Fated

Evernight
Publishing ®

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright©
2014 Allyson Young

 
ISBN: 978-1-77233-116-5

Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

Editor:
Karyn
White

ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this
copyrighted work is illegal.
 
No part of
this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written
permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are
fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

Thanks to author Jennifer Simpkins for diligently reading everything I
send her and providing such valuable feedback. And to
Karyn
White, editor and amazing mom who taught me about fancy dialogue tags and a new
word this time around! As an author I’d be lost without my beta readers and
editors.
Evernight
Publishing has treated me so well
I’m forever grateful they accepted my first submission and we continue to have
such a good working relationship. Finally, to my readers…I write for personal
enjoyment, and sharing with you is the butter icing on my cake. Ally

FATED

Marking Time, 2

Allyson Young

Copyright
© 2014

Chapter One

Candy Grant stared down at her
phone, setting it on the front counter of her boutique, all the while blinking
furiously against the moisture threatening to spill over her lower lids and
drag her carefully applied mascara in dirty rivulets over her cheeks. That
wouldn’t do. Not only did she have customers perusing the high priced items
stocking the shelves, but her tears would signify both envy and ridiculous self-pity,
two emotions she
wasn’t
going to let herself sink into.
One errant tear somehow escaped, fortunately from the eye further away from the
clientele, and she dashed it harmlessly aside, rubbing her dampened finger
against her skirt.

The Russell brothers had obviously
figured out they’d driven away the best thing that could ever have happened to
them, and she could picture them in hot pursuit of her best friend, Sinclair
Renton. A smug smile, in direct contrast to her previous emotional reaction,
twitched her lips, and she could only picture Sinclair’s mixed reaction when
they caught up with her. Candy had total faith they’d work it out, and her
friend wouldn’t blame Candy for snitching on her. Besides, who ran away on a
bus?
To
Canada
?
What about the fact Candy had had to make do with email and phone contact for
all those years while Sinclair was away at school? It was high time her best
friend stayed home so they could spend more time together. That was, if Craig
and Ashton ever let Sinclair out of their bed.

Pushing away thoughts of the
presumably happy threesome, Candy turned her attention to the immediate present.
She’d decided to close a little early, and head out of town and hit a club in
Sheridan
, nearly a two
hour drive away. Not really qualifying as a city, but at least it wasn’t
here,
and far
enough from
here
to give her some anonymity.
Lord knew her small town kept no secrets, and the county wasn’t any better. Her
daddy’s money and status focused more attention on Candy than she preferred,
especially when it curtailed her activities and carried tales back to her
father, who was big on presenting a shiny image to the public. But that money
also enabled her to dabble in things that interested her, like Sweet ’n Sassy
Things, her boutique, a storefront that brought a little class to small town
Barrister. And, she fervently hoped, some excitement.

With another smirk, she watched old
Mrs.
Leffert
heft a gorgeous piece of sculpture, a
well turned piece of erotic bronze that would set any red-blooded, heterosexual
woman’s blood heating. Mrs. L ran a thorny finger down the muscled back of the male
cast in the age-old pose of coitus, his partner a lithe beauty, writhing
beneath him. It was the gorgeous strain on his features, and the pleasured
agony wrought on the woman’s face that told the true story, however. Not
pornography. Not even close. Candy wished someone would gaze upon her with that
kind of love and devotion to her pleasure, and her heart actually ached at the idea.
She thought someone had, once upon a time, and hadn’t been able to forget him.

An image of a scowling face, craggy
brows drawn together over a pair of piercing green eyes filled her mind’s eye. Before
she allowed herself to recall a finely crafted, sensuous mouth, Candy jerked
into action.

“May I be of help?”

Mrs. L twitched, her stooping
shoulders beneath the floral print of her dress dropping another inch before
she faced Candy. The older woman’s face wasn’t pinched with judgment or
distaste, although her pale eyes might have flickered with guilt or
embarrassment.

“This is beautiful, my dear.”

“It is.” It was easy to agree when
Mrs. L spoke the truth, but Candy wanted to ease her out of the shop, along
with the two other women examining some diaphanous lingerie in the far corner.

“I’ll take it.” That was a
surprise. The bronze wasn’t priced cheaply.

With what she hoped passed for an
accommodating—and patient—smile, Candy nodded. “I’ll wrap it up.”

“You have some lovely things in
here.”

“Thanks, Mrs.
Leffert
.”

“Patricia, my
dear.
If we’re to have discourse over such an object, then I believe
first names are appropriate.”

A little stunned, Candy managed
another nod.
“Uh, sure … Patricia.”

“I knew your mother.
Taught her actually.”

That was right. Mrs. L—Patricia—had
been an English teacher at Barrister High, and Lenore Grant, née
Rounce
, had attended that school. Candy’s knowledge of her
deceased parent was meager, but she knew her mom had been born and raised near
here. She had a few vague memories of a tall, slender woman with gentle hands
who carried the scent of lily of the valley.

But her dad never talked about his wife,
and her mom was a subject Candy had learned at an early age not to broach. Her
daddy was her only living relative aside from a distant aunt, and while she
knew why they’d moved here, it was still a place where surely the memories of
her mother abounded for him. Maybe he was into self-flagellation, like her.
After all, she was still here.

“What was she like?” The question
slipped out before she could think to stop it. Her desire to get gone and up to
Sheridan
clouded her judgment. Her daddy would kill her if he thought she was asking the
locals about her mom. As she got older she’d figured out it was grief that had turned
him so cold and reserved, and her own heartbreak gave her a better
understanding. Not that she thought about her own issues in that regard
anymore.

Mrs. L’s attention was on the
tissue paper cradling the bronze as Candy tucked it into a box, but she raised
her eyes. “A good
girl, that
I recall. Smart. You look
quite like her, actually. The resemblance is remarkable.”

Really.
No pictures from the
past, aside from several of her as a child, adorned their home. And yes, she
still lived at home, albeit in a self contained suite, a hard fought battle
she’d won in negotiation with her father. He told her all the photo albums and
other sentimental objects had perished in the fire along with her mother and her
visiting grandparents. She and her dad had been out shopping when the gas
explosion immolated the house, and she chose not to think much about the
devastation amongst innumerable flashing lights at the scene when they’d driven
up to the roadblock and yellow tape. The sight of that fluttering and ominously
printed barrier on television shows could make her belly clench.
Funny how a three-year-old could retain that memory with such
clarity, and so few of her mother and grandparents.
Another reason to
keep Reece Murdoch at bay, given his chosen profession, not that she was giving
any consideration to having him in her life again, despite the way he looked at
her. She pressed a hand against the flutter and sudden heat in her belly,
hoping to short circuit any migration to other, lower areas. Funny how her
heart was a hard, chunk of coal, but other parts of her body didn’t notice.

“Candy?”

“Oh, sorry.
Thinking about my mom.”
And that my daddy likely sees her each and every time he looks at me.

Mrs. L’s face softened. “You were
so young. We weren’t surprised that your father brought you back here to the
family home. Picked up the pieces and carried on the business.”

Yup, her daddy picked up the reins
of the natural gas empire her maternal grandfather had spearheaded—and willed
to her mother—and had never looked back. If anyone saw the irony in how that
man had died, along with his wife and only child, nobody was unkind enough
voice it within Candy’s hearing. She sometimes saw it on their faces, though.

“He did.” That seemed safe enough
to say. Her daddy wasn’t particularly well liked in these parts, but did
command respect of sorts, she supposed. Money and power garnered that emotion
in some people. And she’d be a hypocrite if she didn’t own up to that money
easing her way in life.
If it hadn’t been for her friendship
with Sinclair, both of them the same age and arriving in the area at roughly
the same time, she might have turned out a complete wastrel.
Her daddy
didn’t care if she did well in school or established herself in sports or
anything else. Nope, Daddy Dearest lavished all his austere attention on his
stepsons and his second wife, Roslyn, who’d tried to parent Candy early on but had
given it up as a bad job. Candy was purely decorative and expected to marry at
some point to someone her father approved of, although he did demand a certain
decorum. Never shit in your own nest, was one of his pithier sayings.
Which was why she needed to get to that damn club!