he thought of her when they’d been in here together, as unkempt as Justine had been fastidious, her dark brows drawn underneath a curtain of wind-blown, dark brown waves. And he had to admit, her obvious affection for his daughter, the concern trembling at the edges of her wide, bare mouth when she smiled, had suckered him into feeling a twinge of sympathy for her cluelessness.
He also had to admit, as personality traits went, cluelessness was far preferable to calculated treachery.
Feeling more weary than he ever had in his life, Grant gently tugged Haley’s tangled covers from around her legs, smoothing them over her frail-looking shoulders. She stirred, her eyes never opening, trusting at least in sleep, even if not when awake.
Helplessness and hope collided inside his chest, nearly taking his breath.
Mia waited until she was back in her apartment, a cozy one-bedroom in the West Twenties, before digging out her cell phone to check her messages. At the sight of her parents’ number, she groaned, executing a much-practiced spin-and-flop maneuver onto her sofa as her father’s flat, blue-collar Massachusetts accent burrowed into her ear.
“Just wondering if you’d heard from your brother, or maybe you got a number for him or somethin’, some way for us to reach him? Give us a call sometime.”
No need to ask which brother they meant, since her four older brothers—and their families—all lived within ten blocks of the red-bricked, white-shuttered Springfield colonial they’d all grown up in. One black sheep out of six, you’d expect. Three, however—twelve years ago, her next oldest brother, Rudy, had knocked up his eighteen-year-old girlfriend, and then there was Mia walking away from a six-figure salary to start her own business—was just wrong. Still, at least Mia still touched base with her family from time to time. And Rudy lived with their parents, so their mother could watch his daughter, Stacey, while he was at work. Kevin, however…
She let out a sigh, punching the phone to retrieve her next message, thinking the kid would send them all to early graves. Except at twenty-six, he was hardly a kid anymore, was he…?
The second message was from Venus, her assistant, aka the Butt Saver.
“Girl, where the hell are you? I’ve been trying to call you all freaking day, which is scaring the crap out of me because I know you don’t go to the bathroom without taking your phone with you. If I don’t hear from you by midnight, I’m calling the police. And no, I’m not kidding.”
In her early fifties and the most organized human being Mia had ever known, Venus had been Mia’s secretary at Hinkley-Cohen. And as eager to ditch the nine-to-five—or, in Mia’s case, eight-to-whenever—grind as Mia had been. She immediately hit the callback button, spewing, “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” in the wake of Venus’s “This had damn sight better be good!” Only as soon as she told Venus why she’d been incommunicado, she was all, “You’re not serious? Oh, hell…I’m so sorry, baby! You must be a wreck, I know the two of you were pretty tight.”
Yeah, that’s what she had thought, too.
But now past the initial shock, Mia had to finally acknowledge the tiny flicker of doubt that had grown increasingly brighter since Justine’s divorce, that Justine and she had been drifting apart. Not blatantly, and not all the time—the shopping trip again came to mind—but there’d definitely been the odd moment when Mia would catch Justine looking at her with something approaching regret in her eyes. As though she’d made a pact she now wished she could break. Sometimes Mia would even wonder if her babysitting availability had been the only reason Justine bothered to keep their relationship going.
“Yeah, we were,” she now said to Venus, tears stinging her eyes. “Even if you didn’t understand why.”
“Oh, I suppose I did, if I thought hard enough about it. The two of you being new at the same time, and Justine being all flashy and glittery and worldly and whatnot, and you this subdued little thing when you first got there. What were you, twenty-one?”
“Twenty-two. And I was never subdued! And I haven’t been little since kindergarten!”
“Okay, unpolished, then. Those sorry, clunky shoes you used to wear—”
“Hey. I paid big bucks for those shoes.”
“Then more fool you. And that pitiful thing you called a suit… Honey, I had ancestors from the plantation days who were better dressed. So it was no wonder you gravitated toward her. But you know something? I never did think the friendship was real balanced. That one of you was getting more out of it than the other.”
Mia frowned. “Meaning me, I presume?”
“Hell, no. Miss Justine definitely got the better end of that deal. Flash and glitter might be real pretty to look at, but you were the one with the substance. The solid one. Even if you were younger. She needed you a lot more than you ever needed her.” She paused. “She needed somebody to worship her, to make her less like the little butt-wipe associate she was.”
If Mia hadn’t been lying down already, her knees would have given out from under her. “First off, we were both butt-wipe associates. Secondly, why didn’t you ever say anything before?”
“None of my business? Wouldn’t have made any difference? You seemed to be happy enough the way things were? Take your pick. And the difference was, you took your butt-wipe status in stride. She didn’t.” Her tone softened. “To tell you the truth, mostly I just felt sorry for Justine. She was one insecure chick. And I truly hope she finds whatever it was she was looking for on the other side, since she clearly didn’t here. But I always admired you for sticking by her. The world needs more people like you, baby. And I know you must be hurting right now. So, listen, you want to pull out of the Chin party tomorrow, you go right ahead—”
“No! No, that’s why I came back.” One of the reasons, anyway, the other one being she could only deal with so much masculine brooding intensity at one time. That she’d actually agreed to put herself in the path of that brooding intensity for three or four entire days…
“You sure?” Venus said. “Because everything’s under control from my end, and we’ve got Cissy, Armando and Silas lined up, they could practically handle things without either one of us—”
“I’m sure, Vene. Anyway, it’ll do me good to focus on something else. But I did agree to go back for a few days, after the party. For Haley’s sake.”
“Oh, that’s right, I forgot about the baby. Poor little thing. But at least she still has her daddy.”
“Yeah, you’d think, wouldn’t you?” Mia briefly explained the situation, which got another huge sigh from the older woman.
“Why is it you have to get a license to drive a car or serve booze or sell a house, but any idiot with a functioning joystick can have kids? Explain that one to me.”
Mia smiled. “I wish I could. Not that I know what I’m doing, either, but I promised to at least give it a shot. So anyway, I’ll meet you at the Chins’ at noon…?”
After she’d squared everything away with Venus, she called her parents, breathing a sigh of relief when the machine picked up. Over at one of her brothers’ houses, no doubt. Once again, she gave a quick rundown of events, that she’d be going back up to Connecticut the day after tomorrow, that, no, she didn’t have
