Читать книгу Coming Home To Crimson - Michelle Major, Michelle Major - Страница 13

Chapter Five

Sienna couldn’t have said how long she’d been sitting in her rental car outside the tiny brick duplex the next morning, but her backside was numb and her throat had gone dry from the air conditioner blowing through the vents in the dash.

She’d turned the car on and off at least a dozen times, psyching herself up for approaching the modest home. Within those walls lived a man she hadn’t seen in two decades but who was never far from her mind, no matter how hard she tried to forget him.

A knock on the driver’s side window made her jerk around so fast she banged her forehead into the glass. She let out a sound somewhere between a scream and a groan, blinking away tears of fear, frustration and pain. Her gaze focused on the gray-haired man standing next to the car, and her stomach dipped.

The years hadn’t been kind to Declan Crenshaw, but Sienna knew the signs of age had as much to do with the choices he’d made as the passage of time.

She looked at him through the glass, half tempted to throw the car into Drive and speed away from everything this moment represented.

For his part, her dad looked like he could wait all day for her to decide whether to acknowledge him. It was that air of serene patience that made her punch down the window button.

“I thought you might run out of gas idling at the curb so long,” he said conversationally.

“It seemed like a good idea to sneak up on me?” she shot back, pressing her fingers to the goose egg quickly rising on her forehead.

He ran a hand over his face, where at least a day of salt-and-pepper whiskers shadowed his jaw. “Figured you’d drive off if I came at you through the front door.”

She wouldn’t tell him he’d been right. There was no way she’d admit that he had any sort of insight into her behavior. “You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

“Jase called yesterday.” He inclined his head. “Damn, you look like your mother.”

“So I’m told.”

“You have softer features, though. And straighter hair.”

Sienna huffed out a small laugh. It was the second time in less than twenty-four hours she’d been described as soft, after a lifetime becoming reconciled to her hard edges.

“How’s your mother doing?”

“You can’t expect me to answer that,” she said, not bothering to hide the snap in her tone. No matter the issues Sienna had with her mom, Dana was the one who’d chosen her at least. She owed her mother some loyalty.

Declan stared, as if weighing her answer...as if weighing her. Then he asked, “How are you?”

He had no right to know anything about her life after all these years. Except she was the one who’d sought him out.

Sienna and her mother had left Crimson years ago, and not once had her father contacted her. He hadn’t so much as sent a birthday card. How was she ever supposed to put aside the pain of rejection that was woven into every inch of the woman she’d become?

“I can’t do this,” she whispered, glancing up at him.

Something flashed in his blue eyes, but he didn’t argue. There was no fight, no begging her to stay. He simply stepped back from the car as she rolled up the window, and watched her drive away.

Tears streamed down her face as she turned the corner. Had she really expected him to fight for her? Did her arrival in town mean anything to him? Jase had told him she’d come to Crimson, but neither man had sought her out. They had their lives here, and Sienna had stopped being a part of them a long time ago.

Why should that change now? Growing up without a real father might have defined her, but it clearly had very little impact on the man who’d let her go.

When her vision blurred to the point she couldn’t see the road in front of her, she pulled off to the side, jolting as the car’s tire scraped the edge of the curb. Where had these tears come from? Declan Crenshaw wasn’t worth crying over—that’s what her mother would say.

She took several deep breaths, took a wad of napkins from the glove compartment and wiped her face. Grabbing her cell phone from the passenger side seat, she punched in a number and hit the speaker button.

“You’ve been avoiding my calls.” Her mother’s crisp tone fairly dripped with censure.

“I have bad service up here,” Sienna lied and heard Dana’s disapproving tsk across the miles. Felt the subtle reprimand to her core.

“Kevin spoke with your father this morning. He mentioned you had a spat.”

“It was more than a spat.” Sienna drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. “I broke up with him.”

A soft hiss from Dana.

“I found him in bed with another woman,” Sienna added before her mother could tell her she was making a mistake.

“These things happen,” Dana said quietly, her lack of emotion communicating far too much for Sienna’s taste. “You’d do well to give him a bit of warning when he isn’t expecting you.”

“You can’t be serious,” Sienna said through her teeth before remembering that her mother was always serious. “He cheated on me and somehow it’s my fault because I surprised him at the hotel?”

“I didn’t say that,” Dana insisted in her usual measured tone. “Not exactly. Kevin is important to your father’s business, Sienna. Especially with him heading up the merger. You know it’s scheduled to go through in a month. He can’t afford to have you disrupting the status quo. Remember your place.”

“My place.” Sienna raised a hand to her head, pressing fingertips against the bump there and trying to pretend that the headache was the reason she felt like crying again. “Craig Pierce isn’t my father, Mom. Let’s not act like—”

“He raised you from the time you were a girl.”

“He tolerated me because he wanted you,” Sienna clarified. There had never been any question as to her value with her stepfather. Mostly she hadn’t minded. Dana had made sure she understood they were to be grateful for Craig’s largesse and the opportunities being part of the powerful Pierce family opened to them.

“You never wanted for anything,” Dana insisted, the words coming out fast and with traces of the Alabama accent she’d tried so hard to erase. As far as Dana was concerned, she didn’t have any past before meeting Craig Pierce. It was as if she’d been sprung fully formed as a society wife out of the mold Craig created.

But Sienna remembered the months before her mother had met Craig, when she’d managed to secure a job as a hostess in one of the toniest restaurants in Chicago. It was the type of stuffy, wood-paneled spot where local businessmen came for power lunches and drinks after work. Dana had spent hours with old magazines and CDs she’d borrowed from the library, studying Jackie Kennedy and Grace Kelly, modeling her appearance, the way she dressed and even her mode of speaking after the two women.

Within weeks, all traces of Dana Crenshaw, hard-living party girl had been wiped away. Sienna remembered being mesmerized by her mother’s transformation. Back in Crimson, she’d always been vaguely embarrassed by her parents—Declan and Dana were too loud, hanging all over each other when they weren’t fighting in a way most parents didn’t. Plus they’d lived in the shabbiest trailer in the trailer park, when Sienna’s classmates came from town or the outlying ranches around Crimson.

So it had been true that she’d never wanted for anything material once her mother met and quickly married Craig. But love and acceptance were another story, one Dana had shoved onto a high shelf to gather dust in the pristine mansion they’d moved into with Craig. Out of necessity, Sienna had quickly forced herself to forget where she’d come from and anything else but that gratitude she was meant to feel for her new life.

“I saw him today,” she said suddenly.

From her mother’s sharp intake of breath, she knew Dana understood whom she meant.

“You need to come home,” her mother said after a weighted pause. “You don’t belong there.”

“That’s kind of the problem.” Sienna swallowed against the emotion that threatened to choke her. “I don’t belong anywhere.”

* * *

She drove around for hours, up and down the streets of Crimson and out toward the mountain pass and the farms and ranches that surrounded the town. There was the turnoff for Crimson Ranch, a property she knew was owned by some famous actress. She’d read about it in a magazine a few years ago, and the casual mention of her hometown had been the thing to reawaken her curiosity about where she’d come from and the father and brother still there.