I’d just reached the foyer and was shooting imaginary bullets at Xavier’s giant portrait when I heard the snuffling. It was a faintly strangled sound, and as easily recognizable as the beating of my heart. I found Olivia standing at the large leaded windows overlooking the side lawns, her body in silhouette, her curves and curls and color mocking the severe lines of the cold glass panes. Her arms were wrapped around her core like she was holding herself together…and had been, I thought, for a long while. My heart dipped at the fragile, if stunning, picture she made, and I descended quickly into the sunken living room. I knew she heard me; her head tilted, but she didn’t turn.
“Hey,” I said softly, laying a hand on her shoulder. “Where’s the One Name Wonder?”
“Outside,” Olivia sniffled, and I knew it was bad when she didn’t insist I call Cher by her proper name. “Waiting in the car.”
“You’re going to be late for high tea,” I said, turning her toward me and wrapping my arms around her. All the latent maternal instincts I’d never wanted scuttled forward whenever I saw my sister with tears in her eyes. Sure, I teased her about things we both knew didn’t matter, but if anything truly touched her heart, my hackles went up like a she-wolf protecting her cub.
“Are you sure we can’t get together tonight?” she asked, looking down into my eyes with her own imploring ones. We were usually the same height, but she was teetering on four-inch Manolos. “I really want to spend some time with you.”
“I have a date,” I said quietly, and watched her face fall. “With Ben.”
She clasped her hands together with a surprised cry of delight, and her teary eyes suddenly shone with something more. “Oh, Joanna!”
“Don’t make too much of it,” I said, but even I was having a hard time keeping the excitement from my voice. “It’s just a date.”
“But it’s Ben. Benjamin Traina,” she sighed heavily, and crossed her hands over her heart. “I always knew you two were meant for one another. Oh, you have to tell me everything!”
“I will,” I promised. “Tomorrow.”
“Tonight,” she insisted, squeezing me.
“Olivia…” I tried to make my voice firm, but her excitement was contagious. Besides, she was the only one who knew, who could know, what this meant to me. “All right. I’ll stop by your place around eleven-thirty or so. We should be finished by then.”
“I’ll give you your gift then too, though it can’t compete with Ben Traina!”
What could? I thought, pulling from her grasp. I smoothed her hair from her face and smiled. “You should go clean up. You’ll be a mess for tea time.”
She nodded but didn’t move. “Are you okay?”
I shrugged. “I’m used to it.” And then, because I knew she needed to believe it, I forced a bright smile. “Really. I’m fine.”
Another nod, then she squeezed my hand before we both turned toward the door. We couldn’t talk in Xavier’s house. Nothing happened within these walls that he didn’t somehow find out about. Yet Olivia surprised me. As we exited the foyer into a bright winter day and I turned in the opposite direction of Cher’s waiting Corvette, Olivia grasped my forearm, her grip unusually strong.
“You’re the only family I truly have left,” she said, looking me hard in the eye. “Without you, I’d probably believe all the things they say.”
I didn’t have to ask who she meant. People who wrote magazine articles about her but never dreamed of conversing with her. People who looked her in the chest rather than the eye. People who forgot there was a person beneath all the beauty and gloss, and, yes, that included Xavier.
“Olivia Archer,” I said, taking her hands in mine, “you are all the things they say, and more. You’re beautiful, kind, intelligent, and strong. You’re true and you’re loyal, and even though you possess a baffling penchant for mud baths”—she choked out a strangled laugh at that—“you are also my sister. Beneath the high sheen of your society face lies a solid core of strength, and a spirit stronger than I’ll ever possess. Touch that in your mind when you begin to forget, okay?”
She nodded, teary, and I let her go before we both started blubbering on Xavier’s palatial steps. I wouldn’t give him the pleasure. Still, halfway down the steps I turned. “And Olivia?”
She paused, and I raised my voice so it would carry to her, Cher, and whatever listening devices might be lying in the shrubbery. “Blood sister or not, I’ll never, ever leave you.”
And I wouldn’t. She was all I had left now too.
5
Ben Traina forgot nothing. The Italian restaurant was the same place he’d taken me on our first date, years earlier, in a borrowed pickup truck and a suit that didn’t quite fit. This time his clothes did fit—a snug pair of jeans that made me look twice, and a worn leather jacket that called for a third glance—and the vehicle was his own, though still a four-wheel drive and still souped to the nines. The restaurant had hardly changed at all.
Taverna Deliziosa was an intimate Italian-American hole-in-the-wall that lived up to its name. The dual scents of Italian sausage and fresh bread greeted us at the door, and Sinatra wafted from invisible speakers. The dining area was simply one large room with heavy velvet curtains to soften the corners, and photos of Italian sports and movie stars adorning the crumbling brick walls. A mahogany bar lined the opposite side of the room, its mirror reflecting us back on ourselves, and its edges adorned with greenery, grapes, and old Chianti bottles. Individual tables sported red-and-white checkered cloths, and were topped with atmospheric gold hurricane lamps that did little to brighten the room.
There were a fistful of couples dining tonight, and a Mormon family with an absolute brood of children had taken up the long trestle in the corner. Only one man was alone, his back to us as he sat hunched at the bar. I studied his face through the bartender’s mirror but saw nothing to alarm me. A retiree probably; older, graying, and harmless looking enough, but I still maneuvered so my back was to the wall and the scope of the entire room available to me. If Ben noticed, he didn’t let on.
“The waiter knows you by name,” I said after a bottle of Panna and a bread basket had been placed in front of us.
Ben shrugged out of his jacket. He was wearing a shortsleeved, collared shirt, and it moved nicely with his body. I looked up, trying to focus on his words, but his lips were equally distracting. “They keep cop hours and it’s on the way home.”
He said nothing about it being the setting for our first date, so neither did I.
“Seems I’m a little overdressed, though,” I said, motioning down. I’d worn slacks in concession to the blade sheaths fastened at my boot and lower back, but had chosen a bright coral top to stand out against the contrasting black, its neck draping nearly to my navel. A short battle with double-sided tape had ensured it concealed all the right spots, while a matching purse easily concealed my aluminum kubotan, only six inches long. I could have the blunt steel barrel in my hand in one quick move. I might be paranoid, but I was fashionably paranoid.
“That’s all right,” Ben said, leaning his elbows on the table. “I’m enjoying looking at you again, Jo-Jo.”
I blushed, such a novel reaction for me that I was forced to look away.
We’d seen each other just once after the attack. I’d just been discharged from the hospital, and it was a long enough period for the bruises to have faded from my skin but short enough that neither of us had yet become the people we were today. I didn’t talk much back then—didn’t see or think or taste or feel much either—and I’d been too afraid to call him or to meet, knowing that the sweetness of the moment—being pierced beneath that concerned gaze as he remembered how I’d felt beneath him—was the same thing that would make it bitter.