You had Taylor, and you had me.
Swallowing down the litany of apologies that nearly choked her, Jo managed to keep her tone admirably steady. Addressing the glossy wood of the office door, she said, “If you find out anything about the lien, give me a call. Otherwise … it’s only a few weeks, Harrison.”
“It’s more than that, and you know it. But I can wait. God knows, I’m used to it.”
His low tone vibrated through her. Jo dropped her forehead to rest for an instant against the door panel. “Thank you.”
Without pausing to hear his reply, she pushed open the door and escaped before he could make it any clearer that his legendary patience was strained to the breaking point.
She just had to get through the next month without Dabney Leeds taking her to court over Aunt Dottie’s debt. Or anyone finding out how far the renovation and opening of Windy Corner Stables had depleted her savings. Or Harrison finally getting fed up and washing his hands of her.
Most of all, she needed to make sure none of those problems surfaced to scuttle Ella and Merry’s visit.
Jo Ellen Hollister had waited fifteen years for the chance to get to know her own daughters and to try and make up for the sins of her past. Now that they were finally ready to see her, she couldn’t let anything stand in the way of this chance.
She might not get another opportunity to say what had to be said.
CHAPTER 5
“I am in agony,” Merry moaned as soon as Ella got back to the car. “Screw the suspension or the shocks or whatever—just get us to a bathroom!”
“Why didn’t you go in the bushes?” Ella demanded as she buckled in, silently impressed with how steady her voice was. Considering how fast her heart was thumping in her chest, it was an accomplishment.
“I got all the way over there and wrestled my leggings down before I remembered the TP problem.”
“What—”
“Toilet paper,” Merry clarified. “As in, I didn’t have any. And I know hikers and whatever use leaves, but I don’t exactly have a degree in horticulture. It’d be just my luck to wipe my hoo-hah with poison ivy. So rev it up, Dale Earnhardt Jr.! Before my bladder splatters the inside of this ugly rental car.”
“Yikes.” Ella checked the rearview mirror, but they’d already turned off the main road. There was nothing behind them but sassafras trees, loblolly pines, and a muddy dirt track.
That’s definitely not a pang of disappointment,
she told herself.
The less you see of Grady Wilkes while you’re here, the better.
“I’m not sorry we stopped, though,” Merry gushed. “If we hadn’t stopped, we would’ve missed meeting Voyager!”
She went on to describe the horse they had both just seen in loving detail, reliving the moment when he’d nosed over her hand looking for a lump of sugar or a stray thumb to chomp on, and Ella didn’t feel more than a passing tickle of guilt at tuning the recitation out.
Her mind was too full of Voyager’s rider to do much more than add the occasional “Hmmm” to the monologue.
Grady Wilkes, the watchdog at her mother’s gate.
Why now? Why him?
Because of course, of freaking course, this was the way it went. It had been months since she could think about anything other than her dwindling portfolio of clients and inability to land a deal, mere days since her boss booted her out of the office to get her head on straight … and here she was trundling down this pitted mud trap of a road toward a reunion with the mother who’d abandoned her family in every way that mattered.
So of course, now was when Ella was suddenly walloped in the head with an attraction she couldn’t deny.
The fact that the man in question was a friend of her mother’s, and had already decided that Ella was out to hurt her somehow? That was the cherry on the crap sundae of Ella’s life.
Seriously, Fate. If you exist, I hope you know you’re a stone-cold witch.
As she wheeled the car carefully down the nearly hidden side road Grady Wilkes had mentioned, it occurred to her that maybe she was fixating on that weird, surprising spark she’d felt with Grady in order to avoid thinking about the fact that she was moments away from seeing Jo Ellen Hollister.
Merry’s voice trailed off uncertainly in the middle of a sentence about the way she could tell from Voyager’s teeth that he was at least six years old, and Ella thought maybe her sister was doing the exact same thing—fixating on something, anything, to avoid hyperventilating and passing out from stress and nerves.
The car bounced over a deep rut and Merry put one hand on the dashboard to brace herself as she peered through the windshield. Ella pressed her lips together and tightened her grip around the steering wheel, easing her foot off the gas and letting the car roll to a stop.
A canopy of budding branches stretched overhead, turning the thin spring sunlight into dapples of green dancing across the hood of the car. It was quiet, almost eerily so, with none of the ambient street and car noises Ella had grown so used to in the city. The silence was broken only by the low hum of the rental car’s idling engine and the too fast, almost panicky breathing coming from the passenger seat.
“It’s okay,” Ella said, giving Merry a reassuring smile. “Everything’s going to be fine.” Except she wasn’t at all sure it would be.
“I just … I was only eight when Dad took us away. I barely remember her.” Merry’s voice, usually so vibrant and full of life, was a fraying thread. “What if she thinks I’m a giant slut for getting knocked up and then dumped?”
“She won’t.” And if she did, Ella vowed, she’d make sure Jo Ellen kept her mouth shut about it.
Merry hesitated. Then, in a small voice, she asked, “What if she doesn’t like me?”
It’s not too late to back out of this,
Ella yearned to say.
We could leave right now, make a seven-point turn on this ridiculous, narrow path that passes for a driveway, and head straight back to civilization.
But that wasn’t what Merry needed right now. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. You have everyone you meet eating out of your hand within minutes! And anyway, you know how much Jo Ellen wants to see us.”
Merry nodded slowly, her breathing beginning to even out. “All those letters asking to be allowed to visit.” Ducking her head so that her purple hair swung forward and obscured her face, she asked, “Do you think Dad’s going to be mad that we’re here? I know he was glad when we asked her to stay away.”
Ella swallowed, emotion burning behind her eyes. “Oh, kiddo. Dad loves you no matter what, you know that. He just doesn’t want you to get hurt.”
That wasn’t strictly true. Not the part about Dad loving them, but the implication that he wouldn’t be angry when he found out about this impromptu visit … and Neil Preston knew how to hold a grudge.
Not that he wasn’t justified when it came to his ex-wife, Ella thought.
“Every time she floated the idea of coming to visit, I wanted to say yes,” Merry confessed. She gave Ella a sidelong glance. “I know you didn’t.”
Ella struggled with how to respond. She didn’t want to make Merry feel bad or wrong about trying for a relationship with Jo. It was natural, especially now that Merry was having a baby of her own, to wonder what it would be like to have the support and comfort that supposedly came from the mother/daughter bond.
But unlike Merry, Ella had been old enough to be very aware of what was happening during those final tempestuous years of their parents’ marriage. The drinking, arguing, drinking, crying, and more drinking.
She remembered Jo Ellen Hollister, and no matter how penitent the woman seemed in her letters, no matter how many times she’d begged for the chance to make it up to them, Ella wasn’t interested in adding that much chaos and unpredictability to her nicely ordered life.
Now, if only this trip could help Merry finally move on and put a stop to all the
what if
s …
“It’s okay that we have different needs,” Ella said gently, determined to be supportive. “Are you ready?”
Merry pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly, tapping the fingers of one hand against the swell of her belly. “Yes.”
“There’s my girl.” Ella mustered up every ounce of approval she could find as she put the car in gear and started inching forward once more.
In the privacy of her own brain, all she could think was,
Let’s get this over with
.
But as they rounded a bend in the road and came to a break in the tree line, the view that rose in front of the car took Ella’s breath away.
Gravel covered the last five hundred yards of the driveway as it wound away from the trees and up a slight, grassy hill to the house … although “house” hardly seemed like the right word.
“It’s a mansion,” Ella realized, staring stupidly.
A huge, tumbledown red-brick mansion with a front veranda and white columns reaching for the third-floor balcony, paint peeling sadly from railings and shutters hanging askew at the dark, curtainless windows.
“Wow. This is where she lives?” Merry said, awe creeping into her tone.
“It’s a gorgeous place. Good bones, lots of old-fashioned Southern charm.” Ella stared up through the windshield at the dilapidated building, her brain automatically cataloguing the salable features.
“Stop.”
Torn from her mental calculations of what it might cost to rehab a house like this, Ella blinked. “What?”
“You’ve got that look,” Merry accused. “That how-can-I-turn-a-profit look. This isn’t one of your clients’ properties.”
“I know that.”
Merry huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. Ella pressed her lips together, sorry she’d snapped. Gentling her voice, she said, “Sorry. It’s habit.”
It was more than habit, according to Ella’s ex-therapist, Dr. Adrienne Voss. Adrienne had built her career working with adult children of alcoholics, and she’d explained that her patients often became overachievers in an attempt to create security outside of the home.
Ella didn’t know how much she bought into the theory. All she knew for sure was that she didn’t love the idea of so much of her personality having been formed by her mother’s alcoholism.
Pulling around the circular drive, Ella threw the car into park and hopped out to help Merry extricate herself from the low-slung seat. When she squeezed her baby sister’s cold hands, Ella felt the flutter of Merry’s pulse jackrabbiting away.
She didn’t have time to do more than haul Merry to her feet with a grunt—
wow, is the girl carrying triplets?
—before a screen door banged open behind them.
Bracing herself and putting a sheltering arm around Merry’s stiff back, Ella turned them both to stare up at the woman standing on the sagging porch steps.
Ella blinked.
It wasn’t Jo Ellen Hollister.
This was a girl, just a kid, really, and she was completely unfamiliar. Sunny blond hair, rosy fair skin, coltishly skinny arms and legs, startling eyes the color of warm brandy.
Although there wasn’t a lot of warmth to those eyes, Ella noticed as the unknown girl crossed her arms over her chest.
“Welcome to Sanctuary. How was your trip?”
The words were polite, even friendly, but somehow, they conveyed the exact opposite of a welcome. Ella felt as if the girl had thrown up her hands to keep them at arm’s length.
“Great,” Merry exclaimed, enthusiasm cranking her vivaciousness up to about a thousand. “It’s so insanely beautiful here, I can’t stand it.”
Whoever she was, the blonde reacted to Merry the way everyone did. The thaw was perceptible in her voice as she confirmed, “I’m Taylor McNamara.” She paused for an odd, expectant moment, then finished with a sullen, “I work at the Windy Corner Stables.”
Now that they were closer, Ella thought the girl couldn’t be more than sixteen years old. “That must be a nice summer job,” she said politely. “I’m Ella Preston, and this is my sister, Merry. We’re here to see Jo Ellen Hollister.”
Those golden-brown eyes cut to Ella, wariness cooling Taylor’s voice. “I know who you are. And Jo’s not here. We expected you on the evening ferry, and she had an appointment this morning, but she should be back any minute.”
This was so awkward. In all her worrying about how emotionally draining and upsetting this trip would be, why had Ella never considered the awkwardness factor?
“Okay, thanks.” Ella straightened her shoulders, determined not to show how uncertain she was. They were expected; they’d been invited. There was no reason to feel so unwelcome, just because this teenager hadn’t even asked them up onto the porch with her, much less inside.
Merry did an uncomfortable little shimmy, reminding Ella that they were in danger of an accident if they didn’t find a bathroom soon. Plus, how long had it been since Merry ate anything?
“Come on, kiddo,” she said, grasping her sister’s elbow to steady her for the climb up the sagging porch steps.
“No,” the young woman said sharply, and Ella looked up to see that she had literally stuck a hand out, as if warding them off. “Don’t come up here…”
Dropping Merry’s arm, Ella planted her hands on her hips to keep them from curling into fists. None of this ridiculous situation was Taylor’s fault, but Ella’d had about enough.
Reaching for the porch railing, Ella put her foot on the first step. “Look, my sister and I have been traveling for what feels like a week. We’re tired, we’re hungry, and Merry needs to find a bathroom. All we want is to wait inside until Jo Ellen gets back. She knows we’re coming; she wants us here. I can’t imagine she’d object.”
A strange expression, a blend of hurt and resentment, twisted Taylor’s pretty face for a split second before she said sweetly, “Suit yourself.”
“Thank you.” Ella started marching up the stairs. “Merry? Come on.”
But as Ella reached the top of the steps, there was a loud crack of breaking wood. The world lurched sickeningly and dropped Ella with a scraping thud, her right leg buried up to mid-thigh in a hole in the porch floorboards.
Before Ella could even catch the breath that had been knocked out of her, Taylor strolled over to stare down at her with folded arms.