“Great.”
“Oh, and—”
Colin came up behind Parker and wrapped both arms around her. “Erin’s a grown woman, she’ll figure it out.”
“But there’s—”
Matt opened the back door of his twin-cab truck. “I think we were given less instructions in high school when Mom and Dad went to Monterey,” he teased.
Colin laughed. “We still threw a party.”
Matt chuckled. “And blamed Grace.”
Erin shook her head. “You guys are bad.” She opened her arms to Parker for a hug. “Have fun and don’t worry.”
“Thank you.”
Erin lowered her voice so only Parker could hear. “Text me if he puts a ring on it.”
That earned an extra hug before she climbed in the back seat.
Matt opened his door while Colin walked around the truck.
“You forgot your sunglasses at my house. If you’re around later, I can bring them by,” Matt said.
Parker rolled her window down. “Wait . . . you left sunglasses . . . at his house?”
The woman wanted to read into everything. “You gave me his address for the brownies . . . remember?”
Parker’s brilliant smile at what she thought was news, fell. “Oh.”
“So . . . later?” he asked.
“Whenever,” she told him. “I have others.”
He grinned like he’d been given an invitation.
“You guys better get going. Cabo is an international flight. You need extra time,” Erin said.
Matt waved as he backed out of the driveway.
“Have fun!”
And they were gone.
Scout barked at the truck as it rolled down the driveway before running to Erin’s side. “It’s just you and me,” she told the dog.
Austin was in school and the entire place was left to her. Then, as if to remind her she wasn’t completely alone, a couple of the chickens in the rebuilt coop started to make noise. Instead of heading into the house, she took the hens’ cue and went to see if she could have fresh eggs to go with her coffee.
Scout stuck right by her side.
“. . . and don’t just let yourself in. Erin needs to know who’s coming in the gate.”
It was Matt’s turn to hear all the instructions.
“I won’t.”
“You know, you could have just brought over her sunglasses this morning.”
The sunglasses were actually in his glove compartment, but he wasn’t about to reveal that tidbit. Besides, timing was everything.
“Where is the fun in that?” Colin said for him.
“Oh.” Parker was silent for about ten seconds. “Colin told you the hotel we’re staying at . . . right? So if there’s any problems and the cell phone isn’t working down there you can call?”
Matt looked at her through his rearview mirror. “Yes, Mom. I know the hotel and the flight numbers and I even know the location of a pot shop that delivers chill pills for overanxious women.”
He caught his brother trying to smother a chuckle.
“I’m pretty sure that was an insult,” Parker said, her lips pressed in a thin, unamused line.
Matt busted out a laugh. “If you’re only pretty sure, I’ll try harder next time. We’ve got it, Parker. Erin’s an adult. Austin is . . .” He hesitated. “Not a baby. And I’m going to be around enough to make sure Erin is okay.”
Colin swiveled in the front seat to look at his girlfriend. “It’s going to be fine, hon. The place will still be there when we get back.”
While Matt was smiling, he glanced up again and saw a look of fear pass over Parker’s face. He’d seen that look before. On the faces of people who were evacuating their homes while he and his coworkers rushed in. That’s when it dawned on him. Yeah, Parker might be over-the-top controlling with all her instructions and words of caution. The reality was, she’d almost lost her house less than a year prior, and he was betting she was remembering that right about now.
“It’s not fire season,” Matt said quickly. “Everything is still green and the Santa Anas aren’t blowing.”
He noticed her blinking several times. Her lips sealed.
Colin reached into the back seat. “Is that what you’re worried about?”
“It’s stupid.”
“It’s understandable,” Colin assured her.
Matt hit bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 405 and took a deep breath. “I got ya covered, Parker. Go to Cabo, get a tan, and come back relaxed.”
“You okay?” Colin asked her.
“Yeah. I really need this vacation.”
Matt looked over at his brother and grinned. He knew he had a ring in his luggage and a pretty elaborate plan as to how to put it on her finger. Maybe once she felt like she wasn’t shouldering the whole burden, she’d relax.
He looked in the rearview mirror again.
“This traffic isn’t going to make us miss our flight, is it?”
On second thought . . . he wouldn’t be holding his breath.
Erin didn’t consider herself a babysitter, and Austin certainly wasn’t a baby. However, once Parker and Colin pulled away with Matt at the wheel, she found herself planning meals for the next several days and scheduling an extra trip to the grocery store to ensure she had everything she needed to feed the two of them.
Then she remembered Parker’s lengthy list of instructions and how Austin would often have friends over after school. Considering he was a high school senior without parents, his friends opted for his house instead of their own, even for video games. Keeping all that in the back of her mind, she doubled the amount of food she planned on cooking just in case there was another hungry kid around.
She’d always liked to bake, but it wasn’t until she’d moved into the guesthouse that she really started to enjoy cooking. That was in part because she didn’t eat out very often. A fact based less on the reality that dining out was expensive and more on the need to stay hidden. As her friendship with Parker grew, she’d often cook for the two of them, or even everyone in the household on weekdays when they were all there. Mallory had only moved out a few months ago, but came over on the weekend with her live-in boyfriend, Jase. It helped that Jase was also a first cousin to Colin and Matt.
She loved the big family atmosphere along with the different personalities and laughter. An image of her sister and her family floated in her head. Their last conversation before Erin disappeared forever.
“Where will you go?” Helen, her sister, had asked.
“I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone.”
“How will I know the bastard didn’t get to you and you’re dead?”
“My divorce attorney will keep me updated on you, and you on me.” It was the best Erin could do. “Maci Brandt no longer exists. I’m legally changing my name, passport, ID, everything.”
By now her sister was crying on the phone. Erin hadn’t dared to have the conversation in person or her sister may have tried to convince her there was another way out. So she’d made the phone call minutes after she’d fled. Hours before Desmond would realize she was gone. It was against what the experts on changing your identity and disappearing forever had told her to do, but Erin didn’t have it in her to let her sister worry.
“What will I tell Dad?”
“I honestly don’t care. Tell him I’m dead. Whatever is easier for you.” She’d never see the man again.
“Maci, don’t do this. There has to be an easier way.”
The image of a casket, the one Desmond had shown her when he prepaid for their funeral expenses just days after she’d been released from the hospital, flashed in her head. He’d compared the white satin of the interior to her wedding gown and suggested a young corpse would look beautiful inside of it.
His threat wasn’t missed.
The man was capable of killing her and making it look like an accident.
He’d be the poor widower, and she’d be dead.
“I love you, H
elen. Please don’t provoke him. He’s dangerous. If he thinks getting to you and your family will get to me, he’d do it just to drag me back. Please, for all our sakes, don’t try and find me. Stay away from him.”
“Don’t go. Please, let’s talk this out.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. I’m already gone. Now tell me you love me one last time.”
“Damn you, Maci.” Her sister was hurting, she heard it in her voice.
“Those aren’t going to be your last words to me.”
Helen was sobbing. “Maci . . . please.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too. God, I hate him. How did this happen to you?”
A very good question.
“One more time,” Erin said.
“I love you, Maci.”
She hung up the phone, tucked it into the seat of the bus she was on, and exited at the next stop.
Maci Brandt stopped existing that day, and Erin Fleming was born.
Erin had hopped around the country for six months, made sure the last of her scars could be covered by makeup, and then settled in Parker’s guesthouse. Only then did she buy a cell phone instead of using a prepaid one that couldn’t be traced back to her. Only then did she heave a sigh of relief and sleep more than three hours at a time. She was up to four now, and thought that was a minor miracle. She could count on both hands the number of nights she’d slept all the way through, and each one she woke dripping in sweat with nightmares that gripped her neck so tight she couldn’t breathe. What she really needed was therapy. A fact she couldn’t ignore but was too afraid to pursue. Because therapy would reveal her past to a stranger, and that was the one thing she was never supposed to do.
So why was she so focused on this now?
Erin moved around Parker’s kitchen, enjoying the larger space to move, and prepared what she was going to make for dinner. Austin didn’t rush home from school but hadn’t texted to say he wouldn’t be around that night. He probably didn’t expect dinner from her. He was self-sufficient, as any eighteen-year-old just a few weeks from graduation was. But that didn’t stop her from planning a meal.
With her laptop in hand, she made herself comfortable on the couch with Scout at her feet and the elusive cat, Sushi, curled up and sleeping at her side. Chicken roasted in the oven and all she needed to do for dinner was the sides. For now, she opened one of her client’s latest books and put her editing skills to work.
Freelance editing was not her dream job, but it paid her bills and put her degree to use. A degree she had under a name she no longer used. So far no one had asked to view the papers. Now that she had six months of editing, from developmental to copy editing, under her belt, she boasted about her clients’ work instead of the reason she felt qualified to do it.
Maci Brandt had never used her degree. It was only fitting that Erin Fleming did. She’d gotten her foot in the editing door with two small digital publishing houses. That’s where she learned that taking independent writers that she could vet was the right route for her. Using a new name and hiding behind her computer was a lot easier than she thought it would be. It never left her mind that Desmond could do the same thing to find her. Not that he would ever think she’d be making money editing fiction. He didn’t want her to work during her marriage and had only seen her in the workforce as an intern in the company he now controlled. That internship had been in the marketing department. Nothing remotely close to what she’d wanted to do once she graduated from college.
But her father had set up the summer job that had given her the credits she needed to complete her education, and the rest—as they say—was history.
Erin had dreamt of being a scaled-down version of Lois Lane. Not that she wanted Superman, but she wanted the job of a reporter. Or at least the woman in the office writing stories for the paper or magazine on important facts people needed to know.
She let the old dream slip away. Editing other people’s work was satisfying. And right now she was working on a mystery writer’s manuscript. The woman used a male pen name, and wanted the public to believe she was a man so long as they bought her books. The only reason Erin knew the little secret was the phone conversations she’d had with the woman over the past two books. She had midlist successes with her traditional publisher writing romance novels, but she wanted to branch into a new genre and her publisher hadn’t been too excited to back that. So she did it independently. Now on her fourth straight mystery-suspense novel, the woman pretending to be a man was growing exceedingly popular.
And for good reason.
Erin was on her first read through. The kind she did for the pleasure of it. Anytime she stopped reading, she marked the page on this pass. This was her pleasure read. A way to get a feel for the book before digging in to help the author make it better. But that read came next. For now, Erin was following the male detective around the page and through the chapters as he hunted down the bad guys. The author wrote a specific detail about a flower used in tea to murder someone without detection. So while this was the pleasure read, Erin marked the page to check the facts on that later.
Fact-checking was part of the job. The part Erin geeked out on, to be honest. Falling down the rabbit hole of fact-checking sparked her own ideas for writing fiction. Not that she ever would. But that didn’t stop her from scribbling random thoughts in a journal.
Like now, she took the journal and wrote Flower Tea Murder.
She smiled. It had a nice ring to it.
An image popped into her mind of her ex sitting at a bistro in London, the kind he took her to when they’d first arrived there, but wouldn’t within a week because of the eye swelling she couldn’t hide with makeup. He sat in her fantasy holding a proper English teacup, one with a dainty motif of heather or peonies. The cup was filled with tea and served with a floating flower. In her head it was blue with a dark purple, almost black center. Much like the marks he’d leave on her when he wasn’t happy.
He’d sip the tea and look at her.
His smile would fall.
Erin shook her thoughts aside. It probably wasn’t a healthy habit to imagine the death of her husband . . . ex-husband.
She closed her eyes and sighed.
Soon-to-be ex-husband.
As that passage ran through her head, she reminded herself to call her attorney in the morning to determine if there was new news. The last conversation left her less than hopeful that things would be resolved anytime soon. The restraining order she’d obtained had been a miracle. After nearly a year of it being in place without any contact from the man, he had a pretty good chance of having it lifted. Not that a court order would stop him from coming after her.
Images flashed in rapid succession until she pushed her computer aside and stood. She went to the refrigerator and looked at the wine she’d put in there to chill.
No. She was alone.
Completely alone, and if he found her and she’d been drinking . . .
Erin moaned out loud and grabbed a cold water. Then, because she needed to move and be distracted, she opened the refrigerator door wider and started to remove the contents inside.
Thirty minutes later she had a long list of expired condiments she’d tossed in the trash. For all she knew, Parker didn’t mind expired mustard. But cleaning out the fridge required you start fresh.
The sound of the gate opening told her Austin was home.
Much as she tried not to look out the window to assure herself that it was him, she failed and ended up walking to the bay window.
She smiled.
Just Austin.
Scout moved to the top of the back stairs, the ones that led up from the garage, with his tail wagging.
Erin moved back to the glass shelves she’d removed and was washing.
Austin entered the house like a tornado.
The door slammed. A backpack hit the floor. Scout’s name was yelled from the bottom of the stairway.
The dog’s thumping tail was followed
by three sharp barks and the animal running down the stairs to greet his favorite human.
Erin smiled.
Austin talked to the dog as he entered the house and rounded the corner of the kitchen. “Something smells good.”
“I’m making a chicken.”
Austin stopped moving after one look at the kitchen. “Holy crap . . . what are you doing?”
“Cleaning out the fridge. Did you know the ketchup expired a year ago?”
Unfazed, Austin walked into the pantry and returned with a snack bag of chips. “Still tasted fine.”
“I’ll go to the store and replace what was bad.”
He glanced in the trash can she’d pulled out and filled.
“Whatever.”
She no sooner turned back to the sink to finish what she started than the phone to the house did a double ring indicating that someone was at the gate.
Austin answered the phone, muttered a few syllables, said yeah, and then pressed the button to open it to whoever was there.
“Dinner will be ready in a little bit, if you’re going to be around. If not, I’ll put aside some for later.”
“I can always eat.”
That made her smile.
“I made extra if your friend is staying.”
By now Austin was looking at the screen of his cell phone and texting away. “Sure,” he mumbled.
He walked out of the kitchen, Scout at his heels, while Erin dried off the glass shelf and put it aside.
She’d have to double her time if she was going to finish the sides for dinner.
When she heard the knock on the front door, she waited for Austin to answer it.
Only he had retreated to the back of the house to his bedroom.
Drying her hands, she moved to answer the door and was met with a face she wasn’t expecting so soon.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Matt?”
He was ear-to-ear smiling with her sunglasses covering his eyes.
They looked ridiculous on him. Unable to stop herself, Erin started to laugh.
“Are they me?” he asked as he turned to the side.
“They’re not bad,” she lied. “Maybe you should try them with a white frame.”
Home to Me Page 6
