Mary Sullivan - Because of Audrey

While the worker reported to Gray on the phone, Audrey’s gaze shifted to her fields, to the dewy promise of life in the burgeoning grasses surrounding her. If love were visible, had a color, it would be green. She loved this land.

She breathed deeply of air scented with the damp freshness of morning dew. How ironic that the man who’d inspired her love of nature and the outdoors should be the one who could destroy her.

The foreman hung up, crossed his muscled arms over his chest and stared her down, as though he could change her actions by the force of his willpower.

Not a chance.

No beefy construction worker, or backhoe or business mogul would stop her from protecting her babies, even if said businessman did hold the key to a corner of her heart she’d locked away nearly thirty years ago.

Be still, my hammering heart. He’s only a boy you used to know. He has no power over you.

Even so, she held her breath while she waited for Gray. She knew from experience that trouble wouldn’t be far behind.

* * *

GRAYSON TURNER RACED his father’s Volvo along the back road that bordered his parents’ land outside of Accord, Colorado, biting down on his frustration. What now?

He’d been back home only three months, and already his stress level was through the roof. He still remembered that disturbing call from Dad’s office manager.

“He’s slowing down, Gray,” Hilary had said. “He comes in only two, three hours a day. He’s not here long enough to make decisions that need to be made.” Shocking, considering that Dad used to practically live there, putting in twelve-and thirteen-hour days when Gray was growing up.

“The decisions he’s making are hurting the company,” Hilary had continued. “You need to take care of this.”

Hilary had worked for Dad for thirty years and knew Turner Lumber inside out. If she said Gray needed to be here, then he needed to be here.

So he’d come home. He should have done so years ago, but Marnie... No, he couldn’t go there.

His attempts at dragging the family business into the twenty-first century were being scuttled at every turn, mainly by Dad. Gray had an agricultural conglomerate lined up and was ready to hand over a boatload of money to him for the land, a decision with which Dad had agreed, and what should have been a straightforward mission to tear down the old greenhouses on the property was being held up.

Who would lock themselves to a Turner greenhouse? What had Dad done? Offended a tree hugger? Eaten a piece of meat?

Joking aside, what had his father done? Anything was possible these days.

Cool it, Gray. It could just as easily be a squatter. Dad doesn’t have to be blamed for everything.

Leaving a trail of dust in his wake, Gray shot down the dirt driveway and pulled up in front of the largest greenhouse, barely registering the idle workers and the one woman leaning against the front of the building.

He opened his door and set a foot onto the ground. Darkness. Suffocation. Clawing panic.

Not this again. He shook his head to free himself of the debilitating feelings. He had work to do and no time to figure out what the hell was wrong with him, and what it had to do with Accord.

The car accident had happened in Boston, so why was it affecting him more in his hometown than it had in his adopted city?

He swiped the back of his hand across his sweaty brow and took control of his unruly, nameless fears, got out of the car, and there he was, feet on terra firma, on Turner land, and disaster hadn’t struck to warrant the panic. All of that worry for nothing.

Time to deal with the nutcase his foreman had called about.

Silhouetted against the building, her posture dramatic, one arm chained to the door and the other spread across the glass as though one of the workers were threatening her with a sledgehammer, stood a full-figured woman who looked like she’d stepped out of an old movie set.

It took him a moment to recognize her, to remember her from high school.

Audrey Stone.

That darkness, that suffocating panic, slammed into his chest with the force of a wrecking ball. He reached to loosen his tie so he could catch an ounce of oxygen, a fragment of air, anything to stop the dizziness and nausea.

What the hell did the accident have to do with this woman? He hadn’t seen Audrey in years. He’d never had a relationship with her. They’d never dated, had never been friends.

Audrey didn’t look a thing like Marnie, and in fact was Marnie’s antithesis. Marnie would never have done something this rash. This emotional. So why did Audrey bring up this crippling hangover from the accident?

He undid the top button of his shirt and sucked in a deep breath.

Better.

Ramming his shaking hands into his pants pockets, he studied the woman chained to his greenhouse and forced himself to rise above his distress to view her objectively. Studying her would give him a minute to collect himself.

He’d avoided her in high school. Looked like he wasn’t going to be able to now.

Audrey had changed. She’d been strange back then, in Doc Martens, studded dog collars and spiky black hair, but she’d traded it all in for a more sophisticated weirdness. She wore a suit—a cropped jacket and skirt, and looked like something out of a sixties society photo, Mrs. S—Lunching with Friends.

He stepped closer. Fire-engine-red lipstick that matched a ridiculous little hat perched on her head defined a sinfully full mouth. Black eyeliner framed violet eyes. A cap of black curls surrounded a pale face.

Jackie O meets Betty Boop.

Gray knew both characters well. Mom had a lifelong obsession with Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, and Dad loved old cartoons, but come on, these days who dressed like an uppercrust fifties or sixties housewife out on the town?

As had happened in high school, his feelings about Audrey couldn’t be clearly defined—sometimes anger, sometimes confusion, often panic. They flummoxed him and made him a little crazy. He was a good judge of character, but who was Audrey, really, and why did he feel so strange around her?

And why did she bring up these memories of the accident?

Why would who she was even matter to him? It wasn’t as if she was anything more than another of the town’s citizens, a satellite floating around the edges of his world.

Calmer now, he stopped in front of her. If his stance was aggressive, so be it. He was in no mood to beat around the bush. “What are you doing?”

“Protecting my property.” Her body might have Betty Boop’s curves, but her voice had none of her squeaky breathlessness. No-nonsense and down-to-earth, it had an intriguing depth.

“You’ve got stuff in our greenhouses?” So this situation wasn’t Dad’s fault. Audrey was nothing more than a garden snake variety of trespasser. Harmless. “That’s squatting.”

He turned to his foreman. “Cut off the handcuffs. Escort her from the property.”

“This land belongs to me.” For a short woman, she had a big voice. Must be those well-endowed...lungs. “If any of you puts a hand on me, I’ll call the police and have you charged with both assault and trespassing. Get off my land now.”

Gray stilled. “Your land? What are you talking about?” His foreman was right. She was a nutcase.

With her free hand, she reached into a boxy white purse hanging from her handcuffed wrist and pulled out a paper, the nerves underneath her defiance betrayed by the wavering of her hand.

He snatched it, read it...and stopped breathing. A photocopy of the sale of a swath of land to her, it looked legit.

Impossible. The air around him became thin. Man, he was getting tired of being dizzy.

Dad, you didn’t—

You couldn’t have—