Waiting for Your Love (Echoes of the Heart) (11 page)

Clair had cornered the concierge pet care market in Chandlerville and three adjoining communities. The suburbs north of Atlanta were becoming bedroom communities for young, dual-income, affluent families. Caring for their pampered pooches, felines, exotic birds, and fish (and even snakes, hamsters, and once a potbellied pig named Princess) had flourished from Clair’s part-time high school gig into a growing empire that required a full-time staff of four to meet the growing demand for her services.

“Do you need someone to scoop up after the next boom-boom you drop on the curb?” Nicole asked before Clair could sink her gel-polished talons into Benjie’s jugular. “Maybe we can fit you for one of those doggie diapers.”

“They make unfortunate potty training accidents a cinch to handle,” Clair offered, ever so helpful.

“I need the two of you”—he cupped Bethany’s elbow and sneered at her friends—“to stop pointing your bony fingers at my and Bethany’s relationship, just because we all shared the same air in high school.”

“Relationship?” Bethany’s wine rebounded up the back of her throat.

She jerked away and pushed off her stool, swallowing the sickening burn.

Annihilation
. That was what it had been. Her very public comeuppance for believing Benjie Carrington was where she’d find the love and security, the
forever
she’d always craved. They were going to take the art world by storm, he’d said. And she’d left her heart wide opened to him, when she hadn’t been able to with anyone before that, not since she was a little girl.

“You never gave me a chance to explain, sugar,” he insisted. “To really apologize. It was a long time ago. And I know I made a mistake. But I can make it right now. We could still be good together. Let’s meet for lunch. Dinner? There’s Dru’s wedding next month. I’ll escort you. It would be a great way for me to break the ice with your whole family. Surely—”

“
Surely
you’ve lost your mind.” Bethany was in his face, fists clenched. Shaking. “Make it right? I loved you! You said you loved me . . .”

To hell with what anyone else heard. Screw him, and screw not letting things get back to her family. Long-buried rage was bubbling over, choking her, fueling the need to do something, anything, to make him understand. He’d been her first but by no means her last mistake of the heart, and she’d never forgive him. She’d never forgive herself for being so stupid.

Her friends were right.

Enough was enough.

“I dare you to show up at Dru’s wedding,” she said. “I’ve been patient. I’ve even felt a little sorry for you. But if you get anywhere near me or my friends or my family on my sister’s big day, I’ll—”

“Bethany?” Clair gripped her arm.

Bethany shrugged her off and silently wished for the several inches of additional height it would take to put her eye-to-eye with the dirty dog in front of her.

“You actually think,” she said to Benjie, “that I’d—”

“Bethany . . .” Nicole said, a split second before McC’s cowboy bartender appeared from out of nowhere and eased Bethany to his side.

“Is there a problem, darlin’?” he asked. . .

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Oliver Bowman surveyed
the spectacle beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows of his Midtown Atlanta loft. Disappearing before its setting sun, the dusky sky was a twilight miracle. It made him think of home.

Another high-stakes IT project was behind him, his second since he’d returned to the South. He’d conquered a kick-ass gauntlet of anticipated challenges, more than earning the ridiculous hourly rate he’d quoted his client. Plus a bonus for juggling last-minute crises and beating his deadline.

Two potential deals were in the pipeline awaiting his next pitch: one in Seattle, the other in Toronto. Within the hour he’d pull the trigger on his top prospect. And he would land it, beating out competing contractors—other guns for hire who’d good-naturedly curse him in their congratulatory e-mails. By the first of next week he’d relocate. There’d be no time to focus on anything but work.

But tonight, staring at his sunset view after a nerve-settling run through town, there was nothing to distract him from looking back. From wanting to
go
back—if for no other reason than to silence the question he couldn’t stop himself from asking. What did it say that all these months he’d lived and worked only miles away from the foster family he’d crashed out of at eighteen? Yet no one from seven years ago knew he was back except for Travis, the foster brother Oliver had been closest to.

He was focused on the right things, he reminded himself. And working his ass off to make those things possible. Dwelling on the past was a pointless distraction for a man who made his not-inconsiderable living grinding out the day-to-day present. His demanding career fed his drive to compete and achieve. It kept him on track and freed everyone else to focus on what they needed to—including his foster parents. It kept quiet, nostalgic nights like tonight to a minimum.

He’d just ridden the elevator up after jogging through streets heavy with May’s suffocating humidity. The temps in Georgia weren’t what got to you this time of year. The moisture in the air, rain or shine, made you think you needed a snorkel to breathe. And while he’d been away he’d missed even that for some godforsaken reason.

He was drenched in sweat, logging five miles in under forty minutes. He’d left himself plenty of time to shower before his conference call to a top-shelf West Coast CIO whose six-month contract would solidify the rest of Oliver’s business year. Now he was going to smell like a locker room when he Skyped about cloud computing data solutions. Because he couldn’t stop wrestling with the impulse to turn a brief blip of downtime into an excuse to visit Chandlerville—a suburb twenty miles northeast of the A-T-L.

It was natural to want to see how his foster parents were helping a new crop of kids learn they were worthy of love—one hug, one gently set boundary at a time. And if he were being honest, to want to be seen by Marsha and Joe Dixon now that Oliver had “made it.”

Grunting, he scanned his sparsely decorated apartment with an objective eye. It was a flashy penthouse unit, its staggering lease covered by the latest corporation needing his expertise. The top-of-the line 4x4 in an underground garage was another high-end perk, freeing up his cash for better uses. But beneath the glossy surface he was still the guy who’d walked away from his last chance at a family with a threadbare backpack over his shoulder and the entire contents of his life inside. Just like he’d have to be wherever and whatever a new client wanted him to be next week.

Joe and Marsha’s world was rocking on just fine without him. They didn’t need him barging in and mucking with that. They
needed
the money he sent home every month to help them raise a fresh crop of parentless boys and girls. And it was a sweet deal for a man who’d nearly pissed away the second chance he’d been given.

Enough delaying the inevitable. Time to rip off the Band-Aid. One firm pull. A rush of pain, followed by the soothing relief of having done what he’d dreaded. Because living this close to Chandlerville, he’d never stop wondering whether his foster parents were proud of what he’d accomplished. Or if the beautiful girl he’d lost on another late spring night might smile one of her perfect smiles if she could see him now.

He rocked on the heels of the worn running shoes he kept forgetting to replace. The light beyond his windows faded, purple bleeding to gray. Barely realizing what he was doing, he rubbed a hand over the tattoo he’d had inked above his heart after he’d left the Dixon home. The ball-busting teen still lurking inside him sneered.

Why would Selena Rosenthal be thinking of him after all this time?

Since they were eighteen, they’d been as over as two people could be who’d sworn to love each other forever. Travis had said she’d left Chandlerville not long after Oliver. His first love had married, had another man’s baby. She’d created a totally new life for herself, light years from the small-town reality she and Oliver might have made together.

Meanwhile in the last year and a half he’d satisfied two right-place, right-time, big-dog Atlanta clients. He’d regrouped and was working harder and better than ever for his foster family. Work that kept him perpetually on the move. Which made it out of the question—his getting any closer to the people it would gut him to have to walk away from again.

His apartment phone rang, ripping his gaze away from the final streaks of light dusting the horizon. The handset in the kitchen sounded off a second time.

Only one person on the planet knew how to contact him on anything but his cell. Wherever Oliver moved for business, he maintained a landline and the international messaging service it fed into. He’d shared the number with no one but Travis, who knew better than to use it except for emergencies. Their sporadic conversations over the years had been the result of Oliver contacting his foster brother, not the other way around.

Oliver headed across the loft’s Berber carpet, his gut twisting. He ripped the phone from its receiver.

“Hello?”

“You need to come home,” said the ragged voice on the other end of the line. Travis still lived in Chandlerville, surrounded by the court-appointed family whose love had saved them both. “It’s Dad. It’s bad, man.”

Oliver was back
in Chandlerville.

Through Tuesday morning shadows, Selena Rosenthal locked gazes with the one who’d gotten away. Next door, a ruggedly handsome man stared at her from the front steps of Joe and Marsha Dixon’s sprawling house—a yard, a hedge, and another yard away. Dark hair. Dramatic green eyes. Oliver had the face of an angel and a mouth that could tempt a woman into just about any sin on the books. She’d have known him anywhere.

Years had passed. Seven of them, filled with her wanting to go back and fix the mistakes that had led to her and Oliver’s last disastrous argument. She’d been too busy to miss him since she’d returned to town. At least she’d refused to dwell on how much she missed him—every time she saw someone from before or stumbled into a familiar place. And instead of reveling in the poignant memories she’d felt like half a person, because Oliver wasn’t there to share the moment with her.

Then he’d stepped out of a shiny red truck in his foster parents’ drive just now, dressed in a wrinkled white T-shirt, jeans, and ratty running shoes.

Her mother’s screened front door whooshed shut behind her, smacking Selena in the butt. She waited for Oliver to respond, to move, to do anything except stare back. She couldn’t stop her smile, or the pathetic half wave that followed it. While his non-response dripped with
you’re dead to me
, until she forced herself to look away.

Oh. My. God.

Oliver.

She tried to breathe, to play it cool. And then the head of the precocious bundle of energy and hair bows bobbing in her arms smacked Selena in the chin. She gasped so quickly, she hiccupped.

“We have to water Grammy’s flowers, Mommy.” Camille struggled to get down. Her first mission each morning was to make certain she and Selena cared for the abundance of buds and bushes her grammy obsessed about. “I left my watering can out back.”

“Go find it.” Selena set her daughter on her feet. “Hurry, or we’ll be late for school.”

Two months ago Belinda Rosenthal had welcomed Selena and Camille into her home after a lifetime of estrangement—Camille’s lifetime. Selena had reached out to her mother over the phone as soon as she’d had her own child and begun to understand just how complicated mothering could be: on holidays and birthdays and Mother’s Day. But for Selena coming back had never been an option. Until it had become the
only
option.

With a new appreciation for Belinda’s hands-off, distant way of caring, Selena was trying to mend fences with her mom despite their differences. Including helping care for Belinda’s obsession with all things botanical. Camille’s watering pot was a prop. It kept her busy with the flowers that grew in a wild tangle under her bedroom window, while Selena did the heavy lifting of hoisting hoses and sprinklers from beneath the azaleas flanking the front porch.

Most mornings the process resembled a grudge match: her dragging and untangling everything, so the SweeTart-colored blooms of the monstrous hydrangeas that sprawled near the Dixons’ front yard could have their morning soaking. Daily watering was a must according to Selena’s mother, who’d mastered the art of nurturing delicate buds and blooms to thrive under adversity. While the rest of the country slept off the lingering chill of winter, late spring graced Chandlerville with unseasonable heat. Until September the afternoon sun would revel in its power to wilt even the hardiest of indigenous species.

A rattle from the Dixons’ place, the sound of keys jingling, recaptured Selena’s attention. She braved another peek. The neighboring yard was empty, almost convincing her she hadn’t just ogled a full-grown, ruggedly attractive version of her teenage obsession. But of course she had. Her body knew she had. She was tingling, head to toe, same as always when Oliver was near.

He’d gone back inside was all.
Sprinted
was more like it, away from how she’d just embarrassed herself.

He’d made her feel safe once upon a time. She’d been special, because he’d wanted her. From the moment they’d met she’d been at the center of someone’s world again. He’d tried to protect her. He’d tried to help her, when he hadn’t yet known how to help himself.

Her phone blared its
Mission Impossible
ringtone. She dragged it out of her tote and stabbed the Talk button with her thumb.

“We’re already running late, Mom.” Selena’s little girl returned with her watering can, squeezing through the screen door. “We’re taking care of the yard.”

“Remember,” Belinda said, “we’re helping Camille pick out summer shoes after school. We’ll have to meet at the store after we’re both off work.”

If Selena’s mother stopped reminding Selena about every single detail of the life she was rebuilding, someone would have to check Belinda for a pulse.

“I’ll be there,” Selena said, tamping down her frustration. Subtlety might not be her mother’s gift. But Belinda was making the best of whatever time Selena remained in Chandlerville while she got back on her feet financially. At the very least, Selena owed her mother the same in return.

“Lock up when you leave.” The line went dead, presumably so Belinda could micromanage her Chandlerville post office coworkers into a fugue state.

Selena wouldn’t hear from her again until her mother’s midday check-in call. During which Belinda would couch her concern for the deplorable state of her daughter’s life in even more reminders about nonsense things that couldn’t possibly matter.

As a child, Selena had resented her single mom being too busy to offer soft gestures like comforting hugs and encouraging pep talks. Her relationship with her mother would never be the exuberant kind of love Selena had craved since her father walked out when she was five. But Belinda had worked her fingers to the bone for her daughter—the same as Selena was now doing for Camille.

She dropped her cell into the tote bag her mother had lent her. Selena’s anemic budget had produced only a secondhand backpack. Before leaving Manhattan, she’d given up her designer purses and most of her Upper East Side wardrobe and jewelry—including her wedding and engagement rings—to a resale shop.