The One Who Changed Everything (The Cherry Sisters) Read online

  In this first Cherry Sisters title, Lilian Darcy shows just how tricky mixing family and romance can be!

  Daisy Cherry hasn’t seen rugged landscaper Tucker Reid for ten years. Not since the wedding between him and her sister had been called off, just before the big day!

  Now she’s hired a landscaper to fix the grounds of her parents’ Adirondack resort, Spruce Bay. Yes, it’s Tucker—he’s the best man for the job. Surely that’s okay after all this time?

  Er…no. Her parents go mad. Her big sister disapproves. And her younger sister, Tucker’s ex, doesn’t know—yet. And none of them know that the instant, wild, intense attraction between Daisy and Tucker has bubbled into a secret affair. That would be explosive. Dynamite. But when it’s this good with Tucker, isn’t it worth the family fallout…?

  “What time will your curfew be?”

  She heard his frustration. “It’s not like that.”

  “Then tell me what it is. Here I am, sneaking you home in the middle of the night. Are you going to climb through your bedroom window? Take off your shoes so you can creep inside? Is your dad going to be standing there with a shotgun pointed at me?”

  “Tucker, it’s not like that.”

  “Isn’t it? Isn’t it because of what happened ten years ago?”

  Okay, maybe that was part of it. Tucker had already broken up with one Cherry sister. Would it end up being two? She didn’t want to put her family through another mess. She didn’t want them thinking it was Tucker’s fault.

  “I want to ease them into it…and I need time.”

  “Then we’ll ease into this…” He sighed deeply and she felt his hunger. “But for now, get out of this truck before I make a grab for you and never let you go.”

  Dear Reader,

  As I’m sure you know, it takes months—sometimes more than a year—to bring a book from the idea stage to the finished product on the shelves, so you won’t be surprised to learn that I’m writing this letter in March, while you’re probably reading it six months later. This week, I learned that the third book in my McKinley Medics trilogy from Harlequin Special Edition had reached the finals in the Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA® Award. It’s my fifth time as a finalist, and it’s just as much of a thrill as the first. I’m especially pleased because A Marriage Worth Fighting For was my favorite of the McKinley Medics books, and that’s the one the RITA® Award judges liked best, too. It doesn’t always happen that way!

  A few years ago, if you didn’t happen to buy. A Marriage Worth Fighting For when it first came out, you would have missed your chance. Now, thanks to ebooks, it’s easy to catch up on earlier titles by your favorite authors, as well as their latest releases. Since we all have different favorites, in authors and series and individual books, the diversity of choice is a winner for all of us.

  Meanwhile, over there in September, you’re about to read this first book in my new Cherry Sisters trilogy, while back here in March I’m still writing the second book, with the third book just a cloud of ideas and scenes floating in my head. It’s too soon to say which of these three will be my favorite, but one thing I do know, whichever one it is, not all readers will agree!

  All the best, and happy reading,

  Lilian Darcy

  The One who Changed Everything

  Lilian Darcy

  Books by Lilian Darcy

  Harlequin Special Edition

  The Mommy Miracle #2134

  ^Daddy on Her Doorstep #2176

  ^A Doctor in His House #2186

  ^A Marriage Worth Fighting For #2200

  ΩThe One who Changed Everything #2282

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Balancing Act #1552

  Their Baby Miracle #1672

  ¤The Runaway and the Cattleman #1762

  ¤Princess in Disguise #1766

  ¤Outback Baby #1774

  The Couple Most Likely To #1801

  A Mother in the Making #1880

  The Millionaire’s Makeover #1899

  The Heiress’s Baby #2063

  Silhouette Romance

  The Baby Bond #1390

  Her Sister’s Child #1449

  Raising Baby Jane #1478

  *Cinderella After Midnight #1542

  *Saving Cinderella #1555

  *Finding Her Prince #1567

  Pregnant and Protected #1603

  For the Taking #1620

  The Boss’s Baby Surprise #1729

  The Millionaire’s

  Cinderella Wife #1772

  Sister Swap #1816

  Family Secrets

  Racing Hearts

  ¤Wanted: Outback Wives

  *The Cinderella Conspiracy

  ^McKinley Medics

  ΩThe Cherry Sisters

  Other titles by Lilian Darcy available in ebook

  LILIAN DARCY

  has written nearly eighty books for Silhouette Romance, Special Edition and Harlequin Medical Romance. Happily married with four active children and a very patient cat, she enjoys keeping busy and could probably fill several more lifetimes with the things she likes to do—including cooking, gardening, quilting, drawing and traveling. She currently lives in Australia but travels to the United States as often as possible to visit family. Lilian loves to hear from readers. You can write to her at P.O. Box 532, Jamison P.O., Macquarie ACT 2614, Australia, or email her at [email protected].

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter One

  Mary Jane was laughing. You could hear it thirty yards away, through a closed door and a screen of bushes, and it was a glorious sound on a mild mid-October Monday beside a mountain lake.

  Daisy Cherry came up the steps and out of the delicious fresh air into the resort office and found her sister with shaking shoulders and tears running down her cheeks, a heap of old photo albums in a litter around her, along with piles of shipping boxes, too. “Hey, what’s so funny?”

  Mary Jane rocked back on her heels, flattened a hand over her heart and gasped for breath. “Dad’s mustache, Mom’s wedding hat. Their clothes. Her swimsuit. I’m sorry, it’s not that funny. I don’t know why I’m—”

  “No, it’s great,” Daisy cut in with conviction.

  As the eldest of the three Cherry sisters at age thirty-four, Mary Jane was too serious and too responsible too much of the time. Right now, her medium brown hair stuck out in a messy halo all over her head, she had dust marks on her cream-colored top and she looked like someone who’d been working harder than she should, for longer than she could remember.

  Daisy and Mary Jane had already had a few tense moments with each other since Daisy had come back east to live just a couple of weeks ago, and in all honesty, Daisy didn’t think that she was to blame. It was really good to see Mary Jane lose control, lighten up a little, and Daisy found herself grinning at the sight of it.

  Unfortunately, the laught
er and lost control didn’t last.

  “I don’t have time for this.” Mary Jane took a determined hold of herself, stood up, wiped the tears from her eyes with a crumpled tissue and fussed around getting the albums back in a pile, which she dumped into a cardboard box.

  “Where did you find them?”

  “Here in the office, under a pile of files. Lord only knows what they were doing here.”

  “Are you packed?” Daisy asked.

  “You mean this?” Mary Jane waved her hand at the boxes, some filled, some still empty. “These are going to South Carolina to the new condo with Mom and Dad.”

  “I meant for your trip, not Mom and Dad’s move.”

  “In that case, I was packed a week ago.” Mary Jane looked a little tense suddenly.

  She was leaving tomorrow. She loved to travel, and when Spruce Bay Resort closed each year for most of November and April, during the quietest seasons in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, she always went away. Someplace exotic, or someplace indulgent. Never the same destination twice. Taking full advantage of the fact that she was single, even though Daisy strongly suspected that in her secret heart Mary Jane didn’t actually want to be single at all.

  This unwanted condition was down to Alex Stewart, horrible man. Water under the bridge, four years on. Nobody talked about it anymore, but Mary Jane had wasted a lot of time—years of her life—on a relationship that had gone nowhere and it had taken its toll on her heart and her outlook.

  Mary Jane and I are so different, Daisy had thought to herself more than once. Mary Jane’s love for Alex had been a steadfast flame that refused to die even when it needed to. Whereas Daisy had blown hot and cold. Came on strong, then pulled right back. Sent clear signals, then turned them off like a faucet.

  I jumped in too fast. I never looked below the surface. It was my fault as much as Michael’s.

  Was it a fair accusation to make about herself? She still tied herself in knots asking that question. It was a big reason why she was here, instead of in California, and Mary Jane had accused her—quite gently and sympathetically, which almost made it worse—of coming back for the wrong reasons.

  “I don’t want you as a business partner at Spruce Bay just because you’re running away from something that turned sour in your personal life.”

  This year, because of the renovation and their parents’ retirement from the business, Spruce Bay had closed a month early, missing out on the fall-foliage season, and Mary Jane would be spending most of October, including her thirty-fifth birthday on the eighteenth of the month, on safari in the heart of Africa.

  She hadn’t wanted to go initially. “I’ll have to skip my usual trip this year, with the remodel. It just can’t be helped.” She was definitely too responsible about things like this. Daisy and Mom and Dad—and Lee, from a distance, in Colorado—had all insisted that of course she should go, as usual, since she loved her travels so much. Eventually and reluctantly, Mary Jane had booked her tour package.

  “If you’re worried I can’t handle things here for three weeks, don’t be,” Daisy assured her quickly now, because her sister had really started to look stressed. “Hey, if I can create the dessert recipes and oversee their preparation every night for a two-hundred-seat five-star San Francisco restaurant, I can oversee a construction crew. I’ve brainstormed a heap of ideas for the restaurant remodel, I’m so excited about it, and I have menu ideas to match.”

  “Listen, I don’t doubt that, okay?”

  “But you doubt the reasons I’m here.”

  “Sometimes you dive in too fast, Daisy. You told me that happened with Michael. I don’t want it happening with Spruce Bay.” She gestured toward the open window, where blue sky blazed behind a silhouette of pine needles whose fragrance Daisy could smell from here. She could hear the pine needles, too—the light soughing they made in the breeze. The peace and familiarity of this place hurt her heart, it was so beautiful.

  “It won’t happen, Mary Jane,” she answered, quietly sure of herself, suddenly. “Spruce Bay is different. Spruce Bay is home.”

  Mary Jane looked at her curiously. “Is that how you feel? Even after ten years away?”

  “It is. More than I expected. It hit me just now. I love it here.”

  “Well, okay, then.”

  A new peace settled between them.

  “And as for the landscaping,” Daisy continued after a moment, “it makes much more sense to have the structural work for that done when Spruce Bay is already closed for the interior work, rather than waiting until spring. Obviously the actual planting will have to wait, but that’s only a small part of what needs doing.”

  “True,” Mary Jane conceded. “We’re behind on the planning for all that. The decisions and plans on the interiors took more time than I expected, especially the cabins, and Mom and Dad have been stalling. They think the grounds are fine as they are.”

  “They’re not.”

  “I know. But maybe it’s too late and we’ll have to leave it till spring after all.”

  “No, we won’t, because I called Reid Landscaping yesterday, and I’ve set up a meeting for tomorrow. I’m hoping that if we can make our decisions and plans quickly, work can get started—”

  Mary Jane stood up, looking horrified, and didn’t wait to hear when it was that Daisy hoped work would start. “You what?”

  “Set up a meeting. Tomorrow at ten.”

  “With Reid Landscaping.” It wasn’t a question. More of a thud. Like the dropping of a shoe. All the more obvious because just a few seconds ago they’d had a strong moment of closeness.

  “They’re the best in the area,” Daisy pointed out briskly. “And we’ve known—”

  “Tucker Reid’s company?”

  “Yes.”

  The simmering stress behind Mary Jane’s recent bout of laughter burst through the facade and came out as anger. “You cannot be so clueless, Daisy! Tucker Reid!”

  “Wait a second...”

  “Tucker. Reid!” You could have cut the fake patience in Mary Jane’s tone with a knife.

  Oh, for crying out loud! It wasn’t as if Daisy wasn’t getting this. Of course she got it!

  “It was ten years ago, Mary Jane,” she said, gentleness not quite winning out over frustration. Here was her older sister sniping at her again. “It was a broken engagement, not an acrimonious divorce, and it was mutual. Lee and Tucker announced their decision together, remember. Not to mention that Lee is two thousand miles away in Colorado.”

  Lee, the middle Cherry sister, the meat in the sandwich between responsible, energetically organized Mary Jane and not-nearly-as-blonde-as-she-looked baby sister Daisy.

  “Do you honestly not have any idea?” Mary Jane cut in. She was angry. Needlessly angry, Daisy thought. “Do you honestly not know why Lee and Tucker canceled their wedding?”

  “I was there, wasn’t I? Because they realized it wasn’t right, and weren’t dumb enough to take such a step when they weren’t one hundred percent sure. Because Lee wasn’t ready. And Tucker wasn’t, either. They were pretty young. I think it was a very wise decision.”

  “She was twenty-three, he was twenty-four. Not that young. We were all so incredibly happy when they got engaged. Do you honestly think that breaking it was her choice?”

  “Lee is incredibly happy with her life now.”

  “Now. Yes. But it took a while. It took a long while. Years.” Mary Jane said that last word as if she knew all about things taking years. Alex Stewart again.

  “And you’re saying that’s all because of Tucker Reid?”

  “He dumped her! They might have pretended that it was mutual, but it wasn’t. It was down to two things.” Mary Jane checked the first one off on her fingers. “Because of the accident, and because—” But even though the second finger came up, she stopp
ed abruptly, closed her mouth, and the second reason didn’t get spoken.

  Daisy’s attention had caught on the first reason, however. “The accident? Really? You think it was down to that? Because Lee had some scarring?”

  “In large part, yes.” But she sounded hesitant and awkward.

  “You think Tucker is as superficial as that?” Daisy was shocked about it, for some reason. Disappointed. It had never occurred to her to question the motives of Lee’s ex in such a way. She’d taken the whole canceled wedding at face value. They’d both had second thoughts. They’d sensibly called it off. It happened.

  She’d been twenty-one years old at the time, and excitedly absorbed in her own life. She remembered giving her first impression of Tucker in a drawled aside to her mother. “Well, he certainly seems like the strong silent type...”

  She hadn’t meant it as a compliment, but it hadn’t been a statement of dislike, either. She’d shared the family’s happiness about the upcoming wedding and had thought of Tucker as someone who’d be great for Lee, but not for herself—definitely not her type.

  “Do Mom and Dad think this, too?” she asked her sister.

  “Mom and Dad think it even more,” Mary Jane retorted with spirit. “But that’s because they never saw—” She stopped suddenly, and her face was shuttered.

  “No one has ever said this!”

  “They’ve said so plenty to me. You haven’t been here. And when you are here, usually Lee is here, too, so we don’t talk about it.”

  “Plus it was ten years ago,” Daisy reminded her.

  “There’s that,” Mary Jane conceded. She’d calmed down a little. The angry pink in her cheeks began to fade. The violent eddies of emotion filling the room began to settle. Daisy wondered just how much Alex Stewart had to do with all this, how much Mary Jane was still regretting the fruitless years she’d spent waiting for him to get serious, make the full commitment, and then he never had.

  After a moment she said, treading carefully, “Is there something else going on, Mary Jane? You seem—”

  Wrong thing to say. “Oh, because it couldn’t possibly be you, could it? Or Tucker himself, for that matter. It has to be me.”