“Alessandro hates me.”
“I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.”
“As soon as we get back to Gig Harbor, I have to find another place to live.”
Cara rubbed her shoulder. “I can help you with that.”
“Haven’t you helped me enough?”
Turning Jenna to face her, Cara said, “If you’re talking about the job, that was
you
helping
me
.”
Jenna pulled a tissue from her purse to wipe her eyes and nose, and the tour continued. She hung back from the others, still hurting from Alessandro’s anger. Every painting she saw had his face, every sculpture had his shape, and when she closed her eyes, she saw his brown eyes dark with longing, something she’d probably never see again.
She’d waited too long to tell him about the check, and now she’d lost him.
<>
Mattie sold her car to the son of one of the nurses with the understanding that he’d take her to the inn whenever she wanted to go. He was just a kid, not more than eighteen or nineteen. His mother drove the two of them to the inn, so the boy could pick up the car.
There was a new gate across the driveway, but it was open, and there was a car parked in front of the inn. A woman came out, the mother of the young man who’d bought the inn. She walked right up to the car. “Mattie, what are you doing here?”
“I sold my car, and we came to get it.”
Mattie got out and showed the kid how to release the latch on the garage door. The lock had broken years ago. The kid lifted the door and Mattie saw Jenna’s car parked beside her old Plymouth.
There was a garage door opener thing on Jenna’s dashboard. It must open the gate, because they’d never put an automatic opener on the garage door. Jenna’s car window was down, so she took the gadget while the kid and his mother inspected the engine of her Plymouth. She slipped it into her pocket. If they thought they could lock her out, they’d better think again. If this thing didn’t open the gate, there were other ways to get in, paths through the trees and out to the road. She’d lived here for ninety years, and she knew them all.
The kid started the car and backed it out of the garage. The nurse pulled the door down and thanked Mattie for selling her son the car. “He’s been saving his money for such a long time, and now that he’s out of high school, he needs a car so he can find a job.”
“I’d like to check on my cats before we leave.”
“Take all the time you need, Mattie.”
Mattie walked to the laundry room door at the back of the inn. It wasn’t locked. The cats had food and water and a clean litter box, so someone was taking care of them. Callie was there and Midnight. Albert had his face in the food dish, as usual. She’d never seen a cat eat as much as that one. Bandit was stretched out on top of the dryer washing his face. Coco was probably hiding, and George had disappeared weeks before Mattie left for the nursing home.
Callie rubbed against her legs. “My sweet baby,” Mattie crooned.
The young man’s mother came in and asked if she wanted a cup of tea before she left, reminding Mattie that she no longer lived here.
But that would change. And soon.
“I just wanted to see my cats,” said Mattie. “Is Jenna still in California?”
“Yes, but I expect her back in a day or two.”
“Would you ask her to call me? I want to know who’s going to pay for all the new clothes she sent me.”
“Of course.”
“Okay then.” Mattie walked out the door and toward the car she’d come in. The lock on the laundry room door snapped behind her, and she realized the woman had locked her out of her own home. One of these days, she’d be living here again, and nobody would ever lock her out again.
<>
When Jenna and Cara arrived at the house with the kids, Mr. Pettibone, Cara’s butler, told her that Al had left the house and he would not be returning to Washington with them. “He said he would find his own transportation back to Gig Harbor.”
Cara gave Jenna a questioning look, and Jenna felt like all the air had left her body. He didn’t even want to ride in the same airplane.
They flew back to Gig Harbor that afternoon, without Alessandro. Katie wanted to know where ’Sandro was, and Jenna told her he had to leave on business. She hated to lie to Katie, but she couldn’t tell her the truth, that her beloved ’Sandro didn’t want them around anymore.
Cara’s driver let Jenna and Katie off at the gate to the inn. They walked around the gate and down the drive to the house. As she carried her suitcase down the hill, memories assaulted Jenna. This was the last place she’d lived with her parents, the place where Uncle Charlie helped her through her depression, the place where Mattie berated her and made her feel like less than nothing. The place she’d fallen in love with Alessandro.
It was time to leave the inn for good, but she couldn’t leave Gig Harbor. Cara had convinced her not to leave her job, and Jenna couldn’t take Katie away from Grandma and Sophie.
She unlocked the door, made Katie a snack, checked on the cats, and then went upstairs to pack. She wanted to be gone before Alessandro came back even if it meant staying in a hotel.
While Katie napped, Jenna carried box after box out to the garage until there was nothing left of theirs in the inn but clothes and Katie’s favorite toys. She carried a suitcase downstairs and found Sophia standing at the bottom of the steps. “Jenna, Cara said you needed a place to stay, and I’d like to offer my house.”
“I can’t stay with you, Sophia.” Alessandro would resent it.
“I don’t know what my son did to you, but he should be ashamed of himself.”
“He didn’t do anything. I did. I didn’t tell him something important, and now he thinks I hid it on purpose.”
“You’ll work it out. In the meantime, you’re coming home with me. Bring some of Katie’s kitty friends.”
Jenna didn’t move. “I can’t live with you, Sophia. Alessandro is upset and he needs you, but he won’t go there if he knows I’m there.”
“Nonsense.”
Sophia wouldn’t listen. She rolled a suitcase outside and put it in her trunk and came back for another one. Before Katie woke up from her nap, they had Sophia’s car loaded and the rest of their things piled on the porch. Jenna brought her car around and packed it. Katie wouldn’t go without Callie, so she stuffed the little kitty in her kennel and brought enough food and litter to take care of her needs for the next few days. Alessandro would have to take care of the others.
Jenna looked for the gate opener on the dashboard and the seat and the floor, but it wasn’t there. “You’ll have to close the gate, Sophia. I can’t find my opener.”
They both searched the car and the garage, but the opener was gone.
<>
After Al was sure that Cara’s plane had left, he returned to the estate. He’d brought his laptop with him, and he could just as easily work from here for a few days. He set it up in the library, but his heart ached with missing Jenna, and he couldn’t concentrate. Maybe it was time to take a vacation. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken time off, but vacations were no fun alone, and he’d never felt more alone than he did at that moment.
Why did she have to hide the truth from him? How long did he have before she hired an attorney, or had she already hired one? He should have let Jenna move back to Seattle instead of asking her to stay at the inn. He’d known all along that she was the wrong woman for him, and he’d let himself love her anyway.
<>
Jenna left most of her boxes in the garage at the inn and settled into Sophia’s house with Katie. She called Brian and told him that they’d moved. He hadn’t missed them, so she didn’t mention that they’d been gone. Brian was always single-minded when he had a new girlfriend, and it looked like his relationship with Gabriella was still hot and heavy.
She didn’t waste any time in retrieving the bank information from Gerry. Jenna didn’t stop to chat, since she was still irritated about him telling Alessandro about the check. She’d told him she’d tell Alessandro herself, and she would have told him when the time was right. Now it was too late. Too late to tell him herself and then explain that she wasn’t going to try to get the inn away from him. Too late to tell him she loved him and wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt him.
Too late.
As soon as she got back to Sophia’s house, she opened the envelope and examined the canceled checks. Gerry had requested copies of everything that had been written for over ten thousand dollars.
The biggest check was for half-ownership in the inn, but there were several other big ones. The fifty-thousand dollar check to Charlie was written a year before her parents died. That same year, there were two checks written to Annie Finnegan. One was for twenty-five thousand dollars, and the other for ten thousand. The notation on the bottom was
for Tom
. Then there was the check to Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle for a hundred thousand. There was an account number at the bottom, but she couldn’t read it. The hospital probably wouldn’t give her any information anyway.
Was Tom the boy in the picture? The only Tom that Jenna knew was a boy in college with a deep voice and a shy smile who charmed every girl on campus. It couldn’t possibly be the same one.
Who was Annie Finnegan? Jenna had an old laptop, so she hooked it up and looked up Annie Finnegan on the Internet. There were several people by that name listed, so she narrowed her search to Washington state. There was only one listing, and it had a 509 area code. Jenna retrieved Charlie’s wallet and dug through until she found the paper with the phone number written on it.
It was a match.
<>
Al drove back to Tony’s building site and hung around for most of the day watching the men tear out the work they’d done in the past few days. Time was money, and they’d wasted a lot of it, but it couldn’t be helped. One mistake like this was like pushing down one domino. It triggered another one to fall, and another, and another, until there were a bunch of them down. In this case, a door moved half a foot to the left and another moved half a foot to the right left no room for a dresser on that wall. The closet door had been moved on the opposite wall, leaving no room for a king-size bed. The buyers could squeeze a queen-size bed in, but just barely. It didn’t make sense to build a bedroom with no place to put furniture, yet that was what that jerk had done.
By the end of the day, the mistakes had been corrected, but they’d eaten some of the profit from two houses. At least the foreman was gone. Tony would have to act as his own foreman on this job until he found a man he could trust. Finding good employees was always a challenge. That was one reason Nick hired family when he could. Some of the other employees didn’t like it, but that was tough. Al could trust his brothers and cousin to build the plans as he drew them.
Al had dinner with Tony and his family and then drove back to Cara’s house. He tried to get a flight out of San Francisco for the next day, but there was nothing available, and Cara’s plane was back in Gig Harbor.
He called Nick. “I’ll be back as soon as I can get a flight out. If I had a car, I’d drive back.”
“Then drive back. Cara has been talking about bringing one of the SUV’s up here, but nobody has had time to bring it.”
“Okay, I’ll drive it up.”
“Everything all right, Al?”
“Sure, just great.”
“You don’t sound great.”
Of course he didn’t, but Al didn’t want to talk about Jenna, and he didn’t want a lecture on love. Since Nick married Cara, he fancied himself an expert on the subject.
“Al, Jenna moved out of the inn.”
This was a surprise. “She did?” He thought he’d have to ask her to leave.
“Yeah, but she’s still working for Cara. Cara said whether you two patch it up or not, she needs an assistant, and Jenna is a good one.”
“Whatever. I’ll start back in the morning.”
“You want to tell me what’s going on between you and Jenna?”
“No.” He wasn’t discussing Jenna. What could he say? That he’d made a mistake? That he couldn’t trust her?
That he’d fallen in love with the wrong woman?
Chapter Thirteen
A
l drove back to Gig Harbor, retrieved his car from the airport parking lot, and drove out to the inn. The only occupants were four of Mattie’s cats. The one that had disappeared had never returned, and Callie was gone. Katie had adopted the little calico cat. Too bad they didn’t take the rest of the cats with them. Al changed their water, refilled the food bowl, and cleaned the litter pan.
Late July could get a little warm, even near the water, so he opened the windows to air out the house. Coming back here without Jenna and Katie tore pieces from his spirit. The house was so lonely it echoed.
Al had been on the road since five that morning, and he was tired, but he couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned, punched his pillow, and finally got up and turned on some music. That didn’t work either, so he sat at his computer and started work on a new plan, a home with seven thousand square feet of floor space.