Secrets (11 page)
One side of his mouth pulled. “Tell the truth.”
“I’m not scared, it’s…” For once she wished he’d furnish the last word. She ran her fingers over her hair. “I haven’t slept well. The house is…”
“Haunted?” The smile spread.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
He laughed, then gruffed his voice. “You want I should protect you?”
She glared. “I’m not sure what a man with an earring could do.”
Face hardening, he reached up to his gold ring. “This makes me less of a man?”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“Yes, you did.” The fire was back in his eyes.
“I’m just not used to it, that’s all. The men on my crew—”
“Your crew?”
She swallowed. “Yes, my crew. Is that hard to accept? That I bossed a construction crew?”
“No, I can see it perfectly.”
Somehow that wasn’t a compliment. She threw up her hands. “Forget it, okay?”
He drew his upper lip in between his teeth. “You think I’m a wimp.”
She shot her gaze to the ceiling.
“An emotional weakling.”
She drew breath to argue, but he stepped close and glowered. “Just because I don’t walk around scratching and belching, because I happen to like the look of an earring, that doesn’t mean I’m—”
“I didn’t think you were.” She squirmed under his gaze.
He swallowed. “You don’t exactly bring out the best in a man.”
That hit her low. “Why not?”
“You walk and talk and act tough.”
“So?”
“So you are not a man, even if you have a man’s name.”
“My name is Theresa.”
He stopped and studied her for too long.
She looked away. “Don’t call me that; I hate it.”
“Because it’s pretty?”
She didn’t answer. Dad had called her Rese since she was little. It was Mom who called her Theresa, and mostly when “he” had come.
“I bet you’d just hate it if I said you were pretty.”
A flush crawled up her neck. She didn’t have to listen to this.
“Well, I have news for you. You are pretty. Short hair, baggy T-shirts, and all.”
She fumed. “Are you finished?”
“No. I’d like to take you out for dinner tonight.”
“What?” She jammed her hands to her hips.
He leaned against the counter. “That’s right. I’m asking for a date.”
The man had lost his mind.
He cocked his head. “Unless you’d rather have a sandwich or a can of beans.”
Her stomach protested, but she brought up her chin. “I don’t date my employees.”
“Consider me a partner.”
“I don’t need a partner.” She uncrossed and recrossed her arms.
He said gently, “Consider me a friend.”
Rese had no ready answer to that. She’d spent most of her life with men. But her energy even as a girl had been spent besting them. “I don’t know how to do that.” Not that she excelled with women either. Her best friend, Star, should have been a butterfly. She flitted in to suck the nectar of acceptance and carried away particles of stability, which she nevertheless lost along the way.
He pushed off the counter. “Well, first you agree to spend time together. Like an evening over dinner.”
She shook her head.
“Why not? You’d have eaten with me if I cooked it.”
“That’s different.”
“Because I’m working for you?” He made it sound ugly.
Had she meant that? She understood that relationship. Knew how to handle it.
He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “You are really something.” He crossed in front of her, went out the back door and whistled shrilly for his dog. A minute later she heard his motorcycle roar to life, then fade. She stared across the kitchen to the cabinets that held her dismal choices. It didn’t matter. Her appetite was gone.
Lance parked on the square and let Baxter down. He stretched the kinks from his back and decided to walk a bit in the park that made up the center of the square. Massive eucalyptus trees dangled flimsy leaves, the bark of their trunks peeling in shreds. It was a beautiful evening. It would have been nice to spend it with someone.
He hadn’t meant to ask Rese out, but at least she could have considered it. It wasn’t as though he’d come on to her. Sure he’d teased a little, but she needed lightening up. Serious lightening up. Even so, he wouldn’t have asked if her voice hadn’t ached with loneliness. The statue was hollow. He’d heard the echo.
He stopped and watched a spindle-legged bird with a body like a loon walk toward the small pond and fountain. Lots of green-necked, brownflecked and white ducks paddled in the water and perused the lawn. It was a pretty scene, but made him think of the buzzards.
Was it only this morning?
“Hey there, Baxter.”
Lance turned to the freckled blonde he’d seen at lunchtime. “Hi.”
She stooped and petted the dog’s ears. “Hi.” She wore a blue knit top that didn’t quite meet her drawstring pants. Her waist was tanned and freckled like her arms.
“I’m Lance.” He held out his hand.
She stood up and took it. “Sybil Jackson.” The name fit her, a combination of exotic and girl next door.
“You live here?”
“All my life.” She slid the strands of hair back behind her shoulder. “You, though, are either new or visiting.”
He put on the Bronx. “Whatchu talkin’ about?”
She laughed, a sultry, throaty laugh that made him think of hot afternoons out on the pavement singing harmony with his pals for the quarters people tossed. He gazed across the plaza to the historical buildings that formed the square. “Any place good to eat?”
She smiled. “Lots of places.”
“What do you like?”
“The Swiss Hotel’s good.” She pointed to a building nearby on the plaza.
“Care to join me?”
She rested one hand on the small of her back and looked him over. “Sure.”
Well, what do you know
. He hadn’t contracted leprosy. Lance made Baxter stay outside the door, then motioned Sybil ahead of him as they passed under the balcony into the front lobby. The historical placard outside said it had been General Vallejo’s home in 1850. A glassed-in display cabinet behind the desk showed the original adobe bricks that made up what would have been the back wall.
The dining room behind the lobby was of newer construction, but Sybil informed him the same family had run the place for four generations. It was nice to converse with a woman who understood normal interaction. No big come-on, but she was obviously interested in what he might have to say. Not only that, she waxed rhapsodic when she learned he could cook.
“I fantasize about men in the kitchen.”
Okay, so it was a big come-on. But after Rese, was that so bad?
She took a bite of steak between her teeth. If Rese was all back off, Sybil was the opposite. She closed her eyes and softly moaned. “Gourmet breakfasts?”
“I might be cooking dinner specials as well.”
Her lids rose to half mast. “Dinner before and breakfast after. Perfect.”
What had they put in her drink?
She said, “Tell me how you learned to cook.”
Good safe family lore. “My grandmother taught me.”
“Your grandmother?” Sybil obviously hadn’t expected that.
He described the hours spent in the restaurant with Nonna, the herbs and spices that had developed his nose, the aromas wafting from the kitchen out to the street. His heart swelled and squeezed with the memories.
Knowing how frustrated and alone she must feel, he prayed Nonna would be home soon from the rehab facility. Visits from the family were not the same as being the heart of it, as she’d always been. But he didn’t want to go into that with Sybil.
“I started helping in her kitchen when I was seven, was pulling down a wage by thirteen. I learned to do it all by taste and touch.”
Sybil’s lips parted as she made more of that than he’d meant. Given the shape and scent of her, it could easily go to his head. He knew the signals, and they were all green lights. But that was not his intention.
He paid for their meal and picked up the scraps he had bagged for Baxter. Then he walked Sybil out and squelched any further thoughts she might have. “I better get Baxter home. Thanks for joining me.”
With Baxter between his arms, he drove to the hotel that cost him a hundred eighty-five bucks a night plus a fee for Baxter. Rese’s offer was looking better and better. He sprawled across the bed and dialed his parents’ number on his cell. There was no answer, so he called his own apartment and got Chaz.
“No change, mon. All things in God’s time.”
“You only say that because you’re not from New York. We natives have a custom. It’s called storming the gates.”
“I saw something like that last night. Not pretty.”
“Did Rico survive?”
Chaz laughed. “He wasn’t in it, mon.”
“Well, don’t tell him what he missed. I’m not there to get him out.”
“He wants to talk about that.”
“I’m sure.” Lance squeezed his forehead. “Don’t tell him I called.”
“The Lord detests lying lips.”
“I’m not asking you to lie, Chaz. Just don’t offer him the bait. Is he playing tonight?”
“Somewhere. He’ll come home whining.”
“No doubt.” Lance stretched and yawned, then signed off and lay there, tired enough to sleep just like that, his body feeling the physical labor more than it should. Maybe he was a wimp. Scrawny, weak, and
stylish,
as Rese said. She was probably solid rebar.
But as he dozed, he wondered if she was afraid in the big, old, creaky house. He shouldn’t have said
haunted
. But then, she deserved it.
R
ese sat on the edge of her bed, elbows to her knees, chin in her palms. It was ridiculous to imagine ghostly specters traversing the halls upstairs, congregating in the attic. She didn’t believe in ghosts or Mom’s banshees, even if it had sounded like it.
“What’s a banshee, Mommy?”
“A wailing spirit that cries almost as loudly as you.”
“Why does it cry?”
“Because someone’s going to die.”
Mom and her banshees. But Rese glanced around the room, got up and closed her door, then made sure the window was locked. Stupid. Mom’s fanciful notions only superseded Dad’s practicality at night—when she was vulnerable. Rese jerked a glance over her shoulder, then scolded herself.
Dad would say she was being ridiculous, and he should know. It had been Dad and her since she was nine years old. He had come to the school every day to pick her up in his big truck. She’d done her homework at whatever million-dollar renovation he was on. And once her lessons were done she’d started her real learning. Dad said she noticed things no one else would. And she had pointed them out to his crew—anything cut wrong or nailed carelessly, especially the finish carpentry. She was a stickler for perfection. If something didn’t match up, do it over.
By the time she was fourteen she was handling the tools herself. At twenty-one, she took charge of Dad’s second crew. She made sure nothing they did was substandard to his. And she didn’t care at all what they thought about that, or the snide remarks they made. She pretended not to mind the pranks either, but they were harder to ignore, especially when they got cruel.
Rese curled up on the bed. Her stomach growled. She should have eaten. She could go out now to the kitchen just on the other side of the hall. But then she’d be out in the big, dark space. There were no noises like the night before, no howling in the attic, but the silence was almost worse. It had a gobbling intensity she could almost put fangs to. Good grief. She should make herself do it. But she lifted the covers and hunkered in.
Every time she started to doze, she thought she heard something. Had Lance been serious? Did he see something in the attic he hadn’t wanted her to know about? Mom had told her tales that would never have been admitted into children’s literature. But that wasn’t what she really feared. It was him. The “friend.” She hadn’t thought about him in a long time. Why was he surfacing now?
Because Dad was no longer snoring in their home? He had always provided a barrier. Mom’s “friend” left when Dad came home—or at least she and Mom didn’t talk to him when Dad was there. The pain of missing her father clenched her insides. She had never been alone until now; at twentyfour, had never lived without him. They were partners. She had skipped college to work with him, developing the knowledge of wood and stain and paint and pipes. They had a thriving business, until…
Now the other images pressed in. Rese gave up. She turned on the lamp and clicked the remote on her bedside table, getting something brainless on the small TV across the room. Some people read books to help them sleep. She wasn’t big on that. Dad either. She could not remember him ever once reading a book. The newspaper every day, but never once a story for enjoyment.
“Life has enough lies; why should I read someone else’s?”
It had been Mom who loved stories. And Dad had a point. Rese sighed. Those were mixed memories. She leaned her head back and flipped through the channels, not interested in the reruns or late-night shows that flashed across the screen. With how hard she worked during the day, she should be able to sleep at night. Fighting with Lance hadn’t helped. Why did he take everything so personally?