Something like pain and regret shadowed Jo’s blue eyes. “I didn’t always live up to the Hollister name. But these days, I do my damnedest.”
Despite herself, Ella felt a twinge of curiosity. She knew almost nothing about her family on Jo’s side. It might not be a horrible chore to find out more.
“For now,” Jo said, reaching into the cab of her truck and hauling out a couple of plastic bags, “let’s go inside. I’m dying to see your sister.”
Grady walked over to the side of the porch as Jo came around, stretching an arm to help her up. Instead of taking his hand, however, Jo passed him the pair of shopping bags and vaulted lightly up onto the porch under her own power.
When Jo saw the gaping hole in her porch floorboards, she froze so suddenly that the shopping bags Grady had been handing back to her slipped through her fingers.
“What happened?” Her concerned gaze shot to Ella, raking her from head to toe as she took a step forward. “Are you all right?”
Ella retreated a step before she could force herself to hold her ground, her injured ankle wobbling and slicing lines of pain up her calf.
When Ella sucked in a short breath, Jo froze in place, dismay carving lines into her face.
“It’s nothing.” Ella drew on her reserves and carefully controlled the image she presented. Self-sufficient, dismissive, poised. “Twisted my ankle a little. Go ahead and find Merry, she’s waiting for you. I’ll follow you in a minute.”
Ella forced herself to straighten out her ankle and plant her foot firmly on the floor.
Don’t fuss,
she mentally warned Jo.
I don’t need your sympathy or your concern.
After a long moment, Jo reluctantly looked away. She turned her gaze on Grady, who nodded once, silently.
Which was apparently the reassurance Jo needed. The screen door banged behind Jo as she slipped past them, and Grady turned back to Ella with a wry twist to his mouth.
“Let me walk you in. No sense hurting yourself worse just to prove a point,” he drawled as he held out his arm.
Heat scorched her cheeks and neck. Even Ella wasn’t sure if it was anger at his insistence on misunderstanding her or the thrill she got every time they touched.
“I’m not proving any point,” she declared, defiantly taking his arm. “I didn’t want to get Taylor in trouble for not warning me about the porch.”
Grady’s tawny eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Why not? The brat deserves it.”
“Maybe.” Ella shrugged, hyperaware of the hardness of his bicep under his soft flannel shirt. “But she’s just a kid, and if she and Jo are as close as you say, then it can’t be easy for her to suddenly come face-to-face with Jo’s biological daughters.”
“That’s … incredibly perceptive and sensitive of you.” Grady moved toward the door, keeping pace with her slower steps.
Ella laughed, her throat raw and tight. “Don’t sound so shocked. I’m not the villain here, Grady.”
He stopped short, pulling her off balance so that she leaned more of her weight on his shoulder than she’d intended.
“I know that.” Grady’s arm was like solid steel beneath her fingers. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have tried to run you off.”
The lump in Ella’s throat was hard to swallow around. “Jo is important to you. To a lot of people on Sanctuary Island, apparently. Including Taylor.”
“That doesn’t give us the right to attack you. And you should know, this isn’t Jo’s fault. I mean, it’s not like she’s been bad-mouthing you and Merry all over town or anything.”
“Don’t.” Ella winced at the sharpness of her own voice. “Look, I don’t want to ruin this nice moment we’ve got going on, but I can’t listen to you sing Jo’s praises or make excuses or apologies for her.”
A muscle ticked in his rigid jaw, but he met her gaze squarely. “Fair enough.”
“And thanks,” she said, as they restarted their painfully slow progress across the porch.
“For what?”
“For getting me out of the porch.” Ella paused, then gritted her teeth and finished. “And for not making a big deal about … before.”
He stilled under her touch for the briefest of moments before circling a steadying arm around her shoulders. Despite how close he stood, Ella felt his withdrawal before he even spoke.
“You mean the kiss.”
The kiss was a mistake, a blip in the smooth, predictable course of Ella’s organized, sensible life. She wasn’t here on Sanctuary Island to make friends. Or to make out with handymen.
No matter how handsome that handyman might be. Handsome, intriguingly complicated, fiercely loyal …
“I was taken off guard,” Ella explained quickly, keeping her eyes trained forward on the front door. “This whole trip has turned out to be a lot more … emotional than I was expecting. But it won’t happen again.”
She sneaked a peek at his face out of the corner of her eye and saw the way his jaw clenched. Catching her looking, Grady smoothed his face into an impenetrable friendly politeness. “Sure. With the whole rescuing-the-damsel thing, we got caught up in the moment. It didn’t mean anything.”
Ella swallowed, the ache in her throat making it tough to form words. “Good. We agree.”
Thick, leaden silence dropped over them like a blackout curtain. Ella hobbled on, every fiber of her being tuned in to the rangy, rough-hewn man beside her. It took almost as much effort to hide her wince every time her bad foot landed on the boards as it did to hop laboriously forward, inch by inch.
After the fourth or fifth step-hop-ow, Grady made an aggravated noise. “This is stupid.”
He turned to her, and before Ella knew what was happening, he’d swept her into his arms like a bride, kicked open the screen door, and carried her over the threshold.
CHAPTER 8
This. This was what she’d been missing.
Jo buried her nose in her younger daughter’s hair and breathed in, the combined scents of sea salt and whatever chemicals Merry had used to dye her hair magenta coating Jo’s brain in the kind of euphoria she hadn’t experienced since her last shot of bourbon, fourteen years ago.
The reminder of her past, the things she’d done and choices she’d made that had resulted in having to go more than a decade without putting her arms around this amazing young woman had Jo tightening those arms until Merry squeaked.
“Sorry, sugar.” She never wanted to let go, but she had an insatiable need to stare into Merry’s beautiful face. One glance had been enough to sear the image onto Jo’s brain forever.
During those long years of missing her girls and feeling their absence like an aching hole in her own heart, Jo had prayed for the chance to catch just a glimpse of them. Even from afar, to see how they were with her own eyes—she’d sworn before God that if she could have that, she’d never want for anything more.
And now, here she was with one baby girl in her arms, the other close by, and Jo knew she’d been wrong.
Sorry, God. I lied. One glimpse is not enough. Because I’m weak and greedy, and now that I have them here, on my island, I want more.
Thankfully, Jo was pretty sure God hadn’t been fooled. He knew what she needed better than she knew herself—as proof, the fact that Ella and Merry were here on Sanctuary.
But for how long?
Already dreading the moment when Merry would be out of her reach, Jo let herself have one last squeeze before easing back and staring down into her daughter’s wide blue eyes.
I have them for at least two weeks,
she reminded herself.
Ella agreed to it.
And there was nothing in that agreement that said Jo couldn’t do her darnedest to make them both want to stay longer.
“Um, hi,” Merry said, tucking a strand of reddish-purple hair behind her ear. “It’s good to … meet you? Although I guess we’ve already met. Wow, could I have come up with a dumber thing to say? Sorry.”
Ignoring the tightening of her throat, Jo smiled. “Let’s say we’re happy to see each other and leave it at that.”
Merry ducked her head, a grin tugging at one corner of her mouth. “I guess you saw Ella outside. Was she out of the porch yet? Is she okay?”
“She looked fine to me.” Other than the hurt ankle, Ella looked wonderful—every inch a grown woman, sure of herself and ready to fight to protect her sister.
It warmed Jo’s heart to know that her daughters had such a close bond, and that Ella’s instincts were so caring and strong. It said a lot about her as a person, Jo thought.
“Was Mr. Tall, Blond, and Helpful with her?” Merry popped a dimple in one cheek as she cast a sly look at Jo, who had to laugh.
“Grady? He sure was.”
“Good.” Merry nodded decisively. “Once Taylor told me who your handyman was that she was calling, I decided to stay in here and let them have a few minutes together.”
“That’s funny, I had the same thought!” Remembering the way Grady had stepped up and stood with Ella made Jo smile. She left Merry perched on the ancient chintz sofa and walked across the front parlor to peek out the window. She couldn’t get a good angle to see what was going on out there, but Ella and Grady certainly did seem to be moving mighty slowly.
As Merry explained how they’d met up with Grady on their way here from town, the sound of her bright, vivacious chatter filled the musty old house with light.
“And when I saw them together,” Merry concluded, “I knew. There’s something there.”
Before Jo could do more than clasp her hands in sheer delight, the front door swung open and the man in question stepped into the foyer.
With his arms full of Ella.
Jo shot a quick look over to Merry, who raised both brows and made a see-what-I-mean kind of face.
Giddy at the feeling of sharing something with her younger daughter, even a potentially silly and baseless hope about what might be going on here, Jo beamed at Grady.
Who barely noticed, what with having to contend with Ella’s squirming and loud demands that he put her down this instant.
Grady had that expression on his face, though. Jo had seen that expression countless times after he finally picked himself up and got determined to do his physical therapy and help himself heal. She knew exactly what it meant.
Grady Wilkes was all in.
Hmm. This has possibilities.
“Hush up and hold on. I’m putting you down on the sofa,” he said firmly. “Where you can’t do any more damage to yourself. God Almighty, woman, who taught you to be so stubborn?”
“Are you all right?” Merry’s voice was sharp with concern.
“I’m perfectly fine,” Ella said, just as Grady muttered, “Right ankle. Probably a mild sprain.”
It took everything Jo had not to fuss over Ella, make her sit down and check her out from head to toe and possibly bundle her onto the ferry for a trip to the emergency clinic over on the mainland. But the “back off” vibes emanating from Ella were clear as day, and Jo had made a private vow that since her daughters were being generous enough to give her this chance, she would not screw it up by presuming too much or pushing too hard.
But it wasn’t easy. She’d forgotten what it was like to have this big, consuming love pulling her in more than one direction at a time. For so long now, she’d poured all of those instincts into Harrison’s trouble magnet of a teenage daughter.
Where is Taylor, anyway?
As Grady leaned over to settle Ella on the couch beside her sister, the pocket door to the hallway slid open to reveal Taylor balancing a tray with a pitcher and a bunch of glasses filled with ice.
“There you are,” Jo said, relieved. Here, at least, was someone she knew inside and out—someone whose life she hadn’t in any way screwed up. Someone who might actually count on the plus side in the balance sheet of Jo’s past. “I was worried—did you see that big hole in the front porch that Ella fell into?”
“Uh, yeah, I saw it. Hey, anyone want some iced tea?” Taylor said, and something about the hesitation in her voice made Jo give her a sharper look. Hovering awkwardly in the doorway, Taylor appeared to take in the scene at a glance.
“Thanks, honey, you didn’t have to do that,” Jo said, walking over to sling her arm around Taylor’s shoulders. “So you already met both my girls?”
The thrill of saying that out loud—“my girls”—was almost enough to distract Jo from how Taylor’s neck was strung wire-taut with tension.
“We met.” Ella huffed out a relieved breath as she sank into the couch cushions. “Taylor was the one who called Grady when I had my dumb porch incident.”
Beside her, Taylor swallowed audibly, and Jo frowned. She had the feeling she was missing something.
“You know what?” Taylor shrugged Jo’s arm off with a quick smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m going to take off. Y’all have a lot to catch up on, and you don’t need me for … well, for anything, I guess.”
She shoved the tray at Jo, who grabbed it just as the pitcher wobbled. With visions of iced-tea stains splotching Aunt Dottie’s gazillion-year-old hooked rug, Jo spent precious moments getting the tray under control, and missed Taylor’s swift exit from the room.
“It was nice to meet you,” Merry called after her, and Jo set the tray down on a white-doilied side table before her shaking hands could rattle the ice in the glasses.
Talk about being pulled in too many directions.
Here were her biological daughters, in the same room with her for the first time in years. She’d imagined herself happily busy laying the groundwork for rebuilding her relationships with Ella and Merry.
Instead, she was messing up one of the few relationships in her life that she’d ever been proud of.
Sending Grady an agonized glance, Jo hoped he read her mind as effectively as he usually did.
He gave her a slight nod and went after his cousin … but not without a swift look back at Ella, who was struggling to sit up straight on the edge of the overstuffed sofa cushion. Ella’s cheeks went pink—the same pink that tinged the tips of Grady’s ears as he ducked out of the room—and Jo felt that tingle of potential intensify into the beginning of a plan as she turned back to her daughters.
In recovery, Jo had to take the tools she was handed and use them to the best of her ability. She’d learned not to let anything get in the way of doing the work and achieving her goals.