Larkspur Road (27 page)

But she still had several hours free, a good chunk of time to work on her quilt. Settling in at her sewing machine, with Samson snoozing on the needlepoint rug only a few feet away, she wrestled the quilt layers under the hopping foot and set to work, trying not to think about Travis. He was bringing Grady by for tutoring this afternoon. And she couldn’t wait to see him.

Concentrate on this quilt,
she chided herself.
If you let yourself start daydreaming about Travis, you’ll mess something up and won’t finish until next summer’s quilt exhibition.

Her work was soon accompanied by the sound of Samson’s gentle snores, along with the drone of bees and the chirps of songbirds drifting in through the open window.

Slowly her Starry Night design was taking shape. The stars she’d so carefully appliquéd looked perfect against the dramatic midnight blue background and the swirls of light. Though the quilt wasn’t yet halfway finished, she could already see it becoming a vibrant reflection of her dreamy vision, her own version of the brilliant night sky made famous by Van Gogh.

Mia was so engrossed in her work that she lost track of time and suddenly was startled to discover that she needed to leave right that minute if she was going to have a prayer of getting Aunt Winny to her appointment on time.

She rushed to the door and set the alarm, leaving Samson safely inside as she took off for Sweetwater Road.

Winny was perched on the ancient rocker on her porch, a knitted multicolored handbag on her lap, when Mia roared
down the gravel drive and jumped out of the Mustang with the engine still running.

“No need to hang on to me,” her aunt complained as she started to help her down the porch steps. “I’m not glass and I sure as shootin’ won’t break.”

“Humor me.” Mia held carefully to Winny’s arm.

“It’s not like I have much of a choice,” her aunt grumbled.

Mia noticed the tabby crouched outside, watching them, half hidden in the brush as they started toward the car.

“It looks like rain, Aunt Winny. Don’t you want to leave her inside?”

“We’ll be back before there’s a drop of rain. Those clouds won’t get here ’til late afternoon.”

“If they roll in faster, she’ll get soaked.”

Winny frowned. Stopped. Thought about it. “Well, for Pete’s sake, if you’re going to worry about it…” She half stomped, half limped back toward the porch. “Jellybean, you come on up here. Now!”

To Mia’s astonishment the cat obeyed, leaping up the steps and sidling against the cabin door with a low meow. Mia helped her aunt up and then down the steps again after the cat was safely shut up inside.

“You underestimate that cat. And me.” Winny flicked her a flinty glance as the convertible spat gravel going up the drive. “We’ve gotten along just fine on our own, both of us, for a good long time. We’re survivors. We don’t
need
folks fussing over us.”

“Everybody needs someone to care about them. Most people just say thank you when someone like that comes along.” She smiled as her aunt directed a gaze at her sharp enough to pierce armor. “It doesn’t make you a wimp to care about another person or to let them care about you. It just makes you human.”

“If I want a sermon, I’ll go to church.” Winny folded her hands over the knitted handbag in her lap. “You were late coming today.”

“I’m sorry. But with this sweet little car, we’ll make up the time.” She pressed down hard on the accelerator and the convertible shot forward down Sweetwater Road. “I was distracted working on my quilt for the exhibition. I lost track of time.”

“So you like to quilt, too, do you? No doubt you’re as good at it as Alicia was. You’re just the type.”

“Type?” Mia’s slender brows rose. “What
type
is good at quilting? I don’t understand.”

“The type who things come easy to.
She
was like that—Alicia. The perfect child.” Winny snorted. “The one who always did her chores, followed the rules, minded her manners.”

“Is that how you remember her?” Mia asked quietly.

Winny didn’t reply for a moment. “Alicia drew people to her,” she muttered at last. “It was like she had some kind of invisible charm in her pocket that magically made them love her. My father used to ask me why I couldn’t be like her. Every day he asked me.” Her mouth twisted. “But I wasn’t like her. I wasn’t like her at all.”

“What
were
you like?” Mia asked. She remembered what Martha had said, comparing Winny to one of those wild horses still running free in Coldwater Canyon.

“I didn’t take to being told what to do, for one thing. I liked to climb trees no one else would dare climb—not even any of the boys. I played in the mud, and then I tramped it all in the house because I forgot to wipe my feet before going inside.” She chuckled, but it was a dry, mirthless sound. “I made more work for my mother in one day than my sister did in a year, and my father would swat my bottom until I cried and then send me to my room. Alicia never got swatted or sent to our room, not that I can recall.”

“So you and Gram…you were never close?”

Winny hesitated. “When we were younger. We were close then.” Her voice changed. Softened. Mia had never heard that tone from her before. “She was always nice to me when
we were younger. Felt sorry for me, I guess, because I was always in trouble. When I cried in bed because my bottom was sore from beating, she used to show me her drawings, try to make me forget about the pain.
Butterflies
. She always drew butterflies. All different colors, sizes. Real pretty, they were. Alicia just loved butterflies….” Winny moistened her lips, remembering. “And when I got sent to our room without any supper, she’d sneak me food from the kitchen. Right after supper she’d duck in with it, and again before she came to bed. As much as she could carry. Those were the only times she ever broke any rules.
She
never got caught.”

“I don’t understand.” Mia couldn’t contain the words. “If you and Gram were close…if she was good to you…what happened? Why did you burn her wedding quilt and run away? If you left because of your father, I can understand that,” she added quickly. “But why didn’t you and Gram ever speak to each other after you came back to Lonesome Way?”

They were only a few miles from town and the hospital now, she realized as she made the turn onto Squirrel Road. They’d made up the time and she deliberately slowed her speed so they’d have more of a chance to talk. It was the first time Winny had ever opened up about her childhood with Gram, and Mia knew she might never have another opportunity to find out what had gone wrong between them.

As it was, Winny went quiet for so long Mia feared she wasn’t planning to answer, but at last, as the road dipped just past a fallen tree, and a hawk swooped overhead, casting a shadow in the sky, Winny let out a sigh.

“I guess you could say as we grew up, we grew apart. By the time we reached our teens, my sister learned to be ashamed of me.” She looked straight ahead, into the distance. When she spoke again, the words came steadily, but there was pain beneath them.

“The other girls whispered about me, you see. They
thought I was loose because most of my friends were boys. But I just felt more comfortable with the boys. I had fun with them and I liked the attention I got from them. Abner was one of ’em. And his brother Bill. That was when we became friends—good friends. But the older boys…” Winny sighed. “Well, let’s just say the older I got, the more attention they paid me. Seemed like they all thought I was pretty, so they used to tease me and flirt with me—and I wasn’t one of those girls who shied away from flirting back.” Her mouth curved in a faint, reminiscent smile. “And yes, they kissed me on the first date. If I liked ’em, I kissed ’em back. But that’s
all
I let ’em do. Not that it mattered,” she added, her mouth tightening. “Because I still got a reputation.”

Glancing over, Mia saw Winny’s eyes brimming with memories. Sour memories, from the look of it.

“Everyone thought I was a certain type of girl—the type who slept with anything in pants. Girls started calling me a slut behind my back. One or two said it to my face. Oh, not Martha or Ava Todd or any of the others Alicia was good friends with. They kept silent, probably out of respect for her. But some—most of ’em, if you want to know—they whispered behind their hands whenever I walked by. But it wasn’t true. None of it. I never did all those things they said. I never did
most
of them, except kiss this boy or that one now and then, if I liked him.”

Winny peered over at Mia, and in her dark gaze Mia saw a long-ago hurt, a bitterness hard and old, tamped down deep, like tobacco in a pipe.

“The truth was, there was only one boy I cared about. A boy from Billings. Real handsome, he was. We met at a barn dance, and he was the only one I let touch me. Matter of fact,” she said softly, “I let him do whatever he wanted—well,
almost
anything he wanted,” she added with a wry slant of her mouth that was nothing like a smile. “Because I loved him. And I
thought
he loved me. He told me he did often enough,” she rasped in a low tone.

“What happened to him, Aunt Winny? Who was he?” Mia saw the outer fringe of town just ahead. She tried to imagine her crusty aunt as a pretty, vibrant young woman. Brittany’s age. Mia’s age when she’d fallen for Travis. “Did you…” She paused, uncertain how to phrase her question.

“Sleep with him? Have sex with him? Is that what you want to know?” Her aunt was gripping her cane tightly, staring straight ahead, her profile sharp, almost regal. “No, I didn’t do that, but fool that I was, I would’ve if I’d had the chance. I never did.”

Mia saw her teeth clench, a timeworn pain tightening her elegant features.

“Why didn’t you?” She couldn’t stop herself from asking.

Winny’s mouth twisted like a gnarled tree root. “Because one day I came home from school and found the boy I loved standing in my very own house. Shaking my father’s hand. Paying my mother some flowery compliment. You want to know why? Because he’d just become engaged to marry my sister.”

The instant Travis glanced at his cell phone and saw it was Val calling he had a bad feeling.

Up until that moment, his day had been rolling along great. His office phones were ringing constantly. Potential clients were emailing all day long, his security teams were shaping up, and inquiries for his company’s services were pouring in from D.C. to Sacramento, from Frankfurt to Damascus.

He’d hired five top-notch former Navy SEALs in the past week and he had a video interview with a major potential client in Madrid scheduled at five.

Grady was out in the reception area with his new office manager, and while she fielded phone calls and set up appointments, his son was curled up in a gray-and-black-checked wingback chair, his mouth pursed in concentration as he finished up a take-home quiz Mia had assigned him for homework—comparing how earthquakes, volcanoes, and plate movements affected the earth’s surface features.
In an hour the two of them were going to grab some burgers from the drive-through and then later on shoot over to Mia’s for Grady’s tutoring session.

I’ll see her in a little more than two hours,
Travis had thought, grinning because he was as eager as a teenager. Not only would he see Mia when he dropped Grady off, but she and Britt were joining him and Grady for a barbecue tonight at the cabin.

Every day he saw Mia was a good day. He looked forward to her sexy little smile, to getting close enough to smell the grapefruit and sunshine fragrance of her shampoo. Hearing her laugh was a bonus. And making love to her was the closest thing to heaven Travis had ever known.

The sight of her triggered a million lustful thoughts and kept him busy trying to figure out ways for them to be alone so they could act on them.

The only fly in the ointment was that Wade Collins hadn’t been caught yet. Travis knew that just because the kid hadn’t been spotted didn’t mean he wasn’t around. Snakes liked hiding under rocks. And just because you couldn’t see them, that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Hidden. Coiled. Ready to strike.

He wasn’t about to let down his guard until Britt’s ex-boyfriend was locked up where he belonged.

He’d been trying to shove his concerns about Collins out of his mind, to focus on Tanner Security and the evening ahead.

And then Val called and it all went to hell.

“You’re
what
?”

He listened to her in disbelief, his stomach clenching.

She and Drew. Moving to London in the fall.

Travis heard her out, fighting to control his growing anger. Apparently this had been in the works for a while now. And suddenly it dawned on him. This was probably the real reason for all that talk about boarding school. Drew had been angling toward this all along. Baylor wanted to personally be in London
during the launch phase of the UK branch of his hotel line. He’d known for a while now that he and Val would need to relocate overseas for a minimum of six months. Possibly a year. Val didn’t admit that to Travis, though.

His jaw tightened as he listened to her breathless, rapid-fire words. The woman didn’t give him a second to jump in, just kept on talking. No doubt not wanting to hear him say what she had to know deep down. How disgusting it was to toss a struggling kid off on a bunch of strangers at a boarding school while chasing your own—or your husband’s—career aspirations around the globe.