Family Matters (DiCarlo Brides book 4) (The DiCarlo Brides) (32 page)

“But Blake and Lana are still married. They’re happy.” Cleo didn’t get why adults made it so hard.

“They are. Insanely, disgustingly happy. And the baby just makes it all that much better. They can’t wait to hold their little boy.” She smiled at Cleo. “Just like your parents and I couldn’t wait to hold you.” She walked over and crouched beside Cleo. “You’re my best thing, you know that? It might have been hard, but I’ve never, ever regretted having you, and your parents loved you more than anything—as much as I did.”

Cleo slipped her arms around Rosemary’s shoulder. “I love you too.” She missed her mom and dad so much. Everything was so much easier when they were around. Tears squeezed out of her eyes, but she didn’t want to turn into a baby, so she wiped them away before Rosemary could see and changed the subject back to Harrison. “So are you going to marry Harrison? I think it would be cool to live at his house.”

Rosemary stood again. “I don’t know. You’ll have to wait and see like me. Now get back to work.”

Somehow the math didn’t seem so bad after that, but Cleo decided she was going to make sure Rosemary married Harrison—it would make everything somehow a little bit better.

Cleo woke from her nightmare with a surprised scream, sitting upright in bed as if the pillow were hot. It took her a moment to realize it was just a dream. She wasn’t on the sidewalk being shot at. Rosemary hadn’t really been hurt like she had in the dream. She still heard Rosemary’s last words echoing in her ears, blaming Cleo for her death.

“Hey, honey, are you okay?”

She blinked in surprise when she realized the form in the doorway was Harrison.  She rubbed away the tears from her cheeks. “Where’s Rosemary?”

“She went downstairs to finish decorating Cami’s birthday cake. How are you? Did you have a bad dream?” He entered the room and sat in the chair next to the bed.

“Yeah. It scared me, but it wasn’t real.” She tried to be strong like Rosemary, to pretend she wasn’t scared, even though her hands felt shaky.

“No, it wasn’t real. You want to talk about it?” He took her hand, rubbing the back of it, soothing her.

“No. I’m fine.” She didn’t want to admit that she was still scared, that the thought of having Rosemary blame her for everything that was going wrong made her tummy feel funny.

Harrison waited for a few more seconds. “I had something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“What?” She eyed him curiously.

“I know you’ve been through a lot the past couple of months. It’s been pretty crazy.”

“Yeah.” Sometimes she felt like she couldn’t catch her breath, it changed so fast.

“You know I love Rosemary. How would you feel if I married her someday? I don’t know if it’ll happen anytime soon, but... someday.” He looked kind of nervous.

She smiled. Rosemary said she wasn’t going to marry Harrison for a long time, but Cleo knew better. “I’d like that. I like you, and I think Rosemary does too. She doesn’t talk about it, but I can tell.”

“I hope so. What do you think about my place—do you think you’d be okay living there? I know Rosemary said she’d consider moving back to Washington DC when she finished her contract here, but we both have jobs here. Would you be okay with staying?”

Cleo didn’t say anything at first—he was asking her what she wanted? Most adults didn’t care, they just did what they wanted and dragged the kids with them. “Would you move to DC if I wanted to?” Would he tell her the truth?

He pursed his lips for a moment. “I don’t know. I know we’d definitely consider it if you really feel like you need to move back there, but I don’t know if Rosemary can live in your old house. It’s close to her mom’s place, isn’t it?”

Cleo nodded. “Yeah. She’s not nice. I don’t like her.”

“It probably wouldn’t be easy for Rosemary if she lived that close to her mom.”

Cleo hadn’t thought about that, about anyone except for herself. She missed her friends back home and the comfort of her own furniture, her stuff, and the quilt her mother made for her. She meant to ask Rosemary to pack the quilt, but forgot. But she was friends with Hannah now and some of the other girls were nice too. Did she want Rosemary to want to keep her this time? “Would I be able to bring some of my stuff here, like my furniture?”

He smiled. “Yeah, I think we could manage that. In fact, I bet Rosemary would be happy to have your stuff shipped here anyway. Have you talked to her about it?”

She frowned. “No. She’s so worried all of the time. I’m in the way. I try not to cause too many problems.” She still worried Rosemary would send her away again, like she had when she was a baby.

He brushed the hair away from her eyes. “Not so much like Rosemary, are you?”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head and the skin by his eyes crinkled when he smiled. “We’ll talk to her when things calm down, see if you two can take a few days off to go back and pack the things you want most.”

“What if she doesn’t want to?” Cleo asked.

“She will. She wants you to be happy and comfortable. So do I.”

Cleo considered that. The funny feeling in her tummy had changed so she felt happy again. “I think I love you, Harrison.”

He smiled. “I definitely love you, bug.”

She had a sudden thought. “I don’t know if I’d ever be able to call you Dad. I still miss my dad.”

“That’s okay, I know you loved Don. Rosemary said he was a really good dad, and I don’t think I could ever replace him, even if I wanted to. You can just call me Harrison if you want and if you change your mind later, that’s good too. Do you think you can go back to sleep now?” His voice was a little husky, like he might cry, but she wasn’t sure.

She felt better, not scared anymore. “Yeah.”

“Goodnight. I’ll see you in the morning.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead, then got up and walked out, leaving the door partly open so she could see the hall light.

A moment later she heard the main door open and she got out of bed to see if he was leaving her in the hotel, alone. She didn’t want to be alone. She saw Harrison pull Rosemary close and kiss her, so she must have just arrived.

“How’s Cleo? Did she sleep through?” Rosemary whispered so quietly Cleo could barely hear it from her crack in the door.

“She woke for a few minutes, but she’s going back to sleep now. She had a nightmare, but she didn’t want to talk about it.”

Rosemary shifted out of his arms and Cleo could see her face—there was worry in her eyes. “I wish she would, but she never does.”

“I think she’s missing some of her things from home.”

“Then we’ll have to make a trip back to get them.” She brushed her mouth against his. “Thanks.”

They moved to the sofas and Cleo returned to her bed. Just like that and Rosemary would make a trip to get her things? Starting to feel secure in her new place, her new life in this big family for the first time, she snuggled under the covers. Maybe everything would be okay after all.

Rosemary stood in her bra and panties staring at herself in the mirror. Cleo’s words kept echoing in her head, accompanied by all of the remarks she’d heard from Harrison, Sage and the others. Was she too thin? She considered how loosely her clothes fit her now and how she had liked her body shape before moving to Colorado. She’d been content, so when had that changed?

Now that she studied her reflection, she realized part of her mind had automatically reverted to that wounded nineteen-year-old when she met Harrison again. He’d never so much as hinted that she was overweight in the past six months, but somehow she’d convinced herself that she wasn’t good enough, thin enough, nice enough. She couldn’t change her character much, but she could change her weight. So she had.

But Cleo was right—she was too thin now. And she grew tired faster than she used to. She’d excused it as stress about Mike and being a full-time mom, but it wasn’t about that. She knew it now.

And Cleo needed her to have the energy to keep up, so Rosemary was going to have to make a change. She stared at her own eyes in the mirror. “This stops now.” Then she nodded and dressed for bed. Once again, this was something she could control. So she would.

It had been three days since Cleo skipped school and took ten years off Rosemary’s life. They were both bored out of their skulls despite the fact that Rosemary’s sisters had all stopped in more than once and Harrison spent all of his break time and into the wee hours of the night in their suite.

There was no sign of Mike, but the detective confirmed that he hadn’t flown anywhere—unless he was using an alias—and the police in his hometown had raided his home and found evidence that he was behind the bombing. Meanwhile, she really needed to get back to her kitchens and Cleo needed to talk to someone under the age of twenty-seven.

Feeling thoroughly ready to walk out on strike, Rosemary picked up the phone and called Vince.

“What’s up, Rosemary?” he greeted her.

“Can you make sure your sister brings Hannah to the party tonight? Cleo needs another little girl to chatter with before we both go stir crazy.”

“I’ll call Monica and make sure, but I can’t see Hannah passing up the chance to see Cleo—she’s been asking about her. How are you two holding up?”

“I’d be doing better if there was any change in sight, and if this room didn’t have a guest coming to sleep in it in a couple of days. I’m pretty sure they won’t want to share. They’ve got to find Mike so we can get back to real life.”

“They’re working on it. Don’t worry, the police are finding leads all of the time.”

“I hope so.” She looked out the window and wished she could go for a walk. “I’ve been thinking Joel needs to come up and review some self defense moves, but there’s no real defense against a gun.”

“I thought when he reviewed them with you girls last fall you said you didn’t need any help,” Vince teased her.

“I didn’t have to protect myself and a nine-year-old then.”

“True enough.” There was sound of paper being shuffled in the background. “I’ll see what I can do about Hannah. See you in the private dining room tonight.”

“Thanks.”

“Is she coming?” Cleo asked as soon as Rosemary ended the call.

“We’ll see. How’s the social studies coming?”

“It’s so boring!”

“Everything with you is boring! When it’s done, we can move on to art.” It was a constant struggle to keep them both on task and Rosemary was absolutely certain—supporting what she’d already known—that she didn’t want to be a teacher or home school her kids.

“Okay.” Cleo didn’t seem all that excited.

“I thought you loved art.”

“I did at my old school. We got to paint and work with clay and other cool things. Here we just draw stuff, which is all right, but I’m not really that good at drawing.”

“Me either. You saw the drawing I did for Cami’s cake.”

Rosemary had been sneaking down to work on the cake after Cleo went to bed the past few nights, leaving the officer at the door to keep an eye on things outside and Harrison inside. Her time alone in the pastry end of the kitchen with basically no one around to bother her had been her saving grace. Otherwise she was afraid she would have thrown something at someone by now. She glanced over at the countertop in the hotel room’s wet bar and wondered how badly it would stain if they mixed fondant on it.