stepped forward to protest the invitation, but Chase responded faster than her.
“I don’t want to impose,” he said.
He didn’t want to impose? Joy almost snorted. His very presence in the house was the biggest imposition of her life. What was she going to do? How would she keep the girls’ identity a secret from him? All he would need to do was find out how old they were and he’d probably guess. They were small for their age, so he might think they were younger than three—but if he asked them, they’d tell him the truth.
“Fiddlesticks,” Mrs. Thompson laughed. “I’ll leave you and Joy to chat for a bit while I get the kids their snacks.” With that, she disappeared back into the kitchen, closing the door soundly.
Joy’s mind raced with all the implications of Chase’s arrival, but there was only one thing she could focus on. She would do whatever it would take to keep the house for the kids, and protect her girls from Chase’s family.
He sighed as he faced Joy. “I’m going to see what I can do about this mess. If the board knew you and the kids were here, I don’t think they would have sent me. Somehow, Uncle Morgan’s wishes were not made known to the corporation.”
Hope sprung up in Joy’s heart at his words. “Do you think there’s a way we could still keep the house?”
“I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call my father and tell him what happened.”
It wasn’t much, but at least Chase was willing to do what he could. A part of her wanted to believe he would do the right thing, while the other part remembered how much pain he had caused her when he walked away without an explanation. A couple weeks after he left, when she had found out she was pregnant, she had tried to contact him, but he never returned her calls. Eventually, the number was disconnected. After she learned she was expecting twins, the desire to protect her babies from the Asher family had overwhelmed her, so she had kept her secret. If they knew the girls existed, what would stop them from fighting for custody? They had a fortune at their fingertips and she was a single mother who didn’t even own the home she lived in.
Thankfully, Uncle Morgan had let her stay on at Bee Tree Hill while she went to school, and Mrs. Thompson had helped with childcare once they were born. Both Uncle Morgan and Mrs. Thompson had wanted Joy to tell Chase the truth, but she had kept putting it off—and made them promise not to tell.
But now? Now she might be homeless and would have no excuse left to keep the girls’ identity from their father.
“I appreciate whatever you can do to help,” Joy told Chase, forcing herself not to think about the inevitable conversation they must have. For now, they had other things to worry about.
Chase pulled his phone from his back pocket and stepped out the front door of the house. Bright sunshine filtered through the massive pine trees lining the circle drive. An old tennis court and pool house sat on the sprawling front lawn, and stone pathways crisscrossed over the property, leading down the hill at the back of the mansion to the river beyond. Why had Chase waited so long to return to Bee Tree Hill? He had been in Italy on business when he got word that Uncle Morgan had passed. It had been impossible to get a flight home on such short notice, so he had missed the funeral. He should have made a point to come back to visit before Uncle Morgan died, even if it meant facing his past mistakes.
He walked to a double gliding swing and sat, tapping the phone icon on his screen. He found his father’s number and pressed Call.
It rang several times and then his father answered. “Did you have any trouble getting in?”
“Hi, Dad.” Chase could imagine his father sitting in his office in downtown Seattle, mist outside the large windows, and a view of the Space Needle not too far away.
“What do you need, Chase?”
Taking a deep breath, he rose from the swing, not able to stay still. “We have a problem.”
There was a pause. “What kind of problem?”
Chase didn’t want to tell his father that Joy was the one living in the house. If he knew who it was, he would probably call Chase home and send someone else to deal with the situation.
“Apparently, Uncle Morgan had moved into the carriage house a couple years ago and was letting a woman live in the mansion. She’s a foster mom and has five kids. Mrs. Thompson is still living here, too, helping with the kids.”
“What’s the problem?”
Chase rubbed the tension in the back of his neck as he paced across the manicured lawn. “She told me that Uncle Morgan wanted her to stay here, even after his death.”
“I’m sure she did.” Dad’s sarcastic words were flat and devoid of emotion. “Tell her she has a week to vacate the premises.”
“I can’t do that.”
Dead silence on the other end of the phone wasn’t a good sign.
The boys ran out of the house, shouting and hollering in excitement as they disappeared around the corner of the mansion. Chase moved in that direction, drawn to their enthusiasm.
“The mom has nowhere to go,” Chase continued. “Not to mention Mrs. Thompson. She’s lived here for at least thirty years. Where will she go?”
“That’s not my problem. My grandfather built Bee Tree Hill and when he died, he left the estate to the corporation. We allowed Uncle Morgan to live there, because it was the only home he’d ever known. Now that he’s dead and there are no other Ashers living in Timber Falls, we can finally sell the estate. I won’t let a woman and her kids dictate what we do with the place.”
Uncle Morgan had shared the history of the estate with Chase when he’d stayed with him four years ago. Chase’s great-great-grandfather was a lumber baron in Illinois who had sent each of his sons to a different location in the Western United States to build sawmills in the 1890s. He sent John, Chase’s great-grandfather, to Timber Falls, Minnesota, and that’s when John built Bee Tree Hill. Uncle Morgan was one of John’s sons. He was born and raised in the mansion, and had chosen to stay when the rest of the family moved to Seattle where the company was now headquartered. The property had been part of the family legacy for over a century and it seemed like a shame to sell it now, but it wasn’t up to Chase.
“It’s going to take me at least a month to get the place ready to sell,” Chase said, trying to buy time for Joy and the kids. “I need to have an appraiser look at a hundred years’ worth of antiques and collectibles, not to mention all the work that needs to be done around here. It could take another month or so to find a buyer after that. Why can’t we let her stay until we sell the place? Timber Falls is a small town. It would look bad for the corporation if we kicked out a foster mom, her five kids and an old woman with little warning.”
Dad hated looking bad. It was the reason he had stepped in when he heard Chase wanted to marry Joy. One of the first things he said to Chase was, “What would it look like if you married a woman who grew up in foster care?” He had different plans for Chase, which included marrying the daughter of one of his business partners. But Chase had messed that up, too. Tamara was tired of waiting
