“Tonight?” He sounded like Tessa.
“Why not?”
“Okay. But can we tell my family first?”
Not exactly what I’d envisioned when I talked about eloping, but suddenly it was exactly right. “I’d like that.”
“Good, because I don’t know if my mother would forgive me if I didn’t invite her.”
“She would too.”
“Yeah, but Angela wouldn’t, and neither would our girls.”
Our girls. I laughed. “You already convinced me.”
“I’m glad. Hey, I have a surprise for you.” He opened the car door and scooped up something from the seat. “The girls and I picked it out today.” A velvet ring box sat in the middle of his palm. “It’s just a band, but I swear I’ll get you the biggest diamond you could ever want someday.”
I kissed him. “I don’t want one. I already have everything I want.”
Thirty-two hours later on a brilliant Monday morning, Tessa stared out at me from a computer screen. “You look beautiful! I wish I could be there.”
“You can’t. I’m not coming between you and Mom and Dad.” We both knew that if they ever found out she’d known about my elopement and not told them, she’d suffer. “That would make your work life miserable.”
“I don’t care about them.”
I knew differently, but somehow I had to make her feel okay about this. “You don’t understand, Tessa . . . you’ve been there for me all my life, whenever I needed you. You were mother and best friend. You kept my secrets and took care of me. Today isn’t the end of everything. Just the beginning. So what if you’re watching from a screen instead of holding my hand? I know you’re with me in your heart. And you can be sure that after today, I’m still going to need you, and probably your money, so you have to keep your job. Besides, someday you’re going to bring us all together. I know it.”
She gave me a sad little smile. “You think they’ll ever come around?”
“I don’t know. Everyone changes. Now I have to go!” I handed the computer to Jameson’s brother Tim, who had arranged for Tessa to virtually attend the ceremony.
Except for the suddenness, our attempt at elopement wasn’t anything like eloping at all. We’d shown up at his parents’ house yesterday, the girls and Makay with us, and this morning, Heidi had arranged for her local minister to perform the ceremony. Her friends had also organized a small celebration afterward, and Antonio and Jameson had somehow even come up with a two-night, three-day honeymoon on a Californian beach.
Heidi insisted that I wear her wedding dress, which was a little tight, but with a girdle Makay ran out to buy, I managed to squeeze into it. The simple sheath and modest train made my figure look amazing, but my favorite thing about the dress was the slight yellowing of the material.
Jameson wore a suit I didn’t know he owned, and he looked so handsome and intelligent that I felt a moment of panic. Could he really love a woman like me? But the second he took my hand, all doubts vanished. It didn’t matter where either of us came from, only how much we loved, what we dreamed, and how we worked for those dreams, no matter how impossible they seemed. I would be his light, and he would be my anchor, and together we’d build our future.
He leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “I love you.”
I closed my eyes and breathed him in. He could always do that to me, make the world go away until there was just the two of us and no one else. This man, my heart, my soul, and keeper of my dreams. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I kissed him deeply. “I will always love you.”
Epilogue
Four Months Later
I stood on the chair, stretching to screw in the curtain rod holder. It was the cheapest we could find, and rather ugly, but the curtains Michelle had made, not only for Elsie’s room but for the entire house, covered the rods entirely. Michelle had visited here often during the three months since we’d moved into the house, and though she wasn’t ready yet to take responsibility for Elsie, the two had shared a few overnight stays at Michelle’s. Both Michelle and her cousin had helped clean and paint the house, as well as make the curtains.
Outside, I glimpsed Jameson working in the yard by the front gate, my view of him partially obscured by a tree. He and I were both back in school, me with a new major in family sciences, and so far we were making it, but only because Makay, Tessa, and Saffron helped run the house. We still had the living room to paint, bare wood peeked through in the kitchen where pieces of linoleum were gone, and the yard was awful, but someday we’d get it all finished. Makay had planted a few flowers near the porch that made me happy every time I looked at them.
We’d added four girls to our family in the past month, but only one officially through DCS. The other three were runaways who’d shown up on our doorstep one day, all together, with a ragged scrap of the newspaper article someone had run about our efforts in refurbishing the house. After the article, someone had donated a green refrigerator, and a used washer and dryer were dumped off anonymously during the night. The new girls, however, were our best gift.
Ten girls and Makay and Nate meant we were already over capacity in our seven bedrooms, and I’d ended up clearing out the small office downstairs so Saffron could still have the private room I’d promised. We had a living room and a family room we could use for more girls in a pinch.
Or maybe in another year, a baby of our own.
The mailman was driving down the road, and Jameson went to meet the truck. Jameson accepted the handful of mail and scanned through the envelopes, freezing on one. His gaze shifted to the house, and our eyes locked through the window. He waved, but there was something odd in his expression. I jumped down from the chair and went to meet him.
He was faster than I was, joining me at the top of the stairs on the second floor. He handed me the envelope. “From your parents.”
Trepidation filled me. I’d sent them pictures of the wedding and of the house, but they hadn’t responded. I knew from Tessa that they were furious with me.
Slowly, I opened the envelope. Inside was the same article the runaways had carried here with them, but with it was a check. For ten thousand dollars.
I gasped and sat abruptly on the top stair. This must be a portion of the money they’d someday planned to spend on my wedding. Tessa had probably been working on them.
“What is it?” Jameson sat next to me.
“New tile for the kitchen,” I said, trying to blink back tears. “Maybe enough for grass in the spring, and a walkway, if we do the kitchen tile ourselves.” I let the check fall into his hands. We desperately needed the money, but what I really wanted was a letter, a phone call, a visit, or some indication that they had accepted my choices. That they understood the choices were mine to make.
Jameson wiped the tears on my cheeks, gazing into my eyes. “Sweetie, it’s a start. It’s their language, that’s all. You should write to thank them.” He hesitated. “Unless you want to send it back.”
“No!” I’d accept for the girls. They needed so much, and Christmas was in less than two months. “You’re right, and I will send them a thank-you card. But I think . . . instead of the grass, let’s use some of it for bunkbeds in the bigger rooms. That way we can help—”
“More girls,” he finished. Because the girls who weren’t official foster children didn’t count against our current joint eight child limit, so DCS might give us two more. “I guess grass can wait, and I’ve always wanted to learn how to tile.”
He kissed me then, and my sadness vanished. My parents would come around someday, maybe after Jameson and I proved ourselves. But I wasn’t going to live my life wishing I could remake them. I’d made the right choices.
“Come on outside,” Jameson said. “I have something to show you.”
He took me down past the girls, who were watching a video in the living room, and outside to the gate. “I’ve been working on it in the garage for three weeks. Just got it up. How do you like it?”
He
pointed to where he’d erected two elegantly carved wooden posts and a beautiful, handmade sign, white with carved letters painted in black that read Lily’s House.
I laughed and threw myself into his arms, kissing him with abandon. “I love you Mario Jameson Perez.”
“Not as much as I love you.”
“Shut up and kiss me, would you?”
He did just that, stealing my breath and infusing me with delicious heat that radiated to every part of my body.
Lily’s House.
Now I was definitely official.
NOTE FROM RACHEL BRANTON: Thank you for downloading this book and for spending a little time with me in my world! If you enjoyed House Without Lies (Lily’s House Book 1), please consider telling your friends or posting a short review. Word of mouth is an author’s best friend and much appreciated. For your enjoyment, I have included in the next section the first chapter of Tell Me No Lies, book two of the Lily’s House series, followed by a bonus preview of The Change, a contemporary urban fantasy I wrote under the name Teyla Branton. You can see all my books on the About the Author page, or sign up for new releases here. Thanks again!
THE END
Sneak Peek
1
I blinked to hold back the tears, stunned by what I was hearing. No! I don’t believe it. But I did.
Hurt followed the disbelief, growing to an agony that urged me to physically lash out at Sadie, my best friend and bearer of the terrible news, but I was frozen in place, as though my heart had stopped pumping blood to my suddenly useless limbs.
Besides, it wasn’t Sadie’s fault.
Oh, Julian. How could you?
Sadie put a hand on my shoulder, but the sympathy in her eyes did little to comfort me. “I’m sorry, Tessa. I really am. I didn’t want to tell you, but . . .” She sighed and continued in a whisper, “I would want to know if it were me.”
Her words released me from my mute state. “I need to be alone.”
“Of course. I understand. Call me if you need me.” Sadie stepped close and hugged me while I stood without moving. I barely noticed her departure.
My eyes wandered the room of my childhood, only recently familiar again since I’d come home to Flagstaff to prepare for the wedding. Mother had insisted on dinners and celebrations, and because Julian and I planned to live in Flagstaff, where he would work in his family business, it only made sense for me to leave the job at my father’s factory in Phoenix several weeks early. I missed the job and my friends the minute I’d left, but Julian and I were ready to take the plunge into matrimony—or so I’d thought.
The door to my walk-in closet was open, and I could see the wedding dress I was to have worn in just over forty-eight hours. Bile rose in my throat, and a tear skidded down my cheek. I brushed it impatiently away. I wouldn’t cry for a man who had betrayed me.
Since tonight we were having the rehearsal dinner, last night had been Julian’s bachelor party. Sadie’s brother had been at the party and had told her all about Julian disappearing early with a woman whose hands had been altogether too familiar with a man who was about to be married.
I slumped on my bed, covered with the homemade quilt my grandmother had made, my eyes still locked on the white satin dress. Drenched in lace and small pearls, it had a sweetheart neckline and a gorgeous chapel train. The dress cost seventeen hundred dollars and had taken three weeks of daily shopping to find. My mother had been with me every one of those days, which had been a torture in itself.
I bit my lip until I tasted blood.
I’d met Julian Willis when I’d come home to visit for the Christmas holiday, though if the truth be told, my visit had more to do with my horse, Serenity, than seeing my parents. At my mother’s insistence, I’d tagged along on their invitation to attend a party thrown by the Willises. I hadn’t minded going, once I met Julian. If his blond good looks and toned physique hadn’t won me over, his attentiveness and charm would have. After countless trips to Phoenix on his part and numerous weekends home on mine, the inevitable had happened: we’d fallen in love. He asked me to marry him, and I said yes.
Two weeks later, my father and Julian’s had negotiated a business arrangement to take effect after the wedding. The Willis family owned a huge frozen food conglomerate, and my father produced a line of breakfast cereals, where I managed the swing shift. With the help of the Willises, our business would expand to new markets my father had never before reached. I wasn’t sure what the Willises were getting out of the deal since our business was stable but not growing. Maybe they would simply have in-laws who were up to their standard of living.
Not that we’d ever been poor in my lifetime—thanks to my grandpa who’d worked himself into an early grave to create that first bowl of sugar-coated cereal. I still missed him terribly.
What am I going to do?
The awful thing was that a part of me wasn’t all that surprised. Julian was attractive, thoughtful, and a big flirt—a hit with ladies of every age. Half of the marriageable women in Flagstaff had chased him at one time or another, and before we’d met he’d had a bit of a reputation—one he’d assured me was complete fabrication.
I won’t marry a liar and a cheat. Every woman deserved better than that. I wondered if I’d purposely been blind or if he’d been good at hiding things. Perhaps his betrayal had been a momentary lapse, but if so, what did that say about our future? If I couldn’t trust him now, how could I trust him for the next sixty or more years?
Maybe it’s all a mistake. I latched onto the idea. Yet in the next minute I had to discard it. Sadie had been my best friend since kindergarten, and I’d trust her with my life. There was no way she would have spoken unless she was certain it was true. More likely she hadn’t told me everything she knew, not wanting to hurt me further.
A knock on the door startled me from my thoughts. “Who is it?”
“Your mother.”
“Come in.”
Elaine Crawford didn’t so much as enter a room as sweep into it. She was the epitome of grace and elegance. Even at eight o’clock on a Thursday morning, her hair was styled in an elaborate twist that was both attractive and left her beautiful neck bare.
“My, Sadie was in such a hurry this morning. I’ve never seen her run off so quickly. Did you two have a disagreement?”
I shook my head, unwilling to trust my voice.
My mother’s eyes didn’t leave my face. “What happened? We can’t be losing your maid of honor at this late date.” She smiled to show she was teasing, but there was a warning under the words.
“Sadie and I are fine.”
“Wonderful.” She walked to the closet and peered inside. “You’re going to look like a princess in this dress. Even without you in it, I could stare at it all day. Julian won’t be able to take his eyes off you.”
I gave her a weak smile. I did love the dress—a good thing, since it had taken so much time to find one we both agreed on. My mother wasn’t a woman to give up on any goal, and her goal had been to find a dress that not only would I agree to wear but that would make people sigh with admiration for years to come.
She rambled on, going over a last-minute menu change and reminding me we needed to pick up my father’s tuxedo. “I hope Lily’s man comes dressed appropriately,” she said, almost as an afterthought.
“Mario’s wearing a suit. Lily said he looks great.”
“I wish you hadn’t insisted on their coming.”
“Lily’s my sister. Of course she’ll be at my wedding.”
“You weren’t at hers.”
I didn’t say anything. Lily had done what she felt she had to, and I’d been happy for her.
“He will never amount to anything,” my mother added.
“And you think Julian will?” I couldn’t hold it back any longer, though I knew my mother was the worst person to confide in. She’d never been the kind of mother to bake cookies, to take her kids to the park, or sit and discuss school and boyfriends. As teenagers, Lily and I h
ad agreed that she was like Mary Lennox’s mother in the Secret Garden—too occupied with her own life and goals to really care about her daughters. “Well, you’re wrong. I just found out he cheated on me. Maybe more than once.”
My mother didn’t gasp. She didn’t hug me and ask me how I knew. She showed no sympathy for me or anger toward my fiancé. She simply stared, her arms folded tightly against her stomach.
“I can’t marry him,” I said.
That brought her to life. “Of course you’ll marry him. It’s you he loves, no matter what you’ve heard.”
Something in her demeanor tipped me off. “Wait. What do you know about this?”
“I know that Julian is good for you. He’ll take care of you. His family’s business is doing well, and our contract with them will do wonders for our company as well. Your company someday.”
“You knew? All this time, you knew?”
It was one thing for my mother to disown a daughter because she’d married a man she didn’t approve of, but I couldn’t believe she’d want me to commit my life to a man who cheated before he was even married.
“How long has it been going on?” I asked. “Does everyone in town know?” I could imagine it now, people wagging their tongues and in the end sympathizing with Julian because he was oh-so-handsome and exciting, as if that excused everything.
Not in my book.
“The truth is,” my mother said, “marriage is little more than a business arrangement. Eventually you will realize that, and then you will understand this is a problem you can overcome. Besides, Julian will see the error of his ways. He’ll always come back to you.”
I hadn’t even known he’d left me. I shifted on the bed, searching for something to make her see reason. “Would you have married Dad if he’d been cheating?”
“I would and I did.”
I gaped at her. I knew my parents’ marriage wasn’t perfect. Growing up, Lily and I had often clung to each other at night as they’d argued loudly in their bedroom. I’d been glad to escape to college, though it had hurt to leave Lily behind. But she was far more resilient and determined than I ever was, never wavering from her dreams of leaving and building her own life. It was she who’d fallen in love and eloped in the middle of the night a year ago when she was only twenty-two.
House Without Lies (Lily’s House Book 1) Page 21