warm, and she wanted the predator back, she needed the predator back. Sean was much easier to deal with when they were quick-tempered peers. This tempting security made her long to relax and give in, if only for a few minutes. A few hours. “It is that simple,” he told her in a wonderfully soothing voice. “You say yes. I take you out for a drink. Dinner. Movie. Many options are available in Manhattan.”
Cleo averted her eyes because she couldn’t look at him and do this. “I’m booked up until spring.”
“Was that a joke?”
“Honestly—no.”
This time, her cell phone rang, reminding her that she was late.
“I have to go,” she said again, not willing to commit to anything.
“Monday,” he told her, pushing her out the door. “You can tell me what you’ve discovered about the bar.”
“Maybe nothing,” she answered, resisting the urge to touch her own mouth, feel the hum once again.
“Maybe something.”
“I have to go,” she repeated stupidly.
“I’ll see you on Monday.”
“What?” she asked, looking at him, puzzled.
“Go home. Sleep.”
And Cleo walked two blocks south before she realized that she was headed the wrong way.
CLEO LIVED IN A TOWN HOUSE on the Upper West Side. It was one of the old stone town houses that had been built in the 1800s with the pipes from the 1800s that clanked when hot water ran through them. In the 1970s, the air-conditioning units had been added through the wall so as to not block the light. In the process, they had to knock out some of the wood trim, but when the sweltering summer came, it was worth it. The floors were the originals, extravagantly polished parquet that always smelled like lemon. Flocked wallpaper, vaguely Kennedy-esque, covered the walls and the delicate antique furniture had been in the Hollings family for four generations.
Cleo had lived here for almost her entire life.
Almost. There had been three and half years at the dorm at Rutgers and then two years after college when she’d lived with three other roommates. Life had been one long, fun party. But when she was twenty-three, that all changed, and she moved back into her mother’s home.
“Mom?” she yelled, as she opened the door. Immediately she noticed the gray smoke and the burned smell in the air.
“Mom?” she asked again, feeling the panic inside her. She rushed inside and found the cause of the smells in the kitchen. A pan sat in the sink. The copper bottom burned black, steam still billowing into the room.
Cleo put a hand on the counter and calmed her breathing. Okay, not a disaster.
“Mrs. Cagle?” she called.
It wasn’t Mrs. Cagle who appeared, but Elliott Macguire, Cleo’s uncle, who lived on the floor below them and managed the apartments on the bottom two floors below that. “Elliott? Is Mom okay?”
“She’s sleeping.”
Cleo looked around and swore silently. Why was it that New York was so much easier to run than her own life? “What happened?”
“Rachel decided she wanted to cook, but she forgot.”
“Where’s Mrs. Cagle? She was supposed to be here. She’s supposed to watch for these things. I warned her. How hard is this?” Mrs. Cagle usually covered the late afternoon and evening shift until Cleo returned from work.
“She called me after she put out the fire. I told her to go home and I’d stay with Rachel.”
Cleo stared at the pan, helpless fear and anger battling inside her. Anger won. “I’m talking to the agency first thing in the morning. She’s not coming back here. Mom could have been hurt. I should have been here, Elliott. This sort of thing doesn’t happen when I’m here.”
“You can’t be here twenty-four hours a day. You’ve already fired four sitters, Cleo. Maybe it’s time to stop and think.”
No. She didn’t need to think. She should have been here earlier tonight. Cleo tried to speak, but guilt clogged her throat.
“We need to talk, Cleo.” Her uncle resembled his sister, a masculine, wiser version. The same blue eyes as Rachel Hollings and the red hair that had long faded to gray. He was the oldest sibling, the sensible one. Cleo shook her head.
“No. I don’t need to talk, Elliott. I’ve barely slept for the past four days, I’ve been trying to get the subways and the buses and the trains moving again. I can’t think very well at the moment.”
Actually, most of that was true, but the last part was a flat-out lie. She could think very well at the moment. She could think too well. She knew exactly what her choices were, and she wasn’t going to go there, but Elliott had a soft heart for his sister, and if she needed to take shameless advantage of it to keep up the status quo, then she’d do it, with no regrets.
His eyes looked at her sadly, and she didn’t want him to look at her sadly, but again—whatever it took. However, she did raise her head and inched back her shoulders.
“Thank you. I owe you for this.”
“I can’t do this, Cleo. Not anymore.”
She pinched two fingers against her forehead, closing her eyes, the perfect picture of a headache. Elliott took the hint.
“She’s my mother. She’s your sister. We’re all the family she has left. We do what we have to do.”
His face said he wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t going to argue, and Cleo would take whatever victories she could.
“I can take over from here, Elliott. Go home and get some sleep.”
“We’ll talk about this later, Cleo?”
“Of course,” she lied, and then closed the door behind him.
Before she took off her shoes, before she took off her watch, before she removed her makeup, she went in to check on her mother. She’d learned to do that one cold winter night a few years ago, when Cleo had come home, and immediately changed into her pajamas, only to discover that her mother wasn’t in her room where she was supposed to be. Precious seconds were lost when she had to change back into clothes and shoes in order to go outside in twenty degree weather to track down her lost mother. Cleo never made that mistake again.
Her mother’s room was the same way it had been when Cleo’s father was alive. The double bed with the old color television set sitting on the dresser, and a picture of the three members of the Hollings family in their Christmas best (Cleo had been eight, and still had freckles—the curse of red hair and milk-white skin).
Rachel Hollings had been a beautiful woman in 1983, with the red hair that Cleo had inherited from her, and glorious blue eyes that lit up when she was happy, which she usually was around Christmas time.
Cleo stood there for a moment,
