Liam sighed as he turned the truck into the pizzeria parking lot. "You should talk to Madame. She can do one of those triple cross spreads and straighten you out."
Gabe glared at his friend. Had everyone in town gone nuts? "I don't need straightening out, Liam. Why don't you tell Elizabeth to visit Madame Esmeralda?"
"Elizabeth can't stand her. There was a problem with her lease. Anyway, Elizabeth doesn't believe in tarot. See, there's something you both agree on. Maybe there's hope." Liam parked his truck.
"Yes," Gabe opened the passenger door. "And in a couple of days we'll agree about other things as well."
Liam gave him a "famous last words" look.
He said goodbye to Liam, climbed out of the truck, and closed the door roughly. Unfortunately, Liam's truck was a modern, plush vehicle. The door swung politely and closed with an unsatisfying soft click. Too bad he wasn't driving Zach's truck. Nothing slammed like an old truck door.
As Gabe walked into the pizzeria, he did a quick mental status check. His team was working on the cidery project. Liam's workers were finishing Cole's room. Thus, he had nothing to do, which left lots of time to think about Elizabeth. Elizabeth crying alone in her brother's room had been exactly what he'd been trying to avoid. Well, he'd managed that. She was probably parked in a side street, crying in Zach's truck.
Way to go, Franco.
He felt like an ass. An ass who was absolutely, one hundred percent right about the room and the town and everything else, but was still a cruel, incompetent ass.
Cole would have known what to do. He would have made Elizabeth laugh or he would have given her a hug. They would have ended up having ice cream or watching an alien shark movie or something. Cole had that gift. He always knew how to make people feel better.
Gabe didn't have that ability, so he usually ended up making things worse. He'd certainly done that today. If he'd stayed home, Elizabeth would have gotten the boxes out and painted the room. She would have felt a little sad, and maybe she would have shed a tear or two. The room would've been all splotchy, but who the hell cared about the walls?
She would have dried her tears and gone on to eat ice cream.
Instead, he'd left her a mess.
Good job, Franco.
The Ferrari was right where he'd left it, parked in front of the pizzeria. There was a piece of paper stuck on the windshield. Had Zach already gotten a parking ticket? Gabe picked it up. Nope, not a parking ticket. Someone called Sasha wanted to hear from Zach, and she'd included her phone number. Zach may be turning into a successful restaurateur, but some things hadn't changed. He crumbled the paper and looked around for a trashcan. But he paused, the paper still crushed in his hand. Maybe this Sasha person would distract Zach from his Rosemoor expansion plan. He folded the paper and put it in his pocket.
He pushed open the blue door and found the pizzeria packed with boisterous customers. Pepe's had been a gamble, a wild bet on the paranormie invasion. Yes, Zach had turned Pepe's into a hit, but the Rosemoor? The Rosemoor wouldn't be a pizza place. It would be... Gabe didn't even know what he was planning to do with the Rosemoor, probably something expensive.
He wished he could talk to Elizabeth about it. She'd tell him he was being an arrogant ass, of course. That he should leave his poor brother alone. Hell, she might even make him finance the Rosemoor acquisition himself. He glanced at the basement door, remembering her giggles as she'd pushed him down the stairs. He hated the basement, but for a couple of minutes that night, the dreary room had been his favorite place in the world.
But he had to stop thinking about her. He headed to the tiny office housed in the bungalow's attic and found Zach seated behind a bulky metal desk, working on a computer. Gabe smiled at the sight of his gypsy brother sitting at a desk. Who'd have imagined it?
Zach looked up. He frowned. "Did you bang my truck?"
"Your truck is fine." He collapsed into a chair. The conversation with Elizabeth had drained him. He felt as if he'd aged ten years. "Did you give my Ferrari to your delivery guys?"
"Don't worry. The anchovy smell will go away. Eventually." Zach's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What do you mean when you say 'fine'? I don't see you handing over the keys."
"Elizabeth has your truck."
"Great," Zach said glumly. "That's a disaster movie waiting to happen." He looked Gabe up and down. "Why do you look like crap? Did Elizabeth come to her senses and dump you?"
"None of your business, infant," he growled.
Zach sat up straight. "Shit. She did, didn't she?"
Gabe glared at him. He wasn't sure if he was dumped. Probably. Elizabeth's tears were pretty final.
"Aw, man. That sucks. You were beginning to look almost human. I guess you'll go back to your android self now."
"Is that how people see me?" he asked, a bit hurt. "As an android?"
"A broken-up android, at least since Cole's death. We were all happy to see you with Elizabeth. How exactly did you manage to fuck that up? "
He shrugged. "Natural talent."
"Well, I'm surprised she was the one who dumped you. I would have expected you to pull some stupid shit, like you didn't deserve her because her brother was your best friend. That's more your kind of thing."
"Yeah, I tried that. It didn't last long."
Zach laughed. "You came back from the Town Meeting looking like you'd been nuked, so I'm not surprised. So if your guilt over Cole didn't break you guys up, what did?"
"I like beige."
Zach laughed again. His brother was an idiot.
"I'm serious."
Zach wiped tears of laughter from his eyes. "I know you're serious. That's what's so funny."
"I don't see the humor. I like beige and I got Liam to help her fix Cole's room, and now I'm dumped. I don't see the humor at all."
His brother stopped laughing. "You called Liam? You called a construction company?" His brows shot up in disbelief. "Are you insane? Remember the stupid spaceship she built in high school? Her dad had just left with his floozy girlfriend and he thought bringing in a hotshot stage designer from Manhattan would impress Elizabeth. You know what happened that time."
"Yes, I remember." He touched his nose gingerly. Elizabeth's tantrum had led to a prop mishap, and the spaceship's loading ramp had fallen on his nose.
"You know, that—" he pointed at Gabe's nose, "—is why God created plastic surgery."
Gabe smiled. "I've been told it adds to my rakish appeal."
"I hate to break it to you, big brother, but the thing about being rich as Croesus is that people lie to you."
"And the other thing about being rich as Croesus," Gabe retorted, "is that you can choose to believe them."
"Right," Zach said with a smirk. "And speaking of delusions, how many guys did Liam bring?"
"Five."
Zach winced.
"Plus a decorator chick," Gabe continued.
Zach shook his head, his face a mask of pity.
"What?" Gabe threw his hands up in despair. "I wanted it done right."
Didn't Zach know that good staffing was the first step toward quality results? And Elizabeth didn't know how to paint.
His brother opened a drawer, and took out a bottle of scotch and two glasses. "You don't know anything about anything, do you? She didn't want to do a perfect room. She wanted to work her way through her grief and do something nice for her mom."
"She can't paint."
"That's not the point. We all work through our grief in different ways. Some of us go on crazy motorcycle trips. Some of us refurbish pizzerias. Some of us take on unwieldy painting projects and end up Jackson Pollocking our surroundings. And—" he poked his finger in Gabe's direction, "—some of us spent a bajillion dollars making a dead friend's dream come true."
That stung. "This was a business decision. The numbers—"
Zach snorted. "The numbers do whatever you want them to do. They always have. This PRoVE thing was Cole's baby, the project he was going to work on
after he got out of the Army. The one he didn't get to do. We all know that. Hell, you even bought his favorite building and turned it into the PRoVE headquarters."
Gabe sat immobile, totally speechless.
"So don't judge her coping mechanism. You, Mr. I-Always-Know-Best, came in and took over and robbed her of something precious. And you stomped all over her daddy issues to boot. You're in deep crapola." He poured scotch into the glasses and handed one to Gabe.
Gabe considered his situation. What, after all, was there to say? This was the kind of dress-down Cole would have given him. He didn't feel like taking it from Zach, but he didn't have much of a choice.
And, worst of all, Zach was right.
Idiot baby brother.
"Well, at least I got out of it with my face still intact." He took a long drink. The well-aged scotch was smooth and dry and it burned his throat as it went down.
"Oh, don't count on that." Zach smirked over the rim of his glass. "I spoke to Caine and PRoVE has a little surprise that's going to make Ms. Hunt very unhappy. That cardboard ramp is going to look mighty wimpy compared to what's coming."
Gabe regarded his brother's twinkling eyes with trepidation. It was time for some serious due diligence. He didn't know what his lunatic employees had come up with, but the fact that his brother was involved was not at all reassuring.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
ELIZABETH FINISHED hanging the last picture frame and stepped back to admire the room. The paint job looked terrific. Liam's crew knew what they were doing. They'd even put up a chair rail and pretty curtain rods. She may have managed an off-center curtain rod by herself, but she couldn't have done a chair rail, not in a thousand years.
Gabe was right. It was a lot better without splotchy paint and crooked pictures.
Vintage photographs of the town hung on the wall, and a large shadowbox frame held an antique Welcome to Banshee Creek sign. Now that was a collector's item. Another wall was covered with her mother's community awards. A large bulletin board covered with fabric hung on top of the desk. That and the new lamp made the old pieces of furniture look new. The desk chair had a new seat, and the bookshelves now held pretty white boxes for her mom's client files. The updated area rug gave the room a crisp and modern look.
She was tired, but she couldn't stop now. Her parents would be arriving soon, so she had to finish the room. She reframed the family pictures that would go on the shelves. First a picture of her parents on vacation, then various award ceremonies. She even had a picture of the Cannibal Clones premiere. She hesitated, then put it into an elegant silver frame. Her father would hate the picture, but who cared? This wasn't his room.
Finally, she had one picture left: Cole's college graduation. Her brother wore his white dress uniform and he looked happy and carefree. Elizabeth stared at the picture, remembering that day. Her mom had bought her a green dress for the graduation and taken her to Yolanda's to get the grape Kool-Aid out of her hair. Elizabeth had come back home and promptly added green highlights. Her father had gone ballistic, and Cole had called her Poison Ivy. But Gabe had complimented her hair, and Elizabeth had spent most of the ceremony staring at her crush.
More tears. She'd promised herself she wouldn't cry, yet here she was, bawling like a baby and on her second box of tissues. She reached for another tissue, but the box was empty. Great, let's make that third box of tissues.
She put the picture in its new frame and placed it on the desk. Maybe she should hide the graduation picture. Maybe it was too soon.
The front door opened, and she heard her mother's voice. Her parents were home. She wiped the tears off her eyes, put the graduation picture in a drawer, and glanced around. The room looked good, but suddenly she was nervous. What if her mom hated it? What if she wasn't ready for this? Her mom hated change.
This was a big change.
She also hated surprises.
This was a big surprise.
Elizabeth took a deep breath and walked out of the room.
Her mom was taking off her coat and hanging it carefully in the coat closet. A black-wheeled suitcase stood beside her. Just one. She turned around to greet Elizabeth.
"Hi, honey. I'm so happy to be home." Her brows arched as she took in Elizabeth's paint-stained sweater and jeans. "You look like you've been busy."
"Yep." She gave her mom a stiff hug. "Very busy. Where's Dad?"
"Ah, yes, your father." Her expression was carefully blank. "He wasn't in a very good mood." She fiddled, untied the knot on her scarf, avoiding her daughter's gaze. "One of his...friends is trying to sell her family company and it doesn't seem to be working out for her. He kept muttering about perfidious Prussians or something."
Elizabeth mulled on that little piece of information. So Gabe wasn't planning to sell the cidery after all?
Her mother took off her scarf, folded it neatly, and put it on the top shelf. "I'm too tired to make dinner. Maybe we can order out? I know you like Chinese."
Elizabeth's stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn't eaten since breakfast, and that breakfast had been coffee and a leftover chocolate-chip-and-candy-corn cookie. But Chinese food? That was a rare treat in the Hunt household.
"That sounds good." She headed to the kitchen for the takeout menu. "Can we get spring rolls?"
Her mom smiled. "Of course. Along with extra fortune cookies."
Extra fortune cookies? This was a woman who never got extra anything. Something was definitely up. She looked at the pile of scarves on the shelf, took out two, refolded them, and put them back in.
Elizabeth stared at her in puzzlement. "Mom? Are you okay?"
Her mom nodded. "Oh yes. I'm fine." A small smile crossed her face. "Better than even, in fact." She took a deep breath and straightened her skirt.
"Great." Elizabeth wanted to dig deeper, but she bit her lip instead. Her mom wasn't one for confidences. Once she said she was fine, that was the end of the conversation.
She entered the kitchen, opened a drawer, and took out the takeout menus. She noted with distaste that Dog-Fu Chinese Restaurant had printed out a new menu. The old one had a stylized Chinese guardian lion. The new one featured a ghost silhouette surrounded by Chinese calligraphy. Elizabeth fought the urge to crumble the menu. Was nothing sacred?
"Should I order the pepper steak?" she called out. It was her father's favorite. A thought struck her, and she checked the menu. Sure enough, it wasn't called pepper steak anymore. It was now Pu Songling Beef. Who the hell was Pu Songling? She turned to the back of the menu, which informed that Pu Songling was China's Edgar Allan Poe.
"No, sweetie. Your father stayed behind."
Thoughts of pepper steak and Chinese folk tales fled and she felt a wave of anger rush through her. "Did he say why?" she asked. It was a stupid question. She knew why. Her dad had given his wife a flimsy excuse and stayed behind with the corporate floozy. The man couldn't even take a few days off his compulsive womanizing. This was the last straw. She was going to max out her credit cards, go down to the Cayman Islands, and have it out with her father. She was done with polite pretenses. She would not allow him to abuse her mother any more.
"I told him to stay," her mom said, looking firmly into Elizabeth's eyes.
"What?"
"I don't want him to come back." A heavy sigh. "I know this will come as a shock to you, Elizabeth, but your father has..." a long pause, "a girlfriend."
Just the one? Elizabeth kept her mouth shut though. No sense making this harder for her mom.
"So he's not coming back." She shook her head. "I was an idiot. I should have done this a long time ago. I thought burying it would help. I thought it would keep you kids safe." She paused. "It didn't." She closed the closet door and put on a fake smile. "So how about some Chinese food?"
And that was that.
That was drama in the Hunt household, a couple of short, tight sentences, a non-existent apology, and a conciliatory bribe.
Elizabeth steeled herself. Her mom was
already coping with a really big change in her life, so this probably wasn't the right time to unveil the revamped room. She really couldn't avoid it, though. Her mom would notice at some point, so she might as well get it over with.
"Sure." She took a deep breath. "But first, I want to show you something."
"Of course, sweetie." Her mom turned away from the coat closet and the pile of perfectly folded scarves. "And what's this I hear about you taking Gabe to the Rosemoor? Did he like it?"
"Not really, Mom," Elizabeth said, not willing to elaborate. Two could play the tight-lipped, repressed, we-don't-need-to-talk-about-it game. "Come this way."
"Actually, the Rosemoor isn't a bad choice," her mom mused as Elizabeth led her up the stairs. "It's in pretty good shape."
She kept on chatting about remodeling options and building permits and they walked toward Cole's room.
"Here's what I wanted to show you," Elizabeth interrupted. She took a deep breath and opened the door.
Here it was, the moment of truth.
Her mom frowned and looked inside. Elizabeth waited impatiently as she paused at the doorway, seemingly for an eternity.
Mary Hunt stepped into the room and looked around. She was very quiet as she examined the botanical prints hanging on the wall. Elizabeth fidgeted, waiting for a verdict.
Finally, she couldn't stand it anymore. "What do you think?"
She raised a hand and slowly, meticulously straightened the framed print. Her hand was shaky, though, and the print fell back into its original, slightly crooked, position. She tried again, finally getting it right.
"It's lovely," she said, looking at the print. "I love it."
Elizabeth felt a wave of relief wash over her—no, not a wave, more like the Niagara Falls of relief, crashing heavily on the rocks.
Her mom walked over and touched her shoulder. "Oh sweetie, don't cry."
She brushed the tears away hastily. This moment wasn't about her.
"It's perfect, honey. Absolutely perfect." She stepped back, admiring the room. "I'm so sorry you felt you had to do this by yourself. And I can't believe you got it done in two days. Did you have help?"
Ghost of a Chance (Banshee Creek Book 2) Page 32