by Elle Casey
ALSO BY ELLE CASEY
ROMANCE
Red Hot Love (3-book series)
By Degrees
Rebel Wheels (3-book series)
Just One Night (romantic serial)
Just One Week
Love in New York (3-book series)
Shine Not Burn (2-book series)
Bourbon Street Boys (4-book series)
Desperate Measures
Mismatched
ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
All the Glory
Don’t Make Me Beautiful
Wrecked (2-book series)
PARANORMAL
Duality (2-book series)
Pocket Full of Sunshine (short story & screenplay)
CONTEMPORARY URBAN FANTASY
War of the Fae (10-book series)
Ten Things You Should Know About Dragons (short story in The Dragon Chronicles)
My Vampire Summer
Aces High
DYSTOPIAN
Apocalypsis (4-book series)
SCIENCE FICTION
Drifters’ Alliance (3-book series)
Winner Takes All (short story prequel to Drifters’ Alliance in Dark Beyond the Stars Anthology)
To keep up-to-date with Elle’s latest releases, please visit www.ElleCasey.com
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Elle Casey
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542047067
ISBN-10: 1542047064
Cover design by @blacksheep-uk.com
Cover photography by Matthew Hegarty
To Joka, my artistic, adventurous, and lovely friend.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
BRIGHT LIGHTS. BIG CITY. RED HOT LOVE.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
I wrap my shawl tighter around my shoulders as the late-morning chill sends a shiver through my body. My basket is full of warm, fresh eggs that I’ve collected from my girls in the coop, and I’m headed back to the house. All the animals have been fed and now it’s my turn.
I wave and smile at Harold, a man who pitched a tent out in the yard last week and who is now hanging his socks to dry on our communal laundry line. He seems content to pull weeds in the garden in exchange for the free living space.
Harold comes every year about this time. He says autumn is the best season for reflecting and resetting his priorities. I don’t know much about his other life, the one outside our little intentional-living farming collective. I think he’s a businessman in Washington, DC, but we don’t ask a lot of questions here. People are free to do what they need to do and be who they need to be in order to find happiness.
Reflecting on Harold’s personal journey makes me think of my sister Amber. She left for New York City a little over three months ago to set the record straight with some men who claim to be our fathers—men who, for twenty-five years, should have been a part of our lives but weren’t. My other sister, Rose, and I fully expected Amber to come back as soon as she was done giving them a piece of our collective minds, because she had a flight booked out the same day she arrived, and because other than telling them we weren’t interested in the thirty-million-dollar inheritance they were offering, she had no reason to be in Manhattan. But she didn’t come back that day or in the days or weeks after either. Not permanently, anyway. She got wrapped up in their business and the guy she connected with romantically—Ty, the lead guitarist in their band—and we haven’t seen her since in any meaningful way. She stopped off for a few days once, but that was it. She was more a visitor than a resident on that trip, and it was really strange.
Of course we still chat by phone almost every day, but it’s not the same thing as living together, side by side. I miss her terribly. It’s hard for me to understand how she could so easily and completely abandon our life here on the farm for the one she’s now living in New York City. I don’t think the environments could be any more different. I get it that she has the right to live her life how she wants and needs to in order to be happy and feel fulfilled, but the problem is that her choices have changed my life also, and I didn’t ask for that. I didn’t want anything to be different from how it’s always been, and I’m not comfortable with how it’s worked out . . . with all of us having to work a little harder and our neighbor Smitty being more involved in the farm’s operations. I wish Amber would come back so things could return to the way they used to be, before the band Red Hot came into our lives.
None of us three girls were raised to be big-city types. For twenty-five years, we’ve been participants in the vision our mothers realized when they quit being groupies of Red Hot and settled down on this two-hundred-acre farm in central Maine. We’ve had a peaceful life promoting the beauty and bounty of our natural world, creatures both large and small living together in harmony and doing harm to none. I love it. It’s where I’m meant to be.
We are all one: This is the message we’ve grown up hearing, which I took to heart from the moment I understood what it meant. But if I’m being honest, I have to say that I’m having a hard time feeling the oneness with a sister who’s so very far away.
Amber hasn’t told me a whole lot about what she’s been doing in Manhattan, other than meeting a lot of people an
d staying very busy. Her new job is in public relations, but she says she’s learning a lot about band management too, now that their longtime employee Ted is thinking about retiring and isn’t really on the best of terms with the band. After it was discovered how much trouble he caused in their lives twenty-five years ago, he’s kind of on their poo list. I don’t know what band management actually entails, but Amber seems to enjoy doing it.
If I were in her shoes, working in that big city for Red Hot, I’m pretty sure I’d feel like I was living on an alien planet somewhere, interacting with extraterrestrials. I’m much more comfortable with the people who visit our farm; they’re all searching for peace and quiet, a place where they can center themselves and discover or rediscover their life’s purpose. The craziest thing that happens around here is someone wandering around naked, but I’m used to hippies doing their thing, so it doesn’t even faze me anymore. My life is completely tame compared to Amber’s. She actually laughed as she told the story about a man yelling sexual innuendo at her when she was trying to eat a hot dog. If that happened to me, I’d hide in the restaurant’s bathroom and never want to come out, but she just took it in stride, like it was entertainment and not aggressive, scary behavior. I just don’t get it. Amber has always been bolder than I am, but it’s almost like she’s a different person now. I don’t know her anymore, and it makes me sad.
I kick a stone off the path and watch it roll into the woods, shuffling some leaves out of its way as it passes through and crushing the more delicate ones beneath it. That little rock reminds me of Red Hot and the men who make up the band. They just bouldered into our lives three months ago, messing everything up; sometimes I feel like I’m being crushed under the weight of it.
I was angry and sad when I found out I had a father who was alive and well out there, playing in a famous rock band whose music I’d been listening to almost every day of my life for twenty-five years. I’d believed from things our mothers said as I was growing up that they didn’t know who our fathers were—a partial truth, as it turns out—but I’m even angrier now that these men are pretending to be innocent, trying to say they were ignorant of the fact that they had children growing up just a short plane ride away. In my opinion, not bothering to find out the truth of why our mothers left them years ago doesn’t equate to ignorance . . . it means they’re coldhearted. They cared more about the music than our mothers. And one of these men is supposedly my father. I don’t know which one it is, and I don’t want to know. As far as I’m concerned, the past can stay in the past where it belongs.
Our mothers never would have left the band and the life they had together if they’d felt wanted and loved. I’m sure, like most groupies, they were being used as a distraction . . . for sex and partying. I hate thinking of the women who raised me, who sacrificed so much for my sisters and me, being cheapened like that. I’m glad they left that life behind and took us with them. Men who treat women like that don’t deserve us.
The band members expect us to believe that they didn’t know their manager, Ted, arranged for our mothers to disappear twenty-five years ago here to central Maine, where they bought this farm with money provided from the band’s coffers. Puh-lease. How could they not know a couple hundred thousand bucks were missing from their bank accounts? I’d have to be a complete nincompoop to believe that nonsense.
Before Amber related this story to us, we’d been kept in the dark about our mothers’ shared past, not knowing how much the three of them cared about the band and the men in it or how special their time together was. It might have been only two years, but to them, it seemed like it lasted a lifetime. I was never told that these rockers I’d grown up seeing on well-worn album covers had fathered us, but there had to be a good reason why our mothers chose to leave that part of their story out. If their relationships were so great and full of love—as our mothers would have us believe now that they’re confessing all their sins—why didn’t they tell those men the truth before they left? Why did they leave without saying anything at all about being pregnant?
Asking these completely legitimate questions of Carol, Barbara, and Sally—who raised my sisters and me together as one group-mom, even though Carol is the one who actually gave birth to me—gets me nothing but answers that make no sense. They say life with the band had a very casual atmosphere, where people came and went for no reason and without explanations; there were never any promises made, no commitments. And they claim they didn’t want to screw up the music. They didn’t want to interfere with the band’s creative process.
What a bunch of baloney. If some man ever got me pregnant, he would know about it before anybody else did, and I certainly wouldn’t let him be absent for twenty-five years before he showed himself to my child either. That’s just wrong, no matter how you look at it. I’m having a hard time believing my mothers’ version of events and still respecting them at the same time, so I choose to believe they were duped by users and just don’t want to admit it. They can be stubborn sometimes. And they were young . . . younger than my sisters and I are right now. I made several dumb decisions when I was in my early twenties. Dating our childhood friend Smitty was one of them. Ugh. What a mistake that was. Just thinking about our one disastrous night together is enough to turn my mood completely sour. He’s a nice enough guy, but we have very different ideas about how a first date should go. Never again.
I push the bitterness away. It’s pointless to be working myself up over choices I made before I knew better or choices my mothers made when they were young and silly. They made their beds—choosing to leave and set up our lives here—and we’ve been lying in them ever since. And by the way, those beds are comfortable. My life is good. No, my life is great. I love how everything turned out. I just wish those men had stayed gone. But nooo . . . they had to send their lawyer out here to offer us a huge inheritance and mess things up. And now Amber is gone, and I’m left to pick up the pieces without one of my two best friends at my side.
Nope. I’m not bitter at all.
I walk up the front steps to the farmhouse, picking up a couple of beautiful orange and red leaves that have blown onto the porch. I sigh loudly, letting all the stress leave my body. It’s the simple things that make me happy, like autumn leaves drifting randomly into my day so I can appreciate their gorgeous colors and textures. I’m a creative person and, truthfully, not very social. I don’t like crowds and I’m not keen on strangers, except for the ones who come here to find peace with us; they tend to like space and are cool about giving it, too. My sister Amber might go so far as to say I have social anxiety, but I’m not sure I agree with that label. I mean, I’ve never had any trouble selling items we grow and make here on the farm at the local farmers’ market. I’ve dealt face-to-face with literally hundreds of strangers, and I’ve never suffered more than a racing pulse or a flushed complexion as side effects.
Okay, so I’ll admit that I like more controlled environments, where there aren’t any big surprises. But does that make me socially inept? Weird? I don’t think so. I just prefer peace to chaos, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There are plenty of people out there like me. I just haven’t met them because we all prefer to stay on home ground.
I pause to contemplate my world, turning around so I can appreciate the beauty surrounding me. The trees look like they’re on fire with red, yellow, and orange leaves ready to drop to the ground. Wind scatters the already fallen ones left and then right, collecting them in piles next to the various outbuildings. A three-legged border collie—affectionately named Banana because he’s always been a little crazy—has his nose to the ground as he hops along, chasing anything that moves. He glances up at me for a few seconds, verifying that I don’t have any snacks for him, before he continues on his mission.
I love having my family close and my work right outside the front door. I take care of the animals on our farm—chickens, goats, cows, pigs, and horses—and help my sister Rose at her veterinary clinic when she needs it. And when I’
m in the mood, I paint. Granted, I’m not in the mood to do it very often these days, but that’s okay because it’s not how I make my living. The products we sell from our farm provide enough for all of us, and I have boundless love here: unlimited support, hugs whenever I need them, and a listening ear from any number of women who understand and get me. How could I possibly want more than that? And if I need a little extra something, if I’m in the mood for some music, for example, I can go into town and listen to the older, retired gentleman who plays guitar at the local pub, or I can turn on the radio. If I want to go out with a guy, I can pick one up at the bar—it’s too small and hole-in-the-wall-y to be called a club—or I could call up an old flame . . . Smitty, for example. Not that I would. But I could.
I’ve experimented with sex, like my sisters have, and although I enjoy it, I really don’t see what the big deal is. I’ve read romance novels that have leading men who knock women’s socks off with orgasms galore, but that hasn’t been my personal experience. Do I regret that? No, of course not. How can you miss what you’ve never had? It’s not in me to do that.
All I care about is waking up every day, being a hardworking member of this intentional-living community my mothers started, and doing my part for the family. What I receive in return is priceless: I get to live and work in paradise with wonderful people and animals who do nothing but love me back; I have a front-row seat to a visually stunning changing of the seasons four times a year; and I’m part of a strong, supportive sisterhood that I share not just with Rose and Amber, but with our mothers too. What’s not to love? Reflecting on my life makes me feel warm and sunny inside, even on this chilly autumn day. Some people wait their whole lives to find happiness, but I was born into it.
Am I upset with Amber for leaving? It might sound like I am, but I’m really not. I would never want to hold her back from her dreams. What’s hard or confusing for me, though, is understanding how her dreams could be in New York City, because she never said anything about wanting more than what we had growing up. She always seemed as happy as I am. And that scares me, maybe. Because I realize it’s possible that she didn’t know she wasn’t happy until she left here. Amber woke me up to the idea that a person might not know what she’s missing until she sees or experiences that other thing—hot sex, for example.