He had no idea.

  * * *

  After Vanessa left Izzy’s, she did a bunch of errands before she ended up at Grayson’s home. She needed to act before she lost the nerve she’d worked up while with her older sister. Izzy had always been a source of strength and wisdom to Vanessa and their other siblings. After hearing about Izzy’s accident, she, Sarah, Ally and Henry had jumped into Ally’s car and headed for Vermont, driving for hours without knowing if Izzy would survive her injuries.

  That’d been the longest night of Vanessa’s life as she tried to picture a world without her older sister. She couldn’t and was so, so thankful Izzy had come through the accident with injuries that would heal in time. It’d been a long time since Vanessa had prayed for anything the way she had for her sister during that endless drive to Vermont.

  Putting four Colemans in any situation usually resulted in laughs and jeers and nonstop sibling nonsense. Not that night. They’d ridden in terrified silence for four hours.

  Vanessa shook off those dreadful memories as she pulled into Gray’s driveway at the restored church he, Emma and Simone called home. Emma’s dad, Ray, had an apartment over the garage in back, but he was spending most of his time with Vanessa’s mom these days. She was so happy for her mom to have found a great guy like Ray after so many years alone. No one in the world deserved a happy second chance more than Hannah Coleman did.

  She trudged through sloppy snow and ice to Gray’s mudroom door, where she rang the bell.

  Her eldest sibling came to the door and smiled when he saw her there. “Hey,” he said. “This is a nice surprise. Come in.”

  “Hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  “Of course not.”

  In the warm, cozy kitchen, Ray was helping Simone with her homework while Gray stood watch over a pot on the stove.

  “Hey, guys,” Vanessa said.

  “Good to see you, Ness,” Ray said.

  “Hi,” Simone said with a shy smile. She was eleven, with curly red hair and green eyes, and looked much more like her aunt Lucy than her mom, Emma, who was blonde.

  “Nice to see you both,” Vanessa said.

  “What’s going on?” Gray asked as he took her coat and hung it on the back of a chair.

  “I need your professional advice.”

  “Carry on, citizens,” Gray said to Ray and Simone, before leading the way through the wide family room that made up the center of the unique home. “Step into my office.”

  “This house is amazing.”

  “We love it, except for how all the heat ends up there.” He pointed to the twenty-foot ceiling. “We may have to close that off at some point if we don’t want to freeze to death down here.”

  “I never would’ve thought of that.”

  “We didn’t either, until we spent a winter here. Thank goodness for the woodstove, but we go through some kind of wood heating this place.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  He closed the French doors that sealed off his office.

  “This is nice,” Vanessa said.

  “I love working from home. It’s the best.”

  “You got enough to do in this sleepy town?”

  “More than enough. Being general counsel to the store is a nearly full-time job alone, and now Mom’s roped me into being the town solicitor. I’ve got my hands full.”

  “It’s great that you were able to move home and figure out a life for yourself here.”

  “Is that what you want to do, too?”

  Vanessa shrugged. “It’s starting to look pretty good to me.”

  “I heard you quit your job. What’s up with that?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Vanessa took a deep breath and then dove into the story of the coworker who’d made her life miserable at her job. “He’s one of their top salespeople, so when I complained to HR about him being inappropriate, it fell on deaf ears. He tried to turn it around on me, that I was hitting on him, which was revolting.”

  Grayson had taken notes as she walked him through what’d happened.

  “I finally quit rather than have to fend him off every day, but I documented every single thing that happened. I can provide dates, times, exact words and reports to HR that went nowhere. I have it all.”

  “That’s excellent.”

  “My brother the lawyer taught me well.”

  “You have the grounds for a gigantic lawsuit here, Ness. You realize that, don’t you?”

  “That’s what everyone tells me.”

  “Is that what you want to do?”

  She released a deep sigh. “Part of me wants to forget that place and that asshole exist. The other part of me doesn’t want them to get away with it. People shouldn’t feel intimidated to go to work or have to fend off unwelcome advances from coworkers who outrank them.”

  “No, they absolutely shouldn’t.” He put down his pen and rested his elbows on the desk. “Here’s what I think we should do. I could reach out to the company’s general counsel and let them know we have the makings of a world-class lawsuit and the wherewithal to see it through. I’d need your documentation to make my case to their counsel. I have a feeling they’ll be very eager to settle when they hear what we have.”

  “Settle. What would that entail?”

  “A severance package for you that includes two years’ salary, a cash bonus to be determined and all your benefits continued until you accept a new position. Something like that.”

  “What about him? What happens to him?”

  “We could suggest they part company with him.”

  “They won’t. He brings in too much money for them.”

  “They will if we make that a condition of the settlement.”

  “You really think they’d go for it?”

  “If I had to guess, their goal would be to avoid a public lawsuit that’d bring negative publicity to their company. Getting rid of him would be a lesser price to pay in the grand scheme of things.”

  “Wow. It never occurred to me that I might be able to do something like this.”

  “You suffered sexual harassment in a hostile work environment that your company’s HR officials were aware of and ignored. That’s a lawsuit looking for a place to happen, but only if you want to go that route.”

  Vanessa thought about Izzy showing up at the home of the man who’d hassled her and how brave she’d been. “Yes, I think I want to do it.”

  Grayson stood, went to his file cabinet and withdrew a packet of paper that he handed to her. “My standard retention letter. If you give me a dollar and sign that, I’ll be officially retained to represent you.”

  “I need to give you more than a dollar!”

  “I’d do this for free, Ness. The dollar is a formality.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. No one messes with my sister and gets away with it.”

  Moved by his support, she flipped to the last page of the document and signed her name. She didn’t need to read it to know she was getting the best possible attorney to represent her. Then she fished a dollar out of her wallet and handed it over with the document.

  “Next, I need the documentation of everything that happened.”

  Firing up her cell phone, which was mostly useless in Butler, she found the list of events she’d begun keeping more than a year ago in her Notes app. “What’s the Wi-Fi info?”

  After he gave her the log-in and password, she signed in and emailed the list to him.

  His laptop chimed to indicate a new message.

  Vanessa watched as he scrolled through the information, his eyes widening several times at the sheer outrageousness of it.

  “I’m so sorry you had to deal with this, Ness,” he said softly. “I’d bet anything you’re not the first woman to be hassled by this guy.”

  “I’m sure I’m not. I think there’re others in the company, but they keep quiet because they need the job. I mean, I needed it, too, but not that badly.”

  “I’ll reach out to their counsel tomorrow and see what we can do for you.”

  “Thank you so much, Gray. I appreciate this more than you’ll ever know.”

  “I’m very happy to take care of this for you, but I wish you’d told me about it a long time ago.”

  “I thought I was handling it, you know?”

  “Yeah,” he said, sighing. “I get it.”

  “I’ll let you get back to your family.”

  Gray stood up, came around the desk and reached a hand out to her.

  Vanessa took it and stood.

  He hugged her. “You’re my family, too. You always will be.”

  She held on tight to the older brother who had been a rock for her and their other siblings. “Thank you for always being there for us.”

  “That’s my job as the oldest and wisest.”

  “Haha, you had to ruin it.”

  “That’s also my job,” he said, releasing her. “Did you see Iz today?”

  “I did. She’s still black and blue, but seems to be moving around a little better than she was. When I left, she was waiting for Dad to show up.”

  “Ugh. She told me she’d heard from him.”

  “I guess he just wants to see that she’s okay.”

  “Now that he has my bone marrow, I wish he’d go away and leave us all alone.”

  “Me, too.”

  He opened the French doors and gestured for her to lead the way to the kitchen. “I’ll check on Iz later to see what happened with him.”

  “I’m sure she handled him just fine.”

  “Probably, but seeing him is still tough, even after all this time.”

  “I hate that he’s still upsetting us.”

  “I know. It’s such bullshit.”

  When they stepped into the kitchen, Vanessa immediately noticed Emma had arrived with Troy Kennedy, who smiled widely when he saw Vanessa.

  “We meet again,” he said.

  “So it seems.”

  “I heard you guys met at Izzy’s, and you’re going skiing,” Emma said as she accepted a kiss from Grayson.

  Troy had told Emma about meeting her. What did that mean? And why did she care? The man was incredibly handsome, but he probably knew it.

  “Did you tell him you’re not much of a skier?” Grayson asked Vanessa.

  “I didn’t have the heart to tell him.”

  “She’s never progressed much past the bunny slope, despite significant effort on the part of many siblings and cousins.”

  “I suck at it,” Vanessa said bluntly.

  “Then we’ll do something else,” Troy said, laser-focused on her.

  Vanessa felt her face get warm. “Sure. Anything is better than skiing.”

  “You should’ve said so.”

  “But you’re here to ski.”

  “I’m here to see friends and escape work for a few days. I don’t care what I do as long as it doesn’t involve a computer or a deposition.”

  “I hear that,” Gray said. “I used to be chained to that crap.” He put his arm around Emma, who snuggled into his embrace. “Everything is so much better now.”

  “I see that,” Troy said. “You’re all happier than pigs in shit up here in the boonies.”

  “Um, Mr. Troy,” Simone said. “‘Shit’ is a swear word, so you owe me a dollar.”

  “You didn’t have to repeat the word, madam,” Emma said to her daughter.

  Troy got out his wallet and retrieved a five-dollar bill that he handed over to Simone. “That’s a down payment on four more swears. I’m out of the habit of being around kids since you moved away and left me, so I have a feeling I’m going to slip up again before the week is out.”

  “I’ll start a tab for you,” Simone said.

  “How does she know about starting tabs?” Troy asked Emma.

  “She knows everything. It’s kinda scary, actually.”

  “My baby is the smartest girl in the history of smart girls,” Ray said, earning a warm smile from his granddaughter.

  “Thanks, Pop.”

  “I need to get going,” Ray said as he stood. “Hannah and I are going out to dinner.”

  “Where’re you going?” Emma asked her father.

  “Not sure yet. We like to get in the truck and drive until we find something interesting.”

  That sounded lovely to Vanessa. “Hey, Ray?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “You make her really happy, which she very much deserves. Thank you for that.”

  “Aw, thank you, honey. I love being with her, and making her happy is my only goal.”

  “We appreciate it,” Vanessa said, glancing at Gray.

  “We sure do,” her brother said.

  “Means the world to us that you kids approve,” Ray said gruffly.

  “We definitely approve,” Vanessa said.

  “We do, too, Dad,” Emma said. “It’s wonderful to see two people who’ve been through a lot having this marvelous second chance with each other.”

  “As long as we’re putting it all out there, I may as well tell you that you can rent out your garage apartment starting in February.”

  “And where will you be going, young man?” Emma asked in her sternest mom voice, hands on hips for effect.

  “Very funny. You know exactly where to find me.”

  “I’ll take the apartment,” Vanessa said on an impulse. “If you don’t mind having me underfoot.”

  “We’d love that,” Emma said. “Consider it yours.”

  She had no idea what she was going to do for work, but she’d figure something out in the next couple of weeks. All she knew for certain was that she didn’t want to go back to Boston. After more than a decade there, she’d had enough of city life. Her sublet apartment lease was up in April, and she’d been debating what she wanted to do since quitting her job.

  Hearing the apartment at Gray’s was opening up had sparked a decision, which was a huge relief.

  Ray hugged her, Emma and Simone, shook hands with Gray and Troy and said his goodbyes.

  “I love that he and your mom are moving in together,” Emma said to Gray. “Don’t you?”

  “Yes, it’s great, and merely a formality since he’s practically living there already.”

  “What is it about this place that has people falling in love left and right?” Troy asked. “Everyone I know who’s come up here has found true love.”

  “Not me,” Simone said.

  “Hahaha.” Troy patted her curly red head. “Your day is coming, sweetheart. I have no doubt about that.”

  “All the boys in my class are stupid,” Simone said.

  “That’s why you have to look at slightly older men,” Troy advised. “You need someone more mature, and since boys mature way slower than girls, maybe check out the ninth-grade boys.”

  “Troy!” Emma said. “She is not going to check out high school boys. She’s in fifth grade!”

  “I’m just saying… That would be her sweet spot. She’s probably too mature for them, too.”

  As Emma glared at him, Vanessa rocked with silent laughter.

  “I’ll take that under consideration,” Simone said.

  “You will not,” Grayson said. “I’ll bring out my shotgun for any boy who dares show his face around here.”

  “Oh, please,” Simone said. “You will not. You’d get disbarred.”

  “I’ll risk it to keep the boys away from my girl.”

  “Grow up, Gray,” Simone said. “I’m going to date eventually, so you’d better prepare yourself.”

  “I can’t,” Gray said, adding to Emma, “Make her stop saying these things to me.”

  While Emma wrapped her arms around Grayson, she said, “Simone, stop upsetting your dad this way.”

  Laughter exploded out of Vanessa. She laughed so hard, she couldn’t breathe. “I love you so much, Simone. You remind me of me and our other sisters telling Grayson to stop glaring at the boys who came to the house. I can give you some pointers for how to work around him when the time comes.”

  “Good to know,” Simone said. “I think he’s going to be a problem.”

  “You think right,” Gray said.

  “Can you guys stay for dinner?” Emma asked Vanessa and Troy. “I made a ton of chicken chili, although I’ll warn you it’s a new recipe, so I have no idea how it came out.”

  “I took a little sample earlier,” Gray said. “It’s awesome.”

  “Well, there you have it,” Emma said. “Can you stay?”

  “If you’re sure it’s no problem, I’d love to,” Vanessa said.

  “What she said,” Troy said, using his thumb to point to Vanessa.

  “Excellent,” Emma said. “It’s a party!”

  Chapter Nine

  “You weren’t just a star to me. You were my whole damn sky.” —Unknown

  Izzy forced herself to put on a happy face for Cabot, Mia and Wade during dinner, but she felt sick on the inside over the visit with her father. More than anything, she hated that he could still make her feel like shit all these years later. That was like his superpower or something, making his kids feel like shit every time they saw him or had contact with him.

  “What do you think, Izzy?” Mia asked.

  “I’m sorry,” Izzy said. “What did you say?”

  “I said Dad ought to move to Vermont so he can live near us.”

  “He said something about getting a place up here,” Izzy said, “but I told him he can use my house as his Vermont base.”

  “That sounds promising.” Mia’s gaze darted between her and Cabot. “Anything you want to tell your daughter, Pops?”

  Cabot smiled as he held out a hand to Izzy.

  She put her right hand in his, sighing when he curled his fingers around hers.

  “It seems I’ve got myself a girlfriend,” Cabot said.

  Mia squealed as she clapped and cheered. “I told you!” she said to her husband. “Now pay up!”

  “You bet on whether we were together?” Cabot asked.

  “Yep, and he lost. He said he thought you were ‘just friends.’ I said it was more than that, and I was right!”

  “And she loves to be right,” Wade said, amused by his wife. “It’s her favorite thing.”