Homecoming: The Billionaire Brothers (23 page)

Glancing over her shoulder as if unsure the term “friend” truly applied, or wondering if Miles would be offended by it somehow, Greta said, “Sure. Um, Mama, this is Miles Harrington. Miles, this is my mother, Esther Hackley.”

Sparing a fleeting wish for the comfortable armor of his three-piece bespoke suit and perfectly broken-in wing tips, Miles put on the smile he used on the wives and family members of his board of directors.

“Mrs. Hackley,” he said, stepping forward to envelop her papery-skinned hand in both of his. “I’m glad to meet you. Your daughter has been so hospitable, showing me around the island.”

Mrs. Hackley fluffed her silvery blond curls and tilted her chin up proudly. “Of course, any tour of Sanctuary Island would have to include this place. It’s one of the oldest businesses on the square, been in our family for generations.”

“Mama,” Greta cut in, her voice slightly muffled with embarrassment. “Miles already knows all about Hackley’s, I told him on the way over. Don’t fuss.”

“Don’t fuss?” Esther spread her thin arms wide to encompass the store. “This place is your history and your future, Greta. You should be proud.”

“I am.” Darting him a glance, Greta hooked her arm through Miles’s elbow and started tugging him toward the front of the shop. “You know that. But Miles and I have a lot to see and a few errands to run, so we’ll just grab a couple of eye bolts and be on our way.”

Because he was watching the interaction with interest, on the principle that any information he learned about Greta Hackley could be useful in his plan, Miles saw the way Esther’s gaze sharpened. Hopping off the stool, Esther rounded the back counter and barreled straight over to them.

“What sort of errands?” she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest and staring her daughter down, like a military general in a pink, fuzzy cardigan. “And what do you need the hooks for?”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Hackley.” Miles studied the woman’s tense face. “We’re just rehanging the porch swing at my family’s house on Island Road. Nothing nefarious.”

“Esther,” she snapped, without even glancing at him. All her attention was focused on the stubborn set of Greta’s jaw. “Tell me, Mr. Harrington. Will this repair require my daughter to climb around on a ladder?”

Feeling as if he was missing something, which was an unfamiliar and uncomfortable sensation, Miles glanced back and forth between mother and daughter. Locked in a silent battle of wills, neither woman seemed to remember he was even in the store with them.

Sticking out a careful feeler, Miles said, “Not necessarily. I could be the one up the ladder, with Greta directing from below.”

That surprised a look from Greta, her wide brown gaze snapping to his face. “You’d take direction from me? I would’ve thought you’d be a macho, arrogant know-it-all.”

“Greta.” Esther’s shocked voice made her daughter wince. Finally looking away from Greta, Esther said, “I apologize for my daughter, Mr. Harrington. I’m the one she’s angry with. She shouldn’t be taking it out on you. And she shouldn’t be angry with me, either, I might add—since all I want is what any mother wants. To keep her safe.”

“Mama, nothing is going to happen to me.” The pleading note in Greta’s voice surprised Miles, but he was by no means an expert on parent-child relationships. Was it normal for an adult daughter to still be subject to so much worry?

Esther was shaking her head. “I never would have agreed to mind the store today if I knew you planned to spend your time off recklessly climbing up ladders and attempting repairs you have no business making.” Brightening, she turned to Miles. “Why don’t you call one of my boys, Mr. Harrington? They’d be much better suited to helping you with your porch swing.”

Aware that he’d somehow stumbled directly into the middle of a long-standing mother-daughter battle, Miles held up his hands to remind them both that he was an unarmed combatant.

“That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Ha—Esther.” Miles corrected himself at the glint of swift annoyance in the older woman’s frown. He wasn’t here to make enemies. And even though he didn’t fully understand the subtextual ramifications of this conversation, he was a CEO. Smoothing over personnel problems and getting people on the same page was basically his entire job. So he smiled blandly and said, “I’ll take care of the repair myself.”

“I’m not a child,” Greta gritted through clenched teeth. “And I’m not suggesting that I help him roof his house, followed by a rousing game of tackle football. I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t you minimize my completely valid concerns, young lady.” Esther put her hands on her round hips and stared at her daughter as if calculating whether Greta was too tall to fit over her knee for a good spanking. “You know you have to be careful. If I can’t trust you to take care of yourself…”

Greta went pale, her bloodless lips an unhappy curve, and Miles didn’t even stop to wonder why he hated the sight so much. He simply rushed into the fray. “I have an idea, Esther. What if you hand over the care and safety of your daughter to me, just for one day? I promise not to let her fall from any ladders, and make sure she enjoys her day off in a completely safe, responsible manner. You have my word.”

The look Esther gave him let Miles know she wasn’t at all sure his word was worth the oxygen he’d used to form the sentence, but before she could turn him down, Greta huffed out a shuddery breath and stalked out of the store.

Miles started after her at once, but the light touch of Esther’s hand on his shoulder made him pause. He glanced back to find her offering him a handful of large silver hooks ending in long screws, and a sad smile. “Here, on the house. You’re going to have your hands full with my daughter.”

“You’ll trust me with her for the day?” Miles accepted the hooks with a sense that he was signing off on a contract he hadn’t read.

“I’m trusting that Greta has been reminded that she needs to take care of herself. She’s not like everyone else, Mr. Harrington. There are things she can’t do, ways that she needs to be careful, but she hates to admit it. Even to herself.”

In the short pause that followed, Miles was torn between the urge to demand Esther be more specific, and the intense need to follow Greta. In the end, the invisible tether connecting his rib cage to Greta Hackley pulled taut, and he started for the door.

“Thank you for the hooks,” he said over his shoulder. And even though he had no idea what Esther thought could happen to her daughter on this sleepy little island, he said, “I promise I’ll keep her safe.”

“Just bring her back to me in one piece,” Esther called. “I’ll take it from there.”

Miles didn’t have time to question why the thought of handing Greta back over to her mother released adrenaline to tighten his muscles. Greta was halfway down the block already, and he had to catch up with her.

Wrestling his phone from the back pocket of his borrowed jeans, Miles swiped open the lock and scrolled through his recent contacts for the number he wanted.

He had plans to make.

Chapter Five

Anger fizzed and bubbled through Greta’s veins like anesthesia, numbing her to every other emotion.

Except, of course, embarrassment.

You’d think she’d be used to the way her mother wanted to cocoon her in endless layers of bubble wrap, but somehow, it had felt different to be told how helpless and fragile she was in front of Miles Harrington.

But since she couldn’t bring herself to get mad at her mother, Miles was the one who got the brunt of Greta’s embarrassed rage when his long, loping strides caught up to her at the corner of Main Street and Island Road.

“I don’t appreciate you ganging up on me with my mother,” she snapped out, whirling to face him. “And I certainly don’t need you to take care of me.”

“Of course you don’t,” he agreed.

But Greta was on a roll. “And if you think I’m too delicate or weak to help get that swing rehung—”

“Here,” Miles interrupted, grabbing her flailing hand and dropping a couple of heavy metal hooks into her palm. “Peace offering to prove I don’t think you’re weak. Please don’t take a shot at me with those in your fist. I like my nose the way it is.”

Closing her fingers over the cold metal, Greta deflated. “Sorry. My mother knows me too well. I
am
taking it out on you. I apologize, and I promise your nose is safe.”

Of course that led to Greta thinking about the other things her mother might be right about, and the surge of frustration at her body’s limitations was almost comforting.

She’d been dealing with it ever since she could remember, in one form or another. And no matter how strong she felt or how she pushed herself to gain the strength others took for granted, Greta could always count on her mother to slap her in the face with reality.

She glanced up to see Miles studying her expression, head cocked inquisitively to one side like a panther trying to understand the nonsensical flailing of its prey. “There’s no ticking clock on that repair back at the house,” he said slowly. “Let’s take our time, see a little more of the island.”

Sighing, Greta said, “You mean my prison? Sure, great.”

“Prison.” Miles frowned. With the light growth of beard after one day without shaving shadowing his hard-edged jaw, he looked piratical. Dangerous, like Penny said.

Greta shook her head, ignoring the tingle of desire. “Forget about it. My mother turns me into a crazy person. So!” She gestured expansively at the wide, flat swath of green grass dotted with flowering tulip poplars and dogwoods.

While they were in Hackley’s Hardware, the sky had clouded over with dark, forbidding gray. The humidity, always intense in the summer, had thickened until every breath felt like a gulp of tepid water.

“This is the town square. That’s the pavilion. All the core businesses on the island have storefronts along Main Street on this side, and all the big, old houses are along Island Road on that side of the park.”

“Interesting,” Miles said, never taking his eyes off her face.

Greta fought the urge to squirm under the laser intensity of his scrutiny. “The high school marching band plays concerts on the steps of the pavilion sometimes,” she said breathlessly.

Grabbing her hand, Miles turned and pulled her into the park. “Great. Let’s see this pavilion up close.”

The heat of his rough fingers on hers sent chills up her arms, even in the moist thickness of the still noonday air. “It’s nothing special,” Greta tried to tell him, almost tripping over her own booted feet in her hurry to keep up with his ground-eating strides.

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

The pavilion squatted in the center of the town square, paved pathways leading out from it like rays of light from a star. Miles hustled them up the steps and into the hexagonal, open-sided building just as the sky opened up and poured rain down on the island.

Gasping, Greta leaned on the white wooden railing and stuck her hand out to feel the cooling sting of fat raindrops on her bare skin. “How did you know it was about to start raining?”

“I didn’t.”

He sounded genuinely aggravated, as if he hated admitting that he didn’t have perfect foreknowledge of everything that would happen.

Greta laughed over her shoulder at him, then turned to prop her hips on the low railing and stretch her legs out in front of her. “Well, we’re stuck here now until the rain lets up. Shouldn’t be too long. These summer storms blow over in a heartbeat.”

Another sheet of rain fountained over the gazebo’s roof, loud enough to drown out her last few words. The rain formed an impenetrable veil around the pavilion, enclosing Greta and Miles in their own private world made of white noise and fine mist.

Absently wringing water from the sodden hem of her tank top, Greta felt her breath catch at the soft, rough sound that rumbled from deep in Miles’s chest. She dropped her hands, tugging the shirt down self-consciously, but it was too late.

Miles had already seen it.

Without even meaning to, Greta pressed her hand defensively over the short scar that curved over her left hip. No longer than three inches, pale with age, she knew intellectually that it wasn’t a hideous, deforming mark.

But try telling that to the weak, scared, seventeen-year-old who still lived somewhere inside Greta.

She tensed against the inevitable question. All through high school, and after, if she ever encountered the rare person on Sanctuary Island who didn’t already know everything that happened to Greta Hackley when she was a kid, one look at her scar was all it took for that person to feel they had a right to ask.

Sometimes people would reach out and touch it, almost unconsciously, as if the fact that there was visible proof of her past pain made it public property.

But Miles didn’t move one inch closer to her. Instead, he lowered himself to sit on the bench that ran along the back of the gazebo, hooking his elbows over the railing. He said not a word, asked no questions, didn’t imply in any way that she was obligated to spill her entire life history to explain the scar on her abdomen.

The very fact that he didn’t push made her want to tell him. And why not? It wasn’t some horrible secret. Everyone on the island already knew, anyway. What was one more person who looked at her and saw an invalid, a victim, a weakling to protect?

If Miles Harrington was going to look at her that way, with that horrid, soft pity she hated so much … better to find out now.

“I was sick a lot, as a kid.” Greta pitched her voice to be heard over the rain, but it still came out low and private. Clearing her throat, she pressed on. “In and out of the hospital, lots of different doctors. They finally figured out it was chronic kidney disease, which would have meant lifelong dialysis just to manage the symptoms—but my mom gave me one of her kidneys when I was seventeen. And now we’re both fine.”

For a long moment, there was no sound but the incessant roar of raindrops hitting the gazebo roof. Greta searched Miles’s expression for any change, any hint of pity, but other than a slight tightening of his jaw, he didn’t react at all.

“I see. Thank you for telling me. It explains a lot.”