“Can’t do that. Got to take care of something.”
“Where are you going?”
“I told you, I have a meeting.” Bautista lost himself in the stream of passersby, leaving Sofia with a bruised Joss and an assemblage of designer luggage that hadn’t a chance in hell of fitting in her apartment.
*
Only half of Joss’s things fit upstairs. The clothes—“That’s a Prada. It can’t be left scrunched in a suitcase!” “Can’t we unpack the stilettos and the kitten heels? What about sandals for the beach?”—crowded the bedroom, and the cosmetics and toiletries made the bathroom look like a department store makeup counter. Everything else they carted downstairs to basement storage.
The process went slowly because of frequent interruptions. Caro had returned Tish, who straightaway whined to be taken out to pee. Then Joss had concealed her bruise with makeup and they’d had dinner at a dock restaurant. While Joss dug into her buttered lobster, Sofia ate a grilled chicken salad and endured other diners flitting past to murmur belated condolences for her loss.
“It’s a shame Luz hadn’t any family around in her last days,” a woman commented with a condemning tsk. “She had a man, but a man ain’t necessarily family. And it’s not hard to figure just what she was doing with a younger fellow like that.”
Sofia had dropped her fork and when she reached for it, Joss stopped her with, “If you pick that up, there’s a high likelihood you’ll stab someone with it. Leave it, and let’s take the rest of this food back to the apartment.”
The apartment, she’d said, as though nothing had fundamentally changed and they were still a pair of go-getting New Yorkers dreaming about futures that seemed so far away.
What hadn’t changed?
Sofia continued to wonder as she tried to sleep with Tish stretched across her legs. Eventually she got up and slipped out of the bedroom for a drink, but the living room lamps blazed and she poked her head around the corner to find Joss standing and appearing to study nothing in particular.
“Can’t sleep, kid?”
Joss smiled. “In a few months I’ll be thirty. At that point you’re forbidden to call me kid ever again.”
“Deal.” She went to the kitchen, drank water from the tap, and returned to the living room. Joss hadn’t asked for company, but Sofia sat on a chair anyway. “Does it hurt? Your face?”
“Not really. It looks bad.”
“It is bad. What Peter did…you didn’t deserve it—”
“Please don’t, Sof. NYPD gave me numbers. The hospital dumped all kinds of pamphlets on me. I don’t need anyone else to remind me that I’m a textbook example of a victim of domestic violence.” She began to pace, the dark shimmer varnish on her toes contrasting with her pale skin and the white area rug. “The thing that really sucks? The system that’s drilling into my head the importance of protecting myself and seeking help is the same one that released the bastard who hurt me.”
“It’s not fair.”
“No, it’s not. Accountability’s a one-way street. Men can lie and devastate and what happens? Nothing—certainly not justice.”
“I know you’re hurting, Joss, but there is justice. It happens in big and small ways. Sometimes it takes a while and waiting for wrongs to be fixed is painful.”
“So forgive and forget what Peter did to me? Are you seriously saying that, or am I just overtired?”
“Not all men are jackasses.”
Joss snorted. “Just the ones I keep running into.”
“I’m for damn sure not saying forgive and forget what Peter did, but don’t write off everyone else.” She didn’t say anything more but let her friend continue to pace the rug and wander the room.
“So they were engaged. Bautista and your Aunt Luz,” Joss said, picking up a silver frame. It was a private moment between lovers frozen in time—Bautista kissing Luz’s neck. Their long dark hair was tangled and there was nothing but water and sky and driftwood behind them.
After Sofia had digested what she’d learned in Bautista’s law office, she’d shared the major points with Joss. “Yeah. He says he loved her. I think I believe him.”
“Hmm, sure. Love. What does love mean to a guy, anyway?”
“Depends on the guy,” she replied, recalling her chat with Bautista earlier. For him, love was sacrificing what was personally important to realize the best interests of his fiancée. He’d sacrificed in grand and intimate ways.
Did Burke believe love comprised sacrifice and compromise? Why in hell was she even wondering?
“I came here because I don’t want to wallow,” Joss said on a sigh, putting down the frame. She stretched out on the sofa, shook out her blond curls, and hugged a pillow. “I intend to make myself useful, the same as you said you did when you lived here with Luz.”
“Meaning what? Work at Blush?”
“Sure. You know I worked retail in the past.”
“Yeah, for Teavana and upscale, platinum-cards-only stores in the city. Blush and its clientele are different.”
“Different’s good. Different is what I need until I’m ready for plan B of my life.”
“What’s plan B?”
“I haven’t figured it out yet. But I’ll help out with the shop however I can. It’s summer and something’s in the air.”
“Salt.”
Joss laughed. “No, something else. Not a scent but a really subtle alert that this might be it for me—my second chance.” She squeezed the pillow. “Okay, so here it is. Your new life started when you got the transplant, but mine hasn’t yet and I’ve been waiting. Well, now I think it’s happening. Coming here because things went to shit again…Maybe Eaves, Massachusetts, is my second chance.”
“For what? This isn’t your dream. You told me your dream is to run in celebrity circles. You want a pastry business. You want to be your own boss, not my employee. I’d be happy to sell your sweets in Blush, but the customers are expecting treats in the form of flavored lube and edible underwear.”
“Dreams always look different when you wake up.” Joss shrugged. “So will you think about it?”
“I don’t have to. Of course you’re welcome to help out at Blush. But it’s only temporary.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, because you’re going to have your own business to run someday and can’t be helping me sell erotic stuff on the side.”
“Aww, but I like erotic stuff.” She pointed across the room to the painting Sofia had lugged up to the apartment the night she and Burke had kissed inside the boutique. “Exhibit Fellatio. You should sell it. It might rake in a bundle, and I’m not just saying that because I’m the artist.”
“I’m not selling that piece. I’m having too much fun unnerving people with it. My assistant, Paget, refers to it as Blow Job. Burke stared and I wasn’t sure if he was weirded out or horny.”
“Burke, as in the hot guy from the gas station? That man’s shoulders alone are the reason God made flannel.” Joss fanned herself with the pillow. “I’ve been waiting for all the backstory between you and him since the funeral. The fact that you’ve been keeping your mouth shut says volumes.”
Though Joss had asked for details, it seemed somehow cruel to launch into whatever was brewing between Sofia and Burke. It was probably nothing…or it might be everything.
They hadn’t spoken since that night in Blush, yet they breathed the same air and slept under the same Cape Cod moon. In her dreams she let him stroke her to awareness. Awake and alone, she touched herself with his sulky, unforgettable face in her mind.
He’d inspired the window display downstairs that Joss called “mannequin porn.”
“Try to get some sleep, Joss,” she said, getting up. “Want to keep all these lights on?”
“Yeah,” her friend said, turning and feeling under the edge of the sofa until the end of a narrow object poked out. An umbrella. A weapon.
Sofia supposed tonight more than most nights, Joss needed the assurance that she wasn’t helpless.
“Hey, Joss, what if Tish slept out here in the living room tonight? She’s furry and her breath smells like Milk-Bone, but she’s sort of a dreamcatcher for me.”
“I don’t need a dreamcatcher, Sof.” But as Sofia began to quietly slip down the hall, she said, “She can sleep out here tonight, though, if she wants.”
Saying nothing more, Sofia guided Tish to the living room and brought out a blanket. Joss and Tish stared at one another—a woman and a dog both wary and both hurt, but open to finding an ally in each other.
When Joss hesitantly patted Tish’s neck and the dog lay in front of the sofa, Sofia smiled and went to her room.
God bless Tish. Count on a dog to hold things together when they wanted to fall apart. Tish was Sofia’s courage, Joss’s safety, and little Evan Jayne’s kindred spirit.
That night, Sofia couldn’t sleep. But she thought about Joss and Caro and the gruff protector who watched over Society Street from an underground dive bar. She daydreamed about the friendship she’d forged with Burke in the secret hallways under their families’ stores. And she researched and made plans, and by morning she’d conceived an idea that was a crazy, wicked risk and might not work. But she hadn’t moved back to Eaves to half-ass her way through life.
First things first, though—she needed to see Burke.
*
“You going to head on home?” Nessa Pare folded her wide frame into the captain chair in front of Bautista’s desk. The finger wave pattern of her close-cropped hair shone under the light as she straightened her shoulders and banded her arms underneath the ledge of what had to be a specialty-cup rack. “Or am I babysitting your grown ass all the way to sunup?”
“Take off if you need to, Nessa,” he said to his secretary. “Court’s at nine.”
“We both know that if I take off, you lose an alibi.” She crossed her cheetah-print-booted feet on his desk, and because it was Nessa, who made up for his every deficiency and could throw back more drinks than any man who’d drifted into his bar, he didn’t put her on the other side of his law office door. Nessa could shake down the entire damn building with the booming vibrato of her yell, and in the late hour there was still more business to be done before he stepped away tonight. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.”
“Thanks for the advice. If I ever need more, I know who to come to.”
“I saw Rooster stroll through the lobby.”
“Corporate investors stroll through this lobby all the time. It’s late, Nessa. Sleep on your crazy-ass accusations, fix your attitude, and approach me differently in the morning.”
“Uh-uh-uh.” The points of her boots arced back and forth. “You sent me off to file papers and didn’t count on me doubling back to get my tablet. I don’t know where you met up with Rooster, but I’ll bet my new Fendi bag you did meet him and something’s about to go down.”
“What needs to go down is your blood pressure, Nessa. Quit getting worked up over assumptions. Ain’t no room for overactive imaginations here. Save that for court.”
“Don’t try to dance around me,” she warned. “I’ll stomp your toes and keep on struttin’.” She put her feet on the floor and steepled thick ringed fingers. “So how am I going to be spending the next hours? Shredding documents? Securing new phones? Filtering email?”
“None of that. Clean hands.” The same couldn’t be said for his conscience, but as for his hands, only holy water would make them cleaner. He’d built his success with clean hands, engineered it with a callous conscience. “We’re not the only ones keeping this building lit.”
“Yeah. Alibis all over the building. Maybe you don’t need me here after all, and I can go have a martini someplace.”
“We are still prepping for court. But as I said, if you have to take off, vete a casa.” Bautista fanned folders across the desk. His office burned bright and neighbors passed in the halls. They would notice him here with Nessa, their heads bent over papers.
This was a precaution, should questions surface. He couldn’t mend Joss Vail’s broken spirit or return the bloom to her rose or heal her bruises, but justice was his forte. Justice outside the lines of the law was a specialty, and one he didn’t dabble in often.
“Whatever you’re orchestrating, I hope it’s for a friggin’ good cause.” Nessa held him in a skeptical look. “Is it?”
Retribution. Was that a good cause? “Yeah, Nessa. It is.”
Joss didn’t like him, but a woman needn’t be agreeable to deserve fairness. A system that allowed a man to tear down the world of a woman he victimized and walk free was cracked. Bautista wanted to modestly convey that after beating his girlfriend, Peter Bernard would’ve been safer behind bars than roaming the streets.
Humble man that he was, Bautista found no particular satisfaction in seeing his orchestrations, as Nessa called them, played out. He didn’t need to have his visual, auditory, and olfactory senses engaged. All he required was confirmation that a conversation occurred. The conversations, though, usually involved very little discussion.
So he worked in his office with his legal secretary and they prepared for a high-impact morning. And when, at the agreed-upon time, he put in a call to an all-night pizzeria and a familiar voice told him what he’d expected to hear, he ended the connection and told Nessa, “Put through the usual midnight-oil order.” Half pepperoni, for Nessa, and half green peppers, for him. “Come with me to pick up or call it a night and go home. Up to you.”
“Are you riding with them again?” she asked flatly. “What about retirement? I believe that when folks pass on, they get a viewfinder on the ones left here. Luz ain’t going to like what she sees if you get it in your head to re-up with…them.”
Bautista was banking on another ride—the final ride with his brothers. If Luz did have a viewfinder, she would see what motivated him now. He wasn’t seeking her approval or understanding. Both were immaterial and no way in hell would she have given him either.
But all those plans were put on a short hold. Joss Vail’s catastrophe had demanded immediate intervention. She wouldn’t thank him for it—likely would hate him for playing Robin Hood when she hadn’t asked for a hero who followed an unconventional protocol of law. The legal system was a fickle lover—sometimes it was in sync with him, but other times, such as when it allowed social status to set free an abuser, it turned its back on him. So he improvised, guided only by his keen sense of judgment. It was so keen that his club brothers didn’t doubt his directives, but only men with seniority were trusted with his instructions.
“I’m going, soon as I draft this memo.” Nessa, as brown and soft as oven-toasted bread, turned her voice into granite. “I’m concerned about you, Bautista. Losing her’s twisting you up.”
“Concern’s no good here.” He strode to the door. “Cut the lights out when you leave. I don’t want to get another angry note from night maintenance. I’m going to pay for what I ordered.”
The pizza and the trip his brothers took to New York City tonight.
CHAPTER 11
Daybreak lazed over the ocean and the water undulated gently, relishing the teasing stroke of it. Warm wind puffed softly, like a yawn falling over Sofia’s skin, but she didn’t pedal a U-turn on Society to change her clothes. She had a specific part to play, and the black suit, so tight that the short jacket and cropped pants hugged her possessively, was the outfit to shove her into character. Even her hair, twisted into a chignon and denied the chance to whip the air as the bicycle bulleted down the sleepy street, contributed to her costume.
The white knuckles, clammy palms, and microscopic perspiration pebbled across her nose revealed anxiety.
She was bicycling to the marina to propose a business deal, not to ask for a favor. Yet she was nervous underneath her clothes, and hot, too. Her wardrobe was meant for air-conditioned offices, posh dinners, and nightclub hopping—not cross-town jaunts on a chrome bike. She’d chosen the bike over her SUV because it was the less conspicuous of the two. A Lexus’s engine announcing its p
resence at sunrise was bound to draw people from their boats. A woman bicycling barefoot in a business suit with high heels in the basket might look peculiar, but not many would notice, and that was good enough.
This was about business, nothing more. Okay, so she’d have a rare opportunity to catch Burke first thing in the morning. And fine, she was excited about that. Would his hair be mussed and his shirt rumpled—if he slept in anything at all? Would he be all warm and gravel-voiced?
Redirecting her thoughts, she pictured Cape Foods. Once Eaves’s practical neighborhood market and the downtown hub where kids hung out in front of vending machines while adult conversations carried through the aisles, it was now a shell of itself—a dark, empty place.
Shopping there had been awkward, downright dreaded, when she was in high school and on the outs with the grocer’s son. Whether it was stacking cans of tomato paste on top of eggs or giving her a bag with a hole in it, Burke found ways to retaliate against her compulsion to sniff out his secrets and expose him far and wide. She’d been lonely in those early years, losing her junior high friends to cliques that demanded loyalty and conformity she couldn’t spare. Medical appointments defined her social life, and after too many declined invitations and missed sleepovers the girls had left her on her own in the strange cutthroat world that was high school. Without friends, she’d made enemies. At least then someone knew her name—even if they preferred to call her something else.
Brat. Prude. Bitch.
Had Burke used those words before they’d become friends and he had started carrying her groceries for her and slipping sketches into her bags? What about after she’d stabbed him in the heart before going to New York to get a new one for herself? What had he called her then?
Now she wasn’t hot—she was frigid underneath her skin as she jammed her feet on the pedals and commanded herself to go faster. So fast that she couldn’t identify the occasional person taking to the street to start their day. So fast that she could no longer detect the aromas of baked bread and fresh coffee in the thick June breeze. Faster still, until she might escape the past, because she didn’t want to think about that anymore.
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