by Alisha Rai
Nicholas cleared his throat. “I didn’t think before I walked in.”
Not thinking? That was totally un-Nicholas-like behavior.
The line inched forward. “Please leave before someone recognizes you.”
He moved closer instead, so close she could feel the brush of his breath on her nape. A featherlight touch landed on her spine, and she almost jumped. His fingertip traced the hollow of her back, under her jacket, revealed by the crop top. It barely lasted a second, no longer, and then a coolness where there had been heat.
She glanced behind her in time to catch the door closing behind Nicholas.
Shaken, she made it to the counter and placed her order with the teenage barista. He gave her the total, then grinned. “Sadia’s at Kareem’s school. Some kind of parent-teacher thing, if you were looking for her.”
Livvy forced a smile. See? Entirely possible someone knew her. She’d never met this kid before. “Thanks.” She checked his nametag. “Darrell.”
“No problem.”
She grabbed her latte from the counter when it was ready and walked to the door, part of her certain Nicholas would be gone, the rest of her hoping he’d still be there, waiting for her.
He was, standing next to her beat-up old car, leaning against the driver’s side. His muscles were tensed, his hands curled into fists. She didn’t know who he was looking to fight, but then she realized where he was looking.
The sign. Kane’s Café. “Have you been inside since . . . ?”
“No.” He cleared his throat. “I have not. Not since that double date we had with Sadia and Paul.”
She had to think for a second, mine through her memories. She remembered that. A week or so before the accident. They’d had coffee and cookies.
“You were wearing a polka dot sweater,” he murmured.
“I can’t believe you remember that.”
“I remember putting my arm around you, and Paul rolling his eyes and telling us to quit getting physical around him.”
She huffed out a laugh. “I think I told him to stop hassling us.”
“You did. Then you kissed me. He flicked water at us.” His smile subsided. “How was that us?”
She understood what he was asking. Her life prior to the accident sometimes didn’t feel like hers.
A spasm of pain crossed his face and she drifted closer to him. Understanding and echoing hurt coursed through her. “Yo. Stop leaning on Ruthie. She’s delicate, you know.”
He blinked and focused on her, some of that pain subsiding. It took him a second, and then he moved away from her car. “Paul didn’t change much in there.”
“No. I think he liked it the way it was.” Paul had kept the same menu from her grandparents’ days too. “Sadia’s trying to upgrade things, but it’s kind of expensive.”
His face softened. “How is Sadia?”
“She wasn’t there.” Livvy took a sip of her latte, barely tasting it. She glanced around, but it wasn’t quite five, and the parking lot was fairly empty. She’d parked closer to the edge, and they were hidden from the main road by a large tree.
It wasn’t as good as meeting behind the place like a pair of clandestine lovers or drug dealers, but it would have to do.
“No. I mean how is she? In general?”
“She’s good. She says she sees you around town sometimes.”
“Yes. We don’t talk to each other, because, well . . .”
“For what it’s worth, she wouldn’t react like Paul, if you did talk to her. I mean, she doesn’t love you, but she’d be civil.”
“It would be hard to top Paul’s hatred of me.” His eyes glinted. “We didn’t cross paths much, but when we did, he was really good at looking right through me.”
Her lips twisted. “If it makes you feel any better, he and I couldn’t really see eye to eye either.”
Nicholas shook his head. “No, that doesn’t make me feel better. You should have had your brother.”
She shifted her weight, surprised at the criticism on her behalf. “I couldn’t be who he wanted. It’s okay. I’ve kind of made peace with it.” Much of her mourning after Paul’s death had been over the loss of a possibility of a relationship with the man.
“Maybe someday I can too.” Nicholas shoved his hands in his pockets. “Three days after Paul died, my father told me to buy this café from Sadia. I told him I approached Sadia and she refused to sell.”
Livvy lifted an eyebrow. “You never approached her,” she guessed.
“No.” Nicholas smiled, but it was grim. “Paul would have haunted me forever for trying to rip his place from his widow. But if she needs money, I’m happy to pay over market value for it. I’m also happy to just give her money.”
Despite any financial troubles Sadia might be having, Livvy doubted the other woman would be eager to sell the café or take charity. “I’ll tell her, but I don’t think she wants to sell. And she definitely wouldn’t take your money.”
“I figured.” His smile was forced. “All you Kane women are on the proud side.”
“Pride can keep you warm sometimes.” Especially when you lost all of the people who kept the cold out.
“Tell me about it.” He rolled his shoulders. “You’re early.”
There was something different in his tone, something hesitant. “Yeah, unlike me, I guess.” She nodded in the general direction of Chandler’s, unable to bring herself to look at it. “I thought maybe I could go inside there, face my past, blah blah, but couldn’t manage it. Silly. It’s just a store.”
He glanced at the small café again. “Not silly at all.”
“Someday,” she allowed.
“Someday.” He cocked his head. “We can head up to see my grandfather. We’re a little early, but he won’t mind. He was excited when I told him you agreed to see him.”
“Okay, then. Do you want to take Ruthie or . . . ?”
“You never told me why you decided your car is a woman.”
“Because no man could ever handle my ass for this long.”
Nicholas smiled, his eyes softening. She had to look away. “I’ll drive. Ruthie might be able to handle your ass, but she probably can’t handle driving up a mountain.”
Chapter 13
NICHOLAS HAD been exaggerating by saying his grandfather’s house was up a mountain, but not by much. The trees were older, the growth of lawn heavier, but she knew this hilly road like the back of her hand. When Sam Oka and John Chandler had moved to this then-rural place in the middle of nowhere, they’d purchased neighboring tracts of land. After they’d established their empire and each gotten married—in a joint ceremony, no less—they’d built their homes.
Livvy gazed in the direction of her old house, her late grandpa Sam’s home. She and Nicholas had run wild through these woods as children. As young adults, they’d made love in these woods.
And then later, Nicholas had broken her heart in these woods.
“Stop the car.”
Nicholas didn’t even hesitate, coming to an immediate halt. She stared out her window.
“Do you want to leave?” He didn’t sound surprised.
She ran her hand over the pristine leather seat. “How’s he doing?”
“Grandpa? Well, for his age. He has some pretty bad arthritis, so he uses a wheelchair now.”
“Are you sure he doesn’t hate me?” She wasn’t proud of how plaintive she sounded.
She also wasn’t proud of the rush of soothing comfort she experienced when his thumb brushed the back of her hand. “He doesn’t hate you.”
She rolled her shoulders. Shedding some of her baggage. “Okay. Let’s go then.”
“Are you sure?”
No. “Yes.”
Livvy braced herself for the first sight of the house, but even then she felt like she’d been punched in the belly when the large stone estate came into view. Someone was maintaining it well, the garden John’s late wife had so adored still thriving.
Nicholas parked in t
he circular driveway. She didn’t wait for him to come around the side of the car, fumbling her way out of the passenger side.
Sweat broke out on her brow as they climbed the porch and he stopped in front of the door. “Are you sure, Livvy?” he asked again, this time with more than a touch of urgency.
Yearning and longing and terror whirled inside her, but she nodded. Fearful she would take him up on the next out he gave her, Livvy rang the doorbell.
It opened after a brief pause. The man standing behind the door was young and handsome and a stranger to her. His polite smile turned to familiarity when he caught sight of Nicholas. “Hey there.”
“Hi, Chad. My grandfather’s expecting us.”
The younger man’s gaze moved curiously between the two of them. “Sure. I can let him know you’re here.” He stepped aside.
The knot in her belly got worse as Livvy entered the home. Little had changed here, though the paint on the wall looked fresh, and the carpet had been swapped for hardwood. The air still held the familiar scent of vanilla and cookies.
Nicholas’s fingers brushed the small of her back. “Still okay?”
“Yup.” She firmed her spine. Without waiting for his urging, she walked into the living room, her feet retracing steps she’d taken for years.
Nicholas was behind her, but she forgot all about him when she saw the framed photo. She forgot about everything.
What was it doing here?
It wasn’t a particularly large piece. It didn’t have to be. She could close her eyes and recall every detail of the black-and-white photograph. Two young men, barely out of childhood, dressed in simple jeans and shirts, their arms around each other’s shoulders, in front of a storefront. The white boy was solemn, the Asian boy’s lips slightly curved, a devilish gleam in his eyes.
It had been taken a couple of weeks before Sam and his family had been sentenced to an internment camp for Japanese-Americans.
Another picture of her grandfather hung in a museum in D.C., but that one had been taken by a photojournalist in the Central Utah camp where the Okas had been imprisoned. Sam’s smile had been missing then, his eyes somber, his body leaner, having had to endure things no child should have.
This photo had graced the first C&O from the minute it opened to the day it burned down.
“How does he have this? This was destroyed in the fire.”
Nicholas came to stand next to her. “I’m not sure. He tracked down the photographer, I think, and managed to get a copy.”
“What took its place?”
“Nothing. My father wanted to put up our family portrait, but Grandpa blocked him on that. There’s a blank spot in the front of the store.”
She nodded, her body numb. That was good. Bad enough to be erased, but maybe worse to be replaced.
The whir of a power chair came from behind them. Livvy turned, that numbness protecting her from her anxiety. She dropped her hand from the frame.
John was older, of course, but he sat straight and tall in his wheelchair. Thick, bushy eyebrows lowered over eyes remarkably similar to Nicholas’s. His mouth worked. “Livvy.”
She took a hesitant step forward, part of her still caught in fear, though he’d been the one to ask her to come here. The fear he would tell her to get out, or that her family had ruined his.
But still, she couldn’t stop that hopeful, needy step.
His jaw trembled, and then he did the best thing she could have imagined he’d do. He opened his arms.
Her pulse sped up at the gesture, at the pure, unadulterated eagerness to love her.
Without thinking, she crossed the room and crouched down, allowing him to pull her into his arms. He wasn’t as strong as he used to be, his arms weak, but that didn’t matter. He smelled faintly of cigars and dirt, of home and family and roots.
John smoothed her hair away, his calloused hand rough. He leaned back and beamed into her face, unashamed or unaware of the tears running down his cheeks. “Livvy?” he asked again, and another fresh wave of happiness ran through her at her name uttered in that gravelly voice. “Look at you. All grown up.” He shook his head. “You’re the spitting image of your grandma and mother.”
She sniffed, long and loud, and wiped the back of her hand over her nose. “It’s so good to see you.”
“You’re back. I can’t believe you’re back.”
“No. I mean, yes, I’m back, but temporarily.”
“How long will you be here?” John asked eagerly.
“I don’t know.”
Displeasure crossed his face, followed by resignation, but he rallied. “Are you hungry? Nicholas, go tell that jailer you’ve hired that we could use some food and drinks. He’s probably in the kitchen getting dinner ready.”
“Stop calling Chad your jailer. He’s your housekeeper.”
“I know an old-people caretaker when I see one.”
“He’s here to help you with anything you need. A housekeeper,” Nicholas said firmly.
John snorted as Nicholas left. “The boy thinks I’m an idiot.” He squeezed her hands. “You have no idea how wonderful it is to see you. I’ve dreamed of this, you know.”
“Me too.” She hesitated. “I was scared to come here. I thought . . .”
“I’d shun you.” He nodded, unsurprised. “After what my son did, that’s a reasonable assumption for you to make.”
“After what my father did, you mean,” she corrected him. Her father and her brother, if John believed Jackson had set the fire.
“What your father did was an accident. What my son did was deliberate.” John’s nostrils flared.
She looked away, at the photograph of Sam and John. “It was a shock to see that here. A shock, but a nice one.”
“It’s yours.”
“What?” She turned back to John.
“It’s yours. I have another copy. I kept this for you and Jackson. That’s part of your heritage. You should have it.”
Her first instinct was to take it, but then reason prevailed. “I travel a lot. I—I have no home or anything to put it in.”
John frowned. “Why do you travel?”
Because I keep trying to find what I lost. “I love seeing the country,” she said brightly.
“Hmph.” John didn’t look convinced by that explanation. “Is Jackson here?”
She glanced at the doorway, which remained empty. If she could keep Nicholas from discovering Jackson was back, that would be good. No need to rile him up. “He was here briefly.”
“I’d like to see him,” John said, surprising her. “If you would tell him that.”
“I can’t guarantee he’ll come.”
Sadness came and went in the older man’s gaze. “Tell him . . . the past is dead and buried for me. In case he fears anything.”
“I will.”
John stroked her hair again, as if he couldn’t stop himself from touching her, and she leaned into the paternal gesture, so hungry for familial affection. It was all she could do not to demand more hugs.
“Now, tell me everything about you. You travel. Where have you been? What have you been doing?”
“I’m a tattoo artist.”
“I know that much. I may be old as dirt, but I can google.”
She smiled. “You’re not old at all.”
His lips quirked. “Keep lying to me, sweetheart. I knew you’d be an artist. Always doodling and coloring. Like your mama, when she was young.”
Livvy wondered anew if her distant mother had ached after losing John in her life. “Mom never considered me an artist. I just—”
“Just permanently put your art on people’s skin? Don’t let your clients hear how little confidence you have in your work.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Right. Reflex.”
“Your mother is a good woman. If she puts pressure on you over your chosen profession, don’t hold it against her—she probably sees too much of herself in you. I was always saddened that your father discouraged her from having a car
eer as an artist.”
“No, you’re mistaken,” Livvy said slowly. “My father didn’t have a problem with my being an artist. He even convinced my mom to let me go to art school.”
“Sometimes men have different goals for their wives and daughters. I say this with no animosity toward your father, Livvy, over what happened, but it was pretty obvious when Robert married your mother that part of her appeal was her wealth and social status. Her working as an artist didn’t quite mesh with that.”
The mural.
She remembered suddenly, her father’s deep voice, sweet as always, as her mother put the finishing touches on the fairy tale mural in her and Jackson’s bedroom. Really, Tani, does this match the rest of the house? It seems a bit tacky to have this in our children’s bedroom, no? They’d painted over it not long after.
“I’m sorry. Forget I said anything. I didn’t mean to speak ill of the dead.”
“No, no. I’m an adult. I understand my parents weren’t perfect.” Except . . . as a child, it was natural to make one parent right and the other wrong. Her father, so loving and boisterous and generous and indulgent of her. Her mother, closed off and distant. Right. Wrong.
Livvy pushed the thoughts away, disquieted by even a hint that maybe there had been complexities in her parents’ relationship she’d been unaware of. “My mom doesn’t hassle me about my career anymore.” Because we don’t talk about anything anymore.
“How is Tani doing? Recovering from her injury?” John said her mother’s name like a verbal caress. Tani and John’s relationship had always been like parent and child.
“Yes, nicely.”
“Getting old is fucking awful.”
She smiled. “Yes, it is.”
“I’m sorry about Paul. I wanted to come to the funeral so badly. But I feared upsetting you and Tani further.”
She dipped her head, acknowledging his condolences. Would she have been less miserable that day, standing by the grave of her brother, if she’d known John and Nicholas had wanted to be there? Undoubtedly. It warmed her now, to know that support had been out there, even if she’d been unaware. “Thanks.”