скачать книгу бесплатно
“Tony slept over at the Steens’ last night. They’re going to the zoo today, they said we could both come along, too. Hey, know what, Camryn? When I’m as good a golfer as Tiger Woods I’ll go lots of places besides Sioux Falls,” Trent vowed. “I’ll go to Las Vegas.”
“And you’ll probably blow all your golf tournament winnings in the slot machines. All five dollars of it.” Camryn snickered at her own joke.
“I think that Trent is going to be a great golfer.” Kaylin rejoined them with Camryn’s order. “He’ll be the next Tiger Woods. Maybe even better.”
Trent beamed. “I’ll buy a big house in Las Vegas and you can live there, Kaylin. It’ll be a mansion and we can all live there, me and you and Tony and Camryn and Rate and Hot Dog. And my mom, too, if she wants to.”
“What about Flint? And Eva?” Camryn sat up to swallow the pills with a gulp of cola from the can. “Are they going to be living in the mansion with us, too?”
“No.” Trent shook his head decisively. “Flint will want to stay here and work and Eva—”
“Wouldn’t live with us if you paid her to,” Camryn finished for him. “She hates us too much.”
“Wonder why?” Trent looked glum. “Wish she didn’t.”
“If pigs were wishes, we could fly.” Kaylin shrugged philosophically. “Or something like that.”
A few minutes later Rafe Paradise walked into his living room to find Camryn breakfasting on cola and strawberry ice cream and Kaylin in his chair, a massive blue recliner. She was cuddling Hot Dog, the fattest, homeliest, worst-tempered beast Rafe had ever had the misfortune of meeting. Now he lived with the creature. And Hot Dog, with his imperious sense of canine entitlement, was drooling on the chair’s textured upholstery as well as shedding all over it.
Young Trent was stretched out on the floor on his stomach watching TV. Not quality children’s programming, Rafe noted dourly, but a poorly drawn cartoon that featured stick figures blasting other stick figures with some version of nuclear weaponry.
Rafe hardly knew where to begin. Since Trent jumped to his feet and ran to greet him joyously, Rafe decided to let the issue of violent cartoons slide—for now. Trent stopped just a few inches in front of Rafe, his arms at his sides, and beamed. A hug would’ve seemed natural to some, but Trent was wary of physical contact, and Rafe hadn’t been raised to be physically demonstrative. So the two smiled their mutual affection.
“Hi, Rafe. Did you have a good trip?” asked Kaylin.
Since she was the one sitting in his chair, Rafe didn’t scold her about the dog’s presence there, though it was strictly forbidden. Undoubtedly, it had been bratty Camryn who’d placed the offensive Hot Dog in his chair, anyway.
“The trip went well,” Rafe replied. His specialty was contracts law, and he knew the details of his work would bore the kids, should he attempt to explain it. So far, he never had.
He zeroed in on Camryn, who hadn’t acknowledged his presence at all. She was pouring cola over the ice cream and mashing it into a fizzing mess with her spoon before gobbling it down. At ten o’clock in the morning!
Rafe grimaced. “What kind of a breakfast is that?”
“It’s the only breakfast I want,” retorted Camryn
“And it’s not good for you. I went food shopping before I left for Minneapolis and I know we have juice and eggs and—”
“Quit it, Rafe!” Camryn made a gagging gesture. “You’re trying to make me sick on purpose.”
“I’ll have some juice and eggs, Rafe,” said Trent. “I want the kind with the egg fried in the middle of the bread, like my mom makes sometimes.”
Rafe looked at him blankly. He had no idea what kind of eggs Trent’s mother sometimes made.
“I know what he means. I’ll make it for him.” Kaylin rose to her feet and headed out of the room. “Anybody else want anything?” she called over her shoulder.
“No thanks.” Rafe was grateful for her willingness to help. Kaylin was usually cheerful and cooperative around the house, quite different from Camryn, whose disposition could and often did border on the demonic. But although Kaylin was easier to live with, she was as determined as her sister to run wild with the wrong crowd.
Rafe’s temples began to throb. “Did the girls go out last night, Lion?” He never forgot Trent’s nickname-of-the-moment.
“I don’t know,” Trent replied. “I was playing with my Gameboy. It’s the best present I ever got, Rafe. Thanks again.”
Rafe got the picture right away. The kid wasn’t going to squeal on Kaylin and Camryn, maybe his own choice, maybe because they’d threatened him to keep quiet. Perhaps if he rephrased the question, a standard lawyer’s trick... “What time did the girls get in last night, Lion?”
“I don’t know anything, I was playing with my Gameboy.” Trent stuck to his story.
“By the way, Tony is at the Steens’,” Camryn said in the acidly sweet tone she used to induce guilt. “Did you forget about him? ’Cause you didn’t mention him.”
Rafe felt guilty, all right. “I was just about to ask where Tony was.” He hadn’t forgotten about eight-year-old Tony, he assured himself. He’d been just a second or two away from noticing the child’s absence.
As he glanced from the boy to the girls and then to the dog, a peculiar feeling of unreality swept over him. It had been a whole year, and sometimes he still had difficulty believing that they were all here, living with him. That the life he’d known as a carefree bachelor had been so drastically, irrevocably, changed.
“The new neighbors are moving in today,” Trent said, flopping back down on the floor. “Did you see the moving truck when you came in, Rafe?”
“No, it wasn’t there.” Rafe already pitied the new neighbors who’d been unlucky enough to rent or buy the other half of the duplex in this development of town house condominiums. He knew that the kids’ noise and other antics had driven the Lamberts, the yuppie couple who’d previously lived there, to move across town.
“Maybe it just pulled in this second. I’m gonna go check.” Trent leaped to his feet and ran out the front door, closing it with a jarring slam.
Camryn clutched her head with her hands. “That felt like a cannon blast to the brain,” she complained.
“Where did you go last night and what time did you get in?” Rafe forced himself to ask, hating his role as warden. It was a role thrust upon him and he knew he wasn’t very good at it.
“I went miniature golfing with my friends and then we stopped at the Dairy Queen for sundaes. Real wholesome Midwest teen fun, huh, Rafe? Oh, and I was home before my curfew.” Camryn had a smile that was positively angelic.
Rafe had been fooled by her the first few days after she’d moved in. Then he’d caught on—the girl was actually the devil in disguise.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, scoffing his disbelief. “And Kaylin is going to be the valedictorian in her class and you’re going to be the prom queen in yours.”
The odds of either event occurring went far beyond the realm of possibility, with Kaylin’s and her “what’s bad about a D?” philosophy toward education and Camryn’s Princess of Darkness persona so at odds with the wholesome students at Riverview High. The same odds applied to Camryn’s version of how she’d spent her evening.
Kaylin came into the room carrying a plate with eggs and toast and a glass of orange juice. “Where’s Trent?”
“Pestering the new people next door, or trying to.” Camryn glanced at the food and sat up. “I’m starving! Can I have that?”
“It’s Trent’s,” Rafe said.
“I’ll make him some more. It’ll be cold by the time he gets back, anyway.” Kaylin handed the food and juice to her sister and sat down on Rafe’s designer recliner, wriggling in next to Hot Dog. The dog opened one eye, then closed it again, accepting her presence without protest.
“I feel kind of sick.” Kaylin swallowed visibly. “Like I might throw up. Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten all those Oreos. ’Specially not on top of the Twizzlers.”
“For breakfast?” Rafe heaved a groan.
“I had milk with them.” Kaylin was defensive. “Milk’s good for you.”
“Just don’t puke in here or else I will, too!” Camryn shuddered as she proceeded to shovel the food into her mouth.
Rafe decided to skip this particular conversation. “I’m going upstairs to unpack and change.” He fled from the room.
Two
The moment Holly pulled her overpacked Chevy Cavalier into the driveway of 101 Deer Trail Lane, a young boy came running across the front yard to meet her.
“I’m Lion,” he announced as she climbed out of the car. “I live right next door.” He pointed his finger. “See, our places are connected. If me and my brother pound on the walls, you can hear us real good.”
He seemed pleased by this fact. Holly wondered, a little apprehensively, why and how often the brothers pounded on the adjoining walls.
“Me and Tony—that’s my brother—can do Morse code,” Lion continued, his eyes bright with enthusiasm. “Not only SOS, either. All the letters!”
“That must have taken a lot of practice,” Holly said politely.
“Yeah. We’ll teach you and then we can send messages. What’s your name?”
“Holly.”
“Can I call you that? Or are you Mrs. Somebody?”
“You can call me Holly. I’m not Mrs. Anybody.” How ironic. to be quizzed on her marital status moments after setting foot in her new neighborhood. Was this child an agent of her mother’s?
Holly smiled and tried to appear more enthusiastic than she currently felt. The exhaustion from the long drive was seeping through her, and the prospect of learning Morse code by pounding on her walls did not enchant her. She felt hungry, stiff, and more than a little frustrated that she wouldn’t be able to move in today as planned.
Lion brandished a golf club like a sword while he chattered on. Holly tried to listen, to respond to his many questions, but her head was still ringing with all the directions and suggestions provided by the friendly real estate agent, who had just given her the keys to her rented duplex town house... Along with the unwelcome news that the moving truck had been delayed and wouldn’t be arriving with her furniture and other household essentials until sometime tomorrow.
Hopefully, the truck would arrive tomorrow. The agent’s perky parting comment, “You know how it goes with moving, there aren’t any guaranteed timetables,” didn’t offer a whole lot of reassurance.
“Watch my chip shot!” exclaimed Lion, placing a golf ball on a wooden tee in the grass along the edge of the driveway.
Holly watched as he whacked the ball with surprising strength. As it sailed through the air, she noticed that an obstacle—her new home—stood directly in the ball’s path. Inevitably, a split second later the ball crashed through a window, shattering it.
“I hate it when that happens!” Lion sounded aggrieved. “How come glass always busts like that?”
Holly stared resignedly at the smashed window. “You have a powerful swing, Lion. But you really ought to practice your chip shots at a golf course or a driving range. In fact, it’s probably a good idea to practice all your shots there.”
“Yeah, that’s what Rafe says, too.” Lion sighed.
“Trent, I heard glass break.” A deep adult male voice sounded behind her.
Holly turned around to see a very tall, dark-haired man in jeans, moccasins, and a white T-shirt approaching them.
“Uh-oh. That’s Rafe.” The boy lowered his voice to an urgent whisper. “Would you tell him that you broke the window?” He shoved the golf club into Holly’s hand. “And can I go get my ball while you’re telling him?”
Rafe joined them before any escape could be attempted. He stared from the broken window, to the boy, and finally at Holly, holding the golf club in her hand. “Welcome to the neighborhood.” There was a wealth of subtext in his tone. “I’m Rafe Paradise.”
It struck Holly as strange that his name was Paradise while his cryptic “welcome to the neighborhood” sounded more like a warning heard at the gates of hell. Or maybe she was simply delirious from all the driving.
Nevertheless, she attempted to maintain conventional etiquette. “Thank you. I’m Holly Casale. Uh, from Michigan.”
“She loves golf!” Trent exclaimed winsomely. “Her chip shot is awesome!”
“Give me a break, Trent, I know you broke her window.” Rafe took the golf club from Holly’s hand. “Now, how are we going to arrange to pay for it?”
“You’re mad at me!” wailed Trent. “You hate me! You’re going to send me away, I just know it!” Howling at the top of his lungs, he raced down the street.
Holly was nonplussed. “Should you go after him? Is he running away?”
“No, he has nowhere else to go and he knows it. Trent’s mother would send him back if he tried to go to her place. Looks like he’s heading for the Steens’, who truly take the concept of neighborliness to the highest level.”
They both watched the boy run to the front door of one of the condos halfway down the block. The door was opened by a woman who greeted Trent with a smile and allowed him to enter.
“Yeah, the Steens.” Relieved, Rafe nodded his approval. “God bless them.” He shifted the golf club from one hand to the other. “I want Trent to accept responsibility for breaking your window. How about if he cuts your grass for the rest of the summer? Of course, I’ll assume the expense of replacing your window.”
“I’m confused about something.” Holly glanced up at him. He towered over her, something that rarely happened at her five-foot-eight height. But Rafe Paradise was at least six foot four, and he was definitely towering.
“You have a perfect right to be.” His dark eyes glinted. “Feel free to ask whatever question that needs answering.”
“The little boy called himself Lion. You call him Trent.”
“He’s been Lion for the past few months, since he decided to be a golf phenom like Tiger Woods. But his real name is Trent Krider. He’s my Little Brother.”
“Oh.” Holly was embarrassed to hear how astonished she sounded.
The astute Rafe Paradise reacted immediately. “Think capital letters. Trent is assigned to me by the Big Brother/Big Sister organization. Does that satisfactorily explain how a blond, blue-eyed child could be brothers with a half-breed Indian?”
Holly’s face turned scarlet. As if of their own volition, her eyes dropped to his well-worn moccasins.
Rafe noticed that, too. “They were handed down to me by my great-great-grandfather, Chief Lightning Bolt, who once ruled the Plains,” he drawled. “Being August, it’s too hot to wear my buffalo skins, but I keep them and my headdress in the wigwam out back.”
Holly was aghast. She had unwittingly insulted him and his proud ancestors!
“I—I never meant to imply...or...or...to—to disparage your Native American heritage in any way, Mr. Paradise. I apologize. I—I never intended to be so tactless and I am deeply sorry that—”
“All you said was ‘oh,”’ Rafe said dryly. “How was that tactless or disparaging?”
“I was nonverbally disrespectful,” Holly lamented, horrified by her lapse. She would not spare herself. “I—I looked at your moccasins.”
“Since when is that a crime?”
“Tone of voice, staring, or even silence can be offending and offensive,” Holly persisted frantically.
“I was just kidding, okay? Trying to make a joke, although judging by your reaction, I obviously didn’t succeed.”
Holly wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Look, I don’t feel offended.” Rafe shrugged.
“You are very understanding, Mr. Paradise.”
“It’s Rafe. We might as well dispense with formalities since we’ll be living next door—and my Little Brother has already started breaking your things.”
“Accidents happen.” Holly smiled at him. “Don’t worry about it.”
