“But she’s willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.” That was all he needed: people willing to give him a chance. Willing to reserve judgment until he’d done something deserving of it. Willing maybe not to trust him but at least to not distrust him until he gave them reason.
“And she’s the only one, Cassie, of all the people in the neighborhood,” Jamey said. “She looks at him and sees J.T.’s friend and Karen’s stepson. Everyone else looks at him and sees the punk who used to run around with Ryan Morgan, who used to work for Jimmy Falcone, who used to make their lives hell. He and his buddies have stolen from these people. They’ve harassed and intimidated them. They’ve terrorized the entire neighborhood. No, the neighborhood isn’t going to turn around now and give him the benefit of the doubt. They’re not going to offer him friendship. They’re not going to trust him until he’s proven he can be trusted.”
And his own father was part of the neighborhood, Cassie acknowledged. Maybe he didn’t want to be. Maybe he wished he could offer Reid the same sort of trust, faith and affection that Karen did, but he couldn’t. He knew too much about Reid. He’d lived through too many long years with the old Reid to have faith after only six months that the new Reid was here to stay. Unfortunately, without his father’s faith, the new Reid might get tired of trying. He might figure that if his father couldn’t trust him, no one else ever would. He might say the hell with them all. Then everyone would lose.
Shaking off the melancholy that accompanied her thoughts, she offered to help Karen clean up. When her boss refused, she thanked her for the meal, then went to her car and, with Jamey’s help, unloaded the boxes she’d brought. At her request, her sisters and sisters-in-law had donated their kids’ toys that had fallen out of favor and books that had been outgrown, all well used but in good shape.
When she had placed the last book on the shelf, she locked up. She was turning away from the door when she saw Reid across the street, sitting on the porch of the house next to O’Shea’s. He was so still that she wouldn’t have noticed him if some sort of internal radar hadn’t alerted her to his presence. His back was against the wall, and a sketch pad was braced on his knees. She hadn’t seen any of his work besides the two murals. She doubted that if she strolled over and asked, he would feel kindly about showing her anything else.
But she headed that way anyway.
She entered the yard through the broad opening in the fence. Once a gate had hung there, wrought iron like the fence, with curlicues surrounding a fancy D. Now it lay off to one side on a pile of rubbish, the hinges twisted and broken, the black paint flaking off, the bare iron rusted.
Reid glanced up, then back down. His scowl deepened, and he concentrated harder on his sketch, but he didn’t speak. She sat down on the top step, tucked her long skirt around her legs and rested her arms on her knees. “I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
“Trying to use Karen and Jamey to get what I wanted.”
“You didn’t expect them to take my side, did you?”
“No. But I still think you’re wrong.”
“We’re all wrong and you’re right?” He glanced at her again, shaking his head. “We know Serenity, and you don’t.”
“I know. I have a lot to learn.” Twisting around, she studied the front of the house. Because she was curious, she told herself without believing it. Because it gave her a chance to study him, too. “Is this house empty?”
“Yeah, for as long as I’ve lived here.”
“Who owns it?”
“Someone desperate enough to walk away from it.” Then he relented. “Probably the city. People who abandon their houses tend to quit paying the property taxes.”
“So if a person wanted to buy it—”
He laughed, for just a moment not scowling, not hostile or sullen but simply, purely amused. The moment passed, though, and scorn colored his words. “Any person who wanted to buy it should have her head examined.”
Cassie gave him a long, level look. She wasn’t suggesting that she might like to buy the place. She had just quit a decent-paying job to start one that would place her somewhere around the poverty level. There was no way she could afford a house, not even one that could be had for no more than back taxes. “I’m looking for a place to live.”
“Well, this house isn’t it.” Then, as if her statement had been slow to register, he looked sharply at her. “Down here?”
She nodded.
“So it’s not enough that you’ll be spending your days down here. You want to spend the nights, too.” His words were flat, his tone critical. “Have you told anyone?”
“Just you.”
Finally he laid the pad down and dropped the colored pencils on top of it. She automatically glanced at the sketch. It was O’Shea’s, maybe as it was ninety years ago, maybe as it had never been. The lines were clean, the colors soft. There wasn’t a hint of shabbiness or decay, no crumbling brick, no torn window screens, no faded sign. Long, low boxes were bracketed underneath each upstairs window and were filled with blooms that spilled profusely over the edges. Their soft, creamy hue was the perfect complement to the faded red brick and the stark black shutters that flanked each of the four French doors.
“Even Karen will think that’s a bad idea.”
“Maybe she will. Frankly, though, I’m not asking for permission or approval. I’m simply stating my intent.”
He looked as if her words amused him. They had sounded snooty, she admitted on reflection. “You’re not telling anyone, because you know they’ll try to talk you out of it, and you won’t even be able to argue with them because they’ll be right.”
“I don’t argue.”
“Uh-huh.”
She ignored his skepticism and gestured toward the pad. “That’s nice. Is that how O’Shea’s used to look?”
“It’s the way Karen would like it to look. She’s got this idea that she can fix up the entire neighborhood.”
“Since she married an O’Shea, she can fix up the bar.”
“So we’d have two pretty places on a street full of dumps.” He closed the pad, then nodded toward the street. “Which of these dumps were you thinking about renting in?”
“I don’t know. Any recommendations?”
“Yeah. Stay in your condo. Get your old job back. Forget this place exists.”
“I’ll make you a deal. The day you move away from Serenity, so will I.” She extended her hand. He looked at it as if it were a foreign object, too risky to touch. She could do the awkwardly polite thing and withdraw her hand. Instead, she waited. After one long moment dragged into another, she injected a note of chiding into her voice. “Come on, Reid. You used to run with Ryan Morgan and Vinnie Marino. You worked for a man who would just as soon kill you as look at you. You grew up on the mean streets of Atlanta and moved here to the meanest street of them all. Surely you’re not afraid to shake hands with me on a bet.”
He gave a slow shake of his head. “I don’t like your deal. I don’t plan to leave Serenity.”
She leaned closer to him. If the wall hadn’t been at his back, he would have moved away. “Neither do I,” she murmured, her voice cozily soft. “I guess you’re stuck with me.”
In the cavernous kitchen that filled more than two-thirds of the bar’s ground floor, Reid was making a sandwich and zapping a bowl of canned soup in the microwave when he heard the front door open. For just an instant, he became still, then forced himself to return to his task. Occasionally Karen borrowed Jamey’s key and came over to ask one favor or another, but usually any off-hours visits were from his old man himself. He always had an excuse—working on the books, checking inventory or some other legitimate business—but Reid half suspected Jamey of checking up on him. Though the suspicion rankled, it made good sense. It hadn’t been easy for his father to turn his business over to someone else, especially someone he didn’t trust. Maybe someday that would change—like in thirty or forty years—but, in the meantime, it was only
natural that Jamey would want to keep tabs on him.
The microwave dinged as footsteps entered the hall from behind the bar. Reid removed the soup and set it on the stainless counter as Jamey came through the swinging door. “Hey, Reid. Is this a good time?”
“For what?”
“To talk.”
With a shrug, Reid took a bite from the sandwich. Things did change. It wasn’t so long ago that, if Jamey had wanted to lecture him, he would have done so at his convenience, and, by God, Reid would have stood quietly—and damned resentfully—and listened. Now he got asked if it was convenient before he got chewed out. Progress.
Jamey leaned against the next counter over and went straight to the point. “Cassie’s a nice kid.”
Four lousy words, and the flavor disappeared from Reid’s supper, right along with his appetite. He had known from the minute she opened her mouth about having lunch together yesterday that this conversation would come, that Jamey would make time to point out to him that he should stay away from her, that he wasn’t good enough for her, that she deserved better. Well, he didn’t need the reminders. He knew. Damn it all, he knew.
“Cassie’s sister Jolie and I go way back. She and Nicky were my best friends all through school.”
Reid had his own vague connection to Jolie Wade, not that he was about to mention it. It wouldn’t amuse anyone to know that Nick Carlucci had once offered him twenty bucks to break into Jolie’s car late one night a few years ago. It certainly wouldn’t amuse them to know that he’d done it for free.
Ignoring the soda beside him, he removed a beer from the cooler and took a long, bitter drink before facing his father again. “Don’t waste your time or mine,” he said stiffly. “Cassie’s a nice kid. You and Karen worry about her, and you don’t want her around me. Fine. I don’t want her around, either, but she keeps coming around anyway. You need to have another talk with her. You need to make clear to her just what a worthless bastard I am, because I don’t think the first time sunk in.”
For a moment, Jamey simply stared at him. Then he muttered a curse, swung around and walked away. He didn’t deny that he had warned Cassie to stay away or that he’d come here tonight to make the same warning to Reid. He couldn’t deny that he was a hundred times more concerned with the wellbeing of a woman he’d met only six months ago than with the son he’d fathered more than twenty-six years ago.
The swinging door banged the outer wall as Jamey shoved it open, then banged the counter as it swung back in. He didn’t walk through it, though. Swearing again, he came back. “Do you remember when I called you that?” he demanded, his temper barely in check.
“Yes.” Reid had a lifetime full of little moments like that. The first time Meghan had rejected him in favor of a new boyfriend. The time she had explained to him in a drunken rage just how little she wanted a brat like him in her life. The first time Jamey had looked at him with such scorn. Every time Jamey had walked away from him.
Oh, yeah, he remembered the day his father had told him what a worthless bastard he was. He remembered that he’d had a few things to say, too, sorry attempts to inflict the same sort of pain, unforgivable insults. He remembered the shame, the hurt and the bleak certainty that Jamey was right, that he was worthless.
“It was the day of your grandmother’s funeral—the funeral you couldn’t bother with because you had to party with your friends.” Jamey’s voice was harsh with anger and accusation. “She was your family. She took you in when your mother ran out on you. She gave you food, clothes and a place to live. She took care of you for two years. She was family. You owed her.”
The bitterness in Reid’s smile went all the way through his soul. “She kicked me out less than six months after I came here. She said I was old enough to take care of myself. I slept in the park most nights. When Ryan’s old man was gone, they let me sleep on the floor in their living room. Finally his mother died and his father took off for good, and they let me move in with them.”
Once again Jamey simply stared. His mouth opened, then closed. He didn’t want to believe Reid—that went without saying—but he did. Reid wasn’t sure why. Maybe something he’d said rang true. Maybe it was just gut instinct. Whatever the reason, for the first time in his entire life, his father believed him.
When the silence in the room had almost reached the unbearable stage, Jamey broke it. His voice was low, heavy. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
“You’d already made clear what you thought of me.” Relenting, Reid shrugged. “I’d spent my whole life with people who didn’t want me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” Everyone was sorry. He was the sorriest of them all.
Jamey rubbed his eyes hard with both hands, then sighed. “I really am sorry, Reid. You would have been better off with any other parents in the world. Meghan and I were too stupid and selfish to ever have responsibility for a child.”
“I know. You never wanted a kid. She told me often enough.”
“That’s not...” Apparently seeing the argument as futile, he shook his head and shut up. When he spoke again, it was on a different subject. “I came here to talk to you about Cassie.”
Irritation streaked up Reid’s spine, making his voice sharp. “I’m not going to get involved with her, okay?”
“I just wanted to remind you that she’s not like Tanya or the others. She seems very mature, and she’s very responsible, but she’s also—”
Speaking very clearly, Reid finished for him. “Not my type.”
Jamey gave him a wry look. “Be careful what you say. The last woman I thought wasn’t my type? I ended up married to her.”
Marriage wasn’t something that figured into Reid’s plans. Karen seemed to think it was only natural that someday he would meet a woman, fall in love, get married and have kids, but Karen came from a different world. Her parents had been married a respectable time before she and her twin sister, Kathy, were born, and they were still married nearly forty years later. Her own solid marriage to her first husband had ended only with his death, and all her friends were happily married.
Well, things weren’t like that in his experience. Meghan’s parents had been separated for as long as she could remember. Jamey’s parents, by all accounts, had been miserable right up to their deaths. Few of his old friends had come from two-parent families. Some had been illegitimate and hadn’t known who their fathers were. Ryan’s parents had lived together without benefit of marriage for twenty years in a relationship marked by spectacular fights, infidelity, two kids as unwanted as Reid himself and no affection to speak of. Ryan’s girlfriend Alicia had been raised by her grandmother. J.T.’s father had run out on Shawntae as soon as he’d heard the news of her pregnancy, and her own father had abandoned the family a year or two earlier.
Then, of course, there were his own parents. They had both been seventeen when they’d married, and Meghan had been nearly six months’ pregnant. Reid wasn’t sure why they had bothered to marry at all. It certainly hadn’t been with the intention of making it last. If Jamey’s plan had been to give his kid his name, it hadn’t. worked. By the time Meghan had left him, only days after Reid had been born, she’d hated Jamey so much that she’d wanted nothing from him, not even his name. The birth certificate might list his name as Reid O’Shea, but he’d been a Donovan for as long as he could remember.
No, marriage wasn’t something he saw in his own future.
“Just be careful with Cassie, would you?” Jamey continued. “For all her intelligence and maturity, she’s naive, a little vulnerable. Don’t hurt her.”
“I’m not getting involved with her,” Reid repeated, but his voice was lower, less hostile, less sure. He was too preoccupied with what Jamey wasn’t saying: Stay away from her. You’re no good for her. Leave her alone. She’s not your type. In fact, it almost sounded as if Jamey wouldn’t object to a relationship between him and Cassie, as long as he didn’t hurt her.
As long as he didn’t hurt her. T
hat was a joke. Cassie wasn’t the one at risk. All he could offer was entertainment, a diversion, while she had the power to destroy him.
“I’ll let you get back to your supper.” Pushing away from the counter, Jamey started toward the door. He was almost there when Reid finally spoke.
“She’s planning to move down here.”
His father looked back at him.
“Cassie. She wants to follow in Karen’s footsteps, move in here and become part of the community. She asked which building I would recommend for a rental.”
“What did you tell her?”
“To stay in her condo. To have her head examined.”
“She didn’t agree with you, did she?”
Reid shook his head.
“Stubbornness runs in the Wade family. Jolie’s as hardheaded as they come, and apparently Cassie takes after her.” Jamey gave a rueful shake of his head. “We’d better come up with some suggestions before she moves into an apartment with Vinnie Marino on one side and Satan on the other. Think about it, will you?” With a nod of farewell, he left the kitchen, setting the door to swinging. A moment later it stopped. Another moment later came the click of the French door closing.
Reid poured the beer down the sink, picked up his soda, soup and sandwich and headed into the bar. He didn’t bother with any lights but turned on the television mounted on the wall, sat down at a table against the far wall and ate his dinner to the accompaniment of a Sunday-night sitcom. He didn’t laugh at any of the jokes, didn’t notice any of the commercials, didn’t even take note of the drop-dead-gorgeous actress in the leading role. His thoughts were a few miles distant in a riverside condo.
He had been to Cassie’s place only once. On a hot August night last summer, Karen’s friendship with Alicia Gutierrez had finally pushed Ryan Morgan over the edge. Karen had wound up receiving treatment at the emergency room, and Alicia had gone home with Cassie for a few days. Reid had gone to see her while Cassie was at work. He had never felt so out of his element in his entire life. The condo belonged to Cassie’s rich brother-in-law, Alicia had informed him, but the knowledge hadn’t made a difference. It was an impressive place, with a cool absence of color, highly polished and rough-textured surfaces, undoubtedly expensive furnishings and a quiet, calm, serene feeling. Whether she owned the place or not, whether she had that kind of money, whether she’d been born, like him and Alicia, in poverty on Serenity Street, Cassie belonged there.
The Taming Of Reid Donovan Page 5