“What does Jolie think of your plan to save Serenity?” he asked, drawing her attention back to him.
She smiled sunnily. “She doesn’t know yet. None of my friends know. But I’m sure she’ll think it’s a wonderful idea.”
His laughter was unexpected and good-natured. “Yeah, right. It’s no secret, darlin’, that Jolie’s idea of what’s best for Serenity involves bulldozers, tons of concrete and parking meters.”
Karen’s smile didn’t falter. Neither did her confidence. “But you never know. I might be right. She might be wrong.” After wiping her fingers on a napkin, she took a swallow of the now cooled coffee before continuing in a slyly innocent voice. “Just once in his life even Jamey O’Shea might be wrong.”
Chapter 2
Jamey O’Shea had often been wrong, he thought with a scowl as he walked the half-dozen blocks back to the bar. He’d been wrong to ever get involved with Meghan, wrong to let her set the terms of the divorce, wrong to have been such a lousy father. Who was he to criticize the bad mothers he’d known—Meghan, his own mother, Nicky’s—when he’d been an even worse father? At least his own father had had an excuse for being such a poor role model in the alcoholism that had driven him to an early grave. Jamey had no excuse at all except that it had been easier to sit back and do nothing.
But he wasn’t wrong about Karen Montez. Serenity Street was no place for her. It would chew her up and spit her out. She would go crawling back to Landry, wishing she’d never ventured out—or worst case—she would go back in a coffin, like that do-gooder down the block. She was naive, and while ignorance of what she was up against might work in her favor in some instances, on Serenity it was liable to get her hurt or killed.
And the punks most likely to do the hurting or killing were lounging in the early-morning shade provided by O’Shea’s. They were all facing the house across the street, smoking, talking quietly among themselves. When they became aware of him, the conversation stopped, and all four turned to face him.
Drawing his keys from his pocket, he stepped over Trevor Morgan’s legs where he sprawled across the uneven sidewalk and stopped in front of the French door with the dead bolt lock. Ryan Morgan was right beside the door, Marino behind him. Reid stood a half-dozen feet away, his sullen gaze directed toward the ground. He wasn’t as quick to confront anyone as the others were, and he was downright reluctant to ever confront Jamey. A part of Jamey wished he could say it was a matter of respect, but it would be a lie. There was no respect between them, no affection, nothing at all good or honorable. Derision, hatred and disgust seemed to cover Reid’s feelings, and disappointment and regret were all Jamey would admit to.
He twisted the key in the lock, then opened both doors. Stale, warm air drifted out to meet him. Breathing deeply, he gave each of the four young men a hard, cold look. “If you’re hoping to catch a glimpse of the new neighbor, she’s not home. If you were foolish enough to think of speaking to her, forget it. You want any contact with her, you go through me.”
“So you say,” Ryan replied. “But maybe she don’t want it that way. Maybe I’ll ask her myself.”
“Yeah, and maybe I’ll break your face.”
Morgan moved a step closer. “You talk big, O’Shea.”
“Yeah, and I can carry through. You talk a lot, too, Morgan, but when you take action, you show what a coward you are. You shoot old ladies and little girls from the safety of your car. You slap around that little girlfriend of yours. But when it comes to standing up to a man, you have to get your buddies to do it for you because you don’t have the courage.” He closed the distance between them, moving threateningly, intimately close, and stared down into hostile dark eyes. “If you mess with her, you’ll pay. You’ll pay dearly. Do you understand?”
For a long moment, Ryan stared back at him, then he backed off and nervously laughed. “Hey, Donovan, sounds like your old man wants the redhead for himself. Maybe you’ll be calling her mama before too long.”
The others took up the teasing, causing Reid to meet Jamey’s gaze for the first time. His eyes, the same clear blue, were angry, so damned angry. He’d been filled with anger from the time he was little, fed a steady diet of bitterness and hatred by his mother. Jamey hadn’t been around to counteract it then, and now it was too late. The kid was so eaten up with animosity that someday he was going to explode. Jamey’s only hope was that they would both survive it.
Turning away from Reid and giving Ryan the same sort of dismissive look he might give a fly, he stepped inside, unlocked and opened the remaining three sets of doors and walked back behind the bar. He was still standing there, drinking a glass of iced tap water, when the punks walked away. When the sounds of their passage had long since faded, he finally let the muscles in his neck and jaw relax, and he muttered a soft, vicious curse.
It didn’t matter that, like their own parents, he and Meghan had married far too young and for all the wrong reasons. That didn’t excuse the miserable upbringing they’d given their son. Reid hadn’t asked to be born to a couple of seventeen-year-olds. He hadn’t wanted his mother to disappear with him only five days after his birth, hadn’t wanted his father to accept their disappearance as an easy way out of a marriage and responsibilities he hadn’t been ready for. He certainly hadn’t wanted to live the kind of life Meghan had forced on him for the fifteen years before she’d abandoned him here on Serenity.
Maybe he would have been a bad kid anyway, but under the circumstances, it had been just about guaranteed. No one had ever wanted him—not his mother, not his father, not the grandmother who’d been saddled with him when Meghan had taken off on her own. With no one else to turn to, it was no surprise that he’d become one of Ryan Morgan’s boys. It was no surprise that he hated Jamey with a vengeance. What did come as a surprise was the fact that Jamey cared, but it was obviously too little too late.
Picking up the remote, he switched on the television, then turned to a sports channel. The game was golf, not even considered a sport on Serenity. Down here activity was a little more physical, like running for your life or ducking stray bullets. Golf did have one thing going for it, though: the places where the game was played. There wasn’t a single blade of green grass down here. The few trees were dried up and unhealthy—like the people—deprived of the nourishment necessary to sustain life. As for the pretty water hazards, the closest these people got to water outside their houses was puddles in the street after a rain or an occasional walk along the banks of the muddy Mississippi.
Taking a broom from the back, he swept around the tables, depositing four small piles of dirt on the sidewalk outside the doors, then sweeping them into the street. Back inside he took the chairs down from the tables, then drew one out onto the sidewalk, where he leaned back against the brick wall and made himself comfortable. Except for movement down where the street dead-ended—Morgan and company—he was the only person out. His television was the only noise.
He remembered when Serenity hadn’t been a bad place to live. When he was a kid, all the shops down here had been occupied. They’d had their own grocery store, drugstore and Laundromats. There had been a couple of restaurants, a bank, beauty shops, barbershops and clothing stores. Over on Divinity Street had been the churches—the Baptists, the A.M.E. Zionists and St. Jude’s, where all the Catholics had attended, where Nicky, out of necessity, had sometimes lived, where Jamey on occasion had also bunked. Just outside the neighborhood had been three doctors, a dentist and the schools, all within easy walking distance. Now the nearest schools were several miles away, the buses didn’t run, and the kids, fearing for their safety, usually didn’t go.
Karen Montez thought she could make it safe again.
If he thought she had a chance in hell of succeeding, he would be the first in line to help her. He wouldn’t mind if the street got cleaned up, if the empty businesses were suddenly occupied again, if the street started showing some signs of prosperity. He wouldn’t mind if the hookers and the dealers went home
to someplace else when their night’s work was finished, if Ryan Morgan and the others were forced to move on, too. He wouldn’t mind at all if Jimmy Falcone found it impossible to conduct his sort of business on Serenity.
But it wasn’t going to happen. The decent people in this neighborhood were far outnumbered by the scum. They were scared and hopeless, and they weren’t going to trust some outsider do-gooder to make it all better for them.
Speak of the devil... The sound of an engine made him turn to the left. Her car was an older mid-sized sedan, nothing flashy or expensive, perfectly suited to a woman with a social conscience. All of her money was probably tied up in this project of hers. It certainly wasn’t being wasted on the car or particularly nice furniture. Her clothes so far were nothing special—jeans and a T-shirt yesterday, shorts and a T-shirt today, all plain, all well worn—and she’d worn no jewelry—no watch, no necklace or earrings, not even her late husband’s wedding ring. Of course, maybe that was common sense. Maybe, naive as she was, she was too smart to set foot on Serenity looking as if she had anything worth stealing.
She waved when she slowed to turn into her driveway. He didn’t wave back. He didn’t rise from his chair when she got out and began unloading panes of glass from the back seat. He didn’t offer his help with the gallon cans of paint or the clear plastic bags holding caulk guns, paintbrushes, roller pans and mineral spirits. He simply sat and watched.
And enjoyed doing it. He had to keep reminding himself that redheads weren’t his type. In all his life he’d never been attracted to a red-haired woman, had never been the least bit drawn to pale skin or delicate little bodies. He preferred tall women, athletic brunettes with short hair, big boobs and legs a mile long. In a pinch he could settle for average, but he’d never considered a petite, china-doll redhead an option.
But then, he’d never known a short, slender woman quite as perfectly proportioned as Karen, whose skin was quite as creamy, whose hair was quite as wild—or even remotely as red. He’d never known a woman with her determination... or her optimism...or such faith in herself.
She made a dozen trips from the car to the veranda, stacking everything there. In any other neighborhood, the supplies would be safe there, inside her fenced yard, right outside her door. In this neighborhood, she would have to move them inside where they could be locked up. If they were left unattended for long, someone would surely steal them, and they would do it just out of meanness. They wouldn’t use the paint to fix up their own place, wouldn’t even begin to know how to replace their own broken windows with the glass. No, they would shatter the glass on the sidewalk, leaving her a million fragments to clean up, and they would pour the paint over the porch or her car, or in the middle of the street.
After her last trip, she disappeared inside for a few minutes, then came out again, all those wild curls pulled back in a clamp. Carrying a glass of cold lemonade, she came through the gate, sat down on the curb across the street from him, and heaved a sigh. “Just unloading the stuff is enough to wear me out. I’m in sorry shape.”
His eyes half closed—because of the brightness of the sun, of course—he resisted the obvious comment that, as far as he could see, there was nothing at all sorry about her shape. Other than the fact that, with her redhead’s complexion, she looked as if she had never, ever been exposed to the sun, she looked damned fine.
“Is this what you do all day?”
“Depends on the day. O’Shea’s doesn’t officially open until ten. No one comes around before then unless it’s too long to wait.” Some days no one came around anyway, not until midafternoon. Some days they would be waiting at nine.
“Have you ever considered...” She broke off, looked down the street as if debating the wisdom of what she was about to ask, then looked at him and asked it anyway. “Have you ever wondered if maybe you’re part of the problem here?”
His annoyance with her immediately outstripped his attraction to her. “Because I sell liquor to drunks?” he asked irritably. “Honey, if they didn’t drink here, they’d go someplace else. At least here no one takes advantage of them. No one sells them watered-down drinks for prices they can’t afford, no one tries to con them out of their money, and they’re not going to get rolled by the employees or the other customers. I can keep an eye on them. I know when everything’s okay, and I know when it’s not.” He didn’t go on, didn’t tell her what he did when everything wasn’t okay. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d sat up with one or another of his customers, listening while they poured out their souls, commiserating over their losses. He had fed them, taken them to doctors, had even, on occasion, taken them to church when that was what they’d wanted. He was the closest thing to family some of them had, the only friend others had.
“I’m sorry.” She rested her arms on her knees, her chin on her arms, so that her next words came out muffled, not meant for his ears. “You don’t have to be so touchy.”
“Touchy?” he repeated, leaning forward, letting the front legs of the chair hit the ground with a thump. “You come onto my street, intending to force your way into our lives, planning to fix our lives for us because we’re too stupid or inferior or childlike to fix them ourselves. With your privileged background and your college degree and your Pollyanna attitude, you’re going to make all our problems go away—including even the ones that I’m responsible for, in your oh-so-wise judgment—and you don’t think I should be touchy?”
She scowled. “I didn’t mean... I don’t think anyone down here is stupid, inferior or childlike. I think they need help—and, yes, I think I can help them, at least, some of them. As far as my ‘privileged background,’ you had it right earlier. I’m strictly middle-class. That’s hardly privileged. ’”
“Down here it is. You don’t know anything about these people. You don’t understand their problems. You don’t know what it’s like to start with nothing and lose even that. You’ve had everything you ever wanted. You lived in a nice house with grass and trees and air-conditioning. You had new clothes and plenty of food to eat and money to spend. You went to college. When you were a kid, you always said, ‘When I grow up...’ not ‘If I grow up,’ like the kids around here.” He shook his head in disgust. “You don’t know what it’s like to be poor, to be afraid, to never have a chance. You don’t know what it’s like to lose hope.”
She got to her feet and tossed the remaining lemonade into the dirt. “You’re wrong,” she said quietly. “If I’d gotten everything I ever wanted, I’d be living ten miles away from here in a nice house with grass and trees and air-conditioning. I’d have a husband who’d come home from work every day and children to raise and love and protect from ever losing hope. If I’d gotten everything I’d ever wanted, Evan damn sure wouldn’t have been killed by some crazy who liked to do evil things to little girls, and I damn sure wouldn’t have had to sit three days later and listen to some doctor explain that it was my fault we’d never had those babies we’d wanted so badly.” Her voice thick and choked, she broke off, breathed deeply, then continued in a quieter, shakier voice. “If I’d gotten everything I wanted, I sure as hell wouldn’t be here.”
Feeling like a bastard, Jamey watched her go. He didn’t follow her, didn’t shout out an apology, didn’t say or do anything at all. Let her walk away angry. Maybe anger could accomplish what reason couldn’t. Maybe anger would make her admit the futility of her plans for Serenity. Maybe it would make her admit defeat and get the hell out of there before it was too late. For her, for him, for all of them.
Upstairs in the bathroom, Karen propped her how-to book on the sink, using a towel to hold it open to the pages on removing and installing window panes. She had already read the instructions once, had pulled on leather gloves and removed the glazing putty around the broken pane. She carefully pulled the smaller of the two pieces free and dropped it in a big garbage can behind her, then turned back, clenched her right hand into a fist and deliberately put it through the center of the remaining piece. It
shattered, raining shards of glass onto the roof that caught the sun and glittered in a rainbow of colors. Feeling a little better, she began gathering the dozens of small pieces, stopping only when movement on the street caught her attention.
The bathroom was located at the side of the house, with windows overlooking both the back and side yards. From the side window, she could see just a little of the street, the last set of doors at O’Shea’s and the abandoned building next door. The young blond-haired man who had been with Ryan Morgan yesterday—Reid, the punk, with suitable emphasis, courtesy of Jamey—was standing in the recessed doorway, hands shoved in his hip pockets, watching her. She automatically smiled, but the gesture merely served to deepen his scowl, which chased away her smile.
Her first thought was that he was handsome, with golden skin, shaggy blond hair and eyes that were sure to be the bluest blue. Although Evan had been as dark as night, with black hair and sweet dark eyes, she was discovering that there was something to be said for the pure appeal of blue-eyed blonds. First Jamey O’Shea, and now this kid...
Thoughts of Jamey gave her a scowl to match Reid’s, and she forced her attention back to him. He looked too young to be as dangerous and tough as she’d been warned—although she knew, of course, that was a naive presumption. Age had nothing to do with malice or evil. There were little kids who could plan and execute a murder with an utter lack of regret and ninety-year-old grandpas who couldn’t kill to save their own lives. Reid, though he couldn’t be older than his early twenties, might very well be as bad as Jamey described. But he looked to her like just another unhappy kid whose life had turned out rotten, who had no one to care about what he did or how he behaved.
Convincing Jamey Page 4