“Well, Tasha’s due next month,” Sam pointed out. In fact, the whole Candellano family seemed to be having a population explosion. “Maybe that’ll take the heat off.”
“Off Beth and onto Tasha. Only fair.” Stevie pulled the stainless-steel milk jug free, then wiped down the twin steamer rods with a clean cloth. As she poured the hot milk into a tall cardboard cup, then spooned a layer of foam on top, Stevie said, “Hey, tell Mike I need her to take a look at the sink here in the shop for me.”
“She’s dealing with Grace. Trust me, your sink’ll be a vacation.”
“I saw the summer people are back.”
“Oh yeah, hip deep in goats over there.” Sam reached for her coffee, then slid a sleeve over the bottom of it. “Grace is making Jo nuts, Mike’s ready to mutiny over a purple granite counter, and Papa’s useless, he just keeps grinning at Emma.”
“Situation normal, then.” Stevie laughed.
“Pretty much, and as far as I’m concerned, the world will be right again with a latte and one of your cinnamon rolls.”
“Girl,” Stevie said, “you’re way too easy to please.”
“Not how I remember it.”
A deep voice, directly behind her.
The smile on Sam’s face froze.
The world went still and her blood did a wild race through her veins in celebration. Dammit.
There went a perfectly good coffee break.
Turning, she looked right into a pair of dark blue eyes and wondered why she hadn’t sensed his presence. “Jeff.”
“Sam.” Everything in him tightened up and Jeff didn’t know how the hell to stop it. She’d always had that effect on him and it was damned annoying to admit that she still had the ability to turn his hormones inside out. Although that was all it was, he reassured himself. Hormones. A purely chemical reaction.
Damned irritating.
“What’re you doing here?” she asked.
“Same as you. Coffee.”
“I meant what’re you doing here? In Chandler. Aren’t you supposed to be in San Francisco?”
“I came back early.” Didn’t really cover it, he thought. He’d raced out of the city as soon as he could manage it. He’d left behind a fiancée who was very quietly, very properly, pissed as hell and a backlog of work that had his secretary considering hiring a hit man.
And it didn’t seem to matter.
He’d told himself he was rushing back to be with Emma. But she was only part of the reason. No matter what kind of bastard it made him, Jeff knew that for him, the real draw in Chandler was still Sam Marconi.
Chapter Twelve
“You never should have let her on the roof.”
“Will you shut up already?” Mike shot Jo a quick, uneasy glance. “She’s fine. No harm done.”
“Yeah.” Jo snorted. “She’s fine. You won’t be, as soon as Emma tells her mother. That happens and we’re—I mean you’re—dead meat.”
Sunlight glanced off Jo’s sunglasses and seemed to bounce right into Mike’s eyes. Like she didn’t already have a headache, thanks very much. Her stomach was still doing a roll and spin and her palms were still sweaty. Not that she was nervous or anything. Hell, no. Just that the summer heat had really been beating down on them, practically melting the roof they were sitting on.
The cast-iron weather vane—in the shape of Merlin, no less—stood stock-still atop the conical roof of the tower room, just twenty feet from them. No wind. No air. And the wide sweep of blue sky overhead didn’t harbor the hope of a single cloud. The first of July had arrived and was already making them wish for fall and cooler weather.
But it wasn’t the heat making her flinch. Mike’s shoulders twitched as if she could already feel Sam’s glare boring into her bones like a slow-moving bullet, determined to eke out as much pain as possible. It wouldn’t be pretty. But hell, she could outfight Sam. And if it came down to it, she was pretty sure she could outrun her, as well. But just to get into the right frame of mind, she started using her best arguments. The ones she’d use on Sam as soon as she had to.
“What’s the big deal? We went on roofs when we were her age.”
Jo flipped her hammer into the air and caught the handle as it came down again. Keeping one eye on it and the other on Mike, she did it again. The solid smack of wood against flesh sounded like a heartbeat.
“Yeah, but we had Papa watching over us. Not you.”
Mike thought about snatching the hammer on its next trip through the air and giving her sister a thump with it. But then Jo would just retaliate and Mike really didn’t want to meet her date that night with a black eye. “You were up here, too, you know.”
“Not a chance,” Jo said, laughing, shaking her head. “You’re not pinning this one on me.”
“You’re the oldest.”
“That only worked when Mama pulled it. Not gonna help you this time.”
“That’s very nice. Thank you for your support.”
“Hey, you’ve got my support,” Jo assured her. “I’ll even beg Sam not to kill you.” Grabbing the hammer again, she took a good grip on it, positioned one of the roofing nails over a forest-green shingle and hammered it home. “After all, she kills you, and I end up having to deal with that granite counter.”
“Love you, too,” Mike sneered.
Jo laughed shortly, shook her head, and shifted around until she was sitting, knees drawn up, on the sharp incline of the roof. Arms wrapped around her legs, she dangled the hammer as she watched Mike. “You screw up, you pay. It’s the Marconi way.”
True enough. Mama and Papa had never minded their girls making mistakes. But they had expected them to take the consequences without an inordinate amount of bitching. But this was one session Mike would just as soon pass up. Hell, Sam hadn’t been gone a half hour when her long-lost daughter had taken a nosedive off the roof.
Oh yeah. That was gonna go over real big.
“Emma had a great time,” Mike argued, but that sounded weak, even to her own ears. Sam wouldn’t care if her little girl was having fun or not. She’d only care that she’d taken a header off the roof.
“Yeah,” Jo said, as if reading her mind, “until she fell.”
Mike winced. “She had a life rope on, didn’t she?” Thank God, she added silently, blessing the sturdy belt shaped like an infant’s seat on a swing set that Emma had worn. She didn’t even want to consider what might have happened without the safety precautions. Nope. Don’t think about it.
“No harm, no foul.” That heavy-duty seat had provided Emma with an E ticket ride and she didn’t even have a bruise to show for it.
Although Mike was pretty sure she herself would be seeing Emma take that tumble off the edge for a long, long time. Her dreams would be full of it. And she’d relive over and over again her own wild dash to the edge of the roof only to look down into Emma’s laughing eyes as the little girl swung like an auburn-haired pendulum at the end of the rope.
The kid had treated it like a big game.
“Christ,” she admitted, slapping one hand to her chest, where she could feel her heart still doing a fast dance. “She scared the shit out of me.”
Jo nodded, pulled off her sunglasses, and stuck one arm of them into the bib of the denim apron she wore over her work shirt. “Ditto.”
Mike figured she’d lost at least ten years off her life in ten seconds flat. She only hoped they’d turn out to be old, ugly years. She didn’t want to miss any fun, after all.
“Kid’s amazing,” Jo muttered, shaking her head and smiling now as she remembered how Emma’d wanted to go up on the roof and do it all again. “She may look just like Sam but she’s got a lot of you in her.”
“Yeah?” Mike grinned.
“Not so sure that’s a compliment.” Although it was. Mike might have been the baby of the family, but she’d always had more balls than the other two put together. If she wanted something, she went after it. Didn’t always turn out great, but she’d never had to sit and wonder,
what if? Of course, if she ever said that to Mike, there’d be no living with her.
“Sure it is,” Mike said, her grin only getting broader. “You’re nuts about me.”
“Or just nuts.”
“Goes without saying.” Mike shrugged. “You’re a Marconi.”
“True.” Jo shifted her gaze from Mike to the crowded yard below them. The summer people were still busy in the goat house, some of the crew were lazing about under the trees taking a break, and Papa and Grace were huddled together—no doubt talking about the job.
She frowned.
Couldn’t be a pleasant conversation. Not judging by the way Grace’s chin jutted out or how fast words were tumbling out of her mouth. Crap.
“What’s wrong?”
Jo pointed. “Look down there. Papa and Grace are getting into it, which can only mean—”
“Crap.” Mike squinted into the afternoon sunlight as she stared at the couple standing to one side of the bustling crowd. “Think she’s changing her mind about the job again?”
“I don’t know,” Jo said thoughtfully, studying her father and Grace as if she were watching a foreign movie with subtitles she couldn’t quite read. “But it can’t be a good . . .” Her voice trailed off as she caught a glimpse of something else. “Oh, for God’s sake.”
“What now?” Mike scanned the crowd below. She lifted one hand to block the sun.
“Look at that.” Jo pointed with her hammer and felt a swell of disgust and fury pour through her body, thick enough to make the hammer shake in her hand. “Would you just look at him?”
“Him who? Jesus, who’re we talking about?”
“Are you blind?” Jo reached over, grabbed Mike’s chin in her hand, and positioned her head until she was looking where Jo wanted her to look. “Right there. Mr. God’s Gift to Women is hitting on one of the gypsies.”
“Huh? Oh. Cash.”
“Yeah, Cash.” Jo shook her head as she watched him, unable to tear her gaze away even though it was none of her business what the bastard did—or rather, who the bastard did. As long as he stayed away from her crew, what the hell did she care?
But watching him drape one muscular arm around a woman who had to be twenty years older than him made her want to bean him with the hammer. Her fingers tightened on the worn wooden stock as she considered the odds of making that throw from this distance.
“That’s Kate, isn’t it?” Mike asked, squinting now.
“Looks like her,” Jo muttered, remembering that Kate was the youngest one of the summer women, although she was in her early fifties at least.
“She’s pretty,” Mike said.
“Of course she’s pretty,” Jo snapped and could just barely make him out through the red haze crowding the edges of her vision. “Would he waste his time with a dog? I don’t think so.”
“What’s it to you?” Mike asked.
“Nothing,” she snapped. It meant absolutely nothing to her. Cash Hunter was an irritation. A thorn in her paw. A worm in her apple. “But for God’s sake, can’t he keep it zipped?”
Mike laughed shortly. “Doesn’t look like the woman’s complaining any.”
No, it didn’t. Which only made Jo more furious. Were all women that stupid? she wondered. Did no one but her see that the man had more moves than a chorus line? Did no one have enough self-respect to not want to be one of a legion of Cash Hunter victims?
The woman wrapped her arm around Cash’s waist and leaned into him, her long black hair shining like a satin cape in the sunlight. She smiled up at him and Cash, making his first move, dropped a kiss on the woman’s forehead.
Jo quietly sizzled.
The man should have a warning sign hanging around his neck.
He should be shot. Okay, she amended, maybe not shot. But caged. And kept where women could pay a buck and stare at him through the safety of steel bars. He could be studied. Like any other dangerous animal.
“You’re just jealous because you’re not getting any.”
Jo slanted her a look. “And you are?”
“This isn’t about me,” Mike pointed out.
“Fine. How do you know I’m not?” Of course, she wasn’t, but that didn’t mean she wanted that sad fact to be obvious to everyone.
“Please. Even your mood improves when you get laid.”
Hard to argue with that one. But she tried. “There’s nothing wrong with my mood.”
“Nothing a night with Cash couldn’t clear up.”
“Right.” Jo snorted. “One night with him and I go off to save the world? No, thanks.”
Mike’s blond eyebrows lifted. “Scared?”
“Not interested.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Shut up, Mike.”
“Ooh. Good comeback.”
“Don’t you have something else to do? Someone else to toss off a roof?”
“How ’bout I start with you?” Mike grumbled.
“How ’bout you help me finish these shingles?”
“Who died and made you the boss, anyway?” Mike turned to grab up her hammer and a fistful of shingles.
“Mama did,” Jo muttered, as her heart fisted in her chest.
“What?” Mike asked.
“Nothing,” she muttered darkly. Grabbing her sunglasses, she shoved them back on and deliberately turned her back on Cash and his latest conquest. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Yeah,” Mike said, with another look at Cash and the woman, strolling through the dappled shade. “I believe you.”
They took their coffee to the cliff park.
Not much of a park, really. It sat at the edge of town, a narrow strip of tidy grass bordered by a splash of summer flowers on one side and an iron fence on the other. Traffic on Pacific Coast Highway sounded out in a steady roar, but was drowned out by the wild crash and thunder of waves slamming into the rocks at the foot of the cliff.
Seals barked, tourists wandered, and in-line skaters whizzed along the sidewalk, buzzing by the unwary and making them jump for cover. Wind rushed in off the sea and tugged at Sam’s hair, making her wish for the cap she’d left in the truck. Heck, if she was going to wish, then she’d just wish herself away from here. To somewhere safe. Where the heat that pulsed inside her whenever Jeff was around wouldn’t be able to take hold.
Like the North Pole.
Taking seats opposite each other at a steel table-and-bench set with peeling red paint, each of them waited for the other to start. She’d be damned if she’d talk first. He who speaks first loses power. She wasn’t sure where she’d heard it, but it made sense and she was going to fight her Marconi instinct to jump in and fill a silence.
Sam’s insides skittered, but she kept her hands steady as she set her coffee cup down and began tugging at the cinnamon roll. Just because she wasn’t going to talk, didn’t mean she wasn’t going to eat. Besides, when her nerves started jangling, it was like ringing a dinner bell. Her body craved food. Usually in great quantities. And preferably chocolate.
“You always did have a sweet tooth.”
Her hands stilled and her gaze lifted, meeting Jeff’s squarely. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t talk like you know me.” She shook her head firmly, swallowed the knot in her throat, then deliberately popped a piece of the gooey roll into her mouth and chewed. “You don’t have the right.”
A short bark of laughter erupted from him as he slapped both hands down onto the tabletop. “Fine. I don’t know you. I did, though.”
She squirmed uncomfortably. Happened every time she remembered their past. Every time she let herself wander down a road that was filled with disappointment and regret. “That was a long time ago.”
“You haven’t changed that much.”
Sam took another bite, wiped her hands on the napkin Stevie had jammed into the pastry bag, then reached for her latte. She had a quick sip and, fortified, told him, “I’m not that girl you walked out on, Jeff.”
“I didn�
�t walk out.”
“Funny,” she snapped. “Looked like you.”
His lips flattened into a grim slash and his eyes narrowed into slits. “We’ve been through this. I went to London. To study.”
“And nine years later, you’re back. Tough course.” She winced, hearing the strident tone of her voice and not much caring for it. It was Mike’s fault, she thought. Making her wonder about Jeff’s motives. Making her second-guess every word that came out of his mouth and weigh every word that came out of her own. “There’s no point in going over it all again.”
“Agreed.”
“Yay us,” she said, with a twist of a smile. “So how about instead we talk about what’s important now?”
“We should be able to work something out.”
“Gee? Think you can be a little more vague? Or is that the best you can do?”
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Jeff blurted and pushed to his feet as if he couldn’t sit still and have this conversation.
Sam knew just how he felt. She watched him stalk around the edge of the table, like a man who needed to move, but had nowhere to go. The wind caught his black hair and tangled it around his head. His short-sleeved blue shirt was the same deep sea blue of his eyes and his jeans looked new enough that she was convinced he rarely wore them.
He wasn’t a part of her world anymore. He was just a visitor and the casual clothing he wore was nothing more than a costume, helping him to fit in with the locals. His reality was suit-and-tie, corporate America. A world where Sam would be as lost as he looked.
Blowing out a breath, she said bluntly, “I want you to tell me that you’re willing to share custody of Emma.”
He glared at her and the muscle in his jaw twitched spasmodically. His dark blue eyes flashed and he scraped one hand across his face in an obvious attempt to calm the temper sparking in his eyes.
“Just like that,” he said flatly. “It’s been just me and Emma for eight years and now you want to take her away from me?”
“You’ve had her in your life, Jeff. I missed all of it.”
“Your choice,” he reminded her, teeth clenched, jaw muscle working as if he were trying to chew rocks. “Not mine.”
And Then Came You Page 16