Here in My Heart: A Novella (Echoes of the Heart)

by DeStefano, Anna

  And before Lisa really knew what was happening, she and the Dixons and Dru were walking past the front desk toward one room, Sally and her parents toward another one, while Officer Douglas stayed behind.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dru raced up the Douglas steps, needing Brad to be there more than she’d ever needed anything.

  She’d stayed to help Lisa in her interview. By the time they’d been released, the lobby had cleared out except for Sally, who’d finished up first, and her family. Brad had been gone for more than an hour, Travis had said.

  Dru had wanted to make a stop first, on her way home. Instead, she’d called Horace on the drive over to ask if he would handle her request the same as he was Brad’s. The lawyer had assured her he’d be glad to. He’d said Vivian would have been proud, and that he was, too.

  “Brad?” She pushed the unlocked front door open and rushed inside.

  He wasn’t in the parlor or the kitchen. She ran up the stairs, but he wasn’t in his room. Something told her to keep going, down the hall, peeking into Vivian’s room first, finding it empty, and then arriving at her own.

  “You’re here,” she said, out of breath.

  “Always,” Brad answered.

  He was sitting on the edge of her unmade bed, flashing her back to the mind-blowing night they’d spent together. Then she saw the full duffel bag at his feet.

  “Really?” Her heart wouldn’t stop racing. “Then why are you packed?”

  “I’m not going far.” He smiled, not angry or worried or sad, thank God. He looked just as confident as ever, in her or them or whatever had made him sound so sure back at the sheriff’s department that they could make it. “I’m just giving you space for a few days while I figure out my next move. Travis said I can stay with him. Your foster parents did, too. I think they’re wrangling to adopt me, now that I’m homeless, or at least I will be once the will is probated.”

  “No, you won’t.” She hurried closer before she lost her nerve. She could handle this. She could handle anything now. She dropped to her knees in front of him. “Not after Horace transfers the house to your name.”

  His mother’s quilt had spilled over the side of the bed. Dru was on part of it. The rest lay beneath Brad in a rumpled, oddly perfect way.

  “You’re going to have to say that again.” He drew her closer. They were face-to-face, his eyes searching for answers.

  “I don’t want space.” She kissed him. “I love you, too. I don’t think I ever really stopped.”

  So much could have gone wrong today with the girls, but it hadn’t, because Brad had been there. The same with the last few weeks, when he’d stuck it out and lived up to their agreement, no matter how hard she—and Vivian’s crazy scheme—had made it. Vi’s funeral loomed ahead, and it would be difficult, too. But Dru would be facing it with someone who’d loved Vivian just as much as she had. Someone amazing, who wanted to help Dru face every good day, and difficult day, to come.

  I’m here, for you, forever . . .

  Since he’d said it, she’d been trying to make sense of what had happened between them again so quickly. She couldn’t, of course. Love, as she was learning, rarely made sense. It wasn’t built to be easy. It simply was, along with every dream come true and potential problem that came with sharing your heart with someone. There was no protecting yourself from its possible dangers without running from the rest, too.

  It was time to be brave, like Lisa had said. It was Dru’s turn to go all in, the same as Vivian always had.

  “Say it again,” Brad whispered, his voice shaking, his eyes shimmering. “Say you love me.”

  “I love you, Bradley Douglas. I don’t want the house, or the Dream Whip,” she insisted, “not unless I can have you, too, to make them my home.”

  “You can have me any way you want me, darlin’.” He kissed her. He made her dizzy, just like their very first kiss seven years ago. He chuckled. “But what’s in it for me, besides real estate?”

  “Me,” she said, “never giving up on you. The way you’ll never give up on me, while I shack up in your house and you work for slave wages in my restaurant. Us figuring out what we want for our lives. Everyone in town talking behind our backs, like they talked about the ridiculous things Vivian did. We’ll grow old and paste crazy memories into a book and buy cuckoo clocks and never look back and regret anything we were too afraid to try.”

  “Is that all?” He let her push him down to the quilt and slide up his body to kiss the dampness from the corners of his eyes. “Can I make an honest woman out of you, even if it stops some of the rumors? I want legal grounds to fight with you about my plans for the Whip.”

  “And I want as much trouble from you as possible before we compromise.” She pulled his T-shirt free from his jeans and over his head. “We can’t have the rumors stopping completely. And I want lots of trouble to kiss and make up about.”

  He rolled her beneath him and smiled.

  “Piece of cake,” he promised.

  Don’t miss Oliver and Selena’s story in Waiting for Your Love, the first novel in Anna’s new Echoes of the Heart series.

  Turn the page for a sneak peek!

  Waiting for Your Love

  Echoes of the Heart

  Coming Spring 2015

  Chapter One

  It was Oliver Bowman’s favorite time of the afternoon. No longer day, not quite dark. The dusky world was disappearing before its setting sun like a twilight miracle. Relaxing into his Atlanta apartment’s minimalistic décor, he breathed deeply, crossed his arms, and took in the spectacle beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows of his midtown loft.

  Another workweek had been conquered; a kick-ass gauntlet of expected challenges and last-minute crises. He’d tackled everything flawlessly, earning the ridiculous hourly rate he’d quoted his latest client, plus a bonus for beating his deadline. He’d made his life about exceeding, not settling; driving forward, not looking back. This day, each new day he succeeded, was light-years away from another life, another place; the reckless beginning he’d barely outrun. And yet on this particular Friday afternoon, his past felt closer than it had in years.

  Even in the slow-moving, genteel South, enough happened in Atlanta after dark to keep a different sort of man entertained. Not that Oliver indulged anymore beyond what was required to entertain clients. His partying days were behind him. Otherwise, he’d have stayed in New York. Or San Francisco. Or Chicago. Or Tokyo. Instead, whenever he was free of work commitments, his idea of a perfect evening was carving out as much space and silence as possible.

  Atlanta had once been his backyard. At eighteen, in the historic town of Chandlerville, a suburb twenty miles northeast of where he stood, he’d crashed out of his foster home. A year ago, he’d returned to Atlanta needing the grounded feeling of something familiar, making the city his base for expanding his independent consulting company. Moving back had been more than a business decision, but business was where he’d firmly kept his focus. Even his daily workouts now, his organic diet and his chemical-free lifestyle, were about keeping his mind clear for work—so he wouldn’t renege on his financial obligations elsewhere. Except tonight, after a nerve-settling run through Atlanta’s deserted streets, staring out at his high-rise sunset view, he found himself wondering what it said about him: that he’d been this close to his foster family for going on twelve months, and no one from that chapter of his life knew, except for his “brother” Travis.

  He’d just ridden the elevator up from streets still steamy from the early April heat. He’d clocked in at five miles and was drenched in sweat. He needed a shower before his West Coast conference call. But the view that had sold him on this space had demanded its due. He was going to smell like a locker room when he Skyped about cloud computing data solutions with a high-powered, LA-based CIO.

  He rocked back on the heels of the badly worn running shoes he kept forgetting to replace, unable to talk himself into hitting the showe
r. Something had been bugging him all day: a sixth sense, telling him to slow down, to wait, to reflect on the people he’d left behind. Tonight, the sparseness of his loft’s décor wasn’t doing its job. There was no deflecting his memories of the comfortable, welcoming home where the Dixons had once wanted him to belong.

  His apartment was a flashy penthouse unit with a hefty lease covered by the latest of the corporations that needed his work-for-hire IT talents. The top-of-the line 4x4 in an underground garage was another high-end perk that freed up his cash for better uses. He’d been sending checks home to Chandlerville for years, from the first moment he could, to help his foster parents. He was determined to pay forward whatever he earned. After all, without the Dixons none of this would have been possible.

  The only measure of success that mattered to him on a personal level was how many other kids he now helped with what he made—and from how far away he could do the most good. So why was he in Atlanta? And why had he found himself wondering all day if Joe and Marsha Dixon were finally proud of him. Or if the beautiful girl he’d already lost before he’d left Chandlerville might smile one of her soul-bending smiles if she could see him now?

  The ball-busting teen still lurking inside Oliver sneered.

  Why the hell did he care what Selena Rosenthal might think?

  Travis had said she’d moved away from Chandlerville not long after Oliver left. Oliver’s first love had within a year gotten married and had another man’s baby. Selena had a new life, and so did he, a respectable life that allowed him to financially assist the hard-working people who’d finished raising him. He’d caused them nothing but trouble, and yet Marsha and Joe had to the very end continued to fight for him. Now they were inspiring their next generation of lost boys and girls, and he had their backs—from a safe distance that didn’t tempt him to want more of their charming, small-town world where he wouldn’t fit now any better than he ever had.

  His apartment phone rang.

  He tore his gaze from the streaks of coral and blue dusting the horizon, sensing somehow that the moment he’d dreaded all day had arrived. He grabbed his cell from the pocket of his jogging shorts. The display confirmed that he hadn’t missed a call or his appointment. The kitchen phone sounded off again.

  No one in the city had his home number. No one anywhere had it, save one person. Wherever he moved for business, he maintained a landline and the international messaging service it fed into. He’d shared the number only with Travis, who knew better than to use it except for emergencies. The sporadic conversations they’d shared had always been the result of Oliver contacting his foster brother, not the other way around.

  He headed for the kitchen, his gut twisting. He ripped the phone from its receiver.

  “Hello?”

  A flash of fear mangled the word. He hated the sound of ringing phones. A little boy’s panic rode him, memories of a boyhood Southern night when his world had exploded around him. His mind flashed to what had followed: a coffin and his birth mother inside of it. The only person who had ever really been his was gone forever. He’d been thirteen.

  “It’s about Dad,” said the ragged voice on the other end of the line. Travis still lived in Chandlerville, surrounded by the court-appointed family whose love had saved them both. “It’s bad, man.”

  Chapter Two

  Oliver Bowman was back in Chandlerville.

  Through early morning shadows, Selena Rosenthal locked gazes with the one who’d gotten away. A ruggedly handsome man stared back at her from the front steps of Joe and Marsha Dixon’s sprawling house—a yard and a hedge and another yard away. Even after seven years of regret and wanting to go back and fix the mistakes that had led to her and Oliver’s last disastrous argument, she’d have known him anywhere.

  Her mother’s screen front door whooshed shut behind her, smacking Selena in the butt. She waited for Oliver to respond, to move, to do anything except stare back. She couldn’t stop her smile, or the pathetic half-wave that followed it. And Oliver just stood there through it all, unresponsive, until she forced herself to look away.

  Oh. My. God.

  Oliver.

  His unfriendly expression had dripped with you’re dead to me. She tried to breathe and glance back at him, but she couldn’t. And then the head of the tiny bundle of energy and hair bows bobbing in her arms smacked Selena in the chin. She gasped so quickly, she hiccupped.

  “We have to water Grammy’s flowers, Mommy,” Camille said, a clinging, sweet-smelling monkey determined to get down. Her child’s first mission each morning was to make certain Selena cared for the fragile buds and bushes Selena’s mother obsessed about. “We promised, and I left my watering can out back.”

  “Go find it.” Selena set her daughter on the ground. “Hurry, or we’ll be late for school.”

  Camille’s watering pot was a prop. It was a diversion to keep her busy with the flowers that grew in a wild tangle under her bedroom window, while Selena did the heavy lifting of hoisting hoses and sprinklers from beneath the azaleas flanking the front porch. Most mornings the process resembled a grudge match: her dragging and untangling everything, so she could soak the SweeTart colored blooms of the monstrous hydrangeas that bordered the Dixon property next door.

  Most of the rest of the country was still sleeping off the lingering chill of winter. But spring had once more graced Chandlerville with unseasonable heat. From now until September, they’d be visited by an afternoon sun that reveled in its power to wilt even the hardiest of indigenous species. That made daily watering a must, according to Selena’s mother, who prided herself in being a master at bullying delicate buds and blooms to thrive under adversity.

  Just a few months ago, Belinda Rosenthal had welcomed Selena and her daughter home after years of estrangement—with the understanding that Selena would pull her weight around the house. Which included helping nurture Belinda’s sprawling gardens every dawn and again at dusk. In the seven years that Selena had been away, having the most beautiful yard in their quaint, middle-class neighborhood had remained a driving force in her mother’s life. Belinda never worried about keeping up with the Joneses. But by God, she was determined to be envied by them, every time someone she knew drove by.

  A rattle from the Dixons’ place, the sound of keys jingling, recaptured Selena’s attention. She braved another peek while Camille ran inside. The neighboring yard was empty, almost convincing Selena she hadn’t just ogled a full-grown, ruggedly attractive version of her teenage obsession. But of course she had. Her body knew she had. She was still tingling, head to toe. She always did whenever Oliver was near. He’d just gone inside, was all.

  He’d made her feel safe once, when they’d been together. She’d been special, because he’d wanted her. From the moment they’d met, for the first time in her life, she’d known unconditional acceptance. He’d tried to protect her. He’d tried to help her, when he hadn’t yet known how to help himself. In the end, she’d convinced even Oliver to give up on her.

  Her phone rang. She dragged it out of her purse and checked the display. She stabbed the talk button with her thumb and didn’t bother with a greeting.

  “I can’t talk long,” she said. “We’re already running late.” Selena’s little girl returned with her watering can, squeezing through the screen door. “Don’t worry, Mom. We’re taking care of the yard.”

  “Remember, we’re having meat loaf for dinner,” Belinda said in place of a thank-you. “I wanted to remind you to run by the market on the way home.”

  If Selena’s mother ever stopped reminding her about every single detail of the life Selena was rebuilding, she’d have to check Belinda for a pulse.

  “I’ve got your list,” Selena said, reminding herself to be grateful. Nurturing would never be her mother’s gift. But Belinda was trying as hard as she was capable to make their second chance at being a family work.

  “Lock up when you leave.” The line went dead, presumably so Belinda cou
ld micromanage her Chandlerville post office coworkers into a fugue state.

  Selena wouldn’t hear from her again until her mother’s midday check-in call, when Belinda would couch her concern for the deplorable state of her daughter’s life in even more unwanted reminders about nonsense things that couldn’t possibly matter now. As a child, Selena had thought her single mother too busy for soft gestures like comforting hugs and encouraging pep talks, or that Belinda had been too disappointed by the way her own life had turned out to even try. At twenty-five, Selena could finally appreciate her mother’s hands-off, distant way of caring, even if it would never become the unconditional love Selena had craved since she was five and her father left them.

  She dropped her cell into the tote bag her mother had lent her for work. Selena’s anemic budget had been able to afford only a secondhand backpack that Belinda deemed unsuitable. But there’d been no help for it. Before leaving Manhattan, Selena had sold her designer purses and most of her Upper East Side wardrobe to a resale shop. So her mother had moved her own belongings to an older bag and handed Selena her favorite, waving away any attempt at a thank-you.

  “I found it by the begonias,” Camille chirped. She held up her watering can like a prize.

  The outrageous names of flowering plants rolled off Camille’s tongue the way other little girls chattered nursery rhymes. She loved her grandmother’s blooming, ever-changing garden world. The delicate, bonfire red of the annuals Camille had discovered last week were her latest favorites.

  Selena secured the front door and the screen. She hugged her child, enchanted all over again with Camille’s tender heart and how freely she embraced life’s adventures.

  “Pamper your forget-me-nots.” She steered her daughter toward the perky blue flowers. “I’ll give Grammy’s hedge its morning drink while there’s still shade.” And while Selena pulled herself together enough to drive them to Chandler Elementary School.