Chapter 20
twenty
Georgia
Groaning, I peel away a sheet of wallpaper printed with ribbon-wearing ducks to reveal an ugly gouge mark in the bathroom wall. I went way too hard with my scraping tool. Again.
I should have hired someone to remove the wallpaper—or I should have saved it for a day I don’t have a terrifying task looming ahead.
Damn these Hartnell kids. Taking a deep breath, I focus on settling the nerves dancing inside me. I was never an anxious person until they came into my life.
If it’s not Cash stirring me up, it’s Maisy, and when it’s not Maisy I’m nervous about, it’s Cash.
But today I’m putting a stop to that. In a little while, when Maisy picks me up for dinner, I’m going to tell her about me and Cash.
And while I don’t expect a positive reaction, at least the burden of the secret will fall off my shoulders.
Unable to concentrate, I leave the torn wallpaper and wander the second floor, looking for a little project that might take my mind off things without risking major damage.
At the end of the hall, I push open the door to the little study in the turret.
It’s one of the few rooms in the house that won’t need much more than a good dusting to be move-in ready, so I’ve left it alone.
But the sight of sagging banker’s boxes stacked one upon the other reminds me there’s work to be done here.
Aunt Julie’s photos, paperwork, and random odds and ends need to be sorted through and either trashed or donated.
I wheel the creaky old wooden chair from under the desk into the bit of open space on the floorboards and pull the cardboard lid off the nearest box.
It’s paperwork—old bills, receipts dating back as much as thirty years, things I’ll need a better state of mind to properly sort.
I replace the lid and open the next container.
This one holds albums, thick leather volumes with yellowed pages and photo after photo carefully pasted in place.
Dismay pangs inside me at endless unrecognizable faces, the realization that I’m looking at my family, probably even Mom and Dad, Aunt Julie, and Grandma, but I couldn’t pick these young versions of them out of a crowd.
Whatever became of my parents’ photo collection, I don’t know, but those weren’t artifacts my grandmother allowed me access to.
I only know my parents as how they looked when I was in elementary school.
There was nothing after, and what came before is a mystery to me.
Partway through the second book, however, recognition makes me pause.
It’s a picture of me on a blue tricycle, my dark hair woven into a braid, my smile big for the camera as my mother, crouched on the ground, holds me in a tight hug.
It’s precisely how I remember her. The next several images are clearly from the same day, my mom and me in the same outfits but in various groupings with an array of faces I don’t recognize except for Dad, Julie, and Grandma.
But closer inspection tells me this must be a family party of some sort; too many of the faces have the characteristic bright-blue eyes and dark hair Dad’s side is known for for this to be anything but extended family.
In what must be the official family photo—everyone standing tall, grouped into nuclear families, with children clutching their parents’ hands, the gray-haired family members making up the last row—Aunt Julie’s house stands proudly in the background.
Longing sweeps through me at another picture of me settled on an iron bench between my dad and grandmother.
I stand and cross to the windows that overlook the overgrown backyard.
There’s the bench from the image, still sitting at the base of a fat shagbark hickory tree.
As my eyes settle on the spot where my family assembled for the group shot, a dash of hope works its way through my insides.
“Georgia?”
It takes me a second to recognize the voice echoing through the house as Cash’s. I wasn’t expecting him, but my heartbeat quickens like I’ve been waiting for him all day. Damn these Hartnell kids.
“Up here,” I call from the doorway.
His footsteps sound on the stairs before he appears at the top of the landing.
Desire tugs at me at the sight of his formidable size in the narrow hallway.
His sweatshirt and baggy sweatpants merely hint at the sculpted muscles hiding underneath, but now I know exactly what he looks like under there.
I know he sees the way I eat him up as he saunters toward me, and I know he loves it. Cash can stop his lips from smiling, but he can never stop his eyes.
“What are you leering at, lovely?” he murmurs when he reaches me, brushing his knuckles from my collarbone to my chin. “I hope that’s not how you look at every man who stops by uninvited.”
“Only the ones I’ve seen naked.”
He grunts, his gaze zeroing in on my lips. “I don’t like that. How many would that be?”
“You must think I was very busy my first couple weeks in town.”
“How many?”
I reach up to kiss him, that possessive note in his voice irresistible. “Just the one.”
“That’s what I like.” He locks his arms around me.
“What are you doing here besides checking my body count?”
“Drove past your street after my workout and couldn’t resist seeing my girlfriend. What are you getting up to?” He lifts his chin toward the study behind me.
“Taking a bizarre trip down memory lane. Here, look at this.” Untangling myself from his arms, I pull him into the room and hand him the open album with the shot of me and my mom. “That’s me.”
He smiles. “I can see that, darling. This is your mom?”
“That’s her.”
He leans back against the desk, his head bent as he studies the pictures one by one.
Something about the careful way he searches each image with a smile on his face makes me want to love him.
“Shit, there’s the house,” he says when he reaches the group photo.
“Look how gorgeous it was. We could totally make it look like this again.”
“Think so?”
“I know so. It’s all in the details. If you want me to, I’ll get it done.”
Together, we page through the books. It’s only a few minutes before we find another group shot in the backyard and then another, each taken at a different time. That’s when memory surfaces.
“You know what? I think I remember this. My aunt must have hosted a family reunion every summer. In my mind, it’s one big blurry memory, but clearly we came back here year after year.
” I flip faster through the pages. The reunions stretch back to when my dad was a young boy, and given how many more pictures might be packed away in this room, the odds they go back even farther are high.
“That’s pretty cool. They must have done it every year.” Cash looks up at me, his face turning serious. “You think they stopped when…”
“When they died? Must have.”
Cash runs his hand over the soft green leather cover. “That’s a shame. Might have been nice to keep up the tradition.”
“I’m not surprised, though.” Suddenly I don’t want to think about my family anymore. “Anyway, I love you stopping by, but I have to kick you out. Your sister’s coming over, and I have to tell her about us.”
“We can tell her together.”
“No, I’m doing it.” I shake out my hands, which are suddenly twitchy. “And I’m nervous.”
He sets the album on the desk behind him. “Why?”
“Because she’s going to hate me.”
“No she’s not. Nobody could ever hate you, Georgia. You’re the sweetest person I’ve ever known.”
“I went behind her back and did the one thing she asked me not to.”
“Nothing could have stopped this. You and me? This was always going to happen. This couldn’t be stopped by a word or a promise.”
“Maybe,” I relent with a little smile. “I’m still kicking you out, though.”
He leans back on his hands. “You know what I just figured out about myself? I don’t like anyone telling me I can’t see my girlfriend.”
“You really like that word, don’t you?”
“Girlfriend? I fucking love it when it’s another word for you.
” He pushes off the desk and lowers himself to his knees, the hungry look on his face telling me I’m in for a fight if I don’t plan on taking my clothes off in the next sixty seconds.
He reaches for the base of my chair and rolls me closer.
“You know what else I like?” His eyes rake over my body with such hunger I feel it, sparks igniting from my breasts to my stomach and settling between my thighs. “This view.”
I squirm, fully aware I don’t have the strength to say no and antsy with desire for the feel of him.
Cash runs his hands up my thighs, pushing them apart and dropping kisses along the inner seam of my leggings.
At the first hint of his breath near my pussy, I sigh and curl my fingers around the back of his head.
But before I can give in and close my eyes, my gaze snags on the album sitting on the desk. “Wait,” I tell Cash. “Not here.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere but here.”
Before I can get up, he’s scooped me off the chair, and I laugh as he throws me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
Out in the hallway, he yanks my leggings down my thighs with one hand and smacks my ass hard enough to sting.
“Listen to that echo,” he remarks as the sound of his skin on mine rings between the walls.
He chooses the first open door, a spare bedroom with a bed stripped of its sheets and dark, heavy curtains that let in a single shaft of light where they’re tugged open.
The steady thrum in my clit matches my hammering heartbeat as he pulls my underwear down, then deposits me carefully on the wood chair that sits in the corner of the room. “How much time do I have to make you come?” he asks, taking each of my feet in his hands and peeling my clothes off my legs.
“She’ll be here in thirty minutes. So if you can’t make it happen by then…” I tease.
“Baby, I can change your whole world in thirty minutes.”