“I’m sorry. That must have been incredibly difficult for her. But at least she had you.”
June blinked, her eyes suddenly burning. “Yes. We were very close.”
“Were?” Loretta asked with a sympathy in her expression that almost made those tears spill out, much to June’s dismay.
“She died when I was fifteen.”
“Oh, no. I’m so very sorry. You poor thing. What did you do?”
“I was lucky enough to be placed in a loving foster home in a California beach town for my last few years of high school. I still keep in touch with them.”
“That is lucky. I hear so many horror stories about the foster care system.”
June would be forever grateful for Stella Davenport and the nieces she had raised on her own, who had opened their home not only to June but also many other foster children over the years. Stella still ran a charity event in Cape Sanctuary to benefit other foster families, and June donated generously to support her work.
“Well, now you have another family here in Wyoming,” Loretta said with a sincerity that touched June all over again. “Alison saved your life so that makes you one of us.”
Ali and Beck, she saw, were exchanging another one of those looks June couldn’t quite interpret. Ali spoke up quickly.
“Grandma, June is looking for a project while she’s staying at the cabin. Is there anything she could do while she’s there? I had the idea that maybe if she wanted to, she could help us sort through some of Dad’s papers that we plan to donate to the university special collections in Laramie.”
Loretta made a face. “Oh, she wouldn’t want to go through all those dusty boxes. He never threw anything away.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” June said quickly. She would love poring over the papers of Carson Wells to see into the inner workings of his mind.
“She and her mom were both big fans of Dad’s work,” Alison said.
“Do you have any training in document preservation?” Beckett asked in a doubtful tone.
“Not a bit,” she admitted.
“We might be better off letting the Special Collections department handle the boxes. His papers are already a jumbled mess. We might take a chaotic situation and make it worse.”
Ali’s expression mirrored June’s own disappointment. She had been warming to the idea. How could she argue, without sounding ungrateful for all that everyone had already done for her?
At least she was grateful for one thing—Beck had reminded her that she had good reason to dislike him.
Chapter 14
Beckett
Juniper Connelly was seriously annoyed with him.
Beck could see the tension in her jaw and the slight narrowing of her gaze when she looked at him.
Did she really want to dig through boxes of dusty papers, handwritten manuscripts, old letters from editors—all the flotsam and jetsam of a writer’s life?
He could certainly understand her boredom. She was used to helping run a high-powered tech company. It must be tough to find herself sidelined from such an undertaking, when she was used to the responsibility, pressure and prestige that came along with being a vice president at Move Inc.
He understood that feeling well. When he first moved to Wyoming, he had struggled to figure out how to fill his time. He had tried all kinds of projects, until he had accidentally stumbled onto the fun and challenge of making resin tabletops.
Carson had helped distract him. They had fished together, had gone for rides into the back country, had sat in front of the fire at the cabin, sometimes talking for hours in the evening or often merely reading their respective books without saying a word.
Beck had worried he was keeping the celebrated author away from his work, but Carson never made him feel as if his presence was intrusive in any way.
Oh, he missed the man.
Juniper Connelly was struggling. As much as she clearly disliked him, the woman was trying to come to terms with a difficult diagnosis. His situation wasn’t completely analogousto hers, but he did understand what it felt like to have your life upended in an instant. He understood her upheaval.
