Coming Home to Paradise (Sisters in Paradise #3)

Chapter 1

Nine whole days of FREEDOM.

Bo kept repeating five beautiful words to herself— nine whole days of freedom —when she awoke to the smell of bacon and coffee floating up the stairs and into her bedroom. Tomorrow morning it would be the aroma of cinnamon that wafted up to her bedroom. Lots of things changed with time, but not her mother’s special Thanksgiving and Christmas Day breakfast sweet rolls.

People changed. She thought of her youngest sister, Endora, and her messy breakup a couple of years before. She had always been such an outgoing person, and after she found out her fiancé and best friend were sleeping together, she went into a deep depression. Now she was engaged to the local preacher and had turned her life right back around.

Dreams change. That brought on a sigh when Bo remembered the dream she chased for ten years, and finally gave up a few months ago. She had gone to Nashville right out of high school and thought she would be the next big country star. She found out really quickly that she wasn’t the only young girl in Tennessee who wanted to sing for a living. A decade later, she finally gave up and came back to Spanish Fort and now helped her great-aunt out with her advice blog and speed-dating events business.

“What are you thinking about?” Her twin sister, Rae, peeked into her bedroom. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt from the police department, where she’d worked in Boise City, Oklahoma, for several years.

Bo sat up and inhaled deeply. “I was thinking about how things change. We can always depend on Mama’s cinnamon rolls on Thanksgiving Day. That never changes.”

Rae sat down on the edge of the bed. “What has changed?”

“All seven of us sisters,” Bo answered.

“Amen to all of that,” Rae said, “but it seems strange to have just three of us living here. Every time I’ve been home for the holidays, all the bedrooms were full.”

“You’ve only been here a week,” Bo told her. “It took me at least a month to get used to not having Ursula, Tertia, Ophelia, and Luna in their bedrooms.”

“But we do have Aunt Bernie!” Rae giggled.

“Don’t remind me,” Bo groaned. “Don’t get me wrong. I love our great-aunt, and she was quick to give me a job when I came home, dragging my tail behind me.”

“Don’t say that!” Rae scolded.

“It’s the truth,” Bo said with a long sigh as she threw back the covers and stood up. “All six of my sisters fulfilled their dreams. If I’d been fishing for my supper, I would have gone hungry. I didn’t even get a nibble of a singing contract the whole ten years I was in Nashville.”

“Crap on a cracker!” Rae fussed.

Bo whipped around and stared at her sister. “What brought on that Sunday school cussin’?”

“What you said,” Rae answered. “Think about the dream we each had and look where we are now. We all couldn’t wait to get away from the Paradise. Now, one by one—well, Luna and Endora came back at the same time, so that was two—we are coming home to Spanish Fort. Seems to me like we just made a big old circle.”

Bo slipped a hot-pink robe over her red pajama pants and matching shirt. “Kind of like that Rascal Flatts song about God blessing the broken road.”

“Yep, only this isn’t a boy-comes-home-to-girl song,” Rae said with a nod. “It’s a girl…” She paused.

“It’s seven girls coming home to find happiness,” Bo finished for her. “And the last two—that’s me and you…”

Rae laid a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Are going to have to run from Aunt Bernie’s matchmaking.”

“You got that right.” Bo nodded. “I hate to say it, but I’m glad she’s going to be gone for a few days. Freedom from her trying to hook me up with every eligible bachelor in Montague County sounds like heaven right now. You might as well wipe that smile off your face. As soon as she gets back, she will start her campaign to find you a husband.”

“I figure I’ve got a few weeks.” Rae gave her sister a gentle push toward the door. “She’s still scrounging up every available male in a forty-mile radius for you right now.”

Bo stepped out into the hallway and got an even stronger whiff of cinnamon. “Not every single one. She’s already warned me that I cannot even look crossways at the bartender at Whiskey Bent. She found out that he doesn’t stay in one spot more than a few months or a year at the most.”

“Isn’t his name Maverick?” Rae asked.

“Yep,” Bo answered. “What kind of guy comes to mind when you say Maverick Gibson ?”

“Bibbed overalls, a dip of tobacco and gray hair,” Rae said with a giggle. “How about you?”

“Not what you said.” Bo started down the stairs. “That sounds a lot like Henry Marshall, who has that orchard and truck farm south of town. I imagine him being middle-aged, round-faced, and with a three-day-old beard. I used to wonder how some men were always somewhere in between a clean shave and a real beard.”

“Then you had a relationship with a guy who put a guard thing on his electric razor that gave him that sexy look, right?” Rae followed her to the bottom of the stairs.

“I don’t kiss and tell”—Bo stopped in the middle of the foyer—“but a one-night stand does not a relationship make. Tell me all about how you found out how men could do that.”

Rae’s crystal-blue eyes twinkled. “I read it in a magazine.”

“Yeah, right,” Bo said. “And FYI, I’m going to steer Aunt Bernie toward you. I’ll tell her that I always wanted to be the last one to get married so I could have the biggest wedding of all seven of us.”

“You are a rat from hell,” Rae snapped.

“Yep, and I will own it,” Bo giggled and took a step forward. “Since I work for Aunt Bernie, I can always tell her what kind of man you prefer. Do you want tall, dark, and handsome? Policeman or rancher? Cowboy or combat boots? Sensitive or alpha male?”

Rae pushed her into the kitchen. “Mama, Bo is picking on me.”

Their mother, Mary Jane, and stepfather, Joe Clay, both looked up from the table at the same time. A little bit of salt had sprouted in their dark hair for both of them, and crow’s-feet had showed up around their eyes, but they would always be young to Bo—even if they were in their late fifties.

“Do you both want to have dry toast for breakfast instead of the spread over there on the bar?” Mary Jane teased.

“Or worse yet, have to go stand in the corner?” Joe Clay’s grin left no doubt that he was joking.

“We’ll be nice,” Bo answered, “but for the record, Rae started it.”

***

The hour hand on the old alarm clock that had sat on Rae’s bedside table since she was a little girl moved slowly to the eleven o’clock position. Two weeks ago, she was getting into her squad car and making her first rounds for her shift. Before she left, her partner had warned that leaving the graveyard shift and going back to a normal sleep pattern would take a severe adjustment. He had been right. She was still wide-awake at this time of the night and got sleepy sometime around eight in the morning.

She wandered out onto the balcony that was wrapped around three sides of the house and figured out quickly that it was too cold to sit out there in nothing but a thin nightshirt. She went inside and wrapped a quilt around her shoulders, then went back outside, closing the French doors behind her, and sat down in the ladder-back chair. Three more were lined up down the length of the balcony, and there were four on the other side of the house.

A brisk wind made eerie music when it rattled the bare limbs in the pecan trees around the house. Rae scooted her chair back against the wall of the balcony just off her bedroom. She had thought the balcony was the best thing about the Paradise when Mary Jane moved the girls to Spanish Fort.

The old brothel must have been built on a solid foundation because it had stood like the last silent sentinel of the cattle-run days for a century and a half now. Twenty years ago, it had been put up for sale, and Mary Jane learned about it from a friend. The house and the location were exactly what she wanted, so she moved her girls without even taking them to see the place first.

“And the older sisters threw a pure old southern hissy fit because there was only one electrical plug-in their bedrooms.” She giggled at the memory.

That vision in her mind faded and another image appeared. Mary Jane had hired Joe Clay to remodel the whole place—room and board included and a bonus if he finished the job by Christmas. He moved in before he knew he would be living in a house with seven bickering and conniving little girls.

The sound of a door opening next to her brought her back to reality, but only for a few seconds when a visual popped into her head of all seven of the sisters spending time on the balcony in times past.

Bo came out of her room and dragged her chair over close to Rae’s. “This is a whole new ball game for us. It’s our first holiday to be home and not leave at the end of the weekend. Think we’ll have to fight the urge to pack our suitcases and get ready for the long trip home after church on Sunday?”

Rae shook her head. “Not me. I’m glad to be here, to have time with family and figure out what I want to do with my life from here on out.”

“You’ve got more options than I have. You can always go back to working for a police force or maybe for the sheriff’s department in Montague,” Bo suggested. “Or maybe you can put in your own private investigative business. Or even teach since you have that double degree. You covered your bases better than I did when it comes to getting a job.”

“Hey, now! You are still singing,” Rae argued.

“Playing the piano and singing in church doesn’t bring in money,” Bo said in a grumbling tone.

“But it makes Endora and Mama happy, so that counts for something,” Rae reminded her. “Aunt Bernie keeps you busy with her advice blog and the matchmaking events she’s getting into. At least you aren’t bored while you are trying to figure out your place in life.”

Bo slapped her on the arm. “Don’t say the word bored out loud. Mama can hear it from a mile away on a day when there’s not even a breeze to blow it to her ears.”

“I forgot,” Rae whispered.

Bo shivered. “I’ll never forget washing all the downstairs woodwork and washing down the entire porch.”

“Floor and walls both, and there were spiders in the corners,” Rae remembered.

“Took the two of us all weekend,” Bo said.

“We never said we were bored again,” Rae said with a chuckle. “And the others learned from our mistake.”

“What’s going on out here?” Endora asked. “Are y’all having a preholiday party without me?”

“We were just reminiscing. Come on out and join us,” Rae answered. “It’s late for you to be working on your next children’s book, isn’t it?”

Endora brought her chair over to join them. “I wasn’t working on that. I still have time before the deadline, and right now I’m concentrating on the Christmas program at the church. Seems like the holidays always bring out memories. What you thinking about?”

“The day when we first saw this place, and when Daddy first met us,” Rae answered.

The wind seemed to carry Bo’s and Endora’s giggles out across the land.

“I remember Mama promising us that our bedrooms would look different by Christmas,” Endora said. “Luna and I had always shared a room, and it took a long time for me to be able to sleep in my own room, even after it was remodeled and ready for me.”

“I loved the balcony,” Rae said. “I used to sneak out here late at night and look at the stars.”

“You always were the night owl,” Bo reminded her.

“Yep, and the graveyard shift these past few years has suited me well,” Rae admitted.

“How are you adjusting?” Endora asked.

“Slowly, but then—on a different level, and a very different situation—it took you more than a year to get your sea legs back under you and figure out things,” Rae reminded her.

“Yes, it did, and I have to admit when I found out my fiancé and my best friend were having an affair right under my nose, it knocked me for a loop and shattered my heart.” Endora pulled the hood of her jacket up over her head. “But Parker Martin has put all the pieces back together, and we are going to have a wonderful life together. I just wish March wasn’t so far away.”

“It will be a beautiful wedding”—Bo reached across the distance and patted her baby sister on the knee—“and we’re all here to help you plan it.”

“You’ve made new memories,” Rae said.

“Yes, I have, and Parker gets the credit,” Endora said. “I’m going inside. I’m freezing.”

“Me too,” Bo said. “Good night to y’all. Tomorrow is going to be crazy with all of us here, so we should get some sleep.”

“Thanksgiving is always crazy and so much fun,” Endora said and disappeared down the balcony.

“Think she’s really all right?” Rae asked.

“I believe she is,” Bo answered and closed the door to her room.

Rae wondered if she and her twin sister would be able to say that they were all right with their decisions to move back to Texas. Would another year bring happiness, or in her case, would she finally be able to adjust to a normal sleep pattern?

“Will Aunt Bernie succeed in her attempts to marry us off, so we’ll settle down somewhere in this county?” Rae muttered to herself.