by Shirley Jump
He’d vowed no one would ever hurt Katie again.
He just hadn’t expected the hurt to come walking into his house—and take him along for the ride.
“What are you doing?” Katie asked as he came inside, her face red with exertion and the exposure to the sun, giving her the youthful glow she should have at her age.
“Nothing.” Duncan slammed the book shut and quickly slipped it in among a bunch of other leather-clad volumes on the shelves flanking the mantel. In his pocket, the hard velvet box pressed against his pocket, a telltale bulge announcing his intentions.
Stupid. He’d been so stupid. Duncan steeled himself again and turned slightly away from Katie, then withdrew the box and slipped it behind the books, out of her sight.
And hopefully out of his mind.
Never again, he vowed, would he let anyone get that close. Not to him, and especially not to his sister.
“Duncan, I invited Allie for dinner. I was thinking I’d cook.” His kid sister grinned up at him. “I know, I’ve never done that before and I can see the worry already in your eyes, but I can handle it. Allie promised to help and besides it’s just spag—”
“No.”
“No, what? No spaghetti? No garlic bread? No cooking from me? You can’t have all the fun in the kitchen, you know.” She gave him a wink, knowing full well that he would rather order takeout than pick up a spatula.
“No to Allie coming over.”
“She’s not busy. I already asked her. And—”
“I said no.”
Katie let out a gust. “Why do you do that? Just order things around and make all the decisions? And what do you have against Allie tonight anyway? I thought you liked her.”
Instead of answering her question, Duncan crossed to the kitchen and pulled out the sheaf of menus from behind the phone. “What about Mexican? You know that place in Indianapolis will deliver out here if I promise to pay the driver extra.”
“What will it take to get you to answer me?” Katie said, wheeling herself right out to him.
“I hate that thing.” He gestured toward the wheelchair, meaning no such thing, but trying to distract her.
“Because it means you can’t run away from me.” She propped her arms on the side and sat back, triumphant. “So tell me what’s bugging you.”
“You’re my kid sister. I don’t have to tell—”
“I am twenty-three, Duncan. Hardly a kid anymore.”
He looked down at her and for the first time—maybe the first time ever—saw his sister had, indeed, aged. All he’d ever seen was that frail, fragile girl in the bed. Never the young woman whose bright cheeks and determined grin met him now.
Twenty-three. That meant he was twenty-five. Where had those years gone? They’d passed in a blink, gone as quickly as snowflakes, the months melting one into another. His life, his future—a future he’d just yesterday pictured spending with—
No. He wasn’t going to think about that, or her, again.
“Duncan, I might not have acted it, but I have grown up in the past five years.” Katie looked down at her lap, then spun a bit in her chair. “Some, at least.”
He lowered himself to his knees beside her, thinking of all the changes in the past few days, the things she’d had to face, mountains she’d had to climb. Mountains some people wouldn’t have been able to face, much less conquer. He was damned proud of her, and of how far she’d come. “You have grown up a lot, Katie. A whole lot.”
“Hey, don’t go getting out the band and the standing ovation for me.” She gave him a bittersweet smile. “I have a ways to go yet. Even I know that. And so do you.”
“Me, I’m fine.”
“Oh yeah?” Her tone challenging now, the old, defiant Katie he remembered. “You may have both your legs, Duncan, but you’ve got plenty of other problems paralyzing you.”
He rose, went back to studying the menus. “Nothing’s paralyzing me, Katie. I’m just…cautious.”
“So cautious you’re going to let a great woman go back to L.A. without even trying to stop her?”
“She’s not what she seems, Katie.” Duncan sighed and tossed the rainbow of menus onto the kitchen table. His appetite was gone anyway.
“So? Who is? Are you? Hell, are any of us? We never were, not in this house.”
He looked around the walls, empty now of the artwork, the carefully orchestrated photo shots, yet still holding the memories. He should sell this place, move both of them to somewhere sunny and bright. Somewhere they could start over again, without the specter of their father hanging over everything. “We weren’t, were we?”
“Then how can you blame Allie, Duncan?” Then she wheeled away, awfully wise for someone who was two years younger than him.
Ranger gave Duncan a bark, then hurried after Katie in doggy agreement.
Duncan sighed, then sank into one of the wooden chairs that ringed the walnut table, one of the few pieces he’d kept because it had been his mother’s—and not an antique, not pretentious. Just an everyday kitchen set. There were days when he wondered how his life would have turned out if his mother had lived, if he and Katie both had had her quiet, guiding hand to help them through their lives.
He ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “If only it were that simple, Katie.”
Chapter 23
Allie should have been ecstatic. She had everything she wanted, everything she’d come to Tempest to accomplish.
And it couldn’t have been less what she had envisioned. Yet she still forced a smile to her face, hoping it wouldn’t shatter. Jerry had taken her seriously throughout the meeting for the next day’s shooting schedule. Not once had he raised his voice, called her Sugar-pie, or asked her to retrieve anything with caffeine in it. When they were done, he sent the rest of his crew to sit at other tables, but had Allie stay behind.
“You were unfreakin’ believable in that interview today. Where did you come up with all that crap about Sorority Slumber Party Slaughter?”
“There wasn’t anything to come up with, Jerry. It was all there, in the script. You just had to dig for it.” Allie chuckled. “Okay, dig really deep.” She didn’t add that her own past had helped her see the underlying message in the werewolf’s story.
Was there some hidden karmic reason she’d put Lisa in the costume?
Allie shook off the thought. She refused to think she had anything in common with the one person who had been the bane of her high school existence.
“Well, either way, what you did back there was unreal. I’ll have to hire you to write all the PR. Next thing you know, you’ll be getting me nominated for an Academy Award.” Jerry chuckled.
“An Academy Award might be going a little far.”
“Maybe. But a guy can have his dreams.” Jerry put his boots up on the opposite bench at Margie’s diner, much to the consternation of Margie and Dick, who were leaning against the counter, arms crossed over their chests, sending glares Jerry’s way. But the pile of plates on Jerry’s table, and the ones for the rest of the crew, not to mention the food Margie’s had been hired to cater for the movie, kept Margie from protesting a few scuff marks on her red vinyl. “So, give me the pitch for this chick flick that you want to do.”
Allie blinked. So he had been listening to her over the years. “Are you thinking of backing it?”
“Honey, I’d back a remake of freakin’ Big Top Pee-Wee if I thought it would make money.”
Allie laid her hands on the table, weighing the dozens of pitches that had floated in her head for years, choosing the one dearest to her heart, the one she thought had the most potential. “I want to do a reunion story where two women run into each other years after breaking off contact. They don’t even recognize each other because they’ve changed so much. They were the outcasts in high school, because they were both overweight, ridiculed all their lives. They’ve changed their appearances, but they’re still good people inside. Their lives have taken very different paths, and now, they
’re best friends, reunited. They find out that they were happy just the way they were. That they had everything they already needed inside.”
“What? Beaches with fat chicks?”
Allie forced herself to swallow back the offense. Jerry had never been about tact, but he had, indeed, nailed her long, rambling nervous pitch into one quick high concept. Not exactly a palatable high concept and one that did still need a polish that would make it have some kind of taste. “Sort of, only with a happy ending.”
Jerry scratched his chin and thought for a minute. “I don’t know. You think this friendship thing is going to be hot in theaters?”
“Have you seen what’s big on TV lately? Grey’s Anatomy? Sex in the City? Desperate Housewives? Women’s friendships are it today, Jerry. You’d be jumping on a trend here.”
He looked dubious. “You sure you don’t want to throw in a couple of dead bodies? A few teens in skimpy bikinis?”
She cringed. “No. Absolutely not. I have a script—”
“Where’d you get a script?”
“I wrote it.”
“You write? Since when?”
“I always have. I’ve tried to tell you that a hundred times but you never heard me.”
“Sorry, Sugar—” He reddened, then corrected himself. “Er…Allie, but I’m a guy. And when a guy like me looks at a woman like you, he doesn’t exactly have his listening ears on, if you know what I mean.”
Yeah, she did. How many men had never looked past her chest? Never noticed that she had a head above her breasts? “Will you read the script? And give it a fair shot?”
“Will you teach Leath how to make my damned lattes?”
Allie chuckled. “Of course.”
“Then I’ll consider your script. It’s not a dud, is it? Because I don’t make duds.” He paused a second. “Okay, I do make duds, but starting today, I’m on a strict no-dud streak.”
“That’s a good policy.”
“I read it in some self-help book. My wife keeps that crap in the bathroom. I got desperate.”
“I promise this will not be a dud. It’s got all the right ingredients. Laughs, a good cry, even some sex.”
“Perfect. Sounds like you’re onto something. A moneymaker at that.”
“Really?”
“You’re surprised I’d say that?”
“Actually, yes.”
“Listen, I know I’m a pig and a bastard to work for. But I’m not stupid enough to let a good movie go over to Spielberg or Howard, not when it’s sitting right in front of me. I don’t give a shit if the janitor wrote the script. You have a good idea; I’ll put some money on the table for it. I’ll let you make this one and then kiss you good-bye.”
“Good-bye?” The words were a squeak.
“Allie, you stay one more day with me after this movie is wrapped and you’re an idiot. I’ll friggin’ fire you myself. You got guts, talent, and smarts. Take ’em someplace where they’ll be appreciated.” He sat back, his feet landing with a plop on the floor. “Now, if you ever tell anyone I said that, I’m denying it. I gotta get back to the farmhouse. Brock called earlier and apparently his aura is in a twist. I have to convince him that it’s not going to show on camera tomorrow.”
She chuckled. “And if you can’t?”
“Then I get another stud to replace that dud.” Jerry grinned, then headed out of Margie’s.
Allie sat back on the benchseat and toyed with her empty coffee mug, joy ricocheting inside her chest. She’d done it.
She was going to make a movie. Her first movie. The kind she’d dreamed about for years.
Suddenly, she wanted to tell someone, to share her news. She looked around, ready to bound out of the seat, the excitement a balloon in her chest ready to burst, but the world around her churned along at regular Tempest speed. If anyone had noticed the exchange in the booth, they didn’t give so much of a blink of indication.
She rose, spinning, searching for a familiar face, praying for Vanessa to walk in, for her sister, for anyone she knew.
Her gaze swept over Margie, Dick, Harry, Petey, and Joe. Earl had come in for his evening meal, and taken up residence at the end of the counter, already holding court about the production company, complaining up a storm and vowing to make their intrusion part of his next campaign platform, tourist dollars or no tourist dollars. Allie scanned the crowd again, seeing Scotty, Leath—
Lisa Connelly.
Okay, anyone she knew—and liked. Lisa was talking to Scotty and Leath, excitedly going on and on about her new role and its potential for a sequel. Apparently she hadn’t read the ending of the script and seen Wanda Wolfie’s fate.
And then, with the timing of fate—serendipity, whatever it was, Allie didn’t question it—Duncan strode through the door of Margie’s, heading straight for her. She rose and closed the distance between them, a smile breaking across her face. “Duncan! You’ll never believe what happened.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
“Right now. I just found out.” She pointed toward the door her boss had just exited. “Jerry—”
“I meant tell me who you really were.”
The bottom dropped out of her stomach. Quiet slowly descended over the room at the angry, determined tone in Duncan’s voice. Allie’s joy wound from seventy-eight rpms down to a scratched thirty-three, bumping and jerking before shuddering to a halt. “Who…” But she couldn’t get the words past the lump in her throat.
Past the silence around them. The dark thundercloud in Duncan’s eyes.
No, no. Not now. Please not now.
“Don’t even try to lie, Allison Gray.” The syllables of her name seemed to bounce off the walls of the diner, reverberating off the Kewpie dolls standing sentinel along a thin shelf near the ceiling, their little O-shaped mouths open in shock, wide eyes of accusation.
Someone coughed. A fork screeched across a plate. In the back, a dish shattered on the kitchen floor. But no one moved, said a word, seemed even to breathe. Duncan held his ground, the glare in his eyes darkened with the black of betrayal.
Allie’s mouth dropped open, ready to spout a denial, but she bit it back. What could she say? How could she explain it? Explain why she hadn’t told him sooner? Found a way to slip it into conversation? “Duncan, I…I…”
“Allison Gray?” Lisa’s acidic voice cut through the heavy silence of Margie’s. “I should have guessed it was you. And here I thought my mother was kidding when she said you were back in town.”
The diners whispered Allison’s name, everyone watching, waiting.
Lisa moved forward. “You’ve lost a few pounds of course, but it seems you’re still the same old Allison. And now you’ve added a new trick to get what you want. Lying. You’re trying to hide, to pretend to be something you aren’t, just so that you can be—” Lisa’s expression had lost all its sweetness and light, reverting to the same hateful disdain she’d given to the Blue Plate Special lady. “Liked.”
Allie froze, and as everyone’s gaze swiveled toward her, even Duncan’s, hurt, shocked, betrayed, the instinct to become a flogging pole sprang to life. This wasn’t what she’d pictured.
She swallowed hard, sweat beading on her brow, heart hammering in her chest. Fight or flight, the psychologists called it.
She wanted the floor to open up. Provide a handy escape. That’s all she’d ever wanted—a way to disappear, to make them forget she existed. So they’d just leave her alone. Find someone else to pummel.
Then she realized there was no hole this time. No teacher was going to march in and rescue her from Lisa. She couldn’t hide behind her Trig book or wait for the third period bell to ring and give her an excuse to slink out the back of the room.
All the pounds she’d lost, the changes in her appearance, her success in this very room not five minutes ago, dissolved as fast as Noxzema on Aunt Tilda’s sweaty palms.
Hell, it had dissolved the minute Duncan looked at her, his eyes so full of hurt that she’d real
ized revenge wasn’t as sweet as she’d imagined.
“What, nothing to say, now that you don’t have your little movie to hide behind anymore? You’re as pathetic as ever,” Lisa said, and began to turn around, disgusted.
“Lisa, you’re going too far,” Duncan said. “Back off. Leave her alone.”
“Why are you defending her? That bitch lied to you, too.”
“Let it go,” Duncan said, his voice low and dark. “She’s done nothing to you.”
“Oh yeah? She stole you, didn’t she?” Lisa wheeled on Allie, her face aflame. “Twice. And now she’s made a fool of you. And me. I hate her. I always have.”
Allie took a step back from the venom in Lisa’s voice. She hated her? For stealing Duncan? When had Allie ever had Duncan in the first place?
“What is your problem, Lisa?” Allie asked. “What did I ever do to you?”
“You existed,” Lisa said. “That was enough.”
“Bullshit,” Allie said. “That’s not a reason to hate someone. To torture them.”
“It’s good enough for me.” Lisa snorted. “You made it so easy.”
“I made it so easy?” Allie said, thinking of all the times Lisa’s words had started a torrent of cruelty, all the days Allie had left school in tears, walking home, crying the whole way, barely able to see the sidewalk, wondering what she had done to deserve all this, besides have one too many helpings. And then, making it worse by going straight to the cookie jar, or the potato chips, stuffing her face, trying to quiet the echoes of those voices.
“I made it easy?” she repeated. “Or was it just that you were that cruel? Yeah, Lisa, it’s me. Allison Gray. The Gray Whale. Remember that nice little nickname you gave me back in kindergarten? Funny how those things can stick all the way through high school.”
Lisa scoffed. “That was a joke. You’re still holding that against me? How many years ago was that? I guess you can move to L.A. but you can’t take the dairy out of the cow, now can you?”
“And you can’t take the bitch out of you.”