Untold Read online

  “Yes.” He looked down at the folder. “Her name is Delores. She was brought to the local shelter in Mirabelle after Ms. Grimshaw’s passing. They’ve been taking care of her for the last week. If you don’t claim her, she will be given up for adoption.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, if you don’t take it someone will—”

  “No.” Brie shook her head. “I didn’t mean the cat. Why did Bethelda leave me everything?”

  “Of that I have no idea.” He shrugged his shoulders. “She contacted our law firm about a year ago and we drafted up the paperwork. All she said was everything was yours.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. This has to be some sort of joke.” Brie sat back in the chair, staring at Lincoln in disbelief. This wasn’t happening. This was not happening. The back of her neck started to get hot and itchy again.

  “I assure you, it isn’t a joke. It’s all laid out here quite clearly.” He placed one of his hands down on top of the papers.

  Yeah, she didn’t care what those papers said, because this was a joke all right. Brie just wasn’t sure if it was one Bethelda was playing on her or if it was a cosmic joke the universe was in on.

  Maybe it was a little bit of both.

  * * *

  Brie went to Target.

  There was one just down the road from the law firm. She’d passed it on the way in, spotting the red and white sign like her own personal beacon. The second she stepped inside she made a beeline to Starbucks.

  Shopping and caffeine. Two birds. One stone.

  So now she was pushing her cart around the clothing section sipping on a venti green tea latte with soy milk—soy because it tasted better, not because she had a troubled relationship with dairy.

  She really didn’t need the fuzzy fox slippers she threw into her cart, or the blue and black flannel pajama pants, or the thick white sweater that would look awesome with her red pants, or the oversized floral T-shirt, or the pair of yoga pants with the bright blue stripe down the side. They all went into her cart anyway, along with the fourth book in a historical romance series she was reading and the first in one she hadn’t read before.

  When she got to the grocery section, all hell broke loose. Three different kinds of potato chips (sea salt, barbecue, and spicy jalapeño), two bags of Dove chocolate (both dark and milk), a bag of mini KitKats, and a box of wine.

  Yup, boxed wine. Desperate times and all.

  She might not have had any answers when she walked out of the store over an hour later, but at least she wasn’t right on the verge of freaking the fuck out anymore.

  On a scale of one to ten, she’d been over an eight when she’d left the law firm with the keys to Bethelda’s house in her hand. Now? She was probably at a five, five and a half.

  The woman had left her everything. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G.

  Why?

  Why?!?

  WHY?!?!?

  It just didn’t make any sense. Ten years ago, Bethelda had made it perfectly clear she didn’t want anything to do with Brie. Wanted nothing to do with the daughter she’d given up all of those years ago. Yet, now Brie was the owner of all of the woman’s possessions…including a cat named Delores.

  Brie hadn’t ever really been a cat person. She liked dogs. That was all she’d ever had growing up. They’d gotten Arnold the pug when she was seven, and when she was twelve they’d rescued Esmeralda, a Lab mix. They’d overlapped a little in the middle, but when her parents had to put Esme to sleep a few years back they hadn’t gotten another dog, and for good reason.

  Two years ago both of her parents had taken on professorships at the American University of Rome. They’d sold the house Brie had grown up in, put most of their belongings in storage, and moved across the Atlantic.

  Brie hadn’t told her parents about the recent development with Bethelda. Ana and Marcus weren’t coddlers by any means; it was just that they knew exactly how bad it had been for Brie when everything had happened before. She didn’t want them to worry.

  So self-medicating with shopping and wine it was.

  When she got back to Mirabelle it was close to five. She’d stopped and picked up some sushi for dinner. It was one of her favorite meals, and she was going to enjoy every last bite. Luckily for her, she wasn’t the type to lose her appetite when she was upset or anxious. Clearly from her food-purchasing binge, she was quite the opposite.

  She was probably going to gain a couple of pounds by the end of this trip, but no one was looking at her ass anyway. What did she care?

  So there she sat at the dining room table of the room she was renting at the inn, alternating between dipping her shrimp tempura and her California roll in the soy sauce mixed with a little wasabi. Her eyes kept darting to the other side of the table and to the set of keys she’d put down by her purse…the set of keys to Bethelda’s house.

  Once the sushi was finished, Brie sat back in her seat, grabbing the fortune cookie and ripping open the plastic. Growing up, it was the rule of fortune cookie in her household that the whole cookie had to be eaten before the fortune could be read. She cracked the cookie in half, popped a piece into her mouth, and slowly chewed.

  What would she find in that house? Would she get the answers to the questions she’d been wondering for most of her life? Did she even want to know those answers?

  She popped the rest of the cookie into her mouth, her fingers rubbing against the piece of paper in her hand.

  Of course she wanted answers. She wanted the answers to those questions she’d been denied. And that house might have them.

  Brie looked down at the white slip in her hands, reading the tiny print.

  The penguin, ostrich, and kiwi have wings but cannot fly. Don’t be a flightless bird.

  And with that Brie stood up, snatching the keys and her purse from the table before heading for the door.

  Chapter Three

  Unwanted, Unpleasant Business vs. Pleasant Business…

  Very Pleasant Business

  Bethelda Grimshaw was a hoarder.

  Well, OK, maybe not a hoarder hoarder. There weren’t dead animals in the freezer. Nor did the woman have bags of old hair or years of garbage piled up. Actually, her house was surprisingly clean—everything had a place and there was a place for everything. It was just that it was filled with stuff.

  Brie had had no clue what she was going to walk into when she pulled up in front of the lime-green bungalow, with its robin’s egg–blue steps and matching front door. It was about a fifteen-hundred-square-foot house, raised three feet off the ground on a concrete slab, and complete with an A-frame roof over the porch. The trim and shutters were all painted white. Somehow the whole look worked even if it was eye popping.

  The inside, however, was about twenty times more overwhelming.

  The front door opened up to a foyer, and down the hall was the living room, a living room with almost no wall space visible. What wasn’t taken up by furniture was hidden with framed photos or paintings. The four windows in the room were covered with thick brocade curtains, the pattern a mix of magenta and baby pink. There was a turquoise sofa on one side and red chairs on the other.

  Both of the hall closets were packed with Christmas. Each bin was made of clear plastic so that Brie could look in, but besides that, they were clearly labeled. In one closet she found garland galore, ornaments in every color, glittery snowflakes, snowmen, a Mr. and Mrs. Claus, and a box filled with stockings. The other closet held three trees in varying sizes, two massive plastic bins filled with lights, and a full North Pole setup, complete with an elf village and a reindeer forest.

  Clearly the woman loved Christmas.

  The spare bedroom had been turned into an office. A stunning cedar desk sat against the one mostly visible blue wall, while bookshelves took up a majority of the rest of the space (with more trinkets and knickknacks filling the shelves). A printer, scanner, and fax machine were all set up on a row of filing cabinets. Then there was the closet that was filled with neatl
y stacked plastic bins. There were a few labels on the ones at the front that Brie could read: “Mom’s,” “Delores,” “Extra Lightbulbs,” “Tablecloths,” “Candles,” and so on.

  The room at the back of the house was Bethelda’s bedroom. It held a mahogany antique bed set, the four posters stretching up high to the ceiling. The bed was covered with a rather elaborate quilt made of rich red, purple, and gold silks. The walls were painted a soft sherbet orange and the one and only thing hung up was a painting above the bed. It was of the beach at sunset. The rest of the space was taken up with furniture.

  There was an armoire in front of the bed that held a flat screen TV, the four long drawers underneath filled with movies. On either side of the armoire were solid mahogany cabinets. They were both filled with scarves. Silk, cotton, wool, knitted, woven, fringed, no-fringed, and on and on. There were hundreds and hundreds of them, all neatly folded and color coordinated.

  Two dressers stood on the wall to the left of the bed, both of them covered with antique jewelry boxes of varying shapes and sizes, and all of them filled with rings, earrings, necklaces, and pins. The walk-in closet was packed to the brim, boxes and boxes of shoes on one side, clothes taking up the rest of the space, and more boxes stacked on the shelf that ran around the top, these filled with hats.

  The den at the front of the house was a library, bookshelves taking up the entirety of the available wall space. Floor to ceiling was covered in books, magazines, and newspapers. An overstuffed, emerald-green, velvet sofa sat in the center of the room facing a brick fireplace.

  The fireplace was kind of cool, too. As it was on a wall in the center of the house, there was a hearth in both the den and the living room. Both had been fitted with gas, the ever-present fake logs always ready to go.

  The kitchen wasn’t as overwhelming…comparatively. The space between the ceilings and the tops of the cabinets was lined with an assortment of glass pitchers. There was one with lilacs, another with limes, one that was covered in cherries, while another was a shockingly deep purple. There were fifty-two in total. Brie knew as she’d stood there and counted them all.

  The counters were a different story. They were tiled in a pretty sage green and almost completely devoid of clutter. A purple Keurig machine was on one side of the sink, a sky-blue utensil holder sat by the stove, and three egg yolk–yellow canisters were next to the bright blue KitchenAid mixer next to the refrigerator. The appliances weren’t brand new, but they were all in relatively good condition and shining white and clean. It all worked pretty well with the bright yellow walls.

  When Brie walked into the bathroom, she thought she was in a safari. The shower curtain was a mix of tiger stripes, cheetah spots, and zebra. The walls were wallpapered in a shimmering gold. On either side of the mirror, tall green palm fronds shot up from ivory white vases. And the fuzziest of black bath mats covered the white tile floor.

  And then there were the china cabinets scattered throughout the house. She’d counted seven in total. Seven. And each one was devoted to something special. There were three in the living room.

  The first was filled with figurines and good Lord, there were figurines galore. Little porcelain cats, hand-carved wooden elephants, Russian nesting dolls, and soooo many other random things. The second held colorful glass-blown bottles of every shape, color, and size.

  The third was all teddy bears, each wearing its own costume. There were some in biker outfits, others in steampunk; one was dressed as Scarlett O’Hara, another as Rhett Butler. There were debutant dresses and tuxedos, bikinis and swim trunks, superheroes and every Disney princess created. There had to be over a hundred of those little dressed-up bears.

  The two cabinets in the dining room had an assortment of glass on their shelves, the largest one displaying seven different dish sets. The slightly smaller one was showing off probably close to thirty tea sets.

  The cabinet in the hallway held a gnome village. An entire gnome village. There was a gnome post office, a gnome schoolhouse, a gnome city hall, a gnome grocery store, gnome houses ranging from little cabins to rather large mansions, and so on, and so on.

  Brie had never seen anything like it. Well, that was until she got to the last cabinet in the spare bedroom/office. It was the pièce de résistance when it came to everything in the house.

  Bethelda had apparently been a George Michael fan…a big fan if the shrine to the man was anything to go by. There was stuff from his time in Wham! all the way through his solo career. Over a dozen collector’s plates—with this face on them—were all prominently displayed. A shelf was completely taken up with books about him along with magazines, all with him on the cover. Bethelda had also collected every single one of his albums in every format that was available.

  There were watches with his face as the face, framed photographs with his signature, coffee mugs, ornaments, key chains, postcards, concert ticket stubs, T-shirts, sweatshirts, bracelets, necklaces, and a stuffed bear. The bear was probably Brie’s favorite part. It was wearing a black leather jacket with fringe, big sunglasses, and a cross earring dangled from its ear.

  She had to laugh because it was the only thing keeping her from losing it. Walking through that house would’ve made Brie out of sorts even if it hadn’t been bursting to overflow. And how could it not? These were the belongings of the woman who’d given birth to her. This was where Bethelda had lived…alone…with her cat.

  And that was the moment Brie reached her threshold for the day.

  * * *

  Finn hadn’t been on the schedule to work at the Sheep on Wednesday night. But he’d shown up around seven, hoping that a certain beautiful brunette would be needing a drink.

  She was only in town for two nights, so if he was going to see her again it was now or never.

  As there was a pretty good crowd at the Sheep that evening—a Jacksonville Stampede hockey game was playing on the screens behind the bar—Shep didn’t give his younger brother more than a raised eyebrow as he went to help a group of guys at the opposite end of the bar.

  For the next hour Finn’s eyes moved to the front door every time it opened. Every time someone besides Brie walked in, he found himself getting more and more disappointed.

  OK, so he had a little infatuation with her. No big deal. It wasn’t that weird. He’d liked talking to her the night before, liked her smile and her eyes. She was beautiful, beyond beautiful, and he’d thought about her a couple of times throughout the day.

  Well, maybe more than a couple of times. He’d had to take his mind off being at the funeral home earlier. It wasn’t like it was even close to his favorite location to be in the first place, but being there for Bethelda’s funeral had made the experience that much worse. If he could dislike the woman any more than he already did he’d be surprised. But when his eighty-nine-year-old grandmother had asked him to take her, he’d said yes. Because he never said no to Grandma El.

  Ever since Grandpa Owen had died, his grandmother hadn’t exactly been the same. Ella Shepherd loved fiercely and without end, and for her, Owen’s death had been debilitating. Her mind had started to go over the last few years, and her lucid days were getting to be fewer and fewer. The worst were those times when she thought Owen was still alive. But Ella had been pretty with it on that particular Wednesday morning.

  Good or bad days, Finn didn’t take his time with Ella for granted. So he’d sucked it up and gone, and when he’d needed a distraction, he’d replayed Brie’s soft laugh in his head.

  Damn but did he want to see her again. Wanted to hear her voice again. Wanted to feel her under his palms again. Just that one touch of shaking her hand and he’d known it wasn’t nearly enough. He wanted more. So much more. He wanted to know what her lips felt like beneath his, what she tasted like.

  There was no doubt in his mind that actually kissing her would be leaps and bounds better than anything he could ever imagine.

  “Who are you looking for?”

  Finn turned to find his brother at
his side, both of them at the beer tap filling up glasses.

  “What makes you think I’m looking for someone?” Finn turned back, watching as the thin line of foam floating on top of the amber liquid moved up the glass.

  “Because your eyes have been on the front door since you got here. It’s the girl from last night, isn’t it? The one you almost bulldozed me down to get to. What was her name again? Brittany? Brook? Brandy?”

  “Brie,” Finn answered without looking up. He so didn’t want to see the expression on his brother’s face.

  “Oh, I remembered it.” Shep’s voice had taken on that smirking tone he was so good at. “And she just walked in the door.”

  “What?” Finn pulled his hand back so quickly that beer sloshed over the rim of the glass and splashed his hand and arm. “Shit.” He turned as Brie made her way to the bar, her eyes on him as she pulled herself up on one of the few empty stools. Her hair was pulled up on top of her head, loose strands framing her face. She was wearing those black leather boots again, along with the sexiest red pants he’d ever seen and a white sweater that looked soft to the touch. His fingers itched to feel it.

  “Here.” Finn handed the now mostly filled beer to Shep before he crossed the space to Brie, wiping his hand on his jeans. It wasn’t until he was standing in front of her that the look on her face registered. Her eyes held a slightly overwhelmed look, the corners of her mouth pinched with strain, and her shoulders were tense.

  “You OK?” he asked, forcing himself to keep his hands to himself and not reach out to her.

  She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, shaking her head. He watched as that lip fell from her teeth a moment later. “No. Not even close.”

  Finn reached over and grabbed three bottles of alcohol, setting them on the counter. “Pick your poison.” He waved his hand over them: Jose Cuervo, Bacardi, and Jack Daniel’s.

  She reached forward, tapping the bottle of rum.