“No, Pepper, don’t hang up. Cody is alive. He needs you. Carson’s accident was not your fault. He fell. You did not cause that accident to happen any more than you caused the tree stand to break, which is why the tree fell on Cody. If anything, that damn wolf suit you gave him might have saved his life. His head landed on it. You actually saved him.”
“I have to go,” she said, and the call disconnected.
Rob muttered a string of choice words under his breath.
She was going to walk out on them just like Miranda did. With that thought a realization dawned: No matter how much he loved her or she cared for Cody—because it was obvious that she did—she was not his mother. Maybe the reason she felt as if she had to run was because he’d tried to push her into that role.
* * *
Ten minutes later, Pepper entered Rob’s family room by the Christmas tree.
“You’re here?” Marjory’s voice sounded behind her. “Is Cody all right?”
Her mother had stayed, and Pepper didn’t know what to tell her about Cody. She didn’t know because she hadn’t been there to find out. It had just seemed easier that way—if she didn’t know, if she kept her distance, she wouldn’t have to face the possibility of reliving the tragedy that had crushed her family.
All she could do was stand there and stare at her mother, mute and disengaged. That’s why when her mother came over and put her arms around her and pulled her into an embrace—for the first time since she could remember—Pepper’s world shifted. This time, it was a shift that seemed to help the pieces click together, rather than fall apart...for once.
All her mom did was hold her. She didn’t speak or explain or try to make things right. She just held her until Pepper felt strong enough to gather up the wolf suit.
That’s when Marjory broke the silence. “That was Carson’s, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” Pepper said.
Marjory nodded.
As Pepper got into her car and drove to the hospital, she carried with her the realization that her mother had done the best she could. She was here now, wasn’t she?
If Pepper didn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps, the first step she could take away from that path was to be there for Cody. That was the silent meaning that Pepper understood from her mother’s uncharacteristic embrace.
It was a message that spoke much deeper than if her mother had tried to explain all the years away. They all deserved a fresh start, and Pepper resolved to not stand in the way of that happening.
Marjory was there with her in Christmas Eve. Their family was together. It was a good start.
* * *
Twenty minutes later Pepper found herself standing in the doorway of Cody’s emergency room cubicle clutching his wolf suit. She’d behaved so badly, she didn’t know if she was even welcome. Regardless, she had to get the costume to Cody because it might make him feel better.
It’d saved him, she thought, as she stood assessing the scene before her. Kate’s back was to her as she sat holding Cody’s hand. Rob looked miserable with his head in his hands. Oh, dear God, she hoped they hadn’t gotten bad news about the boy—she prayed that nothing had changed since Rob had told her Cody was going to be okay.
She hugged the plush costume to her and said a silent prayer that everything would be okay. And another for her twin—or maybe it was to him—that she was sorry that he had to die and that she had lived.
And then the voice of an angel spoke her name.
“Pepper? I want you, Pepper.”
“I’m here, baby.” And she went to him and kissed his forehead.
This little angel was alive, and that was all that mattered.
Kate smiled at her. The smile of the patient Madonna-sister.
Rob looked up at her with red-rimmed eyes, and she mouthed, I’m sorry.
He shook his head. “It’s okay.”
Pepper’s engagement ring glittered, and it seemed to promise, This is your happily-ever-after.
“It’s all going to be okay,” she said aloud.
Because us Macintyres, we stick together.
Epilogue
Six months later
Penelope Elizabeth “Pepper” Merriweather, daughter of the late Harris and Marjory Merriweather, married Robert Lewis Macintyre on June 24 in Celebration, Texas.
The ceremony took place under the gazebo in Central Park in downtown Celebration.
The bride wore a white form-fitting gown with an elbow-length veil. She was attended by her friends and business partners—AJ Sherwood-Antonelli; Caroline Coopersmith; Sydney James who caught the bridal bouquet; and sister of the groom Kathryn Macintyre, who took over the reins of the Macintyre Family Foundation in January, serving as the executive editor.
The groom was attended by best man, Cody Macintyre, son of the groom. The boy was able to leave his wheelchair and stand up with his father for a short time during the ceremony.
In a departure from tradition, Marjory Merriweather walked her daughter down the aisle, holding the urn that contained her late husband’s ashes.
The bride and groom will honeymoon in Europe, where they will be joined by family to scatter the ashes of Harris Merriweather.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt of Real Vintage Maverick by Marie Ferrarella!
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Chapter One
It happened too quickly for him to even think about it.
One minute, in a moment of exasperated desperation—because he hadn’t yet bought a gift for Caroline’s birthday—Cody found himself walking into the refurbished antique store that had, up until a few months ago, been called The Tattered Saddle.
The next minute, he was hurrying across the room and managed—just in time—to catch the young woman who was tumbling off a ladder.
Before he knew it, his arms were filled with the soft curves of the same young woman.
She smelled of lavender and vanilla, nudging forth a sliver of a memory he couldn’t quite catch hold of.
That was the way Cody remembered it when he later looked back on the way his life had taken a dramatic turn toward the better that fateful morning.
When he’d initially walked by the store’s show window, Cody had automatically looked in. The shop appeared to be in a state of semi-chaos, but it still looked a great deal more promising than when that crazy old coot Jasper Fowler ran it.
Cody vaguely recalled hearing that the man hadn’t really been interested in making any sort of a go of the shop. The whole place had actually just been a front for a money-laundering enterprise. At any rate, the antique shop had been shut down and boarded up in January, relegated to collecting even more dust than it had displayed when its doors had been open to the public.
What had caught his eye was the notice Under new ownership in the window and the store’s name—The Tattered Saddle—had been crossed out. But at the moment, there was no new name to take its place. He had wondered if that was an oversight or a ploy to draw curious customers into the shop.
Well, if it was under new ownership, maybe that meant that there was new old merchandise to choose from. An
d that, in turn, might enable him to find something for his sister here. As he recalled, Caroline was into old things. Things that other people thought of as junk and wanted to discard, his sister saw potential and promise in.
At least it was worth a shot, Cody told himself. He had tried the doorknob and found that it gave under his hand. Turning it, he had walked in.
Glancing around, his eyes were instantly drawn to the tall, willowy figure on the other side of the room. She was wearing a long, denim-colored skirt and her shirt was more or less the same color. The young woman was precariously perched on the top step of a ladder that appeared to be none too steady.
What actually caught his attention was not that she looked like an accident waiting to happen as she stretched her taut frame out, trying to reach something that was on a higher shelf, but that with her long, straight brown hair hanging loose about her back and shoulders, for just an instant, she reminded him of Renee.
A feeling of déjà vu seized him and for a moment, his breath caught in his throat.
Balancing herself on tiptoes, Catherine Clifton, the former Tattered Saddle’s determined new owner, automatically turned around when she heard the little bell over the front door ring. She hadn’t anticipated any customers coming in until the store’s grand reopening. That wasn’t for a couple more days at the very least. Most likely a couple of weeks. And only if she could come up with a new name for the place.
“We’re not open for business yet,” Catherine called out.
The next thing out of her mouth was an involuntary shriek because she’d lost her footing on the ladder and both she and the ladder were heading for a collision with the wooden floor.
The ladder landed with a clatter.
Catherine, fortunately, did not.
She was saved from what could have been a very bruising fate by the very person she’d just politely banished from the premises.
Landing in the cowboy’s strong, capable arms knocked the air out of her and, along with it, anything else she might have said at that moment.
Which was just as well because she would have hated coming across like some blithering idiot. But right now, not a single coherent thought completed itself in her head. It was filled with just scattered words and a myriad of sensations.
Hot sensations.
Everything had faded into the background and Catherine was instantly and acutely aware of the man whose arms she’d landed in. The broad-shouldered, green-eyed, sandy-haired cowboy held her as if she weighed no more than a small child. The muscles on his bare arms didn’t even appear to be straining.
A tingling sensation danced through Catherine’s entire body, which was stubbornly heating up despite all of her attempts to bank the sensation—and her reaction to the man—down.
Her valiant efforts to the contrary, for just a moment, it felt as if time had stood still, freezing this moment as it simultaneously bathed her in a heretofore never experienced, all but debilitating, feeling of desire. For two cents proper, using the excuse that this rugged-looking cowboy had saved her, she would have kissed him. With feeling.
Catherine could absolutely visualize herself kissing him.
The fact that he was a complete stranger was neither here nor there as far as she was concerned. Desire, she discovered at that moment, didn’t have to make sense. It could thrive very well without even so much as a lick of sense to it.
And for no particular reason at all, it occurred to her that this man looked like the real deal. A cowboy. A real vintage cowboy.
Was he? Or had she managed to bump her head without knowing it and was just hallucinating?
Their eyes met and held for a timeless instance. Only the pounding of Catherine’s heart finally managed to sufficiently rouse her.
“Thank you,” she finally whispered.
Doing his best to focus and gather his exceedingly scattered wits about him, Cody heard himself asking, “For what?”
Catherine let out a long, shaky breath before answering. “For catching me.”
“Oh.” Of course that was what she meant. What did he think she meant? Cody nodded his head. “Yeah. Right.”
The words emerged one at a time, each containing a sealed thought. Thoughts he couldn’t begin to convey, or even understand.
Cody cleared his throat, then realized that he was still holding the woman in his arms. He should have already released her.
Feeling awkward—he hadn’t spontaneously reacted to a woman in this manner since his wife had died—he set her down. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be,” she told him. “I’m not.” I’m not sorry at all. “If you hadn’t caught me just then, I might have broken something—either some of the merchandise or, worse, one of my bones.”
The fact that if he hadn’t come in just now, her attention wouldn’t have been thrown off and she very well could have remained perched on the ladder was a point Catherine had no desire to bring up. Thinking of him as her hero was far more pleasant.
Rather than comment, the tall cowboy merely nodded his head in acknowledgment. At the same time, he began to back away.
“Didn’t mean to trespass,” he murmured by way of an apology. He reached behind him for the doorknob, ready to make his getaway.
“You’re not trespassing,” Catherine was quick to protest. She didn’t have the heart to chase out someone who could actually buy something in the store. “It’s just that I haven’t exactly gotten the store ready for customers yet. But you can stay if you like.”
If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn that her tone was almost urging him to stay. And she had shifted her body so that she was now standing between him and the front door.
Cody glanced around the store, still mulling over her initial protest. “Looks okay to me,” he told her. “Actually, it looks a mite better than it used to look when that old guy owned it.”
Catherine was eager to bring out the shop’s better features and play them up so that she could attract actual customers rather than just the pitying or dismissive glances that the store had been garnering before she’d bought it. After the former owner had kidnapped Rose Traub, the people in Thunder Canyon had deliberately shunned the store. And from what she’d heard, before then the clientele was almost as ancient as some of the antiques that were housed here. She wanted to change that as well. She wanted all age-groups to have a reason to drop by and browse.
Fowler wasn’t in the picture anymore, having been sent to prison, and the shop was something that she wanted to take on as a project, something that belonged to her exclusively. After a lifetime of being the go-to person, the main caregiver in a family of eight and always putting everyone else’s needs ahead her own, it occurred to Catherine that time—and life—was slipping by her. She needed to make her own way before she woke up one morning to discover that she was no longer young, no longer able to grab her slice of the pie that life had to offer.
Since this sexy-looking cowboy seemed familiar with the way the store had been before she’d taken over, Catherine made a natural assumption and asked, “Did you come in here often when Mr. Fowler owned it?”
“No,” he told her honestly. Antiques had never held any interest for him. And they still didn’t, except that he knew his sister liked them. “But I walked by the store whenever I was in town and I’d look in.”
Mild curiosity was responsible for that. He might not look it, but Cody had made a point of always taking in all of his surroundings. It kept him from being caught off guard—the way he had when Renee had become ill.
“Oh,” Catherine murmured. All right, the place had held no real attraction for him, at least it hadn’t before. But he’d walked in this morning. Something had obviously changed. “Well, what made you come in today?”
She glanced over her shoulder to see if there was anything unusual out on d
isplay that might have caught the cowboy’s eye. But nothing stood out for her.
Cody wasn’t sure what this gregarious woman was fishing for, but he could only tell her the truth. “I’m looking for a present for my sister. Her birthday’s coming up and I need to get something into the mail soon if it’s going to get there in time.”
Okay, she wasn’t making herself clear, Catherine thought. Desperate to hone in on a reliable “X-Factor,” she tried again.
“Why here?” she pressed. “Why didn’t you just go to the mall? There’re lots of stores there.” And heaven knew a far more eclectic collection of things for someone to choose from.
The expression that fleetingly passed over the cowboy’s tanned face told her exactly what he thought of malls.
But when he finally spoke, he employed a measured, thoughtful cadence. “I haven’t put much thought into it,” he readily admitted. “I guess I came here because I wanted to give Caroline something that’s genuine, that isn’t mass-produced. Something that isn’t in every store from New York City to Los Angeles,” Cody explained.
He looked around the shop again, but not before discovering that it took a bit of effort to tear his eyes away from the shop’s new owner. Close up, the talkative young woman didn’t really look like Renee, but there was an essence, a spark, an unnamable something about her that did remind him of his late wife. So much so that even as he told himself that he really should be leaving, he found himself continuing to linger on the premises.
“The stuff in this store is...” His voice trailed off for a moment as he searched for the right word. It took a little doing. For the most part, Cody Overton was a man given to doing, not talking.
Catherine cocked her head, waiting for him to finish his sentence. When he didn’t, she supplied a word for him. “Old?”
“Real,” he finally said, feeling the word more aptly described what he was looking for. “And yeah, old,” he agreed after a beat. “But there’s nothing wrong with old as long as it’s not falling apart,” he was quick to clarify.
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