The Marriage Maker. Christie Ridgway

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СКАЧАТЬ he said, his voice commanding her, always telling her how it was, what she must do. “Look what is yours.”

      “No.” She kept her gaze away from the limp body in his arms. It would be her sister Blanche, who had died after childbirth. It could only be Blanche, and Celeste refused to look at her. She couldn’t bear to see her sister’s vibrant fall of hair trailing through the stagnant, murky water. Just the thought made her heart stop, then disappear altogether.

      In the cavern of her chest, only pain remained, echoing over and over.

      “Look,” Jeremiah insisted.

      Fear again, with its high-pitched song. No. But then she obeyed, her gaze angling down, down, toward the dead body of—

      No! Celeste jerked up her head…

      …and jerked right out of the nightmare’s grasp.

      Lying against the soft sheets in her bedroom at Whitehorn’s Big Sky Bed & Break fast, Celeste tried to catch her breath as tears rolled down her cheeks. She wiped at them with her hands, then turned her face against the pillow. Still, the dream clutched at her.

      “Montana,” she whispered to herself, sitting up and lighting the white candle beside her bed. She’d left Louisiana with her husband after only a year, coming back to White horn and buying this house on the lake that with her sister Yvette she’d turned into the Big Sky Bed & Break fast. This was where her daughters were born and lived. Montana.

      Forget the dream. But despite the steady, bright flame of her candle, the emotions the dream always roiled up still lurked in the dark corners of the room. She shivered.

      And the past. The past lurked, too, hovering above her bed like a dark cloying canopy.

      Celeste threw off the covers. Though her clock said it was only 5:00 a.m., she wasn’t going to find any more sleep. Dressing in jeans, sweater and lambskin boots, Celeste told herself a cup of coffee would burn away any last traces of the bad dream.

      She quickly made up the bed, blew out her candle, then stepped into the hall, shutting her bedroom door firmly. Just as decisively, she shoved the memory of the dream to the back of her mind.

      She couldn’t help being a victim to her nights, but she refused to let her waking hours be tainted, too. Today she wouldn’t let the one emotion that always stayed with her after the nightmare—that one unnameable emotion—over shadow her every daytime hour.

      Celeste took the long route to the kitchen, walking through the public rooms of the B and B as if inspecting the intricate, natural-hued woodwork of the arts-and-crafts-style house could bring her quickly and fully into the present. Through the large living room windows she could see the last of the stars reflected in the glassy surface of Blue Mirror Lake. She stared out at the water, her hands absently stroking the Native-print blanket thrown over the back of one of the room’s rattan couches.

      After the years she’d spent along side the bayou in Louisiana, this house, overlooking the water of the small natural lake, had drawn her, and not just because it was a respectable distance from the controlling influence of her brother, Jeremiah Kincaid. She’d always been grateful to her late husband Tyler’s agreeing to return to Montana and to buy this property. He’d recognized that she’d needed something to call her own, especially when he travelled so often. And the house was a true gem. There were a few others scattered among the pines surrounding the lake—vacation places, all of them—and most newer than her three-story house. It had been an ideal location to raise a family, an ideal home for her and Yvette to turn into a ten-bedroom bed-and-break fast, and an ideal way to support them selves while they also raised Summer, the orphaned daughter of their sister Blanche.

      Blanche.

      Celeste shivered as that dream-born emotion she was trying to bury struggled to surface. She hurried away from it by hurrying out of the room, past two more rattan couches and over stuffed club chairs, through the massive dining room with its long mission-style table and heavily beamed ceiling.

      Letting herself think only of coffee, she swore she could almost smell it as she pushed the swinging door that led into the kitchen.

      Celeste blinked in the dazzling overhead light. The room was bright, there was coffee already brewed, and she wasn’t going to keep her insomnia a secret because it seemed another Monroe woman shared it.

      “Mama!” Celeste’s twenty-seven-year-old daughter Cleo looked up from the mug she’d been frowning at.

      “Sweetie, what’s wrong?” Celeste crossed the hardwood floor in the direction of the scarred oval table where Cleo was sitting. “You’re looking at that coffee as if it’s your worst enemy.”

      Cleo’s full lips raised in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “It is my coffee, after all, Mama, not Jasmine’s.”

      Well, her younger daughter was undoubtedly a master in the kitchen, but Celeste knew Cleo was just avoiding the real question. “C’mon, sweetie, this is your mother you’re talking to. You don’t usually have trouble sleeping.”

      Cleo’s eyebrows came together in concern. “No, it’s you that usually can’t get any rest. Another nightmare?”

      Celeste gestured with her hand as if to brush the subject away. She didn’t want to discuss it. “I’m asking what’s keeping you awake.”

      There was a long pause, then Cleo looked balefully back down at her coffee mug. “Bean sprouts. I’m worried about the day care center.”

      Celeste let the admission go for a moment and moved to the counter to pour herself some of Cleo’s less-than-stellar coffee. She was proud of her daughter’s success as the director of the day care center and knew that Cleo also took a lot of pride in what she did. The man she leased the building from had told Cleo last week he was going to sell the property as soon as possible. With her lease agreement up for renewal, Cleo had a legitimate worry that her business might not survive.

      “You haven’t found another possible site, honey?” Celeste added a dash of milk to her mug then held the hot ceramic against the knuckles of her left hand. Their deep arthritic ache was as unpleasantly familiar as the dream that brought it about.

      “Nothing,” Cleo said, shrugging. “And Gene came by again yesterday. He’s putting up a For Sale sign next week.”

      Celeste came forward to lay a hand on top of her daughter’s head. “Maybe he won’t find anyone interested in buying.”

      “Mmm.”

      Celeste’s eyes narrowed. If she had to guess, she would say that Cleo wasn’t thinking about Beansprouts or For Sale signs or anything to do with business. There was a sad, faraway but dreamy look in her daughter’s beautiful violet eyes. “This is about something else. Something besides Bean sprouts.”

      Cleo didn’t look up.

      Celeste’s heart squeezed, and she used her aching left hand to tilt up her daughter’s chin. “Oh, Cleo,” she said. “This isn’t about him, is it? He’s been gone three months, sweetie. You wouldn’t still be mooning over a man like Ethan Redford?”

      A new voice broke in. “Of course Cleo’s not mooning over Ethan, Mama. Cleo is much too sensible, much too practical to be letting a big shot, here-today-gone-tomorrow man like Ethan Redford СКАЧАТЬ