by Liz Crowe
“Hey,” a female voice interrupted her musings about the relative physical merits of each of the brothers.
“Hey, Renee.” Rosalee glanced back and spotted Reese, who’d graduated from Lucasville High a few years after her. The owner-operator of the sort of salon and spa Rosalee only wished she could afford to go to, stood, smiling at her. Rosie noted the other woman’s dolled-up hair and makeup, the pretty sundress and sandals over carefully tanned skin. “Come from church?”
“You know it.” Renee pulled her sunglasses down over her eyes and joined her.
Kieran, ever the peacemaker, tried to force the brawl into an actual game. He stopped the action at one point, holding Dominic and Aiden at arm’s length. She was too far away to hear him, but could read the fury in his eyes as he spoke.
Antony had the ball under one arm, a smile playing around his full lips. Finally, they all took a water break. Kieran spoke to Antony then ran his fingers through his Halloran-family red hair. He had his mother’s family’s build, tall, but lanky, not stocky like Antony and Dom. His sort of spin on the Love family handsome endeared, didn’t startle like Dom’s, mesmerize like Antony’s, or charm like Aiden’s.
“How’re things?” Rosalee said, for lack of anything better.
Renee’s smile shone so bright, Rosalee figured it might very well glow in the dark. “Oh honey, if things got any better I might have to hire somebody to help me enjoy it.”
“Ah. Okay, good.”
The women waited in silence as the game progressed, or devolved, depending on your perspective.
“I hear that fiancée of his, some lady lawyer over in Louisville, is a real bitch on wheels,” Rosalee said by way of striking up conversation with Renee. “Antony says she has him pussy-whipped to within an inch of his life.”
Renee snorted, but kept her eyes on the action. Kieran threw up his hands then and took the ball from Antony, and started shooting free throws. “That one is a real sweetie. Don’t know what came over Cara Cooper, dumping him like she did. Always figured those two for one of those perfect couples, you know?”
Rosalee kept her eyes on the men, three of whom sat draining water bottles, the other dropping shot after shot into the net. “Yeah,” she agreed, unable to tear her eyes from the vision of Aiden as he poured water over his hair and shook it. The water dripped down his bare torso and she experienced the distinct and alarming urge to run over there and lick it off him. “He sure is the politest of the bunch.”
Renee laughed again. “Out of a passel of sons who got politeness beat into them. Where’d he meet her anyway? I heard it was some online dating thing.”
“Yes, that’s what Antony told me. I so wish he’d marry someone nice, who deserved him. But I’ve never met her, and Antony tends to exaggerate about his brothers and women, so…” She glanced over and found Renee studying her, like a bug under the microscope. “Who knows? After what he went through, breaking his leg and all, and having to move back home.”
“So you and Love bro numero uno?” Renee pointed at the court where Antony had just poured water over his dark, sweaty hair and shook like a dog, splattering everyone for the sake of doing it. She got a girlie tingle, watching him, her…what? Boyfriend? Lover? Fix-it man? She blew out a breath and decided to just enjoy the view. All of them were the dictionary definition of “very easy on the eyes.”
“Yes, well…yes,” she said, confirming it for herself as well as Renee.
She let her eyes flicker over Aiden a half second, noting how his shorts rode low, below his belly button, giving her a view of the dark line of hair below it, and the way his hips flexed when he grabbed the ball from Kieran and ran to the other end for a dunk. She swallowed hard and actually whispered “watch out” at the sight of Dominic barreling straight at Aiden, just outside of the younger man’s line of vision.
While not shirtless, Dom wore a thin undershirt, revealing the copious body art he sported on his sculpted arms. He had his dark-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, which gave her a view of the many ear piercings.
Renee made an alarmed sound and gripped Rosalee’s arm. They both winced when Dom slammed into Aiden’s shoulder, ostensibly for a rebound, but knocking him into the fence hard enough for the women to hear it and the man’s curse. Jeffrey jumped up and down on the other side of the fence, clapping his hands.
“Rat bastard,” Renee muttered under her breath and loosened her death grip on Rosalee.
“He was your boyfriend awhile, right?” Rosalee had always been intimidated by Dominic. Paul had hated him, called him a show-off asshole, a thrill-seeking man-whore. Antony had never directly disagreed with him during their high school years.
Renee sighed and fussed with her still-perfect updo. “Yeah, but one of many. Made the mistake of falling pretty hard for him for a few weeks or so, I’ll admit it.” She smiled at Rosalee then focused back on the court again, where Kieran tried to break Dom and Aiden apart again. “Luckily that sweet hunk of man there helped me over my heartbreak.” She cocked her head and kept her gaze on Aiden. Rosalee suppressed an irrational rush of jealousy. “I heard he’d made it back to town. Tricia hooked up with him already, the slut.”
Rosalee’s face heated up. Antony had told her about finding Aiden and Tricia screwing by the pond a few nights ago. Tricia and Renee had been as thick as thieves in high school. She assumed they still were.
“Is it true that Dom has a pierced…you know….” Rosalee gestured in the general vicinity of her crotch.
Renee giggled and bumped her shoulder. “That came after we were together. But of course, I only know because my girls wax his junk every other week.” She winked. “That man has poked holes in more places on his own body than I care to contemplate. I caught him fucking my best waxer just last week. He had that girl bent over the table, ruttin’ like the pig he is. What does he say to me when I open the door and see it all there, spread out like some porno? ‘What’s wrong, honey? Don’t be jealous. I had to see how things felt down there. I can let you try next.’”
Rosalee blushed harder. Renee shook her head. “I tell you I nearly grabbed both those nipple rings and yanked ‘em clean off him.” She straightened and wiped her hands together, reminding Rosalee of the truck’s constant dirty state. “He may look like a cover model, but he acts like a stone-cold slut.”
Rosalee observed the man in question, who had calmed down and moved to the other end of the court. Rumors and gossip flew nearly constantly about Dominic. Hands down the best-looking of a set of perfect brothers, he had bronze-colored skin, not olive, like Antony’s, or pale and freckled, like Kieran’s. Prone to borderline violent outbursts of temper, he could have stepped straight out of a high-fashion men’s magazine with his sculpted cheekbones, signature Love family square jaw, with the added bonus of a chin dimple deeper than any of the others’.
“He sure is mysterious,” she said, for lack of anything better.
Renee nodded. “You know, as tight knit as that family is, and as small as our little community was before it became a rich-bitch bedroom suburb for Lexington, he is still the one no one really understands. I swan but I don’t get how he’s the only one of the four who works with his daddy in the family business.”
“He dropped out of college, but nearly had his chemistry degree at UK,” Rosalee told her, recalling once when Antony got talkative about Dominic. “Took a night flight out to Germany, Antony says, studied to be a brewer. Remember that scraggly hippy he brought back with him?” She blew out a breath, recalling the rumors of loud family arguments while she’d been away at college, pining for Paul. “But whatever happened to Diana? The Brantley girl he kept going back to over and over?”
“Diana has been a Dominic Love doormat for a lot of years, bless her heart.” Renee studied her perfect manicure. “She got married, I heard, but divorced almost as quick. Remember the restaurant she tried to open with that New York guy? What a shyster. But now she helps her sister Jen and their business is gangbusters—you k
now, Brantley’s, with all the farm produce and goat’s milk cheese, and whatever. I’m right proud of her, breaking loose of Dom’s hold after all those years.”
“What about the skinny hippy girl…I mean, wasn’t she pregnant?” Rosalee thought she recalled that being part of the problem.
“Out to here.” Renee held her arms out miming a large belly, keeping her eyes on the men. “I hate that for Miss Lindsay. I know the thought of a grandbaby wandering around New York City, not knowing his people back home makes her crazy.”
“I’m sure of that.”
“Dominic Love is as crazy as a bedbug, I shit you not,” Renee declared. “I know he and his daddy fight like cats and dogs every day. I hear people come in and say they can hear ‘em all the way down Hunter Street.”
“Antony says the brewery is doing great though. Better, since Dom is in full charge of production.”
A woman ran by them, dressed in a sports bra, shorts, and running shoes, with earphones stuck in her ears. Tall, athletic, with a long, dark-blonde ponytail bouncing, she gave a shy smile to the two women. Rosalee figured her for another city transplant.
Renee raised a hand and called out to the woman who waved and kept going around the track.
“Who’s that?” Rosalee couldn’t help but admire the fitness level of the woman’s long legs. “Newlywed suburbanite?”
“Oh, no, honey, that there is Margot Hamilton. She’s a psychiatrist, or some such thing. Or maybe she’s a preacher. I don’t know for sure. She’s the new chaplain at County. And freshly divorced, too.”
Rosalee frowned. “How d’you know all that?”
Renee laughed, showing her perfectly straight, bright white teeth again. “Don’t you know that owning the most popular salon in town is a perfect job for a silly old gossip like me? We do her highlights—have done for a year or so, since she moved here with her husband. We also talked her into a Brazilian, you know.” Renee nodded, as if Rosalee should understand this reference. “He up and left her a month after dragging them down from Michigan for his job in the athletic department at UK. Men are such assholes.” Renee’s eyes softened, and she grabbed Rosalee’s hands.
“I can’t tell you how happy I am for you though, Rosie. You deserve a fine man like Antony. Maybe now he can finally let go of Crystal. Those two were so strange together—happy, but fighting all the damn time. I never understood it. And that daughter….” She surprised Rosalee by folding her into a huge, perfume-scented hug. “Y’all will be so good together. I hope you make more pretty babies, too.” She stepped back. “I’m gonna go. I don’t want Aiden to see me yet. I have such nice homecoming plans for that one, mmm hmmm.”
Rosalee had to consciously unclench her fists while Renee sauntered back to her sexy convertible Mustang. While she was mentally formulating a plan to get Jeffrey away from there and home for a nap, something caught her eye, some movement on a picnic table nearby. She sucked in a breath when she spotted AliceLynn, Antony’s estranged teenaged daughter. The girl sat on the table, dressed in the exact sort of way that made her father red-faced furious. Too short shorts, slutty halter exposing so much of her fleshy real estate, she might as well have on a sports bra and not bother with calling it a shirt.
“Oh, my Lord,” Rosalee said under her breath. She’d had quite enough of the smart-assed girl lately. She would show out and Antony would say nothing as usual, letting her slink back to her grandmother’s, defeated in her latest effort to get the man’s attention.
AliceLynn had a room in Antony’s house she never visited, and bounced between Lindsay and Anton’s, and Crystal’s mother’s house even farther out in the country. She and her father barely acknowledged each other, and according to Antony’s mother, who’d taken her aside just last week about it, things were escalating, thanks to AliceLynn’s recent spate of skipped days at school. The girl had a destructive streak a mile wide, and the will to express it to go with her scary book smarts.
As Rosalee approached, she heard the ball game escalate again. But she ignored the grown men acting like little boys, and focused instead on the pretty girl who’d chosen that moment to flip around so she sat straddling some straggly looking kid, kissing him in a way that embarrassed Rosalee.
“AliceLynn,” she called from a few feet away, hoping her voice had the same effect as a water hose pointed at a pair of dogs in the yard. “I know you’ve been skipping school.”
Still perched on the boy’s lap, so close Rosalee couldn’t see light between their bodies, AliceLynn took her tongue out of his mouth and turned to her.
“Not your business, Rosie. You aren’t my mama.”
A shout came from the court and the kid jumped up, dumping AliceLynn on her ass in the dirt.
“Hey,” she yelped, smacking his calf. “What’s wrong with—”
“Gotta go. See ya ’round.” He flew past Rosalee so fast she almost missed the whiff of pot smoke.
“Asshole,” AliceLynn muttered, rising to her feet. Dominic had taken off after him, chasing him into the parking lot. The other three men stood facing AliceLynn and Rosalee.
“Aiden!” Jeffrey took advantage of the break in the action to storm the court and clamber up Aiden’s sweaty body until he clung to his neck and had his face between his hands. “You were playing very rough.”
“Get on home.” Antony glared at his daughter. “And don’t come here acting like a slut, trying to piss me off.”
“Worked, didn’t it?” The girl lifted her chin, matching her father’s profile to perfection. But Rosalee caught the glint of tears in her eyes.
Antony blinked and took a step back, then wiped his forehead, his expression confused for a split second by the sight of Rosalee together with his daughter. A spike of sadness hit her then, making her hesitate. These two were worse than ships passing in the night. They were more like Jeffrey’s mini-magnet set, faced the wrong way around, their repelling power stronger than the attracting one.
“You know, calling her that in front of people isn’t helping,” she said to Antony.
“Don’t take my side, Rosie. God. I don’t need your stupid, busy-body, goody-two-shoes help.” AliceLynn grabbed her purse and took the first steps away from the tableau. Antony had the girl’s arm before she could blink.
“Do not speak to her like that.”
“Just because you’re fucking her does not make her the boss of me, Daddy. I don’t want a stepmama.” The last word dripped with angry sarcasm. “Excuse me. But I have to go find my date before Uncle Dom kills him. Call him off next time, will ya? Jesus.”
Rosalee had to hand it to the girl. She could press all the right buttons. Antony let go of her and stepped away.
“Oh, hey, Uncle Aiden. Welcome home.” The girl gave a jaunty wave, winked at Rosalee, and held her middle finger high in the air on her way to the parking lot.
Rosalee stood, frozen by the girl’s nerve. Glancing at Antony’ stricken face, she honestly believed the man might explode with rage.
“Mommy! That girl flew her bird at Antony. That wasn’t very nice.”
Aiden chuckled. Rosalee tried not to laugh. Antony blinked at her.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
She shook her head. They’d shared minimal information about AliceLynn and his distance from her. Rosalee had told him more than once he bore half the responsibility for the girl’s bitchiness, and if he’d just pay some positive attention to her, maybe they could repair their shattered relationship. That comment had gotten her exactly nowhere.
“She’s better off without me altogether,” he said, watching her drive off before glaring at both Aiden and Rosalee. “I don’t want to talk about it. God damn Dom. We weren’t done with the game.”
“Jeffrey will play! Jeffrey will play!” her son screamed.
“No, mister, we have to go home.”
Aiden walked right up to her. She could smell him, and had to bite her tongue not to reach out and touch his shoulder, or to lick her way up his neck. She too
k a step back. But he just handed Jeffrey over.
“Next time, Jeff. I gotta go back and school these guys, you know.”
They bumped fists, then without a word to her, Aiden ran back to the court where Antony and Kieran were already playing one-on-one.
Chapter Eight
The week after Aiden had lain in bed and listened to Antony make love to Rosalee, things only got stranger. The reunion on Sunday had gone down about the way he’d expected. The days he’d spent avoiding Dom and Kieran did not help their attitudes about his silent return to their midst, at least the way Dominic measured things.
Good to know at least some things never changed, Aiden mused as he fired up the coffee maker his second Friday morning at Love Garage. His book, the one his professors at the snooty MFA program in the middle of a cornfield had dissed for being “too much like popular fiction” centered around family dynamics. He figured he’d be a fair expert on that topic, especially as it related to ones as large and complex as his. Every family had its own dysfunction, but the Loves really cornered the market on it.
When Aiden had made his surprise appearance in the birth order, followed quickly by the only Love daughter, Dominic had not taken it well. He’d always been a hotheaded super-competitive asshole. Nothing about his “new baby brother” had pleased him. Local urban legend had it that Dom had tried to give Aiden away as a newborn, standing out on the street, holding him and asking passersby if they wanted a “stupid baby” to take home with them.
Luckily, thanks to their small town, that effort got nipped in the bud the second somebody called Lindsay, who’d been taking a well-needed break at a spa in Lexington, leaving a sitter in charge for a few hours.