Run for Covers

He booted his system, and the staccato beeps and blips ensued while they waited. When the monitor screen went live, Tyler sat down, opening programs and flipping through windows.

He forwarded through footage of what Tori recognized as the Racy Rehearsal Dinner event that had taken place on the night before the wedding, and when Laura cued him, he began clicking the pImages** forward frame by frame. “Here you go.”

Tori glanced at a table and recognized the people seated there. Her family. Her parents. Her sister and brother-in-law.

As the featured couple for the upcoming Hottest Honeymoon week, Miranda and Troy had been participating in all the festivities. When Laura’s mother had been invited to the rehearsal dinner for a look at the Mireille Marceaux painting she’d helped arrange the loan of, Miranda had insisted her parents be invited as a show of force against the Grangers.

As a result, there’d been Fords and Grangers together in the same room for the first time in years. Tori had been able to slant this society bit for her feature. Successfully, too, as she’d been pleased to learn from her managing editor, even if Adam Grant had called her tactics sensationalism.

Damn man. Maybe he really was a hopeless case and she should just give up.

Tori scowled at the monitor, watching as the camera zoomed in on her mother, looking as beautiful as always. But the look on her face was one Tori hadn’t seen before, an unguarded look that would have been fleeting without Tyler to play it out frame by frame. That look arced through a lot of emotions…all painful, all captured on film in aching clarity.

Then the angle of the camera shifted and panned in on Laura’s mother.

Occasionally during her school years at Westfalls, Tori had seen Suzanne Granger in the business offices where the woman had worked as chief financial officer. Her wavy brown hair might be different than her own mother’s red, but the similarities between the sisters were striking. Not only their features, but their expressions.

Tori didn’t have to ask to know that these long-alienated sisters had been looking at each other across that crowded ballroom when this footage had been filmed.

“Why are you showing me this?” she asked.

“Because of what you said at breakfast. I think you’re right. What happened between our moms isn’t cut-and-dried.”

Tyler slid his chair back. “If you don’t need me anymore, ladies, I’ll head back to the pool. Clyde promised to ply me with some serious alcohol so I don’t notice the heat.”

“Have him whip you up a Rum Demon. You’ll forget your name.” Laura tugged his ponytail. “Go have fun. I’ll lock up.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. This man understood the importance of fun and, grabbing his towel, he took off, leaving Tori and Laura alone.

Dropping onto the arm of a recliner, Tori stared at the monitor where Suzanne Granger’s hauntingly familiar face stared back. “Okay, Laura. I agree things aren’t cut-and-dried between our mothers.”

“I want to find out what happened and see if we can fix things. Doesn’t seeing them like this make you sad?”

Sad was only part of it. Frustrated that her mother ran herself ragged being the perfect society woman was the other part. “It makes me wonder.”

“About what happened to break them up?”

“About your sanity. We already know what broke up this family. Your mother ran off to a commune with an artist.”

Laura shook her head. “That’s what happened between my mom and the senator. Not what happened between our moms.”

Tori thought about that for a moment and knew Laura was right. Their grandfather had disowned his eldest daughter, but that didn’t explain why her mother hadn’t made peace with her sister in the thirty years since. Then again, Tori knew her mother wasn’t much for going against the senator.

Another side effect of trying to lead the perfect life.

“Are you looking for some big family reunion?” she asked. “If you are, you obviously don’t know much about my family.” They didn’t have reunions, not even with family members they haven’t been disowned.

“If a reunion’s possible, why not?”

“Man, you really do deal in fantasy around here.”

“Falling Inn Bed specializes in love, Tori. Why does that have to be only the romantic kind? You said it yourself—we’ve got the Grangers and the Prescotts together for the first time since Westfalls. I’d hate to miss an opportunity to fix things.” She gave a wry smile. “For our moms. Personally, I’m content to live my life without you or your sister.”

She couldn’t help but smile. Had their circumstances been different growing up, she might have liked Laura Granger. As it was, she could only wonder if the time had come to bridge that distance, and if she would be the right person for the job.

She returned to Suzanne Granger’s face staring at her from the monitor, a striking reminder of the way the past influenced the future, and proof that people could live the lives they dreamed of.

But not without a price.

There was always a catch, but when Tori thought of the expression on her own mother’s face, she knew her mother had paid no less a price to remain home and live up to the family standards.

Tori had paid that price once, too, and had decided it was too high. Only unlike her estranged aunt, she hadn’t been disowned.

Yet.

“How do you expect to do this, Laura?” she asked. “Our mothers haven’t made an effort to do anything about this situation for thirty years, so don’t give me any sappy crap about it being easy to reunite sisters who miss each other. Unlike you, I wasn’t kidnapped from the fold and raised by wolves. I’m a Prescott-Ford, and we don’t deal in fantasies. Just cold, hard facts.”

“I’ve got a few ideas.” Laura folded her arms across her chest and eyed her with a twinkling gaze. “But since I only know half the story, I need someone from the other team to help me fill in the blanks and pull this all together.”

Was it worth a shot? Should she go out on a limb to try and wipe that expression from her mother’s face, or should she give up on her family the way she was about to give up on Adam Grant.

Tori gazed at this cousin she’d never known, a woman who was proving to be nothing at all like expected, and she realized that Laura was right about something else, too.

Tori only had one half of the story.

Not only about her family, but about Adam, too. Maybe he wasn’t so hopeless after all….

“Okay, bedding consultant. I’ll join your team. If you agree to join mine.”

Laura eyed her curiously. “What do you have in mind?”

Tori inhaled a deep breath and went for it. “I could use a little help catching a man.”

BETWEEN A HARD workout and a long visit to the Turkish steam room, Adam’s attempt to exorcise visions of Tori Ford in a sex swing had consumed most of his Sunday afternoon off. He arrived at his massage appointment sore and in need of relief.

“Sandra’s running behind,” the spa host told him. “Just go in and make yourself comfortable. She won’t be long.”

With a nod, Adam stepped inside a private room, where the sound of ocean surf piped in through overhead speakers and the tranquil lighting combined to lull his drowsy senses. He’d sat in the Turkish steam room so long he could practically feel eucalyptus seeping from his pores, but the visit did exactly what he’d hoped—slowed his racing thoughts about the woman in hot pursuit.

He’d been racking his brain to come up with a new game plan for dealing with Tori Ford. Simply stating his disinterest should have been enough. And for any rational woman, a polite rejection would have been.

Rationality didn’t seem to be part of Tori’s equation. Today, she’d revealed herself to be a woman on a mission, and he couldn’t stop wondering what had happened to commit her so firmly to her cause. Under normal circumstances, savoring life would have been an admirable goal, but these weren’t normal circumstances. They were together during a function that celebrated sex, and Tori was no ordinary woman.

And when Adam got down to it, he really didn’t want to know. She had him totally preoccupied as it was, dodging her moves by day and being too edgy to sleep by night.

He wanted to stop thinking about her.

His long workout this afternoon should have cleared his head. Long workouts and frequent massages were about the only indulgences he’d allowed himself since coming to Falling Inn Bed, and Breakfast. With friends and acquaintances back on the West Coast, Adam hadn’t done much but work since his arrival in Niagara Falls. The focus had suited his mood. Or at least it had until now.