Bending the Rules

by Susan Andersen

  “No, of course not. Or at least not only that.” When she shot him a look that made him feel cornered, he demanded, “What the hell is it you want me to say?”

  “Not a damn thing, if you need to ask.”

  “Are you kidding me?” He was almost grateful for the indignation that sliced through his burgeoning regret. “I hate it when women do that kind of shit!”

  She crossed her arms over her bare breasts. “Wonderful. Now you’re lumping me with other women.”

  “No. God.” He rubbed the small ache that was beginning to thump between his brows. But he dropped his hand and took an unprecedented plunge, exposing the soft underbelly he liked to pretend he didn’t have. “Okay, you want me to bare my soul like some damn new-age metrosexual?” Taking a breath, he admitted something he’d always known but had managed to shove down deep inside of himself so he wouldn’t have to deal with it. “Look, you met my brother. I’m guessing he told you about how he and Dad and Pops spent most of my childhood—hell, of my life—in the slammer?”

  “Yeah, about that—just what does it take to earn your trust, anyway? You didn’t think that was something I might’ve wanted to hear from you?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “So tell me. Would you have ever told me if Joe hadn’t come by?”

  Shit. Not voluntarily. Well, maybe. Eventually, probably.

  Oh, hell. “I don’t know.” He shrugged helplessly. “That’s a problem, I take it.”

  “Your unwillingness to share the first thing about yourself?” She smacked him on the chest. “Dammit, Jason, you’re living with me—sleeping with me, but you haven’t told me about the important stuff that makes you you? Yeah, I’d say it’s a problem.”

  “Nobody taught me all these rules!” he roared. His gut rolled but he quieted his voice and admitted something he’d always known but had managed to shove down deep inside so he wouldn’t have to deal with it. “But here’s the thing, Poppy. I don’t know if it’s my family situation or if it’s just me, but the bottom line is, I’m…damaged.”

  “What? That’s ludicrous!” Her opinion prompt and her surprise evident, she dropped her arms to her sides. “You’re stuck in the past, maybe, but there’s not a damn thing wrong with you. I’m guessing it weighs on you that the men in your family are in jail more than they’re out. But, Jason, their mistakes are theirs, not yours. You’re clearly nothing like them.”

  “How the hell do you know?” It had taken something for him to confess that he knew he was fucked up, and she’d just blown it off? Ignoring the fact that she saw him in a much more positive light than he saw himself, he zeroed in instead on the fact that while he’d allowed her her feelings, she wasn’t doing the same for him. “You spent—what?—fifteen minutes with my brother and now you’re an authority?”

  “I know you, and I’ve never encountered a guy so bythe-book. You chose an entirely different path from the one your relatives took, so why would you think you’re anything like them? The only thing you have in common as far as I can see is that your father and grandfather are locked behind steel bars and you’re locked down in a prison of your own making.”

  It was a hit out of the blue, and his stomach roiled even as his mouth tightened. “That’s funny,” he snapped. “I don’t remember seeing your psychology degree.”

  Hurt flashed in her eyes, but she didn’t snarl back at him as he expected. Instead she tilted her face up to his and said steadily, “You know what I just don’t get? I don’t understand why you won’t see what I see in you. You’ve got such a huge capacity for love in you, Jason. I’ve heard it in the way you talk about your friend Murphy. Felt it in the way you treat me. Seen it in how good you are with the kids. But from where I’m standing, you’re just flat-out choosing to deny it.”

  Pushing her hair back from her face, she looked him squarely in the eye. “It just burns a hole in my heart that I can’t make you see it. But I can’t. Only you can make the choice, and I can see by the look on your face that you’re not willing to. So under the circumstances…” She hesitated, then glanced at the door as if measuring the distance.

  Jase went cold, then red-hot. “What?” he demanded furiously, towering over her. “You’re throwing me the hell out?”

  Again, she hesitated. Then she nodded. “I think it might be best if you went back to your place.”

  No! Every atom of his being protested the idea. “Best for who?”

  “For me.” For the first time, her voice wobbled. “I don’t think I can take this, Jase—loving you but knowing you don’t care enough in return to even try. You and I could have something really special, but it takes two. I can’t do it by myself.”

  She stepped back. Squared her shoulders. “So, yes. Under the circumstances I do think it would be best if you packed your suits and left. It hurts knowing you won’t fight for me—for us. Hurts so bad I feel broken in so many pieces you could make a mosaic out of me. But if you can’t see our relationship as something that’s worth working toward, then I need you to stay away from me so I can put myself back together.”

  Heart thundering, he stared at her, torn by so many emotions he hardly knew what to address first. The stuff she’d said before the hit-the-road-Jack part resonated on a level deep inside of him. Yet he’d lived his entire life with one mind-set and it was a mountain that he couldn’t see his way around.

  He didn’t want to leave her.

  He didn’t know how to change.

  So in the end he did what she asked. He packed his clothes and left.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  If only I had handled everything better, smarter…

  “JESUS, BOY, would you sit your ass in the chair and quit wearing a path in my carpet?”

  Jase looked over at Murph and saw the old man scowling at him from the kitchen. “Sorry.” He threw himself down on a chair. Crossed his ankle over his opposite knee and jiggled his foot. Picked up the TV remote and turned on a game. Turned it off again twenty seconds later.

  He thumped his foot back down to the floor, then climbed to his feet and resumed pacing once again.

  “For gawd’s sake,” Murphy muttered.

  The next time he stalked past the kitchen, Murph was exiting it and the old man snagged his wrist in a grip of steel. He stabbed the forefinger of his free hand at the chair Jase had abandoned. “Sit!” he snapped. “Stay.”

  Jase yanked free. “What am I, a fucking dog?”

  “Hey, if it snaps like a hound and barks like a hound. Christ Almighty, son, I once saw a cage full of half-starved pit bulls who were better humored than you. Working with you’s gotta be one helluva joy—what’s your unit had to say about your piss-poor attitude?”

  “How the hell would I know?” Since no one’s talking to me. Everyone was, in fact, giving him a very wide berth. He rolled his shoulders. “I’ve maybe been a little grouchy.”

  “Son, you passed ‘a little’ last Sunday. Why don’t you do us all a favor and just make up with the girl?”

  Pain splintered through Jase. God, he wanted that. Wanted it so bad he was bleeding inside.

  But he couldn’t have it—why the fuck couldn’t anyone understand that? “I’ve told you why, but you obviously haven’t listened to a thing I’ve said over and goddamn over again. I am through having this conversation.”

  And emotions beat to shit, feeling carved hollow, he slammed out of Murphy’s apartment.

  POPPY WALKED OUT of the field house where the Merchants’ Association had just met to discuss the completed art project. They had been pretty enthusiastic about it. Apparently everyone had already received a lot of feedback from their customers and it was overwhelmingly positive. Poppy was pleased to hear it.

  It was, in fact, the first bit of enjoyment she’d felt in six long days.

  Quietly escaping the post-meeting socializing, she headed back to the parking lot behind Harvey’s store. Once she reached her car, however, she simply stood gazing blankly at the completed wall, eyes narrowed against the late-
morning light.

  Because for a rare time in her life, she didn’t have the first idea what to do next.

  It was Saturday, the day she’d invited the kids to join her at the Wolcott mansion. But Henry and Danny had plans, and Cory was under quarantine, for lack of a better word, so Poppy didn’t have a time frame she had to race over there to meet them in. Nor did she have an art class to teach, and weekends meant no menu boards to design.

  She always had greeting cards in the works but she couldn’t stomach the idea of going home. She had stripped the bed and washed the sheets—along with every towel she owned. She had vacuumed, dusted and scrubbed surfaces until they shone. But still she swore she could smell Jason’s scent. Or maybe it was his ghost or spirit that had embedded itself in her apartment. She might not be able to define it exactly, but she knew it was too painful to be there when he wasn’t. She’d been spending as little time home alone as she could.

  The problem was, she didn’t want to visit with anyone. Not her friends. Not her folks. She simply wasn’t fit company.

  Maybe she should go sit in a theater somewhere and pretend to watch a movie. Except…

  She heaved a sigh. She didn’t want to do that, either.

  She climbed in the car and started the engine. The day stretched out in front of her like its own Paleolithic period, and she simply didn’t know how she was going to fill up all those unwanted hours. She supposed the mansion was her best bet. It had the fewest associations with Jason and the Kavanaghs didn’t work on Saturdays so she wouldn’t have to pretend to anyone that she was doing just fine. She’d have the entire place to herself and heaven knew there was plenty for her to do.

  Putting the car in gear, she maneuvered through the lot to the street and pulled into the flow of traffic, pointing her car toward Queen Anne. She might as well get some work done.

  RUMP-SPRUNG from spending so damn much time in the car, Bruno Arturo snapped to attention when an old wreck of a station wagon chugged past him and he recognized the blonde behind the wheel. It was the babe who’d been directing the punks as they’d slopped their crap on the wall. Putting the Escalade in gear, he pulled out into traffic a few cars behind her. It might not be much—in fact it was pretty damn weak—but spotting her was the closest thing he’d come to a break all week.

  Word on the street was that there was an all-points out on him, which had forced him to go underground before the cops came knocking on his door. So he was avoiding them for now, but if he didn’t get his hands on the Capelli kid but soon, he was fucked, no two ways about it. Because once the cops brought him in for questioning, you could be damn sure they’d have the girl there within the hour to pick him out of a lineup. And that would be the start of one hurkin’ fast track to a charge of robbery and attempted murder.

  And as if that wasn’t grief enough, there was Schultz, who had told him to lay off the kid in the first place. The prospect of jail was a wet dream compared to what the boss could—and probably would—do to him for ignoring instructions. Rumor had it Schultz was looking for him—and that he was not happy.

  Bruno didn’t know how many times he’d heard Schultz say he didn’t like loose ends. According to the boss, loose ends had a habit of turning state’s evidence in order to save their own skin.

  Bruno couldn’t disagree. He was considering the option himself if he didn’t get his hands on the kid today. What other choice did he have? He was ass-deep in alligators—gators with bone-breaking teeth longer than his arm—and that wasn’t a position with great future potential. He had the law to the left of him, a crime lord to the right—and he was smack in the middle about to be eaten alive.

  Which brought him here, trailing a curly-headed bimbo in a sorry excuse of a car and telling himself he wasn’t on a fucking chump’s errand.

  He lit a cigarette and forced himself to look on the bright side. Because, hey, who knew, spotting this chick could be a sign. Maybe things were finally turning around for him.

  When the blonde drove her low-rent ride into a high-class driveway a short while later, he nearly missed it. Forced to hang way back to keep her from spotting him once she’d exited the main arterial and begun wending through a high-dollar neighborhood, he’d lost sight of her for a second. It was pure blind luck that brought him around the corner in time to catch a flash of her brake lights—the only part of her old heap that hadn’t been blocked from view by a low wall and an ancient tree in full leaf as the car disappeared into a drive that led to the back of a huge mansion.

  Tempted to swing his Escalade—complete with false plates—in behind her, block her in and do what he did best—extract information from a mark who didn’t want to give it—he had to force himself to cruise past the drive instead. He was losing patience and that’s when things generally turned to shit on him. He knew better than to jump the gun. It usually just led to dumb-shit decisions that ended in an impulsive action he came to regret.

  He didn’t get it, though. The blonde didn’t look like she belonged in a place like that one. Her car sure didn’t fit with the mansion or the surrounding neighborhood with its multimillion-dollar views. But she’d driven right up to the back door like she belonged, so she obviously had some sort of in—even if she was just the hired help.

  Which led him to another fact he needed to consider: he didn’t know who else might be in there with her. He had to think smart, because these were the kind of cribs that were bound to have monitored systems…and security guards cruising through the ’hood like clockwork.

  So until he knew what he was dealing with, he would play it cool. He’d come too far, had managed to evade lockup when odds in his favor had been for shit. He wasn’t about to blow it now because he was too impatient to do things right.

  He found a spot to park and settled in to keep an eye on the place.

  AT A LITTLE AFTER one that afternoon, Cory made her way slowly down the street the Wolcott mansion was on, checking her MapQuest directions one last time. She knew she shouldn’t be here, and if Mom came home before she got back, she’d be in so much trouble.

  But she couldn’t take being cooped up any longer. She just wanted to paint with Ms. C. for an hour or so, then she’d head back home again. Was that so much to ask?

  And it wasn’t like she wasn’t being maximum cautious. Before she’d even stepped outside the door, she’d made sure she had good directions and had looked up the shortest routes by bus. Now that she was out, she was watching everything around her as if she was freaking Fruit Fly Girl with, like, eight hundred eyes in her head.

  It was nice just to be breathing fresh air. But she had to admit that while she felt free for the first time in practically an entire week, she also felt awfully exposed.

  Take that black Escalade over there. Man, that brought her up on her toes for a minute, because that was exactly like the one Arturo had driven that day in Fremont, the one she’d last seen bearing down on her and Ms. C., going, like, a hundred miles an hour. She froze in the shade of a huge old tree while she checked it out. Maybe leaving the apartment hadn’t been such a hot idea after all.

  But then she realized no one was lurking in the SUV or anywhere else, and the tension in her shoulders eased. Jeez, girl. Get a grip. Rich people don’t have to be gangsters to drive a Caddy.

  And this was definitely a rich people’s neighborhood. She’d never seen so many big houses in her life. And the view! This was where half the Seattle pictures she’d ever seen must have been taken from, because with her back to the tree trunk she could see the Space Needle with downtown rising behind it and Mount Rainier behind that. How dap was that?

  But which was the Wolcott place? She peered at each of the rooftops until she picked the one she was pretty sure had been pictured in the article she’d read on the Internet. With a final glance at the Escalade to make sure it truly was empty, she raced down the block and up the drive of the mansion.

  Breathing a sigh of relief to be off the street, the secluded yard making her feel mor
e secure, she climbed a couple shallow stairs to what had to be the kitchen and rapped on the door.

  When no one answered she swallowed hard. Because she hadn’t considered this possibility—that Ms. C. might have decided not to come here at all today. Or that she had made plans to come later or had been here and already left.

  Suddenly desperate and feeling as exposed as if she were naked, she pounded on the door. Oh, God, she shouldn’t have left home. Her mom and Detective de S. were right. She wasn’t safe out of the house.

  Then suddenly the door opened and Ms. C. stood framed in it, her lips parted in disbelief.

  “What the—?” She reached out and grabbed Cory’s arm with a paint-splotched hand and hauled her into the room. Leaning out the door, she looked around the yard before straightening back inside. She slammed it shut and bolted it. In two long strides she crossed to a keypad mounted on the wall and punched in some numbers, making its red light quit blinking.

  Then she turned back to Cory. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to help you paint.” She flashed her best big-eyed innocent look.

  Ms. C. clearly wasn’t buying it, for she narrowed her own eyes and looked far from charmed. “What part of ‘you’ve got to stay in your house, out of sight, in order to keep safe’ don’t you understand?”

  “I was going crazy! You don’t know what it’s like—I can’t go to school, which, okay, maybe I don’t love, but I sure don’t wanna have to take the grade over again. And Mom stayed home for a couple of days, but she has to work so we have a roof over our heads, which means I’m left by myself all day and half the night. It can get scary-noisy sometimes and most of the neighbors aren’t the kind you associate with, you know? Except for Nina. I like her but my mom doesn’t want me hanging with her and besides, she’s taking classes and leaves Kai in the day care at the CC while she’s in school, so I don’t even have him to babysit.”