The sad part was he had been. Harry had been good to her, good for her. He would have been good to Luc, but she couldn’t expect him to choose her over his family. She wouldn’t even want him to. Remy was going on about how they couldn’t kill Harry, and Zep argued that he could take them all out if it meant protecting their sister.
At least she wouldn’t lose them. Her family would have to be enough. Now she had to see Harry one last time and let Celeste know she’d been right all along. She didn’t belong anywhere near the Beaumont clan.* * ****
Harry stared at the gazebo. It was almost done and it looked perfectly lovely, ready for the wedding reception. Picture perfect, but then looks could be deceiving. He’d figured that out.
After all, he’d firmly believed he and Sera would make a perfect couple, and it turned out he was very wrong.
She hadn’t been available when he’d gone to pick up Shep. He’d gone to her house ready to sit down and have a long talk about what had happened. He’d spent the entire night working in the shop because he couldn’t sleep. He’d done what he always did when he was restless—he’d worked and let the problem run through his head. But instead of getting to talk to Sera, he’d been left with Delphine, who’d had a whole lot of questions about why he hadn’t stayed the night. Sera hadn’t told her anything, merely left saying she needed to talk to Remy and had to get to the restaurant before the rush.
He’d gotten to see Luc, who’d been toddling around behind Delphine. The little boy had hugged Shep before letting the dog go. Luc had asked him if he was staying and if he wanted to play, and it had taken everything he had to tell the kid he had to go.
What the hell was he going to do if Sera wouldn’t even talk to him? How had things gone so wrong?
“You finished.” His cousin walked out, a smile on her face. “I can’t believe how good it looks. I’ve seen it in old pictures, but this is amazing. It’s everything you promised. You do good work, Harry.”
Yes, he could put this old gazebo back together again, but a relationship was a different thing. He couldn’t patch up what had happened with Sera unless he agreed never to tell his aunt her secret. He wasn’t sure he could do that. And now that he was done, he had no idea how he would pass the time. He could sneak over to Sera’s at night and be her construction elf. “I’m glad you think so.”
Angie ran her manicured fingers over the smoothed and finished wood. “You also work fast. I was a little worried when I found out Sera put you to work on Guidry Place. I thought you might neglect this job in favor of hers. Not that I would blame you. When I first met Austin, I neglected a lot of things. Luckily my fiancé is an excellent tutor or I wouldn’t have graduated, and then I doubt my mom would have offered me a job at Beaumont Oil.”
That was a surprise. He hadn’t heard anything about Angie working with the company. “I thought you were going to take some time before figuring out what you want to do.”
She shrugged, walking up the steps and glancing out the back, which looked over the rose garden. “That’s just a way of saying I got a fancy degree and now I’m going to get pregnant and never use it again. Austin and I talked about it and we want to put off starting a family for a while. I want to work. I want to learn.”
He could still hear Sera telling him the same thing. She wanted to learn. She wanted to be the one to handle code enforcement. She wanted to be a good partner.
Was he making the wrong decision? Had he handled her all wrong? At the time, it had seemed clear-cut, but he’d spent the whole night thinking about Sera’s position and why she would have done what she did. It was more complicated than he’d made it in that moment.
And he’d been blindingly jealous of his cousin. His dead cousin. He couldn’t pretend. He’d thought about the fact that Wes had been the one to give her Luc. He’d then turned around and been volcanically angry because it was apparent that Wes had taken advantage of her.
He’d been overly emotional, and it might have cost him the woman he loved.
“I think that’s great,” he replied, putting his tools up. He closed the box and started back to the shop. He needed some more time alone, needed to think about how he could convince Sera to give him a second chance. “Though you should know Cal hates it there.”