NICHOLAS HAD been exaggerating by saying his grandfather’s house was up a mountain, but not by much. The trees were older, the growth of lawn heavier, but she knew this hilly road like the back of her hand. When Sam Oka and John Chandler had moved to this then-rural place in the middle of nowhere, they’d purchased neighboring tracts of land. After they’d established their empire and each gotten married—in a joint ceremony, no less—they’d built their homes.
Livvy gazed in the direction of her old house, her late grandpa Sam’s home. She and Nicholas had run wild through these woods as children. As young adults, they’d made love in these woods.
And then later, Nicholas had broken her heart in these woods.
“Stop the car.”
Nicholas didn’t even hesitate, coming to an immediate halt. She stared out her window.
“Do you want to leave?” He didn’t sound surprised.
She ran her hand over the pristine leather seat. “How’s he doing?”
“Grandpa? Well, for his age. He has some pretty bad arthritis, so he uses a wheelchair now.”
“Are you sure he doesn’t hate me?” She wasn’t proud of how plaintive she sounded.
She also wasn’t proud of the rush of soothing comfort she experienced when his thumb brushed the back of her hand. “He doesn’t hate you.”
She rolled her shoulders. Shedding some of her baggage. “Okay. Let’s go then.”
“Are you sure?”
No. “Yes.”
Livvy braced herself for the first sight of the house, but even then she felt like she’d been punched in the belly when the large stone estate came into view. Someone was maintaining it well, the garden John’s late wife had so adored still thriving.
Nicholas parked in the circular driveway. She didn’t wait for him to come around the side of the car, fumbling her way out of the passenger side.
Sweat broke out on her brow as they climbed the porch and he stopped in front of the door. “Are you sure, Livvy?” he asked again, this time with more than a touch of urgency.
Yearning and longing and terror whirled inside her, but she nodded. Fearful she would take him up on the next out he gave her, Livvy rang the doorbell.
It opened after a brief pause. The man standing behind the door was young and handsome and a stranger to her. His polite smile turned to familiarity when he caught sight of Nicholas. “Hey there.”
“Hi, Chad. My grandfather’s expecting us.”
The younger man’s gaze moved curiously between the two of them. “Sure. I can let him know you’re here.” He stepped aside.
The knot in her belly got worse as Livvy entered the home. Little had changed here, though the paint on the wall looked fresh, and the carpet had been swapped for hardwood. The air still held the familiar scent of vanilla and cookies.
Nicholas’s fingers brushed the small of her back. “Still okay?”
“Yup.” She firmed her spine. Without waiting for his urging, she walked into the living room, her feet retracing steps she’d taken for years.
Nicholas was behind her, but she forgot all about him when she saw the framed photo. She forgot about everything.
What was it doing here?
It wasn’t a particularly large piece. It didn’t have to be. She could close her eyes and recall every detail of the black-and-white photograph. Two young men, barely out of childhood, dressed in simple jeans and shirts, their arms around each other’s shoulders, in front of a storefront. The white boy was solemn, the Asian boy’s lips slightly curved, a devilish gleam in his eyes.
It had been taken a couple of weeks before Sam and his family had been sentenced to an internment camp for Japanese-Americans.
Another picture of her grandfather hung in a museum in D.C., but that one had been taken by a photojournalist in the Central Utah camp where the Okas had been imprisoned. Sam’s smile had been missing then, his eyes somber, his body leaner, having had to endure things no child should have.
This photo had graced the first C&O from the minute it opened to the day it burned down.
“How does he have this? This was destroyed in the fire.”
Nicholas came to stand next to her. “I’m not sure. He tracked down the photographer, I think, and managed to get a copy.”
“What took its place?”
“Nothing. My father wanted to put up our family portrait, but Grandpa blocked him on that. There’s a blank spot in the front of the store.”
She nodded, her body numb. That was good. Bad enough to be erased, but maybe worse to be replaced.
The whir of a power chair came from behind them. Livvy turned, that numbness protecting her from her anxiety. She dropped her hand from the frame.
John was older, of course, but he sat straight and tall in his wheelchair. Thick, bushy eyebrows lowered over eyes remarkably similar to Nicholas’s. His mouth worked. “Livvy.”
She took a hesitant step forward, part of her still caught in fear, though he’d been the one to ask her to come here. The fear he would tell her to get out, or that her family had ruined his.
But still, she couldn’t stop that hopeful, needy step.
His jaw trembled, and then he did the best thing she could have imagined he’d do. He opened his arms.
Her pulse sped up at the gesture, at the pure, unadulterated eagerness to love her.
Without thinking, she crossed the room and crouched down, allowing him to pull her into his arms. He wasn’t as strong as he used to be, his arms weak, but that didn’t matter. He smelled faintly of cigars and dirt, of home and family and roots.
John smoothed her hair away, his calloused hand rough. He leaned back and beamed into her face, unashamed or unaware of the tears running down his cheeks. “Livvy?” he asked again, and another fresh wave of happiness ran through her at her name uttered in that gravelly voice. “Look at you. All grown up.” He shook his head. “You’re the spitting image of your grandma and mother.”
She sniffed, long and loud, and wiped the back of her hand over her nose. “It’s so good to see you.”
“You’re back. I can’t believe you’re back.”
“No. I mean, yes, I’m back, but temporarily.”
“How long will you be here?” John asked eagerly.
“I don’t know.”
Displeasure crossed his face, followed by resignation, but he rallied. “Are you hungry? Nicholas, go tell that jailer you’ve hired that we could use some food and drinks. He’s probably in the kitchen getting dinner ready.”
“Stop calling Chad your jailer. He’s your housekeeper.”
“I know an old-people caretaker when I see one.”
“He’s here to help you with anything you need. A housekeeper,” Nicholas said firmly.
John snorted as Nicholas left. “The boy thinks I’m an idiot.” He squeezed her hands. “You have no idea how wonderful it is to see you. I’ve dreamed of this, you know.”
“Me too.” She hesitated. “I was scared to come here. I thought . . .”
“I’d shun you.” He nodded, unsurprised. “After what my son did, that’s a reasonable assumption for you to make.”
“After what my father did, you mean,” she corrected him. Her father and her brother, if John believed Jackson had set the fire.
“What your father did was an accident. What my son did was deliberate.” John’s nostrils flared.
She looked away, at the photograph of Sam and John. “It was a shock to see that here. A shock, but a nice one.”
“It’s yours.”
“What?” She turned back to John.
“It’s yours. I have another copy. I kept this for you and Jackson. That’s part of your heritage. You should have it.”
Her first instinct was to take it, but then reason prevailed. “I travel a lot. I—I have no home or anything to put it in.”
John frowned. “Why do you travel?”
Because I keep trying to find what I lost. “I love seeing the country,” she said brightly.
“Hmph.” John didn’t look convinced by that explanation. “Is Jackson here?”
She glanced at the doorway, which remained empty. If she could keep Nicholas from discovering Jackson was back, that would be good. No need to rile him up. “He was here briefly.”
“I’d like to see him,” John said, surprising her. “If you would tell him that.”
“I can’t guarantee he’ll come.”
Sadness came and went in the older man’s gaze. “Tell him . . . the past is dead and buried for me. In case he fears anything.”
“I will.”
John stroked her hair again, as if he couldn’t stop himself from touching her, and she leaned into the paternal gesture, so hungry for familial affection. It was all she could do not to demand more hugs.
“Now, tell me everything about you. You travel. Where have you been? What have you been doing?”
“I’m a tattoo artist.”
“I know that much. I may be old as dirt, but I can google.”
She smiled. “You’re not old at all.”
His lips quirked. “Keep lying to me, sweetheart. I knew you’d be an artist. Always doodling and coloring. Like your mama, when she was young.”
Livvy wondered anew if her distant mother had ached after losing John in her life. “Mom never considered me an artist. I just—”
“Just permanently put your art on people’s skin? Don’t let your clients hear how little confidence you have in your work.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Right. Reflex.”
“Your mother is a good woman. If she puts pressure on you over your chosen profession, don’t hold it against her—she probably sees too much of herself in you. I was always saddened that your father discouraged her from having a career as an artist.”
“No, you’re mistaken,” Livvy said slowly. “My father didn’t have a problem with my being an artist. He even convinced my mom to let me go to art school.”
“Sometimes men have different goals for their wives and daughters. I say this with no animosity toward your father, Livvy, over what happened, but it was pretty obvious when Robert married your mother that part of her appeal was her wealth and social status. Her working as an artist didn’t quite mesh with that.”
The mural.
She remembered suddenly, her father’s deep voice, sweet as always, as her mother put the finishing touches on the fairy tale mural in her and Jackson’s bedroom. Really, Tani, does this match the rest of the house? It seems a bit tacky to have this in our children’s bedroom, no? They’d painted over it not long after.
“I’m sorry. Forget I said anything. I didn’t mean to speak ill of the dead.”
“No, no. I’m an adult. I understand my parents weren’t perfect.” Except . . . as a child, it was natural to make one parent right and the other wrong. Her father, so loving and boisterous and generous and indulgent of her. Her mother, closed off and distant. Right. Wrong.
Livvy pushed the thoughts away, disquieted by even a hint that maybe there had been complexities in her parents’ relationship she’d been unaware of. “My mom doesn’t hassle me about my career anymore.” Because we don’t talk about anything anymore.
“How is Tani doing? Recovering from her injury?” John said her mother’s name like a verbal caress. Tani and John’s relationship had always been like parent and child.
“Yes, nicely.”
“Getting old is fucking awful.”
She smiled. “Yes, it is.”
“I’m sorry about Paul. I wanted to come to the funeral so badly. But I feared upsetting you and Tani further.”
She dipped her head, acknowledging his condolences. Would she have been less miserable that day, standing by the grave of her brother, if she’d known John and Nicholas had wanted to be there? Undoubtedly. It warmed her now, to know that support had been out there, even if she’d been unaware. “Thanks.”
“A tragedy, that’s what it was.”
“Yes. A tragedy.”
Nicholas reentered the room, his gaze softening as it rested on her and his grandfather. The old-fashioned tea cart he pushed didn’t distract a bit from his rugged masculinity.
Nostalgia shot through her. The delicate porcelain tea set was white with pink roses on it. “Grandma Barb’s tea set.”
John’s wife had been a kind, matronly sort who had adored having all the grandchildren over for tea. She’d passed away when Liv was a child, but she’d had a few years to get to know the woman.
John’s age-spotted hands curled in his lap. “I barely use it now. I don’t have many visitors.”
Nicholas snorted and set the cart in front of them. “You could, if you weren’t so grumpy every time one of your old friends came to see you.”
“I barely liked most of those bastards,” John grumbled. “Can I be blamed for preferring the company of my garden?”
“Then don’t complain you don’t have any visitors,” Nicholas said calmly.
“Asshole,” John said affectionately.
Livvy grinned, glad to see age hadn’t taken any of John’s sharp tongue. The words this man had taught her.
John accepted the teacup and turned to her, a gleam in his eyes. “Now, tell me some sordid stories about life as a tattoo artist.”
LIVVY HADN’T come home looking for a grandfather’s love, but she’d found it. And she’d never be able to express how grateful she was.
She could easily have stayed on this couch for hours. Nicholas and his grandfather’s relationship was as easy as it had always been, half joking, half loving. Nicholas barely swore, but he had no problem matching the elder man’s salty tongue.
There was only one spot of tension, when John brought up some sort of media hubbub. “We’re handling it,” Nicholas said.
“I want to make sure we aren’t slipping, Nicholas. People. Quality—”
“I know, Grandpa.”
“Your father will want to pursue the bottom dollar. Well, that’s not what Sam and I . . .” He paused and shot a guilty look at Livvy, who pretended not to have noticed the slip. “We didn’t start this company with an eye toward only making a profit.”
“Dad would say we’re in a position to make the world a better place if we can make a profit.”
“I—”
“Grandpa.” Nicholas gave a single, firm shake of his head. “Not now.”
His grandfather sighed, long and heavy, but subsided. “Very well. Keep me informed.”
Livvy tried to pretend she wasn’t absorbing this unusual new dynamic between grandfather and grandson, but that would be a lie. She guessed this was what Nicholas had been talking about when he said he was often in the middle of the two older Chandlers.
Nicholas took a bite of his cucumber sandwich, his big hand practically dwarfing the tiny, crustless sandwich. “I always do.”
John grunted and nudged the plate of lemon squares toward Nicholas. “Here. I made your favorite dessert.”
“Lemon squares aren’t his favorite dessert.”
Both men looked at her, and she ran her tongue over her teeth. “Or at least, they weren’t.”
Nicholas shook his head, taking the attention off her. “No, thanks, Grandpa. I’m good.”
“You remember the sweet tooth he had, Livvy?” John mused. “He barely eats the good stuff now.”
“You don’t like sweets anymore?” He’d used to gorge himself on anything remotely sugar filled. He’d been lucky to have an equally fast metabolism.
“They aren’t good for you,” he said briskly, and picked up a cucumber sandwich.
She met his gaze. “Do you only like things that are good for you?”
“I try.”
“Boring,” John muttered, and passed the plate to Livvy. She picked up the lemon square and ate it slowly, catching the surreptitious glance Nicholas cast at her mouth as she nibbled on the tart sweet.
They talked more, Livvy relating a couple of the lighter, funny stories about her travels. She finally noticed the sun slipping away and checked her phone, wincing. “I have to get going.”
“Is Tani by herself?” John asked.
“No, my aunt’s with her, but I didn’t tell them I’d be out so late.” Tani probably wouldn’t notice, but Maile would worry.
John looked disappointed, but nodded. “Of course.”
“I can come back,” she said tentatively, heartened when John beamed.
“Yes. Please.”
Nicholas pushed his chair back. “Let me make sure Chad knows we’re leaving, Grandfather.”
He left the room, and Livvy watched him go.
“Do you know what Sam and I used to joke about?”
Livvy turned back to John and shook her head.
“That Tani and Brendan would grow up and fall in love. I even told Sam we should have betrothed them when they were young.” His smile faded. “That wasn’t to be. But then, you and Nicholas . . . ah, I had such dreams for you two. Uniting the two families would have been magnificent.”
She licked her suddenly dry lips. “John, you understand, we’re not back together.”
“Nicholas grew up into a fine man,” John replied, with enough hopeful eagerness that Livvy grimaced.
“He did.”
“Of course, you already know that.”
There were a million benign ways to read John’s words, but a shiver ran down her spine. “What do you mean?”
John regarded her sympathetically, but there was a certain shrewd quality that reminded her of a fact she bet a lot of people overlooked. Yes, Brendan and Nicholas had been the ones to expand their empire, but John had been the one to lay the first brick. “I know your birthday, Livvy.”
That shiver turned into a tremble. “So?”
“In the beginning I thought . . .” John stroked his finger over his late wife’s teapot. “Well. Chandlers fall hard when they fall in love, after all. I assumed Nicholas was going off to mope somewhere. Then, one year, I happened to look at our flight records. He was flying somewhere, a different destination each time. All over the country.” He inhaled. “I assume that was to see you?”
Her body ran hot, then cold. Mortification and panic mingled. “It meant nothing. Don’t tell him you know about this. Don’t tell anyone, please.”
“I’ve kept it a secret, haven’t I? Even covered for the boy when he got sloppy. I’m not telling you to embarrass you now, my dear.”
“Then why?”
“I’m telling you if something were to develop between the two of you, I would approve. In fact, I would assist, in any way I could.” He patted her hand.
“Nothing’s going to happen.” She thought of her and Eve’s tussle at the bar. Of Brendan, and how he had coldly taken the company from her mother without a shred of remorse. “And I don’t think the rest of your family would echo that sentiment.”
Pain flashed in John’s eyes. “If Nicholas didn’t make it clear, my son and I don’t speak to each other much anymore. I don’t care what he thinks. I would protect you both from his foolishness for as long as I have breath in my body.”
His generosity made her want to weep. “He mentioned you were estranged. I’m sorry. I know how that feels.”
“I’m sure you do.” John’s shoulders hunched forward. “We’ve had a rough time of it, haven’t we? Sometimes I wonder what Sam would say about all of this.” John looked out the window, toward her old house. Sam’s old house.
“He’d ask why we quit, maybe.”
John turned to her. “You remember, huh?”
“Nothing’s over until you quit,” Livvy intoned.
John’s smile was nostalgic. “Sam really was a rebel in certain ways. Like you. But no, I think he’d say something more along the lines of, how the fuck did you all get here?”
“Is that what he’d say, or what you would say?”
“One and the same, love.” John sighed. “We were one and the same.”