Cattitude (11 page)

A sniff came to his ear. “I talked to
Caroline this morning and she told me about that woman. You
should’ve called me. This isn’t a puppy you’ve picked up off the
street. I don’t believe that story about amnesia for one second. It
sounds like something out of that soap opera Tory watches. If the
woman refuses to see a doctor, there’s a reason for it. She must be
wanted by the police, have you thought of that?”

Two weeks, Max told himself. Less. One week
and six days from now he’d be gone. “Maybe she’s an axe
murderer.”

“You think you’re funny. Let’s see who’s
laughing after you’re killed in your bed.”

“You’ll be laughing, right?”

“I’ll be crying. She’ll be laughing. If you
don’t care about your own safety, think of Ted’s. This woman could
be trouble.”

“It’s my trouble, my business.”

“Isn’t that just like a man? Even though
you’re my oldest, you’ll always be my baby. If you hurt, I hurt.
You need to take her to the hospital. Right now. At the very least,
call the police and tell them about her.”

“Mom, I love you but I’m hanging up.”

“Max!”

He set the phone down as Ted sauntered into
the room, his hands in his pockets. “I caught that. Mom found out,
huh? Who told her?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” He gave Ted
the glare he couldn’t give his mother.

Ted raised his palms, hunching his shoulders
as if he were ducking a blow. “Fine with me. You want any pizza. If
not, I’ll finish it off.”

“Go ahead, eat the pizza.” Max glanced out
the window again. Still no Sorcha. Where the hell was she?

An image of her in the tub flashed into his
mind. He shut it off. Later. He’d take it out later. Now he needed
to focus. She had a head injury and she’d been gone for over an
hour. She could be sick.

And what about Belle? Where the hell was
she?

“Jeff called.” Ted slid into the chair facing
the desk. “He wants me to manage the bar.”

Max sat up straight. “You turned him
down?”

Ted shrugged. “I don’t know what else I’d
like to do. May as well—”

“I want you to take over Brannigan
Enterprises.”

Ted shook his head. “I won’t leech off you.
You’ve done too much already. I’ll still help you out part-time,
but you don’t need—”

“You’re not listening. I don’t want you to
work for me. I’m handing you the business.”

“Jesus, you can’t mean that.” Ted sat back in
his chair, his expression as shocked as if Max’s skin had turned
blue.

Max stood and peered out the window. Sorcha
was walking toward the house, her head held high, her hips swaying.
Relief made him stiffen instead of relax. Like a hunting dog
spotting a tasty rabbit, he thought, then dismissed it and shifted
his attention to Ted.

“You’re the first I’ve told. In less than two
weeks I’m out of here. You and Tory are old enough to be on your
own. Now it’s my turn to follow my dream.”

“Well, shit.” Ted rubbed the stubble on his
jaw. “We were holding you back? All these years?”

Max shrugged. “It was my decision. I did what
needed to be done.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Travel.” Max stepped back to his desk,
opened the top drawer, pulled out the brochures, tossed them on the
desk. “I always wanted to travel, and now I’m going to do it.”

Ted picked them up with a dazed look of a
boxer who’d staggered out of the ring after an unexpected punch.
“Australia? Half a world away.” He glanced up, his brows drawing
together. “You can’t get much farther from home.”

“Don’t practice your Psyche 101 on me. If you
don’t want the business, I’ll sell every piece of real estate we’ve
got.”

“You’d do it too.” Ted dropped the colorful
brochures onto the desktop. “Go ahead. I wouldn’t be able to do
half the job you do. Hell, I’m the screw up of the family.”

Something hardened inside Max, a ball of
anger. “I was fourteen when I took over.” His voice came out rough
and raw, but not as rough as raw as the emotions that heaved inside
him. “Going to school during the day, making decisions at night.
Mom carrying them out, leaning on me, depending on me. I didn’t
know anything. If I could do it, you sure the hell can.”

“But look how good you did. You were born to
do this.”

“I was scared as hell. Every day, every
decision. And every night I prayed I did the right thing.”

“It worked, didn’t it? You’re made out of
hero material. Dad couldn’t have done better.”

The ball of anger inside Max exploded. He
slapped his hands on the desk top and leaned forward, resting his
weight on his palms. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Dad saved
us. All of us. If not for him, we’d all be dead.”

Ted stared. “What’re you talking about.
He—”

“Died during a tornado, yes. Died saving our
lives.”

His jaw dropped, Ted shook his head, his
words apparently flown out of his mouth along with a few brain
cells.

“Dad hustled Mom and Tory downstairs,” Max
said. “I pushed you after them. Mom yelled at us to get her
jewelry. The storm was worsening, the rain clattering against the
windows, the wind whipping against the house. I started to run for
her room. Dad caught me and said to forget the jewelry.” Nearly
twenty years later, he could hear his dad’s voice. Urgent and
commanding with a thread of fear. He’d never seen his father afraid
before that day, and he turned back.

Too late. Before he’d taken two steps, a
giant’s roar had shaken the house, shattering it. Changing their
lives forever.

“I was thrown to the floor.” His father had
cried out his name. He heard it in his mind now, heard the fear and
desperation.
Max! Max! Max!
“The house was falling apart,
shit swirling. The ceiling blown apart, the refrigerator crashing
to the floor. Dad shoved me down and jumped on top of me, his body
protecting me from the house.” The house that seemed to be alive,
attacking them. Killing his father. “He saved me.” Saved him as
blood leaked from a sliced vein in his leg and he slowly died.

“Why weren’t we told his?”

Max shrugged and pushed upright from the
desk.

Ted huffed out a mirthless laugh. “Mom. She
didn’t want us to know about the jewelry. Didn’t want us to blame
her.”

“The jewelry doesn’t matter.” Max made a
dismissing gesture. He felt drained after his outburst. Drained of
emotion and energy. “It’s time you knew Dad was the real hero. He
died for us.”

“I guess heroism runs in the family. Now I’ve
got to emulate him as well as you.” He shook his head, his eyes
still dazed. “That will never happen.”

“Emulate one person. Yourself.” Max sank into
the chair.

Ted leaned forward, his hands clasped, his
elbows resting on his spread thighs. “I’ve handled the apartments
and real estate side of the business, but the three times I tried
to pick out stocks I lost money. Not like you. Even when the
experts strike out and the experts on TV are squawking about double
fouls, you’re throwing the ball to just the right stock pick.”

“I can buy and sell stocks wherever I go,”
Max said, “but I can’t buy and sell Wisconsin real estate when I’m
in Sydney or Perth. You’re the business major, you handle it.”

Ted’s brows drew together. “After what you
said, I feel like I have to do it.”

“You don’t have to do anything. Manage the
bar, if that’s what you want. I’ll put the real estate end up for
sale.” Max sat back in the chair, unable to get worked up about it
anymore. “It’s not the best market right now, but we’ll do okay.
You can handle the sale, right?”

Ted scowled. “I can handle it, but you know I
can’t let you do that.”

“Sure, you can.” He stared into Ted’s eyes.
“Do what calls to you.”

“The only thing that calls to me right now is
pizza.” Ted’s jaw set, his expression mulish, the way he looked as
a kid intent on climbing to the top of the tree and refusing to
listen to Max. And damned if he didn’t make it, clinging to the
branch and laughing, afraid as hell to let go. “I’ll do it. I’ll
take it over.”

“You sure?”

“Don’t mess with me. I said I’d do it.” His
jaw unlocked and a smile tugged the corners of his lips. “Jesus, I
can’t believe I just said that. I don’t know what Mom’s going to
say.”

“They won’t have a say in it. I bought Mom
and Tory out a year ago. I put their money in stocks and silver
bars. I can do the same thing with my share—or I can be your silent
partner. Your choice. I’m not handing this over to you with
baggage.”

Ted wiped pretend sweat off his forehead.
“That baggage would make me run like the pit bulls of hell were
snapping at my heels. I wouldn’t want to do what you’ve done.”

“I didn’t have a choice.” Max leaned back in
his chair, gazing at a print of a sailboat on the wall behind Ted.
He’d told Ted so much, why not tell him this one thing more? “When
Dad was dying, he made me promise to take care of all of you.”

“Shit. You couldn’t say no. Not after he
saved your life.”

“No, but you can. Tory’s going after what she
wants. So am I. Why would I hold you down?”

“Don’t worry about me.” A light gleamed in
Ted’s eyes, his face brighter than when he came into the office,
the most important thing on his mind leftover pizza. “I’m good with
people. More outgoing than you. I might even be better than you
are.”

Laughter nudged the darkness inside Max,
shrinking it, though not completely gone. Never completely gone.
“I’ll put money on it.”

Ted’s laugh held a trace of
self-consciousness. “What about you? You’re not staying in
Australia forever, are you? Where else are you going? A cruise
around the world? Europe? Asia? Alaska? China?”

“All the above.” The tension eased from Max’s
shoulders. Telling Ted hadn’t been so hard. It had even been
therapeutic, seeing what happened the night of the tornado through
the eyes of an adult instead of a young, hormone-driven teen. “I’m
taking a year, maybe two.”

“Mom’s gonna flip.”

“Why do you think I haven’t said anything
sooner?”

“What about the house? Why let Caroline fix
it if you aren’t staying?”

“I’ll be back. Besides, you’ll be here with
Belle.”

“Me and the cat. Thanks.” Ted shook his head,
but he grinned. “I don’t know if I want to stay here, but I sure as
hell know Belle would hate to be anywhere else.”

“I can’t believe she hasn’t returned.” Max
looked out the window. Sorcha was walking to the back door. “She
never liked staying out too long. Any moment, I expect to hear her
scratching at the door, yowling at us for not letting her in
immediately.”

“What about Sorcha?” Ted asked.

Max watched Sorcha disappear into the house
before he turned back to Ted. She was a complication he didn’t
need. “We’ll find out where she lives.”

“We have the address from her driver’s
license. Want me to take care of it? It can be my first official
duty as manager of Brannigan Enterprises.”

“No,” Max said sharply. If Sorcha had a
fiancé waiting for her, Max wanted to see him, question him. There
might be a reason she didn’t want to go back. “We’ll both go.”

“This afternoon?”

“Let’s give her one more day.” Max got up,
hungry for pizza after all. Maybe at the end of the day, she’d tell
him the real reason she didn’t want to go back to her former life.
It was possible she did have amnesia.

But more likely not.

He should think of what he’d do to her when
the truth came out, but he must’ve had more of his brother in him
than he’d thought because the image of her in the bathtub popped
into his mind and he could only think of one thing. One very
enjoyable thing.

Caroline pushed away from the wall and
hurried to her desk. If Max and Ted glanced into her office on
their way to the kitchen, they would assume she’d been working the
entire time.

Max was leaving, he was leaving. Shit, shit,
shit. Her whole life was shit.

It was all Emery’s fault. If he hadn’t lost
all his money, she’d never have given into the impulse to push him
off the hiking trail. And if he’d told her he’d stopped paying his
insurance policy, he’d be alive today. Divorce would’ve been
inconvenient, but she wasn’t a psycho.

Like her mother always said, “A girl’s gotta
do what a girl’s gotta do.”

The worst part about killing Emery was
finding out she was still broke. When Max agreed to fund her
interior decorating business, she had wept real tears of joy,
confident she’d have him wrapped around her finger by the time the
year was up, along with a four-carat diamond ring.

After a lifetime of lousy luck, good luck was
finally turning her way. Sure, Max had said he was doing this in
Emery’s memory, but just because she was a real blond it didn’t
mean she was stupid. When a man gave a woman money, he wanted
something in return.

And now he was leaving.

This was screwing up her plans. She’d thought
she’d been making headway with him. That he’d been giving her time
to grieve.

Why did rotten things always happen to
her?

Her breaths shortened and she felt
lightheaded, dizzy. She forced herself to breathe slow and easy
until her mind cleared and she felt solid. Solid on shaky financial
ground. After a childhood of barely scraping by, living in kitchens
with cockroaches, buying gowns for the beauty pageants in
consignment shops and Good Will, her mother altering them to fit
her, she couldn’t stand being poor again.

Poverty shrouded on her soul. She couldn’t
sing or fly or love with the threat of poverty hanging over her
head like Lizzie Borden’s axe. There had to be some way to catch
Max before he flew out of reach. Unattached multi-millionaires
weren’t falling on the ground like dead leaves. The ones that
fluttered by were looking for beauty queens in their twenties, not
their thirties. It wasn’t fair, but in the poker game of life,
money trumped beauty.