Only a couple of seconds ticked by before the automated voice responded. “There are fifteen hotels in a five-mile radius.”
Hope rolled her eyes, beyond all need or desire to make even the smallest decisions. “Closest to my current location.”
A beat passed, then her new best friend chirped up with a perky, “Calculating route to Four Seasons Hotel, North Shore.”
“Yeah, good choice.” Smiling, Hope put the car in gear and cranked the wheel. Once again, she was making an escape.
Chapter 3
“I don’t know how this could have happened. We’ve never had any trouble before.”
Diana threw her hands up to emphasize her distress. Hope’s sister had never discovered the power of a soft-spoken word, or subtle prompt. In this, they were alike. The Winston girls both sprang from the bigger-is-better school of thought, but they had different agendas. Hope liked to stir up trouble. She railed against all forms of restraint, particularly those sanctioned by their parents. Diana liked to swoop in and play the dutiful daughter, a role she played to the hilt.
Hope cradled the ginormo-super-grande caramel macchiato from a drive-thru as if she might absorb energy through the paper cup. She’d stopped on the way to meet the fire inspector at the house, knowing she’d need fortification against the inevitable onslaught.
They stood in the courtyard, Hope’s bland beige rental car parked across from Diana’s gleaming white Mercedes-Benz. The coffee was barely lukewarm, but Hope didn’t care. The drink was caffeinated, and holding the cup kept her from slapping her semi-hysterical baby sister.
“The whole place could have burned to the ground! Then what would we do?”
Diana didn’t seem the least bit concerned by the thought that the occurrence might have killed Hope. For her part, Hope had to admit escape didn’t sound too terribly bad at the moment. She was tired. Her feet hurt. Hell, everything hurt. All she wanted was a few more hours of sleep, but a nap didn’t appear to be a possibility. Her sister was an early riser and believed everyone else in the world should be as well.
Diana had been up and at the house at the crack of dawn, only to find the place cordoned off with caution tape. After a nearly sleepless night, Hope had been awakened by the bleat of her mobile phone. There was nothing as bracing as waking to the sound of her sister in full meltdown mode. Opera singers dreamed of hitting some of those notes.
When she first arrived, Diana had been fretting about the yellow caution tape stripping the finish off the old front door. Since then, she’d gone off on tangents railing against Mother Nature, the village’s emergency services, and even God Almighty. Hope tuned most of the harangue out when she got down to the lawn service hired to prune the trees.
Two hours sleep. Three, if she counted the bit when she drifted off before the storm. Jet lag. Shock. No wonder she couldn’t hang on to the thread of the conversation. What she and Diana had been engaged in for the last thirty minutes could not be considered conversation. Mostly, this was a one-woman show.
The Diana Monologues, Hope decided. A smile curved her lips as she added a tag line: Fifty-two ways my sister has screwed up my life. Again.
“This isn’t funny!” Diana paced the sun-faded pavestones. “This could cost hundreds of dollars to repair. Thousands!”
Hope hid her smirk by taking a sip of the tepid brew. Her sister clearly hadn’t the first idea how much extensive renovations cost. Particularly on an older home. And why should she? Whenever she tired of the house she was in, Dickie bought her a new one. Of course, he probably spent Diana’s money. Lord knows, he didn’t come into the marriage with much more than a prominent family name and perpetual entry to the North Shore Club, thanks to one or more ancestors among the founding members. Comparatively, the Winstons were considered new money, having only belonged to the club for a single generation.
Watching her sister rant and rave now, Hope decided she preferred the full-stop panic. At least her alarm had been genuine. For a moment there, Diana exhibited something that might have been mistaken for actual concern.
But she didn’t waste time fooling herself. Hope knew any familial feeling they had for each other was superficial at best. She couldn’t hold the distance against her. Hope didn’t have an overabundance of affection for her sister, either. Their outlooks on life were diametrically opposed.
The moment she knew Hope was okay, an edge of accusation and plain old-fashioned pettiness had crept into Diana’s tone. The return to normalcy took place with astonishing speed. Hope merely stood by as she carried on with her one-sided arguments knowing sooner or later, they’d circle back to the inevitable conclusion.
Hope was somehow to blame for their latest bout of misfortune.
Gripping the cup tighter, Hope narrowed her eyes and focused all of her energies on parsing Diana’s ramblings. She wanted to be sure a lack of sleep wasn’t making her paranoid.
“One night. You weren’t in this house one night and look what happens!”
No. Not paranoid. Pushing away from the door of her car, she rolled her aching shoulders back. “Yes, well, I’ve long been cultivating the ability to control the weather. Sorry about the oopsie. I guess I need to work on my lightning skills.”
“You aren’t funny,” Diana said tartly.
Hope treated her to one of the Gallic shrugs she knew drove her sister to the edge. “I was simply accepting responsibility for my actions.”
Diana rolled her eyes. “Don’t be absurd.” The jacket of her pastel pink Chanel suit pulled tight across her shoulders when she crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t understand why we have to wait out here.” She flicked a hand toward the open front door. “For Heaven’s sake, it’s our house.”
Heaving a weighty sigh, Hope repeated the response already given three times. This time, she delivered the reasoning in a deliberate deadpan. “We can’t go in because we don’t know if it’s safe to do so.”
“Well, we don’t know it’s safe for that man to be in there.” Diana threw her hands up again. “What if he falls through the floorboards? We’d be liable,” she said, warming to her latest argument. “He could sue us, and we’d lose everything we own.”
Hope snorted at the thought. Even if the fire inspector fell through the floor and broke every bone in his body, it would take one hell of a lawsuit settlement to burn through their combined net worth. “Lucky for us, the fire was in the walls and not the floor.”
Diana whirled to glare at her. “I’m glad you’re finding this all amusing.”
Inhaling deeply, Hope let her hands fall to her sides, her fingers forming a crown over the top of her coffee cup. “Di, I’m tired. A little scared,” she added. “My feet hurt, I haven’t eaten in God knows how long, and I slept a total of three hours last night.” She waved an arm toward the house. “I’m virtually homeless—”
“I told you Richard and I have plenty of room,” Diana interrupted.
“—and believe it or not, I do not actually have the ability to control the weather.” The macchiato kicked in and she picked up even more momentum. “I think we both know I don’t have control over anything.”
“Hope—”
But she was running at full rev. “Again, not my fault, Diana. I have no idea why Mother and Daddy made me Executor.” A hot rush of tears filled her eyes. “Ha! Joke’s on me, right?” She wiped an escaped tear away with the side of her hand. “They got what they wanted. I’m here, doing their bidding.”
Her sister took two long strides toward her but stopped shy of entering Hope’s personal space. “This is hardly the time—”
“Stop.” Hope made a slashing motion with her hand. “Don’t