After a few minutes on her knees in front of the toilet, the heaving stopped, and she ran a cool washcloth over her face before returning to the computer. She typed in a message, “No argument. Do it now,” and sent the e-mail.
In her mind she calculated how long she had until the photos hit the Internet. Major news outlets would pick them up because there wasn’t much going on in the world this week. Where was a juicy presidential scandal when a girl needed one?
She pulled out her phone and punched in the number for the head of the camp’s board. Those photos would change her future. She had to protect what she’d dedicated so much time to building before everything was torn apart beyond repair.
The way her heart had been.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Trevor stepped to the open doorway of the small cabin when the sound of tires crunching on gravel filled the quiet air.
“Thank God,” Grace muttered, coming to stand behind him. “Someone is here to rescue me.”
“You’re not a hostage,” he said, but widened his stance, placing his hands on his hips so Grace couldn’t easily get past him. The car wound slowly up the long driveway, but he didn’t recognize the dark gray Toyota SUV.
“It feels like it. We’ve been here almost a week with no phone, no television, and no computers. All I’ve got is books and schoolwork. It’s like we’re on some sort of Amish reality show.” She hopped up and down a few times. “Who is it?”
“Don’t know yet,” he said. The midday sun reflected on the Toyota’s front windshield so he couldn’t see whether it was a man or woman driving. Only Dale Rogers and a few of Grace’s teachers knew their whereabouts for the week. Dale had allowed them to stay at his fishing cabin, and Trevor doubted his friend or anyone from the school would have made the location known to someone who wasn’t safe.
On the way from Sam’s house out of Denver, Trevor had made arrangements with the junior high principal for Grace to be excused from school. She had her study guides for final exams, textbooks, and enough clothes for a month-long trip instead of the five days he’d planned for them to get out of town. He hoped it was enough time for the worst of whatever storm had developed because of the photo to pass them by.
If Trevor had his way, he would have kept her up here and off the grid until she was twenty-five. He had no cell phone reception this far out in the woods, so he didn’t actually know what was going on back in the real world. Grace had accused him of running away, and maybe that was true. But he couldn’t take the chance on her being swept up in a media hurricane.
He’d thought it would be easier to wait out the worst of it, but nothing about this week had been easy. The first few days had been spent with his daughter slamming doors, muttering under her breath, and glaring at him. His mind had constantly replayed his final conversation with Sam, and all the ways he’d been a jackass.
He’d picked up his phone a dozen times, so maybe the lack of reception was as much a punishment for him as it was for Grace. After the silent treatment failed, Grace had started arguing her way to changing his mind about the forced isolation.
She’d given a litany of reasons why they needed to go back early and how she could handle the fallout. But her most unvarying theme had been that the incident was in no way Sam’s fault.
Trevor knew that already. He’d known it from the start. But, once again, it felt like a mistake to let down his defenses and trust someone. As he’d told Sam, he could handle alone. Alone seemed to be all he was good at in life.
“We’re going back tonight anyway,” he muttered as the SUV drew closer. “I’m not sure why someone would bother tracking us down now.”
The Toyota pulled to a stop next to his truck and he cringed as Jenny Castelli hopped out and stalked toward the front of the cabin.
“Oh, crap.” Grace gave a strangled laugh. “You’re in trouble now. I’m going to finish packing.” She disappeared down the hall that led to the two tiny bedrooms.
He stepped out onto the porch and closed the cabin’s door. “Did you torture Dale so he’d tell you where to find me?”
“In your perverted fantasies,” she shot back. “Turns out your foreman agrees you’re a complete fool. At least his wife does.”
“You brought Beth into it.” He nodded. “Well played, but you can turn around, Red. I get that you’re here to defend Sam, but this isn’t your business.”
She climbed the porch’s two wooden steps and shoved him hard in the chest, following as he took a few steps back. “I’m making it my business when my friend destroys her life for you and you don’t even have the balls to watch her go up in flames. An idiot is one thing, Kincaid, but a coward is quite another.”
“I’m protecting my daughter,” he said tightly, although the longer they’d remained at the cabin the more he’d doubted that avoiding their problems would solve anything.
“Um, no. Sam is protecting Grace by making herself a human shield. She’s like a damn kamikaze pilot, and no one can stop her.”
“What are you talking about?” Trevor tried to move but the tiny redhead had cornered him against the rough-hewn pine of the cabin’s exterior wall. “She has a niece. That doesn’t have to be a revelation. It’s Grace who is on the line.”
Jenny threw up her hands. “Do you have any access to the outside world up here in Grizzly Adamsville?”
“No, but—”
“You need to get online. The photo of Grace never saw the light of day. The only people who care about her connection to Sam are the ones in your community.”
“That’s not possible. From what we heard, it was going to be a pop-culture scandal when it hit.”
“The gossip sites buried the story when an old series of nude photos of retired supermodel Samantha Carlton broke the Internet. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
He shook his head. “Not one word, but I know I’m not going to like it when you explain.”
Jenny stared at him for a long moment. “Sam traded the reputation she’d spent the last five years repairing to keep Grace’s identity out of the press.” She looked away, as if he disgusted her. “She’s back to being the bad girl of modeling. She’s given up the camp and—”
He grabbed Jenny by the arms and crouched down so they were at eye level. “What do you mean she gave up the camp?”
“I thought you were ignoring what she’d done for your daughter, but you really are clueless up here. Although that doesn’t excuse it. Sam resigned as head of Bryce Hollow. She’s putting the money to fund the camp into a trust and the board is going to hire a new director to run it and continue with the campaign to solicit new donors without her. She didn’t want her negative press to affect the kids who need Bryce Hollow.”
“But the camp is her whole life. She’s completely dedicated to it.”
“Not as dedicated as she is to Grace. Now you know. When you come back to reality, you owe my friend a thank-you and an apology.” She took a step away from him before turning back around. “I have a son, so I get the instinct to protect. Cooper’s father has never been a part of his life, yet my biggest fear is that he’ll come back and try to take my kid from me. The enemy you create in your head is sometimes the most powerful. But you know Sam. Or at least I thought you did. That gooey center comment wasn’t a joke. She’d do anything for the people she loves. The funny thing is I thought she’d be the one to mess up what the two of you had. But she put her heart on the line, and it was a bonehead move to turn her away.” She flashed a humorless smile. “Trust me, I’m an expert on stupidity.”
As soon as Jenny climbed back into the SUV, Trevor turned and pushed through the front door. “Grace,” he shouted. “Let’s go. Now.”
She appeared almost immediately. “I thought we had to clean the cabin before we left?”
“I’ll come back later.”
“What did Jenny want?” She followed him into his bedroom, where he shoved clothes into a duffel bag as fast as he could. “Is Sam ok?”
&
nbsp; “She’s done something,” he said, zipping the bag and hefting it onto his shoulder. “Something about pictures of her in exchange for the image of you. We need to get down the mountain to where we have cell phone coverage.”
“So the photo of me . . .”
“Somehow she made sure no one cared.”
She gasped and whispered, “Sam saved me. But how? I thought—”
“I don’t know, but hiding away up here was wrong.” He moved to where she stood in the doorway. “I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”
“You need to say that to Sam,” she said, but allowed him to wrap his arms around her.
“I will, Gracie. If she’ll give me a chance, I’m going to find a way to make this right.”
After a moment she returned his hug and he felt everything in his world settle. The doubts and fears he’d harbored for so long faded as a hope he barely recognized made its way into the light. His heart stuttered and tripped. Christ, he’d been a fool. But no more.
He locked up the cabin and drove toward the city as fast as his truck would take the winding mountain roads. Just as they pulled onto I-70 heading east into Denver, his phone began to beep incessantly with the voice mails and texts he’d missed while out of coverage range. He reached for it, but Grace grabbed it first.
“No cell phone while driving,” she said and swiped her finger across the home screen.
“Those messages are private,” he said, holding out his hand. “Give me the phone.”
“I don’t want to listen to your—” She sucked in breath. “Daddy, pull over.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Pull over.”
Traffic was light on the interstate in the afternoon, so he quickly signaled and pulled off onto a wide swath of the gravel shoulder.
“Look at these,” Grace said, shoving the phone toward him.
Trevor raised his sunglasses onto the top of his head, squinting at the images on the small screen. “What did she do?” he muttered as his heart thumped hard against his ribs.
“Those are old photos,” Grace said, her voice shaky. “That’s not who Sam is anymore. She did that for me. You can’t punish her for it.” She gripped his arm. “You can’t make me not see her now. I have to apologize. I let my friends see those other photos. I was bragging and then Page sent them and—”
He tossed the phone down on the center console and pressed his fingers to his eyes. Acid filled his gut. Although he understood why Sam had done it, the fact that those pictures were public and that his daughter had seen them burned a hole in his gut. The implication and the media frenzy surrounding them would have been fierce and overwhelming. And he’d taken Grace and run away, leaving Sam to suffer through it alone.
She’d told him she loved him, and he’d walked away.
He was an idiot and a coward and a jackass and . . . the self-recrimination flowed through him until it filled his veins, burning him from the inside out.
“We’ll find a way make it better,” he said, reaching out and running a hand through his daughter’s thick hair. “I love her and I’m going to—”
“You love her?” Grace sniffed and wiped a sleeve across her nose. “Like you’re in love with Sam?”
He didn’t shy away from the truth. He wouldn’t any longer. “I am, sweetie. I hope that’s ok with you because you will always be the most important thing to me. But Sam is—”
“I love her too. I know she’s not my real mom, but I want her to be in my life forever. Like we’re a real family.”
He nodded. A family. That’s what he’d wanted, but fear had paralyzed him until he was too weak to risk his heart. “I made a lot of mistakes, and I hurt her. But I swear I’m going to do whatever it takes to fix this.”
“I’ll help,” she answered immediately.
“You don’t—”
“You’re not alone, Daddy. We’re stronger together than not.”
It humbled him to hear his daughter use the same words Sam had a week earlier.
“Maybe if I talked to a reporter about my relationship with Sam—”
“No.”
“It could be a good way to get them to stop focusing on those other pictures,” she argued.
He gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white, tempted to turn the car around and drive right back into the woods. He could homeschool Grace, right? He could hide her away until she was old enough to . . .
Grace placed a hand on his arm. “You need to stop trying to protect me from everything and let me grow up a little.”
How was it possible that she’d read his mind? He glanced over at his beautiful daughter and went numb as it hit him that as much as he wanted to protect her, right now he was only thinking of himself. His need to control every aspect of his life—and Grace’s—was going to eventually hurt the one person he loved the most.
There were plenty of things in his life that had sucked, but he’d learned from every one of them. He needed to start letting Grace make sense of the world on her own terms, not his.
“I can’t stop wanting to take care of you,” he whispered. “But I know you need to learn how to take care of yourself, too.”
“I’m not going to make the same mistakes my mother did,” she answered. “I’ve got you and Sam to look out for me.”
He forced out an even breath. His daughter was still so young, but she was right. He couldn’t do this on his own. “Ok, sweetheart. Let’s get home and figure out our plan.”
Grace gave him a watery smile. “Superdad and Wonder Daughter to the rescue.”
“That was a killer, right?”
Sam jumped at the voice that spoke behind her as she hurried across campus, then pasted a smile on her face when she recognized the woman from her human behavior class.
“The final exam,” the young coed clarified. “I thought I’d studied, but now I’m terrified to get my grade.”
Better than being terrified of an assault by a paparazzo hiding in the bushes, Sam thought, but said, “The questions were definitely intense, but I’m sure you did fine.”
“Fingers crossed for both of us,” the girl answered as they crossed the street toward the dorms. “Do you have plans for the summer?”
Sam swallowed and cleared her throat. “Not really.” She pointed to the parking lot at the end of the block. “I’m headed that way.”
“See you in the fall,” the brunette said with a smile and they parted ways.
“Enjoy your summer,” Sam said and was proud her voice didn’t wobble, a discordant mix of peace and emptiness filling her at the thought of the future.
For the first time in years, she trusted that she was going to make the right choices in her life. Her mistakes were part of who she was, but they no longer defined her.
A few short weeks with Trevor and Grace had made her understand she needed to own the woman she’d become because of her past. She was finally able to see the good parts of herself that her friends had been trying to point out for years. But hope was still a fragile thing in her hands, delicate and easily broken, like a bird that had fallen from the nest too soon but was determined to survive.
She walked past a gardener planting an arrangement of colorful annuals along the path near the university’s main hall, and the ripe scent of dirt reminded her that life always held the possibility of renewal.
She’d used the initial commotion over the hotel photos as a catalyst to make changes that would have normally frightened her into inaction. The first step had been resigning from her position at Bryce Hollow. It was a big shift, moving on from the camp that she’d made successful. At the same time, it was liberating to step out from the shadow of her sister’s memory. Sam had something Bryce never would—her life. She vowed to cherish every day.
She’d warned the board of what was coming and met with them the morning after the images were released. The group’s chairman had assured her they’d find a way to spin the story so she didn’t have to distance herself from the camp, bu
t Sam insisted. It was the right decision for Bryce Hollow and for her. The familiar tune of the bond she’d shared with her twin had become stale and off-key. She was ready to release herself and develop her own individual freedom.
There’d been a few reporters hanging out on her street the first day and a flurry of calls and requests from the media. Peter had handled everything and had seemed both shocked and overjoyed that several magazines and fashion houses had also contacted him, begging for her to come out of retirement. She was considering her options, only so she could leave the camp with a healthy financial foundation as she walked away.
Most of her energy was spent thinking about her future. The fact that it might not include Grace and definitely would be absent of Trevor was the sticking point she couldn’t get over. He’d broken her heart, but she understood his intentions and knew their shared past had shaped and damaged him just as it had her. Most of all she missed both of them.
Kendall, back from her honeymoon, Chloe, and Jenny had rallied around her, taking turns camping out at her house and refusing to leave for the first few days. They’d watched a lot of chick flicks and eaten the food Ben sent over from the restaurant. She’d taken Frank on long walks through the neighborhood once the reporters had gotten tired of waiting for her and left. He seemed as happy at the end of a leash, sniffing tree trunks and other dogs, as he had been romping through the open spaces at camp.
If her dog could adjust so easily then she’d pull up her big girl panties and make the best of it as well. She drove home, planning on another stroll through nearby Wash Park to enjoy the gorgeous spring weather. She felt almost normal when she was outside.
But in her house, the memories of spending time there with Trevor and Grace swirling around like a thousand bits of dandelion fluff, her emotional equilibrium was constantly tested. It had gotten so bad she’d taken to sleeping in the guest bedroom, unable to go near the bed and sheets that might still hold his scent.
She parked on the street and was just starting up her front walk when a man stepped out from behind a tree and shoved a microphone in her face. “Have you offered your niece any advice on the modeling industry, given your troubled past?”
Tell Me Again Page 24