Page 3 of Conail

"You're up early."

"I usually am. Is dad okay?"

"Why? Have you heard differently? Last time I checked, he was fine."

"He sounded weird. I want to swing by for a visit soon."

His brows creased in an annoyed frown. "You're my goddamn sister and still part of the family. Far as I know, family don't drop in for 'visits'."

"I did not call this early to start an argument."

His mouth thinned. "Then you should have thought of that before you talked about 'visiting'."

"Look, I am sorry I offended you--"

"You offend me by staying away. Christ Jesus, Yaz! You can work anywhere. You said so yourself." Blowing out a breath and hanging onto his temper by force, he sighed. "Dad is fine. I left him in the kitchen harassing mama. Trying to persuade her to make him pecan pancakes."

"Colin?"

"What?"

"I'm trying."

"Aren't we all? See you soon." Hanging up the phone, he considered his morning shot to hell.

Chapter 2

Eleanor considered herself to be a fair woman. More than fair. She had come from a middle-class family -- mother a doctor and father a lawyer and they had been good people; God bless their souls. And she had fallen in love with Derek McLaughlin. Just simply melted at one look at the man. She never thought he would look at her twice. The charming and charismatic Irish man with the auburn hair and green eyes had melted her very bones.

She had given him a run for his money. Oh yes. Had pretended that she wasn't interested, but he was having none of it. He had pursued her. Managed to quiet her fears at being with a man of his caliber and rushed her into matrimony.

Now forty years later, she had lost him. To an accident in his little Cessna plane. One minute he was kissing her goodbye and the next he was gone. She was sixty-one and had to live without the love of her life. But they had made a strong, strapping son, all of six feet three, a combination of both of them. She smoothed down her dark brown hair and noticed the new wrinkles at the sides of her eyes.

She was not a vain woman, or so she told herself. She was not looking for love. She had found the one good thing and now it was gone. But she still had her son -- a son she loved with all her heart. And he was hurting. Dinner had been cut short because he said he had business to attend to. But she had seen the strain, the bloodshot eyes and felt her heart bleeding as if from a thousand cuts. She was the one who had persuaded him to attend the function -- one of hers. Trying to raise money for autism. And there they were. Both of them looking so pleased with themselves. Oh, she had wanted to scratch the woman's eyes out and watch her bleed.

She had seen the way Conail bolstered himself, braced his shoulders and that cold unyielding look had came over his handsome face. But she had also seen the slash of pain before he masked it.

He had stayed and that was the stubborn Irish pride in him. Even though she had urged him to let them leave, he had shrugged that aside and actually greeted the couple with cool civility. It had been gratifying to see the longing look on Yvette's face and the guilt on Mark's. She had cut both of them off cold when they greeted her and had wanted to crush them like bugs. She could. The influence she wielded because of their status and money could have allowed her to give them a very hard time, but that would have given them power.

And her son was suffering. She hated the woman for putting him through it. But finally, he was listening to her and reluctantly thinking about surrogacy. She had just the person in mind. Her best friend's daughter. She had told Maeve that she wanted a meeting, and it would be at the farmhouse. The sooner the better. It would be a mutual agreement. She knew they needed money to inject into that farm of theirs and this would be perfect.

Taking a deep breath, she picked up the framed photo of a laughing couple on their wedding day in the thriving Irish pub in Dublin. Tears burned the back of her eyes and had her sniffing them back. Putting away the photo, she rose, determined to try and find a way to make her son start living again.

*****

It wasn't going well. Yasmine stared at the illustration in frustration. Someone else would have made the comment that it was beautiful. The clash of colors, the way she had made the animals look as if they were running off into the forest, chasing each other. But she knew her standards and realized that it was crap. The colors were wrong. Everything was wrong. Pushing away from her desk, she rose to go to the window, a frown etched on her brow. She knew what the problem was.

She was worried and gripped with guilt. Ever since she spoke to Colin or even before that, she had felt the restlessness and guilt crowding her. It did not matter that she assisted whenever she could. She played her part, of course, but it was not enough. She had herself to think about, didn't she? Yes, her career as an illustrator was finally paying off. She was one of the premiers in the field. Her designs were good, and the work was steady. But she had expenses as well. The tiny apartment cost an arm and a leg -- that's New York for you, but it's close to everywhere. The library, the publishing house, the theaters and museums as well as the galleries. And takeout was twenty-four/seven. She grimaced as she imagined what her mother would say to that.

She did not cook, not that she couldn't. You just could not grow up on the farm with a mother like hers and not learn to navigate your way in the kitchen. She had been making pastries and preparing meals since she was seven -- her brother as well. Her mother did not know the meaning of double standards.

"You have to know what you're putting inside your mouth," she always said. So, they had been taught by the best. Maeve Smith's cooking was the talk of the town.

But Yasmine's kitchen with its tiny space and sterile yellow and white design was an area for making coffee and preparing a quick sandwich. Her oven was storage for pots and pans shenever used. It's good that her family had never visited and the pain of that was an echo inside her chest.

But she rarely went back home too. And had been telling herself that she was busy. And she was. The work had picked up and she sometimes went for days without leaving her apartment. She blinked at the brilliant sunlight streaming through the thin green curtains. Summer was approaching and very soon, the heat would be brutal. They were losing the farm. The home she had been brought up on would be sold off piece by piece. She had seen the report. The drought had done them in. If something was not done soon -- her mind shied away from all of it. She had left when she turned eighteen, going to art school, because she had this grand idea she wanted to be an artist. She wanted to be the next Jackson Colby and make her mark on the art world. Oh, how naive she had been! She would get away from the farm, the small town where nothing happened.

And make her mark. She would become famous and breeze back home with loads of money to lavish on her family. Now she was thirty-two. Her career had finally taken off after years of struggles, where -- she shook her head and felt the shame. Where her mother had slipped her money every month because somehow she sensed the struggle her daughter had been going through.

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