by Liz Flaherty
Boone sighed. And nodded. The mechanic’s next words were going to be “One more time.” Aunt Gert wasn’t the only one with the threat gene going on.
“Yes, he does. What does that have to do… Okay, I’ll be here, but can you hurry some? I’m supposed to have four pies out to Mrs. Kline in a half hour and I’m wearing one of them… He will?” She shifted her gaze back to Boone, her eyes wary. He felt insulted. It had been at least fifteen years since Taft in general, and Sims in particular, had been terrorized by its own dynamic duo, Boone and Crockett. Ah, Crockett…
“I’ll ask him. See you then.” She disconnected the phone and handed it to Boone. “Sims says you’ll run me on out to Mrs. Kline’s while we wait for him. Could you?”
She grinned cheekily. The expression registered somewhere around a ten on his hormonal scale. “He says drive slow and pay attention to what you’re doing. I take it you know each other?”
Boone grinned back. “Sure. She still live on Bumpy Road?”
“Yes.” She reached into the van and came out with two flat white boxes. “Hold these, will you?”
He took the boxes, sniffing again and enjoying the aroma. “I’m Michael Brennan. People generally call me Boone.”
She emerged from the van with the third pie. “I’m Lucy Dolan. People generally call me Lucy.”
He moved his laptop to the back seat of the Jeep and opened the door for her, setting the two pies he held on her lap. Now that the pudding was drying in her hair, he could see that the soft curls really were the color of butterscotch, matching the freckles that marched across her pink nose.
“Gertrude Taylor’s my aunt,” he said, swinging onto the road without remembering to check the rearview mirror until a horn honk reminded him. He raised a hand. He was doing a whole lot of gesticulatory apologizing today.
“I figured that out when Sims asked about the tattoo. I should have known it anyway from the pictures on the walls of the house and from your aunt talking about you and your sister and Crockett.” Wariness lingered in her eyes. “Gert’s my landlady.”
“Thought she might be.” Why was she looking at him like he’d just crawled out from under a rock when she was obviously the encroacher here? And hadn’t she nearly run him off the road? “I never knew Aunt Gert to take in boarders before.”
She smiled, although the pink color seemed to spread from her nose across her cheeks. “My van broke down in front of her house. I rang the doorbell to use her telephone because mine was dead and never left. There’s Bumpy Road just ahead,” she reminded him, a little late.
He took the corner at about thirty-five, far too fast, but it was either that or have the pickup that had been following them become a decoration on the Jeep’s bumper. He had the feeling her answer was more evasion than fact. There would be time in the lazy summer before them to find out the whole truth.
“You might try turn signals sometime,” she suggested, her voice sounding somewhat strangled. “You know, just as an alternative.”
“I’ll give it a shot.” He saw Mrs. Kline’s white farmhouse and dutifully turned on his signal, though no one followed or approached them on the gravel road.
Forty-five minutes later, after having his cheeks pinched by Martha Kline and his hand wrung by Sims, Boone followed Lucy’s van into town. The city limits sign was still there, though the population number had been lowered by a hundred or so residents. Some of the cats must have died.
He drove through downtown, noting there were more empty storefronts than there had been the last time he was home. But the doors to the Methodist church were still painted fire-engine red and Down at Jenny’s, the café, was still going strong. Three houses past a left turn onto Twilight Park Avenue, he pulled the Jeep into his aunt’s driveway.
The house was the same, painted red and trimmed in gray and white. Flowers bloomed in multicolor profusion on either side of the brick sidewalk that approached the porch. A well-built teenager in a Taft High School T-shirt and ragged shorts pushed a lawnmower across the yard, his movements efficient. He lifted a hand in a desultory wave. This must be the kid Kelly was worried about.
Boone waved back, then stopped and squinted at the discreet sign that hung from the gingerbread work on the front porch. “Tea on Twilight?”
Lucy parked behind him and walked past him toward the house. He caught up with her, grasping her arm before she could mount the steps. He gestured at the sign. “What the hell’s this?”
*
Not again. Boone Brennan’s chocolate-colored eyes had the same expression of distaste his sister Kelly’s always did when they focused on Lucy. It was a silent insult she hadn’t earned and heartily resented.
“I believe,” she said evenly, “it’s a sign. Excuse me, please. Gert needs me to serve lunch.”
She shook free from his grasp, but before she reached the door, Gert was pushing it open. “Boone, is that you? Haul your tight buns in here. I need help in the kitchen.”
“Hi, Aunt Gert.”
Lucy felt the hairs on her arm stand on end when he brushed against her skin. He stepped past her and swept Gert into a hug, then laid the old lady back over his arm. “Ah, woman, you’ve ruined me for anyone else. When are you going to marry me?”
“Why would I marry a fresh young pup determined to put my back out at every turn?” Gert straightened, swatted his shoulder and kissed his cheek in one economical motion. Then she hugged him again, drawing back and lifting the tail of his shirt to dry her eyes. “Did you meet Lucy?”
“We met.” He met Lucy’s eyes coolly. “What’s going on here, Aunt Gert?”
“Lunch, as a matter of fact, and we’re behind because someone ran the waitress off the road. I thought I was going to have to call Jack in from mowing the yard to don an apron. I can just imagine his reaction to that. It would be a replay of the Crockett and Boone show.” Gert frowned at Boone at the same time as she took his arm in a fond grasp. “Sims called me,” she said.
“Sims the busybody,” he complained. He started to follow his aunt inside, then stepped back and motioned for Lucy to go ahead.
She went straight down the center hall to the kitchen, keeping her eyes to the front. She didn’t care to witness Boone’s reaction to the sight of both parlors, the dining room, and the former den filled with fifteen small cloth-covered tables.
In the big kitchen, Gert picked up a magnum of chardonnay and pushed it at Boone, smacking him in the stomach with it. “Open this,” she ordered. “Lucy has trouble with that damn corkscrew every time. Lucy, those salads are for the front parlor.”
“Wine?” Boone sounded shocked. “For lunch? In Taft? Does the sheriff’s office know about this? Tom Simcox is still sheriff, right, or has the whole town been taken over by a syndicate from the big city that allows drinking in the middle of the day?”
“If you’re going to be a pain in the tookus,” Gert said, scowling over her glasses at him, “you need to go to your room and give some thought to your behavior.”
Lucy didn’t think she’d ever heard of a “tookus,” but it seemed to have some effect on Boone. He went to work with the corkscrew. When she came back from the front parlor, she noted with no small amount of resentment that he apparently hadn’t had any trouble opening the wine. That was as irritating as the snotty expression in his eyes.
“Aunt Gert, don’t you think you might have mentioned this venture at some point?” he asked, filling the glasses Lucy set in front of him. “We talk on the phone a couple of times a week. For that matter, do I even have a room upstairs or have you opened a bordello, too?”
Gert frowned at him. “No, we’re saving that for next year. Do you need hormones, Boone? You sound grouchy.”
Lucy sped away with the tray of glasses without waiting for his response. She returned in time to hear Boone say, “…a stray cat. You can’t just adopt people because you like their eyes.”
“I liked yours and Kelly’s and Crockett’s twenty-some years ago, my boy,” Gert said s
harply. “Give the other tray of wine to Lucy and come over here and slice this pie.”
“Do you have a license to serve this stuff?” He handed Lucy the wine without meeting her eyes and stomped over to the slate-topped island, acting for all the world like an overgrown little boy in the middle of a tantrum.
“I have enough licenses and permits to open an agency of my own,” Gert responded impatiently. “Your sister, remember, is an attorney. And as cranky as you are, I might add. She left absolutely no stones unturned.” Her smiling eyes belied the irritability in her voice. “How long are you staying? Do I need to let Tom know you’re back on the streets for a while?”
“All summer,” he said diffidently. “If that’s all right.”
Lucy nearly stumbled on her way to the back parlor and had to do a swaying little dance with the wine tray to retain her balance without dashing the chardonnay against the wide floorboards of the hallway. All summer? She was going to encounter those disapproving eyes in that devastatingly handsome face every single day for the entire summer? Maybe he would stay with his sister in her townhouse… No, he’d already asked about his room upstairs.
She usually loved when the tearoom was busy. Even though the three hours during which they served lunch often left her with sore feet and numerous flavors of tea, coffee and wine spilled on her apron, it also left her clear-headed and hopeful. But today wasn’t usual. The tables remained full from eleven until well past two and her apron pocket was bulging with cash, but the time seemed unending. Her feet were aching by noon and she’d changed her apron three times. She spent so much time mentally planning where she was going to go when Boone Brennan manipulated her ouster from his aunt’s house that she had to count Reverend St. John’s change back to him three times.
Eli told her it was all right—he didn’t know how to count anyway. Lucy ended the transaction laughing. He had a habit of smiling down at his family from the pulpit and counting heads aloud. “There were only seven this morning,” he would tell his wife Jessie, “and now there are nine. How does this happen?”
“When we got married,” he often explained, “she had three, I had three, and we inherited three from someone else. The problem is, we can’t remember who had which ones and we didn’t save the receipts, so we can’t send any of them back.”
Lucy smiled with the thought of the St. Johns. Maybe she could stay with them if she had to leave Gert’s—Eli would never even notice she was there and Jessie was too nice to tell him.
The grandfather clock in the hall chimed a quarter after two when she turned the elegant little “closed” sign toward the street and leaned back against the wall.
“Lucy, come and have some tea. I can hear your dogs barking from here,” Gert called.
Lucy lifted each foot and stretched it, realizing for the first time just how tired they were. Her right arch cramped and she had to push herself away from the wall, biting back a groan. “On my way.”
Gert was sitting on a bar stool at the island, counting receipts, her reading glasses balanced near the end of her nose. “Excellent day, Lucy,” she announced.
“Good.” Lucy accepted the glass of wine Boone offered. “Thank you.”
She scrounged into her apron, pulling out the rest of the cash and dumping it onto the slate in front of Gert. “Here you go.” She went to the counter that ran along the wall and dropped coins into the gallon-size pickle jar that sat there. A large white label on the outside of it said, “Lucy’s Dreams.” It was half full of money, business cards, and pieces of paper.
“What are you doing?” Boone’s expression was scandalized. “You don’t get to keep your tips? Shame on you, Aunt Gert, for taking advantage of the help.”
Gert divided the cash according to denomination and laid the checks and credit card receipts in separate piles before she replied. “And shame on you, Boone, for speaking out of turn. Lucy’s not ‘the help.’” She totaled the receipts and handed the tape to Lucy before scowling at her nephew over the top of her reading glasses. “We’re business partners.”
Chapter Two
Two days passed before Boone connected with Kelly—days spent dusting hard-to-reach places for Aunt Gert, running the power-washer for Sims at the service station and learning abso-damn-lutely nothing about Lucy Dolan.
After sharing pizza, beer and some decadent breadsticks he’d brought from the tearoom, Boone sat in his sister’s living room and glared across its width at her. “Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?” Not that he was at all sure anything was going on. Lucy was as much a mystery as she’d been standing beside her car on the road into Taft. Jack just seemed to be a nice kid who worked hard—he was a whole lot more productive at the handle of a lawnmower than he and Crockett had ever been.
“Because Aunt Gert told me, in so many words, that she didn’t want us to interfere.” Kelly met his expression, scowl for scowl. “Maybe if you found your way here more than once a year, or maybe twice if you make it for Thanksgiving or Christmas, you could keep an eye on her sometimes too.”
Boone opened his mouth, then closed it. He had no viable argument. When he and Maggie had been together, they’d made the trip almost every month, but the last two years had been different. Living in a swirl of pain was one thing—rippling that eddy out to everyone he knew and loved was something else again. “What do you know about Lucy Dolan?”
“Aunt Gert had a hissy fit when I suggested doing a background check on her.” Kelly shrugged. “Our aunt’s an adult, Boone. I couldn’t treat her as incompetent even if she was.” She sighed and sat on the white couch, leaning forward and steepling her fingers under her nose. “Truth be told, Lucy’s been wonderful to her as far as I know. The only reason I don’t like her is because I don’t want to.”
Something in her voice sounded wrong.
Defeat. That’s what it was.
Suddenly everything about this scene seemed wrong. The glitzy townhouse and hard-edged voice didn’t match up with the sister he thought he knew, although the perfectly cut silk suit was right up her wardrobe alley.
Her hair, which she must have run her hands through once too often, made him think of that first day they’d come to live with their mother’s older brother, Uncle Mike, and Aunt Gert. They’d both been mired in the grief of losing their parents and the fear of whatever came next. Boone was angry and taciturn in ragged jeans and a T-shirt with a torn sleeve, but Kelly wore a carefully matched outfit with complementary socks and headband. Her braids, plaited by an older brother’s impatient fingers, were crooked and loose.
It seemed as though he’d never gotten taking care of his little sister exactly right, but he was still trying. “What’s wrong, Kell?” he asked. “This is about more than Aunt Gert, isn’t it?”
She sat silent, staring out at the man-made lake that was the hub of the wheel of condominiums that had sprung up on Taft’s east side in recent years. After a moment, she nodded—just a quick little jerk of her head—but didn’t meet his gaze.
Trying to stifle impatience, he sat beside her and put an arm around her, leaning back on the sumptuous leather with her tucked into his side. “Tell me,” he said quietly. He dropped a kiss on the top of her auburn-streaked dark hair, then rubbed his chin lightly over the spot he’d kissed. “There. It can’t come off now.”
Her soft laugh had a little hiccup in it, and he knew a moment’s horror that she might cry. “Lucy’s van broke down in front of the house when she came here, as you probably know, but this is where she was heading anyway.”
Her shoulders stiffened under his arm before she went on. Her voice sounded splintered and brittle. “She came to Aunt Gert’s because Crockett sent her.”
*
The grandfather clock chimed just once when Lucy came down the stairs. She glared at it as she passed, as though it were to blame for the fact that she couldn’t sleep through the night.
In the kitchen, she poured a glass of sweet tea and slipped out the back door as noiselessly as sh
e could, walking around to the broad porch that embraced the front and one side of the house. She sat in a wicker chair and lifted her feet to cross them on the rail. Her robe fell away so her legs were bare, and she relished the breeze on her skin. The outside smelled like fresh-cut grass and lilacs, and she breathed deep.
The cool air seemed to sensitize her nerve endings in much the same way Boone’s touch had. Remembering the brush of his arm, she rubbed a hand down the length of her own as though to eradicate the feeling he’d left behind. This was neither the time nor the place for man-woman feelings. She wasn’t the woman and God knew Michael Brennan wasn’t the man.
But what a man he was, with his slightly long brown hair and dark brown eyes that saw too much. A full eight inches taller than her five feet five, he carried his size easily. He was well-muscled, but not with the rippling definition of a man overtly conscious of his body. The jeans he’d worn today had been snug but not tight, his shirt loose enough to appear comfortable. His voice… Oh, yes, his voice. It was deep and soft at the same time, with music in it. The music of dreams.
It had been so long since Lucy had heard that kind of music.
“Guilty conscience keeping you awake?”
She jumped when the voice with all its musicality came from behind her. She nearly spilled her tea, and closed her eyes against the sting of his sarcastic question.
“Must be.” She kept her voice light, but rubbed her stomach against the nausea that teased its edges. The fact that the man made her think she might throw up was conclusive evidence that she needed to avoid him.
“Mind if I join you?”
He was in the chair beside hers before she could think of any way to dissuade him, his long, narrow feet propped on the porch rail next to her short, stubby ones. He had a can of beer in his hand, and he lifted it to his mouth for a long swallow.