Page 7 of Welcome Home to Ivy Falls

My phone buzzed once more, this time a different number than my mother’s.

‘Hello, Gray,’ I answered.

‘Ford, you have to call Mom back. She’s absolutely blowing up my phone over today.’

‘Sorry. I needed some time to calm down after she totally blindsided me.’

‘Come on, Missy Flynn-Boyd is a cutie. Could it have hurt to trade some small talk at brunch? Have a mimosa or two with her?’

‘Gray,’ I sighed, tugging my hand through my wet hair. ‘It was wrong to take off, and I’m sorry, but Mom got me to the country club under false pretenses. She swore it was going to be family only, and then Missy shows up. She’s nice and all, but that wasn’t why I agreed to brunch.’

‘Believing Mom was your first mistake. Claudia Cannon Beloit Foster always has a plan.’

I groaned. ‘Why do she and Dad refuse to listen to me?’

‘Because they think they know better than you.’

‘In this case, they don’t. I mean, hell, I did what they asked for a while. I went to Vanderbilt for undergrad and medical school. I even did my residency a few miles away at Meharry. What else do they want from me?’

‘They want you to buy into a practice here. Get married and have babies so you’ll be chained to Harpeth Manor for life.’

‘What about you? Why isn’t she harassing your ass? You’re thirty-five.’

‘Mom’s given up on me. I’ve already told her I don’t want to get married. That I’m going to work at the bank, play golf on the weekends, and then retire to Lake Como and never come back to Tennessee. You’re her last hope, Obi-Ford Kenobi,’ he chuckled.

‘Not funny, Gray.’

An uneasy breath filtered through the phone. ‘Listen, I get it. Mom can be overbearing sometimes, but she means well. The accident last year shook her up, and she is unflinchingly focused on being a grandmother one day soon.’

‘That’s not happening. She needs to set her sights back on you.’

‘Nope. I enjoy being a bachelor way too much.’ The phone went muffled and then he said, ‘Gotta go. My tee time is up.’ He paused. ‘Let her cool off a bit and then call her, okay?’

I grumbled an agreement and let him go.

A knot tightened in the center of my chest. We’d been in port along the coast of Senegal when I was notified that my mother was in a car accident. I stayed in contact with my dad, who raged about some idiot texting and running a red light, and the surgeries needed to fix her shattered femur, tibia and fibula. Once it was over, Mom spent a couple of months recuperating. Before the incident, she’d been determined to get me back to Tennessee. After, she was like a dog focused on a steak sitting at the edge of a kitchen table. Her sights never veered from her one goal: getting me home for good. It was the only reason why I’d agreed to come home for six months.

I glanced at the sticky shoes sitting next to the couch. Since I was a child, I’d never fit the Harpeth Manor mold. I hated prep school. The starched uniforms and even stiffer personalities. It was like everyone knew what was expected of them. Get good grades. Go to an Ivy. Move back to the suffocating little burg, marry, procreate and add to the long line of old-money families. Maybe that made some people happy but it was never for me.

When I showed my parents my first contract for Humanity of the Seas it was like a bomb detonated in my father’s head. Without my permission, he’d already spoken to his country club friends about me joining one of their family practice clinics. On the day I had to leave, only our housekeeper said goodbye when I left for the airport.

Looking back at the contract on my laptop, I scrolled to the bottom of the document and added my signature. I’d made a promise to stay in Ivy Falls for a short time, but then I was going back to Senegal where I belonged.

Determined to ignore my phone, which was buzzing again, my thoughts veered back to the beautiful woman in the bookstore. I couldn’t help but wonder if she lived close by. She had to in this one-stoplight town.

I picked up my coffee-soaked clothes and dumped them into the washing machine. That scent of vanilla latte hit me again and I saw Piper’s panicked eyes. How my body flamed when she tried to dry me off.

No way. I wasn’t going there. But even as I turned the knob, the washer filling with a gurgle, my mind went back to the bookstore. I wasn’t sure I could stay away from it, especially now that I knew she worked there.