He gathered his tools and went downstairs to check on the progress in the left wing. He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and checked for messages. Frowning, he rubbed his thumb over the screen.
He hadn’t seen or talked to Caterina in three days—not since he’d basically thrown her out of his house and told her they were done. She wasn’t going to call him. If he wanted to salvage things with her, he’d have to make the next move.
He’d accused her of popping pills but realized now that it had been a knee-jerk reaction to finding that bag. She’d been trying to keep something from him—he hadn’t changed his mind about that—but it wasn’t the pills. Caterina wasn’t doing drugs. He didn’t know what they were, or why she had them, but they could have been anything. Just because they looked like the ones he’d found when Sylvie OD’d, didn’t mean they were OxyContin. Instead of jumping to conclusions, and spending the last three days regretting it, he should have asked her. He’d reacted emotionally, let the past suck him in, mess with his head, instead of thinking clearly. Now he stood to lose her, and it was his own damn fault.
He stuffed the phone back into his pocket. His brother Shawn came in through the front door with Elliot. Liam had Shawn for the rest of the week while the hardwoods were being installed on one of his jobs.
“Hey, bro,” Shawn said, “you ready to start dropping those tubs in so we can clear out the dining room and start building the partitions in there?”
“Yeah. I just finished the last tub frame. I’ve got something I need to take care of, though. You two go ahead and get started. Ask Roscoe to lend some muscle if you need help getting them upstairs.”
“How long are you going to be?” Shawn asked.
“I’m not sure. Hopefully no more than an hour.”
Before his brother could question him further, Liam grabbed his jacket off the floor by the front door and went outside to where he’d parked his truck on the hard, rutted ground.
He backed out from between Shawn and Elliot’s trucks and bumped his way over the uneven dirt, up to the road. He needed to fix things with Caterina, and if she gave him any of that contrary mouth of hers, or told him she wasn’t interested, he’d just have to find a way to kiss away her objections.
“All you need is love, but a little chocolate
now and then doesn’t hurt.”
Charles M. Schulz
I’ve been meaning to ask,” Lucia said, late Wednesday morning when she and Caterina were clearing the breakfast setup. “Was it just me, or did you think Marcella’s reaction the other day, when I told her Jordan sent me an email, seemed odd?”
Cat lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. She’s always been touchy about Jordan. He was her first serious crush. I don’t think she’s ever gotten over him taking off, just when she approached an age that he might notice she wasn’t a kid anymore.”
“Seriously? Cel had a thing for him?”
“Are you kidding, Luch? She used to think they were going to get married someday. Of course, we were only eleven or twelve when I read that in her diary.”
Lucia gave her a reprimanding frown. “You read her diary?”
“Hey, she left it on her nightstand for anyone to find. Besides, I was a kid. It’s not like I’d do it today.”
“Cel always has been too trusting. Did Jordan know?”
“I doubt it.” Cat stacked several plates together. “He was your friend, and to him, I think Cel and I were just your kid sisters.”
Lucia looked over toward the door and smiled. “Hey, Liam, how long have you been standing there? We never heard you come in.”
“Just got here,” Liam said from behind Caterina.
Her back was to the door, so she hadn’t seen him yet, couldn’t see his face to guess his mood. She set the stack of dishes she’d been holding down on the serving bar. He hadn’t stopped by or called after she left his place Sunday morning. She’d begun to wonder if he would. She drew a steadying breath, then turned around to face him.
The wind had tousled his hair, a few longer strands brushed his eyebrows, blond streaks that only highlighted his gorgeous blue-green eyes. She’d missed those eyes. Missed him.
“Hey,” he said, looking a little uncertain, she thought. “Can I talk to you?” He glanced at Lucia. “In private?”
“Oh…” Lucia brushed her hands against the sides of her skirt. “I was just going to go into the kitchen to, umm, to put these plates away.” She grabbed the stack that Caterina had just set down and smiled.
Yeah, that’s not obvious, Cat thought.
“It’s okay, Luch.” She touched her sister’s elbow. “You don’t need to go hide in the kitchen. Liam and I can go up to my room.” She glanced at him, and he nodded.
So, he wanted to talk. And he hadn’t balked at doing so in the privacy of her room. She took that as a good sign.
“Can I just get something out of the way first?” Liam asked a few minutes later after following Cat into her room and closing the door behind them.
She turned and looked up at him. “What?”
He caught her by the shoulders, pulled her toward him. “This.”
Before Cat could catch her breath, he stole it with his kiss. And just like that, she fell into it, like an anchor drops into the sea, through murky depths in search of ground, to hold firm what might otherwise drift away. When he moaned, she dug in, clasped tight, kissed him back as if it might be their last. But in her heart, she already knew they had a lifetime of kisses ahead of them.
Liam pulled back, blew out a heavy breath, and then leaned his forehead against hers. “Okay, so I’ll take that to mean you haven’t written me off yet.”
“And I’ll take it to mean we’re not done yet.”
He tilted his head away, met her gaze. “I hope not.”
Cat smiled lightly. “Me too.”
“I’m sorry for being such an ass,” he said, rubbing his hands up and down her arms. “I overreacted. It wasn’t your fault, and you didn’t deserve to be treated that way.”
“You thought the pills you found were OxyContin, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. They looked like the ones I found when Sylvie OD’d. When I saw them, I don’t know…I freaked. I had a flashback of Sylvie lying there dead, and Riley—I remember thinking what if she’d found the pills before I got home, thought they were candy or something? She could have died too. I was so angry Sylvie put her at such risk. She was dead, and I was mad at her.” He pushed his fingers through his hair, and it fell back over his forehead. “I’m sorry, Cat.”
“You already apologized, so let’s be done with that. I can only imagine how horrible it must have been for you to find Sylvie dead, and to think Riley could have ended up the same. I can even understand why you’d get angry, but I don’t want to talk about that, not right now. I’d rather talk about why you jumped to the conclusion that I was taking the same pills, and what any of it had to do with Mitch.” She took his hand and led him over to the bed, sat down and patted a spot next to her. “And just so you know, I get migraines. I have since I was a kid. The pills you found are a prescription for them. I always carry some with me, just in case.”
“I should have trusted you and asked what they were, instead of jumping to conclusions. But I freaked when I saw them. They looked like the pills Sylvie had, and I couldn’t think straight. It was like I was reliving those moments, and you got hit with the shrapnel.” He glanced away. “Mitch Gregory gave Sylvie the pills.”
“Mitch? But how did they even know each other?”
“I don’t know when or how they met, but they hooked up.”
“What? You mean they were sleeping together? While you were married?”
“Yep. I think she probably enjoyed the attention, and she might even have thought that I deserved it since she always accused me of not caring about anything she wanted.” Liam sighed heavily, and Caterina’s heart sighed with him. “We both made mistakes. Mine was marrying her when I knew I didn’t love her.”
/>
“You thought you were doing the honorable thing.”
“Honorable isn’t worth shit when it’s a lie. I could have agreed to support Riley, or raised her myself, and not have married her. Maybe if I’d stuck to my guns, she’d still be alive.”
“Yeah, well, you already buried those self-incriminations, so don’t go digging them back up again. It’s zombie-guilt; it’ll fester and eat away at you bit by bit if you resurrect it. You don’t need that, and neither does Riley.”
Liam looked at her and arched a brow. “Zombie-guilt? Did you just make that up?”
“Maybe. But it suits. My point is—”
“I know what your point is, and I’m working on it. I’ve gotten better at letting go of the guilt, but after what happened Sunday morning, I realized I haven’t done as good a job of letting go of the anger, at Sylvie or Gregory, over the possibilities of what could have happened to Riley. I don’t want it to sound like an excuse, because I acted like a jerk the other day, but it wasn’t about you, Cat. It was about me.”
Sylvie and Mitch. Her and Mitch. Fragmented comments rushed back to Caterina, flipped through her head like the pages of a book, with a plot twist she hadn’t expected. But now, after knowing more of the story, it all made sense.
No wonder Liam didn’t like Mitch. And if Mitch had been carrying on with Sylvie and giving her drugs, she could understand Liam’s attitude toward her when they first met. It didn’t make him right to have judged her because of them, it just made him human. Lie with dogs…, her mother used to say. That was often true enough, but not everyone ended up with fleas. Not if they walked away from the mongrel’s den before they got infected.
Caterina reached for his hand. “I know that, and I get why you acted the way you did toward me at first, even though we’d never met. We both made assumptions and misjudged each other. It just goes to show how wrong we can be about people when we base our opinion of them on things we don’t understand.”
Liam rubbed his thumb over the skin on the back of her hand. “Yeah. You didn’t turn out to be half as bad as I thought you were.”
Cat punched him in the shoulder, and he grinned. “Are we okay here?” he asked, sliding his arm around her waist. “Because I’d like us to be okay.”
“Yeah.” She leaned into him. “We’re good. I think we need to talk more about this to understand things better, but not right now.”
Liam nodded. “Deal.”
They sat on the edge of the bed. Caterina closed her eyes, content not to say anything more, just to be there with him in the moment, stitched back together. If they were like most couples, they’d have their share of misunderstandings and stupid arguments. But they’d find a way to mend the tears, restore the rips, and be all the stronger because the needle that bound them together was sewn with love. And Cat felt confident theirs could weather the storms.
Liam turned her toward him and held her gaze. “I love you, Caterina.”
She smiled. “I know.”
Cat also knew another storm might be brewing on the horizon. After she and her sisters met with Antonio and Damien later that evening, she’d know if her suspicions were correct, and if she’d made a mistake keeping them from Liam until after she could verify them.
“DOES ELIANA KNOW about this? Or that—” Damien looked around the booth, his eyes sweeping over all of them. “That you decided to ambush me under false pretenses?”
“Eliana doesn’t know anything.” Lucia spoke up first. “We didn’t want to upset her if it turned out these were just random photos.”
“They’re not random, though, are they?” Cat asked, although she meant it more as a statement than a question.
Damien leaned an elbow on the table, covered his mouth with his hand. He looked down at the pictures lying on top of the manila envelope they’d found them in. He fisted his hand, tapped it against his mouth—a man considering his next move, Cat mused.
He left Cat’s question hanging in the air for several seconds, either unwilling, or deciding how he wanted to answer it.
“They aren’t random,” he finally said, “but that’s all I’m going to tell you here.”
Caterina stared across the booth at him. All he’d tell them? That wasn’t acceptable, not when there might be other pictures that could hurt Liam and Riley.
“We befriended you, trusted you, and more importantly, Eliana is under the impression her relationship with you has been genuine,” Antonio said. “Whether we’re right to do so is yet to be determined, but we wanted to give you a chance to explain what this is all about before telling her or Liam. We deserve some answers.”
“Why don’t we start with an easy one,” Cat said, “like, who the hell are you, Damien? If that’s even your real name.”
He drummed his fingers on the table. He was cornered, on the defensive, and, Cat thought, it wasn’t a position he was used to being in.
“You’re right. You deserve some answers, but if I’m going to tell you what you want to know, Eliana has to be included.”
“We don’t want El to get hurt.” Marcella, who’d done nothing but observe so far, spoke up.
“Whatever you might think about me, I don’t want her hurt either.” Damien picked up his glass and downed the rest of his scotch. “But I want to be the one she finds out things from. I owe her that much.”
When they met up again about twenty-five minutes later at the winery, Eliana waited for them in the library. An open bottle of cabernet sauvignon sat on the coffee table. A fire burned in the large stone fireplace. Sam Smith crooned “Stay With Me” over the sound system.
Their sister looked over as they filed in through the door, her eyes widening in surprise when she saw Damien. She stood up from where she’d been sitting in one of the wing chairs, flipping through the latest edition of Elle.
“Hey,” she said, all smiles, and as oblivious as a newborn fawn stumbling upon a hungry bobcat in the wood.
“Hey.” Lucia, ever the caretaker, hurried forward and gave Eliana a hug. Nice, Cat thought. That’s not going to make her wonder what’s going on.
El smiled tentatively. “So, what’s up?” She walked over and gave Damien a peck. “Hi. Did you just happen to get here when this crew came in, or are you in on why they called and told me to meet them in the library?” She grinned up at him expectantly. “Is this some kind of surprise?”
Cat worried her sister was about to be very surprised, but not in a good way. From the little she’d gathered from Damien’s sparse comments, Eliana knew nothing about what he’d been doing behind their backs. And if his only interest in her had been to gain access to Liam, she’d be crushed.
Damien leaned down and gave El a quick kiss. Cat frowned. She’d never forgive him if he broke her sister’s heart.
“Let’s sit down,” he said, and took Eliana’s hand. He walked to the couch, took a seat, and El dropped down beside him. The rest of them followed suit, Cat and Marcella claiming the wing chairs, with Antonio and Lucia taking a place on the couch on the opposite side of the coffee table from Damien and Eliana.
El looked around, then frowned. “Okay, who died, found out they had a terminal illness, or discovered our image of Santa Claus, as we know him, is the result of a media blitz by Coca Cola to boost sales way back in the thirties?”
“Sorry, love,” Damien said. “I’d like to think you’ll still be joking around when you find out why we’re all here, but I’m afraid that’s wishful thinking on my part.”
El put her hand on his arm. “What’s this about, Damien?” Her expression turned serious, something Caterina rarely saw with Eliana. She was the most carefree of all of them, a roll with the punches go-getter, who rarely took no for an answer when she set her sights on something. But she was quick to move on to the next opportunity if it didn’t work out.
The way her sister looked at Damien, Cat didn’t think she’d have an easy time moving on after tonight.
“I haven’t been forthcoming with you or your fam
ily about who I am or what I do.” Damien looked away from El a moment, as if he were searching for the right words to explain—words that might help them understand, make him appear less culpable, be less hurtful.
Eliana shook her head, clearly confused, but held her tongue, waiting instead for him to explain.
Damien leaned forward and clasped his hands, resting his elbows on his knees as if he were bracing himself for whatever fallout might come.
“I’m not a photojournalist.”
“What?” Several voices questioned at once. Cat exchanged looks with her sisters. Eliana didn’t take her eyes off Damien. She looked at him as if she’d dropped onto some strange movie set and was trying to figure out what was happening, and why she was there.
“I’m a private investigator.”
“A what?” Eliana stared harder.
“Oh, Christ,” Caterina said.
Lucia covered her mouth with her hands.
Antonio put his arm around his wife-to-be and pulled her closer.
Marcella leaned forward and snagged one of the glasses Eliana had set out before they got there, poured herself a glass of wine.
“I think I could use one of those too,” Cat said, and her twin poured another glass.
Damien pushed a hand through his hair. “I was hired by a client to find out whatever I could about their son-in-law, Liam Dougherty. They told me they were concerned for their granddaughter’s well-being. That Liam was an unfit father, and they asked me to find proof they could use to get custody of her.”
“That’s a lie.” Cat rushed to Liam’s defense. “Liam’s a wonderful father!”
Damien held up a hand. “Please let me finish. You want the truth; I’m trying to tell you.” When he finished filling them in about five minutes later, Caterina wasn’t sure what to believe.
“So, you never gave them any pictures?” Antonio asked.
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