Chapter One The summer of hell was just getting started. And Samantha Marconi was already dreading it. "You'd think I could at least have some coffee," she muttered grimly as she glared into her pitiful substitute for a morning beverage. Tea. What was the point? Without real caffeine, how could she be expected to face what was coming? Outside the cluttered but clean kitchen of the Marconi family home, a summer storm raged. Tiny fists of rain battered the windows and raced down the gutters. Sam shivered. Symbols of foreboding crouched in every corner of the room like medieval gargoyles waiting for the opportunity to pounce. Anyone with half a brain could see that the cards had been stacked against them. The wrath of the gods was about to fall. The boom was lowering. As if nature were determined to prove her right, the trees were whipped by a wind that drove in off the ocean and slapped a loose shutter against the side of the house. Have to fix that. She jotted it down on the mental list of notes she was constantly updating. Of course, she'd made the same mental note during the last storm, but that wasn't really important at the moment. What was important was that she was the only member of the Marconi Construction Company who'd bothered to show up for the meeting. She took another swig of tea, and made a face at the taste just as the back door flew open. Sam jumped as the doorknob slammed into the permanent notch in the wall that had been carved by years of Marconi girls flinging that door open with enthusiasm. A tall woman dressed in a fire-engine-red rain slicker stood framed in the open doorway. Her blue eyes danced and a smile curved her wide mouth. Rain rushed in around her as if it had been perched on the porch waiting for a chance to sneak inside. "Shut the door." Sam inched her chair away from the fingers of wetness reaching for her. "Hi to you, too." Under the big table, Papa's huge golden retriever, Bear, whined and thumped his tail against the floor in greeting. Sam was feeling less enthusiastic. She tossed a quick look over at her younger sister and snarled. "Don't push me, Mike. I haven't had coffee. Where were you?" Michaela Marconi grinned and lifted a cardboard tray high, as if she were offering up her firstborn child to the gods. "Getting supplies. Crap, you're still miserable in the morning." Sam's gaze fixed on that tray and the three tall cups nestled within. Her nose twitched, blood pumped, and something close to awareness skittered inside. "If that's coffee, I'll consider letting you live." "Better than coffee." Mike's blond eyebrows lifted for emphasis. "Lattes. From Stevie's." "There is a God and She loves me." Sam sighed dreamily. Stevie Ryan Candellano, the mistress of the coffee bean, made perhaps the best latte in central California. Here in Chandler, Stevie's shop, The Leaf and Bean, was a gathering place for the locals and a mecca for customers willing to drive in from Carmel and Monterey just for a taste of one of her cinnamon rolls. The woman was a wizard in the kitchen, give her an espresso machine and Stevie could light up your world like nobody else. "Muffins, too?" Sam shoved her hated cup of tea aside and made a grab for the closest coffee cup just as soon as Mike set it on the table. "Of course." Mike shucked the rain slicker, shook it once, flinging droplets of icy water in every conceivable direction, then hung it on a hook by the door. Her blond hair was braided and lay in a single thick rope across her right shoulder. Her black T-shirt was stamped MARCONI CONSTRUCTION and the letters were faded. Her jeans were worn and faded, too, and her work boots looked as though she'd been kicking ass for generations. Plopping one hand on her hip, she said, "Cinnamon streusel and those blueberry ones with the crunchies on top. And," she added, reaching into the bag, "a plain biscotti for Bear." She tossed it under the table and grinned at the eager crunching sounds. "You may live," Sam muttered, taking her first sip and letting the magic slide deep inside her. "Gee, thanks." Taking a seat in her traditional spot at the wide kitchen table, Mike grabbed her own cup of coffee and shook her head. "I'm so glad you moved back in just to make my life a carnival." Sam was the first to admit that it felt a little weird to be living in her father's house again. After all, she'd been out on her own for five years. But while her new house was being tented for termites and having its scarred floor sanded and varnished, here she sat. Still, it could have been worse. At least the Marconi "mansion" was here, as always, just waiting to be home again. The pale lemon-yellow walls of the kitchen were determinedly cheerful and most of the appliances were as old as Sam was. Despite its ragged-around-the-edges appearance though, it was an inviting house. A place that welcomed you in, then surrounded you with the good kind of vibes that attached themselves to homes where love lived. She'd grown up here. The middle daughter of three. She'd fought with her sisters, sneaked out of her room to go to parties and been grounded when she was caught. She'd laughed and cried and always known that this place . . . this one spot in the universe . . . was where she would always be welcomed. Temporarily living at home wasn't too bad. Of course, living with Mike again was a different story. "Quiet," Sam said. "I'll need a minute, here." She closed her eyes and took another sip, feeling every cell in her body slowly shudder and wake itself. Okay, maybe hell wouldn't be so bad after all. She mentally sent all the little forebodings of disaster into hibernation and tried to focus on her little sister. Mike continued to mutter to herself, but otherwise kept quiet. It was a comfortable thing, Sam thought. The crashing storm outside, the familiar warmth of the old kitchen surrounding her, and a hot cup of coffee cupped between her palms. What more could anyone want? "Good." Another voice growled from the doorway leading to the living room. "You're both here." Sam sighed. Solitude would be good. "You're the late one," Mike pointed out, already tearing the crunchy top off one of the blueberry muffins. Josefina Marconi tossed her head, sending a dark brown ponytail swinging back over her shoulder. Her T-shirt was bright red, also stamped MARCONI CONSTRUCTION, but naturally, on Jo's shirt, the lettering was crisp and neat. As were her jeans. Dark blue denim that somehow or other Jo managed to keep clean despite the amount of work she did. Her work boots looked as though they'd been polished--and probably had been. Jo was the organized one. The one to whom lists were foreplay and a good filing system was damn near a sexual experience. Sam shook her head. She herself fell somewhere between the two women--and not just in the birth order. Not as neat as Jo, nor as disorganized as Mike, Sam was the happy medium. At twenty-seven, she was the peacemaker, the one who jumped into the middle of any raging Marconi storm and spilled oil on churning water. The Marconi girls never changed. And, Sam told herself as she half-listened to Mike giving Jo a hard time, there was a familiar comfort in that. This was her place in the universe. The house where she was raised, here, in Chandler, California, would always be home. Chandler was small enough to be cozy but big enough to avoid the claustrophobic atmosphere some small towns had that choked the life out of their citizens. Chandler sat smack in the middle of California. Bordered on one side by the ocean and on the other by a stand of trees thick enough to actually be called a forest, it had the best of both worlds. The sea breeze drifted through town, easing the hottest days of summer, and the smell of the pines at Christmastime gave you the feeling of being trapped in a Currier & Ives lithograph. Chandler was Mayberryesque. Heaven knew she'd heard enough of the tourists muttering just that to be aware of it. But it was more than that, too. The town had started generations ago as a cluster of houses springing up along the coast road. People had lived here and gone to work at the canneries, on the fishing boats, or at the wineries that dotted the California landscape. A lot of those first settlers had been Italian, drawn to the climate which was so much like that of the country they missed so desperately. And little by little, over the years, Chandler had grown and blossomed until it was a small city in its own right and had no need to depend on outside jobs to support it. Sam'd grown up here. She'd gone away to college and come home to mourn when things hadn't gone just as she'd planned. She'd mourned again when they'd lost their mother nine years ago, but together the Marconis had come out the other side of pain stronger than when they'd gone in. "Earth to Sam!" Jo huffed out a breath, stepped into the room, snatched up the last cup of coffee, and sat down in the chair that had been hers since she'd left a highchair behind. "I'm late because I was on the phone." "With who?" Mike asked the question. Sam didn't really care who Jo'd been talking to. Not yet, anyway. She'd need a few more sips of latte to get from merely awake to interested. "Our former secretary," Jo snapped and rustled one hand into the bag from the Leaf and Bean before pulling out a cinnamon-streusel-topped muffin. Practically growling, she took a bite as though she wished it were someone's head. "Former?" Mike asked. "That's what I said." Jo sat up straighter in her chair and shook her head fiercely, until her hair whipped from side to side like a happy dog's tail. "Former. Tina just quit." "I knew it," Sam muttered, finally feeling as though she were fortified enough to join the conversation. "I could feel it in the air. Bad stuff coming." "God," Mike said on a snort. "You sound like Nana." Jo laughed shortly and reached down to pet Bear's big head. Sam was not amused. She lifted her right hand, pointed her index finger and pinky in the age-old ward-off-the-evil-eye hand sign, and said, "Whatever works." "Well hell, why not go outside and clack two sticks together?" Mike rolled her blue eyes and blew out a breath that ruffled her bangs. "Everyone knows you do that to cut a storm, not to ward off doom," Sam said with a half-smile. Seriously, coffee could improve your outlook until even the harbingers of disaster could look like fluffy kittens. "Back to reality, if you don't mind?" Jo waved one hand until she had their attention. "We are now short one secretary just when the Big Job is set to start." "You don't have to say 'big job' in capital letters." "That's what you think." Jo flicked Mike a quick look, then dismissed her. "This is as Big as it gets and we all know it." Oh boy, did Sam know it. Every summer, without fail, the city of Chandler's very own local wacko brought in a construction team to work on her house. Sounded simple, of course. And that's where the trap lay. Because there was nothing simple about Grace Van Horn and her never-ending quest to drive carpenters, contractors, and all of their teams insane. A widow, Grace had more money than she knew what to do with and enough free time to make her dangerous. The major construction firms in the area took turns dealing with her. And this summer . . . the Marconis were up to bat. From July through September, they'd be working with Grace. It made Sam tired just to think about it. So she didn't. "Maybe it won't be so bad this year," Mike said wistfully. "Oh, please," Jo said. "Last year, Grace changed her mind about the Italian tile for the foyer so often, Mr. Donovan had to take a 'rest' afterward." Sam rolled her eyes. "It wasn't that bad. I mean, he had that ulcer before Grace." "Yeah, but it wasn't bleeding until she got to him." "Good point," Sam said. "And the year before that, there was the fiasco with Baker Construction. I don't think Mr. Baker planned on retiring that early." "His own fault," Mike put in. "He never should have gone along with Grace about that astronomical tower on the roof. No way were the beams strong enough to support that mess." "That's the point," Jo snapped. "Grace has a way of talking you into doing things you'd never consider otherwise." "Okay, fine," Sam acknowledged. "It's going to be misery and we all know it." Just thinking about a summer of Grace made that happy coffee glow slide away and Sam wished to hell Mike had brought back a gallon of the stuff. "But well-paid misery, and isn't that the important part?" Mike lifted her coffee cup in silent salute as she tossed Bear a piece of her muffin. Yeah, Sam thought. But wasn't there a steep price when you traded your soul for gold? "God, it's going to be a long summer," she moaned. "Is no one going to ask why Tina quit her job?" Disgusted, Jo looked from one to the other of her sisters. "Fine." Sam straightened up, willing to talk about absolutely anything besides Grace Van Horn and the coming headaches. "I'll bite. Why'd she quit?" "Cash Hunter." "Him again?" Mike squirmed in her chair, planted her forearms on the table and leaned toward her sister. "He got to another one?" Cash Hunter, mysterious carpenter, man of all work, and apparently the champion Woman Whisperer of all time. One night with this guy and women were lining up to go off and be Dr. Schweitzer, Madame Curie, and Mother Teresa all rolled into one. He'd been in town only a little over six months and already he'd become a legend. "Tina told me she was leaving town. Going back home to Georgia to work for Habitat for Humanity." Sam winced. "Well, you can't fault her for wanting to do a good thing." "I didn't say that," Jo snapped, throwing her hands wide. "Sure, it's nice. But what is it about this guy that can make women take sharp right turns with their lives? I mean, before this, the closest Tina's ever come to altruistic was not asking for change when she handed the Salvation Army Santa five dollars last Christmas." "What happened to Lisa?" Sam wondered aloud, as she flipped through her mental list, trying to recall the other women Cash had charmed into sainthood. "She moved to L.A.," Mike said around a mouthful of muffin. "She's working with the Literacy Foundation. Really loving it." Jo nodded, waved one hand at her. "And Paula?" "Oh, I know this one," Sam said, perking right up. "Paula's living in Chechnya now. Working for a foundation that arranges adoption for war orphans." "Cash Hunter must be stopped," Jo muttered darkly. "This guy is like a master hypnotist or something. Is he drugging them?" "Oh," Mike said. "That's good. Now he's an evil scientist." "Well, he's something. I don't get it. Just don't get how a man can make a woman come all unglued." Mike snorted. "Apparently you have not been meeting the right men." "Funny." Jo shifted a look at Sam. "Seriously though, what is this guy up to? What is he doing that's so fabulous it makes women want to turn their lives around?" "I volunteer to find out," Mike said, grinning. "You stay the hell away from him," Jo said, offering some of her muffin to Bear. Sam laughed and shook her head. "No wonder that dog's getting fat. And stop taking Cash so personal, Jo." "The dog's not fat. And the Cash thing is just weird." "Fine," Mike offered. "You want me to stay away from him, you go sleep with him. But report back to us before you run off to join a convent." "You just get funnier and funnier." "I try hard." "Not hard enough," Jo muttered, then ignored Mike to shoot a look at Sam. "We're gonna need a new secretary." A curl of worry unwound in the pit of Sam's stomach. "Don't look at me." "Why not? You'd be great." Sam glared at Mike. "Thanks, I don't think so." "Come on, you're perfect for it. You'll be dealing with Grace anyway and--" The imaginary gargoyles Sam had entertained earlier perched on her shoulder and howled. "Why'm I going to be dealing with her?" Jo and Mike exchanged a quick, secretive look that told Sam that this had already been discussed and she'd been chosen. She choked on a gulp of coffee and coughed hard enough that she was pretty sure her eyeballs were going to pop out of her head and roll across the table. And still she managed to croak, "No way." "She likes you," Jo said. "Because I almost never argue with her like someone"--she glanced at Mike--"I could mention." "Hey, I have opinions." "Too many." Jo glared her youngest sister into silence, momentarily. "You worked well with her last time, Sam." "That was three years ago." "And it's our turn again," Jo said. "We all know it. We all deal with it. You get to handle it." She took another bite of muffin and, now that the matter seemed settled, acted as if she were really enjoying herself. "I don't get a vote in this?" Sam was sputtering now and she knew it. "Sure you get a vote," Mike put in. "But you're one vote, we're two. Majority wins. Congrats." "Ain't democracy grand?" Jo asked no one in particular. "My own family turning on me." "Damn straight." Mike grinned and took a long drink of her coffee. "And," she added, "let's not forget the Home Show in July." The Home Show. This just kept getting better. Every year, the San Jose Convention Center hosted the Home Show, giving local contractors, designers, and suppliers a chance to show their wares to the thousands of people who lined up to see the latest in home improvement. And like everyone else in the county, the Marconis would have their own booth where they'd demonstrate home repairs, painting techniques, and solicit new clients for the business. It was three solid days of making nice and answering dumb questions--with the added fun of keeping Mike from losing her temper while answering those dumb questions. Sam shuddered. "Can't I please forget?" "Not a chance," Mike said, laughing. "But Jo's taking care of the booth setup since you're gonna be dealing with Grace." "And what's your job this summer, then?" Jo said, gaze narrowed. "Watching you guys." Mike shot a look at each of her sisters and gave them a slow grin. Jo wadded up a napkin and threw it across the table at her. Sam groaned. Trapped like a rat. No way out. The summer of hell was just getting started and already she felt the flames licking at the soles of her feet. "Hey," Jo said, "could be worse." Rain blustered against the windows and the wind howled. That loose shutter slammed into the house with the rhythm of a heartbeat and the light in the kitchen dimmed, then brightened as the power flickered. As signs went, not that dramatic. "Never say that," Sam warned. "It's a direct challenge to the gods." "Really, Sam." Mike shook her head slowly. "Way too much like Nana." Maybe, she thought. But it didn't hurt to cover your bases. Besides, Sam'd noticed over the years that once things started going downhill, more often than not, they just picked up speed. By afternoon, the sun was shining and water was dripping off the trees in the front yard. In fact, she'd just about convinced herself that maybe they'd survive the summer of hell after all. Until the doorbell rang. With a fresh fight brewing between her sisters, and Bear snoring under the table, Sam gratefully escaped the kitchen where they'd been working for hours, and headed through the living room. She hardly glanced at the big, square room with its overstuffed sofas, magazine-littered coffee table, and rose-colored walls decorated with years' worth of framed family photos. She grabbed the brass knob, turned it, and yanked the door open. Good thing she still had a grip on the doorknob. It gave her something to hold on to while her world rocked. He was taller than she remembered. It had been nine years since she'd seen him. Since he broke her heart. And he hadn't even had the decency to get bald and fat. "Hi, Sam," the voice from the past said. "Been a while." Excerpted from And Then Came You: Sam's Story by Maureen Child All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
