So Wright (The Wrights 1)

She gave the older woman’s hand a squeeze. “Thanks, Elaina.”

Elaina turned her hand over and clasped Miranda’s. “Give the boy a chance, sweetheart. You never know what could happen.”

Miranda felt walls closing in on her and changed the subject. “Did Gypsy say what brought her here?”

Elaina tsked. “Some awful man was stalking her. Said they met at the nightclub where she worked and wouldn’t take no for an answer. She was terribly frightened. Wanted to get away.”

Miranda barely kept herself from rolling her eyes. Gypsy was worse than a terrible liar. And Miranda was sick of lies. Her mother had been a master. Gypsy obviously had spent just enough time with her to learn how to lie, but not enough to learn to do it well.

Marty and Gypsy brought meat and corn to the table on big platters, and business talk continued through dinner.

Elaina said something about dessert and disappeared into her trailer. Miranda kept her ears perked for slivers of information she could understand. But the language was completely foreign—marketing, promotion, customer base. When they started throwing around acronyms like ROI, MOM, B2C, Miranda decided to cut her losses and turn in early.

Elaina returned with a plastic tray. “Look what I’ve got.”

She moved from chair to chair with the makings of s’mores. Even though Miranda didn’t want any, she put her plans of retreating on hold to spare Elaina’s feelings.

When she reached Miranda, Elaina said, “Gypsy was telling me how this was a tradition at your cookouts when you were younger, and I was feeling nostalgic today, so I picked this up at the market.”

Miranda slid two big marshmallows onto the long-handled aluminum roasting stick with memories flitting through her mind. Bittersweet memories.

Her siblings’ fathers always made an effort to keep their kids acquainted. They scheduled summer trips and Christmas gift exchanges. They’d had Gypsy and Dylan call each other throughout the year to catch up. But Miranda hadn’t been as lucky. Her mother hated the men for taking Gypsy and Dylan. Not because she cared about her children, but because when they left, the child support vanished. And without it, Miranda and her mother were dirt poor.

To their credit, the fathers continually tried to include Miranda, but unless the trips were short and within an hour of wherever she was living, her mother made it impossible for Miranda to go. Without Miranda at home, her mother had to do her own cooking, her own laundry, her own cleaning,

her own errands. And she couldn’t stand the idea of Miranda having fun while she was miserable. So her mother did what came naturally: she took advantage of the fathers’ good nature and demanded money she swore was for food or rent. Of course, she spent the money on drugs and booze.

Now, as Miranda roasted marshmallows and listened to Gypsy tell stories of her many vacations with Dylan, she remembered the personal turmoil that surrounded those few weekends away. The fights with her mother to let her go. Her mother bad-mouthing Gypsy’s and Dylan’s fathers. The chores Miranda had to do to make up for the time she was away. The drugged-up state of her mother upon her return.

By the time she took the first bite of her carefully constructed s’more, the dessert settled in her mouth like sand. She set it down after one bite, while Gypsy finished off her first helping and speared another two marshmallows for a second.

Despite the breakthrough with Gypsy earlier in the evening, Miranda was backsliding and second-guessing her commitment to rekindling a relationship with her sister. They very well might be too different to rebuild a relationship now. Miranda might be—much to her own disappointment—too damaged from the past to forgive and forget.

Her best course of action would be to devise another plan to avoid Gypsy as much as possible while she was here. Then, once the dust had settled, she could think about what Marty had said and take some type of action to start building the company she wanted so badly.

Her cell rang, and a burst of relief for the distraction cut through her stomach. She pulled it from her back pocket and found the bar’s number on the screen.

Hallelujah!

She stood and turned her back on the firepit, wandering a few feet away. When she was out of earshot, she answered with “Please say you need me.”

“I need you.”

The deep, smooth voice was familiar, and the words spilled with truth. A lightning bolt of awareness zinged down her spine. Her entire body came alive, tingling from the roots of her hair to the soles of her feet. “Jack?”

“I’m thrilled you recognize my voice, I can’t lie.”

Her chest was suddenly tight. Her lungs short on oxygen.

“I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time,” he said. “I don’t mean for this to be weird or stalkerish or anything. I was just going to leave my phone number with Violet, but she—”

“Dialed my number for you,” she finished, knowing her coworker all too well.

“Yeah.” He hesitated. “I was so punch drunk from our night, I forgot to ask for your number until it was too late.”

His voice felt wildly intimate, the familiar timbre sliding in her ear and bringing scorching memories.

God, you’re so wet.