Читать книгу: «At First Sight»

Chapter 1

“Grandpa Max is trying to punish us from beyond the grave, isn’t he?” Quinn Sibley wailed, as she stared at the dilapidated house standing—just barely—in front of her.

Charlie Sibley pulled a bulging black suitcase from the trunk of the silver Jaguar that their older sister, Kendra, had haphazardly parked next to the house, and dropped it on the ground. Dirt billowed around it. She frowned. There was dirt everywhere. Charlie was far from a neat freak, but from the two-lane highway that had branched off the main highway to the small town of Sibleyville, California, to the narrow dirt road that had led to the house, there had been dirt. On the sides of the road, on the road, flying in her mouth when Kendra had allowed her to roll down the window. There was no escaping it.

But, besides the dirt, Charlie had more important things on her mind, like finding her emergency bag of chocolate amidst her sisters’ designer suitcases jamming the trunk. Charlie needed that bag. It housed her entire two-week supply of chocolate. And if ever there was a time for chocolate, it was now.

“Have you seen my duffel bag?” she asked Quinn absently. “It’s small and dark blue—”

“Look at it, Charlie,” Quinn ordered, sounding close to tears. “Look at where we’re supposed to live for the next two weeks and tell me that this isn’t some form of punishment. Grandpa Max’s last attempt to make us suffer.”

Charlie followed her sister’s command and turned to stare at the house. She had to admit, the house wasn’t just bad. It was abominable.

The narrow split-level home had probably once been charming. Now, the white wood was rotting and crumbling at an alarming rate. Portions of the roof hung in jagged edges over the front porch, like a medieval defense system against intruders. What had probably once been a comfortable covered porch that had held a few rocking chairs, now was a death trap waiting to ensnare its next victim, from the rotted steps leading to the porch to the chipped and peeling railing. The blue shutters on either side of the front door hung lopsided as if someone had tried to pull them off, but had grown tired before finishing. Charlie hadn’t been inside—and she wished she could keep it that way—but she had a feeling that it would be even worse.

Kendra had disappeared inside the house ten minutes before, and neither Charlie or Quinn had heard anything from her since.

Charlie glanced around the quiet stillness of the country. Cloudless blue skies, free of the smog and towering skyscrapers of Los Angeles, and rolling green hills greeted her. Across the dirt road from the house was a line of imposing redwoods that were so dense that Charlie couldn’t see past the first few rows. There was not another house or car or any other sign of civilization in sight. All the trees and stillness and fresh air made her uncomfortable.

Charlie returned her attention to her younger sister and forced a smile. Quinn was dramatic by nature. Being an actress on the popular daytime soap, Diamond Valley, didn’t help matters. Nor did the fact that Quinn was gorgeous, with the ability to make men do her bidding with one bright smile. She was tall, thin, as most actresses were, had vanilla skin, hazel eyes and long, silky, sandy-brown hair. Quinn would never be caught without makeup or a pair of stiletto heels.

“It’s not that bad, Quinn,” Charlie lied. “In fact, it’s almost…sort of charming. Quaint.”

“Quaint?” Quinn repeated, her hazel eyes widened with disbelief.

Charlie nodded vigorously and added, “It just needs a little elbow grease and soap.”

“Elbow grease and soap?” Quinn repeated, with the same tone of stunned disbelief. When Charlie smiled, Quinn exploded, hysterically, “The only thing that house needs is a wrecking ball.”

Charlie threw up her hands in surrender then turned back to the trunk. She dropped another suitcase onto the dirt and peered into the dark recesses of the trunk for her bag. Her need for chocolate was reaching a critical level. While Quinn, who stood over five foot nine and weighed probably half as much as the shorter Charlie, literally flinched from chocolate like a vampire confronted with garlic, Charlie needed chocolate the way she needed oxygen. And, of course, it showed on her wide hips and thighs.

Charlie grunted from the weight of another bag then threw it on the ground.

“Careful with that,” Quinn cried, tearing her gaze from the house at the sound of the suitcase hitting the ground. She wobbled on four-inch designer stiletto heels towards the suitcase. “I have shoes in there.”

“You have a whole suitcase devoted to shoes?”

“Of course. Don’t you?” Quinn asked, blankly.

Not for the first time, Charlie wondered how she and Quinn could be related.

“This just can’t be real,” Quinn murmured, shaking her head.

“Shoes don’t break, Quinn—”

“Not the shoes. This house. The will. Us living together again, after all these years. It’s unreal.” She paused for obvious effect then whispered dramatically, “It’s as if Fate, that fickle mistress, is punishing me for my success.”

Charlie knew it wasn’t the reaction Quinn was looking for, but she bit her bottom lip to restrain a burst of laughter. She had watched Quinn whisper that same phrase, with that same expression of overplayed guilt, on Diamond Valley. At the time, Quinn’s character, Sephora, had been wracked with guilt because her husband’s brother had jumped off a bridge after Sephora had ended their affair. Of course, his body had never been found, so there was always a possibility that Sephora was not out of the woods.

Charlie sighed then said, “Grandpa Max is not punishing you, and although I can’t speak for Fate, I also doubt that she’s punishing you.”

Quinn stared at Charlie and asked, in a hoarse voice, “Then why would he sentence me to two weeks in this hellhole?”

“It’s his childhood home, Quinn. He was born and raised in this town. The town is named after him, after us. Maybe Grandpa Max wanted us to see where he came from, what we come from. He didn’t always live in a mansion in Beverly Hills, and maybe he wanted us to know that.”

“Couldn’t he just have said that then?” Quinn protested, nearly screeching. “I, personally, don’t need the up-close-and-personal history lesson.”

The torn screen door opened with a creak that echoed across the yard. Their oldest sister, Kendra, stepped onto the porch. The disgusted expression on her flawlessly made-up face told Charlie everything she needed to know. The inside of the house matched the abandoned and neglected exterior.

The screen door flapped closed behind Kendra and promptly one side of the lightweight wire crashed to the floor. Quinn flinched in surprise, while Charlie laughed at Kendra’s expression. She wiped her hands on an immaculately tailored dark skirt and looked over her two younger sisters with the mask of calm disdained boredom that she had perfected in junior high school.

She coolly eyed Quinn then said, “I heard your complaining all the way in the house, Quinn. Feel free to leave at any time. No one will stop you.”

Charlie groaned and raked both hands through her chin-length hair. It seemed to have doubled in size from the heat and stress of the past few hours since the sisters had left Los Angeles and driven four hours into California’s heartland to Sibleyville, population fifteen thousand. Quinn and Kendra had been at each other’s throats for the entire four-hour drive. Actually, Quinn and Kendra had been at each other’s throats since birth.

“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” Quinn shot back, with narrowed eyes. She tossed her long hair over her shoulder in a move worthy of Sephora and said, “Of course, if I left then you wouldn’t get any of the money. Remember that part of Grandpa’s will, Kendra, the part where the three of us have to remain in this house together for two weeks or else all three of us lose our inheritance. Do you still want me to leave?”

Charlie pleaded, “You guys, come on. It’s been a long day—”

“Why did you even agree to this, Quinn?” Kendra demanded, ignoring Charlie’s plea for peace. “You’re a big actress, if one could consider what you do acting—”

“You’re just jealous,” Quinn shot back. “You’ve always been jealous.”

“Of what?” Kendra asked, with an amused laugh.

Kendra’s smile would have been gorgeous if Charlie had thought for one second that she was sincere. Kendra was a few inches shorter than Quinn, but still taller than most women. Instead of being tall and thin like Quinn, or short and curvy like Charlie, Kendra was like a gazelle: lean muscles, athletic grace and awesome power. She was mocha-chocolate, with bone-straight midnight-black hair that she wore in a straight bob to her shoulders. Her razor-sharp bangs would never dream of not hanging how Kendra wanted them to.

“That I have a life. Friends. Lovers. People like me, they want to take a picture with me. Who wants to be around you, except old men because you make them rich?”

Kendra’s remained calm as she said, in a bored tone, “People don’t want a picture of you. They want a picture of your breasts. Those two things are more famous than you are.”

Charlie inwardly groaned as Quinn’s mouth dropped open in shock. She really should intervene, before the two women came to blows, but Charlie had learned long ago to stay out of their way when they started an argument. It had been almost two years since Charlie had been in the same room with both of her sisters, and Charlie wished it could have been another two years.

But, their grandfather—the man who had raised them after their parents’ death—had died, and decreed in his will that his three granddaughters spend two weeks in his childhood home as a condition to inheriting an undisclosed sum of money that could possibly number in the millions. Max Sibley had built Sibley Corporation from the ground up in his twenties and had been worth over millions of dollars at his death. Kendra had estimated that they should each receive over ten million dollars a piece after taxes.

“Just go away, Kendra,” Quinn ordered, pointing her finger towards the road.

Kendra rolled her eyes then said, “I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you. For some reason, the old man thought it would be a riot to throw the three of us together in this dump. If we don’t survive, then we’ll never see a penny of our inheritance and all of the Sibley millions will go to some charitable organization that probably wants to save the whales or grasshoppers or something. I have my own money—a lot of my own money, but I will rot in hell before I allow the Sibley millions to be wasted like that.”

“At least we agree on something,” Quinn said, begrudgingly, while crossing her arms over her ample breasts.

“So, for the next two weeks, I intend to pretend that you don’t exist and that I’m living in the lap of luxury on a small, deserted, primitive island,” Kendra continued as if Quinn had never spoken. “I suggest you do the same.”

“I don’t need or want your suggestions,” Quinn said, with a snort.

“Will you two stop it!” Charlie exploded. Both women turned to her with identical expressions of shock and a little guilt.

As usual, they had forgotten that there was a third Sibley sister.

“I’ve listened to you two argue and complain since six o’clock this morning, and I’m sick of it,” Charlie screamed, as tears of frustration, fatigue and chocolate deprivation filled her eyes. “I don’t know why Grandpa Max did this, but he did and we’re stuck here for the next two weeks. So, maybe we should try to use this time as an opportunity to get to know each other again. We are sisters. And with Grandpa Max dead, the three of us are it. There aren’t any more Sibleys. I don’t know about you two, but that scares me.”

Her sisters’ expressions grew guarded, and Charlie knew it wasn’t because she was waving the white flag. It was because she was close to crying, and the Sibley sisters did not cry, especially in front of each other.

In a characteristically un-Charlie Sibley move, she screeched in frustration and kicked the Jaguar’s rear tire.

She screamed in surprise as the heel on one of her shoes snapped, and she fell to the dirt in a heap of swirling dust. Both her sisters appeared frozen in place. Neither made a move to assist her. Not that Charlie had expected them to. She cursed, more from her annoyance with them than pain, even though her right foot was beginning to throb.

“That hurt,” Charlie muttered.

“Remind me never to make you angry,” drawled a deep, amused voice.

Charlie prayed that the owner of the voice did not look as gorgeous as he sounded. Judging from Quinn’s and Kendra’s slack-jawed expressions however, her prayers were not to be answered. She looked over her shoulder. And gulped.

Her gaze traveled from the dirt-covered genuine cowboy boots to the worn, well-fitted jeans that emphasized long, muscular legs. She gulped again at the slight bulge in his pants at the zipper then at the white T-shirt that settled over his flat stomach and emphasized finely muscled cinnamon-colored arms.

He wore a cowboy hat. A large charcoal-gray cowboy hat that shadowed the sharp lines and angles of his face. He had full lips, a strong nose and piercing brown eyes that were focused intently on her. His profile had probably been chiseled on a African coin.

Charlie wanted to kick the tire again because she realized that despite her supposed cynicism and analytical mind, she had just fallen in love at first sight. And judging from the sudden come-hither smiles that were fixed on Quinn’s and Kendra’s faces, she didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.