by Eva Chase
Jin had lowered his head. Seth leaned forward with his elbows on the table. “It was a long time ago. We’ve all—we’ve all moved past it.”
That hint of hesitation suggested maybe the “all” wasn’t totally accurate. I swiped my hand over my mouth, feeling abruptly queasy. “I had no idea. I really didn’t. If I had, I’d have talked to him, I’d have done anything I could…”
I never would have thought my father was capable of that kind of cruelty, punishing five members of his staff just because their kids had hung out with me a little more than he was comfortable with.
Although—had it been Dad at all or had Celestine convinced him somehow? Or snuck it by him and then when he’d found out it’d been too late to rehire them? I wasn’t sure what possibility was most plausible.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Kyler said quickly. “I mean, we were all only kids, you included. And Seth’s right. It’s fine now. There’s nothing…”
He trailed off, his focus shifting to something behind me. Or someone.
I turned in my seat to see a guy who was familiar and yet not sauntering over to us from the back of the hardware store.
Damon Scarsi had always been fond of leather. The jacket he had on now was more roughed-up than the hand-me-down he’d worn at thirteen, but he filled this one out better with that muscular body, so I guessed it was a fair trade-off. The sweep of his jagged dark brown hair cast a shadow over his even darker blue eyes. A few days’ worth of scruff outlined his chiseled jaw.
There was no mistaking the guy in front of me for a kid now.
“Ooh la la,” Phil said, producing a fan out of thin air to flap at her bosom. “Now this trip was definitely worthwhile. My dear Rose, you have excellent taste in friends.”
Maybe—except Damon didn’t look all that friendly right now. The devil-may-care stride was all him… but the slant of his mouth, half scowl and half sneer, wasn’t the boy I’d known at all.
He came to a halt at the edge of the patio. I pushed myself to my feet, feeling too awkward just sitting there. “Damon,” I said.
He looked me up and down. The glance sent a shiver through my body that wasn’t entirely pleasant. “So you really came back. Isn’t that nice.”
His stance was nonchalant, but there was heat under that cool tone. Was he… angry that I was here?
I scrambled for the right thing to say. “I’m sorry. About your mother—her job—I only just found out—”
He cut me off with a scoffing sound. “Words are cheap.”
Philomena cleared her throat. “As a being constructed entirely of words, I must strenuously object.”
The question fell from my mouth before I knew I was going to ask it. “What do you want me to do?”
For a second, Damon looked startled. Then his expression shuttered again. “I don’t know, Rose. Why don’t you give it some thought and get back to me? Or you can decide it’s good enough that you saw me, and we never need to have happy times like this little get-together again.”
He spun on his heel with a jerk of his head that seemed to briefly acknowledge the other guys. Then he stalked back the way he’d come. I watched him go, my chest a tangle of emotions.
Phil sniffed. “I must say, as enjoyable as that one is to look upon, I really don’t care for his opinions. Just ignore him, Rose.”
“Oh, you’d love speculating about what you might find under that grouchy exterior if he hadn’t made the comment about words,” I said in my head, through the whirl of my thoughts. My hands clenched at my sides. “And I think maybe he’s right.”
Dad—or Celestine—had taken away five livelihoods because of me. I had to find some way to make it at least a little right. That might be the most I could give, but it was the least my boys deserved.
Chapter Five
Rose
You only wanted to see them again the once, isn’t that what you said?” Philomena teased as I pulled on my jacket in the front hall. We’d gotten some April showers overnight, and the air outside was still coolly damp. “Just to see how they’re faring?”
“Just to make sure they were doing well,” I corrected her. “And they’re not, not completely. I owe them more than they got, that’s for sure.”
“Mmhm. And your concern certainly wouldn’t have anything to do with how delectably they’ve all grown up.”
“All of them? Have you forgiven Damon already?”
“Five days is long enough to hold a grudge. After that it becomes unseemly, unless the matter is truly dire. And he is possibly the most delectable of the bunch.”
“Well, you can ogle them while I see if I can make up for the jobs their parents lost.” I pushed open the door. “I’m engaged, remember?”
“Oh, I remember,” Phil said, peeking at me coyly over her fluttering fan. “Anyway, an engagement doesn’t forbid you from admiring the scenery.”
I wrinkled my nose at her and headed down the walk. I’d only made it halfway to the gate when the last voice I wanted to hear reached my ears.
“Rosalind, where are you off to?”
I stopped, glancing back. My stepmother was peering out of the house. I willed my expression to stay relaxed. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I even had an excuse all lined up.
“Heading into town,” I said. “I told Derek I’d pick up samples of some decorations I saw that might do for the wedding reception.” The consort ceremony would be a private matter, but our wedding after would be a more typical to-do. “I was thinking of grabbing lunch while I was there too,” I added, just to buy myself more time. “Unless you needed me for something here at the house?”
“No, no,” Celestine said, with a smile so unexpected I had to restrain a flinch. “I’m glad to see you so interested in the preparations already. Take your time, enjoy yourself.” She flipped her hand in the air. “You know I can find you if I do need you.”
She had to get that little jab in, didn’t she? To remind me that if she really wanted to track me down, her magic could do it for her in a matter of minutes.
Before I had a chance to decide how to answer, she’d disappeared back into the house. “Douglas!” I heard her call out to her assistant.
Philomena raised her eyebrows. “What’s she so pleased about? She looked like the cat that got the cream.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’ll take it.”
I dodged puddles along the gravel shoulder of the road all the way into town. When I got there, my first stop wasn’t the paper-craft shop, which really did have some nice decorations, but a modest two-story house at the south end of town.
“Come in!” Mrs. Lennox’s warm voice called when I knocked. I eased open the door. The mouth-watering scent of fresh-baked scones immediately filled my nose.
Snuff my spark, I’d missed that smell. We’d had a good kitchen staff in Portland, but no one who could top Ky and Seth’s mom in the baking department.
I ventured through the cozy living room to the eat-in kitchen, which took up about two thirds of the first floor. “The woman has priorities,” Phil observed approvingly.
But it wasn’t just the woman. Mrs. Lennox shot me a quick smile of welcome as she bustled between the cupboards and the thick oak table she was setting. Beyond her, Kyler was prodding a sizzling frying pan with a spatula. He glanced over at me and grinned. “Just in time.”
“Just in time for what?” I said, taking in the spread already covering the table. A basket of those scones and neat little sandwiches on rolls, a platter of fresh fruit, a pitcher of iced tea… “I was supposed to just be stopping by.”
“Come on now. I can’t have you back for the first time in ages and not give you a proper meal,” Mrs. Lennox chided. She set down the last of the napkins and turned to face me. “What a young woman you’ve grown up into. You’ll make your father proud, clearly.”
“Yeah,” I said, overwhelmed. I hadn’t meant for her to go to any trouble for me. And she sounded awfully upbeat about the man who might have had bot
h her and her husband fired. I fumbled for a less fraught subject. “Since when do you cook?” I asked Ky.
“Oh, years now,” he said cheerfully, scooping caramelized onions into a pot that looked like it contained soup. “It’s an awful lot of chemistry, you know. Different materials combined, subjected to heat and motion. Every dish is a new experiment.”
His mother cupped her hand by her mouth. “And sometimes they taste like one too.”
“I heard that!” Ky said, but he was still grinning. He motioned me over. “Here, try this out.”
I squeezed past the table to join him by the stove. He’d obviously been helping with the baking too. A few of the tawny waves of his hair had a dusting of flour. There was a smudge of the stuff on his high cheekbone. His gray-green eyes sparkled as he held out a spoon to me.
When I opened my mouth to taste, he touched my jaw lightly with his free hand. My pulse skipped in the second before the spoon reached my lips. A sweetly smoky tomato flavor filled my mouth.
“That’s really good,” I said, making myself take a step back in the hopes a little distance would settle my thumping heart. “A successful experiment.”
Ky shot a triumphant glance at his mother. “I told you the paprika was the right call.”
She waved him off. “You do what you like as long as you don’t mess with my dough.”
Ky gave the soup another stir and turned off the heat. His gaze fell to my wrist. “Yellow today,” he said, nodding to the ribbon I had wound there. “Does the color choice have any significance?”
“Just whatever fits my mood,” I said, but that wasn’t entirely true. If the white was me, then the other colors each symbolized one of the guys in my mind. Yellow was Kyler: sharp-minded and sunny-bright. The thought of telling him that, of hinting at how often I’d thought of him and the other guys over all those years, made my pulse race even faster.
“I’m glad you hung on to them,” he said. His voice dipped in a way that sent a flutter through my chest. Then he licked a drop of soup off his thumb, drawing my eyes to his lips and the flutter lower in my belly.
Okay, more distance was definitely in order. I swiveled toward the table, just as the front door rasped open and another two people strode in.
Right. The table was set for five. “We’re here,” Mr. Lennox called buoyantly. Seth was just behind him, his sweat-damp T-shirt clinging to his torso in all the right places.
They must have just come back from a construction job. Spark help me, I wasn’t sure an ocean of distance would cut it with these twins on either side of me. Where was Phil’s fan when I needed it?
Seth stopped in his tracks when he saw me, his eyes widening. “Rose.” His gaze moved past me to his brother and narrowed. “Ky?”
Kyler shrugged with an innocent expression. I’d texted him first on the burner phone he’d gifted me with last week, checking about dropping by to see his mom. And Ky had suggested I not mention the visit to his twin. Of course, when I’d gone along with that, I’d assumed I wouldn’t even be seeing Seth for the omission to matter.
“Get in here,” Mrs. Lennox said. “Let’s have this soup of Kyler’s while it’s hot.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea, Rose?” Seth asked.
I’d forgotten how grim he could be. What was it Gabriel had used to teasingly call him? The killjoy. I waved off his concern. I was here now. “It’ll be fine, worrywart. I told my stepmother I’d probably have lunch in town anyway.”
The food was, of course, spectacular. I ate faster than I really should have. Then, stuffed and still enjoying the lingering tartness of the buttermilk scones in my mouth, I grabbed my purse to get on with the real reason for my visit.
“I brought these,” I said, pulling out two letters of recommendation marked with the official Hallowell seal. I handed one to Mrs. Lennox and one to her husband. “I dated them this year because I figured that would be more useful. If you’re ever looking for the kind of work you did for my family again, hopefully they’ll help.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Mrs. Lennox said, looking over hers. “You really didn’t need to do this.”
I shook my head. “I wish I could do more. I don’t understand how you could have been let go without even any severance…” I paused, the question I had to ask sticking in my throat. “Was it my father who asked you to leave?”
“You were all already off in the city,” Mr. Lennox said. “Meredith passed on the news. Not at all happy about it herself, of course.”
So it could have been Celestine’s or my father’s orders. I’d have to ask Meredith. “I know you’re already doing other work, but if there’s any other way I can help, please let me know. When I’m officially head of the estate here, I’ll be able to offer some financial compensation—”
“No, no, don’t even think about that,” Mrs. Lennox said. “We’re in a good place now.” She tapped her lips. “If you’d really like to do something, you could bring that fiancé of yours I’ve heard about into town and have yourselves some of the pie I bake for the Bluebell Café. And talk loudly about how good it is.” Her eyes twinkled the same way Ky’s often did. “I’m just getting started with the baking-on-commission and a little nudge in the right direction couldn’t hurt.”
“Of course,” I said. “I’m sure I can gush over it with completely honest enthusiasm.”
“All I’ll say is, if you ever need anything built or repaired on the estate…” Mr. Lennox smiled.
“You’ve got it,” I said. Although that would have to wait until after I had more authority there too. Celestine might not be suspicious of my occasional jaunts into town yet, but she’d definitely notice a familiar name if I recommended a “new” hire.
And also if my errand and lunch took much longer. I got up from the table. “I’d better be getting back now. Thank you so much for lunch.”
“Any time, dear,” Mrs. Lennox said.
Seth followed me to the front door while the rest of his family launched into clean-up. He looked down at the floor, rubbed his mouth, and then raised his head to meet my eyes. Standing over me like that, he seemed almost larger than life, but like a sentinel, not a threat.
“Where are you off to now?” he asked.
“Just to run a couple of errands. My excuse for coming into town.” I gave him a half smile. “That reminds me—did Mr. Lorde, Gabriel’s dad, move away too? I wanted to stop by and see him, find out if there was anything I could do for him, but I couldn’t find him in the listings. The way he was treated seems like the worst of everyone, after how long he’d…”
I trailed off at the tensing of Seth’s expression. My chest constricted. “What?”
Seth opened his mouth, closed it again, and finally came up with some words. “None of us knows exactly what happened. It wasn’t something we really wanted to ask Gabriel about. His dad got into… I guess you could say a dark mood for a while after. He never really came out of it. The day after we graduated…”
“What?” I said when he hesitated again. My stomach had already knotted.
“The official word was he was shot,” Seth said quietly. “It’s generally known that he did it himself.”
“He killed himself.”
“Rose—”
My jaw clenched, my eyes going hot. “He gave his whole life to my family, to the estate, and then we just cast him aside. And then…”
“Rose.” Seth set his solid hands on my shoulders and looked at me until I raised my eyes to meet his. “It isn’t your fault. You had nothing to do with it. I promise you, Gabriel never blamed you for it for a second. Even in the middle of it—you know, it was his idea for us to go try to find you in Portland a couple summers after you left.”
“You did what?” I said, momentarily distracted from my horror. They’d come looking for me?
Seth chuckled, glancing away. “Well, it didn’t go exactly as planned. The bus we took broke down right at the city limits. And then for some reason we couldn’t get a cab to stop for
us. We started to walk, but we all got this feeling that we really shouldn’t be there… It was strange, but at the time, we started to worry we might get you in more trouble than we’d realized if we kept trying.”
His gaze slid back to me with a hint of a question. A feeling they really shouldn’t be there. That sounded like the sort of magic a witch might use on the unsparked, to stop them from realizing there’d been any magic placed on them. Had Celestine found some way to block them from the entire city? No, that would have been too much effort. But she must have had someone keeping an eye on things who’d noticed them heading out, and made some hasty temporary preparations.
Had Dad known about that?
“I never knew about that either,” I said.
“I didn’t figure you did. Look, Rose…” He squeezed my shoulders—gently, despite the power I could sense ran through those brawny arms. “I came over here because I wanted to tell you that I didn’t mean to give the impression that I don’t want you around. It really is great that you’re back. All of us think so. Gabriel would too if he were here. But the last thing I want to do is to bring problems your way just by seeing you.”
My heart squeezed as I gazed back into his solemn gray-green eyes. “I know, Seth. I do. I promise, I’ve been staying out of trouble for the last eleven years—I’ve got plenty of practice. And if I slip up, it won’t be your fault.”
“I’d rather nothing happened that had to be anyone’s fault,” he muttered. He released my shoulders, his hands grazing the sides of my arms just briefly as he dropped them. “Are you okay?”
I dragged in a breath. My mind was whirling, but that wasn’t his fault. “Yeah. I will be. Thank you for telling me the truth.”
“Don’t blame yourself, or I’ll wish I hadn’t.” He gave me one of his rare smiles, warm as the sun’s first peek from behind the clouds after a long rain. “You look after yourself, all right?”