Welcome to Pembrooke: The Complete Pembrooke Series

by Jessica Prince

  “Hello, darling.”

  Ethan

  I didn’t have a script prepared for what I had to say, but I was still riding the high from my conversation with Harlow, feeling relief that that two-ton weight I’d been carrying on my shoulders for years was finally gone. I knew it would take time and work for me and my family to fully come to get to the place I wanted us to me, but we made our start earlier today. So on the wave of that, I was ready to take care of the last thing keeping me from grabbing hold of my happiness and never letting go.

  “Can I help you?” the woman at the front desk asked politely once I’d pushed through the glass doors.

  “Uh, yeah. I was actually wondering if Sheriff Anderson was in. I’d like to speak with him.”

  “Oh, yes, sure. He’s back in his office. Let me just ring him for you.” I tried not to shift from foot to foot as she picked up the phone and hit a few buttons that would connect her with Derrick. “Yes, hi, Sheriff, there’s a…”

  “Ethan Prewitt,” I filled in for her when she glanced up at me.

  “Yes, there’s an Ethan Prewitt to see you? Yes. Yes. Okay.” She hung up the phone and looked at me with a bright smile. “He’ll be right up.”

  A few seconds later the sound of boots hitting the tile floor sounded through the front lobby. Shoving my hands in my pockets to keep from fidgeting as Derrick Anderson rounded the corner, coming to a stop, his hands resting on his waist, dangerously close to the gun on his belt.

  “Well, have to say, this is a surprise.” And not a happy one, judging by his tone. “What can I do for you, Ethan?”

  “I was wondering if we could talk…” My eyes scanned back to the woman who was sitting at the front desk, watching us with rapt fascination. “In private?”

  Derrick’s hands came off his hips as he crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve got a busy schedule, son, so if you’d just say what you need—”

  “Oh, no you don’t Sheriff,” the woman chirped happily. “Your whole afternoon’s free and clear.”

  “Thanks a lot, Marlene,” he ground out to the oblivious receptionist before turning on his heels with a sigh. “All right, let’s go get this over with.”

  I followed him down the long hall and through the bullpen area before coming to stop at his office door. He stood to the side and waved his hand for me to enter, then came in behind me and closed the door before moving around his desk and taking a seat. I sat in one of the small, uncomfortable chairs on the other side and braced for whatever was about to happen.

  “Just so you know, if you’re here to discuss your relationship with Eliza, I stand by what I said the other day. I don’t support the two of you being together.”

  Squaring my shoulders and lifting my chin, I sucked in a breath and said what I’d come to say, whether he wanted to hear it or not. “I respect your opinion, Derrick, but I’m not here to ask your permission.”

  At that, his entire frame got tight. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m not here for your permission to see your daughter. I respect you more than you could ever know, and for Eliza’s sake, I hope that one day you can accept our relationship, but sir, I’m in love with your daughter, and there isn’t a damn thing I won’t do to keep her. I know I hurt her six years ago, and if she’ll let me, I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make up for it, but I’m not giving her up. She makes me happy, but more, I know, if given the chance I can make her happy. And that’s what I intend to do.”

  Sitting back in his chair, he steepled his fingers and studied me with an intensity the likes of which I’d never experienced before. “Thinking you should probably tell me what it was that caused you to break my little girl in the first place, son.”

  I’d been expecting that question from him, but that didn’t mean I was any more excited about giving him the answer, especially considering he was wearing a fucking gun. But if I had any chance of winning the man who meant the world to Eliza over, I was going to have to give him everything.

  “You know I cared for your daughter growing up. She was my best friend. I treated her like I would my own sister.” Shit, now comes the hard part. Please don’t let him fucking shoot me. “Before I entered the draft, my feelings for Eliza started to change. I knew it wasn’t right,” I hurried to add when I saw his face begin to grow red. “I knew she was too young, and I never would have dreamed about doing anything about it, but that’s the truth. I was starting to fall for your daughter, sir, and it scared the hell out of me.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” he sighed, sitting back in his chair and rubbing at his forehead with one hand.

  “I don’t know if there was a better way for me to have handled it, but I did the only thing I could think of at the time, which was to remove myself from the situation. I hate that I hurt her in the process, you’ve got to believe that. But what I need you to understand is that I’ve loved Eliza for a very long time, and I’d give up everything for her. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her. That includes admitting my feelings for her to her Sheriff father, all the while knowing he’d be within his rights to put a bullet in my ass.”

  Derrick remained silent for several seconds as he let everything I’d just laid on him absorb. “Fuck me,” he finally mumbled. “And she knows about this?”

  “She knows everything,” I admitted. “I’ll never keep another secret from her again. I swear that.”

  I was prepared to make more promises, including, but not limited to, naming our first born child after him, when my cellphone chimed from my pocket. Thinking it could be Eliza responding to one of the millions of messages I left her, I yanked it out and engaged the screen, only to have my blood run cold at what I read.

  Standing to my feet so fast the chair I’d been sitting in flew backward, I shoved my phone back in my jeans and looked at Derrick. “Let’s go.”

  “What? Where?” He asked, coming out of his own chair.

  “The café. That was Chloe. Shannon showed up to ambush Eliza.”

  Derrick growled as he rounded the desk. “That fucking girl. Never did understand what you saw in her.”

  “I was a young, dumb kid. Not that that’s an excuse.” I came to a stop at the mouth of the hallway, putting my hand on his shoulder to stop him. “But there’s something else I need to tell you, and you need to keep your head. Got me?”

  “Just spit it out, Ethan.”

  Then I said the one thing that was bad enough to make me and the Sheriff of Pembrooke lose our collective shit.

  “Shannon’s there with Eliza’s mother.”

  31

  Eliza

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t form a fucking sentence. And all the while I felt like I was trapped in my own personal Hell, Shannon was positively delirious with excitement that she’d just managed to fuck everything up for me… once again.

  “Eliza. Eliza, honey. Talk to me,” Chloe coaxed from my side. Her sweet, worried voice was enough to pull me from my melancholy.

  “Oh my God,” I turned to her and choked. “I can’t handle this. I can’t handle it.”

  She put an arm around my waist and held me to her side. “It’s okay, sweetie. It’s okay.”

  I didn’t know how she could say that. Standing in front of my mother, I was anything but okay. And she couldn’t have been much better, seeing as it was the same woman who’d trashed her bakery and hit her with a car years ago.

  “Eliza, darling,” my mother started, but I clamped my hands over my ears, squeezed my eyes closed, and shook my head, unaware I looked like I was having a mental breakdown in front of God and everybody.

  “No,” was all I managed to get out when the door to the café swung opened so fast the glass almost broke. Before I could process what was happening, Ethan came barreling in with my father close on his heels.

  “Upstairs,” he growled menacingly as he pulled me from Chloe’s hold and held me to him. “We’re not doing this shit down here with a goddamned audience.” Then,
without further ado, he picked me up, in front of God and everybody, and carried me through the kitchen and out the door that led to the internal stairwell.

  “Ethan,” I whispered, still feeling somewhat hysterical.

  “Not yet, baby,” he returned as he took the stairs at a surprisingly fast clip. Once we reached the top, he put me to my feet. “Keys, sweetheart.”

  By the look on his face, I knew it wouldn’t be smart to argue, so I pulled the key from my back pocket and deposited it in his waiting hand. In a blink, he had the door unlocked and thrown open, ushering me inside. Seconds later, the door slammed closed and I looked around the room to see it was filled with me, Ethan, my father and Chloe, my mother, and that bitch from Hell, Shannon.

  “Right,” Ethan spit before anyone else could say a word. “First things first.” He left my side just long enough to get in Shannon’s face. “Just when I thought you couldn’t possibly get any fucking lower, you go and pull a stunt like this.”

  To her credit, she at least had the decency to pale under Ethan’s terrifying demeanor. “Ethan—”

  “Shut the fuck up!” he bellowed. “You don’t get to talk. I’m going to tell you how it’s going to be from here on out, then you’re going to get the fuck away from Eliza, and so help me God, she better never lay eyes on you again. I know it was you who sold those photos to the tabloids. I know it was the bullshit you fed them that was posted online. And I swear to fucking Christ, Shannon, if I ever find out you’ve taken another picture of us without our permission, I’ll slap you with a goddamn harassment and stalking charge!” She swallowed so thickly I could see her throat moving, but Ethan wasn’t done yet. “There is no amount of money I won’t spend, no resources I won’t utilize to bury you if I so much as hear you looked at Eliza in a way she doesn’t like. And sweetheart, I’m fucking rich, so you better believe I’ll spend every goddamned dime I have to ruin your fucking life. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Eth—”

  “Yes or no question. Do I make myself clear!?” he finished on a roar.

  “Y-yes,” she stuttered, looking about two seconds away from bursting into tears.

  “Good. Now get the fuck out,” he hissed. She didn’t hesitate, turning and running for the door, and something told me Shannon wasn’t a person I’d ever have to worry about again.

  “Ethan,” I whispered, breaking him from his rage and drawing his attention back to me. He moved so fast I didn’t have a chance to take a step back before he was on me, his arms wrapping around my waist and pinning me to his side as he turned us to face the one other person in my apartment that I didn’t want there.

  “Now you,” he said, sounding no less angry, even with the absence of Shannon The Bitch. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  My mother, never one to be cowed by someone she felt was inferior to her, squared her shoulders and lifted her chin in an effort to look down her nose at Ethan. No small feat seeing as he towered over her. I noticed then that in all the years that had passed, she was still no less beautiful. But her eyes remained hard and uncaring, just as they’d been when I was a child. Whatever brought her back to Pembrooke had nothing to do with a loving Mother-Daughter reunion.

  “I’m here to speak with my daughter, if you don’t mind,” she said in an ice-cold voice.

  “Well I fucking mind, Layla,” my father chimed in. “You haven’t had fuck all to say to her in nine years and you think you can just waltz your ass back into town and demand a face to face?”

  “I don’t see how it’s any of your business, Derrick,” she hissed. Hate radiated from her entire frame as she looked back and forth between my father and Chloe. “She’s my daughter, too.”

  “No she’s not,” Chloe replied, sounding madder than I’d ever heard before. “She’s my daughter. Not yours. I was the one who held her when she cried. I was the one that taught her to cook. I was the one who helped pick her up when you almost ruined her! I was the one who loved her unconditionally. She’s my daughter!”

  My breath hitched at everything she’d just said, and I couldn’t help but cry as I watched tears course down her cheeks as my father moved to hold her the same way Ethan was holding me. God, God. She was right. Chloe was my mother in every single way that counted. I’d always loved her, always would, but it wasn’t until that very moment that I realized just how deep that love ran.

  “Baby,” Ethan called, breaking into my thoughts. “Is there anything this woman has to say that you want to hear?”

  “No,” I whispered with a shake of my head. Because there wasn’t. There wasn’t a single solitary word I wanted to hear from her. The thirteen-year-old girl who’d once wanted nothing more than for her mother to love her had grown up. And I had so much love in my life already that I didn’t need anything from her anymore.

  “Eliza—” my mother started.

  “You heard her,” Ethan cut her off. “She doesn’t want to hear whatever shit you have to say.

  For the first time ever, I saw my mother express something other than superiority and hate. Cold, hard fear. “Eliza, please,” she said, pushing past everyone to get to me. “My last husband divorced me. I have nothing left. Nothing. He left me penniless! I saw those pictures of you and your Ethan, and I knew you were doing well. I knew you’d made a life for yourself and were happy. I just thought—”

  “You thought you’d try and dig your way back into your daughter’s life in an effort to get to her man’s money,” Ethan voiced the words I was just thinking, sounding just as disgusted as I felt. “Christ, I take it back. I thought no one could get lower than Shannon, but I see I was wrong. There’s a special place in Hell for bitches like you.”

  At that, Chloe choked on a laugh, having to slap her hands over her mouth in an attempt to keep it in. And that warmth that had started blooming in my chest at her heartfelt declaration suddenly exploded, shrouding me like a comforting, loving blanket. With Ethan, my father, Chloe, and the rest of my loved ones, I realized I had it all. I didn’t need anyone else. There was room in my heart, sure, and as long as I had them with me, I knew I was safe to let others in because they’d always be there to protect me. But I didn’t need anyone else, because standing in the apartment of my living room, in that very moment, I realized I had everything.

  I was happy.

  “Fuck me,” my father seethed. “How I managed to make such perfection with the likes of you is beyond me, but I thank Christ every single day that your poison never infested my girl. She’s everything you’re not.”

  God, and the feels just kept on coming!

  “You need money?” Ethan cut in. “I’ll give you money. I’ll write you a nice fat check to get the fuck out of our lives and never darken Eliza’s doorway again. Her peace of mind that she’ll never had to see your face is worth more than anything to me.” It was when he began to pull away from me and reached for his back pocket that I finally came out of my daze and jumped into action.

  “No.” At the sound of my voice, everyone paused and turned to me. My mother, who looked ecstatic just one second ago started to look worried again.

  Ethan leaned in close, “What, baby?”

  “No. Don’t write her a check.” I disengaged from Ethan’s arms and moved to stand before my mother. “He’s not giving you anything. You don’t deserve a single cent from him, but he’d have given it to you… for me,” I whispered, leaning in closer. “Because he’s a good person, the very best kind, and he loves me, he’d have done it. But I won’t let him, because I’ve just realized something myself. He loves me because I’m a good person and I deserve it. He loves me because I’m worth loving. You’ve done nothing in your entire life to earn that kind of devotion from anyone. So I’ll be damned if I let the man I love give you anything. I’m done with you. I never want to see you again. And when you’re laying in your bed at night, bitter and alone, I hope you know that I’ll be surrounded by people I love, who love me back, because I was worth it.”

  With that, I
’d said everything I ever needed to say to the woman who gave birth to me. I moved back to Ethan, but not before looking in my father’s direction, pride shining deep in his eyes. “Please get her out of my house. She isn’t welcome here.”

  “Gladly, baby girl.”

  I walked straight into Ethan’s arms and wrapped my own around his waist, holding on for dear life. “I love you,” I whispered against the heat of his chest.

  “I love you too, Eliza,” he said against the crown of my head. “Always will.”

  Pulling back slightly, I looked up at him, the vision of him blurry through my unshed tears. “I’m sorry it took me so long to pull my head out of my ass,” I whispered, earning a deep, vibrating chuckle from him.

  “Better late than never, sweetheart. I’m just glad to be hearing it now.”

  The apartment door opened and closed. “Well,” my dad spoke up, interrupting our moment. “That’s done, so I better be getting back down to the station. Need to make sure that woman actually leaves town.” My father made his way toward us and leaned in to press a kiss to my cheek. “Love you, baby girl. And so damn proud of you.”

  “I love you too, Dad,” I told him with a watery smile.

  “Son,” he said, facing Ethan and holding his hand out. “We’ll see you at dinner Sunday.”

  “Yes sir,” Ethan responded, shaking my father’s hand.

  “Wait, Sunday?” I cut in.

  My father’s expression melted into one of approval as Chloe came up and wrapped her arms around him. “Family dinner. Can’t have one of those without your man there, now can we?”

  Just like that, Ethan had earned my father’s acceptance, giving me the very last piece I needed to finish building my own happiness.

  32

  Ethan

  “Honey, what are you doing?” Eliza giggled from behind me as I dragged her through the woods. Christ, I’d never get used to that beautiful sound. She’d been mine, completely mine for the past few weeks, and every moment I woke up with her in my arms, I had to pull her closer to convince myself it wasn’t all a dream.