by Liz Crowe
Antony hadn’t moved from his position at the kitchen window. When she touched his arm, he jumped as if he’d forgotten she’d been in the general vicinity. “Sorry.” He frowned at something in the yard. “Somebody’s coming up the walk. Mama must have made another rescue.”
Dominic muscled them aside. “Hmmm, nice one, Mama. I might just take her on myself.” Both men gawked so hard, Rosalee thought their eyes would pop clean out of their heads. She shoved between them, bumping them both aside with her hips, giggling when Dom smacked her on the ass. Antony didn’t react, keeping his hands balled into fists on the counter. Ignoring both men, she joined the sets of eyeballs to see what was so mesmerizing.
The object of their concentration was making her way up the long front walk from the road. Without the contacts Rosalee had managed to leave at Antony’s the night before, she could only tell that she had long blonde hair and carried a big plastic box.
“I thought this was just for family. She squinted, trying to make out more details.
“Yeah, well, knowing our mother, she’s probably adopted the poor soul, and is gonna toss her into this mess today. You know how she likes to collect people,” Dom said.
“Only those who need her. Your mother is great that way.” Rosalee elbowed Dom, who snorted.
“Whatever.”
When she drew closer, Rosalee could see her five-foot-nine framed dressed in bright white Capri pants, a sleeveless blue shirt, and flat sandals, with her hair piled half up on her head, long tendrils trailing around her face and shoulders. Athletic, tanned, pretty, and nervous were all things Rosalee would use to describe her right then.
“Come on ’round back, Margot,” Lindsay called out. The woman looked up, waved, and changed her trajectory.
Dom blew out a breath. “Now that is what I call a real Amazon beauty. I think I may be in true love.” He reached around Rosalee and punched Antony’s arm.
But Antony kept frowning. “How in the hell can we have a family conference with some stranger hanging around?”
“Who cares? Maybe she’s matchmakin’ for me. C’mon, let’s go meet the future Ex-Missus Dominic Love.” He smacked Rosalee’s butt one more time on his way out of the kitchen. The stress line between Antony’s dark eyes deepened.
Rosalee put her arms around his waist. He stayed stiff and apart from her a few minutes, until she placed herself in front of him and took his face between her hands.
“Chill, mister. You don’t have to manage this thing. It’s your parents’ deal and they will handle it the way they want.” She went up on her tiptoes and pecked his lips, surprised when he gripped her hips and dove into her mouth with the kind of kiss he didn’t normally bestow in public. She closed her eyes then opened them, recalling Aiden’s lips earlier, and how different that moment had been.
“Mmm.” She broke away, needing some space, and maybe another beer or three to get through the rest of the day. “Nice. Thanks. Now, let’s go be sociable and meet the new lady. I saw her once before. Renee told me she’s a preacher, or chaplain, or something. At least she would be, before becoming Missus Dominic.”
“Oh, Lord, anything but that,” Antony groaned but held her tight, eyes narrowed as he seemed to study her. “I…I don’t know what to think about you right now, Rosie, but…I….”
She touched his lips. “Shhh…no reason to get all mushy. I’m great in bed, I know it.”
He grinned and bit her fingertip. “Yeah? Well, that makes two of us, I guess.” He released her and took a deep breath. Rosalee knew at that moment how hard it must be for a caretaker like Antony, facing the facts about his mother. This might be more than his still-fractured heart could take.
“Yep, that it does. Now, come on, let’s find some beer. I hear there’s some decent stuff on tap outside.”
Chapter Twelve
As they came out onto the patio to join the family, another person emerged from the front of the house. Antony tensed beside her. When she placed her hand on his arm, he slowly exhaled. But his jaw stayed clenched, and his eyebrows furrowed as AliceLynn picked her way across the grass in a pair of wedge sandals not that much different from the ones worn by the snotty Melinda.
She had on a nice sundress, thank the good Lord—no slutty shorts and halter top. Her red hair framed her face, which appeared devoid of its usual layer of makeup.
“She looks real nice,” she whispered to Antony.
“Hmph,” he grunted, stiffening as his daughter got closer.
Rosalee elbowed him. “Go on and say hi. Jesus, man, it’s your own daughter.”
Lindsay grabbed the girl and gave her a huge hug. AliceLynn shut her eyes, and held on tight to her grandmother, one of the two women who’d essentially raised her after her father went off the deep end when she’d been just shy of three years old.
Happy noises wafted around the tension-filled tableau. Screams and laughter from the pool, soft music from the outdoor speakers, quiet conversation between Dom and the tall woman, all hit Rosalee’s ears, making her think that maybe, just maybe, they could make a normal life out all this. She grabbed Antony’s hand. He glared down at her, his eyes dark and wary.
Lindsay tugged AliceLynn into the group and shoved her in front of him. “Go on, give your daddy a hug.”
After a second of hesitation, she stepped forward. Rosalee nudged Antony closer. They mimed the polite embrace of a couple of strangers then backed away from each other.
“Who wants some snacks?” Lindsay said.
“I’ll help,” Rosalee said, eager to escape.
They brought out hummus and pita bread, a tray of veggies and homemade yogurt dip, sliced tomatoes and mozzarella cheese, and a huge bowl of plain, ridged potato chips—the boys’ favorites.
AliceLynn perched on the edge of a chair, fiddling with her phone, and ignoring everyone. Melinda sat, stiff-necked next to Kieran, who was chatting with Margot and Dom. Antony remained where she’d left him. Aiden ran into the middle of everyone and shook like a dog, getting cold pool water on the entire group. The shriek that issued from Melinda’s lips seemed entirely out of proportion to the situation, in Rosalee’s opinion.
She leapt up. “I’m allergic to chlorine!”
Rosalee tried not to giggle at the fact she had borne the brunt of the prank, likely on purpose. Dominic laughed, and Kieran’s lips twitched as he watched his moderately waterlogged fiancée stomp into the house.
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. Aiden, you are very bad.” Lindsay winked at him then followed the furious woman.
Rosalee shoved Antony into a chair at the table where Dominic kept flirting aggressively with the tall blonde woman. She seemed more at ease now, holding a beer and picking chips out of the bowl in front of her. With her dark-blue eyes, high and sculpted cheekbones, she could be a model, Rosalee thought, glancing at Antony.
Aiden flopped into the chair vacated by Melinda, rubbing his wet hair with a towel. It took all Rosalee had not to gawk at his bare torso. She exhaled and kept her eyes fixed on the new lady.
“Hey there, I’m Rosalee.” She stuck out her hand. “Since that guy doesn’t seem to remember his manners.” She nodded at Dom, who shrugged and sipped a beer.
“Hi. I’m Margot.” She shook Rosalee’s hand and gave her a wide, genuine smile.
“So, where did Lindsay find you?” She took the beer Dom handed her and sipped.
“At a book club, actually. I joined a few weeks ago.” Rosalee noted the lack of wedding rings, and that her hands were rough, like she gardened, or shared Lindsay’s love for horses.
“New to town?”
“Kind of. I…we moved here about ten months ago. From Ann Arbor.”
“I thought you sounded like a Midwesterner.” Dom gave her his best smoky-eyed gaze.
Margot blinked in surprise then focused on Rosalee, who suppressed another giggle at Dominic’s aggravation in the face of Margot’s apparent immunity to his charms.
“We?” Rosalee asked, a little unnerved by
the way Antony kept his eyes locked on the woman as if she were an oasis in the desert. Jealousy’s foreign, pointy daggers hurt. She didn’t like them, and had zero reason to feel that way, considering what she’d done with Aiden not an hour ago.
“Yes. I’m…was married.” She took a sip of her beer, her hands shaking. Margot’s eyes begged Rosalee to change the subject.
“Wait, I thought you were a family counselor,” Dom interjected, eyeballing Margot again, second wind obtained. “Isn’t that kinda counterintuitive? I mean, ‘physician heal thyself,’ and all?”
Margot pondered him as if studying a bug under a microscope. “Well, I guess so. Unless you’d say the same thing to a cardiac surgeon who dared to need a bypass. Or, perhaps to use terms you can relate to, a gynecologist who requires a hysterectomy.”
Antony burst out laughing—an odd sound to Rosalee’s ears, as she hadn’t heard a sound like it from him in years.
“Touché, my lovely Amazon.” Dominic raised his bottle to her. She clinked hers to it then faced Rosalee and Antony with a more relaxed smile.
“So, we moved here for my ex-husband’s job. He’s a sports psychologist. Still handles all the UK teams. I came along and started up my practice again. I have an office near campus, and I just got hired as chaplain for the small satellite hospital here in town.”
“Huh, maybe he can psychoanalyze the basketball team into a national championship next year. That’d be a nice change,” Dom said, gazing out over the yard. “Or maybe you can just pray over ‘em. Are you are preacher, too? Sounds fun. I like women who invoke the Lord’s name a lot.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. Rosalee reached over the table and smacked his arm.
Margot ignored him. “Well, anyway, turns out we moved here not necessarily for the job, but for the coach. The women’s soccer coach that is. She got hired just before we moved. I guess they’d been…together a while. Whatever.”
“Sorry.” Rosalee patted the woman’s rough hands. “Men are animals.” Something made her place a possessive hand on Antony’s thigh. Startled out of his frank perusal of Margot, he flinched and swallowed while Rosalee watched, her heart sinking.
“Only around women we love,” he declared, giving her a brief peck on the cheek.
Lindsay plunked a tray of glasses and a pitcher of gin and tonics on the table and took a seat.
“I met Margot at book club. She and I got to talkin’. We’ve had coffee a few times afterward. And so I invited her here today.” She looked right at her oldest son. Antony stiffened again, anxiety coming off him in waves. Rosalee supposed they were that in tune, they’d been together as friends for so long now, and had finally connected, physically speaking. It made sense. But it saddened her, all the same.
She caught Aiden staring right at her. Kieran had gone inside to hunt down the pouting Melinda. Angelique dropped into his chair and punched Aiden’s shoulder before meeting Rosalee’s eyes. She frowned then turned back to Aiden.
Her face flushed and she focused back on Antony and his mother, and Margot who’d been invited, apparently for a specific reason. Kieran reemerged, holding hands with Melinda, who was definitely a bit less linen dress crisp. He poured her a gin and tonic then brought a couple of chairs close to the table. Anton appeared, looking haggard and stressed. Lindsay held out a hand to him. He took it, reserving his gaze for her.
Rosalee was struck dumb by the force of the connection between them. The fact that her own parents had once been madly and passionately in lust and love still gave her pause. But they had been high school sweethearts, right there in Lucasville.
The story of Lindsay Halloran and Anton Love had been something out of a romance novel—one of the steamier ones, complete with young, handsome, unsuitable stable hands, angry fathers, and shotguns at weddings.
Lindsay kept her eyes on her husband for a moment then faced her children and one grandchild, who remained separate, as if only observing. She tugged on Anton’s arm until he took the seat next to her, his arm around her shoulders. The patio silenced as if someone had flipped a “quiet” switch. Terrified, Rosalee clutched Antony’s hand under the table.
“So, it appears that my cancer is worse than we thought. It’s at stage four, and has spread to the lymph nodes in my armpit. The doctors up at University Hospital are adamant that I have the double mastectomy as soon as I can get myself in there, and have the chemo and radiation right after.”
No one spoke, but every face wore identical expressions of panicked horror. Angelique Love stood and walked over to stand next to her father. Anton kept his eyes on his wife.
“Have you obtained a second opinion?” Melinda seemed somewhat more relaxed after one of the famous Love cocktails. “I don’t trust the doctors here. You should come to—”
“Shut her up, please,” Dom muttered out of the side of his mouth. His eyes were the wildest.
“You’re doing the therapies, right, Mama?” Aiden asked. “I mean, you’re young still.”
“Yes, I’m doing ‘em for the first round, even though your daddy had to talk me into it. Go find a shirt please, Aiden.” She patted his knee. “You’ll catch a chill. You’ve already heard what affects you the most.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He brushed past Rosalee’s arm in the process of heading for the door. She set her jaw, determined to ignore him.
“AliceLynn’ll be moving back into her own house. Next week. It’s the best for everyone,” Anton said.
Antony glared at his parents. “You can’t make that call,” he said, jaw clenched so tight she could hardly hear his words.
“Oh, yes we can.” Anton pointed to his son. “You dropped out of her life, and we all know why, and we’re sorry for you. But I didn’t raise you to shirk this duty another minute. That girl is out of control. She’s wild, willful, borderline rude to her elders, and we can’t have her here anymore. We need to concentrate on gettin’ your mama well again.”
“Hey, you do know the wild, willful, rude girl is right here, participatin’ in this conversation,” AliceLynn piped up.
Antony jerked his head around to glare at her. “Don’t sass.”
She rolled her eyes and flopped back in her seat. “Nobody wants me, Daddy. I get it. I’ve already told y’all I could go live with Janey.”
Anton’s dark eyes flashed. “That is absolutely not happening. You have a home, and a father, and it is high time he broke you to a more civilized manner of behavior.”
“I’m not one of your stupid horses, Granddaddy.” The girl’s eyes were filling with tears. Rosalee resisted the urge to jump up and go to her, hold her close like the little girl she resembled at that moment.
“If I may,” a voice interjected. Everyone’s attention shifted to the opposite end of the table from Lindsay and Anton. Margot sat, competent and in control. Rosalee choked back another nasty surge of jealousy.
“Ah, I get it now,” Dom said lightly, his face also red, but his eyes neutral now. “The family shrink gets invited to the family conference. Nicely done, Mama.” He raised his beer bottle.
“Show some respect, Dominic. Or I’ll beat it into ya,” his father growled.
“No need. I’m sorry. But seriously, this is ingenious.” He squinted at Margot, who had her eyes pinned on Antony in a way that made Rosalee blind with furious possessiveness.
“No.” Antony rose so fast, his chair fell backward. “You do not get to decide how I handle my daughter. You do not sign me up for head-shrinking sessions with some divorced stranger you picked up off the street, Mama.” His eyes were full of pain. “AliceLynn and I will work ourselves out. Sorry.” He turned his gaze to Margot. His expression was instantly recognizable, at least to Rosalee. “We don’t need your help but thanks anyway.”
He stalked into the house, leaving the group blinking around at each other in silence.
“I warned you,” Lindsay said as she sipped her drink.
The tall, pretty, blonde head shrinker, who had somehow imprinted on Antony in a way Rosalee
thought she understood, but rejected out of sheer irrational female jealousy, got to her feet. Rosalee wanted to smack her right in her perfect aquiline nose. Instead, she sat on her hands, waiting.
“It’s fine, Lindsay. That went about as well as I thought it might, based on what you told me about Antony.” She looked over at AliceLynn, who still sat, arms crossed, pouting like a two-year-old. “I’ll see you guys at my office on Monday, AliceLynn. It’s already been arranged.”
The girl ran toward the pool, nearly breaking her ankle on the high-heeled sandals in the process. Angelique kissed her father on the cheek and squeezed her mother’s hand.
“I’ll go talk to her.”
Anton snorted into his beer. “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
“Stuff a sock in it, Anton,” Lindsay said, dropping back in her chair, more exhausted than Rosalee had ever seen her. She got up and poured the woman a tall gin and tonic. “Thanks, hon.” Lindsay patted her hand. “Go on and find him.” She gestured toward the house with her glass. “I think I’ll just sit here and get drunk. That sure was a lot harder than I figured it to be.”
“Me, too,” Melinda slurred, pointing at the pitcher. “Pour me another will you, sweet cheeks?” She smiled at Kieran. Dominic made a gagging sound. Anton glared at both of them.
Rosalee went inside, shivering when the air conditioning hit her bare skin. She figured Antony would either be down in the basement or in his old bedroom, the one he’d shared with Kieran growing up. But her quick check of both places revealed empty rooms.
After peeking in on Jeffrey to make sure he remained asleep and hadn’t peed the bed, she wandered back down to the lowest level of the house, the “bottom basement” as the Love siblings had grown up calling it. It had served as their rec room, illicit party, and screwing-around space, according to Antony. It still bore the hallmarks of years spent hosting rowdy athletic boys, and their various buddies, and, later, girlfriends.
The couch and chair cushions were squashed flat. An ancient, boxy model television complete with multiple video games, old-school videotapes, and a ton of DVDs sat, dusty and unused on an army trunk. An indoor-basketball hoop, ratty floor rug, and piles of back issues of Sports Illustrated, Road and Track, Horse and Owner and, likely Penthouse magazines completed the decor. A couple of cots were stacked in a corner. Neatly folded blankets and sheets, plus five sleeping bags were stacked on a large shelf.