Coming home is never simple!

Audrey Stone and her floral shop are thorns in Gray Turner’s side! He’s in Accord, Colorado, trying to focus on wrapping up his family’s business affairs. Instead, thoughts of Audrey and her tempting Hollywood beauty keep filling his head. How can he be this preoccupied with someone whose goals conflict with his?

Then suddenly, he needs Audrey’s support. Digging into his family affairs has revealed secrets that could ruin everything. With her help, he might be able to stop that. Funny how he once thought she stood in the way of his plans. Now he thinks Audrey could be the answer to his future!

What was it about Audrey?

From his car Gray watched her leave the house, a voluptuous Audrey Hepburn, her expression innocent, pure, and yet, deeply sensual. Knowing. He wasn’t sure that made sense, but it was the only way he could describe it to himself.

Audrey Stone was color, life, vivacity.

On a visceral level, she rattled him, made him wish for youth, innocence, oblivion. Relief from too many problems.

He wasn’t a man who caved in to his needs. He was strong. Or had been. He needed that strength back. And to do that, he needed to break this obsession with Audrey.

Because of Audrey returns to Accord, Colorado, where one man learns the truth about himself thanks to one incredible woman.

Dear Reader,

When the idea for the heroine of this book, Audrey, popped into my head, she came fully blown—a complete character who was self-confident, happy with her quirky ways and not the least bit afraid to be different from those around her.

I had a lot of fun writing a strong individual who couldn’t be forced into a mold.

I also had fun dressing her. This woman has a generous figure. She’s not worried about her weight. She’s never dieted. She embraces her image by playing with it, by emphasizing her assets. She sews her own retro clothes or buys vintage Chanel.

When developing a suitable hero for her, I came up with a wounded man. Where Audrey is confident, Gray is a ball of anxiety. He didn’t used to be, but a lot has happened to him lately. Too much. As well, there was that pivotal event in his past, the memory of which he buried so deeply he doesn’t think it ever happened. While he forced it out of his mind, Audrey embraced the experience and used it to create who she became later.

She is here to help Gray to remember and to heal.

I enjoyed writing a story about how one event changed two people so differently and delving into the ways in which people not only survive, but thrive.

Enjoy,

Mary Sullivan

Because of Audrey
Mary Sullivan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary has an abiding respect for the imagination. She just didn’t know it until she decided to stop telling herself to quit daydreaming and to start writing down those stories rattling around in her brain. Boy, is she glad she did. This is her ninth Mills & Boon Superromance book and the ideas don’t quit. New stories continue to pop into her head, often at the strangest moments. Snatches of conversations or newspaper articles or song lyrics—everything is fodder for her stories. She takes a simple idea, a character, a sentence and through effort, patience and a fertile imagination turns it into a novel. She loves to hear from readers. To learn more about Mary or to contact her, please visit her at www.marysullivanbooks.com.

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This book is for Brenda, who has been there through thick and thin and who never fails to offer a compassionate ear.

I adore your intelligence and humor.

Quite simply, you rock.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

HIDDEN BEHIND THE safe harbor of a tree, Audrey Stone studied the men invading her land and knew that bringing the handcuffs had been smart.

She’d parked her Mini on the shoulder down the road out of sight. No sense warning these guys she was coming.

Trees appeared like ghostly Ents out of the morning mist that rose from low-lying patches of land. She had no problem with fantasy. The thought of talking trees appealed to her. She talked to her plants, didn’t she? She believed they listened.

The construction workers had already unloaded their massive yellow equipment. Wary, she inched between a bulldozer and an earthmover, her pulse pounding like a jackhammer, her steps muffled by damp early-morning August earth.

When she saw the digging bucket of a backhoe, its horizontal stabilizers already deployed, hovering dangerously close to the fragile glass roof of one of her greenhouses, she swore. Oh, her babies. What if Noah hadn’t noticed these men on his way into town and called her? They would have destroyed her work without her knowledge. All of it down the tubes with the casual flick of a machine’s lever.

Thank God she’d arrived in time.

She ignored her racing heartbeat and scooted through the busy workers until she reached the front door.

Someone shouted, “Hey, you! What are you doing?”

Protecting my livelihood.

She snapped one end of the handcuffs to the door handle then locked the other around her wrist. A split second later a hand landed on her shoulder.

A man spun her about—the foreman, maybe?—and frowned when he saw what she’d done. “What the hell’s going on?”

She had no doubt who was behind this. She should almost have seen it coming. She tried not to think of Gray, though, and the sorrow he engendered in her.

“Unlock yourself and get the hell out of here,” the construction worker ordered, pugnacious in his anger.

“No.”

“Gimme the keys.” He waggled his fingers. Considering that they were on the end of a very muscled arm, she almost gave in.

“No,” she said again, glancing through the window of the greenhouse, gaining strength from her seedlings, her future.

“Call Grayson Turner,” she said, infusing her voice with as much authority as she could muster.

The construction worker scratched his head and pulled out a cell phone.

A second later, he said, “Boss, you gotta get out here. We have a nutcase who’s locked herself to one of the greenhouses.”

Audrey bristled at the characterization of her as a nutcase. She differed a little—okay, a lot—from the average woman, but she wasn’t crazy. Just worried. Scared. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

If she were lucky, her plants hadn’t been traumatized by the offloading of the heavy equipment so close to home. She had only four more weeks to nurture them to perfection, and now this. She’d almost lost them because one man couldn’t be bothered to check his family’s records.

Grayson Turner could have everything else on earth, but not this little piece of paradise. Audrey needed it, wanted it and owned it. Period.

Her slice of land might be modest by most standards, but pride of ownership blazed through her.

While the worker reported to Gray on the phone, Audrey’s gaze shifted to her fields, to the dewy promise of life in the burgeoning grasses surrounding her. If love were visible, had a color, it would be green. She loved this land.

She breathed deeply of air scented with the damp freshness of morning dew. How ironic that the man who’d inspired her love of nature and the outdoors should be the one who could destroy her.

The foreman hung up, crossed his muscled arms over his chest and stared her down, as though he could change her actions by the force of his willpower.

Not a chance.

No beefy construction worker, or backhoe or business mogul would stop her from protecting her babies, even if said businessman did hold the key to a corner of her heart she’d locked away nearly thirty years ago.

Be still, my hammering heart. He’s only a boy you used to know. He has no power over you.

Even so, she held her breath while she waited for Gray. She knew from experience that trouble wouldn’t be far behind.

* * *

GRAYSON TURNER RACED his father’s Volvo along the back road that bordered his parents’ land outside of Accord, Colorado, biting down on his frustration. What now?

He’d been back home only three months, and already his stress level was through the roof. He still remembered that disturbing call from Dad’s office manager.

“He’s slowing down, Gray,” Hilary had said. “He comes in only two, three hours a day. He’s not here long enough to make decisions that need to be made.” Shocking, considering that Dad used to practically live there, putting in twelve-and thirteen-hour days when Gray was growing up.

“The decisions he’s making are hurting the company,” Hilary had continued. “You need to take care of this.”

Hilary had worked for Dad for thirty years and knew Turner Lumber inside out. If she said Gray needed to be here, then he needed to be here.

So he’d come home. He should have done so years ago, but Marnie... No, he couldn’t go there.

His attempts at dragging the family business into the twenty-first century were being scuttled at every turn, mainly by Dad. Gray had an agricultural conglomerate lined up and was ready to hand over a boatload of money to him for the land, a decision with which Dad had agreed, and what should have been a straightforward mission to tear down the old greenhouses on the property was being held up.

Who would lock themselves to a Turner greenhouse? What had Dad done? Offended a tree hugger? Eaten a piece of meat?

Joking aside, what had his father done? Anything was possible these days.

Cool it, Gray. It could just as easily be a squatter. Dad doesn’t have to be blamed for everything.

Leaving a trail of dust in his wake, Gray shot down the dirt driveway and pulled up in front of the largest greenhouse, barely registering the idle workers and the one woman leaning against the front of the building.

He opened his door and set a foot onto the ground. Darkness. Suffocation. Clawing panic.

Not this again. He shook his head to free himself of the debilitating feelings. He had work to do and no time to figure out what the hell was wrong with him, and what it had to do with Accord.

The car accident had happened in Boston, so why was it affecting him more in his hometown than it had in his adopted city?

He swiped the back of his hand across his sweaty brow and took control of his unruly, nameless fears, got out of the car, and there he was, feet on terra firma, on Turner land, and disaster hadn’t struck to warrant the panic. All of that worry for nothing.

Time to deal with the nutcase his foreman had called about.

Silhouetted against the building, her posture dramatic, one arm chained to the door and the other spread across the glass as though one of the workers were threatening her with a sledgehammer, stood a full-figured woman who looked like she’d stepped out of an old movie set.

It took him a moment to recognize her, to remember her from high school.

Audrey Stone.

That darkness, that suffocating panic, slammed into his chest with the force of a wrecking ball. He reached to loosen his tie so he could catch an ounce of oxygen, a fragment of air, anything to stop the dizziness and nausea.

What the hell did the accident have to do with this woman? He hadn’t seen Audrey in years. He’d never had a relationship with her. They’d never dated, had never been friends.

Audrey didn’t look a thing like Marnie, and in fact was Marnie’s antithesis. Marnie would never have done something this rash. This emotional. So why did Audrey bring up this crippling hangover from the accident?

He undid the top button of his shirt and sucked in a deep breath.

Better.

Ramming his shaking hands into his pants pockets, he studied the woman chained to his greenhouse and forced himself to rise above his distress to view her objectively. Studying her would give him a minute to collect himself.

He’d avoided her in high school. Looked like he wasn’t going to be able to now.

Audrey had changed. She’d been strange back then, in Doc Martens, studded dog collars and spiky black hair, but she’d traded it all in for a more sophisticated weirdness. She wore a suit—a cropped jacket and skirt, and looked like something out of a sixties society photo, Mrs. S—Lunching with Friends.

He stepped closer. Fire-engine-red lipstick that matched a ridiculous little hat perched on her head defined a sinfully full mouth. Black eyeliner framed violet eyes. A cap of black curls surrounded a pale face.

Jackie O meets Betty Boop.

Gray knew both characters well. Mom had a lifelong obsession with Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, and Dad loved old cartoons, but come on, these days who dressed like an uppercrust fifties or sixties housewife out on the town?

As had happened in high school, his feelings about Audrey couldn’t be clearly defined—sometimes anger, sometimes confusion, often panic. They flummoxed him and made him a little crazy. He was a good judge of character, but who was Audrey, really, and why did he feel so strange around her?

And why did she bring up these memories of the accident?

Why would who she was even matter to him? It wasn’t as if she was anything more than another of the town’s citizens, a satellite floating around the edges of his world.

Calmer now, he stopped in front of her. If his stance was aggressive, so be it. He was in no mood to beat around the bush. “What are you doing?”

“Protecting my property.” Her body might have Betty Boop’s curves, but her voice had none of her squeaky breathlessness. No-nonsense and down-to-earth, it had an intriguing depth.

“You’ve got stuff in our greenhouses?” So this situation wasn’t Dad’s fault. Audrey was nothing more than a garden snake variety of trespasser. Harmless. “That’s squatting.”

He turned to his foreman. “Cut off the handcuffs. Escort her from the property.”

“This land belongs to me.” For a short woman, she had a big voice. Must be those well-endowed...lungs. “If any of you puts a hand on me, I’ll call the police and have you charged with both assault and trespassing. Get off my land now.”

Gray stilled. “Your land? What are you talking about?” His foreman was right. She was a nutcase.

With her free hand, she reached into a boxy white purse hanging from her handcuffed wrist and pulled out a paper, the nerves underneath her defiance betrayed by the wavering of her hand.

He snatched it, read it...and stopped breathing. A photocopy of the sale of a swath of land to her, it looked legit.

Impossible. The air around him became thin. Man, he was getting tired of being dizzy.

Dad, you didn’t—

You couldn’t have—

He had.

Dad had sold a piece of their land to Audrey Stone in...Gray checked the date...January, seven months ago, and not a corner plot, or a slice of land from one of the boundaries, but a chunk right in the blasted middle of the land Gray wanted to sell. Correction, needed to sell.

His jaw hurt with the struggle to maintain control, to keep the panic at bay. “How did you get this out of my father? What did you do, threaten him or blackmail him with something?”

“I asked him. Politely. He said yes. It’s legal.”

“We’ll see about that.” He strode away and whipped out his cell. Dad’s lawyer answered on the second ring, none too pleased to be disturbed at breakfast. Too bad. This needed to be handled. Two minutes later, Gray had an appointment to see the man in his office this morning.

He hung up and gestured to the construction crew. “Clear out. Remove the machinery.”

If this sale was legitimate, they were trespassing.

They grumbled but obeyed. Today’s debacle was going to cost Gray a bundle. If the sale of land to Audrey had been fraudulent in any way, Gray would sue for damages.

He turned to the woman unlocking herself from the greenhouse door. If he were a violent man, he’d knock her ridiculous red hat from her head.

“This isn’t over.”

“Yes, Gray, it is.” She’d just won a battle and should have looked triumphant. Her solemn frown, though, didn’t reflect victory.

The few times he’d run into her over the years, he’d gotten the feeling she knew something he didn’t. What? Her knowledge, and his ignorance of it, angered him, made him want to lash out. She was nothing more than a resident in the town he’d grown up in, so why this sense of...drama, of history?

He jumped into his car to drive home, to find out from Dad what kind of whim or idiocy had led him to sell a valuable portion of their land, but not at all sure he’d get an answer that would satisfy him. Dad had always been too softhearted, and was growing worse with age.

When Gray realized he was counting telephone poles, he pulled onto the shoulder, put the car into Park and reached into the glove compartment. Counting, for God’s sake. In the months since he’d returned to Accord, he’d started counting everything, from how many times he chewed his food before he swallowed to the number of steps between his bedroom and the bathroom. Wasn’t that a sign of OCD personality or something? He’d never done it in his life before. Moving back home had screwed him up. He loved Accord. He’d had a good, solid childhood, so why did returning give him the heebie-jeebies?

Granted, he hadn’t been himself since last year’s accident, but he’d been recovering. So, why had coming home left him reeling? Why had it brought all of those bad associations, which had finally been healing, back into play? Moving away from Boston, away from the scene of the accident, should have made him better. So, why had coming here made him worse?

He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, cursing when his hands shook. After lighting one, he blew smoke out the open window. Before last year, he’d never smoked.

Times had changed.

He’d changed.

While he smoked, he struggled for equilibrium.

Rather than calming him, the nicotine riled him—and that pissed him off. He had to stay calm. Turner Enterprises needed a strong hand at the helm. Obviously, Dad was no longer up to the task. He’d sold that piece of land. Sheer lunacy. That strong hand would have to be Gray’s, but for the first time in his career, he was afraid he wasn’t up to the job.

The cigarette tasted like crap and was making him nauseous. Not surprising, given that he’d run out the door before having breakfast. He flicked the butt onto the road.

Pull yourself together, Turner.

Before he knew it, he was lighting up a second cancer stick. It tasted as bad as the first. He tossed it out the window, too, and crushed the pack of remaining cigarettes in his fist. He needed to pick up gum or something. Inhaling tobacco was a dumb idea. Weak. Spineless.

He drummed his fingers on the window well. The scent of pine and cedar from the woods lining the road drifted in on a breeze and blew the smoke out of the car.

He started the engine, pulled a U-turn and returned to the greenhouses to have it out with Audrey. Better to push his anger on her than on his aging father.

* * *

AUDREY SHOULD HAVE been reveling in her victory—after all, she had won—but instead she watched Gray drive away and wished she could turn back history to better times. But too many years had passed. Maybe Gray wouldn’t want to go back to those times.

Maybe he was better off not remembering. He’d certainly shown no sign of recalling much about her, let alone how much they’d meant to each other all of those years ago. As much as she’d tried to forget, in many ways it seemed she was still that girl she’d been when she was only seven. And, today, seeing Gray again, all of the sadness of that time—the trauma, the tragic ending, the sad goodbye—still lingered.

When the backhoe leaned too close to the glass roof after pulling in its stabilizers, she shouted, “Careful!” then tracked its laborious journey to a flatbed and waited until every piece of machinery and every last construction worker was gone.

At last, in peace and quiet, she entered the greenhouse.

“Hey, kids, Mama’s here,” she said, aware of how odd she sounded and not caring a whit. Life was made to be grasped with both hands and lived to the fullest. If she happened to live hers strangely, so be it. As soon as she’d graduated from high school, she’d decided to embrace her individuality, and embrace it she had. With gusto.

She’d been different from others back then, but even her punk gear had been a conformation of sorts. She’d decided she hadn’t wanted to belong to any group, despite how rebellious punk might have looked. Then, in college, she’d figured out who she really was—big, bold and generous in body, mind and spirit—and hadn’t looked back.

She cruised the aisles, giving a soft caress here, offering a gentle word there.

She greeted every plant by name.

“You’re strange, you know that?”

At the voice behind her, Audrey spun around.

Gray stood in the open doorway of the greenhouse, and her body betrayed her, tingling with the fire he never failed to ignite in her.

None of that. You are not allowed to let this man affect you.

But he did.

Irritated by her susceptibility to him, she demanded, “Close the door,” her tone implying, preferably with you outside. “The interior is climate-controlled for my plants.”

With a hint of a mocking smile that suggested he knew exactly where she wanted him but didn’t care, he stepped inside before he shut the door.

Darn. Go away. Leave me alone.

This morning was the first time she’d seen him since his return to town. Before that, it had been a number of years.

He looked too good with the morning’s sunlight glinting through the greenhouse roof onto his golden hair. Everything about him was perfect, from his straight nose, to the even tone of his tanned skin, to his strong jaw, to his perfect, dazzling teeth.

She’d forgotten how handsome he was, how with a shot of lightning he awakened latent slumberous juices in her and set them flowing like sap running in springtime. As always, she pulled her unruly attraction under control. Gray didn’t need her love—yes, she had truly loved the fun, exciting and loyal little friend that he’d been—and she didn’t need his not-so-subtle and undeserved derision. Sad that he’d probably never figured out the source of his disdain for her.

She leaned against one of the counters and crossed her arms.

Keep it light. Keep it normal.

“What have you been doing with your life?” she asked, even though she knew everything about him. She’d collected tidbits here and there, and had kept them in the scrapbook of her memory. He was her enemy now, though, so no sense letting him know that she cared.

He stepped farther down the aisle, coming ever closer. “Starting and running a business.”

“Successful?” she asked, even though she knew. Oh, how she knew, and how proud she was of him. Her former friend had done well for himself.

“Of course.” Funny that he didn’t sound arrogant, but rather matter-of-fact and perhaps puzzled that anyone would think an endeavor of his wouldn’t be successful. Or maybe it was just a casual arrogance.

“What kind of business?”

“Importing computer parts for the government.”

With a glance, she checked out his suit. Why on earth was he wearing one at eight in the morning? A simple pair of jeans and a T-shirt would have sufficed. Did he even own jeans?

His rumpled tie, the unbuttoned collar of his shirt, the hair that sported rills where it looked as though he’d run his fingers through it impatiently, scorned his casual arrogance. Maybe Gray wasn’t as together as he’d like her to believe. But if not, why not?

“The business is lucrative, I take it?” she asked. The suit looked like it cost big bucks.

He nodded. Of course. Gray would make a success of anything he touched. Golden boy. His surface confidence nearly unnerved her. Nearly, but not quite. She’d seen him at his worst, naked, both literally and figuratively. She knew he put his pants on one leg at a time, just like any other man. She knew exactly how vulnerable Grayson Turner could be.

He glanced around the greenhouse, his gaze seeming to linger on the timeworn corners of the old place. Humid streaks trailed the inside of the glass walls. So what if it looked bad? She would fix it all when she had money. “So,” he asked, “what’s so important in here that you locked yourself to the door?”

“My life.” She decided she might as well come clean and let him see exactly how kooky she was. “These—” she swept an arm wide to encompass the tables of seedlings and plants she nurtured like vulnerable infants “—are my babies.”

He quirked one eyebrow. “Babies?”

Her natural defiance kicked in, and she lifted her chin and nodded.

“This is what you do for a living?” he asked. “I thought you did something with rocks.”

“I did. I was a geologist for thirteen years. I decided to come home to open a floral shop.”

“Why? Geology would probably pay more than the income from a flower shop in a small town.”

“After all these years, there’s still a glass ceiling for women in certain industries.”

His swift glance down her body spoke of things he wouldn’t express overtly. Again, his disdain. “Did you dress like that on the job?”

“I expressed my individuality.” She’d been defiant at work, yes, but she’d done a hell of a good job. “I paid a price for it. I worked for thirteen years at something that should only ever have been an avocation. Collecting rocks was a hobby and should have stayed that way, but I made enough to do what I really want to do.” At least, barely.

She gestured toward her fledgling plants in this greenhouse, and the two as-yet-unfilled greenhouses beyond the windows. “I earned what I own here. I paid good money for it. I scrimped and saved and nickeled and dimed. For years I did what I had to do. Now, I’m doing what I want to do. Flowers are my passion.”

But for the occasional self-indulgence, like the vintage Chanel suit she wore today, she’d scraped by and had put the rest into savings and investment accounts.

Through the years, she’d even sewn her own clothes. Still did.

She shot him a look, uncertain whether the sound he’d just made was a snort or a clearing of his throat. Either way, she wasn’t so naive that she didn’t know judgment when she heard it. “There’s more to life than the bottom line. Money isn’t everything, Gray.”

“No? You’re a romantic, Audrey. Everyone needs something to live on.”

“True, but how much is necessary and how much overkill? Why is it no longer okay for businesses to believe that making millions is enough? Everyone wants to be the next computer geek gazillionaire, at any cost. People no longer matter, only more and more money. Insane, unreasonable amounts of money.”

“Is that what you see is wrong with the world these days?” She thought she detected a glint of admiration in his eyes. Or maybe not. His mouth had a cynical cast to it. Surprise, surprise. Their philosophies, after all, directly opposed each other.

“One of many things.”

She couldn’t fix the world, but she could control her small corner of it. “I want to spread joy with my flower arrangements. I want to spend the rest of my life doing something I enjoy. I can make this business work.”

He nodded, cataloguing that information, but why?

His fingers drummed against his thighs, as though nervous energy hummed through his body needing an escape. “Do you dress like that when you go on dates?”

Dates? “What does that have to do with anything?” She did, but it was none of his business. She’d had her share of boyfriends, most of them good men. She’d just never considered one a keeper. “My boyfriends have never complained about my clothes.”

Gray shrugged and looked at the plants. “Tell me about them,” he demanded.

She watched him and remained silent. The man had no authority over her.

“Please.” He’d softened his tone.

“Okay.”

The first row held her myriad weird and wonderful mushrooms.

“What is that?” he asked, indicating a hedgehog of a mushroom.

“Lion’s mane,” she answered.

“It looks like Cousin Itt,” he said, “but with shorter hair.”

The corner of Audrey’s mouth kicked up. She’d often thought so, too.

Gray stepped closer, using his body to make her uneasy. She was pretty sure his subtle intimidation was deliberate. Oh, please. As if that was going to work on her.

She had to be honest with herself. To a certain extent, it did. Where with every other man on the planet she was strong, Gray left her vulnerable. The woman in her liked the man in him too much, breaking down the barricades erected between them as business adversaries.

He unsettled her, the heat from his body penetrating the careful walls she constructed against him. He smelled clean and crisp and green, like her fields, like the forest after a rainfall.

Even though his cologne reminded her of an earthy forest floor, of evergreens, something else hovered around him, too. Cigarette smoke. Yuck. She would have sworn the boy she’d known, who’d loved nature and impish exploration, could never turn into a man this cold and be a smoker to boot.

Tall and fit, he loomed over her. Maybe she should be afraid, but she wasn’t. So many years ago, Gray had been her little buddy. He would never hurt her, but his heat so close to her right arm, and his sheer forceful presence, distracted her. Audrey forgot what she’d been about to say.

This close, she noticed things about him that gave her hope he might not be stronger than her, cracks in his perfect veneer, tightness in his jaw and a tension that radiated from him like static electricity.

He might want the world to believe he was in control, but something was bothering Gray, feeding his nervous system with darkness. She knew as surely as she recognized her own heartbeat that he was a deeply unhappy man.

About to open her mouth to ask, What happened to you, Gray? she felt his withdrawal, as though he sensed she saw too deeply.

He pretended a normalcy whose authenticity she questioned, and asked, “What are those?” He walked to the next row of plants.

She swallowed her concern. If he didn’t want to confide in her, there was nothing she could do.

“Rare orchids.” She held herself back from naming all of her orchids. Not everyone shared her enthusiasm.

Thelymitra ixioides, with its bright blue flowers that bloomed on warm, sunny days, waited patiently for her attention. She thought of telling him how hard it would be to get it to bloom indoors, but held her tongue, wary of this über-practical man and his motives, of his probable question, So why do it?

Whimsy. Pure utter whimsy that he would never understand.

She didn’t want to tell this cold stranger too much, didn’t want to disclose her hopes and dreams to a man who would use them against her.

“And those?” he asked, pointing to her baby sunflowers.

Despite herself, absurdly pleased that he showed interest, she disclosed the names of both her dwarf and her giant varieties. “Coming along nicely, my dears,” she whispered to them.

She showed off the miniature topiaries she was training into the shapes of small animals—a rabbit and two hedgehogs and a squirrel with a bushy tail.

She indicated her Clematis aureolin. “I’m growing this for the strange hairy seedpods it will get in the fall. If you thought lion’s mane looked like Cousin Itt, these will be little green baby Cousin Itt wannabes.”

He didn’t return her smile. Where his height and big body had failed to intimidate her, his cold, flat eyes did. If eyes were the windows to the soul, Gray’s eponymous ones had the shutters firmly closed against her. Or against everyone?

Where are you, Gray? Where did you retreat to all of those years ago when you left me alone?

The temperature in the room dropped, February in August, and the warmth of the day leached out of her.

This was not her friend, not the boy she’d run wild with over Turner fields when they were barely old enough to be out on their own. They’d trusted each other. They’d looked out for one another.

Audrey shivered. Gray wouldn’t watch out for her now. He was her enemy. He wanted to bring her down.

Amused by her discomfort, the corners of his lips twitched. “I don’t know much about flowers, but this is all really strange stuff. Peculiar. Not standard fare for a floral shop. Why are you growing it?”

Audrey’s glance flew to the poster she’d hung beside the door for inspiration, advertising the Annual Colorado State Floral Competition in Denver on the second Sunday in September. Gray turned to see what had snagged her attention.

He jerked his thumb toward the poster. “What’s this?”

She shrugged. She planned to win the trophy. She needed the $25,000 award desperately, and even more, the yearlong contract being offered to the winner to provide all of the arrangements in one of Denver’s boutique hotels, as well as the hospital’s gift shop. The future clients and prestige the win could bring would be huge for a fledgling business. Gray didn’t need to know that, though.

He stared at her and must have seen something on her face. Hope and determination, she guessed. She’d never been a great card player, had lost every hand of poker she’d ever played. He smiled, but not nicely, as though he had a secret, but one he didn’t intend to share with her.

She’d always believed that somewhere beneath that crisp, cool exterior the Gray Turner she had known must still exist. Oh, how wrong she’d been.

“You’re wrong, Audrey.”

Nonplussed, she stared. The man could read her mind?

Tapping a finger against the poster, his grin mocking her belief that, despite her quirkiness, she’d grown up to be a better person than the man he’d become, he said, “Money is everything.”

He left the greenhouse. Chilled, Audrey rushed down the aisles, touching her plants, drawing hope from their fledgling fight to survive, struggling to drive the chill from her blood.

Gray hadn’t returned because he was interested in her work. He’d needed to find where she was vulnerable, and he had.

Knowing his reputation as a hardheaded businessman, she knew he would use it against her, but she didn’t have a clue how. While she might be strong enough to fight the attraction she felt toward him and win, she knew she wasn’t a fraction of the businessperson he was.

She’d been a business owner for only nine months.

Her rib cage cradled her pounding heart as though it were a baby bird needing protection.

What if—?

Audrey, stop. Just stop. Gray’s playing games, messing with your head, but you don’t have to let him.

She left the greenhouse and locked it behind her, wishing she could coat the building in steel to protect her babies from the likes of Grayson Turner.

She strode to her car, morning dew moistening her feet through the peekaboo holes in the toes of her shoes. She glanced back over her shoulder. Sunlight glimmered from the many panes of her greenhouses, igniting shimmering golden jewels in the middle of emerald fields—and a fire in her to burst Gray’s arrogant bubble.

No, she didn’t have to buy into his intimidation tactics. She was strong.

CHAPTER TWO

AUDREY’S HEADY PERFUME followed Gray out the door, trailing him like a scarf that wrapped itself around his shoulders with comforting hands. Nuts.

Nothing about Audrey said comfort. Words that came to mind were sexy and strange and disconcerting, but comforting? Never.

The black eyeliner slanting up at the corners of her violet eyes made them exotic. In the middle of her pure, clear-skinned face, the effect was violently erotic.

Unnerved to feel anything good about the woman, he ordered himself to snap out of it.

She had the power to hurt his family, and he wouldn’t stand for it.

Babies. Gray laughed. She’d called her plants her “babies.” Nutbar. Defeating this woman was going to be a piece of cake.

At least in grilling Audrey, he’d calmed down enough to see his father without confrontation.

Gray drove to his parents’ home. At thirty-six, he shouldn’t be living with his mom and dad, but they were getting on in age, and he felt better being around in case something happened to one of them.

Set apart from town on its private cul-de-sac, the gray stone house with the white trim and black lacquered front door spoke of well-bred money, of discreet, respectful living.

He’d had a good upbringing. So why was he screwed up these days? Why so neurotic?

The garage door was open and Dad was inside. Good. There were things that needed to be said.

“Dad?” he called.

Dad had his head buried inside a deep box. “Aha!” He stood, triumph and a childlike joy lighting his face. “Here they are.”

“We need to talk—”

“Remember these?” He held an old snorkel set of Gray’s in his hands, the rubber of the ancient flippers dry and cracked.

“Yes, I remember. I must have been nine or ten when you bought them for me.” He didn’t have time for this. They had issues to settle. Huge issues.

Dad wore an old cardigan, ratty around the edges from years of use. White hair curled over the collar of the sweater. Disgraceful. Dad used to be particular about his grooming.

“What happened to you, Dad? Something’s changed.” The words were out of his mouth before good manners could stop them, a sign of how bad Gray’s nerves were. Dad’s aging, the slow crumbling of a once-powerful man, affected Gray, left him sad and a little lost. Left him somehow smaller, at a time when he was already vulnerable with residual grief. Marnie was dead.

Stop. Concentrate on the here and now, on business.

“I turned eighty last year.” For all of Gray’s recent worries about Dad’s state of mind, especially given the shaky business dealings lately, Dad had understood his question perfectly.

Gray waited for more explanation. When it didn’t come, he prompted, “And...?”

“And you try turning eighty and looking back on your life and realizing how much time you spent indoors in a stuffy old office when you could have been out doing things.” He pulled out a plastic oar belonging to an old dinghy that had been relegated to the dump years ago. “Look!” His chuckle held a strange glee that Gray had never heard before, not sinister, just, again, childlike.

Gray couldn’t get past his surprise. Dad had regrets? “But...”

“But what?”

“But you loved the business.”

“Past tense. I’m tired. I want to enjoy what’s left of my life. I want peace.”

How had Gray missed Dad’s transformation from a savvy businessman to a reluctant one? Gray had tried to visit as often as possible, but given that he’d taken after his father with twelve-hour days and a demanding, if loved, girlfriend, it had been hard. Obviously, he hadn’t come home often enough.

“You’re here now,” Dad asserted. “You take care of the business.”

Speaking of which...

“Did you sell a piece of land to Audrey Stone in the winter?”

“Jeff Stone’s daughter?” Dad looked up from the box he was still rummaging through. A fine fuzz of white stubble dusted his unshaven chin. Dad shaved every day. Apparently not today.

The gray eyes that Gray had inherited still seemed sharp, but his glance shifted away from Gray’s. What was he hiding? Over and over, Gray had had to find out things about the company from Hilary or the accountant. While Dad seemed to welcome Gray into the business, he also stonewalled him at too many turns. Something strange was up with his father.

He said he was tired. He said you take care of the business. His actions spoke a different language. Dad couldn’t let go of the reins.

“Yes,” Dad replied. “I sold land to Audrey. Why?”

“It’s in the heart of the land I want to sell to Farm-Green Industries.”

“Hmm. Too bad.”

Dad had become a master of understatement. Gray gritted his teeth. “Why did you sell?”

“Jeff is sick.”

“What does that have to do with the land?”

“His daughter needs to take care of him.”

Gray bore the frustration of dealing with Dad like this, but only barely. Conversation was like pulling freaking teeth out of his head one by one. Without anesthetic. Where was the man who used to be open about everything?

“Dad, what does that have to do with our land?”

“She needed a place to grow plants and flowers for her floral shop. She needs to support herself and help her father. We stopped using those greenhouses years ago. Shame to see them go to waste.”

“But we’ve spent months hammering out this deal with Farm-Green. They aren’t going to take it with a huge hunk of land missing from the middle.”

“I never wanted to sell to them anyway. When they first started sniffing around two or three years ago, I told you that.”

God, give me strength. “We’ve gone over this a hundred times. You need to look at the big picture. Look outside of Accord. The economy isn’t what it used to be. The whole country is suffering. The lumberyard isn’t bringing in a fraction of the money it used to. We need that money to pay your employees.” Let alone take care of all of the other dubious decisions Dad had made lately.

“So, find a different solution. Something else that will work. If one thing doesn’t, find another.”

“There won’t be another company who’ll pay what Farm-Green was willing to so quickly. It could take a year to find someone else who’s interested, and then months more of negotiations. I’m turning myself inside out to come up with creative solutions to our problems.”

Dad shrugged. “When one door closes, another opens.”

One of Dad’s empty pronouncements. He thought they were nuggets of wisdom. Not even close. New-age gobbledygook.

“Did you at least get a good price?” Gray wouldn’t put it past his father to give the land away for sentiment’s sake.

Judging by Dad’s annoyed frown, he’d asked the wrong question. “Of course I did. I spent sixty years working as a successful businessman.”

Yes, Gray knew that, but Dad had lost his grip on reality. He was eighty years old and changing, reverting to childhood, or something. He should have retired twenty years ago, but what would he have done instead? Retirement would probably have killed him, but in the past months that Gray had been home, he’d finally had to accept that Dad needed to step away from the business altogether before he sent the whole thing down the drain. Dad was still too sharp for this to be Alzheimer’s. This wasn’t a failing, wasn’t even dementia, just a change. But why?

“Isn’t Jeff Stone the one you pay a salary to even though he’s off work?”

“I pay him a reduced salary. An early retirement.”

“Even though he was short of fulfilling his requirements?”

“He’s going blind.” Gray flinched at Dad’s harsh tone. “Jeff worked for me for twenty-nine years. His macular degeneration precluded him from working his final year.”

“He would qualify for disability. Why make the company bear the financial burden of his care?”

“He would make a pittance on disability. He has medical bills. He needs an operation that will cost a fortune. He’s middle class, not a millionaire.” Dad pulled the second oar out of the box but threw it onto a growing rubbish heap when he discovered it was broken. “Paying Jeff is no burden. He worked hard for me and, by extension, since you enjoyed the secure childhood and higher education the business bought, for you. The least we can do is show our appreciation.”

Dad was too softhearted to run a successful company in today’s environment. Disability was designed for this situation, for people like Jeff.

Gray opened his mouth to argue further, but Dad forestalled him. “Selling those greenhouses to Audrey was the right thing to do. Give it some thought and you’ll agree.”

Before he said something too harsh, Gray left the garage. For sixty years, his dad had done everything right, but in the past year, it seemed he’d been getting it all wrong. Or maybe longer. The further Gray dug into records and finances, the more he realized that Dad had been making risky investments and dubious decisions for a while.

Also, he’d caught him lying more than once. No, that wasn’t fair. They weren’t lies, just convenient half-truths so that Gray had to double-check everything Dad told him to find the truth for himself.

His stomach burned.

Did Mom have antacid tablets in the house? He could use a couple. Or the whole bottle.

Inside, he found her sitting in the living room. Where Dad’s grooming was suffering with age, Mom still looked perfect.

Dressed to the nines even this early in the morning, she wore a silk blouse with a soft pastel print and a tweed skirt, her still slim legs encased in stockings and her feet in stylish black heels.

She sat on the sofa reading a romance novel. She had just turned seventy-five, for Pete’s sake. He didn’t need to catch her holding a book with a photograph of a half-naked man clutching a busty woman on the cover.

Even so, when she peeked at him over the rims of her reading glasses, her once-vivid blue eyes faded now, his heart swelled. A cloud of white hair framed a tiny face. Her welcoming smile warmed him. This amazing woman had given him everything, the absolute best childhood.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked, and he meant anything. For his parents, especially Mom, he would do whatever was asked of him. “A cup of tea?” Mom loved her tea.

“I’m fine,” she answered. “I’ve already had four cups this morning.”

“Mom,” he said, hesitating because he didn’t want to offend, but needing to know. “What’s happening with Dad?”

She didn’t seem surprised by the question. “He’s tired. He’s had a lot of weight on his shoulders for a long time. He needs to let go and relax.”

“He said it started when he turned eighty.”

She set her glasses down on top of her book. “Oh, it started well before that. He’s been tired for years.”

Startled, Gray asked, “Why didn’t he tell me? I would have come home sooner.”

Those faded blue eyes studied him shrewdly. “Would you have?”

His mind flew to an image of Marnie with her hands on her hips, obstinate in battle with him. “Yes,” he said, but he’d taken too long to answer.

“Truly?”

Gray slumped into the armchair. “I don’t know. Marnie didn’t want to live here. She loved Boston.”

“You would have had to have made a choice. Your parents or your fiancée. I understood that, Gray, so I didn’t tell you about your dad’s state.”

Gray leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Mom, I love you and Dad. I would have worked out something.”

“What could you have done? You loved Marnie, too, and Boston is not within commuting distance. Would you have lived six months here and the other half of the year there? Like a child in joint custody? What kind of life would that have been, especially once you had children?”

“I don’t know. I would have come up with a solution.”

Mom closed her book and put it on the side table, giving him her full attention. “Why did it take so long for you and Marnie to set a wedding date? You were engaged for five years.”

Mom had always been too perceptive. Getting away with anything in his adolescent years had taken real skill and subterfuge on Gray’s part. “There were things we couldn’t agree on.”

“Like where to live?”

A heavy sigh gusted out of him, and he admitted, “Like where to live. That was the biggest obstacle.”

“So, even though your father and I tried to protect you, you were caught up in our drama anyway.”

“You were aging. There’s nothing anyone can do to prevent that. You’re my responsibility, Mom.”

“Such a shame that we had only one child.”

“What else could you have done? I came along so late.” He was a surprise for his parents after they had long given up hope of conceiving.

Mom smiled, and her eyes got misty. “Yes. We were lucky to have you.”

The conversation had become too maudlin for Gray. He didn’t want to think about feeling alone as a child, about how much he missed Marnie, or about how old his parents were.

“What do you know about Audrey Stone?” he asked.

Mother perked up. “She’s the most interesting thing to happen to this town in years. I’m so glad she came back home to live. Have you seen her?”

He’d run out on breakfast, so he explained what the emergency had been.

“What was she wearing?” Mother asked, clearly excited.

“Wearing?” She’d thrown him. He’d just told her that Audrey had the means to scuttle a huge deal for the family and Mother wanted to know what the woman was wearing?

He rubbed his hands over his face. As dear as his aging parents were, he didn’t have time for their eccentricities.

“Well?” Mom persevered.

Gray pointed to a large illustrated hardcover on the coffee table. In a full-page photo on the cover, Jackie Kennedy wore the pink suit she’d had on the day her husband was assassinated.

“She wore a suit like that, but it was gray with white trim.”

His mother caught her breath. “A vintage Chanel? I always knew Audrey had class.”

He thought of the full curves shaping the suit. Class? Yes, but also a whole lot more.

“No hat?”

He mentioned the red hat that had matched her lipstick and her nail polish and the glimpse of her toenails he’d seen through her open-toed black suede pumps, which looked as though they’d come straight out of the forties.

“Describe the hat.”

When he finished, Mother nodded her approval. “A pillbox. You don’t see those anymore. Was she wearing gloves?”

Thinking of those bright red nails, he shook his head.

“Ah, well,” she said, “I guess times have changed. Too bad she hadn’t really completed the outfit, though, if you know what I mean.”

He didn’t have a clue.

“Have you thought anymore about what we discussed last night?” she asked.

What they’d discussed many nights since he’d moved back home had been his getting married and having children. His parents wanted to meet their grandchildren before they died. Gray still had to produce those grandchildren. First he needed a partner. It should be the least he could do, but he thought of Marnie and held his breath until the pain passed.

“I’m thinking about it.”

Mother smiled. Honestly, he lived to make her happy, but how did a man snap his fingers and, poof, there would be a wife, ready and willing to bear his children?

He headed upstairs to his bedroom. He needed to change his shirt. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock in the morning and the day not yet hot, but under his business jacket, he’d been sweating like a linebacker. Since the car accident, his body had been betraying him in strange ways. A giant rodent gnawed gaping holes in the cool, collected persona he’d cultivated in business, and he didn’t have a clue how to boot the offending creature from his body.

He picked up a letter that had arrived yesterday, addressed to his father, but Gray handled all of his parents’ correspondence these days. They’d relinquished that responsibility happily, and thank God for that. What if Mother had opened this instead of him?

The thought sent a shiver through him. Mom would have been devastated. He had to protect her at all costs.

He read it yet again with a creepy fascination, as though rubbernecking at a traffic accident.

I have three children to support. Their father is dead. My oldest son has Duchenne muscular dystrophy. I can’t pay for his therapy. He needs a wheelchair. I need money. I’m desperate. I’ll go to the newspapers.

Shelly Harper

Who was this woman? This Shelly? Was she for real? Were her accusations true? That Dad was her father? He checked the postmark. Denver. Too close to home for comfort’s sake, only an hour away.

At heart, Gray was a cynic and took nothing at face value.

And yet, he had an eerie suspicion that everything she’d said was true.

She’d enclosed a birth certificate, hers, with his dad’s name on it, along with a photograph of herself that showed a strong likeness to Dad. The final shot, though, of three children, one of whom was the spitting image of himself at around nine or ten, left him shaken.

It all seemed legit. These kids looked like family. The woman bore an eerie resemblance to him.

Nonetheless, after he’d received the letter yesterday, he’d posted one back to her. I need proof. Give me a DNA sample for testing.

Let’s see if she had the nerve to provide one.

His gut screamed she was telling the truth. In business, he trusted his instincts all the time—they rarely steered him wrong—but how could this be real? Dad couldn’t possibly have committed adultery. Could he have? Dad?

If the woman’s allegations were true, Gray would need quick money to buy her off. It took time to come up with the kind of cash she demanded—four hundred thousand dollars.

Four hundred thousand dollars. Mind-boggling. He started to sweat again.

Yes, his business was successful, but he wasn’t a millionaire. He didn’t have buckets of cash lying around.

He’d already started things rolling yesterday with instructions for his CFO to liquidate certain of his own assets, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

Farm-Green was willing to buy now—the ultimate answer to this mess.

The woman’s threat filled him with cold dread.

How could Gray ever let Mom find out? How could she survive the betrayal once she knew that her husband had been unfaithful, that she’d been wrong about his character throughout her marriage?

He dropped into his old desk chair. It squeaked under his weight. He wouldn’t let Mom be ruined by this. He threw the paper on to the desk—not while he had any say in the matter. But what could he do? If this woman was telling the truth—and it sure looked as though she was—she had a real need.

Then again, if what she claimed was true, she was his half sister and only a year older than he.

Man, that floored him. He’d been a happy child, but so alone. For a long time, there’d been an emptiness inside of him, a wish for more, a sense that he’d lost something he couldn’t name and couldn’t get back.

For years, he’d wanted a sibling.

Was he willing to accept this woman’s assertions too easily because of a long-buried wish for a brother or sister? For something to combat being alone in the future after his parents died, and to assuage his current loneliness?

How was her existence even possible? Dad had adored Mom all of his life. Dad, the epitome of ethics and morals, a man whose backbone and strength of character were admired by all, couldn’t have had an affair.

Gray, though, was stuck considering the unthinkable, that his dad had fathered an illegitimate child while married to his mom.

Talk to Dad.

Can’t. What if I find out it’s true?

Suck it up and ask.

It would shatter Gray, make a mockery of his history and his parents’ history.

You need to know.

In fresh clothes, he went back out to the garage where Dad still puttered.

This whole thing could be cleared up with one conversation.

When Gray stepped close, Dad looked up and smiled. Gray’s heart hammered. He was about to blow Dad’s world apart. And his own.

He handed Dad the letter.

“What’s this?”

“It came yesterday.” Try as he might, he couldn’t keep the foreboding from his voice. Was Dad the man he thought he’d known all of his life? Or a stranger like the one he was becoming now?

The man took a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses out of his sweater pocket and read the letter.

“What is this?” He sounded genuinely confused.

“Have you ever known a woman named Edie Kent? She was this woman’s—” he gestured toward the letter “—mother.”

“This woman who says that I’m her father? No. I’ve never even heard of Edie Kent.” He thrust the paper back at Gray. “You don’t believe this crap, do you?”

Gray handed him the photo. “Look at her son.”

Dad’s skin paled. “My God, he looks like you. Like seeing a ghost. That’s impossible. Coincidence. Nothing more. They say everyone has a double somewhere on earth.”

Now for the crucial question he’d never thought he’d ask his father. “Did you ever have an affair?”

Dad scowled. “How can you even consider that? I adored your mother. Always have since the second I first laid eyes on her, and always will.” He slammed the photo against Gray’s chest, and Gray barely caught it before it fell to the ground. The man still had some power in him.

Gray’s dander rose. He wouldn’t have even considered the possibility that Dad would do this, but that photo was damning, and waiting for DNA results would take too long. Plus, his dad was becoming a stranger. He needed to know now so he could put his mind to rest on this problem at least. He had too much hanging over his head, too much that needed to be settled, and all of it taken care of instantly. Yesterday.

“Is it possible you could have gotten drunk one night and slept with this woman’s mother without remembering?”

“No. Once I married your mother, I became a homebody.” Dad strode out of the garage, and Gray followed. “Besides, when would I have had time? I had a business to grow, and I worked my butt off to do it.”

He stalked around to the front door. “Can’t believe you even considered that I might have—” He spun back to Gray. “Don’t you know me at all?” The anger had left his voice, replaced by hurt. He entered the house and closed the door behind him, as though Gray were no longer welcome in the home he’d grown up in.

Given the changes at work, given Dad’s crazy decisions, Gray was left to wonder whether he knew him at all.

He felt as low as low could be. He’d just hurt and alienated his father. But he’d had no choice. He’d had to know.

* * *

AT ELEVEN-THIRTY, Gray stood in John Spade’s law office tamping down rising nausea, not sure he’d heard the immaculately groomed lawyer clearly.

“Jeez, John, what are you doing these days? Having facials? Mani-pedis? You’ve primped the daylights out of yourself.”

“Stop avoiding the issue,” Spade said. “Can you do it?”

The sweating had started again the second the lawyer had made his crazy suggestion. His absurd, impossible suggestion. The fresh shirt Gray had changed into at home was already soaked. Again.

“You mean have my father deemed unsound of mind?” he asked, unable to mask his distaste. “Unfit to run the business he built from the ground up?”

John leaned back in his chair. “For God’s sake, Gray, stop pacing and sit down. You’re making me nervous just looking at you. This isn’t like you.”

No, it wasn’t. He had a cool head for business, but business problems had never hit so close to home. His father had never been blackmailed before, and Gray had never had problem after problem dumped on him, one on top of the other, until he was drowning in an ocean of anxiety, hanging on to a bit of flotsam by his fingernails.

Was the universe out to get him or something? What had he ever done to deserve all of this?

Oh, quit with the self-pity. Shit happens to everyone. Deal with it and find solutions.

This—what John wanted?—was one hell of an ugly solution.

“The sale of the property was legitimate,” John continued. “I’m just giving you an option. A way out. Has your father been incoherent at all lately? Has he had memory loss?”

Gray stalked to the window and stared out on to the town. In the distance, he could see the sign for Turner Lumber. “Of course he’s had memory loss. He’s eighty. He’s not senile, though. He doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. It would kill him if I went behind his back and did something like this.”

“Don’t get emotional. This is business.”

Gray knew all about how to run a business, how to separate emotion from whatever had to be done to protect the bottom line, but this was his family they were talking about. “He’s my father.”

“He’s also the head of Turner Enterprises, which you’re telling me needs a significant influx of cash. Selling that land is the smart thing to do. Audrey Stone is standing in your way. This is a solution to that problem.”

“It would devastate my parents.”

“It has to be done.” John’s eyes cooled to the color of wet slate. “I’m good at my job, Gray. This is possible. If I didn’t think this could be done, I wouldn’t suggest it.”

Gray considered himself a tough businessman, but John’s expression chilled even him.

“Go home and give the idea some thought.” John stood. “Rational thought.”

Gray left John’s office but stopped just inside the front door of the reception area before stepping outside, tasting bile in his throat. Declare Dad unfit? Declare his mind unsound? Insane. This couldn’t be happening.

No. There had to be a way around it.

He left the office and stood on Main Street, disoriented, his skin clammy and his breathing shallow. He recognized the symptoms for what they represented. Shock.

And why wouldn’t he be shocked? How could he declare a man he loved and admired unfit, a father who’d done his absolute best for his son?

It would be like stabbing him in the back.

Et tu, Brute?

Like the worst betrayal.

Benches lined the sidewalk, and he sat on one, needing a minute to wrap his head around a difficult decision.

Declare Dad unfit.

Impossible.

What then? Was it better to have Mom learn that her husband had fathered an illegitimate child and then didn’t have the honor to admit to the affair or support the child?

But Dad wouldn’t do that.

It looked as though he had.

Gray didn’t know how much he could trust his father. He’d been hiding things. Was he hiding the truth about this? He’d seemed sincere, though. But that photo...

Circuitous thoughts boggled Gray’s mind.

Pain radiated from his hands and up through his arms. He glanced down. He’d been clenching his fists. He stretched tight fingers. His nails had left arched red welts in his palms.

He couldn’t betray Dad.

Before he would even consider deep-sixing his dad’s good standing, he needed to try a couple of things—first, attempt to buy back the land. If that didn’t work, then second, he had to go to Denver and meet with the woman. Maybe she was lying, and, in person, he’d be able to detect her lies, and the problem would be solved. He could call her bluff. He’d buy himself time to take care of issues at work without this woman’s demand.

Four hundred thousand dollars.

Did she think they were made of money? Ridiculous.

Across the street, Audrey’s tarted-up floral shop, The Last Dance, stood out like a peacock strutting on white sand. What on earth dancing had to do with flowers was beyond him.

He crossed Main and checked out the window display—a microcosm of who the woman was, quirky, boldly colorful, and even classy as Mom had suggested.

He didn’t know why the success of her creativity made him angry, but it did.

She had to sell that land to him, had to save him from betraying the father whose business decisions he might question, but whom he adored.

The sign on the front door said Closed, but he could see Audrey inside. He tested the doorknob. Unlocked. He stepped into a shop that smelled floral and felt cool.

A dog came out from behind the counter and sidled close to Gray, butting his hand with his head. Instinctively, Gray petted him, and the dog closed his eyes, leaning into the caress.

The lovely trust of this uncomplicated creature moved him, reminded him of his Bernese mountain dog, Sean, who’d died a month after the accident, compounding Gray’s already raw grief.

His chest hurt and his throat ached, locked as he was suddenly and inexplicably in that grief again. It happened too often, brought on by nothing and everything.

A movement to his right caught his eye, breaking the spell of pleasure/pain the dog brought out in him. Audrey turned from the flowers she was arranging and watched him silently. Beneath wariness, he could almost detect compassion in her eyes, but why? What was she thinking? What did she see in him?

He looked away from that knowing gaze and down at the long-haired brown-and-white beauty. “What’s his name?”

“Jerry.”

Gray thought about the dog’s name and did a double take. “Isn’t he a springer spaniel?”

“Yep.” She waited, watched, wondering whether he would get the joke. He got it all right. Jerry Springer Spaniel.

If he weren’t so pissed off at the woman, he’d laugh. Her sense of humor was every bit as quirky as her style.

“Yeah?” he asked, feeling the rare hint of a grin tug at the corners of his mouth. “Who are his parents?”

“We don’t know the father. We’ve done DNA tests, though. The results promise to be shocking. We think his mother slept around. It could get ugly.”

Audrey leaned her elbow on the counter and rested her chin on her fist. Her other hand sat on her cocked hip. She had good hips—ample and shapely. A smile tipped the corners of her lush red lips, pride in her own joke.

That tiny smile did a number on his equanimity, threatened to turn him soft, to treat her with tenderness when he couldn’t afford to. If he had any hope in hell of pulling his family out of the mess they were in, he had to hang tough.

He straightened and removed his hand from the dog’s head, denying both himself and the dog pleasure. These days, Gray was more at home with pain.

“Sell me the land.”

He’d shocked her. She stepped behind the counter, putting distance between them. “No.”

“I can move your plants to other greenhouses. At my cost.”

“Moving them at this stage would kill them. Besides, the nearest greenhouses are miles away. I don’t even know if there are any available.”

Damn. “I can research it.”

“No, I won’t risk killing my plants by disturbing them. I don’t have to. I own that land legally.”

“How much do you want for it?”

“Nothing. I’m keeping it.”

“I can give you far more than the plants you’re growing are worth.”

“No.”

His jaw, where all his tension centered, cramped. “What’s your problem? They’re only flowers.”

“What’s your problem?” she countered. “Is money all you think about?”

“These days? Yes.”

“Money is not all that matters in life,” she asserted.

It is if it saves my mother, my family, our business and all its employees. He would never say this to her or to anyone else in town. He would never show vulnerability to an opponent or give her ammunition to use against him.

As far as the business went, only Gray and his accountant knew how close to the edge they were. As far as Gray knew, he was the only one who’d received the letter. That could change, though, if the woman didn’t get what she wanted. I’ll go to the newspapers.

The thought of the tawdry truth splashed across newspaper headlines, the thought of his mother finding out about Dad in that way, in any way, left Gray chilled. Desperate.

He thought of how Mom had looked this morning, fragile yet perky, about as classy a woman as he’d ever known.

How could he let this destroy her?

How could he get Audrey to sell? Now? Today?

“Name your price,” he demanded, an incredibly stupid move for a smart businessman, but he needed that land.

“I don’t have one.”

“Everyone does. What’s yours?”

“Gray, leave my shop.”

“No. Not until you promise to sell to me.”

A frown formed between her dark arched eyebrows, and she edged her hand toward the telephone. “Seriously, Gray, go now or I’ll call the police.”

“No.” He couldn’t, not until she agreed.

She reached under the counter for...what?...a gun? For mace?

He was frightening her. He might be mad to get the land, and she might be the strangest woman he’d ever met, but scaring her was unconscionable. Intimidation to get her to sell? Yes. Outright frightening her? Dead wrong.

He backed away.

“Think about it,” he said, the slightest thread of recklessness seeping into his voice. As a businessman, he was making mistakes left, right and center.

She shook her head, and there was such implacability, such conviction in the movement he knew she would never sell, no matter how high his price.

When he turned and left, desperation wrapped around his throat like a noose. He was going to have to do the unthinkable and have Dad declared unfit.

No. Before he did that, he would drive into Denver and see this woman for himself.

He couldn’t wait—for DNA results, for the woman’s next move, for another damn day. On the heels of that thought, he swore. He couldn’t leave today. He had an appointment with Dad’s accountant that couldn’t be put off.

Tomorrow then. He’d go to Denver first thing tomorrow.

Time for a showdown.

CHAPTER THREE

GRAY SAT IN his car for ten minutes getting his emotions under control, and then started the drive down Main toward Turner Lumber on the end of town opposite to where his parents lived. He couldn’t go home to face them.

Not yet. Not while he considered, let alone actually started, the process toward turning against his father.

He noticed a woman he’d gone to school with walking down the sidewalk. She was one of the descendants of the original founding father, Ian Accord. She carried herself with an elegance and grace, with an air of confidence Gray had often witnessed among the rich. Wealth was a language he himself spoke, and being tongue-tied by his current money problems disheartened him.

Down the street, Audrey Stone stepped out of her flower shop and locked the door behind her, then started in his direction, her pigeon-toed stride oddly endearing.

Full curves moved in different directions. She looked clumsy, but those curves, that walk, the slightly askew pillbox hat—those full red lips—were so insanely feminine, he started to smile.

When she stopped in front of a lingerie shop to look at some feminine froth of satin and lace, Gray imagined it cradling her shapely body. His latent smile spread.

When he realized what his foolish mouth was doing, he made himself stop.

Do not even think about finding this woman attractive. She’s your enemy. If she hadn’t bought that land from Dad, you wouldn’t be in your current predicament.

With a screech of tires, he drove on.

In the parking lot of the massive lumberyard and hardware store that had been in his family since long before Gray’s birth, he threw out the gum he’d been chewing and opened two fresh sticks, chewing hard until his shaking hands calmed and he could breathe easily. Why, for a man who was known as a sharp businessman, did just walking into his father’s business leave him feeling so...afraid? Why did everything these days?

His tension filled the car like dark gas.

He forced himself out of the vehicle and into the building, heading past the large shop to the offices that occupied the second floor. Turner Lumber catered to both contractors and the average man. And woman, Gray reminded himself. There were a lot of knowledgable women out there doing their own repairs these days.

The store covered half an acre of land and served all of the towns for miles around. Even in a city the size of Denver, you would be hard-pressed to find a better-stocked, more efficient supplier. They also rented equipment, a part of the business that used to be a going concern. Since the downturn in the economy, there was less construction. As well, homeowners no longer had the money for renovations.

There had been a spurt of construction when a new ski resort had been built outside of town, but Dad had taken his profits and had invested in risky ventures. When Gray had tried to change them to something safer, Dad had vetoed him. For a man who’d been a smart business owner for so many years, Dad’s actions these days seemed like a textbook case of how not to run a business.

Businesses suffered everywhere, including Turner Lumber. And yet, Dad was giving money away left, right and center. It had to stop. Cauterizing the hemorrhaging of money was Gray’s job.

Upstairs, he found the renovations he’d ordered nearly finished. Part of dragging Turner Lumber into the twenty-first century had been modernizing the office. Gone were the separate cubicles of old, replaced by a huge open space filled with desks and office modules. At the moment, they were squeezed into one half of the space while the floors on the other half were being refinished.

The office kept the idle lumberyard workers busy now that traffic had slowed down there. So far, Gray had managed to keep everyone on the payroll. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold out.

If he was smart, he’d start slashing now, but sentimentality kept getting in the way. Was this what Dad felt when he walked in here?

Gray stopped to talk to the office manager, Hilary Scott. She, like all the employees, wore a cotton mask over her nose and mouth.

“Here.” She handed him a mask. “You should wear it until these guys finish their work.” A frown wrinkled her forehead.

“You don’t look happy,” Gray observed. “What’s the problem?”

“The noise.”

“That’s temporary. It won’t last.”

“The dust. Look at our desks.”

A fine gray film settled over everything.

“I’ll have a cleaning crew come in on the weekend.”

Hilary sighed. “But what kind of chemicals, or even old mold, have you stirred up with this destruction?”

Gray loved language, loved how he could manipulate it to his advantage in business, but hated how it could be corrupted.

“This isn’t destruction, Hilary. This is change.”

She didn’t answer, just stood her ground like a wiry-haired bantam hen.

“In another week, things will settle down,” Gray said.

“Given how hard it is to get work done in this—” she gestured with her chin toward the open space, not the contractors and their work, he noticed “—I fervently hope it gets better.”

He barely held himself back from shaking his head. New ideas were always hard to implement. Hilary and her employees had been working with the same systems for years. “These changes should further innovation and fresh thinking.” Something Turner Lumber could use, he didn’t say aloud.

“The open concept should inspire a more communal sense of the company, and the resultant community should inspire more communication and new ideas.”

Hilary nodded but didn’t look convinced. “We already enjoy plenty of community here.”

“Then you should support an increase in that.” He had enough resistance to deal with from his dad. He didn’t need to face it here at work, as well.

“Listen, Hilary.” He sounded testy. Too bad. He was on edge and tired of facing problems everywhere he turned. “Given that you called me home to help, I expected cooperation from you.”

“I didn’t think you’d be changing everything.”

“What did you think I’d do?”

“Make it the way it was before your dad started making dubious choices.”

Hilary was as naive as Dad was. There was no salvation for the company without upgrading it, not in the current financial environment, not using strategies that were forty and fifty years old.

He entered the office he’d set up for himself in the corner to catch his breath and to prepare for his meeting with Arnold Haygood, Turner Lumber’s accountant. His area had sliding walls that opened to the larger space. Most of the time he left the walls open, keeping himself involved. When he needed to have sensitive conversations or make phone calls that he didn’t want overheard, he could slide the walls closed for the best of both worlds.

Still, that feeling of suffocation, the difficulty breathing, had followed him into the office, and had nothing to do with renovation dust or face masks.

He needed to push the deals through on the sale of the land and finish liquidating more of Dad’s assets, so Gray never had to step in here again, never again had to experience this cloying panic.

Maybe it was time to sell the company. He’d been fighting the idea, keeping it as a last resort. He shouldn’t let emotion get in the way of business, but as much as these were Dad’s people, they were also his.

Despite his current anxiety, his memories of running through this place as a child were good. He knew everyone who worked here. What if the new owners mistreated them?

Before leaving Boston, he’d toyed with the idea of selling his company there and moving here to live, not just swooping in to fix whatever was wrong, but to actually stay and run Turner Lumber. Leaving Marnie behind, though, never being able to visit her gravesite, saying goodbye yet again, this time permanently... He couldn’t do it.

Then he’d come home and all of this weird behavior had started, the panic attacks and anxiety, the suffocation.

So then he’d thought he would hire a good manager to take over. But now, with the letter from this woman, and more and more demands on limited dollars, he had to consider that maybe it was time to just sell.

Panic clutched at him again. If having Dad declared incompetent made him nauseous, the thought of how disappointed Dad would be if he sold the company rather than keeping it and running it himself as part of his heritage made him positively ill.

“Hilary,” he called.

Seconds later she stood in front of his desk. She was nothing if not efficient.

“After the men finish the renovations for the day, have all of the employees gather in the office.”

Hilary waited, but Gray didn’t explain. He knew he needed to make changes and he knew the staff should be told, but he had to confirm everything with Arnie before he spoke. He and the accountant could hash out details this afternoon.

* * *

AT LUNCHTIME, AUDREY closed her floral shop and walked down Main to the Sweet Temptations Bakery and Café, resolutely avoiding thinking about that disturbing incident with Gray. He’d been strange, almost unbalanced, but still so handsome, so smoothly...right.... With those pale gray eyes so striking against his perfectly tanned skin, it almost hurt to look at him.

There’d been that brief moment when he’d let his guard down, when he’d been petting Jerry, his expression tender and almost wistful.

Then he’d turned hard. She disliked that version of the man with all of her heart.

A movement in the window of Enchanté caught her attention, Marceline waving and gesturing toward a black teddy with pink polka dots and pink bows. Oh, so cute. Oh, so sexy.

She couldn’t possibly afford it.

Audrey had dresser drawers that overflowed with basques and silk knickers and corsets. Oh, she loved lingerie. She’d been diligent in her search for amazing undergarments at excellent prices. With her full figure, she needed good support and quality material. So much beautiful French lingerie. So little space, time and money.

And no one to wear it for. She did wear it, though, every day, but, oh, it would be lovely to have someone to whom she could show it off.

She shook her head and mimed drying tears from the corners of her eyes, making Marceline smile, and walked on. Someday she would share her favorites with a special someone.

At the café, she ordered a couple of soups and sandwiches then carried lunch along Main to the Army Surplus.

When she stepped into the store, she breathed deeply of the mothballs and incense that made up her friend’s unique scent.

“Noah?” she called.

He came out of the back carrying a pile of boxes, bobbing up onto the balls of his feet in his signature walk that kept him looking young and boyish, one of the things she adored about him.

He bussed her on the cheek. She didn’t return the favor. Noah didn’t like lipstick. She giggled and thought of doing it anyway, of leaving a big swath of red gloss across his cheek, but suppressed her inner imp.

“What did you bring today?” he asked.

“Tomato garlic soup and pastrami on rye.”

“Hot mustard?”

“You got it, cowboy.”

Noah smiled, cleared off the counter and pulled up a couple of stools. He retrieved their bamboo reusable cutlery from a drawer and handed it to her while she set out their lunch, the routine comforting. They might as well be a married couple.

And don’t think she hadn’t wondered many a time whether she should be marrying Noah. He suited her perfectly. She couldn’t ask for a better friend. Too bad that she wanted more in a relationship than this easy friendship.

“Want to go to a concert in Denver?” Noah asked. He named a date in October when a band they both liked would be performing.

“You bet.”

It was a pair of young Swedish women with old souls, throwbacks to sixties hippies, and their music resonated with Noah. They were also insanely talented and very young.

“How can they be successful at such an early age?” she mused.

“Adolescence lends itself to creativity. You remember how creative you were back then.”

Yes, she did. It had been a magical time.

And so painful.

She’d had no female influence to guide her into womanhood. Mom had already been dead for nearly ten years. Audrey remembered being confused, with a body that was blossoming too quickly, too early. She’d hidden her loneliness under a tough veneer and her burgeoning breasts and hips under big clothes.

Dad hadn’t had a clue how to help her.

“Those girls in the band were probably supported by their parents.” Noah threw his sandwich wrapper into the recycle bin. “Imagine where you’d be today if your dad had supported your interest in flowers instead of pushing you into geology.”

“He only wanted what was best for me.”

“I know, but only you could decide that. Not him.”

They’d been through this argument before, so Audrey said no more. Nothing either of them said would change the fact that she’d worked in an industry she shouldn’t have for too long.

She was where she needed to be now, though, and just in the nick of time to take care of Dad.

Noah seemed to understand and changed the subject. “How did the standoff go at the greenhouse this morning?”

“Fine,” she answered. “Gray didn’t even know his father had sold the land to me.”

“Figures. Dude just wants to make money so badly.” He pointed his wooden spoon at her. “You watch out for that guy. He’s a corporate snake in the grass. I don’t doubt he can get down and dirty when he needs to.”

“Relax, Noah. The sale was legal.”

“I don’t trust him.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

Audrey smiled, but Noah didn’t return it, and that chilled her.

“Listen, Noah, I dealt with plenty of Gray’s corporate doppelgängers in my previous job. I can be as tough as I need to be.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No ‘buts’ about it. Seriously. I can take care of myself.”

“I know you can.” Noah’s sentiment sounded hollow. He should be the last person on earth to condescend to her, but she knew their history made it hard for him to think of her as independent.

In high school, when she’d been only fourteen, and too smart and a year ahead of her peers, and already trying to express her individuality with weird clothes, he’d caught a bunch of kids bullying her. Older Noah had given them hell. Even as a young teenager, Noah’s personality had already been set in stone, as though he’d come out of his mother’s womb fully formed. No one Audrey knew had better ethics or morals or stronger convictions, and he wasn’t afraid to act on them.

When he’d rescued her from the kids making fun of her spiky hair, her big boots and her baggy clothes, when he’d taken her under his brotherly wing, she’d been grateful, but it had been an uphill battle ever since to get him to see her as a grown-up. Maybe that was why they’d stayed friends and nothing more.

Too bad Noah’s version of support didn’t match what she needed these days. She buried her disappointment and ate her lunch.

When she left, though, Noah called to her, “Audrey.”

She turned from the doorway.

“You know I want only what’s best for you, right?” He smiled, his lips full in the middle of his red beard, but creases furrowed his forehead.

Oh, Noah. He didn’t even begin to get the similarities between her father and him. Hadn’t they already established that Dad had always wanted what he thought was best for her, too?

“I understand,” she said to ease his worried frown and left the shop.

* * *

GRAY TOSSED HIS pen on to the desk and took a deep, calming breath. Either that, or he would throttle the closest person. Considering that it was Dad’s blameless accountant, that wouldn’t be fair.

“I tried to talk Harrison out of this innumerable times,” Arnie said. “He wouldn’t budge. He wanted to give his people all of these benefits.”

“The company can’t afford them, though. I understand Dad’s urge, his largesse, given how long most of his employees have worked for him, but did he have to give them everything? Massages, for God’s sake. Orthodontics. Orthotics. Couldn’t he have chosen a cheaper benefit package? Just eye glasses and dental? Did he have to opt for the whole kit and caboodle?”

“I used those arguments myself, but he was...” Arnie’s glance slid away.

“Go ahead. Say it. Dad was stubborn.”

“Yeah, he was. About this, at any rate.”

“We have to cancel the contract with the insurance company.”

If the situation hadn’t been dire, Arnie’s look of horror would have been funny.

“What?” Gray asked. “We have to.”

“It’s one thing to fight with a union or a group of employees about implementing this kind of thing, but once it’s done, it just shouldn’t be taken away.”

Gray took another of his calming breaths. “It’s either that or layoffs, right?”

Arnie’s mouth became a thin slash in his aging face. “Yes.”

“Layoffs are the last resort, so we get rid of the benefits.” Gray glanced at his watch. Six o’clock. His head ached. He and Arnie had been hammering away at the budget, making cuts wherever they could, but the benefits package Dad had bought his employees a few years ago was the biggie.

“Come on,” he said. “Hilary should have everyone gathered by now.”

He stood and slid the walls of his office open. Many of the employees were already there. Turner Lumber employed over fifty people.

Some looked relaxed and others tense. Some expected him to be his dad. Others knew he wasn’t.

“The cashiers are just cashing out their tills downstairs, and then they’ll be up.” Hilary led him to a table she’d set up along the far wall, then took a militant stance. “I put on a pot of coffee and ordered in goodies from the bakery to tide everyone over until dinnertime.”

The defiance in her voice bugged him. Honest to God, she didn’t get that he wasn’t mean or stingy or hard-hearted, but a realist. Certain things had to change to save the company, but they could still afford doughnuts.

He was tired of tension in the company and with Hilary. He’d had to call her to task more than once for her spending of company money without his permission.

Worse, she’d actually called Dad a couple of times to make sure that what Gray was doing was okay with him. The woman needed to screw her head on right. She was either for or against him.

In the meantime, she ran the everyday details that Gray didn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole. He needed more responsibility in his life like he needed a lobotomy.

What would the company do without Hilary?

“Thanks,” he said, to appease her. “It was good of you to think of it.”

Hilary smiled, but reluctantly.

To satisfy her further, even though he didn’t have a sweet tooth, he bit into a doughnut. Hilary grinned.

Stifling a sigh, he turned away to socialize, asking about spouses and children.

When the last of the employees had finally dribbled in, Gray called for their attention.

He thanked them for their loyalty over the years and their hard work. Then, with Arnie by his side, he unloaded his bombshell.

“We’re canceling the benefits package my dad gave to all of you a few years ago.”

The eruption of complaints hit the rafters, the sound level sending the throbbing in Gray’s temples into overdrive.

“Cripes,” he mumbled to Arnie. “You’d think I was killing a litter of puppies.”

“Can I say I told you so? Once you’ve given something to people, they take ownership. You try to take it back and they don’t thank you for having given it to them in the first place. Instead, they think they’re being robbed.” Arnie shrugged. “Human nature.”

Once Gray got the crowd under control again, he got right to the point. “Here’s the alternative. Layoffs.”

Again, more grumbling, but this time more subdued. Shock, no doubt.

“I’m fighting tooth and nail to not have that happen. I’ve kept you all on and plan to continue to do so, but you have to work with me. We need to cut corners like crazy. The economy is bad across the country.”

Mumbling all around. The employees’ fear smelled metallic, like spilled blood.

“My concern,” Gray continued, “is that once I let any of you go, you won’t get another job. The retail, hotel and restaurant sectors of Accord are doing well because of tourism, but industry is suffering. We need to fight hard to save Turner Lumber.”

He stalked to his office and slapped a hand against the office wall he’d slid open earlier. “This,” he said, “will be open all day most days. If any of you have ideas on how to cut costs, how to improve service to the customers so they’ll return more often, how to change anything that will help this company stay in business, you come to me and I’ll listen.”

Tired to the bone, he all but mumbled, “I’m heading out now. I’m sure you all have a lot you want to discuss without the boss hovering, so stay as long as you need to. Everyone still has jobs for now. See you tomorrow morning.”

He left the office. Where minutes ago, it had been full of noise, now it was silent. Perhaps they finally understood the situation. Despite how he’d tried to make changes recently, they had resisted and hadn’t understood fully how bad things were.

But Gray had. Maybe now they did, too.

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