“Forgot,” he said abruptly. “Got busy down at the station. You know, doing some editing and dubbing on the tape we did yesterday.” They didn’t need to know that only one cameraman had been at the game, which probably meant that the whole segment would boil down to about ten seconds of airtime.
“That’s right. The play-off,” Paul said. “Who won?”
“St. Anne’s little darlings wiped the field with Santiago.” And that’s all he could remember about the game he’d had to sit through for more than two hours. Not only had he been bored out of his skull, but the odds were that when the ten-second segment aired, Nick would be sliced neatly out of it.
Perfect.
Oh, yeah. His future was looking brighter all the damn time.
“Didn’t love it, huh?” Paul asked as Stevie smiled and walked past him, carrying two pots of coffee out to the crowd.
Nick laughed shortly and took another sip of coffee. “Not so much.” He stared down at the coffee, studying the dark surface, trying to let his mind go blank. But it wasn’t working. One thought chased another through his brain, and all of them were centered on an eleven-year-old kid out to screw up Nick’s life.
He needed to talk to Mimi Castle. Needed to talk to somebody. Paul? he thought again. Sure, he was married now, but the twin thing was a strong bond. Paul could keep a secret. And Paul was so damn logical and clear-thinking, he’d be able to look at the problem coolly, dispassionately, and maybe he’d be able to think of something Nick hadn’t considered yet.
Nodding to himself, Nick looked up at his brother, ready to take the risk and dump everything on him. But Paul wasn’t looking at him. His gaze was fixed on Stevie. Following her as she moved through the crowd, laughing and talking with her customers as she refilled cups. The expression on Paul’s face told Nick that his brother was nowhere near cool and logical. Hell, he looked like he was ready to grab Stevie up and carry her into the office for a little extension on their honeymoon.
Nope. No help from this quarter. And really, maybe it was just as well. Nick needed to get a grip on this himself.
His problem.
His solution.
“Hey, Paul!”
His twin brother tore his gaze from Stevie, looked over at Nick, and grinned sheepishly.
“Sorry. Zoned out on you, didn’t I?”
“I’m getting used to it,” Nick said dryly. “Ever since you and Stevie got back from Ireland, you’ve been like you’re on another planet.”
Paul leaned against the bar top and waggled both eyebrows. “Honeymoons, Nick. You ought to try one sometime.”
“Just what I need,” he muttered. First a kid, then a wife. Oh, yeah. That’d be great. Swallowing the last of his coffee, he straightened up. “As long as you’re back there, give me five coffees to go.”
“Five?” One of Paul’s eyebrows lifted.
“One for me—”
“The Marconis get the rest?”
“If it’ll get ’em to hurry, I’ll bring ’em their coffee every damn day.”
Once he had the coffees ready to go, he picked up the cardboard tray and looked at Paul and Stevie again. He’d never seen his brother happier. Never seen Stevie so completely in love. Marriage could work, he thought. For some, the whole family thing was just right. For him … not a chance.
* * *
Bills.
The great equalizer.
With a break between customers, Tasha snatched at the extra half hour in her day. Settling in the small office tucked into the back of the shop, she pulled out her checkbook and got down to the business of throwing money down a rat hole. Or, to be precise, several rat holes. Well, okay, not throwing it away. But paying bills was enough to give anybody a headache. There just never seemed to be enough money to go around. More often than not, she ended up juggling with all the panache of a circus act. But there was no applause when she finished her performance.
Pay this one, wait on that one—eventually everyone got their turn. But things were tight, no mistake.
She hadn’t even realized how much Mimi’s Social Security checks had helped out. How could she have, though? While Mimi was alive, the older woman insisted they stick to a strict code of “don’t worry, be happy.” That old reggae song had been one of Mimi’s favorites, since it perfectly encapsulated her outlook on life. “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” she was always saying.
“But this isn’t small stuff, Mimi,” Tasha whispered. “This is life stuff, and it’s getting so tight, any minute now, I’m gonna start squeaking.” Heck, just trying to keep the old house from falling down around their feet was eating up a lot of hair money.
Tasha filed the paid phone bill, then reached for the Edison envelope. Bracing herself, she closed her eyes as she pulled the statement out. Slowly, cautiously, she opened her right eye and took a peek at the amount due. Instantly her left eye flew open. “Eighty-five bucks?”
Flipping the folded bill open, she scanned it quickly, all the time remembering Jonas’s habit of entering a room and hitting a light switch. Of course, he never bothered to turn the lights off. Even in broad daylight, the kid left a trail of brilliant illumination behind him.
“He must have lived in a cave in a former life,” she muttered, and picked up a pen to write the check. “I swear, I’m going to buy him a miner’s hat. Or a flashlight.”
But she wouldn’t do either and she knew it. She’d just keep doing what she’d been doing … turning the lights off behind him—only more often. Eleven-year-old boys just weren’t any good at all about remembering anything but the location of the fridge.
“Which brings us to the grocery bill.” She glanced at the amount of this week’s check and shook her head. “Amazing how much that boy can eat.”
Mimi used to say that children went into feeding frenzies just before they started growing in leaps and bounds. “Well,” Tasha said, smiling, “judging by the food intake, if Mimi was right, Jonas should be a foot taller inside a month.”
But then, a lot could happen in a month, couldn’t it? Dropping the pen, Tasha leaned back in her chair and let her gaze slide around the room. Just six months ago, she’d thought things were pretty good.
And then, overnight, Mimi was gone.
Scrubbing one hand over her eyes to keep the threat of tears at bay, Tasha forced her mind onto a different track. Like this little room, for instance.
When she’d taken over doing the shop’s books a year ago, Tasha’d convinced Mimi to let her paint the office. There was only so much pink a person could take. Well, a person other than Mimi. The older woman should have been a Mary Kay rep. She’d loved pink. In all its shades. Thankfully, she’d kept most of the pink in the beauty shop portion of the house, which Tasha would never think of changing. Mimi’s stamp was all over the shop, and there it would stay.
But here, in the office, the walls were now a soft blue, with white paint sponged on top of the base coat until the walls looked like a blue sky studded with soft white clouds. It was soothing and cool and … hers. Tasha’s spot. The one spot in the house where she felt as though she really had earned her place here.
Everything else had been a gift.
She closed her eyes and let her mind drift back across the years to the moment she had first found her way out of the darkness. It was ten long years ago. Mimi Castle had looked into Tasha’s eyes and seen something no one else, including Tasha, had ever seen.
Someone worth saving.
Rain in LA wasn’t pretty.
Water choked in the gutters blocked by trash, and broken neon signs flashed in darkly ominous colors off the puddles stretched across the streets.
Fancy cars with fancier drivers splashed through the rivers in the street, splattering anyone who happened to be close to curbside. But since leaving her home behind her to live on the streets, Tasha’d found ways to keep dry. Huddling in doorways with thick arches overhead, and crouching beneath boxes piled up in an alley, and stretching out under the freeway overpa
sses.
She kept her mouth shut and her gaze down. She steered clear of the boozers—she’d had enough of that life, thanks, before she ran away from a home she rarely thought about anymore. She begged for quarters and cashed in cans at the recycling center—and sometimes, when it got too cold for her pride to keep her warm, she stopped in at one of the missions downtown. There she could get a hot meal and clean sheets, and all for the price of listening to some do-gooder telling her she’d be better off at home.
But what did they know? Even sitting here shivering in the cold rain was better than what she’d left behind.
The old woman stopped her car under a streetlight and pulled a map from her glove compartment. Tasha spotted her right away. A pink Cadillac, especially an old one, was going to attract attention. From her vantage point in the doorway, Tasha saw a cluster of guys across the street, eyeing the old woman and no doubt making some quick plans.
Her gaze shifting back to the woman in the car, Tasha felt a small twinge of worry. Why, she wasn’t sure. She’d learned long ago to look out for number one. So why was this one woman’s safety suddenly an issue? But Tasha had also learned to listen to her instincts. Sometimes they were all that kept you alive.
Grumbling, she stepped out from beneath the archway and was instantly pelted by tiny, icy knives of rain. She pushed her sodden, dirty hair out of her eyes and squinted into the driving rain. Still furious at both the woman and herself for caring, Tasha stomped to the driver’s side window.
The woman rolled it down, telling Tasha right away that she didn’t have a single ounce of self-preservation. She had to be at least sixty, but she wore her long gray hair in a thick braid that lay across her left shoulder. Her face was lined, but she didn’t look … used up, like so many people Tasha knew did.
“Lady,” Tasha said, bending low enough to look into the woman’s soft blue eyes, “you’d better get out of here. Quick.”
“I will as soon as I figure out where I am,” the woman said, smiling. Then her features softened into concern. “You look half-frozen, honey.”
The warmth of the car nearly singed her skin, the shock of it went so deep. She’d been cold for so long, frozen didn’t even come close to describing her anymore. But that wasn’t the point. Tasha glanced back over her shoulder and noticed that the guys were starting to move. Turning around again, she said quietly, quickly, “You see those guys behind me?”
The woman looked, then shifted her gaze back to Tasha. “Yes.…”
“They’re looking to take your car and they won’t much care what happens to you in the taking.”
Those soft blue eyes went hard, and just for an instant Tasha thought maybe the old lady wasn’t such a dummy after all. But that thought was shot to hell the minute the woman said, “Okay then, you’d better get in so we can go.”
“Huh?”
Reaching across the front seat, the woman unlocked the passenger side door, then sat back and repeated, “Get in. We’d better hurry.”
“Lady,” Tasha said, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“The name’s Mimi,” the old woman said and gave Tasha a direct stare that seemed to look deep enough to see her soul—if she had one. With their gazes locked the woman said, “I’m not going anywhere without you.”
Crazy. That’s what she was. Crazy. Too nuts to be out on her own. Tasha looked over her shoulder again. The three men stepped off the curb, moving as a single entity. Danger pulsed off them as clearly as the shattered glow of neon dusting them with a weird red light.
“Lady…” she tried again.
“Get in or help me fight them off,” Mimi said flatly.
Frustrated, torn between wanting to run and wanting to get into the warm, dry car, Tasha blew out a disgusted breath, then sprinted to the other side of the car. The minute she was inside and the door slammed behind her, Mimi stepped on the gas. The old Caddy peeled away from the curb and sent a fantail of dirty water spraying over the three men like a tiny tidal wave.
Their curses rang out loud and clear and only got louder when Mimi stuck her left arm out the window and gave them a prom wave.
“Tasha!”
Her eyes flew open and she jumped, startled, as she turned to look at Molly, standing in the open doorway, one hand on the brass knob.
Tasha slapped one hand to her chest and said, “Christ, you scared me to death.”
“Join the club,” her friend said. “Thought you were in a coma or something. I called you three times.” She frowned. “You okay?”
“Fine,” she said, and released the last wisps of memory before rejoining the present. “What’s up, anyway?”
“What’s up is … Tassel Loafer was here.”
Tasha’s insides went cold and still. Weird. She was pretty sure her heart had stopped beating, too. She swallowed hard. “When?”
“Pretty much now.” The deep voice came from right behind Molly, and as he stepped into view, Tasha knew her heart had started again. Because it was practically skipping in her chest. That couldn’t be a good thing.
Heck, she’d seen handsome men before. Rich ones, too. Just never here. In the shop. In her world.
And the faster she could get rid of him, the better.
CHAPTER 5
Nick took a long look at the redhead and damned if she didn’t look better in daylight than she did by porch light.
Her skin was pale, creamy, but for the sprinkle of freckles across her nose and cheeks. That full mouth of hers was thinned into a dangerous grim line, but it didn’t detract from the whole picture. Her thick shoulder-length hair was pulled up into a ponytail high at the back of her head. The dark red mass, streaked through with blond and pale red strands, fell down against her slender neck, and Nick felt the urge to reach out and touch it. Just to see if it was as soft as it looked.
Then her meadow green eyes narrowed on him as she stood up to her full, less-than-impressive height, and Nick figured touching of any kind might get his hand bitten off.
“Hey,” the dark-haired woman said as she turned to gape at him. “I told you to wait outside.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” Blowing out a breath, she turned back to the redhead and said, “I’m sorry, Tash. I didn’t know he was following me. Those tassels are pretty damn quiet.”
“I cheated,” Nick said. “Wore Reeboks.”
He damn sure didn’t like being called Tassel Loafer. Might be time to pitch those puppies, he thought, Gucci or not.
“It’s okay, Molly,” the redhead said, and gave him a look she probably saved for spiders, just before she squashed them.
Nick never took his gaze off her, even when her friend said, “You want me to stay?”
“No thanks, Molly. I’ll be fine.”
When the dark-haired woman turned to leave, Nick spared her a quick look and caught the gleam of warning shining in her eyes. Jesus. Did he have serial killer tattooed on his forehead?
He forced himself to smile at the dark-haired woman with the hard eyes. “I don’t need you to stay, either.”
“Cute,” she said, but her tone told him she didn’t mean it. “I’ll be right outside if you need me,” she told the redhead. Then she was gone, into the hideously pink and strictly female lair of the beauty parlor.
Seemed as though he’d caught them all flat-footed. Which was, he admitted silently, just what he’d been aiming for. He could have called first, he supposed. Mimi Castle was in the phone book. He’d checked. But if he’d called, the redhead would have just told him to stay away. And if she was going to do that anyway, he’d just as soon make her say it in person.
Hell, just looking at her had been worth the trip. Her T-shirt defined curves that were incredibly generous considering how tiny she was everywhere else. And her worn, faded jeans clung to her short but shapely legs like a second skin. She wore sandals on her feet and a silver ankle bracelet that matched the toe rings peeped at him from beneath the hem of her jeans.
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After indulging in a good long look, he lifted his gaze to the slogan on her shirt, then up to her eyes. His lips quirked. “Nice to see you again.”
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“Now what kind of hello is that?”
“The kind you get when you walk into my house without an invitation.”
Nick stepped into the tiny office and watched her back up. He frowned to himself. He wasn’t trying to scare her, for God’s sake. Hell, he liked women. And they generally liked him back. Until her.
And he’d never frightened a woman in his life.
“Wasn’t exactly uninvited.” He jerked his head in the direction of the shop. “Your friend…”
“Molly.”
He nodded and gave her his most charming smile. “Molly. Well, she told me to wait and—”
She backed up another step until she’d placed the small, incredibly organized desk in between them. “—and you took that to mean ‘Come on in, stranger.’ Sure. I could see how that would happen.”
“Okay, look.” Nick gave up on the charming smile and tried for harmless. “I can see we got off on the wrong foot, but there’s no reason why we can’t behave like adults.”
“Does that usually work?” she asked, throwing him off-balance a little.
“Huh? Does what work?”
“That little smile,” she snapped. Narrowing her eyes on him, she continued, “Flash a dimple and I’m supposed to curl up and whimper?”
He blinked at her.
“Because I’m just too busy to do any adoring today.” Deliberately she picked up a sheaf of papers from the center of the desk, effectively dismissing him. “So if you’ll excuse me…”
Nick closed the door of the office and leaned one shoulder against it. She wasn’t making this easy and damned if he didn’t resent it a little. This was his life here, hanging by a thread over a media chasm filled with popping camera flashes and frenzied reporters. And to do a damn thing about saving his own ass, he was forced to deal with a tiny tyrant who, he thought, watching her, wasn’t nearly as calm and cool as she was trying to appear.
Loving You Page 5