DAMIEN, ANIKA, and the other girls

DAMIEN, ANIKA, and the other girls at the agency would laugh themselves silly if they could see her now. The grandfather clock in the parlor had just finished chiming eight o’clock and Margot could barely keep her eyes open. Eight o’clock, and she was more than ready to crawl into bed. Some sophisticate she was. But it was hard to summon an iota of energy or cosmopolitan worldliness when she felt older than the antiques and the large, too empty, too quiet house itself.
Ellie had left shortly after preparing a meal for them. They’d taken to eating in the kitchen, the dining room with its crystal chandelier and gleaming mahogany table too rife with memories of their father presiding at the head, Nicole facing him. Dinner had been a cheerless affair, with Jade picking at her shepherd’s pie and moving the tossed green salad about her plate. Dessert, a baked apple, had been met with a similar lack of enthusiasm. She couldn’t tell whether Jade’s lack of appetite was due to the junk food she’d scarfed down before dinner or because of Margot’s attempt to draw her into a conversation.
As Jade poked at the caramelized apple as if it were a science experiment, she answered Margot’s questions about school with her usual stock of monosyllables: Good, fine, no, yes, and, finally, a terse I. Don’t. Know.
Getting Jade to open up was like trying to break into Fort Knox, though Margot recognized the problem most likely lay in the fact that it was she asking the questions. Despite her doubt that Jade would listen, she was determined to say her piece—repeatedly, if necessary.
“Jade, I realize you’re dealing with a lot of stuff right now. And I know you’re angry with me and that I’m far from being your favorite person, but I really think it’s important for you to have someone you’re comfortable talking with about what’s on your mind, what you’re going through. I’d like to give Reverend Wilde a call. He might have the name of someone who—”
“No,” she cut her off decisively. “I can handle my own problems. Just leave me alone. And stop butting in. I don’t need your help or anyone else’s. Can I be excused? I have an English paper to write.”
Shoving her chair away, she bolted from the kitchen table as Margot listened to the furious pounding of her footsteps on the stairs and then the slamming of her bedroom door.
Strike one, Margot thought sadly, as the house fell silent around her. Well, she’d just have to try again. Stuart Wilde was a good man. She’d trust him to know how to best help a troubled teenager.
She put the dishes away, not exactly an onerous task, with only four plates and two water glasses. She turned off the kitchen faucet and the quiet felt almost oppressive.
Her memories of Rosewood were of a house filled to bursting with her father’s and Nicole’s outsized personalities. She ached for the ringing tones of her father’s voice. She might even have welcomed a sparring match of old with Nicole.
She could hardly blame Jade for seeking the haven of her room. Her memories of what this house should be like were fresher for her, thus all the more painful. Thank goodness Jordan and Richard would be coming with the kids. Until then the evenings loomed silent, empty, and lonely.
They didn’t have to, though, a voice reminded her. She didn’t have to be sitting here like an old, dried-up prune. A handsome, too-sexy-for-words man was living on the premises. All she had to do was pick up the phone and invite him over for … what? Cookies and milk? Some leftover baked apples? A friendly game of Scrabble?
That she was even contemplating calling Travis scared her. If she were to invite him over, it wouldn’t be to challenge him to a game of Scrabble. No, with Travis’s devastating effect on her, she knew she’d be offering him a large helping of herself—Margot à la mode, with seconds on the house.
But she’d already offered herself up to him once and look what had happened. And what if this time Travis accepted? If he decided to go ahead and sample her like some tasty dish to enjoy and then casually shove aside, what then? She knew the answer to that, too. It would shatter her into so many little pieces.
The prospect was so real and terrifying, it managed what nothing else could. It chased away Margot’s fatigue.
Work, she could do work. There were bills to pay, paychecks to sign, and tomorrow promised to be even more hectic than usual. After calling Crandall to make sure it was okay to sell some of the horses and being told it was fine as long as the money from any sale was put into escrow, she’d given Ned the go-ahead to spread the word that Rosewood Farm was once again open for business. Later this week a trainer named Dan Stokes was bringing a client who was in the market for a show horse. That meant Colchester, Gypsy Queen, Harvest Moon, and Gulliver would all get their ears and whiskers clipped. Then, on the day of the visit, their coats would be brushed to a high sheen and their hooves dressed. Her father had always insisted that the horses be impeccably turned out when prospective buyers came around.
She should go down to the barn and tackle the growing pile of bills. And while she was at it, she should go through the files in her father’s desk and double-check that all the papers for the horses were in order.
Spurred by the lingering fear that if she stayed in the house a minute longer she might opt instead to pick up the phone and dial Travis’s number, she hurried upstairs and rapped on Jade’s door. “Jade?”
“What?” The word came out a surprised squawk.
“Um, is everything okay?”
“Yes! Don’t come in. I’m getting—dressed.”
Margot shook her head. She’d overcome any shyness about her body within a week of modeling. “Oh, okay,” she said, careful to suppress any trace of amusement from her voice. “I just wanted to tell you I’m going over to the barn to do some work. You can call my cell if you need me.”
“Fine. Not that I’m gonna call. I’m tired. After I get done writing this paper, I’m going to bed.”
Margot stared at the door. Wow. Jade had uttered four sentences with practically volumes of information included. And she hadn’t even sounded particularly hostile.
Tempted to go in and verify that it was truly her half-sister in there and not some alien body snatcher, her hand reached out to hover over the doorknob. But Jade would pitch a fit at the intrusion. Why spoil their first decent and fairly peaceable exchange in weeks?
“Well, then, good luck writing your paper and sleep tight. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“See you.”
The barn was nearly as quiet as the house. But the occasional sounds—the rustling of the shavings made by the horses shifting in their stalls, the low whickering, the sleepy equine snorts—comforted Margot as she sat at her father’s desk, filling out the payroll checks, the scratch of her pen adding to the noises. She’d almost finished. Travis, as the barn’s manager, was the last on the list.
It was odd to be writing his name again. There’d been a period when she’d written it constantly, right above her own, before drawing a big, fat heart and an arrow, the trimmings of true love. Sometimes she would print his full name, at others only his initials. She’d even practiced her signature, Margot Radcliffe Maher, loving the way the M’s framed Radcliffe.
Those starry-eyed days seemed a lifetime ago. She felt a pang of nostalgia for the girl who’d spun sugar-coated dreams in which Travis Maher fell in love with her and everyone lived happily ever after.
She filled in the dollar amount and signed her name with a grim flourish. How would Travis react if he knew that it was only thanks to her modeling that she was able to pay his, Ned’s, and the stable hands’ salaries? That the only reason Rosewood didn’t have a big, fat FOR SALE sign posted at the foot of the drive was because of her shallow glamour-girl career?
Although she would have liked nothing better than to march right up to Travis and let him know where the money was coming from, so that at last he’d understand the depth of her commitment to Rosewood, she couldn’t. Enlightening him would entail running the risk of him moving on to greener pastures. A spoiled, vain pleasure seeker she would remain. Oh, well, she was growing used to life’s nasty little jokes.
With a sigh, she capped the pen. Tossing it aside, she ran her fingers through her hair, its ends still damp from the bath she’d taken earlier, while mentally she ticked off items from her to-do list. The vet, feed, and farrier bills were paid. The staff salaries, too. What else remained before she could call it quits for the night?
Oh, right, the papers. Dad had always kept the records for the horses in an oversized binder. Doubting that Bill Gates and a little old company called Microsoft could have caused her father to change his personal filing system, she began opening the drawers to the oak desk.
In the middle left-hand drawer she spotted the binder’s worn corners and pulled the drawer out farther, lifting it out. As she did, she saw a slim leather-bound book lying underneath it. She slid it toward her.
It was a journal, she realized, its leather dyed an eye-popping fuchsia—definitely not Dad’s usual conservative burgundy. Her curiosity piqued, Margot picked it up, the binder with the horses’ papers momentarily forgotten.
For a second she simply held the journal, running her fingers over the buttery-soft leather. Turning it in her hands, she noted that the pages were gilt-edged. What was Dad doing with such a snazzy-looking thing? He couldn’t actually have been writing in it, could he, her fingers already searching out the narrow satin ribbon tucked into its middle and opening it. Her eyes widened at the loopy cursive covering the pages inside. This wasn’t Dad’s handwriting but Nicole’s.
“Margot?” The unexpectedness of Travis’s voice made her jump.
“Gosh, you startled me!” she said, gasping.