Feels Like Home: A Southerland Family Contemporary Romance Book 1 (3 page)

“
Nice,” said Andrew. “He
was just leaving.” He turned his attention back to Autumn, ushering
her to a chair.

“
I was just leaving.” He
waited for Autumn to say something about it being her fault for
stepping in front of him or to acknowledge him at all, but all her
attention was focused on Andrew. “I was just leaving,” he repeated.
His best friend waved him away.

When he closed the office door on them,
Autumn and Andrew were trying to out-charm each other.

It shouldn’t matter. He wasn’t interested in
her – not really. Okay, she was beautiful. That was undeniable.
She’d been polished perfection at the funeral, poised and perfectly
appropriate. He assumed she was one of those successful career
types, driven and at least a little selfish. Marion adored her, and
the woman couldn’t find time to make a trip home. Family was
everything to him. Definitely not his type.

But today, she was sweet, soft curls and lush
curves in a flower print dress which nipped in at her waist and
showed off the gentle swell of her breasts. The pretty pink shoes
emphasized her height – or lack or it – and made a man want to pick
her up and tuck her in against him.

Okay, maybe not him, but it looked like
Andrew would like nothing better. Which was fine, because Jude was
not interested.

He stomped the last few blocks to his office,
stepped down to cross the street and swore as he heard the car
horn.

Mrs. Overstreet rolled down the window of her
Buick LeSabre and peered out at him. “Oh Dr. Southerland, I’m so
sorry. Are you okay?”

“
Fine, Mrs. Overstreet. I’m
fine.” She’d known him all his life. He and his brothers had broken
her window when they were kids, but she still insisted on calling
him doctor and there was no way he’d use her first name. “I should
have been paying better attention.”

“
Nonsense. I know you have
a lot on your mind. The weather is starting to aggravate my
bursitis again.”

“
Call the office. Kristen
will set up an appointment and we’ll take good care of
you.”

“
You always do.” The cars
were starting to pile up behind Mrs. Overstreet’s car. It was only
a matter of seconds before the honking started.

“
Don’t let me keep you,
Mrs. Overstreet,” he said and crossed the street before she could
ask him anything else.

As soon as he stepped through the door to his
office, a frazzled Kristen shoved a stack of papers into his
hands.

“
Deal with this. The
insurance rep has been calling all morning and I can’t make any
sense of it.” She glared at him. “But first you have to take care
of Timmy Johnson and his mother in room one. Stomach
flu.”

“
Right.” He obviously
didn’t move fast enough to suit her because she continued to scowl
at him. “What’s turned you into Nurse Ratchett?”

“
If you don’t get someone
in here to fill in until Mary gets back, I’m going to
quit.”

Perfect.

She turned and headed off down the hall. “Oh,
and Autumn Maddox stopped by earlier,” she said over her shoulder.
“She wanted to thank us for taking care of Marion. I like her.”

Even better.
Autumn thought he was some kind of crazy car
bully, but she charmed everyone around him including his nurse and
his best friend.

Jude pushed open the door to room one just in
time to see Timmy Johnson hurl in his waste basket. His pretty, but
frazzled mother looked at him with something like vindication.

“
I am so sorry Doctor
Southerland, but we have been waiting for a while. The poor dear’s
been sick all day.”

The poor dear looked completely unfazed by
the incident. He was trying to squirm away from his mother to poke
around in the cabinets. At least he’d hit the basket.

“
Let me get rid of this and
we’ll see what’s going on.”

He took the fouled waste basket and went off
to deal with it himself, afraid to ask Kristen for help.

Of course he had to be Jude Southerland. The
only person in the town she felt she actually owed something to and
she’d treated him like a crazy person. When she saw him in Andrew’s
office, she’d been shocked by her body’s reaction to him. She
didn’t have crushes on a man just because of the way he looked. She
never had. She might think a guy was cute, but that was not the
same thing as the heart palpitations and fluttering stomach she got
when faced with Jude Southerland. And after the way she’d dismissed
him, he must think she was a queen bitch.

She’d have to figure out a way to make it up
to him – not because she was attracted to him. She was, but that
was beside the point. She had no intention of acting on the
attraction. She’d simply pretend it didn’t exist until it went
away. She did feel like she owed him her gratitude for the way he’d
taken care of Gran. Gran loved him, and she wasn’t easy to win
over. There must be something to him beyond his good looks and
surly attitude.

Autumn pulled into the gravel drive in front
of the trailer Summer and Abby lived in with Dwayne. From the
outside it looked like it was falling down and Autumn’s heart
clenched with guilt and worry. A pink bicycle with training wheels
lay on its side in the front yard and the ground around the front
steps was littered with cigarette butts. At least Dwayne didn’t
smoke in the trailer, but Summer and Abby deserved better.

Aside from her Gran, Summer was the only
other person who felt like family. She was a year younger than
Autumn, and they’d always been close. At least until Autumn left
for college and never came back. Summer had her own baby and got
her GED and a job at the Kroger. Autumn had been so caught up in
building her own life, she hadn’t done more than send cards and
birthday presents.

Summer and Abby visited her in the city a few
times, but Autumn suspected money and Summer’s lousy car kept them
from coming to see her more often. She loved her sister and had
loved the little bit of time she’d gotten to spend with her niece.
She should have done more to help them. If she had maybe Summer
wouldn’t have felt like she had to settle for that jerk,
Dwayne.

If she could get her sister away from Dwayne,
she and Abby could come live in Gran’s house. Autumn didn’t know
where she’d be in six months, but the thought of seeing her sister
and Abby every day made her smile in spite of everything. Even if
she went back to the city, Summer and Abby could still live in the
house. Andrew said Gran left the whole thing to her to do with what
she wanted. What she wanted was to make a safe place for Abby to
grow up. One without her sister’s crackhead boyfriend.

She had nothing to go back to and a paltry
sum in savings, but that money would go a lot further in Bedford
than in the city. She could stay long enough to convince her sister
to leave Dwayne and to make sure she and Abby were safe. It was the
least she could do for not coming home sooner. She picked her way
through the trash littering the steps and knocked on the front
door.

Inside the TV blared the
music from
Days of Our
Lives
. It had been Gran’s favorite story
and the familiar sound took her back in time.
Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our
lives.
When she was home from school sick,
Gran would make her toast and tea and let Autumn rest her head on
her lap. She’d stroke her hair while they watched the trials and
tribulations of the Brady’s and the Horton’s.

Tears stung her eyes and the longing for her
grandmother almost bent her double. She’d been coming to check on
her sister, but now she needed her, too, needed the connection of
family. She couldn’t change feeling like she’d failed Gran, but she
could make sure she didn’t repeat the mistake with Summer and Abby.
She raised her fist and pounded, rattling the flimsy door. The
latch was the only thing holding it closed. Even locked it didn’t
provide any security.

Determined, she raised her fist again, but
before she could knock Summer opened the door. It looked like she’d
been asleep. Her thin hair lay flat and unwashed around her face
and her huge eyes stared out from sunken shadowed sockets.

“
Summer, honey, what’s
wrong?” Autumn moved forward to step inside but her sister stayed
standing, blocking the doorway.

“
Nothing. Just sleeping.”
Her words sounded slurred with what might have been sleep, but
Autumn doubted that was all. “You look pretty. Why are you
here?”

“
I came to see you. Can I
come in?” She didn’t wait for her sister’s answer, gently pushing
past her and into the dark room.

“
House is a mess.” Summer
rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand. “I’ve been so
tired.”

Empty beer cans and frozen dinner boxes
littered the room. The only light was the glow from the huge flat
screen TV, completely at odds with the rest of the worn out second
hand furniture. A rumpled blanket and divot on the couch showed
where Summer must have been sleeping before she opened the
door.

It had, admittedly been a long time since
Autumn visited her sister at home, but this wasn’t like her. She’d
always been neat and tidy. She sewed pretty curtains and painted
thrift store furniture to make wherever she lived look like home.
This squalor was not like her. Thinking of Abby coming home to this
every day tore at Autumn’s heart. It was too much like the places
they’d lived before her mother died and Gran took them in. Places
she’d never invited friends to because she was ashamed.

Summer swayed on her feet and reached for one
of the cracked vinyl chairs around a table covered with trash and
dirty dishes.

“
Sit down.” Autumn helped
her sister into the chair, convinced more than exhaustion was
making her unsteady. “I’m going to make some coffee.”

She cleaned the used grounds out of the Mr.
Coffee she found on the kitchen counter and opened cabinets looking
for coffee. Summer didn’t protest. She sat at the table, her eyes
glassy and unfocused, and looked like she could fall asleep in the
chair.

She was on something. That was the only
answer that made any sense. But what, and God, why?

Growing up the way they did, they’d always
been so careful about drugs and alcohol. She didn’t smell alcohol
on Summer and couldn’t imagine her taking drugs. Still, something
was wrong.

She finally found coffee in the cabinet but
not before she’d seen enough to know there wasn’t much food in the
house. She opened the refrigerator to get out the milk, but it was
empty except for a bag of tired carrots and an almost empty case of
beer. What was she going to feed Abby when she got home from school
or for dinner that night?

She wanted to scoop her sister and her niece
up and take them away from this place, but she had a feeling Summer
wouldn’t go. She settled for making coffee and pouring a steaming
mug for her sister.

“
What time does Abby get
home from school?”

Summer squinted at the clock on the
microwave. “In about an hour. The bus drops her off at a little
after three.”

Autumn found trash bags under the sink and
started to work her way through the trailer picking up empty cans
and boxes.

“
You don’t have to do
that,” said Summer, starting to rise.

“
Don’t be silly. You took
care of Gran and everything else while I was gone. Let me help you
now.” She pushed in the cushions on the couch and straightened the
pillows. “Come on. Bring your coffee and sit over here. You’ll be
more comfortable.” And it would give Autumn enough room to clean up
the kitchen. “I can’t believe the DiMeras are still torturing
everyone.” She motioned to the glowing TV. “Stephano, Tony, now
who?”

Summer smiled sadly but sat on the couch. “I
don’t pay much attention to it, but I like the music. It reminds me
of Gran.”

“
Me, too,” said Autumn,
squeezing her shoulder. She took the rapidly filling bag of trash
and went to work on the kitchen. By the time she had the sink full
of soapy warm water and dishes, her sister was dozing on the couch.
She washed all the dishes she could find, leaving them to dry in
the rack. Convincing herself she was looking for dishes and not
snooping, she went through the rest of the trailer while Summer
slept.

One of the rooms was locked, which seemed odd
because none of the other door knobs including the bathroom even
had locks. And it wasn’t one of those push button locks, this
needed a key to open. The door seemed sturdier than the rest, too,
even sturdier than the front door. Autumn wanted to know what was
behind the door, but that would have to wait for another time.

The room Summer shared with Dwayne was dark.
Heavy blankets hung over the window and the bed was unmade. She
didn’t see any dishes and she felt funny going into the room to
look.

Autumn pushed open the third door, revealing
a sweet pink bedroom. Abby’s room. She could see her sister’s touch
everywhere from the hand-painted chair and the bookshelf filled
with books to the pretty comforter covered with appliquéd flowers.
She stepped over the threshold and sat on the twin bed, surrounded
by a little girl’s treasures and a mother’s love. Despite
everything else going on, Summer had managed to make this space for
her daughter.

More than anything, it cemented Autumn’s need
to take care of her sister.

She closed the door behind her and glanced at
the clock. Abby should be home any minute. She might not be able to
get Summer to leave Dwayne – yet – but she could still help them.
Gently, she shook her sister awake.