Heatherly Bell - Breaking Emily's Rules

“I get the feeling your sister might be reasonable. Why not meet with her?”

“I did.” All she’d wanted to do was hurl insults and accusations at their late father. He carried enough guilt about those last months without Sarah adding to it.

“Again, I mean.” Matt slid him a look. “One meeting that didn’t go well isn’t enough. It’s worth a try.”

But Stone wasn’t sure of that anymore. He should talk with Sarah again, to see if he could get her to see reason. Matt seemed to think she was open, but that hadn’t been Stone’s experience. Some people were a lost cause, and he felt fairly certain the sister he didn’t know anymore was one of them.

CHAPTER THREE

“WAKE UP, EMILY.”

Emily opened one eye.

Grammy stood over her, dressed in her sparkly blue jeans and leopard-print top. It was one of the most irritating things about her grandmother. She refused to give in to convention and wear tracksuits like all her friends did.

Emily hadn’t even heard her come in. “What good is it to give me the loft for privacy if you keep barging in on me like this? What if I had company?”

“Emily, dear, please. I don’t have time for jokes. We have the Chamber of Commerce party today. I’ll need you to help George. He’s an old man now.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that.”

George Carver had worked for the family for as long as Emily could remember. Old or not, he was still their handyman, their gardener and a long-time family friend.

Emily’s dog, Pookie, a Poodle and Chihuahua mix, peeked out from the under the covers.

“You’re letting Pookie in your bed? What’s wrong with you?”

“She’d old, Grammy, and it was cold out last night. I caught her shivering.” That was Emily’s story and she was sticking to it. Growing up on their pseudo ranch usually meant dogs lived outside, but Emily liked it better this way. If Grammy was going to let Emily have the loft over the garage, then Emily could let Pookie have a spot on her bed at night.

“Girl, your heart is just too big. Pookie has you fooled. She’s fine outside and has a warm dry place in the pen. Cuddles up next to Beast every chance she gets. Anyway, the meat is coming in at noon, and I’ll need you to check it. You know what happened last time.” Grammy started to make the bed with Emily in it.

“Hey. Why don’t you let me get out of bed first? What time is it?” Fighting to push off the last dregs of sleep, Emily pulled the covers up to her nose. She wasn’t sure, but she might have been in the middle of a dream that made her blush, even thinking of it. It might have involved Stone and some of that horizontal dancing.

“It’s time for you to get up. And there’s something I want to show you first.” Grammy walked toward the front door and put her hand on the doorknob.

“What is it?” Emily rubbed her eyes and looked at the clock. Eight thirty. Too bad Grammy didn’t believe in sleeping in even on the weekends, because right now all Emily wanted was another few minutes. And she wasn’t going to get them.

“Wait till you see. I ordered it and it came yesterday. I’ll meet you at the house for breakfast.” Grammy let herself out, but not before picking up Pookie and carrying her out. “Dogs stay outside.”

Emily rustled her feet from under the warm covers and let them touch the cool hardwood. She shrank back and resisted the urge to bury under the blanket and go back to her dreams. Dreams in which she’d gone home with Stone.

Forget about him. I’m not ready for someone like that, and maybe I never will be. No, she was never going to be “that girl.” The girl who didn’t worry about consequences. The one who took a chance. She was too sensible for all that.

Emily showered, tried not to think of Stone, dried off and dressed in the working jeans and Fortune Ranch company shirt she wore while working on the family’s ranch. Not that it was a ranch anymore, unless one counted a petting zoo and three ponies. But Grammy insisted on keeping the name, a testament to the former glory of the Parker family’s four-hundred-acre cattle ranch of days gone by.

After eminent domain and the freeway extension had made its way through, they’d been left with forty acres and the house. Thank God for ever-resourceful Grammy, who claimed she hadn’t lived through the depression for nothing. And even if the family business now came down to outdoor company parties, picnics and high school Sadie Hawkins dances, they still had their home.

Thank heavens for that, because right now Emily needed home. The place where she’d grown up and the last place she’d lived with Mama. She’d been gone seventeen years, but her absence still ached if Emily thought about it too much.

Emily made her way down the creaky steps of her second-story apartment loft above the detached garage and jogged over to the main Victorian house on the hill. She threw open the side door to the kitchen and walked in to the sounds of Molly’s high-pitched voice. “That’s it—you’ve finally taken the last train into Crazy Town, and this time I’m not sure you’ll be back.”

“What’s up?” Emily grabbed a mug from the cupboard.

Molly and Grammy stood before some type of large vase on the kitchen counter.

“Grammy has done it now.” Molly looked like she’d woken only minutes ago and stood in the middle of the kitchen wearing her oversize Hairdressers Do It with Style T-shirt, hair mussed and eyes bloodshot with the after effects of too much tequila.

“Once again, your sister is demonstrating how short-sighted she can be. This is where I’ll be buried—my ashes will be, anyway. And I want you girls to pick the perfect place where I’ll be seated for all eternity. I was thinking somewhere in the dining room.”

That thing sitting on the kitchen counter was an urn? No wonder Molly was freaked out. Emily wasn’t sure she could ever eat food in here again. “Can we take it off the kitchen counter?”

“For the love of Pete, you girls act like I bought a used urn. This was ordered from the most highly regarded crematorium in the state. Don’t you think it’s nice?” Grammy ran her hand along the little pink roses that decorated the border.

Emily couldn’t look at the place where her Grammy’s bones would someday lie. “Can’t we do this another time?”

Grammy waved a hand. “Fine. I’ll find a place in the dining room. This way I’ll be in attendance at every Thanksgiving and Christmas even after I’m gone. Now, I’ll be watching over you all, so don’t forget to say grace.”

“Oh, Daddy is going to love this,” Molly said with an eye roll.

“Your father isn’t any of my concern. He spends half his time in Texas pretending he’s a cowboy when he ought to be home with his family,” Grammy shouted over her shoulder as she left the room with her urn.

The subject of their father and his reluctance to let go of the cattle ranch days was one Emily couldn’t handle before noon. Or plenty of coffee.

She eyed the bacon and eggs Grammy had left on a warming platter, considering whether or not she still had an appetite.

“I was thinking—” Molly said with a grin.

“Don’t you dare.” Emily pointed a finger.

“I’ll be good this time. Okay, I should have stayed away from the tequila shots. And Thomas.”

“That would have been nice.”

“But we should go see if we can find that nice man who helped us with Thomas. And then I can apologize.”

Emily sat at the kitchen table and thought about how much she’d like to thank Stone. But she wouldn’t need Molly for that. “I’m not going back there for a while.”

“Why? I saw you dancing with him. And you looked happy. What have you got against happy?”