Grant looked up to the peak of Mount Pinatubo. “You know how, when you get to the top of a mountain, you enjoy the view for about five minutes before you start looking around for the next summit? That’s where I’m at, Jake. I need a new challenge.”
Jake scratched his head. “OK, I get that, but everything you’ve ever said about Bell Harbor is that it’s a dead-end town with nothing to offer, so why go back there now?”
“I don’t know. I probably won’t stay for long, but it’s a good place to regroup, maybe rescue my brother from throwing his life away.” He smirked at Jake.
He was mostly kidding about rescuing Tyler. Mostly. If his brother wanted to waste his future in that tiny town, it wasn’t Grant’s problem. In fact, he’d made it a policy to not let family drama pull him back to Michigan. His job was all-consuming, sometimes even dangerous, but it was still easier than negotiating Connelly family politics. Even so, he did miss them. And back in Bell Harbor he could make some new plans. He had lots of connections in this business, and with just a few phone calls he could probably work out a deal better than what he had now. Maybe even produce his own show where he could be the boss. He had some ideas.
So . . . what the hell?
It looked like Grant Connelly was going home.
Chapter 2
DELANEY DIDN’T REALIZE SHE’D LEFT the lights on in the kitchen when she’d gone to Gibson’s grocery store, but there they were, glowing brightly through the window. Good thing too, since apparently around here it got dark at dinnertime. She pulled two overloaded grocery bags from the passenger seat of her car and hurried inside, nudging the back door of the house closed with her hip. She set the bags on the yellowed Formica countertop and halted in her tracks, snow dropping from her boots.
Slung over one of the dinged-up dinette chairs was a coat. A man’s coat, by the looks of it. Black, bulky, and definitely not new. And a pair of weather-beaten boots too. One was sitting upright in the middle of the linoleum floor, and the other lay on its side in the hallway as if the wearer had taken them off while still walking.
She heard the shower upstairs turn on, accompanied by a cheery whistle, and her curiosity melted with the snow.
At last, the long-lost Carl had come to do his chores. Thank goodness too, because she’d been here for four days and that leaky shower was full-bore water torture. She’d taken to counting the drip, drip, drips as she lay in her lumpy bed. Last night she’d gotten to three hundred ninety-seven before she’d finally drifted off to sleep and dreamt she’d moved into an enormous clock.
Delaney slid her arms from her coat and turned to hang it up on the hook by the door. A glowing pocket caught her gaze, and the telltale buzz of vibration sounded in her ears. Her phone was in that pocket but she had no intention of answering it. She’d turned off the ringer sometime during her drive through Utah after every single family member had called to implore her to return home where she belonged. She wasn’t going back to Beverly Hills, though. Not yet. Not until everyone in the media had moved on to a new scandal and forgotten all about hers.
Still, from habit, she pulled the phone out to see who was calling, and Melody’s face appeared. Her middle sister. Her tenacious middle sister who’d called sixty-three times since Delaney had left home over a week ago. Melody was quite possibly the only thing more annoying to Delaney at the moment than that leaky showerhead, and she’d never give up. Frustrated, Delaney tapped the phone’s surface really hard, but the effort was unsatisfying. “I don’t want to talk, Mel. I’m fine but I don’t feel like talking, OK?”
“Michigan?” Melody’s voice was anything but melodious. “What the hell are you doing in Michigan?”
Delaney looked out the window as if her sister might be poised on her front step, ready to storm in, followed by the flashing cameras. “What makes you think I’m in Michigan?”
“You have a location finder on your phone, moron. It was pretty easy. I’ve known where you’ve been this whole time.”
“Shit.” That was a distinct disadvantage of trying to hide in this digital world. Delaney might need to buy a new phone and get off the family plan. “Who else knows I’m here?”
“Nobody, just me, but seriously, how did you end up in Michigan?” Melody’s voice mellowed and Delaney could picture her sister just then, lying in the big hammock on their back deck, soaking up the warm sun. Delaney hadn’t been warm since Nevada.
She straightened her shoulders as if Melody could see. “Michigan has its appeal. Condé Nast Traveler said it was gorgeous here. Apparently the sand dunes and beaches are magnificent, although I haven’t seen any yet. So far everything is just piles of snow.”
Melody paused on the other end. “You went to Michigan because of its beautiful beaches? In January?”