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MILLS & BOON
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This book is dedicated to all the sisters out there.
A sister is your best friend, your confidante, your
toughest critic, your strongest ally and your loudest
cheerleader. She can work your nerve like no one
else, but, when the chips are down, she alone has
your back without question or pause.
To my sister, Alyson, I love you!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always I must thank my mother, Patricia Sneed, my sister, Alyson Turner, and my two delightful nieces, Lauren and Erin, for their unwavering support in all I do. Whether I accomplish it or not, they are there for me. I also must thank my good friend and fellow writer, Reon Laudat, for always being a calm port in the unpredictable storm that is the publishing industry. In addition, I have to give a shout-out to my agent, Paige Wheeler, whose excitement for this business makes me excited. And, lastly, I must thank Mavis Allen and all the other folks at Kimani Press, who are keeping African-American romance fiction alive.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Chapter 1
“Grandpa Max is trying to punish us from beyond the grave, isn’t he?” Quinn Sibley wailed, as she stared at the dilapidated house standing—just barely—in front of her.
Charlie Sibley pulled a bulging black suitcase from the trunk of the silver Jaguar that their older sister, Kendra, had haphazardly parked next to the house, and dropped it on the ground. Dirt billowed around it. She frowned. There was dirt everywhere. Charlie was far from a neat freak, but from the two-lane highway that had branched off the main highway to the small town of Sibleyville, California, to the narrow dirt road that had led to the house, there had been dirt. On the sides of the road, on the road, flying in her mouth when Kendra had allowed her to roll down the window. There was no escaping it.
But, besides the dirt, Charlie had more important things on her mind, like finding her emergency bag of chocolate amidst her sisters’ designer suitcases jamming the trunk. Charlie needed that bag. It housed her entire two-week supply of chocolate. And if ever there was a time for chocolate, it was now.
“Have you seen my duffel bag?” she asked Quinn absently. “It’s small and dark blue—”
“Look at it, Charlie,” Quinn ordered, sounding close to tears. “Look at where we’re supposed to live for the next two weeks and tell me that this isn’t some form of punishment. Grandpa Max’s last attempt to make us suffer.”
Charlie followed her sister’s command and turned to stare at the house. She had to admit, the house wasn’t just bad. It was abominable.
The narrow split-level home had probably once been charming. Now, the white wood was rotting and crumbling at an alarming rate. Portions of the roof hung in jagged edges over the front porch, like a medieval defense system against intruders. What had probably once been a comfortable covered porch that had held a few rocking chairs, now was a death trap waiting to ensnare its next victim, from the rotted steps leading to the porch to the chipped and peeling railing. The blue shutters on either side of the front door hung lopsided as if someone had tried to pull them off, but had grown tired before finishing. Charlie hadn’t been inside—and she wished she could keep it that way—but she had a feeling that it would be even worse.
Kendra had disappeared inside the house ten minutes before, and neither Charlie or Quinn had heard anything from her since.
Charlie glanced around the quiet stillness of the country. Cloudless blue skies, free of the smog and towering skyscrapers of Los Angeles, and rolling green hills greeted her. Across the dirt road from the house was a line of imposing redwoods that were so dense that Charlie couldn’t see past the first few rows. There was not another house or car or any other sign of civilization in sight. All the trees and stillness and fresh air made her uncomfortable.
Charlie returned her attention to her younger sister and forced a smile. Quinn was dramatic by nature. Being an actress on the popular daytime soap, Diamond Valley, didn’t help matters. Nor did the fact that Quinn was gorgeous, with the ability to make men do her bidding with one bright smile. She was tall, thin, as most actresses were, had vanilla skin, hazel eyes and long, silky, sandy-brown hair. Quinn would never be caught without makeup or a pair of stiletto heels.
“It’s not that bad, Quinn,” Charlie lied. “In fact, it’s almost…sort of charming. Quaint.”
“Quaint?” Quinn repeated, her hazel eyes widened with disbelief.
Charlie nodded vigorously and added, “It just needs a little elbow grease and soap.”
“Elbow grease and soap?” Quinn repeated, with the same tone of stunned disbelief. When Charlie smiled, Quinn exploded, hysterically, “The only thing that house needs is a wrecking ball.”
Charlie threw up her hands in surrender then turned back to the trunk. She dropped another suitcase onto the dirt and peered into the dark recesses of the trunk for her bag. Her need for chocolate was reaching a critical level. While Quinn, who stood over five foot nine and weighed probably half as much as the shorter Charlie, literally flinched from chocolate like a vampire confronted with garlic, Charlie needed chocolate the way she needed oxygen. And, of course, it showed on her wide hips and thighs.
Charlie grunted from the weight of another bag then threw it on the ground.
“Careful with that,” Quinn cried, tearing her gaze from the house at the sound of the suitcase hitting the ground. She wobbled on four-inch designer stiletto heels towards the suitcase. “I have shoes in there.”
“You have a whole suitcase devoted to shoes?”
“Of course. Don’t you?” Quinn asked, blankly.
Not for the first time, Charlie wondered how she and Quinn could be related.
“This just can’t be real,” Quinn murmured, shaking her head.
“Shoes don’t break, Quinn—”
“Not the shoes. This house. The will. Us living together again, after all these years. It’s unreal.” She paused for obvious effect then whispered dramatically, “It’s as if Fate, that fickle mistress, is punishing me for my success.”
Charlie knew it wasn’t the reaction Quinn was looking for, but she bit her bottom lip to restrain a burst of laughter. She had watched Quinn whisper that same phrase, with that same expression of overplayed guilt, on Diamond Valley. At the time, Quinn’s character, Sephora, had been wracked with guilt because her husband’s brother had jumped off a bridge after Sephora had ended their affair. Of course, his body had never been found, so there was always a possibility that Sephora was not out of the woods.
Charlie sighed then said, “Grandpa Max is not punishing you, and although I can’t speak for Fate, I also doubt that she’s punishing you.”
Quinn stared at Charlie and asked, in a hoarse voice, “Then why would he sentence me to two weeks in this hellhole?”
“It’s his childhood home, Quinn. He was born and raised in this town. The town is named after him, after us. Maybe Grandpa Max wanted us to see where he came from, what we come from. He didn’t always live in a mansion in Beverly Hills, and maybe he wanted us to know that.”
“Couldn’t he just have said that then?” Quinn protested, nearly screeching. “I, personally, don’t need the up-close-and-personal history lesson.”
The torn screen door opened with a creak that echoed across the yard. Their oldest sister, Kendra, stepped onto the porch. The disgusted expression on her flawlessly made-up face told Charlie everything she needed to know. The inside of the house matched the abandoned and neglected exterior.
The screen door flapped closed behind Kendra and promptly one side of the lightweight wire crashed to the floor. Quinn flinched in surprise, while Charlie laughed at Kendra’s expression. She wiped her hands on an immaculately tailored dark skirt and looked over her two younger sisters with the mask of calm disdained boredom that she had perfected in junior high school.
She coolly eyed Quinn then said, “I heard your complaining all the way in the house, Quinn. Feel free to leave at any time. No one will stop you.”
Charlie groaned and raked both hands through her chin-length hair. It seemed to have doubled in size from the heat and stress of the past few hours since the sisters had left Los Angeles and driven four hours into California’s heartland to Sibleyville, population fifteen thousand. Quinn and Kendra had been at each other’s throats for the entire four-hour drive. Actually, Quinn and Kendra had been at each other’s throats since birth.
“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” Quinn shot back, with narrowed eyes. She tossed her long hair over her shoulder in a move worthy of Sephora and said, “Of course, if I left then you wouldn’t get any of the money. Remember that part of Grandpa’s will, Kendra, the part where the three of us have to remain in this house together for two weeks or else all three of us lose our inheritance. Do you still want me to leave?”
Charlie pleaded, “You guys, come on. It’s been a long day—”
“Why did you even agree to this, Quinn?” Kendra demanded, ignoring Charlie’s plea for peace. “You’re a big actress, if one could consider what you do acting—”
“You’re just jealous,” Quinn shot back. “You’ve always been jealous.”
“Of what?” Kendra asked, with an amused laugh.
Kendra’s smile would have been gorgeous if Charlie had thought for one second that she was sincere. Kendra was a few inches shorter than Quinn, but still taller than most women. Instead of being tall and thin like Quinn, or short and curvy like Charlie, Kendra was like a gazelle: lean muscles, athletic grace and awesome power. She was mocha-chocolate, with bone-straight midnight-black hair that she wore in a straight bob to her shoulders. Her razor-sharp bangs would never dream of not hanging how Kendra wanted them to.
“That I have a life. Friends. Lovers. People like me, they want to take a picture with me. Who wants to be around you, except old men because you make them rich?”
Kendra’s remained calm as she said, in a bored tone, “People don’t want a picture of you. They want a picture of your breasts. Those two things are more famous than you are.”
Charlie inwardly groaned as Quinn’s mouth dropped open in shock. She really should intervene, before the two women came to blows, but Charlie had learned long ago to stay out of their way when they started an argument. It had been almost two years since Charlie had been in the same room with both of her sisters, and Charlie wished it could have been another two years.
But, their grandfather—the man who had raised them after their parents’ death—had died, and decreed in his will that his three granddaughters spend two weeks in his childhood home as a condition to inheriting an undisclosed sum of money that could possibly number in the millions. Max Sibley had built Sibley Corporation from the ground up in his twenties and had been worth over millions of dollars at his death. Kendra had estimated that they should each receive over ten million dollars a piece after taxes.
“Just go away, Kendra,” Quinn ordered, pointing her finger towards the road.
Kendra rolled her eyes then said, “I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you. For some reason, the old man thought it would be a riot to throw the three of us together in this dump. If we don’t survive, then we’ll never see a penny of our inheritance and all of the Sibley millions will go to some charitable organization that probably wants to save the whales or grasshoppers or something. I have my own money—a lot of my own money, but I will rot in hell before I allow the Sibley millions to be wasted like that.”
“At least we agree on something,” Quinn said, begrudgingly, while crossing her arms over her ample breasts.
“So, for the next two weeks, I intend to pretend that you don’t exist and that I’m living in the lap of luxury on a small, deserted, primitive island,” Kendra continued as if Quinn had never spoken. “I suggest you do the same.”
“I don’t need or want your suggestions,” Quinn said, with a snort.
“Will you two stop it!” Charlie exploded. Both women turned to her with identical expressions of shock and a little guilt.
As usual, they had forgotten that there was a third Sibley sister.
“I’ve listened to you two argue and complain since six o’clock this morning, and I’m sick of it,” Charlie screamed, as tears of frustration, fatigue and chocolate deprivation filled her eyes. “I don’t know why Grandpa Max did this, but he did and we’re stuck here for the next two weeks. So, maybe we should try to use this time as an opportunity to get to know each other again. We are sisters. And with Grandpa Max dead, the three of us are it. There aren’t any more Sibleys. I don’t know about you two, but that scares me.”
Her sisters’ expressions grew guarded, and Charlie knew it wasn’t because she was waving the white flag. It was because she was close to crying, and the Sibley sisters did not cry, especially in front of each other.
In a characteristically un-Charlie Sibley move, she screeched in frustration and kicked the Jaguar’s rear tire.
She screamed in surprise as the heel on one of her shoes snapped, and she fell to the dirt in a heap of swirling dust. Both her sisters appeared frozen in place. Neither made a move to assist her. Not that Charlie had expected them to. She cursed, more from her annoyance with them than pain, even though her right foot was beginning to throb.
“That hurt,” Charlie muttered.
“Remind me never to make you angry,” drawled a deep, amused voice.
Charlie prayed that the owner of the voice did not look as gorgeous as he sounded. Judging from Quinn’s and Kendra’s slack-jawed expressions however, her prayers were not to be answered. She looked over her shoulder. And gulped.
Her gaze traveled from the dirt-covered genuine cowboy boots to the worn, well-fitted jeans that emphasized long, muscular legs. She gulped again at the slight bulge in his pants at the zipper then at the white T-shirt that settled over his flat stomach and emphasized finely muscled cinnamon-colored arms.
He wore a cowboy hat. A large charcoal-gray cowboy hat that shadowed the sharp lines and angles of his face. He had full lips, a strong nose and piercing brown eyes that were focused intently on her. His profile had probably been chiseled on a African coin.
Charlie wanted to kick the tire again because she realized that despite her supposed cynicism and analytical mind, she had just fallen in love at first sight. And judging from the sudden come-hither smiles that were fixed on Quinn’s and Kendra’s faces, she didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.
Chapter 2
“Are you all right, ma’am?” the man spoke again in a deep, rumbling voice that slid down Charlie’s body to lodge like a ball of lead in her stomach.
When she didn’t respond, he took a step toward her, as if to help her stand. Charlie quickly stood to her feet, ignoring his outstretched large hand. The embarrassment flooded her face so quickly that she thought her body would incinerate. That would have been preferable to being subjected to the man’s direct, unflinching stare.
She averted her gaze to his right shoulder and noticed the black pickup truck parked at the mouth of the driveway. He must have driven up while she had been screeching at her sisters. Charlie was a twenty-nine-year-old grown woman who had a master’s degree in Art History, and who regularly gave lectures and presentations on varied subjects as a curator for the privately owned African-American Art Center in Los Angeles. In other words, she was an intelligent, successful, professional woman who shouldn’t have cared that a cowboy had seen her meltdown, but her heart slamming against her chest ignored her reasoned lecture and continued pounding.
“Charlie, you’re a mess. Let me help you,” Quinn said soothingly, as she quickly ran to her side.
Charlie watched in numb surprise as Quinn brushed the dirt off Charlie’s gray slacks. When Charlie saw the look Quinn sent the cowboy, Charlie wanted to strangle her.
“My poor sister is just frazzled after our long drive here,” Quinn said, with a flirtatious smile at the man, who Charlie noted with annoyance, sent a flirtatious smile back at her.
Not to be outdone by Quinn, Kendra stepped towards the man, her hand outstretched.
Kendra actually smiled as she purred, “Please tell me that you’re a resident of Sibleyville and not just a visitor.”
The man directed his thousand-watt smile at Kendra as he shook her hand. Charlie’s mood darkened when she noted that they held on to each other’s hands far longer than was appropriate.
“I’m a resident…for the moment. I live down the road,” he said, with the trace of a sardonic smile that made Charlie’s heart clog in her throat. He looked from Quinn to Kendra, skipping over Charlie. “I’m Graham Forbes, and you lovely ladies must be the Sibley sisters.”
“At your service,” Quinn murmured, as her gaze greedily drank him in from head to toe.
Charlie would have been embarrassed by Quinn’s boldness if she hadn’t been wishing she had the nerve to do and say the same thing.
“We heard you ladies were coming. Your grandpa’s lawyer asked us to turn on the power and lights, and we cleaned up the place as best we could…” His voice trailed off. Then he asked with a perplexed expression, “How long are you here for?”
Kendra took a few steps closer to the man. She planted her shapely legs in a wide stance and cocked her hip to one side like the pose of a glamorous model at the end of a catwalk. It would have been comical if she hadn’t looked so damn sexy.
“We’re here for two weeks. By the way, I’m Kendra Sibley, the oldest.”
Quinn quickly stepped next to Kendra and slightly bent forward, exposing the tops of her exquisite vanilla-tinted breasts. “And I’m Quinn, the youngest.”
Charlie knew it was her turn to step forward, but her legs felt too unsteady to consider operating them right now.
Besides, as with most men who stood within radius of the three sisters, Graham Forbes had forgotten that Charlie Sibley—the middle one, as she was more often known—existed.
“I didn’t expect you ladies to actually stay here, not with the state of this place. For a long time, we all thought that your grandpa had forgotten it,” he said, while nodding towards the house.
“Apparently, he did,” Kendra said, darkly, then flashed a smile at Graham. “But, we’re staying here. If it’s good enough for our grandfather, then it’s good enough for us. After his death, we figured what better way to feel closer to him and to understand him than to come to his childhood home. If it was just me, I could handle the dirt and rodents—I’ve dealt with worse vermin on Wall Street, but I don’t think my sisters can handle it. They’re not as accommodating as I can be.”
Charlie didn’t miss Kendra’s emphasis on the word accommodating. Judging from the amused and interested glint that entered Graham’s eyes he hadn’t either. Charlie wanted to smack them both.
“Kendra’s right. I’m not as hardy and masculine as her,” Quinn said, loudly, drawing Graham’s attention. Her voice softened to a bedroom whisper, as she said, “I’m more soft and open.”
Charlie couldn’t withhold her snort of disbelief. Apparently, it had also been a loud snort because all three turned to her. Charlie’s face burned with embarrassment once more as she tried to withstand the laser-sharp gaze of Graham Forbes. Against her will, her gaze dropped to his full lips. His lower lip was slightly more plump than the upper one.
She actually had to fight the urge to cross the dirt lot and take his lip between her teeth.
“So, you must be the middle sister,” Graham said, his tone polite and neighborly. One corner of his mouth lifted as he added, “Judging from the beating you gave that tire, you’re the one I should watch out for in a bar fight, right?”
Quinn and Kendra laughed, while Charlie just stared at him. His voice was so deep and warm. It reminded her of molasses, or grits or something hot and Southern. The baritone sound poured into her body and curled into something warm and welcoming.
Then she realized that she had been rendered mute by a cowboy. It was humiliating. When she still couldn’t force her mouth to open, she averted her gaze again and instantly spied her chocolate-laden bag in the trunk.
She grabbed it, murmured a choked “Excuse me,” and limped towards the house as fast as she could with her foot throbbing with pain and her dignity in shreds.
Chapter 3
“As members of the city council, it’s your job to look out for this town’s best interests. And the best interests of this town…”
Graham Forbes blocked out the rest of the speech being given by Mayor Boyd Robbins. He had heard it all before during the six months he had spent on the Sibleyville City Council, a position he was still trying to figure out how he had gotten. The issue might change, but Robbins always found something supposedly in the town’s best interests that usually involved either he or his two sons profiting in one form or another.
Graham felt an ache growing at his temples and rubbed his forehead to soothe the pressure. He glanced around the small cramped meeting room in city hall. As usual, all the windows were shut tight, even though it was the middle of summer and the old building had never been upgraded to air conditioning. As usual, Robbins’ long-suffering wife, Alma, sat in a chair in the corner of the room, taking notes of everything Robbins said, although she usually stopped writing whenever anyone else spoke. And, as usual, the four other city council members managed to look intrigued, as if they had never heard this exact same speech before. And since the other four had gotten elected to the city council around the same time the telephone had been invented—and Robbins had been making the same speech about that long—Graham knew they must have.
Graham was the youngest person in the room by about three decades, and considering he was thirty-two years old, he wasn’t exactly young, and he was feeling older by the second. He wondered how his father had done this, year after year. Not only this, but everything else that came with living and operating a ranch in Sibleyville. Yet now Lance Forbes was finding it difficult even to endure the physical therapy that would get him back on track after a heart attack six months ago.