Blame it on Cupid (9 page)

“Cooper is the one,” Kevin reminded him, “who never does anything wrong. Who always gets the grades. Who never causes any trouble. So isn't it obvious why I use him, Dad? He's got pull with you.”

“Ah.” When Kicker was bored, these conversations could tend to go on forever. Not that Jack minded. He pushed the stop button on the movie and climbed to his feet. Might as well get some nuisance chores done. Still listening to Kicker's exuberant arguments, he wandered into the kitchen, sifted through the day's mail, carted a bag of trash to the garage, then opened the dishwasher. Only, damn. There were clean dishes in there. How come a guy could never open a dishwasher and find the thing empty? Ever?

“Although this time I've got some dirt on Cooper.”

“What kind of dirt?”

“Good dirt. My brother,” Kevin said dramatically, “has a girl.”

“Yeah?” That was interesting enough to make Jack stop with the chores for a minute.

“You know me. I play the field like you do, Dad. Why settle for one when there's no end of women out there? But Coop…I'll tell you, he's just not as smart as you and me. You'd think he'd pick someone shy like him, wouldn't you? That he'd go for a brain like he is? But, no. Instead she's a looker. Boobs out to here. A cheerleader.” Kevin sighed again, one of those man-to-man exhausted sighs. “She's
my
kind, not his. And who can figure women? I'm right here. I've got the charm. The moves. The looks—”

“Um, Kev? You're twins, remember? You have the same looks.”

“Yeah, but he's a
nerd.
He doesn't dress right, doesn't
move
right. Yet she's all over him. Anyways, back to the car. I was thinking, you know, used. Just not too used. And red…”

“Uh-huh….” Only half-listening, Jack opened the fridge for another beer. Just as he flipped the tab, he caught a flash of color in his kitchen window.

He froze, thinking it couldn't be her. Not again.

“So I said to the guys, I said like…”

“Uh-huh,” he said to his son, and bent closer to the window. Damn it and double damn it. It
was
her again. Sitting on the porch again. Her head in her hands again.

This time, though, he was butting out. No discussion, no guilt. If she wanted to sit outside bawling her eyes out, that was her problem.

He'd tried to be nice before, hadn't he? And look where it had gotten him. Kissed within an inch of his life, and by a woman who should have a
T
for Traumatic Trouble inked on her forehead. No one in hell could expect him to get involved again.

He was just going to finish talking to his son, go back to his Steven Seagal movie, put his feet up. Ignore her completely.

M
ERRY MUST HAVE HEARD
his back door slam, because he saw her head jerk up before he'd even stepped on the grass.

“God. Don't tell me you're going to make this into a regular thing.” He crossed the yard, stomping toward her with all the enthusiasm of a guy facing a root canal.

“Jack, you didn't have to come over. I'm not crying.”

He heard her, but he didn't pay any attention. It's not like he was going to believe a ditz like her until he saw for himself. Once he neared close enough to get a bird's-eye of her face, though, he wanted to kick himself. Of course it was dark, but even so there was no hint of puffiness in her face, no sign of recent tears in those big, eloquent eyes.

Now that he'd barged over here, though, he couldn't just take off. God knew, he could do rude. Hell, he
was
rude. But it was too damned awkward to just whip around and disappear back into his own house just because he hadn't caught her crying.

So he hesitated, examining the situation. It was warmer tonight, hardly balmy, but at least it wasn't freezing or windy. She had her hair all piled up on top of her head with one of those clips women used. Not like a hairstyle, more like a way to get it off her face, but unfortunately, it also revealed the long slender line of her neck, her clean profile, the straight nose, the pretty lips, that baby's-butt perfect skin.

She was wearing pink, a thick hooded sweatshirt and sweats, nothing that remotely revealed her figure in any explicit way. Yet she was built so lithe, so soft. So all-woman.

And the last thing in the universe he wanted was to keep noticing things about her, but he couldn't help but recognize the strain around her eyes. Maybe she hadn't been crying—but she wasn't sitting on the porch steps in the dark because she was a happy camper, either.

This time, though, he'd gotten smarter. He unzipped his jacket, handed her a Dixie cup and set one down for himself, then pulled out the Jack Daniels.

“I'd better not. Not in front of Charlie.”

“Do we see her anywhere around here?”

“But she's studying in her room. So she could come out any time.”

“Well, you go ahead and be a saint. But she's seen me and her dad take a drink now and then before, and I never noticed she suffered any trauma from it, so I don't have the same problem. I take it this wasn't a real easy day.”

“She got suspended for fighting.”

His jaw dropped.
“Charlene?”

Merry nodded. “Yeah. Only, as crazy it sounds, that actually turned into the easiest thing I tackled all day.” Abruptly she grabbed his flask and tipped it into the Dixie cup, filled it a good halfway, gulped it. Immediately she made like a bloodhound, trying to shake the fire out of her jowls—only she didn't have any jowls—and darn it, but he was forced to laugh.

“Whew. That's a little stronger than a glass of wine,” she said wryly.

“Works faster, too. So, about the fighting?” He still couldn't believe the quiet little squirt next door who'd followed her dad like a shadow would have initiated a fight with anyone.

“She got in trouble at school for the fighting. Obviously. But for the first time, we were getting along so well. I didn't scold her. I didn't see any reason to. She already knew she'd done something wrong. I just said that I'd like to be in her corner, and I'd appreciate it if she gave me a chance by telling me what happened.” Merry took another sip, did another jowl-shake as the fire hit her throat. “For a while it was so nice. She started opening up. Talking to me about things. Not a lot, just a little. And we were doing just fine until we started doing some things around the house. Damn it, Jack, the child has guns.
Guns!
”

Okay, obviously this was another conversation he was not going to be able to escape from quickly, but as Jack eased down next to her, he was careful to park a good foot distance away. And on second judgment, he edged even farther away, almost to the flower bed. Eighteen inches separation was safer. “I have a feeling where this is going…but she must have told you that her dad's guns aren't really weapons?”

“Of course they're weapons! What else is a gun but a weapon? And she's eleven years old, for Pete's sake. A baby!” She gulped down some more firewater, handed him the Dixie cup. “They were in his room. And all Charlie's stuff, of course, belongs to his daughter now. But she wanted to take them to her bedroom to keep them there. The last thing in the universe I wanted to do was argue with her when we were finally getting along, but
sheesh.
There's no way I could let her do that.”

“Well, I agree with you there. Last I remember, Charlie had them in a locked cabinet in the back of his closet. Where they belonged. But Merry, there's a long history there. They're not contemporary guns.”

“Like it matters whether they're old or new? They're
huge.
”

“They're called long rifles.”

“That's what I said. They're huge.”

He sighed. This was gonna be slow going, he feared. “This was all about a hobby Charlie developed with Charlene. It started because she didn't like American history in school. She thought it was boring. You know how it is around D.C.—there are a lot of historical reenactments and that kind of thing. So he took her to some, and she picked up a fascination for the old-fashioned, custom muzzle-loading rifles. They made two or three of them from scratch. Together. It's the kind of gun the pioneers had in the l700s—what they called a Kentucky rifle or a Pennsylvania rifle.”

“Guns killed Bambi's mother.” Her voice was still full out of outrage.

He sighed again. “Look, personally, I don't like the idea of guns in a house with kids, either. But this really was different for them. I don't think the guns actually shoot. They're just replicas—”

“They're still guns!” Suddenly he got a lot of arm waving. Punctuation, he guessed. “And then, you know what's in the garage?”

He wildly guessed. “His car?”

“His car is the least of it—although I sure don't know what to do with it. I can only drive one car, and I like my Mini. But the thing is—there's crud all over the place. Parts. Power tools. Greasy stuff. Oily stuff.”

“Ah. And this is upsetting…why?”

“Do you know what an Akino is? Or the VW Eco-Racer?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Well, I don't. Charlie wants an MX-5. I don't even know what an MX is. Or a TSX. Or how to put together a sound system—which I guess is what some of those parts are. Sound-system components. And then she starts in about dampers and antiroll bars—I suppose you know what those are, too.”

“Yeah,” he admitted.

“Well, I've never even heard that language before. I finally got her talking to me, for God's sake, and then I can't understand a single word. This whole thing—I feel like I got in a cross between Chaos and Cupid.”

“Say what? How did Cupid get into this conversation?”

“Because Cupid and Chaos were two of the oldest gods. You studied mythology back when, didn't you? Chaos was a contemporary of Cupid. Or Eros. I always got the Roman and Greek names mixed up. The point, though—”

“I'll be damned. You have a point?”

“The point is, when you go way back in mythology, Cupid and Chaos pretty much only had each other at the start of the world. So pretty naturally, they were always tangling it up. I'm not saying I believe in mythology, for heaven's sake, but as a metaphor it makes a lot of sense, don't you think? Hormones bring on chaos every time, and circumstances with a lot of chaos tend to bring on hormones. Sex and trouble just go together. Always have. Always will. And normally we think of that applying to adults—”

“Sex and trouble? That's for damn sure.”

“But in this case, I was thinking about Charlene. Because she's nearing puberty, so hormones are an issue for her, and because she and I are the same gender, I was so sure we'd be able to relate female to female, you know? Instead, it's just crazy. We can't seem to find any common ground.”

Jack lost track of the conversation, partly because initially it seemed like she was talking a bunch of female gobbledegook. And then because she wasn't. Hell, what she said was all too eerily true. There
was
a connection between chaos and hormones. She'd brought nothing but chaos since she arrived here. And he'd felt nothing but hormones.

Like now. He couldn't get a single reasonable thought to stick in his head, yet his concentration was flawless on her eyes. And her mouth. And the curve of her butt.

“Jack?”

Vaguely he realized that she'd gone down another conversational road and he'd completely lost track. Of the road, not of her. The curve of her butt really was damn near perfect. If a guy's mind had to degenerate into complete chaos, at least he had a good excuse.

“Have you ever met Charlene's mother?” Merry asked, apparently for the second time. “I knew when Charlie got divorced that it was a really tense situation. Something had to be really wrong for him to get sole custody. But even in an unfriendly situation, it seems odd that Charlene has yet to even mention her mom. I don't want to bring up another touchy or traumatic situation, but I'd like to know the role her mother has in all this.”

Okay, enough playing around. Jack tore his mind off her adorable butt and got serious. “To be honest, I just don't know anything about the mother. I'm pretty sure she never showed up here. I never caught any hint that she was active in Charlene's life in any way.” He thought back. “When Charlie first moved next door…well, he was divorced and I was fresh separated myself. We were both pretty raw on the subject of women. We just tended to talk about guy things.”

“But he must have said something over the years? To give you a clue what happened?”

“Well, I don't know the whole story, but I believe the breakup of the marriage was about her drug use. One time he mentioned the trigger for the final split—that he'd found her zoned out, alone with the baby, when he got home from work one time, and that was it. He took the kid, hit a lawyer, went for the full custody thing. He really didn't talk about it otherwise. He just wasn't one of those people who wanted to vent a whole blow-by-blow.”

“I know. I knew him right at the time of the divorce, but he still didn't fill in many details. I know that whatever made him fight for full custody was the same factor that made him worry what would happen to Charlene if he died. That there was no one he trusted to be guardian. He obviously didn't think of Charlene's mother as a guardian even in an emergency, at least back then. But…” Merry frowned. “That still doesn't answer the question of where
is
Charlene's mother now? I mean, I assume she's still alive somewhere?”

“Beats me. I don't know.”

Merry rubbed her forehead. “God. What if the woman suddenly shows up in Charlene's life?”

“Um, I'm not sure you need to borrow trouble, when you've already got a handful. Her suddenly appearing after all these years seems unlikely.” He hesitated. “If she did suddenly show up, though—the way Charlie always spoke about her—I'd guess it'd be because she smelled money in the estate.”

“That'd be my fear, too.” Merry leaned back on her elbows, gazing up at the dusty night sky. “But for right now, I'm just trying to understand Charlene. What feelings she might have stored about her absentee mother. Whether she remembers her. Whether those memories are about loss or fear or love or whatever, especially now that she's lost her dad now, too. I mean…this is the kind of thing I thought I'd be able to talk about with her. For darn sure, we're not going to have too many meaningful conversations about guns and roll bars.” She sighed. “You have kids, Jack?”

“Yup. Two. Twins, in fact, both fifteen.” He motioned to his place. “They grew up in that house. That's why I keep it, in fact. The place is way too big for one guy, but they still think of it as home. Their mother and I share custody, but that's not so easy to work out in real life. She moved, bought a condo on the other side of D.C., far enough away that they had to change schools. They don't seem to mind it as much as I do. They're here a lot, but the commuting distance is just enough to make getting together a little harder.”

“You think your ex-wife did that deliberately? Moved to make it harder for you to see them?”

He said dryly, “I don't believe my opinion or the kids' opinions were anywhere near her radar. She made the move because of her career. That's what she cares about.” He added, “Aw hell. I know that sounded like a put-down, and I hate when people talk down their exes. Forget I said anything. Truth is, it doesn't matter that much. The last thing fifteen-year-old boys want is to spend weekends with their parents. They've got their own social lives. So even if they lived closer, it's not as if I'd likely see that much more of them, anyway.”

She suddenly smiled at him—a smile that made him think of satin fantasies and sweaty sheets, moonlight and dangerous kisses. The first time he'd laid eyes on her, he'd had that kind of trouble, but what guy wouldn't? She was striking as hell. But where her looks were hopelessly riveting, her smiles were in the downright-lethal class. She invoked every bad idea he'd ever had and some he was just getting around to considering.