“I would hardly call your stuff obscure,” Erin countered hotly. “It’s original and beautiful, and according to this guy, in certain circles, it’s getting famous. Your pieces are hot investments. They acquire value incredibly fast. This Janos told me one of the Deadly Beauty spray hairclips sold at auction for triple what the original owner paid for it, which was no small sum to begin with. If I remember your prices correctly.”
“Janos?” Tam narrowed her eyes. “Never heard of the guy.”
Erin dug out a business card and handed it across the table to Tam. “Valery Janos. He says he has a bunch of interested buyers. He’d like to arrange a private showing. His consulting business hunts objects for people who have too much money and don’t know what to do with it, if I understand correctly. Wish fulfillment, that kind of thing.”
Tam studied the card. “Capriccio Consulting,” she murmured. “Valery Janos. Not an Italian name. Rome, huh? I’ll check him out.”
“I’m sure you will,” Erin murmured. “I sure did.”
The odd note in her voice made Tam look up abruptly from the card. There was a sparkle in her eye and a sly curve to her smile that put Tam on alert. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Erin bit her lip and dropped her gaze coyly. “Oh, I don’t know. He just so happens to be insanely, unbelievably gorgeous.”
“Oh, really?” Tam said slowly.
Erin’s shrug was elaborately casual. “Breathtaking.”
“Bet you didn’t mention that detail to Connor,” Tam said.
Erin rolled her eyes. “What, you think I’m stupid?”
Tam waited for a beat. “Tempted?” she asked sweetly.
Erin’s brow creased in a thoughtful frown. Tension shivered for a moment in the air. Erin broke it with a burst of whispery laughter.
“Um, no,” she said demurely. “Not in the least. I noticed him, of course. I’d have to be dead not to. But I’ve got my hands full, on every level, in the best way possible.” She left a pause. “So…don’t worry.”
“Why the hell should I worry?” Tam snapped back. “What the hell business is it of mine?”
Erin lifted an eyebrow. Tam turned away. The other woman’s occasional razor-sharp perception bothered her. She didn’t like anyone’s gaze to pierce that deep. Nor was she interested in examining why it rattled her to think of Erin’s bond with Connor being threatened.
It actually made her…well, disquieted. Kind of angry.
Please. That was deadly stupid. Alarming, too. It meant she was needing something she couldn’t have. Relying on things that were unreliable by their very nature. Desire, trust, honor. Love. Hah. When a woman started pinning her already shaky psychological security on that kind of crap, she might as well just open her veins and be done with it.
“Truth is, I wasn’t thinking of this Janos for me,” Erin went on. “I was thinking about you.”
“Me?” Shock was replaced by disbelief. The tension in Tam’s chest was released with a harsh bark of laughter. “Oh, please. As-fucking-if.”
“Six four, huge shoulders, barrel chest, chiseled cheekbones, perfect jaw,” Erin said dreamily. “Olive skin, great eyebrows, sexy little accent. Nice cologne, and I’m not even a fan of man scents. Fathomless, liquid black eyes with long, inky lashes. Beautiful, big, manly hands. Deep, mellow voice. Tight ass. Long legs. Eight hundred dollar shoes.”
Tam snorted. “You should have gone into advertising. You’d be richer. All I need right now is some spoiled Eurotrash clotheshorse to waste my time.”
Erin looked hurt. “Hey. All I said was that he was handsome and charming. Hardly a basis upon which to automatically despise him.”
“He’s a man, isn’t he? If he’s pretty, he’ll expect to be worshipped. Who has the energy to kneel down and lick some man’s swollen ego?”
“Hmm.” Erin looked quizzical. “I don’t know. Connor’s handsome, and he doesn’t expect to be worshipped. Except when he…ah, well, never mind.” She subsided, a blush rising up on her face.
Oh, please. The innocent, pink-cheeked milkmaid routine made Tam’s teeth hurt.
“I was thinking, you don’t have a date for Nick and Becca’s wedding, do you?” Erin said. “Why not ask this guy if he’s free on—”
“Erin. You are kidding, aren’t you?” Tam demanded. “Because if you aren’t, you’re scaring me.”
Erin looked at her with that sharp, narrow gaze that Tam disliked intensely. “There hasn’t been anyone for you since…” Her voice trailed off, but they both heard the name. It echoed through their worst nightmares, linking them together.
Kurt Novak.
The sharp, instinctive gesture Tam made to ward off evil surprised her. One of her great-grandmother’s tics. One of the few things she remembered about the old woman. She’d died when Tam was small.
Strange. The man was stone dead, after all. No doubts about it. She’d seen pretty much every last drop of his heart’s blood decorating the walls, thanks to Erin’s amazing courage under fire. Which continued to surprise her years later. Girl nerds. You never knew.
“You can’t let him poison that for you forever.” There was a tight, vibrating intensity in Erin’s voice. “It’s just not right.”
Brittle laughter would have been the best response, but Tam’s chest was screwed too tight to move. “There is no ‘that’ for me, Erin.”
“But you can’t just shut it off like a faucet and—”
“I can do whatever the fuck I want. My choice.”
The edge in Tam’s voice put a hot flush of hurt embarrassment on Erin’s face. She sprang up and turned her back, sipping her coffee as she stared out the window into the forest. The children’s laughter and Rosalia’s low voice murmuring encouragements in Portuguese floated in.
Tam stared into her coffee. Angry for feeling guilty. Guilty for feeling angry. What a crock of pointless shit this was. Who needed it.
“I guess I should go.” Erin’s voice was tight. “It’s almost naptime for Kev, and I should take advantage of—”
“Why do you put up with me, Erin?” Tam asked abruptly.
Erin was startled into turning. “Huh?”
“I’m a rude, abrasive bitch. That’s not likely to change, ever,” Tam said, her voice stony. “So why? Why do you bother?”
Erin opened and closed her mouth a few times. “I—I—”
“Is it pity? Because I don’t need pity.”
“You certainly don’t deserve it,” Erin observed tartly, crossing her arms beneath her ample bosom. “But you did save my life, you know. And my husband’s life. That makes up for a few behavioral quirks.”
“You saved mine right back, so we’re even,” Tam said. “And besides, it was an accident. I wasn’t in that shithole with any heroic plans to save anybody. I just wanted to wipe out that psycho son of a bitch, get my revenge, and save my own skin. You owe me nothing. So why?”
Erin shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “It’s true. You’re awful. You’re the rudest, most irritating, pain-in-the-ass friend I’ve ever had, or even imagined having. But you’ll also race off at the drop of a pin and risk your life to save a bunch of helpless little kids from organ thieves. That kind of behavior racks up big points fast.”
Tam made a derisive sound. “Oh, horseshit. That was just for fun. I was bored, OK? I needed some action.”
“Oh, yeah. Right. Bored,” Erin scoffed. “You are so full of shit. So you took Rachel on because you were bored?”
Tam choked on her coffee. “No, I took Rachel on because I was insane,” she muttered. “But I want to know, Erin. You’ve got Connor. Margot and Raine and Liv now, too. They’re so much nicer. You don’t need me, for anything. So why the hell do you bother with me?”
Erin seemed to grow five inches. Her face glowed hot pink with anger. “You know what I think?” Her voice rang. “I think you should see a talented shrink since you don’t have the guts to talk to your friends about whatever godawful bug is up your ass. I’ve seen this before. You try to drive everyone away so that the view outside matches the view inside. Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I think I’ll eat a worm. Well, fuck that, Tam. And fuck you, too. I’m
sick
of it.”
Tam blinked, startled into fascinated silence. It was fun to get Erin worked into a lather. She was slow to start, but once she got going, watch out. Blood spattered the walls, left and right. Wow.
“You cannot afford that self-indulgent, scorched earth bullshit anymore,” Erin fumed on. “You’ve got a child! Kids need family! Lots of it! Community. Aunts, uncles, cousins. And so do you, whether you’ll admit it or not, you stubborn, snotty bitch! So just grow up already!”
Tam let out a low whistle, impressed. “Whoo-hoo. Feisty.”
“Do not condescend to me. You know what else? We’re it, whether we like it or not. We’ve been through some bad shit together, and that makes you family. Congratulations, you get to be the scary aunt that everybody’s afraid of. Every family’s got one.”
“I could change my name, go into hiding,” Tam mused.
“Oh, shut up,” Erin snapped. “I’ve had enough of your crap.”
Tam’s mouth twitched. “You’re cute when you’re mad,” she murmured throatily. “Rosy glow, heaving bosom…”
Erin slammed her cup onto the table. “Don’t even start. You can’t convince me that you’re a lesbian, either, so don’t jerk me around.”
Tam hid her smile in her coffee. “Aw, come on. It keeps ’em guessing. Gives me more space.”
“You have plenty of space,” Erin snapped. “And we’re tired of guessing.”
Tam suddenly thought to peek over at the door, where Rosalia’s wide-eyed fascination suggested that her English comprehension far outstripped her verbal skills. Rosalia’s gaze slid away guiltily, and she nudged the kids deeper into the living room.
“It’s hard to find a category for you,” Erin bitched, dropping into her chair. “How do you define a friend like Tam? Well, if blood-thirsty terrorists were threatening my family with a dirty bomb, she’d be there to rescue us in a blaze of glory with diamond-studded hand grenades. But would she give me a ride to the airport? Fucking forget it!”
The smile sneaked out before Tam could stomp it. “Why should I? What a freaking bore. That’s what men are for. What’s the point of putting up with their crap if they don’t provide abject servitude?”
Erin harrumphed. “Speaking of men and abject servitude and all that good stuff, what am I supposed to tell the pretty boy? That you only do big business with ugly, smelly, badly dressed men?”
Tam picked up the card Erin had given her, and scowled at it. “Don’t tell him anything. Don’t even take his calls. I’ll check him out. Since chances are good that all he wants is to stick a knife into my eye.”
Erin made a frustrated sound. “Why can’t anything ever be just normal or nice for you? A business opportunity, a cute guy to flirt with? A date for the wedding? Why is it always blood and guts, life or death?”
The inane goofiness of the question and Erin’s sad, plaintive voice touched her buried tender spot. Tam’s voice came out so gentle she barely recognized it herself. “There’s no normal or nice for me, Erin,” she said. “There never has been, never can be. But don’t sweat it. I just do the best I can. I’ll be OK. Really.”
Erin looked doleful. “But I want better than that for you.”
Tam stopped the automatic sarcastic reply that rose to her lips with tremendous effort, and stayed silent. “Well, I appreciate that sentiment,” she said, stiffly. “In my own way. For what it’s worth.”
Erin looked down, blinking hard. Several agonizing seconds passed, each more fraught with tension than the last.
Tam snapped under the strain. “Don’t you dare start sniffling on me! One tender moment is enough, all right? I can only take so much!”
Erin sniffed her tears back aggressively. “Oh, fuck you.”
Tam let out a sigh of mock relief. “Thank God. That’s more like it,” she said. “Back on solid ground.”
Erin stalked past her, muttering under her breath, and collected her kid. Kev complained about being separated from his new captive audience, and then, oh joy, then Rachel got cranky too, at having her brand new live toy taken away, and so commenced the mad maelstrom of shrieking and flopping and writhing, then the changing of diapers, the distribution of cookie bribes, the reloading of bags, bottles, binkies, bibs, wipes, snacks—Christ alone could remember what all. Tam was on the verge of shrieking with frustration by the time Rachel was calmed down in front of the boob tube, zoning out on Elmo, and the donkey laden Erin and her baby were finally heading down the stairs.
God help her. She’d helped execute blood-drenched coup d’états in third world countries that were less freaking complicated.
She started down after Erin. “I’ll go down and disarm the—”
“I can do it,” Erin cut in. “I learned the goddamn codes. All eight of them. Good-bye.” And off she flounced without looking back, offspring howling and wiggling, diaper bags swinging angrily. Pissed as hell.
“Leave them off,” she shouted down after Erin’s stiff, retreating back. “It’s about time for Rosalia to leave anyhow.”
Erin muttered something rude, and slammed the door to the security room. Tam shrugged inwardly. What the hell. Narrow-eyed, she stared down at the card that lay on the table. Picked it up, fingered it.
She actually felt curious, in spite of her apprehension. Tempted to check it out. Maybe…maybe she wouldn’t dismiss this out of hand without investigating further. Very, very carefully, of course. She’d been so wound up in dealing with Rachel’s problems, it had been a long while since she’d organized any sales. The coffers could always use a fresh influx of ready cash. She liked cash.
She stared at the cookies that were left on the plate in the middle of the table. She could smell the butter from the other side of the room.
Some perverse impulse prompted her to grab one. She examined it from every side, sniffing all its glittering, sugary, cholesterol-laden, artery-plugging, insulin-resistance-causing, cellulite-provoking glory.
Deadly in its own way. Like one of her jewelry creations.
Rosalia appeared in the kitchen entryway. Tam’s cookie-holding hand dropped down under the table as if she’d been caught stealing.
Too late. She could tell, by the discreetly delighted smile the older woman tried so hard to hide. “Nine o’clock tomorrow?” Rosalia asked.
Tam mumbled an affirmative. “Go right on out,” she said. “The security’s disarmed. Erin left it open.”