The Pursuit of Jesse. Helen Brenna
come from an extremely wealthy family. Sarah had been angry at first, but their friendship had been too important to toss aside.
“Does this have anything to do with Brian’s dad?” Missy asked.
It had everything to do with him. Everything. Avoiding Missy’s gaze by fussing instead with the flower arrangement, she pulled out one stem after another only to replace each one in the same spot.
Jesse’s smirk. His deep voice. His laugh. The look in his eyes that made her skin flare with heat. How could she explain that Jesse reminded her a little of every man she’d ever dated before coming to Mirabelle, of the recklessness with which she’d once lived?
“Sarah, you’re my best friend.” Missy touched her hand. “There can’t possibly be anything in your past that will change our relationship today.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” If Missy knew the whole truth then she would never look at Sarah the same way again. In the back of her mind, it would be there. Always.
“If it’s something you did, didn’t do, I don’t care. You forgave me, didn’t you?”
Not the same thing. All Missy had been hiding is that she’d once been listed as one of the richest kids in America.
“You’re not giving me much credit,” Missy said.
Maybe she could share part of the truth. Only part. “It’s a long story, Missy.” She stuck one last iris stalk into the vase and called it a day. She could mess with this arrangement forever and it would never be perfect. “You sure you want to hear?”
“Come on, Sarah.” Missy smiled gently. “Tell me what’s going on with you.”
CHAPTER SIX
SARAH PUT THE ARRANGEMENT in the cooler and then turned. This was it. Time to get this off her chest—at least some of it—once and for all. “You knew I grew up in Indiana,” she said, leaning back against the wall and letting her thoughts wander back in time, an indulgence she rarely allowed herself. “But I’ve never told you much about my childhood. My family.”
“No,” Missy murmured.
“Well, as wealthy as your family was? Is, I should say. Mine was on the other end of the spectrum.”
“I’ve met your mom and dad,” Missy said, confusion on her face. “They seemed…middle-class.”
“You met my stepdad,” Sarah said. A few years back, when Brian was too small to take care of himself, her mom and stepdad had driven to Mirabelle to help with Brian during a particularly busy wedding season. “My real dad died when I was ten.”
“I’m sorry, Sarah. I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay.” It really wasn’t, but maybe talking about him might help. Sarah’s real father had been the only bright spot in an otherwise dreary childhood, and she still missed him with a vengeance. “Before my dad died, we were dirt-poor.”
“That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“It’s nothing I’m proud of, that’s for sure. Maybe if my parents had only had a couple children things might’ve been different, but I’m smack-dab in the middle of seven kids. They could never afford a house, so all of us were crammed into a second-floor apartment, above a drugstore.
“My dad worked at an orchard. Long, back-breaking hours during certain times of the year. We hardly ever saw him at harvest time, but in the winter he made up for it with all of us. Work hard and play harder. That’s what he’d say.”
She smiled, remembering. She had only a few pictures of her dad, but in every one of them he was smiling or laughing. “He was always happy. I don’t think I ever saw him angry. At us kids. Or my mom. God, he and Mom were so much in love. He could make her laugh like no one else.
“I remember them talking quietly about buying a house. My dad wanted to start his own apple orchard, and my mom used to say that a house was the key to happiness.” Sarah looked away. “She also used to say, after he died, that he was all talk and no action.”
“Oh, Sarah.” Missy reached out and briefly squeezed her hand. “How did he die?”
“He got sick. Had a low fever. Didn’t seem to be a big deal.” She paused, not wanting to remember anything more than that. The rest was too painful. “A few days into it, he got really bad, but we couldn’t afford a doctor. By the time my mom realized how sick he was, it was too late. He died of complications from pneumonia. How stupid is that? All because we didn’t have enough money to pay for a doctor.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I was devastated. Heartbroken. We all were. My mom didn’t come out of her bedroom for days. Not long after that, we moved back to my mom’s hometown to be by my grandparents and she met my stepdad. He was an okay guy. Quiet and dependable. Nice enough—a banker—but boring, especially when compared to my dad. I understand now why she married him, but at the time I couldn’t forgive her.”
“For marrying again?”
“For betraying my father. More than that, for, I guess, settling. It wasn’t long before I started to feel…almost…claustrophobic. I couldn’t wait to get away from Indiana.”
“So you left,” Missy said.
Sarah nodded. “Right after high-school graduation, I went to Miami. When I got there, I felt shell-shocked. I’d been so sheltered.”
“A good girl in a big, tough city,” Missy murmured.
“I did okay at first. Picked up a lot. Fast. I got a job within the first week working for a well-known wedding planner. Her clients were only the richest and the most famous.”
Having grown up as a Camden, one of the wealthiest families this country had ever known, Missy had probably run in the same crowd until she’d turned her back on her family and tried for her own fresh start.
“I wasn’t as strong as you were, Missy. Before I knew it, I’d fallen in with a crowd that loved to party. Damn, I met some men who knew how to have a good time. But then, I guess, so did I.” She glanced at her friend, hoping to gauge her reaction. Instead of judgment, there was only compassion and understanding. Still, she knew she couldn’t share everything.
It’d been a long time since she’d let herself even think about the past, let alone talk about it, but as she relayed her story to Missy, it hit Sarah. She was lucky to be alive. “I did a lot of crazy things back then, you know?”
“Didn’t we all?”
There was no way Missy had stepped out like Sarah, and Sarah’s brief step out of line had been the biggest mistake of her life. “That’s when I met Brian’s dad.” Along with a few other bad boys she hadn’t been able to resist.
“You told me he died. I figured the rest would come when you were ready.” Missy frowned. “He is dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” Sarah chuckled. “This is one man who won’t be coming back from the grave. Good riddance to him, too.”
“That bad?”
“Robert Coleman, Jr. Name ring a bell?”
“Coleman and Coleman Enterprises?” Missy asked.
Sarah nodded.
“That company’s the largest health and beauty manufacturer in the world,” Missy went on. “That’s a lot of money. And power. How did you meet him?”
“At a nightclub. I was out partying with girlfriends when he and a couple other guys asked us to dance. Before you know it, we were all heading to Bobby’s yacht. Turned out I was a real sucker for a man’s smile. His was something. The kind that could charm a rosebud into blooming. Or a woman into bed. It wasn’t long before Bobby singled me out. One thing was for sure, that man knew