“What do you do with yourself on a Sunday afternoon?” he asked, keeping his voice easy.
His question took her by surprise. She took a slow sip of tea. “What do you mean?”
He flopped against the back of the couch and accidentally kicked the coffee table while crossing one foot on the opposite knee. He frowned at the table that always seemed to be in his way. Then he shrugged. “I mean, do you go visit friends? Cook out on the patio? Go to the zoo? Fly a kite in the park? What do you do?”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed. “Me? Fly a kite?” The idea was ludicrous.
“You don’t fly kites?”
She tilted her head and studied him. “Do you?”
“I’ve been known to.”
“Why?”
He blinked. “What do you mean, why?”
“Why does a grown man fly a kite?”
“For fun.”
She frowned. “Fun?”
Something in the back of Gavin’s neck tingled. “Enjoyment? Entertainment? You know—fun.”
She gave him a look that seemed to say, If you say so. “I wanted to talk to you about Ben.”
“I’d rather talk about fun. What do you do for fun?”
“Mr. Marshall—”
“If you don’t start calling me Gavin, I’m going to have to get rough with you.”
To give her credit, she didn’t look impressed with his threat. “How long have you known Ben?”
Gavin studied her through narrowed eyes. “That depends on who you’re asking.”
“Pardon?”
“If you’re asking Mr. Marshall, that’s my dad. He’s known Ben for several months.”
Her foot started a rapid tapping on the carpet. “All right. ”How long have you known my brother, Gavin?”
Gavin grinned. “A little over a year.”
“Why did you lend him money?”
His smile slipped. “If he wants you to know, he’ll tell you himself.”
She shook her head. “I’m not asking why he borrowed it from you.”
The words were hard for her to say. Gavin could read every thought that crossed her face. He could feel the sudden tension radiating from her, feel it pulling at him. She might not be asking why Ben borrowed the money, but she damn sure wanted to know. Or thought she did.
“I’d like to know,” she continued, “why you would bother lending him the money at all.”
Trevor shrugged. “He’s a friend. If I hadn’t loaned it to him, he’d have gotten it somewhere else that maybe wasn’t too smart.”
She seemed to shrink in on herself. “You mean, like a loan shark?”
“A thumb-breaker? Yeah. It was a possibility.” There were other possibilities, worse ones that made his gut clench thinking of them, but he didn’t mention them.
“So you loaned him the money yourself.”
“That’s right.”
“Because you’re such a nice guy?”
“Why, thank you.”
“I was asking a question, not stating an opinion.”
Gavin placed a hand over his heart. “You wound me.”
Her mouth firmed, lips thinned. The lady obviously was not amused. “When and how did you meet my brother?”
He gave a negligent shrug. “At a party.”
“What kind of party?” she asked sharply.
“You’ve been reading too many tabloids, sugar.”
“What kind of party?”
He shrugged again. “Just a get-together at a friend’s. Ben was pecking out a tune on the piano. Something, I learned later, that he’d written himself.”
“Ben wrote a song?” There was that baby-owl blink again.
“He’s written several in the past year.”
She cocked her head. “You like him.”
“Yeah. I like him. I’ve. told you that several times. He’s a likable guy.”
Deep furrows dug into her brow. “If you really like him, then why...”
“Why am I after his hide?”
“Is that what you’re after? His hide?”
Gavin shook his head. “I’m not out to hurt him, Anna. But I think if he doesn’t wake up real quick, he’s headed for trouble. Bad trouble. I like him too much to sit back and let that happen without trying to stop it.”
She took a small sip of tea and stared down at her glass for a long moment before looking up at him again. “I don’t understand what it is you’re planning to do if and when he shows up here. I don’t understand what you think you can do.”
“I can make him own up to his responsibilities.”
“How? By telling him to? Do you think I haven’t tried that?” Her voice wavered. “Do you think I don’t know his faults?”
“I don’t know,” Gavin said bluntly. “Do you?”
From the neighbor’s backyard, a dog barked. Out in the street, a car door slammed. Ordinary sounds of an ordinary neighborhood. They soothed something in Gavin, eased the tension that tightened his shoulders whenever he thought of the trouble Ben was headed for if somebody didn’t give him a hard, swift kick in the seat of his pants.
“Are you aware,” he asked her quietly, “that he likes to gamble? And that he’s not very good at it?”
He read the pain in her face before she spoke. “He promised me he wouldn’t do that again.”
“You sound just like my aunt Marilyn.” Gavin’s wry laugh was tinged with sadness. “The two of you have a lot in common. Or rather, her son, Danny, and Ben have a lot in common. Unfortunately.”
Anna took another sip of tea, pursed her lips and leaned back in her chair. “I suppose you’re going to explain what you mean.”
Gavin sighed. “I suppose I am. Marilyn is my mother’s sister. Her three boys were in their early teens when her husband left her. Danny was the youngest. About twelve, I guess, when his dad ran off.”
Gavin hadn’t been much older himself at the time. Lord, he’d never forget the day Marilyn and the boys had come crashing into the house, awash in hysterical tears. Steve had left them. Just said goodbye and waltzed out the door.
Gavin shook his head. It was a long time ago now. “The two older boys, Steve Junior, and Tom, they did okay with it after a while. But Danny apparently couldn’t accept that his dad was never coming back. He started acting up, getting in trouble in school, that sort of thing.”
Ah, the look on Anna’s face was priceless. She knew where he was headed with this story. He could read it in her eyes. She was already tallying up the similarities between Danny and Ben. Ben’s parents might not have walked out on him deliberately, but dying was still leaving, and the ones left behind still felt anger and pain and a sense of betrayal.
“The older Danny got,” Gavin continued, “the more trouble he managed to stir up. By the time he was twenty, he’d milked nearly ten thousand dollars out of his mother to get him out of one scrape after another. The rest of us kept telling her to stop, but she couldn’t. He was her baby. She loved him. She couldn’t just stand back and do nothing when he needed her.”
Pain and stubborn denial mixed with fear in Anna’s eyes. Gavin wished...hell, he didn’t know what he wished. Only maybe that she wouldn’t hurt so much, wouldn’t care so much. But Ben was her brother. If she didn’t care, Gavin wouldn’t admire her—and he was starting to realize that he did—he wouldn’t be feeling this dull ache in his chest on her behalf.
“She sold her new Lincoln and bought an old clunker, she hocked her jewelry, mortgaged her house. And good ol’ Danny just kept coming back asking for more. She borrowed every cent she could from anyone who’d lend it to her, until finally she couldn’t borrow any more.”
“It’s a sad story,” Anna said, denial hard on her face. “But it has nothing to do with Ben.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“No. I’ve never gone into debt for Ben.” But only because she couldn’t, Anna acknowledged silently. She’d been too busy paying off the debts their parents had left them.
“Good for y
ou. Marilyn wasn’t that smart. If she had cut him off sooner, maybe he wouldn’t have ended up where he did.”
Anna did not want to hear the rest of this story. She most definitely did not. “I suppose you’re going to tell me where he ended up?”
Gavin gave her a single nod. “I am. When his mother couldn’t lend—give—him any more money, he tried the rest of the family. Everybody told him to grow up, to stop being so damn irresponsible. Danny didn’t listen. He kept throwing his money away, kept gambling, kept losing. Eventually he lost too much to the wrong kind of people. The kind who break kneecaps for fun. My brother bailed him out of that one after making Danny promise to straighten up and get counseling, get a job.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No, he didn’t.” It still hurt, Gavin thought. After two years, it still hurt to think about what Danny had done, where he was now. “He turned right around six months later and got in even deeper with the same people. Only this time no one was willing to bail him out. So he came up with another way to get the money he needed. Unfortunately, he wasn’t very good at that, either. He’s now a guest of the State of Washington, doing twelve years hard time for armed robbery.”
Anna shivered and looked down at the glass of tea she still held, mildly surprised to notice that her knuckles were white and the glass was in danger of shattering. She eased her grip.
Not Ben. Ben wouldn’t end up like Gavin’s cousin. Ben wouldn’t—
“Right about now I figure you’re telling yourself that couldn’t happen to your brother.”
Anna flinched but refused to look up.
“Don’t kid yourself,” he said. “It can happen. Probably will, if he doesn’t straighten up. One of these days he’ll be in so much trouble you won’t be able to bail him out. Then what will you do?”
This time she did look up at him. “So I stop helping him now? Speed up the process so he can get in real trouble that much sooner? What kind of answer is that?”
“If we handle it right, maybe he’ll learn his lesson now, before it’s too late.”
“We?”
“You and me, Anna. Together. What do you say?”
“I say that considering what you do for a living, it’s incredibly presumptuous of you to think you can teach responsibility to anyone.”
His eyes hardened. His voice softened. Dangerously, she thought.
“What I do for a living?”
“You write songs, Gavin. Rock-and-roll songs. If that’s not a frivolous and irresponsible way for a grown man to spend his time, I don’t know what is.”
Chapter Six
So she thought his work was frivolous, did she? An irresponsible waste of time. Not nearly as earth-shattering a profession as bookkeeping.
It stung. More than it should. Gavin hadn’t had to put up with snide remarks about his chosen profession in years. Maybe he was getting soft.
But then, in the circles he generally moved in, no one was likely to consider rock a frivolous pursuit. Nearly everyone he hung with was in the business. Why should he care what Anna Collins thought?
But he did care, and there was the rub. And he didn’t know what, if anything, to do about it, or if there was anything he could do. Yet he felt things when he looked at her, things he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt before. Things he couldn‘t—wouldn’t—identify. He wanted her to like him.
Damn. There it was. He wanted Anna’s approval, of what he wanted to teach Ben, and of himself. He wanted her to approve of Gavin Marshall. And she didn’t.
If the rest of Sunday was any indication, she didn’t want anything to do with him. After she’d snapped at him she’d closed herself up in her room for hours. When she finally came out, she didn’t speak a word to him all evening.
All right, it was Monday and she was gone to work. To her responsible, important job.
“Her boring job,” he said out loud to himself. Dull, predictable, rule-ridden.
Comfortable in nothing but jeans, his hair still damp from the shower, Gavin roamed through Anna’s home, room by room, looking for clues to the woman who somehow intrigued him.
It worried him a little the way she filled his thoughts when she wasn’t even around. He told himself that the only reasons he couldn’t get her off his mind was that he was in her house, surrounded by reminders of her, and that she was so closely tied in with his determination to straighten out Ben. It was not, he assured himself, because he was attracted to her, because he wasn’t. No way. Not him, not to a stay-at-home, no-nonsense woman like her.
Even her home was no-nonsense, he thought as he wandered through it. He deliberately avoided her bedroom, figuring he’d already invaded enough of her privacy as it was. But he felt no qualms about wandering the rest of the house.
There was a great deal to be learned from the knickknacks and collectibles that filled a person’s home. In Anna’s case, there was a great deal to be learned by the lack of them. Even in her decorating, if it could be called that, Anna Collins was a no-nonsense woman, plain in every way, no frills, no extra touches to deliberately brighten up the place. Yet everything was painfully neat. Not a single thing out of place, unless Gavin himself had left it there.
No houseplants, not even fake ones.
No photographs of their parents. None of Anna. Just a graduation shot of Ben in cap and gown, grinning like a goofball. Typical high school picture. Nice-looking kid. The framed photograph was the only adornment to the stark white walls of the living room.
The third bedroom had been converted into a combination den-office-music room, with a worn brown sofa along one wall and a small desk in the corner. Centered beneath the window on the outside wall sat an old blond upright piano, a metronome, still and silent, sitting on one corner.
Grinning, Gavin had a sudden picture of Ben grimacing over scales and exercises, just waiting for the chance when no one was listening so he could cut loose with a little boogie-woogie. And Anna, rushing in, frowning fiercely, reminding him he was supposed to be practicing, not playing. A piano is not a toy.
He could almost hear the echo of her voice. It made him smile. So stern. So practical. So serious. Always serious.
Looking at the piano, Gavin wondered if she’d ever played it. Then he shook his head. Not her. She was too practical for something as frivolous as music, at least when it came to her own time, her own enjoyment.
What Anna Collins needed, Gavin decided, was to lighten up, have some fun. Learn how to enjoy life.
And he was just the man to teach her.
He would start her off with a pleasant surprise.
It was more than a surprise, it was a shock, when Anna stepped in from the garage Monday evening and was met with the mouthwatering aroma of home-cooked meat loaf. For a moment she thought she’d entered the wrong house. No one but Anna had cooked in this kitchen since she’d taken over the chore from her mother at the age of twelve.
“Welcome home.” Barefoot, wearing faded jeans and a Rolling Stones T-shirt, Gavin executed a grin and a quick little bow.
Anna glanced around the kitchen, saw the mess of cooking—empty bowls, utensils, a spill of something red on the counter. Across the room, the table was set for two. Beside her, the oven radiated heat. “You cooked?”
He beamed like a little boy bringing a fistful of dandelions to his mother. “I cooked.”
She didn’t want to be charmed, but couldn’t seem to help it. This was the last thing she’d expected from him. Not only that he could, but that he would put himself to the trouble. It made her slightly uneasy. She wasn’t used to people doing things for her. Especially strangers. Especially after the way she’d insulted him yesterday.
Then she felt herself flush. She’d asked about him at work today. Donna, who worked at the desk next to Anna’s and handled payroll and accounts receivable, was always listening to rock in the break room, always ribbing Anna for her disinterest, her lack of knowledge on the subject.
Today Anna had surprised her by asking if she
knew anything about rock-and-roll songwriters. Donna had been curious that Anna would ask, but no, she’d said, popping her gum, she’d never heard of Gavin Marshall. “Unless he’s that gorgeous hunk on the Grammies last year, the one whose songs always win awards.”
Now Anna wondered, was this the same man? What would a Grammy-winning songwriter be doing making meat loaf in her kitchen?
“By the time you change clothes, dinner will be on the table.”
“Do you mind if I ask a question?” Startled that the words had come out of her mouth when she’d sworn they wouldn’t, Anna kept her gaze firmly on her plate and used her napkin to blot her lips. The question she wanted to ask had been haunting her since yesterday when he’d told her about his cousin Danny. It had plagued her sleep, and distracted her all day today at work. She couldn’t get it out of her mind.
“Ask away,” he offered.
To give herself time to arrange the words properly, she took another bite of the excellent meat loaf. “Where did you learn how to cook?”
“From my mother.”
“It’s very good.” Anna took another bite in hope that as she swallowed the food, the question on her tongue would go down with it. “Excellent in fact.”
“Thank you. Mom will be pleased to know you approve and that I haven’t forgotten everything she taught me. Is that what you wanted to ask me about? My cooking?”
She felt her face heat up. “No. No, it isn’t.” Still stalling, she sipped her tea, added another dab of margarine to her mashed potatoes. Stirred her peas with her fork. “It’s about your cousin. Danny.”
Gavin eased back in his chair and looked at her. “What do you want to know?”
She didn’t want to ask, but knew she was going to anyway. She was compelled. She just didn’t know how to word the question. “It’s about Danny and his mother.”
“What about them?”
She took a deep breath for courage. “Did he like her, dislike her? Did he respect her? Disrespect her?”
Gavin cocked his head and frowned slightly.
“I guess I’m assuming he couldn’t have thought much of her,” Anna said, “since he took advantage of her, used her the way he did.”
Until You Page 8