didn’t know her. He didn’t know the first thing about her or he wouldn’t have said such a stupid and inaccurate statement. She liked her work, and yes, was passionate about her work. But unlike him, she had a life outside the office. She had friends and a social life…hobbies…
No she didn’t.
She had work. But honestly, there wasn’t anyone else.
“What is your biggest fear?” Cormac asked, breaking the silence. “What’s holding you back?”
Whitney stared at the framed photo of April and Daisy on her desk. It was of Daisy’s first birthday. Whitney had snapped it just seconds before Daisy had put both her hands into the birthday cake.
“I want to see Daisy,” she said quietly.
“But?”
Whitney exhaled slowly, buffeted by wildly conflicting emotions. “Seeing Daisy means I see you.” She forced herself to meet his gaze. “And our relationship is the difficult one. It’s not Daisy’s and mine. Daisy and I are fine. It’s you and me…that’s the mess. That’s the minefield. It’s the part I want to avoid. The part I don’t trust.”
His eyes narrowed. He fell silent. For a moment her office was painfully quiet. Then he shifted his weight in the chair, extending his long legs, crossing his legs at the ankles. “Is there no way to make this work for Daisy’s sake? No way to try to be…friends?”
Friends.
Cormac Sheenan as her friend.
She’d never been friends with him. She’d been everything but his friend. Could they be friends? But didn’t friendship require…trust?
She eyed his dark suit and white button-down. He never wore a tie, his shirt open at the collar showing off a hint of his sun-bronzed skin and the upper plane of his muscular chest. He was built. He was still the hottest thing she’d ever seen. And smart.
Sexy.
Nothing in her viewed him as platonic. After their breakup she’d thought she’d rather not be in his world than relegated to the distant friend zone, and it probably was better to have no contact when trying to get over a broken heart; but that was years ago. Surely she could handle the past and memories now? He certainly was making good points about Daisy.
Daisy needed them to get along.
Daisy needed them to be cordial and amicable so she could have both of them in her life.
“We could work on being more civil,” she said. “Maybe with time we could be…friendish.”
The corner of his mouth lifted ever so slightly. “I’ve never heard of that word before. Friendish.”
“It’s new.” She struggled to keep her smile…friendly. “Kind of like us.”
*
Whitney flew to Bozeman on Monday, and picked up a rental car at the airport for the forty minute drive to Marietta.
She arrived in Marietta late afternoon, and after dropping her luggage off at the Graff Hotel where she’d been booked for the next two month, she took a walk down Main Street. It took very little time to walk from the Graff to Main Street. Marietta was charming, and small, with the historic downtown maybe six blocks long by six blocks wide, and that is if you counted the mixed residential and commercial district between Main Street and Bramble Lane.
She grabbed a coffee at the Java Café and then continued on another block to the Crookshank Building, the future headquarters for Sheenan Inc.
The late afternoon sunlight gilded the one-hundred-and-sixteen-year-old building’s brick façade with warm gold light, and she’d understood immediately why Cormac bought this building. The aesthetics appealed to her. It was big, solid, and Montana rugged with warm weathered bricks and long plate glass windows, a testament to its original life as Marietta’s first women’s department store.
She knew it’d been through dozens of owners since then, serving an equal number of purposes over the past century, but her heart felt as if she’d stepped through the front door yesterday afternoon. Inside it was dark and cluttered and chaotic and maybe it was the time of day, or maybe it was just the amount of noise, but as she peeked around the ground level, nodding hello to the carpenters and electricians, she’d felt overwhelmed and disappointed. The disappointment had kept her from proceeding to the second and third floors, not wanting to navigate the stairs, ladders, drop cloths and electric saws in the fading light.
It was an old building, and vacant on and off for the past ten years. Nothing had been updated in terms of electrical or plumbing. The downstairs interior had been vandalized last year after the Halloween superstore closed and graffiti still covered the interior brick walls.
She knew everything could be fixed. Buildings could be renovated. Electrical and plumbing could be updated. It wasn’t that she lacked imagination to see how the building could be transformed; it was the issue of time. They were short on time and she hated to break the news to Cormac, but his goal to have the publishing group in Marietta by December was unrealistic. Even January looked doubtful. The piles of lumber and spools of electrical wire and cable in every corner of the building’s ground floor just added to her concerns. With Thanksgiving next week, the crew would be taking four days off, which meant very little real progress would be made. But she wouldn’t say anything to Cormac and Jeff until she met with the designer and contractor tomorrow morning.
Whitney hadn’t planned on speaking to Cormac until Tuesday late morning or early afternoon, following her meeting with Heath McGregor, the general contractor, but Cormac called her at six, while she was still setting up her new “office” in one of the smaller hotel meeting rooms on the second floor. She was grateful that Cormac had made arrangements for her to use one of the hotel’s conference rooms, but she wasn’t ready to update him on the Crookshank Building.
“It’s chaos there,” she said frankly, pulling one of the rolling chairs towards her and plopping down. “I’m meeting with Heath and his designer, Josie Montgomery, tomorrow at nine but I don’t see how you could move anyone in there right now.”
“Not even in two weeks?”
“I didn’t make it to the third floor so may
be it won’t be so bad up there, but you have to remember that Thanksgiving is next week. The crew will be off Thursday, Friday and the weekend. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of them were out of there early Wednesday.”
“You need another week.”
“Cormac, we probably need at least another month.” He didn’t say anything and she rubbed at her temple. “And I know we don’t have a month. I know we have fifteen people arriving in early December, needing a place to go. Those are my people, too. My team. Don’t stress. I’ll figure this out.”
“I’m not stressing. You’re stressing.”
She bit back a laugh. He was right. She always stressed about deadlines. He never did, knowing she had every project well in hand. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t. We’re friendish. Remember?”
