by Alison Kent
There were times Annabel thought so, times she wondered too much about the other women he’d known, when she had no business wondering any such thing. “Honestly? I’m not sure I know him at all, and I plan to maintain that status quo. You want coffee?”
“Sure.”
After casual chitchat while filling their cups, and Annabel’s quick check of the bedroom, where she discovered Patrick’s vanishing act down the fire escape, she led Chloe back into the loft’s main room and settled on the opposite end of the sofa.
“So,” Chloe began. “Would you like to explain that status quo comment?”
Annabel lowered her cup. “About getting to know Patrick? What’s there to explain?”
“A lot.”
Annabel shook her head. “I don’t think so. I simply see no need to know him better than I do when this isn’t a long-term relationship. We’ve had our fun.” And she really had done her best to make him see the truth of his destructive behavior. “But I have a lot of decisions to make that are best made without having Patrick around.”
Chloe’s blond bob swung as she tilted her chin. “If you were a man, I’d accuse you of not being able to think with your big head.”
Smiling privately, Annabel blew over the surface of her hot coffee before she sipped. “I’ll admit to seeing things through sex-colored glasses these days.”
“I’ll bet.” Chloe stared into her own cup. “I’m the same way with Eric.”
“Yes, but you and Eric are involved, committed—” a strange twist of envy caught at Annabel’s midsection “—and in love.”
Chloe nodded as she lifted her coffee, but her tremulous expression—one totally out of character—was more telling than the motion of her head.
Annabel frowned. “Chloe? Are you and Eric having trouble?”
“Oh, no,” Chloe hurriedly insisted. “We’re fine. We’re great.”
“If I didn’t know you better, I’d believe every word. But your face is telling an entirely different story.” Annabel paused to let that sink in. “You forget how long I’ve known you.”
“Oh, no, I haven’t.” Chloe’s brow lifted sharply. “I was there every step of the way while you were busy stealing my job.”
Annabel huffed. “You weren’t exactly laying down your life to save what you had. Your interest wasn’t there, and I took full advantage. I remember having this discussion with you then.”
Pulling in a nervous breath, Chloe said in a rush, “I’m afraid that’s what’s happening with Eric. That his interest isn’t there. And that I’m going to lose him.”
“What are you talking about?” Annabel’s chest grew tight with worry. “You adore him. He adores you—”
“I’m not so sure anymore.”
“How can you say that? I was at your place Tuesday night. I saw the two of you together. He can’t stand for you to be out of his sight.”
“That’s the thing. I’ve been so busy with the gUIDANCE gIRL program that I’ve neglected him, neglected us. And I readily admit that….” Chloe’s sadness was virtually palpable. “Did you know Macy’s pregnant?”
“No. I didn’t.” But the revelation certainly put Chloe’s funk into perspective. “Do you want to have a baby?”
“Yes. No. Later, maybe.”
“And Eric?”
“I’ve always thought so. It’s just that recently he’s stopped talking about the Little League team of his loins, when he used to tease me about babies all the time.” She tucked her feet beneath her protectively. “I’m not sure what to do.”
Even knowing her girlfriend was hurting and wasn’t trying to be funny, Annabel couldn’t help but chuckle. “One thing you can do is get ready to kiss those perky boobs goodbye.”
Chloe frowned. “That’s not funny.”
So much for trying to lighten the mood. “I know it’s not. But what sort of friend would I be if I didn’t point out the obvious?”
“Well, think of a different obvious, would you? Like the one I keep missing when I try to figure out what’s going on with him.” Chloe’s hands gripped her cup so tightly Annabel feared the china would break.
She’d never seen her girlfriend so emotionally distraught. Chloe usually tossed off problems in a flurry of foulmouthed curses and gutter talk. She was not the type to fret or to stew. Especially not when it came to her relationship with Eric Haydon.
Annabel, unfortunately, was the last person to dispense advice on dealing with men. She was certainly no shining example of sticking with anything long term.
Even so, she was hardly unfeeling enough to change the subject now that Chloe had confided her fears—no matter that those fears struck at the heart of Annabel’s own decision to cut Patrick out of her life.
“Look, Chloe. I’m the least qualified person I know when it comes to relationship issues. All I can say is that from an outsider’s perspective, you don’t have a thing to worry about with Eric.” She went on, nipping Chloe’s objection in the bud. “But maybe you need to discuss this with him instead of me. Does he know how you’ve been feeling?”
Chloe went back to nursing her coffee, refusing to meet Annabel’s gaze. “Every time I get up the nerve to talk about it, he changes the subject. It’s as if he’s totally indifferent. And I can’t help but worry that it’s not just the babies he’s losing interest in.”
“You think it’s you.”
Chloe nodded, looking so miserable and lost, Annabel couldn’t doubt her friend’s sincerity. Which was why it came out of left field when, cup empty, Chloe slid the china across the coffee table and bounced around like a depressive on a manic rebound. “Never mind about me. I started my period, and I’m moody because I thought an accidental pregnancy might be just the solution.”
She couldn’t be serious. “When is an accidental pregnancy ever a solution to anything?”
“I’m kidding. I’m hormonal, I told you,” Chloe insisted. Though Annabel wasn’t convinced about the kidding part, she watched Chloe dig through her bag for her Day-Timer. “Anyway, let’s go over the rest of your Christmas Eve dinner details. I think we’re set, but with my luck, I’ve totally forgotten something major.”
“Actually,” Annabel began, wondering the best way to make this last-minute request, “I was hoping we could skip discussing Christmas and go straight to New Year’s.”
“Sure,” Chloe said with a shrug. “I’m game, and I’m easy.” She tapped her pen on her calendar page. Then she looked up questioningly. “What I’m not is clairvoyant.”
Annabel released a wry smile. “Newvale’s canceled on me.”
“For Devon’s showing? You’re kidding. What’s the deal?”
“One of their cooks took a walk. Or was asked to take a walk. Whatever.” She set her empty cup on the coffee table, leaned back and cinched her robe tighter. “I’m stuck with sixty RSVPs, a truckload of booze and no servers.”
“Servers, hell.” Chloe’s expression grew wide-eyed. “What about the food? I can’t believe Newvale’s didn’t sell the contract to another caterer.”
“I have the option, but have to let them know by Monday.”
“And something tells me you have an alternative up your sleeve.”
“Patrick’s agreed to cook.”
Chloe’s smirking expression of moments before went carefully blank. “I see.”
Annabel bristled. “You don’t think he’s capable?”
“Of cooking? Sure he is. Of handling possible crises until the last guest leaves?” Chloe shook her head. “Not on your life. A year and a half and he hasn’t stuck around to eat a single meal he’s cooked. The man is an island.”
Chest constricting, Annabel forced a smile and pushed away the unaccustomed protective instincts urging her to defend her lover’s good name. He didn’t have one, after all, leaving her with nothing to safeguard but her feelings, which were in conflict with her goal of their imminent parting.
“He doesn’t have to leave the kitchen or mingle with the guests. All I nee
d is for him to cook and for you and the other girls to help me serve.”
STANDING IN THE boarded-up doorway of the small video-rental store across the street, Patrick stared up at the fourth-story balcony of Annabel’s loft. He’d been here once already, earlier this morning, but couldn’t help it. He’d had to come back.
If anyone had been wanting a clear look at him last night, this would’ve been the place to get it. Not a single telephone pole or electrical line or billboard blocked the view from the sidewalk to the loft. It was a straight shot from here to there, and he didn’t like the idea that he’d been as exposed as he had, that Annabel had been exposed at all.
Mostly he didn’t like the idea that he’d been so stupidly reckless, that he’d been drinking and feeling sorry for himself when he knew better. The first didn’t do him a bit of good, and he’d had three years of doing the second to prove it wasn’t worth the hassle.
Thing was, until he’d picked up the cigarette butt this morning, he’d been halfway convinced that looking over his shoulder was more a waste of time than a precaution. He’d been home for nearly a year and a half now and hadn’t seen so much as a shadow other than his own. And looking for shadows was something he’d gotten used to doing pretty damn fast.
For the first couple of months after being hijacked off the schooner and watching his brother and Ray’s two fraternity buddies sail away, Patrick had flinched at the slightest shift from light to dark. Or, he thought with a sharp laugh, from dark to light.
He’d jumped at everything, truth be told, until he’d met Soledad. When the pirates had returned to the island three days into his captivity, she’d boarded Russell Dega’s powerboat and dragged Patrick up out of the cargo hold, demanding the bandit bastard cut him free from his bonds. Dega had, but not out of the kindness of his heart.
He’d laughed at her saucy, rapid-fire orders and used the same knife Patrick now carried to slice through the ropes he’d had three days onboard to get used to wearing. Patrick had listened then to the two of them arguing in a mixture of English and Spanish, Soledad snapping at Dega that he was about profit, about money, not about sport or revenge.
For some reason, once Soledad came into the picture, Dega seemed to forget the enmity he had for Patrick, treating him as a curiosity, a joke and then as a new toy he’d tired of winding up and watching squirm. It was as if Soledad was the baby-sitter Dega hadn’t trusted any of his men to be. That was Patrick’s first clue that she wasn’t just another of the women who waited for their men to return from a hard day’s looting at sea.
During the three days Patrick had been kept on the boat, however, Dega had been quite clear that he had zero patience with self-important college boys determined to muck up his operation by trying to play the hero. As if Patrick was going to sit back while the pirate crew boarded and trashed the schooner, threatening his brother and Ray’s buddies?
Even Dega’s threat to teach Patrick a lesson didn’t stop him from locking the main cabin hatches behind him as he bolted down the companionway. He’d been after a flare gun, a bullhorn, a handheld VHF radio—anything to signal their distress. He’d run into one of Dega’s men instead, and had been blasted with the rented schooner’s own canister of pepper spray.
Hero. Right.
He’d ended up being the only one dragged away.
The pirate gang numbered in the low twenties, as best Patrick had been able to tell once shuttled from the hold of the powerboat to the remote—though civilized—camp that served as their land-based operation. And that was where he’d stayed for most of his three years away.
He’d been free to wander through the compound, to swim in the cove surrounding the private dock, to fish the reef along the island from one of the flat-bottom boats. At least until the night he’d rowed out into open waters and fired up the outboard.
He really thought he’d calculated his timing, having clocked Dega’s comings and goings for several weeks. But he’d thought wrong. He hadn’t been out of the cove ten minutes when he’d looked up to see Dega’s boat bearing down on him. The searchlights had blinded him, had guaranteed that Dega saw him, but the boat continued forward at full throttle.
Patrick had taken a dive he’d been certain at the time would be his last. He’d sunk like a rock as the propeller churned the water over his head, the boat coming to a stop and circling directly above the spot where he was trying not to drown.
He’d been wrong about the dive being his last, and had ended up with a lot of time to figure out how things had gone from bad to worse while the shackles binding his ankles kept him landlocked. Now, however, the task at hand was to figure out how to keep the situation from traveling any farther south, and how to bring Dega down for the very last time.
Wishing for a cigarette, but only half as much as he wished for a drink, Patrick stepped out of the doorway alcove onto the sidewalk. Lost in thoughts he’d like to lose permanently, he’d forgotten that it was barely ten o’clock. Hardly the time to be chugging down a cold one no matter that his drinking was more about the situation than the hour of the day.
He supposed he could toe a sober line for the next couple of weeks to make Annabel happy and keep her quiet. She didn’t like his drinking much, or at least she didn’t like not knowing the reasons he drank. But the day he answered her questions was the day she owned more than his willing body.
And sobriety was a small price to pay for a soul. Even a sorry-ass one like his.
Heading back across the street, he pulled open the door to the hallway leading to the warehouse’s bank of elevators. Even in daylight, the high, narrow windows provided scant illumination, barely more than the wall lamps that were supposed to finish the job. Patrick couldn’t figure out why such a classy woman as Annabel would want to live in such a dump of a neighborhood.
No one was asking him, but revitalization appeared to be nothing but a fancy word for rip-off if she’d paid even half of what he imagined. Still, he had to admit he would miss the place. He felt safe here, as weird as that was. Felt as if he fit in, instead of sticking out like a big fat sore thumb the way he did in Ray’s neighborhood.
Yeah, they’d both grown up in the house Ray and Sydney now lived in, but Patrick had lost his suburban blinders a long time back. He no longer saw the same world as his brother, and that hurt, losing that connection over a freak disaster that was no one’s fault.
It hurt even more knowing Ray blamed himself for the entire vacation gone bad. That was one delusion Patrick needed to make sure got cleared up, and soon. Annabel had been right to chew him out.
Approaching the elevators, he fought a smile at the thought of her brutal honesty. Surprisingly refreshing, since everyone else seemed to tiptoe on eggshells around him. But not her. Oh, no. She crunched her way straight to her in-your-face point.
Namely that Ray’s self-inflicted punishment had gone on four years too long already. And if Patrick didn’t “snap out of his moody self-absorption and help his older brother forgive himself,” she wasn’t sure they’d ever be able to make up for lost time, much less get back the bond they’d once shared.
Hands braced on the hip-high elevator railing, Patrick hung his head and studied his boots. How she’d known about that brotherly bond was no mystery. Anything Ray knew, Sydney knew. And anything one gIRL-gEAR partner knew, they all learned eventually.
Stupidest damn thing Patrick had ever seen, and sure to get one or more of them burned.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like Annabel’s friends, because he did. He just couldn’t imagine trusting that many people so implicitly. And with Ray growing more and more distant, the one person Patrick might’ve felt free to confide his fears to couldn’t be counted on not to spill the gory details.
He spat out a mouthful of curses as his mood turned foul. Yeah, it was more than past time to make things right with his brother, but he wasn’t going to solve a thing standing inside a box going nowhere.
The elevator jerked upward once he finally hit the
button for four. When it lurched to a stop, he yanked up the door until it caught and slid open on its tracks. Then, pulling back the folding grate, he stepped into the loft.
Chloe and Annabel still sat on the sofa; both women stared in his direction as if expecting his return to bring world peace, when he’d come back with nothing but his instinct for survival running high.
Still the two women stared, and his hackles rose. He hated feeling as if they’d been discussing him, analyzing him and finding him distinctly lacking.
“It’s just me. Your friendly neighborhood thug.”
“What happened to your hair?” Chloe asked.
“Annabel scalped me,” he said, running a hand over the top of his head. “She’s on a mission to improve my acceptability rating.”
Annabel gave him that look that made him feel as if he were a lost cause. Or maybe his perception was simply an extension of his mood. Either way, he needed to get out of here before he tossed out the smart-ass remarks on the tip of his tongue and pissed her off.
He took two steps down the long hallway that ran past the kitchen toward the bedroom before she stopped him. “Walking out on a conversation, or on a guest, doesn’t exactly win you any points. Just in case you’re interested.”
Mouth twisted with sarcasm, he met her gaze. “Nope. Not interested in the least.”
“I see,” she said, all snotty and managing to look down her nose at him from her place on the couch.
If he hadn’t been watching closely, he might’ve missed the flicker of hurt in her beautiful eyes. He damned himself for that, for causing her pain, knowing he should pack up his duffel and go—no matter that he’d just spent an hour detailing the reasons he couldn’t walk out of her life.
But he sure as hell could walk out of the room.
And he did.
4
“OKAY, SPILL. What was all that stuff going on back there with Patrick?” Chloe asked, having followed Poe in her own car as they’d driven from Midtown through Rice Village to Three Mings.
