Because of the List

by Amy Knupp

  “You have money to get by?”

  Marshall’s jaw tightened. “I haven’t taken a paycheck for four months.”

  Alex swore again and Marshall said, “Amen, brother.”

  “Does Mom know any of this?”

  Marshall shook his head as he blew out a tense breath. “Haven’t figured out how to tell her. I’m thinking ‘I need to move back home’ might be a starting point.”

  “She’ll be so happy to have both of her sons back she won’t know what to do,” Alex said sarcastically. Their mom loved them plenty, he fully acknowledged, but who wanted a couple of grown, jobless sons bunking and tripling the grocery bill?

  “Never thought I’d be in this position. No idea where I’m going, what I’m doing. No direction.”

  “I’ve lived like that half my life,” Alex replied. “Guess it doesn’t matter whether you know what you want all along or if you figure it out when you’re nineteen years old. Losing it is a big pile of crap.”

  Either hell was freezing over or, for the first time in his twenty-nine years, Alex and his older brother had something in common.

  “Truer words were never spoken.” Marshall drilled the ball into the ground again, forcing it to bounce off the pavement so hard it went as high as the top of the two-story house. “I believe I’ve figured out the one thing I’ll do first.” He checked his overpriced designer watch. “Close enough to noon. Think I’ll have myself a beer.”

  “Never thought I’d say this to you, big guy, but that’s a damn good idea. I believe I’ll join you.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  NOT. GOING. TO CRY. TODAY.

  Taylor kneeled on the bathroom floor next to the tub. She stretched her fingers, taking a break from scrubbing the shower grout with an old toothbrush. Scrubbing it to within an inch of its bloody life, as Quinn had always said.

  No tears, no tears, no tears.

  She’d repeated the words like a mantra. All day long. Maybe if she said them enough, she’d believe them and get through the afternoon without having a complete system failure in front of Alex.

  Why in creation had she agreed to have him help her sort through Quinn’s remaining belongings? The rest of it—the clothes, high-school trophies, yearbooks—that’d been a traumatic task. In truth, she probably could’ve figured it out herself if she’d tried, but she hadn’t felt up to tackling it. Really, the task could wait another year…or twelve.

  She knew why she’d jumped at Alex’s offer, though. She was a coward. Terrified of facing the basement alone, because if she did, her control could slip, and she’d already cried her eyes out for a week straight when she’d sorted through his bedroom. The loneliness, the emptiness of Quinn’s downstairs workout room, where he also kept his gun collection, might just kill her. She might never stop crying. Having someone with her was a safety net.

  Having that someone be Alex Worth was the dumbest plan she’d formulated yet.

  Taylor checked her watch through tear-blurred eyes, cursing the painful ball in the back of her throat. Fifteen minutes till he’d said he would arrive. Maybe if she bawled her eyes out now, she’d get it out of her system. Yeah, and then she could greet him looking like she’d been staring at a computer monitor for a week straight.

  Biting her lower lip and shaking her head resolutely, she attacked the grout again. It was difficult to tell where she’d stopped cleaning because, truth be told, it didn’t need to be done. There was no marked difference between before and after. That’s what a death in the family could do to a cleanaholic. A couple of months ago, she’d considered replacing the old tub and all the tile around it—original to the fifty-five-year-old house, she was certain—with one of those one-piece, tile-free models. But then what would she do for therapy? If she was really going to sell the house, though, she’d have to look into the possibility.

  A knock on the back door startled her. She dropped the toothbrush in the tub and jumped up. Checked her watch again. Drat. He was early. Normally that was a trait she appreciated, but today she needed every second she could get to force the lump out of her throat. Steel herself. Start believing that mantra of hers.

  The knock came again as she hurried through the living room into the kitchen.

  Lord help her. Not going to cry today.

  She gave the corners of her eyes one final swipe with her index fingers and hoarded oxygen. Opened the door. And for the thousandth time was jolted by the mere sight of Alex Worth. Those broad shoulders, the narrow hips. The stubble on his chin that partially camouflaged his scar and somehow made him even more attractive. The sharp gray eyes that could’ve been dreamy on another, softer face. On his they were arresting. To her, disconcerting.

  His virility seemed to suck out her IQ like a straw in the last drops of chocolate shake.

  “H-hi. You’re early.”

  “You’re flustered and you smell faintly like bleach.”

  Heat flooded her cheeks. “Sorry. I was cleaning…”

  “No need to apologize, Scarlet. I didn’t intend to be early. Wasn’t sure how long it’d take me to walk.”

  “You walked from your mom’s house? Isn’t that a couple of miles?”

  “Three and a half last time I checked.”

  “With your leg? If you needed a ride—”

  “I needed a walk. May I come in?”

  She jumped back so he could enter, the blush not receding at all. Alex brushed by and she made the mistake of breathing in just so, catching his masculine, woodsy scent.

  “Would you like a drink? Some cookies?” Taylor opened the cabinet and searched for anything she could feed him. “I…didn’t get more beer yet but I have tea.”

  Alex chuckled behind her—she wasn’t sure why—and said, “No. No tea. Thanks.”

  “Water? Cookies?” So what if she was trying to put off walking down into Quinn’s “man room”?

  “I’m good. Do you have the home-improvement list done?”

  Grateful for the stall, she took the list from the side of the refrigerator where she’d hung it with a magnet and handed it to him. “That’s the exhaustive version. I don’t expect you to do all of that,” she said, regretting writing every last task down.

  He perused it, flipped it over to the back. “Looks like you’re losing your touch.”

  Alarmed, she moved closer and read over his shoulder, or rather, next to his shoulder, trying to figure out her error.

  “I expected you to have each one weighted for priority,” he said, shoving the list into his back pocket.

  “Oh. I did consider that, but I’d rather you just do the things that you want to take on. I didn’t know if your leg would hold you back…”

  “My leg isn’t going to hold me back.” His words came out harshly, as if driven by anger or frustration. Or both.

  At that moment, Taylor believed he would fly a helicopter again. Soon. This Alex was decidedly different from the apathetic high-school kid she remembered.

  “Let’s get started,” he said.

  Taylor sucked in a fortifying breath. “Okay. Yes, let’s get started.”

  ALEX FOLLOWED TAYLOR down into the basement. As he took the last step with his good leg, he was blindsided by the dank, dim familiarity. The wood-paneled family room seemed to vibrate with Quinn’s presence.

  They’d spent hours down here, in high school and after. Summers, weekends. There were times when Alex had practically lived down here himself. They’d played video games, Ping-Pong, worked out, watched TV…when they weren’t fishing or playing sports, chances were good you’d find them in this cave.

  Alex swallowed hard and faked a smile when Taylor glanced back at him, apparently noticing he was slow getting down the stairs. This time the pain wasn’t so much in his leg. His head throbbed and threatened to explode.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked, frowning.

  Like he’d been flattened by a goddamn tank. “I’m fine.” He was tired of being asked how he was, if his leg hurt, if he was okay.


  Taylor paused at the door to the other finished room, straightened her shoulders and then forged inside.

  At the doorway, Alex steeled himself against the feeling that Quinn should be sitting there on the bench waiting for him to spot while he lifted. He shut out the pang of sharp grief as he scanned the room he knew so well. Nothing had been moved an inch. The workout equipment, covered now with a thick blanket of dust, still loomed in the center of the polished concrete floor. He tried not to notice the weight level still sitting at three hundred pounds. Refused to think about the time Quinn had finally hit that goal.

  The gun cabinet was in the far corner. The large heavy-duty container where Quinn stored his fishing gear whenever he wasn’t in town stood near the door to the furnace room. The stereo on the folding table, considered gargantuan by today’s standards, dated back to tenth grade when Quinn had saved his allowance to buy it. Alex knew without looking that the banged-up cardboard box next to it held the CDs that hadn’t made the cut when Quinn had gone into basic training years ago, pre-MP3 era.

  Shit, this blew.

  Or it would if he hadn’t had months of practice shutting it all down.

  “The guns,” Taylor said, her voice hoarse with sadness. “Let’s do those first.”

  She took a key chain out of the pocket of her baggy hoodie sweatshirt and attempted to unlock the cabinet. The third key worked. Once she opened it, she stood back and gestured toward it.

  “Go ahead,” Alex said.

  “No, thanks. I don’t like guns.”

  “He always made sure they were unloaded, you know.”

  Taylor shrugged. “You’re the expert. That’s why you’re here, right?”

  Something like that. Alex opened the door she’d unlocked and pulled on Quinn’s gloves to keep oil from his hands off the guns. He took out the Winchester rifle first. He wasn’t the gun fan Quinn had been, but he could appreciate the collection just the same.

  “Whatever you want is yours,” Taylor said. She slid her back down the wall to sit on the floor a few feet away, where she could see but wasn’t close enough to handle the guns.

  “Don’t you want to keep any of them?”

  “I’ve never liked having them in the house. If you don’t take them, I’ll just sell them. Post them online or something.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Absolutely not. You can’t put a gun up for grabs on the internet. You could get all kinds of crazies showing up at your door.” He cringed to think what a cluster that would be. Thank God she’d brought the suggestion up so he could prevent it.

  “Oh.” He could see her imagining the possibilities as she frowned. “I hadn’t thought about that. So what do I do?”

  “If you really want to get rid of them, I’ll take care of it for you. I know some guys who might be interested in a couple of them. The rest I can take to gun dealers, see who will give us the best price.”

  Alex continued to unload the cabinet, inspecting each one. He leaned the rifles carefully against the wall and set the smaller guns on the folding table by the stereo. For now, he treated the process like business. He wasn’t an expert and hadn’t purchased a gun himself for a couple of years, but he silently estimated what she could get for each one. Not that she needed the money with her all-powerful computer-wizard job.

  “What about this one?” he asked, pulling out Quinn’s AR-15. “It was his favorite. The one he bought himself for Christmas three or four years ago. Remember that?”

  Taylor glanced at the gun he held and nodded. “I remember. You should definitely take that one.”

  Alex looked it over, admiring the bluing of the metal. “I don’t know.”

  It didn’t seem right taking any of them. They were Quinn’s, dammit. He’d spent years acquiring these, starting when they were still in school, with Marshall’s help when they were too young to make the purchase.

  And Quinn was no longer here to clean them, use them—hell, even decide to sell them.

  “If you don’t take it, some stranger will end up with it,” Taylor said.

  He nodded slowly, thinking how that would’ve made her brother crazy. “I might. Let me know before you do anything else with it.” He went to hand the AR-15 to her to set on the table.

  Taylor stared up at him but didn’t take the gun.

  “What’s wrong?” He stepped closer to her. “You won’t touch it? Really?”

  “Guns scare me,” she said quietly, and his surprise disappeared, the old protectiveness replacing it even though she was completely safe and there was nothing here, right now, that could harm her.

  “Think of it as just a bunch of metal. No ammo. It’s safe.”

  She eyed the weapon as if it was a cobra dancing out of a basket. “No, thanks.”

  “If you want to get rid of them, a coat of oil might be advisable. Which presents a challenge if you don’t want to touch them.”

  She stared up at him hesitantly. “I was hoping maybe you could help me?”

  “You were hoping, huh?”

  This was one of those times she looked so young, like an unsure little girl who could easily get hurt. It was difficult for him to say no to that version of Taylor.

  She sat forward, and before he realized what she was doing, she touched the side of the gun he held with one finger then quickly retracted her arm.

  “There.” She looked smug.

  Alex almost grinned. “Really?”

  “I touched it. Now will you help me oil them? Please? Or do you require further bribery?”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “I’d offer to do your math homework but…”

  He couldn’t help cracking a grin at that. Even though she was three years younger than him and Quinn, there’d been plenty of times when they had convinced her to do exactly that—and she always had been more than capable. Of course she was the whiz kid who’d graduated early from high school and already had college credits under her belt when she did.

  “Home-cooked meals hold a lot of leverage,” he said, reacting to the rumble in his stomach.

  She stared at him for a moment, maybe to gauge whether he was serious.

  “I’ll help you with the guns—no cooking required,” he relented. He’d convince Vienna to take him for carry-out when he got home.

  Her shoulders seemed to relax and he wondered why she was always—still—so tentative around him. They’d known each other for years. This house had been like a second home to him.

  “Nothing to worry about, Scarlet. I’ll handle it. Okay if I keep them down here until I find homes for them?”

  “Of course. Thank you. I’m making a list of them for you.” She held up her phone to show him she’d typed the heading Gun Inventory.

  “List time, is it?”

  She frowned and he resolved to try to stop teasing her so much.

  “Tell me what each one is,” she said, “and I’ll email you the information.”

  Even if Alex hadn’t known much about guns, he could’ve given her a detailed summary of every one Quinn owned. He’d gone with him to purchase most of them and had listened to Quinn debate with himself every time he’d gotten the urge to add to his collection. He rattled off the info now, slowly, as Taylor entered it into her phone.

  “What’s next?” he asked when they were finally through the list of rifles and handguns.

  Taylor blew out a long breath that made the loose wisps of hair around her face fly upward. “Take your pick. Exercise equipment or fishing.” She stood slowly, wearily, and typed something else into her phone.

  Alex might be blocking out the significance of their task but he could tell it was taking a toll on Taylor. “Want to take a break?”

  Her eyes fluttered shut and she leaned her head back against the dark wood paneling. Her long lashes beneath her glasses caught his eye and he took a step toward her without thinking, instinctively wanting to reassure her. Of course there was no reassuring. Quinn was gone and there was
no way to make that easier to swallow.

  She opened her eyes and met his gaze, determination suddenly emanating from her, taking him by surprise. Moments like this served to remind him she was a fully competent adult, not just Quinn’s kid sister.

  “I’d like to get through all the man stuff while you’re here, if you have enough time.”

  “Let’s get it done, then.”

  The workout equipment was quick, since most of it would be sold as a set. They wiped it down and made sure everything worked. Quinn suggested a price and she made a note to put an ad online. Then they moved on to Quinn’s fishing gear. Rods and reels, tackle and the rest of it—even more than the guns, this was who Quinn was. His preferred brand of rods, stored vertically in one section of the cabinet. Neon orange and yellow bobbers that Quinn had sworn were luckier than other colors. An entire tackle box full of nothing but line, organized neatly, secured with wires. If you compared his gear to Alex’s, it was immediately evident they were opposites, at least in this, and you’d wonder how the heck they could be friends.

  Alex laughed quietly. “My tackle box always made him cringe.”

  “He mentioned that. A couple of times.”

  “Couple of hundred, more likely. He wasn’t overly neat in any other area of his life but his fishing gear made me think he hired you to organize it.”

  Her glance skimmed the floor shyly. “Somehow I think that might be an insult.”

  He shook his head absently, fortifying himself again against the grief. Over the next forty-five minutes, as they sat on the cool, hard floor and sorted through more fishing gear than the entire army could make use of, he kept an eye on Taylor for signs she was losing it. A woman in tears could level him as a hand grenade couldn’t. If she was going to break down, he wanted as much heads-up as he could get.

  Taylor had kept it together so far, though. She’d been fighting tears the entire afternoon. Fighting them hard and doing an impressive job of it, in his estimation.

  She continued to make the sorting as businesslike as she could. Efficient. Organized. Lists on her phone. And then he opened the hinged lid of the last plastic box.