Cutting Loose

It was mostly a twenty-something crowd, but in the restaurant end of the room was a quartet of men who kept drawing her gaze. They ranged from late twenties to maybe forty and were holding what appeared to be an intense conversation across the room. Every now and then, however, they’d all shout with laughter, instigated for the most part, it appeared, by the redhead with the seam-threatening shoulders.

She’d never been particularly attracted to redheaded men, but this guy was something else. His hair was the dark, rich color of an Irish setter, his eyebrows blacker than crow feathers and his skin surprisingly golden instead of the creamy pale she associated with that coloring. Influenced, no doubt, by years of hanging around Ava.

Despite repeatedly redirecting her attention, it kept wandering back to him. He seemed very intent on the conversation with his friends, leaning into the table to speak, those dark brows pulled together in a frown one moment, then relaxing as he grinned and gestured animatedly the next. He talked with his hands a lot.

Big, tough, hard-looking hands with long, blunt-tipped fingers that could probably-

Jane jerked as if someone had clapped hands right in front of her face. Good God. What on earth was she doing thinking-what she was thinking-about some stranger’s hands? This was so not like her.

And wouldn’t you know he’d choose that exact minute to look across the room and catch her staring? She froze as he talked to the other guys at his table while his gaze skimmed her from the top of her head to the tips of her shoes, which he studied for a couple of heartbeats before beginning the return journey. When he reached her face once again, he tossed back a shot without taking his eyes off her, then pushed back from the table and climbed to his feet.

Was he coming over here? Ooh.

No! What was she, eighteen? She wasn’t here to troll for a date-and wouldn’t choose a bar if she had been.

“Hey, Jane, sorry I’m late. Poppy’s not here yet, I take it.”

She looked up to see Ava approaching the table and noticed that damn near every male head in the bar turned to follow her friend’s progress. The redhead across the room was no exception. He checked Ava out for a moment before glancing at Jane again. For just a sec he stood there rubbing the back of his neck. Then he hitched a wide shoulder and headed in the direction of the men’s room.

His butt was as nice as the rest of him. But giving it a final lingering glance before turning her attention to Ava, who was pulling out a chair, she noticed the telltale hesitancy in his step of a man who’s had too much to drink.

“Well, shit.” Her disappointment was fierce, which was pretty dumb considering she’d never even talked to the guy.

“What?” Ava tossed her Kate Spade clutch on the table and slid gracefully into the chair.

“Nothing.” She waved it aside. “It’s not important.”

Ava just looked at her.

“Okay, okay. I was doing the eye-flirt thing with this buff redhead over in the restaurant part of the room and-don’t turn around! For God’s sake, Ava. He went to the can, anyhow.”

“Eye flirting is good-especially for you, since you don’t do nearly enough of it. So why are you cursing?”

“He’s drunk. I didn’t realize it until I saw him walking away.”

“Aw, Janie. Not everyone who gets a little lit is a problem drinker. Sometimes it’s just a once-in-a-while kind of thing.”

“I know,” she said, partly because she did but mostly because she really didn’t want to argue tonight.

Ava knew her too well, however, and instead of letting it go, she leaned over the table, her bright hair swinging forward. Scooping it back, she tucked it behind her ear. “You’ve seen Poppy and me indulge a bit too much on occasion and you don’t hold it against us.”

“Yeah, because I know your history, and I know it’s a rare thing for either of you to drink to excess.” She gave an impatient shrug. “Look, I know I’m not completely rational on the subject and I don’t need to put some shrink’s kids through college to understand that Mom and Dad’s drinking is the reason why. By the same token, Av, you know you’re not going to change my mind. So let’s just drop it, whataya say? We’re here to celebrate.”

Deep dimples indented her friend’s cheeks. “Omigawd! Are we ever! Are you as excited as I am?”

“And then some. I’m so psyched at the thought of getting my hands on those collections I can hardly think straight. I didn’t get a chance to talk to Marjorie this afternoon, but unless something special comes up at the Met-and it’s been pretty quiet on the curator front for the past week or so-I’m hoping to dive right in and start sorting them on Monday.”

“Sorry I’m late.” Poppy arrived breathless at their table.

Ava made a rude noise. “Like we’d know how to act if you were ever on time. Where did you guys park, anyhow?” she asked as Poppy dumped her oversize handbag onto the floor and collapsed into the chair next to her. “Did you find a place on the street or park in the lot above the alley?”

“I’m in the lot,” Poppy said.

“I took the bus.”

Both her friends stared at her openmouthed, and she blinked. “What?”

“You’re crazy, you know that?” Poppy shook her head.

“Why, because I’m a public transportation kinda gal?”

“No, because bus service drops way down in the evening and it can’t be safe to hang around bus stops in the dark.”

“Oh, as opposed to walking through a dark alley to get your car, you mean? Besides, I can always call a cab. I don’t see what the big deal is. Ava said meet in an hour and I didn’t think I could make it here in time if I went home first.”

“And like Poppy’s never on time, you’re never late,” Ava said.

She shrugged. “We all have our little idiosyncrasies. Shall we talk about yours?”

“We certainly could…if I had any. But I like to leave those to my lesser sisters.” Serenely she waved over the waitress and ordered one of the tequila specials.

Poppy ordered tequila, as well, then turned to Jane. “How about you, Janie? Do you want your club soda freshened?”

“No, I think I’ll have a glass of wine-whatever the house white is,” she added to the waitress.

Her friends whooped and drummed the table and generally made a huge fuss over her unusual selection and Jane leveled a look at them when the waitress left with their order. “Contrary to popular opinion, you two, I do know how to make an exception on occasion.” Then she grinned. “And this is definitely the occasion.”

“Amen to that, sister,” Poppy agreed.

When their order arrived, Ava raised her glass. “To being new home owners.”

Jane and Poppy clinked glasses with her. “To new home owners!”

Jane took a sip of her wine, then raised her glass again. “To Miss Agnes.”

They clinked again. “To Miss Agnes!”

“Man, I miss her,” Poppy said.

“Yeah, me, too. She was like no adult I’ve ever known.”

Then Poppy raised her glass. “To you, Jane. May you speedily catalog Miss Agnes’s collections.”

“To me,” she said while Ava and Poppy exclaimed, “To Jane!” Then in a rare exhibition of uncertainty, she added, “What if I mess up the job?”

They stared at each other as the possibility of failure hovered in the air above them. Then Ava laughed, Poppy made a rude noise and Jane shook her head, her momentary nerves dissipating.

“Nah.” If there was one thing she was completely confident about it was her abilities in her chosen field.

“That reminds me.” Poppy twisted in her chair to glance around the bar. “I asked the head of Kavanagh Construction to drop by if he had the chance so you guys could meet him. And there he is!”

To Jane’s astonishment, Poppy hailed one of the men at the table she’d been watching earlier, then popped out of her chair and sashayed across the bar.

With her usual aplomb, she stooped down next to the bald guy Jane had thought was maybe forty and started talking with the confidence of a woman assured of her reception. After a brief conversation she rose to shake hands with the other three men at the table, then gestured in Jane and Ava’s direction and said something.

To Jane’s horror, not only did the bald guy get up and follow her back across the room, so did the hot redhead. The latter stumbled over an unoccupied chair a couple tables away and lurched the remaining steps to theirs, where he had to slap his fists down in order to catch his balance. He swore a blue streak beneath his breath.

“Dev!” the bald man snapped. “Cool it!”

“’Scuse my language, ladies.” The redhead gave them all a loose, sheepish smile. “I’m seriously jet-lagged.”

“More like seriously drunk,” Jane said sotto voce.

“Jane, Ava, this is Bren Kavanagh and his brother Devlin,” Poppy raised her voice to say over her. “As I told you earlier, the Kavanaghs are going to be in charge of our construction. Bren was just telling me that Devlin here will be the project manager on our remodel. He’ll oversee-”

“No.” Pushing back from the table, Jane surged to her feet, her heart slamming in outrage. It was one thing to put up with an inebriated man in a bar for a single evening. She’d be damned if she’d put up with one while she was trying to catalog the most important collection of her life.

Devlin, who’d been staring owlishly down at his knuckles where they bore into the rich wood tabletop, raised his hazel-green-eyed gaze and blinked at her. Then, apparently not liking what he saw in her expression, he narrowed his eyes, his devil-black brows snapping together over the thrust of his nose. “Say what?”

“No. It’s a pretty simple word, Mr. Kavanagh-what part don’t you understand?”

“Hey, listen-”

“No, you listen! I will not have some damn drun-Hey!” She yelped as Poppy grabbed her by the wrist and nearly jerked her off her feet.

“Excuse us,” Poppy said as she turned and strode toward the back of the bar.

Leaving Jane no choice but to follow in her wake or be dragged behind her friend like a toddler’s pull toy.

D EV WATCHED the uptight brunette being hauled from the table. “Okay, then, I’m outta here,” he said, and knuckled himself erect. Whoa. He flattened his hand back against the wooden surface. Damn room was starting to sway.

Bren’s eyes narrowed as he studied him. “Man, you are wasted. You’d better go sit down before you fall down.”

Good plan. He started to pull out the chair next to the redhead with the great ti-

“At our table, bro.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure.” He gave the redhead with the killer bod an acknowledging nod for her sympathetic smile, then made his unsteady way back to Finn and David.

What the hell was he doing here, anyway? He should have fallen straight into bed to sleep for ten solid hours. He’d sure as hell known better than to let Bren guilt him into going out to discuss how he could take over for his brother while Bren went through treatment. Or, alternatively, having caved, he at least should have been bright enough to forgo the two shots of tequila he’d slammed back after downing a generous dram or two of Da’s treasured Redbreast. He was from good Irish stock; he could usually put away his fair share without showing the effects.

Tonight, however-well, he’d been up for more than thirty-five hours, nineteen of which had been spent traveling from Athens, Greece. He’d already been flattened with exhaustion when his brother Finn met him at the airport.

But there was no rest for the wicked as far as the Kavanaghs were concerned. When a chick came home to roost, a celebration was not merely expected, it was a given. And a get-together wasn’t a get-together unless it included all six of his brothers and sisters, their respective spouses and kids, his folks, both grandmas and his grandpa, his two uncles, four aunts and their families. Fair enough-he knew the drill.

But he should have paid less attention to Da’s whiskey and a little more to Mom’s food.

“Way to go there, Dev,” his youngest brother said with a sly grin when Devlin made it to their table. “Back in town a few hours and already you’ve managed to get sent back to the kiddie table so Bren can talk to the grown-ups.”

“You’re a riot, David, you know that?” Hooking the crook of his elbow around his brother’s neck, he staggered slightly, steadied himself against his brother’s side, then scrubbed his knuckles in David’s brown hair. “You oughtta take it down to open mic night at the Comedy Underground.” He turned him loose and dropped into the chair Bren had sat in earlier. “I gotta admit, though, that’s kind of what it feels like. Apparently my drunkenness offended one of the potential clients.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Finn said dryly.

He smiled crookedly. “Yeah, me, either. Shit.” He rubbed his fingers over lips that felt rubbery. “I didn’t realize how trashed I was until I stood up to go with Bren to their table. Had to concentrate like a son of a bitch just to walk a straight line.”

Finn looked at him, deadpan. “How’d that work for you?”

“Not so great.” He glanced over his shoulder at his oldest brother, still talking to the redhead across the room, then turned back to the others, abruptly feeling a whole lot soberer. “So how’s he doing, really?”

“He’s got his good days and his bad. I think he’d rather tell you about it himself.”

“Yeah, him being such a talkative son of a bitch so far.” He gave his brothers a look. “I’m still hacked that I didn’t even hear about it until three days ago.”

Finn gave him a bland look in return. “You’ve been a little removed from the family for the past decade, little brother. Maybe we thought you wouldn’t be interested.”

He came up out of his seat, ready to brawl.

Finn merely looked at him with calm, dark eyes, however, and Dev sat back down. Shifted his shoulders. And leveled a hard look on his brother. “I might be removed geographically, but the last time I checked I was still a Kavanagh. I’m still family.” Which, okay, conflicted the hell out of him every bit as much today as it had at nineteen. He loved the clan Kavanagh but couldn’t be around them long before he started going insane. Yet while he’d moved to get away from everyone always knowing his business, this was not the usual oh-did-you-hear-Dev’s-dating-the-O’Brien girl-I-wonder-how-May-would-work-for-the-wedding kind of crap-this was Bren, sick with cancer. It pinched like hell that nobody had bothered to pick up a phone to let him know about it. “I’m still family,” he repeated stonily.

“Yeah, yeah, Finn knows that,” David said peaceably. “But that’s something else you have to take up with Bren. It was his decision not to burden you with it when there wasn’t anything you could do to help. But now you can. If you didn’t blow it with the client, that is. So…what? She took a dislike to you because you didn’t hold your liquor tonight? Didn’t you explain you were jet-lagged?”

“’Course I did.”

“So what was that all about then?”

He thought about the brunette. She’d caught his eye from across the room. She wasn’t built like her redheaded friend or model-pretty like the blonde, and in their company he imagined she got overlooked a lot. God knew she wasn’t his usual type, but she’d been alone and looking at him and he’d found himself abruptly interested.

It had been the contradictions, he thought. She wore a prim white blouse that showed such a meager hint of lace undergarments it might as well not have bothered and a straight midcalf-length black skirt whose center slit barely made it over her knees, let alone into interesting territory. But her shoes were leopard-print high heels designed to make a man realize that the pale, smooth legs they accentuated were pretty damn sleek. And while her shiny brown hair had been piled up on her head in an old-lady bun, it had listed to one side and looked as if it were about ten seconds from coming undone and sliding down that long neck.

But it was her eyes that had been the real contradiction. He hadn’t been able to tell from across the room, but they were blue. And unlike her clothing, there wasn’t a damn thing prim about them. They’d looked at him, in fact, as if she wouldn’t mind giving him the hottest-

Shit. He shook aside the image that sprang to mind, because who the hell cared? She was obviously humorless and judgmental and he looked at David and shrugged. “Beats me, brother. I have no idea what her problem is.”

“Y OU WANNA KNOW what my problem is?” Jane wrenched her wrist free from Poppy’s grasp and reached behind her to grasp the ladies’ room counter at her back to keep from bopping her friend on her elegant chin. She might have thrown caution to the wind and taken her best shot when she was ten, but she had learned control since then.

Hell, she lived and breathed control these days.

“My problem,” she said coolly, “is one, I don’t like being manhandled by you, and two-and this is the biggie, Calloway-you’re looking to saddle me with a drunk while I’m trying to get together the most important collection I’ve ever been asked to head. You know damn well that I’m on a time crunch to get it done for the January exhibit and the last thing I need is to waste time babysitting some lush. That’s my problem.”

“You think you’re the only one with something on the line here?” Poppy thrust her nose right in Jane’s face. “This is not all about you and you damn well know it. None of us want to fall short when Miss Agnes put so much faith in us. At least you have the experience to handle your challenge. Ava has to sell the place without benefit of any sort of real estate experience and I’m responsible for the remodel. And that’s not small spuds, Kaplinski, given that I make most of my living designing menu boards!”

“Oh, please.” Jane thrust her nose right back at her. “Like you don’t know Miss A. requested you decorate because you’ve been trying to get her to redo the mansion since the first time we saw the place! How many suggestions have you given her over the years for improving the place? One million? Two? And I’m guessing she put Ava in charge of selling because she’s the one who has contacts up the wazoo with the kind of people who will be able to afford it.”

“All right, maybe you’ve got a point. But I’ve busted my butt researching and interviewing contractors, and the Kavanaghs are highly respected in their field. Not to mention that they agreed to work at twenty percent below their usual rate in exchange for the publicity that being associated with the Wolcott mansion will bring them. So get over it! Your hard-on against drinkers is not going to screw this up for Ava and me. Or you, either, when it comes to that.”

She could see that Poppy was genuinely angry, and that was a rare enough occurrence to make her swallow her ire and give a jerky nod. “Give me some damn breathing room,” she muttered and Poppy stepped back.

Jane smoothed her clothes, brushed back the strands of hair that had slid free of her bun. Then she met her friend’s eyes.

“Fine,” she said grudgingly, “he stays. But if he drinks on the job just once, I’m not accountable for my actions.”

“Fair enough.”

“I’m glad you think so. Because I’ll be expecting you to help me bury the body.”

“You wound me.” Poppy pressed a hand to her breast. “After all, what are friends for?”

CHAPTER TWO

I will do a good job of this. Miss Agnes obviously thought I could-believed all three of us could-and nothing and NO ONE is going to stop me from doing my best.

“L OOKS LIKE you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

Jane tensed, recognizing the voice. The fact that she did after only one meeting made her want to string several nasty words together. Instead she composed her expression and slowly turned.

Devlin Kavanagh, all hard-bodied male in a navy T-shirt, worn jeans and scuffed boots, lounged in the doorway to the Wolcott mansion parlor, his auburn hair gleaming beneath all the lights she’d turned on. Her heart started thundering in her chest and, propping her fists upon her hips, she slammed her mind closed against his appeal. “What do you want, Kavanagh?”

“Oh, that’s friendly.” Shoving away from the door frame, he tipped his head back, closed his eyes and with wide, sweeping movements touched first his right forefinger, then his left, then his right again to the tip of his nose. Snapping erect, he gave her a level look. “Look, Ma, I pass the sobriety test.”

“For now. It remains to be seen how long it will last, though, doesn’t it?”

Eyes narrowing to glints of golden green between dense dark lashes, he demanded, “What is your problem? I wasn’t kidding the other night when I said I was jet-lagged. Maybe I shouldn’t have knocked back those tequilas at the bar, but give me a break. I’d been up for a day and a half and they hit me harder than usual.”

Mortification suffused her. Because he was right: she was being a judgmental bitch and it wasn’t an attitude that set well with her. She didn’t know this guy-it was hardly her place to criticize his actions. “My apologies,” she said stiffly.

He made a skeptical sound. “Yeah, that sounds real sincere.”

What the hell did he want from her? Her spine ached from holding herself so rigidly against the temptation to get close to him. She didn’t understand this crazy attraction at all, but she knew one thing: she was stronger than a few stray hormones. Tipping her chin up, she looked him in the eye. “Then I apologize for that, as well. Your drinking issues are none of my business.”

“Jesus, you don’t give an inch, do you?”

“I said I was sorry!”

“In the most backhanded way I’ve ever heard. But you’re right about one thing, sister. If I had drinking issues they’d be none of your business.”

It was one thing for her to criticize herself and something else for him to do so. “Was there something you wanted, Mr. Kavanagh?”

“Dev.”

She gave him an “and?” look.

“Call me Dev. Or Devlin if you insist on being formal. Mr. Kavanagh’s my dad.”

“Okay. Is there something I can do for you, Devlin?” She stooped to fiddle with the collection of Columbia River basketry at her feet.

“I’m trying to locate updated blueprints for the mansion. A few of the rooms look off but the place is over a hundred years old and unfortunately I don’t have the originals, either. For all I know the joint is riddled with secret passages or other hidey-holes. I’d like to know what we’re dealing with before we start tearing things apart, though, because hidden spaces might actually be a selling point, which Bren tells me is your ultimate objective.”

The idea of a secret passage intrigued her, but she refused to be sidetracked. The sooner she got rid of Mr. I’m-too-sexy-for-my-boots the better. Yet instead of simply giving him a straight answer, she heard herself demand, “And you’re asking me because…?”

“You appear to be the go-to girl for all the odds and ends around here. So would you happen to know where the blueprints are?”

“No, I’m sorry.” And she truly was because the more information Kavanagh Construction had, the better the restoration was likely to turn out. And she’d love to see this old mansion fixed up the way it deserved to be. “I’m sure there’s more than one set, but I honestly don’t know where Miss Agnes kept them. All I know is that she told us Wolcott had been renovated several times. The last was when she had the interior done in 1985.”

He nodded. “The year the Wolcott diamonds were stolen by her construction foreman.”

Jane quit pretending to pay attention to the work she should be doing and rose to her feet to face Devlin squarely. “You know about that?”

“Babe.” He gave her a smile she’d bet her inheritance had gotten him into more than one woman’s silkies. “I’m a Seattle boy. Those diamonds are an urban legend in this town. Everyone knows about them.”

Well, she was a Seattle girl and-“I didn’t. Not until recently. Miss Agnes never talked about their theft or the murder of her man Henry.” She gave a shrug. “At least not before Poppy heard about it from someone and hounded her for the story.” Her lips crooked at the memory. “Poppy can be a bit of a pit bull when she gets her teeth sunk into a subject.”