A soft hiss from Dana.
“I found him in bed with another woman,” Sienna added before her mother could tell her she was making a mistake.
“These things happen,” Dana said quietly, her lack of emotion communicating far too much for Sienna’s taste. “You’d do well to give him a bit of warning when he isn’t expecting you.”
“You can’t be serious,” Sienna said through her teeth before remembering that her mother was always serious. “He cheated on me and somehow it’s my fault because I surprised him at the hotel?”
“I didn’t say that,” Dana insisted in her usual measured tone. “Not exactly. Kevin is important to your father’s business, Sienna. Especially with him heading up the merger. You know it’s scheduled to go through in a month. He can’t afford to have you disrupting the status quo. Remember your place.”
“My place.” Sienna raised a hand to her head, pressing fingertips against the bump there and trying to pretend that the headache was the reason she felt like crying again. “Craig Pierce isn’t my father, Mom. Let’s not act like—”
“He raised you from the time you were a girl.”
“He tolerated me because he wanted you,” Sienna clarified. There had never been any question as to her value with her stepfather. Mostly she hadn’t minded. Dana had made sure she understood they were to be grateful for Craig’s largesse and the opportunities being part of the powerful Pierce family opened to them.
“You never wanted for anything,” Dana insisted, the words coming out fast and with traces of the Alabama accent she’d tried so hard to erase. As far as Dana was concerned, she didn’t have any past before meeting Craig Pierce. It was as if she’d been sprung fully formed as a society wife out of the mold Craig created.
But Sienna remembered the months before her mother had met Craig, when she’d managed to secure a job as a hostess in one of the toniest restaurants in Chicago. It was the type of stuffy, wood-paneled spot where local businessmen came for power lunches and drinks after work. Dana had spent hours with old magazines and CDs she’d borrowed from the library, studying Jackie Kennedy and Grace Kelly, modeling her appearance, the way she dressed and even her mode of speaking after the two women.
Within weeks, all traces of Dana Crenshaw, hard-living party girl had been wiped away. Sienna remembered being mesmerized by her mother’s transformation. Back in Crimson, she’d always been vaguely embarrassed by her parents—Declan and Dana were too loud, hanging all over each other when they weren’t fighting in a way most parents didn’t. Plus they’d lived in the shabbiest trailer in the trailer park, when Sienna’s classmates came from town or the outlying ranches around Crimson.
So it had been true that she’d never wanted for anything material once her mother met and quickly married Craig. But love and acceptance were another story, one Dana had shoved onto a high shelf to gather dust in the pristine mansion they’d moved into with Craig. Out of necessity, Sienna had quickly forced herself to forget where she’d come from and anything else but that gratitude she was meant to feel for her new life.
“I saw him today,” she said suddenly.
From her mother’s sharp intake of breath, she knew Dana understood whom she meant.
“You need to come home,” her mother said after a weighted pause. “You don’t belong there.”
“That’s kind of the problem.” Sienna swallowed against the emotion that threatened to choke her. “I don’t belong anywhere.”
* * *
She drove around for hours, up and down the streets of Crimson and out toward the mountain pass and the farms and ranches that surrounded the town. There was the turnoff for Crimson Ranch, a property she knew was owned by some famous actress. She’d read about it in a magazine a few years ago, and the casual mention of her hometown had been the thing to reawaken her curiosity about where she’d come from and the father and brother still there.
Even with that curiosity, she’d kept herself distant when Jase had come to visit their mother last year after Dana had finished her cancer treatments. Much like today, the reality of her past and her present colliding had been too much for Sienna.
She’d hidden out in her apartment for an entire weekend, as if she’d spontaneously stumble upon him at one of her favorite neighborhood haunts. Which was stupid because Chicago was enormous.
Unlike Crimson. She was tired and hungry and had squatted to go to the bathroom on the side of a deserted Forest Service road because she was too scared to even run into the local gas station and take the chance on an encounter with Jase.
She could return to The Bumblebee. Paige had told her she planned on painting one of the upstairs bedrooms today. No doubt her new friend would be happy to see her and to hear all about how the meeting with Declan had gone.
Which was what kept Sienna from going back. How could she admit that she’d run away after only a few words with him? She hated that he’d surprised her instead of the other way around. He’d known she was in town to see him, and for some reason that seemed to take away the power she’d expected to feel in the moment.
As she did another loop through downtown Crimson, past painted Victorian houses that had been converted into businesses and the tourists milling along the picturesque shop fronts, she spotted a white Jeep parked at the curb, the words Crimson County Sheriff emblazoned on the side.
Her frustration coalesced into anger in an instant. She should be able to approach her father and brother in her own time, on her own terms. But that choice had been taken away from her because they’d been warned about her.
Warned.
As if she were some criminal or loose cannon intent on trouble.
Cole Bennett had called her a troublemaker, and obviously he believed it because he’d taken it upon himself to tell Jase she was in town. He’d stripped her of the only power she had in this situation, and for that all of her wrath narrowed with laser precision to focus on him.
She parked the rental car on a side street and stepped out, surveying the block where Cole’s Jeep was parked. There was a florist on one side and a toy store next to that. Several gift shops had wares displayed out on the sidewalk, displays of home goods or racks of colorful T-shirts.
About halfway down the block, she saw the sign for Life is Sweet bakery and started walking. Cops and doughnuts might be a stereotype, but she figured a coffee shop was as good a place as any to start her search.
