Chapter 3

“Are you ready to go?” Jillian asked, looking around my now-bare office. “I don’t know how you spent any time in here. You should have let me bring you some plants.”

I barely heard her as I stared at my empty desk, wondering how life could change so drastically, so quickly. I didn’t particularly enjoy my job, but it paid the bills, and I’d resigned myself to climbing the corporate ladder for the next twenty years. Now, my apparently rich grandfather wanted to dump millions on us and send me on a dream trip to Paris, all of which I should be more excited about.

I was excited. It was just so unexpected, like a dream from another lifetime, a wish belonging to someone else.

Holding my laundry basket piled high above the sides with my belongings because that’s all I’d had in my car at the time, I stood staring at an empty office that would belong to someone else by this time next week. My leather chair in the far corner no longer held comforting pillows in varying shades of blue, my favorite color. Nor did the walls bear safe, generic art, like black-and-white photos of a castle in Scotland and a waterfall in Oregon.

A lifetime ago, those walls would have held photos of Paris—the Eiffel Tower, Versailles, a Phantom of the Opera movie poster, or the Broadway advertisement for Les Misérables. But no longer. Not after what happened.

“Oh! One last thing,” I told Jillian, opening the bottom drawer of the desk. I pulled out an insert that served as a false bottom and retrieved a framed photo—a family photo from my junior high years before our family got divided like a pepperoni pizza. Dad and Mom sitting on chairs in the center, holding hands. The thirteen-year-old version of me right behind them in a white dress flaring in the wind. Eleven-year-old Alexis to my right, nearly my height and smirking at the camera. Nine-year-old Jillian to my left wearing a grumpy expression and a sage-green dress she rarely took off because it matched her favorite plants. She’d been grumpy about being forced to stand still so long. A field spread filled the background. If only I could remember whose field.

A happy family before we knew better.

Jillian looked over my shoulder. “Aw. They seemed so happy.”

“They were. We were.”

“That’s the way I remember it. Just proves how amazing Mom was, giving us such a peaceful childhood while shielding us from what was happening with Dad.”

Mostly shielded. I remembered more than my sisters, which wasn’t surprising for an oldest child. Remembering wasn’t the hard part. It was forgetting.

I slipped the photo into the laundry basket and heaved it onto my hip, feeling like a housekeeper but suddenly not caring. One month from now, I’d be in a position to start my own travel agency if I wanted, and nobody here even knew it. The second condition of Grandpa’s inheritance? If any of us told anyone outside the family about the inheritance, none of us got a cent. A reasonable condition, and probably for our own safety, but a little awkward to skirt around when quitting a job.

“Kennedy!” Joseph exclaimed from down the hall. The tall, lanky man straightened his glasses as he hurried over and slid to a halt in front of us. “I heard a rumor you might be quitting. Looks like it’s true.”

What did a person say to that? Duh? I smoothed my face, trying to act as though Joseph weren’t the gossip king of the office trying to pry my secrets from my unwilling hands, and forced a smile. “Yes, it’s sad to be leaving everyone.”

Joseph leaned forward conspiratorially. “Is it, though? You’ve been here longer than almost anyone. Maybe you asked for a raise and didn’t get it.”

That had happened just last year. Not that I was bitter. Mostly. “No, not at all.”

He lowered his voice even more. “This is because Claudia got chosen for partner over you, isn’t it?”

Claudia, the bombshell-gorgeous Brazilian woman down the hall. Rumor said my boss, Kevin, had harbored a secret crush on her for years.

“Claudia deserved that promotion,” I told him honestly. “She’s worked hard.” And thankfully, she kept our boss in his place. Good for her. “Joseph, I promise it has nothing to do with anything you’ve heard. It’s just time to go.”

“Time to go where, exactly? Did you get a better offer at another agency?” His eager expression froze when he turned to find my sister standing there, looking impatient. “Why, hello. And you are?”

“Jillian, Kennedy’s sister,” she said, holding out a hand .

Joseph clasped it and shook it so vigorously, her teeth probably chattered. “How very nice to meet you, Jillian.”

The sound of my little sister’s name on his tongue made me want to puke. “And I’m ready to go. We have a plane to catch, so if you’ll excuse us . . . ”

“A plane!” Joseph clapped his hands together. “You found a job far from this icky little town. Good for you. Where are you going?”

I grabbed my sister’s hand as she opened her mouth to answer. I refused to give Joseph the gossip he wanted, especially if it threatened our inheritance. He and my coworkers could stew over it all they wanted. “We’re going on a family vacation before I settle into my new job.” The job of finding somewhere to live that wasn’t here, that is, surrounded by memories of those who’d left me behind.

I sent him a wave, turned, and headed for the doors that meant my freedom. Jillian’s footsteps behind me meant she followed close behind, completely unaware that turning my back on this part of my life meant more than she could possibly know.

In saying goodbye to the travel agency, I said goodbye to a life that centered around providing for my little sister. Goodbye to the tiny farmhouse with more ghosts than people. Goodbye to the house next door, with its bird poop-encrusted windowsills and potato gun damage to the bricks and an empty bedroom where my best friend had once lived. Goodbye to the woman I’d been my entire life. Hello to a future full of possibility rather than the tiny prison where I’d watched my mother die.

We emerged into the sunlight and strode toward the car. I didn’t look back. Grandfather had retrieved my dreams from the darkest, furthest recesses of my soul and dumped them in my lap. Four years of booking dream vacations for clients, and today, I would finally board the plane myself.

Only one problem remained, and it made my heart pound like nothing else.

Hunter still lived in Paris . . . and he was the last person I wanted to see.