Quinn and Ria looked at each other—a strange premonition prickled its way along the length of Ria’s spine, and she sensed that her niece had felt something similar, because the girl went completely still for a few moments.
Then, with visible bravery, Quinn picked up the telephone receiver, with its twisty, overstretched cord. “Ria Manning’s residence,” she chimed, with a determined smile. But her whole face changed instantly, and her voice was shaky when she responded to whatever the caller had said. “Oh. Meredith. Hi.”
Ria braced herself. She’d been thinking of heading outside to do some weeding and watering, but Quinn’s expression and the sound of her half sister’s name changed everything.
“Sure, she’s here,” Quinn said, after listening for a while. “Is something wrong? You sound strange—”
A blast of unintelligible words erupted on Meredith’s end of the line, a kind of static, and Quinn looked at Ria, held out the receiver and waited mutely for her aunt to take over.
Ria got up from her chair, crossed the kitchen and spoke into the telephone, her voice calm and reasonable, her insides churning again. “Meredith? What’s going on?”
Meredith’s response stunned Ria. It was an outburst, an onslaught, almost a tangible force. And she was crying.
Meredith, made of far sterner stuff than her younger sister, never cried. Now a choked, soblike sound escaped her, raw and, for all the distance between them, both literal and figurative, painful to hear. “It’s all collapsing!” Meredith cried, nearly hysterical. “Ria, everything’s gone—gone—” She broke off to sob again, and the sound was terrible. “I had no idea what was really going on—I didn’t know—I could shoot myself—”
“Meredith,” Ria broke in firmly but gently. “Take a slow, deep breath. Take your time, get your bearings—you’re not making sense.”
Maybe, she thought, recalling her own recent meltdown while she waited for Meredith to get it together, you and your sister aren’t as different from each other as you’d like to believe, Ria Manning.
Getting the story took a while, because Meredith kept stopping to swear or sob or cry out in pure frustration, but the gist of it was, the problem in the Seattle office was the least of Meredith’s concerns. She’d just been confronted with irrefutable proof that two of her most trusted financial advisers had been quietly stealing from company accounts for years. Worse, even though they’d presented Meredith with federal and state tax forms right along, and she’d signed them all, they hadn’t made the required payments. Since they’d kept the delinquent notices from her and fielded the phone calls, Meredith hadn’t suspected a thing.
Now investors were clamoring for their money, and Meredith’s legal advisers had strongly suggested shutting down all six of the firm’s offices for an immediate and comprehensive audit. Creditors she hadn’t even known about threatened to freeze her private accounts, as well.
At least she wasn’t homeless. Yet.
Ria, listening, sank into her desk chair, trembling, the phone cord stretched to its limits, the receiver pressed so hard against her ear that it was starting to hurt. “What can I do?” she asked, when she was fairly sure Meredith had gotten it all out.
Meredith gave a bitter little laugh. “Do? What can you do?”
“Isn’t that why you called?” Ria persisted gently. “To ask for help?”
Her sister was quiet for a long moment. Then, with uncharacteristic meekness, she admitted, “I’m hoping that—well—that Quinn can stay with you for a while. Until—until things settle down, I mean.”
Ria closed her eyes briefly, hurting for this sister who would not, even now, let her in. “Of course Quinn can stay here,” she said carefully. Her niece, pale and wide-eyed, brightened a little when she heard this. “But, Meredith, you must need— What about living expenses—groceries—things like that?”
Meredith was immediately back on the defensive. “I’ll manage,” she said coldly.
How? Ria wondered. She certainly didn’t have enough money to cover the company’s back taxes, but she wasn’t broke, either. She’d saved and invested and even though the farm wasn’t earning a profit yet, and she still had to be careful with her spending, she could certainly afford to help Meredith out financially. Before she could find words to say any of this, though, Meredith was talking again.
“Just look after Quinn,” she said. “Please.”
“Certainly,” Ria answered. “You’ll let me know if—if—”
“I don’t want your money, Ria,” Meredith broke in. All vulnerability was gone now. “When I asked for your help, if you’ll remember, you turned me down.” She paused. “Tell Quinn I’ll be in touch, probably by email.”
“All right,” Ria said lamely. What else was there to say?
Without so much as a goodbye, Meredith hung up.
“She’s in trouble, isn’t she?” Quinn asked, pale again.
“Yes,” Ria replied. Some things couldn’t, shouldn’t be sugarcoated. Quinn was a young woman, after all, not a child, and this disaster was bound to affect her seriously, now and in the future. So Ria told the girl what she knew, which wasn’t a great deal, adding nothing and leaving nothing out, and Quinn listened intently, intelligently, nodding once or twice to show that she understood.
“But I get to stay here, with you? With Bones?”
“Yes,” Ria repeated. “For the time being anyway. Until Meredith gets a handle on things.”
For a long moment, they were both quiet, juggling their own emotions.
Then, Quinn straightened her shoulders and beamed. “I get to stay here with you,” she repeated, seeming to savor the thought.
Quinn glanced at the window over the sink. “There’s still plenty of light,” she said, with a brave resolution that stirred Ria’s heart. “Let’s go out there and get some work done.”
Ria studied her niece for a few moments before giving a slow nod of agreement. “You know what?” she said, trying to shake off the echo of Meredith’s words looping through her mind. When I asked for your help—you turned me down.
“What?” Quinn responded, the screen door creaking on its hinges as she tugged it open, ready to go.
“You’ve got backbone, Quinn Whittingford,” Ria answered, meaning it. “And I’m very, very proud of you.”
* * *
WHEN HE GOT HOME, the encounter with Ria very much on his mind, Landry fed his horses, checked on Bessie and the calf, placidly munching good Montana grass in the pasture, and decided he had too much free time. In Chicago, he’d worked sixteen to eighteen hours a day, six or seven days a week—one of the reasons, he supposed, that his chronically rocky marriage had finally crashed, burned and permanently disintegrated—and he wasn’t cut out to be idle, not mentally, not physically.
Reluctant to go inside the house, he walked around the perimeter instead, taking in the solid parts, the ones with walls and windows and a sturdy roof overhead, but over half of the place was unfinished, framed in, but enclosed only by huge sheets of thick plastic and heavy tarps to keep out the weather.
He reckoned a shrink—or a mystic—would probably say the structure was a reflection of his psyche, if not his soul, and he wouldn’t be half-wrong.
Landry sighed, shoved a hand through his hair. He was double-minded, that was his problem—part rancher, part type-A money mogul—with one foot in the old life and one in the new.
It was time, as both his brother Zane and Highbridge had been saying for a long while, to make a choice and stick by it. Go or stay. Be a rancher or head back to the city and the art of the deal.
Both scenarios had their upsides—he loved the peace and the open space of the ranch, but he missed the pace of city living, too, the way it used him up, left him with little or no time to think about his personal life.
Until today, Landry hadn’t believed he was on the fence at all, whatever Zane and Highbridge thought. He was there, wasn’t he? In Parable County, Montana, raising buffalo, keeping horses, riding bulls
and bucking broncs when he got the chance and driving the requisite big truck?
He was over Susan, had been since before he married her that first time. The unflattering truth? She’d been just another status symbol, a trophy, like his collection of classic cars, his tailored suits, his expensive watch and all the rest of it.
Susan was a smart woman, as well as a world-class beauty. She must have known all along that he didn’t love her, and that had to have hurt. Okay, so he hadn’t been the best husband; he’d never been unfaithful—that would have meant he was like his father, and, as motives went, it was admittedly dicey. He’d showered Susan with expensive gifts, taken her on glamorous vacations, dutifully attended her endless charity events even though he hated being stuffed into a monkey suit and making small talk with her rich friends.
They’d had next to nothing in common, he and Susan—except for Ingersoll Investments, of course—and for all his success, deep down, he’d still been a waitress’s kid, a gypsy, always feeling as though he was one step ahead of some calamity. Home, when they had one, was a rented trailer, a cheap motel room, somebody’s living room floor.
Susan, on the other hand, had been raised in mansions and penthouses. She’d attended the best boarding schools, with the sons and daughters of senators and even presidents, sailed all seven seas on yachts, flown all over the world in private jets.
For all that, she’d actually loved him. She’d wanted to have his babies. Once upon a time anyway. Basically, he’d given her nothing she couldn’t have gotten for herself—nothing at all. Instead, he’d used her.
I’m sorry, he told Susan silently, over the months and the miles, over the intangible but real wreckage the two of them had left in their combined wake. Fat lot of good being sorry now did, he reflected.
High above his head, above the clouds and the orbiting space junk and the ozone layer, stars were beginning to pop out, stars so old and so far away that some of them had been dead for millions of years. Still, their light traveled on, silvery and ghostlike, and bright enough to chart the routes of ships and airplanes.
“Sir?” The voice came out of the twilight.
Highbridge.
“What?” Landry asked, none too graciously, though he was actually grateful for the distraction.
The butler cleared his throat, approached with tentative steps. “Are you quite all right?”
“Why wouldn’t I be all right?”
Highbridge didn’t even flinch at Landry’s abrupt tone, which only made him feel more like an asshole than he had before. “Well,” the older man ventured stalwartly, “you generally dine at six, and it’s already seven-thirty.”
Landry gave a ragged burst of laughter. “That’s why you’re worried? Because I’m late for supper?”
“I didn’t say I was worried,” Highbridge pointed out.
“Aren’t you supposed to be off duty by now?” Landry walked slowly toward the man he’d hired, after the most recent divorce, when Susan made it clear that she no longer required the services of a butler. It hadn’t seemed to bother her that Highbridge had been a faithful family employee for twenty-plus years—she was ready to dump him and move on.
“Quite,” Highbridge admitted, somewhat huffily. He straightened his perfectly straight string tie and stiffened his shoulders. Turned to walk away.
“Highbridge,” Landry said, with quiet respect. “I owe you an apology.”
You and Susan and a lot of other people.
“Nonsense, sir,” Highbridge protested, still walking. With those long legs of his, clad in his usual formal suit of clothes, he resembled a crane doing a bad imitation of a penguin. “Your meal is warming in the oven.”
Landry caught up, walked alongside the other man. “That’s good,” he said. “Thanks.”
Highbridge stopped when they rounded the corner of the house, such as it was, and regarded Landry with solemn patience. “There’s no need to thank me, sir. It’s my job to prepare your meals.”
Actually, it wasn’t Highbridge’s job to feed him, but they’d had this discussion many times, to no avail, so Landry let it pass. “I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘sir,’” he said, and that wasn’t new, either.
“Wish to your heart’s content,” Highbridge replied, with consummate dignity and the merest hint of a lilt in his voice. “Sir.”
Landry laughed. “Damn, you’re cussed,” he said.
Highbridge favored him with a little bow. “Thank you,” he replied, serious as a heart attack. Then he sucked in a breath and added, “If that will be all, Mr. Sutton, this is bingo night, and it’s my turn to drive. Miss Cleo will have my head on a spike if I’m late picking her up.”
Landry pictured his butler in the basement of some church or lodge hall, bent over a row of bingo cards, the kind with little sliders that opened and closed over the numbers, and smiled at the paradox that was Highbridge.
“Say hello to Cleo for me,” he said as Highbridge headed resolutely for his polished Bentley.
Highbridge didn’t answer.
Inside, Landry washed up at the kitchen sink, took his dinner from the oven and peeled back the tinfoil. Lasagna, one of his favorites, along with garlic bread and, waiting in the refrigerator, a green salad.
If he’d followed the dictates of his mind, Landry wouldn’t have eaten at all. His body, though, demanded fuel.
So he sat down at the table, with a can of very cold beer, and ate his lonely supper. His stomach eventually registered gratitude, though he never actually tasted a single bite of any of it. With grim amusement, he recalled Susan’s Zen phase, a few years back, when she’d meditated regularly, burned incense and insisted on doing everything “mindfully,” from brushing her teeth to making love. During that all too brief interlude—Susan was nothing if not changeable—Landry had slowed down a little himself, not been quite so driven, and he’d enjoyed experiencing the much-touted present moment. Especially when sex was involved.
Ah, yes, sex. How long had it been? Better not to calculate.
Landry sighed and, finished with his meal, cleared the table, rinsed his plate and utensils, stowed them in the dishwasher, then crushed the empty beer can and dropped it into the recycling bin.
After that, he found himself at a loss for something to do.
It was too early to hit the sack, he wasn’t much for watching TV and he felt too jangled to read. So he prowled the inside of the house in much the same way as he’d done the outside, earlier in the evening.
He took in the massive living room, with its beamed cathedral ceiling, the hardwood floors, the natural rock fireplace and the floor-to-ceiling windows. The well-equipped bar in the corner didn’t call to him, so Landry let his gaze drift past it without pausing.
There were a few pieces of mismatched furniture, stuff that had seemed fine in his Chicago penthouse but looked downright pretentious here in rural Montana.
The walls were bare—Susan had laid claim to most of the photographs and all of the paintings—and the floors always felt cold, whatever the season, when he walked across them without boots.
Beyond that echoing expanse lay Landry’s bedroom, as cell-like as its counterpart when it came to decoration, but spacious, too. Here, there were built in bookshelves, the fireplace was as big as the one in the next room and one whole wall was composed of tall, arched windows. The master bath was downright hedonistic, with an enormous tub, a fancy shower stall with multiple sprayers, intricately designed mosaic-tile floors and marble countertops, but, like other finished parts of the house, it had all the warmth of a narrow scrub-brush canyon on a winter night.
Yep, Landry concluded, it was time to make some decisions. Chicago or Montana. The fast lane or the slow one.
Walk away from Ria Manning, once and for all—or get her into bed and see what, if anything, happened after that...
Fireworks or fizzle?
There was, of course, only one way to find out for sure.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE FOLLOWING SATU
RDAY morning, Ria was up and dressed before dawn, in anticipation of the weekly farmers’ market, held at the fairgrounds over in Parable, running from early spring to late in the fall.
Content, finding peace in routine, she puttered, letting Bones out and then, after a few minutes, in again. She fed the dog, and made a cup of coffee for herself, debating whether to let Quinn sleep a little longer or go ahead and rouse her to help cut zinnias and daisies and carnations, place them in plastic buckets and load the works into the back of the elderly pickup truck parked in the old tractor shed.
With luck, it would be a busy day, what with making the thirty-mile drive to Parable, setting up in the usual booth, chatting with other vendors and eventually customers for eight to ten hours, counting out change and wrapping bouquets in damp newspaper.
She decided to give Quinn another fifteen or twenty minutes before waking her.
There was no huge hurry, after all, and besides, Ria cherished those early hours of the morning, when the sun was still snuggled behind the eastern mountains and the resounding silence was a soul symphony, in and of itself. The grass remained damp with dew—delicious under bare feet—and the night creatures were just starting to turn homeward, to find their nests and holes and hollow logs. The birds, meanwhile, stirred and blinked in their twig-and-twine havens under the eaves of barns and houses, high in the branches of trees, preparing themselves to sing in a new day.
Ria smiled at Bones, busy chowing down on his ration of kibble. He added his own special nuances, warmth and humor and easy devotion, and she wondered why she hadn’t adopted a dog or a cat long ago.
Down the short hallway, the guest room door creaked on its hinges, and Quinn, clad in shorty pajamas, padded past on the way to the bathroom, without a word or a glance, her hair rumpled and her movements slow and scuffling, like those of a sleepwalker, or someone blindfolded.
Ria chuckled, remembering that her niece was not a morning person.
She brewed a second cup of coffee, hoping that would revive the girl.
In the near distance, the toilet flushed, and water ran in the sink, stopping with an audible squeak when Quinn turned the faucet handle. The plumbing rattled.
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