Someone backstage—her mother’s dresser, Kate recalled—had once told her she would grow into her bone structure and become a true beauty. She hadn’t believed it. But now, today, if she didn’t turn on too many lights . . .
No! It was all wrong. The dress, a subtle rose and mauve flower print with touches of white lace, was far too dressy for Sunday dinner in Golden Beach.
It was Easter dinner. A week late.
She didn’t have anything else to wear.
She wasn’t home. Michael would have to go without her.
“Kate, open this door!” Michael, adding his voice to the pounding of his fists.
Kate continued to sit in the lavender chair, head bowed, the graceful folds of her rosy silk dress spread out around her.
“Kate, I’m going to break down the damn door!”
Fury triumphed over fear. Kate sprang to her feet, charged down the narrow hallway. When she put her lips to the crack, the aluminum seemed cold, even though the temperature outside was pushing eighty. “Just let the whole neighborhood hear you, why don’t you?” she hissed.
Michael dropped his tone to match hers. “Kate, I thought a LALOC knight had more courage. Come on, the family’s waiting. Mom just hates to have dinner get cold. Kate? They’re good people, Kate. And Mark is looking forward to seeing you again. Kate?”
She stepped back, eyeing the door as if it were covered with hunter spiders. With the heavy step of the condemned, Kate picked up the small stylish purse she had purchased to go with the dress, checked her shoes, also brand new. As were the pantyhose. Michael, bless him, was momentarily quiet, as if he sensed he had to give her time to adjust.
Was she so terrified because meeting Michael’s parents seemed too much like commitment? Or was she simply afraid of seeing a family—a real family—acting like a normal family should? Michael’s sister Gayle and her husband would be there. With their children. A big family gathering, herself the only stranger. Kate Knight on the outside, looking in. As always.
Not really. Truthfully, she didn’t know what a big family gathering was like. Tag had avoided his family like the plague. And her own? Her parents had frequently been on separate parts of the planet for holidays. Moments of family togetherness—even for just the three of them—were as rare as hen’s teeth.
Kate unlocked the door, pushed it open. Michael, in suit and tie, stood there, his glower gradually transforming into open admiration. His lips puckered, he actually whistled. She should be furious, running to grab her LALOC sword and . . .
His eyes filled with admiration, Michael held out his hand. And stupid, weak, girlish tears threatened as the warmth of his fingers closed over hers. Here was comfort, strength, friendship. How could she be afraid when Michael was with her? Kate stuck her chin in the air, allowed him to seat her in the 4Runner as if she were the fragile flower her mother had always wanted her to be. After all . . . the girl who had been Katherine Harmon was remarkably fragile. She’d thought herself entitled to an easier road in life. And when she didn’t get it, she’d folded. Run away. Shut herself off. Even Kate Knight, physically tough and agile as an eel, was a wimp, afraid to face the world. It took a Michael Turco to dig her out of her tunnel, make her look at the mess she’d made of her life.
Idly, Kate glanced at the row on row of orange trees outside the SUV’s windows. Painful longing stabbed through her. The glorious scent of orange blossoms, now faded and gone, seemed to linger over the grove, joyfully shouting of love, weddings, and happily ever after. All right, she’d have to admit it, her biological clock wasn’t just ticking; it had exploded. And on top of everything else, Kate was afraid it was coloring her thinking. Could she trust her emotions any more than she could trust her head to find her way through the Gordian knot she’d made of her life? Was Michael just a port in a storm? A false haven who would turn on her?
By the time the 4Runner pulled into a broad circular driveway before a sprawling two-story home, Kate’s stomach was as knotted as the turmoil in her mind.. “We can’t be here already!” she exclaimed. They couldn’t be more than a mile or two from her mobile home.
“When dad built out here beyond the orange grove, it was all country. Not another house in sight, let alone any developments. They’ve got ten acres, two horses, two dogs, three cats. And I think there’s a litter of kittens at the moment.”
“Kittens?” Kate’s pale face actually took on some animation. Michael was relieved. If the family was too much for her, they could always slip away on the excuse of showing her the kittens. Give her some breathing space. He’d warned everyone not to overwhelm Kate, not to pounce on her, drag her into the midst of the family, willy nilly. Kate needed to absorb new situations at her own pace. Being plunged into a world with four new adults and two boisterous children would be enough of a shock without being treated as if she were the Prodigal Daughter. Which wasn’t easy when his bringing a girl to Easter dinner was screaming serious intentions to the entire family.
And seeing Mark wasn’t going to be a picnic for her either.
Michael stretched out a hand to Kate. Her brief animation faded. She was clinging to the her seat as if it were the last zone of safety in a world exploding around her. “Kate, you meet new people every day at the office.”
“This is different.”
“Why?” He wanted to sympathize, but somehow challenging her seemed the best move.
“When was the last time you brought a girl to your parent’s house for dinner?”
Whew! Michael put his hand back on the steering wheel, gripped it hard. “It’s been a while,” he conceded.
Kate groaned. “You set me up! They’re going to think—”
“They’re not going to think anything except we’re working together on a case. You already know Mark—you wanted to see how he’s doing, etcetera, etcetera. That’s it. Perfectly logical. No strings.”
“Just business.”
“Just business.” Michael confirmed.
Dammit! Kate slammed open the 4Runner’s door, slid down to the concrete driveway. She’d gone from friend to business in the space of a heartbeat, and it was all her fault. Kate Knight, prickly pear.
No! She was Kate Knight, LALOC warrior. She could handle anything.
Buck Turco was an older version of Mark rather than Michael. Big, handsome, and hearty, his silver gray hair added an air of distinction to a frame that could probably still lift a hundred-pound cement block without breathing hard. His handshake was firm, his smile broad. Having already been charmed by both his sons, there was no way Kate could not like him.
After greeting them at the door, Buck introduced his daughter Gayle, her husband Dean, and their two offspring who, Kate guessed, were about five and three years old. The all-American family, she reflected sourly. Gayle, as dark-haired and dark-eyed as her brothers, displayed Mark Turco’s swift smile and warm charm. Her husband, built like a rangy linebacker, offered a firm handshake and a grin so openly approving, Kate blushed. Dean Roberson was the odd man out in the Turco family, she noted. A round boyish face, sandy hair, blue eyes—there seemed to be nothing of him in his two children. The Turco genes ran strong and dark.
“Welcome, fair maiden,” Dean Roberson quipped. “Another paleface dares enter Apache land.”
“Old tale,” Michael interjected, taking Kate’s arm.
“Word of warning,” Dean intoned. “The army exiled the fightingest Apaches to Florida where some ended up in the glades with a bunch of other Indians running from the government.” Dean waggled his eyebrows. “And not all of them stayed in the swamp,” he added, tossing a significant, if good-humored, glance at his father-in-law.
“Apocryphal,” Buck Turco rumbled. “Don’t believe a word, Kate. We’re just plain old Americans here. Maybe older than some,” he conceded, “but I don’t sweat the ancestry.”
Lips twitching, Michael led Kate into the kitchen where his mother was just bending down to lift a glazed ham from the oven. Cramming his hands into her oven
mitts, he lifted the pan to the top of the stove.
Kate eyed the immensity of the Turco’s country kitchen. A place of wonder, it seemed larger than her entire mobile home. Gleaming countertops, beautifully detailed wooden cabinets, stove, grill, double ovens, and every other kitchen appliance ever invented from microwave to juicer and bread machine. Ruthlessly, Kate repressed a wave of outright jealousy. She wasn’t domestic. It didn’t matter.
Really.
Michael’s mother, she discovered, was only average height, her hair chestnut, eyes a light amber, skin so pale it could almost be called classic English. Carrie Turco’s smile of welcome was so genuine, her spontaneous hug so natural and unaffected Kate couldn’t possibly retreat into her shell. She didn’t even stop to wonder if Michael’s mother was looking on her as the answer to the Turcos’ prayers for their eldest son to settle down.
That would come later.
“Hi, Kate.”
She gulped, repressing a gasp of dismay, as she turned toward the doorway. Blast Michael! Why hadn’t he warned her Mark was in a wheelchair? He’d aged five years, Kate thought. Yet Mark Turco was still the handsome charmer, the dashing dark-eyed knight, somehow managing to give the impression his wheelchair was only a temporary inconvenience, a new toy to be played with and discarded when he grew tired of it.
“Hi, yourself!” Kate strode across the kitchen, bent down to give Mark a hug. “So how goes it?” she asked, allowing him to see in her eyes the anxiety her light words masked.
Mark tossed his head toward the hallway. “So let’s talk.” He did a fast wheelie, as adept at his wheelchair as he once was with his horse, and headed down the hall, obviously expecting Kate to follow. After an apologetic glance at Michael and his mother, Kate trotted after him. Mark disappeared through a door at the end of hallway. Kate followed. The room was an office, complete with nearly every gadget considered essential to the modern age, from computer, printer, scanner, fax, and copier to multi-line phone. “Sit,” Mark commanded, waving a hand toward an office swivel chair. Kate sat.
“A spectacular girl,” Carrie Turco approved as Kate followed Mark out of the kitchen.
Michael looked down on his mother with one eyebrow raised, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Well?” Carrie challenged, surprising him..
“Is that all you’re going to say?”
“What else can I say? I just met the girl. Spectacular covers it all. Her looks are striking. She’s a match for you in energy and intelligence, that much I can see at a glance. If she wasn’t well brought up and good-natured, you wouldn’t have brought her here. So what more can I say?”
“You’re biting your tongue on a lot of questions.”
Carrie Turco turned away, ostensibly to check on something simmering on the stove. Over her shoulder she said, “You warned us not to jump to conclusions, Michael, and I’m trying. But . . .” Carrie sighed, looked her son in the eye. “Let’s face it, we all want to know if you’re serious about Kate. I mean, I can’t remember the last time you brought a girl home for dinner. I know you think I’m anxious to marry you off,” Carrie added in a rush, “but it’s time, you know. You’ve been on your own too long. A wife and children are wonderful things, Michael. Don’t blame us for wondering, even pushing, a bit.”
Michael gave his mother a bear hug. “I don’t, mom. Oh, I admit I grumble when you’re eager to hear about any girl I date more than once. But . . . well, a home and family are beginning to look more appealing by the minute. Scary, but true. Unfortunately . . .” Michael stepped back, ran a hand through his straight black hair. “Unfortunately, Kate’s not quite on the same wave length yet. But,” he added with a grin, “I’m working on it.
Carrie squeezed her son’s arm. “I’m glad there’s someone at last, Michael. And no need to worry. You’re a fighter. You always seem to get what you want.”
Michael’s smile faded, he shook his head. “It’s all so new, I can’t really be sure where we’re headed. I’m so used to being alone. So’s Kate. There’s a lot we have to work out. At this point it could go either way. But, yes, I catch myself thinking beyond tomorrow or next week. This one could be for the long haul.”
From the sparkle in his mother’s eyes Michael could tell she was suppressing an urge to shout, “Hip hip, hooray!” But Carrie Turco merely smiled a secret little smile and turned back to the stove.
Obviously, Mark Turco had passed Speech Therapy with flying colors. “Look, Kate,” he burst out as soon as she sat down, “I’m sorry you got mixed up in all this. I never thought of old Michael as being the Quest type, but finding this jerk has turned into his personal Holy Grail. Which is no excuse for getting you involved.”
Even as Kate found herself springing to Michael’s defense, she was aware of the irony. “It’s all right, really,” she declared. “It’s a simple thing, introducing him to LALOC. And the king knows. I mean”—Kate smiled—“it’s pretty hard to hide that Michael’s a cop.”
Mark grinned, then shook his head, his good humor quickly fading. “This guy’s dangerous, Kate. I don’t want his madness to spill over on you. Michael shouldn’t be using you like this.”
Warmed by his concern, Kate paused her automatic protest. She really didn’t know Mark Turco well. They were simply acquaintances who knew each other from the Medieval and Renaissance Fair circuit. Yet he was reacting with the concern of a brother. Her brother, not Michael’s. She needed to treat his anxiety with as much seriousness as he was. “I admit I was angry when Michael first asked me to help him go undercover among my friends. It seemed like betrayal. And then”—Kate looked Mark straight in the eye—“and then I recalled why he was doing it. That it was for you. And for the other people who had been hurt. Plus the people who would be hurt—as they have been these last few weeks.”
Mark looked down, then out the window toward the brilliant April sunshine. “You’re saying I shouldn’t take so much blame on myself, that I’m too blasted egotistical.”
“Mark,” Kate chided gently, “I’m saying you’re not the only one who’s been hurt. The worst, yes, but Michael’s doing this for everyone, including me, because any of us could be next. I’m glad to be helping.” Mark was now scowling at the dark computer screen. “Okay,” Kate added briskly, “I doubt Michael would be giving his own time to what’s really a low-priority investigation, and outside his jurisdiction, if it weren’t for you. But he is, and I’m damned glad of it. We’ve got some kind of crazy prankster, maybe a genuine madman on the loose, and none of the rest of us are qualified to know what to do when we actually find out who it is.”
Silence. Kate couldn’t tell if she’d made her point or not.
“So how are you and big brother getting along?”
The question came out of thin air. Kate’s feet pressed into the floor, as if she were about to jump up and run. “Uh . . . fine,” she murmured.
“Fine as in you’re sleeping together, or as in you’re still celibate?”
Kate gasped. “Who told you I was celibate?” she demanded.
“Come on, Kate, be real. A woman your age is celibate, and you think the guys aren’t going to talk about it?”
Of course they talked about it. The LALOC men talked about it; why shouldn’t the men on the Fair circuit? Why shouldn’t she be the butt of crude jokes, the meat of speculation, innuendo, gossip . . . Damn and blast!
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Mark persisted.
“Your brother and I are friends,” Kate replied, hoping her tone would give him frostbite.
“That phrase sure covers a multitude of sins.”
“We leave sinning to our psycho.” Even as she said it, Kate cringed at her Miss-Prim-and-Proper tone.
“I didn’t think old Michael was such a slow-top.” Mark shook his head. “Here the whole family is rejoicing because big brother’s brought a girl home for dinner, and now we find he’s not even sleeping with—”
“You wouldn’t!”
Mark sighed. “No, you’re right, I don’t tell other people’s secrets. I apologize. I was way out of line. It’s just that . . . I guess I’ve been bound to this damn chair too long. Have to get my kicks somehow. And . . . well, I kinda hoped you and Michael were hitting it off. A match made in heaven and all that. I mean, it’s gotta be at least ten years since he brought a girl to the house.”
Kate winced. She’d been right to be terrified. This was a significant occasion. No wonder everyone was examining her like some prize hunk of meat newly displayed on the counter. She wasn’t going to forgive Michael for this. He was creating a false impression, fooling his parents, his sister, everyone but Mark. Making her into something she wasn’t.
The question was, by fitting her into his personal life, was Michael making her into something she wanted to be?
It was just a Sunday dinner, for heaven’s sake! No need to make such a fuss. Talk about making mountains out of molehills.
“I’m here because Michael and I are working together,” Kate stated firmly. “We’re partners, that’s all.” She turned the full force of flashing green eyes on Mark. “And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t let your sense of humor get the best of you. You know—tossing out smart remarks, cute innuendos, knowing smirks. If —and it’s a very big if—anything is going to happen between Michael and me, it needs privacy to grow on. Lots of it. You start making us a couple, and I’m walking home. Got it?”
Mark’s grin was unrepentant. “Got it . . . Sis.”
“If you weren’t in a wheelchair . . .,” Kate threatened.
Chuckling, Mark snapped his chair around and headed for the door, grandly waving Kate in front of him.
Chapter 19
“Do you think Ace would like a playmate?” Michael asked as they knelt beside the box of kittens, which was tucked into a corner of the laundry room. Five small balls of fur, eyes barely open, wriggled for position against their mother’s underbelly, pink mouths searching for a nipple, tiny claws kneading fur as they, too, had their Easter dinner.
Florida Knight Page 23