A Daring Vow (Vows) Read Online Free PDF Page A

her mama’s only legacy. How could she walk away from that as if it didn’t matter? How could she ignore her mama’s last wish, no matter how bizarre, no matter how it might turn her life upside down?
    “There is no way around this crazy stipulation?”
    “None. I drew it up myself. It’s airtight.”
    Taylor sounded almost regretful about that, she noted, wondering if he hoped she’d try to break the will, anyway. Maybe Kate could find a loophole, she thought with a flash of hope. She dismissed the idea almost as readily as it had come to her. She couldn’t even consider such an action unless she understood what had been in her mother’s mind when she drew up the document.
    “How long ago did she make out this will?” she asked.
    “The day she called me to the house, the day before she died.”
    “So recently?” she said in amazement. “Was there any question…? Could she have been confused?”
    “You know how Ella Louise was,” he said dryly. “But I’d have to say her mind was clear as a bell. She knew exactly what she wanted. Knowing how you’d feel about it, I even tried to argue with her about naming me executor, but she was determined. She wouldn’t hear of asking someone else to do it.”
    “Why was it so important to her that I come home? Did she tell you that?”
    Apparently he heard the dismay in her voice. For the first time since he’d walked into the house, Taylor regarded her with real sympathy. “She said that deep down you were two of a kind, that eventually you’d figure it out.”
    “Cryptic to the end,” Zelda said, because she absolutely refused to say what she was really thinking, that despite Taylor’s impression otherwise, her mother had finally lost her always fragile grip on reality like one of those pathetic, dreamy southern heroines Tennessee Williams wrote about so well.
    His mission completed, Taylor rose with an obvious expression of relief. “What will you do?”
    Zelda sighed. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I just don’t know.”
    “Is there… Are you involved with someone in Los Angeles? Do you need to get back?”
    She couldn’t tell from looking at him how he might feel about it if there was a man waiting for her. Pride made her want to invent the hottest romance on record. But even as the words of the lie formed on her lips, she was already shaking her head.
    “A career?” he asked. “You’ve been out there a long time now. It must seem like home.”
    “It does. I have friends. I have a wonderful job. I’d hate to leave it,” she admitted, but she knew that Kate would probably grant her a leave of absence to do whatever she had to do. In the past few months, since her own marriage, Kate had placed a whole new emphasis on the meaning of family.
    Zelda looked directly at Taylor, into eyes that had once gazed on her with so much love and tenderness. Were any of those old emotions left at all? Did she even want there to be? Because she’d once respected his opinion, once believed he knew her even better than she had known herself, she asked, “What do you think I should do? Should I fight this? Should I give everything up? Or should I stay here and make the best of it?”
    She wasn’t sure what she hoped to hear him say in response to that—that he’d missed her, that he wanted her back in Port William for his own selfish reasons. Naturally, though, those were not the words that crossed his lips.
    “I can’t advise you on something this personal. You have to do what you think is best, Zelda,” he said as if he’d rehearsed it a dozen times.
    To her irritation, he’d refused to look her in the eye when he’d said it.
    “That’s right,” she snapped, suddenly furious at his careful, noncommittal response. “It wouldn’t do for you to have an opinion now, would it? Maybe I should just call Beau and ask him.” She glared at Taylor, saw the immediate, angry glint in his eyes that told her she’d gone too far. “Oh, never mind.