The Lemon Sisters Read online

  He heard his own rough laugh, because that’s exactly what he’d been doing as she left him alone with his thoughts. Staring at her and trying to land on how he felt. He knew how he’d felt about her in the past.

  He just had no idea how he felt about her in the here and now.

  THE NEXT DAY, Garrett was outside Mindy and Linc’s kitchen, cutting tiles for the master bathroom. During a lull from the loud tile cutter, he heard an angry voice coming through the open kitchen window.

  Brooke.

  “Don’t you judge my nephew on my past behaviors,” she was saying, clearly on the phone. “So I was a handful, I get it. But Mason’s not, he’s an angel—” There was a pause. “Okay, yes, I get it, he’s wearing his sister’s dress. But if it’s okay with her, then I don’t see what business it is of yours— No, you can’t take this up with his mom. I’m in charge right now, so you get to deal with me, and I say the kid gets to wear what the kid wants to wear—” She paused. “Oh,” she said, much softer and without attitude. Almost . . . apologetic. “No, I didn’t realize today was horseback riding. Yes, I can see why a dress probably wasn’t the best choice. Sure. I’ll send him better equipped tomorrow.”

  Garrett had to laugh as he started to go back to his work, but the total and complete silence coming out that kitchen window was filled with a strained sadness he couldn’t ignore.

  Don’t do it, man. Be smart. Just go back to work.

  He didn’t go back to work. He entered the kitchen, which was empty. He couldn’t have said why, but he went in search of the prickly, frustrating, irritating woman who could still drive him crazy, and found the living room glass slider open. Stepping out onto the deck, he surveyed the large yard. Mindy and Linc hadn’t done much with the land, although he and Linc had sure managed to make the most of it, creating the huge Slip ’N Slide for the kids. It was an ongoing project, getting bigger weekly.

  Past that, the place was lined in the back with huge overgrown oak trees. The previous generation of Lemons had added lemon trees as well, and then there was a hill that led down to a valley of wineries and vineyards stretching as far as the eye could see.

  At the base of one of the lemon trees sat Brooke, knees up, arms hugging her legs as she stared out at the view. He was about twenty feet from her when she spoke without looking at him. “Go away.”

  Yeah. He really, really wanted to do that. Instead he moved closer still and crouched down at her side, balanced on the balls of his feet.

  “You never listen.” Her voice was low and, dammit, quavering. She had dark circles under her eyes. She looked exhausted.

  A pissed-off Brooke he knew how to handle. But a sad Brooke . . . he didn’t have a clue. “I always listen,” he said. “I just don’t always agree. Do I need to go beat someone up at Mason’s camp?”

  Her response was a low, mirthless laugh. “No. Turns out that was my bad.”

  He shrugged. “Mistakes happen.”

  “Not to Mindy.”

  He laughed, and utterly unable to help himself, reached out and stroke a wayward strand of hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear.

  Brooke stilled at the touch, then lifted her gaze to his, her eyes suspiciously shiny, and so green it almost hurt to hold her gaze.

  And yet he didn’t look away. “Mindy would be the first to tell you that’s not true,” he said quietly. “She makes mistakes. We all do.”

  “You don’t.”

  “I do,” he said.

  “When?”

  “You’re not sleeping,” he said instead of answering.

  She shrugged.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because I’m a monster.”

  “Brooke, I was kidding. You’re not a monster.”

  “I am. I lost our baby.”

  He let out a slow, careful breath. He was in no way prepared for this walk down Painful Memories Road, but neither could he turn away from it.

  Or her.

  They’d never talked about it—not for lack of trying on his part. She’d been twenty-one and had been back in Wildstone a whole week that time. They’d made the most of each and every night while still pretending it was just a “one-time thing.”

  But deep down, he’d known he’d wanted more—a lot more. He’d never known what she’d wanted. She’d kept her own counsel.

  Two months later, she’d shown up again, pale and sick and practically vibrating with tension. When she told him she was pregnant and that he was the only one she’d been with in the past year, he’d somehow been both terrified and elated at the same time. But not wanting to pressure her, he’d let her take the lead on what she wanted to do. Her body, her decision. When she’d put her hands over her belly in a protective gesture, he’d offered to marry her.

  She couldn’t have committed to a dentist appointment back then. Hell, neither could he, for that matter, but he’d been willing to try.

  And, shocking him, so had she.

  That same day, she’d been called back to work. Having not had time to process any of it, they’d decided to keep the pregnancy to themselves for the time being, much like their so-called relationship. Brooke told her bosses she had to give up the climbing and dangerous jobs and keep her feet firmly on the ground, and they’d promised her it wasn’t going to be a problem.

  And indeed, the job she’d gone on, taking photos from the safety of a helicopter over Machu Picchu for a crossover special between the Travel Network and Nat Geo, should have been a piece of cake. But there’d been a surprise storm and the helicopter had been forced to try to land at high altitude. Gale-force winds had taken them out. They’d crash-landed, and the survivors had been stranded on a steep precipice for twenty-four hours before being rescued.

  The conditions had been brutal. Brooke’s injuries had been more so. Concussion, cracked ribs, pierced lung, broken leg, and internal trauma that had damaged her spleen beyond repair, pierced a piece of her liver, and some other things that had culminated in her losing the baby and nearly her life.

  And none of it had been her fault.

  Garrett, along with her family, had flown to the hospital in Peru, terrified she’d die. But by the time they got there, she was out of her first of two surgeries and aware enough to make sure no one would mention the baby she’d lost to her family. Only he and the doctors had known.

  As far as he was aware, she’d never told another soul, not even Mindy.

  When she was finally liberated from the hospital and had come home to recover, she’d brushed off everyone’s concerns, saying she was fine.

  With hindsight being twenty-twenty, along with seven years of questionable personal growth and maturity, Garrett had come to realize that Brooke had been too young to deal, so she’d carefully buried it deep and convinced everyone that all was good.

  One of her best lies.

  She’d left as soon as she could, and because she was a master at evasion when she wanted to be, she’d managed to successfully avoid him every time she’d been in town since.

  Which had been few and far between.

  “You didn’t lose the baby on purpose,” he said carefully. “Tell me you’re not blaming yourself.”

  She didn’t answer.

  Shit.

  “Brooke,” he said softly.

  She covered her face. “Don’t be nice to me about it—I’ll fall apart. You’re mad at me, and you should be.”

  “Stop.” He pulled her hands from her face and held on to them, squeezing gently. “How could you think I’d be mad at you for losing the baby? My God, Bee, is that what you think of me? I’m that guy, that selfish bastard who’d blame you for what happened?”

  She stared at him, her eyes luminescent—whether at the use of his old nickname for her or his question, he had no idea. “Then why are you mad?” she whispered.

  “Brooke . . .” He shook his head. “There’s no reason to go there.”

  “But there is.” She drew in an unsteady breath, like she was fortifying
herself. “You’re part of the reason I’m here.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I promised Mindy I’d take the kids for a few days to give her a break. I was thinking Disneyland, but while I was driving, I started to think about my sister, and how hard she always tries. If Mindy the control freak can ask for help, then I could man up, too.”

  “About what?”

  Her gaze met his and she let out another long, purposeful breath. “For a long time now, I’ve known I need to make some changes. My life . . . it’s not what I thought it would be. So I formulated a plan and changed lanes, and came north.”

  He was fascinated in spite of himself. “What was the plan?”

  She held up a finger. “One, to face Wildstone again.” Then a second finger. “Two, help Mindy by kicking Linc’s ass.”

  He choked out a laugh.

  She held up a third finger. “And three . . . apologize to you.”

  He didn’t know what to make of that. “That’s only three things,” he said. “There’s no way you made a list with an odd number of things on it.”

  She looked surprised at how well he knew her, which he could admit rankled. “You’re right,” she said. “Four, I want to return to LA and get my old job—and my life—back. The life I’ve been missing.”

  He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. “What’s the apology for?”

  She drew a deep breath. “For what happened after the helicopter crash. Not just for how I left, or that I stayed gone. But how I ruined you and me.” She swallowed hard. “And that I never acknowledged that you’d been hurt by the crash, too, and the loss of our baby, every bit as much as I was.”

  He hadn’t realized until that very moment how much he’d needed to hear that from her, but she was breathing roughly, the air hitching in and out of her lungs, and her eyes were shiny, so shiny he could have drowned in them. He pulled her in and tried to soothe her with his body heat. “Losing the baby wasn’t your fault. You’re hearing me, right?” He’d say it as many times as she needed him to.

  When she didn’t look at him, he gently wrapped his fist up in her hair and gently tugged her face to his. “Listen to me, okay? Listen and really hear me—the crash wasn’t your fault. The injuries, all you went through . . . losing the baby,” he said carefully. “None of it was your doing.”

  She closed her eyes. “We both know how I felt about getting pregnant.”

  He did know. She’d been clear on that. When she found out, she’d been upset, in shock, and not at all sure she wanted to be a mom. At the time he’d had zero idea of how he felt about it, but in the end, it hadn’t mattered.

  In the years since, he’d had plenty of time to dwell, and he’d come to a realization. He wanted to be a father someday. He wanted that quite badly. But when it was the right time, with the right woman. “You were young—”

  “Twenty-one,” she said. “Old enough to conceive that baby, and old enough to face the consequences. And what did I do? The day I found out, I—” She squeezed her eyes shut and tears leaked out, pouring down her cheeks. With a frustrated sound, she covered her face, trembling from head to toe with suppressed emotion. “I wished our baby away.”

  Heart aching, he pressed his forehead to hers. “It doesn’t work like that, Brooke. None of what happened was your fault. Please tell me you know that.”

  “But what happened after was. I walked away from Wildstone, from my family. From you.”

  And he’d never understood why. He’d assumed she’d simply decided to put it behind her. All of it, including him. Her gaze was shattered and haunted, and his breath caught at the pain she’d kept hidden. “I really didn’t want to come back here and face this,” she said. “You have no idea how close I was to going to Disneyland.”

  “But you came here.”

  She shrugged off what he actually considered to have been an incredible gesture on her part. “When I got here, I felt . . .” She shook her head. “Everything. It all came back, what I lost by walking away. I destroyed my relationship with Mindy. And I did the same thing to us. I’m sorry, Garrett. I know I should’ve said all this a long time ago, that it’s way too late, but—”

  He set a finger over her lips. “There’s nothing to forgive,” he said truthfully. “Your body, your life, your choice, Brooke. Always.”

  “No, you can’t say that,” she murmured. “You don’t know.”

  There were tears in her voice again, and through the mixed feelings that her presence caused, he ached for her. “What don’t I know, Bee?” he asked softly. “You can tell me. You can tell me anything.”

  “Can I?”

  How could she not know?

  Because you’ve been a dick. Aloof. Distant. You made it clear that we weren’t going to be anything to each other, not ever again. He took her hand and pressed it to his chest. “Yes, you can. Tell me why you stayed away so long. Tell me why you wouldn’t let me back in.”

  “I can’t get pregnant again. I can’t have another baby.”

  The words ran through his brain for several long seconds before they penetrated, and even then, he was stunned into silence. “I . . . didn’t know,” he finally said.

  “I know.” Her eyes drifted shut. “I didn’t want you to. I didn’t want anyone to know. I didn’t want pity when I didn’t even fully understand how it would affect me.”

  He stared at her, wishing she’d open her eyes and look at him. “You should have told me. Or at the very least, told your family. You shouldn’t have gone through that alone.”

  “I wanted to be alone,” she said, and finally met his gaze. “I have no regrets about that, Garrett. And if I had to do it all over again, I’d do the same thing. Actually, if I could go back and change anything, it would be to not tell you about the pregnancy to begin with, so that you didn’t have to suffer the loss, too.”

  He was surprised by how much she could still shock him. Hurt him. Rising, he turned away. He’d thought he no longer cared, that he’d moved on, but seeing her again and hearing what she’d gone through all alone had proved him wrong. A fact that, in turn, scared the hell out of him. Her walking away from him had left its indelible mark, had changed him, made him more protective of his heart. The heart that at one point had beat in his chest for her.

  And it was beating for her right now, too, but in frustration—something that he didn’t know what to do with. “That’s not how relationships work, Brooke. You share the good and the bad. Especially the bad. You lean on each other and get through shit because of it. You don’t do it all alone—you’ve got to understand that by now. Hell,” he said with a rough laugh, “who am I kidding? Clearly, you still don’t know that at all.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “I wanted to help you through it. I wanted to be there for you.”

  Her face crumpled. “I know, and I’m so sorry—”

  “No. Stop.” He took a deep breath. “I get it. And thank you for the apology, but I don’t need it.” He rose to his full height, but she grabbed his hand and tugged until he looked at her again.

  “I was trying to protect you,” she said. “We were young and stupid and got pregnant. People would have talked.”

  “I never cared about that. I only cared about you.”

  She stood up, too. “That would never have held up, considering what you now know.”

  He stared at her. “Are you suggesting that I would’ve wanted out because you lost the ability to physically bear a child?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus.” He shoved his hands through his hair, not even sure what to say. “What did I do so wrong that you could think that of me?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t forget—I saw you, Garrett, I saw your face when I told you. You were way more excited about the pregnancy than I was.”

  He let out a sound of stunned disbelief. “That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have wanted you if you couldn’t have babies, Brooke. I wouldn’t have cared about that. I didn’t care about anything other than mak
ing sure you were okay.”

  She gave a slow head shake. She didn’t believe him. And if there was one thing he knew about Brooke, it was that you couldn’t change her mind unless she wanted to change it. He looked at her, really looked, and felt something clench inside him, something that lessened his frustration. Her dark circles had dark circles. She wore no makeup. Her eyes were red from crying, but it was more than that. She looked beyond exhausted. “Okay, seriously,” he said, “when was the last time you slept?”

  She shrugged. “What day is it?”

  Not willing to play, he shook his head and took her into Mindy and Linc’s house. “Which bedroom are you using?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Brooke.”

  “The living room couch.”

  His brow furrowed. “Why?”

  “I didn’t want to dislodge any of the kids. And I didn’t want to sleep in my mom and dad’s old room, which I realize is Mindy and Linc’s now, but still. The couch is fine.”

  “The couch isn’t fine,” he said. His personal feelings aside, it bothered him that she had so thoroughly ignored her own needs as if she felt she didn’t deserve to have them. “It’s uncomfortable as hell and has been since the day Mindy brought it home from some sale warehouse.” Still holding on to her, he strode back out the kitchen door and across the side yard to his own kitchen door.

  Where they were immediately bombarded by a trio of meows.

  “They love you,” Brooke said.

  “No, they stalk me. Ali McClaw and Chairwoman Miao were Ann’s. I’d like to rehome them, but I’m pretty sure they’ll refuse to go anywhere.”

  “You would never abandon them. Or anyone or anything that needed a place to call home.”

  Uncomfortable with the realization that she knew him every bit as well as he knew her, he shook his head in automatic denial. “Don’t kid yourself. I’d dump them in a hot minute for a dog.”

  The cats ignored this for the bullshit it was. So did Brooke. She hadn’t taken the time to look around last night. He knew because he’d been watching her so closely. But she looked now, and he knew what she was seeing. Just like Mindy and Linc’s house, this one had changed since she’d seen it last. The flowery wallpaper was gone, as was the beat-up old furniture. This version was much more masculine, the furniture big and comfy, all in deep colors. Shelves were lined with books and mementos, along with photographs, and he wondered if she was surprised to see herself in several of them. He took her upstairs to his bedroom.