So Wright: The Wrights

by Jordan, Skye

  Someday…

  The path forked into two roads, one that dead-ended near the center of the common area, creating a driveway of sorts, and the other circling around the back of the trailers. A sexy little dark blue soft-top Jeep was parked between Marty’s Ford truck and Elaina’s Buick sedan.

  Miranda followed the path to the right and spotted Marty, sitting in the Adirondack chairs at the firepit with a woman. And it definitely wasn’t his mother, Elaina.

  Miranda pulled up behind her trailer and parked. She got out of her truck, wandering toward Marty to ask if he still wanted to drive together to the Warrior Homes jobsite.

  As soon as she cleared the edge of her trailer, she caught the profile of the woman sitting with Marty. Her feet halted. Her stomach dropped.

  Gypsy.

  Before Miranda’s thoughts could catch up with her reaction, Marty lifted a hand and waved Miranda over. “Look who I found.”

  Gypsy followed Marty’s line of sight. She was still smiling at whatever she and Marty had been talking about as she met Miranda’s gaze. Miranda hadn’t seen or spoken to Gypsy in four long years, hadn’t seen her in longer, and her half sister had only grown more beautiful.

  Her raven-black hair fell to her shoulders in loose spirals, and dimples still flashed in both cheeks. Even from this distance, Gypsy’s green eyes seemed radiant. She’d lost a little more of the round face she’d always had as a kid, and the new, more heart-shaped look elevated her from pretty to stunning. Everyone told them they looked like twins, but Miranda knew Gypsy was, far and away, more beautiful.

  Regret swamped Miranda first. But she only had to remember their mother’s funeral for anger to whip up. For her barriers to rise and lock into place. For all the joy from her night with Jack to evaporate.

  “Hey, Miranda.” Gypsy stood and faced her as Miranda made her way closer. “You look great.”

  Because Gypsy looked like she might try to hug Miranda, she stopped a good ten feet away. She crossed her arms and cocked her hip. Gypsy read Miranda’s expression, and the happiness in her expression drained, replaced by a subdued and contrite smile Miranda recognized well. The one Gypsy always wore when she was asking for forgiveness when she should have asked for permission in the first place.

  “Gypsy.” Just saying her name hurt. Miranda was suddenly bombarded by her past. Her tumultuous, painful, complicated, ugly past. “What do you want?”

  Gypsy released a heavy breath. Her smile fell, but she held Miranda’s gaze. “I wanted to see my sister.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Miranda.” Reprimand rang clear in Marty’s voice. Miranda knew how he felt about family. But she knew how much turmoil and hurt remained between herself and her two half siblings, Gypsy, the youngest, and Dylan, the middle.

  Marty pushed to his feet. “I’m going to let you two talk.”

  “No time.” Miranda turned her gaze on Marty. “We’re due at the jobsite.”

  Marty met her gaze with a frown. When he opened his mouth to speak, she cut him off with “I’ll just meet you there.”

  Marty looked at Gypsy. “It’s great to meet you, Gypsy.”

  “You too.”

  Neither of them spoke as Marty made his way to his trailer and started up the steps.

  Once he’d disappeared inside, Gypsy said, “Wow, he really moves well with that prosthetic.”

  Miranda waited for Gypsy to look at her before asking, “Why are you really here?”

  “I really wanted to see you. It’s been too long. I don’t want to let the past linger between us anymore.”

  “There’s nothing lingering, Gypsy. You and Dylan made your priorities very clear. Whatever ties we had died with Mom.” She dropped her arms, suddenly intensely aware of the pain swirling inside her. Pain Miranda had shoved into dark closets and locked with dead bolts a long damn time ago. “I’ve got to get to a job.”

  Miranda turned toward her trailer.

  “Miranda.” On the top step, Gypsy grabbed her hand. Miranda pulled back, hard, and turned on her sister.

  She didn’t want Gypsy’s touch. Didn’t want her sister’s guilt or regret or even affection. The only thing she wanted from Gypsy or Dylan was distance.

  “Stop.” Miranda was clear and determined. “Just because you’ve decided you want to reconnect doesn’t mean I do. You made your priorities crystal clear four years ago. And I’ve made my peace with your decision. But I won’t pretend I approve of or agree with your choices. You and Dylan burned the bridge between us. Go back to wherever you came from, Gypsy.”

  Miranda opened her trailer door and shut it hard behind her. Then she held the door handle, afraid Gypsy would try to follow her in.

  Miranda’s gaze focused on her hand, holding the door closed, and contradictions stirred in her head.

  Gypsy had been the baby Miranda had loved with everything she had. The innocent little girl Miranda had showered with bedtime stories and regaled with praise over even the slightest accomplishment. The bubbly kid she’d tried to hold on to with every ounce of strength, but who she’d ultimately lost to her mother’s addictions.

  Now Miranda was physically holding a barrier between herself and the woman Gypsy had become. A woman concerned with her own desires, her own needs. A woman who’d failed Miranda when she’d needed her most.

  Tears spilled over her lashes before she even knew they’d gathered. The slide of warmth down her cheeks cracked her heart open. But Miranda held on to the door as if the apocalypse waited on the other side, because she could only take that kind of heartbreak once in a lifetime.

  “Miranda,” Gypsy called through the door. “Can’t you just talk to me? Things… Things aren’t good for me right now. I’m in a bad place. I could really use a friend.”

  It was all about her. Miranda willed herself to hold her ground even while she felt herself sliding down a muddy slope.

  “I just…” Gypsy continued. “I just need a place to stay for a little while. I’ll pay rent. I’ll clean and cook and do chores.”

  “Pffft,” Miranda sputtered. “Right.”

  “I’m not ten anymore, Miranda.”

  Her heart hitched, and she squeezed her eyes closed. She couldn’t deal with this right now. She needed to get away from Gypsy so she could ground herself. So she could think. So she could figure out how to handle this curveball.

  But, for better or worse, Gypsy and Dylan were her family. Her only family. She’d given them both everything she’d had, heart and soul, when they’d been kids. Watched out for them, cared for them, guided them when their mother had been incapable. Having them both taken away by their fathers at four and six years old had torn Miranda apart. Watching them grow up with all the benefits those fathers had brought to their lives both pleased Miranda and seeded an unwanted and futile resentment.

  This was all too complicated to resolve in the moment.

  “Please, Miranda.” Gypsy’s voice softened with a pleading tone Miranda had never been able to resist. “I know I’ve made mistakes. I know life hasn’t been fair to you. But I love you, and I really need a big sister right now.”

  Miranda rolled her eyes and shook her head. Then she wiped her tears with a muttered “I’m a fucking glutton” before opening her trailer door.

  7

  My Darkest Days blasted through Miranda’s earbuds, and the spark of her torch on metal glowed green through her welding visor.

  It’s just your typical, hardcore, casual sex

  We’re single but we’re lovers, crazy for each other

  Just your typical, hardcore, casual sex

  We’re wild under the covers, crazy for each other

  Miranda’s mind played back the feel of Jack kissing a trail along the inside of her thigh, his hand slipping between her legs, his fingers plunging deep inside just before he covered her with his mouth. The arch of her back, her own cry as she splintered.

  Her hand shook, and the weld skewed right.

  “Shit.” She released
the handle, and the flame went out. Sitting back on her heels, she lifted her face shield, dragged out her earbuds, and glared at the mistake. That’s what she got for pushing Gypsy from her mind by thinking about Jack.

  She looked around the inside of the metal shipping container. It didn’t matter whether or not her welds were pretty for this project. They would be covered in insulation, drywall, and siding as the container transitioned into a home, but she was a perfectionist, and she took a great deal of pride in her work.

  She couldn’t say it was even the swerving weld that really bothered her. It was more about how Gypsy’s pop-up routine had cast a shadow on Miranda’s amazing night with Jack.

  She’d never stayed the entire night with a man. Not even when she’d been young and she’d classified a guy as her boyfriend. She’d always needed her space. Her independence. After caring for others nearly her entire life, Miranda was done with commitment and obligations.

  Jack Jonathan Taylor of Manhattan might be a very, very different kind of man for Miranda, but he was still a man.

  “Damn, what a night,” she murmured. He’d turned into so much more than a nervous, conservative city slicker when she’d gotten him into bed. He’d been funny, sarcastic, and irreverent. Confident and erotic. He turned her into butter on a hot skillet one minute, a fireworks display the next.

  She rarely thought about a man after she walked away from a hookup, yet she couldn’t get Jack off her mind. And even though she wanted to see him again, wanted to go on the date he’d begged for all night, wanted to end up in his bed again, she knew there was no point. All she had to do was look beyond another night with him to know all possibilities of something more shattered like glass. Right along with her heart if she invested herself.

  Thinking about something more was as realistic as a pig with wings.

  She tapped the weld with her hammer, and the oxidation chipped free, revealing a shiny silver jagged line. She shouldn’t have been listening to music while she worked. On a large jobsite, she usually didn’t. But when she was working alone, music fueled her creativity, kept her focused. So much for trying to keep her mind off the man who’d rocked her world or the sister who’d scarred it. “Hashtag fail.”

  Marty paused at the container’s doors and propped a forearm on the metal side above his head. He was one of the fittest older men she knew. And that said something, considering the number of hardworking men she worked with. He stood just under six feet and weighed in at one hundred and eighty pounds of muscle, which included his prosthetic leg earned in the Gulf War. His hair was long, wavy, and mostly gray. He tamed the mane with a tie at his neck or a baseball hat. Today, he used both.

  Miranda rolled to her butt and leaned against the nearest wall. “We’re almost out of welding wire. We’re so close to being done, I’d hate to lose momentum. We’ve got a lot of vets depending on us to keep that completion date. Do you have any donors lined up?”

  “Not that I’ve heard, but I’ll ask up the food chain.” The look on his face told her there was little chance of an investor popping up to cover the cost of as much metal as they’d need to finish the welding portion of these last thirty homes.

  She picked up her coffee and groaned when she felt how little there was left. “If you head into town, would you get me another one of these?”

  Marty wore cargo shorts today, and his carbon fiber prosthetic, complete with a blade foot, looked sleek and modern beside his frumpier, battered running shoe and black tube sock pulled up to midcalf.

  “Didn’t think a city boy would keep you up to all hours,” he said.

  Miranda finished off the last swallow of coffee and grinned. “Neither did I.”

  “They do say New York never sleeps.”

  She laughed. “They’d be right.”

  “How’s he different?”

  “Don’t know what you mean.”

  “I’ve never known you to turn a hookup into an overnighter. There must be something special about him.”

  Discomfort niggled up her spine. To get Marty off the topic, she went bold. “Just great in bed, I guess.”

  Marty crossed his arms and leaned his shoulder against the metal wall. A sure sign he wouldn’t be going anywhere until she gave him more.

  She was caught between telling Marty to fuck off and gushing about Jack. Miranda decided on a middle-of-the-road attitude. “He’s here helping his family out. He came into the bar, and we hit it off. There’s no drama to tell.”

  When she didn’t go on, he said, “And?”

  “And…I don’t know,” she said honestly, unable to pin down the details of their chemistry. “He’s…sweet.”

  Marty laughed. “When have you ever gone for a sweet guy?”

  Never. She was too edgy for a beta. But Jack was no beta. He might have appeared that way in the beginning, but all that changed in the bedroom. “He’s…” She struggled to describe him in a way that would make sense of these lingering feelings. “He’s quick and funny. He cares about his family, didn’t run when I brushed him off—like three times. He’s handsome, he’s got a great body, and he knows how to use it.” Oh, did he know how to use it. “What more could a girl want?”

  “Are you asking or stating?”

  She gave him a look.

  “When are you seeing him again?”

  “Don’t start.”

  “Don’t avoid the question.”

  “I’m reminding you that this is my business.”

  “What does he do?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “We can do this the easy way,” Marty said, “or I can sic my honey badger on you.”

  His honey badger was his mother, Elaina. She was in her late seventies, sweet and optimistic and altruistic. She was also the most persistent, most persuasive woman alive. Miranda knew from experience Elaina would get far more out of her later than if she just humored Marty now.

  But as soon as she started talking about Jack, Marty’s eyes would turn into hearts. He didn’t like her hooking up with different guys, despite how infrequently she indulged. He also didn’t like her being alone. And he knew it took something special in a guy for her to go home with him.

  “He’s an architect,” she finally told him.

  Marty’s eyes lit up, just as she’d expected.

  “No, I didn’t tell him what I do or what I want to do,” she said before he could ask. “And you already know why.”

  “You said he was different.”

  “Not that different.”

  “You wouldn’t really know, would you? You didn’t give him a chance.”

  She squinted up at him. “Could I get more coffee before we dive into this old argument?”

  “Miranda—”

  “He lives in New York. There’s no point in investing in a guy who’s going to be gone next week. Talk about asking for heartache. Forget it.”

  “Then let’s talk about Gypsy.”

  Miranda groaned and lowered her head. “She’ll probably be gone by the time we get home tonight.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “Why not? What did she say?”

  He shook his head. “Seems the club she worked for was raided by the DEA and shut down indefinitely. She wanted to be with family, and Dylan is covering the uprising in Syria.”

  Miranda found that suspiciously dramatic. “Well, her version of family and mine aren’t the same. You and Elaina are my family. Gypsy is a fair-weather acquaintance who happens to share a little of my DNA. She’s concerned with filling her own needs, regardless of how that might affect anyone else.”

  “Damn, you’re a real grouch when you’re sleep deprived.”

  “I’m not interested in throwing around opportunities to be hurt like piñata candy.” She frowned at her empty coffee cup. “This is beginning to feel like the Dr. Phil show, and I don’t have the interest or the energy for it right now.”

  “She was just a teenager when Teresa died,” Marty reminded her.
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  “Nineteen isn’t exactly a teenager. She was a full-fledged adult, living on her own, going to college.”

  “Five years older. Five years wiser,” Marty said.

  “Five years more selfish,” Miranda countered.

  “You don’t know that. You haven’t spoken with her since your mother’s death, and you only spent five minutes with her this morning.”

  “I know she ignored both of us when Mom was sick. I know she barely acknowledged Mom’s death. She and Dylan left everything on my shoulders.”

  “It was your choice to take on your mother’s illness. After the way she’d abandoned you, you would have had every right to turn your back on her.”

  Frustration inched up Miranda’s spine. “Now you’re contradicting your own lectures on family values.”

  “My point is that you’ve had choices, and you need to take responsibility for the decisions you’ve made. You can’t blame the hardship of caring for Teresa and footing the bill for her burial on Gypsy and Dylan. You also don’t get to make decisions for other people, and you can’t expect other people to make the same decisions in the same situations as you have. If you traded places with Gypsy, would you have made a different choice? Would you have left college to care for a mother you barely knew? One who caused nothing but havoc in your life?”

  “It wasn’t about Mom,” she said, voice rising. “It was about me. About being there for me. Helping me.”

  Marty crossed his arms and sighed. “Life isn’t fair, Miranda.”

  He was standing in front of her with one leg. No one knew how unfair life was better than Marty, and it made Miranda feel petty. “I hate it when you do that.”

  She’d suffered in her own way. Had her own limb severed when she’d lost her siblings, then her mother—twice. Once when she abandoned Miranda at fifteen to run off to Austin with her newest lover. And again, when she’d returned years later with liver failure before passing away.