by Nora Roberts
“You don’t like him.”
“He’s okay. He’s given Bella what she wanted, keeps her in the style to which she always insisted she was entitled. He’s a good father. Dotes on those kids. Just not the kind of guy you sit around drinking beer and shooting shit with. Last, but never least, Bella.”
Bo watched Bella step out of the car when her husband opened the door for her. “You’ve got a crop of beautiful women in your family.”
“That we do. Keeps us guys on our toes. Hey, Bella!”
He waved, dashed across the street and lifted his sister off her feet in a hug.
The noise level was huge. It was, Bo thought, like walking into a party that had been at peak for several years, and showed no signs of winding down. The floor was littered with kids of varying ages, with adults stepping over or around them.
Reena slipped up beside him, ran a hand down his arm. “You hanging in?”
“So far. They talked about killing me, but decided against it because, you know, dinner bell.”
“We do have our priorities,” she added. “What did you—?”
She broke off when Bianca stepped back in and shouted, “Dinner!”
It wasn’t quite a stampede, but it was a kind of blur of motion. Apparently, when Bianca Hale spoke, everybody listened. He was directed to a chair between Reena and An, then was served, family style, enough food to hold him for a week.
Wine flowed, as did conversation. No one seemed to mind if they were interrupted, talked over, even ignored. Everyone had something to say, and insisted on saying it whenever they liked.
The usual rules didn’t apply. If it was politics on the table, they talked politics. They talked religion, food, business. And prodded him without mercy regarding Reena.
“So . . .” Bella gestured with her glass. “Just where do you stand with Catarina, Bo?”
“Ah, about four inches taller.”
She gave him a little cat smile across the table. “The last one she brought home—”
“Bella,” Reena admonished.
“The last one she brought home was an actor. We decided he was able to memorize his lines because his head was so empty of anything else.”
“I dated a girl like that once,” Bo said lightly. “She could tell you what everyone wore to, say, the Oscars, but was a little shaky on who was actually president of the United States.”
“Bella can do both,” Xander said. “She’s multitalented. Vince, how’s your mother’s arm?”
“Better, much. She’ll be out of the cast next week. My mother broke her arm,” he explained to Bo. “She fell off her horse.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Barely slowed her down. She’s an amazing woman.”
“The paragon,” Bella said with a sweet, sweet smile. “How about your mother, Bo, will Reena have to compete with her, and pale in comparison?”
Tension slammed in, an angry party crasher. “Actually, I don’t see much of my mother.”
“Lucky Reena. Excuse me.” Bella set down her napkin, strode out of the room.
Reena was up a second later and marching after her.
“Let me show you an idea Bo had for the shop.” Gib took the napkin out of his pocket, smoothed it. “Just remember, I’m the father of your children so you can’t throw me over for this guy just because he’s supposed to be good with a hammer. Pass this down,” he said to Fran.
Bella grabbed her clutch bag and stormed out the back door with Reena on her heels.
“What the hell is the matter with you?”
“Nothing’s the matter with me. I wanted a damn cigarette.” She pulled out a jeweled box, slipped out a cigarette and lit it with a matching lighter. “You can’t smoke in the house, remember?”
“You were needling Bo.”
“No more than anyone else.” She sucked in smoke, blew it out in a quick stream.
“Yes, it was, and you know it. Subtext, Bella.”
“Screw your subtext. What do you care? You’re just going to fuck him for a few weeks, then move on. As usual.”
Temper had Reena shoving her sister back two full steps. “Even if that were true, it would be my business.”
“Then mind your own business, it’s what you’re best at. You’re only out here talking to me because you’re pissed off. Otherwise, you can’t be bothered.”
“This is bullshit. I called you back—twice. I left two messages.”
Bella took another, slower drag, and her fingers trembled. “I didn’t want to talk to you.”
“Then why did you call?”
“Because I wanted to talk to you then.” Her voice broke as she whirled away. “I needed to talk to somebody, and you weren’t there.”
“I can’t be there every minute of every day, anticipating one of your crises, Isabella. That one’s not in the Sisters Rule Book.”
“Don’t be mean to me.” She turned back, and there were tears. “Please don’t be mean to me.”
With Bella, there were often tears, Reena thought. But those who knew her understood when they were temper, show or genuine. And these were real. “Honey, what’s the matter?” She moved forward, slipping an arm around Bella’s waist to lead her to a bench at the edge of the patio.
“I don’t know what to do, Reena. Vince is having an affair.”
“Oh, Bella.” Reena leaned over, drew Bella closer. “I’m sorry, so sorry. Are you sure?”
“He’s been having them for years.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Other women. There’ve been other women almost from the beginning. He just used to . . . He used to care enough to keep it from me. To be discreet. To at least pretend he loved me. Now, he doesn’t bother. He goes out two, three nights a week. When I confront him, he tells me to go shopping, to get off his back.”
“You don’t have to tolerate this, Bella.”
“And my choices are?” she asked bitterly.
“If he’s sleeping with other women, if he’s not honoring your marriage, you should leave him.”
“And be the first in this family to divorce?”
“He’s cheating on you.”
“He was cheating on me. When you cheat you at least try to hide it. Now he’s just flaunting it, throwing it in my face. I tried to talk to his mother about it—he listens to her. And do you know what? She just shrugged it off. His father’s had mistresses right along, what’s the big deal? You’re the wife, you have all the benefits. The home, the children, the credit cards, the social standing. The rest is just sex.”
“That’s just stupid. Have you talked to Mama?”
“I can’t. You can’t.” She squeezed Reena’s hand, battled back the tears. “She . . . God, Reena, I feel like such a fool, I feel like such a failure. Everyone else is so happy, and I’m so . . . not. Fran and Jack, Xander and An, and now you. I’ve got thirteen years invested in this marriage. I have four children. And I don’t even love him.”
“Oh God, Bella.”
“I never did. I thought I did. I thought I did, Reena. I was twenty, and he was so handsome and smooth—and rich. I wanted all that. It’s not wrong to want it. I’ve been faithful.”
“What about counseling?”
She sighed, stared beyond the patio, away from the house where she’d grown up. “I’ve been in therapy for three years. There are some secrets I can keep. She says we’re making progress. Funny, I don’t feel like it.”
“Bella.” Reena kissed her hair. “Bella, you have your family. You don’t have to go through this alone.”
“Sometimes you do. Fran’s the sweet one, you’re the smart one. Even though Fran’s prettier, I was the pretty one. Because I worked at it more. That’s what I traded on, and this is what I got.”
“You deserve better.”
“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. But I don’t know if I can give it up. He’s a good father, Reena. The kids adore him. He’s a good father, and he’s a good provider.”
“Listen
to yourself. He’s a cheating sack-of-shit adulterer.”
With a watery laugh, Bella crushed out the cigarette, threw her arms around Reena. “That’s why I called you when I couldn’t call anyone else. Just that, Reene. Because you’d say something like that. Maybe this is partly my fault, but I don’t deserve my husband rolling out of my bed into another woman’s.”
“Damn right you don’t.”
“Okay.” She drew a tissue out of her bag, dried her face. “I’ll talk to him again.” She opened a compact, began to repair her makeup. “I’ll talk to my therapist. And maybe I’ll talk to a lawyer, just to test the ground.”
“You can always talk to me. I might not always be there when you call, but I’ll always call you back. Promise.”
“I know. God, look at this mess I’ve made of myself.” She pulled out a lipstick. “I’m sorry about before. Honestly. I’ll make it up to you. To him. He’s a nice guy, seems like a nice guy. That alone got me started.”
“It’s okay.” Reena kissed her cheek. “We’ll be okay.”
22
“Tell me one thing,” Bo asked as they walked home. “Did I pass the audition?”
“Sorry about that.” She winced. “About the questions, the demands to perform, the request for blood tests.”
“I’m getting one tomorrow.”
She reached out to pat his arm. “You’re a good sport, Goodnight.”
“Yeah, but did I pass?”
She glanced over, decided he was serious. “I’d say your colors are flying. I’m particularly sorry about Bella at dinner.”
“It wasn’t that big.”
“It was rude and uncalled for, but it wasn’t personal. She was upset, about something entirely unrelated. She’s going through a rough patch I didn’t know about until tonight.”
“No harm, no foul.”
“My mother’s not going to rest until she has her pergola.”
“Is your father going to hurt me when he gets the bid?”
“Depends on the bid.” She hooked her arm through his. “You know, when I was a kid, I used to dream about walking home on a warm summer night with a cute guy who claimed to be crazy about me.”
“Since I can’t be the first to make your dreams come true, I’ll try to make this one memorable.”
“You are the first.”
“Get out.”
“No, back when . . .” She stopped herself. “Just how many of my deep, dark secrets do I expose?”
“All of them. Back when?”
“When I was eleven, I was so sure when I got to be a teenager, everything would fall into place. My body, boys, my social skills, boys, boys. Boys. Then I got to be a teenager, and it didn’t all fall into place. Part of it, I think part of it goes back to the night of the fire at Sirico’s.”
“I heard about that. People in the neighborhood still talk about it. Some guy had a grudge against your father and tried to burn you out.”
“That’s the short version. Things changed for me that summer. I studied, I badgered John—John Minger, the fire inspector who handled our case. And I hung around the fire station. By the time I got to high school, I was, well, I was fairly geeky.”
“No possible way.”
“Oh, so possible. I was studious, athletic, obedient, shy around boys. I was a guy’s dream lab partner, his study buddy, his wailing wall, but not the girl he’d think to ask to the prom. I aced my way through high school, graduated third in my class, and could count the number of actual dates I had on one hand. And I yearned.”
She laid a hand on her heart, gave an exaggerated sigh. “I yearned for the boy who plopped down beside me for help with a chem test, or to tell me about the trouble he was having with his girlfriend. I wanted to be one of those girls, the ones who knew how to stand, and talk, and flirt, and juggle four boys at once. I studied them. I was a born observer, a cataloger. I studied, documented, practiced in the privacy of my room. But I never geared up the courage to take my show on the road. Until that night with Josh, the night you saw me. I finally got there.”
“He saw what the others had missed.”
“That’s a nice thing to say.”
“Easy, because I saw it, too.”
By tacit agreement, they turned at his house. “After Josh, something closed off in me, at least for a while.” She stepped inside when he unlocked the door. “I didn’t want a boyfriend anymore. Fire had tried to take my family’s treasure, its heritage, and now it had taken the life of the first boy who’d touched me. I bore down then. For months I didn’t do anything but study and work. When I was in the mood, I scooped up a boy, enjoyed him. Let him enjoy me. Moved on.”
She moved into his living room, no longer sure how her light reminiscence had turned so internal, and so serious. “There weren’t many, and they didn’t mean anything. I didn’t want them to. I wanted the work, the knowledge of how to do the work. Grad school, training, field work, lab work. Because the fire was in me, too, and it wouldn’t let anyone get too close.”
She let out a breath. “There was another guy I felt a little spark with. We were just circling around what we might do about it. And he was killed.”
“That’s a rough knock. You’ve had more than your share of them.”
“It was. And I guess, if I think about it, it soured me. Start to get too close to having someone mean something, and I lose them.”
He sat with her, picked up her hand, played with her fingers. Playing with fire, he thought. “What changed?”
“I’m afraid it was you.”
“Afraid?”
“A little bit, yeah. It’s only fair to tell you that because things have changed, or may be changing, what’s happening between us is going to have to be exclusive. If you want to see other women, it’s not going to work for me.”
He lifted his gaze from her fingers, met her eyes. “The only one I’m looking at is you.”
“If that changes, I expect you to tell me.”
“Okay, but—”
“Okay’s enough.” She swung around so she straddled his lap. “Let’s leave it at okay for right now.”
It looked like a typical kitchen fire. Big mess, smoke damage, minor injuries.
“Wife cooking dinner, frying up some chicken on the stove, leaves the room for a minute, grease flames up, catches the curtains.” Steve nodded toward the scorched counter, the blackened walls, the charred remnants of the curtains at the windows.
“Says she thought she turned it down, but must’ve turned it up, went to go to the bathroom, got a phone call. Didn’t think about it until she heard the alarm go off. Tried to put it out herself, burned her hands, panicked, ran out and called nine-one-one from the neighbor’s.”
“Uh-huh.” Reena walked across the sooty floor to study the burn pattern on the backsplash, the under cabinets. “Nine-one-one came in at about four-thirty?”
“Four thirty-six.”
“Early to be cooking.” She looked at the counter, the nasty trail the grease fire had left on the surface. “So, what? She says she grabbed the pan, and ended up spilling the grease along her counter, dropped it.” She bent closer to the skillet, and the smell of grease-soaked chicken.
“Something like that. She was pretty incoherent. Paramedics were treating her hands. Got her some second-degree burns.”
“Guess she was too panicked to think of grabbing this.” O’Donnell tapped the home fire extinguisher hooked on the inside wall of a broom closet.
“Lot of flame to reach those curtains,” Reena commented. “Chicken’s cooking away here.” She stood by the stove. “That’s some smart fire that leaps out of a pan and engages the curtains over a foot away. Must be a really sloppy cook.” She gestured to the surface of the stove. “You’ve got grease running back across here, taking a turn, hitting the wall. Like it had eyes. Then gosh, oh my goodness, look at what I did! Grab the pan, haul it another foot in the opposite direction, trailing more grease before you drop it and run away.”
&
nbsp; O’Donnell smiled at her. “People do the craziest things.”
“Yeah, they sure do. Crappy cabinets,” she commented. “Countertop’s faded, scratched up. Appliances are low-end, old. Vinyl floor’s seen better days, even before our incident.”
She glanced over. “Phone right there on the wall. Portable job. Where’s the bathroom she used?”
“She said she used the one off the living room,” Steve told her.
They walked out, wending their way. “Nice furniture in here,” Reena observed. “On the new side. Everything’s color-schemed and clean and tidy. Another portable phone right there, on that little table.”
She stepped to the powder room door. “Coordinating guest towels, fancy little soaps, smells lemon fresh and looks like a magazine. I bet that kitchen was an eyesore.”
“Pebble in her shoe,” O’Donnell added.
Reena lifted the top of the toilet, saw the blue water. “Woman keeps a house this clean, this fresh and decorated, she doesn’t let her stove get greasy. We on the same page here, Steve?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Guess we’d better have a talk with her.”
They sat in the pretty living room with Sarah Greene’s bandaged hands in her lap. Her face was swollen from crying. She was twenty-eight, with glossy brown hair pulled back in a long tail. Her husband, Sam, sat beside her.
“I don’t understand why we’re talking to the police,” he began. “We’ve talked to the fire department. Sarah’s had a rough time. She really ought to be getting some rest.”
“We just need to ask a few questions, clear up a few things. We work with the fire department. How are your hands, Mrs. Greene?” Reena asked.
“They said they’re not too bad. They gave me something for the pain.”
“When I think of what could’ve happened.” Sam rubbed her shoulder.
“I’m sorry.” Her eyes went wet and shiny. “I feel so stupid.”
“Fire’s a scary thing. You work for Barnes and Noble, Mrs. Greene?”
“Yes.” She tried to smile at O’Donnell. “I’m a manager there. This is my day off. I thought I’d surprise Sam with a home-cooked meal.” Her smile twisted. “Surprise.”