Lilian Darcy - The Millionaire's Cinderella Wife

Sierra felt her temples tightening. She closed her eyes and forgot about the view of the ocean.

Okay, she’d have to coach Lena or Angie through the blood sugar and insulin thing again. Or Dad himself. But he just didn’t seem able to grasp it, with all the other commitments he had between his business and his city hall duties, and anyhow he always thought she was overreacting. So what if his sugar level was a little high?

“Well, okay, ten days,” she said. “Max. I guess it shouldn’t take more than that to…uh…handle this problem Ty needs help with. Maybe even just a week.”

Maybe she could tell Ty he was on his own. He’d spent the past eight years proving that he could be happy that way. Why should his brief admission of need strike her as so important?

She took a big breath and said to Lena, “Listen, I’m going to print out an exact summary of what Dad needs to do, at what times of day, and what he needs to watch out for, and I’m going to fax it to you. I’m sorry, I thought he had a better handle on it after all this time. His doctor is a phone call away, and so am I, on my cell or here, and the bottom drawer of the desk in my room is filled with diabetic education brochures and booklets.”

“Booklets?” Lena sounded skeptical and daunted.

“They’re actually not that hard to read and understand. You and Angie and Jordy were too young when Mom died, so I took over from her with managing Dad’s illness, but you’re all old enough now.”

Even during the years of her marriage, Sierra had stopped in at Dad’s a couple of times, most days, to help him with his shots and his blood sugar tests. She’d also helped him as much as she could with the younger three, and handed out leaflets for his mayoral election campaign.

She finished, “I’m not expecting you to push Dad to handle it himself. I’ll do that when I get back.”

How? Dad was stubbornly determined to stay as ignorant as possible about his disease.

Sierra decided to ignore this problem until she was actually home again.

“You can handle it, okay?” she said to her twenty-two year old sister, using the same encouraging tone she used to her special needs pupils when they struggled with their math.

“Yeah, I know,” Lena said. “But we just really miss you, okay?”

Which was why Sierra let herself remain the lynch-pin that kept the whole Taylor family together and functioning, ultimately. Because she knew she was loved.

“I miss you guys, too,” she said, then gave Lena the phone number here at Ty’s and ended the call.

Apparently Ty himself was still busy in his office, and the door was closed. He’d told her to make herself at home so she explored a little. Huge, gorgeous granite and wood kitchen; Florida room full of quirky, beachy furniture; wide wooden deck; powder room with decor befitting a five-star New York hotel.

Like the living room, the spare-room he’d designated for her overlooked the dunes and the ocean, on its own up a flight of stairs right at the top of the sprawling, higgledy-piggledy house. Since the room had windows on three sides, Sierra could see up the coast as far as the opening into Carteret Sound, and down the coast as far as a tall Carolina lighthouse with its broad, distinctive stripes.

French doors opened out to a narrow, wood-railed balcony that also skirted the room on three sides. A widow’s walk? Was that what it should be called? Sierra wondered about it as she paced to one end of the balcony and back again, before pausing just to lean on the railing and look at the beach. She didn’t know for sure. She’d only been to the Atlantic shore twice, both times down in Florida, which had felt very different to this.

Taking a deep breath of the fresh, salty air, she felt a surge of energy and anticipation that made sense when she thought about how long it was since she’d taken a real vacation.

Years.

Ever?

Never on her own, for sure. Dad wouldn’t have felt safe about her doing that, in case his diabetes gave him trouble. She and Dad had always gone to places that were easy, like Disneyworld with Lena, Angie and Jordy when they were younger.

Once they’d taken a special cruise with medical facilities on board that were equipped to handle diabetic complications. That had been fun. And relaxing, when Lena and Angie weren’t fighting. They’d been sixteen and seventeen then, which meant the cruise had happened, gosh, six years ago, already.

“I’m on vacation,” Sierra said aloud.

The breeze caught her words and took them away out to sea, so she said it again, louder. “I’m—on—vacation!” And then she laughed.

It felt good.

But it got more complicated as soon as she heard Ty’s voice, calling her from downstairs. The vacation came with conditions and obligations attached.

“I need to get back to the marina,” he told her as soon as she came down to him. He already had car keys jingling in his hand. “How about I drop you at your hotel on the way? Then you can check out, and—You drove from Ohio, right, so you have your car?”

“Yes.”

“Can you find your way back here? I’ll give you a map for back-up. And a key, of course, and a garage door opener. The alarm’s easy. I’ll show you the code.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“And your folks are okay?”

“Seem to be.” She didn’t mention Dad’s blood sugar, or Lena’s doubts about the proposed length of her absence. Maybe this really would only take a few days.

She noticed that Ty had never actually asked if she agreed to his plan. He just assumed she’d found the house and the sleeping arrangements satisfactory and her family’s reassurances good enough. Typical, on his part. But she didn’t feel inclined to protest about his assumptions now.

“So drop off your stuff here,” he said. “Get settled in your room, have coffee, sunbake on the deck, whatever you want.”

“Type up something on your computer and fax it to Ohio?”

“Sure. I’ll leave you my cell number in case you have any trouble with the machine.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Then it would be…really useful…if you could meet me at the marina office, in a very public way, and we can go for lunch at the bar. That’s pretty casual. Tonight, dinner at Nautilus would be great, and that’s dressier, so if you didn’t bring the right clothes I can give you the names of a couple of boutiques and you can shop for something this afternoon.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll cover the tab, of course. Tomorrow—shades of irony, here—I’m dining with the mayor, who’s a friend, and it’ll be pretty formal, so if you could get a second dress—”

“How about you print out the full program for me with wardrobe requirements, as a handy reference,” she cut in.

He stopped with his hand stretched to open the door leading to the double garage, and looked at her.

She glared at him. “Don’t say that thing about sucking on a lemon again, okay?”

“Actually, I was going to apologize.”

“For the lemon thing?”

“For bull-dozing you too much. Do you need more time? Are you committed to this?”

“Are you offering me an out?”

“We’ve both agreed on an out where it counts, with the marriage.”

Not “our” marriage, she noticed. Just “the” marriage. As impersonal as you could get. Not that she wanted to argue with that. But it was…sad. Even after so long.

“I’m committed,” she said.

Maybe if they could spend a few civilized, conflict-free days together, she wouldn’t go home to Ohio with quite such a sense that they’d both failed. Maybe she would discover why his admission of need seemed important.

“Great!” he answered. “We can make this work exactly the way we need it to, I know it.” Sierra would have liked a couple of words added, like “thanks” and “I really appreciate it,” but she wasn’t surprised when they didn’t happen.