Friday was not turning out to be a terrific cap to the work week. One of his men called in sick, felled by the flu that was gleefully making the rounds. Brody sent another man home at noon who was too sick to be out of bed much less swinging a hammer.
Since the other half of his four-man crew was finishing up a trim job across the river in Maryland, that left Brody to deal with the plumbing inspector, to hang the drywall for the partition between Kate’s office and the school’s kitchen, and to finish stripping the woodwork in those two areas.
Most of all, and most stressful, was that it left him alone on the job with his father for the best part of the day.
Bob O’Connell was under the sink to his waist. His ancient work boots had had their soles glued back in place countless times. He’d staple them back on, Brody thought, before he’d spring for another pair.
Don’t need what I don’t need, the old man would say. About every damn thing.
His business, his way, Brody reminded himself and wished he could stop digging up reasons to be resentful.
They rubbed each other raw. Always had.
Bob clanged pipes. Brody measured drywall.
“Turn that damn noise off,” Bob ordered. “How’s a man supposed to work with that crap ringing in his ears?”
Saying nothing, Brody stepped over and snapped off the portable stereo. Whatever music he’d listened to was considered noise to his father’s ear.
Bob swore and muttered while he worked. Which was, Brody thought, exactly why he’d had the music on.
“Damn stupid idea, cutting this kitchen up this-a-way. Waste of time and money. Office space, my ass. What’s anybody need office space for to teach a buncha twinkle-toes?”
Brody had put off working on the kitchen side of the partition as long as possible. Now he hefted the drywall section he’d measured and cut, set it into place. “I’ve got the time,” he said and plucked a drywall nail out of his pouch. “The client’s got the money.”
“Yeah, the Kimballs got plenty of money. No point in tossing it away, though, is there? You shoulda oughta told her she’s making a mistake sectioning this kitchen off.”
Brody hammered wall to stud. Told himself to keep his mouth shut. But the words just wouldn’t stay down. “I don’t think she’s making a mistake. She doesn’t need a kitchen this size down here. It was designed to cook up bar food. What’s a dance school going to do with a small restaurant kitchen?”
“Dance school.” Bob made a sound of disgust. “Open and close inside a month. Then how’s she going to sell this place all cut up like this? Kid-height sinks in the bathrooms. Just have to pull them out again. Surprised the plumbing inspector didn’t bust his gut laughing at the rough-in.”
“When you teach kids, you have to have accommodations for kids.”
“We got the elementary school for that, don’t we?”
“Last I heard they weren’t teaching ballet at the elementary school.”
“Ought to tell you something,” Bob muttered, rankled by his son’s tone.
Bob told himself to keep his mouth shut, to mind his own business. But, like Brody, the words just wouldn’t stay down. “You’re supposed to do more than take a customer’s money, boy. You’re supposed to know enough to point them in the right direction.”
“As long as it’s your direction.”
Bob wormed out from under the sink. His faded blue gimme cap sat askew on a head topped with short, grizzled gray hair. His face was square and lined deep. It had once been sternly handsome. His eyes were as green as his son’s.
At times they seemed to be the only thing father and son shared.
“You want to watch that mouth of yours, boy.”
“Ever think about watching yours?” Brody felt the band tightening around his head. A temper headache. A Bob O’Connell headache.
Bob tossed down his wrench, got to his feet. He was a big man, but had never run to fat. Even at sixty he was mostly muscle and grit. “When you got the years I got of living and working in the trade, you can say your piece as you please.”
“Really.” Brody muscled another sheet of drywall onto the sawhorses, marked his measuring cuts. “You’ve been saying the same damn thing to me since I was eight. I’d say I’ve got enough years behind me by now. This is my job—sited, designed, bid and contracted. It goes the way I say it goes.”
He picked up his scoring knife, lifted his gaze to meet his father’s. “The client gets what the client wants. And as long as she’s satisfied there’s nothing to discuss.”
“From what I hear you’re doing a lot more than satisfying your client on the job.”
He hadn’t meant to say that. Holy God, he hadn’t meant to say that. But the words were out. Damn it, the boy always riled him so.
Brody’s hand clenched on the knife. For a moment, too long a moment, he wanted to punch his fist into that hard, unyielding face. “What’s between me and Kate Kimball is my business.”
“I live in this town, too, and so does your ma. People talk about my blood, it washes over on me. You got a kid to raise, and no business running around with some fancy woman stirring gossip.”
“Don’t you bring Jack into this. Don’t bring my son into this.”
“Jack’s my kin, too. Nothing’s going to change that. You kept him down in the city all that time so you could do your running around and God knows, but you’re here now. My home. I’m not having you shame me and that boy in my own front yard.”
Running around, Brody thought. To doctors, hospitals, specialists. Then running around, trying to outrace your own grief and do what was right for a motherless two-year-old.
“You don’t know anything about me. What I’ve done, what I do. What I am.” Determined to hold his temper, he began to score the drywall along his mark. “But you’ve sure always managed to find the worst of it and rub it in my face.”
“If I’d’ve rubbed it harder, maybe you wouldn’t be raising a kid without his ma.”
Brody’s hand jerked on the knife, bore down and sliced it over his own hand.
Bob let out an oath over the bright gush of blood and grabbed for his bandanna. His shocked concern came out in hot disapproval. “Don’t you know better’n to watch what you’re doing with tools?”
“Get the hell away from me.” Clamping a hand over the gash, Brody stepped back. He couldn’t trust himself now. Wasn’t sure what he might do. “Get your tools and get off my job.”
“You get on out in my truck. You’re gonna need stitches.”
“I said get off my job. You’re fired.” The rapid beat of his own heart pumped blood through his fingers. “Pack up your tools and get out.”
Shame warred with fury as Bob slammed his wrenches into his kit. “We got nothing to say to each other, from here on.” He hauled up his tools and stalked out.
“We never did,” Brody murmured.
Brody O’Connell was going to get an earful. If he ever showed up. He was going to learn, very shortly, that seven o’clock meant seven o’clock. Not seven-thirty.
She was sorry she’d convinced her parents to have an evening out. Now she had no one to complain to. She prowled the living room, glared at the phone.
No, she would not call him again. She’d called at seven-twenty and had gotten nothing but the annoyance of his answering machine.
She had a message for him, all right. But she was going to deliver it in person.
And when she thought of the trouble she’d gone to for tonight. Selecting just the right restaurant, the perfect dress. Now they’d be lucky to keep their reservation. No, she was canceling the reservation, and right this minute. If he thought she’d waltz out to dinner with a man who didn’t have the common courtesy to be on time, he was very much mistaken.
She reached for the phone just as the doorbell rang. Kate squared her shoulders, lifted her chin to its haughtiest angle and took her sweet time going to the door.
“I’m late. I’m sorry. I got hung up, and should have called.”
The icy words she’d planned went right out of her head. Not discourtesy, she realized after one look at his face. Upheaval. “Is something wrong with Jack?”
“No, no, he’s fine. I just checked. I’m sorry, Kate.” He lifted a hand in flustered apology. “Maybe we can do this another time.”
“What did you do to your hand?” She grabbed it by the wrist. She could see the white gauze and bandage and the faint stain of antiseptic at the edges.
“Just stupidity. It’s nothing really. A couple stitches. The ER was slow, and I got hung up.”
“Are you in pain?”
“No, it’s nothing,” he insisted. “Nothing.”
Oh, yes, she decided. It was something—and more than a physical injury. “Go home,” she told him. “I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
“What?”
“With dinner. We’ll do the restaurant part some other time.”
“Kate, you don’t have to do this.”
“Brody.” She cupped his face in her hands. Oh, you poor thing, she thought. “Go home, and I’ll be right along. Scram,” she ordered when he still didn’t move. And shut the door in his face.
She was, as always, precisely on time. When he opened the door, she breezed by him, hauling a huge hamper. “You’re going to have a steak,” she announced. “Lucky for you my parents had one thawing out in the fridge before I convinced them to go out for a romantic dinner.”
She headed straight back to the kitchen as she spoke, and setting the hamper on the counter, shrugged out of her coat, then began to unpack. “Can you open the wine, or will your hand give you trouble?”
“I can handle it.” He took the coat—it smelled of her—and hung it on one of the kitchen pegs. It didn’t belong there, he thought, looking all female and smooth next to his ancient work jacket.
She didn’t belong there, he decided, looking amazing in some little blue number that looked like it might have been painted on by some creative artist who’d been delightfully minimalist and stingy with the brush.
“Look, Kate—”
“Here.”
He took the bottle, the corkscrew she held out. “Kate. Why? Why are you doing this?”
“Because I like you.” She took two enormous potatoes to the sink to scrub. “And because you looked like you could use a steak dinner.”
“How many men fall on their face in love with you?”
She smiled over her shoulder. “All of them. Open the wine, O’Connell.”
“Yeah.”
He put on music, fiddling with the radio dial until he found the classical he thought she’d like. He dug out the good dishes he hadn’t seen in months and set them on the trestle table in the formal dining room where he and Jack had their celebratory meals.
He had candles—for emergency power outages. But nothing fancy and slick. He debated just plunking them down on the table anyway, then decided they’d just look pitiful.
When he came back in the kitchen, she was putting a salad together—and there were two white tapers in simple glass holders on the counter.
She didn’t miss a trick, he decided.
“You know you have a severe deficiency of fresh vegetables in your crisper.”
“I buy those salad things that are all made up and in a bag. Then you just, you know, dump it in a bowl.”
“Lazy,” she said and made him smile.
“Efficient.” Because her hands were full, he picked up her wine, lifted it to her lips.
“Thanks.” She sipped, watching him. “Very nice.”
He set the glass down, and after a moment’s hesitation, lowered his head to touch his lips to hers.
“Mmm.” She touched her tongue to her top lip. “Even better. And, since you’re injured, you’re allowed to sit down and relax while I finish this. You’ll have time to call and check on Jack one more time before dinner.”
He winced. “Shows, huh.”
“It looks good on you. Tell him I said hi, and I’ll see him tomorrow.”
“You really want to do that? The movie thing?”
“I do things I don’t want, but I never volunteer to do them. Go call your boy. You’re getting your steak medium rare in fifteen minutes.”
She liked fussing with the meal. Liked fussing over him. Maybe it was because he so clearly didn’t expect it, and was so appreciative of the little things other people tended to take for granted.
And though she’d never considered herself a nurturer, it made her feel good to be needed.
She waited until they were at the table, until he was well into his meal and on his second glass of wine. “Tell me what happened.”
“Just a lousy day. What did you do with these potatoes? They’re amazing.”
“Secret Ukrainian recipe,” she told him in a thick and exaggerated accent. “If I tell you, then I must kill you.”
“I couldn’t do it anyway. My kitchen wizardry with potatoes ends with my poking a few holes into one and tossing it into the mike. You speak Ukrainian? I heard you speaking French the other day.”
“Yes, I speak Ukrainian, more or less. I also speak and understand English very well. So talk to me, Brody. What happened in your lousy day?”
“One thing, then the other.” He moved his shoulders. “I got two guys out sick—your ballet flu’s making an appearance in West Virginia. Since I had the rest of the crew on another job, it left me pretty shorthanded. Then I mistook my own hand for a sheet of drywall, bled all over the damn place, fired my father and spent a couple hours waiting to get sewn back together in the ER.”
“You had a fight with your father.” She laid a hand over his uninjured one. “I’m sorry.”
“We don’t get along—never have.”
“But you hired him.”
“He’s a good plumber.”
He slid his hand out from under hers, reached for his glass. “Brody.”
“Yeah, I hired him. It was a mistake. It’s tolerable when the other guys are around, but when it’s just the two of us like it was today, it’s asking for trouble. I’m a screwup, always was, always will be. The job’s not being done right, my life isn’t being done right. I’m chasing around after a fancy woman instead of seeing to my own.”
“Now I’m a fancy woman?”
Brody pressed his fingers to his eyes. “I’m sorry. That was stupid, and typical. Once I start on him, I can’t seem to stop.”
“It’s all right. I don’t mind being a fancy woman.” She stabbed a bite of steak. Her temper was on slow burn, but a rant wasn’t what Brody needed right now. “He’s probably as miserable and frustrated about what happened as you are. He doesn’t know how to talk to you any more than you know how to talk to him. But that’s not your fault. I hope you can make it up with him, in your own way.”
“He doesn’t see me.”
Her heart broke for him. “Honey, that’s not your fault, either. I wanted my parents to be proud of me, maybe wanted it too much, so I worked, sometimes brutally hard, to be sure they would. That wasn’t their fault.”
“My family’s not like yours.”
“Few are. But you’re wrong. You and Jack—the family you’ve made—it’s a lot like mine. Maybe, Brody, your father sees that, and wonders why he never made that connection with his own son.”
“I was a screwup.”
“No, you weren’t. You were a work-in-progress.”
“Really rough work. I couldn’t wait to get through—to get through high school, to get through my eighteenth birthday. To get through so I could get out. That’s what I did, on my eighteenth birthday. I packed up and headed down to D.C. Had about five hundred dollars, no job, no nothing. But I was out of there.”
“And you made it work.”
“I lived by the skin of my teeth for three years. Working construction, blowing my pay on beer and…fancy women,” he said with a sudden grin. “Then I was twenty-one, broke, careless, stupid. And I met Connie. I was on the crew doing some work on her parents’ guest house. I hit on her, and much to my surprise we started seeing each other.”
“Why to your surprise?”
“She was a college girl—conservative daughter of a conservative family. She had money and class, education, style. I was the next step up from a bum.”
She studied him. Strong face, she thought. Strong hands. Strong mind. “Obviously she didn’t think so.”
“No, she didn’t. She was the first person who ever told me I had potential. Who ever believed in me. She made me believe in myself, made me want to, so I could be what she saw when she looked at me. I stopped screwing up, and I started to grow up. You don’t want to hear this.”
“Yes, I do.” To keep him talking, she topped off his wine. “Did she help you start your business?”
“That came later.” He’d never talked about this with anyone, Brody realized. Not his parents, not his friends, not even Jack. “I was good with my hands, and I had a good eye for building. I had a strong back. I’d just never put them all to use at the same time. Then I figured out I liked myself a whole lot better when I did.”
“Of course, because then you respected yourself.”
“Yeah.” Nail on the head, he thought. Did she ever miss? “Still, I was skilled labor, not a doctor or a lawyer or a business exec. Her parents objected to me—strongly.”
She toyed with her potatoes, much more interested in what he told her than in the meal. “Then they were short-sighted. Connie wasn’t.”
“It wasn’t easy for her to buck them, but she did. She was going to Georgetown, studying law. I was working full days and going to school at night, taking business classes. We started making plans. Couple of years down the road, we’d get married. She’d stay in school till she passed the bar, then I’d start my own business. Then she got pregnant.”
He studied his wineglass, turned it around and around, but didn’t lift it to drink. “We both wanted the baby. She more than me at first, because the whole thing didn’t seem real to me. We got married. She kept up with her studies, and I took some extra jobs. Her parents were furious. This was what she got for throwing herself away on somebody like me. They cut her off, and that twisted her up pretty bad.”
She could imagine it very well, because, she thought, she’d always had just the opposite in terms of a family that was there for her. “They didn’t deserve her.”
Brody lifted his eyes, met Kate’s. “Damn right they didn’t. The rougher it got, the more we dug in. We made it work. She made it work. A thousand times I panicked, and some of those thousand times I saw myself walking away. She’d go back to her parents, and everyone would be better off.”
“But you didn’t. You stuck.”
“She loved me,” he said simply. “The day Jack was born, I was in the delivery room, wanting to be pretty much anywhere else in the world. But she wanted me there, it was really important to her. So I pretended I wanted to be there, too. All I could think was get this over with, get this the hell over with because it’s too hard. Nobody should have to do this. Then…there was Jack. This little, squirmy person. Everything changed. Everything clicked. I never knew you could love like that, in an instant, in a heartbeat, so it was everything. Every damn thing. I wanted, had to be, whatever he needed me to be. They made a man out of me, right there, in that moment. Connie and Jack made me.”
Tears were flooding her cheeks, continued to spill over. She couldn’t stop them, and didn’t try.
“I’m sorry.” He lifted his hands, let them fall again. “I don’t know what got into me.”
“No.” She shook her head, could say nothing else quite yet. You stupid idiot, she thought. You’ve gone and made me fall in love with you. Now what? “That was lovely,” she managed to say. “Just give me a minute.” She got to her feet, and dashed off to the bathroom to compose herself.
As an alternative to banging his head on the table, Brody got up and paced. He’d come to the same conclusion as Kate—he was an idiot—but for different reasons. He’d taken her very nice gesture of a casual meal at home, one he imagined was supposed to be at least marginally romantic, and he’d turned it into a marathon on his troubles and his past.
He’d made her cry.
Great going, O’Connell, he thought in disgust. Maybe you can round on the evening by talking about how your dog died when you were ten. That would really jazz things up.
He imagined she’d want to take off as soon as possible, so began to clear the table to give her a way out.
“Sorry,” he began when he heard the light click of her footsteps. “I’m an imbecile, dumping all that on you. I’ll take care of this, and you can…”
He trailed off, froze, when her arms slid lightly around him and her head rested on his back.
“O’Connell, I come from strong Slavic blood. Strong and sentimental. We like to cry. Did you know my grandparents escaped from the Soviet Union when my mother was a child? My aunt Rachel is the only one who was born here in America. They went on foot, with three babies, over the mountains into Hungary.”
“No, I didn’t know that.” He turned, cautiously, until he was facing her.
“They were cold and hungry and frightened. And when they came to America, a strange country with a strange language and strange customs, they were poor and they were alone. But they wanted something enough to fight for it, to make it work. I’ve heard the story dozens of times. It always makes me cry. It always makes me proud.”
She turned away to stack dishes.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Courage comes in different forms, Brody. There’s strength—that’s the muscle. But love’s the heart. When you put them together, you can do anything. That’s worth a few sentimental tears.”
“You know, I figured this was the kind of day you just crossed off your list, but you’ve changed that.”
“Well, thank you. Tell you what. We’ll deal with these dishes, then you can dance with me.” Time to lighten things up, she decided. “The way a man dances tells me a lot, and I haven’t tested you out in that area yet.”
He took the dishes out of her hands. “Let’s dance now.”
“Can’t. Call it a character flaw, but if I don’t tidy up first, I’ll keep seeing unwashed dishes in my head.”
He set them aside, took her hands to draw her out of the room. “That’s anal.”
“No, it’s organized. Organized people get more done and have less headaches.” She looked over her shoulder as he tugged her toward the living room. “Really, it’ll only take a few minutes.”
“It’ll only take a few minutes later, too.” Maybe he was rusty in the romance department, but he still remembered a few moves.
“Here’s what we’ll do. You pick out the music while I clear up the dishes.”
He laughed and pulled her into the living room. “You really are compulsive.” He switched the stereo to CD. “Funny, I was listening to this last night. And thinking about you.”
“Oh?” The music flowed out, slow and sultry. A sexy little shuffle that spoke to the blood.
“Must’ve been fate,” he said and slid her into his arms.
Her heart jerked once. “I’m a strong believer in fate.” She ordered herself to relax, then realized she already was. Snugged up against him, moving with him, her heels making it easy—almost mandatory—to rest her cheek on his.
“Very smooth, O’Connell,” she murmured. “Major points for smooth.”
“Like you said, some things come back to you.” He spun her out, made her laugh. Spun her back and had her breath catching.
“Nice move.” Oh-oh. Oh-oh. It was getting hard to think. She’d come to the conclusion when she’d dealt with her tears that she really needed to do some serious thinking about Brody, and where this was all going.
She couldn’t drive this train if she didn’t have her wits about her.
She hadn’t expected him to dance quite so well. If he’d fumbled a bit, she could have taken charge. Kept her balance. There were entirely too many things that were unexpected about him. And fascinating. And oh, it felt wonderful to glide around the room in his arms.
Her hair smelled fabulous. He’d nearly forgotten all the mysterious and alluring facets there were to a woman. The shape, the softness, the scents. Nearly forgotten the sensation of moving with one, slow and close. The images it had winding through a man’s mind.
His lips brushed over her hair, trailed along her cheek, found hers.
She sighed into the kiss, wallowing in the sensation of her bones melting. So when the song ended and the next began, they just stood swaying together.
“That was perfect.” Her mind was foggy, her heartbeat thick. And the needs she’d thought she had under control were tumbling in her belly. “I should go.”
“Why?”
“Because.” She lifted a hand to his cheek, eased away, just a little. “It’s bad timing. Tonight you needed a friend.”
“You’re right.” His hands slid down her arms until their fingers lightly linked. “The timing’s probably off. The smart thing is to take this slow.”
“I believe in doing the smart thing.”
“Yeah.” He walked her toward the doorway. “I’ve been careful to try to do the smart thing for quite a while myself.”
He paused, turned her back to face him. “I did need a friend tonight. Do need one,” he added, drawing her a little closer. “And I need you, Kate. Stay with me.”
He lowered his head, kept his eyes on hers when their lips brushed. “Be with me.”