Pushing her makeshift workspace out of the way, Summer reached for the tub of belly butter she kept on the side table, pulled her dress up, and tucked it beneath her boobs.
Sprawled comfortably, she opened the tub and scooped out a big glob.
“Supposedly, this is good for stretch marks,” she told Tink. “I really don’t care if it works or not. I like the way it feels. Don’t you?”
Her hands glided over skin made taut by pregnancy. It amazed her how adaptable the body was. Massaging the sweet-smelling cream into her belly, she mapped the baby’s position with curious fingers.
“Ladies and gentlemen, as we begin our final approach, please prepare for arrival. Head down, legs and arms tucked. Just like in gymnastics.”
She was uncomfortable, reeling emotionally, and about as discombobulated as she ever remembered being, yet Summer wouldn’t trade this experience for any reason. The wait to finally meet her daughter was long and, at times, felt like more than she could handle, but it didn’t matter anymore. Soon, she’d get to hold her baby. Her and Arnie’s baby. A little girl.
Well, she sniggered. Not so little.
People kept asking her if she had girl names picked out. Despite buying three books full of baby names and even succumbing one bored and restless night to playing around with an online name generator, she still wasn’t happy with any of the options.
Sometimes, she considered naming her Tinkerbelle and be done with it.
And then she came to her senses.
“Monica?”
Ergh. She shuddered. Nope. Not Monica.
“Danielle? Dani for short?”
Hmm. Nothing.
“How about Cordelia? Or Savannah?”
It only took a few seconds before she snorted out a laugh. “No and nope.”
“Your uncle Reed suggested Barbara. Get it? Like Santa Barbara. I told him he was high and suggested he get a grip. Honestly, Tink. Men are clueless.”
Names danced in her head. Evangeline held prospect. So did Autumn until she realized how hokey a mother and daughter named Summer and Autumn would be.
Arnie might find it funny—not that she cared about his opinion one way or another.
Tink elbowed her in the side and made Summer flinch. Even the baby knew she was full of it because she cared about Arnie way more than an abandoned pregnant woman ought to about a man who wasn’t around.
“Shut up,” she muttered.
Imagining her daughter’s laughter was easy. She’d have a giggling chuckle—the perfect parent smashup.
Unfamiliar sounds coming from the vestibule beyond the front door drew her attention. She struggled to scoot off the sofa. Her tension rose as the noises became louder, and she could make out voices raised in alarm.
Hauling ass as quickly as her wobbly waddle allowed, she flung the door open and gasped in alarm when she found Lynda on the floor with Bud hovering over her.
“What happened?”
Bud looked at Summer. She read concern in his expression and went to his side.
“She fell.”
Dismayed to hear this, she glanced around. A couple of small windows made the space connecting the two residences into a mini hothouse for plants. Summer spied a short stepladder next to the washer and dryer. There was a watering can on its side, leaking liquid onto the flagstone floor. Lynda must have been watering a hanging plant when she fell.
“I’ve called 911,” Bud murmured.
Summer leaned in and offered her support to a tearful Lynda. “Are you okay? What can I do?”
“It’s broken, I just know it,” Lynda cried. She lay awkwardly with her left foot at an odd angle.
Bud was ashen-faced. He was a big ole teddy bear where his wife was concerned, so seeing her helpless and in pain must be awful.
Touching his shoulder so he’d look at her, Summer waited till their eyes met. “I’ll go stand in the driveway and guide the EMTs.”
“Thank you,” Bud murmured.
They both looked up at the same time when the sound of an approaching siren sliced through the air.
Summer waddled as fast as she could from the vestibule and used a trash can to prop open the driveway gate. She made it halfway down the drive before the ambulance pulled in. Waving to them, she called out, “Through here,” and pointed at the open gate.
Half an hour later, she waved to the departing ambulance and assured Bud she’d lock up after he left to join Lynda in the emergency room.
Poor Lynda. Her ankle was either broken or seriously fractured. Anxiety clawed at Summer’s composure. Her new friend was her birthing coach and a major part of the labor and delivery plan she’d meticulously put together.
The frightening possibility of her friend getting sidelined by an injury pushed Summer to the farthest reaches of her ability to stay calm.
No matter how she looked at it, this new development was a disaster.
Uncharacteristic vulgarity swirled inside her, and she looked at the heavens to mutter a pithy, “Fuck you.” Adding the necessary middle finger salute, Summer glowered. She was sick and tired of the universe throwing grenades in her path.
Goddammit.
Enough!
Ohio? For another NIGHTWIND wedding? Really?
Arnie shook his head. No sooner had the newly married Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley Maddison settled into their new home than Jon and Lorelai announced a save the date along with the contact information for several Cincinnati area hotels.
This was a joke, right? He’d just arranged Stan’s retreat from the same city, and now here he was, making plans to go there for a long weekend. Maybe he could stop by and terrorize April while he was in town. It’d serve the dumb twat right if he did.
Marking the calendar of California beaches hanging next to his front door, Arnie circled the dates and sighed.
Halloween in suburbia. Oh goody.
His lip curled with amusement. Overnight, brooding and belligerent former Delta Force hard-ass, Jon Weston, was transformed into a grinning, happy-go-lucky idiot. Apparently, love and an adorable fiancé changed a guy.
Lorelai had a costume party planned for the rehearsal dinner.
No, seriously—that shit was happening.
Not one to miss an opportunity for an orchestrated laugh, Arnie knew immediately what his costume would be. He checked with Izzy first to make sure she could work her prosthetic and costuming magic. Laughingly assuring him his Halloween vision was possible, Arnie knew he’d hit paydirt when she showed him a computer-animated image of him dressed like a mortician sporting Lurch makeup.
In some sick way, the NIGHTWIND crew was its own quirky Addams Family, and once he cracked the lid, it wasn’t long before Neal and Rolf, the agency’s security duo, got on board as Uncle Fester and Pugsley.
He looked toward the front door when a Morse code of knocks made him chuckle out loud.
Two raps, followed by one, then a scratching noise, and finally three booming pounds.
It was Stan and yet another reminder of their sibling bond when they came up with a knocking signal for entry to their tree fort. It was a good boyhood memory from the time before their parents' unholy union devolved into a war of emotional and financial attrition. After that, everything was pretty much shit, morning, noon, and night.
Pulling the apartment door open, he stepped back to make room as his brother swept in carrying two large boxes of Krispy Kremes.
“May way, make way. Warm donuts!”
Warm donuts? Well, shit! There was no better recipe for saving a craptastic day than one with a glazed or crème filled donut from the double K.
“Make coffee, Darnell. I come bearing news.”
Hearing his formal name gave Arnie a start. It was a sign—a portent of something yet to be defined.
“Are you ever going to bother with real furniture, or is this rinky-dink crap your style?” Stan looked around and waved his hand.
“Fuck off.” He arched a brow and snarled, “Furniture implies putting down r
oots, but with absolutely no goddamn permanence in my life, why bother?”
He wasn’t quite at the “everybody leaves—everything ends” phase of crying into his beer, but was getting ever closer. His mother was gone. So was any suggestion of a happy childhood. One of his balls was gone and so was Summer.
Gone too was the innocent belief all good guys were one hundred percent good and all bad guys an equal one hundred percent bad. Life taught him nothing was ever that simple.
“The only thing permanent is who you are in here,” Stan said with a hand on his chest over his heart.
“I hate you.”
His brother grinned. “I know. All the psycho-babble and inspirational quotes are a bit much, huh?” With a shrug, he said, “Side effect of getting sober and staying with the program. I’ve literally got sticky notes all over my place with affirmations and encouragement.”
The Ikea set doing double duty as a work desk and the kitchen table was as comfortable as a doctor’s waiting room. He’d bought it after a ten-second glance at an ad on his phone while scrolling Twitter. It was sturdy but poorly sized for a guy like him.
Stan wasn’t quite as tall, but that didn’t mean he fit on the unforgiving chairs either.
They sat in a bubble of awkwardness. While neither of them was comfortable, they were trying way too hard not to show it.
After two donuts and a black coffee, Arnie was through playing host. He sat back and fixed Stan with a look.
“So what’s this news you come with?”
It took his brother an inordinately long time to wipe his mouth, take a slug of coffee, and look Arnie in the eye.
Oh, boy. Not good.
“I said I’d keep an eye on my mother,” Stan muttered with distaste lacing his words. “And I have. She’s up to something.”
He paused for a few seconds. It looked like he was gathering his thoughts, and then Stan surprised the holy crap out of Arnie.
“Nothing with her is as it seems, so instead of driving myself batshit trying to figure out her agenda, I, uh, took a different route.”
Stan’s grin had a menacing vibe. Arnie almost laughed. Giselle had no idea how much her only child disliked her.
There was a God, after all, he thought with no charity whatsoever for his onetime stepmother.
“It turns out the smarmy legal viper she’s been leading around by a leash is over her and her antics.”
“Bruce Wells?”
“One and the same,” Stan confirmed with a nod. “I told you I thought he was ripe for the picking. I bet if put the right way, and with a decent incentive, he’d sell her ass out in a New York minute.”
“How much do you think he knows?”
“No fucking idea, but I am one hundred percent certain he knows what’s currently got her pantyhose twisted.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yep. I, uh, sort of bumped into him at Chelsea Piers.”
Arnie guffawed. “The golf club?”
Stan’s laugh had a snarky quality. His brother had preternatural golf abilities. If the drinking hadn’t gotten him, he might have been another Tiger Woods. It had also been years since he picked up his clubs, so learning he was back at the driving range was illuminating.
“We smacked around a few buckets and shot the shit. He’s a piece of work, that one, but he’s got a nagging ethical streak. Rethinking his priorities.”
Arnie sniggered at the way Stan pronounced the p-word. They both remembered their favorite caregiver, Nanny Colleen, who endlessly nagged them about priorities and what she called gentlemanly behavior.
“So you’re thinking about turning him. Is that it?”
“He’s already turned.” Stan snorted. “He just doesn’t realize it yet.” He looked at Arnie and winked. “Told me there’s something big going down soon. Said she’s turned into a royal bitch. Pretty sure she has an investigator. Anyway,” he continued in a lower, more serious voice, “he implied whatever she’s doing is, in his estimation, a step too far, and he wants no part of it.”
“Sounds illegal,” Arnie murmured. “Oh man, you don’t know how bad I’d like to catch her red-handed. Paybacks are a bitch, and after what she did to Dad, I think some revenge satisfaction is long overdue.”
A wave of regret seized him. Not for Giselle. For Stan. Arnie felt bad that the guy had to go through life with the female anti-Christ for a mom.
“ Hoping to lure him to a knock-knock. One of those super-secret, invite-only strip clubs. He strikes me as the kind to get off on public tits and ass. Hopefully a few lap dances and a trip to the champagne room for a rub and tug, and he’ll tell me whatever I wanna know.”
“Jesus, Stan. I didn’t realize what a gigantic motherfucker you could be.”
They slapped and clasped hands, laughing the whole time. Arnie smirked. “Maybe you want to consider going through NIGHTWIND training. Turn you into a professional motherfucker.”
He was joking, kind of, so Arnie was surprised when Stan took his lead and offered a glimpse inside his sober reality.
“Actually, bro, I was thinking more along the lines of doing something with my hands. Like building shit. Making stuff. Real work, not shuffling paper.”
“Care to be more specific? Building shit is a fairly broad category. Are we talking construction? Building houses? Or something else?”
“Don’t laugh, but I’m kinda into all those renovation shows on TV.”
“Oh. I get it. You want to flip houses and do the work yourself?”
“Yeah!” Stan hooted, clearly delighted when Arnie got what he meant. “I’m not sure if I have a design eye, but I can sure as shit do the work.”
Arnie stuck out his hand and shook Stan’s. “Granddad says real Wanamaker men create. It’s in our blood. He and Dad grow things. I think it’s why he looks down his nose at a family mostly interested in dividends and living like spoiled brats. There’s hope for you, Stan!”
“What are you creating, Arnie? What floats your Wanamaker boat?”
The words rushed from his mouth without censoring or a filter. “I want to honor my mother by making the family she was denied.”
Stan’s eyes widened. “Whoa. That’s kinda heavy.”
“If we can’t be honest, we aren’t really brothers.”
“No, no,” Stan groaned. “I get it. I do. Your mother enjoys a saint-like status. Everyone adored her. Especially Granddad. He talks about her with such love and sadness. I think jealousy for a dead woman fed my mother’s cruel streak. In a way, the memory of Lianne Wanamaker haunts her. All these years later and she’s still trying to win an imaginary contest.”
Stan’s words kicked up something inside Arnie. A disturbing swirl of warning made his muscles tighten. A slow blurring in his peripheral vision triggered his sentient abilities. He sensed something, but now wasn’t the time to check it out. He’d have to chase the sensations later.
19
Her voice brimming with consternation, Lynda said, “The house next door has been empty for more than a year. I was a little surprised when it sold out of the blue.”
Summer poured more virgin sangria into Lynda’s glass and then topped off her own. She dropped an orange slice into each drink and took a sip before responding.
“Yes, it is weird but no stranger than Mrs. Baker on the other side deciding to move to Seattle. It seems like a for sale sign goes up every day.”
“Did you see the new neighbors? They’re creepy.” Lynda mock shuddered to make her point.
It was hard to disagree, so Summer nodded. “Dinkins is the name. I saw it on the boxes from the moving truck. Mother and grown son.”
“I don’t care what their name is or how they’re related. The two creep me out. They stare over here—all the time. I can see them from my spot in the living room.”
“You only notice because you’re stuck on the sofa. I’m sure they don’t stare all the time.”
“I told Bud I think they’re casing us.”
“What? Casing
you? Meaning what?”
“Oh, come on. You know what I mean. The new neighbors are checking us out. Us. Not the gay guys across the street or the obnoxious out-of-place McMansion on the corner.”
Rolling a mouthful of the tasty sangria with her tongue, Summer enjoyed the burst of flavors and thought about Lynda’s observation. Along with most of the properties on Wishing Star Lane, the Gerry house was standard-issue for the San Fernando Valley. The one-story with a small front yard serving no purpose whatsoever was unremarkable. There was nothing about the slightly overgrown landscaping or the cars in the driveway worth a second glance.
But the gay guys, catty-corner and across the street from Bud and Lynda’s home? Good golly, they were flashy. Their yard decorations changed seasonally, and Summer swore they had a bad case of catalogordering-itis. Right now, they had a one-room schoolhouse theme going on which, before long, would be replaced with an explosion of Halloween.
And it wasn’t just the set decorating making Tony and Roy’s LGBTQ suburban showcase worth viewing. The flamboyantly gay couple had a social media following, so they tended to take a lot of outdoor selfies and would occasionally film a random video of them walking around their yard, usually with coffee in hand.
With the real show going on across the street, it kind of did seem unlikely the new people would show overt interest for the bland and uninteresting Gerrys.
“This place has changed,” Lynda stated in a voice filled with disappointment. “Twenty-four years ago when Brigit was going into kindergarten, we bought his place and couldn’t believe how lucky we were to find a nice neighborhood. We all had kids and knew each other. Not anymore, though,” she griped. “The recession in ’08 changed everything. Eventually, kids grow up, and lives move on. Now? Pfft. Perfect strangers.”
After studying Summer for a moment, Lynda brought everything into perspective. “But I guess that’s what makes this place perfect for tucking away.”
“You guys saved me,” she hurried to assure her hobbled friend. “I’ll never be able to repay all you’ve done or thank you enough.”
“You’re a kind soul, Summer. A good girl from everything I’ve seen. What’s happening to you isn’t right. Babies are not commodities, and anyone who thinks otherwise is dangerous.” Lynda patted Summer’s knee. “And there’s nothing to repay. We don’t need compensation for letting you live here. Plus, we never planned to rent the guest house so …” She ended on a shrug.
Finding Summer (Nightwind Book 3) Page 36
