Читать книгу The Reunion - Jana DeLeon - Страница 14

Chapter Five

Joelle pushed her feet against the floorboard of Tyler’s truck, wishing he could navigate the bumpy road at a faster pace. She’d been finishing up with William when her cell phone rang with Alaina’s call. Her sisters had forgotten to call when they left New Orleans and had lost cell service not far outside of the city. By the time she’d gotten a signal again, Alaina was only ten minutes from Calais.

Instant panic set in with Joelle. She hadn’t had time to assess supplies at the house, much less get to the general store to fill in the gaps. And what about the sleeping arrangements? Were the linens clean or was that one other job she’d already fallen down on? She assumed at least one bedroom was suitable for habitation but they needed more than one.

William had immediately clued in to her distress and calmed her down by assuring her that her sisters were well aware of the living conditions and their only requirement was seeing her. Joelle appreciated William’s kind approach to her crisis, but that didn’t solve the problem of upbringing, and Joelle’s adoptive mother had been a real stickler for manners. No way could she allow people in her home—or what would be her home for the next two weeks—without attempting to be a good host.

They’d left the café and headed to the general store to see if Tyler was ready to leave. Even though William had already assured her she didn’t need to provide anything for Alaina and Danae, Joelle picked up the best bottle of wine they had before hurrying out to jump in Tyler’s truck.

Now she wished she would have bought crackers and dip—something to pick at while drinking the wine. Something to keep her hands busy while she had her first conversation with her sisters since they were all children.

Tyler looked over at her and frowned. “Are you nervous?”

Surprised that he’d even spoken, much less at the question, Joelle had to think a couple of seconds before responding.

“Yes,” she finally admitted. “It’s all a bit overwhelming and surreal. Not just that I will finally be reunited with my sisters—which I thought would never happen—but with everything that’s happened surrounding our stepfather’s death.”

“I guess Dad filled you in on everything at lunch?”

“Probably not every detail, but I got the overview. As a social worker, I always think I’ve heard everything. Then occasionally, I’m still blown away at the things human beings will do to one another.”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

The sadness in his voice had her studying him for a moment, then she remembered—marine. “I guess you saw your share of horror overseas.”

“We all did.”

His speech was slightly abrupt, leaving her no doubt that his military service was something he didn’t wish to talk about. Another piece of her softened toward him, because she understood that on a level that people who didn’t deal every day with the horror of human behavior would never understand.

“I don’t know why I’m so nervous about seeing my sisters again. I mean, I’m excited but also nervous.”

He was silent for several seconds, and Joelle wondered if he’d even heard what she said. Or maybe he decided the conversation had gotten too girlie or too psychological.

“Maybe because you’re afraid you won’t fit with them,” he said finally.

She stared at him, surprised at his intuitiveness. “Yes, I think you’re right.”

“Everyone needs to be where they belong—whether that’s the place they live or a person they’re with. But I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

“No? Why is that? Have you met my sisters?”

“I haven’t yet had the pleasure, but I’ve heard plenty about them from my dad. He thinks they’re the best things since cable television came to Calais. My dad likes most people, but he admires few. No one has said anything yet, but I’m going to guess that he’s planning on having Alaina take over his practice in Calais. She’s already doing some work for him.”

“Your dad is very sweet, but he also knew our mother, so it might make him a bit biased.”

“Maybe, but Carter Trahan didn’t know your mother. He’s marrying Alaina and vouches for Danae. Carter and I have been friends since the crib, and trust me when I say a more shrewd human being has not been invented.”

“I wish I would have gotten to the general store before he left. I’m looking forward to meeting him.”

“He’ll be keeping tabs on you for the estate, so I suppose you will soon enough.”

Joelle held in a smile. Tyler was so direct and practical. On a normal day, she dealt with so much fabrication and drama that his what-you-see-is-what-you-get style was refreshing.

“So what do you plan on doing while we’re conducting our Sisterhood Reunion?” she asked.

He frowned. “Staying out of the way.”

His dismay was so comical that she couldn’t hold in the laugh, but as he rounded the tree line and turned onto the circular drive in front of the house, she froze. The SUV in the driveway had a bumper sticker for a New England university. It had to be Alaina’s car.

“They’re here already,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

Tyler parked next to Alaina’s vehicle. “I’m going to take a walk around the perimeter. I’ll be around if you need me.”

He jumped out of the truck and took off at a decent clip around the side of the house. Joelle’s nervousness ticked up another notch as the only person she had any connection with fled. Not that she blamed him. It was an uncomfortable situation for her and she was one of the parties involved. Anyone else would feel even more uncomfortable, especially men, who, in her experience, tended to avoid questionable social situations anyway.

Grabbing the bottle of wine and her purse, she took a deep breath, then climbed out of the truck. The front door was open a crack, and she pushed it the rest of the way and stepped inside. Voices echoed down the kitchen hallway and she started that way. The voices sounded happy and excited, which helped her nerves a bit, but when she reached the threshold of the kitchen, she paused.

What if they hate me? What if I hate them?

She said a silent prayer, then stepped around the corner into the kitchen.

A tall, thin woman with long black hair pulled back in a ponytail stood in front of the refrigerator, her back to Joelle. A shorter, curvier woman with shoulder-length black hair stood at the counter, arranging cheese and crackers on a tray.

They were so busy chatting, they didn’t hear her enter.

“Hello,” she managed.

Immediately, all activity ceased and they both whirled around to stare at her. Joelle sucked in a breath as she looked at the tall woman.

Alaina.

She’d always looked like their mother. Joelle could remember that now. For a split second, all three of them held in that position, then they rushed over to her.

“Joelle,” Alaina said as she stopped in front of Joelle, studying her face. “I remember now. You look like our father.”

Alaina teared up and threw her arms around Joelle.

“I never thought I’d find you two,” Alaina said. “It’s a dream come true.”

All of Joelle’s nerves slipped away as she hugged Alaina. It all came flooding back to her—the love and admiration she’d always had for her big sister. It was as if the years fell away and they were right back in step.

“My turn,” Danae said, clapping her hands.

Alaina laughed as she released Joelle, who turned to look at a smiling Danae.

“The dimples,” Joelle said. “I remember them.”

Danae’s smile widened and she wrapped her arms around Joelle, tightly squeezing her.

“I’m so glad William found you,” Danae whispered.

“Me, too,” Joelle said.

“This calls for a toast,” Alaina said.

Danae released her and they both looked over at their big sister, who was pouring champagne into beautiful crystal glasses.

“I cleaned some of the crystal to get ready for this moment,” Alaina said. “Please don’t tell me you don’t drink.”

Joelle laughed. “I’m not a professional, but at the moment, I can’t think of anything more perfect than champagne.”

Alaina smiled and her whole face brightened, her happiness so clear. “You haven’t had Danae’s cheesecake yet. I bet it’s more perfect than champagne, but she was cruel and wouldn’t let me try a piece before we left.”

Danae blushed a bit, clearly pleased with Alaina’s praise, and Joelle felt her chest tighten as if her heart were expanding inside it. All the anxiety and doubts she’d felt were wasted emotion. These women were so comfortable...so right.

She took the glass of champagne that Alaina offered her and watched as Alaina lifted her glass in the air.

“To sisters,” Alaina said. “To us.”

“To us,” Joelle and Danae repeated and they clinked their glasses together.

Joelle couldn’t remember any moment in her life more perfect than this one.

* * *

TYLER MADE HIS way around the back of the house, pushing through the dense undergrowth, looking for any sign that someone else had passed this way recently. If Carter and his father both felt things weren’t right on the LeBeau estate, then Tyler had no doubt they were right. If someone was prowling around the estate, he wanted to get a handle on it now and try to keep things from getting as out of hand as they had with Alaina and Danae.

So far, he’d turned up nothing. The house appeared tight as a drum. One window downstairs was broken, but it was boarded up. The rest were nailed shut. Danae’s fiancé, Zach, the contractor making repairs to the house, had made sure everything was sealed tight before he returned to his regular workweek in New Orleans and so far, Tyler hadn’t found a single thing the contractor had left undone.

Tyler knew the front door was the questionable point. It was a huge wooden double door, ornately carved, likely ridiculously expensive, and was equipped with ancient hardware complete with giant iron keys like those you’d see in a horror movie. In anticipation of Joelle’s arrival, he’d ordered some security equipment, but it hadn’t arrived until today. As soon as he finished his perimeter walk, he’d start setting up the equipment, beginning with the alarm on the front door.

When he rounded the corner for the side of the house containing the long patio, he paused, staring into the brush. Something looked off. He stepped into the trees and pushed through the foliage, working his way around a forty-foot-square region. On the surface, everything appeared normal, but the telltale signs of recent passage were visible to someone as skilled in tracking as Tyler was.

Some of the broken branches could be attributed to the storms that had swept through the area lately, but the depressions in the ground cover were the result of being trod upon. The ground cover was too dense to make out an actual footprint, but the size of the indentations was too large for any of the creatures that would normally roam the woods, except maybe bear. And if a bear had passed this way, Tyler would see far more damage to the branches.

He followed the depressions and the broken branches about twenty yards into the swamp before turning around. Someone could have traversed the swamp from any number of locations surrounding the house, and may have walked hundreds of yards or even miles to throw someone off the track. Likely, the tracks would come out on one of the many dirt paths that led through the swamp, easily reachable by an ATV. As most everyone in Calais owned or had access to an ATV, that didn’t narrow the suspect pool even a bit.

Turning back, he tried to track the depressions toward the house, but they seemed to end about twenty feet from the patio, which made no sense. Tyler could understand if a stalker had a viewpoint to simply observe the comings and goings of the house in order to plan a strike. The military often watched from one vantage point but attacked from another. But from this vantage point, all he could see was the corner of the house and a bit of the patio. No window or door offered a view inside, except for the small pane of glass on the exterior door off the laundry room. But he couldn’t see in that pane from his current position.

Deciding he wasn’t going to figure it out standing there, he made a mental note to keep an eye on this location and continued back to the patio. The stone patio didn’t leave any opportunity for tracks, so he checked the windows and scanned the nearby brush, but the only tracks he saw were his own from when he’d hauled away brush earlier that day.

As he made his way down the patio toward the kitchen, he heard the high-pitched voices of the three sisters. The excitement was clear in their tone, and Tyler was happy that Joelle’s reunion with her sisters seemed to be going so well. He’d had no doubt that would be the case, but he understood why Joelle was nervous. It was a whole lot to absorb, especially some twenty-five years later and after living so long as an adult with no family to speak of.

He had a key to the patio door that led into the kitchen, but didn’t want to startle them by letting himself in, so he rapped on the glass panes and waved when they whirled around. Joelle hurried to the door to let him in while her sisters stood there, clearly waiting for an introduction.

“Guys,” Joelle said, “this is William’s son, Tyler—my personal bodyguard.”

They both smiled and the taller one walked over to extend her hand. “I should have known,” she said. “You look just like your father. I’m Alaina.”

“Nice to meet you,” Tyler said. “You look like the pictures I’ve seen of your mother.”

Alaina beamed and Tyler understood why his old friend Carter had gotten himself tied down. Alaina LeBeau was gorgeous and, according to his father, brilliant. And from limited exposure, he’d already gathered she had personality to boot. Triple threat. Carter had made a good choice.

“You must be Danae,” he said and extended his hand to the youngest of Ophelia’s daughters. Danae was shorter and curvier than Alaina, and looked like a combination of Alaina and Joelle. Perhaps she’d taken after both parents, while Joelle looked more like their father. Not that it mattered. Apparently any combination of those genes produced good-looking women.

Danae shook his hand and smiled. “It’s nice to meet you. William talks so much about you. We’re thrilled that you’ll be checking up on Joelle. We worry about all of this, and it’s too much for Carter to handle alone.”

“Oh, he’s not checking up,” Joelle said. “He’s living here, going with me when I leave the house. For all I know, he might be sitting guard outside the bathroom when I shower.”

A flash of Joelle standing naked and wet under a shower stream bolted through his mind, and he felt his chest constrict. Instantly, he forced the image from his mind. The last thing he needed was to imagine Joelle—or any other woman—naked and vulnerable.

“I don’t think it will come to that,” he said. “Well, if you ladies are okay in here, I’m going to start installing a security alarm on the front door.”

“That’s a great idea,” Alaina said.

Danae waved a hand over the counter, which was loaded with food. “Do you want to eat? We brought a feast with us.”

“Not right now, but I will take you up on that later if you don’t mind.”

“It’s ready when you are,” Danae said.

“Thank you for installing an alarm,” Joelle said. “I know we’ll all feel better sleeping here tonight.”

Tyler gave them a nod and walked out of the kitchen.

“Stand outside the bathroom?” Alaina said. “I’d totally let him stand next to the shower and hold my towel.”

They all laughed, then he heard Danae say, “You’re awful. Entirely correct, but awful.”

He smiled as he went to the entry to retrieve his equipment. Even the strongest man’s ego couldn’t ignore such compliments from beautiful women. He’d almost slowed for a moment, wondering if Joelle was going to comment, but decided it was information he didn’t need.

Alaina and Danae were safe to admire. They were both attached to good men, but Joelle was risky. Granted, for all he knew, she could have a man back in Jackson, but he doubted it. She had a nervousness about her that seemed like a lack of recent socializing.

Maybe it’s just me.

The thought crossed his mind and he frowned. True, he wasn’t the most pleasant of people to be around, and he could have been a lot nicer when they’d met. He probably owed her an apology for his boorish behavior, but he wasn’t likely to offer one. Less said, soonest mended was pretty much his motto.

He grabbed the box and removed the alarm. What he needed to do was focus on the job. Because he knew from firsthand experience what happened when he got sidetracked.

That was something he never intended to do again.

* * *

HE WATCHED THE house from the safety of the swamp. The women occupied the kitchen, clinking champagne glasses and eating hors d’oeuvres. They thought they had it all, but they were wrong. If it was the last thing he ever did, he was going to get what was coming to him. What he was due.

The man was somewhat of a concern. He had that posture that screamed military and a bulge at his waist that spelled concealed weapon. Right now, he could see the man, installing a security alarm on the front door.

What a waste of time.