All of Me (7 page)

The dog lowered his head. Amazing how he seemed to understand her. Who knew that dogs could be so cool?

At three-thirty on the nose, Jillian walked into Hamilton Green’s office. She’d tried not to think too much about what Blake
could have left her in his will. Thinking about it made it too real. She still wasn’t ready to fully accept that he was gone.

Maybe he’d left her his marble chess set. She’d like to have that to remember him by. As she settled into the chair across
from the lawyer in his plush scholarly looking office, the tears she’d yet to shed thickened behind her eyelids.

“Thank you for coming, Ms. Samuels, and please accept my condolences on the loss of your mentor.” Hamilton Green had a broad
flat face, a Jay Leno chin, and salt-and-pepper hair that gave way to male pattern baldness. You could tell he’d never been
handsome, not even in youth.

“You knew Blake was my mentor?”

“We golfed together. He spoke of you often and with great fondness.”

The pressure behind her eyes tightened. She realized she’d known Blake longer and more thoroughly than she’d known her own
father.

The lawyer steepled his fingers. “I’m certain his fondness for you is the reason he appointed you as executor.”

Her throat constricted. “He did?”

“Blake also left instructions in his will that you be the one to scatter his ashes over Salvation Lake.”

The announcement took her by surprise. “Me?”

He nodded. “The will still has to be probated, of course, and as executor, you’ll be checking up on everything. But as it
stands in Blake’s current will, he left the bulk of his estate to legal aid charities. You were the only individual mentioned
in his will. He had a new will drawn up the week after his daughter’s death.”

Jillian’s nose burned. She bit down on her bottom lip. Honestly, while Blake had been her mentor and they’d been close, she
hadn’t truly realized she’d meant so much to him.

“He left you his property on Salvation Lake.”

“Where is that?” Blake had never mentioned anything to her about owning lake property.

“Salvation, Colorado. It’s a small tourist town north of Denver. The house was built in the sixties, and it has never been
renovated. It’s been vacant for years. I have no idea what condition it’s in or even the approximate value of the property.”

“Blake left me a lake house?” she repeated, still unable to believe it.

“He did at that.”

“And he wants me to scatter his ashes on the lake?”

“Yes.”

It was a lot to absorb. Emotion clotted her throat at the notion of scattering Blake’s ashes. Alone. Suddenly, her world seemed
very small, indeed. She had no experience with this sort of thing. She didn’t even have anyone she could ask. Blake would
have been the person she would have turned to for such advice.

“Here’s a copy of his will and the keys to the house.” Hamilton Green pushed a manila envelope across his desk toward her.

“The house is paid off?”

“Free and clear.”

She took a deep breath, determined to do her duty firmly and without negligence. This is what Blake wanted. She would not
disappoint him.

“And here are Blake’s remains.” The lawyer picked up an urn that had been sitting on the floor beside his desk and handed
it to her.

At the weight of the urn, a tumult of emotions flipped through her. Sorrow and surprise, uncertainty and confusion, despair
and yet at the same time, a small unexpected flicker of hope.

Blake had left her a lake house in Colorado.

It was almost as if he’d thrown her a life preserver in her moment of greatest need.

Salvation.

A fresh start. From the grave, Blake was offering her a fresh start. He’d given Jillian her first job; now he was giving Jillian
her first home.

She stared at the urn and the manila envelope and the keys, and in that moment, she just knew what to do.

Accept Salvation.

R
IDLEY
R
ED
D
EER
was worried about his wife’s little brother.

He shouldn’t have put Tuck in the sweat lodge. Clearly, from the way he had been acting, he hadn’t been ready for whatever
had happened in there. It had been like sticking a six-year-old on a Harley without a helmet and telling him to take off.
A vision quest was heavy-duty mojo.

On the second anniversary of Aimee’s death, Ridley had felt guided. He thought the spirit had spoken to him, telling him to
shove a soaking wet, drunken Tuck into the sweat lodge to renew his ragged soul. But he could see that Tuck had been unsettled
by whatever he’d experienced.

Doubt gnawed at Ridley. Evie had been right.

His wife was always right. It was damned aggravating.

Thing of it was, Ridley couldn’t undo it. Tuck had already been initiated. He’d seen something. The only way Ridley could
help him was to get him to discuss what he’d seen.

But Tuck was not inclined to talk.

Ridley picked up a six-pack of Michelob on his way home from work and dropped by the lake house. He found Tuck huddled on
the dock in a deck chair, staring at the sunset with a University of Colorado blanket thrown over his lap.

“Are you remembering how cold the water is this time of year?” Ridley asked.

“Hey, buddy,” Tuck greeted. “Have a seat.”

Ridley dusted snow from the deck chair beside Tuck and plunked down. He twisted the top off a longneck bottle of Michelob
and passed it to his brother-in-law before opening a second one for himself.

They said nothing for a long time. Just sipped and watched the sun slide down the sky. Finally, Ridley broke the silence.
“You still planning on staying at the lake house?”

“Yes,” Tuck said fiercely. “Starting next spring, I’m renovating the house the way I promised Aimee. I should have started
it when Blake deeded the place to me four months ago, but I just couldn’t summon the energy.”

“It was pretty weird how Blake just deeded you the land out of the blue,” Ridley said.

“I guess he felt guilty.” Tuck’s voice caught. “Blake never came back to Salvation after the divorce. I suppose he held on
to the cottage simply because he planned on giving it to Aimee one day. She had her own key, and he’d given her permission
to use it anytime, but their relationship was so strained that she didn’t want him to know we were here. She wouldn’t let
me tell him that she was dying.”

“That’s hard-core.”

“Aimee just couldn’t forgive her father for cheating on her mother and busting up the family. I tried to talk to her about
forgiving him, but as sweet as she was, forgiveness was not one of Aimee’s virtues. If you ever got on her shit list, you
were banned for life.”

“That must have been really hard on her dad,” Ridley mused. Thinking about becoming a parent was causing him to consider things
in a different light. He wondered what he would do if he ever found himself in a situation like Blake Townsend’s relationship
with his daughter, and he couldn’t fathom it.

“She never gave him a chance to make amends. She didn’t want him to know about her cancer.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t want his pity. Nor did she want him to suddenly start trying to be a father when he hadn’t been around all those
years.”

Ridley was still puzzling it out. “Aimee cheated her father out of precious time with her. Looking at it from her father’s
perspective, she was pretty cruel to the guy.”

“I know.” Tuck looked glum. “But she had her mind set, and I couldn’t change it. Sometimes you’ve just gotta stay out of it.”

Ridley nodded. “You have no desire to ever go back to architecture? No more Magic Man of Manhattan?”

Tuck snorted a harsh laugh. “I was so full of shit back then. It took something like losing Aimee to make me see what matters
most in life. The people you love. Like you and Evie. Aimee’s ashes are scattered on this lake. I’m not going anywhere. Salvation’s
home.”

“Aw, dude, tell me you’re not getting mushy. Here, have another beer.”

“I’m thinking I should hold off.”

“Probably wise.” Ridley nodded and noticed that fresh snowflakes had started drifting from the sky.

After another long moment, Tuck spoke. “I saw a woman.”

“Huh? Are you dating someone?”

“No, no. I saw a woman. In the sweat lodge. In my vision. At least I hope it was a vision.”

Ridley tensed. His stomach knotted. A woman could be a good omen or a bad one. It depended on the circumstances. He prayed
it wasn’t a bad omen. Evie would skin him alive if Tuck had had a vision with a bad omen. He didn’t want to push. He was afraid
his brother-in-law would pull back in like a truculent turtle.

“It probably wasn’t even a vision,” Tuck continued. “Probably just some weird Johnny Walker dream.”

“Yeah, you gotta stay away from that stuff.”

“I know. Usually I do … it’s just that … anniversaries hit me hard.” Tuck exhaled audibly.

Ridley’s butt was getting cold, but he knew Tuck was on the verge of opening up, and he didn’t want to break the tenuous thread.
“So this woman you saw. She wasn’t Aimee?”

Tuck shook his head.

“That bothered you? Seeing a woman and it not being Aimee?” He rubbed his palms together to warm them. It was cold on the
dock, yes, but that wasn’t the only place the chill was coming from.

“Yeah.”

“This woman, what’d she look like?”

“Dark hair, pale skin, tall. I mean, really tall. Close to six foot. Beautiful in a smart, high-class kind of way. Like Cleopatra.”

Ridley grunted. Uh-oh, that didn’t sound good. Not good at all. He took a swig of his beer, afraid to ask what needed to be
asked next.

“And,” Tuck added, “she was naked.”

Ridley choked on his beer. He sputtered, coughed. His braid fell forward across his shoulder.

“You okay?”

Ridley couldn’t stop coughing, and tears of strain misted his eyes.

Tuck pounded him on the back. “Rid? You need the Heimlich?”

He shook his head. Oh shit. Evie was gonna kill him dead. “I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

“This woman you saw,” Ridley croaked. “Was she an … um … a temptress?”

Tuck’s head jerked up. “How did you know?”

“The temptress is quite common in folklore and mythology,” he said, not wanting to tell Tuck what seeing a temptress in a
vision quest really meant. His brother-in-law simply wasn’t ready to hear about that. “Did she … um … did she tempt you?”

“It was a sex dream, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Were feathers involved?” Ridley asked hopefully. Feathers were a good omen. Maybe feathers could temper the ominous naked-temptress-sex-dream
thing.

Tuck frowned. “No, not feathers.”

“But something?” Ridley fisted his hands. This was getting worse by the minute. He should stop asking questions, but he couldn’t.
He had to know exactly how bad it was.

“Veils.”

Uneasiness took hold of him. Ridley’s blood thickened in his veins, and his breath went thin. Hurriedly, he took another swallow
of beer. “What kind of veils?”

“Wedding veils. Lots and lots of white lace wedding veils.” Tuck slapped a hand on Ridley’s thigh. “So, Red Deer, you’re the
Native American here. What does the vision mean?”

“Mean?” Ridley asked, hearing the nervousness in his voice. “Who says it means anything?”

“It doesn’t mean anything?” Tuck sounded oddly disappointed. “I thought by the way you were choking on your beer that it probably
meant something.”

“Naw, not really,” he lied. “I just swallowed wrong.”

“You’re a lousy liar, Rid.”

“Who says I’m lying?”

“Me. When you lie, your nose twitches. Word to the wise—stay away from poker.”

“It does not.” Ridley put a hand to his nose.

“Then why are you touching your nose?”

“Bastard.”

“So what’s the big woo-woo sweat lodge secret?”

“No secret.”

“Then why’d you come sit out here with me in the cold if you weren’t trying to get me to tell you about the vision?”

“Because I’m worried about you.”

“Ease my troubled mind. Tell me what the damned vision means.”

“I’m no expert,” Ridley hedged. He was in over his head.

“What does being visited by this wedding-veil-wielding temptress portend for the Magic Man of Manhattan?”

“It probably doesn’t mean a thing.”

“But if it did mean something …”

Ridley rolled off a shaky laugh. No point in alarming Tuck when he didn’t have any strong evidence that something untoward
was going to happen. “Hang loose, dude.You’re blowing this all out of proportion. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

“W
E STILL CAN’T BELIEVE
you’re moving to Colorado lock, stock, and barrel,” Delaney Cartwright Vinetti told Jillian as they shut the door closed
on the rented U-Haul trailer and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “And in October. Autumn doesn’t seem like the prime
time for a move to a mountainous state.”

“It’s the perfect time,” Jillian assured her. “I’ve got nothing else to lose.”

Delaney was a pretty brunette with a people-pleasing personality. She’d been the one to find the three-hundred-year-old wedding
veil in a consignment shop, and she’d immediately fallen under its spell. She’d believed in the fantastical story that went
with the veil. She’d wished on it just before she was about to marry the wrong man and ended up finding her true love. Nick
Vinetti was a detective for the Houston PD. They had a daughter, Audra, three and a half, and one-year-old twin sons, Adam
and Aidan.

“But Blake’s will hasn’t even been probated yet.”

“I’m the executor; I have to go check out the property.”

“But you’re moving. Visiting I could understand, but you’re moving to the place sight unseen.”

Jillian shrugged. “The lease was up on my condo. I couldn’t justify signing up for a second year.”

“It seems so sudden,” Tish Gallagher Tremont added. “You don’t even know what you’re getting into.”

“Now, come on, Tish, you’re supposed to be the adventurous one of the group. Don’t tell me motherhood has changed you that
much,” Jillian said.