Sunflower Alley (The Merriams Book 4) Read online

  “Yes, and it looks like you need one. Last one,” Louisa said, “and then you’re coming with me and Boxer. You don’t like yourself much right now.”

  He hated himself, in fact, but it didn’t take a genius to see that. “Too easy. You’ll have to do better than that.”

  She raised those arched eyebrows. “You’re incredibly smart but self-destructive and stubborn to boot. And you’re not an alcoholic despite your intentions this evening.”

  He lifted the bottle to his cold lips before answering, “Not yet, I’m not.”

  “You’re not even drunk,” she said, standing up. “Now, I’ve more than fulfilled our contract. You going to fulfill yours?”

  Contract? “You talk like we made a business deal. Lady, sure you’re pretty and all, but I don’t know what you’re selling, and I’ve had enough of it. I’m going to sit here and drink as long as I damn well want, and if my fingers fall off, that’s my problem.”

  She put her hands on her waist. “Do you have health insurance?”

  “I’m not sure.” Shock rolled through him. Billionaire Connor Merriam might not have health insurance. Sure, logically speaking, he knew he could get COBRA, but it felt like everything he’d taken for granted was crumbling beneath him like rocks in an avalanche.

  “Listen to me. You don’t want frostbite. Trust me, it’s horrible.”

  She sounded like she knew, which was weird. Everything about her suggested she was well taken care of.

  “If you don’t come with me, then I’ll be forced to stay out here with you until you see reason.”

  Boxer gave a gusty sigh. “Man, please just come with us. Don’t make Louisa hang out here in the cold with you.”

  Connor stood up and studied her. She stared right back, lifting her chin in stubborn emphasis. That look told him she wasn’t about to back down.

  “You could freeze yourself,” he said. “Why would you do that? I won’t be responsible for that.” He couldn’t take one more person getting hurt because of him. Not even this stranger.

  “So you’ll come with us,” she pressed, reminding him of a baby pit bull.

  He didn’t want company. Maybe he should just head back to the motel. This woman seemed determined to stay with him.

  “All right, last guess about you, and if I get it right, you leave with us. No excuses or complaints.”

  “Lady, you are some—”

  “Someone you loved very much died because of you, and you’re out here because you blame yourself.”

  His sharp intake of breath was audible in the silent expanse of the snowy park. “How could you—”

  “I know the look.” She grabbed his forearm in a solid grip. “You’re coming now, right? Because if not, I’ll have to make Boxer get me more blankets and some coffee. I’m not leaving you alone out here.”

  “I can go back to Ferguson’s—”

  “Too late. I won. You don’t want to welch on a bet, do you?”

  God, she was relentless. “Lady—”

  “The name’s Louisa, and I’d very much like to know your name if you don’t mind. You don’t have to tell me your last name or anything. I understand privacy issues.”

  Privacy issues? Who in the hell was this woman? His mind shifted back to St. Patrick’s and the way the neighborhood used to be.

  “You aren’t a nun from a local convent, are you?” She didn’t look like a nun, but he knew there were plenty of them in Chicago, and they helped people on the street.

  She started laughing. In fact, she bent over and guffawed. “That’s a good one.”

  Boxer joined in, his baritone laughter a harmonious counterpart to her higher-pitched one. “You’ve been called a lot of things, Louisa, but never a nun. Sister Louisa. I might have to tell the staff.”

  “Don’t you dare,” she told him, swatting his massive chest. Turning back to Connor, she said, “Come on… What’s your name?”

  “Connor,” he found himself saying. The man and woman started walking, and to his surprise, he fell in with them.

  She slipped behind him and wrapped the worn blanket around his shoulders, a simple piece of kindness that cracked through his numbness for a moment. How long had it been since someone had done something like that for him?

  “Sorry the blanket’s so wet and cold.” She sluiced some snow off with her hand. “You held out for a while, and it’s snowing pretty hard. We’ll find you something warm when we get back to Sunflower Alley.”

  He stopped short. “Sunflower Alley? You a florist?”

  Her laughter trickled over him again. “Another good one. No, Connor. I’m the director, working with Boxer here. It’s a homeless shelter.”

  He fell back a few steps on the sidewalk, staggered by her words. “You think I’m homeless?”

  She stared him straight in the eye. “You don’t have a job, a home, or a family to go to. You’re staying at Ferguson’s, which probably means you don’t have much money. And you’re sitting in the park in a threadbare University of Chicago T-shirt, drinking out of a paper bag during a snowstorm. Trust me, you check most of the boxes.”

  He checked the boxes? He looked down at himself. His favorite college T-shirt was worn and faded, and he had a rough blanket around his shoulders and a brown-bagged bottle in his hand. He did look homeless. How had it come to this? He was a man who’d graced the covers of Time and Fortune. Done anything he wanted. Had anything he wanted.

  If she could think he was some homeless bum in the park, the man he’d been was truly gone. Shame coated him, and something hot and angry clawed at his throat.

  Rock bottom gave out again, and he fell farther.

  This was the worst moment of his life.

  She put her hands on his shoulders. “Connor, right now you feel like you have nothing to live for. I’m going to help you see that’s not the truth. If you let me… Trust me, I’ve been there.”

  She had? It went along with what she’d said about frostbite, but she didn’t fit any image he’d ever had of homelessness. “But you couldn’t…”

  “I’ll tell you my story if you come with me.”

  Standing in the amber lamp light with snow falling around her, she looked like an angel. Grandma Anna had always told them the right people showed up when times were the darkest. He didn’t want to keep spiraling down.

  He simply had to find a way to set things right. He’d promised Corey, and he had a duty to his own family as well, as the oldest sibling, even if he didn’t have a clue how to regain their trust.

  Louisa held out her hand to him.

  He took it.

  Chapter 2

  Thank God he’d finally agreed to come with them.

  Louisa had been fighting off the shivers as the temperature kept dropping with the snow still falling hard. Connor’s entire head and shoulders had been covered in a thin layer, and his dark beard looked like a frozen mask on his face. He’d been freezing right before her eyes, and her heart rate had kicked up the longer he’d fought her.

  Her dad would call him a tough cookie. Of course, she and Boxer faced hard cases all the time. People off their meds didn’t always understand she was trying to help them. Homeless ex-cons often thought the two of them might be undercover police. And women afraid of going to a shelter due to long-term abuse were difficult to persuade.

  Connor fit none of those categories, and yet his lack of trust in anyone or anything was evident.

  She knew how hard it was to live with guilt over causing someone’s death. She didn’t know this man’s story yet, but she knew what that particular pain “looked like” on a person. He might have done something to consciously hurt someone—like getting into a fight that went wrong—or it might have been negligence on his part. There were a million ways it could have happened. Whatever the case, she hoped they could help him see his way through it so his life didn’t continue to spiral out of control.

  Like her mother’s had.

  Her mom had died outside on a night like tonigh
t. They’d seen each other only once that winter, a few months after her dad had finally been granted full custody. Her mom had tracked her down at school, wanting to wish her a Merry Christmas and give her another damn doll. Louisa had been angry back then, but she’d still asked her mom to go somewhere warm with her. Her mother had refused, and it was the last time she’d ever seen her alive.

  Louisa now never took no for an answer from someone at the end of their rope. If someone refused to leave the park on a snowy night, she’d sit beside them in the snow or walk with them until they agreed to come with her for a cup of soup or warmer clothes. Her tenacity was one of the keys to Sunflower Alley’s success. Everyone needed to know there was at least one person who wouldn’t give up on them, who cared—her father had first taught her that—and this man was no exception.

  She studied Connor in the soft lamplight. He was tall—six three to her eye—well built, and handsome despite the haggard grooves around his eyes and mouth, clear signs of fatigue and grief. He wasn’t malnourished and had straight, healthy teeth, so she’d guess whatever had befallen him had been recent. If he kept drinking like he’d intended to in the park, his aura of health would diminish quickly. She’d seen it time and time again.

  He turned his head, tugging up the blanket when it slipped off his broad shoulders. She helped him, and he gazed at her warily. No, he wasn’t used to kindness. In fact, he was downright suspicious of it.

  Which was probably why he’d assumed someone like her, who wanted to help, had to be a nun. She couldn’t help but smile at that. A nun? Well, she didn’t have much of a social life, but still.

  “What are you smiling at?”

  She almost said, you, but he’d bristle. Instead, she said, “The nun comment. Man, that was funny.”

  “A nun who looks like Rihanna,” he murmured. “Funny or tragic?”

  His mouth tipped up, and she heard Boxer snort out a laugh as they padded across the snow-slicked sidewalk. The Chicago streets were mostly quiet for a change as the storm raged its forecasted ten to twelve inches. They’d dig out tomorrow, but right now, the smart ones were at home and off the roads.

  But not this one.

  “Only a couple more blocks to go,” she told him.

  “You like living in this dump?” he asked.

  So he didn’t live here normally. Something to remember. “This part of South Side isn’t pretty, but I do what I can to make it a good neighborhood.”

  “Let’s be honest here. This section is a shithole, and it’s not safe for average families.”

  She was tempted to argue that the streets were lined with so-called average families. Sure, they didn’t all have white-picket-fence lifestyles, but how many people actually did? Debating the matter wouldn’t get her anywhere with him, however. This man was angry at the world and itching for a fight, and even though she’d known him all of fifteen minutes, she could tell he was stubborn.

  And yet he seemed smart. He’d negotiated with her, for heaven’s sake, while drinking from a bottle. Not normal.

  “So where are you from originally, Connor?” she asked.

  “All you need to know is that I’ve spent time in this part of South Side,” he responded in that firm, crisp, eff-off tone. “It’s gotten worse.”

  Here she was thinking some of it had gotten better, but he was right. One block would improve, another would worsen. Most years it was like playing whack-a-mole. “We do what we can.”

  “Pardon me, but you’re not doing enough.”

  The accusation burned, and she heard Boxer growl. “You think you can do better?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” was all she got in response.

  That maybe held the promise of gasoline on a bonfire. She wondered what he had in mind. Some wanted to dispense good old-fashioned justice themselves to the corner drug dealers and gang members. She’d only seen that breed more hate and violence. The police did their best, but some of the community didn’t trust them. She tried to stay out of that fray. She didn’t dispense justice. She dispensed hope and a second chance at life.

  “Lot of abandoned buildings on this street,” Connor commented as they turned the corner.

  “High rents. Increased crime.”

  “Bad investments,” he finished for her.

  Boxer glanced over at her, and she smiled. So this one knew about investments. More evidence of his smarts. “Exactly.”

  Her dream was to make something out of those bad investments. She hoped to buy a large, abandoned school building a few blocks from Sunflower Alley and turn it into a job training center. She had about a hundred thousand dollars left to raise, and then hopefully Sunflower Alley could give people a full-service program that provided both a fish and a fishing pole.

  “Here we are,” she announced, extending her hand to her pride and joy, a two-story office building she’d bought on the cheap after the owner had declared bankruptcy. Sure, the radiators were ancient and they had window air-conditioning units, but it was a safe place for their clients to stay while they turned their lives around.

  “How did you come up with the name Sunflower Alley?” Connor asked.

  “My dad grew sunflowers for me when I was a kid. He did it to show me that something could be beautiful and tough. I wanted to share that message with others.” She waited for him to make a cutting remark. Others had.

  “He sounds like a good dad,” Connor said instead, shocking her.

  Boxer unlocked the door and opened it for them. “Coach Evans is the best.”

  “The sunflowers are also inviting to women and children,” she added.

  His brow winked up. “Children?”

  “You’d be surprised how many homeless children there are in the greater Chicago area.”

  “How many?” he pressed, despite Boxer holding open the door. He had to be hungry for that warmth, but he didn’t take a step forward.

  “About twenty thousand,” she replied. At one time, she’d been one of them.

  His mouth formed an impressive scowl. “That’s the size of a small town.”

  “Yes, it is, which is why places like ours matter so much. So… Welcome to Sunflower Alley, Connor. Unfortunately, you’ll have to leave your bottle outside.”

  “You let people leave their bottles out front like they’re umbrellas?” he spat back.

  She took the bottle he extended. “Some people are reluctant to part with their friend Jameson or Jack Daniel’s. We try and get them inside without riling them up too much. It’s not a perfect solution. There are lots of gray areas for us to handle when working with people.”

  “Gray is an understatement,” he shot back, anger in his tone.

  She fumbled with her keys for a moment, her fingers numb with cold, but managed to open the short cabinet anchored to the wall beside the door. Once his bottle was secured inside, she locked it up.

  “What?” she asked, feeling his scrutiny. “You didn’t think we were just going to leave it on the ground for anyone to pick up, did you?”

  He made some sound, something between a laugh and a snort. One thing was for sure. He didn’t care much for what people thought of him.

  “Louisa, why don’t you check in with the staff while I take care of Connor?” Boxer said as they walked inside. “Connor, normally we’d have someone sitting at our reception desk, but it’s after curfew and we’re closed.”

  “A reception for the homeless? Now I’ve heard everything.”

  She locked the door again. “We have an intake process. There are practical matters to address, like the person’s situation and needs. Are they single, or do they have children? Do they meet the guidelines we have for safety at the shelter?”

  “What happens if someone comes to the door after curfew because of the storm?” he asked, gazing around like he was sizing up the place.

  “If anyone needed shelter tonight, they’d have to buzz for the night caretaker. Boxer, I’ll take care of our guest. After all, I owe him my story.”

 
“I’m not a guest,” Connor said in a hard tone. “You were right about where I’m staying. I’m not homeless.”

  No, he wasn’t homeless yet if he had a room at Ferguson’s, but he could be on the cusp of it. He was a danger to himself just now, and she wouldn’t have been able to sleep if she’d left him in the snow.

  “Regardless, you’ll feel a lot better once you have some hot coffee and warm clothes,” she said, waving Boxer off. “Come on, Connor.”

  Boxer narrowed his eyes. “Find me if you need anything.”

  “Don’t I always?” she shot back with a wink, making him throw his hands up as he left them.

  “Who writes the Hallmark cards?” Connor asked.

  She turned to see him studying the big chalkboard she’d hung in the bright entryway. Each morning she wrote what she called her daily love note. “I do. People don’t hear good things often enough if you ask me, especially the people we serve. Do you have something against kindness and inspiration?”

  “‘If you’re reading this, something wonderful is about to happen.’ I’m sorry, but do the people staying here really buy that?”

  This time she gave him back her best smirk. “Depends on the person, but I want them to know we care from the moment they walk in.”

  He made another sound in his throat, and she nudged him with her elbow gently.

  “In your case, Connor, something wonderful has happened. You’re here and not freezing to death outside. Sounds like a win to me. Now, let’s get you some clothes. You’re—”

  “Lady, I’m not wearing someone else’s clothes,” he ground out.

  “It’s Louisa, and you’re freezing.”

  “I’m not that bad,” he said, his tone fierce. “I tend to run hot.”

  Sure, he did. She’d humor him and circle back, a fine art she’d perfected with the tough guys. “Do you want to take a shower while I dry your clothes in a dryer then?” She eyed his bare legs, red from the cold. “They should dry quickly.”

  “Is the shower clean?”