A Lot Like Home

Fortunately, Havana didn’t mind sharing with her youngest sister, who had moved to the hotel with their aunt instead of finding her own place. It was a chance for them to catch up while Havana was in town to work on her shopping center pitch, and anyway, the pickings were slim in Superstition Springs no matter what you were looking for, let alone a spare bed.

Aria was family, and Havana didn’t have much of that left. Plus Aria still looked up to her, despite all of Havana’s failings. That made her sister extraspecial.

Havana flopped on the quilted comforter to watch as Aria braided her waist-length hair in anticipation of

a shift at the diner where her sister waited tables for Ruby. The braid didn’t do Aria any favors, muting the already dull red shade of her hair. Havana had gotten their mother’s bold red, while Ember’s had picked up a ton of gold highlights from their father that had blended into more of a strawberry blonde that worked well with her delicate skin.

Aria had long accepted her role as “the plain Nixon sister,” as she called herself, and refused to lift a finger to work with what she had. No makeup, shapeless clothes, and her shoes made Havana want to cry. She’d pleaded with Aria to let her do something, a haircut, take her shopping, but no. Some things never changed.

“Sorry if I’m putting you out,” Havana called, eager to connect with her sister again. Of course, the reason they weren’t close anymore was Havana’s fault, so she wouldn’t blame Aria if she got a little frosty.

“Of course not. I’m the one who suggested it.” Aria glanced at her in the mirror she was using to view her weaving workmanship. “Though I have to admit, I don’t get why you’re not staying with your fiancé.”

Damian had taken a room at the Best Western in La Grange, which meant he was a good thirty minutes away over country back roads at any given time. It didn’t work so well when it came to faking their courtship but worked exceedingly well for Havana, who had no intention of sharing a room with any man. “You know Serenity. She’s got funny ideas about grown adults sleeping together in her house even if they do it at home.”

That was one of the main factors that had allowed Havana to come up with such a cockamamy idea as a fake fiancé. There was no way she could pretend to be engaged to someone like Damian Scott behind closed doors.

All at once, Caleb’s face sprang into her head and something twanged inside as, totally against her will, she got an image of how things would go if she’d asked him to be her fake fiancé. There wouldn’t be a whole lot of pretending, she had a feeling. He wasn’t the type to put up with fake anything.

The twinge turned into more of a spike as she recalled the very real feel of his arms around her. She shook it off. The man was a lunatic, barging in here and telling her he wasn’t going to allow her to build a shopping center like he had some kind of authority or something. Honestly.

Aria’s eyebrows arched in blatant interest. “Are you and Damian living together back in Austin? Do tell.”

She shook her head, glad they’d already worked that part out so their stories would be straight. “We’re waiting until after the wedding, and then we were thinking about building a house here.”

“In Superstition Springs?”

Havana couldn’t blame Aria for her incredulity since she had hightailed it out of town as fast as she could after graduation. “I’ve been trying to tell everyone. I don’t hate this town. I’m here to fix everything. Once the resort is built and there’s a lovely shopping oasis nearby, this area will be hot property. People will love it. Best part, everyone can pick up premium land for a song before the boom.”

Including Havana. Serenity had called that idea “mercenary.” Havana called it due compensation. That’s how a poor girl from the sticks got ahead, by being first in line. If the husband she’d so desperately wanted didn’t want her, she’d invest all her time and energy in her career and this town. She’d find someone who wanted her help or die trying.

“That sounds fantastic,” Aria said loyally, which Havana could not get enough of.

She’d missed her sister’s blind support. Sure, they’d talked by phone often, but it wasn’t the same as being in each other’s orbits again, holding a running conversation that they could pick up again hours later as if they’d never stopped. Havana had given up that right—and the right to her sister’s support—when she’d fled Superstition Springs almost a decade ago.

It was on the tip of her tongue to confess to Aria that the engagement was fake. But she couldn’t bear all the questions when Cole’s betrayal still stung, even five months later. No one knew about Cole because she hadn’t told anyone. If she had, Serenity might not have made her love prediction and none of this fake fiancé stuff would have been necessary. Honestly though, Havana liked having the barrier of Damian in place. Kept everyone from asking too many questions.

Her aunt’s crazy “feelings” and “senses” had always cropped up at convenient times, usually when Serenity got overwhelmed with adult things like paying bills and guiding a teenage girl through birth control options. This time Havana had no idea what Serenity hoped to gain from the prediction. Mysticism had no place with Havana, who preferred to chart her own destiny instead of leaving it to the stars.

Though she couldn’t quite forget what her aunt had told her. Not when it hit a little too close to home.

Work success may overshadow the desire for a relationship, and a problem may arise in becoming a bit too pushy or aggressive. This is a turnoff to the person receiving your advances, but there is an opportunity to meet a new love through a business colleague or work-related event.

Not if she already had a fiancé! The brilliance of the Damian Scott plan could not be overstated. So what if the first part of the prediction put a worm of doubt in her stomach? She knew she came off the wrong way to people sometimes, but it wasn’t because she was pushy. She cared; that’s why she tried to help.

“I have to get to Ruby’s,” Aria said with a frown, clearly unhappy to end their conversation as well. “Come by later. It’ll be slow by nine. Bring Damian and have some pie so I can get to know him. You don’t come around enough.”

By design. She’d been busy trying to figure out how she’d gone wrong with this shopping center pitch. She’d first floated the idea by Serenity several months ago since she—rightly so—suspected her aunt would be a factor in her success. She’d hoped to get a feel for how the project might fly. Badly, would be the answer, so she’d come to town to start working on the townspeople, only to find that Serenity had already spilled the beans and then danced all over them until they were smushed little corpses.

“I will,” she promised before she thought better of it.

Ruby’s had been pretty empty earlier today when she’d met Serenity’s sailor boys, but by dinnertime, it would be packed with people. Especially as word got around that her aunt’s new friends had bodies honed by Uncle Sam and pretty faces to go along with that, especially the tall blond. He did nothing for her, but she also wasn’t blind and the man had some drool-worthy components.

Her mind snapped back to Caleb, and she did not need the spike to the gut to remind her which of the men did do something for her.

Aria stepped into her gawd-awful, thick-soled shoes that she wore to work and waved goodbye. At loose ends and not the slightest bit interested in going over the architectural drawings of her shopping center for the umpteenth time, she wandered to the window to watch Aria walk the short distance to Ruby’s.

The familiar figure of Caleb Hardy slammed through her senses. He stood on the balcony off the second floor of the hotel, directly below the window of Aria’s bedroom.