The best laid plans the.., p.1
The Best Laid Plans (The Best Men), page 1
PRAISE FOR KARLA SORENSEN
“A sexy, heartwarming read. If Karla writes it . . . I’m reading it.”
—Devney Perry, Wall Street Journal bestselling author, on Faked
“I am absolutely obsessed. The writing is so smart, the characters so fresh, the angst and chemistry so hot. It. Is. Everything.”
—Kandi Steiner, bestselling author, on The Marriage Effect
“This book, you guys. The swoon. I cannot even tell you. It’s a delicious, heartfelt, sexy slow burn that gets you in the feels. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Angie’s Dreamy Reads on Focused
“Baking Me Crazy is . . . well, what is it not? It’s beautiful. It’s thoughtful. It’s so well written that I’m jealous of Sorensen’s pen . . . I loved it.”
—Adriana Locke, USA Today bestselling author, on Baking Me Crazy
“The Lie had everything I want in a romance. It was a flawless, perfectly paced ride from start to finish, and it’s gone straight on my top 2021 list.”
—Jen’s Dreamy Little Reads on The Lie
DISCOVER OTHER TITLES BY KARLA SORENSEN
The Wolves: A Football Dynasty (The Second Generation)
The Lie
The Plan
The Crush
The Ward Sisters
Focused
Faked
Floored
Forbidden
The Washington Wolves
The Bombshell Effect
The Ex Effect
The Marriage Effect
The Bachelors of The Ridge
Dylan
Garrett
Cole
Michael
Tristan
Three Little Words
By Your Side
Light Me Up
Tell Them Lies
Love at First Sight
Baking Me Crazy
Batter of Wits
Steal My Magnolia
Worth the Wait
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2023 Karla Sorensen
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781662514395 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781662514401 (digital)
Cover design by Letitia Hasser
Cover photography by Rafael Garcia Catala
Cover image: © ehrlif / Shutterstock
To Kathryn, Kandi, and Brittainy:
the three of you dragged me to the finish line by sheer force of will, and I am eternally grateful.
CONTENTS
Chapter One BURKE
Chapter Two CHARLOTTE
Chapter Three BURKE
Chapter Four CHARLOTTE
Chapter Five BURKE
Chapter Six CHARLOTTE
Chapter Seven BURKE
Chapter Eight BURKE
Chapter Nine CHARLOTTE
Chapter Ten BURKE
Chapter Eleven CHARLOTTE
Chapter Twelve BURKE
Chapter Thirteen BURKE
Chapter Fourteen CHARLOTTE
Chapter Fifteen CHARLOTTE
Chapter Sixteen CHARLOTTE
Chapter Seventeen BURKE
Chapter Eighteen BURKE
Chapter Nineteen BURKE
Chapter Twenty CHARLOTTE
Chapter Twenty-One CHARLOTTE
Chapter Twenty-Two BURKE
Chapter Twenty-Three CHARLOTTE
Chapter Twenty-Four BURKE
Chapter Twenty-Five BURKE
Chapter Twenty-Six CHARLOTTE
Chapter Twenty-Seven BURKE
Chapter Twenty-Eight CHARLOTTE
Chapter Twenty-Nine BURKE
Chapter Thirty BURKE
Chapter Thirty-One BURKE
Chapter Thirty-Two CHARLOTTE
Chapter Thirty-Three CHARLOTTE
Chapter Thirty-Four BURKE
Chapter Thirty-Five CHARLOTTE
Chapter Thirty-Six BURKE
Epilogue BURKE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CONNECT WITH KARLA ONLINE
Chapter One
BURKE
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to do it, Burke,” my dad told me once. One of the many times growing up when I bitched about practice being too hard, or not wanting to go back out onto the field. “Doing the hard stuff when you don’t want to is going to make you the best version of yourself.”
What a horrible fucking moment to remember this piece of advice.
Recalling it at that particular time didn’t cause anger, or even annoyance. It induced the kind of dread that had my blood running in icy-cold chunks through my veins, because there was nothing I could do to prepare for what was coming next. Something I’d learned all too well the last three months of my life.
I didn’t want to do this.
And I had no choice.
As I watched the lawyer fumble with a massive binder, shuffling through page after page before he delivered one of those life-exploding bombs, worry settled like an iron weight in my stomach.
It was a feeling rooted in loss, the kind that you couldn’t ignore and could hardly breathe through.
I had a feeling that whatever was coming out of this wrinkle-faced lawyer’s mouth would shift the road in front of me irrevocably.
He skimmed through another page. “My apologies. We had a hard time finding the trust documents when your friend and his wife passed.”
That dread curdled dangerously under my skin at his words. What a sanitized term.
It was clean and clinical and didn’t cause any damage.
They didn’t pass.
Their car wrapped around a tree trunk because a drunk driver crossed into their lane, and in a crush of metal and glass, they left behind a two-year-old daughter and a stack of legal documents that were still being sorted through in the wake of their funerals.
The last two weeks had been the longest of my life—the last two months, really.
Too much change.
Too many plans cut short, with a few bursts of time that couldn’t be reversed.
“Ahh, here it is.” He dragged his thumb across one more page, tracing his finger along another paragraph before he looked back at the camera in his laptop. “Chris and Amie were new to our firm, and because their last lawyer retired just before their accident . . .” He paused. “Usually we’re a bit more organized than this in executing the terms of someone’s will.”
My jaw clenched, and underneath the table where I sat facing my computer, my knee bounced furiously. He couldn’t see it, but based on the look on his face, he could see the tight, unsure expression I undoubtedly wore.
“Under normal circumstances, we’d do this around the time of the funeral,” he continued.
I nodded. When I trusted my voice to work steadily, I asked him the question I’d been dreading. “Who’s getting custody of the girl?”
His face softened. “Not you. She’s with Amie’s best friend right now.” After a meaningful pause, he said, “My next meeting is with the parties given guardianship of Mira.”
My shoulders relaxed. I loved Chris—one of my best friends since we’d met fifteen years earlier at the University of Michigan—but I wasn’t ready to take on any sort of parenting role to a little girl.
As I waited for the lawyer to deliver whatever news was coming next, I closed my eyes and took a slow, deep breath. Maybe in another week, the tight ball of discomfort would unspool in my chest. Maybe I’d learn how to relax into this new reality.
Forcibly retired from the game I’d spent my entire life playing, thanks to a ruptured patellar tendon, and grieving one of my best friends, thanks to a drunk driver who couldn’t stay in his own lane.
No. I’d never relax into either of those truths. All I could do now was brace myself for whatever might come next.
“Well,” he said, “Mr. Barrett, it looks like you’re the proud new owner of the Campbell House.”
My eyes snapped open. “What?”
He smiled at my brusque tone. “It’s a late-1800s property they recently purchased, someplace that meant a great deal to Chris, if I’m understanding correctly. His grandparents owned it when he was younger, and it’s been somewhat neglected the last dozen years or more.”
I blinked. “I remember it. Sort of,” I managed. Hazy memories flitted in and out of my racing brain. A long drive from school so he didn’t have to go to a funeral alone. A big house with a lot of windows. “I saw it from the outside once, right after his grandma died.”
The lawyer ran his finger along the page in front of him. “Well . . . now it’s yours.”
“What were they going to do with it? They lived in Colorado.”
Chris had never mentioned anything about it to me. Not that we talked weekly or anything, especially during the season.
He’d called me after the news of my injury broke. And like an asshole,
My response had been quick. Told him he was a dick and we’d talk in a couple of weeks, when I started PT.
Busy.
Too busy.
Something that seemed like a cheap excuse now that he was gone.
The lawyer sat back in his chair. “We had one conversation about it, and that’s the extent of what I know. They had plans to completely restore it—with the help of a local expert they hired to manage the project. I don’t believe they intended to live there, at least not full time. It was something of an investment, could be used in any number of ways to generate income. A rental property, an inn, a couple of other options. To the best of my recollection, it was something of a dream of Amie’s, to turn it into a business as a way to honor his grandparents. Her primary goal was to restore it so they could get the historic landmark certification from the state of Michigan.”
Why couldn’t I remember where the house was? I tried to pull in another deep breath, but the oxygen was too thick, too heavy to clear through my stuttering lungs. I’d been there once—put my arm around his shoulder while he pretended like he wasn’t crying when he stared up at their house and tried to make peace with the fact that he couldn’t buy it.
I’d met Chris at the University of Michigan, the same place where he’d met Amie, but I couldn’t recall most of what he’d told me about the house. Once Chris started his professional football career in Colorado and I moved to Dallas, neither of us went back for any significant amount of time—unless it was for a regular-season game in Detroit.
But apparently, my friend had bought the house that he hadn’t been able to afford as a first-year college athlete.
“Where is it again?”
The lawyer consulted his binder. “Grand Traverse County. The northwest part of the state. Right by the water, it looks like.” His eyebrows furrowed as he read. “Pretty impressive property. A few acres. It was locked up in a messy divorce for years with the people who bought it from Chris’s grandparents.”
A steady, crushing pressure built behind my sternum. Was I having a heart attack? I rubbed at my chest bone. “I’m sorry,” I managed. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”
“Can I call you Burke?” he asked.
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him to fuck off, but I swallowed the impulse. None of this was his fault. Just like it wasn’t my fault either. Somehow, I managed a short nod.
“I know this is a lot to take in, Burke.” An incredulous snort was the best I had for a polite response. He ignored it. “But you’re not alone in this. You won’t have to take on anything by yourself.” He tilted his head. “I think Chris and Amie had a lot of faith in this project manager.”
“Can’t I just . . . sell it?”
The look on his face was contemplative, and a little sad. “They didn’t leave clear directives about future plans for the house. All I know is that it meant a lot to them to see it restored. She was excited about the plans.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Does the project manager know about this yet?”
“We tried to get in touch with them,” he said. “C. Cunningham is listed as the restoration expert, but we haven’t been able to get further than mailing a letter and leaving a few unanswered messages with a generic recording on a voice-mail box.” With my eyes closed again, I heard the shuffling of papers and his thoughtful hum. “But they’ve set aside money from their trust to start the necessary renovations, and Cunningham should have no problem facilitating the process of getting the house certified as a historical landmark, which is a significant tax advantage.” He paused. “If that’s what you want.”
Inside my head, a bright, angry mess of feelings fought for top spot.
Frustration and annoyance. Bone-deep sadness and anger that my friend wasn’t here anymore.
I didn’t want an old house.
I didn’t want to deal with project managers or renovation budgets or bureaucracy.
I didn’t want any of this.
And once those immediate, petulant thoughts were out in the open, that dread returned. Because the dread was rooted in the fact that I’d never be able to ignore Chris’s wishes.
“Why?” I asked quietly. “He never mentioned this.”
The lawyer shrugged. “Most people in their early thirties don’t anticipate that something like this will happen,” he answered. It was done gently; there was a respectful amount of tact in his answer. But still, I hated it. “I’m sure he thought he had time.”
Behind me was a line of suitcases, filled with my clothes. My home in Dallas had already sold, and my belongings were on a moving truck headed for Florida, where I planned to park my ass in a chair on the beach and read and stare at the ocean and relax. Three decades (plus a few years) and I’d never done that.
Waiting for me there were my newly divorced little sister and her two kids—I’d just bought them a house and was ready to spend quality time with my family for the first time in a decade.
With an aching knee and a bruised ego over not being able to leave the NFL on my own terms, I’d claimed my retirement as something of a second chance. No more working myself to the bone. No more chasing someone else’s elusive idea of winning and being the best. No more punishing my body on the field. Just finally facing the fact that I’d sacrificed my marriage and the possibility of starting a family—an idea that couldn’t survive what I’d been chasing for the last decade.
A relationship that couldn’t survive the truth that my job always seemed more important than her dreams.
This second phase of my life was supposed to be calm and peaceful. Taking care of the people I loved by being present for them.
Not a wreck of a house that I wanted nothing to do with.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a picture on my kitchen counter. The one thing I couldn’t bring myself to pack just yet.
It was the last regular-season game of our senior year, our faces streaked with eye black and sweat and enormous grins. Me and Chris, standing at the fifty-yard line in the Big House. We’d just beaten Ohio State on a last-minute interception by Chris, and life had never felt sweeter.
The future was one wide-open road. Nothing blocking the things we wanted.
We got the careers playing football after college.
Chris found the love of his life and mother of his child—something that had eluded me so far.
And the absolute fucking unfairness of the fact that he was the one gone made me want to split the side of my house in half, just for a place to release some of that anger.
The lawyer remained quiet while I sat at the table in my kitchen and stared dazedly at the picture he couldn’t see.
“Now what?” I ground out. I met his eyes through the monitor. “Now what do I do?”
He took a deep breath. “I’ll be emailing you everything you need, and it will be a lot of information. There will be papers that need to be signed, once we can get in touch with the project manager.”
I sighed. “Okay.”
“Maybe,” he started, “you could head to Traverse City and take a look at the property.”
I laughed. It was a dull, unamused sound. A tension headache bloomed almost instantly, and instead of rubbing at my chest, my fingers pressed over my forehead. If I tried hard enough, I could imagine the iron band squeezing—tighter and tighter and tighter. Vaguely, I wondered if it would eventually burst something that couldn’t be stitched closed.
“The property,” I repeated. “What can you tell me? I don’t remember much about it.”
He hummed. “It’s impressive. Or was,” he corrected. “The main house is pretty wrecked, from what I can tell. But there’s a carriage house where the project manager is meant to live during the renovations. Sits on four acres, has about eighty feet of private waterfront. Everything fell into disrepair when Chris’s grandparents passed away. It sounds like there were various reasons for that.” He paused. “You know as well as I do that most professional football players don’t have multimillion-dollar sponsorship deals. Chris and Amie were smart with their money; they didn’t invest unwisely. This was a risk but one they believed in strongly enough for their future.”
Every word hit a different point of impact in my body, causing strange tremors that echoed in my head and my neck, my stomach and my heart.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered. “Why me?” It wasn’t a question for anyone to answer, certainly not this buttoned-up lawyer whom I didn’t know. I couldn’t even remember his name. But I gave him a searching look anyway. “He didn’t leave a letter? No explanation why he chose me?”
