by Sey, Susan
“Not quite.”
“Oh. Maybe she just doesn’t like you, then.”
Wouldn’t that be nice?
“Maybe so. Be a welcome change of pace, considering the way you people worship me up here at Hill Top House. It’s embarrassing.” Jax tossed a boot over the opposite knee and stretched his arms along the back of the couch. Georgie gave an elegant snort which he magnanimously ignored. “And speaking of the universally adored, where’s Matty?”
“Disappointing our mother in the upstairs studio.” Georgie closed her eyes in preparation for one of the hundreds of micro-naps she enjoyed on a daily basis, often in the middle of on-going conversations. “Again.”
“Christ’s sake.” Jax winced on his baby brother’s behalf. For a long time their mother had barely been able to even look at Matty, which was understandable given that the kid was wearing Diego’s face almost exactly. Matty’s very presence was a constant reminder to her of a loss she couldn’t accept. Of a wound that wouldn’t heal. But time had a way of moving on, and kids had a way of growing up, and lately Matty didn’t look so much like Diego the toddler anymore, or even Diego the kid. No, he was starting to look more like Diego the man. Diego the artist. And Bianca had started looking at the kid with hungry eyes, because if Matty looked like Diego, maybe he could paint like Diego, too. And that changed the game.
Guilt nibbled at the edges of his heart and Jax forced himself to face the reality he’d been avoiding for the past couple years. He was a bad brother.
Well, not bad precisely. He hadn’t abandoned the kid, after all. He’d left him to Addy, and she’d loved the hell out of him. But the kid was thirteen now, and Bianca had finally decided to engage him. If there really was genius in Matty, Bianca was definitely the right one to pull it out. But if there wasn’t? If Matty was just a normal kid born with an extraordinary face? He needed more than Addy protecting him from the steam-roller of his mother’s ambitions. He needed somebody who’d been there and come out the other side. Somebody who could prove that failing to live up to Bianca’s artistic expectations — and possibly those of an entire town — was tough luck but ultimately survivable.
He needed Jax.
The back door clicked open and a finger of cool air drifted into the great room. It curled around his nape, tickled his jaw and brought the lake air to his nose, along with a dash of sunshine and a hint of mint. But there was no sun today and his mother eschewed mint as too common for her landscaping.
Addy had arrived.
And suddenly Jax remembered why he didn’t come up here all that often. Because even the scent of Addy had his gut clenching while a twinge of longing uncurled inside him like a dandelion, all green and persistent. He pinched it off before it could bloom into anything more substantial. His soul bled a little, even though he’d been uprooting this particular hope several times a week since the day Diego had presented his fresh-faced bride to the family as a done deal over four years ago. You’d think he’d be used to it by now. Or that he wouldn’t have to do it at all. But Bianca wasn’t the only one nursing unreasonable ideas, or wounds that wouldn’t heal. Jax knew his way down that particular street better than most.
But where Bianca embraced her delusion, Jax preferred to do what any reasonable person did when presented with an unsolvable problem. He avoided it. Or tried to. But sometimes he ended up trying to drag it up the hill at his mother’s request.
“Hey, guys.” Addy jogged into the room, her ugly old bag banging off her hip, an apologetic smile barely flashing her dimples. God, those dimples. They just killed him. He looked away.
She flung herself onto the couch a few feet from Jax — of course she did — leaving the end nearest Georgie open so Bianca could use it for a throne. His mom did enjoy a good grand entrance, and they’d all learned the hard way not to mess with her stage. Still, Addy’s caramel-colored curls couldn’t be more than a yard from his cheek, and her bag was practically in his lap. She smelled like sunshine and mint shampoo, and he reminded himself that he was grateful for her presence. For the way she’d watched over Matty in his absence.
“You’re late,” he said to her.
“Later than you. But I beat Matty, so points to me.” She grinned unrepentantly. “And as long as I beat Bianca, I’m good.”
“You promised,” he reminded her. “Straight up the hill.”
She tipped her head, lips pursed, eyes still dancing. “Since when have you been such a stickler for the rules?”
He suppressed a sigh. She had no idea how many rules he followed where she was concerned. “I’m not. I just thought you were a person of your word.”
“I am. I always keep my word. I just keep it in the order in which it was given.” Her dimples peeked out again. “And since I gave my word to Soren Buck and Granny Nan before I gave it to you—”
“—I lose?”
“No, you just have to wait.”
“You might’ve mentioned—”
“Children, children,” Georgie murmured, her eyes still closed, and Jax snapped his mouth shut mid-sentence. How did Addy always do that to him? How did she make him forget who he was and where he was and what he’d promised himself? How did she get him all tangled up in trying to win? Winning wasn’t an option where Addy was concerned. It was all about survival. Self-preservation. Both of which meant keeping a solid football field between his heart and those cookie-soft dimples of hers.
“I’m sorry, Jax,” she said. She lifted a hand and let it drop. “I really meant to come straight up the hill, if it counts for anything. I was driving out of town to do just that when I passed Buck’s and remembered…” She trailed off and gave him a mournful moue with that curvy mouth, her eyes huge and forest-green.
“Forget it.”
She scooted forward, probably to apologize more earnestly, maybe even — God help him — to touch his knee, then salvation arrived. Steps rang out on the stairs behind them and Jax turned to find his baby brother clumping down from the studio upstairs, all oversized boots and sagging jeans, a gym bag with a lacrosse stick poking out the back slung over his shoulder. Sullen resentment clung to him like a dark cloud but all the scowling in the world couldn’t mask the purity of that bone structure. The eerie beauty that had been Diego’s was blooming all over the kid’s face, as undeniable as the man-sized shoulders and feet he’d recently sprouted.
Matty paused for a moment at the bottom of the stairs, surveying his assorted siblings as if they were his own personal guillotine. Then he sighed and ambled over. Jax feared Addy was about to scoot closer to him to make room for the kid so he mashed himself up against Georgie instead.
“Goodness, Jax.” Georgie, wedged between Jax and the corner of the couch, cracked an eye open. “There’s about six miles of couch here. Do you have to sit on top of me?”
“Matty’s here. Sit up, lazy bones.”
She grumbled but hauled herself upright. Addy, meanwhile, leapt to her feet and went to Matty. She dropped her hands on his shoulders — well, reached up to his shoulders, now that he had her by a good five inches — and looked him over with a gimlet eye. She frowned.
“What? What happened?” She sniffed him like a mother dog and said, “You’ve been painting?”
“Not according to Mom.” Matty shook off her hands, dumped his bag and ambled over to the couch. Addy sheep-dogged him into the spot Jax had carved out for him and plunked herself down on the kid’s other side. Give thanks for small miracles. She snatched his hand and hit him with the giant, irresistible eyes.
“And according to your mom?” she prompted. “What were you doing if not painting?”
He tipped his head back against the couch and stared holes into the ceiling. “Apparently, I hacked several canvases to death with my haphazard abuse of light, while my wanton disregard for form convinced one to actually commit suicide. She offed the rest with a canvas knife. Said she couldn’t stand to see them suffering.” He jerked one skinny shoulder and closed his eyes. “I wish she’d just
let me go to school on Fridays.”
“Oh, honey,” Addy murmured and patted his knee. “Me, too.”
“This Friday Art Academy thing is killing me.”
“Cheer up.” Jax gave the kid a bracing shot to the shoulder. “Canvases used to leap to their deaths by the dozen on my watch. Mom doesn’t even like me to visit the gallery. Says it demoralizes the existing art.”
Matty huffed out an almost-laugh and Jax carefully avoided the look of gratitude Addy sent him.
Then his mom appeared at the top of the stairs. “Jackson, you’re here.”
Bianca Davis swept down into the great room on bare feet, her blonde-and-silver-streaked hair swinging below her shoulders. She crossed the gleaming pine floor and held out long, elegant hands to him. He rose dutifully to peck her smooth cheek. She smelled the way she always did — of soft perfume undercut with faint notes of paint and turpentine. “I didn’t keep you waiting, I hope?”
“Not all of us.” He shot Addy a significant look that Bianca didn’t catch and that Addy serenely ignored. Bianca drew back, wrinkled her nose. “I know I said it was an emergency but really, Jax.” She cast a critical eye over his jeans and t-shirt. “You could have showered.”
“I did.” He riffled a hand through his nearly dry hair. It flopped back into his eyes, brown as dead leaves and about as interested in staying combed.
“You still smell like smoke. Please tell me Walt didn’t try to burn down the Sugar Rush again with that deep fat fryer of his.” She paused. “Not that that would be all bad, considering.”
“Nope.” Jax shrugged. “Must be the truck.”
She dropped lightly onto the vacant end of the sectional, crossed her legs and sent him a look of delicate disapproval. “You drove up here in that city-issued jalopy?”
“Yep.” He folded himself back onto the couch between Georgie and Matty. “I’m on call. Rules are rules.”
“No, darling. Rules are for people who require employment. You do not.”
Jax spread his hands. Big, square hands just like his dad’s, if you didn’t count the lack of art in them. “Sure I do.”
“As a fireman? Really?”
“Fire chief,” he said easily.
She ignored this, as she always did. She tipped her head to the side and peered at him with eyes as dark and bright as a bird’s. “If you want to play with fire, you could always try metal working. Or you could blow glass. Or—”
“Or I could keep people’s iffy deep fat fryers from burning down the town.”
She sighed, undistracted. “You parked it right out back, too, didn’t you? The truck.”
He smiled again. “Yep. The mini-pumper.” He loved that truck. Converted from a Ford F350 diesel, capable of putting out 100,000 gallons per minute, it was generally the widest, tallest thing on any given road. Driving it was fun, but parking it between his mom’s cherished veranda and the carriage house was pure entertainment.
“Oh, Jax.”
“Oh, Mom. It’s a jacked-out pickup truck not a scarlet letter.”
“Surely a visit with your family doesn’t require several hundred gallons of water?”
“Foam.”
“What?”
“It pumps flame retardant foam, not water.”
“Whatever.” She lifted a brow. “Surely a visit with your family doesn’t require it.”
He grinned. “You said it was an emergency.”
“For heaven’s sake, Jax, I didn’t mean—” She broke off and pressed her lips together. “I don’t think you can solve this particular problem with several hundred gallons of...whatever you said that thing out back dispenses,” she said. “You’re sweet to come prepared, though.”
Jax frowned, off balance. “I am?”
She drew in a deep breath. “Children,” she said, “I have some bad news.”
Chapter 4
ADDY WATCHED BIANCA reach for Georgie’s hand and lace her fingers through her daughter’s without even looking. As if it had never occurred to her that she might not find a hand where and when she needed it. It sang to Addy, that confidence. That rock-solid faith in another person. In family.
“Bad news?” On the other side of Matty, Jax leaned forward, elbows on knees, frown in place.
Bianca inclined her head. “Of a financial nature.”
“Financial?” Now Addy leaned forward, too. “Have you spoken to Jason?”
Jason Bloom was the Davis family’s long-time financial advisor, the latest in an unbroken string of money-minded Blooms stretching all the way back to Prohibition. Evidently some clever lake-faring Davis had discovered that his boat was just as handy for smuggling Canadian whiskey across the border as it was for fishing. That piratical Davis had hooked up somehow with the original Bloom — a shifty numbers guy from St. Paul where the gangsters ran tame — and a fortune was born. At least that was how the legend went. The Davises had never confirmed or denied the origins of their money, but they’d never moved that money away from the accounting firm that helped them make it, either.
“Well I certainly tried.” Bianca’s smile was sharp and blindingly bright. “But as he’s currently enjoying Bimini with a hair model and most of our ready cash, he’s a difficult man to reach. Or so the police tell me.”
Jax cursed under his breath and Addy’s head went light. Oh dear lord. This was a disaster. The Davises were generations removed from the entrepreneurial spirit that had made their fortune. They were artists now, rich ones, and as such were desperately ill-equipped for poverty. None of them had even held a real job as far as Addy knew, except Jax, of course, who’d made a point of carving out a living independent of the family fortune.
“How bad?” he asked tersely.
“Bad enough,” Bianca replied, equally tersely.
“Wait, we’re…” Georgie blinked twice. Slowly. “We’re poor?”
“Oh, heavens no.” Bianca squeezed Georgie’s hand with a reassuring smile. “We simply have no cash.”
Matty narrowed his eyes. “How is that not the same as poor?”
“It is the same,” Georgie said. She dropped her mother’s hand and let her head roll back on the sofa cushion. She gazed blankly at the ceiling. “Oh my God.”
“It’s not the same, actually.” Jax spoke to Georgie but didn’t look away from his mother. “Why don’t you let Mom explain?”
Georgie closed her eyes and waved weakly for Bianca to continue.
Bianca folded her hands neatly on her lap. “According to Jason’s assistant, only our cash accounts were emptied. Evidently, he left the rest untouched.”
“The rest?” Georgie’s voice had dropped to a sleepy murmur. Addy blinked. Good heavens, was she taking a nap? Now? “What rest?”
Bianca hesitated and looked helplessly to Addy.
“I imagine that would be all your investment accounts,” Addy said. “Your mutual funds, savings bonds, IRAs, shares in individual companies, that kind of thing. You’re heavily invested locally, if I remember correctly.” She hadn’t met with Jason in a professional capacity since shortly after Diego’s death but she remembered the meeting in detail. For a guy four generations deep in money management, he’d been shockingly mediocre at the job. She’d immediately relieved him of her business and had tried — gently, diplomatically — to persuade Bianca to do the same. But Bianca was steadfast: their money stayed with the Blooms, where it had always been. And Addy didn’t persist because Jason wasn’t doing anything wrong precisely. He just wasn’t doing anything particularly right. He didn’t love numbers, that was all. And people who weren’t in it for the love of the game shouldn’t have access to other people’s money, in Addy’s opinion. It was just too tempting. Clearly it had been too tempting for Jason, the thieving weasel. She pressed her lips together and went on, her tone carefully neutral. “You likely retained all your properties as well, both personal like Hill Top House and commercial like the rentals.”
“What’s available for immediate liquidation?” Jax asked
his mother. “I assume Carly had the numbers?”
Addy shot Jax a startled look, but he hadn’t moved his gaze from Bianca since she’d said the word financial. But, honestly, since when was Jax on a first-name basis with Bianca’s money manager’s assistant?
“I’m sure she did,” Bianca murmured, and touched the worried line between her brows as if it were something new and unfamiliar. Which it was. “I was paying attention, Jackson, I swear I was. I wrote things down.” She dropped her hand, and her eyes were bleak and lost. “I don’t remember what, though.” She shifted that wrecked gaze to Addy. “I’m sorry, I just can’t seem to remember.”
Addy was off the couch and on her knees in front of her mother-in-law in a heartbeat. She caught one of Bianca’s slim hands between both of her own. “I’ll call her,” she said softly. “I’ll get Carly on the phone and we’ll figure this out, I promise. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Bianca blinked back a rush of tears. “Oh, Addy.”
“It will, I swear it. I won’t let it be anything else.” She gave Bianca’s hand a reassuring squeeze, then sat back on her heels, scanning the spreadsheets her brain had automatically ordered up. Maybe she’d broken up with the Wharton School of Business for Diego, but she’d never managed to kick her budget habit. It had disgusted her old-money husband, of course, to discover his new bride had such a parsimonious streak but Addy couldn’t help it. She couldn’t in good conscience indulge in fancy bras and handbags without being absolutely, positively sure she wasn’t dipping into the grocery money. Even when the grocery money was, for all practical purposes, unlimited. “It’ll take a few months at least for you to restructure your portfolio, but I can help out.” She’d have to significantly rearrange her own assets to free up that kind of ready cash, but Addy lived to rearrange her assets. Other people had hobbies; Addy had spreadsheets. “I’m sure I can cover at least a month or two of living expenses while you’re getting back on your feet.”
