Chapter 1 #3
She genuinely hoped, for her mother’s safety, that her sneaking suspicion was wrong.
The room went silent. Even the smaller Pomeranian, who had been yapping at irregular intervals, stopped barking.
Bunny’s eyes shifted. Left, down, up. Anywhere that wasn’t at Maddy.
Maddy turned to Aspen and lifted her brows. “Who is Lorraine?” It was the first time she’d actually acknowledged Aspen’s presence since she walked in the door.
Aspen’s hand froze on the lid she was sealing, and she straightened—looking like a deer-in-headlights under the direct address. Good.
“Lorraine?” Aspen’s brows pulled together.
Maddy let out a sharp breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. “There is no Lorraine, is there?” It wasn’t a question.
And she suddenly understood why some people chose murder.
Aspen’s gaze moved from Maddy to Bunny, and something in it shifted. The lightness that had been there when Maddy walked in cut away. “Bunny. What did you do?”
Bunny examined her perfectly manicured fingernails.
“Bunny,” Aspen said, her voice rising. “Talk.”
Bunny let out a long, put-upon exhale, her eyes drifting to the ceiling. “Well—all right. Fine. I may have telephoned your production office.” One ringed hand rose, conceding the point. “And I may, in a moment of maternal desperation, darling, have given them a name that was not strictly my own—”
“You told my assistant you didn’t have long!” It was the most Maddy had raised her voice in years.
Aspen’s jaw dropped. “Bunny! You didn’t!” She pressed both hands over her face.
Bunny pressed a flat hand to her sternum like the wrongly accused.
“Well, it’s technically true, sweetheart.
My recovery is six weeks and the Sterling Cup is in five.
Do the math, baby girl. I genuinely don’t have long.
” She gestured down the length of her own seated, cushioned, ice-packed body, exhibit A. “How am I supposed to—”
“That is not what ‘doesn’t have long’ means, Bunny, and you know it!” Aspen’s voice was furious, which was irritating, because Maddy was perfectly capable of being furious on her own. She did not need Aspen St. Claire to be furious on her behalf.
Maddy crossed to the island and laid a hand flat on the surface and leaned in, forcing Bunny to meet her eye.
“I was in the middle of a twenty-million-dollar production.” She kept her voice low.
“I chartered a fishing boat at midnight, took three flights across the Pacific, and drove straight here from LA on no sleep because—” Her voice cracked.
She stopped. Waited for it to seal. “Because I thought you were dying. And you bruised your ass doing paddleboard yoga.”
“Well, what was I supposed to do, darling, you tell me—” Bunny threw both hands toward the ceiling, the wince arriving a half-second later.
“Because I have tried everything else. You haven’t set foot in this house in fifteen years, and you barely return my calls—” She held up a finger to forestall argument.
“—and on the rare and blessed occasion that you do, sweetheart, they last an average of two to four minutes. I’ve timed them.
” Her hand dropped to her lap. “A mother only has so many tools at her disposal.”
Maddy’s chest tightened. She wasn’t wrong, but in fifteen years of answering one out of every two dozen calls and hanging up as quickly as possible, this was the first time her mother had ever actually called her out on it.
Maddy pushed off the counter. In her periphery, Aspen had gone still. Maddy didn’t look at her. Aspen had always had the unsettling talent for being precisely where Maddy didn’t want her to be, seeing what Maddy didn’t want her to see.
“I cannot organize the Cup from atop this donut, dear. Look at me.” Bunny gestured at herself, a wilting sweep of the hand.
“I’m practically bedridden. A shell of the woman I was just three days ago.
” She softened. “Aspen, bless her, has offered to help, and she’s a treasure, she truly is—” She nodded toward Aspen, then her ringed hand came to rest flat on the island.
“But it is the Sterling Cup, darling. Your father’s Cup.
And it needs a Sterling at the helm. This is our family legacy we’re talking about here.
” Her chin lifted. “Or have you abandoned your roots entirely and traded them in for banana-leaf backdrops and confessional tents? You used to love the Cup, sweetpea.”
Maddy wanted to laugh, or scream, or both.
Yes, somewhere deep down that she hadn’t looked at in a decade and a half, a part of her remembered looking forward to their annual family beach Olympics tradition every Fourth of July—the matching team uniforms, the barbecue with piles of food and endless laughter, the neck-and-neck competition between the Sterlings and the St. Claires.
But that was a long time ago, and she had a career to think about. She had the show. She had Los Angeles. She had goals.
She pulled her attention back to her mother. “So you faked a medical emergency to get free labor.”
“I didn’t fake anything! Okay. Maybe I exaggerated the severity a little.
” Bunny’s voice brightened. “But now that you’re here…
” The full Bunny Sterling smile took over.
Luminous, wide, calculated—six decades of deployment and never once a miss.
The smile that had gotten her out of every speeding ticket.
The smile that made people forget, temporarily, that they’d been angry about something.
And damnit, Maddy could feel it working.
She should leave. She should get in the car right now and drive back to LA. Erase the past thirty-six hours from her memory.
She looked at Bunny. At the ice packs, the donut cushion, the face filled with hope. She looked at the framed photographs covering every wall of the room. Fifteen years of a daughter frozen at eighteen and a man she’d spent fifteen years pushing out of her mind.
She looked at Aspen, who was watching her carefully and who had not once offered to leave during what was clearly a private family moment.
She closed her eyes, already regretting the words she knew were about to come out of her mouth.
“Fine.” It was temporary, she told herself. She could handle this. “I’ll stay through your recovery. Six weeks max, not a day longer.”
Bunny’s face broke open into a wide grin, hands reaching towards the sky.
Maddy crossed her arms. “I already told my production I’d be out for a family emergency, and filming is over in three days anyway. I’m staying because it’s practical. Not because you asked.”
Bunny picked up the tea mug in front of her and lifted it to her lips. “Of course, darling. Whatever you need to tell yourself.” She took a sip and winked.
Aspen made a tiny snort sound. Maddy’s head turned sharply.
Aspen’s face was neutral, but her mouth was twitching at the corners. She met Maddy’s gaze.
Maddy’s eyes narrowed. “Something funny?”
“Not at all.” Aspen came around the island, her bare feet quiet on the tile. “I’m glad you’re staying. Bunny needs the help around here, and the Cup is a lot of work.”
Maddy tracked her movement, but didn’t respond.
“I should head out. I’ll be back tomorrow morning for Bunny’s PT.” Aspen scooped up her keys from the counter.
Wait, what? Maddy’s crossed arms tightened across her body. “PT? You are her physical therapist?”