Stone buried his face in one hand.
“I forgot what that felt like, to have a woman look at me with eyes like that. It made me wish…hell, made me wonder if it would be such a terrible thing if I didn’t push this case through, you know? Pull back just a little. Buy myself just a little more time. She’d never have to know.”
But you’d know.
“Cut it out, Stone. You are a jerk. A jerk half in love with the woman, whatever that means.”
It means nothing, he warned himself. He couldn’t change that. Even if he was reckless enough to try to make all the stuff he felt about her mean something, she’d never let him. She talked about wanting to put Emma in a tower like Rapunzel? Hell, Deirdre was the one locked up in a tower. Except she’d bricked up the door to it herself.
She blocked out all chance of love, of a husband, a home. Now she’d even bricked out her brother and her father—and yes, damn it, Martin McDaniel would always be that to her, if she’d quit being so stubborn and let him.…
Let him love her.
Let anyone love her. Why was it so hard for her to see? The courage Stone glimpsed every time her eyes flashed in anger, the passion he felt when she defended her daughter, when she talked about her music, when she kissed Stone and he touched her.
Had the son of a bitch who raped Deirdre taken all hope away from her? She’d wanted Stone, wanted passion, wanted to drink it all in. Stone would’ve given his right hand to be able to be the man who gave her sexuality back to her.
But the most he could do was move on this case as quickly as possible, navigate Deirdre through all this confusion with as little pain and lasting damage as he could, deliver her back to her family—her real family: her fiercely protective brother and dreamy-eyed Finn, the nieces and nephews that would fill at least some of the place in Deirdre’s heart where more of her own babies should have been, and the father who had loved her all the years of her life, who, please God, would be able to forgive her for showing him that that wasn’t enough.
Stone straightened. Picked up the phone to call March Winds the way he had every night since the gazebo, taking her out for dinner, to the movies, hiking in the park with Ellie May. He didn’t feel much like eating, but he’d go through the motions if Deirdre was across the table.
Time was running out.
He’d just have to make the most of whatever he had left.
“DON’T TELL ME YOU’RE GOING OUT with him again?” Emma scowled over her chemistry book as Deirdre hung up the phone. “God, Stone, get a life!”
“Actually, I’m the one trying to get a life here, Emma.” Deirdre tried to hold on to her patience. “There’s no reason I should stay home. You’re going to play practice, everything’s ready to go for the guests’ breakfast tomorrow morning, the table’s set, muffin batter’s in the fridge. I could sit and watch dust bunnies grow in the corner, but for some reason that doesn’t appeal to me tonight.”
“Or any night for the past week,” Emma complained. “It’s bad enough you’re spending time with that nosy jerk, but forcing me to waste a whole Saturday at some lame picnic with people I don’t know is cruel and unusual punishment.”
Deirdre smoothed her fingers through her unruly hair, trying to tame it down. She flushed, remembering the other night when Jake had told her he liked it a little wild. It suited her. Her cheeks tingled at the memory of the kiss he’d nuzzled against her throat.
Leave it like that…he’d murmured. It’s so damned sexy…
Emma…Deirdre reminded herself. She was supposed to be talking to Emma. Reasoning with her about…what? Oh, that was it. Saturday. She wondered what Stone had in store on that day. The man had perfected turning on Deirdre into an art form, teasing her, taunting her, pushing hot buttons she hadn’t even known existed.
Focus, Deirdre told herself. You’re supposed to be convincing Emma not to be a total brat at the Rizzos’.
“Taking a few lessons from a professional dancer would have thrilled you a month ago.”
“There’s a dance school on Maple Street. I could go there.”
“And mince around with all the other little cheerleaders in tutus? Trula knows what it takes to audition and make it in theater, just like you’ve always wanted.”
“What I want is for you to quit trying to ruin my Saturday!” Emma slammed her chemistry book closed. “I don’t care if Stone’s grandma is Mikhail Baryshnikov in drag, I don’t want to go to some stranger’s house with a bunch of stupid little kids and eat potato salad that makes me feel like I’m gonna barf even before I have to look at that—that nosy jerk Jake Stone’s ugly face.”
Deirdre wished she’d put in a pair of earplugs. Smile and nod. Smile and nod. Come Saturday, duct tape the kid’s mouth and drag her to the Rizzos’ by her hair. “I thought you said Jake was movie-star gorgeous the first time you saw him.” She grabbed a lipstick from her purse and squinted at her wobbly reflection in the chrome of the toaster as she smoothed color on her lips.
Emma scoffed in disgust. “Yeah, well, aren’t you the one who always tells me first impressions are deceiving? Besides, Drew and I have to practice—”
“I checked the practice schedule the school sent home, and you have the day off. A few hours won’t kill you.”
“No, but it might kill you,” Emma muttered. She dragged a pile of dusty books from her book bag and thumped them onto the kitchen table.
“More homework?” Deirdre asked, glad to change the subject.
“Nope.” Emma said, spreading the top book open. “They’re yearbooks.”
“Yearbooks?” Deirdre echoed, a little uneasy. “What do you want to look at old yearbooks for?”
Gravel crunched outside as Stone pulled up.
“Stuff for some stupid old class reunion that’s coming up. The drama department is supposed to dig out old pictures. You know, a picture of me as lead in the senior play, a picture of whatever old chick got Whitewater High’s top billing back in the Dark Ages.”
“Hey, I resent that,” Deirdre’s brow furrowed.
“Yeah, well, it’s your Dark Ages I’m supposed to find this stuff in. Your graduating class. Remember? Aunt Finn said you threw the invitation away.”
“Did I?” Things had been so crazy she could barely remember her own name lately. But Finn had shown her some kind of invitation that had come in the mail a few weeks ago. It was her class that was reuniting. She’d thrown the invitation in the garbage.
One session in hell was enough, she’d told Finn. There was only one way she’d ever show her face at a class reunion: that was if Stephen King could hand over all those psychic powers he gave Carrie. There were some people in the graduating class Deirdre had always figured would look good in pig’s blood.
“So this was your graduating class, huh?” Emma asked, looking up, suddenly a little quiet, a little unnerving.
“I guess so.” Deirdre looked at the images on the yellowed pages, felt a jolt of recognition. Her senior year spread out across the page—the dorky float the music teachers had made them work on, the homecoming court lined up, smiling their toothpaste smiles.
Her stomach lurched.
“What’s the matter, Mom?” Emma asked, her eyes far too keen, her mind too sharp.
Don’t let her see, Deirdre thought desperately. Don’t let her guess…
“I got a speck of dust in my eye,” Deirdre lied. “Don’t they ever go in the library stacks and shake all the crud off these old books?”
“I wouldn’t have had to drag them home from the library if you’d just kept your own yearbooks like everybody else in the world.”
I didn’t want anything that reminded me of him. Didn’t want to remember—
She fought the urge to snatch the book away, slam it shut, shove it into the fireplace and burn it to ash.
Instead she turned and walked away, trying to blot out the image from her mind. But even later that night as she sat across the table from a worried Jake Stone, she couldn’t tell him what
had shaken her so badly. Couldn’t tell anyone how a split second could have torn her world apart. The heart-stopping instant she’d realized that Emma’s fingers lay carelessly across the picture of her own father.
NEVER TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE BALL. Hadn’t some high
school coach of Jake’s a jillion years ago dropped that little gem of wisdom into Stone’s hormone-crazed brain?
Jake doubled over, struggling to breathe. What the coach should have said was keep your eyes on your own balls, at least when Frankie, J.J., Ricky and Tommy Rizzo were practicing the karate kicks Stone had taught them last time he’d been at the house.
Even five-year-old Joey, lured away from roughhousing by his fascination with the fire that Tank was starting in the grill, stared at Uncle Jake in awe.
“Frankie kicked him right in the nuts, Daddy,” Joey shrilled in a voice that could be heard in the next state. “Man, I bet that hurts!”
Tank roared with laughter. “This lady friend Uncle Jake invited must really be something, boys. His concentration’s shot to hell,” Tank muttered, sotto voce, “along with any extracurricular activities you might have had planned after dessert, eh, Jakey boy?”
“Rizzo…you’re a real…comedian.” Stone scowled at his best friend, surprised at the wave of protectiveness that swept through him. “Lay off when Deirdre’s here, man. No sex jokes.”
“With my children’s tender ears about?” Tank tried to look innocent as he tended the charcoal. “I’ll make sure my manners would measure up at Sunday Mass.”
“That’s a hell of a comfort, considering some of the stunts I’ve seen you pull during the boys’ baptisms and first communions.”
“Only when Father Casey isn’t looking and Lucy’s busy trying to keep the kids from killing each other. Somehow they don’t quite get the spirit of that go-in-peace, serve-the-Lord stuff.”
“Yeah, they’re chips off the old block.” Jake limped over
to the picnic table he and Tank had built for Lucy’s Mother’s Day present the year J.J. had been born. “I mean it, Theodore Patsy.”
Tank scowled and thwacked Jake on the arm, his usual reaction to hearing his loathed formal name. “Call me Theodore Patsy in front of this chick and the boys and I will pants you. I mean it, Jake. No mercy.”
Jake hated the strange tension in his nerves. The edginess that had only grown worse in the time that had passed since Stone had not made love to Deirdre McDaniel at the gazebo. Maybe Frankie had done him a favor after all with that well-aimed kick. He’d had a perpetual hard-on for almost a week. Surely pain would take the edge off it.
Then again, maybe not, Stone thought as he saw Deirdre’s van pulling up to the Rizzos’ cozy ranch-style house. The place, on its spacious corner lot, had been advertised as a fixer-upper when the Rizzos bought it. Tank and Jake had remodeled the whole damned place, room by room, until now it was everything Lucy Rizzo had dreamed of.
Stone grabbed Tank by his meaty forearm and glared into his mischievous eyes. “Do not screw this up for me,” Jake warned, his heart skipping a beat as he heard Deirdre’s car door slam. “The lady…she’s a little skittish about, well, sex. I don’t want you spooking her.”
“No wonder you’ve got such a foul temper if you haven’t been getting any—ooph!” Tank gasped as Jake elbowed him in the gut.
“I heard that,” Lucy said as she swept through one of the sliding glass doors. Her green blouse and khaki shorts set off her slender frame, her long golden hair caught up in a ponytail that made her look far too young to be the mother of such a rowdy pack of boys. The heaping platter of burgers and hot dogs for the grill demonstrated she had a
healthy understanding that the Rizzo men plus one would soon be descending on her table like a swarm of army ants.
“Jacob Stone, you’re a wreck,” she said, giving him the once-over. “This woman must be really special.”
Stone was amazed to feel his cheeks burn. “She is.”
“All right, then.” Lucy rounded on her husband. “Theodore Patsy Rizzo, step out of line once tonight and I swear, I’ll put so much starch in your underwear you’ll be walking like a penguin when you go back to work on Monday. Jake is your best friend, and he’s actually bringing a lady over for the first time since…well, in years.”
A shadow crossed Lucy’s face, even Tank’s ornery grin looked stiff. Jake hated the haunted quality in his friends’ eyes.
“Go ahead and say it. I haven’t brought a lady over here since I got divorced,” Jake supplied. “Actually longer than that. Trula always said that Jessica was no lady. I should have listened.”
He almost got a smile out of Lucy. “Men,” Lucy groaned. “Why is it you’re always chasing after these delicate little flowers with big boobs and the brains of a china doll?”
“Hey,” Tank objected. “I chased after you from the time I was an altar boy, and you’re so much smarter than me sometimes it’s scary.”
“Lucy Rizzo, the last of the genuinely good women.” Jake mourned. “It’s a pity that polygamy is illegal in this state since you conned Lucy into marrying you first, Tank. Of course, I’m the one she comes to when she has questions to research in all those love scenes.”
It felt good to see them both laugh, Jake thought. Deirdre’s blunt questions the other day had reminded him of far darker days. When they’d all three been tense and edgy, the friendship they’d taken for granted changed forever.
He’d been so damned grateful when they’d eased their way back into some of the old patterns, sparring back and forth again, no one missing their cue. But tonight was different.
“Hey, Tank,” Stone said, his voice unsteady. “Seriously, man. Take it easy on her. I kinda love her.”
“Holy shit!” Tank exclaimed. “You hear that, Lucy? Jakey here kinda—”
Lucy scooped a hamburger bun from a nearby basket and jammed it into her husband’s open mouth. “Behave, or no sex for a week,” she said under her breath.
Tank mumbled around a mouthful of bun. Stone knew from a dozen other play fights Rizzo’s line was “At home?”
But Stone was too shaken to give a damn about the rest of the exchange. His heart was thundering in his ears like a nine-pound hammer as Deirdre walked toward them, a Tupperware bowl of fruit salad clutched in one hand, a bottle of wine in the other.
Trim denim capris accented her shapely legs, a soft, flowing poet’s shirt in poppy orange making the rich tints in her dark hair glow. Emma, obviously pouting, clutched the play script in her arms, a built-in excuse to barricade herself in a corner, so she could make damned sure she didn’t have a good time.
Deirdre looked tired and wary and so beautiful Stone had a hard time coming up with something to say.
“Hey,” Joey piped up. “You look like a pun-kin. They’re orange, too. Frankie kicked Uncle Jake right in the—”
“Hey, there, partner!” Lucy swooped up her big-mouthed son and smacked a kiss on the kid, drowning out his little announcement. “How about if you and J.J. check to see if any tomatoes are ripe in the garden? We’ll need some for the burgers and nobody’s better at picking them out than you are.”
Joey wriggled in delight. “I get to pick ’em. I’m the best!” He raced around to the vines by the side of the house, his brothers in hot pursuit.
Lucy swept over and gave a surprised Deirdre one of her ubiquitous hugs. “I really hope we’re going to be friends, Deirdre, because I just sacrificed the rest of this year’s tomato crop to keep my son from embarrassing you so badly you’ll never set foot in our yard again. He’ll pick every tomato on the vine and expect us to eat them—especially the green ones.”
Deirdre set the fruit salad on the picnic table. “The green ones are my favorites.” She held out the wine a little awkwardly. As Lucy accepted it, Deirdre nodded to the Ice Princess. “This is my daughter, Emma.”
Jake had a moment to wonder if Emma would be the first one in recent history not to melt under the warmth of one of Lucy Rizzo’s smi
les. But he never got the chance to find out.
Heels clicked across the concrete patio, Jake recognizing his grandmother’s rhythmic stride before he caught a glimpse of her fire-engine-red hair.
“Oh, my, you must be Emma!” Trula gasped, her blood-red fingernail polish flashing as she clasped her wrinkled hands. “Look at the legs on this girl, Lucy!”
Trula looked the kid over as if she were a prized cow or something. Emma took a step closer to her mom, but Trula didn’t miss a beat, God bless her.
“And what presence!” Trula said, enraptured. “You know, Emma dear, presence is something even the finest masters in the world can’t teach. You must be born with it…here.” Trula touched the center of the startled teenager’s chest.
Jake almost laughed aloud as Deirdre’s jaw dropped open. Must be weird, he figured, watching your daughter fall under Trula’s spell.
“When did you know you were destined to be an actress?” Trula inquired.
“I…I guess I never—I mean, I always…”
Jake almost felt sorry for the kid—caught like a deer in the headlights—staring at Trula’s spectacularly red hair. Emma clung to her script almost as tightly as she was hanging on to her rotten mood. “I’ve got lines to learn.”
“Oh. Lines.” Trula waved her hand as if saying, Oh, you’re taking out the garbage.
“I promised her she could sit in a corner somewhere,” Deirdre said, looking uncomfortable. “Someplace far away, where she wouldn’t bother anybody.”
Jake threw the kid an appraising look, filling in the blanks with what Deirdre hadn’t said: Emma can sit far away where she won’t wreck the party with her Oscar-worthy performance of a little black cloud.
But Trula wasn’t backing down. “Jacob and your mother said you are playing Juliet in the school play.” Trula walked around Emma. The old woman laid one finger along a brightly rouged cheek in appraisal. “You know, I lost my virginity to—”
“Trula!” Stone exclaimed while Tank roared out a booming laugh.
The ornery old woman gave the two men a look filled with wide-eyed innocence. “Ah, well, fine, then. Plenty of time to get around to losing your virginity after you learn how to dance. Theodore has been kind enough to clear space in the boys’ roller hockey rink in the basement.”