“No, that’s Ada.” Emma straightened the frame. “When Tom and Helen outgrew foster care, they came here to work as apple pickers one summer and rented out the upstairs room. They never left. I met Tom a few months later at college.” She sighed. “Lovely Ada. She passed away in February.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We all still miss her, especially Helen. Ada didn’t have any family—except us, I suppose. You could say Helen and Tom adopted her, or Ada adopted them, but either way, Helen put her life on hold to care for her.” Emma shook her head. “But look at me, gabbling on like this. Anyone would think I was stuck at home all day with a baby and a toddler. I’m sorry if I’m boring you.”
“No, you’re not.”Quite the opposite.Seb had needed a better picture of his new girlfriend.
Although now he had one, he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.
After breakfast, Seb waited until Tom and Emma reached the end of the backyard to head out for their child-free walk before turning to Helen. “You told them, didn’t you?”
They were standing on the deck next to the open doorway of Helen’s bedroom, listening out for the sleeping baby while Harry played among the brown hens that roamed free.
Helen’s hands fell helplessly to her side.
“You signed a nondisclosure agreement,” Seb continued. “Which bit of ‘you can’t tell anyone’ didn’t you understand?”
“He’s my brother,” she said, keeping her eyes on Harry. “And Emma is like a sister to me. Family shouldn’t count, especially when they’re all I have.”
He could tell they were close, for sure, but Emma, as much as Seb had liked her, was a self-confessed chatterbox. “Does Emma have parents and siblings? What if she decides her family don’t count either?”
Helen’s mouth dropped open. “She wouldn’t do that!”
“How do you know?”
“Because I told her not to tell anyone andI trust her.” Helen ground the words out like some grand revelation he wouldn’t understand. “And how was I going to explain you living here? You were sleeping on the sofa, and as grim as it is to think about, even my own brother would expect my boyfriend to share my bed.”
Damn. Seb hated it when she was right. Thing was,living togetherhad never been part of his fake-girlfriend plan—or any plan. He’d always avoided that particular entanglement with the women he’d dated in the past.
Seb scrubbed his face. “Just don’t tell anyone else, okay?” But then she did that wincing thing again that never boded well for him. “Dammit, Helen. Who else have you told?”
“No one, I promise, but what do I tell my friend Liz? She works at the hotel. She saw us together the other day.”
“Just tell her we’re dating.”
“She won’t believe me. I’m not a very good liar.” Sebastian shot her a look. “It’s true! I can’t lie to someone who knows me well. She’ll see straight through me.”
“Helen, you cannot tell her.”
“This arrangement is very tricky.”
“Tell me about it.” Seb sank onto a wooden chair which creaked and wobbled under his weight.
“You’d better sit on the bench,” Helen said. “That chair needs fixing.”
No shit.Everything around here needed fixing—namely with a can of gasoline and a lit match.
“Okay, Hobbs”—Seb moved to the bench—“I’m going to ask you some questions. If you don’t want to answer them because you feel they infringe on your privacy, fine. But no BS.” Helen folded her arms and kept quiet. “When you came to live here, why didn’t you go back to school like Tom?”
“I hated school.”
“But Emma called you scary clever.”
“Precisely why I hated it. The kids called me a freak and I got bored in class.” Helen’s eyes narrowed. “Emma told you my life story, didn’t she? I knew she’d talk your ears off.”
“She said some very interesting things.”
“And I bet you believe them because they came out of her mouth and not mine.”
