style="font-size:15px;"> “Oh, honey, don’t worry yourself about that. From what my friends tell me, stepmothers and their stepdaughters are bound to share words at some point or another, so I figure we’ll just get that out of the way right quick so we can get on with being friends.”
Who was this woman? Delainey looked to Thad, almost for help, but Thad was already on Team Brenda and hoping Delainey would join the team, as well. Unfortunately, Delainey wasn’t interested in being on anyone’s team aside from her own. “I didn’t realize my father had remarried,” she said. “Congratulations.”
“Boy, I bet that cut like a razor coming out of your mouth,” Brenda observed almost cheerfully. “Darlin’, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Are you staying for dinner? I’m making your daddy’s favorite, spaghetti with meatballs.”
Delainey looked to Thad with a frown, and he supplied an explanation. “Since Brenda came around, he can’t get enough of her cooking. Loves her spaghetti and meatballs. It’s pretty good. You’ll like it.”
“My, how things change when you miss a few years,” Delainey muttered under her breath, feeling much like Alice when she tumbled down the rabbit hole. “Anything else? Perhaps Pops has suddenly taken a liking to classical music, too?”
“Goodness no, your daddy has a fondness for folk country and always will, bless his soul. I like some George Strait myself, but the bluegrass took some getting used to.” Brenda moved past Delainey and started making herself at home—well, Delainey supposed it was her home now, too. But she was discomfited to realize she felt some bristling sense that Brenda was poaching on her turf when Delainey hadn’t been around in eight years. “Are you too tired to help out? I know that flight can be a doozy. If you’re not too tired, I could always use an extra hand in the kitchen.”
“I don’t cook,” Delainey said flatly. She hadn’t cooked in years, almost refused to after she left Alaska. Cooking was domestic. She wasn’t a housewife. She was a businesswoman who held dinner meetings, if she ate dinner at all. She eyed the pasta. Too many carbs. “I’d planned to stay here, in my old room, but I didn’t realize... If it’s too much trouble, I can get a hotel room.”
“Thad has told me all about his successful sister living the glitz-and-glamour life in Hollywood, but there’s no sense in spending good money when you have family to take you in. Now, go wash your face and spritz off and we’ll gab like old hens in a henhouse before your daddy gets home. I’m sure we have lots in common.”
“I can’t,” she said, sharp enough to earn a pleading look from Thad, but she couldn’t act as if it was completely normal to cook a family meal with her new stepmother—a woman she’d never even known existed until five minutes ago—when it was bad enough that she knew her father wasn’t going to exactly do a cartwheel when he saw his ungrateful, selfish daughter showing her mug around town again. Delainey rubbed at her forehead and knew she couldn’t stay here. No. No. No. “Actually, I think it would be better if I stayed at a hotel. I wouldn’t want to disrupt the house. Besides, as much as I know you’re trying to smooth things over between me and my dad, our issues run deeper than you can imagine. It’s going to take more than sitting around the dinner table stuffing our faces with carbs to change what went wrong between us. I’m sorry.”
Brenda pursed her lips and narrowed her gaze. “Suit yourself, dear. But remember, regret is a terrible companion. It’s like a houseguest who never leaves.”
“I don’t have any regrets.”
“Sure you do. We all do, but yours are plainer than most, I can tell you that.”
“You don’t know me and I don’t appreciate you foisting your brand of country wisdom on me.” She looked to her brother. “Could you please get my luggage? I’ll find a place to stay elsewhere.”
“Come on, Laney...” But when Thad saw her mind was made up, he dragged her suitcase from the room and handed it to her as she waited by the door, eager to get away. “If you’d just give her a chance,” he said in a low voice that only she could hear.
“I’m not here to make friends, Thad. I just needed a place to sleep. I should’ve known that coming home wasn’t going to be that place.” At his crestfallen expression, she softened minutely. Thad was a good kid and had always been kindhearted. She caressed the scruff on his cheek and said, “I’ll call you when I get settled and we’ll go to lunch. I promise. In the meantime, take care of that arm.”
She’d just slammed the trunk closed when the sound of her father’s old truck rumbled down the street. Perfect timing, she wanted to mutter. Another five minutes and she’d have been gone. If she’d been thinking straight, she never would’ve presumed she could stomach staying with her father. She didn’t care if she ran through her savings account like water through a sieve; she wasn’t sleeping one night under the same roof as that man...and his new wife. Hand on the door handle, she contemplated leaving without a word uttered, but a part of her wanted him to acknowledge her—perhaps only so she could refuse the gesture. But when he stopped for the barest moment and gave her a once-over then kept walking, she balled her fists and wanted to scream. Delainey fought the urge to follow him straight into the house to give him what was coming to him. But she didn’t confront him. No, instead she stood like a statue, staring and doing nothing. Nice to see you, too. What a jerk. She climbed into her rental and drove away, not realizing until she was a mile down the road she had tears tracking down her cheeks.
CHAPTER FIVE
TRACE WANTED TO PUNCH something. No, that wasn’t the right word. He wanted to destroy something. How dare Delainey Clarke show up as if everything was peachy between them. That soul-sucker lost the right to show her mug in his personal space the day she’d thrust his offer of marriage back in his face and left town so fast she broke the sound barrier. And at his bleakest moment! He made it a point not to go there, but seeing Delainey again brought the memory front and center.
“You’re the only thing that makes sense in my life,” Trace had said, bending on one knee, his voice breaking as he presented the small diamond he’d scrimped and saved to purchase. He didn’t make a lot of money but he didn’t spend frivolously either, and it had taken a year to save up the cash to make the biggest purchase of his young life. But she was worth it, he’d told himself. Delainey was his heart and soul, and he needed her in his life more than anything. Especially after Simone. “Please do me the honor of being my wife.”
Delainey had stared at the ring as if it had sprung fangs and hissed at her and she actually took a step back, distancing herself from it and him. “No,” she whispered. Her green eyes had misted and widened and she shook her head, almost in horror. A sick feeling lodged itself in his gut and he felt like a fool kneeling, so he climbed to his feet and snapped the ring box shut. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” he asked, confused and hurt. “I know you love me and I love you, so what’s the problem?”
“The problem? If you don’t know, then you don’t know me at all. I have a degree in film production. What kind of job am I going to get here with that?”
“You’re serious about going off to California?” he asked, incredulous. “My career is here. You’ve always known that.”
“And you’ve always known that I have big dreams that aren’t here.”
“Yeah, well, what does that have to do with getting married?” he asked, irritated and defensive. He’d always thought her talk of running off to California was kid stuff,
