The great purge would have to wait for now. At the moment, I needed to shower away the haze of a night spent tossing and turning, so I could tackle the most critical tasks. I needed to set the kitchen to rights, order Dad some groceries, and get to the bottom of Carter’s accusation all before I headed out to the ranch for a practice session with Titan.
Thinking about Dad losing the house had guilt swarming through me like termites in wood. When I’d returned to Rivers, I could have moved back in with him. I could have ensured he was keeping it together, paying his bills, and eating healthy when he was home.
Selfish.The sound rippled through me in Chelsea’s voice.
I pushed it away. My therapist had insisted the boundaries I’d put up were healthy. Refusing to be sucked back into caring for a father who’d failed to care for his children was a necessary step in my own healing. I’d needed to put distance between teen Maisey, who’d done everything to soothe everyone’s pain but her own, and the Maisey who’d finally faced most of her demons.
Except, here I was, at home, wondering how to right the mess Dad had made.
I sighed, eyeing the crumpled yellow sundress laying by the closet. I threw back the cover and went to the closet, scanning the leftover mishmash of clothes left from my childhood. My hand reached almost automatically for a faded-pink terrycloth robe.
I pulled it on and rubbed my nose against the collar. Even after all these years, I swore it still held a hint of Mom’s perfume. A spicy, almost masculine, scent of pine and sandalwood layered with a hint of magnolias. A strong and sturdy smell, just like her, until cancer had eaten away at the very fiber of her.
By the time we’d found out about the lung cancer, it had alreadymetastasized to her brain. It had already started to eat away at her personality, making her short-tempered and grumpy when she’d never been anything but patient. It had pulled her apart from the inside out.
Less than six months later, she was gone.
The doctors had been surprised she’d lasted that long.
During those last weeks, the hospice nurses had become my friends, staying with her during the day while I was at school, and being on call for me when I needed them at night. I would have been on my own without them, because Chelsea…
I shook my head, cutting off the spiral before it could start.
That was all in the past. I needed to live in thenow.
I headed for the tiny bathroom Chelsea and I had shared growing up and had just put my hand on the doorknob when it opened from the inside.
I couldn’t help the screech that escaped as a man emerged on the other side. A stranger. A black-haired, blue-eyed, good-looking stranger.
My heart pounded so furiously I thought it would leap out of my chest.
Behind me, the door to Chelsea’s room opened, and my sister’s dry voice said, “Leave it to Cornlette to panic at the sight of a man.”
I whirled around to face her. My sister was wearing a silk pajama set. A tiny camisole edged with lace that bared her stomach and a pair of shorts so small they might as well have passed for underwear. And although it wasn’t even seven in the morning, she was completely made up, looking like she was ready to step onto a runway in her sleepwear. Her deep-auburn hair, which Delilah had spent a lifetime trying to mimic, was wound in long, lazy curls past her breasts. Her skin glowed, dusted with a powder that made it sparkle even more than normal. Eyeliner outlined her vivid green eyes, and mascara coated her dark lashes in an old-starlette fashion.
Her eyes and hair were our dad’s, but the rest of her was our mother. A stunningly beautiful combination that had turned heads, even when we’d been kids. I’d gotten Mom’s straight, brown hair, but the rest of me was our board-like father. Shorter. Flatter. All my limbs and proportions were just a tad off what society considered elegant or graceful or beautiful. Not Chelsea. She was the embodiment of perfection.
My sister examined me, taking in Mom’s robe, and her lips twisted in disapproval. “It’s like you haven’t left this house in a decade. Have you moved back in to take care of Daddy? I worry about you, Maise. Will you ever stop being the dutiful daughter long enough to actually have a life of your own?”
As always, I was uncertain about how to take her comment. If you listened to just the words, you’d think she was actually worried about her little sister. But they also had an edge to them, a hint of criticism. For mostof my life, I’d believed the concern. When I was little, she’d spent years standing up for me. I had dozens of moments, when she’d ripped my tormentors to shreds with her sharp tongue, burned into my brain.
But those times had gotten fewer and fewer as I’d gotten older, and by the time Mom had gotten sick, Chelsea had nearly vanished from my life.
“Thought you said your sister was ugly,” the man behind me said, drawing my memories and my gaze away from my sister and back to him.
His forearm was on the doorframe above his head, and the position put his naked chest on display. He was cut and carved in all the right places. Muscles flexing, eight-pack looming. Other than the thick waves on his head, he had no hair on any other part of his body. It was like he’d been wiped clean. It made him seem like a computer-generated image instead of a real person—an idolized male model crafted to play a part on a screen.
He studied me, taking me in from the top of my disheveled bedhead down to my bubblegum-pink painted toenails. Chelsea would say the color was boring, but I liked that it added a splash of color without screaming, “Notice me.”
“She could be hot if you gave her some fashion tips.”
Without being able to control it, I flushed at the almost compliment—one I’d heard many times before from good-looking men. Ialmoststacked up. I wasalmostwhat they wanted. And sometimes, I was what they tolerated when perfect wasn’t available. But I wasn’t a keeper. I wasn’t the one they wanted on their arm when it really counted.
“Hot is overrated,” I said, scanning his hairless chest before meeting his eyes that were too unnaturally blue to be anything but contact lenses. “Real is something I strive for, but I’m not sure you’d understand that. Fake seems to be your mantra.”
Instead of getting angry, he laughed, crossing his arms over a broad chest. “Down, girl. It wasn’t an insult. No need to get your grandma panties in a wad.”
I refused to tighten the belt on the robe. If he’d gotten a look at my underwear, so what? They weren’t grandma panties. They were cute boy shorts with tiny yellow flowers. I wasn’t ashamed of them.