“Gladly,” he muttered, grateful for the chance to leave this destruction and get back to the marina where he belonged, “now that you know what kind of man I am and what I’m capable of.”
There were no tears this time, no sting of her anger colliding with his, no marinara sauce sliding down her clothes, but he’d hurt her even more deeply than he had fourteen years ago.
’Cause he was every bit the coward she’d branded him. And yeah, he was a bastard. She was right about that, too.
*
“Where were you when I was being mauled against the wall?”
Sofia waited in the entryway to her great-aunt’s bedroom, fully expecting some sort of response because apparently she’d lost her faculties.
Tish didn’t lift her head off her front paws, just continued to lie like a muscled, furred statue on the rug at the foot of Luz’s massive bed.
Beside the beast was a pair of slippers, a bit curled at the sole and frayed all around, probably from a few dozen too many washings. A braided throw blanket trailed off the end of the bed. It was an unmade mess from the wrinkled sheets to the misshapen pillows propped against the headboard. Clothes were laid across the comforter—all price-tagged dresses in shades of blue, gray, and black.
Elegant, muted, kind of somber. Funeral attire, and all completely wrong for Luz. She wasn’t elegant or muted or somber. She wouldn’t have wanted to be buried dressed as someone her spirit wouldn’t recognize.
How could Bautista have allowed this? If he’d been the one to select her clothes, then how could he have bungled something significant for a woman he seemed to respect so deeply?
Unless he was just another man who chose when to really care and when to quit giving a shit. The only predictable thing about males was that they were utterly and heartbreakingly unpredictable.
“Some companion you are,” she said to Tish, coming into the room and pretending that it didn’t feel weird to be intruding in her great-aunt’s private space. “The only protection I had in that kitchen was a condom. If you won’t be a reliable guard dog, then how do you expect to earn your keep?”
She didn’t mean what she was saying, and from the dog’s soft, bored sigh, Tish could peer through her flimsy bluster and wasn’t much impressed with what she found underneath.
Not that Sofia was much impressed with herself at the moment.
Burke Wolf kissed me, groped me, bit me.
And she’d relished it, which revealed how bent she was beneath her practicality and sensibleness. She could still feel the slide of his tongue against hers and the tingle on her skin where he’d touched her.
At least her teenage wonderings about making out with her best friend were finally granted closure. It’d taken fourteen years, but she’d experienced a dream perversely come true and her curiosity was sated.
Only…who knew he’d be so expert at kissing and groping. And biting.
Sofia met her reflection in the mirror above Luz’s dresser. The bleeding had passed, and now there was a faint sliver of red where he’d marked her. She figured wherever he was now, he wore the markings her fingernails had left on his body.
That wall of muscle and warm skin had felt glorious under her hands, so glorious that she’d lost herself and it’d taken an almost pleasurable touch of pain to reintroduce reality.
Kissing him had been a fantasy, a nice, if dark, departure from sound judgment, but not the fairy tale he’d accused her of holding on to. Not once today had she looked at him and seen a vision of happily ever after.
She’d seen…sex. Lust. Arousal. Dangerous, impossible trouble.
She wanted him and he knew it—which had lent him the perfect ammo to use against her.
The Burke who’d been her friend ages ago wouldn’t exact this degree of intimate hurt on someone he cared about—not even when he was high or twisted up in withdrawal or at his worst.
Had Luz known how fundamentally Burke had changed? Or had she accepted this version of him just as she’d accepted all his demons before?
Sofia’s father had warned her off striking up a friendship with a pothead, but Luz had seen Burke as “the grocer’s boy” and treated him neighborly. Her philosophy was that Sofia’s life was hers to wreck if she wanted. It had been another point of contention between Finnegan Mercer and Luz Azcárraga…another issue to deepen the resentment that had begun when Finnegan’s wife cut out on him and their baby girl and he’d blamed Luz for raising her niece, Ellen, to be a free spirit.
Luz was wise. Sofia’s life was her own and even though she’d veered off track and let Burke kiss her today, she was far from a wreck. She didn’t need him to get her through or to be her friend.
Unlike when she had been a teenager and sitting in doctor’s offices while most kids her age were hanging out, she had plenty of friends now.
One of whom was right here in Eaves and likely wondering if Sofia was bunking with a Siberian husky in her car.
Grabbing her phone and dialing Joss, she waited in the living room and counted the rings to distract herself from letting her gaze drift across all the photographs. Luz was big on photos and on bringing the personalities of people she cared about into her home.
Had Sofia ever gotten around to hanging any pictures in her own apartment? She didn’t think so. Joss had put up so many that it wasn’t all that necessary for Sofia to carve out time to give décor any real thought.
“Where’d you end up?” Joss asked immediately.
“Aunt Luz’s apartment over the boutique. I met up with her lawyer at this little bar on the corner and he gave me the keys.” Sofia went to the sofa and started to smooth out a wrinkle from the blanket draped over the back. “It’s a lot like how I remember it. I used to live here.”
“Did you really? I thought you and your dad had a house.”
“We did. I stayed with Luz for a while when I was in high school.” Sofia didn’t explain why she’d moved in at age sixteen and had stayed for over a year. That shame was best left in the past…or dredged up whenever the name Mercer came up in gossips’ conversation, she imagined.
Remember that Mercer girl with the heart condition? Remember that father of hers? You know why they had to leave town, don’t you?
“You lived above an erotic store. How jealous were your classmates?”
“It wasn’t all that glamorous. Luz was all about self-sufficiency and a person making their own way, so she had me earn my keep by working in the store after hours. Cleaning and inventory and counting out the register—that sort of thing.”
“Was there at least a discount on all that inventory?”
“I think I’ll keep you guessing.”
“Are you going to be all right tonight?” Joss asked. “I’m worried about you. You didn’t cry. People are supposed to cry at funerals, aren’t they? Isn’t that the big selling point?”
“The tears just aren’t there.”
“Is that shock?”
“Can we put less energy into diagnosing what I’m feeling and…God, I don’t know…just focus on what’s next?”
“Yeah, but what is next? Do you know?”
“No,” Sofia had to admit. “It’s like this. A few days ago I was functioning in the light and could see everything fine. Then Luz’s lawyer called me, and that call cut out the lights. Now I’m figuring out everything in the dark. It’s scary.”
“Being in the dark’s not so scary if somebody’s there with you. You’re not alone in this, Sof. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Mean it?”
“Yeah.” Sofia smiled. What had she done to deserve the friend she’d found in Joss? “It’s kind of strange to be here without Aunt Luz. The dog misses her. I think she’s depressed. She’s lying on the floor in the bedroom.”
“I had a cat when I was a kid. No matter what kind of awful mood he was in, he could always be soothed with a belly rub.”
“There’s a difference between rubbing the belly of a little cat and rubbing the belly of an enormous dog who jud
ges you when she looks at you.”
Joss hummed as if to say Good point.
“Maybe she’ll perk up once I feed her. Then we’re both going to sleep. I’m seeing Bautista in the morning, but afterward I’ll swing by to pick you up. Unless you need to get out earlier?”
“This place is so amazingly cozy, I’ll probably sleep in. But if I’m overcome with the urge to sightsee, I’ll call a car service.”
“All right.”
“Too bad we’re not staying through the holiday weekend. I just saw a flyer in the office advertising some Memorial Day barbecue. It’s happening Monday. Know something? I’ve been looking for barbecue love in all the wrong places since that little place around the corner from our building shut down.”
“You went back to the office?”
“Yeah, Peter didn’t answer my call so I took a walk when the rain let up. I love the after-rain smell. Anyway, that guy from earlier fixed me a cup of tea and we chatted.”
“Which guy from earlier?” There had been so many faces today that Sofia was scrambling to figure it out on her own. It definitely wasn’t Burke—he’d been occupied doing carnal things to her in this very apartment.
“The one from Shore Seasons. Strayer.”
A whisper of suspicion teased Sofia. “What’d he want?”
“To pour me a cup of tea. He was nice.” A beat of silence passed. “Oh, sweetie, I have to go. But if something—anything—comes up, call me.”
“I will. You be careful.”
“I always am.”
Hanging up and noting that the phone’s battery had waned, Sofia remembered that her charger was in her car. She took a deep breath and went to shut Luz’s bedroom door. “I’m just running downstairs to get my stuff,” she told Tish, as if the dog might give a damn one way or the other. “Then I’ll feed you and then we’ll get some rest and then…well, I don’t know what we’ll do then.”
Tish’s silvery eyes held hers.
“I’m sorry, Tish. I wasn’t prepared…” For you. But what fault of it was Tish’s that she’d found herself suddenly abandoned? The details were different, but Sofia understood the dog’s predicament. “I wasn’t prepared for this.”
She took the rear stairs and hurried past Blush’s Dumpster and the deliveries door to the side of the building, where she’d parked her SUV in the single space reserved for the store owner. Where Luz’s car and the bicycle she had been riding when the aneurism had erupted were parked was beyond Sofia.
Vehicles and people on foot competed for dominance on the street. When she’d lived in Eaves, the season had found most downtown streets overrun with tourists, particularly at night, when everyone wanted to be somewhere other than where they actually were.
Shop windows glimmered, voices brightened the darkness, and there was a teasing hint of summer in the air, yet she wasn’t compelled to wander and take a look around—and definitely wouldn’t risk returning to the bar and finding a grumpy longshoreman staring at the bottom of another drink.
Besides, she had plans to feed a grieving Siberian husky, and in case she hadn’t dabbled in enough danger for one day she would try to rub Tish’s belly.
Lugging her bags back to the alleyway, she glanced at the completely dark building beside Blush. So Cape Foods had been vacant since Burke’s father’s death. Curiously, no one had pounced on the property. Even odder? The town council allowed the eyesore of an orphaned commercial building on Society Street when for so many years Luz had battled to keep Blush’s doors open.
She looked from the market to Blush and let herself drift to the secret moments she’d spent underground, creeping past storage containers and slipping to the narrow passageway that connected Blush’s basement to the market’s.
Burke would be there, reeking of smoke or sneaking a beer or hiding out until he could disguise his intoxication enough to face his father.
They hadn’t been friends until she found him in that claustrophobic hallway and threatened to narc on him. When he didn’t respond, she ventured closer and realized he was listening to music and lost in a drawing as his scraped-knuckled hand coasted over a sketchpad.
“What the hell?” he’d said, startling her. He tugged an earphone free. “Are you gonna sit down or what?”
“I didn’t know you knew I was here.”
“Your shadow’s on my paper, and I can smell you. That friggin’ incense stuff.”
“I can smell you, too,” she’d said. “Weed.”
Captivated was what she’d been, and somehow a condom on a lunch tray had seemed insignificant compared to her need to be near him and watch him draw.
It was a beautiful memory of a beautiful boy she loved. Burke wasn’t that boy anymore, though. He was a man who kissed like a savage and talked like the devil, and now the memory seemed artificial somehow.
Leaving the empty market in the dark, Sofia ascended the stairs and reentered the apartment. She fed Tish and maintained her patience when after fifteen minutes of sniffing around outside the dog refused to go potty but decided to whimper the moment Sofia locked them up tight in the apartment. It was ridiculously late when finally Tish stretched out in front of Luz’s bed.
Sofia showered and pulled on her pajamas, and though she wanted nothing more than to lie across a thick mattress, she hesitated.
The apartment contained two bedrooms: Luz’s and one she used as a personal office. When Sofia had lived here, her aunt had bought a twin bed and put it in the office to accommodate her. There was no twin bed now. That half of the office held herbs and bottles of essential oils, apparently devoted to Luz’s aromatherapy interests.
That left one bed in the place. Sofia was so weary and so wrung out that she went to it.
She set the brand-new dresses aside, peeled back the comforter, picked up a pillow to fluff—and found a long, spiraling strand of hair. It was a silken black thread between her fingers.
Luz had refused to let herself gray.
“God.” Sofia returned the strand to the pillow and turned off the light. “This sucks, okay? It sucks and I hate this!”
The dog’s spine rippled and Sofia snatched the braided blanket off the bed, toed the slippers aside, and sank to the floor beside Tish.
“I get to miss her, too,” she explained, and felt equally stupid and comforted to be expressing her feelings to an animal. “I loved her. She was the only mom I had.”
Curling up on the rug, covering herself with the blanket, Sofia cried. And Tish sighed and kept watch until they both fell asleep.
*
“Caroline, vamanos.” Javier Bautista crooked a finger and the woman passed off her bottles to Tariq to deliver to a table. Javier moved behind the bar, grabbing a fresh beer and tucking himself into a nook where he could speak freely. Bottoms Up was his place. The regulars knew not to crowd him, and tourists caught on quick.
Caro Jayne joined him, wiping down the bar as beads twinkled over their heads. “Are you putting me in charge and finally going home?” she asked over the noise of music and voices.
Yes and no. “I’m making a change to the bar.”
“A change? Oh—at last getting rid of that tired pool table so people can dance?”
“Caroline, hear me out. Did you see Luz’s girl leave with Wolf?”
“Mm-hmm. He certainly is good-looking,” she said. “It’s not even just my opinion. It’s a fact.”
“Know where they’re headed? Blush.” He uncapped the beer, drank down half. “Sofia owns it now.”
Caro searched his eyes. “Luz left her the store?”
“Yeah. She’s probably going to sell it. That development firm that’s been sniffing around these past few months? They might take it off her hands, and if they conquer her, they might conquer Burke Wolf and take his old man’s building. Then the holdout on this block will be you.”
“And you,” she said, then paused. “The bar. This is yours.”
“Not if you want it,” he said quietly. Too much of his history wit
h Luz was entwined with Bottoms Up. Too much love and too many lies. “I need to step away.”
“Bautista, you can’t walk away from this place. It’s a part of you.” She waved a hand. “This is your grief talking, a reaction to the funeral.”
“It’s a choice. A man stands by his choice.”
“It’s bollocks and I’ll never forgive you for putting me in this position. I love this place as much as you do. I’ll fight those developer bastards every step of the way. But I have a studio to manage. I have a son. I can’t do it all alone.” She put down the rag and squeezed his hand. “You and Luz promised to look after Evan and me. She can’t anymore, but you’re still here. I can’t do this without you.”
Caro was tougher than she allowed herself to believe, but fear blinded her. She still carried the ghosts she’d brought with her to Cape Cod when she popped up in this bar with a baby and without a plan.
“There’s the option to sell to the firm, Caroline. You’ll profit. I’ll sell the bar to you cheap and you can turn around and bring home double—maybe triple—to your son.”
“No.” Anxiety raised her voice a few decibels, rippled over her words. “We’re in this together. I’ll join you in ownership, if a partner is what you need. But I’m not going to let Luz’s death take you both away.”
Bautista let the conversation end there, and when she blended into the fray he finished his beer in the pseudo-solitude of the nook. Bottoms Up was the possession he’d treasured most before he let Luz in. He’d thought they’d had an understanding. He’d thought he knew her.
Now? He had an urge to disappear, a friend who wouldn’t let him, and the beer in his hands.
CHAPTER 5
Sofia woke up cranky. There was a twinge of pain from sleeping all night on the floor and a dog was lying on her hair. If she and Tish had battled each other for space on the thin rug—and, clearly, Tish had won—Sofia didn’t remember it. Tugging herself free of the furry anvil, she sat up slowly and rubbed her eyes.
So this was real. Somehow she’d thought it wouldn’t be, that things would be different, brighter, in the morning. Only the sky was bright now, as sunlight bombarded the room and warmed her. Everything else still carried the smoky hue of devastation.
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