The Promise of Rayne Read online

  “Your grandfather.”

  Another lie. She bit the inside of her cheeks as if the effort alone could close the valve to her pain.

  “I’ll arrange for Sharon to call you first thing tomorrow morning so we can get you set up in an apartment near the office—”

  “No.”

  Her father wasn’t inviting her into his sacred political circle because of any talent she possessed. He simply wanted to remove her from Shelby Falls.

  From the farm.

  From Levi.

  From Ford.

  “Excuse me? I’ve pulled a lot of strings for you, young lady—”

  “Then, please . . .” Her voice swelled with a strength that rose from somewhere deep within. “Cut me loose.”

  With the stab of her finger, she ended the call, and she rejected the next two that came after it. She studied the two properties from the same gravel turnabout she’d parked in just six weeks before. Rayne veered her gaze from the lodge that held her dreams, to the farm that held her heart.

  This time, her decision was easy.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Levi braced his hands on his hips and stared at the cyclone of dust swirling in the empty space beside the barn. Either Bess the Backhoe had been stolen, or Ford had taken it off the property. Again.

  When the third sharp crack shook the night sky, he glanced at the clock on his phone. If the old man wasn’t back in the next twenty minutes, he’d go after him. Hauser scurried up the breezeway, his fuzzy golden ears alert to every sound, near and far.

  “It’s just a storm. He’ll be home soon.” He scratched the dog’s head and then turned off the lights in the warehouse, sparing one last glance toward the property to the west.

  In the same way Ford’s companion wouldn’t stray far from the property, Levi’s mind hadn’t strayed from his last interaction with Rayne. If he hadn’t heard the dedication in her voice or seen the determination in her eyes, he’d be going out of his mind. But for reasons he couldn’t understand, a part of him loved her even more for turning his invitation down.

  The crunch of tires on the gravel drive provoked a barking fit from Hauser. “Easy, boy. He’ll be just as excited to see you.” Only the headlights were all wrong. So was the shape of the vehicle. So was the face of the driver.

  Ford wasn’t back.

  Rayne was.

  The impulse to run toward her and crush her to his chest was as painful and palpable as it was achingly familiar. Yet somehow, he resisted. Her door swept open and shut in the time it took him to cross the lot. The sky sizzled again, swallowing her in a blaze of firelight.

  Levi’s stride slowed, allowing his mind to lope ahead. Rayne is here. Unlike that early June afternoon when she’d come to strike a bargain in secret, he saw nothing skittish or frail about her now. Whatever tears she’d shed had dried, and whatever fear she’d battled had lost.

  “You were wrong,” she said. “There was a trail.”

  “And it led you here.”

  She nodded. “Yes, it led me here.”

  “Then I’ll be wrong anytime.”

  A slight dip of her chin. “Where is he?”

  “Somewhere in the backwoods.”

  “In a lightning storm?”

  “He’ll be back soon.” And if he wasn’t, Levi would bring him back. Ford had been waiting eighteen years for this moment. There was no way Levi would let him miss it.

  She said nothing more as he led her up the steps into Ford’s cluttered bachelor pad. Hauser followed behind them with an anxious pant. The screen door creaked open, a rival sound to the echo of distant thunder.

  Ford’s leather-bound Bible lay open on his coffee table, surrounded by mechanical trinkets and scribbled blueprints. Levi watched the way she took everything in, watched the way her fingers ticked at her sides and scrunched the bottom of her cotton shirt.

  “He’ll be glad you’re here.”

  A glassy vulnerability shone in her eyes. “I wish I felt the same way.”

  He wouldn’t fill the silence with empty reassurances. There was no predicting how this conversation would go, and yet, everything in him wanted to shelter her, to carry the burden she shouldered. “Rayne, I—”

  Hauser shot to his feet. Only this time it wasn’t a thunderclap that set him on alert, it was the low, rumbly hum of his master’s backhoe.

  Another eighteen years seemed to pass in the time it took Ford to walk through his front door.

  Rayne’s spine lengthened to the kind of ruler-straight posture her fifth-grade teacher, Sister Meredith, had insisted upon. With a half turn, she faced the doorway, her hands clutched in tight fists.

  Levi strode past her, but Ford beat him to the punch, his heavy work boots vibrating the floorboards upon entry. He slid his worn leather hat from his head. “I prayed you’d come.”

  The room pulsed with a static current that seemed to awaken every nerve ending in her body.

  “I remember—what I asked you in the grocery store.” Her words sounded submerged in half-developed memories. She hadn’t budged an inch since the dog had leapt from the corner of the room to circle the man’s calves, his tail thump, thump, thumping against the back of a recliner on every revolution.

  “Please, have a seat.” Ford eased closer, his footsteps like those of a skilled huntsman, silent but intentional. “Levi, will you bring our guest something to drink?”

  Levi ducked into the kitchen while Rayne perched on the edge of the sofa. There was no cushion in the world soft enough to make this exchange comfortable.

  Ford sat in the recliner opposite her, clasping his hands into a loose fold. “I’ve thought about that day many times.”

  While she’d done just the opposite. She’d blocked it out, stuffed it into a box labeled “Do Not Touch, Do Not Ask, Do Not Open.” What else had she repressed for fear of repercussions? What else had Cal and her father kept from her?

  Levi placed a steaming mug into her hands, his thumb brushing an arc along the delicate skin of her wrist. Somehow he’d known her fingers were frozen despite the sticky, hot air outside. He retreated to the edge of her vision, propping himself against the wall and studying her with an expression she could feel in her bones.

  The faint aroma of lemon and chamomile filled her next breath, strengthening her courage. “I asked you about the apple tree. The one we planted on my seventh birthday.”

  “Yes, you did.” An encouraging nod. “You were concerned it wouldn’t produce fruit since you weren’t able to come to the orchard and tend to it.”

  She set the mug on the coffee table, remembering the way he’d crouched before her in the aisle. “You told me not to worry. You told me that God takes care of his creation . . . that his timing is always perfect.”

  Kind eyes brimming with patience waited for her to continue, for her memories to lead her to a place with far more questions than answers. “But what I couldn’t understand was your timing. Why would you leave us after Grandpa Shelby died?”

  The single flare inside her abdomen sparked a fire through her veins. And this time, it couldn’t—wouldn’t—be stomped out. Not by the tactless deflection of her uncle or the saccharine-coated words of her father. Lies and deceit had dripped from the tongues of every man she’d been taught to trust. And here she was, placing her hope in the only man she’d been trained to despise.

  “William’s death was the hardest day of my life.” His gaze held steady on her mug. “Until the day I walked away from the lodge.”

  “What happened in the meeting between you and Cal and my father?” Her voice snagged on the persistent lump in her throat.

  Ford regarded her as if the question popped the lock on a memory box of his own. “You know about the meeting?”

  “Yes.” Only that was about all she knew.

  The lines etched around his mouth sagged. “Cal wished to discuss your grandfather’s requests in private.”

  Snippets of old conversations—rumors she’d treated like certainty,
hearsay she’d treated like God-breathed truth—clawed at her subconscious. “What requests? Were you or were you not named in his will?”

  His exhale was weighted. “Yes, he named me in his will. But he did so of his own accord.”

  “You’re telling me that you didn’t coerce him in any way to gain ownership of Shelby Farm?”

  “No, Rayne. I did not coerce William.”

  Her intuition kicked against the accusations fed to her since childhood. This man sitting before her, the man with the soothing timbre and the serene gaze, was not the hateful monster who’d starred in her nightmares. Her uncle was far more cunning and ruthless, her father far more strategic and arrogant.

  She wet her thirsty tongue with a sip of tea and let it cool in the hollow of her belly before she spoke. “If you didn’t blackmail my grandfather, why would he leave you the farm? Why would he give you a piece of our inheritance—the land we’ve kept in our family for generations?”

  Crestfallen, he met her eyes again. “In that early-morning meeting I was asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement, a legal contract that bound me to keep the specifics of the will and our negotiations confidential.”

  “Wait.” Confused, she looked from Ford to Levi. “If you’re legally bound to silence, then how does Levi know the details?”

  “Ford didn’t tell me,” Levi offered. “Cal showed up here the day after you and I met at the Falls. He threatened Ford, told him to keep me on his side of the property line or he’d find a reason to take him to court for breach of contract. I overheard more of their conversation than Cal ever intended me to.”

  The knocking in her chest climbed into her temples, her gaze locking on Ford. “But why breach of contract? What did you agree to?”

  “To cut all ties with the lodge and your family.” The sadness in his voice stirred something forgotten inside her. “It’s why I never attended your birthday parties or your graduation ceremonies, why I couldn’t tell you everything I wished I could have in the grocery store that day.”

  Like the release of a dam, his regrets rushed into every abandoned cavern of her soul, flooding her with a sorrow she’d only ever felt when her grandfather had passed. She hadn’t only lost her grandfather that day . . . she’d lost Ford too. Had she loved this man? Had she cried over his absence? And if so, how many lies had she swallowed before her grief had turned to hatred?

  Her vision blurred. “What secret could possibly be worth all this?”

  Levi pushed away from the wall. “Ford, can’t you just—”

  Ford raised his palm and dropped his chin. “I’m still bound to it, Rayne. And Levi made a promise to me that I’ve held him to for his own good—despite himself.”

  Levi’s jaw clenched and her heart nearly punched through her chest. She stared at him, her breath shallow and uneven. “What could you lose—if you broke the agreement?”

  Levi averted his gaze as Ford answered for him. “Everything. The lawsuit would wipe out the farm and Second Harvest.”

  The fog of confusion cleared from her mind for the first time in days. She’d been so focused on the loss of her childhood dream that she hadn’t considered the ripple effect of repercussions to follow. Not only had Levi risked his business aspirations the night he’d confronted Cal, he’d risked the trust of every vendor who’d partnered with him. Every vendor who’d shared his vision for expanding Second Harvest and linking their community together in all the ways the lodge had failed.

  And Levi had jeopardized it all. For her.

  She steered her focus back to Ford, desperation snaking around her heart. “How do I uncover the truth if nobody in that meeting will tell me what was said?”

  “Words are not nearly as important as motives.”

  She closed her eyes against the throb in her temples. In many ways, the men in her family were as alien to her as her estranged neighbor. But their motives were not. She’d witnessed many manipulative takedowns for the sake of power—business deals, political agendas, media posturing. So why did Cal see Ford as a threat to their family name? And why would Ford choose to stay at the farm instead of taking a bundle of Cal’s cash and living free from hostility? What kind of secret would require a nondisclosure agreement?

  She pushed up from the couch. “I need some air.”

  Ford gave her a sympathetic nod and gestured to Levi. She didn’t have to turn around to sense he was behind her. She knew. The same way her heart whispered words her mind would not fully accept.

  She was down the steps and pacing the gravel when Levi planted his feet in her path.

  “Breathe,” he said.

  “I am.”

  “No.” He set his hands on her shoulders, calming the static inside her. “You’re not.”

  She licked the dryness from her lips. “This is just so much to—”

  The two-second blare of a police siren rattled her teeth and sliced through the smoky night sky. Levi spun, pushing her behind him, as if to shield her from the sheriff’s cruiser rolling down Ramsey Highway in first gear. But concerns of her uncle Tony discovering her on the Winslow property vanished the instant the intercom crackled a warning. “Evacuate now. This is your five-minute warning. Evacuate now . . .”

  Ford stepped onto the front porch, his steady-as-a-rock appearance contradicting her own.

  “Wait here,” Levi called out as he jogged toward the police car.

  But there was no time for waiting.

  She darted to her car.

  If the farm was being evacuated, the lodge would be next.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Locked? She rattled the knob and banged on the door glass with the flat of her hand until she heard the thud of heavy footsteps. The instant the dead bolt turned, she pushed into the lobby.

  “Teddy, how many rooms are occupied?”

  “Uh . . .” He crinkled disorderly eyebrows. “Maybe four?”

  She surged toward the laptop on the front desk. “Four not including Celeste?”

  “Yeah. I think so. What’s—”

  “We’re under a five-minute evacuation. I need your help.” She logged in and clicked into the reservations screen, relief flooding her at the sight of the vacant rooms. “I’m gonna pull the fire alarm, but I need you to go to rooms eleven and seventeen. Tell our guests not to panic and to grab whatever they can and drive to the high school. I’ll alert the guests on the third floor, and Celeste.” She started for the stairs and whirled back. “Cal’s not here, right?”

  “Right.” He shook his head, his basset-hound eyes round and alert. “He was gone before I clocked in tonight.”

  “Good, okay, go! Sheriff’s just down the road; he’ll be here next.”

  Adrenaline pulsed into her fingers as she yanked the red handle near the bottom of the staircase. A staccato shriek pierced through the sleepy hallways. Covering her ears, she hurtled up the staircase, reaching the third floor in time to see the retired couple from room thirty-one stumble into the hallway. The woman wore an ankle-length nightgown while the balding man at her side fumbled with the white lodge-issue bathrobe at his waist. A heartbeat later, the door to room thirty-four opened to reveal a midthirties man clad in nothing but boxer briefs.

  “Is there a fire close by?” Boxer Man asked, shielding his ears.

  “Yes, we’re under evacuation,” Rayne yelled over the screeching alarm.

  “From the lightning storm?” he asked.

  Rayne couldn’t be sure, but it was her best guess. She nodded. “We need to evacuate immediately.”

  “But what about our luggage?” the woman cried, cupping age-spotted hands to her ears.

  Rayne held up three fingers. “Grab what you can, and I’ll meet you in the lobby in three minutes. Please hurry.”

  The guests scurried back to their rooms while she ran to the top floor. Celeste met her at the staircase, her scowl as unmovable as her stance. “Did you pull the fire alarm? Turn it off.”

  “We’re under evacuation.” Rayne reached for her
cousin’s arm—she’d need a few things from her room. Like a shirt that reached past her rib cage for starters. “You need to get dressed. We have to go.”

  Celeste shrugged her off. “I’m not going anywhere. The fire can’t jump the river.”

  Was she serious? “This isn’t New York, Celeste. Lightning can strike anywhere, and with the drought, these trees are unlit matches. Uncle Tony’s outside right now evacuating everybody along Ramsey Highway.”

  Her cousin didn’t budge, so Rayne charged into the suite without her. If Celeste wanted to argue, she could do it after Rayne collected her things.

  “Don’t go through my stuff.”

  “Then don’t stand there like I’m not speaking to you.” Rayne yanked a navy blouse off a hanger in the closet and tossed the garment at Celeste’s chest. “Get dressed and get downstairs. This isn’t some power play. It’s your life.”

  Rayne kicked a pair of red flats over from the corner while Celeste slid the shirt over her head. “Here, put your shoes on.” She swiped the Louis Vuitton purse off the nightstand. “Are your car keys inside?”

  A curt nod from Celeste. “Yes.”

  “Good, now let’s go.”

  Rayne cupped her elbow, and much to her surprise, Celeste didn’t jerk away. As they reached the bottom of the staircase, the deafening alarm fell silent, and the sudden quiet felt nearly as disorienting as the initial blast of sound.

  “How—how did it stop?” Celeste asked, removing her hands from her ears.

  “Teddy must have switched it off from the control panel.”

  After Rayne led Celeste and the third-floor residents into the paved lot at the front of the lodge, Teddy met them outside, where the lights from Uncle Tony’s cruiser flashed a sequence of red and blue. He rolled closer and Teddy jogged toward him.

  “All the guests have been accounted for, sir,” Teddy confirmed loudly. “Rayne swept the top two floors and I took the first floor. The second has been closed for cleaning since the shelter guests vacated.”

  Smoke permeated the air and caught in the back of Rayne’s throat. She coughed into the crook of her elbow, escorting the retired couple to their gold Mercedes. She heaved the woman’s suitcase into the open trunk.