“That’s why we won’t be here long,” she sang, in what she evidently believed was a reassuring tone. “Just a couple weeks or so.”
A couple—?
“Great,” he muttered.
Arianna completely missed his lack of enthusiasm. She was patting his face again, smoothing her thumbs over the hollowed spaces under his eyes. “You’re still too thin. I need to work on fattening you up a little. If I don’t, who will?”
Irritated, he shrugged away from her clutching hands. He’d been eating just fine, and when you’d spent time as a POW, you were allowed to look haunted and gaunt for a while.
“I don’t need—” he began.
“Excuse me,” said a sarcastic male voice from the hallway, “but can you siblings suspend the bickering long enough for me to come into the house?”
Startled, they stepped back to allow Arianna’s husband, Joshua Bishop, over the threshold. He gave Tony a grim nod as he passed.
Yeah. Tony didn’t much like him, either.
For one thing, Joshua had served time in prison. He’d been freed through one of those innocence programs, true, but prison was prison, and God only knew what kinds of things he’d learned from the real felons in the joint.
Second, he was bulging with, as far as Tony was concerned, a thuggish amount of muscle and had a tattoo of some Adinkra design on his neck. His neck. Tony’s tattoos, of tigers’ eyes and dragons, on the other hand, were much more tasteful and were limited to his arms and torso. Where tattoos belonged.
Third, Joshua had an attitude that could best be described as…guarded. Moody. Surly. Suspicious. He was loving enough with Arianna, true, but with everyone else he was reserved to the point of being sullen.
Suffering from bouts of moodiness himself, Tony didn’t have the patience for those traits in anyone else. So, yeah, he didn’t like the cat.
Still, Joshua was a real estate tycoon who’d made something of his life since he’d been sprung from the big house, and Tony could respect that. In fact, that gave Joshua something in common with Tony, who’d also suffered a setback or two in his recent history and was trying to rebuild his life.
Most important, Joshua was married to his sister, and since Arianna clearly adored him and the horse he rode in on, Tony was trying to find the good in his brother-in-law.
Right now, for instance, Joshua was weighed down with two large duffels, one slung over each shoulder, and was also carrying Apollonia, the baby.
Yeah. The family was big into Greek names, which came from having a matriarch who’d been a Greek professor.
Apollonia was just a tiny little thing, had a Mohawk strip of black curls down the middle of her lolling head. She was fast asleep for the moment, strapped into a sling across Joshua’s chest.
Seeing her, Tony felt the pull of something…primal.
She was a pretty baby, with sweet pink skin and a pouty rosebud mouth. Tony loved his little niece. He leaned down to smooth his hand over her downy soft spot and kiss her forehead.
“Hey, little girl,” he cooed.
Joshua stiffened. “Have you washed your hands, man? You need to wash your hands before you handle a baby.”
Straightening, Tony glared at his brother-in-law, who scowled back.
“So what’s wrong?” Arianna demanded.
“Nothing. Why do you keep asking?”
This was, of course, an unnecessary question. He’d been just a notch or two above catatonic for the last several days, ever since making love with Talia and then being flattened by her bombshell, and he knew he looked pretty bad. Additionally, he’d never been particularly good at hiding his feelings from his sister, so she was probably reading him like a child’s bedtime story right about now.
Hell, he had no idea why he was even going through the motions of denying there was a problem, except that he didn’t want to spill his guts in front of her husband, the tattooed wonder.
“Something’s wrong with you,” Arianna insisted. “Spill. Now.”
Joshua, who by now had almost tiptoed his way out of the room, patted the baby on the bottom with one hand and jerked a thumb in some vague direction over his shoulder with the other. “I’ll just—”
Arianna looked around at him and beckoned him back with a wave of her hand.
Judging by Joshua’s stricken expression, he would rather have been summoned for a laser eyeball peel.
“Why don’t you stick around, honey?” Arianna asked him. “You always have good advice. Maybe you can help Tony.”
“Oh, I don’t think—” Tony and Joshua began together.
Arianna naturally ignored both of them. “Sit down. Both of you.”
With that, she marched off to the sofa and sat. After a fair amount of awkward shuffling and darting looks at each other, Tony and Joshua followed Arianna and sat on either side of her. Joshua took a moment or two to arrange the sleeping baby across his lap, which gave Tony time to get his thoughts together. But soon they were both looking at him with expectant gazes—actually, Arianna’s gaze was expectant; Joshua’s was pained, if not outright gloomy.
“Well?” Arianna asked encouragingly. “This is about Talia, right?”
Joshua stirred. “Talia? Who’s Talia?”
“The artist Tony’s in love with,” Arianna said softly, out of the corner of her mouth.
A stab of alarm made Tony sit up straighter. “I never said—”
Arianna waved that hand again. “Whatever. What happened?”
He hesitated, trying to form the words around his twisting mouth. The words didn’t want to come out. “She’s…got cancer.”
It was hard to say whose eyes opened wider, Arianna’s or Joshua’s. For the first time, Tony had a taste of what it must be like for Talia every time she told someone she’d been sick.
“Cancer?” Arianna echoed faintly.
“Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” Tony clarified.
They sat in silence, letting the words sink in.
“Oh, Tony,” Arianna said. Her eyes filled with tears, and they fell down her pretty cheeks, making the conversation a million times worse.
“For God’s sake, Arianna.” Resting his elbows on his knees, Tony hung his head and tried to keep it together. “You’re killing me here.”
“I know,” Arianna said. “I’m trying to stop. See? I’m stopping. Right now.”
With a silent eye roll in his direction, Joshua plucked a tissue from the side table, passed it to Arianna and rubbed her shoulders. “It’s okay, baby,” he said in a soothing voice. “But you need to pull it together. Tony needs us to be strong right now.”
Tony felt his brows inch higher with surprise. If anything, he’d expected Joshua to punch him in the mouth for speaking that way to Arianna, but apparently the brother could be an ally when he wanted. Good deal.
“You’re right. You’re right. I’m going to stop crying.” Ducking her head, Arianna sobbed harder, pressing the tissue to her mouth.
Joshua chose his words carefully. “Arianna’s had a…rough time with her…emotions, since the baby was born,” he explained.
Arianna’s head came up. “Why are you trying to sugarcoat it?” she snapped. “I have a little postpartum depression. It’s perfectly normal. A little moodiness. The occasional mood swing—”
Joshua’s brows rose toward his hairline, but he said nothing.
“—And a little moodiness. Big deal. But why do we have to tiptoe around it? I’m doing better, aren’t I?”
This time, Tony thought he caught a glimmer of a smile in Joshua’s glance at him.
“Yep. You’re doing much better, baby. The medication is really working for you. I can tell a huge difference.”
This seemed to perk Arianna up. With a final sniffle, she blew her nose, pocketed the tissue and turned back to Tony. “So what are you going to do?” she demanded crisply.
“Do?” Tony asked stupidly.
“Yes, do, you big oaf,” Arianna snapped. “What. Are. You. Going. To. Do?”
Joshua’s hand ran over Arianna’s shoulders again, taking some of the fire out of her eyes. “If I know anything about your brother, baby,” he said carefully, his steady gaze resting on Tony, “he believes there’s nothing more important than being with the person you love and supporting them. No matter what. Isn’t that right, Tony?”
Joshua and Arianna stared at him, waiting.
Was that what they thought?
“Of course I’m going to be with Talia,” he told them. “I’m just praying I have the strength to do what she needs when she needs me.”
Talia decided early that Friday evening, as she flopped onto her bed and wallowed in the familiar downy softness of her Navajo-patterned comforter and mountain of pillows, that it was great to be back in her own apartment, even if it was only for a weekend break from all the hard work she’d been doing on the mural.
Not that she’d been out in the Hamptons for that long, or that they’d mistreated her. If anything, her time at Tony’s house had been like a luxury retreat from reality, with five-star accommodations, all the gourmet food Mickey could cook up for her, and that spectacular oceanfront setting, which made her seriously wonder how she’d survived so long in her landlocked little two-bedroom apartment.
It was just that she needed the soothing comfort of home right now, with the pale gray walls that she’d painted herself, her sandalwood-scented candles burning on the dresser, Chesley lounging in the corner chair with her paws draped over the arm, and Gloria.
Every now and then, she really needed her sister.
Even if Gloria did tend to get on most—if not all—of Talia’s nerves.
Turning her head, she looked across the bedroom to her walk-in closet where Gloria was rummaging through clothes and probably making a royal mess. The continual scrape of hangers and the opening and closing of shoe boxes didn’t sound encouraging, but what could she do? Talia and Gloria were the same size, and it was every sister’s solemn duty to share her clothes when emergencies arose.
“Hey, Glo?” she called.
Gloria, looking hassled, with a strand of hair hanging in her face and several of Talia’s expensive silk scarves draped across her neck, poked her head around the door.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for coming with me this morning.”
They’d been through this drill a million times before, so Talia knew what to expect…and here it came.
Gloria lowered her brows, making the familiar frowny face. “Don’t thank me. That’s what I’m here for. Did you think I’d let you go to the doctor by yourself?”
Talia flipped over onto her side so she could see Gloria better, resting her head on her palm. “No. But I’m not sure you know how much it means to me.”
They didn’t normally do emotions, she and Gloria, so it was no surprise when Gloria tsked and waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, you’ll make it up to me, honey. When I turn up with breast cancer or Alzheimer’s, I plan to be a much bigger pain in the ass than you are now.”
That got a laugh out of Talia. “I look forward to it.”
Gloria’s gaze sharpened, running over Talia’s face in one of her critical assessments. “You doing okay? You look tired.”
“I’m fine.” Talia had a strict policy that had carried her through her treatments: never acknowledge or give in to the periodic physical weakness. Better to drop into a dead faint from exhaustion than to admit that her body wasn’t firing on all cylinders all the time, just like everyone else’s. “Stop asking.”
Talia caught a quick glance of narrowed eyes and pursed lips before Gloria ducked back inside the closet. “Stop being such a freaking martyr and take a nap,” she called. “I won’t tell anyone.”
Talia dropped her arm and sank her head into her favorite pillow, giving herself five minutes—no more!—to rest her eyes before she thought about dinner.
“I’m not a martyr. I prefer to think of myself as Wonder Woman. Or Buffy. I can handle anything.”
A muffled snort came from the closet. “I stand corrected, O invincible one. So…what’s going on with you and Tony? And please give me credit for putting my nosiness on the back burner all day. Are you impressed?”
“You know what would really impress me?” Talia called back. “If you went a whole day without being nosy. Why don’t you shoot for that?”
“You don’t want to talk about it? Is that what I’m getting?”
Talia hesitated. The thing was, she did want to talk about it. Sort of. The lead weight of her heartache was getting to be too much for her, and it might be time to share it.
Anyway, how could she feel any worse?
“I told Tony about the cancer.”
There was a long silence, and then Gloria reappeared, eyes wide. “Hold up. Go back to the beginning. Are you telling me there’s something going on with you and Tony? I was just fishing.”
Talia glared. Why did they have to waste time on every little detail before they got to the main point of the conversation? “Get real. You saw him, didn’t you? And he’s a great guy. How could I resist that combination? Of course there’s something going on.”
Gloria hissed with outrage. “Well, why’d you have to act like I was insane for asking?”
Feeling unaccountably irritable, Talia shrugged. “I’m not happy about it.”
“Because…?”
“Because when I told him I’d been sick, he said he needed some time to—”
“Well, give the brother a minute, Talia. It’s a lot to take in.”
Astonishment made Talia hike herself up into a sitting position so she could see her sister better. Notwithstanding her policy of endless second chances for the bastard she was dating, Gloria wasn’t big on giving people the benefit of the doubt, especially men.
“What gives?” Talia asked. “I’m surprised you don’t want to stake him through the heart.”
“Illness scares people, Tally.” Gloria’s expression and tone were gentle enough to make Talia want to reach for a tissue. “They don’t know what to do or what to say. It’s like they get paralyzed. And anyway…”
She trailed off, blinking.
“Anyway,” Talia prompted when the silence went on too long.
Gloria ducked her head, but not before Talia caught a glimpse of a tear as it trailed down her cheek. After a quick swipe at her eyes, Gloria shot her a rueful smile.
“Anyway,” Gloria said, “I’d trade places and be sick for you if I could, no matter how big a pain in the ass you are.” She paused. “Maybe he feels the same way.”
“Aww.” Talia squirmed and made an exaggerated pout to hide her discomfort. A close corollary to her rule about never admitting weakness was her rule about never showing emotion. Breaking either rule would quickly lead to the ugly cry, and once she started that, she feared she’d never stop. “I love you, too, Glo.”
Gloria, luckily, was on board the keep it cool train.
“Yeah, whatever,” she said, disappearing back inside the closet. “Enough about you. Back to me. What should I wear? Too bad I’m so much more petite than you. Your clothes always hang on me like a tent.”
“Child, please.” Grinning, Talia flopped back onto the pillow. “You’d be lucky to fit one of your cellulite-riddled thunder thighs inside anything of mine.” They both laughed, probably because they’d worn the same size in everything since they were teenagers. “I don’t know why you think you’re going to find something in there,” Talia continued. “You know I don’t have any black or white clothes. You’ll have to go with a color. Doesn’t that make your skin break out in hives?”
“I told you. I want something colorful tonight. Aaron’s taking me to Masa. He knows how much I love Japanese.”
Right, Talia thought sourly, glad Glo couldn’t see her roll her eyes. Aaron the married man was taking Gloria to a Manhattan restaurant.
Sure.
And the director of the Louvre was on the phone right now, offering to devote a section near the Mona Lisa to Talia’s w
ork.
It was really hard, but she bit back her words of warning and kept her mouth shut. Why risk getting her head bitten off again? It wasn’t as if Gloria welcomed the truth, no matter how obvious it was. God alone knew no good had ever come from telling Gloria her honest opinion about the wonderful Aaron, so why would today be any different?
“And can you make me up?” Gloria called. “You do the liquid eyeliner so much better than I do.”
“Sure,” Talia said.
If she heard the lack of enthusiasm in her voice, Gloria gave no sign of it as she peered around the door again, holding up Talia’s red vintage wrap dress. “What about this one? Do you think Aaron will like it?”
Oh, who the hell cared what that lying and cheating SOB liked or didn’t like?
Talia stared into her sister’s face, which was so eager and hopeful it was like watching a puppy in the second before it got kicked, and tried to dial back her frustration and confusion. Gloria was smart, funny and beautiful. What had happened to make her self-esteem so low that she was grateful for whatever crumbs a married man might drop her way?
Why wouldn’t—or couldn’t—she see the light?
On the other hand who was Talia to wonder about any woman’s ability to see the light? It wasn’t as if she was batting a thousand with her stellar selection of first Paul and then Tony, now, was it?
“That one’ll make your butt look huge, Glo,” Talia reassured her. “He’ll love it.”
“Perfect. Now for some shoes—”
Chesley’s head came up off her paws and she cocked her ears. She jumped off the chair and trotted through the apartment and to the front door, just as the bell rang.
“Do you want me to—” Gloria began.
“I’ll get it.”
“Great. I’m going to change.”
Gloria went to work unbuttoning her blouse and shut the closet door, leaving Talia to haul her tired butt off the bed and follow the dog, who was now sitting on her haunches and looking back at her with a lot of hurry up in her eyes. If there was any question about what she wanted, she gave a low woof and a follow-up whine as she pointed her snout at the knob.
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