A quick thrill of worry hit my brain. I knew Antony Love in full-on furious mode could be a danger. I also somehow knew that the little brother was gonna bear the brunt of it. I was headed towards him when a couple of the kids started wrestling on the grass. Once I got them sorted out and separated, the creeping dread had blossomed into full-blown panic.
Then Rosie ran in, carrying a squalling Jeffrey. I walked toward her, feeling relieved, until I realized Antony was nowhere to be found. Rosie motioned toward the table where Dom sat, decked out in sexy vampire gear, and flirting his tail off with a slinky-looking lady I didn’t know. He got up and came over to Rosie, and I edged closer, wanting to know what was up, but not at the same time.
Dom hollered for Kieran, and they ran out before I could get the scoop. Mama took Jeffery and left Rosie standing in the middle of the empty space, wringing her hands.
I put my arm around her shoulders. “Drink?” I asked. I liked her a lot, and hoped she wasn’t the catalyst for a serious Love brother breach.
We took a seat next to Bobby, who’d come as a cowboy, and looked mighty tempting in his tight jeans and half-unbuttoned shirt. He made us laugh with a stupid joke, but I could still sense Rosie’s anxiety rolling off her in invisible waves.
A few awkward minutes passed while we sipped our beers. Bobby had his arm draped over my shoulders; possessive in a way that irritated me, so I got up and headed for the bar, unable to sit still. The absence of all four of my brothers seemed the world’s worst omen.
“Anton!” My mother yelled across the tent that was slowly emptying of kids and adults.
I spotted my father by the bar, laughing with my Uncle Lorenzo, who’d been in town for a few weeks spying on the business he’d left in his little brother’s charge. He frowned.
I glanced at Mama. She tilted her head in the direction of the pool outside the tent. Calmly, graciously, Mama made her good-byes, received kisses and smiles from everyone, and then caught my eye. I hurried over to her.
“Stay here, Angelique. Make sure the bar’s still stocked and the folks who stick around have full glasses.”
She looked over my shoulder. “Melinda, Renee, Rosie, would you ladies please come with me?”
They rose, giving each other confused glances, and then followed my mother out of the tent.
“But …” I started toward the opening. Daddy passed by me at a quick march.
“Do as your mother says, Angel.” He disappeared behind the pack of current and future Love women.
Aggravated by their seeming dismissal, and by the lingering presence of Bobby Foster, who now leaned on the bar eyeballing me, I had to wrestle with myself to keep from stamping my foot.
Bobby pushed the brim of his fake cowboy hat up and winked. I narrowed my eyes at him and sneaked over to the tent opening, hoping to hear something, but they must all have been down at the pole barn, since the lights there were bright and the pool was empty.
Sighing, I closed the tent flap door and headed back inside to do as I’d been told. While I was clearing one of the tables, someone grabbed me around the waist from behind.
“What’s up, Glinda Good Witch?” Bobby breathed his booze fumes in my general direction before biting my earlobe.
“Get off me,” I said, a little too bitchy, but I was too stressed to care.
He took my arm and turned me, holding me close again. I put up a half-hearted struggle, then let him kiss me before pushing him away. He did look damn good in that get-up. I licked my lips, my stress translating into a need for physical action of the fun kind. “Later,” I said, smacking his ass as I walked away from him.
I chatted with my uncle awhile until he left, claiming he had to get to the airport. Then I started clearing glassware and pulling the black and orange coverings off the tables, leaving them in a heap I knew I’d be responsible for laundering later. Bobby wandered over, beer in hand. “Can I help?”
“No,” I said, not looking at him. “You should probably go. I think there’s major family drama unfolding, and my Daddy won’t want it aired in front of anybody else.”
“Okay,” he said, agreeably enough. But when I turned, he grabbed me, shoved his tongue in my mouth and mashed one of my boobs with one hand. “Later works.” He let go, shoving me away so hard I stumbled.
“Not with that attitude, it won’t,” I said, rubbing my elbow where I’d banged it to keep myself from falling. “Fuck off, Foster.”
He finished his beer, threw the empty on the grass, then turned and stomped away without another word. I grabbed his bottle and heaved it at the bar, relishing the shatter, not even sure what had gotten into the man … other than me being a bitch to him all night long.
Tears burned my throat and eyes. I held my arms tight around my body, attempting to contain the stress that had been building since Daddy told me Mama’s cancer had spread, and that she had to have another long surgery to remove her uterus, ovaries and part of her liver.
It was bad. My mother was dying. And my brothers were acting like a pack of dumb-asses on top of it all. Finally, I grabbed a half empty bourbon bottle and sat, waiting them out.
Within about an hour, everyone knew about Mama’s condition, and my parents had gone inside. I sat on one side of a table, the silly Halloween lights still lit, the music still playing from somewhere.
Antony, Kieran, Dominic, and Aiden all sat opposite me, staring into their drinks. Aiden had a shiner, and he was cradling one arm. Antony’s nose had crusted blood under it. Kieran and Dom wore scowls so deep it was hard to believe I’d ever seen them smile. They were all soaking wet from a Lindsay-administered water hose intervention to make them stop fighting. All in front of their fiancées.
I held up my glass, filled from the second bottle my father had provided, insisting we drink and calm our asses down before finding a horizontal place to pass out. No one would be allowed to drive out of here. And for the first time in years, we all slept under one roof again, Antony and Kieran in their room, Dom and Aiden in theirs. And me, the precious angel, under my faded pink canopy that I stared at long into the night.
Chapter Eleven
By Thanksgiving Mama’s surgery was complete, and she’d emerged slightly weaker but feeling, as she claimed, about twenty pounds lighter. She used a cane to get around, which was weird. But her bossiness was front and center, undiminished. She and I had reached a bit of a compromise with regard to my increasingly frequent overnights in Bobby Foster’s bed.
Which is to say, so long as I executed my daily slave labor to her satisfaction, she gave me slightly less of a ration of shit when I arrived home the morning after my “sleepover” as she called it.
“Do you love the man, Angelique?” she asked me once while we folded yet more sheets and towels.
“No, Mama. I’m pretty sure I don’t.”
She shot me an odd look—somewhere between put out and sympathetic. “Well,” she said, handing the stack to me to carry upstairs to the linen closet. “You should probably make sure he knows that. I heard tell he’s ring shopping.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever—” I stopped, recalling that he said he wanted a real date this weekend because he had a surprise for me. “Shit,” I muttered as I turned toward the steps.
“I heard that,” my mother sang out from behind me. Sometimes I missed those few quiet days post surgeries when she did nothing but sleep.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, and then turned toward her again before heading upstairs. “Hey, don’t forget—”
But my mother wasn’t paying attention to me anymore. She was staring into a small compact mirror she’d been carrying in her pocket lately. Rosie had been making her the cutest bandanas to cover her thinning hair. Today’s was emerald green and had tiny horses on it. She stared at herself, tugging the remaining thin curls of red out from the sides of the thing. Her eyes were watery. I started to speak, but she snapped the compact shut, tucked it into her pocket and looked up at me.