Free Take Me Back by Kelli Maine Page A

Merrick. He’s been nothing but generous to me and Jan, and I can tell he cares about you, but I don’t know him, Rachael. It’s not like I can have the two of you over for dinner. I need to know him through you, and if you’re not talking…”
    I’m quickly realizing that I’m the one with the communication problem. First you, then Shannon, now Mom.
    Well, there’s no way I can tell her the deep, dark secret about how you and I came to be together. But lately, I’ve been so wrapped up in Turtle Tear and the Weston Plantation and, more recently, Ingrid that I haven’t even called Mom for over a week.
    “I’m sorry,” I say. “You’re right. I guess, well, I’ve been lost inside my head lately. That’s why Merrick wanted me to come visit and leave everything behind for a few days.”
    Mom takes the dumplings and pinches them closed, making tiny pouches. “So, living in your fantasy world is more stressful than you imagined?” She gives me a knowing smile, the one she’d give me when I was little and touched the iron after she told me not to.
    “No, not stressful. It’s wonderful. Perfect. Any stress I have, I put on myself. Merrick knows that about me. He knows I get a bit… obsessive when I set my mind on something.”
    She lets out a loud chuckle and turns the broth on to boil. “You sure do. Always have been that way. Remember when you were hell-bent on making a Barbie pool out of a shoebox? Took you three days to find something that wouldn’t leak to line it with, but you kept at it.”
    “Only because I didn’t want you to buy me a real one.”
    “Honey, I said I’d go to the store and get you one after I saw how determined you were to have one.”
    I grip the edges of the counter. “But you’d spend money that needed to go to pay bills. I knew we didn’t have it to spend on toys, Mom.”
    She wrings the dish towel in her hands. “That’s why you told me not to buy you one? I thought you just wanted to prove that you could make it on your own.”
    “That’s why,” I say. If she wants to talk, I guess we’ll talk. “Same reason I turned Merrick down for the Turtle Tear job when he first offered it.” I take her hand. “Mom, you want to know about Merrick? He’s the one who taught me how to take what I want. That life’s what I make it and if I don’t make it what I want it to be, then nobody is going to care. I have to put myself first. That’s what he gave me with the island and the hotel… and his love. He wants me to be happy.”
    “And you think I didn’t?” She pulls her hand away.
    “No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying I didn’t let myself take what would make me happy, because I wanted you to be happy. You didn’t want me to move to Florida, so I turned down the job. Fortunately, Merrick’s not a man who takes no for an answer.”
    I smile, thinking about you and how you’re such a huge force in my life. It seems like I wasn’t really living at all before you. I was waiting for life to find me.
    “Well, if you’re happy, then I guess that’s good,” she says, wiping the counter with her towel.
    “I am happy. We have our issues to work through, just like any other couple, but yes, I’m very happy.”
    I really hope we can stop talking about this now, because the awkward level has reached an all-time high, and she’s closing off because she took offense to what I’ve already let slip out of my mouth. She’ll never understand how hard it is for me to stand up to her, how hard it’s always been.
    She opens the pantry door and starts taking out baking ingredients. “I think I’ll make that angel food cake you love so much.”
    “Can I help?”
    She sets a bag of sugar on the counter and flips my hair back over my shoulder. “No. You go call your aunt. I think she wants to take you shopping tonight. She knows your style better than I do.”
    The cake is her way of smoothing things over between us, and suggesting I call Aunt Jan is a forfeit.