No Turning Back

No Turning Back

by Patricia Holden

Published by Susan Sampson at SmashWords

Copyright © 2018 Susan Sampson

Cover Photo from Dreamstime

Other Titles from Patricia Holden on Smashwords:

Turn My Head

Break Through

Third Time’s the Charm

Conflict of Interest

Romeo Night

Last Man Standing

Talk Dirty To Me

Secrets of the Bayou

High Maintenance

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Chapter 1

Marianne Drummond touched the wall at the end of the lap lane in the pool at her parents’ country club, and stood up in the water. After putting her goggles on her latex cap clad head, she decided that was enough for today. Enough laps, enough exercise...enough being all alone with herself and her thoughts regarding all the crap going on in her life...and all the crap that wasn’t going on in her life, and she couldn’t help but wish was. Later today, after she cleaned up from her workout, and had her hair in some semblance of dryness, she was headed out to a Fourth of July celebration that would bring all of it home to her. All of it - even the events that had not come to pass and may never. It was really rather depressing after a fashion. Her friends, and some members of her family, were moving along with life in every way possible, and she just wasn’t.

Well, she sighed as she pushed herself up onto the pool deck where a solitary lifeguard watched the handful of diehard lap swimmers head back and forth across the pool, at least she wasn’t moving along at the same pace all the rest of them were. No, her friends and family were getting on with life at warp speed, and she was basically treading water, just waiting for the next wave to take her onto the next gig….

Quit being so dramatic, Marianne heard a voice in her head say to her with impatience. The voice that was outright admonishing her from the grave was that of her grandmother Drummond, a woman who was known in the family for being the most pragmatic and business like, non-sentimental woman on the planet. Actually, Grandma Drummond’s voice was one that clashed mightily with Marianne’s own mother’s on a regular basis while she was still among the living, especially when Mari decided to take up violin as a career. As a profession, it was useless, the old battle ax had claimed on more than one occasion. It was useless and didn’t contribute to the family business-

Marianne took a deep breath, and walked into the shower room of the main clubhouse to take care of getting the pool chemicals off of her body, and out of her tank suit and hair. Over the years, she’d taken to swimming laps as the one sort of physical activity where she could work out her frustrations, and not face bruising or assault and battery by reaching out and smacking someone. Some days, she needed that relief badly, and then there were days, like today, that it was more of a pre-emptive strike. At the Fourth of July shindig she was attending this afternoon, just about all of the family and friends who were getting on with life and leaving her behind were going to be in attendance, and mentally she had to be ready to face all of it and them.

Oh, joy, she thought, not feeling an ounce of the actual emotion.

She snagged her shower tote and her towel from her private locker, and headed for a private shower stall to take care of business. She tried to put all of it from her mind just a little longer, but in the end, once the water and soap were cascading over her, her thoughts turned to the one person she was determined to avoid that afternoon. Given the closeness of the circle of friends’ families that would be out at their mutual friends’ estate that afternoon, Marianne was all but sure that Sean Dolan, the oldest, tallest, hottest, and most desirable – and suddenly available - grandson of the late Senator Aidan Dolan, would be in attendance.

She put her head under the shower spray and rinsed her hair trying to remember the last time she and Sean ever did anything together other than attend the same events. She couldn’t ever remember him talking to her, or doing much other than staring at her from across a room, if that’s what he was doing when she caught him looking her way. Usually, the truth was it was Marianne staring at Sean, all six foot three of him with the black Irish face, and black hair and dark eyes to match that usually gave off the idea that he was up to no good.

Not that Marianne would know. Back when their paths crossed on a regular basis, she was in high school, and he had just graduated from veterinary school at Mizzou. He was eleven, almost twelve years older than her. He was one of the guys who was on her older brothers’ hockey team when they were in high school. And, like all little sisters who came into their parents’ lives several years after their big brothers with no one between them, Marianne naturally developed a crush on Sean, one of her brothers’ most trusted friends.

For her, the tendre was just what the word crush implied. When he married someone else almost eleven years ago, Marianne swore she was going to die.

She shook her head at the memory, and the drama it always stirred in her breast, and reached to turn off the shower before toweling herself dry.

Reliving the drama of that time in her life did absolutely no good, she told herself for the thousandth time that week alone. Back then, she was young, and stupid, and really had no reason to think that Sean Dolan would notice her. Heck, last fall, when they were in each other’s presence a lot at the end of his grandfather’s earthly life, Sean did not come near her even to say Hi. It wouldn’t have bothered her at the time other than the reality that he was in the process of getting divorced, and, in anticipation of celebrating being rid of his then wife, he had a magnum of champagne on ice ready to pop the cork the minute the judge’s gavel came down on that particular disaster.

Marianne actually had heard through the grapevine that Sean tied one on the night his marriage was officially legally over and done with, and that he reveled in a three day hangover. She imagined it was a good sort of pain. His ex-wife was one heck of a female dog in the basest sense of the more common word.

Marianne put on her undergarments, and slipped her navy boat necked jersey dress with horizontal nautical white stripes over her head letting it settle against her form before she exited the shower stall. It was nice that the country club had put in these private shower stalls for the older women of the club who really didn’t want the rest of the world to see what age and necessary surgeries did to their bodies. When they weren’t around, everyone else was free to use them…and she could keep the world from seeing what youth, stupidity, and a generous allowance during college did to hers. Only her physician ever saw it these days, and as far as Mari was concerned, her rebellious secret would literally remain under wraps for as long as she could keep it.

She walked to her locker and opened it to put her shower tote inside, hang her suit, and get out her practically luggage sized purse that held her hair styling tools and make-up. Even if the gathering this afternoon was more of a picnic, she still needed to look like a Drummond woman should: classily coiffed, and ladylike in every way.

Whatever, she thought to herself. Not all of the women in the family actually made much of an effort to coif anymore.

She sat on a stool at the mirrored vanity counter that stretched the length of the room, and took her time getting her mid-neck length bob combed out, dried, and curled under just so. Unlike a lot of her friends, and her cousins, her sandy blonde hair was pretty straight. It took a bit of product and work to get the curl under just right. She pulled out her make-up bag, and covered her pale skin in light street make-up taking care to highlight her eyes in bronze earth tones that changed the gray into something more of a blue.

When she decided she was ready to head out to the estate where she’d see...everybody...Marianne picked up her purse, and put her new, classy Chanel sunglasses on her face. No sense in completely ignoring high fashion even if one of her aunts was in a constant competition with herself to be rich and a plain jane all at the same time.

Mari made an effort not to publish her thoughts on her Uncle Keith’s wife Elise’s fashion choices – or lack of them - on a daily basis. The woman actually thought she could fool the world into thinking she was a simple woman by dressing like a slob. Someday, Mari was going to tell her that particular effort simply didn’t work.

She walked out into the bright sunlight of July in her native suburban St. Louis, and sighed. The heat and humidity wasn’t as bad as usual for the Fourth of July, but still, the weather was going to be beastly unless they got a good, long rain shower that actually cooled things off and didn’t simply ignite steam from the concrete and asphalt as the water drops hit the ground.

She headed for her Audi, and the ordeal ahead.

Not even fifteen minutes later, Marianne parked her car along a road in Ladue, the old money, wooded, and not nearly as snobby as it sounded suburb of St. Louis. She settled her ride behind a Porsche, which was behind a Range Rover, and on and on to the open gate in front of the house where yet more cars were parked on the landing pad in front of it as well as in the drive. From the number of expensive driving machines littering the place, it looked to Marianne like just about everyone was here.

The estate she was visiting today belonged to old friends of her parents and brothers. The Pernouds were true old money in the city, and, currently, they owned one of the nation’s leading infrastructure engineering firms. Growing up, Marianne was subjected to the two youngest of the seven brothers more than she cared to remember, actually. Their parents were part of the same social circle her parents inhabited, and as a result, Francis and Gabriel Pernoud were a part of her life whether she liked it or not since they were in her same age range. Of course, the reality that they were both now engaged to two of the other girls in the string quartet in which Marianne played second violin was a sure sign that that reality would not change. Francis was set to marry the first violin, Rosemary Fallon – her crush Sean Dolan’s cousin - and Gabriel was engaged to Mari’s own cousin Alicia Drummond, the cello player in the group. They had a double wedding date set in September. The viola of the group, Josie Miller, was engaged to Rosemary’s twin brother Ryan. The pair just announced that they were expecting a baby in March. Marianne tried her darnedest to be nothing but happy about all of that even if it meant no new blood in the group to help get her mind off of Sean. But, no, that wasn’t the way this friends and family circle operated. No sense in letting the tree spread its branches and roots any, she thought. May as well stick all the way through together. At this point, the whole friends and family circle was a big bramble bush. Once they were all paired off, Marianne just hoped there weren’t any tar babies in the resulting briar patch.

She sighed as she walked onto the drive of the stately stucco and brick house with the five French doors leading out to the terrace across the front, and the five nine pane over nine pane windows above the French doors. The Pernoud family mansion had a pitched slate roof, and a carriage drive leading to the back around one side. From the sounds of the party that reached her ears, Mari figured everyone was out back. She started walking that way.

When she rounded the corner at the back of the house, she found the wide driveway pad that was usually littered with cars free of them, but under a tent with long table after long table set up for a meal. With the garage at the other end, and the wall that led down to the rose garden on one boundary, the house and the patios and pool and hot tub counted as the third side. She walked toward the house itself, across the small patio that was also under the tent where a number of older women were congregated, and under the deck toward where she knew the outdoor bar to be. True to form when at the Pernoud’s house, she found one person there who could tell her where to put her purse at least.

She approached the bar and Ed Pernoud, the fifth of the ten Pernoud siblings named in alphabetical order, was manning it with the help of an adolescent boy she assumed was one of the Pernoud triplets. He looked suspiciously like his older brothers Adam and Ben with black hair and eyes. When she reached the bar, Ed looked up at her, and smiled. Marianne Drummond. Didn’t know if you were going to make it today.

Mari returned the smile, and said to him, I wouldn’t miss it. She looked at the younger Pernoud and inclined her head. Is this one of the famous triplets?

Ed grinned, and put an arm around the youngster’s shoulders. Yes, he said, drawing the boy into his side. This is our little brother Jean-Paul. The girls are all inside feeding the babies, and our sisters are in there with them.

Marianne couldn’t help but smile. In the last year, the older five Pernoud brothers went from being the most eligible bachelors in town to married and each with a child. The fourth brother, Damian, and his bride were actually expecting still, but they knew the baby was a boy, and Damian’s wife Margot, Sean Dolan’s younger sister, actually, were over the moon happy about it. When the Pernouds’ parents showed up on the doorstep six weeks ago with a set of twelve year old triplets in tow that no one knew existed, the Pernoud boys’ collective world was turned upside down. It also prompted this little Fourth of July get together so that everyone in the circle could meet the three, and welcome the Pernouds’ parents, Stephen and Manon, back into the fold.

Ahh, Marianne said, I take it there’s a place I can put down the luggage? She shrugged the shoulder where her purse was hanging.

Sure, Ed told her. I think most of that sort of stuff is in the weight room.

Great, she told him.

Tell me your poison, and I’ll have it waiting when you come back out, Ed said to her.

Oh, Marianne smiled again. Just some plain sparkling water if you have it, she said.

Not a problem, Ed told her. Okay, Jean-Paul, the sparkling water is in this cooler.

Marianne grinned to herself, and stepped into the lower level of the house to deposit her load.

Sean Dolan was sitting on the side of the pool next to his best friend Ben Pernoud when he spotted her walking under the tent that was set up for the dinner being cooked on the giant grill a floor above them at deck level. There she was. Marianne Drummond in the flesh. The elegant and beautiful girl who reeked class like an Eva Marie Saint groupie. She was actually here. Marianne, the one he ran from all those years ago.

Twelve years and one disastrous marriage later, Sean knew without a doubt that’s what he had done. Time away from her after his marriage was over and done had given him that perspective. Actually, he thought to himself, he somewhat recognized the truth of it last fall when they buried his grandfather, and she always seemed to be around captivating his senses, albeit at a distance. At the time, though, he wasn’t quite ready to face what that meant.

Not that he really knew what it meant now, sitting here on the side of a pool in his friends’ back yard soaking wet. After all, Marianne had grown up quite a bit from the budding girl who caught his eye when she was in high school, and when he was just out of college. A lot had changed since then though, and not just him having married, and eventually divorced, absolutely the wrong woman. At this point, Marianne had a pretty exciting life being a violinist who played with symphonies all over the world. That wasn’t something that just anybody anywhere could do. It took talent and dedication, and-

She’s not jailbait anymore, the dark, velvety tones of Ben Pernoud’s voice came from beside him.

Sean looked at his friend. Tall and dark with a longer face and practically black hair and eyes, Ben Pernoud was the epitome of a tall, dark and handsome fallen angel according to the women in Sean’s life. Too bad for just about all of them that Ben was happily married to a very sweet woman who was built like a model.

Who’s not jailbait anymore? Sean asked him, knowing darn well and good who the man was talking about.

Play dumb with someone who hasn’t known you most of his life, not me, Ben told him looking out at the pool and contemplating all of the little bodies in it. At the moment Ben and his brother Christian who was parked on the edge of the other side of the pool were playing lifeguard. Anyone who had small children was invited to let them cool off in the pool that was big enough