House of Payne: Rude (5 page)

“No. Why would I?”

“
Why would you
?” It was a strange thing, shrieking at someone while still trying to keep her voice down. “What the hell is wrong with you? That should’ve been done a month ago.”

“Sassy, calm down. It’s over four months away.”

“Exactly! All the good places will have been taken by now. Oh, you’ve never done this before, you don’t know what it’s like,” she groaned, diving into her clutch for her phone. “You’ve always been deployed or stationed God knows where, so you’ve never put one of these things together. Didn’t Scout offer to help you on this? She said she was going to.”

“I couldn’t let her do that while she was putting together her wedding. She’s amazingly organized, but she’s not Superwoman.”

“Don’t tell her that. Okay.” She flicked her thumb at the screen to scroll through her phone book. “I have a few notes from a couple years ago when it was my turn to do the party. I have some contacts for venues, maybe you’ll get lucky there—oh, and don’t forget to ask if valet parking is used at your venue site, or if you have to arrange for that yourself. Party rental equipment—you’ll need that number too. Then you need to look at caterers, and you need to order a cake like,
now
. And then there’s the humongous headache that is the guest list, which was nearly a hundred last year. But before all that, the one thing you absolutely have to do is decide on a theme because that’ll dictate—”

“Stop.” No longer smiling, he had the appearance of a man pinned down by enemy fire. “It can’t be that complicated.”

“It is.”

“Why? Why can’t it be just like…I don’t know, pasta night around the dinner table?”

“Because it
can’t
.”

“That’s how it’s going to be if I’m in charge of this, and I am.”

“Not anymore, you’re not,” she muttered to her phone, and when she glanced up at him when he didn’t answer, she caught his sharp smile before he wiped it away.

Damn it. Played again.

Chapter Four

“I can’t believe it. I mean… Rude and The Secret Garden?”

“That’s just such a wacky combo. Did he like the food?”

“How did it even happen?”

“Were you guys on a date?”

“
No
.” Sassy held up a hand to stop the torrent of questions pouring out of her former foster sister Tonya and Rude’s sister, Francesca “Frankie” Panuzzi-Valente. Frankie had been away at college when the Panuzzis had opened their home to Sass, but over the ensuing holidays and various breaks, she’d become one of Sass’s favorite people. Sass had even been one of the bridesmaids at Frankie’s wedding, a happy day marred only by Rude, whom she’d had to walk up the aisle with once the ceremony was over.

That was a walk she wouldn’t soon forget. It had been done in stone cold silence from both of them, with Sass not even looking Rude’s way, which had been a difficult task for several reasons. Mainly because the wild-eyed wedding coordinator insisted they had to end the ceremony by walking arm-in-arm back up the aisle. But it had also been tough not looking at him because Rude had been in his dress blues. Until that day, she’d never fully understood how some women could never resist a man in uniform. After the ceremony, however, she was a true believer. He’d looked so freaking
different
. Gone was the obnoxious brat she couldn’t stand to be in the same room with. Instead, with his hair all but shaved off, his eyes solemn under the brim of his cap and his shoulders filling out his uniform in ways that were new and awesome, it had been almost impossible
not
to look at him.

But she’d done it. Not looked at him, not talked to him. And he’d treated her the same way.

Even now it was hard to admit that his pretending she wasn’t there—behavior that mirrored her own—had hurt her deep down in a place she didn’t want to analyze.

“I want to make it clear that what happened was no big deal,” Sass announced as she curled up in a white wicker chair on Tonya’s back patio. Frankie—four years older than Rude with jet black hair that curled down to her shoulders and those cognac-brown Panuzzi eyes—was seated in a matching chair across from her. Rude’s sister looked like she was on the edge of her seat, hoping to hear a thrilling fairy tale full of dragons, derring-do and earthshaking kissy time. Tonya, meanwhile, lounged on a chaise, wrapped in a fuzzy blue bathrobe and doing an excellent job of looking like someone recovering from the stomach flu. Normally her latte-hued skin looked so flawless it could have been in a skin commercial, and her tight corkscrew blonde-tipped curls usually cascaded in thick profusion around her model-stunning face—a face that could have been Puerto Rican, Brazilian, Polynesian, African American or a mixture of that and more. Today, however, her hair was scraped back into a messy bun and she looked as weak as water.

But she’d obviously been feeling well enough to call this powwow. Sass figured that if Tonya was perky enough to insist that Sass drop her latest cookbook manuscript so that she could drag her butt out into the suburbs to go over how she’d wound up at The Secret Garden with the foster brother from hell, her former foster sister had to be on the mend.

“That picture Rude sent everyone is nothing but a joke. I already explained to you why he stopped by my place this morning. He was just checking up on me, no doubt so he could give a full report once Mama Coco and Papa Bolo get back from California.”

Frankie pulled a pouty face. “I still can’t believe you didn’t call me, little girl.”

“Or me,” Tonya chimed in, and her expression added new definition to the term
cranky
. “And don’t give me that bullshit about me being sick and you didn’t want to bother anyone or whatever the hell you said. Some cocksucking asshole tries to fucking
kill
you, you damn well better drag your skinny little ass over to the nearest phone and
call me
.”

“I’d almost forgotten what that sweet potty mouth of yours sounds like.” Frankie grinned over at her, brightening. “You’re no fun when you’ve got Sabrina with you and you get all G-rated.”

Tonya gave Frankie a withering side-eye. “My little girl’s going to be two years old in just a handful of months and she’s already talking up a storm. I don’t want her perfect mouth dropping F-bombs before the age of twenty.”

Frankie toasted her with her mug of coffee. “Good luck with that, babe. My youngest, Giovanni called his sister a bitch last week. I mean, Michaela was totally being one by refusing to let Vonnie into the bathroom when he seriously had to pee, but he’s frigging
five
.”

“That’s why Rude didn’t want us as foster sisters.” The words were out of Sass’s mouth before she knew she was going to speak. Stuck, she tried to look casual by lifting a shoulder when their gazes swung back to her. “That’s what his big crisis was. With us there, he had to wait in line again for bathroom privileges. Apparently you and Izzi traumatized him.”

“
Traumatized
? If that’s what that boy calls
traumatized
, then he should be on his knees thanking a higher power that he’s been given such a happy-go-lucky life,” Tonya announced, while Frankie scoffed in indignation. “He would’ve been crushed like a fucking bug if he’d had to live a damn
week
in the system.
Traumatized, my ass.”

“He didn’t actually use that word,” Sass hastened to add, not wanting Tonya to think badly of him. Then she shook her head. Why the hell she cared about how Tonya thought of Rude Panuzzi was beyond her. “And I’m sure Rude now knows how nice he had it while growing up. Just think of all the horrible places he’s been deployed and all the things he’s probably seen. I’m sure he now knows the true meaning of trauma.”

“That’d be a safe bet,” Frankie offered while Tonya absorbed this. “About a year and a half ago, Rudy broke off all contact with everyone in the family after going through some seriously traumatic shit.”

Sass’s heart gave an uncomfortable lurch, and her attention snapped around to Frankie. “What’s this?”

“Loss of contact with him would happen from time to time—secret deployments of his unit, or whatever. But when his silence lasted for the better part of a year, Dad and Anthony went searching for answers.”

Tonya’s thin brows pulled together. “This is the first I’ve heard about this.”

“I only heard about it six months ago myself, when Rudy resigned his commission and went into the private sector. Mom and Pop wanted to keep from worrying everyone, but they finally contacted Anthony for help.”

“Why Anthony?”

“I guess because he’s the first-born son, and closer to Rudy than Gino is. Who knows, really?” Frankie lifted a shoulder, shaking her head. “Pop and Anthony found out that Rudy had been in a real bad fight in one of those awful places—Ramadi or Fallujah, or something like that. His people had gotten bad intel, and Rudy and his patrol wound up walking right into an ambush.”

“Holy crap.” Sass didn’t even realize she’d clutched a hand to her heart. It was just suddenly there, fisting on her sweater until her fingers went numb.

Frankie nodded. “His patrol was totally wiped out. I know that Rudy tried carrying another wounded guy out, but something must’ve happened, since Rudy wound up being the only one left alive. He had to hide out for a week without provisions before he somehow made it back.” She shuddered. “I still don’t know the details of how he got out alive.”

Sass’s skin iced over, trying not to picture an alone and desperate Rude stuck behind enemy lines a world away, thinking every second was going to be his last. “I can’t believe this is the first I’m hearing about it.”

“You’ve never been his greatest fan. None of the strays are, with good reason.” Frankie grimaced, and it was the half-embarrassed, half-apologetic look she got every time she spoke of her brother and the fosters in the same breath. She even wrinkled her nose over the word
stray
, when she knew that, after Scout had been called a stray as a teen, that word had been adopted as their personal badge of honor. It meant they were all survivors, and they were proud to be labeled as the Panuzzi strays. “I think that… no. Never mind.”

Sass leaned forward. “What?”

“Well…I don’t know this for a fact, but I think that the hardest part for Mom was that Rudy had actually been back stateside for six months after this horrible incident occurred, but he’d never bothered to pick up the phone to let someone know he was alive. It was like he’d turned his back on us, and we didn’t know what we’d done to deserve that.”

“Please don’t do that, Frankie. His shutting down probably had nothing to do with you.” Though Sass tried her best to fight it, a tide of horror and pain and sick devastation rose up inside to swamp her with old, old memories. Memories of being helpless and hyperventilating with fear, of sharpening her nails and meticulously hiding sandwich bags under her mattress to seal her hands up if she survived, and trying to open a window that had been nailed shut… “Sometimes there are things that happen that are so bad, there aren’t words awful enough to describe it. So, when you can’t find those words, all the rest of your words pale in comparison until they disappear altogether. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking his silence has anything to do with you. It doesn’t. Getting upset or allowing your feelings to be hurt over something that has nothing to do with you—and certainly over something that can’t be helped—it only makes things worse for Rude, and for you.”

Frankie looked at her with concerned eyes, and Sass saw the question appear there even as she opened her mouth. But before she could utter a word, Tonya, bless her, cut in.

“What was Rude like when Papa Bolo and Anthony finally tracked him down? Was he ready to talk? Was he ready to even be a part of the family again?”

Frankie’s attention swerved back to her. “Pop wasn’t all that forthcoming. He just said Rudy needed his space. But Anthony told Gino about it, and then Gino told Izzi and me that Rudy treated Pop like a stranger—really polite and asking after everyone, including the strays, but otherwise he didn’t say anything. Later on, after Rudy came home, I asked him why he didn’t let us know he was back.”

“What’d he say?” Tonya asked, sitting up straighter in her chaise.

“He said he didn’t know how to reconnect with us. It’s like we were out of reach and in a different world that had nothing to do with him.”

Tonya frowned. “I don’t get it.”

Frankie sighed, and it was a sad sound. “There’s like this huge chasm in how he looks at it—like there’s the life he had before that mission, and there’s the life he now has after that mission. He told me that when he first got back to the States, he felt so completely disjointed from life here that it seemed like it belonged to another person.”

“Wow,” Tonya murmured, and her expression was both concerned and caring, proof in Sass’s eyes that the Panuzzi strays cared more for Rude than even they probably realized. “Is he suffering some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder, or something?”

Frankie nodded. “I think all combat soldiers have a little bit of that, and I know he was treated for it in the time that he was away. And I suspect it went fairly well, since it was his decision to come back to Chicago and reconnect with us six months ago. Dad didn’t force his hand or anything. Rudy came back all on his own, and he’s been reaching out to make those connections with everyone ever since.”

“I knew he seemed different when he first got back,” Tonya said, and her voice was filled with a new understanding. “Whatever he went through… it
really
changed him. Or at least I thought it did, until he started harping on Sass when we went out to eat with him.”

“Yeah, I really didn’t see that much change in him when he came back.” But that wasn’t true, and Sass cursed her contrary habit for saying the opposite of what she thought. There
had
been a change in Rude, though she hadn’t been able to put her finger on what it was. She still couldn’t. All she knew was that there was a watchfulness in him now whenever they were together, whereas before he’d simply acted like she was an invader he hadn’t wanted around and didn’t know how to get rid of.

Even now, she couldn’t decide which behavior was more unsettling.

“Whatever he went through,” Frankie sighed, shifting in her chair, “it was enough to make him walk away from the military after twelve years, and enough to make him isolate himself from the family that loves him. I know he’s back now and I’m thrilled beyond words about it. But I can still see something in my little brother that keeps him separated from us, and it breaks my heart.”

Sass stared into her now-empty mug and wondered if Rude’s eyes showed that chasm that cut his life to two parts, the before-and-after sections of his existence. But to go in search of that chasm would mean looking deep into his eyes and potentially opening herself up to have him do the same. She wasn’t about to do that, so it would never happen.

No matter how much she was tempted to look.

“You’ve been disgustingly chipper all day, and I wanna know why.”

At his open locker, Rude raised a brow at his friend and coworker at Private Security International, Dorian Havlik. The other man was fresh from the gym, if his T-shirt and dark sweatpants were any indication, along with the sweat dampening his short high-and-tight blonde hair. Considering the way Havlik settled a forearm on the lockers, he was clearly in the mood to chitchat. Rude wasn’t, so he snatched his jacket off a hook and closed his locker with a snap. “What are you talking about?”