“Actually,” Carla was saying, “Mama’s trying to fix me up and the pickings around here are pretty slim. Until you showed up, her prime prospect was Frank Pezzini.”
Stunned, Jackson just stared at her. “You mean the guy at the grocery store? The butcher?”
“That’s Fabulous Frank.”
“Jesus.”
“Pretty much my reaction.”
“So, do you want one?” he asked a moment later, when they’d started walking again.
“One what?”
“Husband.”
“Is that an offer?”
“No.”
She laughed shortly and he wondered if she found everything so damn funny. Then he remembered that just a few hours ago she was breaking his heart by stoically accepting the complete blame for the loss of a child. No, she wasn’t all laughs. But she damn sure knew how to compartmentalize her life.
“Just checking,” she assured him before saying, “and to answer your question … no. Much to Mama’s everlasting frustration, I’m not in the market for a husband, thanks.”
Now that should make him feel better. But for some reason, it didn’t. His own marriage had been a disaster, but maybe the cards had been stacked against him right from the beginning. After all, what had he known about family? Someone like Carla, on the other hand, should have every reason to want what she’d grown up with.
If he’d come from the kind of family she’d known, maybe lots of things in his life would have been different. He shifted Reese into a better position, enjoyed her sigh of warm breath on his neck, and asked, “Any particular reason why?”
Carla shrugged and bent down quickly to pluck a blade of grass from the lawn. As they walked, she shredded the single blade with a concentrated effort.
“Well, I’m lousy company in the morning—before coffee, that is.”
“I noticed.”
“Gee, thanks.” She shook her head, lifted her gaze to study the sky briefly, and suggested, “I don’t play well with others?”
He smiled but shook his head. “Not buying that one.”
“No, huh?” Fingers busy, she thought for a minute or two. “Okay, I confess. I was almost married, once.”
“What happened?”
She tossed the remnant of grass aside, tucked her hands into her jeans pockets. “He decided to go back to his former fiancée instead.”
“Busy guy.”
“Yeah.” She looked up at him. “But he was polite, too. Sent me an invitation to his wedding.”
“Thoughtful.”
“Oh, yeah. I declined.”
“Don’t blame you.”
“Passed on the baby shower invite, too.”
“What an idiot.”
Clearly offended, she demanded, “Why would I want to go to his wife’s baby shower?”
“Not you idiot. Him idiot.”
“Ahh … in that case, you may continue to live.”
“Good to know.” They were close now to her driveway. Too close. He wasn’t really ready to say good night yet. So he kept talking. “I’m guessing the end of your engagement didn’t go over well with your mother?”
She laughed and God, he loved the sound of it. Even Reese didn’t seem to mind, since she slept on, completely comfortable in his arms.
“Being a good mother, her first instinct was to go kill him for me.”
“Understandable.” Hell, Jackson wouldn’t mind taking a punch at the guy himself. No matter how she was making light of it, he knew that the man’s betrayal must have cut at her. She was going to marry the man, for chrissakes. She must have loved him.
“But, when she calmed down, she went into a period of mourning eclipsed only by the time Nick first broke it to her that he didn’t want to become a priest.” Carla stopped at the edge of her drive and tipped her head back to stare up at him. “And she’s been on a search for a replacement fiancé ever since.”
“Determined woman.”
“Oh, you have no idea.” But there was a smile in her voice when she spoke. And that’s what he responded to.
“Must be nice.”
“What?”
“Being loved like that.”
“I always sort of took it for granted,” she admitted. “But yes, it is. Annoying sometimes, too. Your family isn’t close?”
He hitched Reese a little higher in his arms and laid a protective hand against the small of her back. “She’s my family.”
Carla studied his features in the soft, pale light and wondered what had put the flash of pain in his eyes. It was brief. Hardly noticeable. And if she hadn’t already been watching him closely, she probably would have missed it.
As hard as it was to deal with her family at times, she couldn’t imagine having a life without them. Just as she couldn’t imagine what Jackson’s life was like. The silence. With only him and Reese in the house, the quiet must be crushing.
“My folks died when I was a kid,” he said, his voice a soft rumble that whispered through the air and seemed to attack the hairs at the back of her neck. “Went into the system then and got bounced around until I was eighteen.”
She didn’t know what to say. I’m sorry didn’t seem appropriate.
“I know what you’re thinking, and don’t worry about it. It was a long time ago.”
Distance. They might be standing right next to each other, but there was a distance in his voice that clearly said, Don’t go there. So she didn’t.
Instead, she glanced up the drive toward her own house, where the front porch light shone like a lighthouse standing on a rocky shore. Ordinarily, after dinner with the Candellanos, she’d be more than ready to crawl into her own nest and veg out with Abbey. The dog, as if reading her mind, trotted halfway up the gravel drive, turned around to face Carla, and sat down, head cocked as she waited.
Tonight, though, Carla wasn’t as eager as usual to be by herself. Jackson seemed to be feeling the same way, since he made no move to start walking again.
“You were really impressive today,” he said finally, just when she thought they were going to stand in the moonlight in silence forever.
“What?”
“You and Abbey. The way you worked together.” He paused and her stomach rolled over as his gaze locked with hers. “It was amazing. Especially knowing why you didn’t want to be out there.”
Okay. Now she was ready to go inside. She didn’t want to talk about that again. In fact, she’d like to pretend she hadn’t told him about it in the first place. She still didn’t understand exactly why she’d told him. Sure, it had felt good at the time, unloading those feelings. Hearing herself talk about it for the first time. But that didn’t change the outcome. And it didn’t change how she felt about it.
Late at night, when she couldn’t sleep, she knew that boy’s face would still swim to the surface of her mind. She’d still see his parents, clinging together, his mother weeping, his father stoically trying to bear the burden no one should have to carry.
That wouldn’t change. Would never change.
She shifted slightly and the soles of her boots scraped across the asphalt, sounding like a dry nervous cough.
“We didn’t find the guy, remember?”
“You looked.”
She’d looked for the boy once, too. For all the good it had done anyone.
“Only because Tony bullied me into it.” And at the thought of Tony came the reminder that she still had to get to the bottom of what was going on with him. Good, she told herself. Focus on your idiot brother. Much better.
“Bullshit.”
“Excuse me?”
He shook his head as he watched her. “I saw your face when your brother showed up wanting your help. You said you didn’t want to go. But everything inside you was eager to go.” He reached out to touch her and she almost held her breath, waiting for the brush of his hand against her cheek. But he stopped short, disappointing them both. “I saw your face. Your eyes. It was all there, plain for anyone to see.”
“No,” she argued, even though she remembered clearly that rush of adrenaline. That had just been instinct. Like a firehouse dog reacting to the sound of the fire alarm. “I—”
“Carla,” he interrupted, “it’s what you do. It’s who you are.”
“Not anymore.” It used to be. It used to be everything to her. But times change. People change. She wasn’t that girl anymore. She wasn’t wide-eyed and filled with the conviction that she could make a difference. She couldn’t cling to a ratty thread of hope anymore. It had frayed in her grasp when she’d needed it most, and there was no getting it back.
“Who’re you trying to convince?” he asked. “Me? Or you?”
A spurt of irritation flickered up inside her, then flattened out again. She tossed her hair back from her face and met his gaze squarely. “I thought you were a lawyer, not a shrink.”
He stiffened. “You don’t have to be a shrink to see the obvious.”
“Really?” she countered. “Good at that, are you? Seeing the obvious?” Carla didn’t wait for him to answer before adding, “Then maybe you can see that I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Prefer to ignore it and hide?”
She looked up at him and gave a short, harsh laugh. “Hello, Pot? This is Kettle. You’re black.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything, but she was damn tired of everyone and their uncles offering her advice on how to “get over it.” So she did what any good Candellano would do when attacked.
She fired back.
“I mean, you’ve got a helluva nerve accusing me of hiding. Keeping your daughter tucked away isn’t the key to bringing her back into the world.”
Fury pulsed inside him. Carla could almost feel the heat of it. Okay, gloves were off now. This could get ugly. A muscle in his jaw twitched and he planted his feet wide apart, as if slipping into a battle stance. She saw in his face just how much he wanted to yell. But his sleeping daughter apparently gave him enough reason to keep his voice low. As if to calm himself as much as comfort his sleeping child, he stroked Reese’s back in long protective strokes.
“You don’t know anything about my daughter. Or me.”
“You don’t know me, either,” she pointed out, “but that didn’t stop you from offering advice I didn’t want.”
“That’s different.”
“Of course it is,” she muttered. “You’re a guy.” She wondered idly where all of the nice warm fuzzies had gotten to. How had their friendly conversation dissolved into this?
For the first time in two years, she’d been actually enjoying herself. Talking with Jackson did as much for her bruised heart as it did for her hormones. But there was a wall separating them that neither of them was willing—or able, obviously—to cross.
“Look,” she said abruptly, interrupting the war with what she hoped would be accepted as a truce. “We had a good day. Let’s leave it at that, okay?”
And before he could respond one way or the other, Carla stepped around him and headed up the drive. Abbey leaped to her feet and bounded toward the house, trusting that Carla would be following. Her footsteps crunched on the gravel drive as she walked away, feeling considerably lonelier than she had been only a few minutes ago. She felt his gaze locked on her back, and a part of her burned with the heat of his stare.
Hormones, she told herself.
That’s all it was.
Hormones.
Lust. Pure and simple.
In all its glory.
“Carla?”
His voice, low and intimate, stopped her. She steeled herself, then looked back at him over her shoulder. He and his daughter were spotlighted in the moonlight, standing as he was, between the patches of shade cast by the nearby trees. They looked so alone that a twinge pinged around Carla’s heart before she could tell herself that it didn’t matter to her. That they—he was only a summer neighbor. A temporary blip on her radar screen.
Yeah, right.
“What?”
“You were right, you know.”
“Ah,” she said, loving the sound of those words, “the way to a woman’s heart.” She smiled in spite of the turmoil within. “Right about what?”
“It was a good day.”
Then he smiled a little sadly, walked off, and the two of them disappeared into the shadows.
* * *
Her morning ritual was ruined.
And it was all his fault.
Grumbling, Carla pulled another Oreo out of the bag, dipped it into her coffee, and took a bite. Abbey looked up at her, hopeful as always.
“Well, you still love me, anyway.” Carla popped the last of her cookie into her mouth, then picked up a dog biscuit and flipped it to the golden. Abbey caught it midflip and crunched contentedly. “Of course, do you love me for my wonderful self, or for my biscuits?” The dog just stared at her. “Never mind,” Carla said. “Don’t answer that.”
Then her gaze went directly back to the view that had now effectively ruined her little wake-up ritual.
Jackson’s house.
Funny, but she no longer thought of it as the Garvey place. Now it was his. And not just for the duration of the summer, either. Carla had the distinct feeling that from now on she would be looking at that house and wondering what he and Reese were doing. What he was doing. Hell, admit it.
She’d be wondering who he was doing.
Her body reacted to that thought as she’d known it would. Getting all warm and soft in places that had gone too long without being warm and soft. For all the good it was going to do her.
A hell of a thing, she thought. Being raring to cha-cha, so to speak, and having no one to cha-cha with. And dancing alone didn’t sound like much fun.
She propped her feet on the railing in front of her and took another long sip of coffee. The familiar swirl and rush of caffeine buzzed through her system, opening her eyes and shouting, Wake up! at her brain.
Shaking her head, she looked down at Abbey and said, “You wouldn’t think it would be so hard to wake up if you never really slept.”
Abbey closed her eyes at that, obviously unmoved by Carla’s predicament.
“Well, sure. You can sleep. You don’t have one brother cheating on his wife and another brother hiding something about his medical condition.” But even as she said the words, she knew it for the lie it was. Okay, fine. She was worried about her brothers. And she was currently hatching a plan to get to the bottom of Tony’s trouble. But it wasn’t thoughts of her brothers that had kept her up all night.
“Nope. It was him. Mr. Charm. Or lack thereof.” Her gaze locked on the silent house across the way from her as if she could see through the wood siding and straight into Jackson’s heart. Her dreams had been filled with him. The way he’d been earlier yesterday. When he’d listened to her and sympathized without pitying. When he’d touched her and made her want more. When he’d smiled and she’d read the shine of want in his eyes.
And while she was willing to admit that dreams of Jackson Wyatt were certainly better than nightmares about failing Jamie, neither of those options made for good sleeping.
So she supposed it was a measure of just how on edge she was that when the phone rang she reacted with gratitude rather than the snarl she would usually have felt.
Stepping over the dog, she hurried across the porch, coffee cup in hand, opened the front door, and snatched up the receiver on the second ring.
“Hello?”
“Carla…” A soft, feminine voice, filled with tears. “It’s … Beth.…”
“Beth, are you okay?”
“No. Can I come … over?”
The little gaps between her words were filled with half-sobs that told Carla her sister-in-law was crying. Which meant Tony was still being an idiot.
“Of course you can come over,” she said, her hand tightening on the receiver as if it were Tony’s neck. “I’ll put fresh coffee on.”
When Beth
hung up a moment later, Carla just stared at the silent phone for a long minute. Oh, man. Her back teeth ground together and every muscle in her body tightened into fighting stance.
Okay. Here was the solution to her current misery. Instead of concentrating on her own problems, she’d focus on someone else’s. She’d get details from Beth, then hunt Tony down like the dog he was and give him both barrels.
That was sure to cheer her right up.
CHAPTER NINE
“YOU’RE THROUGH.” THE DOCTOR’S words were simple. Final.
Morning sunlight sifted through the tinted windows, making the view of downtown San Francisco look as though it were encased in some weird shaded fog. Which was just how Nick Candellano felt. As if his brain were shrouded in mist. He’d heard the other man’s words; they just weren’t completely registering.
Because he didn’t want them to.
But he couldn’t ignore the situation forever.
Nick looked up at his doctor and saw something in the man’s eyes he didn’t want to see. Pity. Well, shit. A cold, hard knot formed in his guts and he fought to keep it from spreading. Hell of a way to start off a morning. He scraped one hand along the back of his neck and stalled for time. Time to adjust to the reality that was about to deliver a sucker punch to his life. He’d known this was coming, though, so it really wasn’t a sucker punch, was it? More like a body slam. Somehow he’d just known it. His knee didn’t feel a hundred percent, despite the physical therapy.
Still, it was a hard thing to face. Deliberately misunderstanding the man, Nick gave him a winning smile and said, “Through, you said. For this season, right?”
“For good, if you’re smart.” The orthopedic surgeon shook his head, took a seat behind his desk, and folded his hands atop the file folder that contained Nick’s life. “Look, Nick, your knee, to put it simply, is more plastic than bone, now. Take a hit the wrong way and you’re in serious trouble. You blow it out again and best-case scenario, you’re looking at using a cane for the rest of your life.”
Finding You Page 10