Forever Vows, page 1
Forever Vows
THE ASHTONS
FOREVER AND EVER
KATHRYN KALEIGH
Prologue
Seventeen Years Ago
Little baby birds hidden away in a straw nest tucked in the fork of the old maple tree chirped shrilly for their mother.
“Can you see them?” Isabella asked, standing on her toes as though that would make her taller than her four feet two inches. She bounced on her white sneakers, swinging her blonde ponytail in the process.
“Almost,” nine-year-old Daniel said, swinging dangerously to land on the next limb. “There.”
“What do you see?” Isabella asked.
“There are five of them,” Daniel said, looking down, grinning from ear to ear.
“Five. Wow.”
“No. Wait. There are six of them. They’re starving.”
Isabella glanced over her shoulder.
“Come down,” she said. “Before the mother sees you.”
“I’m not afraid of a bird,” he said. “Let’s get some worms. Feed them.”
Isabella put her hands on her hips. “You can’t feed the birds,” she said. “Just take the picture and come down.”
“You’re bossy for a girl,” Daniel said, but he took his phone out of his pocket and snapped a picture.”
“Come down,” she said, bouncing again.
“Okay. Okay.”
Daniel scooted nimbly from one limb to the other and he made his way down.
“You’re going to fall,” Isabella said.
Daniel landed nimbly on his feet.
“Didn’t fall,” he said, holding his arms over his head.
“You’re an idiot,” Isabella said, but she blew out a breath of relief.
“Your idiot,” he said.
“Not mine.”
“Wait. You said you’d be my girlfriend.”
“That was before I found out you’re an idiot.”
She turned, facing the warmth of the sunshine on her face.
“Do you want to see the picture or not?”
“Yes!” She turned back, smiling. “Let me see.”
“Girls,” Daniel muttered under his breath, but he held up his phone.
Isabella took the phone and zoomed in on the little baby birds, their mouths wide open.
“Aw,” she said. “They’re really hungry.”
“I told you.”
The flutter of wings above signaled the return of the mother bird.
“She’s back,” Isabella said.
“Let’s go,” Daniel grabbed her arm to lead her away.
“But—”
“If she knows we’re here, she won’t feed them.”
“Why, that’s the silliest thing—”
But Daniel pulled her away where they crouched behind a purple blooming hydrangea bush.
“How do we know she’s feeding them?” Isabella asked, worried now about the mother bird knowing Daniel had been in the tree. “Do you think she smells you?”
But Daniel, an always prepared boy scout, pulled his spyglass out of his back pocket and zoomed in on the birds.
“Look,” he said. “She’s feeding them.”
“Aw,” she said. “She’s sharing her food. That is so amazingly wonderful.”
Daniel watched Isabella carefully.
Satisfied, she lowered the spyglass and smiled at him.
“We can have six babies if you want.”
“What?”
“Babies.” Daniel sat back on his heels. “After we’re married, of course.”
“You don’t want to marry me,” Isabella said.
“I do. I’ll marry you right now.”
Isabella looked at him crossly and crossed her arms.
“There’s no priest here.”
“We don’t need a priest. My sister said all you need to do is to say your vows.”
“How does she know that?”
“She learned it in history class.”
Isabella didn’t really believe him. She had an older sister and three older brothers. If that was a thing, she would have heard about it.
But Daniel said it with the utmost conviction. And besides. He was looking at her with those smiling blue eyes that made her heart beat too fast.
“How?” Isabella asked, curiosity overcoming skepticism.
Daniel seemed to think for a minute.
“You don’t know—”
“Put your hands in mine,” he said holding out his hands, palms up.
She put her hands in his.
“Now what?”
“We say our vows.” He took a breath. “I do.”
Isabella had never been to a wedding, but she had seen weddings on television. So far, it seemed right to her. Right enough anyway.
“I do,” she said. “So we’re married now?”
“Not yet,” he said. “There’s one more thing we have to do to make it official.”
“What’s that?”
“I have to kiss you.”
Isabella’s eyes widened. Daniel Benton was going to kiss her.
“Are you sure?” She had imagined this moment about two million times. Since Kindergarten.
“If we don’t, we won’t be married.”
Well, Isabella thought, she had come this far. Mimicking what she had seen on television, she closed her eyes, leaned forward at the waist, and puckered her lips.
Seconds passed. Two seconds. Three seconds.
Maybe she had misunderstood.
But then Daniel’s lips lightly touched hers.
Opening her eyes, she grinned at him.
“We’re married now.”
“Yes,” he said. “Forever and ever.”
Chapter One
Isabella Ashton
Today
I unrolled the oversized vellum graph paper, spread it over the drafting table, and clipped it onto the top edge to keep it from sliding off.
Early morning sunlight streamed in through the third floor window of Ashton Manor, casting a bright glow of light across the desk.
My new studio. A quiet place just for me to work.
Maybe a little too quiet. I tapped my phone, turning on some popular music just loud enough to fill in some of that background quietness. Coming from a crowded corporate office environment, I had to get myself accustomed to the quiet.
Not quite happy with the light, I shoved the heavy hardwood desk, just a little, shifting it so that the paper was free from shadows.
The drafting table was new, but the desk behind me where I kept my rulers, pencils, paper, and other supplies was antique. It made a good desk for my computer, too.
The antique desk stayed put. It was so heavy, I couldn’t move it if I had to.
It had been handed down through the years and according to my grandmother it had been built in the early 1800s and used by my great great great great grandfather who had built this house. She also told me that it had a secret compartment.
There were lots of stories about what was in that secret compartment, but no one knew for sure.
Everyone looked for the secret compartment. I looked for it, too. But no one could find it. I wasn’t giving up on it. Someday I was going to figure it out.
On the lawn below, my sister-in-law’s black retriever, basically a big oversized puppy, had been sniffing around for half an hour. Suddenly lifting his head, he raced toward the line of maple trees that indicated the end of the lawn and the beginning of the forest, toward something only he could see.
The dog came to an abrupt skidding stop at the edge of the lawn, about fifty yards across, at the maple trees, with their bright red leaves of fall, and laid his ears back.
Tori, the dog’s owner, called him back. Biscuit. Tori and my brother James named their dog Biscuit. What happened to normal dog names like Charlie, Buddy, or Rover. Spot. Spot was a good name for a dog. Especially Biscuit since he had a white spot between his eyes.
If I had a dog, I’d name him Spot. Or maybe Bandit. Depending.
Personally, I was more of cat person. My best friend had a cat named Fluffy. A normal pet with a normal pet name.
Biscuit raced back toward the house on long gangly legs and disappeared beneath the terrace deck.
The back door closed below as they came inside.
With no more distractions outside, I sat on my drafting stool and sipped my hot latte.
Running a hand over the pristine sheet of paper, I considered where I wanted to start.
I had a rough sketch on a napkin. Something had come to me while I was having Sunday dinner with my family and instead of looking for sheet of real paper, I’d used the napkin at hand.
That’s how it worked for me.
Ideas occurred to me when I was not supposed to be working—like Sundays with my family or showers. I got most of my ideas when I showered. Something about the hot water flowing over my head tended to loosen my thoughts.
The Ashton Manor was more than a house. It was an estate. I lived here with my parents, my four older siblings, and two sisters-in-law.
The house was so big we only saw each other in passing.
It would probably be different now, though, I mused, because starting today, I would be working from home.
Tori also worked from home, but she didn’t have a studio. She liked working downstairs on the sectional sofa in front of the fireplace.
I’d worked on the kitchen table until today, but that had been when I’d worked from home after putting in hours at my full-time job.
I still couldn’t believe I’d turned in my resignation and left my corporate job to go off on my own.
I was going on a leap of faith.
Doubling down on my idea of designing small cottage home offices for individuals. With so many people, professionals, working from home now, I saw the need for people having their own office space just steps away from their back doors.
A place they could call their own whether they wanted to work in the quiet or attend a Zoom meeting without the noises of family interrupting.
I’d only sold one of my plans, but I’d gotten a lot of interest.
Since it aligned with what I wanted to do, I took the leap.
One of my cousins out of Houston had put together a business plan for me. Ran some numbers.
And the result had been startling.
And yet I had not made the decision lightly.
I made pretty good money working at my corporate job. Decent, steady money.
But if my business made a go of it, I could make in one month what I would make in one year. My cousin had cautioned me that business success did not happen overnight.
I knew that, of course.
I also knew that at twenty-six, I had to make a move if I was going to.
So many people at my job were trapped. They had mortgages and car notes and children. They had too many obligations to leave the steady work force.
I’d personally spoken to a dozen people at work. They all told me the same thing.
If they had it to do over again, they would go out on their own before they became dependent on the money. I knew that ninety-nine percent of them would not do anything differently.
People tended not to take risks like that. They preferred the benefits and pension plan and steady income.
I had a safety net most people didn’t have.
I had a place to live and no expenses.
My parents wouldn’t let me fail. I might have to pivot, but I wouldn’t fail. My grandfather owned several high rise buildings in Pittsburgh and establishments inside those buildings including five star restaurants. He provided the capital and other people ran the businesses.
He was exceptionally successful. His brother, my Uncle Noah, was also an entrepreneur. Uncle Noah had created the largest and most successful private airline company from the ground up. Skye Travels.
He had airplanes housed at various places around the country, including Pittsburgh.
That was my goal. I wanted to have my own architect firm with people working for me around the country. Or at least maybe in an office in the city.
I had entrepreneurship in my blood.
But first I had to start with my second blueprint.
I had to establish a brand before I could make sales. A lot of people thought it went the other way around. Most people wanted to find a client before they made blueprints.
I knew I had to have blueprints to attract clients, at least at first.
People had to see what they were buying, especially from someone without an established track record.
That would be me.
But if determination had anything to do with it, I would have lots of blueprints for people to choose from. I’d have a website that I’d already been working on. All I had to do now was to make the designs and put them up for sale.
I was betting on myself.
My phone chimed with a text message.
Unknown number
Hello. Isabella Ashton? I got your number from your neighbor. She said you might could held me design an office cottage for me.
My heart pounded rapidly in my chest.
This was happening much more quickly than I had planned.
Staring at the blank sheet of paper in front of me wasn’t going to get the job done.
Can we meet? To talk about what you have in mind.
Chapter Two
Daniel Benton
I stepped off the elevator onto the second floor of the Skye Travels building at the edge of the Houston airport tarmac and turned toward Noah Worthington’s office.
The thick carpet muffled the sound of my shoes. The offices were quiet. The only noise came from outside. The airplane engine on one side and the freeway traffic on the other side.
Noah Worthington was what I thought of as the big boss.
Didn’t get much bigger in my mind.
Noah had started Skye Travels with one little Cessna airplane and built it into the largest private airline company in the country. He now had a fleet of airplanes including more Phenoms than any other one single man owned. Most of them were housed in Houston, but some were housed in various places around the country including Whiskey Springs and Mackinac Island. He had a tendency to go for places off the beaten path. Beautiful, magical places that didn’t have easy access.
Of course, he also had airplanes in other cities, too, like Dallas and Birmingham.
Maggie, talking on her headset, as always, held up a hand in greeting as I passed. Maggie had been with Skye Travels for years. Some claimed she came with the place but Maggie always evaded giving a straight answer about that.
I walked down the hallway and stopped at Noah’s door.
He turned around from where he stood looking out over the tarmac. He had the best view of the Houston Airport from here. He could see every one of his private jets as they came and went and if that wasn’t enough, he could watch commercial jets landing and taking off on nearby runways. Most of them went airborne right over his office.
It was a befitting office for a man of Noah’s stature and reputation.
I’d worked for Skye Travels for five years coming here straight after college graduation. The envy of most of my peers, many of whom took me off their friend list. It was my fault I landed one of the most coveted jobs for pilots.
Fortunately, I had friends who weren’t pilots. I just didn’t stay in touch nearly as much as I should.
“Come in,” Noah said. “Have a seat.”
In the five years that I had worked here at Skye Travels, I had never been summoned to his office. He’d interviewed me back when and that was that. I’d only seen him in passing since, at the office at least.
I’d been to his home for a couple of normal Sunday dinners and I’d been to holiday parties.
But I’d never once been summoned to his office.
If I had done something wrong, I couldn’t imagine what it would be.
As I took a seat on the sofa in his little sitting area, a large commercial jet came in for a landing, the loud roar from its engines filling the air.
Noah didn’t even seem to notice. He took two bottles of water from a little refrigerator and handed one to me. The water bottles had the red Skye Travels logo on the label.
“Thank you,” I said, twisting the top off and drinking while I waited for him to fill me in on what he needed to talk to me about.
I shifted in my seat and adjusted my tie.
“You’re not in trouble,” Noah said, watching me.
Had I been that obvious?
“Good to know,” I said.
“Actually I need a favor.”
“A favor.” I had not expected Noah Worthington to need a favor from me. I tended to fly beneath the radar.
Just doing my job and going home.
But I was a pilot and it was hard for a pilot to fly beneath the radar for very long.
“Sure thing,” I said. “How can I help?”
I was thinking maybe he needed me to take an extra flight. Maybe an overnight flight. The married guys didn’t like the extended overnight trips and Noah tried to accommodate them.
Being single, I didn’t mind taking overnight trips, but he would know that. I took overnight trips all the time.
“You’re originally from Pittsburgh, right?”
“Yes sir.” I was still trying to figure out what kind of favor he might be looking for.
“Good,” he said, stopping to watch one of his planes takeoff. He probably even knew who the pilot was. How many times had he watched me land and takeoff?
I waited in silence. He’d tell me in his own good time.
“I need someone to cover one of my Phenoms up there for a while.”
“Pittsburgh?”
“Yes.” He toyed with the label on his bottle of water.
“Okay. How long?”
“Two months.”
“Oh. Two months.”
