Chapter Seventeen
Thursday, April 13 eleven-thirty p.m.
Flames reared from the pillowcase that now sat where an elegant set of candles had been shining softly on the low dresser, in front of the windows. Tom leaped off Peach, snatched the comforter from the floor, and attacked the flames as they licked at the draperies.
“Get Poppy out of here,” he ordered.
“We need to call 9-1-1,” she shouted back.
Smoke reached the ceiling. The sprinkler activated, raining cold water, soaking the burning linen and their naked bodies. The fire alarm screamed through the house. “They just got called. Get going.”
He tore the gauzy drape from the rod, depriving the greedy tongues of fresh food. Picking up the discarded comforter, he smothered the flames.
“Poppy. Poppy, you need to wake up.”
Tom heard Peach’s voice over the noise of the fire alarm, calm and authoritative. There was urgency, yes, but not panic, and it helped tame his own reaction, driven by surprise and adrenaline.
“Get back,” Jeb said as he bulled into the room, then doused the dying fire with an extinguisher.
The room was filled with noise—the fire alarm, the bursts from the extinguisher. Then abruptly, silence. A clap. Then two. He looked over his shoulder at the three men looking down on his sprawled, naked body. Jeb held the extinguisher; Nate had the battery from the alarm; Butch was on a chair turning off the sprinkler.
All the sons of bitches had big ass grins on their faces.
Jeb scrubbed the top of his head. “Clyde, well, now, I just can’t think of anything to say.”
“There’s a song in here,” Butch said, his bare foot taking up a rhythm.
“This is some kind of crazy family my sister married into,” Nate said, shaking his head.
“Maybe, but it’s a good kind of crazy.” Jeb clamped his brother-in-law on the shoulder. “Never a dull moment.”
“I’m going to get up. You boys want an eyeful, or are you going to turn around?” He grabbed his wet sleep pants from the floor and forced his legs in.
“We’re going. No need to get worked up. Again,” Butch said.
Jeb grinned as he turned away. “I’ll send your woman back. Poppy can stay in my spare room tonight.”
“One thing before you guys go. What do you think about calling Doc and setting up a little game?”
“It has been a while since we had a game night,” Butch said. “I’ll make some calls, once the rooster is up. ’Night.”
They left his room, snickering like a pack of teenage boys. More revelry came from the staircase, and then Peach and Poppy returned.
“He wouldn’t stay,” she said.
“I prefer to sleep in my room,” her grandfather said, slipping from her hand and retiring to his room.
Together, they went to the door of the princess room and stared in. “The fire wasn’t that big. You wouldn’t think there’d be such a mess.” He went in and carried out her open suitcase. “You want to throw these in the wash?”
“Let’s just lay them out to dry. If they’re too bad, then I wash them.”
“Right.” He picked out a pair of underwear and draped it across his bar. Digging through the case, he found another pair and a bra to add to the bar. Then he found—
“I do have more clothes than just underwear.” She laughed as she filled his hands with a shirt.
He dropped the shirt and filled them with her butt. “Some things are just more important than others.”
Friday, April 14 nine a.m.
Waking wasn’t such a chore, Peach decided, when she was awakened by a virile and talented man. After the pyromania incident, she moved into Tom’s room. Funny how she didn’t consider, even for a moment, moving into one of the other spare rooms. She had a feeling that even without the fire, they would have been sleeping in the same bed. The smoke-stained bedding just gave them an excuse. She left the bed and stretched and realized…she was happy. It was such a good feeling that she decided to share it by whipping up breakfast for Tom and Poppy.
Dressing quickly, she skipped down the steps and into the courtyard, her step as light as her heart. She didn’t question the feeling but tried to savor it, suspecting that sooner or later, reality would crash back down on her head.
By the front door to Jeb’s suite, Jeb and Katie were huddled in a heated discussion. Jeb continuously shifted his weight—left foot, right foot, left foot. His hands went to his hair. Then he spotted her, and so did Katie. Katie motioned Peach over with a wave that was all “get your ass over here fast.”
Peach ran across the stones, her heart suddenly locked in a vise. “What’s wrong? Something happened.”
“Carolina won’t come out of her room,” Katie said.
Peach blinked. Not the ground-shaking reality she was expecting. “Why?”
“She is due in Nashville at the NPR radio station. She’s going to be on the show Fresh Air,” Jeb said, his big body restless with uselessness. “She’s curled up in our bedroom and refuses to move.”
Katie jumped in. “Before being the love of Jeb’s life, Carolina Walker was a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and researcher. She just had her first book published on a land scheme in Florida. It might not have gotten the attention of NPR except that Randolph Edgerton, Governor of Florida and Democratic Presidential hopeful, was killed last week on a trip to Afghanistan.”
“Carolina likes staying home,” Jeb added. “She’s getting better about going out—at least with us—but this is all too much for her. I feel like a sap forcing her to do this.”
Katie stepped into Jeb, not threateningly but to be heard. “She wants to do this. You know she does. If Carolina didn’t want this, she would have said no or never taken the call to begin with. She’s just getting cold feet. Come on, Peach. Let’s talk to her.”
Jeb opened the door and let Katie and Peach into his space. Katie flashed Peach a sassy grin as she made for the stairs. “Heard about the fire in your place. Nice.”
Peach tripped up the steps. Katie hurried down the hallway without bothering to wait for her. She didn’t knock when she reached the closed door at the end.
In the middle of the big bed, engulfed in a cloud of white, a tangle of blond hair floated. Beneath was a huddled mass that didn’t flinch when Katie’s off-centered weight fell clumsily across the bed. “You could have at least camped out close to the edge,” Katie said.
A muffled sniffle came back.
“Why are you impersonating a cocoon?” Katie asked.
“Ilookf asbadder wif.”
Katie laughed and tugged until the covers pulled away. “You want to try that again?”
Carolina flipped her hair back. “I l-look like a b-battered wife.” Her eyes, red and bloodshot from crying, also sported a spectacular shiner—complete with all the colors of a rainbow. “I c-can’t go out like this.”
Katie sat back on her heels. “It’s not so bad. It’s not really swollen. That bag of peas really helped.”
Carolina threw Jeb’s pillow at Katie. “I look like a z-zombie.”
“No. Zombies are pale, colorless. You look more like a pixie. Full of color.”
Carolina narrowed her eyes at Katie.
Peach stood at the bedside, beyond curious as to how Carolina ended up with the black eye. She listened to the sparring, feeling on the outside. In just a few days, she’d come to like and respect Carolina and Katie. Neither was holding her at arm’s length. If she wanted to be part of this, all she had to do was figure out a way to get Carolina out of bed. “So you’re Carolina Walker? The Carolina Walker.” She widened her eyes and openly gawked. “You won a Pulitzer Prize before you were thirty.”
Carolina shifted on the bed, raising her chin just a bit. “T-two, actually.”
“I picked up some of your work. The law firm I worked for provided the defense for a businessman accused of art theft.”
Carolina smoothed her hair and then wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. “You d-defended one of them?”
“Well, not me. I was just the investigator. I picked things up where you left them. My job was to prove you wrong or, if I couldn’t do that, find holes big enough for a semi-trailer to drive through.”
“Which one did you w-work for?” Carolina asked, and when Peach answered, she grinned. “He took a plea bargain.”
Peach smiled back, coaxing her friend along. “Yes, he did. So where are you supposed to be going today?”
Carolina settled against the headboard, making space for Katie to sit next to her and then patting the other side. Recognizing progress, Peach climbed onto the bed, sandwiching Carolina in the middle.
“I’m doing an interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Do you know it?”
“Do I? Wow. That’s all I can say. Did she call you?”
“Well, not herself. Her people. The show’s people, I mean.”
“Very impressive. What are they interviewing you about?”
Carolina let out a deep breath, her anxiety forgotten for the moment. “I wrote a book. One of those tell-all-the-facts type.”
Guilt nagged as she baited Carolina along, but Peach shut it down. This was doing a good deed. “Like a tabloid exposé? Who did you write it about?”
She listened, gasping in the right places as Carolina told the story Katie had summarized in the courtyard. When she finished, Carolina’s expressive face was a complicated swirl of pride and determination, embarrassment and fear. The first two Peach had in super-sized quantities. Embarrassment she hadn’t really known until New Year’s Eve. Fear wasn’t allowed in her personal space. Relating to Carolina was hard but not impossible. Peach focused on the embarrassment and wiping it from Carolina’s face. “I bet Terry is bragging to her competition that she has Carolina Walker on her show.”
Carolina quieted and picked invisible lint off the immaculate bed spread. “I’m not going.”
“Why?” Peach asked, ready to dismantle whatever argument she had.
Carolina rolled her eyes. “Look at my face.”
“Your face is perfect. It’s radio.” She let out an exasperated sigh. “Fine, if you care that much, I’ll fix it for you. Jump in the shower and wash that bale of straw you call hair. I’ll go get my stuff. What are you going to wear?”
Carolina nodded to the closet door and the shapeless gray frock with a bold white stripe ripping across the middle hanging on it.
“Well, if you wear that, you won’t have to worry about anyone looking at your face. Katie? Will you get my makeup case from Tom’s guest bathroom? I’m going to do wardrobe control.”
Tom came out of the shower to find an empty bed. Under the hot water, images of his night with Peach played on loop. Before the fire had been amazing. But after the fire, after he thought they had settled in for the night, that had been life altering. He didn’t have to look down at his body to know he wanted more.
But she was gone.
The empty bed deflated his mood and his body.
He dressed quickly, wanting to find where she had gone. The house wasn’t that big. He stepped into the hallway, where the smell of their sexual fire greeted him. It shouldn’t have made him smile, but it did. It shouldn’t have made him hard but…
“Tom,” Poppy called through the open bedroom door, pronouncing the name with the easy sound of his native language. He sat in the comfortable armchair in the living area and motioned to the empty couch. “We need to talk.”
Tom tripped, he swore under his breath, and his growing hard-on turtled. We need to talk was never a good phase, no matter who said it. He regained his composure. “Is something wrong?”
The old man pursed his lips. “Wrong? I would not say wrong. But they are not right, either. My Peach, she is going to leave us.”
Denial was his first reaction. After all, he had plans.
“As soon as she thinks she is done here. I was sorry she found Rico so quickly—”
He shook his head. He couldn’t have heard him correctly. “You were?”
Poppy bowed his head. “I knew in my heart Rico was dead. For the last week, Peach had been getting ready to leave. She looked for excuses to stay and found them. But she was running out of excuses.”
“Until this whole mess.”
“She promised me she would find Rico. She does not make promises lightly, and I have never known her to break one. She said she would find him, and she did. It hurt her. I don’t want to know the details. I don’t need them. She is going to leave. One day. Maybe three.”
That didn’t surprise him. He’d picked up on that “one step out the door” attitude of hers. But hearing a time put to it, it didn’t sit well. He had plans…and what was her hurry? It’s not like she had a job to go to.
Poppy patted his hand. “She will stay for you.”
Tom’s instincts reared and sounded retreat. “For me?” He stepped back, away, until the doorway caught him between the shoulders. “Why would you think that?”
“I see her with you. Even though my eyes do not work so well, I see very clearly. She needs you. You need her.”
“No. Not me.” He swung his arms across his body, calling the runner out at home. He needed air. He needed water and food. He did not now nor would he ever need another woman.
“You think she is not the woman for you?”
“I don’t think any woman is for me. No offense, but I’m happily single.” He forced casual into his voice when he felt as wound up as a Tasmanian Devil.
“No, you are not,” Poppy said, equally calmly. He sat in the armchair with his leg crossed and his hands resting openly on the arms. There was no tension, only a quiet confidence that scared the hell out of Tom.
His instincts reared again, this time calling for defense. He stalked to the center of the room, jutting a finger at the nearly blind man. “Yes, I am.”
“Do you know what love is?”
Tom looked to the open door—freedom a mere twenty feet away. Nothing good ever came from “we need to talk.”
“I know you do,” Poppy said when he didn’t answer. “I see you with your family.”
“That’s different.”
“Yes and no. When you find the right woman, everything is brighter, happier, easier. You want only to see the sun reflected in her smile. All her wants, her dreams, you want to make come true.”
Tom coughed uncomfortably.
“And do you know what you get in return?”
“What?”
“Everything. Needs you didn’t know you had are filled before you could want them.” Poppy patted the arm of the chair. “She will stay for you.”
An entire drum corps beat in his chest. Women had wanted to stay with him before; he knew the signs. Peach exhibited zero of them. She didn’t hang on him, didn’t try to please him, didn’t agree for the sake of agreeing. And, importantly, she didn’t want those things from him. He relaxed then, realizing that her grandfather wanted those things for her, which made sense for his generation and his love for her. “I know that you love her and you want a good life for her, a happily ever after. But you know Peach better than anyone. She doesn’t need a man to make her life good. How ever she lives her life, she’ll write it herself.”
“I will stay here.”
“Here? As in here? Permanently?” His voice was strangled again.
“I wish to be close to my great-grandchildren.”
Tom sputtered, choked, and hurried from the room. “I need to go.” It was lame, but it was the truth. His feet didn’t stop until he was out in the courtyard. But where to go? Peach was probably in the kitchen. It was shitty of him, but he didn’t want to see her. He didn’t want to see Carolina or Jeb in their newlywed glow. He didn’t want to see Butch, forever the romantic. He didn’t even want to see Katie with her big, round baby belly.
He went back in the door he’d just come out of but hung a left and went into his lab. If his brain was going to be going a hundred miles an hour, he would damn well put it to good use.
It had taken the better part of an hour and several trips between closets for Peach to get Carolina and Katie dressed. Carolina wore the blue dress she said she had bought that day she had her first date with Jeb. The dress had been shoved in the back of the closet and forgotten about. From the moment the silky material brushed over Carolina’s skin, Peach knew she couldn’t have picked a better dress. Her blue eyes glowed, broadcasting confidence.
“I’m going to channel Marilyn,” she said.
Katie dressed in an empire-waist dress from Carolina’s closet that settled in over her baby bump. The scoop neck showed off the amazing breasts the pregnancy hormones had loaned her while her arms and legs were still long and trim. It was topped off with a silk scarf in a muted floral pattern. “You should come with us. We’ll make it a girls’ day out.”
“That would be fun, but I’m booked. I’m going to help Tom with his work today, you know, since he helped me yesterday.” Peach shimmied into a short dress from Katie’s closet. The green leafy pattern drew attention to the vivid green of her eyes. Fancy attire wasn’t required for working behind a computer, but she’d woken up feeling pretty. The dress matched her mood exactly.
Katie snorted. “Sometimes I ‘help’ Butch with his music. Carolina, she’s always ‘helping’ Jeb with his work. Aren’t you?”
Carolina sat on the chair in front of Peach. “We’re newlyweds. We’re supposed to ‘help’ each other.”
She worked quickly on Carolina’s hair, pinning and spraying and twisting sections until she looked like she’d walked out of a magazine. Katie’s hair she left down but curled it so it was soft and as fun-filled as the woman. For her own hair, she pulled it into a long tail and then wrapped a section around the base. It looked fancier than it was and did the job of taming the unruly strands.
“Where did you learn how to do all of this?” Katie asked as Peach worked the concealer over Carolina’s black eye. “Your mother?”
“Oh God, no. My mother has been MIA most of my life. Poppy raised me.” She laughed a little. “The sight of lip gloss made him nervous. I wasn’t sure he would survive me getting my first bra. He had our neighbor, Mrs. Hernandez, take me.” She dabbed gently with her pinkie finger and then applied powder.
“It’s disappearing,” Carolina said in amazement.
“My roommate in Virginia always said dressing well was as much a woman’s weapon as a gun or a knife. She is a federal agent. She taught me how to use all my assets to my benefit. So you guys know I’m dying of curiosity…how did you get it?”
Carolina sighed. “Katie started a bar fight. I slipped on spilled beer and hit my face on the back of a chair.”
Peach’s gaze snapped to Katie’s belly. “You started a bar fight?”
“This brainless numb nuts insulted me and Butch, talking about him ‘liking fatties.’ I calmly pointed out I was pregnant and that it was rude to talk about any woman like he did.”
Carolina snorted as Peach read between the lines. “The women in the bar surrounded the man. Next thing you know, purses were flying and the police were hauling the man out.” She paused while Peach touched a pencil to her lips. “Things definitely got out of hand, and I got a black eye.”
“If anyone asks,” Peach said, “and they will, don’t say the part about slipping. Stick to the bar fight. There. Perfect.” With the efficient hand that came with practice, Carolina and Katie were finished ten minutes before they had to leave. Peach spared the time for her own make up.
“You have beautiful eyes,” Carolina said. “They look like spring leaves.”
It was a nice compliment. One of the best she’d ever had. She added more mascara, then touched up her lips. “Thank you. You both look great. A fine job, if I say so myself.”
They stood shoulder to shoulder, surveying the finished product in the long bathroom mirror.
“Amazing,” Carolina said. Her baby blue eyes were haunting amid the dark shadow and long lashes.
“You know who we look like,” Katie said, her eyes trimmed in an ocean of colors and her lips glistening in pink bubblegum.
“Charlie’s Angels,” Peach said, her own eyes piercing from the dark trim and underscored by a deep red lip stain. She smiled. “That means I’m the smart one.” She left the room, a noisy debate hot on her tail.
The computer program had finished an hour ago, producing a two-digit megabyte file that now needed the analysis of a human brain. Running simulations allowed Tom to induce flaws at different points in the crane structure to estimate which set of circumstances resulted in the outcome that most closely matched the actual. Wind was a factor. It decreased the lift capacity of the crane to the point that the weight of the steel frame would have been seventy-five to ninety percent of the limit, depending on the wind gust rate. He had isolated the area; now he needed to isolate the component. The catastrophic failure meant that the strength of at least one component of the crane had been exceeded.
It shouldn’t have been the bolts. So many would have had to fail. He was confident he had zeroed in on the area of the failure. Structurally, the location didn’t make sense. It was too low. He remembered Hawthorne’s comment about the “melted paint.” Was there more to it than a surface blemish? He said he noticed it on two of the supports. Did that mean the other two were undamaged or that he didn’t look? He scrolled through the images he collected and the progress photos from Hawthorne’s computer. Photos had been taken nearly every day, but he had to sift through to find the ones with the area he wanted. Images of human ingenuity were displayed on the wall-mounted monitor.
In his peripheral vision, his door opened. He was in no mood for small talk, plus he was knee deep in data that demanded his full attention. “Go away.”
“Room service,” Peach called out.
“Not now.” He hunched over his desk, fingers flying over the keyboard, demonstrating he was working. He didn’t want to see her. Didn’t want to talk. He just wanted to be left alone.
“Rumor had it you skipped breakfast. That’s the most important meal of the day.” She set a platter on the empty corner of his desk.
He scowled at the food, but his stomach rejoiced at the aroma. He glared harder, resenting that she knew he was hungry. “I…I’m busy.” He glanced at her and did a double take. “What are you wearing?”
“Oh, this old thing?” She twirled, the skirt flaring out to show off long, toned legs.
She crossed behind him and started working on his neck. “Wow. You are really tense. You were putty in my hands last night. What happened?”
Panic squeezed his heart. Did she know Poppy had picked him out as the father of their children? Her children? Crap. She didn’t look like she had a clue…but she was wearing a dress that sent his body into overdrive. There was nothing innocent about that. Maybe she had planted the idea in Poppy’s head. She couldn’t tell him she wanted to stay so she tricked her grandfather into it. Oh, yeah, she played it well. If Poppy told him she was leaving, then he’d have to step in and stop her, making him the one who said stay. That made sense. She was using reverse psychology on him. Well, it wasn’t going to work. He was going to use double-reverse psychology.
“Figuring things out?” she asked.
“Oh, I think I’ve figured things out all right.” He pried her hands from his shoulders and pushed his chair back, forcing her to step away.
“You’ll get farther with some fuel in that body of yours. I was worried I depleted it last night.”
“I’m fine.” He wasn’t playing her game. When he played a game, he made the rules. No babies. Simple rule. Then he choked on his own spit. He hadn’t used a condom. He’d believed her that she had them protected but what if…
“You need food to—”
“I don’t need anything.” He jumped to his feet, turning to glare at her. “I don’t need a massage. I don’t need breakfast, and I don’t need you.”
She stepped back, an eyebrow raised. “You think you don’t need anything?”
“That’s right.” He said it cruelly. It took every bit of testosterone in his body to withstand the onslaught of those radiant eyes. But he did it. He stared her down, daring her to contradict him.
“You’re wrong.” She picked up the breakfast, smashed it into his chest, and let the mess fall to the floor. She knocked over everything possible on her way to the door. In the doorway, she turned back. “I don’t know what the hell just happened here, but you better get over it. Asshole.” Door slam.
Get over it. Right. He kicked the platter, sending it into a steel base where it shattered into a million pieces.