He might have stood there all day, shock pinning him to the ground, if his sister hadn’t walked out in the street to stand beside him. Arms crossed over her chest, she looked him up and down. “Wow, you really effed that up, didn’t you?”
He shot her a look of annoyance. “After all these years, how is it that you’re still this irritating?”
She grinned. “I’m a big sister. It’s our moral obligation to point it out when you make a colossal mistake.”
“Thanks,” he muttered dryly. “Very helpful.”
Glancing back at the house, he realized that Marie’s brood—all five kids, plus the husband—had poured out onto the lawn after them. In fact, they’d even attracted the attention of a few neighbors. Little wonder. How often did you see a guy in nothing but a towel running after a car?
He turned around and headed back to the house. Marie fell into step beside him. “What are you going to do?”
“What do you think I’m going to do?”
Marie smiled. “The brother I remember would chase her down and win her back.”
He nodded, hoping he looked more confident than he felt. “I’m going to need to borrow your car.”
“Borrow?” Lacey laughed. “No way. You think we’re going to let you do this all on your own?”
“I did hope,” he admitted in exasperation. But when had his family ever done what he wanted them to do?
“Too bad,” Mark said. “This is the most entertaining thing that’s happened since that toy company’s truck crashed on our corner and all the kids on the block got free toys the week before Christmas.”
Wendy briefly considered skipping the hotel and driving straight back to her apartment in Palo Alto. After confronting Jonathon, the last thing she wanted was to see her own family. However she still needed to convince Mema she was the best mother for Peyton and abandoning them without a word in Palo Verde would do little to help her cause. And since she wasn’t going to have that rich husband in her favor anymore, she figured she needed all the help she could get.
Besides, she had unfinished business with her uncle.
The historic Ellington House hotel sat in the middle of town, on Main Street, a block or two from Cutie Pies. She nabbed one of the parking spots on the street. She dug around in the suitcase and pulled out a dry shirt and jeans. It was tricky changing in the car without drawing attention to herself, but she managed it. Plus it gave her time to muster her courage, before she extracted Peyton from the car seat and headed into the hotel.
When she’d called her mom earlier, her entire family had just met for breakfast on the terrace of the hotel’s dining room. If she was lucky, they’d be just finishing up and she could get this all over at once.
Striding with purpose, she carried Peyton through the lobby and up the stairs to the second-story dining room. On another day, the hotel’s elegance and meticulous restoration might have impressed her. As it was, she barely noticed the velvet-trimmed antiques and heavy oak furnishings.
Instead, she made a beeline for the double doors leading onto the patio. That was where she found them, sitting at a long table overlooking Main Street. Mema was at one end, Uncle Hank at the other. Her parents, Hank Jr. and Helen scattered in between. They all looked at ease among the fine china and sterling teapots, the poached eggs and hollandaise sauces. The meal was so perfectly her family.
No homemade banana chocolate-chip waffles here. Just elegant dining and a steely determination to ignore the tension simmering beneath the surface. This would be her life from now on.
She dreaded this with every fiber of her being. Yet it was still preferable to the life she was walking away from. She knew how important FMJ was to Jonathon. Its success had always been his first priority. She couldn’t knowingly ruin all he’d planned for the company.
If she did, she’d be stuck on the sidelines in her own family, Jonathon’s heart forever just out of her reach.
She stopped at Mema’s end of the table. Peyton still propped on her hip, Wendy said, to the table in general, “Okay. You win.”
Uncle Hank’s face split in a wide grin. Helen’s eyes lit up as if someone had just offered to sprinkle full-carat diamonds on her plate as a garnish. Hank Jr. just looked bored, as he had ever since setting foot in California.
Her mother and father exchanged worried looks. Looks that seemed—for once—to reveal actual concern for her. Maybe there would be an upside to this debacle after all. Her heart would be broken into a thousand pieces, but maybe the pieces her parents had broken years ago would start to heal. It gave her hope that maybe the parts Jonathon had broken would someday heal as well.