Carlo Jr. had snubbed the idea of making a life of the company. He was an architect instead. Though they sometimes all worked together, John didn’t think Pop had ever fully forgiven their big brother for that betrayal.
Luca felt about the company like their father did, like his bones were made of two-by-fours and his blood of cement. But Pop had wanted to pass his legacy on to serious, accomplished Carlo Jr., his firstborn, and it had been a long time before he’d seen second son Luca, an extrovert—a fighter, and, in his youth, a partier—as mature enough to take the helm. Luca was a great leader for the company and had always been the best choice of them all, but Pop would never see him as anything but second best. If the company folded, their father would blame Luca.
John, the good son, had never considered working anywhere else. Of course he’d had adolescent fantasies of being a famous musician, but he’d started working at the family business while he was in high school, and he’d always known he’d spend his working life right there, because that was what Pop wanted.
And he enjoyed the work. He was good with his hands—they were all good with their hands in their particular ways—and he found peace and fulfillment in making something beautiful with them. Music or cabinetry, it didn’t matter; there was something real in that beauty.
When Pop retired, he’d finally acknowledged that Carlo Jr. was not going to swoop in and take over, and he’d given Luca the lead and brought John up as Luca’s second. Now John rarely got to do the work he enjoyed. Instead, as Chief Supervisor, he pushed papers and went to meetings, and he and Luca sweated the books. He also drove from job site to job site, checking up on the people who did that work. He was the guy the workers grumbled about.
He hated this work. Deeply. He was bored, and he was stressed, and he missed ending each day tired and sweaty, feeling like he’d accomplished something real.
“I still say we need…need…to go to…N-N-N-”
Luca cut Joey off and stood abruptly. “You have got to lay off that, Joe. We are not asking Nick for a favor.”
Joey stood up, too, and faced off with Luca. “He could hand us that…that…Tyler-O-Orvo job.”
“The cost is too high. I’ve paid the only debt I’m ever going to have to the Pagano Brothers.” Luca turned to John and asked, “You heading out, bro?” effectively canceling the conversation Joey wanted to have.
John had been thinking about the debt he owed Nick. There was no telling when that marker could get called. It had been three months, but it could be years, even, before it was called. There was no telling what he might have to do to clear it, either.
At Luca’s question, John looked up with a start. “Uh, yeah. Yeah. No rush, though, if Lexford is stalled. You checking in today, too?”
“Nah. I’m doing some more research on Tyler-Orvo.”
“You need help?”
Instead of answering, Luca said, “Hey, sugar.”
Luca had never called either John or Joey ‘sugar,’ but he commonly called women—strangers, friends, family, his wife—by that endearment. John had been writing in his book, but he looked up and saw Katrynn standing there, dressed for work in a pretty black dress, a denim jacket, and a pair of low-heeled black boots.
He now knew that she had at least a dozen pairs of boots, most of them black, with tall shafts and low heels, and she could hardly walk past a boot in a shop without stopping to consider it.
She’d never come to his work before, and without calling first, she’d have had no idea that she’d find him here. This visit was the definition of impromptu. He stood. “Hey, baby. Everything okay?”
She looked at Luca and Joey, seeming conflicted and freaked.
“Katrynn? What’s wrong?”
Clearing her throat like she was about to give a presentation, she said, “I have something to say, and I just need to say it.”
Fuck. He knew why she was here. Fuck. Goddammit.
Offense and hurt boiled up in John’s belly. He’d let her off the hook after that debacle in Connecticut. They’d needed to talk, but she hadn’t wanted to, and, yet again, he hadn’t pushed. He’d felt like he’d already been a bully coming after her the way he had, fucking her on the floor, and he hadn’t wanted to lean on her again, so he’d let her drop it. And now, when he was caught off guard, here she was with ‘something to say.’ Goddammit. Even when he thought he understood a woman, he did not understand women.
“Guys, get out.” If he was about to get dumped, the very last thing he needed was his brothers standing by as witnesses.
Luca and Joey left. Luca gave Katrynn’s elbow a little squeeze as he passed by. Joey closed the door on his way out.
“Do you want to sit for this pronouncement?” He heard the ice forming over his words. He could be a real bastard when he was hurt, and he felt the barbs lining up. All the shitty things he could say to make her hurt, too.
She frowned at his tone, and he could see her second-guessing herself. Good.
“No, I don’t need to sit. I need you to come over here, though.”
That knocked him back a step. Why would she want him close enough to reach her if she was going to dump him? Not that he’d hurt her like that, but in his experience, women with something harsh to say liked to say it from a distance.
He came around his desk and stood before her, arms crossed. She was wearing her Mrs. Dalloway pendant. Somehow, it seemed fitting. “What do you need to say?”
Her frowned deepened. “Are you mad at me?”
“I guess that depends on what you have to say.”
“I…” Her face paled, and she faltered, then visibly squared her shoulders. “There’s a lot of stuff I’m freaked out about. I’ve been trying to figure out why you’ve got me so spun, but this morning I decided that it doesn’t matter. You matter. I love you.” A blush filled in her cheeks, and she dropped her eyes. “That’s what I have to say. I love you. So I’m just gonna jump here. Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t let me crash in a heap at the bottom.”
For a second, John was too stunned to react. What he’d expected her to say and what she had in fact said were universes apart, and he had to force his brain to make a U-turn. He felt a little queasy with the shift.
“John?” her voice was low, her tone pleading, and John shook free of his shock.
“I won’t hurt you. I thought we were already at the bottom together.”
“I guess I was still holding on to the edge. Now I’m gonna try to let go.”
“I love you. I’ll catch you.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her. She closed her arms around his waist and kissed him right back.
He walked her backward a few steps until he had her against the door. The sound and feel of the impact told him at once that somebody was right on the other side of the door, listening in, and he knew exactly who it was. He leaned away from Katrynn and said, “Fuck off, Joe!”
Joey’s answering chortle proved the point.
“Asshole!” John laughed and caught Katrynn’s smiling lips again.
~oOo~
Luca stared at the house and yard. “Dude, you were not kidding. Who lives here? A fairy on acid?”
“You’re not that far off. Just roll with it, guys. Please. Katrynn feels weird about this as it is.”
She really did, and so did he, but she was trying to make things better with her mom, and he was going to help her.
On the day that she’d told him she loved him, she’d also asked if the offer was still on to help with the garage. When he talked to his brothers and got their curious agreement, Katrynn had called home and apologized, offering the services of the Pagano boys as an olive branch.
Which was why John was standing again in this chaotic yard, looking up at that slapdash house, one week to the day from the last time he’d stood here.
He wanted badly to get Katrynn to talk about her family more, but the topic made her uncomfortable. There was a conflict in her, though, between the girl who said she loved her funky fam
ily no matter what and the woman who was afraid she’d been warped by them. He felt like their relationship was caught smack in the middle of that conflict.
John had questions, but he had time to get answers. He hoped he had a lifetime.
Carlo came up alongside them, carrying a toolbox he’d pulled from the back of Luca’s truck. Besides the good set of small construction tools Carlo was carrying, they’d brought all the power tools they’d need. “What did you do that was so shitty we’re being punished for it?”
“Nothing. This is me being the good guy that I am.”
“This is us being the good guy that you are, bro.” Luca cuffed John on the back of the head.
“And I’ll owe you. Come on. There’s beer and food. A.J. and I got the materials, and we cleared the site. None of us get our hands dirty anymore these days. This might even be fun.”
“Who’s A.J.?” Carlo asked.
“You’ll see. Just roll with it, Carlo. Trust me.”
~oOo~
With four strong men and two women, one of whom was considerably more capable of following through on a task than the other, they got the garage up just past nightfall. It still needed to be painted, and the roof needed to be shingled, but the structure was up and solid, and they had the new overhead door in, too. Somebody from the town garage had brought a flatbed wrecker in and towed the old Delta 88 away.
A.J. turned out to be a good worker and a competent carpenter, and by the end of the project, John had decided that he wasn’t as much vapid as he was shy. It was probably as weird for him as anyone else that his girlfriend’s daughter was older than he was, and that her boyfriend was close to old enough to be his father.
Dana and Katrynn kept the refreshments coming, and, at Dana’s demand, they sorted through the detritus of the old garage for any reusable bits. By the time the men were almost done with the day’s work, Dana was ready to prepare dinner, and she had a big pile of old garage sitting in the middle of the yard. She meant to take to heart John’s offhand remark that the old garage was nothing more than bonfire.
John had kept an eye on mother and daughter, worried about another blowup, or simply the awkwardness that Katrynn had most feared, but they seemed to be getting along. He had no context for what they were normally like together, but they seemed to be doing okay.
After the job was done enough for the day, John sat with his brothers and A.J. on one of the picnic tables, drinking a beer and wiping his chest with his long-since wadded-up t-shirt. The yard was illuminated by what seemed to be dozens of strands of mini-lights, strung through trees and over the fence and around the back porch. He knew where Katrynn got her taste for Christmas lights.
Dana burst through the back door and ran down the porch steps. “I just had the best idea! Let’s camp out!”
“Mom.” Katrynn had only come out as far as the porch.
Mother sent daughter a look that belied the cheerful tone of her words, then, when Katrynn said nothing more, turned back to the men. “No, really! It’ll be great! We’ve got a bunch of pup tents and sleeping bags—I keep forgetting about them and buying new ones—and I’m making a big meal. We’ve got the wood for a bonfire. We can eat and you can drink all you like without worrying about the drive, and then we can sleep out in the beautiful May night tonight. In the morning, I’ll make a big breakfast. It’ll be perfect!”
Without waiting for their answer, she turned and flitted back to the house.
“Is she serious?” Carlo muttered.
It was A.J. who answered. “She gets lonely.”
John turned and considered the kid, but he didn’t speak.
A.J. went on. “I know it’s weird, me and her. She’s married—I guess you know that. But he just runs off. All the time. And she never knows if he’s coming back, or when. This last time, she woke up and he was just gone. No warning at all. She still tries to be happy all the time. She says enough people make the world ugly, and she doesn’t want to add to it. She gets lonely, and she’s a good person.” He sighed and got up from the table. “Anyway, she’s a great cook. Makes big, fluffy pancakes.”
John and his brothers watched the kid walk to the house.
“How the fuck did that just happen?” Luca asked.
“What?” John had barely heard his brother; he was still thinking about what A.J.’s speech had told him about Katrynn.
“Some kid with a wicked big zit on the back of his neck just made me feel like an asshole.” He turned to Carlo. “What d’you say, big bro? Feelin’ like a Boy Scout tonight?”
Carlo and Luca had ridden together in Luca’s truck. Carlo’s first response was, “We’ll miss Mass.”
When John and Luca both shrugged, Carlo stared down at his beer. “Is there a lot more where this came from?”
“I saw a couple of cases in the kitchen,” John answered. “You’re seriously thinking about staying?”
“Might as well. By the look of this place, if we don’t get the roof shingled and the wood treated while we’re here, it’ll never happen.”
“I love you guys.” John jumped to the ground. “I’ll go tell the girls.”
“You owe us so big, little brother,” Luca laughed. “So big. And you’re gonna explain missing Mass to Pop.”
~oOo~
“I can’t believe you guys actually stayed. I can’t believe you actually all came here today and built the garage. I can’t believe we’re all sleeping in the yard. It’s got to be the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me or my mom. You are amazing. Your whole family.”
They were lying in a pup tent, zipped together in two joined sleeping bags, in the back yard. Carlo and Luca had taken seriously Dana’s invitation to drink as much as they wanted, and they were both snoring in their tents.
John kissed Katrynn’s head. “I love you. So they do, too.”
She sighed and nuzzled her face into his bare chest. “Your family is so…right. It makes me see how wrong mine is.”
“I admire your mom.”
Katrynn lifted her head and stared at him. “What?”
“I do. It seems like she tries very hard to be glad for what she has. Like she’s made a choice about what her presence in the world should be, and she does what she has to do to live that choice. That’s hard for me. I’ve always done what people expected of me. I guess that’s my choice, too, but it never feels like that. It’s always felt like other people do the choosing.”
“What life would you be living if you’d done the choosing?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? “I have absolutely no idea.”
“That makes me sad for you.” She brushed her face over his beard, and he caught her hand and kissed her fingertips.
“Don’t be. My life is good. I have my family, and I love the Cove. I live on the beach. And I have you. You are my choice.”
“You’re my choice, too. I love you.”
He smiled and rolled over, laying her on her back. The sleeping bag tightened around them like an embrace. “Those are beautiful words in your beautiful voice.”
When he tried to kiss her, she held him off. “I’m scared. This feels so different from anything I’ve had before.”
“That’s what makes it so good. I’ve got my arms around you, baby. I’ve got you.”
She smiled and let him kiss her.
~ 16 ~
Katrynn found the sleeping bag zipper and eased it down as quietly as she could.
John’s hand slid over her hip and pulled her back. “Hey. Where’re you goin’?” His voice was husky with sleep, and she almost moaned at the sound.
“I thought you were asleep. I was going to help Mom with breakfast.”
“Don’t leave me yet.”
She relaxed into his hold and closed her eyes as he nosed her hair out of his way and pressed a kiss to the back of her neck. His tongue swirled lightly over the spot, and far away in her belly, nerves danced.
“We should go camping this summer. Real camping. I like sleeping outsi
de with you.” He hadn’t moved his mouth from her skin, and the breath of his words made gooseflesh flow over Katrynn’s shoulder.
“I like sleeping with you anywhere.”
Prayer (The Pagano Family Book 5) Page 22
