the bathroom.” Not when Cara had worked so hard to establish her business and had nearly fainted when she was handed the opportunity to do something as prestigious and impressive as the wedding of a wealthy socialite and her big-time hero DEA fiancé.
Cara had fought back against every piece of crap life threw at her and kept going. Bad husband. A checking account balance that hovered near zero. Single parent to a baby who demanded her attention every two seconds.
None of that sounded good to Katie. Of course, neither did being homeless, which explained why she took the job watching Eric. Someone wanted information on the guy’s activities and she needed the money. It was a simple matter of math.
She kept repeating that in her head every time the doubt threatened to overtake her. Taking cash so soon after having sex left her with a dirty feeling she could not shake. Watching Eric at his ex’s wedding was one thing. Dropping her panties and wrapping her legs around him…yeah, not part of the assignment.
“Uh, hello?” Cara stood in the middle of the one-room business with cookie sheets stacked in a pile on her arms.
“What?”
Cara’s eyes narrowed in the disapproving way she’d mastered as a responsible teenager horrified by her baby sister’s antics. She’d been using it ever since. “Where did you go?”
“What are you talking about?” Katie knew but she asked anyway because stalling for time seemed like the right choice.
“You’ve got this dreamy, I’m-about-to-cause-trouble look in your eyes.” Cara shook her head. “I’ve seen it before and am not a fan.”
When in doubt, hide behind false outrage. The plan had rarely worked for Katie in the past during sister-to-sister battles, but she decided to try it again anyway. “I helped out at your big job and this is the thanks I get?”
Cara lost all color in her face. “Oh, no.”
Katie recognized the horrified look. It meant one thing. Busted. “What?
The color came back to Cara’s cheeks but it was kind of a yellowish-green tint. Not all that attractive. A little scary, actually. “Oh, this is bad. Like, when you got picked up on the drug charge, bad.”
It had been almost a week since Cara brought up that little gem. Katie had started to think the memory might have faded. Apparently not.
She waved off the reminder even as she winced inside. “That was three years ago and a complete misunderstanding.”
Fact was, she was a person who stepped in crap every time she turned a corner. Luck had never been her friend. But sleeping on the floor of an acquaintance who claimed to waitress at a club but really spent her evenings dealing drugs was a particularly awful moment in her glass-half-empty life. Not a highlight in the sister-to-sister bond either. Cara screamed for a good three days without stopping after that one.
Never mind that Katie wasn’t involved in the mess. The police didn’t exactly listen as they dragged her out of her sleeping bag, but they were a joy compared to Cara’s “I told you so” diatribes.
“Tell me now.” Cara dropped the load of metal from her arms to the butcher-block counter. The clanging bounced off every wall. “Did something happen at the wedding?”
Something about six-feet tall with dark hair and an expert set of hands. “I was there for a job and I did it.”
Those knowing eyes narrowed. “Why don’t I believe you?”
“Because you prefer to think the worst of me.” Forget the fact Cara usually was right to go that route.
“That’s called experience.” Cara blew out a long breath. “Look, Katie.”
Oh, not the “look” conversation starter. Katie could tolerate anything but that.
“I didn’t do anything illegal. Just worked the wedding and chatted with the guests.” Katie decided the word ‘chatted’ was sufficiently vague enough to cover her wedding activities. “You don’t have anything to worry about.”
“You promised me you were going to turn your life around. Start working, go back to school.” Cara ticked off the ideas on her fingers. “Focus.”
Katie thought about rolling her eyes but refrained. “I am twenty-five years old.”
“And?”
“I am doing everything I told you I’d do, but it all takes money.”
“Which is why I offered you the job.”
“And I’m grateful.” Perpetually grateful.
“I don’t want any other surprises.” A dark sadness fell over Cara’s eyes. “After Bill…well, I’ve had enough. I need to concentrate on growing this business and raising Ashleigh. Josh and Deana trusted me with a huge responsibility. Their wedding, for heaven’s sake. I really need it to turn into more work.”
Guilt snuck up out of nowhere and smacked Katie right across the cheek. She’d spent the years since her parents’ deaths as the ultimate screwup. Cara did everything right. Katie got most everything wrong. Irresponsible and difficult, she’d heard all the comments teachers and relatives whispered behind her back and into Cara’s ear. The years from eighteen to twenty-three were a blur of partying and waste. But that was over. She worked for Cara now. She watched Ashleigh. She registered for night classes that would begin in the summer session. She’d made a few extra bucks reporting back on Eric.
Eric.
Yeah, that brought Katie spinning back to Cara and the guilt thing.
“Okay.” Katie grabbed her sister’s hands and willed her to calm down before the thumping blood vessel in her forehead burst. “Listen to me. The wedding job went really well. You’re going to get lots of new business from it, and I’ll be here to help out. It will all be fine. You’ll see.”
Cara bit her bottom lip. “Promise?”
“Yeah.” Katie nodded. For a second, she even believed the words coming out of her mouth. “Let’s forget all about the wedding and start getting ready for that insurance conference you’re catering in two days.”
And she would forget all about one Eric Kimura, those hands, and the e-mail report she’d sent as a requirement of her paycheck after the wedding. The same one that left out any mention of the extracurricular bathroom activities. After all, some things were private. Stupid and self-destructive, but private.
“Anything else?” Eric pushed back from his kitchen table and headed for the coffeepot. A two-hour evening meeting on political strategy with his friend and campaign manager was enough to dull the senses for a month.
All Eric wanted to do was run for the job of prosecuting attorney, a job he currently held on an interim basis since his boss had left the position. Eric understood the office and saw what needed to be streamlined and what needed to be eliminated. Working his way up through the ranks gave him an insight that the guy he was running against, Howard Gunnery, a former military lawyer, didn’t have. In Eric’s view, that should have been enough, but he had to convince the entire island of Oahu, or at least the majority of it, to agree and vote for him.
