Amanda’s parents called her to a meeting in her father’s office. “As you know, Amanda, your father and I are leaving for Europe in the morning. I have no idea how bad Mother’s breathing problem is, but she’s no spring chicken.”
“But Molly is a tough old bird,” her father added, as if he’d rehearsed the line.
“We need you to fly to Marietta and take care of things in our place.”
Not once in twenty-nine years had Amanda’s family visited her grandmother’s home in Montana. Amanda had asked to visit many times but had been told that wasn’t possible. Molly had attended both of Amanda’s older sisters’ weddings, but those were the only times Amanda could remember seeing the woman.
“I’m an ad exec. What do I know about eldercare?”
“You were an ad exec,” her father said, taking full advantage of the opening she’d given him. “Now, you’re jobless and living at home. Your mother spent a small fortune on a wedding that didn’t happen. I think the least you can do to repay that largess is to spend a couple of weeks—a month at the most—caring for your elderly grandmother.”
“You can stay in the guesthouse once it’s been cleaned out,” June had added. “According to this letter from the head of Crawford County Search and Rescue, the big house needs work. I’m not surprised. My mother has no taste. She’s notoriously cheap and she never throws anything away. I shudder to think what the old place looks like.”
Andrew tapped his watch, the signal Amanda had always known meant: “Time is money, people, keep things moving.”
He picked up a sheet of paper with what appeared to be an itinerary. “There’s a flight out of JFK tomorrow. Our car service will drop you off after they deliver us to the international gates. Once you get to Montana, we’ll expect you to take stock of the situation and acquire bids to repair the house. Your mother will make herself available by phone to finalize decorating decisions. And, of course, once Molly’s doctor says she’s strong enough to be released, you’ll need to find a place for her.”
“A place for her to stay until the work on her house is done?”
He’d looked to the ceiling and let out a long, frustrated sigh. “No. Molly is never going back to her house. She’s too old to live alone, and she’s blown through her savings. The money from the sale of her home will cover the cost of—what do they call old folks’ home now, June?” He cut off his wife before she could answer. “You know what I mean.”
“Assisted living,” June answered belatedly.
Amanda got the picture. And it wasn’t pretty.
“Under no circumstances do you reveal this plan to anyone, Amanda. Do you understand?” he asked in that iron fist tone she knew all too well.
Amanda fought to keep from squirming like a bug under the laser focus of his powerful stare. Andrew Heller hadn’t reached the top of the food chain by being nice. Amanda’s older sister, Julia, once joked that the only reason Daddy was still married to Mommy was because June knew where all the bodies were buried.
“What plan?”
Andrew made a sound of pure exasperation. “You’ve never been overly quick, have you?” He pawed through a couple of pieces of paper on his desk until he found what he was looking for—a legal-looking document. “We need you to get Molly to sign over power of attorney to June. Your grandmother is in no shape to be making end-of-life decisions. We’ll cover the cost of getting the old house fixed up so it will bring top dollar when it goes to auction. Once that’s done, we’ll set up Molly somewhere safe and healthy so she can live out her final years under the care of skilled professionals.”
And you won’t have to have anything to do with her again until she’s dead, Amanda thought.
Anything Amanda might have said—or wanted to say—was lost when Andrew’s phone rang. He’d looked at the screen and said, “I have to take this” and walked out.
Mother had tried to soften the austerity of Andrew’s edict, but she, too, stressed the importance of stringing Molly along, dangling the hope of returning to her own home, until the paperwork was in place for June to start calling the shots.
“If we do this right, Amanda, we can create a bidding war when we put the old place on the market. I did a little market comparison on the phone app they have, and I think a house like Molly’s with an oversize yard and guesthouse will bring six or seven hundred thousand dollars.” She shrugged. “I know that’s not much in the big scheme of things, but it should be enough to cover the cost of Molly’s upkeep.”
June made a face Amanda equated with bad grades and the disappointing news that Amanda hadn’t made first string on her school’s volleyball team. “It better be.”
An all too familiar sick feeling settled in Amanda’s belly. “I know you won’t disappoint us this time, Amanda. If you can make the job come in under budget and get Molly settled without too big a fuss, I’m sure your father will forgive you for the train wreck you created with the Bainbridges.”
As June turned to leave the room, she added, “You just have to make everyone believe that Molly’s family is doing everything in our power to provide quality end-of-life care for her. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Sell drivel to the masses?”
The next morning, Amanda boarded a plane to Montana to repay her parents for having wasted so much of their precious time and money raising a failure who couldn’t play the game right by proving she was capable of being a team player. Her father undoubtedly expected Amanda to fail so badly she’d have no choice but to crawl home begging to be given back her old role in the family: people-pleasing good girl who did whatever was asked of her—even marry the wrong man.
She uttered a word that normally never passed through her lips because coarseness was beneath a Heller. The unutterable word started with F and ended with K, and saying it eased a small amount of the long-distance pressure bearing down on her shoulders.
She would make this happen. As unfair as it sounded, she’d find a way to sell Molly on the idea of moving into a cozy, comfy new home where she’d get superb care...since she sure as hell couldn’t count on that sort of kindness and respect from her family. Plus, Amanda was certain her grandmother—at least, the independent woman who spoke her mind and never backed down from a fight—would much prefer to know the sale of her home was paying for her care, instead of Molly being beholden to June in any way.
The only part that didn’t sit well with Amanda was the subterfuge of keeping Molly in the dark until the remodeling was done and June was in control of her mother’s finances and health decisions. But who else was there to take care of Molly?
Certainly not Amanda. She’d lost enough time out of the job market. If she didn’t get back in the game soon, she’d need to start looking for a new career. And she liked advertising.
Her mother was right about one thing, Amanda was good at selling bullshit.
Tucker left the little cottage through the kitchen door, even though it meant tackling steps. He put both crutches in his right hand and used his left to support his weight on the metal pipe railing. Old-school galvanized pipe had been heated and bent to make a smooth and practical application. This handrail was the sort of thing his scrapper grandfather would have run across and used somewhere in the rambling, multi-level bayou home where Tucker had grown up.
Some had called the place ramshackle. Tucker loved the word, almost as much as he loved his grandparents’ old home. If he ever built a place of his own, he hoped it would show some degree of uniqueness and personality as Ona and Twig’s house did.
Once on level ground, he secured both crutches under his armpits and slowly started toward the big house. God, he thought, how could someone as fit and athletic as an American Male dancer wind up handicapped—even for a short time?
“Bad luck,” he told his grandmother, when he brought her up to date in their weekly call.
“Sounds to me like God tripped you to get your attention,” Ona said. His deeply religious grandmother who still dressed in hose and heels and a h
at for Mass every week had an interesting way of blending Catholic dogma with low country folk religion. “Lord knows you have a way of going fifteen different directions at once. Sometimes, it takes a big sign from Above to make you slow down.”
Unfortunately, every sign in his grandmother’s universe was subject to interpretation. Was God telling him to pull the plug on his new venture and go back to what he did well—dance and firefighting—or to cut the ties to his past and completely commit all of his focus on this new business that had so much riding on it?
He didn’t know, which added to his grumpiness.
He stabbed the rubber tips of his crutches into the soft, spongy grass path leading to the fence/hedge combo that hid the little cottage from the main house. He’d been told by the Planning Department that historically a carriage house had occupied the space where the guesthouse now sat. A loophole “grandfathered” into building permits had allowed Molly O’Neal to build a second dwelling on a single-family home lot.
“The hedge is nearly as old as the house,” the woman behind the counter had told him. “People didn’t want to see their cars the way they do today.”
Tucker remembered the first time he’d visited the place. Flynn Bensen, his Wildfire Hot Shots buddy who took over the Crawford County Search and Rescue operations, had been asked to make a safety inspection of the house. Neither of them had even realized a second home existed on the property. Tucker wondered if the cottage had grown into a constant reminder of disappointment to Molly. Maybe that’s why she let the hedge become so overgrown.
Someone—probably Flynn’s girlfriend, Kat Robinson—told him the guesthouse had been built to accommodate Molly’s daughter and granddaughters on summer visits from back East, but something happened to prevent that from happening.
Until now.
As he glanced back at the small but charming little home, a large black and white cat ambled from beneath the hedge to let out a raspy, “Meow.”
“Hello, Peaches. Are you hungry, big guy? Well, I’d be happy to feed you if you remember our talk about you not tripping me while I’m on crutches.”
He’d grown up with a dozen or more cats around his grandparents’ home. Indoor, outdoor, blind, deaf and dumb cats. Dogs, too, of course, but he’d always had a soft spot in his heart for the resourceful, independent felines.
Amanda hadn’t moved from her spot by the window, but she’d turned so her back was to him. Even at a distance, her body language bespoke tension and frustration. This society girl’s life wasn’t as perfect as he’d imagined. She had her share of problems. A broken engagement, for one.
“Odd that Amanda never mentioned an ex-fiancé in any of our conversations. Wouldn’t you agree, Peaches?”
The cat wound in and out of Tucker’s sticks and legs before shooting toward the main house where Tucker kept a stash of cat food and treats. “Who names a black and white male cat Peaches?” Tucker asked, following a safe distance behind.
His thoughts went back to Amanda. What had they talked about when they were together? Her grandmother. The house. The work that needed to be accomplished while Molly was in the rehab hospital. She’d shared snippets of the often frustrating medical side of her grandmother’s case quite freely.
“So, I met with a nutritionist,” she’d told him. “There’s a chance some of Molly’s problems with cognition and memory may be a result of poor nutrition and an imbalance in her potassium levels. Who knew you could OD on those little bottles of liquid meal replacement?”
He hadn’t thought much about her statement until she grabbed her purse and left with a, “See you later. I have some shopping to do.”
Even though Tucker usually hated shopping, unless it involved a new electronic toy, he’d been a little put out that she didn’t invite him to join her. Three hours later, when Molly’s 1985 Oldsmobile 98 returned, he thanked his lucky stars she hadn’t asked for his help. She’d obviously visited a popular big box store for a high-end blender and enough organic fruits and vegetables to win the Goat’s affection for life.
“I should be prepared when Molly comes home, right?” she’d asked, her tone a bit defensive. As if he had any problem with how she spent her mother’s money. “I figure I’ll practice on us. I could use some decent nutrition, too. Hospital food and take-out is getting old.”
He gave her credit for trying. Whether or not Molly would play ball once she returned to her newly remodeled home was another thing. “You can lead a horse to water but, if he’s partial to whiskey, he won’t drink it,” Ona liked to say.
Chuckling, he realized he was overdue for a trip to Louisiana. He’d introduced his grandmother to video chats a few months back, but that wasn’t the same as sitting across from his grandmother sharing a plate of beignets and sipping café noir.
At least, Tucker didn’t have to worry about Ona on a daily basis since his aunts and uncles lived all around his grandmother. Unlike what happened to Molly, he’d never get a call from the hospital telling him Ona took too many of the wrong pills. The only kind of “medicine” Ruby-Lee Montgomery believed in came from traiteurs—faith healers who dealt in herbs and potions, as well as prayers and rituals.
When he reached the clever overlap where the fence and hedge met, with a two-foot gap between them, he carefully squeezed through the opening to arrive in the main house’s back yard. To the casual observer from the house or the cottage, the fence line appeared unbroken.
“You’re one smart cookie, Molly,” he whispered under his breath, not for the first time. Just like Ona.
Maybe that explained why Tucker had jumped at Amanda’s barter so quickly after they met. He’d been languishing in self-pity at the Graff Hotel lamenting the fact his doctor had ordered him to stay off the mountain until his ankle healed when Amanda offered him a place to stay in return for overseeing the necessary repairs and remodeling to make Molly’s house safe and elder-friendly.
“I can’t be two places at once,” Amanda had said when she proposed trading services. “Between doctor appointments and rehab to help her use a walker, I have to try to get her estate in some kind of order. If you’re here, you can let in the carpenters and make sure nobody runs off with all of Molly’s so-called treasures.”
He may not have liked her condescending tone when Amanda talked about her grandmother’s collectibles, but he’d agreed to the deal because, in return, Amanda had promised to put together a promotional package that would make people flock to Mountie’s Marvelous Montana Zip Line and Enduro Course.
Win-win. No brainer. Not only would his new company get a first-rate write-up in local papers and across the Internet, he’d be able to make sure Molly returned to the home she loved instead of getting shuffled off to a crappy old folks’ home to die alone while her ungrateful progeny reaped the benefits of a lifetime of hard work.
Not that the O’Neal family drama was any of his business, but, dammit, right was right and everybody knew society girls couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing.
His mother was living proof.
Caroline Mayhue of the New York City Mayhues.
When, to her horrified parents’ shock and dismay, twenty-one-year-old Caroline abandoned her God-given talent—and the perfectly crafted future they had in store for her—to run off with a Cajun dancer with a flashing smile and a line Caro couldn’t resist, the New York City Mayhues disowned their only child.
So, Caroline moved in with Reynard Montgomery. They got pregnant, eloped and moved to Louisiana. His family wrapped them in their arms, embracing Caro as one of their own. Tragically, Reynard died of an aneurysm a few months after Tucker’s birth. Caroline lost her anchor, her reason for being in Louisiana. One day, a stretch limousine appeared and Caroline Mayhue disappeared, leaving her baby son with his grandparents.
Society Girl went back to her real life. One that, apparently, had no place for a half-Cajun kid.
Chapter Three
Amanda returned to the dining room, expecting to find Tucker w
ith his injured ankle propped on a chair, but he was gone.
A flash of movement beyond the kitchen window told her where to look.
She bit back a smile. Who in their right mind wore Hawaiian-print board shorts and long johns? Only Tucker. The man had a style that bordered on the ridiculous but somehow worked with his fabulous build, constantly tousled hair, and the irreverent twinkle in his light green eyes.
She grabbed her jacket. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to the weather in Montana. Warm and inviting one minute, colder than a mid-winter Manhattan afternoon the next. And the wind. Did it ever not blow here?
She hurried out the front door and trotted after Tucker the best she could in her ridiculously impractical Louis Vuitton boots. One of the first things Molly had told her when Amanda had shown up at her grandmother’s bedside was, “Sexy shoes have been the downfall of many a woman.”
“Why is that?” Amanda had asked, trying not to laugh.
“High heels attract men who want sex. Men who want a wife are looking for a woman in sensible shoes,” Molly had recited in what Amanda called her “teacher voice.”
Amanda honestly hadn’t expected her grandmother to be so funny. “Mother is argumentative, sullen, opinionated and given to sulking,” June had shared on that long, early morning car ride to the airport. “She thinks being a teacher for all those years gives her the right to talk down to people. Who really cares what the capital of Copenhagen is, right?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, June,” Andrew had snapped. “Copenhagen is a city. You’ve been there. Stop talking before I change my mind about taking you with me.”
Neither Amanda nor her mother spoke after that. Amanda had wanted to stick up for her mother—it was early, after all. So she made a little mistake. Big deal. But people didn’t talk back to Andrew Heller, even to stand up for themselves.
And, honestly, Amanda had heard enough from her parents to make her bring back her old daydream of finding her real parents. Maybe in Montana. After all, the place couldn’t be all bad. Her eighty-something grandmother had lived there all her life.
Montana Rogue (Big Sky Mavericks Book 7) Page 3