Dandelion Wishes
Dandelion Wishes
Melinda Curtis
Will Jackson was a control freak and a killjoy.He had been since they were kids. He’d made it his mission to come between Emma Willoughby and her best friend—his little sister—all their lives.But why?Until the day of the accident Emma had always thought of herself as adventurous, not dangerous…. And then her friend had almost died.She desperately needed to apologize, to try to explain, if she could.Will had managed to keep the two apart while Tracy was in the hospital, but now that she was home in Harmony Valley, the winemaker-wannabe had to understand that getting past this was the only way they could heal.And yet even if Tracy was able to, Emma wasn’t sure she could forgive herself.And Will had made it abundantly clear: he wouldn’t sleep until he’d found retribution.
Will thought dandelion wishes were a waste of time.
Will thought dandelion wishes spread weeds into the world. Will thought–
Emma spun around and plucked the dandelion from the side of the road. She didn’t care what Will thought. She and Tracy had been making dandelion wishes since they were kids.
She turned toward home, stopping in the middle of the bridge over Harmony River. She tried to catch her breath. She tried to be as calm as the water flowing beneath her.
It wasn’t possible. Not even with a dandelion wish at the ready.
What would she wish for?
Dear Reader,
Welcome to Harmony Valley!
Things aren’t as harmonious here as they once were. Jobs have dried up and almost everyone under the age of sixty has moved away in the past ten years, leaving the population…well…rather gray-haired and peaceful.
Enter Will Jackson, newly minted millionaire and hometown success story. He’s been on the fast track too long and is looking for a break. But then his sister, Tracy, and her friend Emma get in a car crash, and he realizes Harmony Valley would be a perfect place for Tracy to stay permanently. If he could just create a business for his sister and keep her away from Emma’s spur-of-the-moment adventurous tendencies, everything would be fine.
Emma may look as if she walked away from the accident unscathed, but she bears emotional scars. She wants to rebuild her friendship with Tracy and heal. But nothing in life ever comes when you want it, especially not love and healing.
I hope you enjoy Will and Emma’s journey, as well as the romances in the works for friends Flynn and Slade as they get their winery in Harmony Valley off the ground. I love to hear from readers and you can always check on the progress of Harmony Valley on my website, www.MelindaCurtis.com.
Melinda Curtis
Dandelion Wishes
Melinda Curtis
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
MELINDA CURTIS grew up on an isolated sheep ranch, where mountain lions had been seen, and yet she roamed unaccompanied. Being a rather optimistic, clueless of danger sort, she took to playing “what if” games, which led her to become an author. She spends her days trying to figure out new ways to say “he made her heart pound.” That might sound boring, but the challenge keeps her mentally ahead of her three kids and college-sweetheart husband.
Nothing in my life would be possible without the love
and support of my immediate family, extended family
and close friends. This past year was a roller coaster
and you helped keep me strapped in.
With special thanks and hugs to A. J. Stewart, Cari
Lynn Web and Anna Adams for holding my hand and
kicking my butt throughout the writing of this book.
And to Carrie Knudson, thank you for the laughter,
the love and the memories.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE (#u2b35890e-f65a-5de0-baea-3e22524aac9e)
CHAPTER TWO (#u7818a9d4-e8da-5862-8a27-dce268520dfc)
CHAPTER THREE (#ua1c547c2-57e6-59b8-a10e-f2764dc6f5f8)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u1395bd35-70cd-5294-96e6-55776c3a6c24)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u1b0b49c9-0f96-59ed-a731-74e4c35bba55)
CHAPTER SIX (#uf3ba25d0-2f24-5266-acbb-64498fda96c5)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
TODAY WAS THE day.
There’d be hugs and smiles, reminiscences and laughter.
And apologies. Of course there’d be apologies. But they’d be accepted and waved aside because best friends stood by each other. Always.
Today was the day.
If Emma Willoughby repeated it to herself often enough, this time it might come true.
Standing in the parking lot next to clumps of cheery daffodils, she checked her purse to make sure Tracy’s gift was inside. She silenced her cell phone. She pasted a friendly smile on her face, passed under the grand portico and headed toward the massive glass doors of Greenhaven Rehabilitation Center.
The doors slid open as she neared. On previous visits, she’d recognized people in the lobby—elderly actors recovering from strokes, aging politicians recovering from hip surgeries, elite athletes recovering from injuries. But in nearly six months, she’d never caught a glimpse of Tracy.
The Sunday receptionist, Francie, looked up to greet her, recognition stealing the beginnings of a smile from her face.
Today, Emma silently prayed.
Francie pushed her rhinestone glasses up the bridge of her nose, tugged the lapels of her aquamarine polyester jacket tightly together and sent an icy glance toward a tall, aging security guard, who stepped forward to block Emma’s path. In all the months Emma had been coming here, this was the first time Francie, Greenhaven’s gatekeeper, had set a guard on her.
“Young lady, I’m terribly sorry.”
Emma’s smile weakened. She would not give up. She would keep coming every Sunday until someone let her in. Tracy’s family couldn’t keep her out forever.
“I know I can’t go inside, Francie.” Emma reached into her purse for her gift—a Carina Career doll. She’d been handing the receptionist a doll every Sunday for months. This week Carina was an astronaut. The dolls were meant as a reminder of their friendship and to let her best friend know Emma believed she still had plenty of choices ahead of her. “Could you please give this to Tracy?”
Francie blanched. “I can’t take that. Tracy Jackson is no longer a patient in this facility.”
Emma felt a moment’s panic. “What do you mean?”
“Tracy Jackson is no longer a patient in this facility,” Francie repeated. She glanced at the security guard once more, a disapproving line deepening her already furrowed brow. “I must ask you to leave.”
Tracy was dead.
Emma tried to form a word—any word—that would refute that possibility. But the air in the lobby had become thick and heavy—suffocating—until Emma knew she was going to collapse if she didn’t move.
On a gasp of air, she spun and ran to her car parked at the far edge of the visitors’ section. The chilly bay breeze clawed at the hem of her dress, buffeted her hair. By the time she reached the new Subaru, she was shaking so badly she dropped her purse to the ground and leaned against the car door as memories assailed her.
She and Tracy on the bank of the Harmony River building a mud fort for frogs. She and Tracy dreaming about different futures in the Carina Career section of the toy store. Tracy bursting into their dorm room doing an uncoordinated victory dance after landing an internship at an ad agency. And then the most painful memory—Tracy’s near-lifeless body, head smashed against the passenger window of Emma’s car. And everywhere...blood.
They’d known each other since they were three, and yet Tracy’s family hadn’t let her say goodbye, hadn’t let Emma know she had died.
But why would they?
Emma had been driving the car that caused the accident, the accident that had put Tracy in the hospital, the accident with killing complications.
A violent, shuddering sob threatened to break her into sharp, tiny pieces. Tremors shot to her fingertips. Useless fingers that had been unable to draw or paint since the accident. Emma ached to create from a blank page or canvas again, but if an empty, soulless existence was her penance for the accident, so be it.
Francie appeared at the Subaru’s fender, huffing and clutching a shoebox under her arm. “She’s not dead.”
Emma’s limbs turned to liquid and she slid to the ground, landing on her tailbone, asphalt scraping her legs. She ignored the pain. Tracy was alive.
“There, there.” Francie knelt beside Emma, smelling of breath mints and garlic. “Company policy forbids me from telling you what happened, but you came every Sunday for more than five months. It broke my heart to turn you away.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Emma choked out.
“Are you okay to drive? Want me to call someone?”
Granny Rose. Her grandmother had practically raised Emma while her mother established a career as a cutthroat trial attorney. After Tracy, it was Granny Rose that Emma turned to with her problems. She had always looked up to her grandmother’s wisdom, wit and courage. But Granny Rose was eighty and lived hours away in Harmony Valley, in the northernmost corner of Sonoma County.
“Fine. I’m fine.” Or she would be when she could catch her breath. Emma scrubbed at her eyes. “Do you...do you know where Tracy is?” It would be exactly like Tracy’s self-made millionaire brother, Will, to have found a specialist in Switzerland and moved her there.
“Francie!” a male voice rumbled from beneath the portico. “I hear you talking to that girl. Don’t make trouble for yourself.”
Francie frowned and pressed the shoebox into Emma’s hands. “I can’t say more, but I wanted you to have this.” Using the car for balance, the receptionist stood. “You take care.”
Emma lifted the shoebox lid. More than twenty thumb-size Carina Career dolls stared vacantly up at her, one for every week Emma had tried to come and visit Tracy.
A slip of paper was tucked in the corner of the box.
Had Tracy written her a note?
Emma reached for the paper with trembling fingers.
An invitation to visit? Or a request to stay away?
An address was scrawled in thin, spidery handwriting on Greenhaven stationery, too neat to have been written by her friend. Emma made out a familiar address in Harmony Valley.
Tracy’s.
* * *
“THIS IS GOING to be good.” The false enthusiasm left a sour taste in Will Jackson’s mouth. He opened the front door of his childhood home. “Dad’s been lonely with both of us gone. And now he’ll have a full house. You and me, just like old times.”
Tracy walked in, looking to all appearances like any other twenty-six-year-old in blue jeans, a beige T-shirt and short, tousled blond hair. Until she spoke. “I want. To...to go. To—”
“I know you want to go back to your own apartment,” Will interrupted. There was no way he’d let his little sister return to San Francisco, to the place she shared in the city with Emma. Tracy was still fragile. Oh, she got around all right, her broken ribs and broken leg having healed. But when her skull smashed into the car window it caused damage, resulting in aphasia, a language disorder. Her speech would probably always be halting, although specialists promised it would get better as long as Tracy fought.
But Tracy had given up fighting to improve.
“You’ll go back after your next round of speech therapy.” If Will could persuade, bribe or exhort her to return for a new form of transcranial direct-current stimulation—brain shock therapy. He had two months to convince her before the test trials started. “Here’s your cell phone.” Miraculously, Tracy’s iPhone had survived the crash. Will had waited until now to give it to her. Harmony Valley was surrounded by several mountains that prohibited more than an occasional bar of cell-phone service. He didn’t want her texting Emma, the so-called friend who’d nearly killed her.
Controlling and overprotective? Maybe he was. But his sister had brain damage and couldn’t be trusted to understand what her friend had done, let alone make appropriate decisions right now.
Tracy scowled at the phone. She scowled at the saggy green microfiber couch and worn brown leather recliner. She scowled at the stuffed trout on the wall and the orange burlap curtains. She’d scowled at everything in the past month to the point where her doctor at the rehabilitation hospital thought she might make more progress at home.
“You’ve got a way to go until you can live on your own again.” Much as it worried Will to think about Tracy living alone, odds were against him being able to protect her forever. But if things worked out the way he wanted here in Harmony Valley, those odds evened out.
Her scowl intensified. “My. Car.”
Will shook his head. “Doctor’s orders. No driving.”
Tracy opened her mouth, presumably to argue, but closed it again and stomped off toward her room. A door slammed, shaking the entire house. Shaking Will’s resolve.
The family portrait over the fireplace tilted. His mother, immortalized at age thirty-nine, gave him a lopsided, infectious smile. He set the family photo to rights, wishing it was as easy to right the rifts in the family and keep everyone safe.
Will’s father Ben came in through the kitchen door carrying a large duffel bag with Tracy’s belongings. His boots and faded jeans showed the wear and tear of years working on the farm. “Where’s Tracy?”
“In her room.”
Ben put the duffel on the scarred kitchen table. He grabbed a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water from the sink. “Give her time. She went from being an independent, healthy woman to someone who’s had to depend on others for everything.”
“She shouldn’t have gone to that conference in Las Vegas with Emma.” Just the thought of Emma Willoughby induced chest-tightening resentment. She’d walked away from the car accident unscathed.
“Son, I know you want to protect your sister, but people have got to make their own choices.” Ben rubbed a hand back and forth over his thinning blond-gray hair. “I was wrong to let you shut Emma out. I was afraid of losing Tracy. But now—”
“There’s only one choice here, Dad.” There would be no repeat mistakes. No playing with fire. “Aren’t you even the least bit angry at Emma for what’s happened to Tracy?”
“Of course I’m angry. It isn’t fair, what Tracy’s going through. But those girls have been friends since they were toddlers.” His father leaned against the sink, watching Will sit at the head of the kitchen table. “Where one went, the other followed. And oftentimes, they followed you.”
“Tracy’s not following Emma anymore.” The first thing Will had done upon learning the details of the accident was ban Emma from the hospital. The road had been clear, the day sunny, Tracy dozing in the passenger seat. There were no drugs or alcohol in Emma’s system. She hadn’t been on the phone or texting. And yet, Emma had crashed the car. She was to blame, the same as he knew Harmony Valley Grain was at fault for his mother’s death. “Emma’s too much like her grandmother. Too irresponsible.”
“I like Rose. Nobody can say that old girl doesn’t live life to the fullest. Tracy and Emma have always done the same.” Ben arched faded eyebrows. “Maybe you ought to try it.”
“Yes, because look where it got Tracy. Responsibility comes before fun.” That was how Will had become a millionaire so quickly. And now he was determined to help revitalize his hometown before he increased his fortune further. If only Rose could be made to see that change wasn’t a four-letter word. “Rose may be on the town council, but she doesn’t understand her responsibilities. She won’t even consider our proposal to rezone the Henderson property for a winery.”
“Sometimes it takes more subtlety than a hammer, son. You and your friends tried to ram change on Rose like an unexpected enema.”
That was an image Will didn’t want to contemplate. “Two members of the town council asked us to develop a business and jump-start the local economy. They should have told Rose they wanted to bring some life to this town. How is this my fault?”
Will, Flynn Harris and Slade Jennings had struck gold a few months ago when they’d sold their popular farming app for millions. They’d returned to their childhood home to decompress before coming up with their next big idea. But life in the one-gas-station town moved slower than the Harmony River. If cell-phone service was spotty, internet connections were an urban myth. The population was almost solely comprised of retirees who lacked skill and comfort with technology. Withdrawal from work and the world left Will and his friends sleepless, jittery and irritable. And most concerning? They hadn’t come up with a new app idea.
The winery was a solution to everything—their burnout and boredom, the town’s nearly nonexistent economy and Will’s dilemma about a way to protect Tracy in case her brain damage was permanent.
“I don’t see why you can’t take over here and make a living being a real farmer. Generations of our people have worked this land. You should be proud of your roots.”
“Dad, for the hundredth time, I don’t want to be a farmer.” Will lived for the chaos of programming and development. He thrived on long days and longer nights challenging his brain to wrestle down code that would accomplish the impossible. Will, Flynn and Slade had spent five years living their work, programming and troubleshooting, working out of a crappy apartment in San Jose as they scraped by on the most pitiful amount of venture capitalist funding on record.
Ben scoffed. “If you start a winery, you’ll be a farmer. Or will this winery be a hobby?”
What Will hoped was for Tracy to run the winery. Using her business degree would give her purpose and keep her from being judged by anyone who assumed her IQ was tied to her halting speech. Will had to convince Tracy it was best to move home permanently. He was waiting for the right nonscowling moment to tell her.
“It’s an investment, Dad. My passion is programming.”
“A hobby, then.” His father crossed the living room to restraighten the picture over the fireplace. He didn’t turn around when he’d finished, but stared at the family portrait and the love he’d lost.
Will communicated better with his sister these days than he did with his father. The two men were never on the same wavelength and things had only become worse since the accident, when Will had taken charge of Tracy’s care. “I’m headed over to see Rose and then I’ll be at Flynn’s house.”
Ben gave a wry chuckle. “The old girl can see your agenda a mile away. You’ll never get her vote.”
“It’s Sunday.” Will shrugged, forcing an enthusiasm he didn’t feel. “Rose likes me on Sundays.”
CHAPTER TWO
HOURS AFTER LEARNING of Tracy’s release, Emma parked her car behind Granny Rose’s sea-foam-green-and-white Victorian home in Harmony Valley and climbed the creaky planked steps to the front door. As a freelance graphic artist working mostly on print advertising for magazines, Emma could work on her laptop wherever she chose, uploading her completed work when she found an internet connection. She could design in Harmony Valley for a few days, hoping she might see Tracy, and upload her work before the weekend.
After the accident, the Jacksons had been guarded, not only with who visited Tracy, but with details of Tracy’s condition. Granny Rose had learned that Tracy suffered from aphasia, but had never gotten a straight answer from Tracy’s father as to why Emma was being kept away. She’d know how best to approach the Jacksons about visiting now that her friend was home. Well, home to their hometown anyway. Next best thing to their apartment.
The welcoming aroma of pot roast and the familiar canned sound of Gene Kelly on vinyl drifted out an open window. Granny Rose didn’t have an answering machine or a cell phone. She hadn’t answered her house phone earlier and didn’t know Emma was coming.
“I’m singing in the rain. Just singing in the rain....” Gene Kelly’s voice floated beneath her grandmother’s breathless vibrato and above the shuffle of her shoes on the wooden floor. It was Sunday night and Granny Rose was reenacting one of her favorite musicals.
Emma opened the stained glass door, stepped inside and froze.
The last time she’d seen Granny Rose dance was a month ago. She’d been wearing a white silk button-down and a black pencil skirt. Fred Astaire had been spinning on the ancient phonograph.
“I’m laughing at clouds. So dark up above....” Her back to Emma, Granny Rose tipped an Elvis umbrella over her shoulder. She was wearing a pair of faded red long johns that drooped from her skinny butt. They probably would have bagged even more if her waist hadn’t been cinched into a white tutu.
Rose, in yellow duck boots, tripped and nearly fell onto the antique coffee table, sending the wood-trimmed settee skittering into the wall.
“Granny!” Emma dropped her purse and ran to steady her grandmother.
Granny Rose shrieked. She elbowed Emma in the ribs, stomped on her foot and stumbled free. Turning, she hit Emma on the head with the Elvis umbrella.
Emma crumpled beneath one of the best Sedona landscapes she’d ever painted. The orchestra swelled.
“Granny Rose.” She lifted her head. “It’s me. Emma. Your granddaughter?”
Gene Kelly closed the song softly. Granny Rose lowered the umbrella and stared in bewilderment. “Emma?”
Emma nodded. Blood pounded in her foot and at her temple. “Is that the tutu from my dance recital when I was twelve?”
Granny Rose’s gaze dropped to the stiff white tulle. She looked around the cluttered living room, taking in the phonograph needle butting against the record label. “My raincoat is at the dry cleaners.” Her breathless voice lacked its usual confidence. “Is it time for cocktails?”
“Yes.” Emma could use a stiff drink.
“I didn’t expect you.” Granny Rose steadied Emma as she stood, although the eighty-year-old needed a bit of shoring up herself. Her huffing as she caught her breath seemed to bow her shoulders. “If you stay until next weekend you can come to the Grand Marshal Selection Ceremony.”
“I’d like that,” Emma said, studying her grandmother cautiously. “Tracy moved back home today,” she added. “I was hoping—”
Someone knocked on the door.
Granny Rose straightened instantly. “I bet it’s that computer nerd again. He should know it’ll be a daisy-wilting day in winter before he gets my vote.”
“Who?”
“You know, what’s-his-name.” Rose in her duck boots headed toward the door, thrusting the Elvis umbrella ahead of her like a sword.
“No, no, no.” Emma didn’t know how a computer nerd could set Granny Rose off, but she hooked Rose’s bony elbow and spun her around. “You can’t answer the door like that.”
“It would be rude of me not to answer the door.” She spoke in a tone one could only learn from a semester at Vassar.
“I may not have been a debutant,” Emma protested, “but even I know you can’t greet guests in Grandpa’s underwear.”
Granny Rose looked at herself. Her hands flitted over the tutu. And then she handed Emma the umbrella. “Don’t be fooled by the way he looks. He’s got an agenda and he’s not above charming you out of your pants to get to me.”
* * *
IN THE TIME he and his partners had been trying to get their property rezoned for the winery, Will had encountered both support and opposition in Harmony Valley. But the real wild card was Rose Cascia. Most days, she was a hellion on wheels, running roughshod over Will’s efforts to garner support for their winery. But on Sundays...
Her Sunday-afternoon hobby involved dressing up and performing musicals in her antique-filled living room. And on Sundays, Rose was usually in a good mood and seemed happy to see him. Will always made a point to stop by.
But this Sunday, as he powered off his music and removed his iPhone earbuds, it wasn’t Rose who answered the door. It was a disheveled woman in a red dress leaning on an umbrella as if it was a cane. As soon as she saw him, she seemed to do a double take.
A warning bell went off in his head, urging him to pay attention, access his memory banks.
“I’m so glad you stopped by.” She gave him a tentative smile. “I was going to come over to your house tomorrow. So I could apologize to Tracy and your family in person.”
Memory clicked into place. He hadn’t seen her in four years. Her cheekbones were more prominent, her makeup more subtle, but her dark eyes were the same.
Emma Willoughby.
Will’s ears rang. He couldn’t help himself; he clambered for something his father disapproved of.
Retribution.
He’d waited six months to rip into Emma for nearly killing his sister. The first two weeks he’d sat at Tracy’s bedside, wondering if she was going to die from the injuries Emma’s careless driving had inflicted. And after Tracy had turned the corner to recovery, he’d spent more than five months trying to imagine every excuse Emma might give for the accident.
And yet Will stood on the porch, staring at the woman, unable to speak.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Was he all right?
“Are you kidding me?” he exploded. “No one in my family will ever be all right. Tracy came this close to dying.” Will thrust his hand in front of Emma’s face, his thumb and forefinger almost touching.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her face pale. “It was an accident.”
He drew a deep, shuddering breath and stared over Emma’s shoulder.
In the living room, the tiny wood-trimmed love seat sat cockeyed in a corner. The delicately carved walnut coffee table tilted on two legs against a bookshelf.
“Is Rose hurt?” Will pushed past her and called, “Rose? Rose, where are you?”
Rose’s voice warbled a show tune from somewhere in the back. Thank God.
“Granny’s changing.” Emma released her ribs to brush her dark bangs off her forehead with one hand, flinching. Her fingers came away bloody.
What on earth had happened in here?
Will’s conscience warred with his need for retribution. Emma would live. But she needed something to stop the bleeding and possibly an ice pack. Without asking what had happened, in two strides he was at the narrow hall table. He reached into a porcelain vase for a bandage, which Rose kept close at hand, he knew, for emergencies.
Emma stared up at him as he lifted her bangs out of the way and bandaged her wound. Her hair smelled like flowers and felt like silk. “Is Rose getting ready to perform?”
“No more performances today.” Guarded dark eyes caught his skeptical glance. She backed away to thread the umbrella carefully into the stand on one side of the door. And then she gave him a small, apologetic smile. “I’d like to visit Tracy.”
Will didn’t hesitate. “She doesn’t want to see you.”
“She...she said that?”
He looked away and didn’t say anything.
“You haven’t asked her,” Emma said. It wasn’t a question. Color returned to her face in a slow creep of pink that seemed to fortify her. “You haven’t asked her, but I will.”
Will crossed to stand very close to Emma, so close he registered a green fleck in her dark chocolate eyes. “Let me be clear. My sister trusted you with her life. An apology isn’t enough, could never be enough.”
Rose swept into the room in low-heeled pumps and a black skirt that fell just below her knobby knees. Her white hair was in a tight bun. Her hard gaze landed on Will.
“I don’t think I’ve had time to tell you, Emma,” the older woman said. “But this man wants to convert Harmony Valley from a peaceful small town into a soulless tourist destination.”
So much for being welcome on Sundays.
CHAPTER THREE
WILL JACKSON KNEW how to push Emma’s buttons.
He hadn’t always. When she was a kid, he’d been her and Tracy’s reluctant rescuer. When she was a teenager, he’d been like a nosy, overprotective older brother, one who’d had the potential to be attractive, if he’d removed his braces and learned how to use hair product. And then he’d gone away to college and transformed himself into a serious hunk, determined that Tracy never have any fun.
Today, authority exuded from Will like heat waves off a summer sidewalk. He didn’t need a power suit. His navy polo and faded blue jeans couldn’t disguise the stench of carefully managed success. He had the lean, lanky body of a surfer. Only his sun-kissed gold locks were conservatively trimmed and his fierce blue eyes didn’t miss a thing. The man was well put together, handsome and heartless.
The last time Emma had seen Will was four years ago. He’d been waiting for Tracy outside their apartment. She and Tracy had just returned from a hot road trip to Tijuana for a friend’s bachelorette party. Hot being the operative word since Tracy’s air conditioner had died in Bakersfield, and the California valley was having a record heat wave. Despite short shorts, a tank top and cornrowed hair courtesy of a beach vendor, Emma’s deodorant had given out hours before and she was sweltering. She didn’t look, smell or feel like entertaining a man who was far from being her biggest fan.
Will had taken Emma in with one quick, disapproving glance, then ignored her, preferring to ream out Tracy for taking off without letting him know where she was. They’d been twenty-two, for crying out loud.
Emma understood that Will probably hated her for causing the accident, but what she’d never been able to understand was why Will had seemed to hate her in the first place. It didn’t help that she’d been a mess when he came to the door today. Since she was a teen, he’d treated her like she had the Congo Cooties.
Emma fingered the bandage beneath her bangs and sighed.
And now, according to Granny Rose, Will wanted to remake Harmony Valley. He probably planned to cancel everything that gave the small town its character, like the annual Beer Belly Serenade and pumpkin bowling for the Harvest Queen crown.
Emma sagged uncomfortably on her grandmother’s thinly padded, red-velvet settee as the strains of South Pacific’s chorus built. Even Granny Rose’s pot roast at dinner hadn’t cheered her up. There were too many unanswered questions banging about in her head: whether Granny Rose’s long-johns performance was anything to worry about; how much of a threat Will posed to Harmony Valley’s cherished way of life; if she’d ever be able to paint or sketch again; whether or not Tracy could forgive Emma for the accident.
Granny Rose sat in her rocking chair by the window, moving in time to one of her favorite musical numbers. She didn’t own a television. And she didn’t look as if she was up to answering questions. Her lids were heavy and her lined features slack.
“I bet Tracy’s happy to be home. There’s no place like Harmony Valley,” Granny Rose mused.
“No, there isn’t.”
“I hope Will didn’t fill your head with nonsense about his winery while I was changing. We adopted a no-growth policy for a reason. We don’t want change. After the grain-escalator explosion, we wanted peace and quiet.” Her grandmother spoke slowly, as if stringing together a sentence tired her.
Was this malaise a sign that she was finally slowing down? Or was something more serious affecting Granny Rose’s ability to think?
Glass-half-empty pessimism had never been Emma’s style. She preferred to look on the bright side. Maybe her grandmother was tired after a busy day. Maybe Emma was misreading Rose’s mental state. Emma used to get fuzzy after a long day of painting. If Granny Rose was worried about Harmony Valley, it might account for her being distracted. “When was the last time you went to the doctor?”
Her grandmother replied in the same measured cadence. “Didn’t I tell you? Dr. Mayhew died last winter. His replacement is in Cloverdale and wetter behind the ears than a baby duck in a rain shower. He told me I needed to slow down and take up yoga.” Granny Rose harrumphed. “I was a highflier in the circus, not a contortionist.”
Her grandmother had been many things before settling down, including a brief stint as a Rockette and a transatlantic-cruise-ship cocktail waitress, where she’d met the man of her dreams.
“You sound worn out, Granny.”
“Worry will do that to you.” She stopped rocking. “When I first came here, I thought this town was a cultural wasteland, a place with blinders on as to what was happening in the rest of the world. It had never hosted a speech from a candidate for president or governor. There was no opera or a cultural museum. But do you know...” Rose leaned forward, eyes suddenly bright. “My attitude changed. The mix of people here is unlike anyplace else on earth. And I learned to love it.” She pointed at Emma with one slender finger. “We like Harmony Valley the way it is.”
Here was the familiar, determined Granny Rose. Emma sat up with a roll of her shoulders. “I like it, too.”
Granny Rose laughed. “Kathryn, you hated growing up here. We didn’t have television and there weren’t enough boys. You couldn’t get out of here fast enough.”
Emma’s breath hitched. Kathryn was her mother. For the second time that day Emma reintroduced herself. “Granny, it’s me. Emma.”
Rose blinked. “Emma?” She smoothed her white hair back with fingers that trembled. Emma didn’t know if the shaking came from age, illness or stress. “Emma. You’ve always loved Harmony Valley.” And just like that, Granny Rose was herself again.
It was like losing the car-radio signal when you went beneath an overpass. Only this tuner required a doctor to fix it.
“I do love it here.” Emma loved it so much that more than half of her freelance portfolio and some of her bestselling works were based on the unspoiled views. Not that she couldn’t sketch or paint elsewhere. She had. Sedona, Yosemite, Yellowstone. But Harmony Valley was different. Not as grand. Not as colorful. But infinitely more peaceful.
If... When Emma painted again, it would be in this place. With all of Granny Rose’s love and support. And hopefully Tracy’s, too.
“Well, I have a busy day tomorrow. I like to be fresh in the morning.” Rose stood, wobbling a smidge. If Emma hadn’t been watching, she would have missed it.
Emma rushed to her grandmother’s side, offering an arm to lean on. She’d call her mother in the morning and tell her she was getting in touch with Granny’s doctor. “Let me walk you back.”
“My room is just down the hall, not across the continent,” her grandmother snapped with all the pepper Emma knew so well.
Emma chuckled, breathing in the familiar scent of rose water. “Humor me. I’ve missed you.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Granny Rose accepted Emma’s support with a wry laugh. “Isn’t it lovely to have someone to lean on?”
“You miss Grandpa, don’t you?”
“Every day. But he’s going to be waiting for me when my time comes, the same as he waited for me under the oak tree in the town square when we were courting.”
Emma loved to hear how much her grandparents had loved each other, probably because her lawyer parents had barely survived a messy divorce when she was a toddler. That was when she and her mother had come to live with Granny Rose.
The floorboards creaked more than usual, almost as much as her grandmother’s knees. “You know he wants to cut down the oak tree in the town square. He doesn’t care that half the town received marriage proposals under that tree.”
“Who doesn’t care?” Emma turned on the hall light. It flickered, then burned bright.
“That computer nerd. He’s a pain in my tuckus.”
“Mine, too.”
Emma bid Granny Rose good-night, and then lugged her bags upstairs, depositing the shoebox full of Carina Career dolls next to her bed. Her room at Granny’s was small with a single bed covered in a green-and-gold star quilt and an old walnut dresser that didn’t take up much floor space. Emma loved the room. The southern exposure let in the most wonderful natural light.
When Emma was ten, she and Granny Rose had painted the walls the palest of blues and taken all the permanent pictures down so Emma could hang her works. She’d filled the walls last summer, but sold all those paintings to contribute to the cost of Tracy’s care.
Tonight, the empty walls spurned her.
Tomorrow she hoped Tracy wouldn’t do the same.
* * *
AFTER WILL LEFT Rose’s house, he walked along the fragrant bank of the meandering Harmony River, dodging blackberry vines and the occasional tendril of a wild yellow rose. The sun had dipped behind one of the hills surrounding Harmony Valley, creating a humid, hazy twilight.
When Emma realized he hadn’t asked Tracy if she wanted to see her, she’d glared up at him, the bandaged bump pushing through her dark brown bangs as stubbornly as she pushed up her chin. He’d seen that headstrong look of hers before—when she was seven and had been convinced that she and Tracy deserved a chance to play baseball with the older boys; when she’d found him and his fourteen-year-old friends skinny-dipping in the Harmony River and wanted to jump in; when he’d answered an SOS call from Tracy after the pair had sought refuge in a strip club when they’d realized they were in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district after-hours.
Emma Willoughby was trouble.
His sister was at a critical juncture in her recovery. She’d hit a plateau and was emotionally beaten. The last thing Tracy needed was a reminder of the accident or some ill-conceived adventure of Emma’s. He had to keep her away.
A figure stepped onto the path ahead of him, immediately recognizable. Her jeans and beige T-shirt bagged on her too-slim, too-frail frame.
“What are you doing here?” Will asked his sister with forceful cheer.
Tracy’s mouth worked in a halting cadence. “You. Took. Too. Long.”
Sorrow clung to Will like a lingering hangover. His sister used to talk high-speed and nonstop. Doctors told them these next few months were critical for Tracy’s recovery. Somehow he had to get her back on track. Tracy needed a goal to work toward, something more concrete than smoother speech.
Sorrow became anger, directed at Emma and her carelessness. “I visited Rose. I need all the votes I can get.”
“Suck. Up.”
“Come look.” Will leaned against a eucalyptus tree, breathing in its minty scent. The trees here bordered the property he and his business partners had purchased. Neat rows of chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon grapes filled forty acres like ranks of green soldiers. The farmer in him appreciated the effort required to build the vineyard and keep it healthy. The businessman looked at the farm buildings the town council threatened to condemn and shuddered.
Tracy leaned against the trunk next to him. “Pretty.”
Now was the time to plant the seed. “How would you like to run our winery when it’s done?” Tracy struggled with speech, but she was as sharp as ever. This could be the goal she needed to push herself further in her recovery.
She thrust away from him, scowling. “You... I... No. Why?”
“It was just a thought. You have a business degree.” Will backed down. It was too soon. He’d wait a few more days before mentioning it again.
“Minor,” she corrected with a shake of her head. “English major.”
He ruffled her short blond hair, careful not to touch the sensitive scars on the right side.
She swatted him away and grinned, the expression so rare of late that Will froze, afraid any movement might startle Tracy into remembering she had little to smile about.
There was no way he was risking that smile disappearing forever. “Did Flynn pick up pizza?”
Tracy nodded.
“Come on.”
They walked along the river to Flynn’s grandfather’s house. Crickets sang a gentle chorus as they passed. Shadows lengthened and began blending with the night.
Flynn and Slade waited for them on the wraparound porch, watching the river go by and drinking beer. After days trying to generate enthusiasm for the winery in Harmony Valley, Will and his friends took refuge in the weathered white rattan chairs on the outdoor porch.
The Jeopardy! jingle drifted out the screen door. Moths fluttered around the porch light.
Tracy perched on a redwood bench and looked out toward the river, but she wasn’t watching the calm waters. Her gaze was unfocused.
“Pizza’s in the kitchen. Italian sausage or pepperoni.” Flynn pulled a beer out of a small cooler and handed it to Will as he came up the steps. His Rolling Stones T-shirt was wrinkled, as usual. Reddish-brown hair hung to his shoulders beneath a Giants baseball cap, as usual. “Which musical did Rose perform tonight?”
Will opened his beer and leaned against the porch railing. “I’m not sure.” Two months ago, Will would’ve been hard-pressed to name any show tunes. Oh, how the mighty had fallen.
Flynn readjusted his Giants cap and grinned at Tracy. “Do you remember when Rose did a one-woman rendition of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for elementary school?” He waited until she nodded. She, Emma and Flynn had been in the same grade in school. After Emma, Flynn was Tracy’s closest friend. “It was so funny, I thought I was going to wet my pants. And then Rose picked me and a couple other kids for the finale. I got to sit in this cardboard car she’d made. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Didn’t matter that I only knew the chorus. For a moment, I was a man of the world.” Flynn sighed. He’d been dreaming of visiting all the places his grandfather had served overseas ever since he was a kid.
Tracy’s laughter was soft and all too brief. They knew Flynn wanted to take his grandfather around the world with him, but Edwin’s heart was failing.
The river sidled past and crickets chirped. Inside the house, the Jeopardy! buzzer did its off-tone double beep.
Will wished Tracy would say something, start a conversation, bring up a positive childhood memory.
“Why don’t you know which production Rose put on?” Slade stretched his long legs across the porch, clasping his hands over the ends of his tie. As their financial guru, Slade believed in living the leader look 24/7. According to him, you never knew who might be willing to invest in their next big idea, so he had to look legit. “What happened?”
Will didn’t want to answer, not in front of Tracy, but it would be a bigger issue if he didn’t. “Rose’s granddaughter showed up.”
“Emma?” Tracy sat up so quickly the bench she was on nearly tipped over.
Will couldn’t tell if Tracy wanted to say more or not. She wrinkled her slim blond eyebrows when she struggled for a word, the same way she did when she was unhappy. They all waited for her to say more, but she went mute.
Slade smoothed an imaginary wrinkle in his slacks and then fiddled with his tie. Will had a theory about those ties. They were a gauge of Slade’s mood—a bold, bright color meant he was content and focused on results, an artistic pattern signaled something stormy or melancholy and on black-tie days Will made sure to avoid asking Slade for anything. Today’s tie was a bright orange diagonal strip. That boded well for the winery. “Was this a planned visit? Or does Emma know Tracy’s home?”
“She knows.” Will continued to study his sister. “She wants to visit Tracy.”
Tracy blew out a breath. “I don’t...don’t.”
“You don’t want to see her,” Will finished, greatly relieved.
“No.” Her brows furrowed. “I. Don’t. Want. You. To—”
“You don’t want me to let her visit.” Will tried again.
“No!” Tracy stood, growling in frustration.
“Let her get it out.” Flynn leaned forward.
She shook her head. “I don’t. Want you. To...to...” Tracy glanced up and to the left. The doctors had told them when she looked in that direction she was trying to access memory for the words she needed. Her hands circled like upside-down eggbeaters. “Stop. Emma.”
“Are you sure?” Will set his beer down and moved closer to capture Tracy’s hands. Her delicate hands. “She’s the reason you’re like this.” Broken. Fragile.
Tracy blinked back tears. “Let me. Decide.” She tore free of his grip and ran down the steps, across the verdant grass.
“She needs space.” Flynn held Will back when he started off after her. “It’s got to be frustrating.”
Will shrugged off his friend’s hand, grasping his beer by the neck to keep a hold on the resentment churning in his gut. If only Emma hadn’t come back. If only Emma hadn’t talked Tracy into going to Las Vegas six months ago. “Tracy doesn’t like me telling her what to do.” Wanting to follow his sister but knowing she needed space, Will anchored his beer on the porch railing.
“I’m going to make an unpopular suggestion,” Slade said. “You’re worried about Tracy, and Flynn’s worried about Edwin’s recovery from his heart attack. This project has gotten too complicated. In addition to the winery we’re opening a restaurant, a tasting room and a gift shop? Maybe we should—”
“We’re ten miles east of Cloverdale,” Will cut in, trying to hammer out his frustration. “No one will drive forty miles north of the heart of Sonoma wine country on a twisting, narrow road simply for a glass of our wine. It’s too much trouble. We need to make Harmony Valley a destination. Build something out here besides our winery. I’d love for someone in town to open a day spa or a bed-and-breakfast.”
“A gelato parlor or a bakery. Maybe even a coffee shop.” Flynn had a huge sweet tooth. “What I wouldn’t give for a latte every morning.”
“Why don’t we stick to what we know and design a new app?” Slade fiddled with his tie.
“Take off your tie,” Will snapped, his frustration finding a new target. “It represents everything we aren’t. We’re supposed to be a lean, independent, creative firm, able to turn our talents toward a new opportunity on a dime. Not a suited-up, slow-moving corporation.”
Slade leaned forward. The old wicker chair groaned in protest. “It sounds like you’re saying you don’t want to be responsible for employees and buildings and a harvest. I agree. Let’s move on.”
“I can’t move on.” Will passed his beer bottle from one hand to the other. He hadn’t told either of them that he wanted Tracy to run the winery. Slade would argue that a junior advertising executive wasn’t qualified to manage their business. Flynn would argue Tracy didn’t drink wine. It didn’t matter. He needed to tell them. But when Will opened his mouth, he said, “You’re the one who said we needed a tax shelter.”
“And you’re the one who said it would be simple to start a business here.” Slade got to his feet. He might not have been as tall as Will, but he was broader. “All we’ve found are roadblocks and complications.”
Will’s temper flared and his words came out angrier than he’d intended. “Flynn and I, we need a break from the creative side of things. We promised ourselves we wouldn’t be one of those one-hit wonders, remember? We promised ourselves the freedom to focus on what we do best—out-of-the-box design. I don’t have any ideas to work on. Do you?” Will rounded on Flynn.
“Nope. My mind’s as blank as a new hard drive.” Flynn tipped his baseball hat toward Slade, seemingly unconcerned by his creative block. “I’m a wealthy man, not that anyone around here cares, and not that my grandfather will let me spend any money on him or this property.” The same as Will’s father wouldn’t allow him to pay for improvements on the family farm. “But I’d like to enjoy being a wealthy man before I burn through another five years of my life becoming wealthier.”
“Amen,” Will said grimly.
“Try to understand where we’re coming from,” Flynn said, ever the peacemaker. “Tracy needs Will right now, and our winery is the best thing that’s happened to my grandfather in a long time. He needed to feel useful after his heart attack. I won’t back away from this deal for that reason alone.”
“But if you need any further convincing,” Will said. “Think about this—it’s next to impossible for us to come up with any new ideas when we’re worried about our families.”
Slade’s long features turned as hard as the granite face of Parish Hill. He was an only child. His mother had always been fragile and had died of a heart virus when he was a teenager. His father had committed suicide soon after Slade graduated from college. Divorced, Slade had no family left.
“I’m sorry,” Will began, knowing the words wouldn’t be enough.
But Slade had already left, heading for his family’s empty house.
CHAPTER FOUR
EMMA WAS BACK in Harmony Valley.
Tracy closed her bedroom door and scowled at the princess bedroom set she’d picked out when she was eight.
On days when she was scared, Tracy wished she’d died in that car accident.
She had no memory of the crash itself, but she did remember what had happened afterward in flashes. Emma taking off her white bra and using its padding to staunch the bleeding on Tracy’s head, her voice high and thin as she told Tracy everything was going to be all right. Emma asking a passing motorist for a blanket to keep Tracy warm. Emma begging Mediflight to let her ride along, and after they refused, squeezing Tracy’s hand with one last bit of reassurance before she’d left on the high-flying roller coaster that had had her throwing up on herself.
Emma had lied. Everything wasn’t all right.
Tracy hadn’t woken up again until a week after the accident. The doctors had put her into a coma until the swelling in her brain decreased. And when she’d come out of it, Emma hadn’t been there. Tracy had been unable to ask about her friend, not with a tube down her throat and a morphine drip clouding reality. It wasn’t until a highway patrolman had shown up to ask her about the accident and they’d lowered her morphine dose that she’d found she could scribble out words. He’d told her Emma had survived. The bigger question: Where was Emma?
Tracy sat on her full-size bed next to the window and stared out at the moonlit night, at the acres of chest-high corn her father took such pride in growing.
After she’d stabilized, they’d moved her to a rehabilitation hospital, where they had a no-cell-phone policy.
Still no Emma.
Her father and Will alternated their visits.
Still no Emma.
Tracy grew tired of bedpans and flash cards, well-meaning therapists who sang goofy kids’ songs and wanted her to sing along. Emma would have understood, would have busted Tracy out for a much-needed afternoon of playing hooky. They’d have hit the mall or found one of those small shops that made their own ice cream. They’d have gotten a scoop of something fattening and decadent, like coconut cream cheese or turtle truffle.
Still no Emma.
And nothing seemed right.
Oh, it was right in Tracy’s head. She had mental conversations with herself as quickly and smoothly as before the accident. She’d surprised her doctors by being able to silently read and write fluently. And her broken bones had healed. She could walk and run and, although she hadn’t tried, she suspected she could dance.
But resuming her job at an ad agency was out of the question. Tracy couldn’t sit with her peers and shout out ideas. She couldn’t contribute to a fast-paced conference call. And she could no longer smoothly present storyboards to advertising clients.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of Tracy’s situation was that everyone treated her like an invalid. Her father wanted her to rest more. Her brother finished her sentences. Doctors, nurses and specialists patted her knee and told her things would get better if she just obeyed every request they made and tried to speak. Again and again and again. Until Tracy hated the sound of her own faltering voice.
She pressed her forehead against the cool window and fingered the cell phone that had no network. Maybe that wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst of it was that the doctor had recommended shock therapy as a next step in her treatment, which in laboratory experiments had increased blood flow to the brain and helped reconnect synapses so that speech was smoother.
Attach electrodes to her brain and start zapping her?
No flippin’ way!
She’d stopped cooperating with her therapist. A few weeks later she’d been discharged, which annoyed the heck out of Will. He kept talking about her needing more therapy. Didn’t he realize what they wanted to do to her?
And now Emma wanted to see her? Tracy was so upset she could scream. Only her scream would probably come out like a trebly Tarzan wail and upset her father.
Tracy both wanted and didn’t want to see Emma.
Truth was, she didn’t want to see anyone, not like this. Maybe she’d cloister herself away in her room, with its pink ruffled bedspread and pink flowered walls and only have conversations with herself. For the rest of her life.
* * *
“YOU THINK WILL took it upon himself to protect Tracy from you? I had hoped it was doctor’s orders. I never could get Ben to say exactly.” Granny Rose poured a cup of coffee and carried it over to the breakfast nook where Emma sat.
It was barely six in the morning and Granny was already dressed in olive slacks, a faded blue denim shirt and scuffed work boots. Her snowy hair was caught up in an intricate chignon. She paused before setting down Emma’s coffee, taking in her bike shorts, tank top and messy ponytail. “Going for a bike ride?”
“Up Parish Hill.” The main road through Harmony Valley wound along the river and then at the northern tip of town ribboned its way up the hill.
Her grandmother nodded approvingly, straightening the morning paper. “But why keep you away? It’s not like you’re the devil.” Granny sighed. “Well, piffle. We’ll just see about that today, won’t we?”
“It’s been so long. Tracy probably thinks I’ve abandoned her.” She hadn’t. She hadn’t been able to get past Will. But Harmony Valley didn’t have security guards. “I’m going over there later in the morning and hopefully Will won’t have her locked up in the attic.”
“Now I wish I’d never let that computer nerd into my house on Sundays, although he did like show tunes. I caught him singing along once.” Granny Rose slid into a chair across from Emma, so clear and normal that last night’s long-john dance and fatigue seemed like nothing to worry about. “No matter. Tracy’s here and Harmony Valley is a small town. You’re bound to bump into her sometime and then you can have a nice long talk.” Granny Rose reached across the table and touched Emma’s hand. “Speaking of talking, let’s talk about your fears regarding your art. No one ever got through an artistic block by ignoring it.”
The beginnings of a dull rumble filled Emma’s ears. She clutched her warm coffee mug. “I’m not—”
“You’re not blocked? Or you’re not ignoring being blocked?” Granny Rose’s faded blue gaze was gentle. “It takes more than talent to fill a canvas or a sketchbook. You need drive and passion.”
“And courage,” Emma added over the intensifying noise of the car accident replaying in her head. She willed herself to shut it out and her hands to stay steady on the mug. “It’s impossible to be creative without courage.”
Granny Rose’s white eyebrows arched. “Since when did you lack courage or passion? I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to force you to stop painting or sketching to eat. Sometimes you get so lost in a project you lose all sense of place and time.”
Fear shuddered through Emma’s veins, threatening to sweep her away. Being lost in a project was precisely what had made her crash and nearly kill Tracy. Her mind had been more focused on an idea for a painting than on the road.
Emma planted her coffee mug on the table with only slightly trembling hands and peered more closely at her grandmother’s to-do list. “This is for today?”
“No, dear. It’s my morning to-do list. Don’t change the subject.”
Emma did anyway. “Mow lawn, weed vegetable garden, make cupcakes, visit Cloverdale Elementary, bring easel down from attic.” Forget that most people younger than her grandmother wouldn’t accomplish that much in one day, let alone one morning. Granny Rose was going to bring down the easel. She expected Emma to paint while she was here.
The dull roar in Emma’s head increased, reverberating down her arms into her fingertips until she had to sit on her hands to stop their shaking. It was nothing—nothing—compared to what Tracy had to go through every day. Emma forced her lips into what she hoped was a smile. “Just looking at your list tires me out. When was the last time you relaxed and had a cup of coffee with your friends?” The last thing she needed was Granny Rose tired and slightly out of it two days in a row.
“Pish. My friends drink wine at the end of the day. We’re too busy living life to dawdle over coffee every morning.” There was nothing out of the ordinary about Granny Rose today. She had all her usual bounce and energy, more at eighty than Emma had at twenty-six.
“How about if I do the yard work after I go for a bike ride?” Exhaustion was just what Emma needed to clear her head, which had begun to throb.
“That would be lovely. I’ll start on the cupcakes. I’m staging a production of The Music Man with the fourth graders in Cloverdale. My cast needs to keep their strength up.” With no mention of the easel, Granny Rose stood and bent to kiss the top of Emma’s head. “Don’t forget in all your rushing to stop and see the world.”
“I might say the same to you.” Emma smiled, more easily this time as the pounding at her temples receded slightly. She finished her coffee and went in search of her old ten-speed bicycle in the garage. A few swipes of a rag took care of the bike’s cobwebs and Emma was on her way.
The sun hadn’t risen high enough to chase away the morning fog. It clung to the grapevines and blanketed the river. The bicycle tires glided over the pavement with only a whisper of sound. She crossed the bridge into town slowly, taking in the way the first bright rays of light snuck through the trees, admiring the varying shades of silver green on the eucalyptus bark. An image flashed in her mind’s eye of a canvas filled with the scene before her, but it was quickly followed by a ripple of panic-driven, leg-pumping adrenaline.
“Be aware of your surroundings,” Emma mumbled. “Stay in the moment.”
The road took her behind the few businesses on Main Street. Soon she was at the beginning of the loop that wended its way up Parish Hill and down on the other side of town. The first switchbacks were soft grades. Emma managed them easily. Then the hillside steepened, and fog and eucalyptus trees gave way to the occasional oak and sunshine. Poppies and dandelions thrust optimistically upward from the gravelly soil.
Emma rounded a bend and saw a jogger ahead.
Buff, blond and bossy. Will Jackson.
A photographer would have snapped the image. Everything about him was golden, from his hair to his tan skin to the way the early morning light illuminated him.
The sight of Will set her teeth on edge.
He’d kept her away from Tracy for six months.
Emma considered turning around, but he’d most likely see her retreat. That stubborn Willoughby pride, the one she could have sworn she didn’t have, egged her on. She shifted gears and pumped the pedals like she meant business, which meant she nearly fell over.
Emma righted the bike and shifted gears again. She wouldn’t let Will beat her to the top.
* * *
WILL’S IPHONE SHUFFLED to a Blink-182 song that had a fast beat his feet didn’t want to keep time to. He was sucking in air like a clogged air filter on a ’57 Chevy. But he kept pushing up this hill. Each time Will took on Parish Hill, he made it a little farther. There were ten switchbacks. He’d managed six the other day before slowing to a walk. Someday, he’d run all the way to the top.
The town council meeting was tonight and Will had a lot of people to see beforehand. It had been a month since their permit and rezoning requests had been put on hold. A month of pulling together facts, drawing up blueprints and kissing up to residents who might support them. Tonight, he hoped he and his friends weren’t going to stand alone.
A sound behind Will had him spinning on the defensive. It wasn’t unheard of—if you believed local myth—for a mountain lion to attack out here. He cocked his arm back, ready to launch his only weapon besides his signal-less iPhone—a water bottle.
But it wasn’t a mountain lion behind him. It was Emma, legs churning pedals as she rounded the turn below. She wore black bike shorts and a tight blue flowered tank top, exposing most of her lithe limbs. Emma might have pulled off the professional racer look, if not for the uneven back and forth, near-tumbling way she worked the bike. And the way that she was smiling beneath a pink helmet decorated with daffodils and ladybugs.
Laughter filled the air—warm, unbidden and unexpected.
His, Will realized with a start, watching Emma close the gap between them.
He frowned, put his hands on his hips and told himself Emma hadn’t heard him laugh. He waited for her and what would certainly be another argument about visiting Tracy.
Instead of stopping at his side, Emma kept going. “See you at the top.” And then she laughed. To be sure, it was a ragged, I’m-breathing-hard kind of laugh. But she delivered it with an I’m-gonna-kick-your-butt jab.
Will spun and put his body through the motions of a jog. But the hill was steep and he’d lost momentum. His overheated muscles and aching joints responded to his commands in agonizing slow motion. Emma started to pull away, even though she couldn’t have been going much faster than he was. The next switchback seemed miles off.
Will refused to give up even as the distance between him and Emma stretched. Adrenaline blazed through his muscles until they shook and threatened to collapse. His lungs burned, each breath a fiery agony. One switchback.
Two.
This was as far as he’d ever gone without reducing the pace to a walk.
Emma was moving slower. She’d changed gears a few times, but Will was betting money she didn’t have any options left.
Switchback number seven loomed above. Emma was about fifteen feet ahead. She glanced over her shoulder at Will, never losing that hitching, awkward rhythm.
Emma was going to win. He could stop. He should stop. But to do so meant to surrender. To Emma? Never.
And then she fiddled with her gearshift and her chain clicked in loud, stuttering protest. It clicked and clacked and then dropped to the pavement.
Emma’s feet did a quick once around the pedals before the bike tilted toward the ground. She hopped out of the way as it crashed.
Leaving the road clear for Will to reach the next switchback first.
The thrill of victory propelled him to the elbow in the road. There was no sense going any farther. They were both spent. Will walked in small circles, attempting to fill his lungs with much-needed oxygen, trying to keep his muscles from convulsing him into a permanent fetal position. He’d been clutching his bottle of water and now drained it. After a few moments, he rasped, “You suck.”
She’d righted the bike and was walking it up the hill, feet digging in to build enough energy to reach him. “I had you all the way.”
“Doesn’t matter. I won.”
“Nobody won. We didn’t make it to the top.” Emma popped out the kickstand and removed her helmet. Her hair was plastered to her head and sweat trickled down the sides of her splotchy red face.
And yet, there was something about her that wasn’t unattractive to look at. Her inviting curves. Her challenging grin. Her warrior attitude that dared any man to take her on.
A memory surfaced. Emma wearing a red backless prom dress that clung to every dangerous contour, her dark tresses woven in a bride-like style threaded with delicate white flowers. Also not unattractive.
Emma wiped at her temples with her forearms, and directed her frustration at an inanimate target. “Stupid chain.”
Will took a second, more assessing look at her. His system was in cool-off mode. Rivulets of sweat dripped off the ends of his hair. Most of the rest of his body was just as soggy and droopy. Emma looked about as sexy as he felt.
Which was great. That moment of attraction must have been due to oxygen deprivation. The prom memory was a fluke. It wasn’t like he’d taken her to the event. He’d only made a preprom appearance to intimidate Tracy’s date. “Did you lose track of what gear you were in? You had me until that last gear change.”
“I did, didn’t I?” She grinned as if she’d won the Tour de France.
That smile somehow managed to trap the air in Will’s lungs. Something about Emma burrowed under his skin in a way he vehemently rejected, and had been rejecting since he was in high school. She never played it safe. She never obeyed the rules. She was like a predinner chocolate—temptation you couldn’t resist, even when you knew it was wrong.
He exhaled forcefully. “As soon as I catch my breath, I’ll fix your chain.”
Where had that offer come from?
Emma’s mouth puckered as if she was going to refuse him, but then she laughed and nodded.
They looked out over what they could see of the valley and the hills that bordered it, an uncomfortable silence settling between them as if they were both remembering they were at odds. Not that this was unfamiliar territory. Will’s most vivid memories were of Emma opposing him. Convincing Tracy to go tubing down the Harmony River when it was still raging from spring rains. Dragging Tracy to a New Year’s Eve celebration in Union Square when the girls were naive freshmen in college. Driving with Tracy to that bachelorette party in Tijuana despite the fact that a young woman had been abducted in that city a few weeks earlier.
Oh, Emma was good at flashing a “forgive me, I know I’ve been bad” smile and a good excuse: We knew what we were doing. It was all innocent. Everything turned out fine. Only that time, everything hadn’t turned out fine. Tracy had almost been killed.
Emma plucked a dandelion from her feet, studied it for a moment and then blew its white parachute seeds into the wind. She knelt to pick another one, closed the distance between them and held it up to Will. “How about a dandelion truce?”
Generations of farming blood had him warding her off with one arm. “It’s a weed.”
“It’s a dandelion.” Emma twirled the stem back and forth. “Kids make wishes on them all the time.”
“And blow the seeds of a weed out into the world.” If wishes could make Tracy whole, he’d blow an entire crop of dandelions into the wind. But chances were those dandelions wouldn’t result in wishes. They’d sprout up in his vineyard. “Farmers kill dandelions.”
“Suit yourself.” Emma studied the white puff, drew a deep breath and blew another handful of delicate white parachutes on to the breeze.
Will knew he shouldn’t ask, but he couldn’t help himself. “What did you wish for?”
“If I told you,” she said in a solemn voice, as if she truly believed in dandelion wishes, “it wouldn’t come true.”
Will felt a chasm open between them, shored up by differences like belief in fairy tales, Santa Claus and happy ever afters. He stood with the realists. She danced with the dreamers. It had nearly cost his sister her life. He was right to bar her from seeing Tracy. Wishes couldn’t make his sister well.
Emma knelt by her bike and fiddled with the chain. Apparently she’d decided she didn’t need his help. “What’s a good time to come by and see Tracy?”
“Don’t. I talked to Tracy last night and she doesn’t want to see you.”
“You’re lying.” Her hands, splotched with grease, shook.
“I’m not,” Will lied. He’d do anything to protect Tracy. “Flynn and Slade were there. Ask them.” He was betting she’d never do it.
“You can bring a thousand friends to testify she doesn’t want to see me and I still won’t believe you.” Emma’s face was as closed off as the latest firewall software to a cyber attack.
“Don’t come by, Emma. You’ll be the one to get hurt this time.”
“I don’t care.” She pushed her chin in the air, but her lip trembled.
And he was twelve all over again, bending to her will. “At least wait until tomorrow. The trip home tired her out.”
She nodded stiffly. “All right. But I don’t need your permission. And I wouldn’t try to keep her locked up in that house forever. She’ll resent you for it.” The chain dropped onto the sprocket. Emma jammed her helmet on, hopped on the bike and left, her rear brake squealing at him as she returned the way they’d come.
“I don’t have to keep Tracy in the house forever,” Will muttered to himself, catching sight of a drifting dandelion seed floating on the breeze. “Just until you leave.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THERE WAS NOTHING Emma disliked more than being made to feel she was a shrew. And that was what arguing with Will did to her.
She’d apologized to him twice, but he still treated her as if she’d pointed a gun at Tracy and pulled the trigger. It left a bleak, bottomless sensation in her belly. Oh, she’d like to blame Will for that feeling, but her guilt was the cause, not Mr. Perfect’s lack of forgiveness. She shouldn’t care that he’d refused her attempt to apologize twice. The only absolution that should matter was Tracy’s.
Emma outran the emptiness as best she could. She’d biked back to Granny Rose’s, driven the riding mower over the half-acre lawn and pulled some stubborn weeds out of the small vegetable garden. She’d called her mom and left a voice mail about Granny Rose, requesting a callback that probably wouldn’t come for days. In the middle of a murder trial, her defense-attorney mother only dealt with life-threatening emergencies. Granny Rose being Granny Rose didn’t qualify.
Emma didn’t want the easel but she couldn’t stand the thought of Granny Rose climbing up the rickety attic stairs and wrestling it down, either, so she carried it to her room. And just to punish herself, she put a fresh canvas on it, got out her sketching pencil and stood like a statue, left hand hovering unsteadily over the canvas.
Since she was a little girl, she’d loved to color, draw and paint. She lost herself in the process of creation, her senses taking in the scene she was trying to capture to an internal soundtrack that was sometimes soothing, sometimes lively and always passionate. But now all she heard was the repercussion of a diesel engine bearing down on her, the trumpet of brakes locking. She was aware of sliding, losing control and the uneven rasp of Tracy’s struggle to live.
She couldn’t imagine Will losing himself in a moment. He noticed everything, as he held himself with a rigid grace the Renaissance masters would have loved to paint. If Will was naked.
Not that Emma wanted to imagine him without clothes. She didn’t sketch or paint people and she certainly shouldn’t be imagining her best friend’s brother in his birthday suit. But the seed had taken flight, just like her dandelion wish. And instead of mentally planning out the foggy-morning image of Harmony Valley’s bridge before moving her pencil, she found herself dwelling on the golden glimmer of his hair in the sunlight, the elegant taper of tan shoulders to his waist, the bunch and release of his quads as he ran uphill. But even those vivid images didn’t liberate her talent, or free her hand, or quiet the internal wail of frustration when the canvas remained blank.
Granny Rose believed Emma could overcome this block. Emma wasn’t so sure. Even as she stood there, her breath came in labored, near-panicked gasps, and not just because her art had deserted her.
What if Tracy never forgave her?
* * *
“WE USED TO eat ice cream with girls on that bench under the oak tree.” Slade stood at the northern corner of the town square, fiddling with a solemn black tie. He hadn’t looked at Will all morning as they’d called on various residents and discussed the benefits the winery would bring the town. “I haven’t seen anyone under there since we’ve been back.”
The midmorning sun warmed what had been a brisk spring breeze, bringing with it the smell of chicken grilling at El Rosal, the one restaurant left in town.
Tracy wandered over to the wrought-iron bench beneath the town square’s lone oak tree.
In his memory, Will saw Tracy as she’d been a year ago—a glow to her cheeks and clothes that didn’t hang off her petite frame.
He thought of Emma’s determination to see his sister, regardless of who got hurt; all the ways Slade couldn’t hide his despair at being alone; Tracy’s resentment; the town’s resistance. His worries stacked on each other until the possibility of failure weighed down his shoulders and dragged at his heels.
Will hadn’t found an opportunity all morning to mend his rift with either his sister or Slade. They had a bit of time to kill before their next appointment. He opened his mouth to apologize.
And Flynn interrupted. “The ice cream parlor closed when I was in high school.” Flynn gazed wistfully into the window of the empty corner shop as he adjusted his Giants cap over his tangle of reddish-brown hair. “Maybe we should open an ice cream parlor instead of a winery. It’d make Rose happier.”
Will rolled his shoulders back and crossed his arms over his chest. When the stakes involved his sister, he stood firm. The winery would succeed. “Harmony Valley is at the end of the road. Who’s going to drive this far for ice cream?”
“How about gelato?” Flynn grinned. “I’d bring a date out here for gelato.”
“You aren’t very discerning in your women or the places you take them.” A hint of a smile slipped past Slade’s bad mood.
“We need to focus on the winery and related businesses. That’s the only way to attract significant outside revenue when Harmony Valley is about as convenient to the rest of the county as the sun is to Uranus.”
“Ouch. Okay, I give.” Flynn held up his hands, exchanging a look with Slade that seemed to say Will needed to be humored.
“A lot of people are going to come to the council meeting tonight.” Will forced himself to uncross his arms and draw a breath. “If enough of them speak on our behalf, we might sway Mayor Larry or Rose.”
“If people speak positively.” Slade fingered his tie, the movement taunting Will like a red flag in front of a bull. “You’ve lost your perspective. Admit it. This isn’t about saving the town. It’s about you overcoming another challenge, proving something to us or your dad or someone.”
“Prove?” Will sputtered. “I love the smell of success the same as the next guy, but this has nothing to do with my ego. We made a commitment to—”
“You committed!” Slade’s words burst out as if he’d been holding them in too long. “I’ve been crunching numbers and waiting to see how this plays out. But I’ve said all along that wineries are a money suck. I’m all for a tax shelter, but not this one. If I had my way, Harmony Valley would be a ghost town.” Slade stopped and turned away, as if he’d said too much. But then he added in a muted voice, “You should feel the same way after losing your mom here.”
Will followed Slade’s gaze to the skeleton of a grain silo visible over the treetops. The Harmony Valley Grain Company had been the primary employer in the small town until the grain elevator had exploded, killing Will’s mother and three others. The company had closed before the embers were cold, forcing the workforce to move, other businesses to fold, schools to shut down and leaving nothing behind but cash settlements to grieving families.
The Jackson family’s settlement had paid for Will’s and Tracy’s college tuitions. But nothing could replace the fact that they were motherless. Or erase the fear that life could be lost at a moment’s notice.
“You’d abandon this place?” Flynn looked perplexed. “But it’s home.”
“Not to me.” Slade cast a sidelong glance up the north end of Main Street toward the house he’d grown up in.
And then both he and Flynn turned their attention to Will.
Did Will want the town to die?
He shook his head. “There are painful memories here, but more good ones than bad. And as corny as it sounds, residents don’t look at us and tally our net worth. I don’t feel the pressure to add to our resume of work while I’m here.” Although the lack of a new program to code against made him restless.
“That doesn’t bode well for the future of our company.” Slade started to smooth his tie, then seemed to think better of it and set his hand on his waist.
“We are not one-hit wonders.” Certainty rang through Will’s words, despite the whisper of doubt, the one that slipped into his thoughts on nights when he couldn’t sleep. But he’d heard that chorus before and proved it wrong. “Maybe this break and this winery are what we need to reboot that creative spark.”
Will’s gaze drifted to Tracy, whose head tilted up to watch clouds pass by. “This isn’t about my pride. I want to open this winery so Harmony Valley will thrive and my dad won’t be so isolated. I want there to be emergency services here in town rather than thirty minutes away. But mostly, I want this winery to provide a job for Tracy.” Now was the time to say it. He drew a deep breath. “I want her to manage the businesses once we’re up and running.”
“Is that all?” Flynn looked from Will to Slade. “That’s okay with me.”
For one brief moment, Will experienced the lightness of relief.
Then Slade’s voice came down with trust-me-on-this negativity. “We talked about hiring someone with experience. Tracy has none. This makes the risk even greater.”
Will was used to overcoming obstacles and opposition. But for five years, Slade had been on his side. He’d known Slade wouldn’t approve of his choice. He’d known, and yet he’d hoped. “My sister needs a job in a place where people know and understand her. She gets tongue-tied under stress.” He stared down the road toward Slade’s house, realizing how helpless Slade must have felt when his father died. At least with Tracy, Will could keep trying. Slade had no second chances.
The dread Will had been holding back for six months broke free, spilling into his words until he could no longer hide how the weight of responsibility threatened to crush him.
“I worry about Tracy all the time. Can I hope for something close to normal in her speech? What if she has an emergency and can’t get the words out quickly enough? Are people going to judge her intelligence by the way she talks? Tracy’s doctors tell me what to do and I feel hope. And then I try to help her and nothing works.” He clenched and unclenched his fists, trying to expunge the helplessness. “If we can perform CPR on this town and Tracy has a role in our organization, I’d be happy. She doesn’t have to run everything. Maybe just the gift shop. Or the tasting room.”
Slade cleared his throat.
But the flood of Will’s frustration wasn’t finished. “It’s the doubts that drive me insane. Will Tracy be like this forever? Speaking in broken English and with pain so deep in her eyes that I can’t find the bottom? I know Tracy doesn’t want any handouts from me. But if you don’t approve of hiring her, I’ll pay her salary out of my own pocket.
“Last night Slade said Tracy was a distraction. But he’s wrong. Carving out a place in the world for her is my life’s work right now. And these businesses we’re proposing can give her that place.” If only he could make Tracy see. “If I can’t fix Tracy so she can return to her old life, I need to help her create a new one. Everything else, including our next multimillion dollar sale, is a distraction.”
Will hadn’t realized an empty street could be so silent.
Slade stared at Will with fathomless black eyes that neither condemned nor supported.
“Slade,” Will began, “what I said last night... I was a jerk.”
“You get a pass,” Slade said gruffly.
“I need you standing by me. You and Flynn.” Together, the three friends could do anything—if they all concurred.
“We’re doing this, then?” Flynn asked Slade.
Their financial partner nodded curtly. “Since I’m in charge of our investments, I’ll agree to pursue rezoning if you both agree that at each step in development we review our options. If this winery ever becomes a losing proposition, we cut our losses.”
Flynn and Will agreed.
Will was determined he’d never let the winery come to that. His tension slipped away, loosening his limbs. He scanned the town square, tensing when he noticed it was empty. “Where’s Tracy?”
Flynn pointed. “She headed back along the river toward your house.”
The river path would take Tracy past Rose’s home. Where Emma, Tracy’s Pied Piper, was staying.
Will stepped off the curb, but Flynn held him back. “You have to let Tracy deal with Emma in her own way.”
Will pulled his arm free. “She’s not strong enough yet.”
* * *
“EMMA!” GRANNY ROSE returned from her visit to the elementary school in the next town around eleven-thirty, her booted feet echoing throughout the old house. “Come here.”
Emma saved the print ad she’d been revising for one of her clients on her laptop before going downstairs.
She found Granny Rose on the porch, reaching through an open window to start the record player. “Schoolchildren make me want to dance for joy.”
After her bike ride, Emma’s legs felt as if they were in plaster casts, stiff and cumbersome. Dancing would be impossible.
The Andrews Sisters began singing about a bugle boy. What little booty Granny Rose had started shaking. Her arms stretched out midair, fingers snapping. And then she held out her hand to Emma. “Let’s dance, sister. I’ll lead.”
With a slump to her shoulders, Emma shuffled forward. “Do I have to?”
“It’s either that or color!” Pointing to a coloring book on the table, Granny Rose laughed, the sound rippling above the music, cresting over Emma’s sour mood and washing away most of her reluctance.
At first, Emma stumbled through the steps of the swing like a zombie with two left feet. But then, miraculously, her muscles warmed and loosened and her spirits lifted. She and Granny cut a rug back and forth across the porch as if competing in their own dance competition.
* * *
TRACY HAD SLIPPED the noose of Will’s leash and was heading back to the house like a schoolgirl playing hooky.
Her body and spirit needed a lift. Life here didn’t feel much different than in the rehabilitation hospital. Banned from driving, she still couldn’t go where she wanted when she wanted. Harmony Valley was another cage and Will her jailer. It was hard to believe, but being a shock-therapy lab rat might allow her more freedom.
And then she heard music.
Although it was a tune from a different generation, it was the music of Tracy’s youth. The music she’d learned to dance to—big-band swing. Just listening to the song as she walked down the narrow path by Harmony River buoyed Tracy’s steps.
The Andrews Sisters beckoned her closer, inviting her to set aside her worries, if only for a few minutes. She couldn’t see Rose’s house through the trees, but with the volume up this loud, the older woman had to be outdoors, dancing on the wraparound porch as if her shoes had wings.
Tracy and Emma had danced many a summer night away on that porch. Tracy had danced away her grief after her mother died.
Taking the path around a blackberry bush, she stopped in the shade of the eucalyptus grove.
She and Emma—
Emma was dancing with Rose.
Emma.
Dancing. As if she didn’t have a care in the world. As if the crash hadn’t permanently destroyed her dreams.
Had Emma been dancing the entire time Tracy was in the hospital?
Her pulse quickened until it felt like her heart would hammer its way out of her chest if she didn’t do something. She took a step out of the shadows, but a hand on her arm held her back.
“Don’t,” Will said.
Tracy snapped her arm free and turned toward Rose’s house, fueled by anger at both Emma and Will.
Will yanked her back again. “Don’t.”
Emma had been here all this time? Dancing?
“What are you going to do?” Will’s contempt was palpable. “Dance with them?”
That was the furthest thing from her mind. Tracy wanted to yell at Emma, wanted to make her listen to all her frustrations. She wanted to shout and scream and howl in pain. She wanted to accuse and blame. She wanted to finally have someone understand the anger and uncertainty that beat a pounding staccato in her chest.
Tracy opened her mouth to tell Will what she had in mind, but all that came out was, “I...”
Her pulse dragged to a sluggish near halt.
Who was she kidding? It would take hours to get everything off her chest.
Will must have sensed her defeat because he pulled her deeper into the trees, farther down the winding path toward the river.
And she let him.
* * *
“TRACY?” EMMA STEPPED out of Granny Rose’s arms. She thought she’d seen Tracy in the trees, her blond hair catching a ray of soft sunlight. Emma ran down the front stairs and into the eucalyptus grove bordering the river. “Tracy!”
But it wasn’t Tracy who awaited her. It was Will.
Beneath the trees, he exuded none of the golden-boy aura she’d admired on Parish Hill. He was breathing heavily, as if he’d been running. But his blond hair didn’t glisten, his skin didn’t radiate vitality and there wasn’t a fleeting shout of laughter as when he’d first seen her this morning.
“How can you dance?” The anger in Will’s voice thrust barbed points at Emma, bringing her to a halt. “You were dancing like you were happy.”
The emptiness that never receded completely expanded inside of Emma, filling her with a bleakness that welled into her eyes and threatened to overflow. But she wouldn’t cry. Not in front of Will. “I wish I could make you understand. Part of me cringes every time I feel a hint of happiness because I caused the accident that nearly killed Tracy. Me.” She tapped her chest. “I carry that with me every day and I always will. But I was trying to make my grandmother happy just now. I owe it to her.”
Glaciers were warmer than Will’s expression.
“So if I was smiling, if I looked happy, I’ll admit, there may have been a moment when the music swelled and I felt hope. Hope that I’d finally see for myself that Tracy is okay.” She searched the area again for any sign of her friend, but she was gone. “I’d switch places with Tracy and take on all her suffering if I could. It would mean the world to me if she forgave me, but she doesn’t have to. Whatever she thinks, whatever she feels, I’ll honor that, but she has to tell me herself. Please,” she added, feeling suddenly weary.
Will’s gaze cast about as if searching for his arguments. Finally, he said, “Tracy was crushed when she saw you.”
“She was here?” Emma clung to hope.
“You upset her. She went home.” Will looked along the river toward his family’s property. “She’s hit a plateau in her recovery. She needs rest before her next round of therapy. Once her communication improves, she’ll be better equipped to handle the stress of the everyday world.” He cast her a sidelong glance. “And people like you.”
“Me?” Emma stepped back.
The edge returned to his voice. “People like you don’t look before they leap, you don’t think about the burn you’ll get twirling near the fire. You and your grandmother get a whiff of excitement and off you go, without considering the consequences.” His gaze returned to the river. “But people like Tracy, like my father and me, we have to be careful of every step we make.”
Will was referring to something other than the car accident. He’d been fifteen and Tracy eleven when their mother died at work. Mrs. Jackson had been a frequent Sunday visitor at Emma’s house, taking part in Rose’s theatricals along with Emma, Tracy and, occasionally, Will. Emma had loved Mrs. Jackson’s infectious laugh, her boundless energy, her joie de vivre. She and Granny Rose were like sisters and Emma had wanted to be just like them. And she had, up until the accident.
After his mother’s death, Will had seldom left his computer except to haul Tracy back home for supper or away from whatever mischief the two girls had gotten into. He’d never come over for Sunday theatricals unless forced. He’d started treating Emma as if she had a contagious disease.
She hadn’t realized. She hadn’t known.
This was why Will had shunned her all those years, treating each trip or excursion she and Tracy took as if it was hazardous. This was why Will had kept her away from Tracy, because he thought she’d hurt Tracy worse than she had in the accident. He planned to cocoon his sister the same way he’d cocooned himself, burying himself in work instead of living life to the fullest.
Emma wanted to tell him, I don’t leap without looking. But he wouldn’t believe her. He’d spent nearly fifteen years forming an impression of her as someone he and his sister should avoid. Emma wanted to tell him, You can’t cover yourself in bubble wrap the rest of your life. Instead she said, “You can’t hover over Tracy the rest of her life.”
“Why not?” He held himself very still, as if he wanted to be swayed by her logic.
“Because she deserves the right to choose her own road, be it safe or risky.”
Will shook his head. “She tried your way, Emma. It’s better if she stays on my road from now on.”
“Don’t do this.” Emma touched his shoulder as he turned to go. “You’ll lose her.”
Will turned back, his gaze anguished. “Can you guarantee I won’t lose her if I let her go her own way?”
Emma couldn’t. No one could.
CHAPTER SIX
WILL WAS THE first to arrive in the small, one-hundred-year-old church where the town council held its meetings. He’d tried all afternoon to shake off Emma’s warning that his form of protection would push Tracy away. He’d attempted to forget the sincerity in Emma’s explanation, to ignore how listening to her threatened to erode his sense of purpose. What he felt didn’t matter. Keeping Tracy safe did.
Would Tracy forgive her, even if Will couldn’t? He feared the answer was yes.
The meeting started in less than an hour. Will forced himself to shut out thoughts of Emma and concentrate on the task at hand. He needed the council to set aside their no-growth policy and rezone their land for commercial use so that Harmony Valley could thrive another one hundred and fifty years.
No sound disturbed the church. The sun elbowed its way through the grimy side windows, past ancient wooden pews, flooding the entry with dust motes and light. The church had been built so the morning sun would illuminate the minister delivering his sermon. The altar was shadowed now and the place smelled musty. No matter. Will planned to set up his laptop and projector so his PowerPoint presentation could be seen on the wall behind the now-gloomy pulpit.
Flynn and Slade came in behind him, their feet echoing on the wooden planked floor.
Slade paused to give each of them a brief once-over. It wasn’t every day Flynn and Will wore suits and ties.
“About time you guys showed some class.” Slade approved their outfits with a nod.
The three men proceeded up the aisle to set up the presentation.
While they worked, nerves wavered in Will’s gut. There was more at stake than a new business venture, but he had to appear confident and put forth their strongest arguments.
Once the laptop was powered up, the projector connected and the PowerPoint presentation showing on the front wall, Will flipped through a few pages, including their architectural renderings of the new buildings. Since the wall behind the pulpit had been plastered over, it wasn’t the smoothest of screens or the sharpest of images, but everything was visible.
“Oh. My. God,” Tracy said from the back of the church.
“I thought this was a small winery,” their dad added, coming in behind her. “And why does it look like a mission? The Franciscans never settled this far north.”
“The mission style says California.” And Will liked how the arches resembled those at Stanford—orderly, established, impressive.
“Wrong. For H-H-Harmony. Valley. Too big.”
“There goes another supporter,” Slade muttered.
“It’s not too big.” Will spared Tracy a glance that he hoped disguised his irritation. He was tired of fighting with her on everything.
“We’re not going to build a mom-and-pop operation,” Flynn said, as if sensing Will needed backup.
“Too big,” Tracy repeated.
The door to the church opened and Emma blew in, as if ushered forward by a strong wind.
* * *
“TRACY!” HEART POUNDING apprehensively, Emma nearly bowled Tracy over as she enveloped her in a tight hug.
Tracy’s halfhearted reception doused Emma in doubt.
Was Will right? Was Tracy not ready to see her?
Will stood at the altar, as still and silent as if he were a religious relic. Only his eyes gave away his feelings. Don’t hurt her, they said.
Emma nodded, ever so subtly, to let him know she understood. And then she let Tracy go.
Granny Rose stepped through the doorway. “It’s our precious Tracy.” She gave Tracy a hug. It was hard to tell who was thinner or frailer.
Emma drew a breath and held on to her carefully honed patience. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you. I felt so bad about the accident.” She hesitated. She didn’t want to hurt Will, not now that she knew why he’d kept her away, but she had to let Tracy know she hadn’t abandoned her. “I’ve been trying to come visit, but no one would let me in.”
“No. One?” Tracy glanced at Will and then her father, her mouth pulling to one side in the start of a scowl.
Will’s scowl was already in place.
“But none of that matters now.” Emma smiled gently. “You’re here and I’m here.”
Other residents streamed into the church before Emma could say anything more. They also greeted Tracy, who acknowledged each with a small smile and a nod.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/melinda-curtis/dandelion-wishes/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Melinda Curtis
Will Jackson was a control freak and a killjoy.He had been since they were kids. He’d made it his mission to come between Emma Willoughby and her best friend—his little sister—all their lives.But why?Until the day of the accident Emma had always thought of herself as adventurous, not dangerous…. And then her friend had almost died.She desperately needed to apologize, to try to explain, if she could.Will had managed to keep the two apart while Tracy was in the hospital, but now that she was home in Harmony Valley, the winemaker-wannabe had to understand that getting past this was the only way they could heal.And yet even if Tracy was able to, Emma wasn’t sure she could forgive herself.And Will had made it abundantly clear: he wouldn’t sleep until he’d found retribution.
Will thought dandelion wishes were a waste of time.
Will thought dandelion wishes spread weeds into the world. Will thought–
Emma spun around and plucked the dandelion from the side of the road. She didn’t care what Will thought. She and Tracy had been making dandelion wishes since they were kids.
She turned toward home, stopping in the middle of the bridge over Harmony River. She tried to catch her breath. She tried to be as calm as the water flowing beneath her.
It wasn’t possible. Not even with a dandelion wish at the ready.
What would she wish for?
Dear Reader,
Welcome to Harmony Valley!
Things aren’t as harmonious here as they once were. Jobs have dried up and almost everyone under the age of sixty has moved away in the past ten years, leaving the population…well…rather gray-haired and peaceful.
Enter Will Jackson, newly minted millionaire and hometown success story. He’s been on the fast track too long and is looking for a break. But then his sister, Tracy, and her friend Emma get in a car crash, and he realizes Harmony Valley would be a perfect place for Tracy to stay permanently. If he could just create a business for his sister and keep her away from Emma’s spur-of-the-moment adventurous tendencies, everything would be fine.
Emma may look as if she walked away from the accident unscathed, but she bears emotional scars. She wants to rebuild her friendship with Tracy and heal. But nothing in life ever comes when you want it, especially not love and healing.
I hope you enjoy Will and Emma’s journey, as well as the romances in the works for friends Flynn and Slade as they get their winery in Harmony Valley off the ground. I love to hear from readers and you can always check on the progress of Harmony Valley on my website, www.MelindaCurtis.com.
Melinda Curtis
Dandelion Wishes
Melinda Curtis
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
MELINDA CURTIS grew up on an isolated sheep ranch, where mountain lions had been seen, and yet she roamed unaccompanied. Being a rather optimistic, clueless of danger sort, she took to playing “what if” games, which led her to become an author. She spends her days trying to figure out new ways to say “he made her heart pound.” That might sound boring, but the challenge keeps her mentally ahead of her three kids and college-sweetheart husband.
Nothing in my life would be possible without the love
and support of my immediate family, extended family
and close friends. This past year was a roller coaster
and you helped keep me strapped in.
With special thanks and hugs to A. J. Stewart, Cari
Lynn Web and Anna Adams for holding my hand and
kicking my butt throughout the writing of this book.
And to Carrie Knudson, thank you for the laughter,
the love and the memories.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE (#u2b35890e-f65a-5de0-baea-3e22524aac9e)
CHAPTER TWO (#u7818a9d4-e8da-5862-8a27-dce268520dfc)
CHAPTER THREE (#ua1c547c2-57e6-59b8-a10e-f2764dc6f5f8)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u1395bd35-70cd-5294-96e6-55776c3a6c24)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u1b0b49c9-0f96-59ed-a731-74e4c35bba55)
CHAPTER SIX (#uf3ba25d0-2f24-5266-acbb-64498fda96c5)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
TODAY WAS THE day.
There’d be hugs and smiles, reminiscences and laughter.
And apologies. Of course there’d be apologies. But they’d be accepted and waved aside because best friends stood by each other. Always.
Today was the day.
If Emma Willoughby repeated it to herself often enough, this time it might come true.
Standing in the parking lot next to clumps of cheery daffodils, she checked her purse to make sure Tracy’s gift was inside. She silenced her cell phone. She pasted a friendly smile on her face, passed under the grand portico and headed toward the massive glass doors of Greenhaven Rehabilitation Center.
The doors slid open as she neared. On previous visits, she’d recognized people in the lobby—elderly actors recovering from strokes, aging politicians recovering from hip surgeries, elite athletes recovering from injuries. But in nearly six months, she’d never caught a glimpse of Tracy.
The Sunday receptionist, Francie, looked up to greet her, recognition stealing the beginnings of a smile from her face.
Today, Emma silently prayed.
Francie pushed her rhinestone glasses up the bridge of her nose, tugged the lapels of her aquamarine polyester jacket tightly together and sent an icy glance toward a tall, aging security guard, who stepped forward to block Emma’s path. In all the months Emma had been coming here, this was the first time Francie, Greenhaven’s gatekeeper, had set a guard on her.
“Young lady, I’m terribly sorry.”
Emma’s smile weakened. She would not give up. She would keep coming every Sunday until someone let her in. Tracy’s family couldn’t keep her out forever.
“I know I can’t go inside, Francie.” Emma reached into her purse for her gift—a Carina Career doll. She’d been handing the receptionist a doll every Sunday for months. This week Carina was an astronaut. The dolls were meant as a reminder of their friendship and to let her best friend know Emma believed she still had plenty of choices ahead of her. “Could you please give this to Tracy?”
Francie blanched. “I can’t take that. Tracy Jackson is no longer a patient in this facility.”
Emma felt a moment’s panic. “What do you mean?”
“Tracy Jackson is no longer a patient in this facility,” Francie repeated. She glanced at the security guard once more, a disapproving line deepening her already furrowed brow. “I must ask you to leave.”
Tracy was dead.
Emma tried to form a word—any word—that would refute that possibility. But the air in the lobby had become thick and heavy—suffocating—until Emma knew she was going to collapse if she didn’t move.
On a gasp of air, she spun and ran to her car parked at the far edge of the visitors’ section. The chilly bay breeze clawed at the hem of her dress, buffeted her hair. By the time she reached the new Subaru, she was shaking so badly she dropped her purse to the ground and leaned against the car door as memories assailed her.
She and Tracy on the bank of the Harmony River building a mud fort for frogs. She and Tracy dreaming about different futures in the Carina Career section of the toy store. Tracy bursting into their dorm room doing an uncoordinated victory dance after landing an internship at an ad agency. And then the most painful memory—Tracy’s near-lifeless body, head smashed against the passenger window of Emma’s car. And everywhere...blood.
They’d known each other since they were three, and yet Tracy’s family hadn’t let her say goodbye, hadn’t let Emma know she had died.
But why would they?
Emma had been driving the car that caused the accident, the accident that had put Tracy in the hospital, the accident with killing complications.
A violent, shuddering sob threatened to break her into sharp, tiny pieces. Tremors shot to her fingertips. Useless fingers that had been unable to draw or paint since the accident. Emma ached to create from a blank page or canvas again, but if an empty, soulless existence was her penance for the accident, so be it.
Francie appeared at the Subaru’s fender, huffing and clutching a shoebox under her arm. “She’s not dead.”
Emma’s limbs turned to liquid and she slid to the ground, landing on her tailbone, asphalt scraping her legs. She ignored the pain. Tracy was alive.
“There, there.” Francie knelt beside Emma, smelling of breath mints and garlic. “Company policy forbids me from telling you what happened, but you came every Sunday for more than five months. It broke my heart to turn you away.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Emma choked out.
“Are you okay to drive? Want me to call someone?”
Granny Rose. Her grandmother had practically raised Emma while her mother established a career as a cutthroat trial attorney. After Tracy, it was Granny Rose that Emma turned to with her problems. She had always looked up to her grandmother’s wisdom, wit and courage. But Granny Rose was eighty and lived hours away in Harmony Valley, in the northernmost corner of Sonoma County.
“Fine. I’m fine.” Or she would be when she could catch her breath. Emma scrubbed at her eyes. “Do you...do you know where Tracy is?” It would be exactly like Tracy’s self-made millionaire brother, Will, to have found a specialist in Switzerland and moved her there.
“Francie!” a male voice rumbled from beneath the portico. “I hear you talking to that girl. Don’t make trouble for yourself.”
Francie frowned and pressed the shoebox into Emma’s hands. “I can’t say more, but I wanted you to have this.” Using the car for balance, the receptionist stood. “You take care.”
Emma lifted the shoebox lid. More than twenty thumb-size Carina Career dolls stared vacantly up at her, one for every week Emma had tried to come and visit Tracy.
A slip of paper was tucked in the corner of the box.
Had Tracy written her a note?
Emma reached for the paper with trembling fingers.
An invitation to visit? Or a request to stay away?
An address was scrawled in thin, spidery handwriting on Greenhaven stationery, too neat to have been written by her friend. Emma made out a familiar address in Harmony Valley.
Tracy’s.
* * *
“THIS IS GOING to be good.” The false enthusiasm left a sour taste in Will Jackson’s mouth. He opened the front door of his childhood home. “Dad’s been lonely with both of us gone. And now he’ll have a full house. You and me, just like old times.”
Tracy walked in, looking to all appearances like any other twenty-six-year-old in blue jeans, a beige T-shirt and short, tousled blond hair. Until she spoke. “I want. To...to go. To—”
“I know you want to go back to your own apartment,” Will interrupted. There was no way he’d let his little sister return to San Francisco, to the place she shared in the city with Emma. Tracy was still fragile. Oh, she got around all right, her broken ribs and broken leg having healed. But when her skull smashed into the car window it caused damage, resulting in aphasia, a language disorder. Her speech would probably always be halting, although specialists promised it would get better as long as Tracy fought.
But Tracy had given up fighting to improve.
“You’ll go back after your next round of speech therapy.” If Will could persuade, bribe or exhort her to return for a new form of transcranial direct-current stimulation—brain shock therapy. He had two months to convince her before the test trials started. “Here’s your cell phone.” Miraculously, Tracy’s iPhone had survived the crash. Will had waited until now to give it to her. Harmony Valley was surrounded by several mountains that prohibited more than an occasional bar of cell-phone service. He didn’t want her texting Emma, the so-called friend who’d nearly killed her.
Controlling and overprotective? Maybe he was. But his sister had brain damage and couldn’t be trusted to understand what her friend had done, let alone make appropriate decisions right now.
Tracy scowled at the phone. She scowled at the saggy green microfiber couch and worn brown leather recliner. She scowled at the stuffed trout on the wall and the orange burlap curtains. She’d scowled at everything in the past month to the point where her doctor at the rehabilitation hospital thought she might make more progress at home.
“You’ve got a way to go until you can live on your own again.” Much as it worried Will to think about Tracy living alone, odds were against him being able to protect her forever. But if things worked out the way he wanted here in Harmony Valley, those odds evened out.
Her scowl intensified. “My. Car.”
Will shook his head. “Doctor’s orders. No driving.”
Tracy opened her mouth, presumably to argue, but closed it again and stomped off toward her room. A door slammed, shaking the entire house. Shaking Will’s resolve.
The family portrait over the fireplace tilted. His mother, immortalized at age thirty-nine, gave him a lopsided, infectious smile. He set the family photo to rights, wishing it was as easy to right the rifts in the family and keep everyone safe.
Will’s father Ben came in through the kitchen door carrying a large duffel bag with Tracy’s belongings. His boots and faded jeans showed the wear and tear of years working on the farm. “Where’s Tracy?”
“In her room.”
Ben put the duffel on the scarred kitchen table. He grabbed a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water from the sink. “Give her time. She went from being an independent, healthy woman to someone who’s had to depend on others for everything.”
“She shouldn’t have gone to that conference in Las Vegas with Emma.” Just the thought of Emma Willoughby induced chest-tightening resentment. She’d walked away from the car accident unscathed.
“Son, I know you want to protect your sister, but people have got to make their own choices.” Ben rubbed a hand back and forth over his thinning blond-gray hair. “I was wrong to let you shut Emma out. I was afraid of losing Tracy. But now—”
“There’s only one choice here, Dad.” There would be no repeat mistakes. No playing with fire. “Aren’t you even the least bit angry at Emma for what’s happened to Tracy?”
“Of course I’m angry. It isn’t fair, what Tracy’s going through. But those girls have been friends since they were toddlers.” His father leaned against the sink, watching Will sit at the head of the kitchen table. “Where one went, the other followed. And oftentimes, they followed you.”
“Tracy’s not following Emma anymore.” The first thing Will had done upon learning the details of the accident was ban Emma from the hospital. The road had been clear, the day sunny, Tracy dozing in the passenger seat. There were no drugs or alcohol in Emma’s system. She hadn’t been on the phone or texting. And yet, Emma had crashed the car. She was to blame, the same as he knew Harmony Valley Grain was at fault for his mother’s death. “Emma’s too much like her grandmother. Too irresponsible.”
“I like Rose. Nobody can say that old girl doesn’t live life to the fullest. Tracy and Emma have always done the same.” Ben arched faded eyebrows. “Maybe you ought to try it.”
“Yes, because look where it got Tracy. Responsibility comes before fun.” That was how Will had become a millionaire so quickly. And now he was determined to help revitalize his hometown before he increased his fortune further. If only Rose could be made to see that change wasn’t a four-letter word. “Rose may be on the town council, but she doesn’t understand her responsibilities. She won’t even consider our proposal to rezone the Henderson property for a winery.”
“Sometimes it takes more subtlety than a hammer, son. You and your friends tried to ram change on Rose like an unexpected enema.”
That was an image Will didn’t want to contemplate. “Two members of the town council asked us to develop a business and jump-start the local economy. They should have told Rose they wanted to bring some life to this town. How is this my fault?”
Will, Flynn Harris and Slade Jennings had struck gold a few months ago when they’d sold their popular farming app for millions. They’d returned to their childhood home to decompress before coming up with their next big idea. But life in the one-gas-station town moved slower than the Harmony River. If cell-phone service was spotty, internet connections were an urban myth. The population was almost solely comprised of retirees who lacked skill and comfort with technology. Withdrawal from work and the world left Will and his friends sleepless, jittery and irritable. And most concerning? They hadn’t come up with a new app idea.
The winery was a solution to everything—their burnout and boredom, the town’s nearly nonexistent economy and Will’s dilemma about a way to protect Tracy in case her brain damage was permanent.
“I don’t see why you can’t take over here and make a living being a real farmer. Generations of our people have worked this land. You should be proud of your roots.”
“Dad, for the hundredth time, I don’t want to be a farmer.” Will lived for the chaos of programming and development. He thrived on long days and longer nights challenging his brain to wrestle down code that would accomplish the impossible. Will, Flynn and Slade had spent five years living their work, programming and troubleshooting, working out of a crappy apartment in San Jose as they scraped by on the most pitiful amount of venture capitalist funding on record.
Ben scoffed. “If you start a winery, you’ll be a farmer. Or will this winery be a hobby?”
What Will hoped was for Tracy to run the winery. Using her business degree would give her purpose and keep her from being judged by anyone who assumed her IQ was tied to her halting speech. Will had to convince Tracy it was best to move home permanently. He was waiting for the right nonscowling moment to tell her.
“It’s an investment, Dad. My passion is programming.”
“A hobby, then.” His father crossed the living room to restraighten the picture over the fireplace. He didn’t turn around when he’d finished, but stared at the family portrait and the love he’d lost.
Will communicated better with his sister these days than he did with his father. The two men were never on the same wavelength and things had only become worse since the accident, when Will had taken charge of Tracy’s care. “I’m headed over to see Rose and then I’ll be at Flynn’s house.”
Ben gave a wry chuckle. “The old girl can see your agenda a mile away. You’ll never get her vote.”
“It’s Sunday.” Will shrugged, forcing an enthusiasm he didn’t feel. “Rose likes me on Sundays.”
CHAPTER TWO
HOURS AFTER LEARNING of Tracy’s release, Emma parked her car behind Granny Rose’s sea-foam-green-and-white Victorian home in Harmony Valley and climbed the creaky planked steps to the front door. As a freelance graphic artist working mostly on print advertising for magazines, Emma could work on her laptop wherever she chose, uploading her completed work when she found an internet connection. She could design in Harmony Valley for a few days, hoping she might see Tracy, and upload her work before the weekend.
After the accident, the Jacksons had been guarded, not only with who visited Tracy, but with details of Tracy’s condition. Granny Rose had learned that Tracy suffered from aphasia, but had never gotten a straight answer from Tracy’s father as to why Emma was being kept away. She’d know how best to approach the Jacksons about visiting now that her friend was home. Well, home to their hometown anyway. Next best thing to their apartment.
The welcoming aroma of pot roast and the familiar canned sound of Gene Kelly on vinyl drifted out an open window. Granny Rose didn’t have an answering machine or a cell phone. She hadn’t answered her house phone earlier and didn’t know Emma was coming.
“I’m singing in the rain. Just singing in the rain....” Gene Kelly’s voice floated beneath her grandmother’s breathless vibrato and above the shuffle of her shoes on the wooden floor. It was Sunday night and Granny Rose was reenacting one of her favorite musicals.
Emma opened the stained glass door, stepped inside and froze.
The last time she’d seen Granny Rose dance was a month ago. She’d been wearing a white silk button-down and a black pencil skirt. Fred Astaire had been spinning on the ancient phonograph.
“I’m laughing at clouds. So dark up above....” Her back to Emma, Granny Rose tipped an Elvis umbrella over her shoulder. She was wearing a pair of faded red long johns that drooped from her skinny butt. They probably would have bagged even more if her waist hadn’t been cinched into a white tutu.
Rose, in yellow duck boots, tripped and nearly fell onto the antique coffee table, sending the wood-trimmed settee skittering into the wall.
“Granny!” Emma dropped her purse and ran to steady her grandmother.
Granny Rose shrieked. She elbowed Emma in the ribs, stomped on her foot and stumbled free. Turning, she hit Emma on the head with the Elvis umbrella.
Emma crumpled beneath one of the best Sedona landscapes she’d ever painted. The orchestra swelled.
“Granny Rose.” She lifted her head. “It’s me. Emma. Your granddaughter?”
Gene Kelly closed the song softly. Granny Rose lowered the umbrella and stared in bewilderment. “Emma?”
Emma nodded. Blood pounded in her foot and at her temple. “Is that the tutu from my dance recital when I was twelve?”
Granny Rose’s gaze dropped to the stiff white tulle. She looked around the cluttered living room, taking in the phonograph needle butting against the record label. “My raincoat is at the dry cleaners.” Her breathless voice lacked its usual confidence. “Is it time for cocktails?”
“Yes.” Emma could use a stiff drink.
“I didn’t expect you.” Granny Rose steadied Emma as she stood, although the eighty-year-old needed a bit of shoring up herself. Her huffing as she caught her breath seemed to bow her shoulders. “If you stay until next weekend you can come to the Grand Marshal Selection Ceremony.”
“I’d like that,” Emma said, studying her grandmother cautiously. “Tracy moved back home today,” she added. “I was hoping—”
Someone knocked on the door.
Granny Rose straightened instantly. “I bet it’s that computer nerd again. He should know it’ll be a daisy-wilting day in winter before he gets my vote.”
“Who?”
“You know, what’s-his-name.” Rose in her duck boots headed toward the door, thrusting the Elvis umbrella ahead of her like a sword.
“No, no, no.” Emma didn’t know how a computer nerd could set Granny Rose off, but she hooked Rose’s bony elbow and spun her around. “You can’t answer the door like that.”
“It would be rude of me not to answer the door.” She spoke in a tone one could only learn from a semester at Vassar.
“I may not have been a debutant,” Emma protested, “but even I know you can’t greet guests in Grandpa’s underwear.”
Granny Rose looked at herself. Her hands flitted over the tutu. And then she handed Emma the umbrella. “Don’t be fooled by the way he looks. He’s got an agenda and he’s not above charming you out of your pants to get to me.”
* * *
IN THE TIME he and his partners had been trying to get their property rezoned for the winery, Will had encountered both support and opposition in Harmony Valley. But the real wild card was Rose Cascia. Most days, she was a hellion on wheels, running roughshod over Will’s efforts to garner support for their winery. But on Sundays...
Her Sunday-afternoon hobby involved dressing up and performing musicals in her antique-filled living room. And on Sundays, Rose was usually in a good mood and seemed happy to see him. Will always made a point to stop by.
But this Sunday, as he powered off his music and removed his iPhone earbuds, it wasn’t Rose who answered the door. It was a disheveled woman in a red dress leaning on an umbrella as if it was a cane. As soon as she saw him, she seemed to do a double take.
A warning bell went off in his head, urging him to pay attention, access his memory banks.
“I’m so glad you stopped by.” She gave him a tentative smile. “I was going to come over to your house tomorrow. So I could apologize to Tracy and your family in person.”
Memory clicked into place. He hadn’t seen her in four years. Her cheekbones were more prominent, her makeup more subtle, but her dark eyes were the same.
Emma Willoughby.
Will’s ears rang. He couldn’t help himself; he clambered for something his father disapproved of.
Retribution.
He’d waited six months to rip into Emma for nearly killing his sister. The first two weeks he’d sat at Tracy’s bedside, wondering if she was going to die from the injuries Emma’s careless driving had inflicted. And after Tracy had turned the corner to recovery, he’d spent more than five months trying to imagine every excuse Emma might give for the accident.
And yet Will stood on the porch, staring at the woman, unable to speak.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Was he all right?
“Are you kidding me?” he exploded. “No one in my family will ever be all right. Tracy came this close to dying.” Will thrust his hand in front of Emma’s face, his thumb and forefinger almost touching.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her face pale. “It was an accident.”
He drew a deep, shuddering breath and stared over Emma’s shoulder.
In the living room, the tiny wood-trimmed love seat sat cockeyed in a corner. The delicately carved walnut coffee table tilted on two legs against a bookshelf.
“Is Rose hurt?” Will pushed past her and called, “Rose? Rose, where are you?”
Rose’s voice warbled a show tune from somewhere in the back. Thank God.
“Granny’s changing.” Emma released her ribs to brush her dark bangs off her forehead with one hand, flinching. Her fingers came away bloody.
What on earth had happened in here?
Will’s conscience warred with his need for retribution. Emma would live. But she needed something to stop the bleeding and possibly an ice pack. Without asking what had happened, in two strides he was at the narrow hall table. He reached into a porcelain vase for a bandage, which Rose kept close at hand, he knew, for emergencies.
Emma stared up at him as he lifted her bangs out of the way and bandaged her wound. Her hair smelled like flowers and felt like silk. “Is Rose getting ready to perform?”
“No more performances today.” Guarded dark eyes caught his skeptical glance. She backed away to thread the umbrella carefully into the stand on one side of the door. And then she gave him a small, apologetic smile. “I’d like to visit Tracy.”
Will didn’t hesitate. “She doesn’t want to see you.”
“She...she said that?”
He looked away and didn’t say anything.
“You haven’t asked her,” Emma said. It wasn’t a question. Color returned to her face in a slow creep of pink that seemed to fortify her. “You haven’t asked her, but I will.”
Will crossed to stand very close to Emma, so close he registered a green fleck in her dark chocolate eyes. “Let me be clear. My sister trusted you with her life. An apology isn’t enough, could never be enough.”
Rose swept into the room in low-heeled pumps and a black skirt that fell just below her knobby knees. Her white hair was in a tight bun. Her hard gaze landed on Will.
“I don’t think I’ve had time to tell you, Emma,” the older woman said. “But this man wants to convert Harmony Valley from a peaceful small town into a soulless tourist destination.”
So much for being welcome on Sundays.
CHAPTER THREE
WILL JACKSON KNEW how to push Emma’s buttons.
He hadn’t always. When she was a kid, he’d been her and Tracy’s reluctant rescuer. When she was a teenager, he’d been like a nosy, overprotective older brother, one who’d had the potential to be attractive, if he’d removed his braces and learned how to use hair product. And then he’d gone away to college and transformed himself into a serious hunk, determined that Tracy never have any fun.
Today, authority exuded from Will like heat waves off a summer sidewalk. He didn’t need a power suit. His navy polo and faded blue jeans couldn’t disguise the stench of carefully managed success. He had the lean, lanky body of a surfer. Only his sun-kissed gold locks were conservatively trimmed and his fierce blue eyes didn’t miss a thing. The man was well put together, handsome and heartless.
The last time Emma had seen Will was four years ago. He’d been waiting for Tracy outside their apartment. She and Tracy had just returned from a hot road trip to Tijuana for a friend’s bachelorette party. Hot being the operative word since Tracy’s air conditioner had died in Bakersfield, and the California valley was having a record heat wave. Despite short shorts, a tank top and cornrowed hair courtesy of a beach vendor, Emma’s deodorant had given out hours before and she was sweltering. She didn’t look, smell or feel like entertaining a man who was far from being her biggest fan.
Will had taken Emma in with one quick, disapproving glance, then ignored her, preferring to ream out Tracy for taking off without letting him know where she was. They’d been twenty-two, for crying out loud.
Emma understood that Will probably hated her for causing the accident, but what she’d never been able to understand was why Will had seemed to hate her in the first place. It didn’t help that she’d been a mess when he came to the door today. Since she was a teen, he’d treated her like she had the Congo Cooties.
Emma fingered the bandage beneath her bangs and sighed.
And now, according to Granny Rose, Will wanted to remake Harmony Valley. He probably planned to cancel everything that gave the small town its character, like the annual Beer Belly Serenade and pumpkin bowling for the Harvest Queen crown.
Emma sagged uncomfortably on her grandmother’s thinly padded, red-velvet settee as the strains of South Pacific’s chorus built. Even Granny Rose’s pot roast at dinner hadn’t cheered her up. There were too many unanswered questions banging about in her head: whether Granny Rose’s long-johns performance was anything to worry about; how much of a threat Will posed to Harmony Valley’s cherished way of life; if she’d ever be able to paint or sketch again; whether or not Tracy could forgive Emma for the accident.
Granny Rose sat in her rocking chair by the window, moving in time to one of her favorite musical numbers. She didn’t own a television. And she didn’t look as if she was up to answering questions. Her lids were heavy and her lined features slack.
“I bet Tracy’s happy to be home. There’s no place like Harmony Valley,” Granny Rose mused.
“No, there isn’t.”
“I hope Will didn’t fill your head with nonsense about his winery while I was changing. We adopted a no-growth policy for a reason. We don’t want change. After the grain-escalator explosion, we wanted peace and quiet.” Her grandmother spoke slowly, as if stringing together a sentence tired her.
Was this malaise a sign that she was finally slowing down? Or was something more serious affecting Granny Rose’s ability to think?
Glass-half-empty pessimism had never been Emma’s style. She preferred to look on the bright side. Maybe her grandmother was tired after a busy day. Maybe Emma was misreading Rose’s mental state. Emma used to get fuzzy after a long day of painting. If Granny Rose was worried about Harmony Valley, it might account for her being distracted. “When was the last time you went to the doctor?”
Her grandmother replied in the same measured cadence. “Didn’t I tell you? Dr. Mayhew died last winter. His replacement is in Cloverdale and wetter behind the ears than a baby duck in a rain shower. He told me I needed to slow down and take up yoga.” Granny Rose harrumphed. “I was a highflier in the circus, not a contortionist.”
Her grandmother had been many things before settling down, including a brief stint as a Rockette and a transatlantic-cruise-ship cocktail waitress, where she’d met the man of her dreams.
“You sound worn out, Granny.”
“Worry will do that to you.” She stopped rocking. “When I first came here, I thought this town was a cultural wasteland, a place with blinders on as to what was happening in the rest of the world. It had never hosted a speech from a candidate for president or governor. There was no opera or a cultural museum. But do you know...” Rose leaned forward, eyes suddenly bright. “My attitude changed. The mix of people here is unlike anyplace else on earth. And I learned to love it.” She pointed at Emma with one slender finger. “We like Harmony Valley the way it is.”
Here was the familiar, determined Granny Rose. Emma sat up with a roll of her shoulders. “I like it, too.”
Granny Rose laughed. “Kathryn, you hated growing up here. We didn’t have television and there weren’t enough boys. You couldn’t get out of here fast enough.”
Emma’s breath hitched. Kathryn was her mother. For the second time that day Emma reintroduced herself. “Granny, it’s me. Emma.”
Rose blinked. “Emma?” She smoothed her white hair back with fingers that trembled. Emma didn’t know if the shaking came from age, illness or stress. “Emma. You’ve always loved Harmony Valley.” And just like that, Granny Rose was herself again.
It was like losing the car-radio signal when you went beneath an overpass. Only this tuner required a doctor to fix it.
“I do love it here.” Emma loved it so much that more than half of her freelance portfolio and some of her bestselling works were based on the unspoiled views. Not that she couldn’t sketch or paint elsewhere. She had. Sedona, Yosemite, Yellowstone. But Harmony Valley was different. Not as grand. Not as colorful. But infinitely more peaceful.
If... When Emma painted again, it would be in this place. With all of Granny Rose’s love and support. And hopefully Tracy’s, too.
“Well, I have a busy day tomorrow. I like to be fresh in the morning.” Rose stood, wobbling a smidge. If Emma hadn’t been watching, she would have missed it.
Emma rushed to her grandmother’s side, offering an arm to lean on. She’d call her mother in the morning and tell her she was getting in touch with Granny’s doctor. “Let me walk you back.”
“My room is just down the hall, not across the continent,” her grandmother snapped with all the pepper Emma knew so well.
Emma chuckled, breathing in the familiar scent of rose water. “Humor me. I’ve missed you.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Granny Rose accepted Emma’s support with a wry laugh. “Isn’t it lovely to have someone to lean on?”
“You miss Grandpa, don’t you?”
“Every day. But he’s going to be waiting for me when my time comes, the same as he waited for me under the oak tree in the town square when we were courting.”
Emma loved to hear how much her grandparents had loved each other, probably because her lawyer parents had barely survived a messy divorce when she was a toddler. That was when she and her mother had come to live with Granny Rose.
The floorboards creaked more than usual, almost as much as her grandmother’s knees. “You know he wants to cut down the oak tree in the town square. He doesn’t care that half the town received marriage proposals under that tree.”
“Who doesn’t care?” Emma turned on the hall light. It flickered, then burned bright.
“That computer nerd. He’s a pain in my tuckus.”
“Mine, too.”
Emma bid Granny Rose good-night, and then lugged her bags upstairs, depositing the shoebox full of Carina Career dolls next to her bed. Her room at Granny’s was small with a single bed covered in a green-and-gold star quilt and an old walnut dresser that didn’t take up much floor space. Emma loved the room. The southern exposure let in the most wonderful natural light.
When Emma was ten, she and Granny Rose had painted the walls the palest of blues and taken all the permanent pictures down so Emma could hang her works. She’d filled the walls last summer, but sold all those paintings to contribute to the cost of Tracy’s care.
Tonight, the empty walls spurned her.
Tomorrow she hoped Tracy wouldn’t do the same.
* * *
AFTER WILL LEFT Rose’s house, he walked along the fragrant bank of the meandering Harmony River, dodging blackberry vines and the occasional tendril of a wild yellow rose. The sun had dipped behind one of the hills surrounding Harmony Valley, creating a humid, hazy twilight.
When Emma realized he hadn’t asked Tracy if she wanted to see her, she’d glared up at him, the bandaged bump pushing through her dark brown bangs as stubbornly as she pushed up her chin. He’d seen that headstrong look of hers before—when she was seven and had been convinced that she and Tracy deserved a chance to play baseball with the older boys; when she’d found him and his fourteen-year-old friends skinny-dipping in the Harmony River and wanted to jump in; when he’d answered an SOS call from Tracy after the pair had sought refuge in a strip club when they’d realized they were in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district after-hours.
Emma Willoughby was trouble.
His sister was at a critical juncture in her recovery. She’d hit a plateau and was emotionally beaten. The last thing Tracy needed was a reminder of the accident or some ill-conceived adventure of Emma’s. He had to keep her away.
A figure stepped onto the path ahead of him, immediately recognizable. Her jeans and beige T-shirt bagged on her too-slim, too-frail frame.
“What are you doing here?” Will asked his sister with forceful cheer.
Tracy’s mouth worked in a halting cadence. “You. Took. Too. Long.”
Sorrow clung to Will like a lingering hangover. His sister used to talk high-speed and nonstop. Doctors told them these next few months were critical for Tracy’s recovery. Somehow he had to get her back on track. Tracy needed a goal to work toward, something more concrete than smoother speech.
Sorrow became anger, directed at Emma and her carelessness. “I visited Rose. I need all the votes I can get.”
“Suck. Up.”
“Come look.” Will leaned against a eucalyptus tree, breathing in its minty scent. The trees here bordered the property he and his business partners had purchased. Neat rows of chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon grapes filled forty acres like ranks of green soldiers. The farmer in him appreciated the effort required to build the vineyard and keep it healthy. The businessman looked at the farm buildings the town council threatened to condemn and shuddered.
Tracy leaned against the trunk next to him. “Pretty.”
Now was the time to plant the seed. “How would you like to run our winery when it’s done?” Tracy struggled with speech, but she was as sharp as ever. This could be the goal she needed to push herself further in her recovery.
She thrust away from him, scowling. “You... I... No. Why?”
“It was just a thought. You have a business degree.” Will backed down. It was too soon. He’d wait a few more days before mentioning it again.
“Minor,” she corrected with a shake of her head. “English major.”
He ruffled her short blond hair, careful not to touch the sensitive scars on the right side.
She swatted him away and grinned, the expression so rare of late that Will froze, afraid any movement might startle Tracy into remembering she had little to smile about.
There was no way he was risking that smile disappearing forever. “Did Flynn pick up pizza?”
Tracy nodded.
“Come on.”
They walked along the river to Flynn’s grandfather’s house. Crickets sang a gentle chorus as they passed. Shadows lengthened and began blending with the night.
Flynn and Slade waited for them on the wraparound porch, watching the river go by and drinking beer. After days trying to generate enthusiasm for the winery in Harmony Valley, Will and his friends took refuge in the weathered white rattan chairs on the outdoor porch.
The Jeopardy! jingle drifted out the screen door. Moths fluttered around the porch light.
Tracy perched on a redwood bench and looked out toward the river, but she wasn’t watching the calm waters. Her gaze was unfocused.
“Pizza’s in the kitchen. Italian sausage or pepperoni.” Flynn pulled a beer out of a small cooler and handed it to Will as he came up the steps. His Rolling Stones T-shirt was wrinkled, as usual. Reddish-brown hair hung to his shoulders beneath a Giants baseball cap, as usual. “Which musical did Rose perform tonight?”
Will opened his beer and leaned against the porch railing. “I’m not sure.” Two months ago, Will would’ve been hard-pressed to name any show tunes. Oh, how the mighty had fallen.
Flynn readjusted his Giants cap and grinned at Tracy. “Do you remember when Rose did a one-woman rendition of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for elementary school?” He waited until she nodded. She, Emma and Flynn had been in the same grade in school. After Emma, Flynn was Tracy’s closest friend. “It was so funny, I thought I was going to wet my pants. And then Rose picked me and a couple other kids for the finale. I got to sit in this cardboard car she’d made. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Didn’t matter that I only knew the chorus. For a moment, I was a man of the world.” Flynn sighed. He’d been dreaming of visiting all the places his grandfather had served overseas ever since he was a kid.
Tracy’s laughter was soft and all too brief. They knew Flynn wanted to take his grandfather around the world with him, but Edwin’s heart was failing.
The river sidled past and crickets chirped. Inside the house, the Jeopardy! buzzer did its off-tone double beep.
Will wished Tracy would say something, start a conversation, bring up a positive childhood memory.
“Why don’t you know which production Rose put on?” Slade stretched his long legs across the porch, clasping his hands over the ends of his tie. As their financial guru, Slade believed in living the leader look 24/7. According to him, you never knew who might be willing to invest in their next big idea, so he had to look legit. “What happened?”
Will didn’t want to answer, not in front of Tracy, but it would be a bigger issue if he didn’t. “Rose’s granddaughter showed up.”
“Emma?” Tracy sat up so quickly the bench she was on nearly tipped over.
Will couldn’t tell if Tracy wanted to say more or not. She wrinkled her slim blond eyebrows when she struggled for a word, the same way she did when she was unhappy. They all waited for her to say more, but she went mute.
Slade smoothed an imaginary wrinkle in his slacks and then fiddled with his tie. Will had a theory about those ties. They were a gauge of Slade’s mood—a bold, bright color meant he was content and focused on results, an artistic pattern signaled something stormy or melancholy and on black-tie days Will made sure to avoid asking Slade for anything. Today’s tie was a bright orange diagonal strip. That boded well for the winery. “Was this a planned visit? Or does Emma know Tracy’s home?”
“She knows.” Will continued to study his sister. “She wants to visit Tracy.”
Tracy blew out a breath. “I don’t...don’t.”
“You don’t want to see her,” Will finished, greatly relieved.
“No.” Her brows furrowed. “I. Don’t. Want. You. To—”
“You don’t want me to let her visit.” Will tried again.
“No!” Tracy stood, growling in frustration.
“Let her get it out.” Flynn leaned forward.
She shook her head. “I don’t. Want you. To...to...” Tracy glanced up and to the left. The doctors had told them when she looked in that direction she was trying to access memory for the words she needed. Her hands circled like upside-down eggbeaters. “Stop. Emma.”
“Are you sure?” Will set his beer down and moved closer to capture Tracy’s hands. Her delicate hands. “She’s the reason you’re like this.” Broken. Fragile.
Tracy blinked back tears. “Let me. Decide.” She tore free of his grip and ran down the steps, across the verdant grass.
“She needs space.” Flynn held Will back when he started off after her. “It’s got to be frustrating.”
Will shrugged off his friend’s hand, grasping his beer by the neck to keep a hold on the resentment churning in his gut. If only Emma hadn’t come back. If only Emma hadn’t talked Tracy into going to Las Vegas six months ago. “Tracy doesn’t like me telling her what to do.” Wanting to follow his sister but knowing she needed space, Will anchored his beer on the porch railing.
“I’m going to make an unpopular suggestion,” Slade said. “You’re worried about Tracy, and Flynn’s worried about Edwin’s recovery from his heart attack. This project has gotten too complicated. In addition to the winery we’re opening a restaurant, a tasting room and a gift shop? Maybe we should—”
“We’re ten miles east of Cloverdale,” Will cut in, trying to hammer out his frustration. “No one will drive forty miles north of the heart of Sonoma wine country on a twisting, narrow road simply for a glass of our wine. It’s too much trouble. We need to make Harmony Valley a destination. Build something out here besides our winery. I’d love for someone in town to open a day spa or a bed-and-breakfast.”
“A gelato parlor or a bakery. Maybe even a coffee shop.” Flynn had a huge sweet tooth. “What I wouldn’t give for a latte every morning.”
“Why don’t we stick to what we know and design a new app?” Slade fiddled with his tie.
“Take off your tie,” Will snapped, his frustration finding a new target. “It represents everything we aren’t. We’re supposed to be a lean, independent, creative firm, able to turn our talents toward a new opportunity on a dime. Not a suited-up, slow-moving corporation.”
Slade leaned forward. The old wicker chair groaned in protest. “It sounds like you’re saying you don’t want to be responsible for employees and buildings and a harvest. I agree. Let’s move on.”
“I can’t move on.” Will passed his beer bottle from one hand to the other. He hadn’t told either of them that he wanted Tracy to run the winery. Slade would argue that a junior advertising executive wasn’t qualified to manage their business. Flynn would argue Tracy didn’t drink wine. It didn’t matter. He needed to tell them. But when Will opened his mouth, he said, “You’re the one who said we needed a tax shelter.”
“And you’re the one who said it would be simple to start a business here.” Slade got to his feet. He might not have been as tall as Will, but he was broader. “All we’ve found are roadblocks and complications.”
Will’s temper flared and his words came out angrier than he’d intended. “Flynn and I, we need a break from the creative side of things. We promised ourselves we wouldn’t be one of those one-hit wonders, remember? We promised ourselves the freedom to focus on what we do best—out-of-the-box design. I don’t have any ideas to work on. Do you?” Will rounded on Flynn.
“Nope. My mind’s as blank as a new hard drive.” Flynn tipped his baseball hat toward Slade, seemingly unconcerned by his creative block. “I’m a wealthy man, not that anyone around here cares, and not that my grandfather will let me spend any money on him or this property.” The same as Will’s father wouldn’t allow him to pay for improvements on the family farm. “But I’d like to enjoy being a wealthy man before I burn through another five years of my life becoming wealthier.”
“Amen,” Will said grimly.
“Try to understand where we’re coming from,” Flynn said, ever the peacemaker. “Tracy needs Will right now, and our winery is the best thing that’s happened to my grandfather in a long time. He needed to feel useful after his heart attack. I won’t back away from this deal for that reason alone.”
“But if you need any further convincing,” Will said. “Think about this—it’s next to impossible for us to come up with any new ideas when we’re worried about our families.”
Slade’s long features turned as hard as the granite face of Parish Hill. He was an only child. His mother had always been fragile and had died of a heart virus when he was a teenager. His father had committed suicide soon after Slade graduated from college. Divorced, Slade had no family left.
“I’m sorry,” Will began, knowing the words wouldn’t be enough.
But Slade had already left, heading for his family’s empty house.
CHAPTER FOUR
EMMA WAS BACK in Harmony Valley.
Tracy closed her bedroom door and scowled at the princess bedroom set she’d picked out when she was eight.
On days when she was scared, Tracy wished she’d died in that car accident.
She had no memory of the crash itself, but she did remember what had happened afterward in flashes. Emma taking off her white bra and using its padding to staunch the bleeding on Tracy’s head, her voice high and thin as she told Tracy everything was going to be all right. Emma asking a passing motorist for a blanket to keep Tracy warm. Emma begging Mediflight to let her ride along, and after they refused, squeezing Tracy’s hand with one last bit of reassurance before she’d left on the high-flying roller coaster that had had her throwing up on herself.
Emma had lied. Everything wasn’t all right.
Tracy hadn’t woken up again until a week after the accident. The doctors had put her into a coma until the swelling in her brain decreased. And when she’d come out of it, Emma hadn’t been there. Tracy had been unable to ask about her friend, not with a tube down her throat and a morphine drip clouding reality. It wasn’t until a highway patrolman had shown up to ask her about the accident and they’d lowered her morphine dose that she’d found she could scribble out words. He’d told her Emma had survived. The bigger question: Where was Emma?
Tracy sat on her full-size bed next to the window and stared out at the moonlit night, at the acres of chest-high corn her father took such pride in growing.
After she’d stabilized, they’d moved her to a rehabilitation hospital, where they had a no-cell-phone policy.
Still no Emma.
Her father and Will alternated their visits.
Still no Emma.
Tracy grew tired of bedpans and flash cards, well-meaning therapists who sang goofy kids’ songs and wanted her to sing along. Emma would have understood, would have busted Tracy out for a much-needed afternoon of playing hooky. They’d have hit the mall or found one of those small shops that made their own ice cream. They’d have gotten a scoop of something fattening and decadent, like coconut cream cheese or turtle truffle.
Still no Emma.
And nothing seemed right.
Oh, it was right in Tracy’s head. She had mental conversations with herself as quickly and smoothly as before the accident. She’d surprised her doctors by being able to silently read and write fluently. And her broken bones had healed. She could walk and run and, although she hadn’t tried, she suspected she could dance.
But resuming her job at an ad agency was out of the question. Tracy couldn’t sit with her peers and shout out ideas. She couldn’t contribute to a fast-paced conference call. And she could no longer smoothly present storyboards to advertising clients.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of Tracy’s situation was that everyone treated her like an invalid. Her father wanted her to rest more. Her brother finished her sentences. Doctors, nurses and specialists patted her knee and told her things would get better if she just obeyed every request they made and tried to speak. Again and again and again. Until Tracy hated the sound of her own faltering voice.
She pressed her forehead against the cool window and fingered the cell phone that had no network. Maybe that wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst of it was that the doctor had recommended shock therapy as a next step in her treatment, which in laboratory experiments had increased blood flow to the brain and helped reconnect synapses so that speech was smoother.
Attach electrodes to her brain and start zapping her?
No flippin’ way!
She’d stopped cooperating with her therapist. A few weeks later she’d been discharged, which annoyed the heck out of Will. He kept talking about her needing more therapy. Didn’t he realize what they wanted to do to her?
And now Emma wanted to see her? Tracy was so upset she could scream. Only her scream would probably come out like a trebly Tarzan wail and upset her father.
Tracy both wanted and didn’t want to see Emma.
Truth was, she didn’t want to see anyone, not like this. Maybe she’d cloister herself away in her room, with its pink ruffled bedspread and pink flowered walls and only have conversations with herself. For the rest of her life.
* * *
“YOU THINK WILL took it upon himself to protect Tracy from you? I had hoped it was doctor’s orders. I never could get Ben to say exactly.” Granny Rose poured a cup of coffee and carried it over to the breakfast nook where Emma sat.
It was barely six in the morning and Granny was already dressed in olive slacks, a faded blue denim shirt and scuffed work boots. Her snowy hair was caught up in an intricate chignon. She paused before setting down Emma’s coffee, taking in her bike shorts, tank top and messy ponytail. “Going for a bike ride?”
“Up Parish Hill.” The main road through Harmony Valley wound along the river and then at the northern tip of town ribboned its way up the hill.
Her grandmother nodded approvingly, straightening the morning paper. “But why keep you away? It’s not like you’re the devil.” Granny sighed. “Well, piffle. We’ll just see about that today, won’t we?”
“It’s been so long. Tracy probably thinks I’ve abandoned her.” She hadn’t. She hadn’t been able to get past Will. But Harmony Valley didn’t have security guards. “I’m going over there later in the morning and hopefully Will won’t have her locked up in the attic.”
“Now I wish I’d never let that computer nerd into my house on Sundays, although he did like show tunes. I caught him singing along once.” Granny Rose slid into a chair across from Emma, so clear and normal that last night’s long-john dance and fatigue seemed like nothing to worry about. “No matter. Tracy’s here and Harmony Valley is a small town. You’re bound to bump into her sometime and then you can have a nice long talk.” Granny Rose reached across the table and touched Emma’s hand. “Speaking of talking, let’s talk about your fears regarding your art. No one ever got through an artistic block by ignoring it.”
The beginnings of a dull rumble filled Emma’s ears. She clutched her warm coffee mug. “I’m not—”
“You’re not blocked? Or you’re not ignoring being blocked?” Granny Rose’s faded blue gaze was gentle. “It takes more than talent to fill a canvas or a sketchbook. You need drive and passion.”
“And courage,” Emma added over the intensifying noise of the car accident replaying in her head. She willed herself to shut it out and her hands to stay steady on the mug. “It’s impossible to be creative without courage.”
Granny Rose’s white eyebrows arched. “Since when did you lack courage or passion? I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to force you to stop painting or sketching to eat. Sometimes you get so lost in a project you lose all sense of place and time.”
Fear shuddered through Emma’s veins, threatening to sweep her away. Being lost in a project was precisely what had made her crash and nearly kill Tracy. Her mind had been more focused on an idea for a painting than on the road.
Emma planted her coffee mug on the table with only slightly trembling hands and peered more closely at her grandmother’s to-do list. “This is for today?”
“No, dear. It’s my morning to-do list. Don’t change the subject.”
Emma did anyway. “Mow lawn, weed vegetable garden, make cupcakes, visit Cloverdale Elementary, bring easel down from attic.” Forget that most people younger than her grandmother wouldn’t accomplish that much in one day, let alone one morning. Granny Rose was going to bring down the easel. She expected Emma to paint while she was here.
The dull roar in Emma’s head increased, reverberating down her arms into her fingertips until she had to sit on her hands to stop their shaking. It was nothing—nothing—compared to what Tracy had to go through every day. Emma forced her lips into what she hoped was a smile. “Just looking at your list tires me out. When was the last time you relaxed and had a cup of coffee with your friends?” The last thing she needed was Granny Rose tired and slightly out of it two days in a row.
“Pish. My friends drink wine at the end of the day. We’re too busy living life to dawdle over coffee every morning.” There was nothing out of the ordinary about Granny Rose today. She had all her usual bounce and energy, more at eighty than Emma had at twenty-six.
“How about if I do the yard work after I go for a bike ride?” Exhaustion was just what Emma needed to clear her head, which had begun to throb.
“That would be lovely. I’ll start on the cupcakes. I’m staging a production of The Music Man with the fourth graders in Cloverdale. My cast needs to keep their strength up.” With no mention of the easel, Granny Rose stood and bent to kiss the top of Emma’s head. “Don’t forget in all your rushing to stop and see the world.”
“I might say the same to you.” Emma smiled, more easily this time as the pounding at her temples receded slightly. She finished her coffee and went in search of her old ten-speed bicycle in the garage. A few swipes of a rag took care of the bike’s cobwebs and Emma was on her way.
The sun hadn’t risen high enough to chase away the morning fog. It clung to the grapevines and blanketed the river. The bicycle tires glided over the pavement with only a whisper of sound. She crossed the bridge into town slowly, taking in the way the first bright rays of light snuck through the trees, admiring the varying shades of silver green on the eucalyptus bark. An image flashed in her mind’s eye of a canvas filled with the scene before her, but it was quickly followed by a ripple of panic-driven, leg-pumping adrenaline.
“Be aware of your surroundings,” Emma mumbled. “Stay in the moment.”
The road took her behind the few businesses on Main Street. Soon she was at the beginning of the loop that wended its way up Parish Hill and down on the other side of town. The first switchbacks were soft grades. Emma managed them easily. Then the hillside steepened, and fog and eucalyptus trees gave way to the occasional oak and sunshine. Poppies and dandelions thrust optimistically upward from the gravelly soil.
Emma rounded a bend and saw a jogger ahead.
Buff, blond and bossy. Will Jackson.
A photographer would have snapped the image. Everything about him was golden, from his hair to his tan skin to the way the early morning light illuminated him.
The sight of Will set her teeth on edge.
He’d kept her away from Tracy for six months.
Emma considered turning around, but he’d most likely see her retreat. That stubborn Willoughby pride, the one she could have sworn she didn’t have, egged her on. She shifted gears and pumped the pedals like she meant business, which meant she nearly fell over.
Emma righted the bike and shifted gears again. She wouldn’t let Will beat her to the top.
* * *
WILL’S IPHONE SHUFFLED to a Blink-182 song that had a fast beat his feet didn’t want to keep time to. He was sucking in air like a clogged air filter on a ’57 Chevy. But he kept pushing up this hill. Each time Will took on Parish Hill, he made it a little farther. There were ten switchbacks. He’d managed six the other day before slowing to a walk. Someday, he’d run all the way to the top.
The town council meeting was tonight and Will had a lot of people to see beforehand. It had been a month since their permit and rezoning requests had been put on hold. A month of pulling together facts, drawing up blueprints and kissing up to residents who might support them. Tonight, he hoped he and his friends weren’t going to stand alone.
A sound behind Will had him spinning on the defensive. It wasn’t unheard of—if you believed local myth—for a mountain lion to attack out here. He cocked his arm back, ready to launch his only weapon besides his signal-less iPhone—a water bottle.
But it wasn’t a mountain lion behind him. It was Emma, legs churning pedals as she rounded the turn below. She wore black bike shorts and a tight blue flowered tank top, exposing most of her lithe limbs. Emma might have pulled off the professional racer look, if not for the uneven back and forth, near-tumbling way she worked the bike. And the way that she was smiling beneath a pink helmet decorated with daffodils and ladybugs.
Laughter filled the air—warm, unbidden and unexpected.
His, Will realized with a start, watching Emma close the gap between them.
He frowned, put his hands on his hips and told himself Emma hadn’t heard him laugh. He waited for her and what would certainly be another argument about visiting Tracy.
Instead of stopping at his side, Emma kept going. “See you at the top.” And then she laughed. To be sure, it was a ragged, I’m-breathing-hard kind of laugh. But she delivered it with an I’m-gonna-kick-your-butt jab.
Will spun and put his body through the motions of a jog. But the hill was steep and he’d lost momentum. His overheated muscles and aching joints responded to his commands in agonizing slow motion. Emma started to pull away, even though she couldn’t have been going much faster than he was. The next switchback seemed miles off.
Will refused to give up even as the distance between him and Emma stretched. Adrenaline blazed through his muscles until they shook and threatened to collapse. His lungs burned, each breath a fiery agony. One switchback.
Two.
This was as far as he’d ever gone without reducing the pace to a walk.
Emma was moving slower. She’d changed gears a few times, but Will was betting money she didn’t have any options left.
Switchback number seven loomed above. Emma was about fifteen feet ahead. She glanced over her shoulder at Will, never losing that hitching, awkward rhythm.
Emma was going to win. He could stop. He should stop. But to do so meant to surrender. To Emma? Never.
And then she fiddled with her gearshift and her chain clicked in loud, stuttering protest. It clicked and clacked and then dropped to the pavement.
Emma’s feet did a quick once around the pedals before the bike tilted toward the ground. She hopped out of the way as it crashed.
Leaving the road clear for Will to reach the next switchback first.
The thrill of victory propelled him to the elbow in the road. There was no sense going any farther. They were both spent. Will walked in small circles, attempting to fill his lungs with much-needed oxygen, trying to keep his muscles from convulsing him into a permanent fetal position. He’d been clutching his bottle of water and now drained it. After a few moments, he rasped, “You suck.”
She’d righted the bike and was walking it up the hill, feet digging in to build enough energy to reach him. “I had you all the way.”
“Doesn’t matter. I won.”
“Nobody won. We didn’t make it to the top.” Emma popped out the kickstand and removed her helmet. Her hair was plastered to her head and sweat trickled down the sides of her splotchy red face.
And yet, there was something about her that wasn’t unattractive to look at. Her inviting curves. Her challenging grin. Her warrior attitude that dared any man to take her on.
A memory surfaced. Emma wearing a red backless prom dress that clung to every dangerous contour, her dark tresses woven in a bride-like style threaded with delicate white flowers. Also not unattractive.
Emma wiped at her temples with her forearms, and directed her frustration at an inanimate target. “Stupid chain.”
Will took a second, more assessing look at her. His system was in cool-off mode. Rivulets of sweat dripped off the ends of his hair. Most of the rest of his body was just as soggy and droopy. Emma looked about as sexy as he felt.
Which was great. That moment of attraction must have been due to oxygen deprivation. The prom memory was a fluke. It wasn’t like he’d taken her to the event. He’d only made a preprom appearance to intimidate Tracy’s date. “Did you lose track of what gear you were in? You had me until that last gear change.”
“I did, didn’t I?” She grinned as if she’d won the Tour de France.
That smile somehow managed to trap the air in Will’s lungs. Something about Emma burrowed under his skin in a way he vehemently rejected, and had been rejecting since he was in high school. She never played it safe. She never obeyed the rules. She was like a predinner chocolate—temptation you couldn’t resist, even when you knew it was wrong.
He exhaled forcefully. “As soon as I catch my breath, I’ll fix your chain.”
Where had that offer come from?
Emma’s mouth puckered as if she was going to refuse him, but then she laughed and nodded.
They looked out over what they could see of the valley and the hills that bordered it, an uncomfortable silence settling between them as if they were both remembering they were at odds. Not that this was unfamiliar territory. Will’s most vivid memories were of Emma opposing him. Convincing Tracy to go tubing down the Harmony River when it was still raging from spring rains. Dragging Tracy to a New Year’s Eve celebration in Union Square when the girls were naive freshmen in college. Driving with Tracy to that bachelorette party in Tijuana despite the fact that a young woman had been abducted in that city a few weeks earlier.
Oh, Emma was good at flashing a “forgive me, I know I’ve been bad” smile and a good excuse: We knew what we were doing. It was all innocent. Everything turned out fine. Only that time, everything hadn’t turned out fine. Tracy had almost been killed.
Emma plucked a dandelion from her feet, studied it for a moment and then blew its white parachute seeds into the wind. She knelt to pick another one, closed the distance between them and held it up to Will. “How about a dandelion truce?”
Generations of farming blood had him warding her off with one arm. “It’s a weed.”
“It’s a dandelion.” Emma twirled the stem back and forth. “Kids make wishes on them all the time.”
“And blow the seeds of a weed out into the world.” If wishes could make Tracy whole, he’d blow an entire crop of dandelions into the wind. But chances were those dandelions wouldn’t result in wishes. They’d sprout up in his vineyard. “Farmers kill dandelions.”
“Suit yourself.” Emma studied the white puff, drew a deep breath and blew another handful of delicate white parachutes on to the breeze.
Will knew he shouldn’t ask, but he couldn’t help himself. “What did you wish for?”
“If I told you,” she said in a solemn voice, as if she truly believed in dandelion wishes, “it wouldn’t come true.”
Will felt a chasm open between them, shored up by differences like belief in fairy tales, Santa Claus and happy ever afters. He stood with the realists. She danced with the dreamers. It had nearly cost his sister her life. He was right to bar her from seeing Tracy. Wishes couldn’t make his sister well.
Emma knelt by her bike and fiddled with the chain. Apparently she’d decided she didn’t need his help. “What’s a good time to come by and see Tracy?”
“Don’t. I talked to Tracy last night and she doesn’t want to see you.”
“You’re lying.” Her hands, splotched with grease, shook.
“I’m not,” Will lied. He’d do anything to protect Tracy. “Flynn and Slade were there. Ask them.” He was betting she’d never do it.
“You can bring a thousand friends to testify she doesn’t want to see me and I still won’t believe you.” Emma’s face was as closed off as the latest firewall software to a cyber attack.
“Don’t come by, Emma. You’ll be the one to get hurt this time.”
“I don’t care.” She pushed her chin in the air, but her lip trembled.
And he was twelve all over again, bending to her will. “At least wait until tomorrow. The trip home tired her out.”
She nodded stiffly. “All right. But I don’t need your permission. And I wouldn’t try to keep her locked up in that house forever. She’ll resent you for it.” The chain dropped onto the sprocket. Emma jammed her helmet on, hopped on the bike and left, her rear brake squealing at him as she returned the way they’d come.
“I don’t have to keep Tracy in the house forever,” Will muttered to himself, catching sight of a drifting dandelion seed floating on the breeze. “Just until you leave.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THERE WAS NOTHING Emma disliked more than being made to feel she was a shrew. And that was what arguing with Will did to her.
She’d apologized to him twice, but he still treated her as if she’d pointed a gun at Tracy and pulled the trigger. It left a bleak, bottomless sensation in her belly. Oh, she’d like to blame Will for that feeling, but her guilt was the cause, not Mr. Perfect’s lack of forgiveness. She shouldn’t care that he’d refused her attempt to apologize twice. The only absolution that should matter was Tracy’s.
Emma outran the emptiness as best she could. She’d biked back to Granny Rose’s, driven the riding mower over the half-acre lawn and pulled some stubborn weeds out of the small vegetable garden. She’d called her mom and left a voice mail about Granny Rose, requesting a callback that probably wouldn’t come for days. In the middle of a murder trial, her defense-attorney mother only dealt with life-threatening emergencies. Granny Rose being Granny Rose didn’t qualify.
Emma didn’t want the easel but she couldn’t stand the thought of Granny Rose climbing up the rickety attic stairs and wrestling it down, either, so she carried it to her room. And just to punish herself, she put a fresh canvas on it, got out her sketching pencil and stood like a statue, left hand hovering unsteadily over the canvas.
Since she was a little girl, she’d loved to color, draw and paint. She lost herself in the process of creation, her senses taking in the scene she was trying to capture to an internal soundtrack that was sometimes soothing, sometimes lively and always passionate. But now all she heard was the repercussion of a diesel engine bearing down on her, the trumpet of brakes locking. She was aware of sliding, losing control and the uneven rasp of Tracy’s struggle to live.
She couldn’t imagine Will losing himself in a moment. He noticed everything, as he held himself with a rigid grace the Renaissance masters would have loved to paint. If Will was naked.
Not that Emma wanted to imagine him without clothes. She didn’t sketch or paint people and she certainly shouldn’t be imagining her best friend’s brother in his birthday suit. But the seed had taken flight, just like her dandelion wish. And instead of mentally planning out the foggy-morning image of Harmony Valley’s bridge before moving her pencil, she found herself dwelling on the golden glimmer of his hair in the sunlight, the elegant taper of tan shoulders to his waist, the bunch and release of his quads as he ran uphill. But even those vivid images didn’t liberate her talent, or free her hand, or quiet the internal wail of frustration when the canvas remained blank.
Granny Rose believed Emma could overcome this block. Emma wasn’t so sure. Even as she stood there, her breath came in labored, near-panicked gasps, and not just because her art had deserted her.
What if Tracy never forgave her?
* * *
“WE USED TO eat ice cream with girls on that bench under the oak tree.” Slade stood at the northern corner of the town square, fiddling with a solemn black tie. He hadn’t looked at Will all morning as they’d called on various residents and discussed the benefits the winery would bring the town. “I haven’t seen anyone under there since we’ve been back.”
The midmorning sun warmed what had been a brisk spring breeze, bringing with it the smell of chicken grilling at El Rosal, the one restaurant left in town.
Tracy wandered over to the wrought-iron bench beneath the town square’s lone oak tree.
In his memory, Will saw Tracy as she’d been a year ago—a glow to her cheeks and clothes that didn’t hang off her petite frame.
He thought of Emma’s determination to see his sister, regardless of who got hurt; all the ways Slade couldn’t hide his despair at being alone; Tracy’s resentment; the town’s resistance. His worries stacked on each other until the possibility of failure weighed down his shoulders and dragged at his heels.
Will hadn’t found an opportunity all morning to mend his rift with either his sister or Slade. They had a bit of time to kill before their next appointment. He opened his mouth to apologize.
And Flynn interrupted. “The ice cream parlor closed when I was in high school.” Flynn gazed wistfully into the window of the empty corner shop as he adjusted his Giants cap over his tangle of reddish-brown hair. “Maybe we should open an ice cream parlor instead of a winery. It’d make Rose happier.”
Will rolled his shoulders back and crossed his arms over his chest. When the stakes involved his sister, he stood firm. The winery would succeed. “Harmony Valley is at the end of the road. Who’s going to drive this far for ice cream?”
“How about gelato?” Flynn grinned. “I’d bring a date out here for gelato.”
“You aren’t very discerning in your women or the places you take them.” A hint of a smile slipped past Slade’s bad mood.
“We need to focus on the winery and related businesses. That’s the only way to attract significant outside revenue when Harmony Valley is about as convenient to the rest of the county as the sun is to Uranus.”
“Ouch. Okay, I give.” Flynn held up his hands, exchanging a look with Slade that seemed to say Will needed to be humored.
“A lot of people are going to come to the council meeting tonight.” Will forced himself to uncross his arms and draw a breath. “If enough of them speak on our behalf, we might sway Mayor Larry or Rose.”
“If people speak positively.” Slade fingered his tie, the movement taunting Will like a red flag in front of a bull. “You’ve lost your perspective. Admit it. This isn’t about saving the town. It’s about you overcoming another challenge, proving something to us or your dad or someone.”
“Prove?” Will sputtered. “I love the smell of success the same as the next guy, but this has nothing to do with my ego. We made a commitment to—”
“You committed!” Slade’s words burst out as if he’d been holding them in too long. “I’ve been crunching numbers and waiting to see how this plays out. But I’ve said all along that wineries are a money suck. I’m all for a tax shelter, but not this one. If I had my way, Harmony Valley would be a ghost town.” Slade stopped and turned away, as if he’d said too much. But then he added in a muted voice, “You should feel the same way after losing your mom here.”
Will followed Slade’s gaze to the skeleton of a grain silo visible over the treetops. The Harmony Valley Grain Company had been the primary employer in the small town until the grain elevator had exploded, killing Will’s mother and three others. The company had closed before the embers were cold, forcing the workforce to move, other businesses to fold, schools to shut down and leaving nothing behind but cash settlements to grieving families.
The Jackson family’s settlement had paid for Will’s and Tracy’s college tuitions. But nothing could replace the fact that they were motherless. Or erase the fear that life could be lost at a moment’s notice.
“You’d abandon this place?” Flynn looked perplexed. “But it’s home.”
“Not to me.” Slade cast a sidelong glance up the north end of Main Street toward the house he’d grown up in.
And then both he and Flynn turned their attention to Will.
Did Will want the town to die?
He shook his head. “There are painful memories here, but more good ones than bad. And as corny as it sounds, residents don’t look at us and tally our net worth. I don’t feel the pressure to add to our resume of work while I’m here.” Although the lack of a new program to code against made him restless.
“That doesn’t bode well for the future of our company.” Slade started to smooth his tie, then seemed to think better of it and set his hand on his waist.
“We are not one-hit wonders.” Certainty rang through Will’s words, despite the whisper of doubt, the one that slipped into his thoughts on nights when he couldn’t sleep. But he’d heard that chorus before and proved it wrong. “Maybe this break and this winery are what we need to reboot that creative spark.”
Will’s gaze drifted to Tracy, whose head tilted up to watch clouds pass by. “This isn’t about my pride. I want to open this winery so Harmony Valley will thrive and my dad won’t be so isolated. I want there to be emergency services here in town rather than thirty minutes away. But mostly, I want this winery to provide a job for Tracy.” Now was the time to say it. He drew a deep breath. “I want her to manage the businesses once we’re up and running.”
“Is that all?” Flynn looked from Will to Slade. “That’s okay with me.”
For one brief moment, Will experienced the lightness of relief.
Then Slade’s voice came down with trust-me-on-this negativity. “We talked about hiring someone with experience. Tracy has none. This makes the risk even greater.”
Will was used to overcoming obstacles and opposition. But for five years, Slade had been on his side. He’d known Slade wouldn’t approve of his choice. He’d known, and yet he’d hoped. “My sister needs a job in a place where people know and understand her. She gets tongue-tied under stress.” He stared down the road toward Slade’s house, realizing how helpless Slade must have felt when his father died. At least with Tracy, Will could keep trying. Slade had no second chances.
The dread Will had been holding back for six months broke free, spilling into his words until he could no longer hide how the weight of responsibility threatened to crush him.
“I worry about Tracy all the time. Can I hope for something close to normal in her speech? What if she has an emergency and can’t get the words out quickly enough? Are people going to judge her intelligence by the way she talks? Tracy’s doctors tell me what to do and I feel hope. And then I try to help her and nothing works.” He clenched and unclenched his fists, trying to expunge the helplessness. “If we can perform CPR on this town and Tracy has a role in our organization, I’d be happy. She doesn’t have to run everything. Maybe just the gift shop. Or the tasting room.”
Slade cleared his throat.
But the flood of Will’s frustration wasn’t finished. “It’s the doubts that drive me insane. Will Tracy be like this forever? Speaking in broken English and with pain so deep in her eyes that I can’t find the bottom? I know Tracy doesn’t want any handouts from me. But if you don’t approve of hiring her, I’ll pay her salary out of my own pocket.
“Last night Slade said Tracy was a distraction. But he’s wrong. Carving out a place in the world for her is my life’s work right now. And these businesses we’re proposing can give her that place.” If only he could make Tracy see. “If I can’t fix Tracy so she can return to her old life, I need to help her create a new one. Everything else, including our next multimillion dollar sale, is a distraction.”
Will hadn’t realized an empty street could be so silent.
Slade stared at Will with fathomless black eyes that neither condemned nor supported.
“Slade,” Will began, “what I said last night... I was a jerk.”
“You get a pass,” Slade said gruffly.
“I need you standing by me. You and Flynn.” Together, the three friends could do anything—if they all concurred.
“We’re doing this, then?” Flynn asked Slade.
Their financial partner nodded curtly. “Since I’m in charge of our investments, I’ll agree to pursue rezoning if you both agree that at each step in development we review our options. If this winery ever becomes a losing proposition, we cut our losses.”
Flynn and Will agreed.
Will was determined he’d never let the winery come to that. His tension slipped away, loosening his limbs. He scanned the town square, tensing when he noticed it was empty. “Where’s Tracy?”
Flynn pointed. “She headed back along the river toward your house.”
The river path would take Tracy past Rose’s home. Where Emma, Tracy’s Pied Piper, was staying.
Will stepped off the curb, but Flynn held him back. “You have to let Tracy deal with Emma in her own way.”
Will pulled his arm free. “She’s not strong enough yet.”
* * *
“EMMA!” GRANNY ROSE returned from her visit to the elementary school in the next town around eleven-thirty, her booted feet echoing throughout the old house. “Come here.”
Emma saved the print ad she’d been revising for one of her clients on her laptop before going downstairs.
She found Granny Rose on the porch, reaching through an open window to start the record player. “Schoolchildren make me want to dance for joy.”
After her bike ride, Emma’s legs felt as if they were in plaster casts, stiff and cumbersome. Dancing would be impossible.
The Andrews Sisters began singing about a bugle boy. What little booty Granny Rose had started shaking. Her arms stretched out midair, fingers snapping. And then she held out her hand to Emma. “Let’s dance, sister. I’ll lead.”
With a slump to her shoulders, Emma shuffled forward. “Do I have to?”
“It’s either that or color!” Pointing to a coloring book on the table, Granny Rose laughed, the sound rippling above the music, cresting over Emma’s sour mood and washing away most of her reluctance.
At first, Emma stumbled through the steps of the swing like a zombie with two left feet. But then, miraculously, her muscles warmed and loosened and her spirits lifted. She and Granny cut a rug back and forth across the porch as if competing in their own dance competition.
* * *
TRACY HAD SLIPPED the noose of Will’s leash and was heading back to the house like a schoolgirl playing hooky.
Her body and spirit needed a lift. Life here didn’t feel much different than in the rehabilitation hospital. Banned from driving, she still couldn’t go where she wanted when she wanted. Harmony Valley was another cage and Will her jailer. It was hard to believe, but being a shock-therapy lab rat might allow her more freedom.
And then she heard music.
Although it was a tune from a different generation, it was the music of Tracy’s youth. The music she’d learned to dance to—big-band swing. Just listening to the song as she walked down the narrow path by Harmony River buoyed Tracy’s steps.
The Andrews Sisters beckoned her closer, inviting her to set aside her worries, if only for a few minutes. She couldn’t see Rose’s house through the trees, but with the volume up this loud, the older woman had to be outdoors, dancing on the wraparound porch as if her shoes had wings.
Tracy and Emma had danced many a summer night away on that porch. Tracy had danced away her grief after her mother died.
Taking the path around a blackberry bush, she stopped in the shade of the eucalyptus grove.
She and Emma—
Emma was dancing with Rose.
Emma.
Dancing. As if she didn’t have a care in the world. As if the crash hadn’t permanently destroyed her dreams.
Had Emma been dancing the entire time Tracy was in the hospital?
Her pulse quickened until it felt like her heart would hammer its way out of her chest if she didn’t do something. She took a step out of the shadows, but a hand on her arm held her back.
“Don’t,” Will said.
Tracy snapped her arm free and turned toward Rose’s house, fueled by anger at both Emma and Will.
Will yanked her back again. “Don’t.”
Emma had been here all this time? Dancing?
“What are you going to do?” Will’s contempt was palpable. “Dance with them?”
That was the furthest thing from her mind. Tracy wanted to yell at Emma, wanted to make her listen to all her frustrations. She wanted to shout and scream and howl in pain. She wanted to accuse and blame. She wanted to finally have someone understand the anger and uncertainty that beat a pounding staccato in her chest.
Tracy opened her mouth to tell Will what she had in mind, but all that came out was, “I...”
Her pulse dragged to a sluggish near halt.
Who was she kidding? It would take hours to get everything off her chest.
Will must have sensed her defeat because he pulled her deeper into the trees, farther down the winding path toward the river.
And she let him.
* * *
“TRACY?” EMMA STEPPED out of Granny Rose’s arms. She thought she’d seen Tracy in the trees, her blond hair catching a ray of soft sunlight. Emma ran down the front stairs and into the eucalyptus grove bordering the river. “Tracy!”
But it wasn’t Tracy who awaited her. It was Will.
Beneath the trees, he exuded none of the golden-boy aura she’d admired on Parish Hill. He was breathing heavily, as if he’d been running. But his blond hair didn’t glisten, his skin didn’t radiate vitality and there wasn’t a fleeting shout of laughter as when he’d first seen her this morning.
“How can you dance?” The anger in Will’s voice thrust barbed points at Emma, bringing her to a halt. “You were dancing like you were happy.”
The emptiness that never receded completely expanded inside of Emma, filling her with a bleakness that welled into her eyes and threatened to overflow. But she wouldn’t cry. Not in front of Will. “I wish I could make you understand. Part of me cringes every time I feel a hint of happiness because I caused the accident that nearly killed Tracy. Me.” She tapped her chest. “I carry that with me every day and I always will. But I was trying to make my grandmother happy just now. I owe it to her.”
Glaciers were warmer than Will’s expression.
“So if I was smiling, if I looked happy, I’ll admit, there may have been a moment when the music swelled and I felt hope. Hope that I’d finally see for myself that Tracy is okay.” She searched the area again for any sign of her friend, but she was gone. “I’d switch places with Tracy and take on all her suffering if I could. It would mean the world to me if she forgave me, but she doesn’t have to. Whatever she thinks, whatever she feels, I’ll honor that, but she has to tell me herself. Please,” she added, feeling suddenly weary.
Will’s gaze cast about as if searching for his arguments. Finally, he said, “Tracy was crushed when she saw you.”
“She was here?” Emma clung to hope.
“You upset her. She went home.” Will looked along the river toward his family’s property. “She’s hit a plateau in her recovery. She needs rest before her next round of therapy. Once her communication improves, she’ll be better equipped to handle the stress of the everyday world.” He cast her a sidelong glance. “And people like you.”
“Me?” Emma stepped back.
The edge returned to his voice. “People like you don’t look before they leap, you don’t think about the burn you’ll get twirling near the fire. You and your grandmother get a whiff of excitement and off you go, without considering the consequences.” His gaze returned to the river. “But people like Tracy, like my father and me, we have to be careful of every step we make.”
Will was referring to something other than the car accident. He’d been fifteen and Tracy eleven when their mother died at work. Mrs. Jackson had been a frequent Sunday visitor at Emma’s house, taking part in Rose’s theatricals along with Emma, Tracy and, occasionally, Will. Emma had loved Mrs. Jackson’s infectious laugh, her boundless energy, her joie de vivre. She and Granny Rose were like sisters and Emma had wanted to be just like them. And she had, up until the accident.
After his mother’s death, Will had seldom left his computer except to haul Tracy back home for supper or away from whatever mischief the two girls had gotten into. He’d never come over for Sunday theatricals unless forced. He’d started treating Emma as if she had a contagious disease.
She hadn’t realized. She hadn’t known.
This was why Will had shunned her all those years, treating each trip or excursion she and Tracy took as if it was hazardous. This was why Will had kept her away from Tracy, because he thought she’d hurt Tracy worse than she had in the accident. He planned to cocoon his sister the same way he’d cocooned himself, burying himself in work instead of living life to the fullest.
Emma wanted to tell him, I don’t leap without looking. But he wouldn’t believe her. He’d spent nearly fifteen years forming an impression of her as someone he and his sister should avoid. Emma wanted to tell him, You can’t cover yourself in bubble wrap the rest of your life. Instead she said, “You can’t hover over Tracy the rest of her life.”
“Why not?” He held himself very still, as if he wanted to be swayed by her logic.
“Because she deserves the right to choose her own road, be it safe or risky.”
Will shook his head. “She tried your way, Emma. It’s better if she stays on my road from now on.”
“Don’t do this.” Emma touched his shoulder as he turned to go. “You’ll lose her.”
Will turned back, his gaze anguished. “Can you guarantee I won’t lose her if I let her go her own way?”
Emma couldn’t. No one could.
CHAPTER SIX
WILL WAS THE first to arrive in the small, one-hundred-year-old church where the town council held its meetings. He’d tried all afternoon to shake off Emma’s warning that his form of protection would push Tracy away. He’d attempted to forget the sincerity in Emma’s explanation, to ignore how listening to her threatened to erode his sense of purpose. What he felt didn’t matter. Keeping Tracy safe did.
Would Tracy forgive her, even if Will couldn’t? He feared the answer was yes.
The meeting started in less than an hour. Will forced himself to shut out thoughts of Emma and concentrate on the task at hand. He needed the council to set aside their no-growth policy and rezone their land for commercial use so that Harmony Valley could thrive another one hundred and fifty years.
No sound disturbed the church. The sun elbowed its way through the grimy side windows, past ancient wooden pews, flooding the entry with dust motes and light. The church had been built so the morning sun would illuminate the minister delivering his sermon. The altar was shadowed now and the place smelled musty. No matter. Will planned to set up his laptop and projector so his PowerPoint presentation could be seen on the wall behind the now-gloomy pulpit.
Flynn and Slade came in behind him, their feet echoing on the wooden planked floor.
Slade paused to give each of them a brief once-over. It wasn’t every day Flynn and Will wore suits and ties.
“About time you guys showed some class.” Slade approved their outfits with a nod.
The three men proceeded up the aisle to set up the presentation.
While they worked, nerves wavered in Will’s gut. There was more at stake than a new business venture, but he had to appear confident and put forth their strongest arguments.
Once the laptop was powered up, the projector connected and the PowerPoint presentation showing on the front wall, Will flipped through a few pages, including their architectural renderings of the new buildings. Since the wall behind the pulpit had been plastered over, it wasn’t the smoothest of screens or the sharpest of images, but everything was visible.
“Oh. My. God,” Tracy said from the back of the church.
“I thought this was a small winery,” their dad added, coming in behind her. “And why does it look like a mission? The Franciscans never settled this far north.”
“The mission style says California.” And Will liked how the arches resembled those at Stanford—orderly, established, impressive.
“Wrong. For H-H-Harmony. Valley. Too big.”
“There goes another supporter,” Slade muttered.
“It’s not too big.” Will spared Tracy a glance that he hoped disguised his irritation. He was tired of fighting with her on everything.
“We’re not going to build a mom-and-pop operation,” Flynn said, as if sensing Will needed backup.
“Too big,” Tracy repeated.
The door to the church opened and Emma blew in, as if ushered forward by a strong wind.
* * *
“TRACY!” HEART POUNDING apprehensively, Emma nearly bowled Tracy over as she enveloped her in a tight hug.
Tracy’s halfhearted reception doused Emma in doubt.
Was Will right? Was Tracy not ready to see her?
Will stood at the altar, as still and silent as if he were a religious relic. Only his eyes gave away his feelings. Don’t hurt her, they said.
Emma nodded, ever so subtly, to let him know she understood. And then she let Tracy go.
Granny Rose stepped through the doorway. “It’s our precious Tracy.” She gave Tracy a hug. It was hard to tell who was thinner or frailer.
Emma drew a breath and held on to her carefully honed patience. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you. I felt so bad about the accident.” She hesitated. She didn’t want to hurt Will, not now that she knew why he’d kept her away, but she had to let Tracy know she hadn’t abandoned her. “I’ve been trying to come visit, but no one would let me in.”
“No. One?” Tracy glanced at Will and then her father, her mouth pulling to one side in the start of a scowl.
Will’s scowl was already in place.
“But none of that matters now.” Emma smiled gently. “You’re here and I’m here.”
Other residents streamed into the church before Emma could say anything more. They also greeted Tracy, who acknowledged each with a small smile and a nod.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/melinda-curtis/dandelion-wishes/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Melinda Curtis
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв
О книге: Will Jackson was a control freak and a killjoy.He had been since they were kids. He’d made it his mission to come between Emma Willoughby and her best friend—his little sister—all their lives.But why?Until the day of the accident Emma had always thought of herself as adventurous, not dangerous…. And then her friend had almost died.She desperately needed to apologize, to try to explain, if she could.Will had managed to keep the two apart while Tracy was in the hospital, but now that she was home in Harmony Valley, the winemaker-wannabe had to understand that getting past this was the only way they could heal.And yet even if Tracy was able to, Emma wasn’t sure she could forgive herself.And Will had made it abundantly clear: he wouldn’t sleep until he’d found retribution.