Authors: Maureen Child
“Won’t take much figuring,” she muttered and ignored a tourist who walked a wide berth around the woman standing on the sidewalk talking to herself.
Scowling, Sam thought that if Jackson was right,
then she and Jeff were about to get into a good old-fashioned war. And she couldn’t help thinking that it was generally the innocent bystanders—in this case, Emma—who ended up getting hurt.
But she’d do all she could to keep from dragging her daughter into the middle of this. She didn’t want Emma put in the position of having to choose sides. No kid should have to do that. That didn’t mean, though, that Sam was willing to roll over and play dead.
She’d fight if she had to. And if she fought, dammit, she’d
win
. After all, she only wanted to share in bringing up her daughter.
Wouldn’t any mother want that?
Head pounding, mind spinning, she told herself she should head back to the job site. But her stomach was in knots and her nerves were skittering like live electrical wires downed after a storm. No point in facing Emma again until she was calmer. Though how she was supposed to stay calm when thinking about going into a custody battle with a man who had more money than God was something she hadn’t really figured out yet.
Besides, with Jo, Mike, and Papa, not to mention Grace, all there, the little girl was in good hands.
Which meant Sam could take advantage of being in town.
Chandler was a small town by anyone’s standards.
Small enough so that you couldn’t walk down Main Street without having to stop and chat every few steps. But it was also big enough that you weren’t forced to drive into Monterey to shop for groceries. Small enough to escape the notice of a chain coffeehouse like Starbucks—but big enough, thank God, to support the Leaf and Bean.
Glancing quickly to her right and left, Sam jumped off the curb and sprinted across Main Street, darting between the cars stopped at the light. She waved to Joe Hannigan, sitting in his truck, then grinned at Julie Davis as she stepped out of the bakery, carrying a box that undoubtedly held a birthday cake for her son Justin.
Everything was so . . . normal.
The sidewalks were bustling and shopkeepers’ doors stood wide open in invitation to the tourists and their wallets. Sam smiled as she did a little bobbing and weaving between the people slowly meandering along the sidewalk.
Every year, the tourists flocked to town to take in the harbor and the art galleries and the eclectic little shops selling everything from pot holders stamped “California” to tarot cards and incense. The crowds were thick and noisy and Sam loved it. Made her feel as if she were in the middle of things. And today, the rush of people took her mind off—however briefly—her own problems.
Sam pushed open the door to the Leaf and Bean and paused on the threshold to linger over the fragrant aromas that reached out for her. Coffee. Good, rich coffee. And on top of that
amazing
scent came waves of tantalizing aromas . . . apples, blueberries, and oh, dear God,
cinnamon rolls
.
Polished wood gleamed in the sunlight streaming through the wide front windows. From the overhead beams, on silver chains, hung shining copper planters and baskets bursting with ferns and ivy—enough to start a halfway decent rain forest. The shop felt cozy, welcoming, and for Sam, just what she needed.
“Just going to stand there drooling?”
Sam grinned. She stepped all the way inside, closing the door behind her. Ignoring the scattering of people at the dozen or more small round tables, she kept her gaze on the blond woman smiling at her. Walking across the highly polished wood floorboards, she followed her nose toward the glass cases filled with muffins, rolls, bagels, and oh my, freshly made biscotti. Slapping one hand on the countertop, Sam said, “Stevie. Be a hero. One latte and a cinnamon roll before I fold up and perish.”
“Easily done.” Stevie Ryan Candellano finished wiping the already gleaming wood countertop, then set the cloth under the counter before turning toward the espresso machine. “Hey, I hear your daughter’s in town.”
Not surprising, Sam thought. No secret stayed that way in Chandler for long. Besides, her friends knew the whole story. Knew about how Sam had given up her daughter and knew the pain she’d been living with ever since.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “She’s great. Really.”
“So when do we get to meet her?”
“Soon. I promise. I’ll bring her in next weekend for some of your special hot chocolate.”
“Good.” The steamer hissed and spat as Stevie heated the milk until the surface of it frothed like a cloud.
“So how’s Beth doing?”
“Hanging in,” Stevie said with a half-shrug. “Mama’s been over at Beth and Tony’s nearly every day since the baby was born. I think Beth’s ready for a little alone time.”
Mama Candellano loved nothing more than her family, and with a brand-new grandson, she could hardly be expected to keep her distance.
“Well, Tasha’s due next month,” Sam pointed out. In fact, the whole Candellano family seemed to be having a population explosion. “Maybe that’ll take the heat off.”
“Off Beth and onto Tasha. Only fair.” Stevie pulled the stainless-steel milk jug free, then wiped down the twin steamer rods with a clean cloth. As she poured the hot milk into a tall cardboard cup, then spooned a layer of foam on top, Stevie said, “Hey, tell Mike I need her to take a look at the sink here in the shop for me.”
“She’s dealing with Grace. Trust me, your sink’ll be a vacation.”
“I saw the summer people are back.”
“Oh yeah, hip deep in goats over there.” Sam reached for her coffee, then slid a sleeve over the bottom of it. “Grace is making Jo nuts, Mike’s ready to mutiny over a purple granite counter, and Papa’s useless, he just keeps grinning at Emma.”
“Situation normal, then.” Stevie laughed.
“Pretty much, and as far as I’m concerned, the world will be right again with a latte and one of your cinnamon rolls.”
“Girl,” Stevie said, “you’re way too easy to please.”
“Not how I remember it.”
A deep voice, directly behind her.
The smile on Sam’s face froze.
The world went still and her blood did a wild race through her veins in celebration. Dammit.
There went a perfectly good coffee break.
Turning, she looked right into a pair of dark blue
eyes and wondered why she hadn’t sensed his presence. “Jeff.”
“Sam.” Everything in him tightened up and Jeff didn’t know how the hell to stop it. She’d always had that effect on him and it was damned annoying to admit that she still had the ability to turn his hormones inside out. Although that was all it was, he reassured himself. Hormones. A purely chemical reaction.
Damned irritating.
“What’re you doing here?” she asked.
“Same as you. Coffee.”
“I
meant
what’re you doing
here
? In Chandler. Aren’t you supposed to be in San Francisco?”
“I came back early.” Didn’t really cover it, he thought. He’d raced out of the city as soon as he could manage it. He’d left behind a fiancée who was very quietly, very properly, pissed as hell and a backlog of work that had his secretary considering hiring a hit man.
And it didn’t seem to matter.
He’d told himself he was rushing back to be with Emma. But she was only part of the reason. No matter what kind of bastard it made him, Jeff knew that for him, the real draw in Chandler was still Sam Marconi.
“You never should have let her on the roof.”
“Will you shut up already?” Mike shot Jo a quick, uneasy glance. “She’s fine. No harm done.”
“Yeah.” Jo snorted. “
She’s
fine.
You
won’t be, as soon as Emma tells her mother. That happens and we’re—I mean
you’re
—dead meat.”
Sunlight glanced off Jo’s sunglasses and seemed to bounce right into Mike’s eyes. Like she didn’t already have a headache, thanks very much. Her stomach was still doing a roll and spin and her palms were still sweaty. Not that she was nervous or anything. Hell, no. Just that the summer heat had really been beating down on them, practically melting the roof they were sitting on.
The cast-iron weather vane—in the shape of Merlin, no less—stood stock-still atop the conical roof of the tower room, just twenty feet from them. No wind. No air. And the wide sweep of blue sky overhead didn’t harbor the hope of a single cloud. The first of July had arrived and was already making them wish for fall and cooler weather.
But it wasn’t the heat making her flinch. Mike’s shoulders twitched as if she could already feel Sam’s glare boring into her bones like a slow-moving bullet,
determined to eke out as much pain as possible. It wouldn’t be pretty. But hell, she could outfight Sam. And if it came down to it, she was pretty sure she could
outrun
her, as well. But just to get into the right frame of mind, she started using her best arguments. The ones she’d use on Sam as soon as she had to.
“What’s the big deal? We went on roofs when
we
were her age.”
Jo flipped her hammer into the air and caught the handle as it came down again. Keeping one eye on it and the other on Mike, she did it again. The solid smack of wood against flesh sounded like a heartbeat.
“Yeah, but
we
had Papa watching over us. Not
you
.”
Mike thought about snatching the hammer on its next trip through the air and giving her sister a thump with it. But then Jo would just retaliate and Mike really didn’t want to meet her date that night with a black eye. “You were up here, too, you know.”
“Not a chance,” Jo said, laughing, shaking her head. “You’re not pinning this one on me.”
“You’re the oldest.”
“That only worked when Mama pulled it. Not gonna help you this time.”
“That’s very nice. Thank you for your support.”
“Hey, you’ve got my support,” Jo assured her. “I’ll even beg Sam not to kill you.” Grabbing the hammer again, she took a good grip on it, positioned one of the roofing nails over a forest-green shingle and hammered it home. “After all, she kills you, and I end up having to deal with that granite counter.”
“Love you, too,” Mike sneered.
Jo laughed shortly, shook her head, and shifted around until she was sitting, knees drawn up, on the
sharp incline of the roof. Arms wrapped around her legs, she dangled the hammer as she watched Mike. “You screw up, you pay. It’s the Marconi way.”
True enough. Mama and Papa had never minded their girls making mistakes. But they had expected them to take the consequences without an inordinate amount of bitching. But this was one session Mike would just as soon pass up. Hell, Sam hadn’t been gone a half hour when her long-lost daughter had taken a nosedive off the roof.
Oh yeah. That was gonna go over
real
big.
“Emma had a great time,” Mike argued, but that sounded weak, even to her own ears. Sam wouldn’t care if her little girl was having fun or not. She’d only care that she’d taken a header off the roof.
“Yeah,” Jo said, as if reading her mind, “until she fell.”
Mike winced. “She had a life rope on, didn’t she?” Thank God, she added silently, blessing the sturdy belt shaped like an infant’s seat on a swing set that Emma had worn. She didn’t even want to consider what might have happened without the safety precautions. Nope. Don’t think about it.
“No harm, no foul.” That heavy-duty seat had provided Emma with an E ticket ride and she didn’t even have a bruise to show for it.
Although Mike was pretty sure she herself would be seeing Emma take that tumble off the edge for a long, long time. Her dreams would be full of it. And she’d relive over and over again her own wild dash to the edge of the roof only to look down into Emma’s laughing eyes as the little girl swung like an auburn-haired pendulum at the end of the rope.
The kid had treated it like a big game.
“Christ,” she admitted, slapping one hand to her chest, where she could feel her heart still doing a fast dance. “She scared the shit out of me.”
Jo nodded, pulled off her sunglasses, and stuck one arm of them into the bib of the denim apron she wore over her work shirt. “Ditto.”
Mike figured she’d lost at least ten years off her life in ten seconds flat. She only hoped they’d turn out to be old, ugly years. She didn’t want to miss any fun, after all.
“Kid’s amazing,” Jo muttered, shaking her head and smiling now as she remembered how Emma’d wanted to go up on the roof and do it all again. “She may look just like Sam but she’s got a lot of you in her.”
“Yeah?” Mike grinned.
“Not so sure that’s a compliment.” Although it was. Mike might have been the baby of the family, but she’d always had more balls than the other two put together. If she wanted something, she went after it. Didn’t always turn out great, but she’d never had to sit and wonder, what if? Of course, if she ever said that to Mike, there’d be no living with her.
“Sure it is,” Mike said, her grin only getting broader. “You’re nuts about me.”
“Or just nuts.”
“Goes without saying.” Mike shrugged. “You’re a Marconi.”
“True.” Jo shifted her gaze from Mike to the crowded yard below them. The summer people were still busy in the goat house, some of the crew were lazing about under the trees taking a break, and Papa and
Grace were huddled together—no doubt talking about the job.
She frowned.
Couldn’t be a pleasant conversation. Not judging by the way Grace’s chin jutted out or how fast words were tumbling out of her mouth. Crap.
“What’s wrong?”
Jo pointed. “Look down there. Papa and Grace are getting into it, which can only mean—”
“Crap.” Mike squinted into the afternoon sunlight as she stared at the couple standing to one side of the bustling crowd. “Think she’s changing her mind about the job again?”
“I don’t know,” Jo said thoughtfully, studying her father and Grace as if she were watching a foreign movie with subtitles she couldn’t quite read. “But it can’t be a good . . .” Her voice trailed off as she caught a glimpse of something else. “Oh, for God’s sake.”
“What now?” Mike scanned the crowd below. She lifted one hand to block the sun.