Fix It Up - Mary Calmes Page 0,100

and Efrem, a surprise he’d planned. We went to the kitchen to join them, and the three men had papers spread out in front of Nick’s aunt and uncle. The two people in question appeared shell-shocked.

“Here’s the thing,” Nick apprised them, taking a breath, looking pained. “I don’t know when I’m going to be back here.”

“What?” Gwen asked. “Sugar, we just got you back. I want to see you for Thanksgiving and Christmas and––”

“No,” he told her. “And that’s not to say that you’re not invited to our house, and I hope you come for the wedding that you’re going to be invited to, but I know you have a whole matriarch-of-the-family thing going on here, and I don’t want to disrupt that. If, however, you’re ever up for a vacation over the holidays, or any time at all, you just give me a call and you’re welcome to stay.”

The two of them were staring at him blankly, and he smiled kindly in return.

“But for right now, I’m not sure when I’ll see you again once I leave, so I wanted to thank you both for being so kind to me and opening your home to the madness that was yesterday and that will surely be again today, and for sitting with the film crew, and just being so wonderful, and—”

“We didn’t do it for thanks or—” Efrem began.

“No, I know,” Nick assured him. “Both of you think of me as part of your family, which I do as well, now, but still…if I can do something for you, I want to, and this,” he said, gesturing at the men in suits from the bank, “is something I can do.”

“What have you done?” Efrem asked breathlessly.

Nick turned to the assistant bank manager, who had made the trip up to the farm.

“Mr. and Mrs. Shelton,” the man sitting in the middle intoned, “Mr. Madison has paid off the mortgage on the farm, as well as purchased the parcel from the Duttons that you were in negotiations for, so now, as you wanted, your property extends to the river.”

Both Gwen and Efrem turned to Nick, and on their faces was absolute shock and awe. As I looked at them, I realized that that would be the part I would enjoy about having money, making dreams come true in an instant for people I cared about.

“It’s too much,” Gwen whispered after taking several breaths, clutching her heart as her mouth fell open.

“Nick, you—” Efrem gasped and stood, gripping the edge of the table. “You can’t just—it’s more than we could ever accept and…Nick.”

This was fun, and when Nick glanced at me, I waggled my eyebrows at him. The delight on his face was instant.

“Just sign, please,” Nick told them. “You’ll make me very happy, and really, it’s more for me anyway. This way I don’t have to feel guilty if you don’t see me again ’til next September.”

They just stared at him.

“It’s a payoff,” I told them, winking. “Let him off the hook, willya?”

They signed after that, because really, when someone gave you a gift of a lifetime, it made no sense to stand there and question your good fortune.

Efrem and Gwen were both smart people, so they didn’t make an announcement, and they decided not to even tell their kids until after Nick left. No one wanted the rock star to suddenly be inundated with requests for money. It was the right thing to do.

Nick had to do some taping with the Netflix crew, and they wanted him outside, walking in the meadow, bathed in sunlight, and it only got more frou-frou and artsy from there.

A couple hours later, I was on the porch, sitting with Efrem, contemplating calling my mother to tell her the news about me and Nick, even though, I was certain, she already knew, when I heard a familiar rumble and my head snapped up.

“Oh,” Efrem said, chuckling. “You’re one of those?”

“Sorry?” I asked distractedly, watching the bike go by.

“You’ve got it just as bad as Ferris.”

I was listening, or trying to. It was hard to focus when I got another look at the stunning motorcycle that had been driven by the front of the house moments ago and then vanished down the road to the right, only to suddenly reappear and turn into the yard across the street.

“Shall we?” Efrem offered with a grin.

I got up so fast that the porch swing I was on, flew back, hit the side of the house, and would have smacked