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“Heard his wife left him.” Addie frowned. “Heard he had a drinking problem, too.”
“Had being the important word here.” Charlie popped the cork from the bottle. “Jack likes him.”
“Jack likes everyone,” Tess pointed out. “He’s been seen buying crushed cans from the crazy guy who sells trash down by the wharf. He even continued to like you while you were trying to run him out of town a couple of months ago.”
“You shouldn’t lump Charlie in the same sentence with Crazy Ed.” Addie folded back a page in the magazine on her lap and passed it to Tess. “How about this gown? The lace is so delicate.”
“You shouldn’t lump Charlie in the same sentence as delicate,” Tess said, handing back the magazine.
“Don’t bother showing me,” Charlie mumbled around a mouthful of sugar cookie. “I’m only the bride.”
Tess watched her soon-to-be-married friend stack her booted heels on the rickety coffee table. The tom-boyish redhead would be horrified to hear that her pint-size frame and pixie-style nose were two of the most obvious items on a long list of features that could be termed delicate.
“Isn’t Quinn the guy who drives that big black truck?” asked Addie. “The one with the gold shamrock on the door?”
“That’s him.” Tess scowled. “He was at the site tonight when I swung by to gloat. Spoiled a perfectly good mood.”
“Which happens so rarely.” Addie shot her a sideways glance. “He’s kind of …”
Tess narrowed her eyes. “Kind of what?”
“Kind of … hot.”
“Hot?”
“Hot” Charlie said. “H-O-T. Not that I’d notice, being engaged to someone who’s even hotter.”
“Hot. Huh.” Tess shrugged to prove her disinterest, even if she agreed with her friends. “I suppose. If you go for tall, dark and brooding.”
“Who doesn’t?” Addie shared a knowing grin with Charlie. “Especially you, Tess.”
“Brooding gets old after a while.” Tess straightened with a sigh. “I know I’m getting tired of it myself, tonight. Time for some fun. Time to pick out a dress.”
“And flowers,” Addie said.
Charlie groaned and slumped in her chair. “I thought this was supposed to be a party in honor of Tess’s big news.”
“It is.” Tess poured a half inch of champagne into her cup. “And this is how I want to celebrate.”
“By making me miserable?”
“You know what they say about misery,” Tess said. “It loves company.”
“Thanks a lot,” muttered Charlie.
“Any time.” Tess grabbed a sugar cookie and snuggled back against the sofa cushions. “What are friends for?”
CHAPTER THREE
QUINN EDGED his way through his apartment door that night with his arms full of breakfast supplies and a fast-food dinner. “Hi, Neva.”
“Here, let me take that.” Neva Yergin, his elderly neighbor and part-time sitter, shuffled toward him to take one of the sacks and set it on the narrow counter in his tiny kitchen. “You’re back earlier than I expected.”
“Hope I didn’t interrupt Trivia Maze.”
She shook her head. “Commercial break. But I’d better scoot next door before they start round two.”
“Okay.” He pulled the quart of milk and canned cat food she’d asked him to pick up for her from one of the sacks and set them aside. “How’s that disposal working?”
“Like a charm. Thanks again for fixing it.”
“No problem.”
Neva slipped her things into her bulging tote and headed toward the door. “She got home right on time. Been sitting at that computer all afternoon.”
Quinn stopped short of a sigh. He didn’t approve of Rosie’s method for shutting herself away, but he couldn’t ask Neva to drag his daughter out of her room and force her to find something better to do with her time. His neighbor was doing far too much for him already, more than he could repay with the rent he subsidized, or the occasional repair or sack of groceries.
“Thanks, Neva,” he said as the door closed behind her.
He moved into the cramped space that served as a combination living and dining room and switched off the television. The radiator rattled and wheezed and coughed up traces of mildew and aging plaster. Beyond the tall, grime-streaked window overlooking Third Street, a siren’s wail competed with the hum of passing traffic. Not the best place for raising a kid, but he’d had his own needs in mind when he’d signed the lease for an efficiency apartment two floors above the Karapoulis Travel Agency storefront.
And if they moved away, there’d be no Neva a few steps down the hall to keep an eye on Rosie after school. “Rosie,” he called.
No answer.
He set the bucket of chicken on the table and headed toward his daughter’s room, pausing in the doorway. “Rosie.”
“What do you want?” She sat slumped in her desk chair with her back to him, reading a note on her monitor screen.
“It’s time for dinner.”
“In a minute.”
“Now.”
The only part of her that moved was her finger on the mouse as she clicked to another screen.
“Rosie.”
“What?”
“You didn’t set the table.”
“I didn’t know what time you’d be home.”
“I’m home now.” He held his breath and grasped for patience, trying to avoid another fight. Another scene. There’d been far too many of both since her mother had dumped her on his doorstep. “And it’s time for dinner. Now.”
“Okay.” She clicked to a page with a picture of a wild-haired rock guitarist caught in the glare of a gigantic spotlight. A tidal wave of electronic noise flooded the room.
“Turn that off.” He stepped through the door. “It’ll still be there after you’ve eaten.”
“All right.” She blew out a martyred sigh and whirled in her chair to face him. “Chicken again?”
“Yeah.”
“Jeez.”
“We can go to the store this weekend. You can pick out some things you like to cook.”
“I’m not your slave.”
“No. You’re my daughter,” he said, feeling foolish for pointing out the obvious. “And I want you to come and eat your dinner.”
“I said all right.”
He slid his hands into his pockets and watched her, waiting, praying she’d give in and walk through the door, promising himself he wouldn’t move a muscle or say another word until she did. He searched her face—that long, pale face dusted with her mother’s freckles and framed with his own dark hair—looking for the sweet, cheerful little girl he’d known so long ago. But she wasn’t there.
“Are you just going to stand there all night?” she asked.
“No. Just until you come to dinner.”
She rolled her eyes and shoved to her feet. “Jeez.”
He followed her back to the kitchen, dreading the nightly routine. Questions about homework, answers he didn’t trust. Conversation conducted in monosyllables and resentment hanging so thick in the air it seasoned every bite of food he swallowed. An argument about the cell phone, or bedtime, or something she wanted to buy, or whether a ten-year-old needed a babysitter—any-thing but the one topic he knew she really wanted to fight over: her mother, and when she was coming back to rescue her.
At times, the pain was unbearable. He wanted to keep his daughter here, with him, wanted to get to know her again, wanted to break through the walls she threw up in his face, wanted his love to matter, to build solid memories for her to take with her when she’d grown and gone. He wanted to gather her close and hold her tight, to make her pain disappear, to feel her thin arms wrap around his neck and hug him tight, the way she’d hugged him so many years ago. A lifetime ago.
But he couldn’t take away her hurt, and he couldn’t offer the comfort she wanted right now. All he could do was reach deep, deep down below his murky emotions and haul up another handful of patience and love. And pour his invisible offering over the sad and sullen child whose stony expression reminded him of all his failures.
He asked her what she’d done at school that day, but she wasn’t talking to him tonight. So they sat in uneasy silence as they picked the meat from the bones.
TESS GLANCED up from her monitor two days later when the door to her office clicked open, admitting a gust of rain-specked wind and a dripping, frowning Quinn. He raked long, scarred fingers through his wet hair and ran an assessing look around her office.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Is that how you greet all your customers?”
“Is that what you are?” she asked as she rose from her chair. “A customer?”
“What kind of customers do you get in here, anyway?” he asked as he stepped farther into the room. His gaze traveled over the sketches pinned to the wall, the fan suspended from the tin ceiling, to the models displayed on tall white cubes and the massive ficus arching over one corner of the red Persian rug on the old plank floor.
“The serious kind.” She folded her arms and waited as he leaned over a model of a tasting room she’d designed for a Paso Robles winery.
He straightened and met her stare with a particularly grave expression. “I’m serious.”
“Yes,” she said as her lips twitched to hide a grin. She wondered if she’d just witnessed a miserly sample of his sense of humor. “You are.”
“I like this.” He bent again to study the winery model. “It’s clean.”
“Clean?”
“Uncluttered. French without the frills.”
“The client asked for sleek and no-nonsense, with an Old-World feel.”
“You gave it to him.”
“Giving my clients what they ask for is what keeps me in business.”
“Even if you know better than they do what they should be asking for?”
“That’s where a touch of diplomacy comes in handy.” Tess tilted her head to one side, pleased with his subtle compliments but wondering what he wanted. He had to be working some angle, or he wouldn’t have spared the time to stop by. Everyone who knew him said he was a straightforward kind of guy. “It works wonders,” she said. “You might give it a try.”
“Waste of time.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and straightened again, facing her. “I want to change the approach to the parking area. Straight shot, northeast corner.”
“The curve from the street on the south will slow traffic and show the building to best advantage. I want visitors to savor their entry into the space.” Tess strode to the model set in the wide bay window and pointed to the overlapping layers representing the site grade. “A curving drive will give the landscape design team a more interesting flow to work with. And this bend in the road will be the perfect place for an ornamental tree.”
“We can get more parking spaces if we come in straight from the street.” He crossed the room to where she stood and sliced a finger across the softly cascading form. “Here.”
“We’ve already provided for the number of parking slots the city required.”
“There’s room for more.”
“No.”
He glanced at her. “Now might be a good time to try some of that diplomacy you mentioned.”
“I don’t have to be diplomatic about this.”
“You do if it’s not cost-effective.”
“Everything I’ve mentioned is in the budget.”
“About that budget.” He narrowed his eyes. “There’s no room for delays.”
“Yes, there is.”
“Not enough.”
Now it was her turn to aim a dark look in his direction. “Are you planning on inefficiency?”
“No. But weather happens. Shit happens. It always does.” He leaned toward her. “If you’d spent any time around a construction site, you’d know that.”
“I’ve spent plenty of time around construction sites,” she snapped, temper edging her closer to him, “and I’ve never had any problems with my budgets.”
“Because the contractor covered your butt?”
“Don’t worry, Quinn. You’re the last person I’d ask to cover any piece of my anatomy.”
