by Sey, Susan
“Only if you want me to pledge my eternal love in front of all these people,” he said. Gerte snorted and busied herself at the bakery case.
Addy turned back to him. “Well somebody’s got to be dead if you tracked me down via the family calendar. Because if memory serves, you swore you’d sign up for that thing over my dead body. Or was it yours?”
“It was Mom’s.” He grinned at her suddenly and she stepped back, startled. Jax wasn’t a handsome man but when he smiled and meant it? A girl felt it in the backs of her knees. “And I believe my exact words were that I’d wear Mom’s electronic leash over her dead body. But if you wanted to wear it, that was your business.”
“I see.” She gazed at him, so off balance that she accidentally took a sip of coffee. Oh, ick. All the cream and sugar in the world couldn’t hide the fact that it was still coffee. “And do you check on my whereabouts often? Or only when Nan wants to kill me?”
“Believe me, it wasn’t my idea. But Mom’s having a fit, and if I don’t deliver you to Hill Top House within the next fifteen minutes, my life won’t be worth living. Or so she tells me.”
“Oh boy,” Lainey muttered from the kitchen. “Bianca could make good on that.”
“Tell me about it,” Jax said with a goodnatured eye roll. Addy stayed carefully silent. Lainey wasn’t wrong — Jax’s mom had what you might call an artistic temperament and she’d put some miles on it — but with Gerte head-down in the bakery case, listening avidly, Addy wasn’t about to agree. Anything Addy said now could and would be used against her in the court of public opinion, and she knew it. She smiled noncommittally and abstained from comment. Jax had put this ball in play; he could finish it off.
“And since I like my life just the way it is,” Jax went on easily, “I’ll be fetching Addy home now.” He turned back to her and swung an arm toward the door. “Hup hup, sis.”
She stared at him, incredulous. Sis? Since when did Jax call her sis?
“I’m sorry.” She tipped her head and studied him. “Did you just hup hup me?”
“Well, you’re dawdling. And milady awaits.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake.” But she started toward the door.
“Hang on, kids.” Gerte straightened from the bakery case and held the white paper bag out to Jax. It looked deliciously heavy and suddenly the pie seemed like a while ago. Addy pressed a quelling hand to her hopeful stomach. She was truly a lost cause. “Your usual, Chief. Let us know how it goes up on the hill.”
Jax bee-lined back to the counter, dropped a few bucks on it and scooped up the bag. He opened it and stuck his nose in for a deep, enthusiastic inhale. Pleasure spread across his face like a sunrise.
“Gerte,” he said, pressing the bag reverently to his chest. “Marry me. Make me the happiest man alive.”
“Oh, land. Such a Romeo today!” She colored up prettily. “Go pick on somebody your own age, why don’t you?”
He dropped the bag and snatched up her hand. “But I only have eyes,” he warbled in a surprisingly rich baritone, “fooooor yooooooou!”
“Uff dah,” Gerte said, laughing. “No wonder you’re still single.” She pressed her free hand to her cheek and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Addy, he’s singing.”
Addy gazed at him, bemused. “Yes, I see that.”
She stepped forward, hooked a finger into the bakery bag and peered inside, curious as to what could make the stoic Jackson Davis burst into song. It was a morning glory muffin, studded with nuts and carrots, spangled with sugar, and so dense with butter it was already staining the bag.
Mercy. She felt a show tune coming on herself.
“Well?” Gerte laughed. “Do something!”
“I’m trying,” Addy murmured, still a little dazzled.
Lainey poked her head over the counter separating the dining room from the kitchen. “Pull it together, kids. Jax’s life is about to be not worth living.” She smirked. “Yours might already be shot, Addy, if there’s not an excellent reason Bianca couldn’t get a hold of you herself.”
It was a point. She shook off the muffin spell and said, “I have a cell phone issue. It’s been refusing incoming calls.” Everybody gave that a moment of skeptical silence. “It is,” she said. “It’s like the Greta Garbo of cell phones. It wants to be alone.”
“Mmm,” Gerte said kindly.
Jax, still clutching the older woman’s hand, just laughed. Addy sighed.
“Oh, fine.” She handed him his muffin and helped herself to a handful of his long sleeved t-shirt. “Come on then.” She’d intended to tug him away from Gerte and get him moving toward the door. But his shirt was soft from hundreds of washings and warm from his body, and the urge to put her nose between his solid shoulder blades and inhale caught her off-guard. She stalled there for a moment, frowning and fingering his sleeve. She wondered what laundry detergent he used. Evidently, she liked the smell. A lot. “Hey, where’s your jacket? It’s freezing outside.”
“I’m fine.” Jax dropped Gerte’s hand and stepped carefully away from Addy’s touch, exactly as he always did. The smile he gave her was utterly correct in size and shape, and completely devoid of any true warmth.
“Right. Of course.” She shrugged off the sting of his rejection. It never got easier but she’d gotten better at it. He stood there, gazing at her with unreadable eyes until she finally said, “Well? Are we going, or do you want to sweep Gerte off her feet some more?”
“Oh, I’d definitely rather stay here and sweep some more,” he said, sliding Gerte that lady-killer grin that a guy who looked like Jax should not be so good at. He shifted his attention back to Addy, and the charm fell away, leaving him stone-faced and faintly resigned. “But we should probably go do the other thing.” He gestured her toward the door ahead of him, leaving a good two feet of space between his hand and her person. “I’m parked out front of the bait shop.”
“Oh, I’ll drive myself.” Addy shrugged into her jacket and headed for the door. “I’ll meet you up there.”
She could feel him on her heels, even across that careful margin of empty air between them. “Mom’s really in a state, Addy,” he said. “I don’t think it would be a good idea to screw with her today.”
“Like I screw with her ever?” She shot him a look as she pushed through the door and into the wind knifing down the empty street. It whipped her hair into a crazy crow’s nest of curls and she clamped it down with her free hand. “I just have a jam-packed day, that’s all. Who knows where I’ll need to be once Bianca’s done with us?” She gave him big, guileless eyes. “I’m sure you’re busy, too. No need to be joined at the hip all afternoon, right? Let me just grab my car and we’ll be independently mobile.”
He frowned down at her a moment, clearly caught between the need to present her at Hill Top House as soon as possible and his omnipresent desire to avoid her. She waited him out, confident. No way he was subjecting himself to the misery of her company when there was a half-reasonable excuse to avoid it.
“Fine,” he said eventually and she suppressed a celebratory boogie. She so rarely won when it came to Jax. “But go straight there, Addy. No detours. Mom’s really in the boughs.”
“Straight up the hill,” she said. “Promise.”
A few yards down the street, a shop door jingled open and a single tourist ambled out of the Gilded Fish gift shop. Weird, airy flute music drifted out with her, and the pitiless wind snatched at the pretty pouf of tissue paper topping the gift bag over her arm. The woman hesitated, looking right then left, and Jax stepped casually to the side, putting his big shoulders between Addy and the tourist.
“No detours,” he said again. “Not even to play Diego’s Angel.”
She lifted her chin. “I wasn’t planning to sprint over there and ask if she recognized me, Jackson.”
“But if she did? If she happened to look over here and say oh, hey! It’s Diego Davis’ muse and tragic widow! Can I have a picture and twenty minutes of your time to ramble on about
how vital your husband’s work has been to my development as an artist and a person?”
Addy’s lips twitched in spite of herself. She didn’t love her cult status with Diego’s still-rabid fans, but she wasn’t about to write off a subset of tourists who weren’t weather-dependent, either. She peeked around Jax’s shoulder. “At ease, soldier. She’s heading for the gallery.”
“Awesome.” Jax pinned her with those hazel eyes. “So you’re going straight up the hill now?”
“I just said so, didn’t I?”
He only gazed silently at her until she sighed and shoved her coffee cup at him. “Here, take this. To go with your muffin.” He took it automatically. Tried to take her spoon cookie, too, but she snatched it back. “Oh no you don’t. I’ll leave the gun but I’m taking the cannoli.”
He blinked at her. She blinked back.
“For goodness’ sake, Jax. You’ve never seen The Godfather?”
“Of course I have.”
“Leave the gun.” She pointed at the coffee. “Take the cannoli.” She held up her cookie. He continued to study her in grave silence. She sighed, defeated. “I’ll just see you at Hill Top House, okay?”
“You bet.”
She turned her back on him — petty but satisfying — and walked away. She didn’t know how long he stood there watching her but if eyes were knives, she suspected she’d have a back full of stab wounds by the time she turned the corner. She tucked her bag more firmly into her side, aimed her shoulder into the wind and wondered — not for the first time — what the heck she’d ever done to piss that guy off.
Even driving the department-issued mini-pumper, Jax was pretty sure he was going to beat Addy up the hill. All that big-eyed, crazy-curled innocence she’d hit him with on Main Street? A sham. Oh, she’d probably meant it when she’d said it. Straight up the hill, Jax. Promise! But Jax knew his sister-in-law and, worse, he’d seen her calendar. Addy’s afternoon was a labyrinth of tiny commitments wedged together like the gears of a pocket watch. If even one failed to turn at the appointed hour, there went the whole operation.
And Addy — lord help him — wasn’t a quitter. He devoutly wished she were but no. The girl just didn’t give up no matter how lost the cause, and Jax ought to know, as he’d made himself as lost as causes came. If she hadn’t given up on him after all these years — and she hadn’t — there was no way on God’s green earth she could possibly drive past Buck’s Bait and Tackle, not when her calendar had her picking up the city council meeting minutes from Soren Buck forty-five minutes ago. (Which wouldn’t be necessary if Soren would either learn to type, learn to email or resign his position as secretary of the town council, but that was a different battle.)
It would take two minutes, she’d think. Of course she’d stop! And of course she’d swing by the newspaper office afterwards to drop them off, also as indicated by her calendar. That would be another two minutes but still, less than five total, right? How could Jax be mad about less than five minutes? Plus, she would reason, he was driving the mini-pumper, so she’d catch him on the hill. No problem.
Except, whoops, she wouldn’t because she hadn’t accounted for the extra twenty minutes she’d lose at the newspaper office apologizing to Nan for blowing off their meeting while Nan chain-smoked and ignored her. Jax nearly smiled at that. Nobody held a grudge like his granny. She’d make Addy dance to her tune for weeks over this.
There was some comfort in that, he supposed, and downshifted the wheezing mini-pumper. It surged gamely, climbing the winding path to the very top of Devil’s Kettle with determination if not speed. Jax eyed the odometer. He’d probably roll over 300,000 miles within the year but budgets being what they were, there was no retirement in sight for the old girl. He eased off the accelerator a bit. When the mini-pumper went, she’d go the way a faithful public servant should — rolling hot into a three-alarm fire with her lights blazing. She’d die with her boots on, by God, not racing to yet another of his mother’s manufactured emergencies.
When he finally crested the hill, it was at a gentle thirty miles per hour, and Jax let the pumper catch her breath. He cruised along the ridge line nice and easy, an army of massive pines to his left, a rock-strewn meadow to his right with Lake Superior brooding darkly away in the distance beyond it. The road dead-ended after a mile or two at a massive boulder. Two private drives split off the turn-around, both owned by his family. The one on the right was a well-kept gravel thoroughfare aimed toward the million dollar view at the cliff’s edge. The one on the left was a stingy, overgrown two-track snaking yet farther uphill to a more expensive — if more difficult — view. Jax turned right toward his childhood home.
Hill Top House was two-and-a-half sprawling stories of glass and pine overlooking the harbor far below, presiding over the view like a queen over her subjects. The lake stretched away into a bleak haze today, gray and unsettlingly vague about the existence of a horizon. It was gorgeous even as it lifted the hair on the back of his neck. All the same, it felt like home to Jax.
At least it used to.
Chapter 3
HE FOLLOWED THE drive to the rear of the house where it spread into a prettily landscaped circle between a gracious veranda and a four-car garage. (The carriage house, according to his mother. Looked like a garage to Jax.) He pulled around the circle, aimed his hood toward a quick get away and killed the engine. The beleaguered truck farted with relief, shook like a wet dog, and went silent. Jax did smile this time. Nothing like announcing your arrival with style. He hopped out, slammed the door nice and loud, and headed for the back porch.
Everybody used the back door in this neck of the woods. The front of the house always faced the view when there was a view to be had, and Hill Top House had one. Hell, Hill Top House was one. The front of the house was just one huge stretch of glittering glass, all doors and windows, rising up into a cathedral-worthy arch that had boats down on the water stopping to take pictures. Our Lady of the Lake. Of the lake view, anyway.
But the Davises didn’t do anything by halves, so the back of the house was no slouch, either. A veranda ran the entire length of the rear of the house, and a set of half-moon steps curved graciously out into the circular turn-around. Jax took the steps at an easy jog and landed in front of a set of double doors. They were glossy black, about twelve feet tall, and came complete with massive wrought iron knobs dead in the center of each, right where they’d look amazing and be completely impractical in terms of actually pulling the damn door open. Every time Jax used them, he half expected to be stopped by a little person demanding to know why he wanted to see the wizard.
He let himself into the foyer and was suddenly immersed in a world of snowy white. Pale pine floors, soft white walls, creamy white woodwork, white flowers in white vases on shiny white tables. It would’ve been a bit much except that his mother, with her unfailing radar for the razor-thin line between art and parody, had crowned the whole thing with a blown glass chandelier in every color Crayola had to offer. It splattered the floor with sunsets, dripped sunrises down the walls, shot rainbows off every shiny surface. It was, he had to admit, impressive. Lord knew it was supposed to be. Bianca Davis was an artist, and in her hands Hill Top House wasn’t a house so much as a canvas.
Still, home was home.
The museum quality hush his mother fostered always made him sound like a fully-shod Clydesdale, and Jax clomped happily through the echoing foyer and into the great room. It soared even higher than the foyer, but this room wasn’t about the height or the white (although it was still extremely white). It was about the view. It was all about the dizzying cliff-drop to the water, the gut-clutching sweep of Superior, and the wall of windows that framed it all like a priceless masterpiece.
“Hey, Jax,” his sister called from an enormous U-shaped couch in (what else?) white suede that anchored the vast space.
“Hey, Georgie.”
She was draped across one corner of the couch like a sleek blonde cat, and he dropped a noisy smo
och on the sharp blade of her upturned cheek. She wiped it off with a lazy swipe of her sleeve.
“So nice of you to finally join us,” she said dryly.
“Us?” He eyed the yards of empty suede, then plopped down onto the couch right beside her with a cheerful bounce. She sighed and sat up marginally straighter to make more room. Judging from the side-eye she gave him, even his clean jeans weren’t up to Hill Top House standards. He suppressed a grin and made a show of glancing around the airy room, empty but for the two of them. “Us who?”
Light streamed through those giant windows, but even the epic view they offered paled next to the slashing, vibrant paintings hanging on the narrow walls between the panes. His late brother’s paintings. Diego. He rubbed a palm over his heart, the pang predictable and brief. He’d forgotten. How had he forgotten? It was never just him or Georgie or anybody else in this room. It was Diego, too. Always.
“I’ve decided to start using the royal we,” Georgie informed him. She slid one elbow along the back of an over-stuffed cushion and pillowed her cheek on her forearm. She regarded him with sleepy eyes of the Davis blue, the same blue their dad’s had been, and their grandpa’s too. “I think it enhances my consequence.”
“Yeah?” He smiled, diverted. You just never knew what Georgie was going to say. “Your consequence, huh?”
She shrugged and curled her long legs underneath her until she looked like a lazy S. “Either that or I was expecting you to bring Addy with you.” She arched a significant brow. “As instructed.”
“What was I supposed to do? Knock her unconscious and drag her up the hill by her hair?” Jax lifted helpless shoulders. “You know Addy.”
“I do.” She studied him idly. “She’s the cooperative type. Nobody else seems to have any problem getting her to behave. I wonder why you do?”
“Because I don’t want anything from her.” Or anything to do with her. “It throws her off.”
“She’s task-oriented, no question. Lives to serve, that girl.” Georgie smiled smugly. Addy made her life extremely comfortable. “Which is why she should’ve hauled her cookies up the hill the instant you asked. You finally needed something from her. She must’ve been over the moon.”