Page 16 of Three Little Wishes

“Hey, it’s not that bad,” she said, nudging him with her duffel bag. “I have a lot to pack, and I’m working.”

He lifted an eyebrow at the clothes escaping from her bag. “It took you twenty minutes to pack an overnight bag.”

“Sorry.” She winced, shoving the leg of her jeans and the sleeve of her blouse into the duffel. “I had to sort through my clothes, and then I got worried my landlord would come into check on things while I was away, and I tried tidying up a bit.” She closed the door behind them and locked it.

“Unless there’s an emergency, your landlord can’t enter your home without your consent, Willow.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, following him across the lawn to the car.

He held the car door open for her. “Positive. Did you not read your lease agreement?”

“Uh, no.” She thought better of telling him she didn’t have one.

Noah’s gaze roamed her face, and whatever he saw made him shake his head. “You don’t have a lease agreement.”

“It’s a small town. I’ve known my landlord since I was in grade school,” she said instead of lying outright or telling him he’d surmised correctly.

“So what, you shook hands on it?” He sighed. “Of course you did.” He closed her door and rounded the hood of the car.

Since he looked as if he planned on continuing the conversation when he got behind the wheel, she was relieved when his cell phone rang.

He looked at the screen, frowned, then connected the call. “Mrs. D, what’s the—no, I’m not driving. Mrs. D, just spit it out.” His face went blank as he listened to the woman on the other end.

From his blank expression, Willow wasn’t sure whether he was bored or angry, but he cleared it up when he said in a voice coated in ice, “No, I do not want to talk to her. I’ll deal with her when I get home.”

He ended the call, started the car, and pulled onto the road. Eyes straight ahead, he said, “You’re staying with me tonight. I’ll bring you to the hospital in the morning.”

If not for his ice-cold voice, Willow might’ve shouted, “Yippee!” She hadn’t been looking forward to spending the night sleeping on a chair at the hospital anyway.

“Okay,” she said slowly, afraid to anger him further. “And why am I staying with you?”

“To keep me from strangling my sister.”

Chapter Six

Riley Bennett sat on a leather couch in her brother Noah’s penthouse apartment in New York City, contemplating her summer wish list. Nowhere on her list did it say “Get picked up at the bus station by the cops.”

She should’ve known Noah would’ve canceled their mom’s credit card but she’d been hoping that, with all he’d had going on since their mom died, it would’ve slipped his mind.

Nothing slipped his mind. Nothing except her.

She’d heard from him ten times since she’d moved across the country to live with Billy, her father, in LA. She hadn’t wanted to move or to live with Billy, who’d been even worse than Noah about staying in touch. So she’d barely known the guy, and what she’d known she hadn’t really liked. And now that she’d been living with him and his new wife and their one-year-old twins for fifteen months, she pretty much hated him. If Billy’s reaction to her fake news last month that she was attending the six-week GSTEM camp at NYU was anything to go by, he felt the same way about her.

He couldn’t get rid of her fast enough. All he’d cared about was who was going to foot the bill for the camp. She’d lied and told him Noah was but that he’d have to pay for herflight. She’d planned on using her mother’s credit card to buy a bus ticket from New York to Sunshine Bay. She’d been confident her father wouldn’t call her brother. They didn’t get along, like at all.

Billy had married their mother when Noah was thirteen. Billy blamed him for their divorce. Riley figured he was probably right to. Noah was smart, crazy smart. She bet that Noah had seen through Billy right away and done everything he could to get rid of him.

If her father had bothered to check, he would’ve discovered Noah didn’t have a clue about the camp or that, with her grades, she wouldn’t have been eligible anyway. With the move and everything, she’d missed a semester of school. She was starting tenth grade at a new school in the fall, something she didn’t want to think about. She hadn’t told anyone how nervous she was. Who would she tell anyway? It wasn’t as if she had friends in LA, and all her father and his new wife cared about was the twins. Whatever. She didn’t want to be stuck with them for the summer anyway.

She glanced at the wish list on her iPad. She’d made it after her father told her he wasn’t going to put up with her moping around all summer with her nose stuck in a book and that she had to pull her weight around the house and help out with the twins. She missed her mom every day but she’d missed her even more when he’d said that to her. She needed to feel close to her mom again, and there was only one place she could think of where she would.

It wasn’t the brownstone in New York where she’d lived her entire life. Her brother had sold it in January. Nearly everything that meant something to Riley and her mom had been sold in the estate sale. She’d been so mad at Noah when she’dfound out what he’d done that she’d yelled at him, and no one yelled at her brother, even her mom. It was the first time she remembered Noah ever being angry, like really angry.

But he hadn’t been angry at her. He’d been angry at Billy. Her father had told Noah that he didn’t want her mom’s stuff cluttering up his house and that Riley didn’t want to be reminded of her mom and to go ahead and sell everything. He’d wanted the money from the sale, though.

It always came down to the money with him. As her legal guardian, Billy got an allowance—a generous one—from her trust fund to raise her. She didn’t know what her mother had been thinking leaving her with him. Then again, it wasn’t as if Riley could live on her own no matter how much she would’ve liked to. And it wasn’t as if her single, workaholic brother had wanted her.

She glanced around Noah’s apartment. It looked pretty much the same as his office—a lot of dark wood and heavy leather furniture—only with more rooms. There weren’t any of her mom’s things or any family photos or mementos that she could see. Then again, she hadn’t snooped. Maybe he had some in his bedroom or his study. Except she kind of doubted it. He wasn’t a sentimental guy. She had a few memories of being at his penthouse but Noah had mostly come to the brownstone for holiday dinners and such.

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