The Lemon Sisters

by Jill Shalvis

  Her first “I love you” had stopped his heart. The second “I love you,” flung at him like a weapon, had nearly brought him to his knees. “So we adopt,” he said with a calm he wasn’t close to feeling. Calm had been replaced by equal parts hope and fear—hope that he could have this, her, and fear that she wouldn’t let it happen. He reached for her hands to still her nervous fidgeting, not wanting her to be nervous or anxious at all. “Or we don’t. We’ll figure it out, Bee.”

  She closed her eyes and breathed for a moment, and he knew she was counting in her head, trying to self-soothe. “It’s not that simple,” she whispered.

  “Have you been happy here? Yes or no?”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “I’ve loved being home again with my family. With you. It’s been . . . everything. Everything I needed. But it was never going to be long-term. I mean, we haven’t really even thought this through. You want different things than me. We’re in different places.”

  He shook his head. “No. That’s not it.”

  “Of course it is.” She turned away from him, staring out the window. “What else could it be?”

  Where did he start? “How about the fact that you’ve been packed to go for a week? You’ve just been waiting for an excuse to go and not look back. The only question is, will it be another seven years before you grace us with your presence again?”

  Her spine had snapped straight as a pin and temper crackled out of her as she whipped back to face him. “Me leaving was always the plan.” She poked a finger into his pec, hard. “You knew that. I told you, more than once.” She stabbed him again. “I came here to try to make things right. I wanted to figure my shit out so I could go back and be me again. I know you don’t understand, but for me it was about courage and bravery, facing my past and coming to terms with it.”

  He let out a mirthless laugh, because in spite of everything, his worst nightmare was about to come true. “You think you’re being brave by running away from here? No. Fuck no, Brooke. The bravest thing you could do would be to at the very least keep Wildstone as your home base. You love your sister, you love her kids. And you love me. You ran away from that last time, and now you’re going to do it again. And the worst part? I should have seen it coming.” He shook his head. “You haven’t changed at all, and apparently, neither have I.”

  She sucked in a breath and bowed her head a moment before meeting his gaze, her own eyes shimmering with rare tears. “I’m sorry. I’ve gotten too good at being alone.”

  “You were never alone, Brooke, never. You just chose to shut us out.” This time he turned away, disgusted with the both of them. Her, for fooling him again, and himself, for knowing better and falling for her just as hard this time around anyway. “The real problem here is that you don’t know what you want. Or maybe you do, but you’re too scared to get it. You don’t believe in this, in us.” He took a step back. “Good to know that some things never change. I love you, too, Bee. You know that, or I hope you do. But I can’t make you believe in me, in us. You have to do that yourself.”

  She turned to the door to leave, but then put her hand on the handle and paused. “I’m going back to LA in the morning,” she said to the wood. “The old me would’ve just left, but I didn’t want to do that to you again.”

  He let out a rough laugh, through lungs so tight that he couldn’t draw in air. “Good luck. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  There was a single heartbeat where she hesitated, and he felt hope grip him by the throat, but then she shook her head and was gone—this time, he was pretty sure, for good.

  MUCH LATER, MINDY stood in her kitchen, sick with worry and anxiety. Her three babies were looking at her, so she put on a smile and opened her baking drawers, all three of them filled with things like measuring cups and spoons, wooden and plastic utensils, the works. Millie clapped her hands in delight. One of her favorite things to do was riffle through it all and put on pretend cooking shows, making her brothers be her captive audience.

  Leaving them to it, Mindy headed for the cleaning supplies, because when life went to shit, she cleaned. When her vacuum shut off unexpectedly in the living room, she turned to find Linc standing there. He’d pulled the plug out of the wall.

  “I don’t want to fight with you,” she said.

  “On that, we’re quite in agreement.” Tossing the cord aside, he took her hand and led her to the couch. “I just want to talk.”

  “That’s not exactly our strong suit.” She was careful to not quite touch him, because he was wearing her favorite shirt of his, a gray UCSF Medical School T-shirt. It’d been worn to a buttery softness that clung to his broad shoulders. His cargo shorts had a bazillion pockets that she knew would be full of a huge assortment of things, but still always had room for him to take on the burden of whatever she didn’t want to carry.

  Dammit. She loved him so much.

  Ignoring her clear personal space bubble, he pulled her in until they were thigh to thigh. He twisted to face her, his arm resting along the back of the couch, his body language telling her this was important to him, she was important to him, and she took a deep breath and let that wash over her.

  “First things first,” he said quietly, eyes on hers, his solemn. Intense. “I really did believe you wanted the shop. I’ve always hated that we never had enough money for it because of my student debt. I assumed you hated that, too, maybe even resented it.”

  “Linc—”

  He put a finger to her lips. “You put your entire life on hold for me so I could go to medical school, which meant you working so we wouldn’t starve. Then, just as we started to get it together, I got you pregnant. You never complained, never faltered, just kept us in the boat with life jackets on and steered the ship. You’ve put all of us, everyone you care about, ahead of yourself, and I wanted to return the favor. So I cashed in some investments and moved things around so you could have what I thought was your dream. I was wrong to do that without talking to you first.” He ran a finger along her temple, over an earlobe, and smiled when she shivered. “We got an unexpected offer on the store,” he said. “For more than I paid your parents for it. It’s from Xena and her sister. They want their own franchise and apparently have for a while. It’s your choice, of course, this time and for always. Whatever you want to do, I’m in.”

  She let out a careful breath. “Xena’s perfect for it. I could go back to baking and selling her my stuff for the shop, assuming she wants it.”

  Linc’s eyes warmed as he smiled. “Your stuff’s amazing, I hope you know that. You can do whatever you want. You could take over the world if you set your mind to it. No one would know what hit them.”

  From the kitchen came a loud drumming sound that Mindy knew from experience was Mason sitting on the floor surrounded by upside-down pots and pans, beating them with her wooden spoons, headbanging like he was the drummer from an ’80s rock band.

  “Also”—Linc handed her the itinerary and tickets for Hawaii—“we’re still going. Ethan and I had a serious talk.”

  “Ethan doesn’t do serious.”

  “He does now.”

  She stared at the papers in her hand. “So . . . he’s going to help handle the practice for the whole week? No emergencies?”

  “It’s not ‘helping’ when he owns half of it,” he said. “But that’s going to change, too. I told him I was cutting my hours back to something reasonable versus insane, because you and the kids didn’t sign on for me running Dad’s practice alone. I’ve missed too much precious time. I also told him if he didn’t have time to devote to his half, we’re selling. The hospital’s been coming at us with offers for two years. It’d leave us as independent contractors and managers of the practice, but not owners, the biggest plus being that they’d add two additional MDs to the rotation. We’d all have reasonable shifts and time to work in the hospital and clinics if we want.”

  She stared up at him, afraid to hope. “Which is exactly what you’ve wanted to do.”
/>   He nodded, his expression endearingly earnest. “This works for us, right? It’s what you want, too?”

  The husky sincerity in his voice, coupled with his big, warm body pressed against hers and that finger tracing softly along her ear and down her throat, warmed her. “What I want,” she murmured, “is for us to be on the same page.”

  His smile was sexy. “We’re always on the same page. In bed . . .” He chuckled when she blushed. “Do you want to know when I first realized I’d fallen in love with you?”

  “I thought it was Trash Can Mindy.”

  “No, that’s when I first knew you were going to be mine. Junior year of high school, you came over to my family’s house to watch a movie. You and my grandpa promptly fell asleep.”

  “Because you picked a Star Wars movie we’d seen a million times.” She felt her face heat, remembering what had happened next. “I don’t need to hear this story again, I already lived it—”

  “And around halfway through, still dead asleep, you popcorn farted loud enough to wake the dead. Pop, pop, pop.” He grinned. “My grandpa fell out of his chair.”

  And the old man’s dentures had gone skittering across the room. “Well, you fed me hot dogs. Hot dogs hurt my stomach!”

  He was still smiling. “You jerked upright, horrified—which, as a side note, you shouldn’t have been. You should’ve been proud as hell because it was very impressive—”

  “Please stop,” she begged, covering her hot face.

  “Remember what came next?”

  Of course she did. He’d claimed the farts as his own, covering for her.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s when you fell in love with me, too,” he said knowingly.

  She sighed. “You laughed every time you looked at me for like three weeks.”

  “And you’ve been making me laugh ever since. I can’t imagine my life without you in it, Min. You’re all I’ve ever wanted. Hold on, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  She eyed him warily. “I’m not going to pull your finger.”

  He grinned. “No, this is something much better.”

  “You’ve taken massage lessons?” she asked hopefully.

  “No, but hold that thought.” He vanished down the hall and came back with a three-ring binder that she’d never seen before.

  “Open it,” he said.

  She began to flip through, and her pulse took a good, hard leap. “You redid the family schedule.”

  “I did.”

  He sounded cocky as all hell, and quite pleased with himself. She went back to eyeing what he’d done, and her heart melted. “You even color-coded it.”

  “Gave you purple,” he said.

  She met his gaze.

  “Which is your favorite color, even though you tell everyone it’s blue,” he said.

  He’d given himself half the work, along with giving the kids their own to-do charts. God, she loved this man. “You think you’ve got me all figured out,” she managed through a thick throat.

  “No.” He sat next to her and pulled her into his lap. “And God knows, I might never have it all figured out. But I promise to always love you, to keep working on things, and to be a better partner to you. You deserve that, and I’ll never stop giving you everything I’ve got. Please say you’ll let me try to make you happy every day for the rest of your life.” He kissed her softly. “I want this, Min. I want your early mornings, even the crabby ones. I want your fiery temper and the way you smile at me when I manage to calm you down, even when it’s by accident. I want to share a bed with you, even when it’s full of our crazy children. I want your everything.”

  Setting the binder aside, she straddled him and slid her fingers into his hair. “Even when I’m not all that lovable?”

  “You’re way too hard on yourself.” He cupped her face. “You’re always lovable. And tonight, when the kids are asleep, I’m going to prove it to you.” Leaning in, he put his mouth to her ear and whispered exactly how he was going to do that, in great detail.

  “Kids,” she yelled, never taking her eyes off her sexy husband. “Early bedtime tonight!”

  She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight, marveling that he was hers. All hers.

  Chapter 24

  “It’s the orgasms.”

  Throat too tight to breathe, Brooke walked into the guesthouse, trying to compartmentalize the different parts of her life that couldn’t be reconciled. Trying to control her emotions.

  But she couldn’t control anything, much less herself. She was hurting, she was shaking, she was angry, and she knew, without a doubt, that whatever she did next was going to be incredibly stupid.

  She didn’t care.

  Garrett was wrong. She wasn’t running. She was simply going after what she wanted. Walking away from him was going to hurt, but she had to do it. She really did see herself taking on the world again. Maybe it wasn’t for everyone, but it was her life. No kids, but hopefully a partner, if she met the right one.

  You already met him.

  She ignored this little voice in her head. She was a grown-up, and grown-ups couldn’t always have everything they wanted. That was just a fact. She pulled out her phone.

  Brooke: I’m coming back.

  Cole: There is a God.

  Brooke: If you missed me that much, I’ll take a raise.

  Cole: Funny. I was actually expecting a resignation letter. Even me, the hardheaded, coldhearted bastard I am, can tell when a person’s found their place.

  Brooke: Wildstone isn’t my place.

  Cole: Glad to hear it.

  Brooke: I don’t belong in Wildstone.

  Cole: Music to my ears.

  Brooke: I can’t possibly end up here.

  Cole: Shit. You’re protesting too much. Quick, get in your car and come home right now before you realize it.

  Brooke: You’re as dramatic as Tommy. I’ll be there in four hours. And I want my old job back.

  Her phone battery was low, and since she didn’t have a car charger or an extra battery, she plugged her phone into the wall outlet and lay down to rest her eyes while it charged. “Just for a few minutes,” she told the room.

  A few minutes later, she jerked awake. But it hadn’t been only a few minutes. It was six a.m., and she’d slept the rest of the night away. Jumping to her feet, she staggered into the main house, needing caffeine before hitting the road.

  And maybe some sweet TLC from her three favorite little people.

  Her sister was looking over a pan of perfectly golden cinnamon rolls, calmly sipping tea and definitely looking like the Mindy of old. Peaceful. Put together.

  Serene.

  Brooke stared at her.

  “What?” Mindy asked.

  “You look . . .” Brooke shook her head. “Really good.”

  “It’s because we’re leaving for Hawaii in two hours.”

  “Actually, it’s the orgasms,” Linc said as he came into the room.

  Mindy rolled her eyes, but she was smiling, too, glancing over at Linc with the look of a well-loved woman.

  Brooke drew a steady breath, happy for her sister, but filled with a melancholy she couldn’t have explained. “Well,” she said, trying for cheerful, “I’m out, too. Wanted to give you all a hug good-bye first.”

  Mindy gasped. “No.”

  “And it’s not your fault,” Brooke said quickly, seeing the guilt on her sister’s face. “So stop it. And don’t cry.”

  Linc gave Brooke a hug. “You sure?” was all he asked, pulling back to see her face.

  She nodded. “I want to get back to work.”

  “Uh-huh.” Still holding on to her, he met her gaze. “As long as that’s all it’s about.”

  “What else would it be?”

  Linc gave her a get real look.

  Right. “I’m not running! Everyone needs to cut it out.”

  His expression said she wasn’t fooling anyone, but Linc was a live-and-let-live kind of guy. He gave her one last squeeze, whispered, “
You know where to find us when you need us,” and stepped back.

  Mindy was right there, hands on her hips, eyes now dialed to unhappy.

  “I never planned on staying, Min.” And that was the truth—at least in the very beginning. But somehow over the past couple of weeks with the kids, Mindy, Linc, her camera around her neck, Garrett . . . she’d started to realize she’d been feeling happier than she could remember feeling in years.

  Mindy cupped Brooke’s face. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Min, it’s not your fault.”

  “I mean for what happened between us, you and me, to break us up from being sisters.”

  Brooke started to shake her head, but her sister gently squeezed to hold her in place. “Please let me say this. If you’re going, I need to say it.” Mindy drew in a deep breath. “I know you don’t want to talk about what happened to you. I know you hate thinking about it. And that’s a big part of why I never pushed you. You put limits on all of us, and I get it, I’m just a wife and a baker, and that you’ve done a lot of things I haven’t. But I know you, Brooke. I love you, and I don’t want you to throw away a chance at being happy just because you’re scared and there’s nobody you can talk to about it. I should’ve made you talk—really talk—to me before, about the crash, about Garrett. About everything.”

  “Come on,” Brooke managed to say lightly through a very tight, burning throat. “You know me. No one can make me talk if I don’t want to.”

  Mindy laughed a little, but then she shook her head. “See what I mean? You act like it’s nothing, like you weren’t broken, like everything’s okay, even when it isn’t. I should’ve pushed my way into your life, but I didn’t because . . . well, frankly, because I was a bad sister. I let my hurt feelings get in the way. But I’m here now, and I want you to know that I see you and I’m here for you, whether you’re happy or sad or hurt or pissed off, or just being plain stupid.”

  “Gee . . . thanks?”

  “I wouldn’t be back with Linc if it weren’t for you,” Mindy said seriously. “And I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t say this—please at least tell Garrett how you really feel and give him a chance to tell you back. I’ve never seen two people who deserve happiness more. I know there’s got to be a way to work this out—”