Stirring Up Trouble (14 page)

“Does anyone still call you Sloaney Baloney?”

Sloane cracked a self-deprecating grin. “Not if they want to live to tell the tale.” She paused, dipping her chin to meet Bree’s eyes across the counter space.

It was now or never.

“You’re growing too fast to keep up with your clothes, aren’t you?”

Bree wound her arms around herself in a flash of long limbs. “Nobody’s calling me names over it, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s not that big a deal.”

“Well, I’m glad no one’s calling you names. But I respectfully disagree about it being a big deal. Can I ask why you’re hiding it from Gavin?”

“Who says I’m hiding it from him?” She angled her body away from Sloane on the other side of the breakfast bar, but didn’t flee, so Sloane proceeded with gentle caution.

“Because if he saw that shirt, he’d take you shopping in about ten seconds flat.” Sloane had no doubt Gavin did his best to take care of Bree. But if she’d been hiding her ill-fitting clothes from him, he wouldn’t have the chance. Plus, noticing the length of her shirtsleeves was probably the last thing on his mind, considering everything they’d been through.

Bree huffed softly. “Would you ask your older brother to take you shopping for clothes? For . . .” She lowered her voice to a thready whisper. “For
underwear?
”

Eh. The kid had a point. Sloane sighed. “I hear what you’re saying, Bree, but maybe you should give him a little credit. It might not be as bad as you think. And pretty soon, you’re going to run out of shirts. You need clothes that fit.”

“I can fix this.” Bree lifted her arm again, twisting to get a closer look at the tear. Something utterly strange ripped free in Sloane’s chest, and before she could even process the sensation, she was moving with swift intention. She pushed away from the counter and took a step around the breakfast bar, then another and another until they were close enough for her to see the shock in Bree’s eyes.

“I know you can, but you don’t have to. Now go get your coat.”

“What? Why?”

Sloane marched over to the kitchen cabinet where Gavin kept the coffee and propped it open with a decisive tug.

“Because your brother has a hundred dollars in here in case of an emergency, and today’s emergency is a trip to the mall.”

Chapter Fourteen

Gavin raked a hand through his hair as he made the turn onto Rural Route Four, finally succumbing to the delicious exhaustion that signaled yet another successful Friday night shift. He’d never been a nine-to-five kind of guy, and while the weariness wasn’t exactly relaxing, it was the sign of a job well done. At some point, he’d probably pay for it, but come on. He was only thirty-two. There was plenty of time before he had to worry about his body yielding to the long hours and brutally hectic nature of his job. Of course, he’d thought there would be plenty of time for other things too. Things that could vanish in the blink of an eye, without warning.

Things that mattered a lot more than a couple of aches and pains from a double shift or two.

“Great attitude there, Carmichael,” he grunted, guiding the Audi up the shadowy driveway toward the cottage. While things with Bree weren’t all hearts and flowers, there had been some hopeful glimmers lately, and in truth, those tiny moments had saved him. She wasn’t the fun-loving little girl he’d left behind with their mom in Philly, although the three years he’d spent traveling for work had gone by so fast, they’d been reduced to a smudgy blur of cities with restaurants desperate for rescue attached. The bakery bistro in San Francisco—his first big break into management—had been a grueling series of trial and error for eight months. But after going to culinary school and doing his time to move up the ranks in Philadelphia’s bustling restaurant scene, he was hungry for the backbreaking work of managing his own place. When that job opened up in San Francisco, he’d pounced on the chance to go.

Gavin put the car in Park, and rather than fighting his thoughts like usual, he let them spin backward, into his past. The success he’d felt at righting the bistro, at going in to fix what needed fixing in order to make the place flourish, had been addicting, so much so that he’d wanted to do it again. San Francisco became Santa Fe, which then morphed into Chicago, and before Gavin could turn around, over three years and just as many restaurants had passed, not to mention half a summer’s worth of European wine tours in between.

In spite of the fact that he’d made it home to Philly for a grand total of seventy-two hours over the course of those years, his mother still encouraged him. He’d cultivated a passion for something he truly loved, and he felt right at the helm of a restaurant, restoring it to former glory.

Yes, he missed his family, and was in awe even then of how fast Bree seemed to slingshot from a gap-toothed little girl to the cusp of adolescence. But his own father had left when Gavin was five, and Bree’s father died when she was a toddler. Gavin could barely remember a time when it wasn’t just the three of them, and he owed it to his mother and sister to make a good living, to support them the best he could, even if it had to be from afar. He wasn’t crazy about being absent for such long stretches, but there would be plenty of time to make up for that later. Doing whatever he could to bolster his mother’s single-parent salary while gaining the experience to write his own ticket had seemed like a win-win of the first order.

Until his mother got sick, and he realized he’d failed both her and Bree miserably by not being there until it was too late.

Gavin shook off the wad of guilt building in his gut and got out of the Audi, welcoming the snap of cold night air around him as he stalked up the porch steps. No matter how badly he wanted to, he couldn’t change the past. The most important thing now was to take care of Bree, and while their talk earlier in the week seemed like small potatoes on the surface, the relief he felt at finally making progress tasted more like a four-course banquet. He might not be perfect parent material, but he was getting the hang of things, slowly but surely.

The sound of voices floating into the foyer from the living room hit him like a thick web of confusion, and concern immediately pinpricked his senses. Frozen to the threshold between the porch and the cottage, he tried to place the voices. Bree’s light timbre mixed in with Sloane’s deeper cadence, and the concern upgraded a level. He hadn’t told Sloane about Bree’s nightmares, but what if she’d had one? It was after midnight, and a nightmare might explain why she was up. A curl of laughter shot from the kitchen right into Gavin’s chest.

If Bree had woken from a nightmare, no way would they be laughing over it. So what the hell was going on?

Stuck to his spot between outside and in, he listened. The actual words were unintelligible, but the way Bree’s girlish voice layered over Sloane’s throaty laughter took a potshot at his gut. The sounds held strains of something he hadn’t heard in far too long.

They sounded so happy.

Realizing that he was standing in an open doorway with a subarctic chill at his back, Gavin stepped all the way into the cottage with a quick head shake. He pulled the front door shut behind him, and the resulting noise reduced both voices in the kitchen to hushed whispers.

“Hey!” Sloane poked her head in from the doorframe, eyeing him mischievously. “You’re home.”

“Is Bree okay? She’s not normally up this late.” He nodded toward the back of the cottage. Although his fear had downgraded after hearing the sounds of happiness coming from the kitchen, it wouldn’t hurt to be one hundred percent sure everything was fine. And to find out why on earth Bree was awake if nothing was really wrong.

Sloane’s eyes widened, fringed by her sooty lashes. “Oh! I know it’s late, but . . . well, it’s Friday night. And Bree wanted to stay up until you got home.”

Gavin’s pulse stuttered with shock. “She . . . what? Are you sure everything’s okay?”

Sloane released an overdrawn sigh, clucking her tongue. “You are such a pessimist. Of course everything is okay. She just has a surprise for you.”

“What is it?” He swallowed tightly, tamping his feelings into a smooth veneer.

“Please. Didn’t anyone ever tell you how a surprise works? You have to close your eyes.”

The worry he’d felt when he’d walked through the door gave way to a startled laugh. “You’re serious.”

“No,
you’re
serious. But I’ll try not to hold it against you.” She walked into the living room, and the sway of her hips beneath her dark, low-slung jeans made Gavin’s libido yawn and stretch like a bear coming out of hibernation.

“Gee, thanks.” Damn, Sloane looked pretty with her face all lit up in excitement. And clearly, the surprise was something good. How bad could it be to just play along?

Sloane sidled up to him, wearing that infuriatingly sexy grin he simultaneously loved and wished she’d keep to herself, and said, “Come on, close ’em. I promise I won’t lead you astray.”

Every single one of the just-business defenses he’d built over the course of the week disintegrated into dust. He jammed his eyes shut, more of an act of self-preservation than obedience. “Okay. They’re closed.”

Sloane’s obvious buzz of happiness was catching, and despite the reluctance he’d felt just minutes ago, Gavin found himself giving in to the bolt of eager curiosity running through his veins. If the conversation he and Bree had shared earlier in the week was a glimmer of hope, her staying up late to surprise him with something was an out-and-out bonfire of possibility.

“Okay, Bree. Are you ready?” Sloane’s voice lilted past his ear, and his anticipation amped even higher when Bree chimed in.

“I guess. Okay, yeah.” Traces of something soft folded over Bree’s voice, and Gavin scrambled through his mental Rolodex to try to place it.

But before he could put a finger on the hushed emotion cradled in her words, Sloane said, “Okay. Open your eyes.”

Gavin raised his lids, but the image in front of him made no sense. Blinking didn’t offer any help in the clarity department, and finally, after ten seconds of full-on staring, recognition flattened him like a steamroller moving downhill.

No way.

“Bree?” The word thudded past his lips, laden with shock.

“Ta-da.” She gave an awkward twirl, not meeting his eyes when she returned to stillness. The Bree standing in the doorframe was an altered version of a beloved familiar image, and he went back to blinking in an attempt to reconcile the two in his brain. But the more he did it, the less it worked.

He barely recognized her.

“What did you do to your hair?” Gone was the light brown ponytail he’d watched her pull into place just this morning, replaced by a sleek new haircut that barely grazed her shoulders. And wait, how did it look so much lighter than it had just hours ago? She looked just like the older girls she’d been hanging out with in Philadelphia, and the realization made his unease return with a nasty vengeance.

Bree’s cheeks flushed. “I . . . I got it cut.”

“It’s a different
color
.” Anger welled up, demanding release, but it was circumvented by a fresh wave of shock as Gavin registered the trendy new jeans and V-neck sweater she was wearing. And was that lipstick shaping her mouth into a sheer pink frown? “How did you do all of this?”

Bree’s eyes darted over his shoulder, her frown flattening into a thin line. “We just went to the mall.”

His anger ratcheted higher, and he swung around to face Sloane. “You did this?” God
damn
it, Sloane being impulsive with herself was one thing—she was an adult, even if she didn’t always act like one. But letting Bree go from zero to grown-up in an afternoon was totally over the line.

Sloane took a step back, eyes as wide as dinner plates. “She needed a couple of new outfits for school, so we went to the outlet mall in Riverside.”

“Funny, last time I checked, hair color wasn’t on the school supply list.” His tone could’ve inspired an ice age, but he was well past giving a shit.

“There’s a training school for stylists around the corner from the mall. The highlights are only temporary—they wash out in a couple of shampoos, and they offered to do them free with her haircut. They’re not that much different from her natural color, so I didn’t think it was such a big deal. In fact, I thought you’d be happy.”

“Happy?” The word reeked of sarcasm, but Gavin made no effort to rein it in. “You thought I’d be happy about the fact that she looks like she’s eighteen? You’ve got to be joking!” Temporary or not, thirteen was way too young for hair color. Those shampoos needed to start happening, pronto.

Before he could draw enough breath to tell her to get scrubbing, Bree threw her hands up with a shout, startling the hell out of him.

“Are you ever going to stop treating me like a baby? It’s my head, and I’m standing right
here!
”

He slashed a hand through his hair in frustration, but refused to budge on the argument. “I know you’re not a baby, Bree, but you’re not an adult, either. You can’t just run around getting makeovers like you’re grown up.”

A niggling thought trickled into his consciousness, and the entirety of what Sloane had said hit Gavin like a delayed reaction.

He turned to narrow his eyes at her. “Wait. You said the highlights were free. Where exactly did you get the money for the rest of this little excursion?”

Sloane’s wince was so slight, he would’ve missed it if he hadn’t been staring her down. “From the cabinet in the kitchen.”

“The money I left for emergencies?” It was all he could do to drag in a deep breath and let her answer.

“Yes.”

He turned toward Bree, reaching for as much calm as he could muster under the circumstances. “Go to bed. I need a word with Sloane in private.”

“But—”

“I’m not arguing with you about this.” His tone sounded as frostbitten as he felt, but his cool was bound to be short-lived if he kept looking at this transformed version of her. “We’ll discuss it in the morning.”

“What’s the point?” Her knuckles flashed in a thin string of bright white as she tightened her fists at her sides, and every ounce of progress they’d made over the course of the week evaporated into thin air.

“You never let me do anything, anyway! Don’t even bother grounding me. I’m not coming out of my room
ever!
”

Before Gavin could tell her to stop overreacting, she ran down the hall toward her room, punctuating her departure with a bone-jarring slam of her door.

Which left him alone in the living room with Sloane.

“Gavin, I’m sorry. I just thought—”

He stopped her apology midbreath, unable to hold back. “You didn’t
think
at all! Hair color? Makeup? There’s nothing about this that’s okay.”

Sloane bit her lower lip hard enough to leave two crescent-shaped indentations in the curve of pink skin. “It’s only a little lip gloss and temporary hair color. They’re both easily undone.”

“But your bad judgment isn’t,” he pressed, taking an angry step closer. “You’re supposed to be taking care of her, not stirring up trouble. Just because you go through life like there aren’t any freaking rules doesn’t mean it’s how her life should be.”

“I said I was sorry.” Although Sloane’s words were nothing more than a whisper, they assaulted his senses as if she’d bellowed them like a drill sergeant.

He snapped, “Sorry isn’t good enough!”

Sloane flinched visibly, and the rest of his anger jammed to a halt in his throat. But rather than apologize again or back down, she met his gaze head-on.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe the way I do things makes me a crappy candidate for a babysitter, and maybe I did use poor judgment when I took Bree to the mall without asking you first. But that kid opened herself up to you tonight. I might not know squat about how to raise a thirteen-year-old, but let me tell you what I
do
know. If you push her away for the sake of what you think she
should
be doing, she’s going to shut you out completely.”

Gavin stood, stunned into silence by Sloane’s words as she picked up her things in a swift grab and walked toward the door.