The Lemon Sisters Read online

  Her first “I love you” had stopped his heart. The second “I love you,” flung at him like a weapon, had nearly brought him to his knees. “So we adopt,” he said with a calm he wasn’t close to feeling. Calm had been replaced by equal parts hope and fear—hope that he could have this, her, and fear that she wouldn’t let it happen. He reached for her hands to still her nervous fidgeting, not wanting her to be nervous or anxious at all. “Or we don’t. We’ll figure it out, Bee.”

  She closed her eyes and breathed for a moment, and he knew she was counting in her head, trying to self-soothe. “It’s not that simple,” she whispered.

  “Have you been happy here? Yes or no?”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “I’ve loved being home again with my family. With you. It’s been . . . everything. Everything I needed. But it was never going to be long-term. I mean, we haven’t really even thought this through. You want different things than me. We’re in different places.”

  He shook his head. “No. That’s not it.”

  “Of course it is.” She turned away from him, staring out the window. “What else could it be?”

  Where did he start? “How about the fact that you’ve been packed to go for a week? You’ve just been waiting for an excuse to go and not look back. The only question is, will it be another seven years before you grace us with your presence again?”

  Her spine had snapped straight as a pin and temper crackled out of her as she whipped back to face him. “Me leaving was always the plan.” She poked a finger into his pec, hard. “You knew that. I told you, more than once.” She stabbed him again. “I came here to try to make things right. I wanted to figure my shit out so I could go back and be me again. I know you don’t understand, but for me it was about courage and bravery, facing my past and coming to terms with it.”

  He let out a mirthless laugh, because in spite of everything, his worst nightmare was about to come true. “You think you’re being brave by running away from here? No. Fuck no, Brooke. The bravest thing you could do would be to at the very least keep Wildstone as your home base. You love your sister, you love her kids. And you love me. You ran away from that last time, and now you’re going to do it again. And the worst part? I should have seen it coming.” He shook his head. “You haven’t changed at all, and apparently, neither have I.”

  She sucked in a breath and bowed her head a moment before meeting his gaze, her own eyes shimmering with rare tears. “I’m sorry. I’ve gotten too good at being alone.”

  “You were never alone, Brooke, never. You just chose to shut us out.” This time he turned away, disgusted with the both of them. Her, for fooling him again, and himself, for knowing better and falling for her just as hard this time around anyway. “The real problem here is that you don’t know what you want. Or maybe you do, but you’re too scared to get it. You don’t believe in this, in us.” He took a step back. “Good to know that some things never change. I love you, too, Bee. You know that, or I hope you do. But I can’t make you believe in me, in us. You have to do that yourself.”

  She turned to the door to leave, but then put her hand on the handle and paused. “I’m going back to LA in the morning,” she said to the wood. “The old me would’ve just left, but I didn’t want to do that to you again.”

  He let out a rough laugh, through lungs so tight that he couldn’t draw in air. “Good luck. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  There was a single heartbeat where she hesitated, and he felt hope grip him by the throat, but then she shook her head and was gone—this time, he was pretty sure, for good.

  MUCH LATER, MINDY stood in her kitchen, sick with worry and anxiety. Her three babies were looking at her, so she put on a smile and opened her baking drawers, all three of them filled with things like measuring cups and spoons, wooden and plastic utensils, the works. Millie clapped her hands in delight. One of her favorite things to do was riffle through it all and put on pretend cooking shows, making her brothers be her captive audience.

  Leaving them to it, Mindy headed for the cleaning supplies, because when life went to shit, she cleaned. When her vacuum shut off unexpectedly in the living room, she turned to find Linc standing there. He’d pulled the plug out of the wall.

  “I don’t want to fight with you,” she said.

  “On that, we’re quite in agreement.” Tossing the cord aside, he took her hand and led her to the couch. “I just want to talk.”

  “That’s not exactly our strong suit.” She was careful to not quite touch him, because he was wearing her favorite shirt of his, a gray UCSF Medical School T-shirt. It’d been worn to a buttery softness that clung to his broad shoulders. His cargo shorts had a bazillion pockets that she knew would be full of a huge assortment of things, but still always had room for him to take on the burden of whatever she didn’t want to carry.

  Dammit. She loved him so much.

  Ignoring her clear personal space bubble, he pulled her in until they were thigh to thigh. He twisted to face her, his arm resting along the back of the couch, his body language telling her this was important to him, she was important to him, and she took a deep breath and let that wash over her.

  “First things first,” he said quietly, eyes on hers, his solemn. Intense. “I really did believe you wanted the shop. I’ve always hated that we never had enough money for it because of my student debt. I assumed you hated that, too, maybe even resented it.”

  “Linc—”

  He put a finger to her lips. “You put your entire life on hold for me so I could go to medical school, which meant you working so we wouldn’t starve. Then, just as we started to get it together, I got you pregnant. You never complained, never faltered, just kept us in the boat with life jackets on and steered the ship. You’ve put all of us, everyone you care about, ahead of yourself, and I wanted to return the favor. So I cashed in some investments and moved things around so you could have what I thought was your dream. I was wrong to do that without talking to you first.” He ran a finger along her temple, over an earlobe, and smiled when she shivered. “We got an unexpected offer on the store,” he said. “For more than I paid your parents for it. It’s from Xena and her sister. They want their own franchise and apparently have for a while. It’s your choice, of course, this time and for always. Whatever you want to do, I’m in.”

  She let out a careful breath. “Xena’s perfect for it. I could go back to baking and selling her my stuff for the shop, assuming she wants it.”

  Linc’s eyes warmed as he smiled. “Your stuff’s amazing, I hope you know that. You can do whatever you want. You could take over the world if you set your mind to it. No one would know what hit them.”

  From the kitchen came a loud drumming sound that Mindy knew from experience was Mason sitting on the floor surrounded by upside-down pots and pans, beating them with her wooden spoons, headbanging like he was the drummer from an ’80s rock band.

  “Also”—Linc handed her the itinerary and tickets for Hawaii—“we’re still going. Ethan and I had a serious talk.”

  “Ethan doesn’t do serious.”

  “He does now.”

  She stared at the papers in her hand. “So . . . he’s going to help handle the practice for the whole week? No emergencies?”

  “It’s not ‘helping’ when he owns half of it,” he said. “But that’s going to change, too. I told him I was cutting my hours back to something reasonable versus insane, because you and the kids didn’t sign on for me running Dad’s practice alone. I’ve missed too much precious time. I also told him if he didn’t have time to devote to his half, we’re selling. The hospital’s been coming at us with offers for two years. It’d leave us as independent contractors and managers of the practice, but not owners, the biggest plus being that they’d add two additional MDs to the rotation. We’d all have reasonable shifts and time to work in the hospital and clinics if we want.”

  She stared up at him, afraid to hope. “Which is exactly what you’ve wanted to do.”