Persuaded

by Alicia J. Chumney

  Laughing, Derek shook his head, “That’s sort of what I was thinking.”

  “I was mostly thinking about the fit Mary would have if we didn’t use their SUV.”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” he agreed.

  “So that leaves my car and Sophy’s car, and it’ll probably be better to take mine instead of your sister’s.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my car is my car, but your car is not actually your car and we are not going to take your sister’s car from her when she might want it.”

  “She doesn’t use it,” he shrugged.

  Rolling her eyes, “We’ll take my car. The backseat is a bit bigger than yours.”

  “Sophy has more trunk space.”

  Leaning forward, Anne hissed, “I know exactly what you are attempting to do. However, if we take your car, I’m stuck with Mary for twelve hours. If we take my car, we can stick Etta with Mary.”

  Derek went still. “But what about Isa?”

  “If you really think she won’t manipulate her way into whichever car you are in, you have another think coming.”

  Nodding his head, “Fair enough.”

  “And,” Anne added, “If we split the sisters up, that means more baggage goes in the SUV and we have more room in my car.”

  Glancing down at the luggage list, he pointed out, “It’s about even.”

  “If you don’t think that Etta and Isa aren’t sharing bags, you are out of your mind. And if you manipulate Charles when you are loading everything up, you can get the bigger suitcases in the back of the SUV and the smaller ones in my car. Then whoever is stuck in the backseat won’t have to share space with a bag.”

  Grinning at her, he commented, “You are one sneaky person.”

  “I’ve had to be with my sisters. I figured out how to sneak zucchini in brownie batter so that Mary gets more vegetables in her diet.”

  “Is that why she complains when she’s eating brownies that aren’t yours?”

  “I’m just that good in the kitchen,” she shrugged.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Surprisingly, the first thing that happened as the group invaded the hotel that held their reservations was that Anne bumped into somebody as she attempted to get her rolling suitcase over the metal divider the sliding doors moved over.

  “Oh!” she gasped, feeling her body slam into the stranger. “I’m sorry!”

  “It’s my fault,” the slightly familiar voice said. “I’m sorry,” he apologized as he reached for her suitcase and righted it, maneuvering it over the troublesome spot for her. “I wasn’t watching where I was going,” he explained, holding up his phone as evidence.

  “It’s fine,” she mumbled, giving him a slight smile before heading over towards the check-in desk. A second later, she turned around and scrutinized the stranger’s back.

  He looked so familiar…

  “Who was that?” Derek whispered, aware that Mary was frozen in place and looking back at the stranger with a confused expression that matched Anne’s.

  Tilting her head, Anne shook it for a moment. “I’d almost want to say that he was my cousin Will… but that can’t be right. He’s supposed to be in Florida, according to Elizabeth’s sources.”

  “And people can’t go on vacations?” Derek laughed, urging Anne towards the check-in desk. “Come on before Etta and Isa claim the room next to mine.”

  “I don’t know what you think is going to happen.”

  “I know that we have two singles and two doubles booked and I’d rather not have a room next to Isa.”

  Sighing, “Whatever,” Anne replied with an eye roll that was more out of habit than anything else.

  “Anne!” Mary called her sister over. “Who was that?”

  “I don’t know, Mary,” Anne sighed. “We didn’t exchange names, numbers, and insurance information.”

  “Why would you exchange insurance information?”

  “Because he bumped into me…” Anne pointed out. “You know what? Never mind. Let’s get our room assignments.”

  By the time they had joined Charles and Derek at the desk, the guys already had the room situation in order. “Isa, I don’t know why you think I would let you and Etta have a room with an adjoining door to Derek’s room,” they overheard him saying.

  “But…”

  “No buts,” he interrupted. “Mom told me to watch out for you and I’m going to watch out for you.” Turning to Derek, he added, “Not that I don’t trust you…”

  “You don’t trust me!” Isa exclaimed.

  Turning to his sister, Charles stated, “When it comes to Derek, no, I don’t trust you.” Looking at Derek, he added, “She’ll be knocking on your door at all hours trying to get in on the pretext of Etta snoring.”

  “I don’t snore!” Etta protested.

  “We know,” Anne assured Etta. “Charles was being polite by not saying what he really meant.” Catching Etta’s confused expression, Anne leaned forward and whispered what Charles really meant in the girl’s ear.

  “Ohhh,” Etta drawled out, understanding washing over her face. Glancing over at Isa, she nodded her head. “Yeah, Isa would try to steal Derek’s virtue.”

  Nobody noticed that Derek and Anne both flushed.

  “It would be much better if Derek and Anne shared a door,” Etta concluded. “Nothing would ever happen between the two of them!”

  Anne felt her cheeks heating up even more than before. Looking at him, she shook her head, the memory of one New Year’s Eve party flashing though her mind.

  With Mary opting to take a nap in the hotel room, the group piled into the SUV as Derek gave directions towards the Harville’s house.

  It didn’t take long for them to navigate the route; which Anne was thankful for as she was squished between Etta and Isa in the backseat. By all rights, the much thinner Isa should have sat in that weird half-ish seat in the middle, but she had insisted on getting the seat behind Derek.

  Although she quickly realized that Anne had much better access to Derek than her own seat directly behind his. She started pouting, even as the others ignored her.

  It got worse when Derek exited the SUV without opening her door for her as he went up to the front door and rang the doorbell. He had texted both Frank and James before they had left the hotel that they were on their way, but nobody had come outside to greet them.

  Laughter coming from the backyard caught Anne’s attention. Joining him at the door, she nudged him and nodded her head towards the side of the house. “I think they are in the backyard playing.”

  “Frank and Bianca do have several kids,” he stated. Turning towards the others, he told him that he would be right back. “If somebody does answer the door, tell them I went to the backyard.”

  “Okay,” Isa piped up even though Derek had been talking to Anne.

  Etta, standing to the side, crinkled her brows as she started to think. She saw Derek had been talking to Anne directly. He wasn’t even looking at Isa, even though Isa assumed that he had been.

  Thinking back on it, she had seen several one-on-one exchanges between the pair that excluded the others, sometimes more by accident than by design.

  A minute later, he emerged from the side of the house. Frank and James were following him.

  “Everybody!” he called out, drawing their attention back to the driveway. “This is Frank Harville and my good friend, James Benson. James helped save my knee after my accident in Italy.”

  Dismissing Derek’s phrase, James grinned, “All I did was stabilize it.”

  “Guys, this is…” and Derek started to introduce everybody, starting with Anne and ending with the Musgraves sisters. “Charles’ wife had a headache and decided to take a nap,” he concluded.

  Laughing, Frank pointed out that it might be a good idea. “My children can be loud when they want to be.”

  “I understand,” Charles commiserated. “My own two can burst your eardrums if you get too close.”


  The two fathers went off to talk about their children as the group headed towards the back.

  Isa, leaning towards Etta, commented, “He introduced me last.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “So, did he save the best for last or was I an afterthought?”

  Etta, her suspicions beginning to form, simply said, “I don’t know.” She didn’t want to tell his sister her real suspicions.

  They were interrupted by the sound of children playing on an outdoor swing set – one of the good ones with the swings, slide, and treehouse-designed platform structure for them to climb on. Charles, still off with Frank, started to wonder if he should get his boys one of them when they were older.

  Frank, attempting to point, started naming off the children that played on the swings and in the sandbox underneath the platform. “Some of these aren’t mine, but I can’t refuse the neighborhood kids when they want to play with mine.”

  Pointing at the back patio, he introduced them to his wife. She lifted a glass of lemonade in her hands and gestured for everybody to join her. It would have been impossible for Bianca to clearly hear them over the sounds of about five children playing, only two of them hers.

  Once they were closer, she stood up and held out a hand towards Anne. “I’m Bianca, but everybody calls me Bee.”

  “Anne,” she replied, holding out a hand.

  Bee looked at Anne curiously, glanced over at where Derek and Frank were chatting, and then back at Anne. “Elliot?”

  “Yes?” Anne replied, tilting her head in confusion. “How did you know that?” Looking over at Derek, she wondered if he had been talking to them about her.

  “It was a good guess,” Bee dismissed, waving her hand in the air as if actually dismissing the question. “Derek told us who all was coming, last names included just in case.” Turning towards the sisters, she added, “And you must be Etta and Isa Musgraves.” She recognized the girls based on the general description Derek had given her, even though he’d talked more about Anne to her and Frank.

  “Were you in Italy too?”

  “Oh goodness no,” Bee dismissed. “I work as a nurse stateside. James was married to Francine while they were stationed over there and when Derek got sent to Walter Reed in D.C. – I was working there then – James told me to seek his friend out. Derek met Frank and me there. I was there for most of Derek’s P.T.”

  She knew about a certain photograph that Derek would never admit existed. Anne hadn’t changed that much since the picture had been taken.

  “Why are you here if you work at Walter Reed?”

  “I work at the VA hospital now. Frank has family in the area and once he was discharged, I requested a transfer and we moved here.”

  “I used to come down here every summer with my Aunt,” Anne sighed.

  “It’s a small world,” Bee smiled at the younger girl. “I know Derek’s brother used to live about ten minutes from here, closer to the beach.”

  “Really?” Isa asked, distracted as she looked in James’ direction.

  Etta recognized that look.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Mary started bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet after overhearing something at the continental breakfast bar. The waffle on her plate threatened to fall into the floor with all of her bobbing.

  “Anne,” she loudly hissed. “You’ll never believe who that guy is!”

  “Mary,” Charles responded instead. “I hope you didn’t invade his privacy.”

  “Of course not,” she protested. “I would never invade somebody’s privacy.” She missed the looks that Derek, Anne, and Charles shared as she continued to talk. “I heard him answering his phone.” Turning back to her sister, she grinned, “That’s our cousin, Will!”

  “Well,” Anne wanted to roll her eyes. “That doesn’t really matter since he just left.”

  “Oh,” Mary pouted. “I was hoping that we would get the chance to talk to him.”

  “He doesn’t really look like an Elliot,” Derek commented.

  “He was adopted by our Uncle Warren,” Anne explained, talking over her sister's excited chatter.

  Charles opted to start reading on his phone to help block out his wife’s rambling.

  “So,” Derek grinned. “He’s not biologically your cousin.”

  “Much to Elizabeth’s joy,” Anne smirked.

  Prodding her sister next to her, Mary redirected her attention away from the husband that was paying her no mind. “Do you think we should go talk to him?”

  Derek was the one to point out that Will had gone back to his room.

  “Did he?” Mary asked, turning all the way around in her seat and scanned the room for him. “Oh. That’s disappointing. I wonder if the front desk will tell us his room number.”

  “I doubt it,” Charles mumbled from what had caught his attention.

  “What was that?”

  “It would be a liability issue, Mary,” Anne sighed. “They cannot tell us what room he’s in just because we are family.”

  “But we know him.”

  “And if we knew what room he was in, then that would be a different issue altogether. But we don’t,” Anne reasoned. “And unless you go from floor to floor and knock on every single door, we won’t.”

  Catching the gleam that had entered her sister’s eye at the suggestion, Anne quickly added, “And if you do that, we will get kicked out of this hotel and it’s Spring Break so it’ll be near impossible to get another room let alone four.”

  “Where are Etta and Isa?” Charles asked, looking at Derek from over his phone.

  Shrugging, Derek dug into the bowl of cereal he had gotten. “I’m not next door to them.”

  “But I thought you would have…”

  “Charles,” Anne interrupted. “Your sisters are in the room next door to you because you didn’t want Isa sneaking over to Derek’s room. You also told me, if I heard Isa in Derek’s room to send her back to her own room. Isa stayed in her room to my knowledge.”

  Making eye contact with Derek, she withheld the information that she had been in Derek’s room watching a movie until they fell asleep. Isa had made an attempt to enter his room, but Derek had sent her on her way without opening the door.

  “They probably stayed up late watching a movie and are still asleep,” Derek pointed out. Looking towards the elevator once he heard their giggles, he added, “Here they come now.”

  “Oh good,” Charles distractedly replied. “I was getting worried.”

  “Morning!” Isa chirped. “That bed was surprisingly comfortable for a hotel room.”

  “Oh, waffles!” Etta exclaimed.

  “I want some coffee,” Isa added.

  The table fell silent as the girls moved off to get some food before returning. Isa, plopping herself down in the seat beside Derek, leaned over and started to whisper. Etta, rolling her eyes on her sister’s other side, took a sip of her coffee before closing her eyes in bliss.

  Mary, acting like a dog with a bone, piped up, unable to drop the topic of Will Elliot, “We should still introduce ourselves to him. He’s our cousin.”

  “Mary,” Anne tried to reason, “we have no reason to try to talk to him ever since our fathers dissolved their law partnership.” It still troubled her that the two brothers couldn’t even get along enough to make their law firm work, but at the same time, she knew that there was no possible way she would ever work with her sisters.

  Not even for a million dollars.

  “Whatever,” Mary dismissed her sister. “Will was over at our house practically every day after school.”

  “He broke Elizabeth’s heart,” Anne tried again, aware of their audience.

  “That’s funny,” Mary practically snorted. “Elizabeth doesn’t have a heart.”

  “Mary!” Anne hissed, aware of the giggles coming from the Musgraves sisters. Derek and Charles had politely looked away, but she could tell that they were listening as well.

  “Well, she doesn’t,”
Mary shrugged. “Can somebody pass me the coffee?”

  Anne, both embarrassed and angry, glared at the wall behind Derek, who had happened to land in the chair across from her. It was one of the seats he’d been avoiding most of the semester just to keep people from digging into their changed relationship standing.

  He knew she wasn’t glaring at him, and waited until she looked at him again before mouthing, “Are you okay?”

  Shrugging, she reached for the orange juice in front of them.

  By now he knew what type of person her sister was.

  “You will tell Father though, the next time you speak to him. I’m sure he’d love to know about us running into William,” Mary asked, not looking at Anne as she searched the table for the strawberry jam.

  “If it comes up,” Anne mumbled, aware that Mary wouldn’t grasp the full meaning behind her sister’s non-committal comment.

  “Good,” Mary replied. “Has anybody seen the strawberry jam?”

  “It’s right in front of you,” Charles answered, not looking up from the news app on his phone.

  “I wish you’d put that away.”

  Derek happened to look up and towards the front desk at that moment. He’d have to tell Anne later that he saw Will checking out of the hotel. He doubted the other man would enjoy having Mary ambush him in the lobby when all he was trying to do was leave.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  They were wandering around the boardwalk when Anne let out a gasp. Derek, trying to stay by her side, but constantly was being pulled away by the excitable Isa, happened to be the only person who heard her.

  “What is it?”

  “The art supply shop,” she breathed. “It’s still here.”

  Shaking his head, Derek couldn’t figure out why she was so surprised. “Of course it is. Haven’t you been back since…” he trailed off. “You said you come here every year.”

  “I’ve avoided the boardwalk,” she admitted. “Too many memories. I spent most of my time down at the beach at the dunes. Sketching.”