a huff, what would he have accomplished? He calmed his pulse and considered what his grandfather had said. If Gray could hold a job, he’d return the money. Surely that was almost as good as an admission of guilt.
Could this be the opening he’d hoped for?
For several seconds, fury warred with common sense. Finally, common sense won.
He didn’t really want to bring a lawsuit. It would take forever, and it would cost a fortune on its own. He had no interest in humiliating his grandfather publicly. He wanted only the personal, private admission that the old man had wronged Gray’s father—and, in doing so, Gray himself.
He eyed his grandfather narrowly. “Will you put that deal in writing? If I do what you ask...if I hold a ‘real’ job for four weeks straight without bolting, you’ll write a check for every penny my father ever gave you to invest for him?”
The old man squinted at him in return as if he suspected a trick. “Not just any job. A hard job. A dirty job. The kind you turned your nose up at all your life.”
Gray wanted to ask him, “What do you know of my life?” The last time they’d seen each other, Gray had been nineteen, reckless, defiant and mixed up as hell. Because he’d refused to come back to Silverdell over his college summer breaks and dig marble in the family quarry, the old man had decided Gray was afraid of real work. Just like his father.
How could old Grayson have been so stupid as to miss the truth? Gray wasn’t afraid of work. He was afraid of Silverdell and what madness the memories might create in his heart. He was afraid of what living in this house another summer might make him do to his grandfather.
“Of course,” Gray said with feigned calm. “I’ll accept a job as dirty and demeaning as you want it to be. The only thing I won’t do is take a job at the quarry, or anywhere I would report to you.”
The old man worked his lips, clearly thinking fast and hard. “It would have to be here. In Silverdell, I mean. So that I could check on you. So that I could be sure it’s not a scam.”
“Of course.” Gray’s smile felt twisted. “I wouldn’t dream of asking you to trust me.”
If old Grayson recognized the sarcasm, he didn’t deign to acknowledge it. He scanned his grandson’s face so thoroughly it felt like a scouring.
“Then yes,” he said, finally. “If you can hold a real, Joe Lunchbucket job here in Silverdell, one with physical labor and no fancy title, and you can keep it for four weeks straight without bolting, or complaining, or getting yourself fired, I’ll write a check for any amount you ask.”
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS TWO in the morning, and though Bree and Penny had been talking for hours, the conversation showed no signs of sputtering out.
They were ensconced in Penny’s suite in Aunt Ruth’s beautiful old San Francisco Victorian town house. The sitting area was close enough to Ruth’s sickroom to hear her if she called out, but private enough to let them chat in peace. They both still wore their day clothes because getting into pajamas seemed too much of an admission that the night might end.
Bree had been visiting her little sister for three whole days—a true luxury, since ordinarily the entire breadth of the country, and their respective obligations, lay between them.
When the sisters had been split up after their father went to jail, sixty-five-year-old Aunt Ruth had taken Rowena and Penny into her home. But she’d declared herself unequal to mothering all three sisters. After a tense period in which the state seemed likely to get involved, their mother’s college roommate had stepped up. Kitty Afton, a Boston divorcée with no children, had always been fond of Bree, and was glad to offer the teenager a home.
Bree had lived in Boston ever since. She told herself she loved it. And yet, three days in a new place, with a fresh perspective and her little sister’s calming presence, had done her a world of good. After the mess with Charlie...
She looked at Penny, suddenly wishing she could scoop her up and take her along when she returned to Boston. Without Charlie, without Breelie’s, her “perfect” life in the city seemed hollow. Even the trendy Brighton-area condo she’d snagged a year ago—but never had time to decorate—felt lonely and sterile, and she could hardly bring herself to set foot in it again.
But Penny would never agree to leave San Francisco. Ruth, now in her early eighties, had congestive heart failure and needed full-time care. She really ought to be in a nursing facility, Bree thought, but Penny would never abandon the old lady who had put a roof over her head when everything else in their world had exploded.
So Penny couldn’t leave, and Bree couldn’t stay...not that she’d been invited. Reluctant or not, she had to get back to Boston and see if she could possibly piece her career back together.
Her plane left from San Fran International first thing in the morning.
So they lingered here, not ready to sleep in spite of the late hour. Bree had stretched out on top of Penny’s small sofa, her head propped on the heel of her hand, and Penny had curled up in the adjacent armchair, sketching her sister as they talked.
“So what’s our plan for Charlie?” Penny’s face was still bent over her sketch, but her lips curved upward, and her smile could be heard in her words. “Shall we boil him in oil? Or can you think of something more creative?”
Bree laughed. Only Penny could say things like that and still look and sound positively angelic. She was undoubtedly the sweetest person Bree had ever met, but that didn’t mean she was saccharine or dull. In her gentle, Alice in Wonderland face, sugar and spice coexisted in complete harmony.
“Boiling in oil sounds fine to me.” But Bree yawned as she said it, which showed that, thank goodness, she’d finally lost her bloodthirsty enthusiasm for revenge.
The first day here, she’d spent hours detailing Charlie’s sins—which, it turned out, had only begun with Iliana Townsend, not ended there. He had also been cooking Breelie’s books for God knew how long, draining the savings to keep himself in cool suits and hot women. When news got out that he’d been sacked, vendors all over Boston practically set Bree’s phone on fire, calling to complain they hadn’t been paid in months.
It had taken Bree weeks to straighten it all out—and every penny of her personal savings, too. She’d stayed in Boston long enough to finish the last event already contracted...but, as she’d predicted, no one had called to hire her company for anything new.
She had one appointment still on the books, a golden wedding anniversary consult that had been set long before the Townsend fiasco and, miraculously, hadn’t yet been canceled. She tried to be optimistic. Maybe, from that small job, she could begin to rebuild the business.
But she’d had a few days of rare freedom, and, so ravaged by resentment and self pity she couldn’t stand her own company a minute longer, she’d impulsively booked a plane ticket to visit Penny.
Her little sister was probably the only person on earth Bree could have been completely honest with about how much Charlie’s betrayal had hurt. Though she was four years younger than Bree, and five years younger than Rowena, Penny was without question the kindest of the three Wright girls, and the wisest. She was a good listener, and a true empath, with no trace of the schadenfreude most people—especially Rowena—might feel on hearing of Bree’s misfortune.
