The Fountain of Infinite Wishes (Dare River Book 5) Read Free Page B

found some early Eastern ones and asked Sadie to make a peach pie for the rehearsal dinner. It had been delicious.
    Out of all of them, Sadie was the homiest. She’d even grown tomatoes for salsa last summer, and as if that hadn’t been effort enough, she’d packaged jars for everyone in the family with hand-written labels and artful bows. She was a good sister to have around.
    “Done,” Shelby said, and they shook on it.  
    They hugged each other. The door opened, causing them to break apart.  
    Vander stuck his head inside. “Are you finished conferring?”
    “Yes,” Sadie said brightly as he walked toward them.
    He sat on the edge of his desk again and gave them that compelling smile. Her reaction to him was completely normal, she decided—the man was a chick magnet. His charm must come in handy with his job. People talked to nice, well-dressed handsome men—especially women.
    “We’d like to hire you,” Shelby said, giving him what she hoped was also a professional smile. “Thank you for letting us talk it through.”
    “This is a big decision. I want you to be one hundred percent sure you want to move forward.”
    “We do,” Sadie said, nodding.
    He gave them a measured look. “Let’s go ahead and sign a service agreement so I can get started. You can tell me your father’s last known address so I can include it at the bottom.”  
    Sitting down at his desk, he typed for a minute, prompting Shelby when he needed the address, and then printed off the service agreement. He handed it to her when he was finished. Sure enough, their family’s last address together loomed large at the bottom of the page.  
    They’d lived in that house for only a few more months after their daddy’s abandonment, because Mama hadn’t been able to afford the mortgage on her own. Shelby had been too young when they’d moved to miss the house on Meadow Grove Street, but she’d driven by it multiple times as an adult. It was something she’d never shared with her siblings, but every time she did it, she imagined what their life might have been if they’d remained whole. How she’d imagine Daddy pushing her on the tire swing. Or J.P. playing in a sandbox as a more carefree little boy.
    Shelby wished she had more real memories of that simple white colonial house with the black front door and matching black shutters, but like everything else from that time in her life, she only knew it from pictures and her flights of imagination.
    Sadie rummaged in her purse. “Do you need a photo of Daddy?” she asked, handing him the one of their family taken two months before he’d left.
    Vander took the photo and studied it. “You have his likeness, Shelby.” Then he locked gazes with her. “The eyebrow line is the same. And the mouth. Your bottom lip is…full…like his.”
    “Is it?” she asked, a little breathless. “I mean, do I…look like him?”
    Sadie shot her a look, which she ignored. She needed to pull it together, but since no one ever talked about their daddy or so much as brought out a picture, she’d never been told she resembled him. J.P. resembled him more than the rest of them, not that the McGuiness siblings talked about it much. In fact, this photo was the only one they had of that time. Sadie had snuck it out of a photo album when she was a junior in high school and put it in her bedside stand. If Mama ever knew, she’d never said anything.
    It rattled the heck out of Shelby to hear she looked like Daddy. Besides, Vander was staring at her with such intensity. Talking about her full bottom lip…
    “You do. From this photo, Sadie takes more after your mother.”
    “Yes,” her sister agreed, and Shelby wondered if she was longing to hear if any of her features resembled their daddy too. Those physical attributes were all they had of him—so far.
    “The database I start with doesn’t have any photos,” Vander said. “I’ll just plug in your father’s name and last known address and see where