pushed at his already tousled hair. “We’re all pretty stressed about Gregory....”
Brynn waved her hands to stop the flow of words. “Please don’t apologize.” She didn’t think she could stand any more guilt. At this rate she’d be under tons of the uncomfortable emotion soon. “I’m afraid I’ve made an already difficult situation worse by being here. I’ll leave on the next shuttle to the city.”
“I won’t hear of it!” Ruth declared in a rapidly rising voice.
“Hear of what?” her husband questioned as he rejoined them, his face pale, his breathing uneven.
“Brynn’s talking of leaving.”
“We won’t hear of it,” Frank declared, his voice still weak, but his tone filled with conviction. “We’ve barely gotten you here. You can’t leave.”
“Leave?” Heather questioned, bending to pet Lancelot as she, too. joined them. “Who’s leaving?”
“Brynn says she is,” Ruth replied, clearly agitated.
“But why, Brynn?” Heather asked, turning large, hopeful eyes on her. “Don’t you like it here?”
“It’s not that.... It’s just that I’m making things worse for your family and—”
“Of course you’re not!” Ruth contradicted her. “Your being here makes things easier.” She reached out to enfold Brynn’s hand. “We have a link to Gregory through you. And that’s very precious to us.”
And very bogus , Brynn wanted to add. “But I don’t want to trouble you. This isn’t a good time for guests—”
“Number one, you’re not a guest, you’re family,” Frank interrupted. “Number two. You keep forgetting our business is guests. Wouldn’t have a business without them. So stop worrying.”
She’d barely gotten here and she was already sinking fast. There were simply too many things she didn’t know, couldn’t know about Gregory and his family.
She nearly thumped the side of her head. But you’d think she could remember they were at a ski resort since the mammoth buildings surrounded her, not to mention the ski lifts dotting the mountainsides. Feeling as she often did when lost in her daydreams, Brynn wished she wasn’t always one step out of pace.
Heather picked up Bossy’s cage. “I’ll take this in and show you to your room. Mom picked out the best one for you this morning.”
Ruth had been very sure of her persuasive powers, Brynn acknowledged silently. “Thank you. I wouldn’t mind freshening up.”
Matt grasped her suitcases, looking skeptically at the dog and cat.
“They’ll follow,” Brynn told him. “They’re not used to being outside and I’m afraid they’d get hopelessly lost.”
“We’re used to dogs at the resort,” Matt replied, not mentioning the cat.
The omission worried her. “Snookems won’t get into anything. She doesn’t have much sight left, so she sticks pretty close.”
“Just what I wanted to hear,” he muttered.
“I knew I shouldn’t have come with the pets and all—”
“Don’t start that again,” Matt warned. “You don’t want to see Act Two if you get Mother stirred up.”
“He’s right,” Heather agreed tactlessly. “Mom’ll come unglued.”
“And the meltdown’s not always pleasant,” Matt added as they left the stone floor of the spacious lobby and ascended the stairs. “She’s on the edge already. Won’t take much to push her over.”
Brynn bit down on her lower lip, considering. The MacKenzies were lovely people and she didn’t want to contribute to Ruth’s breakdown. Still, when they discovered the truth, the meltdown would be on a nuclear scale. Obviously the best plan was to make her stay brief, leave behind good feelings, and escape before Gregory returned. And then when he did come back and discovered how noble she’d been, he’d be grateful. Grateful and more, because his eyes would finally be opened. He would see her as she really was, rather than—
“This is your room,” Matt told her, shouldering open the door.
Brynn shook off her daydreams and