are you going?”
“Our secret spot,” I confess, making sure I have the room key before we leave. “Well, more like Hayes and Henry’s. I wasn’t allowed to go with them until I was older.”
“Okay, lead the way,” she says, sounding uncertain but following me up the dim stairs to the roof. “Is this like an all-boys kind of club?”
“No, I’m sure if we had a sister, we would’ve let her come with us,” I tell her. “I bet Hayes already brought Blaire a few times.”
“She’s nice,” she says, standing in the doorway as she looks around. “This is gorgeous.”
“You can see even more stars from here than you can from home.” I set the blanket I brought with me on the floor, along with the bottle, and take a seat. “Come on, let’s drown our sorrows.”
“What’s going to happen if one of you is missing?” she asks. “Are they really going to—”
“Sell everything and destroy the town?” I nod in confirmation.
“Hayes, Henry, and I have a few ideas on how to prevent it,” I explain. “However, he stole a week from us.”
I shake my head and confess, “I fucked up too. The dates made a lot of noise. I should’ve looked closer, but with everyone pulling me into so many directions and… I trusted Mom.”
“Let’s focus on the now.” She swallows hard. “Can we buy everything?”
“No,” I remind her. “There are only a few pre-approved buyers.”
“What if you talk to them?”
“We’re trying to find them and buy them out, but if we fail tomorrow…I don’t know what we can do,” I confess. “Whoever buys can’t be heartless.”
She huffs, “People with money are too heartless.”
“Yes, but…” I can’t defend anyone because she’s met the worst kind already. “I agree, but with the right price, they might sell back to us. Hayes and I will stay to rebuild if necessary.”
“If you need money, I have plenty,” she offers, and I smile. This is the woman I married. She’d give up all of her fortune to save this place. I don’t even know how much that is though. It doesn’t matter to me at all. If I’m lucky, she might stay long enough to see this town is safe from my crazy father.
“Thank you,” I answer. “We might not need it, but if we do, I won’t hesitate to ask.”
“After walking through the town and talking to Blaire, I’ve decided that I want to open an animal hospital here,” she states.
Arching an eyebrow, I ask, “You do?”
“Why are you surprised?”
I shrug. “That means staying longer than a couple of months.”
She nods a couple of times, looking at the dark horizon. I stare at her. She seems relaxed. A lot more than she has been in a long time. A small voice whispers in my head, what if?
“When you apply for adoption, I’ll be happy to look over the applications and send a recommendation letter,” I offer. “The training you took in Colorado to foster doesn’t count, but it might help you get a certification here.”
“I’ll have to figure out where to take the classes and what’s the process, but I might need to leave town,” she informs me. “Which I wouldn’t mind, but we’re not allowed to get out of this place unless it’s to go to Happy Springs.”
“There are a few things I might be able to tweak, and going to Portland is one of them,” I assure her.
“Tell me more about the things you used to do with your brothers,” she says as she lays on the blanket, staring at the dark sky. “I bet you raised havoc during those weeks you visited.”
The next morning, Easton and his guys help me move the furniture. Hayes, Henry, Beacon, and Mills arrive when we are done, and I’m starting to hang pictures and shelves throughout the media room and the living room. When I see them, I realize I forgot one tiny little problem. Arden. When the guys enter the house, and Leyla spots him, she freezes, turns white, and her mouth opens into a perfect o.
It is as if she has seen a ghost.
“Red,” Mills greets her and grins at me. “It’s nice to see you without that big parasite next to you.”
She smiles, staring at Arden. “He’s cute, and my name is Leyla. Not Red,” she pauses and gives a rugged look at him.
I smirk and shrug. I told him never to call her that.
“That’s what People magazine and the entire world says. Kind of. They call me the hottest man