Finding Liberty

by B. E. Baker

  “He’s your brother?” she asks.

  “My much older brother who doesn’t live here and already has a wife, a girlfriend and an ex-wife,” I lie. “Now scram.”

  Cole’s dreamy eyes dance when she leaves.

  “I should punch you,” I say.

  He frowns. “Why?”

  “A black eye might ugly you up a little.”

  He lifts one dark eyebrow. “I don’t follow. Maybe it’s my English. Ugly me, as a verb?”

  I sigh. “I have this friend, Geo. She’s like, slap-your-mom beautiful.”

  “I wouldn’t slap our mom—”

  “She is the female version of you, okay?”

  His brow furrows.

  “Only she’s a girl. So she brings droves of guys to my side, and she can’t keep them all, can she?”

  He opens his mouth, but I dive right back in. “No, she can not. But you, your looks are terrible for me. They draw catty women with their claws out, right up until they realize I’m your sister.” Actually, I have a newfound appreciation for Rob’s patience. To hang out with Geo as long as he did, he must have the forbearance of a saint.

  “Tell me more about this Geo,” Cole says.

  I roll my eyes. “She’s engaged. Look, focus. Why are you here?” I ask.

  Cole has just stuffed a very impolitely sized bite of chocolate silk pie into his mouth. He points at the bulge in his cheek and cocks his head sideways.

  I suppress a laugh while he chews.

  “Don’t you mean, ‘How long can you stay? I miss you so very very much, darling Cole’?”

  “Right,” I say. “What I meant to say was, oh beloved Cole, how long can you stay with me on this trip on which you came to visit me, uninvited and at a bad time?” I clap my hands together and paste a slightly pained smile on my face. “I do hope it’s a terribly long time.”

  Cole frowns. “I know you’re kidding, but it’s starting to sting anyway. Are you really upset I’m here?”

  I sigh. “You know I’m happy to see you. I’m sorry if I’m crabby. Lady friend over there just called me a pig.”

  “Three pieces of pie.” Cole looks at my plate pointedly.

  “I only ordered two at first,” I say. “And her job is to sell me pie.”

  “Three slices.”

  “I meant to take them to go,” I say, “but I wanted to try a few. When she judged me for it, I don’t know. I couldn’t help myself.”

  “Typical.” Cole smiles. “I’ve called you a dozen times in the past few weeks, and you’ve returned my calls twice. And even then, you could only talk for a few minutes. You can’t be that busy.”

  “What’s going on, Cole? It’s tax season in America, so believe it or not, I’m actually pretty busy.”

  “And you don’t want to come home to visit. It’s been almost a decade.”

  I blow air out of my mouth in frustration. “It hasn’t been that long, and you know I don’t want to go home. Mom and Dad will just guilt trip me.”

  “You can’t walk out on your family forever.”

  “Why not?” I ask softly. “Noel did.”

  Cole flinches. “It’s not the same.”

  “No, it’s not.” I shove my plate away with way too much partially eaten pie away. I can’t eat a bite more, not now. “But it turns out, I don’t even need to go home to take a guilt trip.”

  “Mom and Dad miss you.” Cole taps a fork on his plate and stares at the lemon chiffon pie like it might try to walk away. His words are so quiet I can barely hear them. “I miss you too.”

  My heart trembles a little, but I tell it to shut up. Missing someone is hard, but you survive. In fact, with time it becomes easier and easier. “Then it’s good you’re here,” I say. “I’m slammed at work, but Mary won’t mind if I leave a little bit early each day to see you.”

  I eat another bite of pie so that I can say I’m full, but I have no idea which pie I’m even eating. Then I stand up. “Well, I think I might have over ordered. I’m heading home. You ready?”

  Cole wipes his mouth on a napkin, folds it in half and sets it next to his plate. Then he stands up, pushes his chair back under the table and nods. “Now I am.”

  “Where’s your suitcase?” I ask.

  “Lost on the flight. I gave them your address, and they insist they’ll deliver it shortly.”

  “Stupid airlines,” I say. “You may never see that bag again.”

  He shrugs. “It’s not like I brought the crown jewels or anything.”

  I laugh. “More like your dumb plaid pajamas and that ratty old lamb.”

  Cole’s nostrils flare. “I did not bring Lamby.”

  I can’t help making fun of a grown man who still loves a stuffed animal. “Too big of a risk.” I nod slowly. “I totally understand.”

  The walk back home takes less than two minutes. “So how many calories do you think we just burned?” I ask when we reach the third floor.

  “Doing what?” Cole asks.

  “On the trip from the pie shop to my apartment,” I say. “Duh.”

  Cole frowns.

  “Seriously. You think it was two hundred? Three?”

  He laughs. “You’re crazy.”

  “And we’re related, so what does that say about you?” I bump the door open with my hip.

  “What was that?” he asks.

  “Oh, nothing, a sticky door, that’s all.”

  Cole follows me through my front door and into my living room. “Oh Pais, this place is an even bigger dump than your last apartment.”

  I drop my purse on the floor. “Well excuse me if my house is not spotless. I had no idea you were coming, so it’s not like I can be faulted for not picking up.” I glance around at the throw pillows on the floor. The pizza box by the edge of the sofa. The empty, almost empty and nearly full water cups strewn across every surface haphazardly, like zits on a teenager. “I’ll pick up, okay? It’ll take me fifteen minutes.”

  “I’m not talking about it being messy.”

  Of course he isn’t. He’s talking about my plaid sofa that doesn’t even almost match my orange arm chair. He’s criticizing the wonky-legged kitchen table with five chairs, none of which match. “It’s eclectic. That’s a thing in America. They call it shabby-chic.”

  “A little heavy on the shabby. You’re not poor,” he says. “Your trust—”

  “What’s wrong Cole?” I plop down on my comfortable sofa and scoop up a few pillows to block the part where the cushioning on the arm has shifted, exposing the frame. “You wouldn’t have surprised me like this if something wasn’t wrong.”

  He sits on the edge of my oversized armchair. “Dad’s sick.”

  “You couldn’t have told me that on the phone?”

  “It’s time to come home, Paisley.” Cole’s eyes bore into mine. “It’s time to stop hiding here and come back. We need you.”

  Oh please. “Now they’re sending you here to make heartfelt pleas?” I shake my head. “Tell Mom and Dad that I’m not hiding, and if they want to see me, they can big fat get on a plane and come here themselves.”

  “Big fat?”

  “It’s an American expression. It means, suck it up and do it.”

  “Suck it up?” Cole asks.

  Oh come on. “Look, Dad’s not really sick. Mom would have called if he was.”

  “Dad has macular degeneration and can barely see his hand in front of his face.”

  “That hardly sounds life threatening.” I try to ignore the pangs of guilt, but they’re a little more insistent.

  “He didn’t want me to tell you this, but he’s also suffering from heart failure. The doctors aren’t sure how much longer he will be around. I’m not trying to alarm you. It could be years, it could be months.”

  I open my mouth to argue, but I can’t think of a thing to say. Dad’s big and strong and larger than life. He’s getting close to seventy, sure, but that’s nothing. That’s not so old anymore.

  “All Mom wanted for her bir
thday was for me to convince you to come home.”

  I miss those tiny pangs of guilt. Now they’re like waves of guilt, crashing over my head. “Fine. Fine, I’ll come home.”

  Cole beams at me, his perfectly white teeth practically blinding me.

  “But I can’t come right now. My boss is mired in the middle of an avalanche of work, and her wedding is in a few weeks. Plus, did I mention she’s one of my closest friends?”

  “Wait, are you offering to come home for a visit? Or did you mean you’d come back permanently?”

  I grit my teeth. “For a visit. We can’t keep arguing about this. I’m not fifteen years old. I’m an adult, and Mom and Dad can’t make me do anything.”

  “When Dad dies, you have to come back,” Cole says simply. “And it would be a shame if you missed being with him for what little time he has left.”

  “I’m sorry he’s sick,” I say. “I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with all of it alone. I’m really, really sorry, okay?”

  Cole nods.

  “I’ll come for a few weeks, alright? After tax season, and after the wedding, I’ll come for a really long trip.”

  “We need more than one visit. With Dad being sick.” He shakes his head. “Business is bad. Dad’s bringing some investors in to check things out.”

  “Investors?” I ask. “Or consultants?”

  Cole shrugs. “Investors, I think. Dad says we need someone to buy in, and if they have ideas on how to run it, even better.”

  “Berg Telecom has made telephones for a hundred years,” I say. “Our clients are loyal.”

  “No one buys phones anymore,” Cole says.

  I lift my phone. “Really?”

  “We make landlines,” he says. “We haven’t ever been able to secure a manufacturing contract for cellular phones, and our plants don’t have the technology—”

  “What do you think I’m going to do about it?” I stand up and walk across the room to my window. “I’m a secretary Cole.”

  “You’re not,” he says. “You’re pretending to be a secretary.”

  “I went to college here in the United States,” I say, “and graduated with a degree in microbiology. I never used it. I needed a job immediately, because, well, you know why—so they wouldn’t deport me. I’ve been working as Mary’s executive assistant for years and years. It’s who I really am. It’s what I really do. I actually love my job.”

  Cole stands up and crosses the room until he’s standing right next to me. “You can move away. You can insist that everyone call you by your middle name. You can sit on used plaid couches and heinous orange chairs. You can even live in an apartment with threadbare carpet. You can work as an assistant to some woman you respect and admire, while doing a job that you could do half asleep. None of those things changes who you really are, and it’s not a secretary.”

  I set my jaw.

  “Since I’m a half-brother, you’re Dad’s only heir. At some point you’re going to have to move home and take over for him, Holly Paisley von Liechtenstein. You’re the Hereditary Princess of Liechtenstein, whether you like it or not.”

  If you enjoyed that sample, grab Finding Holly now!

  Acknowledgments

  My husband is the best man I have ever known. He supports me and lifts me up, and he is patient with my many shortcomings. I love him every single day.

  My kids are so great about letting me write and edit and only rarely complaining.

  My writing friends are simply the best.

  Dr. Rohit Vasan, you were SO patient with all my questions and invaluable for the medical side of Rob and Brekka.

  To my sensitivity readers: thank you. I know I was annoying and clueless, and you were so patient. I am not naming you because I know I need to stand behind my own words and any errors in them, but I appreciate your help and guidance more than you know.

  To my ARC team and my readers and my fans, your reviews and your words and your support mean the WORLD to me. Thank you!

  And to my mom, last this time, but never least, thank you for your unfailing support and enthusiasm and wonderful feedback. THANK YOU!

  About the Author

  Bridget loves her husband (every day) and all five of her kids (most days). She’s a lawyer, but does as little legal work as possible. She has a yappy dog and backyard chickens. She makes cookies waaaaay too often and believes they should be their own food group. To keep from blowing up like a puffer fish, she kick boxes every day. So if you don’t like her books, her kids, or her cookies, maybe don’t tell her in person.

  Also by B. E. Baker

  The Finding Home Series:

  Finding Faith (1)

  Finding Cupid (2)

  Finding Spring (3)

  Finding Liberty (4)

  Finding Holly (5)

  Finding Home (6)

  Finding Balance (7)

  Finding Peace (8)

  The Finding Home Series Boxset Books 1-3

  The Finding Home Series Boxset Books 4-6

  Books by Bridget E. Baker (same writer, but I use a different name for my fantasy and end of the world genre books!)

  The Birthright Series:

  Displaced (1)

  unForgiven (2)

  Disillusioned (3)

  misUnderstood (4)

  Disavowed (5)

  unRepentant (6)

  Destroyed (7)

  The Birthright Series Collection, Books 1-3

  The Sins of Our Ancestors Series:

  Marked (1)

  Suppressed (2)

  Redeemed (3)

  Renounced (4)

  The Anchored Series:

  Anchored (1)

  Adrift (2)

  Awoken (3—releasing July 15, 2021)

  Capsized (4—releasing September 15, 2021)

  A stand alone YA romantic suspense:

  Already Gone

  Children’s Picture Book

  Yuck! What’s for Dinner?