It Takes Heart Read online

  “Great.”

  He cleared his throat. “Well, we should get back. I’ve got a full day, then the afternoon with Izzy and Kitty.”

  “That’s sweet you spend time with them, Bran.” Geneva slipped her shoes back on.

  “Sweet? It’s not being sweet. It’s a requirement. Izzy has a list of things for us to do.”

  Geneva tied her shoelaces. Was there a way to take her shoelaces and somehow secure her heart in its place? Because Brandon and his nieces and their list? It was all too much. She stood, avoiding his eyes. “Can I drop you off?”

  “That’d be great.” He offered his hand. She took it and stood, and instead of waterside, he followed the path up to the main road. “I’ll keep you posted about when we can meet with Lainey. And oh, you mentioned that there was something you wanted to talk about?”

  She shook her head and pushed the issue of the photographs away. It wasn’t a big deal, not nearly as important as the excitement over their teamwork. It was a good morning. Geneva couldn’t fuss over everything. “It’s nothing.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “This . . . this isn’t right.” Brandon hefted a backpack onto his shoulders, and it weighed at least ten pounds. “Geesh. What else do we need? We’re just going for milkshakes.”

  “Listen, little brother, the moment you forget something is the absolute same time you’re going to need it.” Gil pulled a folded umbrella stroller from the hallway closet. It was pink and shiny.

  “Why do we need a stroller? Kitty can walk.” This was getting ridiculous. What had been a simple, short break was turning out to be more complicated than the actual construction he was supervising.

  “Girls! We’re leaving without you,” Gil yelled above the television playing in the other room. The volume was up high, recently jacked up by one of the girls. He looked at Brandon pointedly. “Look, Kitty walks until she refuses. I personally don’t want to carry a fifty-pound grumpy little girl. It was fine at thirty pounds, but fifty? I’m too weak for that.”

  Brandon’s words of reasoning—that he was there to help, that they weren’t planning to go for a walk but sit and have milkshakes, that perhaps Gil should put his foot down and make Kitty understand she would not be carried—came to a screeching halt when his nieces rushed into the living room. Kitty was in her swimsuit.

  Izzy’s hair was skewed sideways into a wannabe ponytail. She bore an exasperated expression. “I can’t get my ponytail like Mommy does it. And Tita Beatrice isn’t here.”

  Gil sighed. “Where are your clothes, Kitty?”

  “I was hot.”

  “Go change.”

  “But they’re too hot, Papa. I want to wear my swimsuit instead.”

  “My hair’s messy,” Izzy said once more, but this time she was looking at Brandon. Like she wanted Brandon to do something about it.

  “Um . . . ,” Brandon hedged. “Kuya Gil?”

  Flustered, his brother waved him away. “I can’t right now. Just . . . try your best, okay? I need to find Kitty’s clothes.”

  Izzy was already dragging him by the hand to the couch. She pointed at the seat.

  Brandon removed the backpack and sat at her request. Izzy pulled out her ponytail and pressed the rubber band into his hand. He stared at it and then at the back of Izzy’s head, hair now a mane down her back.

  “Tito Brandon, hurry! My milkshake is waiting for me.”

  “Okay.” Except it wasn’t okay. He’d never brushed, much less styled, a little girl’s hair before. It couldn’t be that hard, could it? He took a deep breath, then set the rubber band on the couch. Wait, that was too far away. Instead, he slipped it onto his wrist, where it dug into his skin, and proceeded to palm Izzy’s hair into his hand, scooping hairs that had fallen out of his grasp.

  “Ouch!” Izzy yelped, slapping the back of her neck.

  Brandon leaned back, letting go, and raised his hands in the air. “What?”

  “You pulled too hard,” she admonished. “But why did you stop?”

  “I . . . okay.” So he started over, concentrating now, scooping strands into one hand, attempting not to pull when Izzy hissed, and somehow, in the process of the chaos, threaded her hair through the rubber band.

  Sweat beaded at his hairline, but he absolutely refused to let go. Fingers cramping, he twisted the rubber band and threaded the ponytail through one last time. “Done!” he yelled.

  He looked around to see if he had an audience. Surely someone was going to give him an award.

  Meanwhile Izzy had taken off to the hallway mirror. She was short enough that only her eyes peered over the bottom edge. He followed her and lifted her off her feet. “Well?”

  She twisted her head left, then right. “I guess it’s good enough.”

  “What?” He set her down. “That is runway-walk worthy. It’s”—he spied the bump he’d totally missed on the left side, where he could see her scalp all the way through—“artistic.”

  She sighed. “Thank you, Tito.”

  “You’re welcome. Now go find your dad. I think he went down a rabbit hole.”

  Izzy ran down the hallway, and Brandon’s phone rang in his pocket. Seeing that it was Garrett, he took the call. They had been checking in regularly, bouncing off ideas about the Illinois Way project. So far, so good. They seemed to be on the same page.

  Garrett was in a jovial mood. “I’ve got Will on board to manage the project while you’re gone—we’re walking through tomorrow. How’s everything there?”

  “Good. Busy.”

  “Attaboy. Did you talk to your siblings about Mulberry Road?”

  Brandon pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. He and Garrett only named the properties they were managing, and usually after the streets they were on. The fact that Garrett had now named his house—it was a shove toward speeding up a process he had yet to figure out how to even begin. “No,” he said truthfully.

  “Bran. You know you have to tell them.”

  His friend was right. “I’ll bring it up to Gil. I’ll start there. But Garrett.” He checked to make sure the coast was clear.

  “What?”

  “She’s here.”

  “Who’s there?”

  When Brandon didn’t answer, Garrett said, “No. Wait. What? Her?”

  “Her.”

  “Hold . . . hold up.” Muffled noises ensued; a door slammed. “Geneva?”

  “Yes.”

  “Geneva Harris?”

  “Yes, but . . . ,” Brandon started. There was too much to discuss. Garrett had been there to pick up the pieces of his affair with Geneva. After all, Brandon hadn’t been able to go to his siblings. But, with the sound of his brother and his nieces headed his way, he said, “I can’t talk about this right now.”

  “You can’t do that, Puso. First you ghost me, and now you can’t fess up with gossip?”

  Gil walked into the room with an exasperated expression on his face. “We go now, or I give up.”

  “Kuya Gil just walked in, and I’ve gotta go.”

  “No no no no no no,” Garrett said.

  Brandon spoke above Garrett’s objection. “No decisions until I get to see the numbers.”

  “Of course. Don’t freaking change the subject, Bran.”

  “Promise me, Garrett.”

  “Dang it, are you really letting me go right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine—fine! Have I ever let you down?” He laughed. “Don’t answer that. What I mean is, have I ever done you wrong purposely?”

  “No. No, you haven’t.” Brandon’s chin dropped to his chest. For what Garrett lacked in logical decisions, he made up for in his intuition about good properties to invest in. This flip could be the one that could turn the tide, if they were wise. Part of that decision was Brandon stepping up to be the partner Garrett needed too. “I’ll call you.”

  “You better!”

  Brandon hung up. He slung the backpack over his shoulder. “You look like you got worked over,
Kuya.”

  “I’m in trouble with these girls, Bran.” Gil ran a hand over his disheveled hair. “I can’t keep up.”

  The girls brushed past them and got ahead, screaming, “Milkshakes, milkshakes,” and they bounded down the stairs and into the minivan, its doors already open. Izzy helped Kitty buckle into her booster and climbed into hers.

  Brandon beamed with pride at how responsible his oldest niece was, at the natural way she took care of her little sister. He had been doted on the same way. His pediatrician had been worried about him when he was three because he was uninterested in speaking; his siblings had advocated for him. They’d anticipated his every need. “They’re good kids, though,” he said to Gil, while climbing into the passenger seat. It was a captain’s chair, and in it he felt at least a decade older.

  Gil double-checked the girls’ belts and then slid into his seat and buckled in. “Don’t let them hear you say that. They are sneaky.” He side-eyed his girls.

  “Who’s sneaky, Papa?” Izzy asked.

  “See?” Gil grinned. He looked over his shoulder. “What did I say about Papa’s conversations.”

  She rolled her eyes. “They’re yours and yours alone.”

  “Right.” He lowered his voice. “Just in case, let me turn on a movie. Watch this magic trick.”

  More screaming ensued as a movie was decided.

  Gil fiddled with the onboard entertainment system. With the press of a few buttons, music piped through the speakers, and the girls quieted behind them.

  Brandon marveled at the effect. “You’re right. It is magic.”

  “And music to my ears.” Gil lowered the visor and raked his hair with a hand, then examined a blemish on his cheek before pushing the visor back up. “They’re great kids, but sometimes I don’t know if I’m doing a good enough job.” He reversed the van out of the parking space. “It’s a crappy deal. I get them for the summer, and then I don’t see them for a couple of months. So I give them everything they want, and then what? They forget me all over again, until Thanksgiving, when I have to woo them once more? Divorce sucks.”

  Brandon remained silent; he didn’t know what to say. Gil, too, was a quiet guy. As a former model and actor, his looks usually spoke for him, and even then, his image was so well crafted by his agent, by his choice, that people assumed so much about him. That Gil held few opinions, that he was happy about everything. That life was effortless.

  Brandon knew better, now. Image was simply that.

  “How’s Jessie, anyway?” Brandon asked, reminded of Gil’s ex.

  “She’s good. Fine, actually. Better than fine. She’s done so well for herself. She’s in LA doing her thing.”

  Brandon detected a pain in his voice. “And . . . you? I meant what I said—you look good.”

  “I’m . . . taking it a day at a time. The resort has kept me busy; the girls too. Though it doesn’t quite fill the niche of what I used to do.” He grinned. “They don’t tell you about this stage, man.”

  “Stage?” Brandon’s mind drifted as they exited the headquarters gate. A right turn would take him to Geneva’s place.

  Since they’d parted this morning, he hadn’t been able to get her—or how close in proximity they were to one another—out of his mind.

  He had to be careful. When together, he forgot the fact that she’d left him; she was another person in his life he’d relied on who was there one day and gone the next.

  “The stage when you realize that you’ve taken things for granted,” Gil said. “I could have done more, could have been more ambitious. And now I’m old.”

  “You’re not old. You’re not even forty.”

  “It’s old enough. See my wrinkles, the sun spots?”

  “No.” Brandon never really thought about those things. He just didn’t care. In his mind, Gil had always been Gil.

  “I do. And so does my agent, and so do photographers. And aging has no place in media, man. You’re appreciated for your youth or wisdom, and at this age, you’re considered neither. Not enough gray hair to say I’m a silver and wise fox, but just enough sagging skin that they wonder if I’m spending enough time in the gym. And being a single dad, the reminder that I all but gave up my relationship with my kids’ mother for my career? It sucks.”

  “Wow.” Brandon, stunned, mulled over his brother’s words. How often had they had a heart-to-heart? Obviously not often enough.

  “Wow, what? Wow good? Wow bad?”

  “Wow . . . I had no idea you were thinking this at all.” He ran a hand through his hair, ashamed now. “I knew that you were adjusting to your divorce, but not about how much you cared about your looks.”

  Gil gave him a double take. “It’s not about my looks, Bran. It’s about how it’s attached to my worth.” He peered out in front of him as they got to the intersection that led out of the resort. “And how all that messes you up so you don’t see what’s so good in front of you. Why do you think I’m here instead of trying to get another job out there?”

  Under his breath, Brandon said, “I guess I just thought that you wanted to go into the family business with Kuya.”

  He snorted. “I wanted to invest in the business, not work in it. But I’m here . . . to get away and regroup. To spend time with the girls, to just figure things out. For all the brands I represented, the roles I acted, where I fit in is still a question.

  “Bran, let me give you some advice. When you find the person you want to be with for the rest of your life, don’t run. You stay. You work it out. You don’t think that something out there is better, that something can replace it. It’s harder to stay, but it’s worth it.”

  As they turned left onto Highway 12, the girls, bored of their movie, took Gil’s attention. Brandon was left to look out the window at the passing view to contemplate his words.

  If only it had been that easy.

  Hindsight was twenty-twenty, and Brandon had long since come to the conclusion that if Geneva had decided to stay after those three weeks, they could have been something.

  But she hadn’t, and he wasn’t sure if he could forgive that.

  “Are you saying that you could have worked it out with Jessie?” Brandon asked, the conversation in the minivan just catching up to him. They were sitting at a picnic bench next to Goodness Gracious, a roadside dessert shop. Situated across from a strip mall outside Nags Head, it was a white home trimmed in green. A line snaked from the storefront window and wrapped down the sidewalk.

  “If I wasn’t being a stubborn jerk. Absolutely.” Gil, with half of his face covered by his aviator glasses, passed out napkins to Izzy and to Brandon.

  “But I thought it was her fault, that she . . .” Brandon pressed his lips together as Izzy climbed on the bench seat and plopped down, cheeks caved inward as she sucked on a straw. Gil had told the family that it was Jessie who’d walked away first by admitting she’d had an emotional affair with the host of a long-running matchmaking reality show where she worked as the director of photography.

  “Yes, but I definitely didn’t make life easy.” Gil lowered his voice. “I gave her a hard time about her ambition. She surpassed me. I’m ashamed to say that I was jealous of that. I fought her tooth and nail about everything, from whose family we spend Christmas with to where we should live.”

  “Papa, what’s ambition?” Izzy asked.

  “Something you have and you’re always going to be proud of, iha,” Gil answered.

  Brandon handed Izzy his phone, to distract her, and his niece, a whiz after a couple of rounds on it, clicked on one of the apps Brandon had preinstalled for her.

  “Where did you want to live?” Brandon whispered, latching on to that small worm on the hook Gil had thrown his way.

  “Where else but here?”

  “Not the town house?”

  “You know, as much as I loved that place for Mom and Dad, I couldn’t wait to get away.” His tone was matter of fact.

  “Interesting.” If only Brandon was as nonchalant
about it. Irritation buzzed through him, at the idea that he seemed to be the only one attached to the house yet didn’t have full responsibility for it. “What do you think about me moving out and selling the town house?”

  Gil coughed. “What?”

  “I’ve lived there seven years on my own.”

  “But it’s paid for. And it’s housing in an area where prices are sky high. That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Does it have to make sense?”

  “I mean, yes.” He half laughed. “I know that you’re not thinking of the future now, but one day you will. That town house is ours, free and clear. We need to keep it ours.”

  Brandon’s stomach soured.

  “Tito Brandon.” With perfect timing, Izzy handed him his phone.

  “We’ll talk more later,” Gil said.

  But Brandon had heard enough. He would need to reassess; he was outnumbered. Perhaps it wasn’t time. Gil was right—the town house was their nest egg. He turned off the calendar notification that had popped up, reset the game for Izzy, and handed the phone back to her, then shrugged, to ease the moment. “Nah, it was just a thought. You know me, always thinking about the next flip.”

  “That’s probably something you shouldn’t bring up to Kuya. You’ll give him a coronary.”

  Oh, believe me, I tried.

  After taking a long sip of his vanilla shake, Gil said, “I don’t know about you, but goodness gracious, Goodness Gracious is worth the drive and all the effort.”

  “And . . . I admit, I thought you were being extra with that stroller. I was wrong.” Brandon gestured at Kitty, slouched in the stroller, both hands clutching her strawberry milkshake in a kid-size cup. Frowning, she sipped ferociously. In a hushed tone, he said, “That was the most epic meltdown.”

  “Told you. I think I lost another two years of my life. Under this body, I am literally sixty.”

  Brandon laughed as he sipped and forced himself to be in the moment. He dug into the fries in the greasy paper bag.

  “You have to do it this way, Tito Brandon,” Izzy said. “You have to dip. See?” With purposeful hands, she gave instructions on how to properly dip and eat a fry. “Now, your turn.”