“Watch it!” Weave? Oh, the sister was tripping. She was taking that back, or Jenessa was handing it to her—like garnish on top of a platter of whup-ass.
But Mitchell wasn’t going to let it come to that. Smoothly, he sidestepped Jenessa, which brought him within two feet of the woman, who was overtaken by an unholy case of the shakes. “Easy, now,” he said soothingly, like he was trying to coax a small wild animal back outside without having to hurt it.
“Easy?” The woman gestured at Jenessa with a wide sweep of the arm. “She’s the one looks easy to me, and you, you should be ashamed of yourself. Can’t you keep it in your boxers while Ruby’s around?”
Mitchell’s face tautened. “Ruby’s not here right now. I would never—”
The woman dropped the issue of Mitchell’s sex life like a hot rock. “Where is she?”
He shook his head guardedly. “Just out for an hour or two.”
“Out? You sent my baby out on a night like this? On Christmas night?”
Her baby? Jenessa’s thoughts floundered.
“I didn’t send her anywhere,” he hedged. “She’s safe.”
“I want to see her.”
“You know you can’t.”
“I’m not tryin’ to hear that, Mitch. Where’s Ruby?”
“You know you’re not allowed to see her without supervision. . . . ”
“The court can bite me! I want to see my daughter.”
Jenessa sucked in a lungful of air as the missing puzzle piece slid into place. The gaunt, agitated woman who was so electrically charged her hair practically stood on end, was Ruby’s mother. Mitchell’s sister. But what was all this about court orders and supervised visits?
“Coral,” Mitch began gently.
“I have to see her! I have to see her!” Coral began rummaging through her capacious shoulder bag, bits and pieces of paper and other odds and ends tumbling out as she dug. “I bought her something.” She pulled out a small plastic object like she was yanking a rabbit out of a hat. It was a lilac pony, with a long, luxuriant mane and glittery flowers on its flank. The kind seven-year-olds liked to play with.
“I got her this,” Coral panted, as if the exertion of digging was too much for her. “You have to let me give it to her.”
Jenessa wondered if Mitchell was going to point out that Ruby was five years past the stage of playing with ponies, but he said, in the softest, kindest voice she’d ever heard. “It’s lovely, Coral.” He held out his hand. “I’ll make sure she gets it as soon as she comes home.”
“Don’t you even think about giving it to her!” Coral shrieked. “I’m giving it to her! Wherever she is, you get her. You go get her right now, or I’m warning you. . . . ” She ran to the door and tore it open. The icy blast assailed them once again. “Go! Go!” Coral yelled and gestured wildly outside. “Go get my daughter, right now!”
Mitchell shut the door firmly, and said, equally firmly, “You know I can’t do that. It would get us both into trouble. You have a scheduled visit coming up, early in the New Year, remember? I’ll be all nice and legal, and you two can—”
He never got to finish what he was going to say. His sister threw the pony at him. It bounced off his forehead and landed on the floor, still smiling benignly. With a yowl, Coral launched herself forward, ragged fingernails clawing and scraping. He tried to duck out of the way, but it was like trying to evade a wheat thresher. Fine red lines appeared on his cheeks.
Not satisfied with clawing her brother to shreds, Coral grasped her bag in both hands, and with some effort, began spinning it around her head like a bolo. When it had built up so much momentum that she ran the risk of going spinning as well, she let it go. It exploded full in his face, and an amazing collection of junk went flying.
Mitchell shrugged off the blow as if hit by a pillow. As Jenessa watched in open-mouthed astonishment, he grasped his sister’s windmilling arms and pinned them to her sides. She shrieked like a captured banshee, and fought with a strength Jenessa wouldn’t have imagined possible in someone so thin, but Mitchell prevailed. A bead of sweat trickled down his temple with the effort, but Coral was pinned against the wall, Mitchell leaning into her to keep her from rising again, whispering something Jenessa couldn’t hear.
I’ve heard of dog-whisperers, she thought irrationally, but this is the first time I’ve seen a wildcat-whisperer in action.
Under the influence of Mitchell’s murmurings, Coral’s demands degenerated to an incoherent stream of pleadings and mews, and then even further, into almost silent sobs.
Jenessa watched, feeling like an intruder, embarrassed and incredibly uncomfortable, as he finally released his grip on his sister’s biceps, and instead enfolded her in his arms, pressing her face into his shoulder.
I shouldn’t be here, Jenessa thought. I ought to leave. But the siblings were standing between her and the door, and she had the feeling that trying to inch past would be like trying to tiptoe her way through a room full of mousetraps. Any false step could unleash more drama.
Drawn to the tenderness and intimacy of the scene, and yet repulsed by the ugliness of what had gone before—not to mention the host of answered questions that hovered in the air like hornets waiting for an excuse to start stinging—she looked around for something else to focus on. It was a choice between minutely examining the titles on Mitchell’s shelves, slinking off to the kitchen to get a head-start on the dishes, or cleaning up the clutter on the floor she’d already tidied once that night.
She dropped to her knees, her now-loose, weave-free locks sweeping down over her face, and began gathering up the contents of Coral’s bottomless handbag. Mints, candy, tissues (used and unused), pens, pencils, scraps of paper, stamps, more candy, lipstick, more candy . . . the woman was a sugar fiend. No wonder she was so wired.
By the time she’d gathered up everything that hadn’t rolled under a major piece of furniture, Mitchell and Coral had parted, although he still held one of her hands in both of his. Her tear-streaked face looked way older than she should be.
“Let me take you back,” he was saying.
“I don’t want to go back.”
“You have to.”
“I don’t want to,” Coral moaned.
“I know.” The compassion in his voice was infinite, bringing a hard lump to Jenessa’s throat. “You need to get back before they find you missing,” he reasoned.
“I’m on a day pass.” She lifted her head, catching his eye in a gesture of pride. “Some people trust me, you know.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Real good.”
Then he caught sight of Jenessa, rising from the floor, still stuffing knickknacks into Coral’s bag, and started a little, as if he’d forgotten she was there. He released his sister, and raked his hair back from his forehead an uneasy gesture that infected Jenessa with his discomfort.
Someone had to say something. “Mitchell. . . . ” She remembered how she’d been messing with his head, calling him by his full name even when he was asking her to do otherwise. Because teasing him was fun.
Well, the fun had leached out of the room, leaving everything a dull, flat gray. She heard him say, “I have to take my sister back to . . . where she’s staying.”
Where, she wondered? Where did they keep crazy women with wolverine claws, and then let them out on day passes? A mental institution? An open prison? Something in between? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“It’s time for me to leave,” she said as nonchalantly as she could. But she didn’t move, her eyes searching Mitchell’s face for something, but she didn’t know what.
He nodded wearily. “I’m sorry. I wish. . . . ”
Coral seemed to suddenly realize that Jenessa was still clutching her bag. She lunged, tore it from her arms and then cradled it to her chest like an abducted baby, glaring.
You’re welcome, Jenessa thought dryly. With a shrug that was more mental than physical, she spun around, once, twice. Trying to remember where her bag and
coat were. Her jacket was lying accusingly on the couch, where she’d eased out of it while they were kissing, opening themselves to a new awareness of each other, about 500,000 years ago.
By the time she’d put it on, Mitchell was holding her coat out. He helped her into it, and then she slung her bag on her shoulder. She fished out her keys, and held them in her hand, pointing forward like a small switchblade, as if she was warning him not to come any closer.
He glanced down at it, frowning, and sought out her eyes, but she looked away. With a barely audible groan, he faced his sister. “Haven’t you got a thicker coat than that?”
Coral looked down at herself, like she didn’t even remember she had one on. “Didn’t think it’d get so cold.”
“It’s Christmas,” he reminded her with a glimmer of humor.
“Yeah, well . . . um.”
“Take this.” He enfolded Coral in one of his own coats, with as much care as he’d shown Jenessa. It was way too big for her scrawny frame, like throwing a tarp over a tetherball post. When he was all wrapped up himself, he opened the door. “Got everything?” he asked Jenessa.
She responded with a tight nod, and the trio stepped outside into the frosty night. The two women followed Mitch down the front steps, and then, to Jenessa’s horror, he darted immediately up the steps leading to the other dwelling in the duplex. Brianna’s place . . . where Ruby was.
“I need to . . . let my neighbors know where I’ll be,” he explained cagily. And left them standing together on the sidewalk.
Jenessa cringed. First, because if Coral was able to make the mental leap across the great divide of reality, it wouldn’t take her more than a few seconds to figure out that there was a reason her brother had to report on his whereabouts to the people next door, and that that reason probably involved Ruby.
Second, Mitchell had left her alone on the sidewalk in the middle of the night with a woman whose belfry had quite enough bats in it, thank you. And who, from the looks of the deep gouges in his cheeks, whiled away her free time sharpening her fingernails to deadly points. Jenessa kept a tight grip on her car keys, and wished the power of teleportation was hers.
Coral seemed equally uncomfortable; her eyes, which were much darker than her brother’s, darted around with those quick, birdlike movements that Jenessa wouldn’t be forgetting soon. Then she broke the turgid silence, pointing with her chin at Jenessa’s pearl-white SUV parked at the curb.
“That your ride?”
“Mmm,” Jenessa answered by way of admission.
“Cost a bundle.”
“Huh.” This wasn’t going down in the annals of human interaction as the conversation of the century, that was for sure.
Then Coral flipped it on her, abruptly sounding rational. “Tell you something?”
“What?” Jenessa answered warily. If a revelation was coming, she wasn’t sure she was going to like it.
“My brother—”
Whatever gem was poised to tumble from Coral’s lips would never reach Jenessa’s ear. There was a clatter behind them, and Mitchell was taking the stairs two at a time. His breath was a dense, white, cotton-candy puff suspended beyond his lips.
“Okay, all set.” Then he said to his sister, “Just let me see Jenessa to her car.”
But Coral, having lost interest in Jenessa and any conversation they might have been having, was staring off into the distance, drifting through in her own personal winter wonderland.
Mitchell crooked his arm, inviting Jenessa to take it, but since they were only three or four steps to the car, she didn’t bother. As she clicked open the door, the car beeped a welcome, and the house lights turned on, bathing the interior with a warm, fireside glow. Looks were deceiving, she knew, and the inside of the car was as warm as a penguin’s patootie. Nevertheless, she slipped hastily behind the driver’s wheel. Please, make him not want to talk. Not now.
Good manners prevented her from slamming the door shut, so she left it open a crack while he stood there, with his hands stuffed into his pockets looking like he wanted to say something. Not now, she said again in the depths of her mind.
He got the psychic telegram. “We’ll talk,” was all he said. “Soon.”
“Mmm.” The Cooper clan had made her mono-syllabic over the course of a single evening.
With a hesitant nod, he turned his back to her, went back to his sister and wrapped a protective arm around her shoulder. He guided her to a sturdy black station wagon and ushered her in. Then he walked to his side. She could hear the engine start up, but he didn’t move off. When it occurred to her that he was waiting for her to go first, she started her engine. Not bothering to wait for the car to warm up, she lurched out of her parking spot, desperate to be out of his line of vision. Once she was on the move, he, too, set his car in motion. He did an abrupt U-turn and headed off in the other direction.
As soon as he was out of sight she pulled over to the curb. She was no more than a block away from his townhouse but her stomach was tied up in such huge knots that it felt as if her heart and lungs were being twisted with it. It was barely after ten and the Christmas celebrations were still going on around her. Noise and laughter poured out from restaurants. Even the businesses that were closed left their Christmas lights on, and the thousands of glittering stars that adorned the storefronts seemed to flash peace, joy, and happiness in Morse code.
But for Jenessa, the light of Christmas joy that being in Mitchell’s and Ruby’s company had ignited inside her had gone out. Suddenly and brutally, as if someone had whacked a firefly with a rolled-up newspaper. She looked out the windows, which had already begun to frost up with her breath. Christmas lights and rooftop Santas notwithstanding, the streets of Catarina had taken on a menacing look.
She felt fear wrapping around her like a fast-growing vine, spreading its leaves and tendrils up her legs. But it wasn’t the quirky little neighborhood that scared her; it was a darker shadow looming in the back of her mind. Buildings much more rundown than these. Narrower streets, dark alleys. A neighborhood that nobody could pass off as simply historical and eccentric. A neighborhood that was what it was: a slum.
She’d fought so hard to claw her way out of it, that ugly Detroit neighborhood. She and her sister, Jordana, had decided long ago they were meant for much more than that, and had set in motion an action plan that included a solid education and a series of jobs that grew more and more prestigious.
With determination, focus, and single-minded dedication, both girls had scrubbed the stink of the ghetto off themselves, replacing it with the sweet scent of expensive perfumes, fine clothes, and success. What’s more, they’d taken their parents with them, out of the kind of life they refused even to reminisce about out loud.
She’d left behind shame, frustration and low self-esteem, and almost everyone who’d known her then when her hair was an unremarkable brown tangle, her clothes bought in bargain stores, and her shoes posed no threat to the health and happiness of cows or crocodiles.
Jordana had married a successful engineer. While Jenessa wasn’t the marryin’ kind, she dated men like her; ambitious and stylish. Men who knew the ugly truth: that in life, there were just two options: you could climb to the top and enjoy benefits of victory, or stay below in the dust with all the others, and get stepped on.
What was she doing? How could she even be thinking of dating Mitchell Cooper? Okay, so he was smart and good looking. Breathtaking, even, if he caught you unawares. Well read, from the look of his books . . . and his choice of poetry. Good to his family. And alright, if you wanted to beat the truth out of her, the way he kissed her . . . did things to her. Stuff nobody’d done to her in a long time.
But he wasn’t her people. In his neighborhood, folks didn’t mind shouting out the window. There wasn’t any residents’ association to tell you to get your ugly-ass plastic reindeer off your roof. Bianchi’s paid well, and she was sure that as top dog in Maintenance he was making a fair chunk of change. But it wasn’t her kind
of money.
And this family thing. This . . . whatever was going on between him, his niece and his sister—who, she didn’t mind saying, had guzzled down a whole gallon of crazy—what was that all about?
Jenessa let her head fall back against the headrest and allowed her lids to close. This was more than she’d bargained for. She couldn’t do this. Mitchell had asked for one date, and he’d gotten it, but that was all. She was ending this, right now, and staying on her side of the tracks. And he’d do well to stay on his.
7.
After dropping her bombshell, Sharona Holmes folded her arms and gave Jenessa a look that dared her to object. Perched on the edge of Jenessa’s desk, rather than in the visitor’s chair, she crossed her legs, which took a little effort, given the heaviness of her thighs and the tightness of her skirt. Sharona was a huge fan of desk-sitting. Wherever she went, she left a trail of desk butt-prints in her wake. Jenessa figured she did it because it made her look taller and more imposing. Her vice president was a woman who liked to throw her weight around: on occasion, quite literally.
“Well?” Sharona leaned forward, giving Jenessa a few anxious moments for the safety of her inbox, which had been inching toward the edge of her desk since Sharona had plunked herself down near it.
Jenessa sat back, her mind boggling with the enormity of the tragedy. More than sixty workers being dumped—sorry, downsized—without warning, with the minimum severance package, just days after Christmas. How could this have happened? This was Bianchi’s! A family company. Not just family owned; the workers were a family. How could Tony Goodman do something like this?
Sharona read Jenessa’s thoughts like she was shouting them from a mountain top. “Tony didn’t have a choice. Things are hard all over.”
“I know, but. . . . ”
“It’s a tough time for small businesses. Lots of others are closing. But if we do this, we can survive.”
“Bianchi’s will,” she conceded, “but what about the workers?”
Sharona tried her best to look sincere. “I know. It’s a terrible loss.” Then she flicked her impeccably tended fingers. “But they’re mostly lower-level. Factory workers, clerks. You know.”
The Irresistible Mr Cooper Page 7