Paul tossed his keys on the high bench by the door and kept walking, passing through the living room and turning left into the large, efficient kitchen. Light wood cabinets lined the walls, and a butcher-block table for two sat before a bay window that overlooked the wide front yard.
Nick kept pace with him, and when Paul offered to make coffee, Nick just nodded and plopped down onto one of the two chairs drawn up to the narrow table.
Nick watched his brother and wondered why his twin was so much more together than he was. How in the hell had his life gotten so far out of control? He felt like he was spinning and the world kept rushing past at such amazing speeds he could barely make out the colors in the swirl of motion.
But then, he and Paul had always been vastly different people, twins or not. Even their homes were complete contrasts. Nick’s place was chrome and glass and … cold. He’d paid a decorator to come in and do the place and he’d never felt at ease in it. Hell, he spent as little time there as possible. It was just an apartment, after all.
But Paul had a damn nest here. He’d bought the land and had a custom home built. Cost a damn fortune, no doubt, but it was worth it. Richly wood-paneled walls, hardwood floors, and enough books to stock a library. Yet the … feeling in the house was … inviting. Welcoming. Good thing, since Nick really needed to feel welcome tonight.
“So where were you tonight anyway?” Nick asked, wanting to avoid thinking as much as possible. He leaned back in the chair. “I was waiting outside forever.”
Paul slapped coffee into a filter, dropped it into place, and flicked the ON switch. “You should’ve come in. You’ve got a key.”
Nick scraped one hand across his jaw, fingering the two days’ growth of whiskers. “Your key’s at my place. Haven’t been there in a couple of days.”
“Where’ve you been?” Paul glanced at the coffeepot while it bubbled and hissed, as if mentally hurrying it along.
“I asked you first,” Nick said with a forced smile, not really wanting to talk about the last couple of days yet. “So who were you with tonight? Judging by the way you’re dressed, you weren’t out with that writer. Was it the astronaut?”
“No,” Paul said tightly. He didn’t want to talk about his old girlfriends. Didn’t want to stroll down memory lane with Nick. “It was … nobody.”
Nobody. Hell, Nick thought, he’d been stocking his life with nobodies for two years. At least Paul’s nobodies had class. Women with brains as well as bodies. Someone you could actually talk to without being bored into a stupor. “Been there, done that.”
“Right.” Paul changed the subject abruptly while he poured out coffee for each of them. “So what’re you doing here anyway?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.”
“What’s the answer?” Paul asked, carrying two cups of coffee to the table. “Still black?”
“Yeah.” Nick took the cup from his brother and curled his fingers through the wide handle. He stared at the steam lifting from the cup and twisting into the air as if he could see his future in the swirling mists. “I haven’t changed that much.”
Paul shook his head and took the seat opposite Nick, stretching his legs out and crossing his feet at the ankles. “The last month or so, Nick, you’ve changed plenty.”
“That’s ’cause I’m screwed.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed. So has everyone else in the family.”
Nick winced at the direct hit.
“Just say it, will ya?”
“That’s the trouble. Haven’t been able to say it. Not to you. Or Mama. Hell,” he muttered thickly, “not even to myself.” Nick lifted the cup and noted with some small amount of pleasure that his hands weren’t shaking anymore. One good thing, anyway. Taking a sip, he let the hot liquid slide down his throat and hit his empty stomach like a blessing. Warmth spread through his system, chasing away the cold he’d been carrying with him since that last day at his orthopedist’s office. “I’m through.”
“With what?”
Nick lifted his gaze to Paul’s and forced himself to say the words he’d been trying to forget for weeks. “I’m finished with football. My career’s over.” He took a breath and said the rest of it. “My knee’s fucked. The doctor said one more good hit and if I’m lucky, I’m looking at a cane for the rest of my life. Not lucky, and I’m popping wheelies in hospital hallways.”
God. The words were hanging in the air like some black banner of death. He could practically see them. Feel them, wrapping around him like a shroud or something. Everything he’d worked for. Everything he’d been shooting for since high school was now done. Taken from him because he’d gone one way and his knee’d gone the other.
Paul winced. “Jesus, Nick.”
“Yeah, I know.” Nick stared into his cup again as if trying to see beyond the surface of the coffee and into his own murky life.
Paul slammed his coffee cup down onto the table hard enough to slosh some of the dark brew onto the wooden surface. “That’s why you’ve been drinking half the state dry for the last month?”
“Seemed like a plan at the time,” he muttered, noticing that he wasn’t really getting the sympathy he’d expected from his own damn twin.
“Bullshit.”
Nick’s gaze snapped up to his brother’s. “What?”
“I said bullshit. That wasn’t a plan; it was a retreat.”
“That’s great.” Anger surged through him. “Thanks for the support.”
“You don’t need support. You need a kick in the ass.”
Nick’s eyes narrowed and his blood pumped hot and ready through his veins. Hell, it’d be good to pop somebody. A little pain to the body might be enough to ease the pain in his mind. “You want to give it a shot?”
Paul shoved one hand through his hair and damn near snatched out a handful just as a distraction. “Tonight … don’t tempt me.”
“Damn it, where’s my sympathy?” Nick stared at his brother. Despite the subtle competition between them over the years, he’d always been able to count on Paul. Until now … when he really needed him. Had Paul gotten so damn successful now that his brother’s problems didn’t matter a damn? “I thought you’d understand.”
“Yeah. I understand that you’re acting like a damn fool. So you lost football. So what?”
“So what?” Nick jumped up from the chair with enough speed to flip it over and it clattered on the floor, sounding like the snap of bones. “You can say that to me? What if this was you, huh? What if some doctor behind a mile-wide desk looked at you and said you could never touch a damn computer again? What then, brother?”
Paul jumped up, too, and faced him down. For a computer geek, Paul had always been plenty fit. They even used to work out together until Nick turned pro and started working with a trainer. Watching him now, Nick almost hoped his twin would throw a punch. It’d feel good to work off some of this … crap running through his system.
“If I couldn’t touch a computer, I’d find something else to do.”
“Just like that?” Nick snapped his fingers and glared at his twin. “You could give up what you’ve been working for your whole damn life with no problem?”
Paul’s hands were bunched at his sides as if he were as ready for a good brawl as Nick was. “It wouldn’t be easy, but I’d do it. Just like you will.”
“Do what?” Nick demanded. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”
“Did you expect to play ball forever?” Paul argued.
“No. But damn it, I say when it’s over. Not some damn doctor.”
Paul swallowed back the anger crouching at the base of his throat. He stared at his brother and felt the old instinctive urge to protect rise up inside him. No matter what else went on between them, he and Nick had always watched each other’s backs. They’d stood up for each other against bullies in school and covered each other’s asses when their parents went on the warpath. Now was no different.
“What do you do?” he asked quietly, watchi
ng the tension slowly seep out of his brother’s stance. “Any damn thing you want, Nick. That’s the point.”
“I want to play football.”
“You can’t.”
“I never wanted to do anything else.”
“Yeah,” Paul said, reaching out to slap one hand on his brother’s shoulder and squeeze. “I know.”
“I don’t know how to do anything else, man.”
“You can learn.” “Yeah?” He snorted. “You want to hire me at your fancy-ass think tank company?”
“Not particularly,” Paul admitted.
Nick laughed shortly. “See?”
“There are plenty of places that would jump at the chance to hire Nick Candellano. Things change,” Paul said. “You’ll adapt.”
A long minute ticked past while the simple truth dropped into Nick’s consciousness. He didn’t want to let it in. Wanted to keep ignoring reality and fight for the life he was meant to live. The life he’d worked hard to get. But there was no saving it. It was done. His dreams were over and Paul’s were riding high. Where was the fair in that? Finally, though, he looked at Paul. “We’re not gonna fight, are we?”
Paul released a breath. “Doesn’t look like it.”
“Almost a shame. It’s been a while.”
“Yeah, it has,” Paul agreed, taking a seat again and reaching for his coffee.
Nick sat down, too, grabbed his cup, and took another long drink to steady himself again. “You remember the last one?”
“Not likely to forget it,” Paul said, smiling now in memory. “Three years ago. At the Fourth of July picnic. You cheated at the softball game.”
“I was safe,” Nick said automatically.
“Out by a mile and you know it.”
“Hey, the day hasn’t come when you could beat me on a playing field.”
“I did that day,” Paul countered.
They sat there in the kitchen, each of them comfortable enough to lapse into a thoughtful silence that ticked past with a gentle, steady beat.
And after a few minutes, Nick picked up his coffee, took a long, deep drink, and set the cup back down again. Looking at his brother, he said simply, “Change really sucks.”
Paul thought about all of the other changes that had happened in the last few days and wondered what his brother would have to say about any of them if he knew. But Nick wasn’t going to know. The guy was low enough already. Hearing about his twin and Stevie would topple him over the emotional razor’s edge he was busy balancing on. Besides, it was over. Yet another change. So Paul kept his mouth shut. No point in opening up that can of worms now. So instead, he just agreed. “Damn right it does.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I’M TELLING YOU, STEVIE, those kids from the karate class are about to knock my fence down.”
“It can’t be that bad, Mrs. Frances.”
The older woman blew at a lock of dyed red hair as it dangled like a fishhook over her forehead. Then she picked up her cookie, took a savage bite, and chewed. Waving her arms, she chopped and slashed an invisible enemy as a demonstration. “Those little thugs come out of that class with way too much energy to spare and they’re chopping at my picket fence and screaming like they’re about to attack.”
Stevie set the coffeepot down onto its burner, then turned back to face one of her best customers. “They’re not thugs; they’re just kids.”
“Thuglets,” the woman said. Using what was left of her cookie as a pointer, she jabbed it toward Stevie. “You mark my words. Those little brats need their bottoms warmed, or pretty soon they’ll be knocking over liquor stores.”
Stevie’s lips twitched. “Don’t look now, but you’re starting to sound like Virginia.”
The other woman’s eyes bugged open, then narrowed. “Well now, you’re just being mean.”
Laughing, Stevie shifted a look at Virginia, one-third of Chandler’s Terrible Three. The older women had snagged a table in the only splotch of sunlight in the shop. They huddled together, like the old crones in that play of Shakespeare’s—which one was that? Didn’t matter. All they needed was a bubbling cauldron. They had the nasty dispositions already.
Virginia—always on the lookout for “gangsters”—wore two red circles of what she still called rouge on what used to be her cheeks. Just like her mentor, Abigail. But her skin had faded and sunk so much, she was pretty much just drawing with crayon on her bones. Abigail, the leader of the little coven, was at least fifteen years older than Virginia’s seventy-five, but what she lacked in age she made up in mean. Abigail’s rouge was even darker. And Rachel, the last member of the Three, was only in her sixties, but her spirit was as wizened as the other two’s faces put together.
Scary bunch. They were always the first to leap on whatever piece of gossip came their way, and they had a network of cronies who could distribute that news fast enough to make Federal Express look like a wagon train.
Stevie looked away from the women and back to Mrs. Frances. “Did you talk to Tony about the kids?”
“Yes, for all the good that’ll do,” the woman complained. “When he was a kid, the sheriff used to hit my fence with his baseball bat like he was Babe Ruth in Yankee Stadium.”
The phone rang, an ear-splitting shriek, designed to be heard above the everyday noise in the shop. Laughing at the woman’s disgusted expression, Stevie took a step back, grabbed the receiver, and said, “Leaf and Bean, how can I—”
“Stevie!”
The voice sounded a million miles away, but she’d have known it anywhere. “Carla!” Stevie waved a frantic hand toward her counter girl, Sarah, to take over for her as she rounded a corner, taking the phone with her into her cubicle of an office.
Sitting down in the chair behind her tiny cluttered desk, Stevie leaned back, propped her feet on the edge, and ignored the papers sliding off to land on the floor.
“How are you? How’s Chandler?”
“Good and the same,” Stevie said, her fingers curled tight around the receiver. “How’re things there?” she asked, and hoped to hell Carla’s first trek back into the search-and-rescue business was going well. After all, she’d delayed her honeymoon to be able to go and help people through a disaster.
“They’re great,” her best friend said. “Tough. Disappointing and frustrating sometimes, but great.”
“Good. That’s good.” Just two years ago, Carla’d given up what she did best because of a tragedy she held herself responsible for. Good to know that she’d finally managed to put it behind her.
“Hey, have you seen my husband?” Carla was saying. “And how weird is it that I have a husband?”
Stevie grinned. “No, he hasn’t been around. I hear, though, that he’s got some Mafia guys helping him set up his new office.”
Carla laughed and the sound bubbled over the distance and filled up a lonely spot in Stevie’s heart. “Good to know Virginia’s still in fine form.”
While Carla talked, Stevie’s gaze shifted around the small office, sliding across a framed photo of her dad and a poster of the Caribbean she’d tacked to the far wall as a reminder of her last vacation. And right now that white beach and clear, green water looked like paradise. The fact that she was imagining Paul surfacing from the waves, water sluicing down his tanned, sculpted chest as he reached up to push his wet hair off his face, had nothing to do with it.
“Anything new?”
“Huh?” Stevie snapped out of it and told herself to concentrate. “What?… Uh, nothing. Nothing’s new.” Just old friends finding new ways to connect. And connect. And connect some more.
“No new guy?”
“No.” Old guy, Stevie thought with a silent groan.
Oh God. She sat up, propped her elbows on her desktop, and stared down at the papers scattered across the surface as if looking for the secrets to the universe in a shipping order for sugar.
“Have you seen Nick lately?”
This just kept getting better. “Yeah, he’s fine, too.”
She pressed her fingertips against her temple, hoping to ease the throbbing ache that had just leaped into life. Pounding in time with her heartbeat, pain pulsed inside her, bright and hot.
But Carla was talking again and she forced herself to pay attention.
“Mama okay? I tried to call her”—Carla’s voice faded, crackled, then came back again—“wasn’t there.”
“I’m losing you, Carla,” Stevie said, raising her voice to be heard over what sounded like locusts chewing at the phone wires.
“Storm coming—” The crackling got louder. “Gotta go—you soon.”
“Bye!” Stevie shouted, and when the dial tone buzzed in her ear, she lowered the receiver and stared at it as if she could see her best friend’s face. Best friend. That meant a lot. Heck, it had meant everything to the twelve-year-old girl Stevie had been when she’d first moved to Chandler.
Finding Carla, having a friend like her, had been, for Stevie, like finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Living out of suitcases, wandering the world in the wake of her mother, an elegant gypsy, Stevie had hungered for the kind of friendship Carla had offered her.
Someone to talk to on the phone. Someone to giggle with and cry with and get in trouble with. Someone who liked you no matter what.
Carla, being raised in a normal, loving family, had more self-confidence than anyone Stevie had ever known. And over the years, that bravado had rubbed off on Stevie and taken the edge off the shy little girl who had never really felt wanted.
Hanging up the phone, Stevie leaned back in her chair and let her memory take her back to those early years with Joanna. She had taken Stevie with her when she left Chandler, not because of any great maternal instinct—the woman had all the nurturing skills of a praying mantis—but because people would have talked had she abandoned the infant she’d never really wanted in the first place.
Knowing You Page 8
