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Dandelion Wishes
Melinda Curtis
Will Jackson was a control freak and a killjoy.He had been since they were kids. He’d made it his mission to come between Emma Willoughby and her best friend—his little sister—all their lives.But why?Until the day of the accident Emma had always thought of herself as adventurous, not dangerous…. And then her friend had almost died.She desperately needed to apologize, to try to explain, if she could.Will had managed to keep the two apart while Tracy was in the hospital, but now that she was home in Harmony Valley, the winemaker-wannabe had to understand that getting past this was the only way they could heal.And yet even if Tracy was able to, Emma wasn’t sure she could forgive herself.And Will had made it abundantly clear: he wouldn’t sleep until he’d found retribution.
Will thought dandelion wishes were a waste of time.
Will thought dandelion wishes spread weeds into the world. Will thought–
Emma spun around and plucked the dandelion from the side of the road. She didn’t care what Will thought. She and Tracy had been making dandelion wishes since they were kids.
She turned toward home, stopping in the middle of the bridge over Harmony River. She tried to catch her breath. She tried to be as calm as the water flowing beneath her.
It wasn’t possible. Not even with a dandelion wish at the ready.
What would she wish for?
Dear Reader,
Welcome to Harmony Valley!
Things aren’t as harmonious here as they once were. Jobs have dried up and almost everyone under the age of sixty has moved away in the past ten years, leaving the population…well…rather gray-haired and peaceful.
Enter Will Jackson, newly minted millionaire and hometown success story. He’s been on the fast track too long and is looking for a break. But then his sister, Tracy, and her friend Emma get in a car crash, and he realizes Harmony Valley would be a perfect place for Tracy to stay permanently. If he could just create a business for his sister and keep her away from Emma’s spur-of-the-moment adventurous tendencies, everything would be fine.
Emma may look as if she walked away from the accident unscathed, but she bears emotional scars. She wants to rebuild her friendship with Tracy and heal. But nothing in life ever comes when you want it, especially not love and healing.
I hope you enjoy Will and Emma’s journey, as well as the romances in the works for friends Flynn and Slade as they get their winery in Harmony Valley off the ground. I love to hear from readers and you can always check on the progress of Harmony Valley on my website, www.MelindaCurtis.com.
Melinda Curtis
Dandelion Wishes
Melinda Curtis
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
MELINDA CURTIS grew up on an isolated sheep ranch, where mountain lions had been seen, and yet she roamed unaccompanied. Being a rather optimistic, clueless of danger sort, she took to playing “what if” games, which led her to become an author. She spends her days trying to figure out new ways to say “he made her heart pound.” That might sound boring, but the challenge keeps her mentally ahead of her three kids and college-sweetheart husband.
Nothing in my life would be possible without the love
and support of my immediate family, extended family
and close friends. This past year was a roller coaster
and you helped keep me strapped in.
With special thanks and hugs to A. J. Stewart, Cari
Lynn Web and Anna Adams for holding my hand and
kicking my butt throughout the writing of this book.
And to Carrie Knudson, thank you for the laughter,
the love and the memories.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE (#u2b35890e-f65a-5de0-baea-3e22524aac9e)
CHAPTER TWO (#u7818a9d4-e8da-5862-8a27-dce268520dfc)
CHAPTER THREE (#ua1c547c2-57e6-59b8-a10e-f2764dc6f5f8)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u1395bd35-70cd-5294-96e6-55776c3a6c24)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u1b0b49c9-0f96-59ed-a731-74e4c35bba55)
CHAPTER SIX (#uf3ba25d0-2f24-5266-acbb-64498fda96c5)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
TODAY WAS THE day.
There’d be hugs and smiles, reminiscences and laughter.
And apologies. Of course there’d be apologies. But they’d be accepted and waved aside because best friends stood by each other. Always.
Today was the day.
If Emma Willoughby repeated it to herself often enough, this time it might come true.
Standing in the parking lot next to clumps of cheery daffodils, she checked her purse to make sure Tracy’s gift was inside. She silenced her cell phone. She pasted a friendly smile on her face, passed under the grand portico and headed toward the massive glass doors of Greenhaven Rehabilitation Center.
The doors slid open as she neared. On previous visits, she’d recognized people in the lobby—elderly actors recovering from strokes, aging politicians recovering from hip surgeries, elite athletes recovering from injuries. But in nearly six months, she’d never caught a glimpse of Tracy.
The Sunday receptionist, Francie, looked up to greet her, recognition stealing the beginnings of a smile from her face.
Today, Emma silently prayed.
Francie pushed her rhinestone glasses up the bridge of her nose, tugged the lapels of her aquamarine polyester jacket tightly together and sent an icy glance toward a tall, aging security guard, who stepped forward to block Emma’s path. In all the months Emma had been coming here, this was the first time Francie, Greenhaven’s gatekeeper, had set a guard on her.
“Young lady, I’m terribly sorry.”
Emma’s smile weakened. She would not give up. She would keep coming every Sunday until someone let her in. Tracy’s family couldn’t keep her out forever.
“I know I can’t go inside, Francie.” Emma reached into her purse for her gift—a Carina Career doll. She’d been handing the receptionist a doll every Sunday for months. This week Carina was an astronaut. The dolls were meant as a reminder of their friendship and to let her best friend know Emma believed she still had plenty of choices ahead of her. “Could you please give this to Tracy?”
Francie blanched. “I can’t take that. Tracy Jackson is no longer a patient in this facility.”
Emma felt a moment’s panic. “What do you mean?”
“Tracy Jackson is no longer a patient in this facility,” Francie repeated. She glanced at the security guard once more, a disapproving line deepening her already furrowed brow. “I must ask you to leave.”
Tracy was dead.
Emma tried to form a word—any word—that would refute that possibility. But the air in the lobby had become thick and heavy—suffocating—until Emma knew she was going to collapse if she didn’t move.
On a gasp of air, she spun and ran to her car parked at the far edge of the visitors’ section. The chilly bay breeze clawed at the hem of her dress, buffeted her hair. By the time she reached the new Subaru, she was shaking so badly she dropped her purse to the ground and leaned against the car door as memories assailed her.
She and Tracy on the bank of the Harmony River building a mud fort for frogs. She and Tracy dreaming about different futures in the Carina Career section of the toy store. Tracy bursting into their dorm room doing an uncoordinated victory dance after landing an internship at an ad agency. And then the most painful memory—Tracy’s near-lifeless body, head smashed against the passenger window of Emma’s car. And everywhere...blood.
They’d known each other since they were three, and yet Tracy’s family hadn’t let her say goodbye, hadn’t let Emma know she had died.
But why would they?
Emma had been driving the car that caused the accident, the accident that had put Tracy in the hospital, the accident with killing complications.
A violent, shuddering sob threatened to break her into sharp, tiny pieces. Tremors shot to her fingertips. Useless fingers that had been unable to draw or paint since the accident. Emma ached to create from a blank page or canvas again, but if an empty, soulless existence was her penance for the accident, so be it.
Francie appeared at the Subaru’s fender, huffing and clutching a shoebox under her arm. “She’s not dead.”
Emma’s limbs turned to liquid and she slid to the ground, landing on her tailbone, asphalt scraping her legs. She ignored the pain. Tracy was alive.
“There, there.” Francie knelt beside Emma, smelling of breath mints and garlic. “Company policy forbids me from telling you what happened, but you came every Sunday for more than five months. It broke my heart to turn you away.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Emma choked out.
“Are you okay to drive? Want me to call someone?”
Granny Rose. Her grandmother had practically raised Emma while her mother established a career as a cutthroat trial attorney. After Tracy, it was Granny Rose that Emma turned to with her problems. She had always looked up to her grandmother’s wisdom, wit and courage. But Granny Rose was eighty and lived hours away in Harmony Valley, in the northernmost corner of Sonoma County.
“Fine. I’m fine.” Or she would be when she could catch her breath. Emma scrubbed at her eyes. “Do you...do you know where Tracy is?” It would be exactly like Tracy’s self-made millionaire brother, Will, to have found a specialist in Switzerland and moved her there.
“Francie!” a male voice rumbled from beneath the portico. “I hear you talking to that girl. Don’t make trouble for yourself.”
Francie frowned and pressed the shoebox into Emma’s hands. “I can’t say more, but I wanted you to have this.” Using the car for balance, the receptionist stood. “You take care.”
Emma lifted the shoebox lid. More than twenty thumb-size Carina Career dolls stared vacantly up at her, one for every week Emma had tried to come and visit Tracy.
A slip of paper was tucked in the corner of the box.
Had Tracy written her a note?
Emma reached for the paper with trembling fingers.
An invitation to visit? Or a request to stay away?
An address was scrawled in thin, spidery handwriting on Greenhaven stationery, too neat to have been written by her friend. Emma made out a familiar address in Harmony Valley.
Tracy’s.
* * *
“THIS IS GOING to be good.” The false enthusiasm left a sour taste in Will Jackson’s mouth. He opened the front door of his childhood home. “Dad’s been lonely with both of us gone. And now he’ll have a full house. You and me, just like old times.”
Tracy walked in, looking to all appearances like any other twenty-six-year-old in blue jeans, a beige T-shirt and short, tousled blond hair. Until she spoke. “I want. To...to go. To—”
“I know you want to go back to your own apartment,” Will interrupted. There was no way he’d let his little sister return to San Francisco, to the place she shared in the city with Emma. Tracy was still fragile. Oh, she got around all right, her broken ribs and broken leg having healed. But when her skull smashed into the car window it caused damage, resulting in aphasia, a language disorder. Her speech would probably always be halting, although specialists promised it would get better as long as Tracy fought.
But Tracy had given up fighting to improve.
“You’ll go back after your next round of speech therapy.” If Will could persuade, bribe or exhort her to return for a new form of transcranial direct-current stimulation—brain shock therapy. He had two months to convince her before the test trials started. “Here’s your cell phone.” Miraculously, Tracy’s iPhone had survived the crash. Will had waited until now to give it to her. Harmony Valley was surrounded by several mountains that prohibited more than an occasional bar of cell-phone service. He didn’t want her texting Emma, the so-called friend who’d nearly killed her.
Controlling and overprotective? Maybe he was. But his sister had brain damage and couldn’t be trusted to understand what her friend had done, let alone make appropriate decisions right now.
Tracy scowled at the phone. She scowled at the saggy green microfiber couch and worn brown leather recliner. She scowled at the stuffed trout on the wall and the orange burlap curtains. She’d scowled at everything in the past month to the point where her doctor at the rehabilitation hospital thought she might make more progress at home.
