Chapter 3 Rhiannon, Nosy Neighbors & Belonging （or lack thereof） #2
He gave her a sideways glance before simply pointing to the back of the space.
“Delivered, brought in, stored properly. Even with all those asshats falling over themselves drooling over you. Talk about barking up the wrong tree. When I am right here, ready and able and very willing—”
“Don’t be gross, Lachlan.” Rhiannon took a long sip of her still relatively hot coffee. “And despite me doing my absolute best to not pay attention to the revolving door of your bedroom, I could’ve sworn you were engaged to some prancing blond pony just days ago.”
Lachlan’s laughter rang loudly, echoing off the mahogany walls of the Atelier. All six foot seven inches of him folded into a ball of hilarity, spilling to the stripped wooden floors of the front showroom.
Rhiannon gave him exactly one minute before she kicked the closest Doc Marten with her Louboutin.
“No need for violence.” His voice was still full of giggles, but he had the decency to stand up. If one could call standing up draping his hulking frame over the nearest stack of new windows waiting to be sanded down.
Then his beautiful face sobered.
“While I adore the fact that you do pay attention to the goings-on in my bedroom, more than you actually wish to admit, Barnaby and I broke up. You got saddled with this place and I said it was time to make a decision about his and my relationship, otherwise I’d have to follow you here…”
Rhiannon placed a hand on his shoulder, a rare form of support, and gave it a firm squeeze before returning it to her coffee cup.
“And here you are. Barnaby, I assume, decided to stay in LA.”
They shared a moment of awkward silence, and Rhiannon marveled at the twists and turns of the past months of her life. And the domino effect that they had on so many other people’s fates. She imagined before today was over, she’d wreak havoc on more unsuspecting souls.
But then, as her smile turned razor sharp, wreaking havoc was Rhiannon Crowhart’s stock-in-trade. Ask anyone. Ask Margaux Belcourt-Crowhart. She could write an entire treatise on how Rhiannon ruined her life.
But since that was no longer possible without a good Ouija board, ask Victoria Crowhart-whatever-was-the-last-name-of-that-useless-man-she-had-married. Had she really thought Rhiannon would not sense her skulking about her place of business?
Place of business?
Rhiannon lifted a chilled hand—Goddess, she really hated the Northeast—and pinched the bridge of her nose. Boleyn, sensing her mood, jumped down from the windowsill and bumped her legs, doing a great job of leaving as much cat hair as possible on Rhiannon’s ankles.
Lachlan was just as good a judge of her moods as Boleyn, hence she knew that his first order of business would be to change the subject. And he did.
“I know you always said this is a bit of a hick town, but Rhiannon, darling, I saw the most fascinating woman dash earlier into the bookstore next door. Tall, willowy and oh my god, the boho chic clothes… To die for. And I swear, if you hadn’t told me you don’t have family here…
” Rhiannon pinched the bridge of her nose harder.
This was not happening. She could practically see the wheels in Lachlan’s head turning as Victoria stepped out of the book shop and straight into what had immediately become a downright monsoon.
Rhiannon counted to ten. The rain and the wind did not stop. Didn’t even slow down. She frowned, and as if mocking her, thunder rolled in the distance.
Defeated, she closed her eyes. This island always undid her. What was one more humiliation?
So, of course, because the universe was perverse and the Mother Goddess had a mile-wide cruel streak, Victoria took two steps before slipping and landing on her behind in the puddle nearest to the construction site.
Rhiannon cursed Victoria, cursed the rain, and cursed this entire godforsaken town before setting her coffee down and making her way outside.
To her credit, Victoria was sitting quietly in the rainwater, her face a picture of complete innocence.
When Rhiannon, now drenched herself, took two steps and came to a stop right in front of her, Lachlan hot on her heels, Victoria lifted her head and made the fakest possible production of looking at Rhiannon.
“Goddess, Rhiannon Crowhart, as I live and breathe! You’ve hardly changed, child. I heard tell someone took over old Jerome’s place, but never in a million years would I have assumed my own kin—”
“Can it, Aunt Vicky.”
Behind her, Lachlan’s gasp was loud and just as theatrically honest as Victoria’s earlier speech had been fake.
“Aunt Vicky?”
“You know that it is and always has been Victoria, never Vicky, if you please. Now be a dear, young man, and give me a hand. My tired bones cannot take this rain and this cold and the abuse they are suffering on these cobblestones since my niece here cannot be bothered at all to help her feeble aunt.”
Lachlan’s jaw dropped at the information pouring down on him along with the rain. He blinked then obviously swallowed a dozen or so questions before deciding that the best thing to do was spring into action.
“Oh, of course, ma’am, and may I just say that you are by no means old—”
“My dear, I did not utter that ghastly word. Never have I ever spoken it out loud about myself. Feeble. That’s more my speed. Now, gentle, please.”
Rhiannon rolled her eyes at her aunt’s antics and led the way back to the building, fuming.
Above her, thunder boomed stronger. Mocking her again.
As she scowled at the sky, lightning severed the clouds and she exhaled in defeat, even as her body sang with the storm gathering speed and power around her.
Inside her, her own storm was powerless to answer the call of the island.
She had made sure of that years ago, and if she could control anything in her life, it was the craft in her blood.
Or so you think…
The voice laughed, and Rhiannon felt the skin of her palms tingle as she bit her cheek to refocus, to stop thinking… To stop the howling of the tempest. As she gritted her teeth, the wind picked up, lashing at her and at the unsuspecting, cheerfully colored buildings of Market Square.
Rhiannon curled her fingers into fists, her knuckles cracking, and willed herself to move. When she turned around, she caught Victoria watching her, tsking and shaking her head as Lachlan was carrying her up the stairs.
“Always had a temper, didn’t you, Rhiannon Elizabeth?”
Rhiannon chose to ignore Victoria’s words and her eyes lifting to the dark moody skies as she spoke.
As Lachlan sat Victoria down on one of the overturned buckets the workers were using and hurried off in search of— presumably—something to use to dry off, Rhiannon finally turned and took a good look at her gossip-seeking aunt.
Time had been graceful to Victoria. But then the going cliché was that time had always been gentle with the Crowharts. With those who were privileged to age at all, that is. Rhiannon knew she herself was a testament to that.
Victoria allowed her the perusal and then stood up, as if she hadn’t just taken a fall in the rain and didn’t resemble a drowned chicken, and dished some of her own.
“I have to say, I am a bit afraid to approach the two of you now, ladies.” Lachlan had returned with a towel and was standing a few feet away. “You look like you are about to start tearing strips off each other, and while I’d pay to watch, I feel that it’s not my place.”
He shoved the towel into Victoria’s hands and was gone as silently as he’d come in, something Rhiannon always admired about him. His perceptiveness and his way of moving without disturbing the air, for such a giant of a man.
“Your boy is smart, Rhiannon.”
Victoria did not lift the cloth to her face and kept looking as if she was trying to catalogue the differences.
Well, twenty years, while very kind still, had left quite a few of them.
Her aunt had changed too. Rhiannon’s treacherous heart squeezed at the depth of lines on the older woman’s cheeks, at the brightness of her white hair.
Crowharts aged gracefully, but they aged, nonetheless.
“It has been a long time, dearest.”
Victoria broke the staring contest and finally allowed herself to wipe the rain off her face.
“Am I still?” Rhiannon had no idea why she was asking things she had no desire to know the answer to. And honestly, after all this time, did it matter?
“My dearest?” Victoria lifted the patented Crowhart eyebrow and smiled.
Rhiannon had pictured this moment often in the first few years of her self-imposed exile.
She would return, triumphant and all-conquering, and they would all recognize how much they had wronged her.
And Victoria would look at her with absolution.
Except, there was no absolution in her aunt’s eyes, so like her own.
And since they were exactly like Rhiannon’s, there would be no getting over what had happened.
A Crowhart never forgot and never forgave.
It was, after all, their motto. Forged on their crest as a way of self-preservation at a time when they were hunted and haunted, and now it was just as heavy as the haunting itself.
What was one more curse on their family name?
Victoria took a step closer, interrupting Rhiannon’s bitter train of thought, and lifted her hand. Since she didn’t know if her aunt would strike or caress her, Rhiannon braced for whatever was to come. A slap perhaps.
“You get this one free, old woman. But just one.” She gritted out the words and was met with her aunt’s characteristic cackle.
“Still such a child.” The bony, too-bony fingers neither slapped nor caressed.
Her chin was clasped a bit too hard, and her face was turned to the light, her aunt’s gaze examining it with a lingering curiosity.
“The years might have been kind to you indeed, Rhiannon Elizabeth, but the Fates have not. Your skin is bright, but your eyes are lifeless.”
Rhiannon shook her head, freeing herself from Victoria’s touch, and took a step back and turned, her mind reeling. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, trying to stave the chill and the penetrating stare that was causing it.
Her thoughts ran rampant and she bit her lip to avoid voicing them.
She came to Dragons out of spite and yet she didn’t belong here anymore.
She didn’t miss her Malibu house either.
It felt like she swapped one hotel for another, one temporary space for another.
Was there a place where she was happy? And if so, why couldn’t she find the damn door into it?
Would someone for the love of everything holy just please let her in already?
A lifetime had passed, and her aunt could still read her like an open book. A lifetime and her aunt still saw things that Rhiannon herself chose to ignore.
She heard steps behind her and cringed, wrapping her arms around herself tighter. The movement behind her stopped, a sigh echoing loudly in the empty space around them.
She didn’t need to turn around to see Victoria wringing her hands or dropping the towel.
Or giving her more of those long, lingering, deciphering looks.
She didn’t need the admonitions. She knew exactly the accusations her aunt could lay at her door.
Rhiannon deserved every single one of them.
And yet… Why was she so desperate for this one person, with a face so like her mother’s, to not judge her harshly? And perhaps not ask her any questions.
The latter was, of course, too much to demand of a Crowhart.
“You brought that handsome boy, and Christian Astor is helping with whatever it is you are doing here, I heard. You also contracted about a dozen too many builders and are in a hurry to finish the renovations. I assume you’re bringing the Atelier back to its old and dubious glory days, waking up the old ghosts. Are you staying on Dragons, then?”
The gaping hole that held what was left of Rhiannon’s heart pulsed, open, defenseless. She choked on words and then simply resolved to say nothing. Victoria’s second tsk told her what her aunt thought of that tactic.
The steps receded, and then the door to the shop opened to the rain still pouring outside, and Rhiannon exhaled.
As she turned to see Victoria exit, she caught the older woman’s eyes.
Victoria’s surprisingly held no judgment at all.
And neither did her words. In the darkness of the room with the storm raging in the Square, Victoria’s quiet “You always were and will always be my dearest” broke what was left of Rhiannon’s heart.