Page 6 of The Dangers of Daydreaming (Love Connections #2)

Change is Coming

Finn

The beeping of hospital machines made it hard to pretend this was just a regular evening with my grandparents.

Under normal circumstances, I’d love the chance to be in a hospital and ask questions to the nurses and doctors.

I’d be figuring out what each of these machines was monitoring.

But instead, I studiously avoided looking at the tubes attached to my grandpa as I settled into a chair by his bed.

“Nice dress, Pops,” I said, nodding at his hospital gown that disappeared into white and blue blankets on his bed.

He chuckled, his gray eyes twinkling as he glanced at Gram. “I don’t know why Jules complains so much. These things are comfortable.” He winked.

Gram rolled her eyes, which brought my attention to the dark circles under them. Pops had only been here since this morning, but Gram already looked haggard. Worry wrote itself into every smile line on her sixty-five-year-old face. “Yes, well, my dresses aren’t open at the back.”

Pops barked a laugh at that.

I appreciated the levity. It was another great distraction from the sterile room we sat in and everything it meant.

“How’re you doing?” I asked, not sure I wanted a truthful answer.

“It’s nothing compared to that time a Massasauga bit me back in the seventies,” Pops said, but I noticed the shadow of discomfort as he tried to lean back.

“ Better pain meds this time?”

“Enough to tranquilize a horse,” he responded with a grin that turned grimace.

I couldn’t look at that expression, so I turned to Gram. “Is it broken?”

She nodded. “The surgeon was here this afternoon. He wants to operate.”

“Better to do that soon, right?” I chanced a glance back at Pops.

“Dr. Gulliver doesn’t want to wait more than twenty-four hours, but…” She raised her brows at her husband.

I swung my gaze between the two of them. “Do you not want the surgery?”

Pops avoided my eye. And Gram’s. Instead, he took a sip from the massive cup sitting near him. “There are a lot of risks with surgery.”

“Lots of risks with a broken hip, too,” I replied. This was just like my grandpa. Loved the man, but jeez, he dragged his feet on everything. He called it a “farmer’s pace,” and said he couldn’t afford to go too fast or he would miss something important—the exact opposite of my Gram.

“I’m not saying I won’t get the surgery,” Pops hedged. “I’d just prefer to read through all the information.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said, shaking my head.

“Don’t look at me like that, I get enough of those looks from your Gram.”

I swept aside my annoyance. Pops would get there on his own, just not as fast as the rest of us would like.

And hopefully it wouldn’t cause any long-term medical issues—if the doctor was really worried, he’d probably insist on surgery ASAP, not just recommend it within twenty-four hours.

“Sorry, Pops,” I said, leaning back and feigning nonchalance even though every one of my muscles was tense and begging to get up and pace.

“It's a hard life when you marry a woman who’s always right.”

Both my grandparents laughed at that.

“ I always knew you were my favorite grandson,” Gram crossed the room to pat my head like I was an obedient pup.

“He's your only grandson,” Pops grumbled with a light grunt as he tried again to get comfortable. He leaned his head back against the flat hospital pillow.

Gram ignored him, looking down at me in my chair. “How did the tour go today?” she asked.

I stood, nudging her into my chair and crossing my arms as I thought over the day.

“Same as usual. Booked an additional guest at the B something about the action looked embarrassed. “To be honest, we’d thought about this before everything. It’s just getting to be too much for us. All the company's overhead, along with the upkeep of the farm… it’s more than we can handle.”

A hailstorm of disagreements filled my mind, but I closed my mouth against them.

It was harder to tamp down the sensation of frustration that they’d been discussing this without me.

I wanted them to do whatever was best for them…

I just wish it wasn’t this. I honestly didn’t think it needed to be this.

Life was good. They’d been running the farm and bed-and-breakfast for as long as I could remember.

The last couple of years, we’d fallen into a great rhythm with the addition of the tours.

Gram and Pops ran the small tour company along with their B&B.

We had a few employees. I took the tours out and helped with odd jobs around the place, and Stephanie handled the reception desk—her mom came i n and helped with breakfast when needed.

Wes saw to the upkeep of the farm with Pops’ help.

Gram even ran a little social media page for it all, with help from Stephanie, because none of us really knew what we were doing with that stuff.

We weren’t one of the bigger groups around, but we had a lot of referrals, and things had really started to grow and take off.

Maybe that was the problem. If things weren’t going so well, it would have been more manageable for them.

“We won’t make any major decisions till we have more answers about your grandpa,” Gram whispered. “I just wanted you to know it was a possibility.”

I nodded, my throat too tight to speak. It wasn’t so much that I was sad or upset as I was…

worried. I liked knowing what each day would bring and living in the moment without fear for the basics of life.

Just like I didn’t have to worry about the sun rising each day, I didn’t have to worry about Gram and Pops, my job, or my living situation.

And now I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to me if the business shut down.

I scoffed. Way to be self-centered, Finn.

“You just let me know what you need from me, Gram. I’m happy to take on more if that would help.” Whatever she needed, so long as they kept things the way they were.

She smiled, but her eyes seemed pained. Or pitying. Probably pitying me for thinking I could change their minds. Or that I could be more help.

By the time I made it back to the farm, I was exhausted from watching Gram's exhaustion. I hadn't stayed too much longer, just another fifteen minute s or so, but to see the haunted look of worry in my grandma's eyes had weighed me down.

Gram and Pops had raised me since I was fourteen.

They'd stepped back into parenthood with an ease that made it so I hadn't considered how hard it must have really been.

Until a few years back, I'd never realized how much that must have rocked their lives, but they hadn't batted an eye.

And throughout the next decade, they had met challenges and setbacks in their personal and professional lives with the same ease.

Until now. And it stressed me out.

Lots of people broke their hips, though. And that wasn’t a life- or future-ender. We’d work through this.

A light in the parlor had me leaning back to look through the doorway. I had a small duffle of clothes and toiletries I’d grabbed from my house on the way in, and I dropped it on the floor in the middle of the entry so I could go shut the lights off.

But someone was in there. Someone cute with red hair and a smattering of papers surrounding her on the loveseat and coffee table.

When I came in, she looked up, her brows pulling together beneath her upswept hair.

At some point, she must have plopped it all on her head, and curls fell around her forehead and down the nape of her neck.

Dark red that framed her face and accentuated the angles of her nose, cheeks, and jaw.

A bit of my junior high crush might have survived the last decade.

“You wear glasses?” I asked as I stepped further into the room.

Her eyes crossed for a moment, as if checking if there were really glasses on her face. “Oh, no, these are just for the blue light.” She pulled them off.

“Too bad, they’re cute.”

Her eyes narrowed. It almost made me laugh how annoyed she got with a bit of light flirting.

“Have you moved from here since we left this morning?”

“Yes.” She drew the word out.

“That wasn’t very convincing.”

“I’ve been working. But I did take breaks.”

I picked up one of her papers. It was a handwritten list of tour locations… all surrounding Anne of Green Gables . My mouth quirked up. “Still obsessed?” I asked.

She snatched the paper from me. “It’s for work.”

“How much did you have to bribe them to create an Anne of Green Gables tour?”

She started grabbing all her papers with a disgruntled expression. Seemed my teasing worked as well on her now as it had in junior high. “If you need to know, my agency has decided to offer literary tours. I am planning out the Lucy Maud Montgomery one.”

I nodded, sitting down on the coffee table as if she didn’t seem like she was just getting ready to leave. “You know, we go to a lot of these places on our tours.”

She stilled. Interesting. She’d been quick to dismiss the idea of joining our tours earlier.

“Yeah,” I said. “We even go to Green Gables. Mrs. Hastings told me today that she and her daughters all read the books together. That’s a big part of why they chose to come here for their family trip.”

Yep, she was definitely interested. Her hands full of papers and her computer had lowered back to the couch, and her mouth was parted as if she wanted to say something. I cocked my head at her. “Still sure you don’t want to just join us?”

She pressed her lips together, something holding her back.

Probably me, to be honest.

“Come on, Lucy.”

“What?”

I gave her a knowing look. “You haven’t been able to book anything, have you?”

She glanced down. “No, I’ve been able to book a couple things…”

“But not the important ones. I’ve lived here half my life.

I know how quickly tours fill up this time of year.

And you said this was a last-minute trip, so you probably haven’t had a chance to plan ahead, which means you can’t get into any of the important tours.

But I already have reservations for a group.

” My lips lifted in a slow smile. Her eyes fixated on my mouth, and for the briefest of moments, I let myself think there was anything but annoyance in that expression.

Then her shoulders drooped. “I’ve been planning and calling places all day, trying to get into tours. Half of them are closed for the weekend, and several are booked. I…” Her nose scrunched up, and she sighed. “Yes, Finn, I would really appreciate it if I could join your tour group.”

I stood, clapping my hands on my knees as I did. “Perfect. We leave tomorrow at ten a.m.”

She pressed her eyes closed, and I thought I read relief on her expression before they popped open again. “Thank you. I’ll be ready.” And, shock of all shocks… she smiled at me.

I wasn’t going to tell her that tomorrow was a tour stop not at all related to Lucy Maud Montgomery.

She hadn’t asked and maybe it was a little mean but…

I wanted to spend more time with Lucy Sinclair.

Because, as I stepped from the room and the weight of the evening dropped back on me like a heavy backpack, I realized that I hadn’t thought about the problems with Pops and the farm once during our conversation.

That was the kind of distraction I needed. And I only felt a twinge of guilt to use Lucy that way. But I settled my guilt with the thought that knowing PEI in its entirety would be useful to her.

She just might not agree.