The One Who Changed Everything (The Cherry Sisters)

by Darcy, Lilian

  “Well, no, okay, but if there is something, if there’s ever anything, I want you to know that you can talk to me, that’s all.”

  She reached out her hand and touched Mary Jane’s arm, and at least her sister didn’t throw her off. The atmosphere between them eased a little, once more. They were sisters, after all. There was a strong bond, even when they disagreed.

  “Look, you’re going to Africa,” Daisy continued. “It’s going to be amazing.”

  “Y-yes. Oh, it is!”

  “I’m sure you still have a ton of stuff to do to get ready. I do understand what you’re saying. I’m...a little shocked, actually.”

  “Shocked?”

  “About Tucker.”

  Mary Jane muttered something that was impossible to hear.

  “You said there were two reasons...”

  “Yeah, well, no, not really. No.”

  “You said—”

  “Look, that’s not important.” There was a stubborn set to Mary Jane’s mouth now that told Daisy she could spend all day trying to coax more out of her sister and still get next to nothing.

  “Let me talk to Lee,” she offered, letting the was-there-or-was-there-not-a-second-reason thing go. “And I’ll talk to Tucker himself. If there really does seem to be a good reason not to go ahead, our meeting tomorrow is just the initial consult so that he can put together an estimate if we ask him to. We’re not committed yet. And if some of his personal choices and attitudes aren’t quite what they should be, does that matter? I mean, it’s...yeah, disappointing...”

  Mary Jane huffed out an impatient breath as if she could have come up with a different word.

  “But he’ll be doing our landscaping, and that’s all,” Daisy continued. “It’s a business arrangement. It’s not like he’ll be part of the family, the way we once wanted. It’s not as if we need to love everything about him.”

  “Lee—”

  “Lee is way stronger than you think. She’s—” A lot happier about being single than you are, sis.

  Daisy managed not to say it out loud, while Mary Jane retorted, “Lee was way more upset than you think about the canceled wedding.”

  “But since none of this actually involves Lee because she has a whole life that she loves, ski instructing and mountain guiding in Colorado, that she’s not planning to change anytime soon—”

  “Oh, I give up,” Mary Jane muttered and stalked into the front office, closing the door very firmly behind her just in case Daisy was in any doubt that the conversation was over.

  “You know what?” Daisy said out loud to the empty room. “I give up, too!”

  * * *

  That statement wasn’t quite true, however. She hadn’t given up at all. Why else would she have found herself forty minutes later, wearing a fresh outfit, climbing out of her car in the parking lot at the front of Reid Landscaping’s building? She’d tried to call Lee to talk about all this, but Lee’s phone was switched off, so she’d left a message.

  She didn’t have an appointment with Tucker. That was tomorrow. But if there was any chance of hosing down Mary Jane’s overreaction before she flew off to Africa tomorrow, then why not go after it. You had to put the right energy into a problem if you wanted results. Daisy put energy into everything she did.

  The headquarters of Reid Landscaping was an impressive advertisement for the company’s abilities. She hadn’t seen it before. Ten years earlier, the landscaping business had been only an ambitious plan simmering in Tucker’s head that he hadn’t spoken of very much, even to Lee. Since then, and having lived in California until so recently, Daisy had never happened down this quiet street on the edge of the woods during vacation visits home.

  She’d never bumped into Tucker himself, either, and she knew nothing about his life now. He could be married with two or three children, or seriously attached. He could be divorced, for that matter, or wedded to his career, or maybe a player with no plans ever to settle down.

  The building itself was a gorgeous, purpose-built structure in modern log cabin style, with richly varnished golden wood and huge double-glazed, south-facing windows that would catch the sun at all the right times. On the upper level, there seemed to be a private apartment with a balcony orientated to face summer sunsets. A round wooden table and two chairs invited the idea of cool drinks on warm, lazy evenings, while now, in fall, there were wooden tubs planted with chrysanthemums in gold and bronze and deep red.

  But it was the exterior landscaping that really showed itself off. Even though the fall foliage had passed its peak of color, everything still looked beautiful. There were plantings that would offer color according to the changes of the season, a long boardwalk-style entrance ramp zigzagging from the parking lot to the front door, garden features in stone and wood and acid-rusted metal that provided structure to the greenery...

  There was much more that Daisy didn’t have time to take in right now, but she would definitely want a closer look when it came to planning the detail on the relandscaping of the Spruce Bay grounds.

  She went up the entrance ramp and entered the building, hearing a bell jangling to announce her arrival. “I’m hoping I might be able to see...uh...Mr. Reid for a few minutes. Is he around?” she asked the woman at the main desk. “I’m Daisy Cherry, from Spruce Bay Resort.”

  “Oh, right, yes, we’ve spoken. Spruce Bay, that’s along the lake between Mission Point and Back Bay? Gorgeous setting. By the way, I’m Jackie. I’m the office manager.”

  “That’s the place. Nice to meet you, Jackie. Something’s come up, you see, and I’m hoping for five minutes now, to set us up for the longer meeting.”

  “Let me check for you.”

  “Would you? Thanks so much.” Daisy sat down in a sleekly comfortable leather chair while Jackie made some finger movements over something on the desktop, apparently sending a text message via cell phone to her boss, which meant that Daisy was left not knowing whether Tucker was actually on site or not.

  And that was frustrating because she really, really wanted to see him right now, since she really, really didn’t want her sister to wing off to Africa in the wrong mood. At times, you could almost suspect that Mary Jane was actively dreading the trip.

  Daisy sat, and kept sitting.

  Had Tucker checked his phone yet?

  Had Lee?

  Jackie went on with her work, and Daisy looked around. On the wall to her right there was a whole gallery of photos, beautifully enlarged and mounted. Before-and-after shots of Reid Landscaping projects, candid pictures of the team at work. Here was Tucker himself, perfectly dressed in a dark suit, hair cut short, beard like Orlando Bloom’s, accepting an award for a big landscaping project. The award plaque was right here on the wall, also.

  And here he was again in another photo, very differently dressed, leaning on a shovel and grinning at the camera. This time he was clean-shaven, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his legs bare and tanned in faded green shorts. He had a couple of staff members standing on either side—a young man with knobby knees and a tall, pretty, fair-skinned brunette with a belt cinching the top of her cargo pants against her very slender waist. It was the closest thing Daisy could find to a personal photo.

  Tucker looked the same as he did ten years ago, and yet not. His frame had filled out with more muscle. He had more laugh lines around his eyes, especially when wearing that satisfied, outdoorsy grin.

  His presence dominated the whole photo and he looked more confident than he had been the last time they’d met. He gave off a sense of energy and presence, the way a man did when those big plans in his head from years ago have become a reality better than he’d ever dreamed.

  And, oh, that grin! Strong and content and full of life.

  Daisy didn’t really recognize the grin, when she thought about it. He’d been tense during those few days
she’d spent in his company around the time of the canceled wedding. Prickly and uncomfortable and too watchful sometimes. Strong and silent, as she’d said to Mom. He hadn’t grinned much. Had he smiled at all? She hadn’t really felt that she’d gotten to know him at all.

  With nothing to do but wait, and with Mary Jane’s accusations from earlier this morning still fresh in her mind, she found herself thinking back in a way she hadn’t done in...oh...ever.

  Chapter Two

  Ten Years Earlier

  Lee’s fiancé didn’t smile.

  At all.

  “Nice to finally meet you, Daisy,” he said, barely moving his lips. Standing beside him and beaming at both of them, Lee didn’t seem to notice.

  Tucker Reid’s face was set like a rock, with a deeply grooved frown between his brows, blue eyes that Daisy couldn’t read and a closed, flat mouth. And it wasn’t so much that he looked angry or unhappy, he just looked totally determined to keep any expression at all from showing on his face, or let any of the wrong words escape his lips.

  She registered the barrier he’d put in place as she shook his hand in greeting, so she let her own smile ebb and just nodded at him and quickly took her hand away from the large, strong grip. “Same back at you. It’s about time, isn’t it?” Even though the wedding was only five days from now, this was the first time they’d met.

  Daisy had been in Paris for a year, and Lee and Tucker had only known each other for a few weeks when she’d flown off to France. They hadn’t even been dating at that point and were just friends. They’d both had summer jobs at a big-chain hotel, working long shifts to put some decent money in the bank.

  Lee was a rather private person. Even though the rest of the Cherry family was close at hand, they hadn’t met Tucker, either, until he and Lee were practically engaged.

  Mom, Dad and Mary Jane all adored him, apparently, and were incredibly happy and excited about the wedding.

  “He was so wonderful about Lee’s accident,” Mom had been gushing at regular intervals during the twenty-four hours since Daisy’s arrival home, the same way she’d gushed in phone calls and emails while Daisy was in Paris. “He was there by her hospital bed for days on end. She said she couldn’t have gotten through the pain without him.” Burns hurt a lot, as Daisy knew from her own experience of minor ones in restaurant kitchens. “He never once made her feel it was her fault. He really talked her around on that, because she was beating herself up for being careless with that hot oil in the fryer.”

  Daisy wasn’t sure yet how she was going to feel about Tucker Reid. He stood there while Lee went on talking for just a little too long about how great it was to have all three Cherry sisters together again, and how much had changed over the past year, and how happy she was about absolutely everything.

  He gave a tiny nod occasionally, but that was about it, and Daisy decided it was time to extract herself from the whole situation. There was something about the way he was holding himself that wasn’t right, something about the look in his narrowed blue eyes, but she didn’t have time to think about that. She’d promised to show off her new French dessert-making skills tonight—no, of course she wasn’t too tired!—and there was a lot to do in the kitchen.

  “Mom, I need to get started on the peach tart and the raspberry dacquoise,” she said. “Or I’ll crash from jet lag before I’m done.”

  She undraped the gorgeously patterned and very Parisian fringed silk scarf from around her neck and shoulders and tossed out her hair, itching to get to work.

  Mmm, it felt so good to be home, and yet to know herself a little changed from the person she had been the last time she was here. She’d learned so much about fashion and taste and grace and creativity in Paris. She’d spent hours browsing boutiques and galleries and food markets, people watching at pavement cafés, window-shopping, dreaming.

  Even though dessert-making was her main creative outlet and her planned profession, she loved to draw, as well, and she’d filled a stack of sketch pads with rapid-fire impressions of Paris and its people. She hadn’t wasted a second of the trip.

  She felt as if she was bursting with life, bursting with the love of it, its beauty and variety and vibrancy. Lee had the reputation in the Cherry family of being the most energetic of the three girls, but Daisy had decided this wasn’t true.

  Lee might be incredibly athletic and outdoorsy, just as her fiancé was, but there were other kinds of energy. The energy of her own creativity sizzled inside Daisy, and right now she couldn’t wait to get started on those luscious desserts.

  On her way to the kitchen, she glanced back at the bridal couple, still a little thrown by her first meeting with her future brother-in-law—by how little he’d given her, by the fact that she had so little to go on in finding out who he was. Lee was looking up at him and she wasn’t smiling and animated anymore. Tucker stood awkwardly, his head tilted in his fiancée’s direction, but his eyes were elsewhere, restless.

  They landed on Daisy for a tiny moment and she felt too warm suddenly. What was that about? Why was he looking at her now, when he hadn’t met her eyes once during their greeting and awkward first conversation? What was wrong with the man?

  Or is it something wrong with me?

  Everyone was so happy about the wedding. It would be horrible if she didn’t get along with her sister’s husband!

  Present Day

  In the end, of course, Daisy’s feelings about Lee’s groom hadn’t mattered. The wedding had never taken place. Mom had nagged her a little about the “strong silent type” comment. “You’re not suggesting he’s not smart enough for her, are you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “He’s cautious, that’s all. Sensible, and reserved. And responsible. He thinks before he speaks.”

  “It’s fine, Mom.”

  “When you get to know him...”

  But she never had gotten to know him. Lee and Tucker had announced their decision to call off their wedding just a few days before the scheduled event, both of them looking a little wrung out and sad, but with some relief in the mix at the same time.

  For a moment during the announcement, they’d held hands, but then they’d dropped the contact with two awkward movements that somehow hadn’t matched—a sign that the right connection wasn’t there, it seemed.

  Less than a week later, Daisy had flown out to California, lured by the sudden chance of a three-month internship with an internationally known pastry chef. From then on, far too busy with her fifteen-hour days in a hectic professional kitchen, she’d taken the whole thing at face value whenever she thought back on it.

  A mutual decision, announced while standing side by side.

  The strong silent type wasn’t what Lee wanted, after all.

  Now, after what Mary Jane had said this morning, Daisy wondered how much more there’d been to the situation that she hadn’t seen at the time.

  It was an uncomfortable feeling, like a nagging itch in a place she couldn’t reach to scratch. Her phone began to ring. She grabbed it quickly and found it was Lee. “Sorry I missed you. What’s up?”

  “You sound breathless,” Daisy said, relieved to hear her sister’s voice. It would be good to get this settled before she talked to Tucker himself.

  “Just got back from a five-mile run,” Lee said.

  “You didn’t have to call me back before you’ve even got your breathing back to normal.” Except that already it almost was. Lee was incredibly fit.

  And although convenient, the timing of her call was a little awkward. “I’m good,” she said. “Now, shoot, Daze.”

  Daisy picked her words carefully. “Look, I’m here at Reid Landscaping...”

  “Oh. Wow. You mean Tucker’s company?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re thinking of contracting him for the w
ork at Spruce Bay?”

  “Yes, only Mary Jane...has doubts.”

  “Because of me?” Lee had a habit of getting right to the point.

  “That’s right,” she said again, aware that Jackie could overhear.

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “Well, yes, I thought so, but I wanted to check with you.”

  “And you’ve checked, and I’m good, so go ahead.”

  Daisy laughed. “You are the most efficient conversationalist I know, Lee.”

  “Only when I’m busting to get into the shower. Seriously, it seems like half a lifetime ago that he and I were planning a big wedding, and I am sooo not that kind of girl anymore. If I ever was. Mary Jane is projecting her own stuff.”

  “Well, yeah, I did wonder about that.”

  “I was hurt at the time. I mean, I was.”

  “I don’t think I knew that...”

  “You were hardly around. But now I know it’s the best thing that could have happened, us calling that wedding off. Are we done?”

  “We’re done. Go take your shower.”

  They ended the conversation seconds later, just as the phone vibrated on the Reid Landscaping office manager’s desk. Jackie checked it quickly and said, “Okay, you’re in luck, Ms. Cherry.”

  “Please call me Daisy.”

  “Daisy. Such a pretty name!”

  “Thanks.”

  “Tucker can see you now. He’ll be coming in from the display area in a moment or two.”

  “Can I meet him out there?” Daisy jumped up. “I don’t want to create too much of an interruption.” She felt a little claustrophobic in here for some reason, and suddenly craved the open air with its October crispness and bite.

  “Sure, go through the door here,” the office manager said. “You’ll see him coming across in a minute or two.” Once more, there was that flicker of curiosity in Jackie’s manner, and Daisy wondered what it meant.