Until it wasn’t theirs anymore. Until they’d been run out by the same people who’d celebrated their birthdays and anniversaries at LeClarks for as long as they could remember. Even as she boarded the bus, everything in Kaitlyn rebelled against the idea of returning.
God, she hated New Canton.
Landon James rumpled his hand through his dark hair, stared out the window of his luxurious apartment on the 54th floor of the most prestigious high rise in Manhattan, and wondered what he was thinking. Why was he leaving all this, even for a week, to return to New Canton? He certainly didn’t harbor any fondness for his hometown. In the last eight years, he’d returned approximately seven times. He’d endured five Christmases at the sprawling James’ estate that somehow never seemed big enough for both him and Randolph James. He’d gone back for one obligatory 70th birthday party at which he’d toasted his septuagenarian father and thought: to very few more. And three months later he’d gone back for Randolph’s funeral.
Maybe that was why he was going back now. Because even the long arm of the James’ patriarch couldn’t escape the grave. But most likely, Landon knew, it was because the LeClarks were returning. And Christ, if the LeClarks could return after practically being run out with flaming pitchforks, he certainly could.
And he had to. Landon didn’t explain himself to many people. No one, actually. But when Grayson had called to tell him that he wanted to revive LeClarks, Landon had to tell him. If Gray had blown up at Landon, Landon could have laughed and hung up without a shred of remorse. Maybe he’d have told his business partner and best friend, Carter, about it over drinks, and they’d have toasted with shots of Patron, the way they always did when they got the best of someone.
But instead, Grayson had taken it the way he took all the shitty things that had happened over the last fifteen years. Without batting an eye. And Landon had found himself offering to come back. To help.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, shaking his head in wonder. When was the last time he’d offered to help anyone? What the hell was it about Grayson that brought out the better nature no one else believed existed? If Landon bothered to think about the question, he probably could have pinpointed the truth. That it wasn’t Grayson so much as the man he’d grown up to look and sound like. Arthur LeClark had been everything Landon’s father wasn’t—everything he abhorred, really. Randolph James valued power, wealth, and standing, and he didn’t care how he got it. Arthur LeClark hadn’t had any of that and didn’t want it. He valued decency, honesty, and kindness. And for a while, Landon had thought those things meant something.
Then Arthur LeClark had been run out of New Canton, died at the age of 55 with barely a cent to his name, and Landon realized that his father had been right all along.
Decency was bullshit.
Landon’s phone rang, and he looked down to see the name of his assistant on the Caller ID.
“What?” He barked into the phone.
“Sir, the chopper is on the roof. It’s ready when you are.”
“I’m coming.” Landon hung up and took one last look at the Manhattan skyline. It would be seven days before he saw glass and concrete buildings towering against the blue sky, the yellow snake of taxis below, the carefully contained rectangle of greenery that was Central Park. Until then, his lip curled, it would be low-slung rooftops; the sleek, discrete Mercedes; and grass.
God, Landon hated New Canton.
Chapter Two
The bus ride was three hours long, and Kaitlyn had been determined to work for all of it. The Confident Cook, the latest cookbook she helped develop, was in the final proof stage. Once, Kaitlyn had relaxed by this point. She’d trusted in the careful writing, the thorough copy editing, and the exhaustive first proofread to create a flawless product. Now she knew that there could—and likely would—be mistakes even in the finished product. They’d be minor, and they’d be fixed in the second edition (if they were lucky enough to get a second edition), but she was determined to make sure as few as possible went to press. This was her last project before LeClarks, and three hours should have been just enough time to make sure no teaspoons had been confused with tablespoons and that the diacritics made it over the sautées and flambés.
She settled into her window seat, nodded politely at the older woman who sat beside her, and fell asleep instead. She fell so deeply asleep she didn’t hear the bus driver when he announced the first two stops and would have slept through her own if the elderly woman hadn’t tapped her shoulder politely and asked, “Is this you, dear?”
Kaitlyn peeled her forehead off the window and looked out of it woozily. Yes, there was the sign for Springfield, Connecticut—the closest bus stop to New Canton—and there was Grayson, tapping impatiently on the glass from the outside. He mouthed thank you to the woman and rolled his eyes at Kaitlyn.
“Get off the bus,” he said clearly enough that she heard him through the glass.
“I am,” she said loudly, startling people around her. She grabbed her duffle and hurried down the aisle and through the accordion doors.
“I had to get my stuff together,” she said to Grayson when the bus had pulled away.
“Right,
