“Ha! You’re just jealous.” She was out front with the boys, passing out cigarettes and copies of the Trib with her byline above the fold, as delighted with herself as Jeremiah had been at twenty-six. “We’ve got not one but two rich boys, we’ve got a doting rich grandma with a gun, we’ve got a hired thug, and we’ve got you, Tabak.” That last she clearly loved. “A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter tackling a two-hundred-twenty-pound security expert in Leonardo Pascarelli’s media room. Damned good thing you were heroic or your reputation would be shit right now. You watch, it’ll be a TV movie.”
“Don’t forget the publicist,” he said.
“I’m not. She’s the innocent, the ordinary person caught up in extraordinary circumstances with her unique set of clients. A jazz-playing Apollo astronaut. A mutt. Then there’s the caterer.”
“Griffen Welles.”
She’d entered the kitchen to finish cleaning up and had found her boyfriend shot and bleeding, a battered Croc holding him, a white-faced best friend, and Jeremiah holding a gun on a near-catatonic elderly socialite and a well-known security expert. The police and ambulance were en route. And so were the Tiernays. Unwilling to leave his brother’s side, Croc had asked for a portable phone and called them himself.
“It’s a great story,” Helen said with a satisfied sigh. Forty-eight hours after it was over, and she still hadn’t let it go. “Of course, I knew it would be. That’s why I kept giving you the dish and letting you do the running around. I’m too old for that shit.”
Sal, Bennie, and Al passed around a book of matches and watched her, transfixed. Sal looked particularly smitten. Jeremiah just shook his head.
Helen grinned at him. “God, this feels good. The kids’re going to be all right, you know. Deegan and Kermit. Their folks got with the program in the end. Momma was a little late on the upswing, but she’s at the hospital round the clock, had Kermit moved into the main house. They’re making the younger boy take responsibility for what he did, but they’re right there with him.”
“He got their attention,” Jeremiah said.
“That he did. Atwood’s only talking to her lawyers, but the way I see it, she was raised by disengaged parents, then raised her own daughter that way. The generational cascade at work. The triumph of form over substance.” She flicked her half-smoked cigarette onto the porch and ground it out with her foot; the guys, Jeremiah knew, would do likewise. “You figure out what to do about your blonde?”
He rolled up on his feet. He’d spent last night at his apartment; he’d needed the space, Mollie had needed the space, and his reptiles needed to know he was still alive. Plus, Bennie, Al, and Sal had wanted details. They’d left a message on his voice mail-it was Sal who figured out how to use it-saying they were renting a car and driving up to Palm Beach if he didn’t get down there. Over bagels and coffee and a little whittling on the porch that morning, Jeremiah gave them details, and they gave him advice. Unsolicited advice. It had to do with marriage, commitment, kids, and having a life. And a dog. Bennie thought he should get rid of the reptiles and get a dog. A beagle would be good.
Then Helen had arrived.
He regarded her with an affection that even a month ago he would have thought impossible. “Yes,” he told her, “I most certainly know what to do about my blonde.”
Mollie didn’t know how they did it. Busy musicians all, her parents, her sister, and Leonardo all managed to arrive at the West Palm Beach Airport within an hour of each other. They brought their instruments, and tons of unnecessary clothes because they hadn’t taken the time to think about what they really needed, and they wanted to hear everything, the whole story, all over again, from start to finish. It was a transparent show of support that Mollie appreciated.
They were out back, now, with Griffen Welles and Chet and a few other of her clients, all making sure she was okay, that she didn’t feel alone and isolated in her new home. She’d wandered out front to get her bearings.
A battered brown truck rattled to a stop in front of Leonardo’s driveway. Her heart skipped a beat when Jeremiah climbed out and sauntered around front, then leaned against the hood. “Going to let me in?”
“We had the security codes changed, just in case.”
“Ah. Is this a hint?”
He knew it wasn’t. His tone, his bearing, even his straight line of a mouth told her he knew exactly how hard she’d fallen for him this time. She opened the gates, and he left his truck where it was, just walked on in and slid his arms around her, kissed her.
Stopped cold.
“What the hell is that?”
Mollie listened a moment. “ ‘The Volga Boatmen,’ I think.”
“A recording?”
“Leonardo Pascarelli, Bart and Amy Lavender, Cecily Lavender, and Chet Farnsworth. I think Griffen might be singing, too.”
He frowned. “Your family’s here?”
“Uh-huh. They called en route. That’s an improvement, you know. Usually they don’t call at all.”
“Flakes,” he said.
She laughed. “They’ll never change, you know. They are what they are.”
His arms tightened around her. “We’re fortunate, Mollie. Very fortunate. You have your crazy family, and I have my father. Croc and Deegan…I don’t know. I wouldn’t have wanted to grow up like that.”
“How is Croc?”
“Last I saw, he was eating a plate of french fries with way too much ketchup out at his parents’ pool. He’ll be okay. He’s got a lot to work out.”
“And you’ll be there helping him.”
“He lied to me, and he’s no prize. Harvard, a damned trust fund baby. But yeah, I’ll be there.” He stared out toward the backyard, the singing growing louder and more boisterous with every measure. “You know, I have a feeling that lot out there won’t care if we keep a lizard on the kitchen table.”
“We, huh?”
He grinned at her. “You want your own lizard? I’m of the what’s-mine-is-yours school. If I get Leonardo Pascarelli and your daffy family, you get my lizard.”
Her stomach fluttered, her head spun. It was the heat, the trauma of the past days, the proximity of this man she’d loved too hard, too long. Yet she didn’t give away her turmoil of feelings. “What about your family?”
“My mother died when I was twelve. My father never remarried and never will. I used to see that as depressing, as an unwillingness to move on with his life, but now I don’t. He’s happy. He’s grateful for the years they had.”
“But his experience made you afraid to commit yourself to anyone.”
“But I did anyway,” he said, his mouth meeting hers briefly, a promise. “I love you, Mollie. I’ve loved you for a long, long time. I was just too stupid to see it until now. I’m like my father, Mollie. There’s only one woman for me. When you know that, in your gut, and yet when you’ve seen life’s unfairness-” He paused, and she could see him searching for the right words. “Ten years ago I just thought I was a romantic fool.”
“You still are, Tabak, and you’re the one for me.” She kissed him softly. “You always have been.”
“Even when you were telling me to rot in hell?”
“Even then.”
He smiled. “Shall we go tell your family?”
“They won’t be surprised.”
“They see it coming, do they?”
“No. They’re just never surprised. They’ll just say, ‘Oh, wonderful, then come, sit, and sing along with us.’ ”
“I can’t sing.”
“You can’t?” She grinned, tucked her hand into his. “Now that will surprise them.”
Carla Neggers
