Chapter Five

 

 

Then he walked into his house and was enveloped by the madness that both repelled him and that had helped shape him.

Jack and Daphne Chance were remarkable people. They’d met when a nineteen-year old Daphne was pregnant with another man’s child. They’d married and had kids of their own. They also picked up strays along the way. They wouldn’t turn away a child whose parents were unable or unwilling to provide a loving home. Over the years, they’d ended up with eleven. One of the many things he admired about his folks was that they refused to differentiate between the kids who were adopted and those who weren’t. Jack, a foster kid with some bitter memories, said he never wanted to be one of those men who announced, “This is my son so and so and my adopted son, such and such.”

The deal was that when the kids reached sixteen they could ask if they wanted to find out the truth of their parentage. Of course, the older ones had a pretty good idea about the ancestry of the younger ones, but they’d grown up understanding that keeping that secret was an unbreakable family deal.

He had some murky memories of his own origins but sixteen had come and gone and he’d found he didn’t really care. He strongly suspected he did not spring from the loins of Jack and Daphne. Based on his dark looks and a certain affinity he felt for the land, he believed he was part native. He had never said those words aloud, but some journalist somewhere had suggested that he was a shaman. The idea had stuck and been repeated so often it was part of his professional aura. He never confirmed or denied. Frankly, he didn’t know.

And the last thing he wanted to do was dig into his beginnings. Some things were better left buried.

He headed toward the low roar coming from the living room and found most of his family gathered together.

In the pandemonium that greeted his arrival, Evan finally yelled louder than anyone else, which was pretty much how you got people’s attention in the Chance household. “Guys, hold up, I gotta introduce Prescott to Caitlyn.”

A grinning Evan came forward looking happier and more at home with himself than Prescott had ever seen him. “Scott, this is the woman who is planning to join the family, so behave yourself.”

He fell in love with his soon-to-be sister-in-law on sight. She was gorgeous, elegant, but also had a warmth that most of Evan’s previous girls had lacked.

She rose and they shook hands. “I’m so happy to meet you,” she said with a refined East Coast accent.

“Sorry we haven’t met sooner.” He’d been so busy with work. Always work. That was his excuse, anyway. But now that he was here he was conscious that he’d missed his sibs.

He glanced around the crowded living room.

All of them were there but one.

“Where’s Ben?” Ben was the oldest and the one who was home least. The family rule about keeping a person’s parentage secret didn’t apply to him. Since he was half black, it was pretty obvious Jack wasn’t his father.

“He’s on some kind of hush-hush government business.”

For a while they’d all thought Ben was a spy, but it turned out he was involved in trade talks. Hush-hush because of global economic rather than political or military reasons, though, of course, the economy connected to all of it.

While he chatted with Caitlyn, he saw Holly enter his peripheral vision. She paused, hovered at the edge of things, still appearing a little unsure of her welcome.

“Did everybody meet Holly?” he yelled in his turn, drawing her into the room.

Since she’d arrived at his home before him, it seemed like everybody had.

He pulled her forward by the hand and found her a seat by kicking Cooper off his.

“Oh, no, that’s okay,” she said when he gave Cooper the heave-ho.

“I’m used to it,” Cooper said with good nature. “Been abused all my life.”

He could feel the curiosity pulsing as they all tried to figure out his relationship with Holly. Even Cooper, who could usually be relied upon to ask the awkward question, was strangely silent. Finally, he said, “Holly and I work together.”

“Oh,” about three people said at once, in various tones of Then what’s she doing at our family home on a weekend?

None of anyone’s business so he left it at that and engaged Caitlyn in conversation, keeping Holly included.

Since Prescott didn’t believe idle conversation served a purpose, he got right to a subject that concerned him. “Evan isn’t really going to make us all wear rented tuxes, is he?”

Caitlyn seemed like a sensible woman, and everyone knew the bride was the one who made all the critical decisions about a wedding. Also, he could tell from one look at her that she had class and good taste. He felt he could count on her.

“Oh, well.” She pushed her long hair behind her ears in a gesture that made her look like a high school student and not an accomplished doctor in her thirties. She glanced to Evan in appeal. “That’s really not my decision.”

Evan must have sensed what was going on for he came over and sat on the floor at Caitlyn’s feet. “What’s my little brother doing now?” he asked as though Prescott had borrowed his car without asking. Honestly, it had only happened that once. Prescott was still proud that he hadn’t hurt the deer that had leapt in front of him on the highway and only the car was totaled. Evan, however, hadn’t seen it that way, and a backyard brawl culminating in a painful black eye had ensued.

“I’m trying to talk your girlfriend, who seems like a woman of taste, out of those awful tuxes. We’ll look like the Osmond Brothers.”

“But way better looking,” Evan insisted.

“Cooper?” he appealed.

“Hey, anything that’s not a hand-me-down is good for me.” He loved to claim that he’d only ever worn clothes each of his brothers had worn before him. It wasn’t true. Mostly.

Realizing that he wasn’t going to get anything but grief from pushing the issue with the tuxes, he went to work on the next item on his agenda.

He cornered his mom in the kitchen on the pretext of helping with dinner. “Where are you putting Holly?” he asked, thinking the house was going to burst at the seams with all of them home. It had been bad enough when they were kids and smaller, but now there were eleven adults, plus guests, plus Jack and Daphne. He couldn’t imagine where she was going to stash everybody.

His mother opened the oven and a burst of steam hit her in the face. She backed away and then started to ease out a huge pan of lasagna. He pushed her out of the way and took the pot holders from her. Then he muscled the massive casserole onto the wooden block counter. Jack had built it and Prescott could see where the nails hadn’t been properly countersunk.

“I had to put her in your room, honey. The girls’ rooms are all full. Obviously, I had to give Evan and Caitlyn the guest cottage. There’s nowhere else.”

It was the room he and Evan had shared as kids. He narrowed his eyes at her. “Are there still bunk beds in there?”

She puffed out a breath. “What else do you suggest?”

“Mom, why don’t you let me design you and dad a new house? Something with room for everybody and more bathrooms? I’ve got more money than I can ever spend. I’d like to do it.”

She patted his cheek and smiled her warm mom smile. “You are such a dear. But as crazy as this old place is, it’s where I’ve lived since I first got married. Your dad’s added on as our family grew and a lot of love went into the place.

Also a lot of crooked nails since Jack was a more enthusiastic home renovator than a talented one.

Before he could say more, Holly walked into the kitchen. “Can I help?”

Then she spied the enormous lasagna. “Oh, that smells fantastic.”

“It’s the same recipe I’ve been making for years. Everybody loves it.”

Prescott opened the fridge and pulled out the salad he knew he’d find in there. “Listen, Holly, my mom had to put us in the same room since we’re full to the rafters with Chance kids.” He winced thinking of his custom-designed bedroom and the spa-like en suite in his apartment. “It’s bunk beds.”

She blushed a little. “Oh. I hadn’t realized. Um, is that okay with you?”

None of this was okay with him.

He still had no idea how he’d ended up in this mess. And sharing his bunk-bed room with a girl seemed like the final indignity. Maybe it wouldn’t matter so much if there wasn’t this unwilling attraction that he suspected she felt too.

“Of course we want you to stay,” his mother insisted, seemingly oblivious to the undercurrent. “Marguerite’s got night things you can borrow and I always have extra toothbrushes and so on.”

But Holly bit her lip and looked at him.

What could he do?

He leveled a tough guy look her way. “I get the top bunk,” he said.

Then she grinned at him and he noticed how pretty she was when she wasn’t worrying about pleasing Alistair Rupert or doing a million things all at the same time.

“Deal,” she said.

You learned a lot about a man from the way he behaved with his family, Holly thought. With the Chances it was closer to a tribe than a family because there were so many of them. The girls mainly had flower names so it was hard to keep them straight, but Holly was doing her best. The boys, well, men she supposed though it seemed they all acted like boys when they got together, were like a rolling mass of puppies. She couldn’t begin to tell them apart.

She had a sense that when the full brood got together all of them fell back in time so she had a picture of what Prescott would have been like as a boy.

Everybody sat at a long table that reminded her of those in her college cafeteria, except that it was clear everyone had assigned seating, and she’d been shoehorned in between a brother whose name was James, a nice-looking guy with military short hair and a charming smile, and Iris’s boyfriend, a nice guy, the local high school English teacher. His name was Geoff.

Prescott carried out what had to be the world’s largest pan of lasagna, and Daphne followed with the salad Holly had helped her make.

Jack Chance, bearded and beaming, came in carrying a huge glass jug of red wine. “My latest vintage,” he said proudly.

Geoff leaned close. “A word of warning,” he said, “one outsider to another. That stuff will strip paint. Beware.”

“Thanks,” she whispered back.

Jack slopped wine into glasses. She knew from her research that Prescott had fine tastes in everything and she’d have included wine in that category, but he accepted the garnet-colored brew.

And sipped water.

And then she got it. Nobody wanted to hurt Jack Chance’s feelings. She imagined they’d drink a little and the rest would get chucked out and their dad would never know the difference.

A rush of affection filled her.

In her turn she accepted a glass of wine.

Meanwhile, Daphne was dishing up lasagna, handing the plates off to . . .was that Marguerite? Who was adding a spoon of salad to each one.

Then the plates were passed along.

When they’d all been served, Jack raised his glass. “I want to propose a toast,” he said. He looked like a man happy with his life, proud of his brood, at peace with the world. His cheeks were ruddy, his beard more gray than brown, but his blue eyes still twinkled with youth. “I want to thank all of you for coming home to celebrate the first wedding in our family. And I want to thank Caitlyn for agreeing to join our crazy brood. A man gets to an age when he realizes his best days are behind him. But I look around me and I see that my life has real meaning. Daphne,” he said, looking down the table to his wife at the other end. “We’ve got a beautiful family.” His voice grew husky but he seemed perfectly comfortable with his own emotions. “I am proud of every one of you, proud of who you’ve all become. I thank God every day for my wife, and my family.”

There were a couple of sniffles from around the table and Holly felt her own eyes grow moist.

“Evan, you’ve chosen well, son, and on behalf of all of us, I wish you both as happy a marriage as Daphne and I have enjoyed.”

“Oh, Jack,” Daphne said. And she got right up out of her chair and walked around the table to give him a kiss.

Holly wondered what it would feel like to have a man love her that much, to feel that kind of satisfaction with life. Of its own volition, her gaze shifted to Prescott. He always seemed so remote to her. So self-contained. To her surprise, she saw him smiling at the kissing going on at the end of the table, looking for a second as though he might actually be human.

“Okay, guys,” he finally called out. “Knock it off in front of the children. This is a PG dinner.”

With a laugh, Daphne hauled herself off her husband’s lap. When she’d returned to her seat, she said, “I want to echo everything Jack said.” She turned to Caitlyn. “Caitlyn, honey, welcome to the Chance family.”

They all drank a toast and Holly immediately understood what Geoff had meant. As the wine hit her tongue her entire mouth felt like it was being scrubbed out with a scouring pad.

Fortunately, the large water glasses were full. The lasagna tasted as good as it smelled. The salad was similarly wonderful. She ate on such a tight budget that she could never afford the fancy greens in the market. “Oh, this salad is so good,” she said.

“Thank you, honey. Marguerite’s our green thumb.”

Holly was astonished. “You grew this?”

“Sure. I have a house on the property. Come over tomorrow and I’ll give you a tour of the organic veggie farm. I sell most of it to restaurants and at a farmers’ market, and the rest we eat ourselves.”

“I can’t tell you the last time I ate a salad that didn’t come in a bag,” she admitted. Usually marked down, but she didn’t bother sharing that fact.

James called across the table to his sister, “How’s the coffee shop doing, Iris? Since you opened the second location?”

She’d already been told that Iris owned the best bakery café in town. But Holly didn’t know she’d franchised. Cool.

As Holly began to listen to Iris talk about how her assistant had pretty much taken on the everyday management of the new location, up at the other end of the table, Evan asked Cooper how his exams were coming. Cooper was getting his Ph.D. in some field of genetics. She was interested in that, too, and tried to listen to both conversations at once. But then Jack asked James about a big Seattle drug bust that he’d seen on the TV news.

James, she soon realized, was a cop in Seattle.

She discovered that a conversation around the Chance household was more like a brush fire. New blazes would spring up everywhere and there was no way to stay on top of them all.

Her own family had always been more of the children should be seen and not heard model, and her folks didn’t have a whole lot to say to each other so family dinners had been pretty silent. Her dad was Irish, her mom from Kansas, and they’d met on a blind date when he was newly in the country. She thought that the Irish lad had been homesick and her mother had been attracted by how different he was from the other boys she knew. Because it wasn’t like they had anything in common. The fact that they were still together was more from habit than affection.

She had a brother, Aidan, in the army, posted to Germany, so she rarely saw him. She made a duty phone call to her mom every week, and sometimes they ran out of things to say.

Nobody here seemed to have that problem. They were all interested in each other’s lives. Seemed to genuinely like each other.

Holly felt as though she’d stepped out of a cold room and into the sun.

Ouch, she thought, as she scooped up another flavorful bite of lasagna. Bad metaphor. Corny and self involved.

But she did like the Chances. She liked them a lot.

She’d imagined Prescott coming from a cold, upper-class family somewhere. She’d never believed the mythology surrounding him that he was a shaman. The very fact that he never talked about his background had suggested to her right away, when she was studying his life as though there’d be a final exam, that he’d come from some entirely uninteresting background.

The truth was so much more.

“Are they always like this?” she asked Geoff.

“Everybody talking at once and the noise level rising by the second?”

She nodded.

He grinned at her. “Pretty much. You get used to it after a while.” He seemed to realize that he was making assumptions and shifted in his chair. “If you stick around.”

This crowd was rich, noisy, barely controlled and lovable. And among them, she saw a Prescott she’d never have believed existed. Funny, warm, maybe not as talkative as the rest of them, but he wasn’t off somewhere in the dark hanging upside down, either, which she’d suspected he did in his spare time.

As though he felt her watching him, Prescott’s gaze suddenly connected with hers, too fast for her to look away.

He didn’t smile at her, exactly, but his expression softened and she felt that he’d forgiven her for showing up on the very weekend when his entire family would be here. When she smiled back at him, she felt something more. A warmth that had begun to build. She didn’t want to be attracted to a man who was known for dating the hottest women on the planet. Nothing could come of it but heartbreak, and yet, when he looked at her this way she couldn’t resist the pull.

After dinner everybody fell into the prescribed roles as though none of them had ever left home. Dishes were scraped, stacked, passed along. You cleared or you loaded the dishwasher, or you washed or dried and put away. Both Holly and Caitlyn tried to pitch in but Daphne waved them into the living room. “Holly, tell Caitlyn about some of your ideas for the wedding,” she said. “I’ll bring coffee through in a minute.”

Prescott couldn’t imagine what Holly could add to wedding planning but he wasn’t one to let opportunity slip by. As he walked by her, ostensibly to collect napkins from the table, he said, “Try to talk her out of the rental tuxes.”

Before she could answer, Caitlyn took Holly by the hand and pulled her toward the living room. “Daphne says you’re a genius at organization. And you have some ideas.”

Good. He hoped she came up with a better idea than matching tuxes.

Prescott did not bring women home. Never had. He’d always shuddered at the thought of trying to explain the mess and the dog hair and the yurt. At the voices all talking at once, the in jokes, the shorthand that developed when you have that many people in one house.

But, as they all relaxed over coffee in the living room, he glanced over at Holly and saw her laughing at something James was saying to her. It occurred to him that she was having no trouble keeping up. Maybe she didn’t catch all the in jokes, but she didn’t seem to mind. And instead of being horrified by dog hair, she was sitting on the ground with Lucky’s head on her knee. The dog wore a totally blissed-out canine grin on her face as Holly pulled gently on her ears. A second dog, Henry, some kind of terrier who’d been clobbered with the ugly brick, flopped on the floor at Evan’s feet.

They settled into groups as usually happened. There were just too many of them to have a single conversation. Because it had been so long since he’d been home, Prescott made an effort to chat with every one of his sibs. And from his peripheral vision he kept an eye on Holly. Not that she needed rescuing. She was no wallflower. Both James and Cooper seemed determined to make her laugh, and she was happy to oblige. She had a great laugh. Low and husky.

As he moved around, he talked first to Paisley, the baby of the family, who he hardly knew since there were twelve years between them. She was growing into a very pretty woman. She must be twenty-two now and a college student. She made a point of telling him how much she liked Holly.

He moved on to Lauren. Lauren was the official hottie in the family. He thought all his sisters were good looking, but Lauren was the kind of woman who got poetry and love songs written to her. Instead of making her stuck up and obnoxious, though, the constant attention had made her pull into herself a little bit. She tried to disguise her crazy beauty, which somehow only made her more attractive. “How’s it going, little sis?” he asked, sitting beside her.

“Okay. But I’d forgotten how noisy it gets with all of us here.”

“I know. Wish I’d brought ear plugs.”

She smiled. “And with the plus ones, the place is bursting at the seams.”

He put up his hands. “Hey, Holly and I might be involved in a project together, that’s all.”

“I like her,” was all she said.

Rose and Marguerite made sure he knew how much they liked Holly, too.

Since every single brother and sister made some comment about how much they liked Holly he decided to be absolutely clear to all of them—Holly included—that nothing was going on between him and Alistair Rupert’s assistant. So, when it got to bedtime, he challenged his dad to a game of crib. When Holly headed off to the bunk room with a slightly shy, “Good night,” he was deep into a game. By the time he and Jack had played three games and managed to discuss everything from local politics to sports to how happy he was that Evan had found a great girl, it was well after midnight.

They packed up the game and Prescott undressed in the bathroom before slipping into the bunkroom. Holly was a softly breathing shape on the bottom bunk. She’d left a lamp burning for him, and as he flicked it off, she stirred.

“G’night,” she said sleepily.

“Good night.” He climbed up the ladder and into the bunk bed. And, since he was thirty-four and had gained a few inches since he’d last slept in here, he banged his head on the ceiling getting in.

The dinner gong, which Daphne had bought at a flea market when they were young, clanged, waking Prescott. To his relief, his bunkmate was long gone, leaving nothing but a neatly made bunk bed and the slight scent of wildflowers.

She was already seated at the table when he wandered out to the kitchen to hit the coffee pot. She wore the same clothes she’d arrived in, and she smiled shyly when he said good morning.

Breakfast was farm fresh eggs, an enormous plate of bacon, skyscrapers of toast and pancakes as well as yogurt and fruit for anyone who hoped to keep their arteries clear.

“Don’t forget everybody, the tux fitting’s at noon,” Evan announced.

Prescott shuddered and drank more coffee.

“And we girls will do some wedding planning,” Daphne said, sounding like it was the most exciting thing she’d ever done in her life. “And we have to address all the envelopes for the wedding invitations.”

Holly happily accepted another pancake from James and poured maple syrup liberally. “This is so good,” she said, munching happily.

When breakfast was done and cleaned up, she said, “Well, I should really get going. I’ve got a long drive.”

It wasn’t his mother who stopped her this time. It was Caitlyn. “Oh, no, please. You can’t go already. I loved your ideas for the wedding. I was hoping you could help us plan it all. I have so little time, I need to get everything nailed down this weekend.” Caitlyn didn’t seem like someone who was comfortable asking for things, so she must really want Holly’s help.

Holly glanced at him helplessly, but what was he supposed to do? Kick her out? “Hey,” he said, holding up his hands. “Knock yourself out.”

“Well, okay, then. Thanks. I’d love to help.” The strange thing was that she genuinely did seem like she wanted to give herself writer’s cramp addressing invitations to Caitlyn and Evan’s wedding.

“So,” James said, as soon as it was settled that she was staying. “Do you want to see the first house Scott ever designed?”

Prescott’s first design was generally accepted to be an energy neutral home he’d designed after winning a prestigious contest back in his twenties. The house nestled on a wooded hilltop outside Seattle. Somehow, he did not think James was planning to take their guest there.

She nodded, looking thrilled, and the two scrambled to their feet. Lucky jumped up to follow, tail swishing. Henry, not to be left out, jumped to his stubby little legs and shook himself before trotting along behind. Prescott had a pretty good idea where they were headed. He watched them out of the big picture window and, sure enough, saw them head past the pond. He toyed with remaining where he was and then strode outside to follow.

As James must have known he’d do, for when he arrived at the spot, his little brother was putting on a spiel as though he were a TV announcer on one of those home and garden shows. “You’ll notice the radiant heating from the thermal-paned windows and the tilt of the cantilevered roof. Many people consider the Gestalt House to be Prescott’s first home design, but we here in Hidden Falls lay claim to his very first design.”

He thrust his hand dramatically in the air to where a rickety set of boards had been nailed into a tree trunk. “The Tree house.”

Holly laughed, but then she laughed at pretty much everything James said.

Then, to his surprise, she backed up and stared at that foolish tree fort he’d built when he was a kid as though she was taking James seriously.

“Holly,” he said, “it really is just a tree house. I built it when I was a kid.”

Still, she remained staring up at it, moving sideways to get a different view. “You know, every tree house I’ve ever seen is pretty much the same. A few boards nailed down and plywood walls and a roof. But this, this actually looks interesting. You can see a creative mind at work.”

He’d scrounged around in the barn and found some old windows and the bits and pieces of timber that his dad always had lying around. He remembered cutting down an old door and remaking it to fit. All he had by way of carpentry skills were what he’d learned from his dad and then learned properly in a high school course. As crude as it was, the structure still looked pretty solid, twenty years later.

She walked halfway around the old oak and back again. “You made the house fit the tree instead of sticking a house shape in there like most people would.” She turned back to him. “Is that when you knew what you wanted to be when you grew up?”

Was it? He could remember to this day the fun he’d had drawing and redrawing his plans, the pencil sketches on graph paper, the way he’d wanted to capture the sun and keep out the rain. He shrugged. “Who knows?”

She was about to speak and then something beeped. Before he could remind her about their deal, she said, “That is not a cell phone. I set a reminder. I have to go help your mom and Caitlyn. We’re talking about table decorations. And then she ran off, Lucky following her like a shaggy shadow. Henry looked at the retreating Holly, back to Prescott and James, sneezed once, then trotted after Holly and Lucky.

Table decorations? What the hell was his mother doing getting Holly involved in table decorations? Couldn’t she see that Holly was overscheduled and overworked as it was? Could she not have one weekend off?

“She’s a fun girl,” James said.

“Yes. She is.”

His younger brother glanced sideways at him. “Hot, too.”

“Maybe, but not my type.”

James grinned. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

“Why?”

He got a slap on the back, buddy to buddy, “Cause she’s totally my type.”

As his younger brother strode away after Holly, Prescott had the sudden urge to tackle his kid brother and wrestle him to the ground. He’d actually started to move when he caught himself. What the hell was he doing?

His brother was joking.

Had to be. Sure, James and Holly were around the same age, but he could not see the two of them together. If he tried, the picture wouldn’t form.