Prayer (The Pagano Family Book 5)

by Susan Fanetti

  “Oh! He’s probably here for Bev’s car. Nick said he would send someone.”

  John gave her a curious look, then opened the door. “Hey, Donnie.”

  “John. Good to see you.” They shook hands, and Donnie came in. “Hi, Katrynn.”

  She got Bev’s key from a drawer under the counter. “Hi, Donnie. Bev’s keys are just here.”

  Donnie was one of Nick’s men and a good friend of Bev’s. Katrynn wasn’t sure where he was in the pecking order, but it was probably pretty high, because he wore nice suits, and not all of the Pagano Brothers men dressed like that.

  He’d been hurt several years ago in some kind of nasty business. Really hurt—half of his face had been burned away, and now that side was a waxy-smooth mask of skin grafts. Katrynn had heard him called Two-Face and The Face, like gangster names.

  Not like gangster names. Gangster names exactly. She thought they were mean, but he didn’t seem to mind and answered to them all.

  He took Bev’s keys with a nod of thanks, said his goodbyes, and left again.

  John turned back to Katrynn. “Bev had a very hard day, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah, she did. I’m pretty worried.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  She really, really did. But she didn’t want to make things worse for Bev. “I think it’s too personal.”

  “Okay. But you’ve got me worried, too.” He wasn’t pushing at all. Katrynn suddenly realized that, at least since Atticus had left the Cove, John was again the good guy that she’d known before New Year’s—and she also realized that she truly wasn’t mad, or even hurt, about New Year’s anymore. Even now, when she dug into that memory to test her hypothesis, she didn’t find hurt. Only disappointment. A connection had been made and broken.

  “It’s probably better if you talk to Bev or Nick.”

  He nodded and went back to work, and Katrynn figured out that leaning against the counter watching him was only going to complicate and confuse things, so she went back to the front to look for some busy work.

  Something to keep her mind off the realization that she was starting to want to make another attempt—a sober one, this time—with John.

  That was a bad idea. If she were dealt two disappointments from the same guy, she didn’t think she’d recover too well.

  But what if the way he’d been that night, and the things he’d said, had been real, even in his drunken haze? Was that even possible?

  What if she told him what the night had been like? How would he react to know what he’d forgotten?

  No. That was too scary. It would require the kind of vulnerable exposure that she had always feared. She wasn’t strong enough for a risk like that.

  Was she?

  All day she’d been worried about Bev. But the image that played over and over in her head was Nick sitting on the floor, cradling his distraught wife in his arms, turning that angry look at Katrynn when she’d reminded him that she was an audience of the scene. That was a man who would die for the woman he loved, who would kill for her.

  She wanted someone in her life like that, who would drop everything to be there when she needed him.

  What if John was a man like that?

  Katrynn thought about the way he was with Atticus. That punch that had torn up Chris’s room and a lot of other things as well. What if it had been about her?

  She put her hand to her throat, now almost clear of bruising. Those bruises had been sort of dubiously consensual—okay, from Atticus’s perspective, they’d been plain old consensual, since she’d hadn’t told him that she’d hated being bitten and choked—but she knew they’d looked like what they’d felt like. Abuse.

  Nick had noticed them, despite her attempts at camouflage. Might John have noticed, too? She rewound the scene and tried to see it clearly, to remember if he’d said or done anything that would suggest he’d thought Atticus had hurt her.

  No. There was nothing. Nothing she’d noticed—or, anyway, nothing she could single out. That scene had been intense on its own merits.

  She didn’t know. Probably not. But she could feel herself building the idea in her head that John had punched Atticus out of an instinct to protect her.

  If so, it was a totally caveman response. But that didn’t mean a part of her didn’t want it to be true.

  Not a small part, either.

  ~ 7 ~

  John restored the pieces of the door jamb, not bothering to use finish nails, since he’d be taking this temporary job down the next day, after he’d had time to buy and prepare a premade trim piece. Once he had the wood back in place, clearing out the splintered bits and jury-rigging the strike plate, he noticed that the lock hadn’t taken the pressure of whatever had forced the door in—probably a kick—very well. It needed replaced, too. Really, now that he had it more or less working again, he could see more damage than he’d first thought.

  While he worked, he tried to puzzle out what had happened. He supposed it technically wasn’t his business, but Bev was family, and when things went on with family, the family should know. The few things that Katrynn had said indicated that the broken bathroom door and Bev not doing so well—and being pregnant again—were connected ideas.

  By the time he swung the door closed and made sure that the latch worked, he’d decided that Nick had kicked the door in. Who else, if it had to do with Bev? That meant that Bev had locked herself in the bathroom for some reason. A fight? Between those two, he doubted it. Luca and Manny fought. Carmen and Theo—boy, could they fight. Carlo and Bina argued. But John didn’t think he’d ever seen Nick and Bev in conflict. He wasn’t around them as much as he was around his siblings and their spouses, but he thought he’d know if they fought enough for something like this to be the result.

  Bev was a lighthearted woman, a mediator rather than an instigator. And Nick never lost his temper.

  So, then, had she been sick? Sick enough, and locked in the bathroom, so that Nick had had to kick the door in? He couldn’t work it out, but it worried him, and Katrynn didn’t want to tell him. That made it all the more worrisome, in fact. If it were no big deal, she wouldn’t have had reservations about breaking a confidence.

  He guessed that was admirable, her reluctance to be in other people’s business, but it was frustrating, and making him think of scenarios that were probably worse than true. The prevailing sentiment in his family was that family should know. It sucked when it was his confidence he was trying to keep, but he did believe that most things you want to hide from family are things you really need family to know.

  The thing he didn’t want family to know right now was about him and Katrynn. As time passed, and as she had warmed up to him again, he was hating himself less—not to say that he wasn’t mortified when he let his mind reach back and coil around the incomplete memory. What kept him from letting it go completely was the worry about what he didn’t remember. Something bad. Something bad enough to make her cry.

  Another thing that his mind was making really, really terrible. He could only hope that the reality was nothing like the images he’d conjured. He was not a man who hurt women.

  He wanted that still to be true.

  Finished with the interim repair to the bathroom door, he put his tools away and went to the front of the store.

  Katrynn was working in the front windows, making two pretty scenes. In one, she had placed an armchair that he’d seen elsewhere in the shop, among the stacks. Facing it, she had a little cardboard fireplace, painted to resemble flagstone and filled with orange, white, and yellow paper flames. There was a throw over the arm of the chair, and a tattered rag rug, the kind his mother had liked in the kitchen, before the fireplace. Stacks of books were arrayed in the scene, and the shop cat had settled herself in the chair, as if she knew that she improved the view. He set his toolbox down on the sales desk and went to check out the books.

  Mysteries—old school, like Agatha Christie and P.D. James, and some others he didn’t know as well. He smile
d. The books were all about murder, but they seemed like great reads before a cozy fire on a cold day. He got it.

  “You like mysteries?” Katrynn asked. She was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the other window, on the other side of the front door, trying to make an artificial pine tree stand straight. In her jeans and plain white shirt with the bulky brown cardigan over it, she looked exactly right, with the grey light of the late winter afternoon behind her.

  “My mom liked them a lot. She read all the Agatha Christies and the P.D. Jameses. I read some James when I was a kid. I thought the detective guy…Alex, or Adam, or…”

  “Adam Dalgliesh.”

  “Yeah—I thought he was pretty cool. She liked this other series about cat detectives. Is that right?”

  “The Cat Who series by Lilian Jackson Braun! I should totally add those to the window. Those are definitely cozy little afternoon reads. It’s not really the cats who do the detecting. Their person is a reporter, and he does most of the thinking.”

  “That sounds cooler. I thought they were old lady books.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t think books have a gender.”

  “No? You don’t think books with oiled-up, naked dudes on the cover are for women? And how many chicks read spy books?”

  He could see that he’d stirred her up. Not surprising that a bookstore manager with a degree in English would be passionate about books. John’s heart sped up a little, just that boost that came in an interesting conversation.

  “First, ugh with the ‘chicks.’ You sound like a dudebro. Second, I know men who like romance novels, and this woman likes spy books.”

  “Forget about it. You?”

  She popped her hip and dropped a sassy hand on it. “Yes, me. I like all the technology and the weapons, and the fighting and chasing. It’s hot. I also like romance. And science fiction. And lots of different things. It’s my mind that makes me interested, not my genitals.”

  John was caught speechless by that last statement.

  It didn’t matter, because she was on a roll and not yet at its end. “I think publishers try to tell us that some books are for men and some are for women, some for boys and some for girls, but it’s crap, unless you’re one of the sheeple and believe what the marketeers tell you.”

  “Marketeers? Why does that word sound vaguely creepy?”

  “Because marketing is vaguely creepy.” She grinned. “Says the woman who is trying to entice people to come into her shop by making winter scenes in the windows.”

  He came closer and studied the display she was working on. She had three small fake pine trees clustered on one side, and one taller tree on the other. On the floor next to the window was a box of fake snow and several stacks of books about winter nature, ranging from children’s books to New England winter hiking and wildlife guides.

  It was the taller tree that kept trying to lean against the window. Seeing the problem, John leaned in, between Katrynn and the tree, and adjusted the legs of the stand. She was wearing perfume, subtle and spicy, and he could feel the scent low in his gut. He stepped back quickly. “There. Are these Christmas trees?”

  “Yeah. We have them for the Christmas displays. I took off the decorations and figured they could just be trees for now.”

  He stood back and helped her to her feet. “I like it. The displays are pretty. They make me want to take a hike in the snow and then come home and sit by the fire with a murder mystery.”

  “That’s the plan. If we ever get snow, anyway.”

  “We will. Sky like we’ve had is going to have to bust sooner or later.”

  “I hope so. I love snow. One of the great things about living in New England is that we get snow every winter. This has been such a strange season.”

  New Year’s came into his head, and he answered, “Yeah. It has.”

  She caught the change in his tone and looked up at him. Her eyes were a rich brown, and when she looked him dead on like this, they seemed bottomless. He found himself looking so intently that he could discern the faint rims of her contact lenses.

  She blinked and broke the moment. “Okay. I should get this done.”

  John stepped back. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll get to work in the room. Only got a couple of days left, I think.”

  “Good. It’ll be good to have that room back in commission and get everything back to normal.”

  John nodded, but he didn’t really agree. He’d enjoyed coming to the shop every day.

  ~oOo~

  He liked her.

  That was not exactly news; he’d liked her as long as he’d known her.

  Now, for the first time in all that time, they were both single—he thought so, anyway; Arthur-call me Atticus the Asshole Calhoun was gone, and he’d heard no further mention of him. Katrynn had taken his stupid books out of the windows on this very day.

  But the timing was still off, and it was his fault. He could hardly try to make a move, no matter how gentle, knowing that he’d done something to hurt her. Not while the specter of possibly having forced her to do something she hadn’t wanted to do loomed over them.

  Jesus, could he have done something like that? Was he actually capable of it? It chilled him to consider that he might have been.

  No, he couldn’t try to start something with her. But he was glad that she had relaxed again with him. She seemed back to normal.

  That was something. Not only was he glad to have her friendship again, but it eased his mind about New Year’s. If he had done the worst things his mind had suggested, he couldn’t imagine her wanting anything at all to do with him, ever again.

  Fixing the door and talking with Katrynn in the shop had killed more than an hour, so he didn’t do much in the Reading Room on this afternoon. He put the trimwork on the new cases and brought the repaired armchair and two tables, one repaired and one newly-built to replace the one that had been destroyed, in from his truck. Then he repaired the damage to the walls.

  All that was left was to paint the walls and stain the cases. It would have been better to stain them off-site, but they were seven feet by four feet each, and the only place he had to do the work was the construction office, which had a decent shop for small work. But it was full of paying jobs in progress. So he’d work out the ventilation problem and stain them in the room they were meant for.

  When he was done with all he could do for the day, he packed up and went to the front of the store. The sun had set, and Katrynn had added string lights to the displays, making the fire in the fireplace glow and the sky in her nature scene twinkle. John was charmed.

  Katrynn didn’t seem to be in the front, so he went to the door to the back area and, after an odd hesitation where he wondered if he should knock, he opened it. She wasn’t in the break area, either, but he could smell that she’d made cocoa.

  He set his tools on the table and went to her office. That door was ajar, but he knocked anyway and opened it wider when she called him in.

  She was at her desk, staring at her laptop. Her ponytail lay over her shoulder, and she was twisting a lock of it around a finger.

  “I’m done for today. Just wanted to let you know if you were hanging around for me.”

  “Done already?” She closed her laptop and smiled at him.

  “Got a late start today. I’ll come in earlier tomorrow and get the painting and staining started, but I didn’t want to start that project so late tonight.”

  “Okay.” She made a face. “Are you going to make the shop all stinky with chemicals tomorrow?”

  “I’ll vent it out to the back. That hopper in the back faces the alley.”

  “Hopper?”

  “The little window at the top of the wall, that tilts inward? That’s a hopper.”

  “Oh. There’s my new thing for the day, then. I call it a tilty window.”

  He laughed. “Paints the right picture.”

  “I’m all about the visuals.”

  Katrynn had a fascinating smile—or, rather, many fascinating
smiles. She had a hint of an underbite, and her mouth naturally curved a bit downward. When she was truly, fully happy, the upward sweep of that broad grin changed her face dramatically—lit it up like a beacon. When she was feeling sardonic or droll, the corners stayed down and made her look all the more like a smartass. Every single emotion worthy of a smile played out differently on her pretty face.

  Her smile now seemed encouraging, and before he’d thought it out, John asked, “Hey—you hungry? Want to grab some dinner?”

  He wasn’t sure if he was asking her out, or asking her to hang out with a friend. He’d leave that to her.