His eyes – blue like ice chips – raked over her from top to bottom. No one had ever made Madeline feel ridiculous, for the simple reason that she had been taught to value appropriateness over all else. She was always impeccably groomed, utterly beyond reproach. But the way Harrison’s eyes analysed her elegant chignon, then her designer coat and suit, down to her heels, made Madeline want to shuffle her feet uncomfortably. She didn’t, of course, but the desire was there.
“Go and see your Gran. She’s got a hot cocoa for you.”
“Yippee!” Ivy slipped off the bench and grabbed her father’s fingers. “Daddy, can I come watch the sunrise with Madeline one morning?”
“No, pumpkin. Madeline won’t be in town long enough for that.”
Ivy’s crestfallen face was a picture. She opened her mouth to argue forth another point but Harrison silenced her. “Go. Now.”
The little girl threw one last wistful glance in Madeline’s direction then scampered off.
Leaving Madeline alone with the man she’d once promised to marry.
The man she did, and always would, love with all her heart.
“Hello, Harrison.”
CHAPTER TWO
Such a small statement to make. Feet of gravel spread between them but it might as well have been a torrent of raging water, for all the ease with which they could traverse it. He wedged his hands in his pockets and continued to stare at her, that slightly mocking cynicism cast into his face.
“It’s you.” His voice was just as she remembered it. Like butter on warm bread, so smooth and deep, it inspired a physical reaction in her body. The words that voice had whispered to her; the promises it had made.
She almost groaned at the intensity of her feelings.
“Yes. It’s me.”
He frowned, and as he took a step closer, she saw that there were some lines around his eyes now, that had not been there years ago. Laughter lines, they told of a happy life. A life far more filled with mirth than her own. The old Madeline would have pulled her lip between her teeth and stared out at the sea. The new Madeline lifted her sunglasses and met his blue eyes head on. Unflinchingly, unapologetically unafraid.
“How are you, Harrison?”
He seemed to make a similar effort to pull himself together. “I’m fine. What brings you to Whitegate?”
She blanched at the very idea of mentioning her father to this man. For her father had been instrumental in pulling apart, at the seams, the garment of their relationship. “Kenneth.”
As she might have predicted, his dark blue eyes flecked with an emotion that matched the storm brewing over the Atlantic. “Did the old bastard finally summon you back? Wasn’t finished beating you over the head with your perceived errors yet?”
She didn’t react. Harrison’s hatred for her father was matched only by her own. “He’s dying.”
“Shit.” He shook his head and dragged a hand through the honeyed crop. “I’m sorry, Maddie.” The childhood nickname came easily. He shook his head again, as if to erase any trace of that long-forgotten intimacy. “Madeline. I’m sorry, Madeline.”
She nodded. “Usually, I’d try to look grief-stricken. Or at least appropriately sad. That would be transparently false with you though, wouldn’t it?”
A hint of a smile kissed his handsome features. “Yeah.” He shrugged. “If you need help dancing on the old man’s grave, just let me know the time.”
This man had been her future, at one time. Were the theories of parallel universes true? Could she at least hope that there was another world out there? One in which her father hadn’t known what he did? Hadn’t used that information to end their relationship? Might she have been happily married to Harrison, after all, with their own little Ivy running around?
Who could say? Not Madeline. What she did know was that Harrison had moved on. Had married, and had a baby. A little girl with huge chocolate eyes, a winning smile and an inquisitive nature that was just like her father.
“Where’s your husband, Maddie?”
Oh, the pain those words inflicted to her battered heart. For Harrison to ask about Dean was almost impossible to bear. Now, Madeline did flicker her eyes to the horizon, in a telling sign of discomfort. Harrison noticed. Hell, he noticed everything about this woman anyway. Always had done. Since he had first seen her, he felt as though he’d been struck by lightning. But his job as the town’s Chief of Police meant he had particularly keen analytical skills.
“Still in D.C.” There could be no point going into her sad, inevitable marriage breakdown with the man she’d once loved.
Harrison’s lips compressed minutely. “Coming to the funeral?”
Out of misplaced loyalty, Madeline closed her eyes and whispered, “He’s not dead yet, Harrison.”
“A man can dream.”
Madeline looked at him with a sense of distant, gaping hurt. “Your little girl is lovely, Harrison.”
The mention of Ivy made his features relax. He tossed a rueful look over his shoulder, in the direction his daughter had walked moments earlier. “She’s part lovely, part troublemaker.”
“Takes after you then,” she murmured, allowing herself the brief indulgence of properly admiring his handsome face. Those eyes, so mysterious and filled with secrets, rimmed with dark lashes. They were the deepest blue, and they always betrayed his mood.
“Unfortunately, in most ways, yes. Wish she had a bit more of her mother in her.”
His reference to Sally, Ivy’s mother, made her blood fill with ice water. Unlike Madeline, Harrison had married for love. He’d truly moved his life forward. Though Harrison didn’t know it, Madeline had met Sally. Had liked her. The moment she’d realised who Harrison had chosen to live his life with, after her, Madeline had understood that she’d lost him for good. In the brief time she’d spent with Sally, Madeline had seen for herself the woman’s kind, generous heart, and sweet nature. He’d found someone far more capable of giving him happiness, and she’d given him a child too. Madeline squared her shoulders, as she might have done if she were going into a policy meeting with important lawmakers.
“I should go. I’m late.” What more was there to say? Where could they even begin?
She was so distant. This woman he’d once loved with all his heart. She might as well have been a stranger to him, for all the connection he felt with her. That coldness infuriated him. It offended him. Though he could usually be counted on to keep a firm grip on his temper, he felt it dropping out of his control now. His words came out as a condemning hiss. “Go. For God’s sake, go. Get out of Whitegate as soon as you can, Madeline. If I never see you again, it will be too soon.”
She turned and strode away before he could see the way his harsh words had affected her. The way his dismissal had dug a hole into her being.
She deserved it. She knew she’d broken his heart, when she had been forced to end their engagement. And if she’d had any other choice, she would have taken it. But, after her father’s ultimatum, there was no way she could go through with their marriage. No way on hell would she expose the guy she loved most in the world to the hurt and pain Kenneth Bartlett intended to inflict.
So Harrison had moved on.
Kenneth had forgotten, eventually.
And Madeline had existed in a frozen sort of state of hell, going through the motions of life whilst sometimes wishing she were no longer in it.
She unlocked her Mercedes with the same sense of purpose she was famous for; but her heart, her weak heart, was hammering against her slender chest like a butterfly trapped in a glass.
The drive to the ranch took less than ten minutes. It was just around the cape from the township, and Madeline hugged the coastline with her sports car. She let the top down, despite the inclement, moody day, so that the wind could rustle her perfect hair. She tilted her head upwards a little, enjoying the feeling of the precipitation on her face.
The ranch was a coastal mansion that had been in the Bartlett family for generations. The
ir proud lineage had its roots in cotton farming and then banking, and now, politics. Their dynastic presence on Capitol Hill belonged with all the other great political families.
The ranch reflected their esteemed place in American history. In the Dutch style of architecture, the house was made of timber and painted white, with two long wings joining in a central house. The roof was red brick, and each window had grey shutters. The grounds were expansive and immaculately kept, stretching to the rugged coastline of the North Atlantic. Ancient Oak trees lined the sweeping drive and, Madeline’s car made a crunching noise on the small gravel as she steered it towards the disused stables.
The house had been the scene of a suffocating childhood, but she couldn’t bring herself to hate it. It was a creation of great, great beauty. She grabbed her Wholefoods bag out of the boot and walked with her innate elegance towards the side entrance.
“Your father’s eaten already.” Arielle barely looked up when Madeline entered, her groceries hung over one shoulder.
“I got held up,” she murmured, placing the bag down on the marble bench top. Her cheeks had a very slight, betraying blush, after her quick run from the garages to the main house.
“No matter. It’s not like he can make it to the dining room now anyway.”
Madeline’s feelings were in a spin. Though she hated her father, and would never forgive him for how he’d hurt her, the responsibilities she’d been raised to respect reared their heads. “I’m sorry, mama. I meant to be back, only I met someone and…”
Arielle’s nod was tight. The toll of caring for an invalid Kenneth was showing. Madeline watched with the disinterested pain of an outsider. Eight years away had given her that vantage point.
“Have you eaten?”
Madeline looked at her bespoke Tiffany watch with a small shrug. She hadn’t eaten, but she rarely found the time for a meal in the daytime. It was her worst habit – forgetting to eat – and one she was trying hard to break. “I’ll make a coffee. Can I make one for you?”
Arielle shook her neat blonde head from side to side. “I have enough trouble sleeping as it is.”
“It’s still lunch time, mama.” Madeline retorted quietly, slipping a pod into the nespresso system. “I’m sure a small coffee won’t keep you up.”
Arielle, always eager to please, nodded. “A small one, then.”
Making coffee felt good to Madeline. She rarely got to do it anymore. Between Dean’s aides, her own very obliging personal assistant, not to mention their housekeeper, her domestic obligations were few and far between.
“How does he seem today?” Madeline had given Kenneth’s room a wide berth all day. Since the night before when he’d shown displeasure in her very existence. Without Dean there, she had little value, after all.
“The same,” Arielle shrugged. “Unable to believe that he’s actually going to die.” She rubbed her pale fingers with bright red tips over her eyes and dipped her head forwards. “He is really going to die. He is, isn’t he?”
Madeline nodded wearily. “Yes, mama. And soon.”
Arielle dipped her head lower, and when she was able to speak again, her voice was a slender husk. “Who did you meet in town?”
Madeline kept her expression neutral as she lifted the coffee cup to her lips and sipped it gratefully. “A little girl, by the beach.”
Arielle wasn’t really listening. She was staring at the tabletop, completely distraught. She had spent her life – since she’d turned sixteen – with a man who treated her like a possession. Madeline had never understood how her mother had put up with his domineering ways. But it was clear now that her love had not been out of duty. Arielle’s heart was genuinely breaking at the certainty that her husband was in his last days.
“Have you heard from KB?” Madeline asked, referring to her brother by the nickname he’d had since childhood. Being the fifth in a line of men to carry the same name had a tendency to cause confusion. The moniker KB neatly avoided that.
At the mention of her son, Arielle’s expression briefly lifted. In her firstborn, she saw the almost complete reflection of her husband. “He’s still in Hong Kong. You know how depended upon he is. It’s not like he can just up and leave the bank at a moment’s notice.”
Madeline sipped her coffee again. The implication was subtle, but obvious to Madeline, who’d spent a lifetime being unfavourably compared to her brother. She, Madeline, was less depended upon. She’d received the teary phone call from her mother and dropped everything to be back at the ranch. Never mind that she was a successful human rights lawyer in her own right. True, she kept a minimal caseload so that she could play the part of the congressman’s wife, but she was still busy and well regarded. Just the week earlier, she’d heard that she’d won a protection visa for a child who had fled her own war torn country to escape the abuse of her parents and uncle. The case had been all over the press, but it didn’t matter to anyone in Whitegate.
Here, the Bartlett Ranch was its very own universe, and Kenneth was the sun and centre of it. KB and Arielle were planets in his orbit and she, Madeline, was simply flotsam on the outer edges of the universe. Trapped by the sun’s gravitational pull, but unable to properly break free.
“Did he say when he plans on leaving?”
“Soon.” Arielle’s voice cracked. “Emily emailed this morning to say she’s trying to get him to wrap up swiftly.”
Madeline smiled at the mention of her sister-in-law. Though they couldn’t be more different, whenever they saw one another, they enjoyed a true companionship. “I’m glad.”
The storm was coming in closer now, and lightning flashed outside the large bay window, followed by the distant rumble of thunder. “I love storms,” Madeline said with a deep breath. She fixed her gaze on the old tree house high up in the nearest oak, remembering days spent huddled in the timber construction, rugged up and staring out at the pouring rain.
“You always did,” Arielle said with a tight smile. “Funny creature that you were. I had such a battle with you, though you wouldn’t know it to look at you today. Time was, I couldn’t lay my hands on you for all the grime and mud you insisted on rolling about in.”
Madeline’s smile was equally forced. “I was a nature child. I loved the outdoors.”
“I don’t know why. All that ghastly mess. Do you remember the time your brother had to rescue you from the stream?”
Madeline drank her coffee, though she would have preferred to employ one of Ivy’s eye rolls. “He didn’t rescue me, mama. He pushed me in and then realised I was too young to properly swim. He threw me a rope and laughed.”
“Sink or swim,” Arielle drawled with a proud shake of her head. “KB was always wonderful with you.”
“That was not the moral of the story,” Madeline said with a small laugh. “But I survived, so I guess it’s not the end of the world.”
“No. You’re only thirteen months apart in age, but so different.”
“Yes.” Madeline had heard that so many times in her youth. Her stomach churned with remembered hurts. The woman sitting across from her was her mother. The woman who’d brought her into this world. And yet Madeline almost felt she was a stranger to her.
The sound of a buzzer caused both women to jump, before Arielle remembered herself. “Your father,” she explained unnecessarily. “He must want his tea.”
“I’ll take it to him,” Madeline offered, regretting the words the instant she uttered them.
“Would you?”
“Thank you, Madeline. He’s taken a dislike to the housekeeper now, and I’m run ragged with keeping up with his requirements.”
It was the closest thing to a complaint Madeline had ever heard her mother make. She assembled a tray of tea and shouldered her way out of the kitchen, pausing only to give Arielle one last, slow look. Her mother had returned to her sad vigil. Her head bent, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes half-closed.
“What took you so damned long, Arielle?”
K
enneth Bartlett was a shadow of his former self. He’d had a hospital style bed set up in the library, for it was his favourite room of the whole house. He had spent endless evenings poring over the ancient collection of invaluable leather bound books, drinking aged scotch and smoking his beloved cigars. His love for the former had made him bombastic, and his love for the latter had finally brought about his downfall. His emphysema was advanced, and he had less than ten percent lung capacity remaining. The oxygen tanks helped him find comfort, but not much.
His breath stained the air with its wretched, torturous wheeze. The room smelled of bleach and dust.
“Hi, daddy,” she said quietly, her eyes not meeting his.
“Where’s your mother?” He asked gruffly, his words hard to shape because his breath was so thin.
She placed the tea on the table beside him, and carefully poured a cup from the pot. “She’s in the kitchen.”
His dark, beady eyes stared at her hands as she tipped two sugars and a dash of milk into the fine porcelain cup and then stirred it three times.
“Where would you like it?”
His expression was disapproving. “Put it in my lap.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want you to spill ----.”
“Damn it, Madeline, I’m still capable of holding a damned tea.”
Madeline would have jumped, except she was used to his quick temper. She placed the tea on top of the blankets, keeping her hands on it until his own slightly wobbly fingers had gripped it firmly.
He didn’t say thank you. Why would he express gratitude for something he considered was one of Madeline’s obligations of birth? Waiting on people, and falling in with Kenneth’s plans, was part and parcel of being Madeline.
“Your hair’s a mess.”
She lifted a hand to her fair head, and ran her fingers over the windswept bun. Yes. For the first time in years, she’d let it have a little fun. It was uncharacteristic and she’d enjoyed it. Even more so now that she saw the reaction she was getting from her father. “Yes. I drove with the top down. It’s blowing a gale out there.”
“Stupid, idiotic thing to do,” he muttered disapprovingly, then sucked in a large breath and began to cough harshly. Madeline immediately lifted the tea out of his hands, holding it quietly until his episode abated. Then, she placed the tea back in his grip, without a word, and moved to the large windows overlooking the old swimming pool. Built in the twenties, it was resplendent with art deco features. Beautiful ornate tiles formed the entire basin, and in the middle, there was a fountain made from mosaic tiles and copper.
A Second Chance at Love: A Hometown Hero Series Novel Page 2