by Lori Wilde
“Make a U-ey. Hurry, hurry.”
“Okay, okay, keep your shirt on.” His grin turned wicked. “Unless, of course, you want to take it off.”
Any other time she would never have said what she said next, but she was so stunned at seeing her snooty mother slumming at an amusement park that she was not her normal self.
“Shut up and drive, Vinetti,” she snarled.
“Yes, ma’am.” He obeyed and made a U-turn at the next traffic light.
She was amazed at his acquiescence. Hmm, maybe that was the way you handled a guy like Vinetti. If she’d growled “shut up” at Evan, it would have hurt his feelings so badly he would have pouted for an hour. Nick, on the other hand, seemed to respect her for it. Then again, Evan had never given her any reason to snarl “shut up” at him.
“Drive slower.”
“Cars are on my ass, Rosy.”
“Tough.”
“When’d you get so bossy?”
When indeed? She wasn’t acting like herself, but right now that felt like a good thing. Delaney undid her seat belt and scooted over to Nick’s side of the truck and craned her neck to peer out his window. She was sitting so close she could hear him breathing.
They crept along Seawall Boulevard, cars piling up behind them, drivers honking their horns in irritation.
“What are we looking for?” he asked.
“I thought I saw someone I know.”
“And that’s worth snarling traffic over?”
“In this case, yes.”
“What? Do you think that you saw your fiancé with another woman?”
“No.”
“Then what on earth could you have seen that would make you holler like a banshee with her hair caught in a chamois wringer?” Nick asked.
“That’s none of your business.”
“I hate to disagree with you on that, but your sighting is the reason these cars are kissing my bumper. You owe me an explanation.”
“I saw my mother, okay? Happy now?”
“With a man other than your father?”
“What’s with you and the cheating-loved-ones scenarios? Oh, oh.” She tapped his shoulder. “Slow down even more, we’re almost there.”
They inched past the amusement park entrance.
Teeth clenched, Delaney scanned the area. She looked first left toward the Gulf, then right toward the collection of ragtag carnival rides.
Nothing.
No one.
Her mother had vanished.
Chapter 8
Shaking with fear and revulsion, Honey climbed into her sleek white Cadillac and sped out of Galveston as fast as she dared, desperate to reach home and take a long, hot, cleansing shower to wash away her sins. Her heart was in her throat, her stomach was a tight knot, and her hands smelled of the twenty thousand dollars she’d just counted out. She felt very dirty.
Blackmail was an ugly business.
Then again, so was the thing she had done.
All these years, she thought she’d gotten away with it. Thought she had fooled everyone. Thought no one would ever discover her terrible secret.
In retrospect, she’d been both foolish and arrogant.
Now she was trapped. Forced to pay to keep her shame quiet and never knowing how long the blackmailing would continue.
And she had to keep it quiet. For her daughter’s sake. No one must ever discover the truth.
At least until after the wedding. When Delaney was married to Evan and safely out of harm’s way.
Nick didn’t know why he’d told Delaney about his mother. He rarely talked about Dominique anymore. He wasn’t the kind of guy who liked stirring up the past, and he certainly didn’t like examining his feelings and talking about them.
Unfortunately, once the memories of those old feelings had been aroused—feelings of loss and anger and sadness—he could not easily stuff them back down into his subconscious. Even after he’d gone home for the day, he kept replaying his afternoon with Delaney over and over in his head. To relieve the pressure, Nick was back at the gym, pushing himself, exercising his body in an attempt to free his mind.
It wasn’t working.
Almost always, when things got too emotionally tough, exercise provided him with the release he needed. During the whole Amber/Gary Feldstein fiasco, he shed nine pounds, ended up running a five-minute mile, and bench-pressed two-sixty. Thanks to Gold’s Gym, he’d been able to put the scandal out of his mind and get through the humiliation.
But this was the second time exercise had failed him where Delaney Cartwright was concerned.
He lost count during bicep curls because he kept thinking about Delaney’s soft voice and the way her deeply green, intelligent, expressive eyes encouraged him to spill his secrets. He forgot how many laps he’d done in the pool and had to go around again to make sure he wasn’t shortchanging his routine because he’d vividly imagined kissing that slightly crooked little mouth of hers. He forgot to put the timer on the treadmill and ended up staying on fifteen minutes longer than he intended because he kept wondering how her silky hair would feel slipping through his fingers.
What was it about Delaney that loosened his lips? Why did he feel this need to explain himself to her?
He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all. She seemed to hold some kind of magic key to the trunk where he kept his vulnerabilities locked up tight. She knew just how and when to slip that key into the lock and turn it. Nick barely knew the woman, and he had already told her things he’d never told Amber. Not even after being engaged for eighteen months.
He’d never even told his ex-wife the story behind Lalule.
When she’d run off with Feldstein, Amber had cited Nick’s inability to communicate as the reason she’d left. Ha! If she could see him now. With Delaney, he was communicating like Geraldo Rivera in the Middle East, spilling everything he knew. How laughably ironic.
Then it suddenly occurred to him why he would share his deeper feelings with Delaney and not with Amber. For one, Delaney was an empathetic listener, but he suspected that was secondary. He could talk to her because with Delaney, he had nothing to lose. She was engaged to someone else. He didn’t see her as a threat to his self-image. With her, he wouldn’t forfeit any macho points for revealing his tender side.
Once he realized that, he felt better.
Okay, he didn’t have anything to worry about. If tears had misted his eyes a little when he’d talked about his mother, no harm, no foul.
Except whenever he thought about Delaney, something tightened in the dead center of his chest, and that disturbed him. A helluva lot. The woman was engaged to another man. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, have these feelings for her.
Clearly, he had to find a way to chase her off. Not only because he didn’t want her succeeding at selling Nana’s house, but for his own mental health as well. He had to be subtle about it. Nana loved her. Hell, the whole family was smitten with her. If he didn’t handle this right, he’d come off looking like the bad guy.
Quitting the job had to be Delaney’s idea. But how to accomplish that goal? What he needed was an underhanded plan.
A smile broke across his lips as the perfect plot popped into his head. He’d turn on the charm and pretend he was trying to win her away from her fiancé. That ought to do the trick. Pleased with his solution, Nick breezed through the rest of his workout.
Yep, Delaney Cartwright’s days as his Nana’s house stager were numbered.
“You’ve got to be mistaken. Our mom? At an amusement park? Talking to a one-eyed carny woman?” Skylar scoffed when Delaney dreamed of her again.
“Yes.”
Tonight, Skylar was dressed in scarlet cowgirl boots and a fawn-colored suede jacket with fringe on the sleeves. “I can’t imagine in what universe that scenario is even remotely possible.”
“I’m telling you, it was her.”
“Did you ask her about it?”
Delaney blew out a breath. “Yes… no.”
&
nbsp; “Did you or not?”
“I tried to, but I couldn’t get the words out. I did mention that I had a job on Galveston Island.”
“Well, that was straightforward and to the point.” Skylar picked up a tube of lipstick off Delaney’s vanity, plunked down in front of the mirror, and rolled some on. “Ick! Too pale. Ditch the pink and get some red.”
“If you don’t like my lipstick then don’t use it.”
“I don’t have a choice. You’re the only one who dreams about me.”
“Mother and Daddy don’t dream about you?”
“Not much. Not anymore.” Skylar uncapped Delaney’s mascara and leaned forward to brush it across her eyelashes.
“Then why do I keep dreaming of you?”
“Who do I look like, Sigmund Freud? How would I know? Anyway, back to Mother.”
“I don’t know why she was there, but I’m telling you it was our mother.”
“If you’re so certain, then you should have confronted her, not wishy-washed around. If it had been me, I would have just come right out and said, ‘Hey, Mom, spied you on Galveston Island chatting up a one-eyed carny chick; what gives?’ ”
“Yeah, well, that’s you.”
Skylar propped her cowgirl-booted feet up on the vanity and cocked back in the chair until only the two back legs were left on the floor. “Remember how Mom used to carry on about the evils of carnivals and street fairs and amusement parks? What was her deal? If it wasn’t for Uncle Lance and Aunt Maxie taking me with their kids, I would never have even gone to Sea World.”
“I never did get to go to Sea World,” Delaney said. “By the time I was old enough, you were dead and Mom wouldn’t let me out of her sight.”
“Wonder what her deal is with carnivals? A rock concert phobia I get, but carnivals? Come on. Everyone loves carnivals.”
“Not our mother.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“About what?”
“Finding out what Mom was doing there.”
“I’m not going to do anything about it.”
“Why not? Scared of the one-eyed woman?”
Truthfully, yes. “What would be the point?”
“So you’d have something over on Mother. We spent our lives totally under her control, and now you have the opportunity to prove she was not only hanging out at an amusement park, but that she lied to you about it. And besides, aren’t you just a wee bit curious as to why?”
“Why would she be there?”
“Maybe she was buying drugs. Mother always told us that behind the scenes, carnivals were a hotbed for drugs.”
“Mother? Doing drugs? Please.”
“Yeah, you’re right. If she was doing drugs, she wouldn’t be so uptight.”
“I’ve been thinking about it all day,” Delaney said. “It makes no sense.”
“Maybe she went there to meet a lover.”
“Hello, I saw her with a woman.”
“Eeps! Mother’s a lesbian? That’s her big secret.” Skylar leaned back too far and the chair hit the ground. She rolled on the floor, laughing hysterically. “Good thing I’m not real. Otherwise, that might have hurt.”
“Until now, I never realized how silly you were.”
“I’m forever trapped in your imagination the way I was when I died. Of course I’m silly. I’m sixteen.”
“When I was a kid I thought you were so mature and sophisticated.”
“We all have our shattered illusions. Like Mother at an amusement park. Life will never be the same.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
Skylar shrugged. “Have you told Mother about the wedding veil yet?”
“No.”
“Wanna get to wear it with impunity?”
Delaney eyed her sister. “What do you have in mind?”
“Go talk to the one-eyed woman. Get proof it was our mother you saw at the amusement park. Then tell her you want to wear the veil. If she refuses, you whip out your trump card and inform her that you’ll tell Dad about her clandestine trip to Galveston if she doesn’t put her stamp of approval on the veil.”
“But that’s blackmail.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I can’t blackmail my own mother.”
“No? Why not? She’s been doing it to you for years.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Using my death to keep you in line. Be perfect, live up to her expectations, or you’ll end up dead. That’s emotional blackmail. She’s kept you from being the person you were truly meant to be. This, my sis, is the ideal time to declare your independence and break free. All it requires is a little daring on your part. You up for it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.” Skylar winked, and then Delaney woke up.
Honey couldn’t sleep.
She’d spent the night tossing and turning beside a snoring James Robert, thinking of what she’d been forced to do the previous day and fretting over something Delaney had said at dinner the night before, about having a house to stage out on Galveston Island. She’d announced it quite out of the blue and then stared at Honey as if she knew something.
Could Delaney have seen her at the amusement park?
She had to find out.
Just after dawn, she got up, dressed, and went to Delaney’s room.
She knocked on the door, and before her daughter could tell her to come in, Honey was already pushing her way over the threshold. She found Delaney sitting at the vanity in her bathrobe, flatironing her hair. Delaney’s hair, without the proper products and styling techniques, looked shockingly unruly.
“You’re up early,” Delaney said mildly.
“I thought maybe we could have a heart-to-heart.” Honey made Delaney’s bed and stiffly sat down on it.
“Is this about the wedding preparations?” Delaney eyed her from the mirror.
“No. Not really. We just haven’t had much of a chance to talk lately, and I was feeling we were a bit disconnected. You’ve been busy with this new project, and I’ve been busy too.” Honey came over to pat her shoulder. “Here. Let me have the flatiron. You missed a spot along your nape.”
Dutifully, Delaney handed her the ceramic styling iron and Honey breathed a sigh of relief. The insurrection had been a small one.
“Sit up straight; you’re slouching.”
Delaney sat up, but kept her eyes lowered so Honey couldn’t peer into the mirror and read her thoughts. But she could feel tension tightening the muscles along the back of her daughter’s neck.
“Busy doing what?” Delaney asked.
Alarm spread through Honey. Was her daughter being cagey? “Why, planning your wedding of course.”
“Right,” Delaney said in that calm, unemotional tone of hers that at times Honey found slightly demeaning.
You’re the one who stressed the importance of learning to manage her emotions. She’s just doing what you taught her.
Ah, but she’d learned too well. Honey feared she never really knew what her daughter was thinking or feeling behind those enigmatic green eyes so much like her own.
The price of controlling her youngest daughter had been high, but it was a cost Honey had no choice but to pay. She refused to let Delaney end up like Skylar. Even after seventeen years, the memory of her oldest child painfully wrenched Honey’s heart. Haunting guilt sent her gaze flicking over Delaney, looking for any problems to nip in the bud. She took in the serene sophistication of her daughter’s large bedroom with its cool sage green walls, cherrywood sleigh bed, and haute couture–inspired accessories.
“Did you have a wedding-based errand at the amusement park on Galveston Island yesterday afternoon?”
Honey froze. Don’t reveal a thing. Keep your face emotionless. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come on, Mother, I saw you.”
The words, once spoken, were as powerful as a slap. Honey’s cheeks stung. She gulped. How was she going to handle this?
> Lie through your teeth. It’s the only way to survive.
Grappling to control the terror mushrooming inside her, Honey laughed, trying to sound carefree, but she only ended up sounding nervous. “Don’t be absurd. You know how much I hate Galveston and amusement parks.”
“Yes, I do, which is exactly why it struck me as so odd to see you there.”
“I wasn’t there,” Honey denied. “It wasn’t me.”
The flatiron hissed in the silence between them, steam rising up from Delaney’s hair. The silence lay heavy. An accusation.
“Are you having an affair?” Delaney asked.
This time her laugh was honest. “Don’t be silly, darling. I would never jeopardize my marriage for a fling. I love your father with all my heart. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love him.”
“You couldn’t prove it by me.” Delaney’s voice was flint.
“Excuse me?” This change in her daughter bothered Honey immensely. Skylar had bucked her, spectacularly and often, but Delaney? Never.
“You nag Daddy constantly. He can’t ever seem to do anything to please you.”
Honey was taken aback. “I do not.”
But it was true. She did nitpick James Robert. It was for his own good. Without her he would just drift along, never taking a stand, never feeling strongly about anything.
“I know things between the two of you fell apart after Skylar died, but Mother, it’s been seventeen years. Hasn’t Daddy been punished enough?”
“I’m not punishing him.”
Delaney’s accusation was ludicrous. Wasn’t it?
“No?”
“I’m helping him to improve.”
“What if he doesn’t want to improve? What if he likes being the way he is? You married him that way. How come he isn’t good enough for you anymore? You criticize me all the time too. How come I’m not good enough either? What’s this impossibly high standard you’re trying to reach? Face it, Mother, we’re never going to be good enough for you.”
Shocked to her very core, Honey sucked in her breath. “Darling,” she whispered, “I had no idea you felt this way. I only correct you because I love you so much. I want to see you excel. To have a rewarding life.”
“Have you ever considered your definition of excellence might differ greatly from Daddy’s and mine?”