by Anne Hope
Zach looked across the kitchen table at Becca, who nibbled on a piece of toast as if taking a real bite would cause her to balloon on the spot. She’d always been overly concerned with her weight, even though she had the most incredible figure he’d ever seen. True, she wasn’t on the skinny side. Her hips were wide and round, her breasts full. In today’s society, where anorexic runway models ruled, women like Becca were made to feel self-conscious about their bodies, which was a damn shame. To Zach she was the ideal woman, firm and voluptuous, curved in all the right places.
“What’s the plan for today?” she asked between bites.
“Divide and conquer.”
She aimed a confused stare his way.
“A great strategy in both war and parenting,” he explained. “Together, they’ll wipe us out. Split them up and we actually stand a chance.”
“Okay, commando, so what do you suggest?” Her tousled hair fell in a silken cascade over her forehead.
He’d always loved the way she looked in the morning, fresh and soft with just a hint of wildness. Long-forgotten cravings swam to the surface, made him acutely aware of her every gesture, her every sigh and sound. The way she smacked her lips together, wetting them with the tip of her pink tongue. The way she brushed the piece of toast against her mouth right before she took a bite. The soft whisper of fabric scraping her skin as she bent forward and reached for her coffee mug. Her pale blue satin robe parted, exposing the smooth swell of her breast.
Need pummeled him with iron fists. It took all his self-control not to glide his hand beneath her tank top and explore the tempting curve of her creamy white skin. He knew just how she’d feel in his palm, soft and supple and hot enough to scorch his flesh. He could all too easily imagine her eyes growing smoky as her nipple puckered beneath his thumb…
All the more reason to divide and conquer. He couldn’t bear to spend another minute in this house with her.
“For starters, you can take Kristen to ballet class.” His voice sounded gruff, roughened by desire. Thankfully, she didn’t catch the change in him.
“I didn’t know she attended ballet.” She lifted her coffee mug and took a sip. The warm liquid glazed her lips, made them glisten in the sunlight.
Zach pried his gaze away from her mouth. “Every Saturday at ten. Lindsay insists—insisted—that her daughter inherited her talent for dance.”
When she was a kid, Lindsay had always spun around the house, usually dressed in a silly tutu that had made him snicker and roll his eyes. The going joke was that she’d been born with a pair of ballet slippers on her feet. For a while he’d almost believed it. He wasn’t sure Kristen was as gifted a dancer, but Lindsay had somehow convinced herself that she was.
“Ten?” She shot a glance at her watch, and a frantic expression dashed across her face. “It’s almost nine. I haven’t even showered yet.”
“Then you better get a move on.”
She inhaled the rest of her toast, forced it down with a couple of mouthfuls of coffee, then bolted to her feet. Within seconds she was sprinting up the stairs.
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Welcome to the land of parenthood.
He wondered how the reality of it measured up to the fantasy she’d always harbored. To Becca, being a parent had always meant long strolls through the park, shared laughter and games, cozy hugs and kisses. She’d never anticipated sleepless nights, an endless battle of wills and nerve-shattering noise levels that set your teeth on edge.
If these last two weeks had taught him anything, it was that she was in for a rude awakening. One that was long overdue.
The Movement and Dance Studio was located in a beautifully renovated building on Harvard Street in Brookline, a short ten-minute drive away. Ms. Orloff, the owner and dance instructor, had once trained with the Russian ballet. She was a tall, lithe woman, with soft, fluid movements and the kind of innate grace that made goose bumps spring from one’s pores. She glided across the shiny hardwood floor as if on invisible skates, perfectly in tune with her body and the world around her.
Rebecca envied her. From the time she was old enough to walk, she’d longed for grace, composure and the kind of self-assurance that had always come so naturally to Zach and Lindsay. When Lindsay had been performing in dance recitals and Zach had been awarded medal after medal, Rebecca had sat in the shadows, silently cheering them on. She’d been so proud of them both, even as she’d secretly ached for something of her own—a talent, a passion, a smidgen of success.
She’d been the geek through and through. Sure, she’d aced all her tests and won the best short story award in high school, but athletically speaking, she’d been a nobody—the last kid ever picked in gym class, the invisible one, the one no one ever bothered to acknowledge with a pass or a pat on the back.
At seventeen she’d decided to change that. She’d joined a gym, had pushed herself to work out even as her muscles screamed in protest. After a year of training, her body had grown firm and supple, strong and defined. She’d been so pleased with the results that she’d never stopped working out. Even now she tried to go to the gym at least twice a week.
So, although she wasn’t willowy like Ms. Orloff and did not possess a fraction of her grace, she was still in relatively good shape and hoped to keep it that way.
Ms. Orloff demonstrated a pirouette. Eleven little girls in pink tights followed her lead. Kristen didn’t. She spun the wrong way, lost her balance and fell. Ms. Orloff frowned and pinched her mouth in a way that reminded Rebecca of a plucked ostrich. Kristen cowered and slowly dragged herself to her feet.
The mother sitting beside Rebecca clucked her tongue disapprovingly, and Rebecca shot her a withering look.
“Chassé,” Ms. Orloff instructed, skating across the dance floor. Eleven little girls floated through the room, as graceful as swans. Kristen moved a little too fast and crashed into the girl beside her. Ms. Orloff’s chest heaved with an exasperated sigh. The same mother snickered and shook her head.
Rebecca angled a glance her way. “Is there a problem?”
“That girl’s got two left feet,” she said, unaware that Rebecca was Kristen’s aunt. “She’ll never be a dancer. I don’t know why her mother keeps bringing her.”
She leaned closer, whispered conspiratorially, “I haven’t seen her around these past few weeks. Maybe she’s too embarrassed to stay and watch.”
Rebecca wanted nothing more than to wipe that self-satisfied smirk from her face. What a wretched, wretched woman. “That’s because she was shot to death two weeks ago,” she informed her. “I’m Kristen’s guardian now.”
The woman’s features fell. Purple blotches blossomed on her cheeks. “I’m sorry— I had no idea— I didn’t mean—”
Rebecca noted the despair on Kristen’s face, the way she inched away from the group and stared at her pink slippers as if they were the source of all her misery. She felt her pain. Her embarrassment was her own. It would probably take years for this little girl to find herself, and when she did, it most certainly would not be here in this stodgy studio.
“You’re right,” she agreed. “Kristen may never learn to be a ballet dancer, but at five she’s already learned compassion, decency and common courtesy.” She shot the woman an accusing look infused with bitter meaning. “Things so many adults still fail to grasp.”
The woman’s lips parted with an unvoiced protest, but Rebecca didn’t wait for her reply. She stood and tore into the classroom, not caring that she was interrupting the lesson. She walked up to her niece and crouched beside her. “Are you having fun?”
“Excuse me,” Ms. Orloff reprimanded with a hint of haughtiness, “we’re in the middle of a lesson.”
Rebecca ignored her. “Sweetie, are you having fun?” she asked again.
The girl shrugged. “I’m no good. I can’t dance.” Self-reproof shimmered in her bruised irises, making her look far older than her years. She was too young to know of failure, of loss, of deat
h. Too young to know anything but joy.
“That’s not what I asked you. I asked you if you were enjoying yourself.”
With a wary look at her teacher, Kristen reluctantly wagged her head.
“That settles it then. We’re blowing this pop stand.”
“You cannot leave in the middle of a lesson—”
With no hesitation at all, Rebecca took hold of Kristen’s hand and stalked past the dried-up old prune of an instructor. She no longer envied her willowy charms or pretentious grace. Without stopping to look back, she barreled past the startled mothers—who watched her as if she were a couple of baskets short of a picnic—raced down the stairs and burst out the front door.
The hot July sun welcomed them, sprinkled kisses along their skin as a warm breeze caressed their faces. The thick wooden door swung shut behind them with an angry clunk. In the street, cars whizzed by at breakneck speed, the drivers hardly noticing the cotton-tailed clouds chugging across a cornflower-blue sky or the way newly planted trees saluted them with a wild flutter of leaves. In a few months those leaves would be mottled with orange and gold before they slowly abandoned the safety of their branches in favor of an icy grave. But for now a stunning burst of color streaked the day.
Rebecca cradled Kristen’s small hand in hers and walked away from the redbrick building with its impeccably polished floors and stone-hearted inhabitants. The lost little girl gazed up at her tentatively, her expression brimming with confusion and something else—trust.
Rebecca’s heart swelled until it could barely beat. The strangest feeling came upon her. A feeling more powerful than despair, more paralyzing than self-recrimination, more gripping than longing. It was one of purpose, and it brought with it a bone-deep conviction that made her insides shake. She would help these damaged children heal, grow and find their place in the world…and God have mercy on anyone who dared get in her way.
“Finally. U came,” Night-Owl wrote the moment Noah logged on to Falcon World. “I’m bored.”
“Yeah, me 2.” With Kristen gone and Uncle Zach busy taking care of Will, Noah was completely on his own. Being alone sucked. He’d made a few drawings for the comic book he was working on, but now he was sick of drawing. He’d called up his friend Jason to see if he wanted to get together at the park or something, but no one had answered.
So he’d snuck into his dad’s office, turned off the speaker on the computer and stepped into Falcon World. Being in this room still made a swarm of bees buzz around in his stomach, but he fought to ignore them.
Chicken-shit.
He was happy that Night-Owl was here. “Still glad school’s out,” he added.
“KWUM.” Know what you mean, Night-Owl typed. “Rather be bored at home than in some dumb classroom.”
“School is total B/S.”
“Total.” There was a short pause. “What R U doin this summer?”
“BTSOOM.” Beats the shit out of me. “It’s up to my aunt and uncle.” As soon as Noah pressed Enter, he regretted it. He hadn’t told Night-Owl about his parents dying. The last thing he wanted was to have to explain. Just thinking about the shooting made the bees in his belly angry enough to sting.
“How come?”
A thick, wet knot rose to clog his throat. He couldn’t bring himself to answer. The words were all tangled up in the ugly images in his head.
“Raptor, R U there?”
“I’m here. Wanna play a game?” he wrote instead.
“Checkers?”
“No. How bout Chess?”
“K.”
So they played and Night-Owl didn’t ask him any more questions about his parents. For a few minutes Noah forgot they were gone. Forgot the shiny black gun with the long barrel that had taken them from him. Forgot how shitty the world could be.
He was just a kid again, having fun with a friend, and he liked it.
Chapter Eight
Becca and Kristen should have been back over an hour ago. Zach had tried calling to see what was holding them up, but Becca’s cell phone was off. He told himself it was too early to worry, but he couldn’t help it. After what had happened to Liam and Lindsay, he saw disaster around every corner. A truck could have rammed into Becca’s car, crumpled the metal and trapped them inside. A distracted driver might have passed a red light as they crossed the street, flattening them on the pavement. Even now, a strung-out gang member could be roaming the streets with a loaded gun in hand, determined to use pedestrians for target practice. Danger was a shadow, barely visible yet ever present, waiting for the perfect opportunity to bury you.
He tried to distract himself by entertaining Will, but it didn’t work. The grandfather clock in the living room kept catching his eye. Every damn tick was torture. When the doorbell rang, relief flooded his veins. He didn’t bother asking himself why Becca would ring the doorbell when he’d given her one of the spare keys that morning. He simply rushed to open it.
Disappointment sliced through him when he found Martin Birch standing on the front porch instead.
“Hey, Zach,” he greeted, squeezing in past him.
Martin was Liam’s older brother, a slick financial advisor with more arrogance than common sense. Zach had never liked him much. There was something about his perfect row of pearl-white teeth and icy blue gaze that left a greasy feeling in Zach’s gut.
“We weren’t expecting you,” Zach said a little too curtly. “I thought you were out of town.”
“I was. Sorry I missed the reading of the will, but I had a seven-digit deal to close and couldn’t get out of it.”
Of course, what could be more important than a million-dollar deal? Certainly not the fate of his niece and nephews. Zach thanked God Lindsay and Liam had had the good sense not to appoint Martin as guardian. He was single, emotionally crippled, and marked each new day on the calendar with a dollar sign.
“How are the kids doing?”
Zach wanted to say, “What do you care?”
Instead, he tamped down his bitterness and followed Martin to the living room. “As well as can be expected. They need a little time to adapt.”
“I bet they do.” Martin bent his body at midriff, placed his hands on his knees and flashed an exaggerated grin at Will, who sat on the rug chewing on a carrot. Zach had read somewhere that it helped with the teething.
“Where are the others?”
“Noah’s upstairs in his room. Kristen’s at dance class.”
“Business as usual, huh?”
“I’m trying to keep their routine as normal as possible.” He didn’t like having to explain himself, especially to the likes of Liam’s snake-oil salesman of a brother.
“Sounds fair enough.” Martin swaggered to the couch, dropped into it and stretched out his arms like a king staking a claim on his throne. Dressed in a pair of crisp black slacks, a designer shirt and Italian loafers, he looked like he should be on the cover of Business Week. “Have you gotten around to clearing out Liam and Lindsay’s things yet?”
Anguish serpentined around Zach’s chest, a hungry python that squeezed him until his lungs hurt. “No,” he said a little too adamantly. “Haven’t found the time.”
“If you need help, give me a ring. I don’t mind lending a hand.” He glanced at the wedding picture hanging over the fireplace and had the decency to look remorseful. “I still can’t believe my baby brother’s gone.”
For once, Zach had to agree with him. He understood Kristen’s refusal to accept her parents’ death. Hell, he could barely wrap his brain around it himself.
“If you need a break, I can take them over the weekend,” Martin offered. “Now that the big deal’s behind me, I’ve got some down time.”
“Thanks, but Becca moved in yesterday. She’s assuming some of the responsibilities, so things have gotten a lot easier.”
Something dark and predatory flared in Martin’s cool gaze, but he quickly subdued it. “How’s that working out?”
“Sorry?”
“It’s
gotta be weird, living with your ex again.”
Zach bristled. Becca had always been a sore subject for them. “We’re both adults. We can be civil to each other. The kids have to come first.”
A humorless chuckle resonated in Martin’s throat. “If I ever moved in with one of my exes, she’d skin me alive. You know what they say about a woman scorned.”
“Becca’s different.”
“Sure she is. Bet she’s never fantasized about raking you over burning coals.”
You wish. He fought to tamp down his growing irritation. Martin had the annoying habit of assuming he knew his wife better than he did, and as hard as he tried Zach couldn’t squelch the prickling fear that the jerk might be right.
Noah ambled into the living room, an iPod clipped to his belt. The moment he saw Martin, he pulled the plugs from his ears. “Hi, Uncle Martin. Are you moving in, too? ’Cause if you are, we need a bigger house.”
Martin’s face lit up at the sight of his eldest nephew, and he laughed. “No, bud. I’m not moving in.” He patted the couch cushion, invited Noah to come sit beside him. When the boy complied, Martin wrapped an arm around him and drew him hard against his side. “So how you holding up?”
Noah gave one of his trademark shrugs and wriggled free from the man’s grasp. He was old enough for open displays of affection to make him uncomfortable. “I’m fine. But Will whines all the time and Kristen’s a pain in the ass—”
Zach skewered the boy with a quelling look. “How many times have I told you to watch your mouth?”
“What’s the big deal?” He slid his thumbs through his belt hoops and slumped back in the couch. “You swear all the time.”
Martin watched Zach with a reproachful look that made him want to ball his hands into fists. What right did the cocky son of a bitch have to judge him? While Martin was off wheeling and dealing, Zach was here rolling with the punches, trying his damnedest to keep this family together. He had to put aside his own ambitions, bury his pain even as it struggled to eat him from the inside out and work to mend the three young lives tragedy had left in shambles. The way he saw it, he was damn well entitled to a swear word or two.
