A Week Till the Wedding (17 page)

She was
free.
Daisy found herself smiling and crying at the same time, planning ahead as she mourned the past. Soon enough the tears stopped. The smile remained.

Daisy spent the afternoon calling her clients. She squeezed as many as she could into the next few days, but left a couple of days clear for cleaning out the shop. She called Lily and Mari, and explained to them what had happened. They were initially horrified on her behalf, but she was no longer horrified for herself and once she explained that to them, they were reluctantly happy for her. She heard the hesitation in their voices and wondered if they, too, hadn’t felt as if something of their parents remained as long as Daisy kept the shop and house as they’d always been.

She didn’t tell them that Jacob might be a part of her new life. That was still up in the air, a variable. She was hopeful that variable would work out the way she wanted it to, but until then she’d keep it close. If he broke her heart again she’d keep it to herself. There would be no need to burden her sisters with her pain—which would also mean sharing her foolishness with them. No, for now she’d keep Jacob and those possibilities to herself.

She called the house, but Jacob didn’t pick up. Why would he? It wasn’t his house. He had a cell phone, but she didn’t have the number. Come to think of it, in the past few days she hadn’t seen that phone at all. She’d tell him the news later, and maybe he’d take the opportunity to ask her again to leave with him when he left town. She had to admit, the timing would be perfect.

Daisy was putting her house up for sale.

She was closing her business.

It was scary, but there was also a strange sense of excitement inside her. She didn’t know where she’d go, she wasn’t even sure what she wanted to do, but one way or another the last of the Bells was about to leave Bell Grove for good.

* * *

Jacob drove out to Tasker House not because he wanted to leave Daisy’s place but because he needed a razor and a change of clothes. Daisy had shared her shower, soap and shampoo, and she’d found him an unused toothbrush with the name of her dentist stamped on the side, but he needed more. If nothing else, the razors in her bathroom were unacceptable.

Before he’d left the house yesterday he’d made sure his mother had known not to expect him home. He hadn’t added “If I’m lucky,” though to be honest he hadn’t been positive Daisy would ask him to stay.

Not until he’d kissed her.

Tonight he’d ask her again to come to San Francisco with him. While they were both fully dressed and she couldn’t accuse him of asking only because he was carried away, caught up in the moment. It might take time to convince her. She had the house, her sisters...business concerns. He would have to make changes himself. He couldn’t work the kind of hours he and his company had come to expect, couldn’t devote himself entirely to work if he had a woman in his life. But he was suddenly certain they could make it happen. He
wanted
to make it happen.

He found his mother sitting on the front porch swing, drinking tea, looking as sour as the lemon slice in her beverage.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Good afternoon.” Susan’s response was sharper than was necessary.

Jacob, wearing the suit he’d worn last night but without the now-rumpled tie, headed in his mother’s direction. “What’s wrong?”

There were new lines on his mother’s face, a strain no amount of makeup could hide. “What isn’t wrong? Your grandmother is more of a trial every day. In the past couple of years she’s run off every caretaker we’ve hired to help, and will only tolerate me or Lurlene and we both have our hands full without taking care of her. Thank goodness Ben has taken on so many of the business responsibilities, but to be honest I miss it. I want to get back to work.” She smiled a little. “Your little brother is more than competent but I enjoy working, and I like being needed for my brain. You know very well that the Cyrus Tasker branch of the family doesn’t have the good sense of a fence post, and the Clyde Tasker branch has sold almost everything away. Uncle Carlton is the only one with any sense, and when he dies, well, I don’t even want to think about it. He’s pushing ninety, you know. Your father would rather play golf and drink beer with his friends, but he does help out at work when I need him. He’s no help with your grandmother, though, because she still sees him as a child.” Her smile was gone, and her eyes shone bright. She didn’t let a single tear fall, though. “And Daisy. Really, Jacob, how could you take up with her again, after everything she put you through?”

Jacob leaned against the house and looked down at his mother. “Everything she put
me
through?”

“Yes! She broke your heart...don’t think I didn’t see that. She should’ve...she could’ve...” Her lips pursed and the line between her eyebrows deepened. “Oh, who am I kidding? Daisy didn’t do anything wrong, and neither did you. It’s all my fault.”

Jacob was accustomed to his mother’s dramatics, but this one surprised him. “Your fault?”

The dam broke and tears ran down Susan’s face. This was a woman who never cried, no matter how bad things got.

“I didn’t want you to be saddled with a ready-made family, not at twenty-four. I pushed you to move on, to leave Daisy behind. I did my best to make sure her sisters were not a responsibility you’d have to bear.” She balled her fists. “I even...I even made sure she knew how happy you were in San Francisco, how well you were doing there. It’s easier to blame her, to twist my memories of that time around and forget my part in it all, but...I did everything but tell her outright that you didn’t need her.”

His heart constricted. “Whatever happened between me and Daisy is on us, not you.”

“You say that, but I could’ve helped. I could’ve made things easier for both of you, and I didn’t. I sat back and watched Daisy give up everything. She did a wonderful job of raising those girls.” She wrung her hands—another unusual gesture. “So I quit going to town to get my hair done. I started shopping in places where I knew I wouldn’t run into her. I avoided Daisy, because every time I looked at her I felt guilty.”

“We can all look back and see what we should’ve done,” Jacob said calmly.

“I was so wrapped up in the business, in seeing that you boys got a good start to your adult lives, I convinced myself that I didn’t have time to take on another responsibility. I loved the idea of being more businesswoman than mom, of not having a houseful to take care of, and I didn’t want to take on raising two young girls. I was selfish, Jacob. Horribly selfish. Now Daisy is here, day after day, playing this ridiculous game with you and the guilt is worse because I see how much you two care for one another. If I’d offered to take the girls in, if I’d pushed the two of you together instead of doing my best to tear you apart...”

“I don’t think Daisy would’ve agreed to leave her sisters here, not even with you,” Jacob said.

“But...but I could’ve done something to help. I should’ve done something. Anything.”

Jacob sat beside his mother and put an arm around her shoulder. For a moment they just sat there. She sniffled, but her tears didn’t last.

“The blame is mine, not yours,” Jacob said calmly. “If it makes you feel any better, I never believed what you said about taking on Daisy and her sisters being too hard, I never took that argument to heart. That’s not the reason it didn’t work. I got caught up in a new life, and I suppose the same thing happened to Daisy. We were young, and we let what we had fall apart all on our own.”

“I can hardly look at her without regretting all I did. And even more, I feel horribly guilty about what I didn’t do. I didn’t help...all I did was make matters worse. She’ll never forgive me.”

“You’re going to have to get past this, Mom,” Jacob said. “Because if I have my way you’ll be seeing a lot of Daisy.”

She looked up at him.

“I’m going to pack a bag and stay at her place for a few days, if she’ll have me,” Jacob said calmly. “And if I’m very lucky, she’ll agree to move to San Francisco with me.” If he left here without her, no matter how good his intentions were, he feared they’d grow apart all over again.

“The mother of my grandchildren will hate me,” his mother said softly.

Grandchildren?
“She doesn’t hate you.”

“She doesn’t like me much, either. Not that I’ve given her reason.”

“Daisy hasn’t agreed to anything yet,” Jacob said with a tight smile. “And you’re getting ahead of yourself talking about grandchildren.” Way ahead. He was thinking of living together and seeing how things went, getting to know one another again, having Daisy in his bed at the end of every day.

“I’m not ahead of myself, you’re horribly behind. No one can watch the two of you together and not realize that you’re in love.”

First
grandchildren,
then
love
. The words shouldn’t come as a surprise to him, shouldn’t hit him with an almost physical force, but they did. He liked Daisy, he wanted her, she was like no other woman. Was that love?

His mother sniffled, lifted her head and looked him in the eye. “Don’t ask her to move in with you.”

Not again! “Mom, I...”

“Marry her, Jacob. She deserves nothing less.”

* * *

Daisy was about to head for home when Martin Chestnut came back into the shop. He looked every bit as serious, and nervous, as he had that morning. She’d have to let him know that she was no longer upset, that it was okay...

“I got to thinking, after I left,” he began.

“It’s all right,” Daisy said.

“No, no, it’s not all right at all. At first I was just excited about the money, because the offer was so good. I was thinking about paying off the mortgage on the house, and retiring earlier than I’d thought I could. But after you asked who’d made that generous offer I got to pondering. I called my lawyer and asked him to do a little digging. He made a few calls, he asked all the right questions, I guess.” Martin fidgeted, he was sweating, and though it was a hot day it wasn’t that hot. And she had the air cranked up high.

“What did you find out?” Daisy asked, suddenly curious.

“The offer was routed through a couple of lawyers, like, you know, there was something to hide.”

Daisy’s spine went rigid. She tingled from head to toe, not in a good way but with an instinctive fear. She knew what was coming; she heard it in his voice.
No. Please, no
.

“It’s a Tasker,” Martin said. “Someone with the last name Tasker is trying to buy the downtown buildings.”

Chapter Twelve

D
aisy walked home slowly. She didn’t hum, as she had that morning. She didn’t wave at neighbors as she passed by. Her body and her brain were both numb. She hoped with everything she had that Jacob wasn’t still at her house.

She wanted to kill him. Even before he’d asked her to go to California with him, he’d set a plan into motion to make sure she had no choice in the matter. The offer had seemed so spontaneous, as if he’d been as carried away by the moment as she’d been, but that wasn’t the case. As usual, Jacob Tasker had come up with a plan to get what he wanted. Her.

A part of her wanted to believe that he hadn’t had anything to do with what was happening, but nothing else made any sense. She’d tried to come up with another reason, an alternative, but there was no other logical explanation. He was playing her, had been playing her since the moment he’d walked into her shop. And it
hurt
. It hurt more than she’d imagined was possible.

Why was she surprised? It was Jacob’s MO to do whatever was necessary to get what he wanted. He didn’t lose. Ever.

He’d rip her livelihood out from under her to make sure she had no options other than him. Did he really think she was so weak? Did he think he could frighten her into packing up and following him to the other side of the country? Well, he was wrong. She
wasn’t
weak and she had options. She had plenty of options that didn’t include his sorry ass!

Again, Daisy suffered a moment’s doubt. It was true that Martin hadn’t specifically said
Jacob
Tasker was behind the sale, but who else could it be? What other Tasker would go to the trouble? It didn’t make any sense to buy the property for one of their businesses. Downtown Bell Grove was much too small and insignificant to be of use to the company. The fact that hers was the only space that had to be vacated immediately was definitely suspicious. She tried to think of anyone else besides Jacob who might be behind the purchase. Ben probably didn’t have the money. He and Maddy were big spenders, and she couldn’t imagine that his savings were impressive. Not yet. Caleb and Luke had cut their ties to Bell Grove long ago. Jim? No. If it had been a golf course...maybe. Susan didn’t even like the idea of Jacob and Daisy together. She wouldn’t lift a finger to push Daisy out of town, and perhaps into her son’s arms, and given the timing Daisy couldn’t think of any other reason for the unexpected sale.

It couldn’t possibly be coincidence that a Tasker was driving her out of business. Yeah, there were a lot of Taskers around, but she’d ruled out everyone else in Jacob’s family—but him—she didn’t think any of the cousins were even aware of her existence. Downtown Bell Grove functioned, but it wasn’t great investment property by any stretch of the imagination.

That left Jacob. He wanted her, he’d set his sights on her the way he did a floundering company he thought his employer could take over and fix. Or destroy. Would he try to fix her and then, when he discovered that he couldn’t, dismantle her? Maybe he’d get bored with her, once she was entirely his and there was no more challenge. Maybe once he had her, he wouldn’t want her anymore. Like a fool she’d fallen in love all over again, and he’d just been playing a game. A game he fully intended to win.

Jacob Tasker always won.

She couldn’t believe she’d let him get under her skin this way, that she’d fallen in love with him, that she’d actually allowed herself to
like
him. Well, at least one part of her original plan was still in place. There would be no growing apart, this time. No nagging feeling of romantic matters left unfinished.