She hesitates and for a second I think she’s going to argue, but then she says, “Fine,” and digs around in her purse.
Pulling out her keys, she leads me by the wrist down the sidewalk and to the nearest parking lot, pulling me behind her like I’m a dog on a leash. She walks me to the back of the parking lot and over to a small green car covered in scratches, dents, and rust.
Not the vehicle I pictured Kayla Turner driving.
I expected a Cadillac. Or at least something with nice rims and tinted windows. Nothing about Kayla’s appearance or possessions or behavior makes sense anymore.
“Don’t judge,” she says as she unlocks the doors.
“I wasn’t judging.”
“You’re worse than that couple back there. I can feel the judgment rolling off of you,” she says bitterly. “Not everyone can afford to speed around in a Porsche.”
“Trust me,” I say. “I know.”
All too well.
She heads for the driver’s side as I head for the passenger’s side and we grunt as the handcuffs pull tight against our wrists as we move in opposite directions.
She sighs in frustration. “Okay. Let’s not be dumb about this. Why don’t you get in on the driver’s side and climb over to the passenger seat. Then I can get in behind you and drive.”
Heading to the driver’s door, I duck inside the car and awkwardly crawl over the center console, my elbows and knees knocking into the dashboard.
“Ow.”
“Watch it.”
“I can’t fit—”
“Ugh. Quit yanking my wrist.”
“Quit yanking my wrist.”
Her car is a disaster. Books. Socks. Bottles of hair care products. There’s crap everywhere. I carefully wade through the minefield of girl mess until I reach the other side. Then, folding my body up like an accordion, I finally manage to squeeze down into the passenger seat.
Kayla climbs in after me and says, “Real smooth.”
I flex my jaw. “I’m six feet tall and your car is the size of a marshmallow. The fact that I fit inside it at all is a miracle, let alone defeating the center console obstacle course you have set up here. What is this, a water bottle?” I hold up a giant plastic thermos. “It’s the size of a sink.” I point to the many other items she has crammed into the console cup holders draped over the seats. Sunglasses. A nursing uniform. A pair of sandals. A diner name tag. “What’s happening here?” I say. “Are you undercover? Suffering from multiple identities?”
She points at me. “Lay off my mess. I just drove eighteen hundred miles cross-country and didn’t plan to have any passengers. If you have a problem with the contents of my ‘marshmallow’ car then we can always crawl into your pretentious little Porsche.” She arches an eyebrow. “What’s it going to be, cowboy?”
“Cowboy?” I pull back. “Well that just makes no sense at all. It’s not like I was yee-hawing or tipping my hat at you.”
She moves to exit the car. “Pretentious Porsche it is.”
“Okay, okay.” I hold up my hands, yanking her attached wrist up with mine. “I’m sorry. Your messy car is perfectly fine. I happen to be a big fan of…” I look around at the clutter. “Granola bar wrappers and packing tape.” Her eyes narrow and I flash her a broad smile. “I’m kidding. Now would you please just drive?” She doesn’t move so I lift our cuffs and merrily say, “The sooner we get the inheritance the sooner you’ll be rid of me.”
She starts the car.
I hold my wrist by the steering wheel as Kayla uses both hands to back out of the parking spot. She shifts into gear and pulls out onto the main road before lowering her cuffed wrist to the center console and driving with one hand. I place my attached wrist beside hers as we drive in silence. Her hand looks small and delicate next to mine.
“So…” I say, feeling the need to make conversation and break the tension from the tangible annoyance she feels toward me. “It was a beautiful funeral.”
She inhales. “I guess.”
“I was kind of surprised to see you there.”
She keeps her eyes on the road. “Why? He was my father.”
I shrug. “Yeah, but you didn’t bother to visit him when he was sick, as far as I know, so I just figured you wouldn’t bother with the funeral either.”
She cuts her eyes to mine and something flashes in their blue depths. Something vulnerable and hurt. “I didn’t bother to visit because my father didn’t bother to tell me he was sick.” Just as quickly as it appeared, the spark of emotion melts into bitterness and she glares back at the road.
I furrow my brow. “Really?”
“Really,” she says sharply. A beat passes. “My own father didn’t care enough about me to let me know that he was dying. And as far as the funeral is concerned, I came because I needed closure.” Her voice wavers with emotion and she clears her throat. “I was surprised to see you at the funeral—alone. From the stories I heard growing up, I assumed Daren Ackwood always traveled with a flock of large-breasted groupies.”
I grin at the superiority in her tone. “Are you jealous you were never in my flock?”
She gives me a sugar-sweet smile. “I pity all the brainless hens who were.”
I let out a small laugh. “Sure you do.” My smile fades. “But with the funeral… I didn’t exactly feel like company. So no hens for me.”
She glances at me and I look away, my chest tightening as I stare out the window. Turner and I didn’t grow close until after he and Kayla were estranged, so there’s no way she’d understand how important he was to me. Not that I’d try to explain it to her. I doubt any explanation I gave would do justice to my relationship with him anyway.
I wouldn’t know where to begin. His importance in my life grew so slowly, so quietly, that pinpointing the exact moment he became a crucial part of who I am is impossible. My first memory with James Turner was when I was eleven and I tagged along when he and my dad were golfing together. Turner accidentally hit a ball into a tree and asked me to go get it because, and I quote, he was “an old man.” I teased him for that and addressed him as Old Man Turner for the rest of the day. The name sort of stuck and I continued to call him Old Man Turner as I got older, even though he was always very youthful and energetic. I think he liked the nickname because it made him feel special. And he was.
He was like a father to me—a good one, which is why I hold so much resentment for Kayla turning her back on him.
“Can I ask you something?” I scratch my jaw as we drive along. “What happened with you and your dad? Why did you stop talking to him?”
She furrows her brow. “I didn’t stop talking to him. He stopped participating in my life.”
I let the silence hang between us and wait.
Marcella once told me that the best place to have a conversation with someone is in a car or in the dark. Because when no one is required to make eye contact, people feel safer and are, therefore, more honest.
I never gave much thought to Marcella’s claim. Until now.
“He was supposed to come out to Chicago for my sixteenth birthday,” Kayla continues, spilling her story. “I was ecstatic and couldn’t wait to see him. But he didn’t come,” she says simply. “He didn’t call or write to tell me he wasn’t coming. He just didn’t show up. There I was, waiting by the door in my yellow birthday dress, and he was back here in Arizona not giving a damn about me. I cried for days.”
I open my mouth to speak but can’t find anything to say. It’s hard to believe James Turner would miss his only daughter’s sixteenth birthday. Especially since he remembered mine and gave me a present—and not just any present; an old pocket watch that had belonged to his grandfather. A family heirloom.
This is valuable to me, Turner had said, handing it to me. Be careful with it.
It looked expensive with a bronze chain and a turquoise centerpiece, and the face smoothed over with age.
I shook my head at him. I can’t take that. I don’t deserve such a gift. And
besides, it belongs to your family.
He locked eyes with me and waited until he had my full attention. Then he smiled. Gifts are not things that you earn or deserve. They are a way for the giver to show their appreciation for you. And Daren—his eyes glimmered—you are a part of my family.
His words held more weight than any others I’d ever heard but I was too young and foolish to come up with any reply other than Thanks.
I took the watch and carried it in my pocket all the time, showing it off to my friends at every opportunity. I had a lot of things that money could buy but Turner’s watch was more important than anything I owned. It was a gift from the only man in my life who gave a damn about me, which made it priceless.
But a few months into my junior year of high school, I accidentally dropped it. Horror filled my eyes as I watched the antique watch plummet to the ground and shatter into pieces. It was the only thing of value I was ever entrusted with and I had been careless with it. The pocket watch never worked again and I felt so ashamed.
I had broken something that was precious to James Turner.
I never had the balls to tell him about the watch, though, fearing the disapproval I’d surely find waiting in his eyes. But I kept it, broken pieces and all, because it was the greatest birthday gift I’d ever received. I still carry it in my pocket to this day.
I glance across the car at Kayla. I can’t believe that the same man who entrusted me with his family heirloom would abandon his daughter on her birthday.
“There must have been some kind of misunderstanding,” I say. “I’m sure your dad wanted to be there for your birthday.”
She sets her jaw. “Oh yeah? Then maybe you can explain why, after my birthday, it just got worse. He never called—or returned my calls. He never answered my e-mails,” she continues, no longer talking to me but sort of ranting at the windshield as she drives. “I mean, he stopped sending me birthday cards, for God’s sake. The smallest of gestures and he couldn’t be bothered. Then he cut my mom and I off, so we had no money. But the worst part was that he no longer wanted me to come stay with him over the summer. He didn’t want me around.” Her voice cracks. “It was like he was trying to erase me. And in a way, I guess he did.”
I watch the pain in her eyes and shake my head. “That… doesn’t sound like him.”
The pain morphs into icy contempt. “Well neither does stealing a little boy’s baseball cards, but hey. Sometimes people suck.”
I want to ease the hurt in her voice and assure her that her father wasn’t the jerk she thinks he was, but the sharpness of her tone warns me off. She doesn’t want comfort. She wants to be angry. So I stay silent.
Turner never really spoke about Kayla. And the few times her name came up, a look of sadness would cross his face before he’d hurriedly change the subject. Back then, I figured it was because Kayla was some kind of tyrant teenager. But now, seeing the heartbreak on Kayla’s face, I wonder if maybe there was more to it.
But how could a good man like Turner call me family and neglect his own blood? It doesn’t make any sense.
Kayla and I don’t speak for the rest of the trip. When we finally turn onto Milly Manor Drive, I sit up and look out the window. I haven’t been here for almost a year, but everything looks the same. The same cracks in the sidewalk. The same trees.
Kayla slows down and parks in front of the large estate.
Staring up at the impressive home made of red bricks and trimmed with white, I can understand why the town of Copper Springs takes such great pride in the place. Rich ivy coats the outside of the house, sprawling up to the pitched roof and around the brick chimney. And bright green grass blankets the front yard, crawling up to the wooden white steps of the wraparound porch. The grounds are unkempt and heavily overgrown, an obvious sign that Turner never hired a replacement when I stopped caring for his yard, but even with all the unruly vegetation it’s a nice place. And with its location being so close to the town square, I’m sure it will make a great museum—or whatever else Copper Springs might make of it.
“Home sweet home,” Kayla mutters dryly.
I glare at her. “God, you’re bitter.”
Her hardened gaze drops to the steering wheel and becomes soft as snow in an instant. “Not usually,” she says quietly. Then she looks back at me with raw honesty in her eyes. “I’m sorry. This whole thing is just… hard for me.”
“Right. No. I get it,” I say, nodding as, once again, my defenses drop to the floor at the vulnerable look in her eyes.
Why the hell does this girl affect me like she does? One minute, I’m pissed at her for hating her father, and the next I want to comfort her and feed her cookies and shit. I’m a nutcase around her.
She turns the car off and we exit the vehicle the same way we got in, but this time I follow her out of the driver’s door. I can’t help but grin as I watch her butt wag in front of me as she tries to clamber out of the car with a grown man attached to her. She really does have a perfect ass. And the way it’s bobbing up and down in front of me is enough to make a man beg.
She catches me eyeing her and glowers. “Pervert.”
“You’re taking up my whole line of vision.” I grin. “What am I supposed to do, close my eyes?”
“Yes,” she snaps.
I snort. “Right.”
With a huff, she turns and drags us up the front steps of the porch. At the front door, she stops. Her gaze bounces around the doorknob, the mail slot, and the potted plant beside the welcome mat with sentiment and anger warring in her eyes, but she swiftly masks the battle with a look of indifference.
“Do you have a key?” I ask.
“Crap. No.” She puts a hand to her forehead. “I didn’t even think about the key. I should have asked Eddie back at the office.” She curses. “Now we have to drive all the way back.”
“No we don’t.” I walk back down the steps, pulling her along through the side gate. She fumbles after me, trying to keep up with my long strides, and more blonde hair falls loose around her face.
She swats a bug away from her face with a scowl. “Where are we going?”
I lead her to the garden against the back wall, where dozens of white roses grow. “Here.”
The red dirt at the base of the plants sticks to my shoes and I smile. When I first started taking care of the rose bushes, I hated the rare red topsoil because it got everywhere. My clothes, my shoes, my skin. But Turner insisted on using it, year after year. I inhale through my nose. Damn, I’m going to miss him.
I crouch—forcing Kayla to bend down a little—and pick up a small boulder at the base of the plants. Then I start digging through the red soil beneath.
Kayla’s cuffed hand flops around beside mine as she stares at me like I’m crazy. “Why are you clawing through the dirt?”
“Because…” I pull out a shiny silver key and grin. “I know where the spare key is.”
11
Kayla
Daren knows where the spare key is? Come on!
“How did you know that was there?” I say as we stand up.
He dusts off his hands and shrugs. “Your dad told me.”
I go to cross my arms, realize I can’t with our attached wrists, and settle for propping my free hand on my hip instead. “He just told you where the key to his million-dollar estate was buried?”
“Actually, he asked me to find a good place to hide it. So technically, I told him where it was buried.” He tilts his head with a smile. “Why do you look so angry?”
“I’m not angry.” I drop my hip hand and swallow back my jealousy. “I just find it hard to believe that he trusted you so much.”
His lips form a tight line. “That’s because you don’t know him as well as you thought.”
“Obviously.”
He shakes his head and mutters, “Whatever,” as he starts pulling us back through the yard and toward the front door. “Let’s just finish this.”
I stumble up the porch steps behind him—damn the
se high heels—and wait at his side as he sticks the silver key into the lock, then swings the door open.
Dust flurries float through the air, lit up by the sunlight spilling in from the doorway as we step inside.
The house smells the same as I remember. Like vanilla pipe tobacco and cherries. It’s a smell I associate solely with my father and for some reason my heart squeezes and my eyes begin to burn as I breathe it in. I close my eyes to keep the stinging at bay.
I can picture my father seated in his leather chair in the study, puffing on his old-fashioned Sherlock Holmes pipe while he leans back and reads one of his favorite books. Thin white swirls of smoke would lift out from the pipe and float up in the air until they disappeared into the tall ceiling. When I was seven, I remember giggling as he tried to blow out a perfect smoke ring for me. Being only a part-time pipe smoker, he was impossibly bad at smoke formations, but he tried anyway. The two of us ended up laughing as I sat in his lap on his leather chair with the scent of vanilla smoke teasing my nose.
“So.” Daren’s voice interrupts the memory and I open my eyes. “Where’s this suitcase closet?”
I shake off the nostalgia trying to cling to my skin and straighten my shoulders. “Over here.” I walk him through the living room and down the hall to a skinny door on the left. Then I open the closet.
Inside, several trench coats hang below a shelf of hats, and three old umbrellas stand propped up against the wall. And in the back, on the floor beneath the coats, is a blue suitcase.
“Jackpot!” Daren says with a smile.
I give him a disparaging look. “Jackpot? Really?”
His smile grows. “Oh, come on.” He rolls his eyes. “Don’t act like me saying ‘jackpot’ is tacky. You know you wanted to say something just as clever. Like ‘Eureka!’ or ‘Tallyho!’ ” He raises his fist in exaggerated glee with each exclamation.
I try to look annoyed, but a small smile tugs at my lips when he adds “Bingo!” with an especially exuberant expression. What a goofball.