CHAPTER 20

Ella shuffled her stack of projections, location reports, and graphs charting the potential for Sanctuary Island, and tried to convince herself there was no reason to be nervous.

A truck engine rumbled loudly out front as Jo drove up the driveway. Ella fumbled her papers and dropped them in a fluttering cascade.

So much for not being nervous.

When Jo walked in, Ella was scrambling under the table for the last elusive page of her prospectus.

“What on earth?” Jo sounded mystified.

Cheeks flaming hot, Ella snatched the final page and backed up on her knees. She got to her feet as gracefully as she could under the circumstances, meeting Jo’s amused gaze with a self-conscious smile.

“It never fails.” Ella shook her head. “Ever since I set foot on Sanctuary Island, I can’t seem to stop finding new ways to make a fool of myself.”

The amusement in Jo’s eyes faded to unhappiness.. “I’m sorry you haven’t found anything on the island to enjoy.”

An echo of the exhilaration she’d felt while free-falling fifty feet into open water shivered down her arms and legs. All she could think about was the warm passion of Grady’s mouth against hers, and the way they’d smiled at each other afterward, even as Ella realized she’d broken every promise she’d made to herself about keeping her distance from Grady Wilkes.

Not helpful to think about that now. Focus!

“Oh, not at all!” Ella pasted on a broad smile, fingers carefully riffling the pages of her proposal back into order. “I think Sanctuary has a lot of potential. That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Jo pulled out a chair with a slow scrape of wooden legs against the hardwood floor. “Really? What kind of potential?”

Ella let out a surreptitious breath and felt herself settle into the familiar rhythm of pitching an idea to a prospective client.

“With its natural beauty, hiking trails, and the unique attraction of the free-range wild horse herds, I think Sanctuary Island could draw a fair bit of tourist trade.” She spread a chart she’d printed out from her laptop on the table in front of Jo, who leaned over it as if fascinated. “But the problem is that once they’re here, there’s no place on the island to stay. Not even a campground. Winter Harbor has some nice inns, but the ferry schedule is erratic, making day trips to the island inconvenient.”

Jo glanced up at her, blue eyes unreadable. “True enough. We don’t get a lot of day-trippers.”

“That’s not where the money is, anyway,” Ella told her. “What Sanctuary needs is to be able to attract tourists to stay overnight and spend their dollars over the course of a weekend, or longer. Sanctuary needs an inn.”

The chair creaked as Jo sat back to study Ella’s face. “And where are you envisioning this inn?”

Ella produced another page, the jewel of her proposal, and the one she’d spent the most time on.

It was a large photograph she’d printed out of Jo’s house. She’d gone into a photo manipulation program and touched up the paint in the image, carefully erased the signs of wear and tear, and added some flowering bushes out front—along with a sign that read WINDY CORNER BED & BREAKFAST.

She placed the photo in front of Jo. “Right here.”

Silence stretched between them, long enough for Ella to get uncomfortable. She was used to getting a big reaction from clients—most of them weren’t able to visualize the possibilities for themselves, but once she showed them images of how the place could look, she usually got gasps and interest. Something. Anything!

“It’s not the most professional mock-up in the world, but you get the idea,” Ella said, hating the nerves she could hear in her own voice. “Normally, I would’ve used glossy paper for the photo, but I couldn’t find any. I wasn’t expecting to need to come up with a prospectus on the fly while I was here.”

“Why did you?” Still fingering the edges of the B and B photo, Jo lifted her head to pin Ella with a sharp gaze.

“What do you mean?” Ella tried to sidestep the question, but Jo wasn’t having any of it.

“You’ve been more than clear about your feelings for the island—and for me. I think you know I’m willing to do whatever it takes to be a part of your life. But I know that doesn’t go both ways. What possessed you to spend so much time and energy coming up with this?”

Ella’s defensive shields slammed into place. “This is what I do for a living,” she reminded Jo. “I look at properties and see their potential, then I work to develop it. I’m very good at what I do—I’ve made a lot of money for my clients and my firm. And from what I can see, you need an infusion of cash just to keep this place from falling down around your ears.”

Jo stiffened. “The upkeep of a house this old is expensive. But I’m doing all right.”

Sensing weakness, Ella leaned in. “Are you? Because I’ve done my homework. I know about the lien. I also know you won’t be able to pay it off without a major loan from a bank. And no bank is going to fork over any cash unless you can show a way that you’ll be able to use part of that loan to turn a profit and pay them back.”

“I have the stables!” Jo protested, before narrowing her eyes. “And how do you know about the debt? Does Merry know?”

Time for another sidestep. “The stables aren’t making money,” Ella said bluntly. “And according to my projections, giving riding lessons and boarding other people’s horses aren’t likely to provide a huge income. Unless you have connections in the horse racing or champion breeding worlds that I don’t know about?”

Jo looked away, and Ella read her answer in the tight, slumped line of the older woman’s shoulders.

Too bad. That would have been an elegant, simple solution. One that would have allowed Ella to avoid suggesting something she knew Grady would hate. Setting her jaw, she said what Jo needed to hear—and silently acknowledged that they were words Ella could stand to remember, as well.

“You have to be realistic about this. Banks don’t hand out loans for the fun of it. They need collateral. Even the expectation of future earnings isn’t usually enough.” She paused delicately, then dropped the bomb she’d been saving. “That’s where your boyfriend comes in.”

Jo’s head shot up as if a high-voltage electric current had just zapped through her seat. “What? How—”

Ella had expected to feel smug. Pleased. But sitting at the table across from her mother, she couldn’t find that familiar pleasant sense of having gathered the exact piece of hidden information guaranteed to serve as the perfect pressure point in a tricky negotiation.

All she felt was angry. And tired—tired of being angry, of fighting. Tired of realizing that no matter how often she lectured herself about the foolishness of having expectations, she was still surprised when all of Jo’s platitudes about opening her life to them and getting to know each other turned out to be so much bull.

“Harrison McNamara.” Ella didn’t bother to keep the thread of bitterness out of her voice. “Taylor’s dad. Grady’s uncle. The man you’ve been seeing for who knows how long … but certainly long enough to be a maternal figure for Taylor. It wasn’t exactly a huge leap, especially once Merry told me about the man who came to see you at the stables that first day.”

Red filtered into Jo’s shocked face. Her wide eyes were like two holes burned through a white sheet. “Do you want to hear my explanation or are you so sure you’ve got everything figured out?”

“Not quite everything.” Ella crossed her arms over her chest. “The one thing I don’t understand is why you lied. You’re an alcoholic. I’d think telling the truth would be important for you.”

*   *   *

It took everything Jo had not to flinch from the knife edge of her older daughter’s voice.

“You’re right.” Jo carefully flattened both hands on the tabletop, palms down to stop the tremor in her fingers. “Living an honest life is a big part of the recovery process. But I didn’t lie to you and your sister. I just didn’t tell you everything.”

Ella snorted. “So much for opening your house and your heart to us.”

Frustration sizzled under Jo’s skin. “And what about you? How open have you been—to Sanctuary, to your family history?”

To me.

But Ella only shook her head, her lips a stubborn line. “I never promised you anything. You’re the one who offered, who wanted a chance to get to know each other. You and Merry. I’m only here for her.”

Ignoring the stab of Ella’s rejection, Jo leaned forward across the table, resting her weight on her forearms. “Harrison and me—it’s a complicated situation. We’ve known each other a long time, cared about each other for years, but we’re not always on the same page about what our relationship should be.”

If that wasn’t the understatement of the century, Jo didn’t know what was. Especially considering how up in the air everything with Harrison was at the moment.

He asked me to marry him.

She shook her head to clear it of the extremely distracting thought, along with the even more distracting fact that she’d turned him down. Again.

Ella’s face was hard, but there was a soft blur of pain at the corners of her downturned mouth. “Spare me the incredibly vague nondetails. I’m not concerned about your relationship beyond the fact that having an in with the local bank manager will help me achieve my goal.”

“What goal is that, exactly?” Jo zeroed in on the heart of this conversation. “I know you haven’t forgiven me—and that’s fine. That’s your choice, and I’m not going to say I deserve any better. But given that, I can’t see why you’re working so hard to help me.”

Ella struggled visibly, her mouth working silently as she tried to decide how much to say.

“Cards on the table,” Jo said. “If I promise to be honest from here on out, same goes for you.”

Ella lifted her chin at the challenge. “I’m helping because you’re in trouble. And if you lose this house, Merry is going to want to come back here and be supportive. She’s got enough problems of her own, along with an overactive empathy gland; she doesn’t need to be saddled with any down-on-their-luck family members. She needs to focus on herself and her baby.”

Understanding began to dawn, like a match flaring to light in the darkness of Jo’s mind. “And you think if I’m set for life, running your B and B, then Merry will never feel a need to come back here?”

Ella shrugged, glanced away. “It’s a start.”

“Oh, sweet girl.” That got her a sharp look, but Jo couldn’t help it. She ached for both her daughters—but at least Merry knew something about love. The ability to love, the desire for love, glowed all around her. But Ella … The young woman sitting in front of Jo was all folded in on herself like a locked puzzle box without any key, and the knowledge that Ella was paying for the sins of Jo’s past and the mistakes Jo made … it was enough to make her determined to call her sponsor later.

“What?” Ella demanded.

“I don’t know what you’ve convinced yourself of,” Jo said, picking her way softly. “But I’m not giving up on you or Merry. And I’m pretty sure your sister feels the same way.”

“So?”

“So even if things are going well with me here, even if you remove all the logical, rational reasons you can think of for Merry to want to come back and visit—there will still be the illogical, irrational ones. Nonsense concepts like love and family and wanting to be a part of something bigger.”

Guilt squeezed a tight knot into Jo’s throat at the spasm of fear that flashed across her daughter’s face.

Faster than thought, Jo reached out to Ella, the impulse to comfort and care for her overriding everything else. But it was the wrong move, as Ella proved by jerking away.

The fear in her eyes shifted, darkened to anger. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, talking to me about family, when you’re the reason our whole family fell apart. And if I have anything to say about it, Merry’s going to realize she’s only setting herself up to get hurt.”

It would be easy, so easy, to give in to the defeat of knowing that Ella was right. But Jo refused to surrender—there was more at stake here than indulging her own guilt.

Gaze steady on Ella’s flushed cheeks, her glittering eyes, Jo said, “But you don’t have anything to say about it. Merry is an adult, Ella. She can make her own decisions about what’s right for her. That’s not your job.”

Ella stood up from the table so quickly, she knocked over her chair. It fell to the hardwood floor with a clatter, but she didn’t even spare it a glance. All her attention was on Jo. “Yes, it damn well is my job to look out for Merry. It always has been, since the day she was born. Who else was going to take care of her? You? Please. You weren’t fit to be her mother then, and you’re not fit to be around her now. She deserves more.”

Jo couldn’t suppress her flinch, but before she could say anything else, a quiet voice from the doorway froze both Jo and Ella in their places, like wax figures in an ugly tableau.

“Stop it. Both of you, just stop.”

Jo caught the minute flicker of that same, sick fear in Ella’s gaze before they both turned to face Merry.

Fists clenched, Merry hunched over her big belly, lines of tension and strain bracketing her mouth.

“Merry! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she grated out, panting a little. “I want to know what the hell is going on in here.”

Still looking worried, Ella said, “We were talking about my proposal.”

“We had a deal, Ella.” There was steel in Merry’s voice, a strength Jo hadn’t been sure her younger daughter possessed. In spite of the awfulness of this moment, Jo couldn’t help but be a little bit glad to see it.

“What deal?” Jo asked, glancing between her girls.

Ella straightened her spine defiantly, her gaze touching on the papers scattered across the table. “A proposal that will get you a bank loan in return for Merry doing the smart thing and coming back to D.C. with me.”

A frisson of awareness shivered up Jo’s spine. So there had been the possibility of Merry staying longer, then. Even if it didn’t happen, it meant something to her that Merry had wanted to. It meant a lot.

“But there was a condition,” Merry reminded her sister coolly, straightening her back with a grimace. “No interference from you in my relationship with Mom. And I think getting into a screaming fight about how she’s not fit to be around me counts as interference.”

Jo couldn’t take any of this in. “Wait, girls. I don’t completely understand what’s going on here, but please don’t fight because of me. The last thing I’d ever want to do is come between you.”

“Too late,” Ella choked out, her eyes shining brilliant blue with unshed tears as she stared at her sister’s stubborn expression. “This is a mistake, Merry. The worst you’ve ever made, and that’s saying something.”

Merry shrugged. “Maybe. But at least it’ll be my mistake.” The mask of her face crumpled a little, then, and Jo’s breath caught at the soft, bruised look of hurt in the depths of her eyes. “If that makes you feel bad, I’m sorry.”

“All I feel is tired. This is going to blow up in your face,” Ella warned, gathering up her sheaf of papers, the proposal she’d worked so hard on, with shaking hands. “And when it does, I’ll be the one cleaning up the mess, as usual.”

“Not this time.” Merry squared her shoulders. “Whatever happens, you’re absolved of the responsibility of rescuing me. I won’t call you in tears, you won’t have to come back out here, since you hate it so much.”

Ella blinked, a horrible blankness covering her face like a white sheet. “Fine,” she said, her voice sounding odd and distant. “I hope you’re happy. I really do.”

Before Jo could gather herself to protest, to demand an explanation for what the hell was happening, Ella had dropped the proposal on the floor and walked out of the kitchen without a backward glance.

The moment she was gone, Merry’s face crinkled up like tissue paper. She brought up a hand to hide her tears, but the shaking of her shoulders gave her away. Faster than thought, Jo was on her feet with her arms around her daughter.

“So. Maybe I should have asked this before. But can I stay?”

The words were muffled against Jo’s shoulder, where a patch of her cotton sweater was getting damp with Merry’s tears. The rush of love and protectiveness was so sudden and overwhelming, it stole Jo’s voice.

Misinterpreting the pause, Merry pulled back to swipe at her cheeks. She gave a tremulous smile. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have sprung that on you. But I’ve been living in Ella’s apartment for the last few months, and now I’m pretty sure I’ve burned that bridge. I don’t really have anywhere else to go.”

Clearing her throat, Jo tugged her daughter back into a hug. Closing her eyes at the perfection of feeling Merry relax against her, Jo said, “Of course you can stay. As long as you want—you’re always welcome, I told you that. But you haven’t burned any bridges with Ella. I don’t know either of you as well as I hope to, but I’m sure about this. Ella loves you. You’ll always have a place with her.”

Merry shuddered out another sob and clenched her fists in Jo’s sweater. Jo shushed her and petted her dark magenta-streaked curls, cherishing every heartbeat of this moment.

But even in the midst of the heady rush of comforting her baby girl, Jo couldn’t stop worrying about her older daughter.

Ella’s the one who has nowhere to go, she thought with a pang. Jo had to fix this. But how?

Whatever she came up with, it wouldn’t happen tonight. Merry sagged against her chest, unsteady with exhaustion. She needed a glass of water, then sleep.

Before she got them both moving in the direction of bed, though, Jo took one last moment to cuddle her near. And, closing her eyes, Jo sent up a silent prayer that the magic of Sanctuary would guide Ella’s footsteps and keep her safe until morning.