15 years later
Being an overachiever sucked, Rachel Corsie-Aitken concluded as she crawled into bed after midnight, mentally and physically drained after a roller-coaster day in SLC. She'd managed about twenty minutes of quality time with her twin daughters before they'd fallen asleep barely into the opening paragraph of Little Red Riding Hood. She'd eaten warmed up Chinese food for the third night in a row, then pulled out a half-dozen voluminous analysts' reports she needed to absorb before the stock exchange opened in the morning. Her bedtime reading was a lot more challenging than what Callie and Jessica chose.
She was good at her job as a chartered accountant for Ernst and Young, but so far it had cost her a marriage to Lisa, who was great, but had become tired of playing second fiddle to her career, and more sleep than she could possibly calculate. Though she shared custody of the twins with Lisa, she often felt as if she was barely acquainted with her five year old daughters. It sometimes seemed as if they spent more time with the child minder—and even her ex-wife—than they did with her. She'd long since lost sight of exactly what she was trying to prove and to whom.
When the phone rang, Rachel glances at the clock and groaned. At this hour, it could only be an emergency. Heart thudding, she reached for her phone.
"Rachel, it's me," her sister Erin announced. Ez was the youngest of the five Corsie siblings and the real night owl among them. Rachel stayed up late because it was the only way to cram enough work into a twenty-four hour day. Ez did it because she was just starting to hit her stride when the moon and stars came out. "I called earlier, but the minder said you weren't home yet. Then I got distracted with a project I'm working on. I hope it's not too late. I know you're usually up till all hours."
"It's fine," Rachel assured her. "Is everything okay? You sound stressed. Is something going on with gran? Or dad?"
"Gran is amazing. She'll outlive us all. And dad is off someplace, I can't keep track of him."
"He was in Glasgow last week," Rachel recalled.
"Then I guess he's still there. You know he has to oversee every single detail of the accounts he's working on. Of course, then he loses interest, just like he did with Aberdeen City."
There was an unsurprising note of bitterness in Ez's voice. As the youngest of five, she, more than the rest of them, had missed spending time with their dad. Ian had already been making a name for herself as a chartered accountant, especially when he rejuvenated the financial sector in Aberdeen and the Shire. He'd done it in partnership with his older brothers—one an architect, the other a financial advisor. It was to be the crown jewel in Ian's body of work and the idyllic place his family would call home. It hadn't turned out this way.
Ian and his brothers had fought over the construction, the financial market, environmental issues and even over the preservation of the few falling-down granite buildings in the city. Eventually they'd dissolved the partnership. Now, even though they all coexist in or near Aberdeen, they seldom speak except on holidays, when gran insisted on a pretence of family harmony.
Rachel's mother, Marion, had lived in London since she and Ian had divorced fifteen years ago. Though the plan had been for all of the children to move to London with her, for reasons Rachel had never understood, that hadn't happened. They'd stayed in Aberdeen with their mostly absent dad and their gran. In recent years, one by one they had drifted away, except for Ez, who seemed to have a love-hate relationship with the City and with Ian.
Since moving to the United States after university, Rachel had reestablished a strong bond with her mother, but none of the others had done the same. And not just Ez, all five of them had an uneasy relationship with their father. It was gran—with her fading red hair, twinkling blue eyes, ready smile and the lingering lilt of Glasgow in her voice, who held them together and made them a family.
"Did you phone to complain about dad, or is something else on your mind?" Rachel asked her sister.
"Oh, I can always find something to complain about with dad," she admitted, "but I actually need your help."
"Anything," Rachel said at once. "Just tell me what you need." She was close to all her siblings, but wee Ez held a special place in her heart, perhaps because of the big different in their ages and her awareness of how their mothers departure and their fathers frequent absences had affected her. Rachel had been stepping in to fill that gap in Ez's life since the day Marion had left.
"Could you come home?" Ez pleaded. "It's a little too complicated to get into on the phone."
"Oh, sweetie, I don't know," Rachel began, hesitating. "Work is crazy."
"Work is always crazy, which is exactly why you need to come home. It's been ages. Before the girls came along, you used work as an excuse. Then it was the twins. Now it's work and the twins."
Rachel winced, it was true. She had been making excuses for years now. She'd eased her conscience with the fact that every member of her family loved visiting London and cane down frequently. As long as she saw them all often, it didn't seem to matter that it was almost always on her turf rather than in Aberdeen. She'd never stopped to analyse why it had been so easy to stay away. Maybe it was because it really hadn't felt like home after her mother had left.
Before she could reply, Ez added, "Come on, Rachie. When was the last time you took a real holiday? Your honeymoon, I bet. You know you could use a break, and the girls would love being here. They should spend quality time in the place you grew up. Gran could spoil them for a couple of weeks. Please. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."
"Life or death important?" Rachel asked. It was an old exchange, used to rank whether any crisis was truly monumental or only a temporary blip in their lives.
"It could be," Ez said seriously. "At least in the sense that my whole futures at stake. I think you're the only one who can fix this, or at least the only one I'm willing to ask for help."
Struck by the somber tone in her voice, Rachel said, "Maybe it's best if you tell me right now."
"You need to be here to understand. If you can't stay for a couple of weeks, then at least come for a few days. Please."
There was something in her sisters voice that Rachel had never heard before, an urgency that suggested she wasn't exaggerating her claim that her future was at stake. Since Ez was the only one of the five siblings who'd been floundering for a focus since reaching adulthood, Rachel knew she couldn't turn her back on her. And admittedly, a break would do Rachel the world of good. Hadn't she just been bemoaning her workaholic tendencies earlier tonight?
She smiled, thinking about how wonderful it would be to breathe the salty Cove Bay air again. Even better, she would have uninterrupted time with her girls in a place where they could swing on the playground next to the floodlights of Pittodrie Stadium, build sand castles on the beach and run barefoot through the chilly waters of Cove Bay.
"I'll work something out tomorrow and we'll be there by Monday," she promised, giving in. She glanced at her jam-packed schedule and grimaced. "I can only make it for a couple of days, okay?"
"A week," Ez pleaded. "I don't think this can be fixed in a day or two."
Rachel sighed. "I'll see what I can work out."
"Whatever you can arrange," Ez said at once, seizing the compromise. "Let me know when your flights getting in and I'll pick you up."
"I'll rent a car," Rachel said.
"After all these years in the USA, do you actually remember how to drive on the right side of the road?" Ez teased. "Or even how to get home?"
"My memories not that bad," Rachel responded. "See you soon, sweetie."
"I'll call gran and let her know you're coming."
"Tell her not to go to any trouble, okay?" Rachel said, knowing it would be a waste of breath. "We'll go out to eat. I've been dying for a crab sandwich."
"No way," her sister countered. "It's a little early in the fishing season, but if you want crabs, I'll find 'em somewhere and pick them up for Friday night dinner. We can eat on the porch, but I'm not about to stop gran from cooking up a storm. I say let the baking begin."
Rachel laughed at her enthusiasm.
Grans cooking—pies, cookies, scones, cakes— was pretty amazing. There'd been a time in her life when Rachel had wanted to learn all all those traditional family recipes and open a bakery, but that was before she'd discovered an interest and aptitude for the accountancy world. That had been her ticket out of Cove Bay.
Now, after more than ten hectic years away—years spent saving companies from bankruptcy, marrying, giving birth to twins and divorcing—she was going home for a real visit, something longer than a rushed weekend with barely time to relax before it was time to fly back to Utah. She couldn't help wondering, based on the dire tone of Ez's voice, if that was a good thing or not.
—
"Couldn't you at least have worn something half decent?" James Alexander grumbled, scowling at his daughter. "You can't come in here looking as if you just climbed off the back off of a shit tip."
Lee regarded her father with amusement. "That's exactly what I did. My car outside in the car park."
Her father's frown deepened. "I thought I told you to drive your mothers car."
"What was mother supposed to do?" Lee asked reasonably. "I couldn't see her driving my shit tip to her yoga classes."
"She has a dozen different friends who would have been happy to pick her up," her father countered.
"And apparently not one of them had time to take her on her messages after they'd finished." Lee responded.
"You have an answer for everything, don't you?" her father grumbled. "This situation is never going to work if you don't take me or this job seriously."
"I always take you seriously." Lee said. "As for the job, I don't want to take it at all. I have a perfectly good career in Glasgow. Just because I don't wear the clothes you want or use a calculator doesn't mean it's not respectable." In fact, her career as a youth coach payed well, enabling her to live and work in Glasgow, it didn't require her to answer to her father. That was quite a perk in her book.
Her fathers scowl deepened. "So, what? I should let this community bank get gobbled up by one of the big banking conglomerates?"
"Maybe so," Lee said, knowing her response would only push her fathers buttons. "That's the way the banking world is going."
"Well, this bank won't, not as long as I have any say about it," her father said stubbornly. "Cove Bay Community Bank serves the people in this town in a way that one of those faceless, impersonal behemoths never could."
Lee couldn't argue the point. She just didn't want any part of running the place, family heritage or not. "Why not put Kim in charge?" She asked, referring to her younger sister. He warmed to the topic. If she could convince her father to put Kim in the job she'd always wanted, she could be on the road back to Glasgow by morning. All she had to do was sell her father on the idea. "Think about it. She has a head for numbers. Her maths exam results were through the roof. She aced all her university exams. She'd be a natural."
"I thought of that." her father admitted.
"I even spoke to her about it, but your sister told me to take a hike."
That was unexpected, Lee thought. "Why?"
Her father shrugged. "She said she wasn't going to be anybody's second choice, even mine."
Lee regarded him with bewilderment. "But you asked her first."
"When has your sister ever paid any attention to logic? She's convinced I only asked her because I knew you wouldn't want the job."
"I don't suppose you tried to convince her she was wrong," Lee said.
"How could I when she was right?"
"Do you think you two will ever learn to communicate?" Lee grumbled. She and her dad might be at loggerheads ninety percent of the time, but James and Kim were rarely on the same page about anything, from a choice as inane as breakfast cereal to a decision as critical as who ought to run the bank. It had been that way from the moment she learned to talk.
"You mean communicate the way you and I do?" Her father retorted wryly.
"Yeah, at least that well," Lee responded. "Look, I'll talk to her. I'll smooth things over between the two of you. Her prides been hurt because you've made it plain over the years that you want me back here, but she'll come around."
Her father hit his fist on the desk.
"Dammit, you're the one who needs to come around, Lee. Whatever happened to family loyalty?"
"I've had a lifetime to think about it. You've never made a secret about what you expect. I've given it a second thought and a third, for that matter, ever since you phoned. Dad, come on, you know the whole nine-to-five drill would never work for me. I'm a family lawyer, I work if and when I'm needed. I only work in family court and that seems to make you nervous as hell."
The faint hint of a smile finally touched her fathers lips. "True enough." he admitted. "How about this? We give it six months. If you still hate it, you can take off again with my blessing. That's fair, isn't it?"
Lee would pick and chose which family law cases she took on, so she still had the flexibility to do as her father asked. She could even keep up with a few accounts to keep herself from going totally stir-crazy in Cove Bay. If it would buy her her freedom permanently, surely she could survive six months working in a bank. She owed her father that much respect. And in the long run that short-term display of loyalty would be wiser than causing a family rift.
Moreover, she could spend the time trying to convince her sister to forget about her stupid pride and being second choice. She'd wanted this job since she'd learned to count. She ought to grab it, rather than wasting her talent by keeping the books for a few local businesses. Unfortunately she'd inherited their fathers stubbornness. It would probably take Lee every single day of the allotted six months to make peace between the two of them.
"Okay, six months," Lee agreed. "Not one day longer."
Her father beamed at her. "We'll see. You might discover you have an aptitude for banking, after all."
"Or you'll realise I'm incompetent when it comes to maths."
"I have your exam results that say otherwise." He stood up and held out his hand. "Welcome aboard, Lee."
Lee was shocked at how welcoming he was into letting Lee and Kim into the family business, but as he only had two daughters, Lee supposed that he didn't have much of a choice.
Lee noticed a glint in her fathers eyes that suggested there was more to the negotiations than Lee had realised. "What are you up to?" she asked warily.
"Up to?" James had a lousy poker face. Half of his pals at the golf club would testify to that. For the past thirty years, they'd lined their pockets with his losses.
"Don't even try to play innocent, dad. You're up to something, and it has nothing to do with me becoming your protege around here."
"We've made a business deal, that's all," her father insisted. "Now let me show you your office. It's fairly Spartan now, but if you decide to stick around you can decorate it however you want. Meantime, I'll have Leanne go through some loan folders with you. We have a meeting with the loan committee first thing Tuesday morning. You'll need to have your recommendations ready then."
Lee held up a hand. "Hold on a second. I don't know enough to make recommendations on whether loan operations should be approved."
"Leanne will show you the ropes. She's been my right hand for years. And they're not all loan applications. There's a possible foreclosure in there, too."
Lee's stomach knotted. "You want me to decide whether or not someone's home should be taken away and put up for sale?"
"It's a business, not a home. And you won't be deciding on your own, of course. The board will have the final say, but we'd likely act on your recommendation."
"No way," Lee said. Who was she to rip someone's dreams to shreds? Businesses in Cove Bay were small, family owned operations. It would be like taking the food right off someone's table, someone she knew, more than likely. She wasn't sure she had the stomach to do that.
"You can't be soft heartened, Lee. It's strictly business, a matter of pound and pennies. You'll see once you've taken a look at the paperwork." Her father patted her on the back. "You start looking over those files and I'll send Leanne in."
Lee scowled at her fathers departing back, then turned to the stack of folders sitting neatly in the middle of the huge mahogany desk that took up most of the corner office. Right on top sat one with a large, ominous red sticker pasted on the front.
She sat down in the leather chair behind the desk, her wary gaze on that folder. Curiosity finally got the better of her, and she flipped open the file and stared at the first page.
"Oh, fuck," she murmured as she read it: Possible notice of foreclosure—Lochanagar Guest House. Owner: Erin Corsie.
She knew Erin, but it wasn't her image that immediately came to mind. It was that of her older sister, Rachel, the woman who'd stolen her heart years ago on a steamy summers night, then disappeared without even a goodbye. Over the years she'd told herself it was ludicrous to cling to such an elusive memory. She'd tried to chase it away with other relationships, most of them casual, but even a couple that had promised a deeper intimacy. In the end, she hadn't been able to shake her desire for someone with brown hair, laughing eyes and a daredevil spirit that matched her own.
Now she was supposed to decide the fate of her sisters guest house? One thing he knew about the Corsie's, they stuck together. If he took on Erin, he'd be taking on the rest of them, Rachel included. Was that what had put the gleam in her father's eyes earlier?
She shook off the possibility. Her father couldn't know that she'd been carrying a torch for her all those years. No one did.
Except Kim, she realised. Her sister had been Rachel's best friend. She'd even covered for the two of them that amazing night they'd spent together in a secluded cove on the beach. Maybe she was finally about to get her wish and see Rachel again. Or maybe she was about land in a whole mess of trouble. She wondered if, with Rachel involved, she'd actually be able to tell the difference.
An hour later with the guest house's dismal financial figures still in her head, Lee climbed into her car and took a drive to see the property. She was hoping she'd find something—anything—to convince her to let the loan stand. She needed arguments she could take to the board and her father with complete confidence.
Winding along the coastal road, she breathed in the salty air and relaxed as the sun beat down on her shoulders. It was late spring, but there was still the scent of lilacs on the breeze as she rounded the curve by the O'Brien property. Widow Nell O'Brien, who had been bent and wizened when she was young, loved her lilacs. They'd been able to grow and spread until they formed a hedge all along the road.
To her right, along the narrow strip of land that ran along the beach, ospreys were building their nests back in the same bare branches where they'd built them for years. To her amusement, one intrepid osprey was constructing an elaborate configuration of branches, bits of string and even a strand of yellow police tape on a post at the end of someone's dock. The owner was going to be ticked as hell to discover that his dock would be off-limits for the rest of the summer while the birds of prey took up residence.
Eventually she reached the turn off to the guest house, converted from what had once been a sprawling Victorian home on a pinnacle of land overlooking the bay. The last time she'd been here, the place had been badly in need of paint, it's boards weathered by sea air and harsh winter winds. The Adirondack chairs and rockers on the porch had been in an equally sad state of disrepair. The once perfectly manicured grass had now gone. The Patterson's hadn't put a dime into the place for years, and the neglect had shown.
Now, though, there was plenty of evidence that Ez had been hard at work remodelling the guest house. The exterior was a soft white that seemed to reflect a hint of blue from the nearby water. The shutters were a bold red. The grass wasn't as lush as it had once been, but it was green and well trimmed. The azaleas and lilacs were in bloom, and one overgrown purple rhododendron spilled its huge blooms over a porch railing at the back of the house. The guest house's sign had been freshly painted and hung from brass hooks on a new pole at the edge of the driveway. It looked to her as if the place was ready to make a comeback.
Ez's payment record, however, told a different story. Since taking out the loan a year earlier, she already had a history of late payments and had missed several altogether. She'd spent every penny if her small-business loan, and no opening date for the guest house had been set. Her cashflow was nonexistent. She'd already had a couple formal warnings from the bank. Ever since the credit disaster in the mortgage industry, banks were getting jittery about loans that looked as if they were going bad. On paper, it appeared the bank had no choice except to issue a foreclosure notice. Lee shuddered at the thought.
Even as she sat in her car in the driveway, the door opened and Ez stepped outside. She caught sight of her and frowned.
"What are you doing here, Lee?" She asked.
Scowl in place, she crossed the garden, hands on hips, her feet shoved into a pair cup of rubberised, all weather clogs from one of the big outdoor clothing companies.
Her jeans and T-shirt were splattered with paint—white and blue and several different arrays of red.
When she was standing practically toe-to-toe with her, her defiant gaze locked with his, she reminded her of another Corsie with the same fiery Scottish temper.
"Well?" she challenged.
"Just looking things over."
"For your father, no doubt."
"For the bank," Lee corrected.
"I thought you'd left town years ago, that you wanted no part of the bank."
"I don't. I'm just filling in for a few months."
"Long enough to make my life hell?"
She grinned at that. "Maybe longer." She made a sweeping gesture to the house and grounds. "You've been busy."
"It's taken a lot of work. I've done most of it myself to save money," she said, her chin lifted with pride and a hint of belligerence.
"Might have made more sense to hire people and get it done sooner, so you could open."
"I didn't see it that way."
"Obviously not."
"Do you want to take a look around inside?" she asked, her expression hopeful, her tone filled with enthusiasm.
"Maybe once you've seen how great it looks, you'll be able to go back and tell your father to be patient."
"It's not that simple, Ez. I know he's warned you that you're getting too far behind. The bank looks at the bottom line, not at whether or not you're doing a good job with a paintbrush."
"When did you turn into a hard-ass, by the numbers person like your dad? You weren't that way when you were seeing my sister." She gave her a considering look. "Or were you? Is that why the two of you split up?"
Lee stiffened. "You really don't want to go there," she warned. "Rachel has nothing to do with this."
"Doesn't she? For all I know, you're absolutely thrilled by the prospect of payback for whatever she did to you. She was the one who broke it off, wasn't she?"
The comment was not only intrusive, it was insulting. "Fuck, Ez, you don't know a thing about what happened back then and you sure as hell don't know anything about me if you think I'd use you to get even with your sister."
"Really?" she said, her expression innocent. "She's coming back, you know. She'll be here tomorrow."
Lee tried not to let her immediate and unsteady reaction to the news show. "Tell her I said hi," she said mildly. He started up his car again. "See ya around, Ez."
Her show of confidence faltered. "What are you going to tell your father, Lee?"
"I have no idea," she said candidly. She looked into her eyes. "But I will promise you this, it won't have anything at all to do with Rachel."
She nodded slowly. "I'll take your word for it."
As she drove back in towards town, though, she began wondering if she should. When it came to her conflicted feelings for Rachel Corsie, her word might not be entirely trustworthy.