I Think I Love You (25 page)

He started to unfasten his pants, then pulled something out of his pocket. "Look what I have." He shook a pill bottle. "Something to make it better."

Dean had introduced her to nutmeg, so she wasn't surprised that he still used mood enhancers, but she didn't want anything to cloud her memory tonight. "Not this time."

"Oh, come on," he said, unscrewing the lid. "It's just a muscle relaxer." He pressed three pills into her hand.

She pulled her hand back and the pills fell to the floor. "I don't want it, Dean."

Frustration flashed across his handsome face; then he was all charm again. He removed three more pills from the bottle. "Come on, baby, you're all tense. Let's get happy. It'll be like old times."

Justine bit into her lip, wavering.

Chapter 19

If he's a fink, DO warn other women.

Mica walked into the bathroom in search of a glass of water to take a painkiller. Her neck ached, and the stress of seeing Dean had brought on a headache, too, so she felt her way by the soft glow of the night-light.

As far as her sisters went, she couldn't seem to do anything right. She'd hurt Regina's feelings when she turned down her request to give a quote for one of her authors, but how could she explain that she was on the verge of being fired? Better to say no to the only favor Regina had ever asked of her than to risk embarrassing her later.

And guilt plucked at her for telling Dean about their secret.

Her ears perked, because she could have sworn she heard his laugh. She looked over.

From Justine's room.

She pressed the water glass against the door leading from the bathroom into Justine's bedroom. Her worst fears were confirmed when she heard the murmur of Dean's voice. She closed her eyes against the thrust of pain to her chest. He had climbed the trellis to Justine's bedroom window, just as he used to do when they all lived at home. They thought no one had been the wiser, but Mica had heard them once through the bathroom door, making love, and figured it out.

Hurt washed over her in waves as she sagged against the door. Deep down, hadn't she known that Dean had never gotten over Justine? His gaze lingered on every redhead that crossed their path, and despite his steadfast support in Mica's career, he'd never really committed to her emotionally. In truth, he'd never even told her that he loved her. She would ask him occasionally, and he'd say, "You know I do, baby."

Tears ran freely down her cheeks. How stupid she'd been, allowing herself to believe that she had a future with Dean, that they might even have a family. He couldn't be faithful to one woman—

She inhaled sharply. Dean was, at this moment, preparing to give her sister a double shot of VD. Maybe she hadn't always done right by Justine, but she couldn't in good faith stand by and allow him to start a family-wide epidemic.

Taking a deep breath for courage, she composed herself, then knocked loudly on the door and walked in. "Don't do it, Justine!" She flipped on the light switch.

Dean turned, squinted, and had the grace to look chagrined as he zipped his pants. "Mica—I can explain."

Justine sprang up from the bed. "What are you
doing
in here? Get out!" She grabbed the white dress at the foot of the bed to cover herself.

Mica blinked—Justine's
wedding
gown? This was worse than she thought. She glared at Dean. "Have you no morals whatsoever?"

"We were just talking," he declared in a familiar naughty-boy voice.
That kiss didn't mean anything. I was only flirting. She came on to me.

"Mica," Justine said through gritted teeth. "Get out."

"He has VD."

That got her attention. "What?"

"That's a lie," he said.

"Then why am I taking antibiotics?"

He shrugged. "Maybe you've been screwing that agent of yours."

She raised her hand to slap him, but he grabbed her arm and leaned into her face. "Careful, I just might black your other eye."

Justine gasped. "He blacked your eye? I thought I blacked your eye."

Mica shook her head, wrenched her arm loose, and rubbed her wrist. She moved around him to stand next to Justine, who hurriedly stepped into the dress to cover her nudity. Mica gave her a quick zip; then Justine turned on Dean.

"You hit my sister and gave her VD, and you were about to sleep with me? You pig!" She was screaming now, eyes bulging, arms waving.
"I could kill you!"

Mica was frightened to death, but Dean was unfazed. In fact, he laughed. "Listen, girls, since you're both here..." He gestured toward the bed.

Her gasp of horror was masked by a loud knock at the door.

"Justine?" It was Regina, sounding concerned. "Justine, are you all right?"

Mica turned back in time to see Justine pull something from under the mattress.
A gun?
Pure instinct drove her forward. "Justine—no!" She grabbed for Justine's hands as she pointed the gun at Dean. They struggled and Dean dived for the floor. The gun fired and the discharge vibrated her arms to the shoulders. Plaster rained down on them.

"Justine?"

The doorknob rattled frantically. Mica saw rather than heard it, because her eardrums had surely been ruptured. She covered her clanging ears with her hands, relieved that the blast seemed to have dazed Justine enough to loosen her hold on the gun.

The door burst open and Mitchell Cooke charged in, followed by Regina. "What's going on?" Regina demanded.

"She tried to kill me," Dean said, scrambling to his feet.

Mitchell approached Justine cautiously, then took the gun from her shaking hands. She was crying.

"What did you do to her?" Regina asked Dean.

"Nothing," Dean said, holding up his hands. "She wanted me here. Look at her—she was waiting for me, for God's sake."

Justine choked on a sob and turned her back. She tugged on the rings, but they were stuck, frustrating her further. Mica's heart went out to her.

"I'll show Mr. Haviland out," Mitchell said, then shoved Dean toward the door. He held the gun by the trigger guard but gave the impression that he'd use it if he had to.

John limped down the hall toward them, followed by Cissy. "We heard a shot."

"Everyone's fine," Mitchell said. "Justine's gun misfired."

A kind half-truth.

John fisted his hands in the front of Dean's black T-shirt. "I told you to never come back here."

"You're pissed off at the wrong person," Dean said with an insolent smile. "It's your daughters who can't get enough of what I got." He looked back to where they stood in the bedroom. "All three of them, right Blue Eyes?"

John popped him in the jaw, and although Mitchell restrained Dean, Dean didn't attempt to retaliate; he only laughed.

Blue Eyes? Mica squinted—Regina was the only one with blue eyes. The implication of his words hit her and she gasped.

She and Justine turned to look at Regina and, to Mica's dismay, found her wearing a guilty flush.

Chapter 20

If the relationship isn't working, DO kill it quickly.

Regina emerged from the footpath into the clearing around the antiques shop, both perplexed and relieved to find no cars in the parking lot. After leaving their house last night, her father had probably gone to a bar to get blitzed. No doubt he was parked on the side of the road somewhere sleeping it off. Mitchell either hadn't yet arrived or didn't plan to after witnessing another chapter in the
Metcalf Family Guidebook to Broken Families.

She could write that book, all right, but who would want to read it?

She sighed, quelling tears that had hovered just below the surface since last night's nightmare of an incident. Justine in her jilted-bride garb with a smoking gun, Mica screaming about the communicable diseases that Dean had given her, Dean bragging that he had all three sisters wrapped around his finger.

An overstatement of gigantic proportions, at least where she was concerned, even though his words had stirred the guilt that she'd carried around for years. She'd known Dean was a cheating cad before the wedding. She was a sophomore in college, home on Christmas break, when he'd cornered her under a spray of mistletoe hanging in the shop. Over the years she'd become accustomed to Dean's flirting and teasing, but this time his hands had gone beyond platonic patting, and his mouth, beyond a brotherly buss.

"I've been dying to kiss you for years," he'd murmured. "Really kiss you."

She'd made a bad split-second decision, based on remnants of the hormonal crush of a fourteen-year-old and the ridiculous justification that they were, after all, standing under mistletoe. So she'd kissed him back, and liked it. He had crushed her against him to let her know where his intentions lay. And she hated to think what might have happened if her father hadn't suddenly appeared.

Regina closed her eyes—she would never forget the look on John's face. The accusation, the shame, that she would betray her own sister. But his disappointment in her had been nothing compared to her disappointment in herself. For the remainder of the holiday break, her father had avoided her, and she had avoided Justine. When Dean had sought her out again, she had threatened to tell Justine if he didn't stop.

"You won't tell," he'd said with infuriating confidence. "Because you wouldn't dare cause trouble, Regina."

She'd hated him for being right—she wouldn't burst Justine's bubble of happiness. So she'd believed Dean's excuse that he'd slipped because he was feeling pressured to set a date for the wedding, and she'd returned to school. And, from that point on, had endeavored not to be alone with Dean.

And because she'd kept her cowardly mouth shut, look at how their lives had unfolded.

Even if you'd told her, Justine wouldn't have believed you
, her mind whispered.

Maybe not, but at least when Justine read that thoughtless note pinned to her wedding gown, she would've had some forewarning; she wouldn't have looked as if she'd been hit by a truck.

God, what a horrific day that had been—Regina had awakened with a heavy heart, fearing that Justine was making a big mistake by marrying Dean but feeling powerless to stop it. She had offered to go with Justine early to the church to get ready—Mica wanted to sleep in and come later with their parents. When John and Cissy had shown up alone, Regina had the first niggling that something was wrong. And when Dean's best man had shown up alone, her suspicions compounded. She'd seen the looks Mica had cast in Dean's direction when she thought no one was looking—Regina recognized those looks from her own misplaced fantasies about Dean, the man they'd grown up idolizing. Still, she had naively worried that Dean and Mica had spent the night drinking and had overslept. Even in her worst nightmare, she hadn't imagined that they'd skipped town together. When Justine had collapsed in her arms, she'd been so angry at herself, she could barely face her sister and, in hindsight, hadn't been nearly as supportive as she could've been.

A car drove by on the road in front of the antiques shop, breaking into her troubled thoughts. She shook herself, reminded of her wide-eyed resolve during the night to focus on the things she could control, such as finishing the appraisal work with Mitchell.

And Mitchell... she groaned. What a mess that had turned out to be. As he himself had pointed out, she had terrible taste in men.

The items designated for the dump were sitting on the ground by the back door—decrepit pieces of furniture, industrial-sized bags of trash, rolls of ruined carpet. A brown squirrel poked its twitching head out of one of the bags, and she smiled for what felt like the first time in days. They would all get through this—the alternative was unthinkable.

She unlocked the back door and entered, flipping on lights. The place was starting to look a little forlorn in its orderliness, everything stacked together and lined up, instead of the usual welcoming sprawl. They had made remarkable progress in a short time. She looked around and sighed—in a few weeks, M&G Antiquities would be gone, and so would M&G, Metcalf and Gilbert. Her parents, as a result of the story about the girls' witnessing Lyla's murder, and the disturbance over Dean, had grown even farther apart. The few times they were together, they exchanged furtive whispers and hateful glares, as if they blamed each other for what was happening. Regina hadn't had time to think of a way to get them together, to get them talking and remembering how much they needed each other.