Neanderthal Marries Human: A Smarter Romance (Knitting in the City)

by Penny Reid

  “No you didn’t.”

  “So, is it true? Are you cutting everyone out?”

  I waited for a moment. Then I strolled to the couch and sat down, stating the obvious. “This is a waste of my time.”

  “Are you going to cross me now?”

  I squinted at him. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because, if you’re not looking for influence, you don’t need my info.”

  “Seamus, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I run a security firm. I provide security for corporations—businesses, banks, hotels, et cetera. As far as I know, you are not affiliated with a corporation. You and I have nothing to do with each other.”

  His eyes narrowed and he studied my face like it held the key to his continued existence. “Just know this: you come after me, I come after you.”

  Dan muttered a sacrilegious curse. He then followed it with, “What are you even doing here, huh? What are you going to do? Send more guys to Chicago to get stabbed with knitting needles? Just let it go, Seamus.” He huffed in exasperation.

  “I can’t,” Seamus said to his brother, but his eyes never left mine.

  “You need to because Quinn is out; he’s been out for almost a decade, and everyone he cares about is untouchable.”

  “That’s a load of shit, Dan.” Seamus turned to his brother. “He isn’t out. He’s been building an empire, a global fucking empire of contacts, of people to use. He is the master of using people. I think I’m an excellent delegator, but I’m nothing, nothing in comparison. Now he wants to wash his hands? Too bad! Hands that dirty don’t get clean.”

  “Nothing we do is illegal.” Dan threw his hands up and yelled this to the ceiling.

  “Yeah, except the part about knowing. Your guy here is an accessory to hundreds of felonies because he knows.”

  I was bored. Seamus’s dramatics were boring.

  “Get to the point.” Dan sliced his hand through the air. “What do you want?”

  “I want assurance that your decade of squeaky clean information gathering isn’t going to come back and bite me in the ass, that’s what I want.”

  Seamus wasn’t the first person I’d had this conversation with. The first question most of my private clients had after they found out I was offloading their account was, “What assurances do I have that you’re going to keep my secrets?”

  What they didn’t know was that if the secret was bad enough, I’d already spilled it. People with reprehensible secrets weren’t used; they were exposed.

  If the secret was drug distribution, human trafficking, or any other form of mass destruction or exploitation of an individual, that information had already been passed to the right people, people who could make it stop without my involvement being revealed.

  I knew with certainty that my involvement would never be known because the right people—the people who ultimately made the bad guys pay—didn’t know I’d been the one to provide the evidence.

  Luckily, very few of the private clients were of this type. Most of them were of the hiding funds offshore type, the tax evasion type, the recreational drug user type, or the cheating on their spouse type. Their secrets ranged from embarrassing to potentially life and career devastating, but very rarely—in my estimation—consummately evil.

  “Seamus, you’re an idiot.” Dan was out of patience.

  I glanced from one brother to the other. Physically, they were very similar, six foot, stocky, brown eyes. They could have been twins. My brother Des and I didn’t even look related. We were approximately the same height, but he was blond and took after my mother.

  Des had been my hero; just like Seamus had been Dan’s hero. But whereas Des’s values of honor and courage were easy to admire, Seamus was a selfish asshole.

  Seamus glared at his brother. “Get off your fucking high horse….”

  “That’s enough.” This conversation was going nowhere and it needed to end. “Seamus, I have nothing to offer you other than assurance that I am entirely disinterested in your existence.”

  Seamus sniffed, scowled, but nodded. “Yeah. Okay…good.”

  I waited a moment, allowed him to relax, get comfortable in the promise of my indifference.

  Then I added, “Don’t give me a reason to become interested.”

  ***

  Just when I thought the day couldn’t get any worse, more hell broke loose.

  I walked into my parents’ house and found Jem.

  Actually, I walked in on my dad slapping handcuffs on Jem. She was lying face down, her cheek pressed into the wood floor of the entranceway. He had one knee on her back, pinning her in place, though, giving credit to her crazy, she was doing her best to break free from his hold.

  “You haven’t read me my rights, pig,” she shouted as she squirmed, thrashing her long legs.

  “Fuck a duck, look who it is.” Dan stopped short just inside the door then glanced at my dad, “Sorry, Mr. Sullivan.”

  My dad heaved a sigh; otherwise, he appeared to be completely composed.

  “Where’s Janie?” I asked, craning my neck to check the living room.

  “Not here,” my dad answered. “They left this afternoon, aren’t back yet.”

  Worry surged in my gut, and I pulled out my phone. I turned away to call Stan.

  “Boss.” He answered on the first ring.

  “Where are you?”

  “Beau Boutique.”

  I frowned. “What the hell is that?”

  “The hell if I know. I’ve never seen so much pink in my life. How many dresses does she hafta try on? And they’re all white! The ladies are drinking champagne outta glasses the size of my thumb. But don’t worry, Boss. They don’t have beer. I asked.”

  “Jesus Christ, Stan….”

  “I know, right?”

  “No.” I hit my fist against the door jam. “You were supposed to bring them home.”

  The line was silent for a moment then Stan whispered, “You want me to take champagne from your mom?”

  I rolled my eyes, thought about telling him to get his ass back to the house, but then I imagined Janie and my mom’s reaction if I tried to dictate their comings and goings. It was better that my mom stay and drink her champagne. Under the circumstances, it was probably good the ladies were out.

  “Fine. They have one hour. Text Dan the address.”

  I ended the call and turned, found Dan standing behind me.

  “Everything okay?”

  I nodded, glaring at him. Then, because all hell was breaking loose and Dan was keeping his shit together, I decided now was the moment.

  “Will you be my best man?”

  He blinked at me. Then his eyes narrowed and he looked abruptly irritated. “Of course. Why the hell you even asking that shit? I’ve already talked to your mom about the tuxes.”

  “Good.” I tried to frown, failed. “Let’s go.”

  We walked back to the entranceway where my dad and my handcuffed future sister-in-law were still on the ground. I nodded once to my dad, communicating silently that Janie and Mom were fine, then shifted my attention to Jem. She was intermittently mumbling to herself then screaming. She had just tried to bite my dad’s arm, and was being giant a pain in the ass.

  She wasn’t supposed to be in Boston. She wasn’t even supposed to be in the States. I’d dropped her in Rio with a hundred thousand dollars in cash and a new passport. She promised me that she would disappear. I didn’t really believe her promise, but I hoped she would never be my problem again.

  I stepped into her line of sight, leaned against the wall, and rubbed my forehead. I was getting a headache. She looked tan, which—for her—meant very freckled. It also meant her eyes seemed lighter, not amber like Janie’s looked against her pale skin. Jem’s looked almost yellow.

  “I just left Seamus,” I said.

  Panic flickered behind her eyes. She quickly clamped down the flare of emotion and lifted her chin defiantly. “So? What do I care?”

  “So, if you don
’t stop kicking, biting, and pissing me off, then I’m going to call Seamus and ask him to come pick you up.”

  Considering the fact that Seamus wanted Jem dead, I felt this threat would be most effective.

  Her eyes fired shards of yellow glass at me. “You wouldn’t. Janie would never forgive you.”

  “You know Janie. She’s very pragmatic.”

  Jem huffed, growled, screwed her eyes shut, then stopped kicking. Her legs fell to the floor with a thud.

  My dad glanced at me, cocked an eyebrow.

  I considered which version of the truth to tell him and finally settled on, “Seamus is her man.”

  The corner of his mouth quirked up. “And Dan is your second in command, and Janie is your woman….” His eyes narrowed slightly, and I could see that he was assembling an invisible relationship diagram. “Small world.”

  I shrugged, decided to tell him later that I’d first noticed Janie in Chicago at the Fairbanks building because I thought she was Jem. I uncomfortably realized that, in a way, Jem was partially responsible for Janie’s and my relationship.

  I dismissed the thought.

  For the second time in less than as many hours, I found myself asking an individual on my list of top three people I’d like to have disappear the same question.

  “Why are you here?”

  Her eyes were still shut, but the muscle at her temple jumped when I spoke.

  “Tell your douchebag doppelganger to uncuff me.”

  “Nope,” my dad responded. “I’m arresting you for something. I just haven’t decided on the full list of charges yet. No need to uncuff you if I’m just going to do it again in five minutes.”

  “I’m not going to jail!” she screamed, her eyes flying open.

  “Why are you here?” I repeated, my fingers digging into the space between my eyebrows. I needed an ibuprofen.

  “Listen….” She licked her lips, her eyes darting around the room. “I’ve been in town for two weeks, heard you were here with my sister. I need to speak to Janie and…I need money.”

  “What happened to the money I gave you?” I asked, not caring what conclusions my dad would draw because, at some point, I knew I’d be able to set him straight. This thought caught me off guard and I wondered at what point over the last several days I’d started taking for granted that I would have a future relationship with my parents.

  “I ran out,” she said. “It wasn’t enough.”

  “You ran out.”

  “I need to talk to Janie!” she shrieked.

  “That’s not going to happen,” Dan said, shaking his head, his arms crossed in a wall of defiance.

  “I’ll tell Janie you want to speak to her,” I said, I wanted to outright deny her request, but it wasn’t my place to do so. “It’s up to her.”

  “Just…just let me talk to her and give me some cash, and I’ll leave you alone, I swear.”

  “She was holding this when she broke through the window.” My dad chose this moment to withdraw a .22 pistol from the back of his pants. “I thought she was Janie at first, so I didn’t shoot.”

  I let out a frustrated bark of laughter. Thank God my mother had made an appointment at Beau Boutique so Janie could try on white dresses.

  “Listen, freak show,” Dan said; he had reached the end of his tether, and I wasn’t surprised. He knew Jem a lot better than I did. “You’re going to jail. You see this guy, Mr. Sullivan? Quinn’s dad? He’s the real deal, sweetheart. You broke into his house. He’s Boston PD. He’s a detective. That means he’s a badass. You’re going to jail for breaking and entering into a badass police detective’s house…with a gun you crazy bitch.”

  Dan waited a moment, giving her time to start plotting a way to weasel out of the situation, then he added, “Not even Quinn can save you from that.”

  Jem’s heavy breathing was the only sound in the room. Tears filled her eyes. No one was impressed.

  Then, my dad read Jem her rights.

  Just then my phone rang. I turned from the scene relieved for the distraction. I walked to the dining room. It was a New York number, but I didn’t recognize the owner. I debated a half second whether or not to answer.

  Nothing could shock me at this point, so I picked up the call. “Yes?”

  “Hi. Is this Quinn Sullivan?” It was a male, smoker, late twenties or early thirties, who sounded vaguely familiar.

  “Who is this?”

  “Uh, Elizabeth Finney gave me your card. I’m Nico Moretti, and I’m in need of a new private security firm.”

  CHAPTER 18

  *Janie*

  “Nico Moretti? The comedian?” Katherine glanced from me to Quinn, her face a mixture of delight and disbelief. “That good looking guy who gets naked at the end of his show?”

  “How do you know he gets naked?” Desmond’s hands stilled, his pizza slice halfway between his plate and his mouth. He was frowning at his wife with a very Quinn-esque glare of displeasure.

  It was after 10:30 p.m. and we were just finishing dinner. I’d been starving; thus, I was quiet through most of Dan’s recitation of the evening’s events. I got the impression that he blurred the facts surrounding Seamus’s visit—likely for Quinn’s parents’ benefit—but held nothing back when recounting Jem’s arrest.

  Apparently, we’d missed quite a lot while I was trying on wedding dresses.

  I was surprised by Jem’s attempt to break into their house, but then again, nothing she did really surprised me anymore. I hadn’t decided what to do about her request to speak with me. Therefore, I delayed my decision. It’s not like she was going anywhere.

  I felt annoyed and guilty about the whole thing. I was annoyed because she was once again mindlessly casting her insanity and poor decisions all over the place and into my life. She was like an insane chef, tossing globs of rancid tomato sauce around a restaurant then telling everyone that dinner is served. The analogy made just as much sense as her behavior choices.

  I felt guilty because I felt annoyed. Part of me would always hold out hope for her, for a relationship, and I wanted to feel more than annoyance for my little sister.

  I’d tried to apologize to Desmond and Katherine but they waved me off, said that I was not responsible for the decisions of other people.

  I think Katherine in particular just wanted to know more about Nico Moretti. Dan was happy to recount Quinn’s call, even though he hadn’t heard both sides of it. He also didn’t try to hide his excitement about Nico. It seemed Dan was a fan.

  Katherine rolled her eyes at her husband’s expression then turned to confide in me. “He’s very hot.”

  I smiled but didn’t comment, even though I agreed.

  Quinn had been quiet during dinner. As far as I knew, if he accepted Nico Moretti as a client, this would be his first celebrity and his first new private client account in over four months. I wondered what he was thinking, but didn’t ask.

  Quinn leaned back in his chair and picked up his whiskey. He seemed to be studying the contents of the glass as though he was pondering the manufacturing methods of Texas distilleries.

  Therefore, I was surprised when he announced rather loudly, “I’m sorry.”

  We all looked at him. I noted Katherine and Desmond shared a glance of confusion then shifted their attention to me. I looked to Dan. He also appeared to be perplexed.

  “What’s that, dear?” Katherine asked, a gentle smile on her face.

  “I’m sorry about Des. I’m sorry it happened and that I could have prevented it.” Quinn’s gaze moved between his parents.

  A long moment followed. Katherine’s smile waned, her face fell, and a flash of pain cast a shadow over her features. Desmond held Quinn’s gaze, his expression stone, but that didn’t signify anything. Like Quinn, his thoughts were private and his emotions were like ghosts.

  Quinn swallowed, his throat working with effort, and I was surprised to see that he made no endeavor to hide his anguish. I’d never seen him so transparently desolate, and my h
eart reached out to him. I didn’t realize it, but so did my hands and my arms. Before I quite understood that I’d moved, I was embracing his shoulders and holding him tightly.

  He repeated on a whisper, “I’m so sorry.”

  Katherine pressed her lips together and lifted her chin. Her eyes shone, and I knew she was holding back tears.

  “Quinn….” she started, stopped, cleared her throat. “You couldn’t have known.”

  He shook his head at his mother and asked on a tortured sigh, “Why don’t you hate me?”

  A pained understanding claimed her features, like something in her broke and mended at his words, as though pieces of a puzzle finally fit together, and the picture they revealed was dreadfully wrong.

  “Baby, I could never hate you. We have never hated you. We may have been lost to our grief, we may have lashed out at you in despair, but we never hated you—not ever. Loving unconditionally brings only joy. You are our son, and when Des…when Des….” Her chin wobbled and two tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Katherine quickly wiped them away and swallowed before continuing. “When Des died, our hearts were broken, and so was yours; so was Shell’s. We should have taken comfort in each other instead of mindlessly casting blame. That’s on us, baby. That’s not your fault. And I am so, so sorry we didn’t do something about it before now.” The end of her sentence was lost on a sob and she buried her face in her hands.

  Quinn shook his head, but before he could challenge his mother’s words, his father reached over and gathered his wife in his arms, pulled her to his lap, and tucked her head against his shoulder.

  Then he turned his eyes to Quinn. I heard and felt Quinn’s small intake of breath at his father’s expression, perhaps because it was so full of love and compassion.

  Then Desmond spoke. “Blame is a thief. It robs us blind while it wastes our time, time we could be spending as a family, making memories, supporting each other. Your mother and I don’t want to miss another day with you, or your sister, or Janie. You need to cut that shit out. You need to let go of it, because your mother needs you…I need you. And I think you might need us too.”