Bastard! Tom ran toward the guy from behind, careful not to make a sound on approach. Gussie and Alex disappeared around the next corner, just as Tom jumped. He whipped the guy around, slammed an elbow into his gut, sent the phone flying, and smacked him against the wall with a loud grunt.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Tom demanded.
Horrified hazel eyes popped wide open, and he fought for breath.
Tom pressed a little harder, ready to knee the prick in the balls if he had to. “Why are you taking pictures of them?”
He shook his head frantically, and for a second, Tom assumed he didn’t speak English.
“I don’t want to hurt her,” he murmured, killing that theory. He not only spoke English, he was as American as Tom.
But that didn’t make him let up any pressure. “Then why are you following them?”
“I just…I wanted…” He closed his eyes. “I wanted to see how she turned out.”
Her? Who did he mean? Tom searched every inch of the guy’s face, digging for anything that would be a clue as to who the hell he was and what he was talking about.
“I had to…see her.” He wasn’t even trying to push Tom away anymore. “I had to.”
And then Tom knew exactly who he had pinned against the wall.
Chapter Twenty-two
Alex and Gussie wandered through the backstreets, taking the scenic route to what Alex liked to think of as The Best Bakery in the World.
“Stop for a second,” Gussie said, putting her hand on Alex’s arm. “Look, right there, down that incline to the corner. What does it look like to you?”
Alex frowned into the view, taking in the yellow buildings and low gray stone wall along the side of one road. It did look like something…
“Delfino Square!” She almost jumped up and down, thinking of the race route in Mario Kart. “This is totally like the first intersection right after the roundabout.”
“Exactly,” Gussie agreed, throwing an arm around her. “And up there is like that main road where it gets busy and I always, always get creamed.”
Just then, a bus rolled by, so close that Gussie and Alex had to step closer to the buildings. It turned the corner and headed for a large building surrounded by twenty other giant buses exactly like it.
“Jeez,” Gussie said. “It’s about as dangerous as Mario Kart, too. Next thing, they’ll be flinging banana peels at us from the…gare routière. Which I believe means bus station.”
“You’re getting good at French,” Alex said, fighting the urge to hold Gussie’s hand when the light changed and they could cross. “Do you think Mario Kart based that course here? I thought it was supposed to be Italy.”
“It’s Europe,” Gussie said. “Who cares? Still feels like we’re living in our video game.”
Our video game. When did that happen? Alex waited for a surge of disloyalty—after all, Mario Kart was Momma’s game—but that guilty feeling never came. Just something she hadn’t felt in a long time, something like peace or contentment.
Then Gussie yawned so loud and long, it drowned out all sounds and peace and made Alex giggle. “Whoa. That was pretty,” she teased. “Pretty ugly.”
Gussie elbowed her. “Shut up. I didn’t sleep all night.”
Alex looked down at her feet, not really able to meet Gussie’s gaze because she knew why she had been awake.
Even though Gussie had been in her own room and Uncle Tommy’s door had been closed when Alex had come home this morning, she knew. They had to be doing it. She and Lizzie had talked about it for hours, laughing so hard they cried. And Miss Annie made enough comments about what a cute couple they made and how they looked at each other that Alex had it all figured out.
The question was…did that mean they would be, like, boyfriend and girlfriend? Or more? Because living with Uncle Tommy as her guardian, just the two of them—that was not an option and it felt like time to tell Gussie.
Because the dream that her father would show up out of the blue and want to take her away to raise her—that wasn’t happening. Although, she’d hoped when Uncle Tommy had said some guy had followed them in the market. Of course, she’d prayed it was her father.
But that was crazy. When she woke up this morning, next to her new friend Lizzie, Alex had a certainty about her father that she hadn’t felt since Momma died. He wasn’t going to swoop in and save her, so she had to tell Gussie…what she wanted. She’d even gone back to the apartment early to tell her, finding her up. When Gussie suggested they go for croissants, Alex was sure this was her perfect opportunity.
Except she was scared Gussie would say no.
“Can I have coffee, too?” she asked.
“I think in France kids can have coffee and wine, but let’s start with a little café au lait.” Gussie put a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “And one of those incredibly sinful chocolate croissants while you tell me all about your evening with the Stone family. I want every gory detail.” She fake-coughed and muffled the word, “Eddie.”
A little shiver shot through Alex, because that was so something Momma would have done. And she’d said so many times how she couldn’t wait for Alex to like boys so they could talk about each one of them for hours and decide whether they were boyfriend material.
A sudden wave of sadness so powerful and strong she could taste it washed over Alex. Momma would never, ever get to know about any one of her boyfriends. Ever.
“Um, Alex?” Gussie nudged her. “Someone just went off to la-la land. And I can only imagine why.”
Let her think it was Eddie who took over Alex’s thoughts. She wished it was. She wished she could think about Momma a few less times every minute.
“Do you like our next-door-neighbor boy?” Gussie asked in a singsong voice.
Just like Momma, no beating around the bush. “He’s cute.”
“Very.”
“And nice.”
“Seems so.”
“But he cheated at Monopoly.”
“Ugh!” Gussie made a face as she yanked the bakery door open. “Cheaters are not boyfriend material.”
Alex froze. “Boyfriend material?” Only Momma said that!
“Oh, don’t pretend you haven’t thought about it,” Gussie said, holding the door so Alex could walk right into the smell of heaven. “But you are too young for a boyfriend, you know.”
“I know, but who says that?” Besides my mother?
“Everyone.”
Alex’s heart dropped a little. “Oh, I thought…” That it was a sign. “Never mind.”
Gussie took a noisy sniff. “I could crawl into that mountain of baguettes and live there.”
Alex smiled, still thinking how Gussie sounded like Momma when she said things like that. After they got their goodies, they went outside, and Gussie picked a table by the street.
“This is the same table where I sat with Uncle Tommy the other day,” Alex said. “Hopefully, this will be more fun.”
“Oh, Alex, come on.” Gussie handed her the bag. “You have to give the guy a chance.”
She didn’t have to. Without answering, she spread out the wax paper, taking a second to admire the perfection of the croissant.
Gussie sipped coffee, her gaze off in some distant place, brows pulled in a slight frown. With red eyes and the shadows under her lids, she definitely looked like she’d been awake all night.
“Why are you staring at me?” Gussie asked.
“Still getting used to you with no makeup,” Alex lied, looking away.
Gussie sighed. “Me, too.” She closed those shadowed eyes and exhaled noisily. “Alex, I might go back to Mimosa Key soon.”
“What?” Alex sat straight up, punched by the announcement. “Why? What would you do that for? You can’t leave now.”
“I might need to…” She looked away again, and Alex could have sworn she was about to cry. What happened last night? Alex was almost afraid to ask. Instead, she tried guilt.
“But you promised
to stay, to have a freecation, to be with us like…like a family.” She was whining, but she didn’t care.
Gussie’s expression softened as she reached over the crumbs and bag to take Alex’s hand. “Oh, honey, I’m not really your family.”
Alex stared at her, willing her eyes not to fill as the words hit her heart. She failed. Gussie never talked like that. She was never negative.
“Alex.” She squeezed her hand. “Please, don’t cry. I’ll start, too, and then we’ll be two blubbery messes.”
How could she not cry? “Don’t you want to stay?”
She didn’t answer, but shifted around in her seat as if the iron bottom hurt her. Or the conversation did. “I may have to go home,” she finally said.
“There’s no wedding for you to work on, you said so. And your friend isn’t getting married until the end of the month.” Nothing was working. “How can you leave Uncle Tommy?”
Gussie gave her a get real look. “Um, easily?”
Really? “But he really likes you. He loves you!”
Gussie blinked at her, color draining from her face. “No, he doesn’t, honey.” The hitch in her voice told Alex a whole heck of a lot. Like Gussie really liked him, but he didn’t like her back. Did that happen to grown-ups, too? Grown-ups as pretty and cool as Gussie?
“Miss Annie thinks he loves you.”
Gussie smiled. “For a woman in the throes of divorce, that says a lot about her optimism.” She shook her head. “Enough about me. Tell me about this Monopoly cheater you like.”
No, she wouldn’t let her change the subject. “You’ll never get him to fall in love with you if you leave, Gussie.”
“I’ll never get him to fall in love with me, period.” Her voice was tight, like she was trying to make a joke, but it wasn’t funny. “He’s determined to be alone.” As soon as she said that, she must have realized what it sounded like, because she squeezed Alex’s hand even harder. “Not alone alone,” she corrected. “I mean alone without, you know, a woman in his life.”
Alex pulled her hand free so she could make a fist under the table. “So, if you don’t marry him—”
Gussie snorted hard. “I’m not going to marry him, Alex.”
“Then…” She took a deep breath and spilled her idea. “Could you take me and be my guardian and take care of me?” She rushed through the question so fast she wasn’t sure if Gussie understood.
Maybe she didn’t, based on the look of complete confusion on her face.
“Would you? Could you?” God, she sounded like a Dr. Seuss book.
“Alex, I—”
“Think about it before you say no, okay? Think really hard. You are such a natural at being a mom, and I’m an orphan, so—”
“Alex, you’re not—”
“I think we could have so much fun, and I don’t eat much, and I promise I would be so neat, my room is never messy, and I won’t spend a lot of money. In fact, I could get a—”
“Stop.”
She swallowed her promises, letting the big lump in her throat the size of the whole croissant she’d eaten choke her with the truth. “You don’t want me.”
“Alex, that’s not true, not for one second, and you know it.”
But Gussie was the only person who seemed to understand her, who made her feel safe, who could possibly replace the giant hole left by her mother.
“A person can’t just take someone’s child to raise,” Gussie said softly.
But she wasn’t anyone’s child now. Except her father’s. And he—
“There are courts and legalities and what your mother wanted—”
“She didn’t want me to end up with her stupid brother!” Oh, great, now she was bawling like a two-year-old.
“Shh.” Gussie instantly moved her chair to the side of the table, getting closer to Alex. “Calm down and listen to me.”
Alex bit her lip, trying to do exactly that, but her head was buzzing.
“If she really and truly didn’t want you with your uncle, then she’d have changed her will. She wants you with family, Alex.”
“What is family? It’s the people you like to be around, right?”
Gussie opened her mouth and shut it. “You know, I was going to tell you that family is blood, but I know that’s not true. When you’re older, you’ll make friends who will seem like sisters to you. But, until then, you can’t choose your family.”
Alex shot her a look, hating the tears that blurred her vision. “Why don’t you choose me?” she sobbed.
“Oh, Alex.” Gussie’s voice cracked as she hugged Alex. “I would if I could. You’re sweet and good, and I love you already.”
She clung to every word, every syllable. There was hope.
“But I told you, it isn’t that easy to take someone from their legal guardian.”
She jerked back. “He’d let you have me! He doesn’t even have a heart.”
Gussie’s green eyes were completely wet, and when she blinked, a tear rolled down her face. “He does have a heart, honey, but something happened to break it.”
She inched back, taking in this new information. “How do you know that?”
“He told me, and it made me understand him a little better.”
But what did it mean? “Can you…fix him?”
She smiled sadly. “I don’t think I’m the person to do that, but maybe you are.”
“Me? He hates me.”
“No, he doesn’t, Alex.” She stroked a soothing hand over Alex’s face. “He doesn’t understand you.”
Alex leaned into Gussie’s soft fingers, aching everywhere for how much she wanted Gussie to take her. “Gussie, will you make me a promise?”
“If I can.”
“Talk to him.”
“And try to make things better between you two? Yes, I promise you, Alex. I’ll talk to him—”
“No, ask him.” She reached out to hold Gussie’s hand. “Ask him about you adopting me. Please, talk to him about the possibility. I need to know there’s a chance.”
Gussie’s eyes shuttered half closed.
Please, Gussie, please. Alex silently squeezed her plea into her grip on Gussie’s hand.
“Okay, I’ll tell him we talked about it.”
That’s all she needed to hear. “Then I won’t go and try to find my dad.”
Gussie gasped. “You would never!”
“I was thinking about it.”
“Well, don’t think about it. Ever again. Come on, let’s go.”
“And you’ll talk to him?”
“I will.”
Holding on to that hope—he might say yes!—Alex stood and let Gussie put her arm around her as they started walking home.
“I’m not going into that apartment until you tell me whether you like Eddie,” Gussie said as they headed down the sidewalk.
She was trying to get things back to normal, so Alex went along with it. “Not that much. A little, maybe. He definitely likes me.”
“Really?” Gussie gave her a squeeze. “How can you tell?”
“Every time I look at him, he’s looking at me.”
“Oh, dead giveaway.”
Which was funny, since Alex had seen Uncle Tommy staring at Gussie for what seemed like hours on end. “And when he cheated at Monopoly, it was to help me win.”
“Ohh.” She turned them into the apartment building, that lightness in her step again. “He’s not a cheater, he’s a helper. We can forgive that.”
“Lizzie couldn’t.” They trotted up the stairs. “They fought so hard about it.”
“Well, brothers and sisters fight, you know. At that age, Luke and I wanted to kill each other.” She opened the front door, and they both stopped at the sound of men’s voices coming from the balcony.
“Who’s here?” Alex asked.
“I have no idea.” Gussie ventured farther into the room, peering out toward the balcony doors. Behind her, Alex looked in the same direction, seeing a man talking to Uncle Tommy, a complete stra
nger. As tall as Uncle Tommy, with short hair, he turned when they got closer, a huge smile breaking over his face.
“I found you,” he whispered.
The words floated over Alex’s ears, grabbing her heart and squeezing every drop of blood out if it. Her knees nearly buckled, and every cell in her body went completely numb.
He was here! Her father had come for her! She covered her mouth to hold back a scream, tears she thought had completely dried up sprang to her eyes.
Nothing came out of her mouth. Nothing. Not Daddy or Mr. Whitman or—
Next to her, Gussie made a weird whimpering sound. Her hands were over her mouth, too, and her face was bone white.
Gussie shook her head like she couldn’t speak, like she couldn’t even breathe. All she did was open her arms and fall against the man, murmuring the same thing over and over again.
“Luke! Luke! Luke!”
Chapter Twenty-three
He was here! In her arms! It wasn’t a dream or fantasy or trick of the light.
Gussie embraced her brother until her arms hurt, fighting a sob of joy and relief and more joy.
Shaking, crying, still trying to get her breath, she drew back to look at him, and that made her let out another sob and hug him again.
“Oh my God, oh my God. I can’t believe it.” She was blubbering, but didn’t care, finally hugged out enough to pull away and look at this grown-up version of Luke. He was so different than the boy who’d left, but still so distinctly…Luke. His slash of dark brow, his wide cheekbones and strong jaw. But all if it was so magnified and masculine. This was no boy, that was for sure.
Luke was bigger, better, and…a little scary-looking. A faded scar on his temple and the shadow of his whiskers added to that, but it was something else. He was all muscles, his hair was nearly shorn, but it was his eyes that had changed the most.
Still a muddy mix of green and brown, still fringed with unfairly long lashes, but the light behind them had dimmed and darkened to more of a glint. A serious, cynical, harsh glint.
Even when he smiled, which he was doing as he examined her with the very same scrutiny, no doubt balancing his memories of a girl with the woman in front of him.