by Lisa Jackson
He couldn’t wait.
He tucked the legal papers inside his bag again and stuffed the duffel into a drawer. Walking stiffly across the room he sat on the edge of the windowsill and looked into the backyard where Tiffany, in the gathering dusk, was watering some of the planters near the carriage house. She was humming to herself, seemingly at peace with the world, but J.D. sensed it was all an act. The woman was restless; disturbed about something. Ten to one it had to do with her little foray down to the police department today. She set down her watering can and glanced up toward the window.
He didn’t move.
Through the glass their gazes met. J.D.’s stomach tightened. His pulse raced. As he stared into those amber eyes, something inside him broke free. Memories he’d locked away emerged and turned his throat to dust. He remembered touching her, kissing her, feeling her sweet, forbidden surrender. God, she was beautiful.
She licked her lips and his knees went weak at the silent, innocent provocation.
Or was it innocent?
Damn it all to hell. Sweat tickled the back of his neck. Desire crept through his blood.
She looked away at first, as if her thoughts, too, had traveled a sensual and taboo course. She turned her attention back to the planter boxes and J.D. snapped the blinds closed. This couldn’t be happening. Not again. Not ever.
His fascination for his deceased brother’s wife was his personal curse, one he’d borne from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her.
Chapter Three
“Did you hear that we’re getting a new neighbor?” Doris, the owner of the small insurance agency where Tiffany worked, asked the next day. Tiffany was just settling into her chair, balancing her coffee cup in one hand while reaching for the stack of mail sitting on the corner of her desk.
“Who is it this time?” Tiffany took a swallow of coffee and snagged her letter opener from the top drawer. In the small cottage converted into offices there had been everything from acupuncturists to a toy store, a bead shop and a phone-card business. All had failed.
“An architect,” Doris said with a wry smile.
Tiffany froze. “You don’t mean—?”
“Yep. Bliss Cawthorne’s going to be right next door.”
“Great.” Tiffany sliced open the top envelope as if her life depended upon it. She didn’t need to be reminded of her half-sister, her legitimate half-sister. Not this week.
“Thought you’d be pleased.” Doris’s eyes gleamed from behind thick, fashionable frames. Near sixty and divorced, she had the energy and stamina of a woman half her age. “She already stopped by this morning, asking about tenant’s insurance, spied your nameplate, and after half a beat, said she’d be back later.”
“To see me.”
“I guess.” Doris lifted a shoulder and rolled her chair back as the fax machine whirred to life. “Uh-oh, looks like someone found us. Probably from the main office.” Adjusting her reading glasses, she walked to the fax machine and waited for the paper it spewed forth. “ Another memo about Isaac Wells, wouldn’t you know,” she said, clucking her tongue and shaking her short blond curls. “Aren’t we lucky to have policies out on him. I wonder what happened to that old guy.”
“You and everyone else in town,” Tiffany said uneasily. Any talk of Isaac’s disappearance reminded her that the police thought Stephen knew more than he was telling. She shivered. Impossible. Not her boy. He was only thirteen.
Doris snapped up the page of information.
“When is Bliss moving in?” Tiffany asked in an effort to change the course of the conversation. How would she deal with seeing her half-sister every working day? Bliss Cawthorne, “the princess.” John’s indulged and adored daughter. The only one of his three offspring allowed to bear his name. Get over it, she told herself as she settled into her morning routine, opening letters and invoices and scanning each with a practiced eye. It wasn’t Bliss’s fault that their father was an A number-one jerk, a man who’d ignored both of his other daughters for years. Until it was convenient for him.
Now, after his brush with death, he wanted to make everything nice-nice. As if the past thirty-odd painful years could be swept away. Just because he’d had himself a heart attack, he wanted to start over. Well, in Tiffany’s estimation, facing one’s mortality didn’t do a whole lot toward changing the past.
Give it a rest, she told herself and, taking her own advice, buried herself in her work. Several policyholders came into the office to pay their bills or fill out claim reports.
Tiffany worked through lunch, balanced the previous day’s invoices, made her daily trip to the bank, and had found time to chat with Doris about the kids and Doris’s planned trip to Mexico while eating a container of strawberry yogurt at her desk.
It was nearly quitting time when the bell over the door tinkled and Tiffany glanced up. Her insides tightened a bit as she recognized Bliss, her face flushed, striding to the front counter.
Wonderful. Tiffany’s good mood disappeared.
With cheekbones a model would kill for and eyes as bright as a June morning, Bliss Cawthorne looked like a woman who had everything going for her. Slim and blond, she exuded the confidence of a person who knew her own mind and had never wanted for anything. She wore a white skirt, denim shirt, wide belt and sandals. Upon the ring finger of her left hand she sported a single pear-shaped diamond, compliments of her fiancé, Mason Lafferty, a local boy who, despite his poor roots, had returned to Bittersweet a wealthy, successful man.
Bliss practically glowed, she seemed so happy, and Tiffany had to stanch the ugly stream of resentment that flowed whenever she was face-to-face with her half-sister. Fortunately, their meetings had been few and far between. Until now.
“Hi,” Bliss said with a smile.
Tiffany forced a grin. “Hello.”
“Did you sign the lease?” Doris asked and Bliss, her steady gaze never leaving Tiffany, nodded.
“Looks like for the next year at least, I’ll be your neighbor.”
“Welcome aboard,” Doris said, walking around her desk to shake Bliss’s hand. Her bracelets jangled in the process and she grinned widely enough to show off the gold caps on her back teeth. “It’ll be nice to have another woman around here, won’t it?” she asked, cocking her head in Tiffany’s direction.
“Absolutely.”
“It’s just us and Randy around back. He organizes guided tours into the wilderness—canoeing, backpacking, trail riding, whatever.” She fluttered her fingers by the side of her head, as if dismissing Randy’s occupation. “Seth was in the office you’re renting. Semiretired accountant, but he had a cancer scare last winter and decided to sell his business.”
There was nothing that Doris liked more than gossip and she didn’t get as many opportunities as she wanted, so she was anxious to bend any ear she could.
“I hear you’re marrying that Lafferty boy.”
Bliss’s grin widened. “Next month.”
“Pretty soon after your father’s big to-do,” Doris observed.
“I guess it is.” Bliss was a little noncommittal, and Tiffany realized that her half-sister had her own reservations about their father’s impending nuptials. Not that Tiffany blamed her. It seemed that the old man had kept Brynnie, his bride-to-be, as his mistress off and on during most of the duration of his first marriage to Bliss’s mother, Margaret. The guy was a creep. A slime. And you’ve got his blood running through your veins whether you like it or not.
“I’ve decided to take out the renter’s policy,” Bliss said, as if the subject of her father’s wedding was a little touchy. “I’ve listed all the assets—computers, fax machine, copier and furniture.” She and Doris began discussing the policy as Tiffany printed invoices. She heard Doris giving Bliss her best sales pitch for life, auto and liability insurance while slipping her a business card.
“We could take care of all your insurance needs and we’d be right down the hall,” Doris was saying as Tiffany pulled the billings off the p
rinter.
“I’ll think about it.”
“And talk to your dad. We could help him out, too.” Doris nodded toward Tiffany. “I’ve asked Tiffany to call him and show him how we could help out, but she—”
“Doris!” Tiffany reproached, shaking her head. That was the trouble with her boss. Doris didn’t understand the word soft when it was applied to sell. “You don’t have to talk to John,” she said to Bliss. “Doris can call him herself.”
“I suppose,” Doris said with a theatrical sigh. “But I should wait until after the wedding.”
“Good idea.”
“You can’t blame a girl for trying, now, can you?” Doris slipped a thick bundle of papers into an envelope and handed the packet to Bliss.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Bliss replied, tucking the envelope into her leather bag. “I, uh, was hoping that you and I,” she said to Tiffany, “could have lunch or coffee or something. You know, get to know each other.”
“As long as it’s what you want and not John’s idea.”
“Tiffany!” It was Doris’s turn to appear aghast.
“Bliss understands,” Tiffany said. “Ever since John came back to Bittersweet, he’s been trying to steamroller me into doing things I’m not comfortable with.”
“That’s between you and Dad,” Bliss said.
“So you’re not going to try and pressure me into attending his wedding?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Bliss sounded sincere. “But it’s up to you. This whole concept of a new family—stepmother, half-sisters and the like—hasn’t been easy for me to swallow, either. But I’m trying. And I’d like to start by having coffee or . . . a glass of wine . . . or whatever with you. But it’s your choice.” She glanced back at Doris, who was assessing the situation between the two half-siblings with surprised eyes. “Thanks.” To Tiffany, she added, “I’ll give you a call.”
“Any time.”
Bliss left and Doris stared after her. “You could have been more friendly, you know.”
“Just because she bought a policy—”
“That has nothing to do with it. You should be friendly because she’s your damned sister, Tiffany.”
“Half-sister.”
“Whatever.” Doris straightened the papers on her desk. Her lips were pursed into a perturbed pout, little lines appearing between her plucked eyebrows. “You’re lucky, you know. A sister—even a half-sister—is a special person. More than a friend.” She cleared her throat. “There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think of mine.”
Tiffany cringed and felt like an insensitive oaf. Doris’s sister had died less than a year ago from heart disease. “I suppose you’re right.”
“There’s no ‘supposing’ about it. I am right. It’s not Bliss’s fault that her father’s a jerk who never claimed his other kids. The way I look at it, Tiffany, you have a chance to have a family now. Your father, well, you can take him or leave him. Your choice. But your sisters, they’re gifts. Now, let’s go over these casualty reports, then you can tell me about your love life.”
“There isn’t much to tell,” Tiffany said.
“ A situation that needs to be remedied and I just happen to know a divorced father of four, forty years old, six-foot-three with gorgeous blue eyes and a smile to die for.”
“I’m not in the market.”
“He has a great job, nifty sense of humor and—”
“And I’m still not in the market.”
“You can’t mourn forever, honey,” Doris said, her eyebrows lifting over the tops of her glasses.
“I’m not mourning—not really.”
“Then why not go out, kick up your heels a little?”
“When the time is right.”
Doris walked to the coffeepot and poured its last dregs into her mug that seemed permanently stained with her favorite shade of coral lipstick. “You’ve got to make it right, Tiffany.”
“I will.”
“When?”
“Soon,” she promised but knew she was lying. She wasn’t interested in men right now. There was a chance she never would be. So what about J.D.? that horrid voice in her head nagged, and Tiffany did what she did best: she ignored it.
* * *
“You’ve come to the right place,” the Realtor, an egg-shaped man with freckles sprinkled over every square inch of his exposed skin insisted as he drove J.D. along the winding, hilly roads outside Bittersweet. The grass was bleached dry and wildflowers bloomed in profusion along the fence-rows while Max Crenshaw blabbered on and on about the merits of one farm over another.
“I don’t know much about growing grapes down here and I’ll admit it right up front. But there’re several wineries around Ashland and Medford, up the road a bit. They seem to do a bumper business, and the soil here grows about anything.”
J.D. was barely listening. He gazed through the dusty windshield at the small herds of cattle and the occasional thicket of oak trees that dotted the fields flashing by. Nondescript music wafted from the speakers of the older Cadillac and was barely audible over the rush of cool air from the air conditioner and the drone of Crenshaw’s voice.
“Been here all my life, let me tell you, and I’ve seen cattle farms turned into llama and ostrich ranches.... You know times change, so I’m sure we’ll find the right place. . . .”
J.D. tried to pay attention, but his mind strayed. To Tiffany and her kids. There was more trouble in that house than she was willing to admit. Stephen was well on the path to becoming a juvenile delinquent. J.D. could read the signs—the same signs that he’d displayed as a youth. As for Christina, the imp had woken up in the middle of the night wailing and sobbing. Through the floorboards J.D. had heard Tiffany’s hurried footsteps and soft voice as she’d run to her daughter’s room and whispered words of comfort.
Yep, she had her problems at the old apartment house. There were four tenants besides himself. Mrs. Ellingsworth, whom he’d already met, occupied one basement unit, an art student lived in the other, and a recently married couple resided on the main floor of the carriage house. The upper story was empty, recently vacated by a man named Lafferty.
He’d learned all this from Max Crenshaw as they’d driven from one place to the next. The Realtor seemed to know everything that happened in Bittersweet.
“Now, I’m gonna show you something that I don’t have listed yet—well, no one does, but it’s part of our latest local mystery and since we’re driving by anyway . . .” Crenshaw braked at a run-down old ranch with a small cabin near the front of the property, a couple of sheds and an imposing barn at the back. Vast, untended acres stretched behind the house.
“Weird deal, this,” Max said as he nosed the Cadillac into the drive, shoved the gearshift into Park and let the car idle. “You mind?” he asked as he rummaged in his breast pocket and came up with a crumpled pack of cigarettes.
“No.”
“Good. I’m tryin’ to cut back, but, hell, you know how it is.” He shook out a cigarette, offered one to J.D. and punched in the lighter.
“No, thanks.”
“Ever smoke?”
“Years ago.”
“Wish I could quit. Anyway, this place belongs—or belonged, depending upon what you want to believe—to a guy by the name of Isaac Wells.”
“Did it?” J.D. was suddenly more interested in the dilapidated cabin and desolate acres.
“Yep. Old Isaac lived here all by himself. Never married. Had a sister who died a long while ago and some brothers who have scattered to the winds, but, oh, a month or two ago, Isaac just up and disappeared.” The lighter popped and Max, after rolling down his window, lit up. “Weird as hell, if ya ask me. No one’s heard anything from him. You’d think if he died or was killed, someone would’ve found his body by now. If he was kidnapped, he would have been ransomed, though what for I can’t imagine. Some of the people in town think he had money locked in a deposit box in one of the banks or buried in tin cans around the ranch, but that’s all
just hearsay as much as I can tell.” He smoked in silence for a few minutes. “You know, if he just took off on his own, someone he knew would have heard from him, wouldn’t they?” He shook his head and jabbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. “Anyway, this place could be on the market—I’m sure as hell looking into it. Then again, it might stay just as it is forever.”
J.D. studied the abandoned acres through the windshield. The house was small, in need of paint, with a couple of windows that were cracked. The barn, built of cedar planks that had weathered gray, was huge and sprawling; the other outbuildings looked worn and neglected. The entire spread seemed lonely. Desolate.
“He was an odd one, old Isaac, but didn’t have any enemies that I knew of. Like I say, it’s a mystery.”
“Without any clues?”
“If they’ve got ’em, the cops aren’t saying.” He shifted the car into Reverse. “Let’s mosey on down the road a piece. I’ve got a couple more ideas. The first place—the Stowell spread is listed with a Realtor in Medford. It’s about a hundred acres, well-kept and the owners are anxious to sell, would even agree to terms—not that your company would need them—but let’s take a look-see just in case.”
He backed the Cadillac out of the drive and J.D. watched Isaac Wells’s place disappear from sight in the sideview mirror.
Max prattled on. The boring music continued to play. The miles rolled beneath the wheels of the old car and J.D. itched to be anywhere else on earth. With each passing minute, he felt that he’d made the biggest mistake of his life by showing up in Bittersweet.
* * *
Juggling two sacks of groceries, Tiffany managed to unlock the front door. “I’m home,” she called out, but knew before no one answered that she was alone. On a chair in the parlor, Charcoal lifted his head, then arched his back and stretched lazily. “Anybody here?” she said to the house in general, then sighed. “I guess it’s just you and me, eh?” The cat yawned and padded after her to the kitchen.
A note in Mrs. Ellingsworth’s chicken scratch told her that she had taken Christina to the park. Stephen was still at his grandmother’s house doing yardwork. She set the sacks on the kitchen counter and started unpacking the groceries only to notice that the wedding invitation she’d tucked away was on the counter, lying open, seeming to mock her.
