With a wave, her boss left, leaving the big door open so the warm March air, fragrant with honeysuckle, could drift in. Cassie breathed deeply, dispelling the lingering, faint odor of paint, then picked up the first box and carried it to the front. Rolling the creaky wooden chair away from the teacher’s desk—from her desk, she thought with delight—she sat down on the floor, opened the deep bottom drawers on either side and began unpacking lesson plans, grade books, textbooks and other teacher’s supplies.
When she’d gotten her teaching degree, she had known that jobs could be scarce, and she hadn’t been convinced that it was even what she wanted to do. She had considered applying to graduate school and earning her master’s degree. She had thought about studying abroad, preferably in Paris, since she spoke the language fluently and loved all things French. She had even contemplated joining the Peace Corps and traveling to some exotic corner of the world, helping others, broadening her horizons, learning new things.
But she had been tired of school and had already used up enough of her parents’ and Jolie’s money, in addition to her scholarships. As for living abroad—even in Paris—the inevitability of homesickness had stopped her. She had always been extraordinarily close to her family and couldn’t imagine being more than a few miles away from them. With an entire ocean separating them, she would be too lonely to find pleasure in whatever she was doing.
That was how she’d wound up working in an office in the city’s Central Business District. The pay had been sufficient, particularly since Jolie and Smith had offered her use of the riverside condo where he’d lived before their marriage. But the work hadn’t been very fulfilling, and she had found herself all too soon dreading going to the office, daydreaming about other, better jobs. More satisfying jobs.
Now she had one of those better jobs. Granted, the pay was significantly less, and the hours promised to be significantly longer, but it was going to be a great job. She believed it in her heart.
And she always trusted her heart.
She was back.
From his vantage point at the living-room window above O’Shea’s, Reid Donovan could see a fair portion of Serenity Street in either direction and the buildings across the street.
He had a good view of Kathy’s House and the old garage set off to one side behind it and an especially good view of the woman standing outside the garage.
Cassie Wade had been coming down here since last August, when she’d shown up at Karen’s first neighborhood cookout and volunteered her services. She was the only member of the Kathy’s House staff who had ventured onto Serenity before the women’s center opened, the only one besides Karen who had spent all her free time working on the house. She was one of only two staff members who were paid a salary—or would be as of Monday. And she was the only one of them all who got under his skin.
It wasn’t just that she was a pretty woman. He’d known plenty of pretty women, some beautiful enough to make Cassie look plain, but none of them had ever bothered him the way she did. Maybe it was because she was different. All the women he’d known had come from Serenity or someplace just like it. Most of them were bold and brash. Some were trashy. All of them were hard around the edges. Coming from a neighborhood like this, they had to be. Weak people didn’t survive on Serenity.
Cassie came from Serenity, too, but her family had been one of the lucky ones. They’d gotten out when she was just a kid. She probably remembered little about the place, and her few years in the neighborhood certainly hadn’t left their mark on her. No one could ever look at her today and guess that she came from here. She was too self-assured. Too well educated. Too elegant. Too optimistic by a mile. Too foolish.
His scowl deepened. Last summer another do-gooder who was self-assured, well educated, overly optimistic and foolish had come to Serenity and knocked Jamey right off his feet. Reid didn’t intend to let that happen to him. He wasn’t going to be a case of like-father-like-son.
With an uneasy feeling tickling down his spine, he turned away from the window. There wasn’t much chance of him following Jamey’s lead in anything. They were father and son only through the mistake of birth. Jamey had been an absent father, and Reid had been a lousy son. After more than twenty-five years of anger and resentment, hostility and contempt, they were trying to build some sort of relationship, something they could both live with, but it wasn’t coming easy. Sometimes he thought they were making progress. After all, hadn’t Jamey given him this apartment and a part-time job in the bar downstairs? Didn’t they have dinner together every Sunday? Weren’t they able to keep a halfway civil tone to their conversations?
Other times he knew it was a lost cause. They’d been enemies too long. Some sins were too hard to forgive. Some things were never meant to be. Maybe Jamey and Reid as father and son was one of them.
Maybe an honest and trustworthy Reid was another.
Still scowling at the thought—at the possibility—he gazed around the living room for something to do, but there was nothing to occupy his mind. With a mother who had never quite grasped the concept of picking up after herself, he had learned at an early age that he would have to do whatever cleaning would be done. It was second nature to throw away the newspaper when he finished reading it, to make his bed as soon as he got out of it, to sweep the floor whenever it showed dirt. Sometimes he wished he were more of a slob. At least then he would have something to do. He wouldn’t have an entire weekend stretching ahead of him with nothing to fill the hours. He wouldn’t have time to brood over the sorry state of his life. He wouldn’t have time to brood over Cassie Wade.
He usually spent his weekends away from here, doing nothing special in no place special. He wandered around the Quarter, watched the tourists and the street performers and listened to the music. He ate in some of the city’s lesser-known restaurants, spent hours in darkened movie theaters and occasionally bought a few drinks in someone else’s bar. His wanderings were aimless, his hours wasted. But what were the alternatives? Stay here with no television, no radio and nothing to read? Go downstairs and watch the TV mounted on the wall while Jamey tended bar? Hang out on the street and risk running into his old friends and former partners? See if there was any work to do at Kathy’s House and risk running into Cassie?
A day alone and away from Serenity sounded better with each suggestion.
Even if he was damn tired of spending his life alone.
He went into the bedroom, pulled on a shirt, then laced on his sneakers. Yesterday had been payday at the garage, giving him another hundred dollars in his savings account and a hundred in his pocket. With no one to spend it on but himself, the hundred bucks would buy two weeks’ worth of groceries and cover his out-of-pocket expenses until next payday. He didn’t make much working the two part-time jobs, but with his lack of education and his reputation, he wasn’t complaining. He was lucky to have either job. Most people around here would hear his name, lock up anything that wasn’t nailed down and throw him out the door. Most people wouldn’t trust him to do anything but rob them blind.
And he had no one to blame but himself. He had spent the better part of his life building a reputation as a punk, a thief and a thug, one of Ryan Morgan’s boys—which meant he was also one of Jimmy Falcone’s boys. Intelligent people were afraid of Jimmy Falcone. Honest people were scornful of him. Everyone was suspicious of him and the losers who worked for him. Reid had earned every bit of the fear, scorn, suspicion and distrust directed his way.
Sliding the money into his pocket, he left the apartment and locked the door behind him. There were two identical units on the second floor of the building, each with a living room and bedroom and sharing the bathroom in back and the kitchen downstairs. After their friendship had been shot to hell last summer and Reid had no longer been welcome at the apartment he’d shared with Ryan Morgan, Jamey had offered him this place. Reid had moved in soon after Jamey had moved out of the second apartment and into Karen’s house across the street.
The bui
lding was old and wore an air of neglect. The furnishings were shabby and sparse—a sofa, chair and a couple of tables in the living room, a bed, night table and bureau in the other room. Still, it was the nicest place he’d ever lived. Tattered and worn though it was, it was comfortable, and it was private. He had no roommates to contend with, no neighbors to disturb him. For the first time in his life, he had a place that was his alone, off-limits to anyone he didn’t invite in.
In the six months he’d lived there, he hadn’t invited anyone in. Turning his back on the Morgans had meant turning his back on his only friends. As for girlfriends, the kind of women he knew how to be with weren’t the kind of women he wanted to be with. They were the easy kind, the kind who didn’t mind getting intimate with someone like him, the kind who reminded him too strongly of the life he’d lived for so long, who might tempt him to return to that life.
They weren’t like Cassie.
Scowling again, he took the narrow stairs two at a time. He’d spent enough time in the past six months obsessing over Karen’s pretty young friend. Now that the school was about to open, now that Cassie would be here every day, five days a week, it was time to get that obsession under control. They lived in different worlds. She was everything he wasn’t. She wasn’t like any woman he’d ever known, and it was damn certain that he wasn’t like any man she’d ever known. He wasn’t respectable. Educated. Trustworthy. Dependable. His own father had probably already warned her away from him, the way he’d warned Karen last summer to keep her distance, the way he would soon warn off Reid himself. Punk. That had long been Jamey’s favorite way of describing him. Punk, with special emphasis, with particular derision.
Punk. Reid hated the word. He hated that he’d earned such a description, hated that he would probably never live it down, no matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried.
The stairs ended in a short hall. Straight ahead was the bar. On the left a swinging door led into the kitchen, easily twice the size of his apartment and fully equipped for the restaurant O’Shea’s had once been. The equipment was ancient, older than Jamey, though the six-burner stove, one oven and the industrial-size refrigerator were all in working order. Reid didn’t use any part of it but the refrigerator and the microwave, the only addition in recent memory. Cooking had never been one of Meghan Donovan’s strongsuits. He’d grown up on sandwiches, soup from a can and fast food, and that was how he still ate—quick, easy and for one.
Bypassing the kitchen, he went into the bar. Though it was twenty minutes till ten, the ceiling fans were already turned on, the doors were already open and Jamey was already moving the upturned chairs from the tabletops to their proper positions on the floor. He glanced Reid’s way but didn’t stop working. “Morning.”
“Yeah.” Though he wanted nothing more than to walk straight through the room and out the French doors without exchanging another word, Reid stopped near the bar. “You’re in early.”
“Karen’s working on a new grant proposal. I decided to get out before she roped me into helping.”
His stepmother had requested Reid’s help on a number of projects in her quest to save Serenity. He had scraped the boards that sided the three-story house and painted them pale blue, planted grass and watered it, dug holes for new trees, rehung doors and gates and painted a graffiti-proof mural on the brick wall that enclosed Serenity’s only park. Any job that required brute strength, patience for tedious tasks or attention to detail was deemed appropriate for him. Anything requiring brains Karen handled herself or delegated to Jamey.
He didn’t blame her. Life with Meghan hadn’t been compatible with regular schooling. Back in Atlanta, where she’d taken him when he was a baby, stability had been sorely missing from their lives. They had moved often, usually only a step or two ahead of the landlord demanding the unpaid rent and threatening eviction. By the time he’d come to Serenity, he had been enrolled in twenty-one schools, and he’d missed two days for every one he’d attended. He had come to hate always being the new kid in class and always being so far behind the others. On Serenity, he had written off school for good. He had given no thought at all to finishing high school, hadn’t even considered the remote possibility of ever attending college. All his energies had gone toward survival and antagonizing his father.
And he had succeeded. After eleven years on Serenity, he was still alive—more than he could say for Ryan Morgan or any number of others—and Jamey had been antagonized to the point that there might be little salvageable between them.
“What are you going to do today?”
Reid shrugged. “Probably see a movie.”
“By yourself?” Without waiting for an answer, Jamey offered a suggestion. “Why don’t you ask Karen to go? Remind her that weekends are for relaxing.”
“Maybe.” Reid liked his stepmother. From the day she’d moved into that big old house across the street last August, he’d known there was something different about her—something special. She’d never seen a place like Serenity before, but she hadn’t let it beat her down. She had come in full of hope, optimism and big plans, and not even the vandalism against her house or the beating she’d received from Ryan Morgan had dampened it. Her dream of a center to help the women of Serenity was now a reality. Kathy’s House had opened its doors to steady business last October. Her biggest threat—Morgan—was dead, and the punks who had once done his bidding now followed Jimmy Falcone’s orders and pretty much left Karen and the women’s center alone. The people in the neighborhood had forgotten that she was an outsider and accepted her as one of their own. She was friendly, resourceful, not arrogant, never holier-than-thou and was convinced that there was good in everyone, even Reid. She loved her work, her neighbors, her home and Jamey, and everyone adored her, including Reid.
But he didn’t want to ask her to spend the afternoon with him. She had better things to do, and frankly he wasn’t up to sunshine, happiness and isn’t-life-wonderful today.
Pushing away from the bar, he started for the front door, taking a moment to set the chairs he passed on the floor. With a muttered goodbye, he stepped out onto the uneven sidewalk and, with his first glance across the street, locked gazes with the one person he had seriously hoped to not see again this morning.
Cassie was removing a sign from the open trunk of her car—or, at least, she had been. Now she was standing motionless, her long brown hair falling straight down her back to her waist, her fingers clasped tightly to the corners of the sign, and she was watching him. She did that sometimes, as if she didn’t trust him enough to ignore him or as if he were some specimen requiring further study, some form of alien life deserving of curiosity, suspicion, wariness and distrust. He was alien to her. Guys like him didn’t make it into nice, middleclass neighborhoods like hers, not unless they’d gone there to burglarize and terrorize. Guys like him usually never met women like her.
His mind was giving the command to turn and walk toward Decatur, toward the street that would take him away from Serenity and Cassie Wade, but his body wasn’t yet obeying when she spoke. “Good morning.” Her voice was sweet, pitched low, full of rounded tones that, by rights, should soothe. It was always even, always warm, had once been easy on the spirit.
He couldn’t remember exactly when he’d stopped finding it soothing or easy. Maybe it had been last month, when she’d offered him hot coffee and a warm blueberry muffin on an unusually chilly Saturday morning. Maybe it had been the neighborhood Christmas party, when she’d arrived bearing gifts for the kids on Serenity and looking like a gift herself, all wrapped up in green velvet and satin ribbons. Hell, maybe it had been the first time he’d ever seen her, at Karen’s first cookout last summer. His old gang had shown up to cause trouble, and Karen had accommodated them. In the few minutes they’d been there, Reid had spent most of his time restraining Ryan, holding him back from a physical confrontation, but he’d still managed to notice the stranger at the party. Pretty, elegant, self-possessed women in a place where shabbiness, pove
rty and squalor were the norm were difficult to overlook.
With a sigh, he slowly stepped out into the street. “Hey.”
Breaking eye contact with him, she began tugging the sign. Unlike the thin metal rectangle that hung near the middle gate and identified Kathy’s House, this sign was large and heavy, protected by Plexiglas and encased in a metal frame. Unlike the Kathy’s House sign, it wasn’t meant to be easily replaced after random vandalism but rather was intended to survive such acts intact. He wondered if she realized that the kids prone to painting, trashing, torching and destroying other people’s property would take such solid construction not as a reason to leave it alone but as a challenge to be defeated. He should know. He’d done enough damage on these blocks himself in times past, back when he was younger, wilder and much stupider.
She didn’t ask for help. He would be perfectly within his rights to walk away and leave her to deal with her sign all alone. She might think less of him for it, but what she thought wasn’t important. He didn’t know her. He didn’t want to know her.
He just wanted to get real close to her. Intimately, indecently close.
Still, he crossed the street to her car, parked where eighty years ago the shell drive had made its exit back onto the street after circling behind the house. Silently accepting his help, she released the sign and moved to stand on the curb.
“Where does it go?” he asked as he lifted it from the trunk.
“Over there.” She reached inside to pull out a handful of tools and bolts, then gestured toward the single section of ironrail fence between the gate and the brick wall next door. He positioned the sign from the sidewalk while she went inside to the grass and secured it to the rails in a half dozen places with heavy-duty bolts. When the last bolt had been tightened in place, she came to stand beside him and look.
The Taming Of Reid Donovan Page 2
