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The phone rang again.
“Maybe that’s them now,” Eliza said, dashing out to the base of the stairs to answer.
“Eliza?” It was Chelsea again.
“What?” Eliza said in exasperation. “I need the phone. I’m expecting a call.”
“Cade hates you. He never wants to see you.” Chelsea was gloating, no doubt about it.
“Fine. I’ll stay out of his way. I’m not feeling too positive about him myself!”
“I lied. My brother would never cheat on you. You’re the fool. Now he won’t forgive you. You’re history. But he’ll always be here for me, no matter what. He’s my brother, and we don’t need you pushing your way in, trying to take him from me.”
“Chelsea, you’re crazy. I wasn’t trying to take him from anyone.” Eliza felt her heart drop. Had Chelsea really lied about Marlise? Or was she lying now? Eliza had seen Cade kissing Marlise with her own two eyes.
“Forget him, he’s not for you.” The words were full of venom. “I’ll make sure you never get your hands on him again.”
Eliza slammed down the receiver. She’d known Chelsea was a little wacko. She was also a drama queen. But she was Cade’s sister, and Eliza had always tried to be polite to her. If Chelsea had lied…
The implication struck Eliza with full force. Cade hadn’t cheated—but she had. He would never forgive her. She should have asked him for an explanation, not gone off for the day with Shell, the guy with the worst reputation in school. Well, not the worst. Heller had that honor. But Shell was trouble from way back. His hands all over her today had proved that.
April came into the hall.
“Was that Jo or Maddie?”
“Chelsea again. She said she lied about Cade and Marlise.”
April gave a whistle.
“But I saw them together.” Doubt niggled at Eliza. What if she’d made a mistake? She loved Cade. He was the best thing ever to happen to her. He was due to graduate in another few weeks, and she would follow the next year. They had been going together for months. He was kind, caring, sexy.
But she had seen him kiss Marlise.
“So talk to the guy,” April suggested.
They heard a car in the driveway and hurried to the back door. Maddie got out of the old sedan. She seemed surprised to see the two girls at the door. A deputy’s car turned in behind hers.
“Where’s Jo?” April asked from the doorway.
“She’s in the hospital.” The older woman walked to the back door, looking ten years older than when they’d seen her that morning. “She won’t be coming home.”
“What? She’s going to die?” Eliza couldn’t believe it. Jo had been healthy that morning. How badly was she hurt?
“No, not that.” Maddie walked past them and went to sit at the kitchen table. “She’s being taken to another home.” She looked at each of them. “You two are being reassigned, as well. No one believed me when I swore I hadn’t touched Jo.”
The deputy stepped inside the kitchen and stood near the door.
She stared at her hands. “How could they think I would strike a child?”
“What do you mean, we’re being reassigned?” Eliza asked.
Maddie raised her eyes. “You and April are to pack and be ready to leave by nine in the morning. Social Services will be taking you to another foster home after the sheriff asks you both some questions. The deputy is here to make sure you two stay safe until morning.” Maddie’s voice was strained.
Stunned, Eliza looked at the cop. What had Jo told the police?
April touched her arm. They left the kitchen together, not speaking until they were in April’s room.
“We have to find out what’s going on,” April said. “And just where they plan to send us. Maddie didn’t hit Jo. She couldn’t possibly have caused the damage I saw. Why would Jo say she had?”
“I don’t know. Why would Chelsea lie about Cade and Marlise?”
“It’s hardly the same thing,” April snapped.
“It is to me. Both lies are changing my whole life.” Eliza headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To find out something.”
She sneaked down the stairs. There was only silence from the kitchen, so she picked up the phone and dialed Cade’s number. She would talk to him as April had suggested. And tell him she was being reassigned. Where would they go? She couldn’t think of an available foster facility in town. But Social Services wouldn’t assign them out of town, would they?
The phone rang and rang. Finally Chelsea picked up.
“Cade, please,” Eliza said.
“He’s gone to work. He’s so angry. I’ve never seen him so angry before. He hates you.” Chelsea was practically shouting. “I’ll make sure he always hates you. You can’t have my brother!”
“Shut up, Chelsea. He’s your brother, not your boyfriend.”
“He’s mine. He loves me. You tell him I never lied to him.”
“Tell him yourself.”
There was a pause. Then Chelsea said, softly, almost in a singsong voice, “I won’t be here to tell him. But he won’t ever forget me. Or what you did.”
“Where are you going?” Eliza asked despite herself.
“Nowhere. I’ll be dead.” The receiver slammed down.
Eliza couldn’t believe Chelsea would ever even think of such a thing. How like her to be so melodramatic. How Cade stood it was beyond her. Eliza listened for a moment. No sounds came from the kitchen. Slowly she walked to the front door and eased it opened. She had to talk to Cade. Had to hear his side of things and explain her own.
And what was she going to do about Social Services? He had to help her or she was going to lose her home. Chelsea couldn’t be right. He would forgive her. Nothing had happened between her and Shell. It was Cade she loved. She couldn’t lose him.
CHAPTER ONE
ELIZA SHAW SWORE AGAIN as she shifted to balance her dripping, overstuffed handbag, stack of damp mail, twisted skeleton of an umbrella and soggy bag of food, all the while trying to unlock her apartment door.
“Dammit!” she muttered through clenched teeth. The perfect ending to the day from hell. She hated days like this. She was wet from head to toe and had a raging headache to boot. Sometimes it didn’t pay to get out of bed.
“If anything else goes wrong, I’m wiping the date off the calendar for years to come,” she muttered, finally succeeding in opening the door. She burst into her apartment, dropping the handbag and remnant of her umbrella onto the hardwood floor.
She kicked off her sopping shoes and tossed the mail on the counter separating the kitchen from the living room. She was freezing. The month of April was supposed to be the beginning of spring, not the tail end of winter. The forecast had been for a little rain—ha! If the storm that now raged over Boston had arrived after midnight as predicted, instead of twelve hours earlier, she wouldn’t have been caught in it at all. She glanced at her watch. It was not quite eleven-thirty. Too bad the storm hadn’t listened to the weatherman.
Every cab in the city had been elsewhere, leaving her to trudge the twenty blocks between work and home in the pouring rain. The wind had laughed at her paltry umbrella, twisting it inside out within seconds of leaving the safety of the restaurant.
“If I ever win the lottery, I will hire my own chauffeur,” she vowed as she traipsed into the kitchen. She turned the faucet on high, blasting water into the teakettle, which she quickly set on the gas range. Hot chocolate or tea would help to warm her up along with a hot shower.
Impatiently waiting for the water to boil, Eliza went to the flashing answering machine and pushed the button. She needed to get out of her wet clothes. The rain had soaked through her jacket and even her sweater was damp.
“Hello, Eliza,” a familiar voice said. “I know you’re still at work, but call me when you get home no matter how late.”
Eliza frowned, checking her watch. It was late, but she’d still call. Stephen would wait up until she did. He didn’t like the fact she worked until after eleven most nights, and after midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. But as a sought-after chef in one of the hottest restaurants in Boston, Eliza was used to the long hours. Stephen knew working late came with her job. There was no need to have her check in every night.
Guilt tugged at Eliza. She was tired and cranky. She should appreciate that Stephen cared enough for her to want to know she was safe. It was nice to feel cherished. She shouldn’t take out her bad mood on him.
She picked up the phone as the teakettle screamed. Carrying the portable receiver with her into the kitchen, Eliza quickly made a cup of tea, then punched the speed dial for Stephen’s number.
“What are you doing still up?” she said when he answered.
“Waiting to hear from you. You’re later than I expected.” He sounded worried. “Are you all right?”
“Sopping wet. There were no cabs so I had to walk.”
“In this downpour at this time of night? You should have called me.”
She smiled, feeling warmed with his concern. “I’m fine,” she assured him. “I wouldn’t have asked my worst enemy to come out on a night like tonight.”
“I wish you’d quit that job,” he said. “Find something that has daylight hours. Or open a business of your own. You know I’d back you in a New York minute.”
He’d suggested it before. Maybe it was time she gave the idea some serious thought. “After this walk home, I’m closer to starting that catering business we’ve talked about,” she murmured, taking a sip of the warm tea. More days like this and she’d take the plunge. She’d never thought of herself as an entrepreneur, but she had menu ideas for special events bubbling around in her mind.
“You’d still be working evenings, but with a better clientele,” Stephen said. “ And you could take off when you wanted. Let’s get married right away, sweetheart.”
He’d been patiently waiting for her to pick the right time to get married. She loved Stephen, but was not quite ready to make that final commitment. What was wrong with her? Or was she still adjusting to the fact they were engaged? It had only been a few weeks. She needed to get used to the idea.
“Maybe I could work from home and we could spend all our time together,” he said facetiously.
Eliza laughed. “Sweetie, I can’t see your clients coming to our flat. Besides, we’d be tempted to do a lot more fun things besides work.”
His chuckle warmed her even more. She did love him. She wished she had called him for a ride, just so she could have seen him this evening. Why was she dragging her feet about setting a wedding date?
“Okay, so open a bakery. At least you’d keep more normal hours.”
“Something to think about, but bakers have to start work about four in the morning. I’m not sure that’s for me.” Baking was fine, but she loved the challenge and range that creating main courses offered.
“You could do charity work,” he suggested. “You know Mother would love to have you on some of her committees.”
Eliza wrinkled her nose, not that he could see. “I don’t think that’s my thing.” They’d had this discussion once before. She thought she’d made her position clear. Sometimes Stephen heard what he wanted to hear, not what she said.
As for Stephen’s mother… Eliza adored Adele Cabot. She was all Eliza wished her own mother had been—loving, elegant, devoted to her only child. And she was more than welcoming to Eliza. At one point Eliza had wondered if her feelings for Stephen had grown out of her liking for Adele and her hopes to have her for a mother-in-law.
“It beats working nights and never having time for a normal social life,” he said easily. “Speaking of which, Mother is having some friends down at the Cape this weekend. I told her we’d join her.”
This wasn’t the first time he’d made plans for them without consulting her. She wasn’t up to dealing with it tonight.
“Stephen, you need to check with me before accepting invitations.”
“This is just a weekend at home. No big deal.”
“I’m working Friday and Saturday nights, but I could make it there Sunday in time for brunch,” Eliza said. She loved spending time at the old Cabot family home on Cape Cod. It was totally different from what Eliza was used to. She’d been a foster child in a small Mississippi town—no family, no background, no money. But her lack of background hadn’t stopped Stephen from proposing, or Adele from accepting her into the family with welcoming arms. Eliza’s childhood seemed distant—as if it had happened to someone else. Boston had been her home for the last ten years.
“Switch with someone like you did two weeks ago,” Stephen suggested.
“I can’t do that very often. That was for that special opening at the museum you wanted us to attend. I traded with Paul, but I can’t keep asking him. He has his schedule and I have mine. Once in a while maybe.” Didn’t Stephen realize that many people came to the restaurant solely because of her cooking?
“It would give us time together,” he said in that sexy Bostonian accent that still sounded exotic to her ear.
“I’ll see about switching Saturday night. Then I could get there Saturday morning, but I can’t switch two nights.” Eliza was firm.
“Deal. I’ll take what I can get. We’re leaving Friday afternoon and will return Monday morning. Shall I drive back and pick you up?”
“No, I’ll get there on my own.”
“I’ll drive Mother’s car and leave you mine. That way you and I can come back together.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“And maybe while we’re there, we can discuss setting a date for the wedding,” Stephen suggested.
“We’ll see.” Eliza hated to feel pressured, but she was too tired to argue tonight. “I’ve got to get out of my wet clothes. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Her bare feet felt like blocks of ice. She had plonked the bag of food on the counter beside the mail. Thankfully the soggy paper sack had held up. She didn’t know what she would have done if she’d dropped her dinner in some puddle blocks from home. She popped the meal into the oven, set on a low heat, and headed for the bedroom and some warm clothes.
A quick hot shower and sweats, that’s what she wanted. That, plus peace and quiet for at least twelve hours!
Ten minutes later she was toasty warm in fleece sweats and thick socks. Her hair was slightly damp, but she hadn’t wanted to spend a lot of time drying it. She was starved!
Passing through the living room, she picked up the ruined umbrella and stuffed it in the trash. She ran a practiced eye around the room. It was tidy. Immaculate, actually. Just the way she liked it.
She returned to the kitchen to eat a late dinner. People sometimes teased her about being a neatnik, a control freak. But she liked order. She felt able to cope with anything as long as there was a certain amount of harmony in her life. In Eliza’s mind, order equaled harmony.
Sitting at the breakfast bar, she riffled through the mail as she ate the warmed roasted squab. She could almost feel the storm inside the eighth-floor apartment. Rain sheeted down her windows, the wind howled. She pitied anyone still out in the tempest.
Once she’d finished eating, she took her hot tea and the newspaper that had come in the mail and went to sit in her cozy chair in the living area. The Maraville Bugle arrived weekly—a hometown paper for a woman who hadn’t been to Mississippi in ten years.
Boston had been her home since her second set of foster parents had moved to the city a couple of years after she’d graduated from high school. While Eliza was not technically a part of their family, they’d invited her along and she’d gone. After high school she’d tried a semester of college, but it wasn’t what she’d wanted. She had felt restless and had had no direction, so had been happy to move east. She’d lived with the Johnsons until they’d been transferred to California six years ago. Eliza still missed Dottie and Al and kept in touch.
A couple of years ago, before she’d met Stephen, Eliza had given in to a bout of nostalgia and had begun a subscription to the weekly paper from her hometown in a vain hope of feeling connected to her past.
