A Lot Like Perfect

The problem lay in how Isaiah wished this one time, a woman might overlook Marchande and settle her sights on someone a little less obvious and flashy. Like Isaiah. Thank goodness she hadn’t. Imagine that mess, when he was already halfway down the road. Except, it had been a while since he’d thought about leaving. He should do something about that.

He sprawled on the bed and tried to watch something inane on his iPad but he’d had to route the internet connection through the hotspot on his phone and the buffering speed was so lousy there was literally no point in even trying to decipher the broken dialog.

A knock at his door saved him from the game of Solitaire he’d just started. Bad mood aside, he welcomed the interruption.

Caleb Hardy stood outside, hands in his back pockets in a misguided attempt to appear casual, but his former team leader had forgotten to remove the all-business glint from his eye. “Got a sec?”

“Depends. How serious is it?” He was only half-kidding. Whatever Hardy needed, Isaiah would try to do, no question.

“I need you to take over managing the PR campaign for Superstition Springs.”

Except that. He laughed at what was surely meant to be a joke. “Is that how you lead up to the real thing you need? So the real thing doesn’t seem so bad?”

Hardy waved that away, clearly not joking. “You’re the only one I would trust with this. You have a knack for figuring out what people need to hear. It’s awe-inspiring sometimes how you get the guys motivated.”

The praise should have hit a couple of warm-fuzzy buttons inside but instead it just made his stomach turn. “Yeah, maybe in the Navy. Not so much anymore.”

Hardy eyed him curiously. “Still. Even just recently. At the diner, you always smooth over the rough spots with ease. Marchande has a big mouth and you keep him in check before Rafferty takes him apart. You always have kind words for Rowe and I appreciate how you make sure he hears everything being said.”

Only because Marchande didn’t always understand how he came across and Rafferty needed no encouragement to take care of something that irritated him, usually with very permanent results. Hardy’s brother, Rowe, couldn’t help that he’d lost most of the hearing in his left ear. It was no trouble to watch for pitfalls. Rowe would do the same for him.

Isaiah would shuffle his feet in an aw-shucks kind of way if any of the above would have made an ounce of difference. It didn’t. He was the wrong guy for this. “Managing Marchande is already a full time job. I don’t have time for anything else.”

“I’m not asking you.” Hardy hadn’t moved from his stance outside the door but it sure felt like the mayor was standing on his chest as his gaze drilled through Isaiah. “I can’t handle the PR piece right now, and it’s critical to start drawing people to the town. Superstition Springs needs people. New businesses. A doctor, like yesterday. The development company gave us six months to do three years’ worth of work. Figure out how to motivate people to relocate here. Come on daytrips. Something. Just get them into the town.”

The enormity of what Caleb was asking him to do just about broke him. He could scarcely handle the responsibility of the barn renovations. Had spent a lot of time working out how to get the four people doing it to ditch work and go the movies yesterday. Most of his remaining energy went toward keeping his lungs from seizing up and even that wasn’t going so well.

Like now. “I can’t.”

Hardy pushed into Isaiah’s room and shut the door, turning immediately to put a concerned hand on his shoulder. “What’s going on with you? Stop feeding me BS lines about Marchande and be real with me. You’ve been a little off-kilter since we hit town. Do you hate it here?”

“No!” That had burst out of its own free will and had the benefit of being the truth. “This place is great.”

“Okay. I know I have a tendency to push people into things they aren’t ready for. But I think you’re tailor made for the PR job, and I need someone who will do it well. Plus, being honest here. You’re floundering.” Caleb’s warmth bled through his arm straight to his heart. “Tell me I’m wrong. I thought out of anyone, you’d be first in line to take a permanent role. Show the other guys how it’s done. When you didn’t—”

“You’re not wrong.” No point in denying it. The jig was up. Caleb had figured out he was broken same as Tristan had. “You know you’re not. That’s why you shouldn’t be here asking me to do something you just labeled critical. I can’t do it.”

“You can. Or I wouldn’t be here. Sit down.”

Isaiah dropped to the bed instantly without question. He’d followed Hardy through some pretty rough circumstances, and it came automatically to do as ordered in the heat of the moment. If only he could conjure up some of that same will when stepping up to the plate Hardy had thrown down in front of him.

Looked like Isaiah should have hit the road sooner. Before the mayor came looking for someone to fill a spot on his roster that felt too huge for someone who was indeed floundering.

Hardy sat on the floor, back against the wall, a deliberate move that put him physically lower than Isaiah so it was obvious this was a chat and not his former team lead trying to pull rank. That’s why Hardy was a great mayor—he knew how to handle every situation, no fear, no hesitation. It was near poetic to watch sometimes.

Not right now though. Because Isaiah had a feeling he knew what was coming.

“Syria messed us all up,” Hardy threw out gravely. Yep. Exactly the script Isaiah had expected. “You included.”

“Not a news flash. Naming it and claiming it doesn’t change facts. I led everyone into that crapstorm. Me,” he stressed but only because Hardy had to be crystal clear on this point. “You say I’m good at motivating. Well I did my job pretty well that day, didn’t I? Rafferty questioned the intel. He knew it seemed fishy. What did I do? I brushed it off because when had Rowe ever been wrong before?”

That was a pretty bland recitation of the things that haunted his nightmares and sometimes his awake hours. They’d called Rowe The Ghost well before he’d turned into a shadow of himself. The man could become darn near invisible when the situation called for it, which made his intel-gathering skills legendary. Why would anyone question the coordinates?

But Rafferty had. And Isaiah had told him to shut it because he didn’t want anyone balking right before a critical op.

“It’s not your fault,” Hardy chided gently. “Did you have the authority to call off the raid?”

“No, but that’s—”