Garrett moved to the center of the room and took a breath. Aunt Chelsea met his eyes and nodded, and he seemed to take courage from it. “Willow, sweetie, you were not your parents’ firstborn child,” he began.
Every one of Willow’s cousins sent a wide-eyed look her way. And then Uncle Garrett told the story.
CHAPTER TWO
Camellia Rio
Camellia knew that the woman calling herself Cilla Travail was a ginger-haired beauty with a soft smattering of freckles across her nose and that her real name was Priscilla Bishop.
She hadn’t expected Cilla’s “son” to look like heaven in blue jeans, with long black hair that made her fingers want to touch it, and brown eyes full of pain and confusion. He was so beautiful that for a moment she’d forgotten her own name. He was Native American, not red Irish like Priscilla.
Not that she’d expected him to look like her.
The house was small and neat, except for that one room. While not trashed, she could see that it had clearly been searched. Funny, though, how the stacks of clothing on the hospital-style bed were still folded, placed specifically enough that she thought they were in order, and the things on hangers were draped across the bottom. Drawers were open and empty.The cushion was off the rocking chair, but standing upright against it.
Cilla’s room had been searched.
Neatly.
Wolf waved her to the living room where a braided oval rug lay beneath a floral-patterned camelback sofa and a matching loveseat with pretty wood trim. Some clothes lay on one cushion and her host scooped them up—a button-down flannel shirt and a T-shirt, she thought.
Cilla said he worked on a construction crew. The image of him coming in at the end of a hard day, peeling off his shirts on his way to a hot shower, popped in unbidden. She traced his imaginary path with her eyes and, sure enough, there was a closed door at the end of it. Bathroom, for sure.
She should not be this attracted to him. This job could be a threat to her recent vow of celibacy and aspirations to old maid-hood.
“Have a seat,” he said. “You want anything? And by anything, I mean a coffee or a beer, and it’s kinda late for coffee.”
“Is the beer cold?” She sat down on the cute sofa. There was an old-fashioned look to the place, coffee table and end tables like her own mom’s, with little doilies on them and stacks of coasters. There was a TV mounted to the wall.
He must know, she thought. Why else go through his mother’s room like that unless he was looking for the truth?
Was he angry?
Was he dangerous?
A ripple of apprehension tiptoed over her spine and she looked at the room again. Nothing had been thrown or broken. It looked like a careful, respectful search, not a temper tantrum.
Her spine relaxed slightly.
Wolf Travail headed deeper into the house, and when he flipped on the lights, she could see all the way into the kitchenwhere he’d gone. In seconds, he was heading toward her again with two dewy brown longnecks. He opened them both, then handed her one and took the rocking chair between the sofa and loveseat.
He moved with an easy grace that didn’t go with the strain on his face.
Hisreallyhandsome face.
“So Ma has life insurance? You know she’s still alive, right?”
“Yeah. I know. She left word with her doctor to call her lawyer when she’d passed, or was near passing, if it could be known, and he let me know. I’m so sorry you're losing your mother right now. I can’t even imagine.”
Her voice cracked at the end, and that seemed to make him look at her. She was embarrassed that her eyes burned, but the thought of losing her mom… She reached across to put a hand over his, where it rested on the arm of the chair. “I’m deeply sorry. I mean it.”
“Thank you,” he said, and he was looking into her eyes like he could see that she meant it. “You’re the first person to say that to me, besides her nurses.”
She felt for him. Especially because she was about to tell him that he wasn’t who he thought he was—that none of the things he thought he knew about himself were true. She took a drink of the beer, ice cold and perfect. “So…you were looking for something?” As she asked, she nodded toward the bedroom.
He glanced that way, too. “Yeah. It’s uh…personal.”
Yeah, he wasn’t going to admit anything, even if he knew. And why should he? He didn’t know who she was or why she’d come.
