Prayer (7 page)

When the reading was over, Calhoun schmoozed again with his adoring audience. Hidden back in the reading room, John took his time packing his gear up. He’d briefly considered playing background while Calhoun signed his masterpiece and people stuffed canapés into their mouths, but Bev hadn’t asked him to, and he didn’t want to lock himself into staying very long. He’d done what had been asked of him. He wanted out as soon as was seemly.

“You sounded great.”

At Katrynn’s voice, John, who’d been crouching at his hard case, taking a lot longer to pack up his Alvarez than was necessary, turned and stood up.

She wore another turtleneck dress, with another pair of tall, low-heeled boots, these in tan. The dress was maroon and hugged her body everywhere. She had a nice body: smallish tits, but high and round, and a sleek sweep of hips and ass. The clingy fabric did good things. The neck was very high, all the way to her jaw. He thought he saw some discoloration there, but it was probably a trick of the light and shadow with the color of her dress.

“Hey. Thanks.”

With a sharp little nod and a tight smile, she made to turn and leave.

“Katrynn, wait. Please.”

She stopped. After a moment’s hesitation, she faced him again. “John, just don’t.”

“I feel terrible. I won’t bug you. I just want to apologize.”

As she had last night, she reacted to that statement by going cold. “You did that last night.”

“And you didn’t accept it.” She was talking to him, so he took the risk and closed part of the distance between them.

“Is that what you want? Fine. I accept your apology.”

“I don’t care about the words. I’d like to know that you believe that I would never mean to hurt you. I was still half-drunk and not thinking clearly.”

She scoffed bitterly.

Again, John wondered if he’d done something even worse. He had her here, and she hadn’t turned on her heel again yet, so he asked. He couldn’t think what he had to lose. “Bailing on you like that was wicked shitty, I know. But did I do anything else? Worse?”

Some kind of understanding dawned on her face, and it was not pleasant to watch. He
had
done something worse. Jesus. What?

“You don’t remember the night.”

He tried out a sheepish grin and took another step toward her. “No. I’m sorry. I drowned my sorrows really well.”

“Oh my God. Oh, my God.”

Her eyes filled with tears. Jesus GOD, what had he done? He took another step, until he was nearly toe-to-toe with her. “Fuck, Katrynn. What did I do to you?”

As he asked, he reached out, without a clear intention to do so, but feeling a need to offer her comfort. She jerked her head away before he could touch her.

The movement separated the top of her turtleneck from the line of her jaw, and John saw that her neck was badly bruised. All of the skin she’d exposed was an angry, dark puce.

He knew that Calhoun had done that. He just
knew
it. It looked like the bastard had choked her.

He reached again, and as he formed the words to ask what had happened, Katrynn skittered backward, and then Calhoun was there. He put his arm around her waist and gave John that smug glare, like he was affecting anger but not really feeling it.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, man?” Calhoun asked, his tone heavy with challenge.

John punched him in the face.

Calhoun stumbled back, then pushed Katrynn aside and jumped at John.

They were in the Reading Room, which wasn’t exactly spacious, so it took a while for anybody to get to them and pull them apart. By the time Luca had John, and Theo had Calhoun, they had torn the hell out of the room and each other.

Not to mention the party.

John was quite a bit taller, but he was lean. Calhoun was broader—and he wore rings; John didn’t. John definitely got the worst of the fight. But as Luca shoved him to the wall, he was pleased to see that Calhoun’s nose was gushing blood and his eye was already swelling shut.

“Jesus fuck, John-O,” Luca snarled at him. “You cool now?”

He took a breath and was about to say yes when Calhoun broke Theo’s hold and stormed over. “I will
end
you, motherfucker!”

The sound of the threat was impaired by his broken nose, but Luca let go of John and turned on Calhoun. He pushed Calhoun away. “Back off, buddy, or
I
will get in the middle of this shit, and you will not like that at all.”

Not knowing Luca well enough, Calhoun was undeterred and made another advance. But then Sam, Nick’s driver and bodyguard, was there, with his enormous hand clamped on Calhoun’s neck.

“Enough.” Nick’s voice was deadly quiet.

John looked over and saw his cousin, standing in the rubble they’d made. They’d knocked stacks over, broken a couple of tables, shattered a lamp John knew was an antique, and broken an arm off the armchair that he knew had been Bev’s friend’s favorite. Bev’s dead friend, who’d left her this shop.

Goddammit.

Without another word, without looking at anything but the mess they’d made in his wife’s business, Nick turned. He went to Katrynn, who was still standing in the entrance, her face full of shock. He took her by the elbow and led her out of the room, through the throng of his wife’s scandalized guests.

Luca watched them go, too, and turned back to John. “You are in serious shit, John. Whatever has you so twisted up these days, you better find the end of it.”

John agreed. First he had to figure out what it was.

~oOo~

At Mass the next morning, John withstood his stepmother’s hand-wringing fuss about the state of his face, and his father’s censorious comments about how he would have expected such from Luca, or even Junior, but not from him. Pop always managed to scattershot his criticisms and hit multiple brothers at once.

He hadn’t seen Carlo Sr. or Adele, his father’s wife, since before he’d left for Italy. Pop was retired and had had four heart attacks. He and Adele pretty much stayed at their house these days, rarely going farther than next door, to the family house on Caravel Road, which he still owned, and where Carlo Jr. lived with Sabina and their kids. So they hadn’t been present at either of the most recent events of John’s downward spiral.

But they’d gotten the full report. News traveled fast in the Pagano family. Especially juicy news.

Nick, Bev, their daughters, and Nick’s mother, Aunt Betty, sat in the pew across from John and his family. As it had always been, the Paganos took over those two pews and, now, on Carlo Sr.’s side, a bit of a third. Everyone came to Mass at Christ the King every Sunday—except Manny, Luca’s wife, who was quickly bored and bad about hiding it, and Theo, who had some strong opinions about Catholicism.

After Mass, everyone stood outside and waited to talk to Father Mike. The temperature neared sixty degrees on this Sunday in February, and John lifted his head into the breeze and let it soothe his sore face. His eye was swollen shut, too, and his jaw was a mess. Not broken, but Luca had had to shove it back into joint. And he’d still ended up in the ER for stitches. Fucking Calhoun and his fucking rings.

He was off by himself, his eyes closed, feeling the nice weather, when he sensed that he wasn’t alone. He opened his working eye and saw Nick.

“I want you at the office tomorrow morning at eight.”

Nick didn’t wait for an answer, just turned and went back to Bev and his kids.

Bev was now another woman he needed to apologize to. But he wasn’t going to get the chance today.

His bigger concern was that he’d just been summoned to Pagano Brothers Shipping. To Nick’s office. That meant that Nick had decided to deal with the damage John had caused in Cover to Cover not as his cousin but as Don Pagano.

And that meant that John was, as Luca had said, in serious shit.

~ 4 ~

Katrynn woke up on Sunday morning with only Lennie and George for company. They both sat primly on the empty, still neat, side of her bed and stared at her, as they always did. They wouldn’t start yowling until she sat up, and then they wouldn’t shut up until they were fed.

She lay there and let them stare for a few minutes while she got her head straight about events of the night before.

She wasn’t surprised to be alone; Atticus had left the bookshop with Murray, his publicist, and Lydia, his editor, on the way to the Urgent Care Center in Narragansett, several miles out of town. He’d refused to go to the ER at St. Gabriel’s because that was where John’s brothers had taken him.

When Katrynn had tried to go with him, Atticus had waved her off angrily. He blamed her for his broken nose and swollen face.

She didn’t think that was quite fair. She had no clue why John had punched him. But now John had fucked up something else in her life. Possibly a few things.

Possibly some really significant things. She couldn’t let herself think about what John had told her. Those thoughts and the feelings that went with them had to be locked behind a door at the far side of her brain.

It was interesting, though: she was angry and upset, absolutely. And there was a black pit of hurt lurking behind that locked door. But it was the state of the shop, and Bev’s heavy distress about the damage to Chris’s room, that had Katrynn really torqued. The thought that what had happened might have turned Atticus off of her was irritating, but not the greatest of her complaints. Seeing Bev, after everyone but Katrynn, Bev, Nick, and Sam had left, on her knees in the middle of the mess, weeping at the sight of Chris’s broken chair—that had made Katrynn’s blood boil, and the memory of it this morning was no less potent.

And Nick—Nick had been terrifying. He’d been completely calm, and his voice had never lifted above a low rumble. But he had these always-intense, vivid green eyes, and last night they’d seemed supernaturally expressive. Like they might have burned whatever they’d focused on.

When he’d gotten Bev calm, he’d sent her to the car with Sam, and then it had been only she and Don Pagano alone in the shop. He’d turned those eyes on hers and said, quietly, “I would like you to show me your neck, Katrynn.”

You didn’t tell Nick no, so she’d shown him her neck. When she’d attempted to speak and explain that the bruising was not a big deal, he’d put up his hand to silence her. He’d said nothing; he hadn’t even nodded. After several silent seconds, he’d said, “We’re taking you home. I’ll send someone to bring your car to you.”

Atticus had picked her up in his rental and taken her to Dominic’s, so her car hadn’t been at the bookshop—and until Nick had mentioned it, it hadn’t occurred to her that she’d been left without a ride. Her apartment wasn’t much more than a mile from the shop, so it wouldn’t have been a crisis if she’d had to walk, but it made her feel lonely that Atticus had left her behind like that.

George stood and came over, stepping onto her chest. She had just enough time to put her hands over her boobs before he stepped on them. When he was nose to nose with her, he yowled and then rubbed his grey face along her jaw.

“Okay, okay. Let’s get breakfast.” She set the cat to the side and got up. There was a lot left to think about, but she couldn’t lie in bed all day. That would only lead to getting stuck there. One thing Lennie and George were good for, besides their company: they wouldn’t tolerate neglect, so Katrynn never could fall too deep into the quicksand of self-pity.

~oOo~

Later in the morning, Atticus showed up at her door. His nose was splinted, one eye was badly swollen, and the other was shadowed with the deep bruising that masked his face, the result of his broken nose. He had a couple of stitches in his lip as well.

“God,” she said when she opened the door. “I’m so sorry.”

He didn’t acknowledge the apology. When he just stood there, looking both pathetic and angry, Katrynn asked, “Do you want to come in?”

Again, he didn’t answer, but when she stepped back, he came forward, into her apartment. As she closed the door, he went to her sofa, pushed George out of his way, and sat down.

“Can I get you something? A drink?”

“No.” His voice was stilted and hoarse. “Sit down.”

She sat. The vibe he gave off was considerably more angry than friendly, so she sat in the Bentwood rocker across from her sofa. Then she waited for him to say what he’d obviously come to say.

It took him a few seconds of staring at her to get the words going. “I like you, Kitty.”

“I like you, too.” She smiled as she said it, though the expression felt strangely inappropriate.

“But you’ve got something going with that guy—John.”

“No.”

He answered that with as broad an expression of ironic disbelief as his mangled face could manage. “Then what’s his problem?”

“I honestly don’t know. There’s nothing between us. There never has been.”

That was even truer than she’d realized. John didn’t even remember their night together. What had been a perfect night for her, what had given her hope that she might have a chance at something real and deep, what had totally reset the bar of her understanding of what sex could be—he didn’t even
remember
it. Her perfect night had not happened at all for him.

That was how much she mattered.

She really needed to keep all that locked behind the mind-door.

“That’s bullshit, Kitty. Look at my face. He didn’t come at me for nothing. So you’re lying or you’re stupid, but either way, it doesn’t matter. I do not need this shit in my life.”

It was as she’d expected. Katrynn felt disappointed, but her disappointment seemed to come from a place bigger than Atticus himself. It wasn’t so much losing whatever they might have been starting. It was more like her heart simply sighed. Another one bites the dust.

Sometimes it was her doing the breaking up, and sometimes it was the guy, but there was always a breakup. Katrynn was a couple of months shy of her thirtieth birthday, and she was getting tired of endings. Even when she was intent on settling, she ended up alone.

She guessed, though, that Atticus wasn’t really breaking up with her. They’d spent a few days, and only one night, together. He was ending something that hadn’t begun. His calling her a liar or stupid had eased any real regret she felt to have this particular man out of her life.

“I understand,” she answered, now ready for him to be gone, so she could go herself. A mom hug was in order this afternoon.

But he wasn’t finished yet. “Look at my face,” he repeated. “Murray is cancelling six appearances I had lined up for this week. Three TV interviews. To support my book. That’s money out of my pocket. Murray thinks I should press charges. And sue. That asshat and the bookstore both.”

And who was calling whom stupid? “That’s a terrible idea, Atticus. Do you know who Bev’s husband is? And he’s John’s cousin, too.”

“Everybody knows who he is. So I’m just supposed to sit back and take this? That’s not how I work, honey.”

“Then you are truly stupid.”

He stood up at that. “We’ll see. I don’t know why I came here today.”

She stood up, too. “I guess I don’t, either. Don’t start a fire, Atticus. You’ll be the one who gets burned.”

He grinned at her, his lips creeping up the less-injured side of his face. The effect was ghastly. “Aren’t you the little poet.”

It seemed to her that he was being intentionally mean. Rather than continue the pointless and increasingly insulting discussion, Katrynn went to her front door and opened it. “Goodbye, Atticus. Good luck with your book.”

He smacked her ass on his way past. “Too bad. You’re a half-decent fuck. Bye, Kitty.”

When Katrynn closed the door, she had a sense that she had dodged a bullet. She almost thought she might owe John a thank you.

No. No, not that.

Even Atticus had respected her enough to say goodbye.

~oOo~

After Atticus left her apartment, her life, and Quiet Cove, Katrynn changed into jeans and a turtleneck sweater and drove home.

Home was Welcome, Connecticut, a quirky little town just southeast of Hartford, where she’d been born and raised. The drive from the Cove to Welcome was less than two hours, if traffic was good and Katrynn followed posted speed limits. On that Sunday afternoon, traffic was great—and Katrynn rarely followed posted speed limits.

Her parents were…unconventional. Dana, her mother, had had several million, at Katrynn’s round estimate, different jobs. Bill, her father, worked as a plumber, when he was home and working. But he had trouble staying in one place for long, so for months-long stretches of every year Katrynn could remember, her father had been absent from her life.

Somehow, Dana was okay with that. And Bill was okay with coming home after one of his wanderings and finding a different man in his house and his bed. Sometimes, the different man would hang around a while, and all three of them would be together.

Unconventional. Yet Welcome was the kind of town that made a lot of room for unconventional people, so home had always been full of friends and neighbors.

For Katrynn, that had always been her family, and she loved them. Even once she’d realized the extent of their unconventionality, she’d been comfortable with it, shrugging off any comments from her peers. That got a lot harder to do when she became a teenager, and it was even harder, as an adult, to bring people in from away to introduce her family, so she rarely did that. But she loved them, and they were who they were.

She herself wasn’t nearly as weird as her folks, and she didn’t want a life for herself like theirs. She had been happy to get her own place and her own things and be a little bit normal, yet there were things about her parents’ lifestyle she admired. Every day was a new adventure for them. They were both vagabonds, and they’d cobbled together a life that gave them what they wanted and needed.

Her older brother did not have the same sanguine attitude. They had named him Evelyn, after the British writer Evelyn Waugh, and they called him Evie. But Evelyn had not been a common name for a boy in a long time—maybe never in the US. That had not gone well for him in school, and no amount of insisting that he be called by his middle name, William, had had any effect. Katrynn thought that his name, more than any other oddity their parents had presented, had soured her brother on their family.

Her name was a tad unusual, too. She had grown up correcting people who wanted to put an ‘H’ after the ‘T’, or who wanted to stress the first syllable rather than the second, and she expected that she would spend her life making those corrections. But her name issues were inconveniences. No one had bullied her because her name wasn’t exactly normal. Her brother, on the other hand, had had a really hard time.

He’d gone to college in Texas. He still lived there, and in the more than thirteen years since he’d left, he had been home four times. He and Katrynn kept in touch, mainly online, and he sent cards and gifts home, but he rarely made the trip back east. He was Will Page now everywhere but at home, even Katrynn called him Will, but he was still bitter about ever being Evie.

Katrynn thought he was missing out. While he had run as far as he could as soon as he could, she had stayed close. Their parents were weird, but she loved them.

When she arrived unannounced that afternoon, she came upon her mother standing on a chair in the middle of the living room. The walls and shelves were completely bare, and all of the furniture but that one chair—which belonged in the kitchen—was out of the room.

When Dana saw her, she clapped happily. “Oh good! Hi, darling! You can help!”