Emerald Windows (19 page)

B
ROOKE NOTED
R
OXY’S TENSION
the moment she led her into the church, stepping over the electrical cords and around idle equipment used in the renovation. Because it was Saturday, the construction crews were off, and Brooke breathed a sigh of relief that she would be able to break Roxy in with relative peace and quiet.

“You’ve been working around all this?” Roxy asked.

Brooke looked over her shoulder. Her sister looked so young today, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing an old pair of jeans with a hole in one knee and a Hayden High School Tigers T-shirt. “Yeah. You should see it on weekdays. The noise level is so high you can hardly hear yourself think, and you can’t walk through here without fearing for your life.” She tossed a half smile over her shoulder. “I’m starting to get used to it, though. Our workroom is back through here.”

Roxy hesitated. She crossed her arms, drawing her shoulders up defensively. Was she nervous about meeting Nick? Brooke wondered.

Slowly, with Roxy lagging behind, Brooke led her down the dark corridor to the workroom. Before she reached it, Brooke could see that the lights were on. She heard Nick’s voice, then another’s. Sonny? Maybe that was good. Maybe his being there would help Roxy to feel more at ease.

She stepped into the doorway, waiting for Roxy to catch up. Nick sat in his chair with his feet propped on the table. Sonny leaned back against the wall across the room.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi, yourself.” Nick’s face lit up at the sight of her. Then his eyes shifted to Roxy behind her, and he dropped his feet and got up. “Hi.”

“Roxy has decided to work for us part-time,” Brooke said. “She needed some extra money, and I told her how badly we needed help. She’s willing to wait to get paid.”

Nick offered Roxy a smile that would have charmed her right down to her toes if she hadn’t already erected such strong barriers. “Hi, Roxy,” he said. “I’m Nick Marcello.”

“I know.” The words were clipped and made it clear she wasn’t interested in friendship.

Nick looked bemused when he shot a glance at Brooke. He turned back to Roxy and gestured toward Sonny. “This is my nephew, Sonny Castori. He’s going to be helping out here some too. If his folks agree.”

Roxy cleared her throat and tried to smile at the young man in the black T-shirt. “Hi.”

The clouds passed out of Sonny’s eyes, and he brightened at the sight of the small blond standing at the door. “Hey, I remember you,” he said. “You went to Hayden High, didn’t you?”

“Still do,” Roxy said.

Sonny grinned, slid his hands into his back pockets, and took a cocky step toward her. “Yeah. I remember seeing you in Ole Lady Hannah’s class a couple years back. I was in the class across the courtyard. You sat by the window.”

The awkward smile tugging on Roxy’s lips was hard to miss, but it was evident that she struggled to look unaffected. “I don’t remember you,” she said.

Sonny shrugged and ruffled his dark mop of hair. “Yeah, so what else is new? I have one of those faces that’s real easy to forget.”

Roxy grinned. As if to distract herself from her grudging interest in Sonny, she stepped over to the worktable, perusing the tools and patterns lying there. Behind her, Nick gave Brooke a wink that said he knew it would work out with Roxy, if Sonny had anything to do with it.

Even so, Brooke decided that Nick should be warned of Roxy’s reluctance. She set the case she was carrying on the table. “Before we get started,” she said, looking pointedly at Nick, “I need some help getting some things out of my trunk.”

Sonny started for the door, but Nick stopped him. “I’ll go,” he said. “Sonny, why don’t you just show Roxy where everything is for now? We’ll be right back.”

Roxy looked at Nick, then at Brooke. She dropped her gaze to the floor, as if she knew without a doubt that Nick had more on his mind than getting anything out of Brooke’s car.

As if oblivious to Roxy’s disapproving glare, Nick escorted Brooke back out into the corridor. “So you talked her into it, huh?” he asked quietly as they walked.

“Yes,” Brooke whispered. “But she’s skeptical about it. She isn’t exactly crazy about you, you know. She believes everything she’s ever heard about us.”

“Well, I’ll just have to work hard to win her over.”

“Yeah, me too,” Brooke said. “But she’s a tough one. Thanks for suggesting that she work with us, Nick. It means a lot to me. Maybe there’s hope for Roxy and me yet.”

CHAPTER
   

N
ICK STILL HAD HOPES THAT THEY
would get the job done on time. The four of them worked diligently for hours, Nick and Brooke enlarging sketches and numbering them to keep the pattern pieces from getting lost, and Sonny and Roxy tracing pictures through sheets of carbon so that there would be three precise copies of each cartoon, the paper pattern and the working drawing.

Although Roxy occasionally exchanged a quip with Sonny, she was quiet for the most part, hardly speaking to Nick at all. Her silence added another level of tension to the already charged atmosphere, and Nick could clearly see that she was alienated not just from him but from Brooke as well. Near lunchtime, when Brooke had gone to retrieve something from Nick’s office and Sonny was out running an errand, Nick found himself alone with Roxy.

“You’re doing great,” he said, looking over her shoulder at the drawing she’d just finished tracing. “I’m glad you decided to help us out.”

“Thanks.”

Undaunted by the monosyllable, Nick pulled up a stool and sat down next to her. “Are you interested in art too?” he asked.

Roxy’s face turned pink, but she didn’t look at him. “No. The art teachers at school now aren’t nearly as interesting as they were when Brooke was there.”

Nick accepted the verbal dart with a lift of his brows. “Ouch.”

Still not looking at him and clearly not amused by his response, Roxy continued to work.

Nick heard footsteps approaching. He studied Roxy for a moment longer, searching for a clue to unlock her bitter resentment. But she was too tightly barricaded.

Brooke came back into the room, carrying a stack of fresh paper. “It’s getting late,” she said, putting the paper on the table and surveying both their faces for a hint as to what had transpired while she was gone. “I think I’ll take Roxy to lunch. We don’t want her to starve to death on her first day here.”

Roxy pretended to be too engrossed in her work to eat. “That’s okay,” she mumbled.

“I want to,” Brooke said, feigning brightness, despite the clouds hanging over the room. She turned back to Nick. “Can you do without us for an hour?”

“I’ll manage,” he said. “You go ahead.”

Nick watched as Roxy reluctantly put up her tools and followed Brooke from the room.

S
onny seems to like you,” Brooke told Roxy as they sat in the popular little cafe, Back Street Deli, which drew people from miles around for its savory cheeseburgers. “What do you think?”

Roxy moved the uneaten potato chips around her plate with an idle finger. “I hope you don’t plan to try to push us together,” she said. “The last thing I need right now is another man in my life.”

The weary way she spoke, as if she were a forty-five-year-old divorcee, disturbed Brooke. Roxy was too young to be so bitter. “I don’t plan to do anything like that,” she said. “But you’ve got to admit he’s cute.”

“If you like his type,” Roxy said, indifferently. She pushed her half-eaten burger away and set down her wadded napkin.

Brooke cleared her throat and tried again to find a subject they could share. “So, do you like the work?”

Roxy nodded. “It beats filing at City Hall. All the hassles…”

“You could quit and work more hours for us,” Brooke said. “You said you were leaving town after you graduated, anyway. It isn’t like you’d be giving up anything long term.”

Roxy studied the wood grain on the table. “I can’t really count on your budget, can I?” she asked. “What happens if I quit my job, and then Abby Hemphill pulls the rug out from under you?”

Brooke didn’t have an argument for that. “Well, maybe you can think about it after the budget’s secure.”

Roxy nodded noncommittally.

Brooke broke a French fry in half and nibbled on it absently. “It hasn’t been so hard today, has it?” she went on. “Working with Nick, I mean?”

Roxy scanned the room idly, as if bored by the conversation. “It’s okay. There’s no law that says I have to like him.”

Brooke set her French fry down and knitted her brows together. “You don’t like him?”

“No,” Roxy said, bringing her jaded gold eyes back to her sister.

“Well,” Brooke said. “I guess that’s your right.” She laced her hands together on the table, wondering what had happened when she left Nick and Roxy alone today. Had Roxy sniped at Nick when she’d left the room? Had Nick made Roxy angry? A heaviness settled over her at the idea that her two favorite people might have the capacity to hurt each other.

She watched her sister, desperate to find the words that could break the ice between them. Last night she had almost felt close to Roxy. They had met each other halfway, both of them trying to bridge the gap between them, and when Roxy had accepted the job Brooke offered, Brooke had embraced a hope that their relationship was healing. But now Roxy’s exposure to Nick seemed to have made her shut down again.

“Are you—?”

“Do you—?”

Their words came out simultaneously, and they each stopped, yielding to the other.

Feeling the renewed awkwardness between them, Brooke tried again. “Are you ready to go back?” she asked quietly.

Roxy stood up. “I was going to ask the same.”

Brooke left a tip on the table and followed her sister to the cash register near the door. She was busy digging through her bag for her credit card when she heard, “Hi, Rox. How’s it going?”

Brooke looked up to see the man she had seen with her sister in the dark office at City Hall last week, standing with a woman who looked to be at least five months pregnant.

Roxy’s face turned a startling shade of crimson as she shot a guilty look Brooke’s way. “I’m…I’m fine…”

Knowing that her thoughts flashed across her face like the messages of a neon sign, Brooke kept her jaw from going slack.

She glanced too conspicuously at the woman’s left hand and saw a wedding ring sparkling there. On his hand was a matching band, confirming that the two were married to each other.

“Bill, the hostess is waiting at our table,” the woman said, tugging on his sleeve.

A wave of dizziness swept over Brooke, and she gaped at them as they moved past her and Roxy. Her eyes clashed with Roxy’s in harsh reprobation. Incipient tears glistened in her sister’s eyes, and Brooke wondered if they were tears of shame or heartbreak.

Mechanically, she paid the bill with her credit card. The cashier could have charged her three hundred dollars for a cheeseburger, and she would have signed for it without a thought. All that mattered was that her little sister was involved with a married man. Roxy was straddling the edge of a scandal, one that would ruin her life just as Brooke’s had been ruined.

Neither said a word as they got into the car. Quietly, but on the verge of tears, Brooke pulled the car out of its parking space,
waited for a break in traffic, then headed for the church a few miles away.

“It’s not what you think.” Roxy’s voice was weak.

“Oh?” Brooke asked, her voice restrained. “What do I think?”

One tear spilled over Roxy’s lashes and she lifted a shaky hand to wipe it away. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” Brooke said, unable to stop herself. “I think you’re having an affair with a married man. And despite how that infuriates and upsets me, it does explain a few things. Like why you have to meet in dark offices at night, and why he has sudden ‘emergencies’ come up that force him to leave you stranded in sleazy bars.” She slammed to a stop at a red light, and sat seething until it changed color.

Roxy sat like a cold, rigid statue in the seat next to her, holding in whatever feelings she had.

“His wife is pregnant!” Brooke railed on, growing angrier the longer Roxy sat quiet. “Don’t you even care about that? Doesn’t that bother you at all?”

“Don’t you dare judge me!” Roxy said through her teeth, the pitch of her voice rising with every word. “You had a fling with your art teacher at my age! Maybe it runs in the family, Brooke. Maybe those promiscuous genes are hereditary!”

Brooke screeched into the parking lot, killed the engine, and sat smoldering. “You can’t blame this on me or your stupid genes,” she said. “This is something that
you
are doing, Roxy. I want you to think about that.”

“Think about it?” Roxy cried. “Do you think I’ve thought about anything else in the past few weeks?”

Brooke pressed her face into her hands. “You’re going to get hurt, Roxy,” she said. “It isn’t worth it.”

Roxy shook her head and opened her car door. “I can’t talk to you about this,” she said. “There is no way you would ever understand.”

And before Brooke could stop her, Roxy had bolted out of Brooke’s car and around the building, undoubtedly intending to walk home.