accident before he could look into those eyes without flinching on the inside. Still happened, sometimes.
“We almost forgot to say goodbye!” Rianna, the youngest, lisped, clinging to his right leg with both arms. She would be seven on Saturday.
Maeve, tall for ten, clutched him around the middle.
His heart softened into one big bruise, and his eyes stung a little. He embraced the girls and bent to kiss them both on top of the head.
“I’ll be back in a few days,” he said.
They let go of him, stepped back, craning their necks to look up at his face. Their expressions were solemnly skeptical.
“Unless you decide to go someplace else after you leave San Antonio,” Maeve said sagely, folding her arms.
Rianna’s attention had already shifted to the pink Volkswagen. She approached and touched one fender with reverence, as though it were an enchanted coach, drawn by six white horses, instead of a car.
“It’s like a Barbie car,” she said wondrously. “Only bigger.”
Maeve rolled her eyes. The young sophisticate.
“Yeah,” Rance agreed, though he didn’t have the faintest idea what a Barbie car was.
The door of the soon-to-be-bookstore opened again, and Rance heard bells ring. He was confused, until he remembered the little brass tinkler Cora had hung above the entrance to the Curl and Twirl, so she’d know when a customer came in. Echo’s shop must have one, too.
Echo stood in the gap, leaning one bare and delectable shoulder against the splintery framework and smiling at the girls. “Hi,” she said, taking in both Rianna and Maeve in the sweeping, sparkling approval of her glance, and leaving Rance firmly outside the she-circle. “My name is Echo. What’s yours?”
“Echo,” Rianna sighed, spellbound.
“You made that up,” Maeve accused, being the proverbial chip off the old block, but she sounded intrigued, just the same.
“You’re right, I did—sort of,” Echo said. “It suits me, don’t you think?”
“What’s your real name?” Maeve asked.
Rance should have been on his way to the airstrip outside of town, where the McKettrickCo jet was waiting, with Keegan and Jesse already onboard, checking their watches every few seconds, but he was as curious to hear the lady’s answer as Maeve was.
“That’s a secret,” Echo said mysteriously, and put a finger to her lips as if to say, Shush. “Maybe when we’ve known each other for a while, I’ll tell you.”
“My name is Maeve,” said Rance’s eldest daughter, stoically charmed.
“I’m Rianna,” said the younger.
“Well, if my real name were as beautiful as yours are, I’d have kept it,” Echo confided.
Rance could almost hear the engines revving on the company jet.
“I’d better go,” he told his daughters, who seemed to have forgotten he existed.
The white dog slipped past Echo, trotted over to Rianna and licked her face.
Rance, poised to lunge to his daughter’s defense, was confounded by this display of canine affection.
Rianna giggled, stroked the dog with both hands and looked back at Rance over one tiny shoulder. “Can we get a puppy, Daddy?”
“No,” he said. “I travel too much.”
“You can say that again,” Maeve quipped. Sometimes she was more like a very short adult than a kid.
Echo raised one perfect eyebrow.
“Goodbye,” Rance told his daughters.
Rianna was busy snuggling with the dog. Maeve gave him a look.
He got into his enormous gas-hog of an SUV and drove off.
“I LIKE YOUR PINK CAR,” Maeve said, but only after she’d watched her father’s SUV go out of sight. The look on her face reminded Echo of Avalon, sitting next to the Volkswagen the night before, hoping to hitch a ride and fully expecting to be refused.
“I like your dog,” said Rianna.
“Dad won’t let us get one,” Maeve announced.
“So I gathered,” Echo answered carefully. These were well-cared-for children. Their long dark hair was neatly brushed and clipped back with perky little barrettes, and their denim shorts and colorful sun-tops looked as though they came from some rich-kid boutique.
So why did she want to kneel on the sidewalk and gather them both into her arms? They probably had a mother.
“He’s gone a lot,” Rianna said.
“We stay with Granny all the time,” Maeve added.
“Does your mom travel, too?” Echo asked.
“She died,” Maeve said.
Echo felt bereft. “Oh,” she replied, lacking a better response.
The door of Cora’s Curl and Twirl opened, and a woman stuck her elaborately coiffed auburn head out. “Maeve, Rianna—” She paused, noticing the dog, then the car, and finally Echo herself, and broke into a big smile. “You must be Miss Wells,” she said.
“Echo.”
“Echo, then,” the woman said pleasantly. “I’m Cora Tellington, and I presume you’ve met my granddaughters.”
“I have,” Echo said softly.
“Well, land sakes,” Cora enthused, coming over to pump her hand. “I wasn’t expecting you for a few more days yet. I would have dusted a little, inside the shop, and aired out the apartment upstairs if I’d known you were going to be here so soon.”
“That’s kind of you,” Echo replied, already liking the woman. She’d purchased the shop sight unseen, and the whole transaction had been conducted via fax and overnight delivery services. She’d wondered what kind of person Cora Tellington was, selling property over the Internet for next to nothing. Cora had probably speculated about her as well. “Actually, I’m looking forward to getting the place in shape.”
“Don’t you have any furniture?” Maeve asked, peering through the display window, which needed scrubbing.
Rianna and Avalon drew up beside Maeve, taking ganders of their own.
“How can you have a bookstore without any books?” Rianna asked.
“My things are coming in a truck,” Echo explained. “And I’ve got a lot of work to do before I can stock the shelves.”
Maeve whistled through
