by Amy Knupp
True Colors
Amy Knupp
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by Amy Knupp
About the Author
Chapter One
You better not be late picking up my sister.
Drake North grinned at the hint of a threat in the text message from his best friend as he walked—okay, damn near jogged—out of the short-term lot toward the Nashville airport terminal. Late, of course.
Got it under control, he typed as he entered the building.
The plane landed three minutes ago, Ezra texted.
Drake was fully aware of the time. He might have a rep for being fashionably late—he crammed a lot into every day, by design—but he wasn’t going to let Ezra down.
Yep, Drake replied. You can quit stalking the airline app now. It doesn’t really ease your guilty conscience anyway, does it? He couldn’t resist the jab, even though he was more than a little familiar with Ezra’s lifelong protectiveness toward his younger sister, Mackenzie.
As Drake made his way toward the security cutoff, keeping an eye on the scattering of arriving passengers who passed him, his phone vibrated with a phone call. He laughed when he saw it was Ez.
“Kinda busy here,” Drake answered facetiously.
“Are you even to the airport yet?” his friend demanded from the other side of the globe.
“Relax. I’m in the terminal, watching for her. Her plane hasn’t unloaded yet.” This part of the airport was relatively calm at the moment, probably because it was nearing ten p.m. on a Wednesday.
Ez released a breath over the line, as if finally relaxing. “Thanks for doing this. I’m sorry to drag you away from whatever you had going on. I’m sure there was a woman involved somehow.”
“There was,” Drake said, “but not the way you think. Here’s a question for you. Who’s the North brother least likely to get hitched?”
“You,” Ez said without hesitation, and Drake grinned because that was tough to argue with.
“Besides me. Try Cole. He proposed tonight. Popped the question on camera while Sierra was recording an episode of the remodeling show. The whole family was there watching. We went to celebrate afterward. I had to show my face for that.”
“I guess you did.” Ezra’s surprise was evident. “Damn. One of the eternal-bachelor North brothers goes down.”
“He’s happy. Like I’ve never seen him. Cole and happy are two words you don’t often hear in the same sentence. Anyway, I dragged myself away just for you.”
“For Mackenzie,” Ez corrected.
“You do know she’s a grown woman who’s been on her own in LA for years?” Drake asked. He did the math in his head to figure she must be twenty-five now, four years younger than the two of them.
“She could handle it on her own, no question, but it’d be nice if she didn’t have to. And moving sucks no matter how old you are.”
“That it does, but tonight’ll be easy. It hardly counts as moving.”
From what Drake understood, Mackenzie’s move back to Nashville, where she’d grown up, was because of her job. She’d apparently sold her car, packed her bags, and had already signed a lease on an apartment here in town.
“Still, I appreciate it,” Ezra said, his tone going serious. “Big-brother fail on my part. And not the first one.”
Not surprising considering Ezra’s demanding career, the very type Drake had always managed to avoid. As a consultant in technology, Ez often had to put the job first, drop everything, and jet to some other part of the world with little or no notice. His friend was still beating himself up because he’d promised Mackenzie he’d meet her in Nashville to help her settle in and then his schedule had changed last minute, taking him from Europe to Australia instead of back to the States.
“I’ve got you covered, bro. I’ll get her to her apartment, make sure it looks okay, see that she has what she needs until her stuff shows up. I’ll take care of her for you. You go back to doing your technology-whisperer thing.”
It really was no big deal, just a couple of hours of Drake’s time before he met some friends out at a bar later, and he’d do anything for his best friend. Ez had been there for him at some of the toughest times of his life.
“Gotta go,” Drake said as passengers started appearing from the direction of Mackenzie’s gate. “They’re deplaning. I assume I’ll recognize her.”
“I emailed you a photo from the last time I visited her,” Ez said.
“I must’ve missed it.”
“Check your email. Dinner’s on me next time I’m in town.”
“Get your ass here soon. It’s been a while.”
They said goodbye as Drake scanned the people exiting the secured part of the airport. Not seeing her, he went to his inbox on his phone and scanned the senders until he found Ezra’s name. He opened it to see Ezra and Mackenzie in a selfie on the beach. As he zoomed in on her face, it struck him as it hadn’t before that she was all grown up. She looked happy and confident and attractive. As a kid, she’d always had indistinctive medium-brown hair, but there were a few copper highlights now. Her brown eyes sparkled with an indescribable something, and he could see how a guy could be drawn in by them.
Confident he could recognize her, he shoved his phone into his pocket and skimmed his gaze over the cluster of people who approached. Then he spotted a head of tousled hair the right color a few steps behind the pack, pointed downward so he couldn’t see the face. As they got closer, the group in front of her dispersed, allowing him to see that, yes, this was Mackenzie. He was fairly sure of it even with her head down, as she focused on stuffing something in an oversized bag on her shoulder and rolled a carry-on behind her, and then her step stuttered as the bag rolled into her ankle, and that sealed it. Mackenzie had always been the clumsiest human he knew.
Drake stepped closer, waiting impatiently for her to look up and notice him. She was tall—she’d always been tall for a female and skinny—but the feminine curves on her were new to him. She wore jeans, a simple V-neck T-shirt, and a light-blue-and-white-plaid flannel shirt tied around her waist that highlighted the dip inward from her hips. On her feet were flat-soled sandals with copper beadwork that showed off a toe ring and wine-colored toenails. With her face still pointed down, his gaze was drawn to her collarbone, partially revealed by the wide vee of her shirt, and something about it got his attention as a man instead of as her brother’s friend.
He shook himself out of that right quick, and then finally she pulled her attention from her bag and looked up. It was as if someone had zapped him with a Taser as a strange combination of familiarity and shock hit him. Familiarity because that smile and the spark in her eyes were his friend’s little sister through and through and took him back to when he was a teenager and she was a busybody brat he’d affectio
nately called Shawlet. Shock because…damn. Mackenzie Shaw had grown up spectacularly. The picture Ez had sent did not do her justice.
“Drake,” she said in a melodic voice that was fuller than the teenage version he remembered, “you’re here.”
The surprise in her tone gave away a hint of vulnerability, as if she hadn’t believed he’d make it, and that waver of insecurity took him back to the time when he and Ezra had been determined to protect her from an eighth-grade putz who’d broken her naive seventh-grade heart. He and Ez had picked her up at the middle school for a week straight just to intimidate the little prick who’d kissed her after a basketball game and then ghosted her. Their intimidation had been limited to big-brother don’t-fuck-with-my-sister stares, as they’d had the advantage in size, brains, and muscles and it wouldn’t have been a fair fight.
Without thought, he stepped forward, wrapped her in a brief hug, and kissed the top of her head. “It sounds like you didn’t think I’d show.”
“Ez said you might be late.” She beamed up at him, and his nostalgia was shoved aside by a surge of desire. “Thanks for picking me up.”
“Welcome back,” he said, more than a little rattled by his reaction to her.
Mackenzie inhaled deeply, causing her chest to rise, sexy collarbone, intriguing breasts, and all. “It feels good to be back,” she said as her gaze roved over him. “Really good.”
Hell. He needed a moment. Or a kick in the ass, which Ez would readily provide if he knew the thoughts firing through Drake’s head.
The thought of Ezra was enough to bring him to his senses. “Let’s put your brother’s mind at ease,” Drake said, pulling his phone back out and sidling up next to Mackenzie for a selfie. “Smile pretty. He’s got his tighty-whiteys in a bunch, thinking I’ll let you down.”
“It’s always fun to prove my brother wrong.”
Drake clicked, and without inspecting the photo, he reopened the app they used to text internationally and sent it on its way. Ignoring, the whole while, the hint of Mackenzie’s feminine floral scent that affected him on an elemental level.
Mackenzie had done her homework.
Well, as well as she could. It wasn’t easy to get the lowdown on a guy who didn’t do much on social media. He had accounts—she’d found Drake on three different platforms—but he didn’t post much. The content on his accounts consisted mostly of photos he was tagged in by other people. Females. Always females. Pretty, happy females draping themselves all over the youngest North brother.
Mackenzie couldn’t blame them.
Drake was drape-worthy. He always had been.
He reached over and took the handle of the rolling bag from her and pulled it behind him. “Do you have another bag?” he asked as they walked in the general direction of the baggage claim area.
She laughed. “I had to check three.” And paid for extra weight on two of them. Still the cheapest way to get the things she needed most immediately to Nashville.
“It might be tough to fit those on my bike.”
Mackenzie halted in her tracks and peered over at him, narrowing her eyes, assessing if he could possibly be serious.
On the one hand, the thought of this mouthwatering man on a motorcycle—she assumed he wasn’t talking about a Schwinn—was all kinds of distracting. On the other, surely he couldn’t be that dense, could he?
No. The Drake she remembered was not stupid.
“You’re bullshitting,” she said as she resumed their path toward the escalator.
With an irresistible boyish grin, he said, “Got me. I switched it out for the Jeep just for you.”
Between those arresting sky-blue eyes with their spark of mischief, the just-right amount of toffee-brown scruff on his jaw, and that sexy tone in his voice that made the words sound more intimate than they were, it was evident he still oozed charm the way most guys oozed sweat during a pickup game of basketball on a ninety-degree afternoon.
She could fully, privately admit to a raging crush on him back in the day, when—she could acknowledge it now—she was too young for him. Drake North had plunged her right into puberty, though he hadn’t been aware of his role in her immature fantasies. Thank God.
She hadn’t seen him in person for close to ten years, when he’d gone off to college. She’d thought of him on and off throughout the years, had heard vague reports of him from Ezra, and yes, had checked out his social media, but one thing she’d not been doing was pining away. She’d been living life full tilt in Los Angeles, first dipping her toes into college and then building a career she loved, meeting scores of people for both business and fun, and trying to find her place in life, like the seven billion other people on the planet.
Though the move back to Nashville had come up suddenly, it was key to her long-term plan. Living in this city she loved would enable her to put down roots. She had a down payment for a home saved, one that would buy her something decent in this part of the country, unlike on the West Coast, and once she got her bearings and laid the foundation for the new Nashville office of To the Stars, house hunting was her priority. If things went as planned, she’d be cozied up in her very own home in less than six months.
Her phone dinged from the depths of her travel bag, signaling a text, and she assumed it was Cora, her boss and friend, finally responding to Mackenzie’s I made it text, which she’d sent as they taxied in. Now that Drake had her carry-on, it was easier to handle the oversized bag that enabled her to throw in pretty much everything except the kitchen sink—and liquids over three ounces.
The message had a local number but no name. She unlocked her phone as they got on the escalator and read the text.
This is Nadine from Hillside Haven Apartments. I realize you might already be on your way here, so I wanted to give you a heads-up. There’s a problem with your apartment and I’m still assessing the extent. We can discuss details and a plan of action when you get here, but I wanted to warn you because it’s a little bit shocking. We’re working to remedy things at this moment. See you soon.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mackenzie said out loud, her stomach dipping. Then she scrolled up and read the message a second time before they reached the bottom of the escalator. She missed the end of the escalator, her head buried in her phone, and stumbled slightly, then righted herself. She stepped to the side and stopped. Read the text for a third time, her shoulders drooping.
“Problem?” Drake asked. He’d been behind her on the escalator and paused at her side now as he sized up the row of baggage carousels.
“There’s an issue with my apartment.” The apartment with the short-term lease that was crucial for her plans to work out.
“What kind of an issue?” he asked, turning his focus to her.
Mackenzie held out her phone so he could read it himself, absently glancing toward the carousels and not really seeing them. She was fighting off a host of negative thoughts, reminding herself that, as fast as she’d put all the pieces of this move into place, there were bound to be some hiccups. She would work through them.
“Let’s get your bags and then we can go check it out,” he said.
She let Drake figure out which carousel while she followed, typing to Nadine, asking her for more information.
By the time they had all of her suitcases lined up in front of them and Drake had ribbed her for packing like a girl, there was still no response from Nadine.
“I guess we’ll go see for ourselves,” Drake said. He threw a quick arm around her from the side, tugging her into him briefly.
As uneasy as she was about her apartment, all of that took a backseat as she caught the masculine scent of him, momentarily felt the heat of his solid, delectable body pressing up against her side, and thought for an instant about letting herself lean into him. Then she put a hard brake on her reaction, because that had been more of a big-brother move than a man-woman move, and she needed to keep it big-brother in her mind.
For the first time, she had a plan to get h
er life together, make it what she wanted and needed, and mooning over an unavailable guy, regardless of how tempting he was, was not the way to make it happen.
Chapter Two
Mackenzie believed you could tell a lot about a person from their vehicle. What brand was it? How old? How clean? What color? Especially in Hollywood, did the owner drive it himself or have a driver? What extras were on it? Though she didn’t often get in a car with her clients, she frequently saw what they arrived in or, in some cases when she met with people at their home, could see into their eight-car garages.
The twelve-year-old, two-hundred-thousand-mile-plus white Camry she’d hocked for two thousand bucks before leaving LA likely conveyed practicality, perseverance, and determination, plus working class and either not worried about appearances or not having the budget to worry about appearances. She was in the latter group. In her job, appearances were important because of who her clients were, but she had to focus her energy on what she could afford—namely, her clothes, accessories, and hair.
Drake, on the other hand…
The shiny, new-looking black Jeep Wrangler Rubicon that he started remotely when they were still thirty feet away spoke volumes. He liked to drive and maybe off-road. He liked to impress. And he liked to play. Though the doors and roof were intact, she was pretty sure they could be removed and he could showboat to his heart’s content while basking in the sun and letting the wind whip through his short dark hair. His vehicle screamed carefree.
