Storm Shells (The Wishes Series #3) (43 page)

Jasmine spun me back to face the mirror. “Well?” she asked.

I deliberated for a long moment.

“Are you going to cry?” she asked, sounding worried. “I can order in some hair extensions if you don’t like it.”

I shook my head, trying to hide the fact that I was nearly in tears. I didn’t hate the haircut. It was just a bigger deal than I’d expected it to be.

“It’s great,” I mumbled. “Thank you.”

* * *

Gabrielle and I parted company outside. She had an art class to teach and I needed to go home, have a good cry about my haircut and get it out of my system before Adam got home. He hadn’t been convinced that it was a good idea in the first place, and witnessing a meltdown would confirm it. I put Bridget down for a nap, had a good sook and managed to pull myself together.

Everything was fine until I got a phone call from Jean-Luc. I stared at his name flashing on my phone for a long time before working up the courage to answer it.

I was feeding Bridget at the time. I was convinced she could feel my heart thumping through my chest.

“Hello.”

“Good afternoon, Charli.” His formal tone and diction did nothing to calm me. “How are you?”

I answered his generic question with and equally generic response – then got down to business and asked why he was calling.

I hoped to hear that he’d had a change of heart regarding the hard line he’d taken with Adam, believing there was no way he wouldn’t have melted at the sight of his pretty granddaughter in the pictures I’d emailed him.

But his call had nothing to do with Bridget. His focus was solely on his errant youngest son – and I couldn’t deny that what he had to say was very enlightening.

I knew Adam had blown off his clerkship. What I didn’t know was that he’d blown off sitting the bar exam too.

“He never told me,” I admitted.

“I suspected as much,” he replied gruffly.

It was almost maddening to think that our lives together had been put on the back burner time and time again for something he’d never actually managed to complete.

I looked at the baby in my arms and gently ran my fingertips across her head. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I want you to talk some sense into him,” he replied. “You seem to be the only one he listens to lately.”

“What are you asking me to do, exactly?”

I didn’t give him a chance to explain. Bridget began to fuss. I told Jean-Luc to hold on and set the phone down while I repositioned the baby.

“Are you still there?” I asked, bringing the phone back to my ear.

“Yes,” he said after a long pause. “Is that the baby I can hear?”

The hard Décarie shell cracked – just a little. It was spectacular.

“Yes,” I explained, “I just had to swap boobs. She’s impatient.”

“Oh, I see,” he stammered.

The mention of boobs fell into the too-much-information category. I didn’t care. As far as Jean-Luc was concerned, Bridget’s existence was in the too-much-information category.

After a long silence, he cleared his throat and went back to laying out his master plan. Just a few minutes later I found myself agreeing to something I never thought I would.

“It’s for the best, Charli,” he assured me.

“I know.”

I ended the call feeling uneasy. Bridget didn’t seem to pick up on my stress. She was milk drunk and fast asleep. I was glad. It meant she didn’t hear me when I told her that we were going to have to let her father go.

July 24

Adam

As soon as I walked through the door, I knew something was going on. Charli stood in the centre of the room rocking Bridget in her arms. It didn’t seem like a soothing gesture, more like a nervous one. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t venture much further than the doorway.

“You’ve had your hair cut,” I noted, wondering if that was the root of the tension. “It looks great.”

I wasn’t just trying to be nice. She looked gorgeous, but it had little to do with the shorter hair. I was distracted by her beautiful form. She was wearing a blue dress that I vaguely remembered from her New York days. The way the skirt flowed around her legs as she stood rocking our child practically set me on fire.

“Thank you. I’m not sure if I like or not.”

I kicked my boots off at the door and hung my coat on the hook. “Well, if you want me to knock you up again so it grows back faster, just say the word. I’m game if you are.”

She laughed, but nothing about it sounded genuine. Something was going on. I just had to figure out what it was.

I walked over to her, leaned down and kissed her forehead. It was the best I could do considering I was covered in dust. I held off touching Bridget but noticed that she was dressed to the nines too.

“Wow. Both of my girls have gone all out tonight,” I said, peering down at her. “She has no hair, Charlotte. How did you manage to get the bow to stay on her head?”

She grinned, more genuinely. “Blu Tack,” she replied. “I couldn’t find any glue.”

* * *

Pretty outfits weren’t all they had going on that night. Charli had cooked dinner. It was a sure-fire sign that something was in the wind.

I managed to hold off quizzing her until we were at the table. “What are you up to?” I asked suspiciously.

Charli jumped up as if the question had freed her to confess. “I have something for you,” she blurted.

She headed to the kitchen and snatched an envelope off the top of the fridge, her makeshift filing cabinet.

“Good something or bad something?” I took it from her.

“Just read it.”

It was an airline ticket.
One
airline ticket.

“I want you to go back to New York. You leave tomorrow.”

“Why, Charli?”

My expression must have looked dire because her answer came at warp speed. “I want you to sit your bar exam. If you go tomorrow, you’ll make it in time. You can only sit it –”

“Twice a year. Yes, I know.” I folded the ticket and dropped it on the table.

“I don’t want you to miss it,” she replied. “If you don’t see this through, all the angst and separation we’ve been through has been for nothing.”

“There’s no need for it, Charli. I’m happy here.”

“How do you know you’re not going to want to go back to it some day?” she asked, sounding frustrated. “At least keep your options open.”

I stared at the ticket.

Charli wrapped her arms around my neck from behind. “Please do this.”

I slid my chair back and pulled her onto my lap. “You’ve been speaking to my dad, haven’t you?” It was a redundant question. She couldn’t have known about the exam otherwise.

She nodded, twisting a button on my shirt so she didn’t have to look at me. “It would mean a lot to him.”

“I’m not going to fly half way around the world and sit a two-day exam to please him, Charlotte. I’ve spent too much of my life trying to please him.”

“Don’t do it for him then.” She shrugged. “Do it for yourself.”

Nothing about leaving Charli and Bridget seemed like a good idea, but I couldn’t deny that there was a small part of me that wanted to pass the bar and end my years of study properly.

I stared at the ticket and deliberated. “You’ll be okay for a week without me?”

“We’ll manage.”

I leaned forward and kissed her before resting my forehead against hers. “I don’t like who I am without you,” I whispered. “That guy from New York is an ass.”

She put her hand to my face, predictably poking my cheek with her thumb. “So, don’t be him. Go back, wrap him up and come home to us.”

July 26

Charli

Besides sitting the bar exam, a chance to make peace with his father could only have been a good thing. Both men were stubborn but this was a disagreement that Jean-Luc wasn’t going to win. For once, Adam was following his heart instead of his over-educated private school mind.

Fiona was in Adam’s corner, despite the fact he’d ignored her pleas to ship his family back to New York. She called me every day, but I suspect Jean-Luc knew nothing about it. The queen gave up on the idea of Bridget being raised caged instead of free-range remarkably early. I guess Ryan had something to do with talking her round – she’d once referred to moon ducks when wailing about our settlement in the boondocks.

She’d also stopped threatening to visit. No amount of planning on my part could prepare for a visit from the queen. Pipers Cove was definitely not Fiona Décarie’s scene. I could picture Jasmine Tate cornering her on the main street to give her fashion advice.

Confident that Adam would sort out his differences with his father, I made the promise of visiting her instead, when Bridget was a little bigger and able to travel. It was a compromise I was happy to make. Occasional jaunts to Manhattan weren’t going to kill me. I was a hundred percent confident that Pipers Cove was where Adam wanted to be. If that changed in the future, we’d work it out together.

* * *

A couple of days after Adam left I found my feet. The house was almost in order and Bridget was sleeping. For the first time since she’d been home, I was able to pick up my camera, slip outside and take some pictures.

I wheeled the pram onto the veranda so I could keep an eye on her. It probably wasn’t the best day to have the baby outside. There was a dark sky moving in from the east. I hoped the little Cove wasn’t about to cop another pounding from the elements. The clean-up from the last one had only just finished.

I loved the squally winds. The bed sheets, towels and baby blankets hanging on the line were the perfect muse. I stood in the yard snapping away at the linens flapping wildly. As the wind picked up, so did the clothes.

I was about to move to a different vantage point when something came into sight through the viewfinder.

My blood froze in my veins.

Ethan Williams stood on the porch, holding my daughter.

I glanced toward Flynn’s house. His patrol car wasn’t on the driveway, which obviously wasn’t good. I was on my own.

I had no idea what Ethan wanted. I wondered if he was looking for Nicole. Perhaps he didn’t know that she was punching out numberplates in jail.

I walked to the veranda, doing my level best to play it cool.

“Ethan. How are you?”

“I’m alright. Your baby was crying.”

That was a lie. She was still sleeping, despite the fact that he’d taken her blanket off her.

Bridget was within reach but I decided against making a grab for her. I didn’t know what he was capable of. Nicole had told me some horrific stories, but I had no clue whether any of them were true. She was hardly a reliable source.

“We have to get her inside,” I said. “It’s too cold for her out here.”

He gave an upward nod toward the door as if he was giving me permission, but didn’t hand me the baby. I breathed a silent sigh of relief when he followed me in.

All I wanted to do was get Bridget away from him. I didn’t care what happened after that. I grabbed a blanket off the couch and held it out. Bridget wriggled in his arms, letting out a tiny little mewl that seemed to scare him. Ethan handed her over and I wrapped her up in record time. If ever there was a moment that I was truly in danger of dropping her, that was it. I gently laid her back in the bassinette and turned back to Ethan.

“Why are you here? We haven’t seen you in a long time.” I made it sound like a casual, friendly question but my heart was in danger of exploding right out of my chest.

A grin crossed his face. “I’ve been here for a while. I keep visiting you but you’re never in.”

Although vague, his comment answered a hundred questions I’d had burning at me for days. I’d never understood why Nicole got into the cottage by jemmying windows. She didn’t need to have me out of the house to steal my dresses. She probably could’ve bagged them up while I watched and I wouldn’t have noticed.

“
You’ve
been the one breaking into my house?”

“So many freaking times, Charli.” He sounded put out, as if I’d made him burglarise my home over and over.

“You have great taste in clothing. You took all the best dresses.”

“I didn’t take the bloody dresses.” He grimaced. “That was all Nicole.”

I wasn’t surprised that she’d rated a mention. It didn’t take a genius to work out that she was probably at the root of things.

“So what did you take?” I asked, trying to sound relaxed.

He took a step closer to the bassinette and I moved to block him.

“I never found what I was looking for. That’s why I’m here now.”

“So, what do you want?”

Ethan pointed to my left hand. “Nicole reckons that ring is worth twenty grand.”

I glanced at my curly fry rings. “At least,” I muttered foolishly.

He shrugged. “So, hand it over and I’ll leave. You won’t ever see me again.”

As if!
I’d mellowed lately, but not that much.