Chapter 16
16
Sweet exhaustion flooded Madison, body and soul, as she leaned against the counter in Liam’s kitchen, back in her regular clothes, her hair still damp from the pool, her stomach threatening to burst with all the food she’d eaten—barbecued chicken, salad, corn on the cob, baked beans and, unbelievably, dessert.
The kids were in another part of the house, taking showers, changing clothes—in general, getting ready for an early bedtime, since they’d expended a lot of energy that day. The swim, especially, had left both Cavan and Keely yawning.
For the first time since she’d arrived, Madison was alone with Liam.
It was a delicious interlude, with him standing close to her, so close that with another half step, his hard, strong body would be pressing against her softer one.
At some point, Madison knew, sex with this man would be inevitable, but for the moment, they were both dealing in restraint.
The kids were in the house, after all.
And it was still early in the game.
Madison was no virgin—she’d been married, and had several serious relationships between her first husband and Jeffrey, her discarded groom—and it seemed that her whole self was straining to be with Liam, to join with him, not just physically, but on a much deeper level.
Sex almost seemed superfluous, compared with all that might be possible between them, much of it a mystery still, and yet so enticing as to be patently irresistible.
This was a journey she had to take, wherever it might lead.
Liam kissed her, very lightly.
“We have to wait,” she told him in a whisper, licking her lips with the tip of her tongue in an effort to take that kiss inside her, taste it, swallow it, hide it away in her heart.
Liam groaned, his voice low and thick. “I know,” he agreed, with the utmost reluctance. “But I don’t have to like it.”
She laughed, then moved her arm between them, consulted her watch.
It was after six, and the vet’s office, where she’d left Charlie for a badly needed physical update, would close at six thirty.
“I have to go and pick up my dog,” she said. “Wouldn’t want him to think I’ve ditched him.”
Liam smiled, tucked a lock of her moist hair behind her ear. “For a runaway bride,” he teased, “you place a high value on loyalty.”
She arched an eyebrow, grinned a little, soaking in the warmth of him, the nearness of him, the sweet safety she found in his presence.
“Was that a jibe?”
Liam shook his head. “Just an observation,” he replied.
Madison drew a deep breath, exhaled. “Maybe I’m too loyal for my own good,” she informed him. “And I don’t think of myself as a runaway bride. I think of myself as a woman who came to her senses just in time to avoid certain disaster.”
His smile widened, tilting up on one side, somehow accentuating the chiseled lines of his handsome face. Before he could say anything, though, they heard footsteps pounding in their direction, approaching fast.
They drew apart just as Cavan came sliding into the kitchen like a runner making a mad dash for home plate. He was wearing Spiderman pajamas.
“Good!” he almost shouted, beaming at Madison. “You aren’t gone yet!”
“I’m still here,” she confirmed, and some of her baby fever, always with her, the pulsing subtext to almost everything she did, melted away. Yes, she could definitely love this child; perhaps she already did, just a little.
“I wanted to say good-night,” Cavan told her, rapid-fire, almost breathless with relief. “And say thank you for the salad and the cake and could you please let me meet your dog Charlie real soon?”
Madison laughed. “Good night to you, too, Cavan McKettrick,” she said, “and thank you for your hospitality, you’re very, very welcome and yes, you can definitely meet Charlie, and soon.” She glanced at Liam for confirmation, thinking she might have overstepped by offering an introduction to the dog she barely knew herself, and he gave her the slightest nod of approval.
Cavan gave an ear-splitting shout of pure joy.
Liam winced, made a big deal of covering his ears with his hands. “Buddy,” he said. “Dial it down just a little, okay? That yell went through my head like a spear!”
“Okay,” Cavan agreed charitably. “When can I see Charlie?”
“When Madison and I have talked about it and decided on the best option,” Liam responded. Then he reached out, mussed his son’s dark hair with one hand, and sent him off to finish getting ready for bed, promising they’d read a story together later.
After Cavan had retreated to do as he’d been asked, Liam walked Madison outside and across the front yard to the Bentley.
That was when she realized she hadn’t taken Cavan for the ride she’d promised the day they all met up on the sidewalk in front of Bailey’s.
She’d left the cake and salad containers behind since there were leftovers inside, but she wasn’t going to worry about that.
Loose ends usually bothered Madison, even the smallest ones, but in this case, she was glad to have any reason to see Liam again, no matter how mundane.
“Next time you talk to Courtney, thank her for me,” she said, referring to the loan of the swimsuit and the boots. Liam’s sister-in-law had already left for the airport, after hugging and kissing both children, evidently not caring that they had just climbed out of the pool, soaking wet of course.
Madison had fretted quietly, after Courtney had gone, because she was wearing the swimming suit at the time and could hardly have returned it sopping wet and unwashed.
Liam had assured her that Courtney had planned to leave some of her things at the ranch anyway, since she’d be returning for more meet-ups with the movie people.
“How’s that going?” Madison asked now, standing beside Coralee’s classic car, which was dusty after traversing country roads. “The movie project, I mean?”
Liam laughed, standing near her again, holding open the car door. “Thanks for clarifying,” he said. “That question could cover a lot of hot topics.”
“Sometimes I don’t do segues,” Madison explained, smiling, ready to fetch her dog from the vet’s, go home, soak in a hot bubble bath and crawl into bed, where sweet dreams surely awaited. “I was thinking about Courtney, which led to the movie, which led to my asking how it was going.”
“It’s going. I stay away as much as possible—and I’ve been pretty busy with the kids. Frankly, I’ll be glad when they wrap the thing up and move on, but the people of Painted Pony Creek are getting a big kick out of the whole process, and that’s good. They like running into movie stars in the grocery store, I guess.”
“Don’t you?” Madison asked, actually curious.
Liam sighed. Could be that, like her, he was pleasantly worn out. “I don’t much care, to be honest,” he said. “When I’m starstruck, it’s by real stars , Madison. The kind that spill across a midnight sky like billions of tiny pinpoints of silver. That impresses me.”
You impress me.
That was the message she saw in his eyes, but of course, she could have been imagining that.
“You’re quite the poet, Liam McKettrick,” she said.
He grinned. “If you say so, Madison Bettencourt,” he replied.
They were silent for a minute or so, just looking at each other, taking each other in. For Madison, the interval was so profound that she had to fight back tears.
“If you’d like to watch some of the filming, I’m sure I can arrange something,” Liam offered presently, breaking the spell, and as lightly as he’d spoken, she could see that her answer mattered to him.
“I’d like that,” she replied.
“Are you free tomorrow?”
Madison shook her head. “I have Zoom meetings all morning—Audra and I are in the process of selling our company—and then I plan on visiting Coralee.” She paused, sighed. “Somewhere in between, I need to get acquainted with Charlie, buy some dog gear, like a leash and food and toys, take him out for a walk or two, that kind of thing.”
“I’ll text you after I speak with the director,” Liam said. “There’s no hurry. They have a lot of street scenes to film, evidently, plus a few in the hotel lobby, the church and the saloon.”
“That sounds good,” Madison said, reluctant to part from this man, and all the intangible pleasures of being near him. It was powerful, this feeling, almost mystical, and for the time being, she wasn’t interested in defining it, or putting it into a category.
Even the word love didn’t cover it.
He kissed her again, not so lightly this time, but not with any pressure or tongue, either.
“Good night, Madison,” he said huskily.
Madison responded in kind, nearly floated onto the car seat.
She was strangely disassociated as she drove toward town, but fully alert, too.
Did it mean anything that never, ever, in her whole life, had she felt what she was feeling now?
The residual joy of riding again, at full throttle and with Liam beside her, lingered, and so did the time the four of them had spent in the pool, laughing and splashing each other.
Madison could admit it now—she already adored little Cavan.
As for Keely, well, the kid might well be seeing her as a potential wicked stepmother, even though marriage wasn’t a factor.
Not yet, that is.
Maybe never.
Quite possibly what she had with Liam was nothing more than infatuation, a sort of rebound thing, since she’d only recently parted with a man she’d believed she loved.
Surely it wasn’t smart to shift gears so quickly.
Was it?
When it came to romance, Madison wasn’t ready to trust herself.
She’d already made two huge mistakes, marrying Tom and almost marrying Jeffrey. A third screwup of that magnitude might be more than she could bounce back from. She was a strong woman, but she wasn’t superhuman, for Pete’s sake.
To make matters more complicated, her grandmother, her only living blood relative, was dying, and her dear friend, Olivia, might be, as well.
Plus, she was selling the company she and Audra had built together, and that was a major shift in its own right. They’d worked tirelessly, endlessly, for years to build their design service, to create and maintain the app. They’d each put a big chunk of themselves into the enterprise, traveling all over the world, consulting top-flight designers, working crazy hours, succeeding and failing and succeeding again.
Madison wondered who she’d be, exactly, without the business, and she knew Audra well enough to be sure her friend had to have similar concerns.
There would be a huge payout if the deal didn’t fall through, and even after taxes, she and Audra would be even richer than they already were.
Managing all that money would be an even bigger challenge than earning it in the first place, quite possibly a full-time job in and of itself, even with the help of accountants and financial advisors.
Madison was sure of only one thing where the money was concerned: she could have gotten by without it.
She had enough fancy jewelry, designer outfits, bags and shoes.
Too many, in fact.
She lived in a house she loved, and she was driving Coralee’s Bentley.
She had excellent friends who truly had her back, as she had theirs.
And she had something with Liam McKettrick, though she couldn’t have said what it was.
Her desires in life were simple.
She wanted to love and be loved.
She wanted a family.
And, yes, she wanted to make a difference in the world.
A big difference, like paying to have freshwater wells dug in developing countries, contributing to the cost of medical care and education for those who needed it most, helping with the most pressing causes of the times.
Madison Bettencourt wanted to be more than an heiress who’d sold her half of a business for a fortune.
She’d been receiving all her life.
Now it was time to give.
Madison was thinking all these thoughts when she drove into the parking lot behind the vet’s office, got out of the car, and made her way around to the front.
The receptionist, clearly ready to close the place, met her with a grin and a spiffy little dog with pointy gray ears, wearing a bandana over the collar he’d been given.
Madison’s heart swelled as her new companion hurried toward her.
“Charlie,” she greeted him, choking up a bit. “You look like a different dog! ”
“A bath and a good meal did wonders,” the receptionist said cheerfully. She was called Kathy, according to her name tag, and she was dressed in pink scrubs with tiny white cats printed all over them. “Dr. Valerie says he’s healthy, just a little undernourished. He’s had his shots, and he has a chip now, too.” She paused and handed Madison the leash, then a bag that had been waiting on the counter in front of the desk. “Here are some samples to tide you over until you can go shopping—packets of wet and dry food, eye wipes, a tennis ball. Stuff like that.”
“Thank you,” Madison said as Charlie rose onto his hind feet and scrabbled at her legs with the front pair. She couldn’t resist picking him up, and she was surprised, once again, by how little he was, how light. “Everything covered moneywise?”
“We ran your card when Dr. Valerie was finished,” she said, with a big nod and an even bigger smile. “Added the cost of the grooming in, of course.”
“Of course,” Madison said agreeably, pleased that all the dots had been connected.
Charlie licked her cheek. Maybe he smelled the barbecued chicken she’d eaten at Liam’s a little while before.
Or maybe he was just glad to see her.
Her eyes burned with a new kind of happiness as she headed for the door, which would soon be locked behind her.
“Come on, Charlie,” she said, nuzzling his neck as she walked toward the Bentley. “Let’s go home.”
Soon, Charlie was sitting obediently in the front seat, his ears up.
It occurred to Madison, not for the first time, that Charlie might not have been abandoned, as she’d thought. He might have run away from home, or gotten lost.
Maybe someone was searching for him even now, heartbroken.
However short their acquaintance, Madison knew she would be devastated if someone showed up and claimed him. And that could happen.
Turning onto the road that led to Bettencourt Hall, she decided not to worry.
What was the point, really?
If Charlie belonged to someone who loved him, someone who was searching for him at this moment, she would surrender him, even though it would hurt. Her heart had wrapped itself around this little fellow the moment they met up in the driveway, and letting go wouldn’t be easy.
But suppose he’d been purposely neglected instead of loved, tossed away, even abused?
Well, in that case, she’d fight to keep him.
With everything she had.
Thus resolved, she reached over and patted Charlie’s furry head. His coat was soft and shiny now that he’d been bathed and brushed, and she would have sworn he was smiling as he looked over at her.
There was still plenty of light when they got to the house, and Madison was glad of that, because, despite the benign spirit of the place, it was isolated, and there were plenty of places to hide.
She’d feel safer with Charlie around, not because he’d be of any real use as a guard dog, featherweight that he was, but because he could serve as an early warning system.
He was a mixture of small breeds, mostly terriers of one kind or another, Madison thought, and that meant he would bark if he heard, smelled or merely sensed danger.
Madison parked the Bentley in the garage, and then she and Charlie made their way around to the back of the house.
Charlie paused at the foot of the sunporch steps to lift a hind leg.
At least, Madison thought charitably, he hadn’t waited until they were inside to do his business.
Once she’d flipped on the kitchen lights, she set the goody bag from the vet’s office on the counter, along with her purse, and crouched in front of Charlie to cup his funny little face in her hands.
His eyelashes were long enough to envy.
“You’ll be happy here, buddy. And safe, too. I promise.”
Charlie whined softly, then laved her face with his quick little tongue.
Madison laughed and leaned back slightly to avoid more of the same. “You’re a kamikaze kisser,” she said. She’d have to watch out for incoming volleys of canine affection in the future. “Let’s get you settled in for the night,” she concluded, getting back to her feet.
She opened the goody bag, took out a packet of dry food, and emptied it into a bowl, then filled a second bowl with water and set them both down in a far corner of the kitchen.
Charlie ignored the food, but he lapped up some water.
He’d been fed at the vet’s office, and evidently his last meal was sticking to his ribs.
She shut off the kitchen lights and started up the back stairs, Charlie following in little bounding leaps. He’d need license tags, a real dog bed—maybe two—and, of course, a proper leash and collar for walks in the countryside. The people at the vet’s office had provided temporary ones, but they wouldn’t hold up as well as the ones Madison intended to buy.
As she’d told Liam, she didn’t expect to have very much free time tomorrow, between back-to-back meetings with HammondCo and their lawyers, accountants and various other advisors, and her daily visit to her grandmother over in Silver Hills.
She felt a flash of guilt as she took a wool blanket from the linen closet, folded it into a thick square, and laid it down on her bedroom floor for Charlie to sleep on.
She was going to have to leave the dog home alone for a couple of hours while she was with Coralee; no way around it.
He ignored the improvised dog bed and immediately hopped up onto its counterpart, designed for humans, curling up near the footboard, yawning, and closing his expressive brown eyes.
Madison sighed and shook her head.
She didn’t have the heart to remove him, so she found a nightgown and went into her bathroom.
There, she filled the big claw-foot tub, adding in a generous squeeze of liquid bubble bath, and stripped off her clothes while steam filled the room and clouded up the mirrors.
Finally, with a big sigh, she sank into the tub, sliding down until her chin touched the water and the bubbles tickled her nose.
Now that she felt the sheer relief of soaking in a hot bath, she realized that her thighs, bottom and lower back were aching from the horseback ride with Liam and his children.
Both Keely and Cavan were naturals on horseback, like their father, though Keely hadn’t seemed to enjoy the experience nearly as much as her little brother did.
Madison couldn’t help wondering if it had been her presence that had caused Keely to tamp down the delight she obviously felt, astride her dainty palomino mare, Lady. Without a word, the child had made it clear that Madison was—extra.
An outsider.
With a sigh and then a huge yawn, she decided she was reading too much into a very small thing. She was a stranger to Keely, and therefore, somewhat suspect; that was entirely natural.
If what Madison had begun with Liam turned into something lasting, and Keely was still withdrawn, she’d find a way to deal with that.
In the meantime, she had plenty of other things to keep her occupied.
For example, Coralee’s longtime attorney, Ezra Clark, had emailed her twice already, wanting to set up a meeting, each time stressing that it would be wiser to go over the details of her grandmother’s estate in advance of her death.
And each time, Madison had put him off, not only because she’d been busy settling in at Bettencourt Hall and spending as much time as possible with Coralee, but because she preferred to ignore the depressing fact that Coralee was dying.
It was true that Madison and her grandmother had been apart for long stretches of time, but that didn’t mean they didn’t love each other.
Yes, Coralee had held herself a step removed from her, emotionally, for as long as Madison could remember, but along with Bettencourt Hall itself, the old woman had been a touchstone, anchoring Madison to her identity, her heritage, her family history.
Furthermore, the kindly distance Coralee had kept between them had strengthened Madison rather than scarred her.
She’d been a lonely kid, sure.
But she’d known all along that Coralee was doing the best she could, all things considered.
It couldn’t have been easy to lose her son and daughter-in-law so tragically and then find herself responsible for the four-year-old daughter they’d left behind.
Coralee had adapted , and sometimes, that had to be good enough.
Soon, the bath began to cool off, and instead of turning the hot water spigot to add more, Madison lathered herself up, scrubbed, rinsed and climbed out of the tub, which was long, wide and deep enough to serve as a horse trough.
She wrapped herself in an oversized towel before bending to pull the plug, and after brushing her teeth and applying moisturizer to her face and lotion to the rest of her body, she returned to the bedroom and tossed back the covers on her bed.
Charlie, still ensconced at the foot of it, opened his bright button eyes and then closed them again.
Madison smiled to herself.
She was tired, so tired.
Normally, it took her a while to fall asleep; she needed time to settle her busy mind, to slow down on the inside, not just the outside.
Sitting up with her pillows propped behind her, Madison considered the packet of letters and the stack of leather-bound journals waiting downstairs in the library, on a side table.
She’d intended to sit down and read through every word, ever since she’d found them in that box from the secret room, but for some reason she couldn’t explain, she was reluctant—not in a negative way, though.
No, she wanted to be ready, that was all.
Whatever being ready meant.
Madison sighed, plugged her phone in to charge, switched off her lamp, adjusted her pillows, and slid down beneath the lightweight summer covers.
Charlie began to snore, and although Madison knew she should have made him get down off the bed, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Anyway, it was nice to feel his weight near her feet.
She shifted this way and that, trying to get comfortable, having to maneuver her feet around the warm lump that was Charlie each time she moved, but eventually, sleep overtook Madison and sucked her down into the realm of disjointed dreams.
They moved and changed like colorful glass shards in a kaleidoscope, her dreams, mental fragments of a busy day.
Meeting Charlie in the driveway.
Riding hard over open rangeland, with Liam riding beside her.
His children, splashing and laughing in the swimming pool.
That soft, special kiss in Liam’s kitchen.
And then, from somewhere in the depths of her unconscious mind, stranger images arose, displacing the happier bits.
A little girl, a familiar one, running breathlessly, frantically through darkened woods.
Bliss?
Yes. Yes, of course, it was Bliss.
Who—or what—was pursuing her, and why?
Vaguely aware that she was asleep, indeed that she was dreaming, and none of this was real, Madison was nonetheless struck by the child’s desperation and fear.
As her dream-self, she called out to Bliss, tried to run toward her, but she was stuck fast, as though her feet were mired in rapidly drying cement.
Bliss didn’t slow down. She crashed blindly through the underbrush, looking back over her shoulder every few strides, stumbling, righting herself again.
Running. Running.
The light of a waning moon illuminated the small figure, then the shadows swallowed her again.
Madison called out. “Bliss, wait! Wait! ”
And then Bliss was in the cemetery, their meeting place.
Madison could see the girl’s bright eyes, her halo of brownish-blond hair, tangled and unkempt, rioting around her small, freckled face.
A face filled with fear. And something else.
Determination?
Again, Madison tried to move, to get to Bliss, to save her somehow.
But she was still stuck, as though caught in waist-high quicksand.
Bliss hopped onto the gravestone where she’d liked to sit, spine straight, legs crossed, like those of a miniature and very skinny Buddha.
Next, to Madison’s bafflement, a shimmer rose around the girl, not fog or smoke, but the energy, the essence of those things.
Through the haze, Madison saw her lost friend press both hands to her ears and squeeze her eyes shut, as though she were in the worst kind of pain. She cried out, swaying atop that rectangular marker—and then—
And then, she simply disappeared , as if absorbed by the strange mist.
The shock was so great that Madison was jolted from the depths of sleep to full wakefulness in the space of a single heartbeat.
Her skin was moist and very cold.
Her heart was pounding, and so was her head.
And Charlie stood at her side, on the mattress, his ears perked, watching her.
Clearly, she’d startled him, waking up with such a violent jerk that she could still feel it in her muscles and joints.
What the hell was that about?
Like everyone else on the planet, she’d had bad dreams before. She’d had full-on nightmares. But this had been something more—much more.
More like a memory than a dream.
Yet she’d never seen Bliss in such a state, running as if for her very life, perching on the grave marker and pressing her little hands hard into the sides of her head.
Giving a hoarse shout of indescribable pain.
And then vanishing.
Just vanishing.
Madison sat up, careful not to send Charlie flying off the bed in the process, and swung her legs over the edge. Planted her feet firmly on the floor, the way she’d done once or twice in college, when she’d gotten carried away at some party, drinking more than she should have.
Now, as she had then, Madison felt a need to anchor herself.
To stop the room from spinning around her like a carnival ride gone out of control.
Her breath came hard and fast, and she rested a hand on her chest, felt the thud of her heart right through flesh and bone and the fabric of her nightshirt.
Charlie whimpered and crawled into her lap.
She hugged him gently, whispered reassurances she needed to hear herself.
“It’s all right,” she said, after a long time spent rocking back and forth and trying to slow her breathing down enough that she wouldn’t hyperventilate. “It’s all right.”
It wasn’t, though.
The dream haunted her, prodded at her. It lurked, as if it might pounce on her, even now that she was awake.
Bliss. Poor, terrified, lost Bliss.
What, Madison asked herself for the hundredth time, had happened to her friend?
In the dream, Bliss had been fleeing from something or someone, flying along as if her life depended on it.
And maybe it had.
“Shake it off,” Madison told herself aloud, easing Charlie off her lap so she could stand up. “It was a dream, that’s all. Only a dream.”
Alas, it wasn’t that easy.
Dream or no dream, it had felt real.
As real as the room she stood in.
And it had left her shaken, even a little traumatized.
Could a simple dream do that?
If so, Madison had no reference point for such an experience, because she’d never had one quite like it before.
She’d been there , in the woods, under a nearly full moon, watching, straining to get to Bliss, to rescue her somehow.
And she’d been unable to move.
That had been the worst part.
Madison stumbled into her bathroom without bothering to switch on the lights, turned on the cold water faucet in the sink, and splashed her burning face over and over again.
Slowly, very slowly, she began to calm down.
When she felt strong enough to stay upright without leaning against the pedestal sink, Madison left the bathroom, grabbed her phone from the nightstand, and crossed to her door. She entered the hallway and started down the rear stairway.
Charlie followed, his recently clipped nails tap-tap-tapping on the wooden steps.
In the kitchen, she turned on the lights, flipped the switch on the electric teapot, found a package of chamomile tea bags in the cupboard, and dropped two into a mug.
Chamomile wasn’t going to cut, it was the best she could do at the moment. She didn’t have any meds for anxiety, and just then, the thought of alcohol of any type turned her stomach.
She glanced at the phone, checking the time.
It was late. After one a.m.
Too late to call Audra, or any of her other friends.
Certainly too late to call the person whose voice she most wanted to hear—Liam.
While she waited for the kettle to boil, she practiced taking slow, deep breaths.
Charlie nuzzled her bare calf with his very cold nose, and she took a moment to bend down and give him a pat on the head.
She was being silly, she lectured herself.
She’d had a dream, that was all.
Just a dream.
The kettle reached a rolling boil, and she lifted the pot from its base and poured scalding hot water into her mug, causing the tea bags to float to the top.
Just as she was about to sit down at the table and wait patiently, sanely for her jitters to stop, or at least abate a little, her phone rang, startling her so much that she jumped, and poor Charlie skittered backwards in alarm.
Madison frowned, pressed the button to accept the call, and said hoarsely, “This is Madison Bettencourt. What is it?”
“I’m Jenny Baker, and I work at Silver Hills Assisted Living Center,” replied a female voice. “I’m calling about your grandmother, Coralee Bettencourt.”