Falling back on her tried-and-true method of dealing with nerves, Ella swept the man with a swift, assessing gaze, sizing him up in a single glance.
She couldn’t get much of a read on his expression under the cap, but his honeyed Southern drawl had sounded … carefully neutral. Not particularly friendly, but not threatening, either. His body language was noticeably loose and relaxed, especially considering he was sitting on top of two thousand pounds of rawboned muscle.
So he was comfortable in his skin, comfortable in the outdoors—but even as she thought that, she noticed the way his leather-glove-clad hands were clenched tightly around the horse’s reins.
Interesting. Maybe he wasn’t as comfortable as he seemed. But that was a mystery she didn’t have time to solve.
Shooting for a sunny smile, Ella found it best to appeal to the manners hopefully ingrained in this Virginia gentleman since he was a much littler boy.
“As a matter of fact, I’m a bit turned around. If you could point me in the right direction, I’d be so grateful. And then you can get back to your ride.”
He crossed his arms casually and leaned forward over the horse’s heaving neck. The morning light caught a gleam in his shadowed gaze that sent a shiver of awareness down Ella’s spine.
“Well, ma’am, I surely do appreciate you giving me permission to keep riding on this land, but I’m not the one who needs it.”
Ella blinked at the edge in his tone. Wow, it had been a while since she misread someone so completely. “Needs what?”
“Permission. Fact of the matter is, you’re trespassing.”
The rustling sound from the bushes behind her had Ella stiffening. Willing Merry to have the sense not to come charging into this tense little standoff, Ella said, “I’m just passing through.”
A slight sneer twisted his mouth, drawing Ella’s attention to the sensual, masculine curve of his lips. “Is that right?”
He sat up tall in the saddle once more, his gaze moving to something over Ella’s shoulder as he went on, voice bland as butter. “That’s not what I heard. Jo Ellen said you and your sister were coming to stay a while. Get to know the island. And her.”
This man knew their mother. The knowledge struck Ella like a blow to the head.
As if he could read the complex stab of emotion under Ella’s ribs, he shrugged and sat back in the saddle. “Then again, maybe I heard wrong. And maybe that’s a good thing. God knows, Jo doesn’t need any more trouble than she’s already got.”
He was sending out waves of disapproval strong enough to nearly knock Ella off her feet. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Just a friend of your mother’s. And I have to tell you, darlin’…” One leather-gloved finger tipped up the brim of his ball cap, and for the first time, Ella got a glimpse of his handsome, hard-jawed face and burning green eyes.
Those eyes skewered her, pinning her in place as he told her, “You look like big trouble to me.”
“Well, hello, gorgeous!” Merry’s delighted voice shattered the tense, shocked silence as she sidled up next to Ella, her lips parted in a happy grin.
The man’s dark gold brows winged up, a maddening smirk twisting his lips. Ella clenched her fingers against the itch to slap that mocking half smile off his face.
“She’s talking to your horse,” Ella said in the most withering tone she could muster.
“I am,” Merry agreed, with stars in her eyes, all her attention zoomed in on the big, dark reddish-brown horse. “What a beauty. Not that you aren’t nice-looking, too, mister.”
“Hey, don’t do me any favors,” he said, clearly amused.
Merry had worked her magic once again. Since they were kids, people had been drawn to Merry’s bubbly personality, the vivid, reckless sense of fun and life that beamed out of her bright blue eyes. Within moments of meeting most people, Merry had them eating out of her hand.
A thin sliver of something oddly like jealousy pierced Ella’s belly. Reminding herself she didn’t give two shakes if this unfriendly stranger fell all over himself for Merry, Ella turned determinedly away from him.
“We need to get going,” Ella told her sister. “Apparently, we’re trespassing on this man’s property.”
“I never said it was my property.”
“Then what, exactly, is your problem?” Ella couldn’t help the sharpness of her voice, even when it made the horse eye her nervously and prance in place.
“Shhh,” Merry cooed, before the man could respond. She held out one calm hand, green-tipped fingers curled under to let the horse bump its nose against her knuckles.
Ella fought the urge to snatch her sister’s hand away from the horse’s whuffling nostrils and big teeth. Merry had always loved animals. The horses on the island were a huge part of the draw for Merry in coming here, Ella knew. This was part of the plan—the sooner Merry got her fill of the horses, the sooner they could go back to D.C.
“You must be Merry. You’re good with him,” the man observed.
“Is he a gelding?” Merry was all eagerness, the unguarded innocence of her voice at odds with the sullen darkness of the makeup ringing her eyes, the streaks of punk-rock red highlighting her brown hair. “What’s his name?”
“Yep, he’s a gelding. I call him Voyager. Do you ride?”
Merry shook her head, hand still outstretched and that enchanted look turning her pixieish face soft and dreamy. “Never had the chance to learn.”
Ella squeezed an arm around her sister’s shoulders, a pang hitting her heart.
“It’s not too late,” the man observed, watching them. “I’m sure your mom would love to teach you. Or I could.”
Time to take control of this encounter. Sending the rider a frosty smile, Ella said, “Oh, I think we’ve taken up enough of your no doubt valuable time. Just tell me how to get to Jo’s house, and we’ll be out of your hair.”
With a reluctant sigh, Merry gave the horse’s nose one last stroke and said, “Guess I’ll start the ten-minute process of squishing this blimp of a body back into the car. Nice to meet you and Voyager.”
Ella waited until Merry was in the car before whirling to face the unnamed stranger who felt he had the right to meddle in their relationship with their mother.
“Look. I understand you’re a friend of Jo Ellen’s,” Ella said, striving to keep her voice even. “But that doesn’t give you the right to pass judgment on me or to put ideas in Merry’s head about what this visit is going to be like. You don’t know us. You don’t know our family history, and frankly, it’s none of your business, anyway. So tell me how to get out of here, and hopefully that will be the last we’ll see of each other.”
He studied her for an endless moment, the heat in his green eyes taking away the chill of the storm-washed morning air. There was something new on his face, an expression she couldn’t read, as he stared down at her.
A pulse of feminine awareness pulled at Ella’s consciousness, but she didn’t allow herself to break eye contact.
“You’re right,” he finally said, his drawl slow and rough as honey over gravel. “I don’t know you, but I do know your mother. And if you’re here to break her heart, then the only directions I’m going to give you are for how to get back to the mainland.”
*
Fire kindled in her blue eyes—that same clear blue she shared with her mother and sister. Grady Wilkes stood his ground in the face of Ella’s shocked anger, but it wasn’t the easiest thing he’d ever done.
After five years on Sanctuary Island, surrounded by friends and family, he was a little out of practice when it came to dealing with strangers.
And despite how much Ella and Merry looked like their mother—from their wavy dark hair right down to the fact that their mouths were made for smiling—and despite the fact that he’d never seen Jo Ellen happier than the day she found out her daughters were finally accepting her standing invitation to visit, Grady was worried about his friend.
Jo wanted so badly for
this to work out, and he understood better than anyone that guilt and regret could make a person do crazy things. It was a tough situation, because Jo definitely had plenty to feel guilty about, and Grady realized her daughters had every right to hold a grudge.
But he didn’t want to see Jo get hurt.
Blood ties don’t make a family. Family are the people who are there for you when you need them most.
Even though she’d turned down every one of his uncle’s marriage proposals, Jo Ellen Hollister was the closest thing to a mother that Grady had left. And he’d do whatever it took to protect the vulnerable heart she tried so hard to hide. Getting taken in by a pair of opportunistic scam artists who hadn’t shown any interest in her until she inherited Windy Corner and the valuable land it sat on—that would kill Jo Ellen.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Ella tossed out, crossing her arms over her chest in a way that had his eyes skimming over her curves without any help from his brain. “But we’re not leaving. Not until Merry has the chance to work through her obsession with getting to know Jo Ellen.”
Grady frowned. “So it’s all about Merry. Right.”
As if she hadn’t picked up on the sarcasm dripping off his words, Ella shrugged. “Hey, believe me, I tried to talk her out of this trip. But Merry is a force of nature when she has her heart set on something.”
Grady couldn’t fight the tug of curiosity. It was his besetting sin. “What about you? What’s your heart set on?”
He didn’t know what answer he thought he’d get—if she were really a gold digger intent on hooking her claws into her mother’s recent inheritance, she’d hardly be likely to admit it straight-out.
Ella stared up at him, an unreadable expression on her pretty face. “All I want is to get Merry through the next few days and be there for her when she realizes the fantasy of a mother that she’s dreamed up in her head is nothing close to the reality. And then I want to get us both back to D.C.”
That, at least, sounded like the truth.
An unwelcome spark of respect kindled in Grady’s chest. He knew all about protective urges and how deep they ran, and he couldn’t fault Ella for wanting to take care of her very pregnant younger sister.
In return for her honesty, and in recognition of the fact that he clearly wasn’t going to have much luck running them off before they ever got to Jo’s, he pointed at the road where her car was pulled over.
“You missed the turnoff for Jo’s place about a mile back,” he said, instinctively rebalancing his weight as Voyager danced under him. “Her land is the last acreage inhabited by humans on the east side of the island. Once you get out this far, it’s all dedicated as a nature preserve and wild horse sanctuary. We try to keep nonislanders—and their cars—out of here, to ensure the safety of the horses and their habitat.”
She arched a brow. “You sound like a public service announcement. Do you get paid to patrol the marsh for trespassers? Are you authorized to shoot on sight?”
“Obviously not, since you’re still here.”
“Right,” Ella said. “I never did catch your name, Mr.…”
She trailed off expectantly, those blue eyes wide and intent on his face. Grady had the unfamiliar urge to mess with her—he’d been known around the task force for being a prankster, but he’d always kept his sense of humor to the guys, or his cousins. People he knew well, who knew how to take a joke.
Not prickly, put-together women he’d known for all of thirty seconds.
Shaking it off like a dog emerging from a lake, he offered her his gloved hand and said, “Wilkes. Grady Wilkes.”
She hesitated before stepping closer, and he wondered if she was nervous about the horse or about taking his hand. Whatever it was, it didn’t stop her from reaching out.
“Ella Preston,” she said, and the moment their fingers touched, Grady had to clamp down on a shudder of sensation.
Even through the thin, supple leather of the work gloves covering his scarred hands, Grady felt electricity arc between them in a flash of heat and awareness. Her eyes widened with it, and she stumbled back a pace.
Sudden panic had him curling his stiff fingers into as tight a fist as he could manage, keeping his leather glove from peeling away from his hand with her jerky movement.
Ella blinked at him, the moment spinning out between them as fine as spider silk strung between two pine trees as Grady’s heart banged against his rib cage.
“Ella! Are you coming? We need to go, because I didn’t. Go, I mean. And it’s starting to get dire up here.”
Without another word to Grady, Ella whirled and hustled around her car, calling out, “I’m coming, and I’ve got directions.”
Grady watched her walk away, unwillingly fascinated by the sleek, sexy movement of her rear end in those conservative khaki pants.
There was a time, he remembered, when even this loose fist would’ve been more movement than his hands could deal with. When he’d thought he’d never get any range of motion back, or be able to use his hands as more refined instruments than paddles.
The memory had him gripping the reins more tightly than he needed to as he wheeled Voyager around and pointed him in the direction the car had disappeared in.
Nothing about this situation was as cut-and-dried as he’d thought when he fielded that happily tearful phone call from Jo telling him her daughters were finally coming to visit.
If Grady was going to figure out where to go from here, he needed to see how Merry and Ella reacted to Jo, and to the big, rambling, falling-down plantation house she’d inherited. And he needed to be there for Jo if it all went to hell.
It had nothing to do with wanting to see more of gorgeous, strong-willed, overprotective Ella Preston before she hightailed it off the island back to the city where she belonged.
Nothing at all.
CHAPTER 4
Jo Ellen Hollister stared across the gleaming expanse of the polished mahogany desk and fought the feeling of relief washing over her. She wasn’t here to lay her troubles at this man’s feet.
She’d given up the right to expect his help.
“I know I said we needed to take a break, but…” Paper crinkled in her grasp, and she had to force herself to unclench her fingers, to smooth out the wrinkles in the letter from the county.
Harrison McNamara shifted his tall body, making the tufted leather of his chair creak. “Stop that. I hope you know you can always come to me. No matter what.”
Jo closed her eyes briefly, then forced herself to meet his gaze. “Thank you.”
He leaned forward, his dark eyes full of the intent focus and attention that never failed to send Jo’s pulse into overdrive. Her heart kicked against her rib cage with bruising force, but this time she was pretty sure it had nothing to do with Harrison’s deep-set brown eyes.
“Honestly, I can’t believe you’re only coming to me with this now,” he said. “I know we haven’t exactly been on the best of terms these last few months, but if you needed money to get the stables up and running…”
“She didn’t tell me.” Ridiculous. It was intolerable that out of the whole mess, this single fact could make Jo’s throat squeeze tighter than a fist. “I found out when I got this letter.”
The words came out whispery and cracked. Jo cleared her throat forcefully and sat up in her chair. “When Aunt Dottie gave me the money—I should’ve questioned it, but she told me a bond had matured, and I just … took it. I wanted my stables so badly.”
Those dark eyes of Harrison’s softened at the corners. “You wanted to make her proud of you, to show her you were independent.”
“And instead, I made her think she had no other option than to go to the meanest, nastiest old man on Sanctuary for a loan.”
Harrison smoothed his close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard with a jerky, agitated hand. “I don’t understand why she didn’t come to the bank.”
Jo sat back, her shoulders bending down under the weight of new knowledge. “There’s no way she
could have gotten a bank loan without you knowing about it. Maybe she thought you’d tell me, and then I’d stop her from putting up the house as collateral. Which I would have. Or maybe she thought she could talk old man Leeds into better terms—she knew him her whole life, ever since they were kids. Who can say?”
They certainly couldn’t ask Dottie now.
Grief reached up and slapped Jo in the face, sharp and shocking. Grief faded, everyone said. Time healed all wounds. But Jo had mostly found that as her sadness faded from a constant pain to a dull ache, it had become an even more painful surprise when it flared back up.
“I’ll look into the lien for you,” Harrison said, reaching across the desk for the letter.
Jo surrendered it reluctantly. With everything else she had going on, there was no way she’d have time to do as full and thorough an investigation into this situation as Harrison would do. Without even breaking a sweat, because the man was a genius with finance.
“I appreciate it. You can keep that letter—it’s a copy. I have the original at home in a safe place.”
Expectant silence stretched between them for a long, agonizing minute before Harrison’s mouth went flat and hard. Keeping his eyes on his own hands shuffling papers around on his desk, he said, “All right, then. I’ll let you know what I find out.”
Jo ached at the distance between them. “Harrison, this means a lot to me. You mean a lot to me.”
He snorted out an unflattering breath. “Sure. Not enough to marry me, but enough to come running when you need something.”
Jo stiffened, but before she could snap out the retort burning her tongue, Harrison held up a big, blunt-fingered hand.
“Forget I said that.” His voice was gruff and tired, burrowing tendrils of guilt into Jo’s heart. “I’m glad you came. I’ll be even gladder if it turns out I can do something to help. And I’m not doing it for thanks, or to guilt you into changing your mind about us. But I suppose I’m enough of an optimist to hope this situation might show you there are some benefits to going through life as a couple, to having someone to rely on.”
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