Up until now, he’d been resting his chin on his fist. But the moment his mother had called his daughter a greasy primate, he’d had to clamp his fingers over his mouth, his thumb planted firmly under his jaw to keep from growling at her to get the hell out of his office, out of his shop.
She’s only trying to help, he chanted in his head. She only wants what’s best for her granddaughter.
He looked out the window that separated his office from the three work bays that made up the shop. Erin had her head stuck under the hood of the car parked in the first bay. The bill of her baseball cap was twisted to the back of her head. Her elbows and knees were nut brown with grime, her denim shorts and cotton top smeared and grubby as well. His heart hitched in his chest. That little girl was his whole life. His whole world.
“That child needs some feminine influence,” Helen said. “And if she doesn’t get it soon, it’s going to be too late. You mark my words.”
Too late for what? Dylan was too preoccupied to ask. He was too busy wondering if his mother might be right. Was he doing Erin a great disservice by allowing her to spend time at the shop? Should he be chauffeuring her around to piano lessons and ballet recitals rather than teaching her how to change an engine’s spark plugs and fuel filter?
“I think you ought to let Erin move in with me,” Helen said.
His knee-jerk reaction was to say, “No way.” But the response fell on deaf ears.
“I can teach her to be a proper young lady,” his mother argued. “You do want her to grow up into a woman who can hold her head up in this town, don’t you? You do want her to be proud of who she is? Do you think that’s going to happen when she spends most of her life—” she looked around again, disdain evident in every muscle of her face “—hanging around Dylan’s Auto Repair?”
Usually he wasn’t at all fazed by the disgust his mother showed when she spoke the name of his business. Usually he allowed her disappointment in him to roll off him like water off a rain slicker. Usually. But today it struck him—like a forceful, unexpected poky in the gut with a tire iron.
“You think about it,” his mother said. “And when you do, I want you to consider long and hard what’s best for Erin. Not what’s best for you.”
She opened the door of his office then, and carefully picked her way through the dirty clutter of car parts toward the big open door of the garage bay, taking care not to allow the hem of her yellow dress to become soiled. Helen Minster called a curt goodbye to her granddaughter and then disappeared from his view.
Almost immediately, Erin was standing in the threshold of his office. “You okay, Dad?”
He nodded. “Sure, hon,” he told her. “Give me a few minutes, okay?”
She smiled and then went back to fiddling with the Caddy’s engine.
Dylan sat at his desk for a long time, studying her. Tendrils of wavy red hair escaped from under the cap on her head. Concentration creased her brow as she searched in the large metal box for some tool or other.
The love he felt for that little girl out there was so great it actually made his chest ache. And he found it more than a little worrisome to think that letting her hang out here at the shop with him might be harming her in some way.
Okay, he thought, so we have a problem. His daughter’s femininity needed a little...fine-tuning. Hell, he told himself, tell the truth, Erin’s feminine side needed a complete overhaul!
As much as he hated to admit it, his mother was probably right. Erin should be reading great works of literature. She should be involved in culturally enriching activities. And there couldn’t possibly be a less likely place for a little girl to find polish and refinement than an auto repair shop.
He stroked his chin over and over between his index finger and thumb as his mind churned. Boarding school was out of the question in his mind. But was the solution packing Erin off to live in Minster House with his mother?
“Over my dead body,” he whispered too low for anyone but himself to hear.
Pine Meadow certainly hadn’t changed much in the ten years she’d been away, Tess mused as she drove through town. Certainly, the strip mall on the main thoroughfare was new, or at least new to her, as the shops had looked well established when she’d passed by them. But the First Methodist Church looked the same as ever. As did the supermarket on the corner of Main and North Streets. And the fact that the billboard hovering over the double doors of the Main Street Theater advertised Hollywood’s hottest movie let her know the cinema was still doing a booming business. Tess had spent many a Saturday afternoon in the cool, dark recesses of that movie house while her father was busy at his shop. And then as a teen, her theater visits changed to Saturday nights. When she’d sneaked out on dates with Dylan Minster.
His name whispered across her mind, across her thoughts, sending shivers skittering across her skin.
Lord, how she had loved him. And the things she’d learned from him...
Tenderness. Commitment. Affection. Passion.
The closeness and devotion they had shared together rivaled even that between Shakespeare’s infamous Romeo and Juliet.
Tess smiled. The childishly fanciful manner in which she thought of her relationship with Dylan was inevitable, entirely natural, she guessed, seeing as how she’d been so young when they’d been a couple. Her smile faded, though, because along with tender passion, he’d taught her other things as well.
Pain. And guilt. And anger.
The awful names he’d called her had the flush of humiliation rushing to her face even after all this time. It was so sad that the three wonderful years they spent together were marred forever by the one hostile, accusation-filled fight they’d had. The fight that had her finally agreeing to leave Pine Meadow with her father. The hateful words Dylan had used as weapons to assault her had been a devastating turning point in her life. Without them, without hearing Dylan’s opinion of her face-to-face, she’d have never left New Jersey with her father. She’d have never run away from the young man who had captured her heart so completely. No matter the threats from his well-respected and wealthy family. No matter the consequences.
Braking for a red light, she forced herself to rise from the foggy haze of her memories. She’d automatically switched on her left turn signal, and as she waited for the light to change, she realized she was staring at the red brick building that had always been the home of Minster Savings and Loan.
Fear welled up inside her seemingly out of nowhere. A fear so pure, so unadulterated, it had her heart pounding, her blood whooshing in her eardrums. It mattered not one whit that the panic threatening to drown her was irrational. The fact that Helen Minster, or the rest of the Minster clan, could no longer hurt her was too logical a thought; besides, it was buried under about a dump truck load of frantic insanity that had perspiration prickling her underarms and her brain screaming at her to get the hell out of this town, get the hell away from the prejudice of the judgmental Minsters. Such thinking caused nothing but heartache, humiliation and hurt for people like herself.
She’d worked so hard not to obsess about the account book she’d found among her father’s possessions. But now questions and conclusions swam in her head until she thought she’d surely drown in them.
Had her father accepted some kind of payoff from Helen Minster? There really was no other explanation that Tess could come up with. Had they really been paid to leave Pine Meadow? She shook her head, thinking the only possible answer to that was yes. And all this time Tess had been under the impression she and her father had left town of their own free will, with their chins held high, their pride intact. But it seemed their exodus had been under a whole