by Lacey Baker
Raine was the peacemaker. She was the middle sister, the teacher, the only one who hadn’t inherited their mother’s quick temper and sharp tongue or their father’s booming voice and tenacious attitude.
“It is what they’re saying, Raine!” Savannah yelled. “Nobody ever wants to listen to me. I have something to contribute and I’m part owner of this place. I should be able to make a suggestion and not get slapped down like some pesky insect.”
“Who’s slapping who in here?” Parker asked, walking into the meeting late.
It was the first time Michelle had seen him since yesterday, when they’d all arrived at the festival together. But Parker had left before any of them, and she hadn’t seen him since. Sure, she’d heard some things about him—which wasn’t really new where Parker was concerned—but she hadn’t seen him. And now, looking at her too-handsome younger brother as he walked over to the dining room table and took a seat beside his twin, she wondered if what she’d heard had any truth to it.
“Nobody’s doing any slapping in here, but I heard you got yourself a good whacking when Louisa caught you in the girls’ bathroom last night,” Mr. Sylvester said, not looking at Parker but lifting his ratty old baseball cap from his head and scratching.
“You were where last night?” Nikki asked Parker.
Preston shook his head. “That’s a new place even for you, Parker.”
Parker frowned as his siblings ragged on him about Mr. Sylvester’s comments. “You were talking about Savannah and her ideas. I think some of them have merit,” he began in an attempt to shift the focus away from him and his issues last night.
Unfortunately, in the Cantrell household it just didn’t work that way.
“So why were you in the girls’ room?” Raine asked quietly.
Savannah let out a hoot of laughter. “Are you seriously asking Double Trouble Cantrell that question? You know why he was in the girls’ room, to get with some girl!”
Nikki joined Savannah in laughing. It was to be expected, since those two had been thick as thieves since they were younger girls. Mr. Sylvester shook his head, and Quinn looked seriously at Parker.
“You’re a law enforcement officer, tell me that’s not what you were doing,” he said to Parker.
“I’m a law enforcement officer in Baltimore, which I was so rudely reminded of last night,” Parker stated, leading Michelle to believe that something actually may have happened last night.
“So did they arrest you for being in the bathroom?” Preston asked. “And were you in there alone?”
“No. He wasn’t alone, Louisa was in there with him like I said before,” was Mr. Sylvester’s next comment.
“Ewww, you were with Louisa in the bathroom?”
Savannah’s face scrunched with her words, which made Nikki laugh a little harder. This time even Parker and Heaven cracked a smile.
“We’re not going to get past this, are we?” Parker asked.
Michelle felt sorry for him. Well, not really, but she wished he’d just go ahead and explain so this torture would stop. Then again, she wanted it to last a little longer, because this entire scene brought back memories of when they were younger and Gramma was still alive. They’d shared so much in this house, good times and bad times, and Michelle hadn’t wanted to let them go. Standing here today, she realized she still didn’t want to let her siblings go.
“All right, yes, I was in the bathroom. But I wasn’t with Ms. Louisa. That old busybody followed me in there,” he told them.
“And why were you in there? Did you get lost?” were Preston’s questions.
Parker frowned at the man sitting beside him who looked a lot like him. “No. I wasn’t lost. I followed someone in there.”
Michelle held her breath and waited for the rest.
“Who in the world would you follow into the bathroom, and why?” Savannah asked incredulously. Her mood had brightened significantly since the topic of Parker in the girls’ room came up.
A few seconds passed in silence, all eyes on Parker as he seemed to be contemplating his next words. Parker was many things, but a liar was not one of them. And for the most part, he owned up to whatever situations he managed to get himself into. Michelle didn’t believe this time was any different, but he was hesitating a bit longer than normal. If Gramma or even their father were standing in this room, she’d understand the hesitancy, because neither of them had tolerated Parker’s foolishness—not that their discipline had been effective in slowing Parker down any.
Finally, Parker sat back in his chair, his gaze reaching everyone sitting in the room. Michelle couldn’t tell if he was looking for allies or simply trying to familiarize himself with his siblings again.
“I followed Drew Sidney into the bathroom to see what was wrong with her. She told me she was pregnant and Louisa barged in,” he said as simply as if he’d just recited the day’s weather forecast.
And the room went quiet, utterly and amazingly quiet, for a seemingly endless stretch of time, possibly the first time in the last twenty or thirty years.
Chapter 6
“Drew’s pregnant?” Heaven asked, looking directly at Quinn.
Parker might have missed the look his future sister-in-law and his older brother shared if he hadn’t been avoiding the knowing glare coming from his twin. Of all the people sitting in this room, Preston was the only one who knew about Parker’s night with Drew, and that knowledge had been granted to him only recently. Parker had had no choice but to tell him after walking into this very room a couple of months ago to find Drew and her mother sitting in here. They’d come so that Lorrayna could discuss her legal woes with Preston, and Preston—professional that he was—had asked Parker to entertain them while he made some phone calls for the woman.
Drew’s reaction to his entering the room sort of said it all; luckily, Preston hadn’t seen it. But when they were leaving, as Parker bade Lorrayna good day and attempted to do the same to her daughter, the frigid response from Drew was a dead giveaway. The minute the front door of the B&B closed, Preston turned to him.
“What did you do to her, and when?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” was Parker’s knee-jerk reply, because for the first time in their lives Preston’s accusatory tone had offended him.
“Before you came down Drew was annoyed with her mother and apologetic to me. Then I leave you alone with her for fifteen minutes and she’s irritated and ready to run out of this place as if her life depended on it. And she wouldn’t look at you. Any female that doesn’t look at you has probably already seen as much as she could stand or as much as you’ve allowed. Now, I’ll ask you again, what did you do to her?”
Preston had that serious litigator tone in his voice. He wanted an answer and he expected the truth. Parker suspected he already knew the truth. He and Preston were fraternal twins, born only minutes apart. They were as close as two people could be without being conjoined. They’d grown up in this town together, doing the same things, chasing girls, and getting into trouble. When they graduated from high school, Preston had immediately headed to the University of Maryland while Parker had gone into the police academy. They’d both moved to Baltimore City, where Preston attended law school and Parker worked his first years as a rookie on the force. Maturity had come for both of them as they settled into their adult lives, still chasing women but this time fighting trouble.
Things had changed since Gramma’s passing. Preston had moved back to Sweetland, going into the city only for court appearances his former law partner couldn’t handle. He was engaged to a gorgeous woman who loved and respected him. Preston was living the American dream, or the Sweetland dream, Parker corrected himself. And he was looking at his twin brother as if he were wondering why he wasn’t doing the same thing.
“I slept with her, okay? Are you satisfied?” Parker finally replied.
His response was a sigh and a shake of his head. “You know how small this town is, Parker. Everybody knows every
thing, and females here are thinking of that cute little house, two point five kids, and a husband at the dinner table every night. If you’re not prepared to do that, you should probably leave them alone. Go back to the city and take care of your urges,” Preston told him.
“Like you did?” Parker argued, anger growing at the way his own brother was judging him. “Heaven’s not your normal city girl. She has those same plans in her pretty little brown eyes and that didn’t stop you from getting her in bed as soon as you could.”
Preston looked slightly riled by Parker’s words but still remained calm as he continued to chastise his younger brother. “She wasn’t living in Sweetland when our relationship began and I didn’t leave her high and dry the next morning. But from the way Drew was avoiding any contact with you at all, I’m assuming that’s what you did to her.”
Parker couldn’t deny the obvious, and he hadn’t wanted to. What he’d wanted was to scream how he’d been trying like hell to talk to Drew since that night, how he’d wanted nothing more than to see her again, and not just intimately. But Preston wouldn’t have understood that because it wasn’t the way Parker normally behaved.
“Look, we’re both adults. Whatever is between us, stays between us,” Parker had told Preston, ending the conversation.
Now, sitting at this table and feeling like one of Preston’s defendants on the witness stand, he got the impression that what was between him and Drew was about to become a family matter.
“And why would she tell you she’s pregnant, Parker?” Quinn asked, his voice low and subdued.
“Heh, heh, heh,” Mr. Sylvester chuckled, slapping his cap on the edge of the table.
“Parker?” Preston prodded.
“Wait!” Savannah screeched. She’d sat up in her chair, palms flat on the table so that her hot-pink-polished nails glistened against the cherrywood of the table. “Did you sleep with her? You did, didn’t you? You slept with Drew and now she’s pregnant! Oh. My. G—”
“Parker Roland Cantrell,” Michelle interrupted, her voice reproachful and stinging. “Of all the people, in all the world, you chose Drewcilla Sidney.”
He wanted to leave this room. Really badly. If he could just go back to the last fifteen minutes, where he’d stood on the deck of the restaurant looking through the glass doors to the table where Drew sat with her mother, having their Sunday brunch. She’d looked a lot better than she had last night, rested and refreshed, a smile gracing her face a time or two. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail. She wore faded jeans, a turquoise tank top, and flat sandals with glittering studs across her toes. She drank orange juice and ate Michelle’s fluffy waffles with berries and plenty of syrup. Parker didn’t care for the berries, but he loved maple syrup on his waffles.
“Well, are you going to answer us or not?” Nikki prodded. “Or I can just waltz into the dining room and ask Drew myself.”
Nikki stood, but Quinn touched an arm to her elbow to stop her.
“If Parker has something to tell us, he will,” Quinn announced.
Whenever Quinn spoke in that tone, everyone knew it meant someone would be doing exactly what he’d said in the next few seconds. This time the someone was Parker. And he was no longer a child, so being scorned by his big brother—either one of them—wasn’t intimidating. At least he planned to act that way.
“Drew is carrying my child,” he announced.
“Heh, heh, heh, heh!” This time, Sylvester chuckled so hard that his frail body fell back against the chair, tears eventually beading in the corners of his dark brown eyes.
Michelle rushed around the table to his side. She put her hands on his shoulders, looking over at Parker as she spoke.
“Well, he’s probably in a state of shock,” she said.
“I think I’m in a state of shock,” Heaven murmured.
Nikki shook her head. “Cordy’s gonna flip when she hears this. All those years she spent wondering what could have been between you two if you hadn’t packed up and moved away and she hadn’t married Barry, and now you’re going to end up with a Sweetland girl after all.”
“Great, another Cantrell wedding. Yippeee,” Savannah said blandly.
“There isn’t going to be a wedding and I’m not ending up with a Sweetland girl,” Parker told them. “A woman who lives in Sweetland is carrying my child. End of story.”
“Oh my, my, my,” Mr. Sylvester wheezed as he spoke, using the backs of his hands to wipe his eyes. “Mary Janet is smiling in her grave, I just know it. She loved her puppies, but she really wanted babies around this here house. She’s gonna love this. Heh, heh, heh.”
“Look, it’s not public knowledge yet, so let’s just keep this under wraps for the time being. Drew and I are still trying to figure all this out,” Parker continued.
The last thing he wanted was for this news to spread through Sweetland like a deadly disease. He suspected Drew didn’t want that, either, and since he was still trying to figure out what he was going to do about the mother of his child, he’d like to stay in her good graces.
“So you’re not going to marry her?” Nikki asked, but quickly cut short her next question as Quinn gave her a look.
Quinn shared that look with everyone, then finally said, “We have more pressing business than Parker’s love life. Keeping The Silver Spoon alive and viable in this town while new businesses sprout up all over the place is our priority.”
And Parker’s latest stunt is his own to get out of. Quinn didn’t say that part, but Parker felt the words drifting quietly through the air. All his life he’d gotten into things—the fight in school with Billy Wilder, where Billy left with a broken nose and Parker had to get stitches in his head; the speeding ticket he’d received for driving on the highway and that he and Preston had considered fighting all the way to the Supreme Court; the night he was caught in the Lincolns’ garage, a very naked and agreeable Shannon Lincoln lying on a blanket beside him. There seemed to be no end to what Parker Cantrell could get himself into, or so the residents of Sweetland thought. Years later, it appeared his oldest brother still felt the same way.
“Right, we should focus on the B and B. I can take care of my own problems,” Parker said, and he walked out, leaving the rest of his siblings to stare after him.
* * *
Drew couldn’t focus at all.
At brunch with her mother, she’d only half listened to the conversation, very much aware of Parker out on the deck, carrying boxes back and forth. He wore shorts and a sleeveless shirt that molded against his chest like a second skin. Each time he lifted a box, muscles in his arms flexed and Drew’s breasts tingled. As he walked, the muscles in his calves were more pronounced, his strength undeniable. At one point he’d stood on the deck, his back to the window where she was looking from the other side. Raine had approached him with a bottle of water. Drew had watched, entranced, as he’d removed the top and put the bottle to his lips, tipping his head slightly and drinking the contents without stopping.
She’d swallowed hard, watching him do the same. Then her mother had said something in a pitch significantly louder than she had been using, and Drew had pulled herself from the enticing daydream that had been forming in her mind. She was physically attracted to Parker Cantrell.
Well, she was a female, so that fact alone wasn’t hard to figure out. Every single woman in town was attracted to Parker, and before he’d left Sweetland they had been as well. At that time, he’d been very eager to give the women as much of his attention as he could, or so Drew had heard.
“He’s not going to marry you,” her mother had said after Drew missed a few more of her questions while staring at Parker.
Her head had jerked around as she’d looked at her mother in shock. “I don’t want to marry Parker,” she’d countered defensively. Even though she didn’t know why she needed to defend her position with her mother. Lorrayna of all people knew exactly how Drew felt about committed relationships and about intimacy, for that matter.
“Wel
l, you want to do something with him,” Lorrayna had continued, wiping her hands on the linen napkin and then dropping it onto her still partially filled plate.
Drew had no idea why her mother insisted on having brunch every Sunday when she rarely ate the food. This was definitely not a testament to the cuisine at The Silver Spoon, Drew thought as she chewed another mouthful. No, that was all wrapped in Lorrayna’s warped and heartbroken mind. Her mother’s heartbreak had played a significant part in Drew’s outlook on relationships, as had her third date with Jared Mansfield.
“I can tell by the way you’re staring at him like he should be on your plate instead of those waffles. And everybody else in this room can tell, too, so you should really get yourself together,” Lorrayna continued to scold her.
“He’s the father of my baby, I think I’m going to have to look at him at some point,” Drew replied. But she did stop ogling Parker. She focused on her plate and not her mother, who was already beginning to get on her nerves.
Lorrayna tsked. “If he were concerned about being the father of your baby, he would have come in to at least speak to you by now.” She shook her head, dull brown curls haloing her face like a snug-fitting cap. “He’s nothing like his brothers, I tell you that much. They’re so in love they can hardly walk down the street without smiling. Every time I see one of them they’re happy as can be. That one,” she said with a jerk of her head in the general direction of the deck, “he doesn’t seem to know if he’s coming or going, unless he’s on that godforsaken bike making all that noise. I wish somebody would ban those motorcycles for good.”
“You cannot ban motorcycles, Mom. It’s a free country, remember?”
Drew had been tired of this conversation ten minutes after they’d sat down, but she didn’t have the heart to cancel. Her mother rarely went out except for when she went to work. She stayed at Uncle Walt’s house as if it were a shelter from everything, including life, and Drew thought it was sickening. After her father’s death, her mother had seemed to shut down completely. Sure, she worked and paid bills and generally took care of herself and now Uncle Walt as well, but that was all she did. No dates. No friends. No other family. No connections to anyone. All Lorrayna seemed to want to do with the rest of her life was bask in widowhood, without ever accepting that her husband was a selfish idiot to do what he’d done to their family.
