them, digging bare toes in the still-cool sand, sighing sighs the slight breeze snatched away but could not halt.
One of the muscle types spotted Jessica and deliberately tossed a Frisbee in her direction, so that he could shout out, “No, Buster, don’t chase it. Be careful of the lady,” and then came jogging across the sand to smile down at Jessica, to apologize if his charging dog had frightened her.
The guy was cute, in an overgrown-puppy way. All he needed was a friendly, waving tail and a Frisbee between his too-white teeth. He was tall, with muscles he obviously worked on daily, and had a broad, confident smile. The kind of guy who considered a beautiful woman a required accessory, just like the dog.
Boy, had he ever picked the wrong beach and the wrong girl.
“That’s all right,” Jessica said, barely looking at him, his handsomeness really not registering in her brain; not considering his attention the compliment he’d believed it to be. Then she stood up, brushed sand from her green shorts and walked away. She headed toward the waves without a backward look as the hopeful hunk shrugged and jogged off in the opposite direction. Buster followed her for a few paces, then grabbed the Frisbee between his teeth, turned, tagged off after his master.
Jessica Chandler was alone on this late-July morning, but she didn’t want company, be it male or canine. The very last thing she wanted was company.
Hello, everybody! Bet you didn’t know I was here, did you? But I am. Nobody’s talking about me yet, so I thought I’d introduce myself. I’ve been here for a little while now, feeling pretty good, making myself at home.
That lady you just met? Jessica? That’s my mom.
You still don’t know what’s going on, do you? I do. There’s a real mess going on, that’s what. But don’t worry. Where I come from, there’s no such thing as an unhappy ending. I promise.
Stick around. This should be fun.
The Chandler mansion—the mellow brick building was much too large to call it a house—sat in the western suburbs of Allentown, Pennsylvania, one state and a few hours northwest of Ocean City, New Jersey.
Jessica lived there, along with her brother, Ryan, their grandmother, assorted staff and, until almost two months ago, her baby sister, Maddy.
Now Jessica’s sister was married. Married to Joe O’Malley, the man she’d left outside a Las Vegas wedding chapel nearly two years earlier, a man who had come back nearly on the eve of Maddy’s marriage to Matthew Garvey.
Maddy and Joe had purchased the sprawling house next door to the Chandler mansion. They had just returned from a ridiculously long honeymoon, and they were just as happy as they could be—because the only thing that would make them happier would be if Jessica had been there to welcome them home.
“I don’t get it,” Maddy Chandler O’Malley said, hooking her legs around a kitchen stool as she watched her grandmother spoon butter-brickle ice cream into three bowls.
“I don’t think that’s a requirement, my dear,” Almira Chandler purred, licking the metal scoop as she handed the tub of ice cream to Joe O’Malley and pointed toward the double-door freezer on the opposite side of the room. “I really do adore Mrs. Hadley’s day off. Ice cream for lunch. Could anything be more decadent? At least at my age,” she said, winking one expertly resculpted eyelid—just one example of the several cosmetic surgeries that had Almira Chandler looking twenty or more years younger than nature and the passing of the years had ever intended.
She might be a grandmother, Almira had decided years ago, but that didn’t mean she had to look like one!
Almira had been in charge of the three Chandler children for more than a dozen years, since their parents had died. And she took her responsibilities seriously, when she remembered raising children was supposed to be a serious venture.
Mostly she enjoyed life and enjoyed her grandchildren, believing that they were intelligent beings and were probably smart enough to raise themselves. They just needed her around to point them in the correct directions.
She’d pointed Maddy in Joe’s direction. Oh, goodness, hadn’t she ever! She did not consider her actions to be meddling, however. She considered them to be more in the way of nudging.
Of course, Almira Chandler’s nudges could end up sending the nudgees reeling….
“Nice try, Allie,” Maddy said, giving her grandmother a jaunty salute. “Now, ice cream to one side—and I mean that figuratively only, so pass over my dish, if you please—why has Jessica gone to Ocean City? She never goes until August, when all that fiscal-year stuff is over and she says she can’t look at another figure unless it’s wearing a bathing suit.”
“Besides,” Joe said, leaning down to kiss the top of his wife’s head, “Maddy expected Jessica to be here to hear all about our honeymoon. Isn’t that right, honey?”
Maddy, the baby of the family, with eyes as green as her sister’s were blue, and with hair as black as Jessica’s was light, leaned back against her husband’s strength and stuck her tongue out at him. “You love it when you’re right, don’t you?” she said, then pulled him down for a kiss.
They made a perfect couple: two gorgeous physical specimens who complemented each other in every way. They looked young and in love and happier than might seem humanly possible. Handsome Joe, with his shaggy, sandy hair and cobalt-blue eyes; Maddy, with her wonderfully rounded figure that was such a perfect foil for Joe’s planes and angles.
She’d done well, Almira told herself, not for the first time or even the tenth. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t poke a little fun at the lovestruck pair.
“There goes the appetite,” Almira teased, taking another bite of butter-brickle, closing her eyes as the confection melted on her tongue.
Joe laughed as he disengaged himself from his bride and sat down on the stool beside her, then looked across the bar at the matchmaking woman to whom he owed much of his current happiness. “Ah, you love it and you know it, Allie,” he said, reaching for his own dish of ice cream. “Mostly because you love being right. Otherwise, Maddy and I would still be pretending we didn’t love each other, and Maddy would be married to—”
“No,” Maddy interrupted, shaking her head. “No, I wouldn’t. Remember, darling, Matt was going to call off the wedding even before I told him I was still hopelessly in love with you, just as I was working up my courage to tell him I couldn’t marry him. We never would have gotten to the altar.”
“True enough,” Almira seconded. “And now, since I arranged all this newfound happiness you two seem determined to shove under my nose, I think it’s a good time to remind you that I’ll be old and doddering someday and expect you two to take care of me.”
“A villa in Spain, high in the mountains of Spain. Are there mountains in Spain? Ones with nearly inaccessible roads?” Maddy asked quickly, looking at Joe.
“Is that far enough away from here?” Joe just as quickly responded. “With full-time keepers, of course, to make sure she doesn’t find her way back.”
“And with Mrs. Ballantine installed as head warden, most definitely,” Maddy finished on a giggle, referring to the Chandler housekeeper, a woman Almira swore she detested—when the two weren’t plotting together to run all three of the Chandler grandchildren’s
