Prayer (9 page)

Since he’d gotten to the office late, John took a late lunch that day and stopped by Cover to Cover around three in the afternoon, after he’d done his rounds at the few interior job sites they had running this winter. He came in with his small toolbox; he planned today only to understand what needed to be done and what materials he’d need. And he also hoped to get a moment with Bev—and that he wouldn’t run into Katrynn, though that hope was slim.

The double doors to the Reading Room were closed, and there was a neatly handwritten sign on one that read,
The Reading Room is closed for renovation. We regret the inconvenience
.

Inconvenience. Nick had called it a ‘nuisance.’ Small words to describe John losing control of his life.

A salesclerk was at the desk, a guy John might have seen once or twice but didn’t know. He hadn’t been at the party Saturday night. The guy blinked at the sight of John’s face, then recovered and gave him a professional smile and said, “Good afternoon. May I help you find something to read?” So he didn’t know John, either.

“Hi. I’m looking for Bev. I’m here to start work on the Reading Room.”

“Oh, good. Bev’s gone home for the day. Hold on, please.” He picked up the handset of a phone on the desk and pushed a button. “Hi. There’s somebody here to work on Chris’s room.”

Too late, John realized that if Bev wasn’t here, then there was only one person the clerk could have called.

The clerk confirmed John’s fear when he said, “The manager will be out in just a sec.”

“Thanks.” He didn’t feel especially thankful.

Katrynn came through the office suite door before the clerk had stopped nodding.

Stopping at the desk, keeping it between them, she said, “Hi.”

She was obviously still trying to camouflage her neck. Today she wore a white shirt under a black blazer, with jeans. Wrapped around her neck was a red and white checkered scarf. Her hair was in its usual ponytail—and she was wearing her glasses. Black horn-rims.

John had seen her in them a few times. He thought they were hot. In fact, he thought her whole ensemble, though it covered her from jaw to toe, was hotter than the form-fitting dresses she’d worn at the parties. She looked older and younger simultaneously. She looked smart. She
was
smart.

“Hi,” she said again, and John realized he’d been staring.

“Hey. I’m going to fix what I broke. Today, I need to take some measurements and get a sense of everything I need to do. I’ll start work tomorrow. Unless that’ll be in your way.”

She took a set of keys from a drawer in the desk and came around to his side. “No. The faster you get it done, the better.”

He followed her to the double doors, and she unlocked them. He got two steps into the room and then stopped, shocked.

How had two men caused this much destruction?

“Fuck,” he muttered to himself.

“Yeah. Bev’s really upset, and she doesn’t need any more stress right now. Let me know when you leave, so I can lock the doors again.”

“I will. Thanks.” When Katrynn turned to leave, John called out, “Katrynn, wait.”

She turned back. Except for the rubble, the scene was suddenly a lot like it had been on Saturday.

“I know, John. You’re sorry. Apology accepted, okay? It’s amazing how little those words do to change anything, though, isn’t it?”

She didn’t wait to see if he had an answer for that.

Just as well; he didn’t.

~oOo~

“Maybe I’m a dick to say it, but I’m kinda glad you’re in trouble with Nick.” Luca drew on his beer and kept his eyes on Nick, who was crouched across the way with his four-year-old daughter, Lia, tying the lace on her little bowling shoe. Teresa wanted her party at a bowling alley. She was a cool little kid that way, and all of her uncles were celebrating the fact that they could drink at a seven-year-old’s birthday.

Nor’easter Lanes was a little joint, with ten lanes. Carmen and Theo had rented out the whole place for the afternoon. Between their huge family and Teresa’s many friends and their families, they were a party of sixty. The cacophony of squealing girls and crashing pins resounded against the waxed floor.

Carlo, Luca, and John were sitting at a table behind the lanes. Joey, the youngest of them, was down on a lane with Manny, their baby sister, Rosa, and her husband, Eli. Manny didn’t join in festivities much, but she seemed to be enjoying the hell out of bowling, jumping and punching the air every time she knocked even one pin down. Joey was having a good time, too. It was more physical activity than John had seen him do in a long time.

“You’re a dick to say it, Luc.” Carlo answered before John could. The eldest of them turned then to John. “It sucks, bro. We’ve all been there.”

“That’s why I’m kinda glad. It does suck—though at least you got to punch Calhoun repeatedly in the face—but it feels like you’re one of us. We’ve all done our time, and we’ve all survived it.”

“You just barely survived it, Luc. And you, too, John. You both almost died when Uncle Ben called in a debt on Luc. I’m surprised Nick would’ve even called you on this.”

Years ago, before Luca and Manny were married, the Uncles had called a marker on Luca, putting him in the middle of a fight-fixing scheme, trying to ferret out the fixer. By the time that had played out, Luca, Manny, and John had all been badly hurt.

Actually, the backlash had gone even farther than that. By the time it was done, years later, there had been a lot of bodies piled up, Uncle Lorrie’s among them. And Bev had been hurt more than anyone.

“That was Uncle Ben’s debt to me, and he settled it a couple years ago.”

Luca and Carlo stared at him. “How’s that?” Carlo asked.

“Uncle Ben wanted it just between us, but I guess that doesn’t go past his death. He gave me the down for the beach house. He’s the reason I could buy it.”

Carlo nodded. “I wondered how you’d managed to squirrel that much away. You didn’t cheap the offer.”

“It was Carmen’s house. I wasn’t going to low-bid my own damn sister.”

“She took your offer, though,” Luca laughed. “Didn’t give you a break. Typical Carm.”

“Forget about it, Luc. She would have. Once Uncle Ben made his offer, though, there wasn’t a point. The down was big enough that my mortgage is about what I was paying her in rent. I’m good. Anyway, the point is that Nick doesn’t owe me shit. Besides, what I did hurt Bev. There’s no way he’d have called us square.”

The brothers nodded solemnly at that. They all understood the instinct to protect family at all costs and to wreak bloody vengeance on any who hurt those they loved.

Teresa bopped up from the lanes and dropped her elbows onto the table between Carlo and John. Her long, dark hair was pulled up into a high ponytail, and she wore a blue satin bowling shirt that had ‘Birthday Girl’ embroidered across the back and her name over the right front pocket. The satin made her striking blue eyes almost glow. She gave them all a serious look, lowering her young brow over those eyes.

“You’re not playing, Uncles. Don’t you like my party? We have bowling for one more hour and then pizza and cake and presents.”

John pulled her onto his lap. “We’re just talking. It’s a
great
party, Baby Blue.”

“Mamma said you’d like it because there’s beer. I like it because there’s bowling and pizza and cake and presents. I like bowling. But I think Daddy is letting me win.”

“It’s your birthday. Don’t you want to win on your birthday?” John asked.

“Yes, but I want to win because I’m better.”

“You are your mother’s daughter, sugar,” Luca laughed. He leaned over to kiss her cheek. She accepted it but shrugged her shoulder up when he didn’t back off quickly enough. Like her mother, she wasn’t big on physical affection.

“Everybody always says that.”

“It must be true, then.” Carlo stood up. “Okay. I promise not to let you win, but I can’t speak for Uncle John and Uncle Luca.”

Teresa turned to John and patted his face gently. “If it hurts too much, you don’t have to play.”

“Thank you, honey. But it barely hurts at all.”

In truth, his face was the least of the injuries incurred that night.

~ 6 ~

Katrynn shivered and slipped her arms back into her thick, fisherman-knit cardigan. With the long sleeves of her sweater dress under it, she’d be boiling in the shop, but back here in her office, sitting at her desk, she needed it. She considered putting on her fingerless gloves, too, but they made Bev feel guilty, like she was Ebenezer Scrooge to Katrynn’s Bob Cratchit. Bev had gone home for the day, so she wouldn’t know, but Katrynn still felt like it would be disloyal to pull the gloves out of her drawer. Like she would be sneaking warmth.

It wasn’t Bev’s fault that the staff suite was so drafty and cold in winter. The Quiet Cove Historical Society was a force not even Nick Pagano could bring to heel, and they were persnickety about every detail of the original buildings. Two hundred years ago, insulation sucked. The shop was fine; it was nestled between the thick walls of two other businesses, and there was a good stove near the sales desk. In the back, though, with the wind tunnel of an alley behind it, the temperature dropped twenty degrees, at least.

The winter had been warmer than normal until a few days ago, and now a northern wind had brought in a cold like Mother Nature was trying to catch up.

She hurried through her paperwork—preparing payroll, tracking sales figures for the week, and starting to figure out the next month’s orders—and decided that she’d update the home page on the website later on. Maybe at home tonight, where it was warm and quiet.

It was definitely not quiet here at the shop. John had been working on Chris’s room for a week, coming in every day during the last hours of the day, when they tended to be very slow. In all the seasons that weren’t summer, except for weekends, Cover to Cover did most of its business in the first part of the day, and things petered out sharply after the lunch hour.

Except for summer and special events, they didn’t really do all that much business at all, not in the shop, at least. They were a little independent bookshop in a digital world. Until Katrynn had talked Bev into building a website, they hadn’t had a single month in the black. She did the accounting; she knew that Nick had kept the shop afloat for the first couple of years, and he still filled in the gaps during slow times.

She
knew. Bev did not. Early on, Nick had instructed Katrynn to send a copy of the shop’s records directly to him on a regular basis. Back then, she hadn’t had a full understanding of exactly how powerful Nick was, but even so, she’d known not to question him. So she did what he said, and the records Bev saw looked a lot better than the records Nick saw. At least at first. The shop was solvent now, and more times than not Bev saw the true records, but they had not had the strong start that Bev thought they’d had.

Katrynn had always felt guilty about it, but she also liked Nick all the more for it. She shouldn’t; the women’s studies minor in her said he was being manipulative and controlling and calling it loving and protective, but the lover of hearts and flowers in her thought it was romantic. She didn’t know how she’d feel if she were Bev and found out about it, but from her seat on the sidelines, it gave her the warm fuzzies and much as it gave her the guilties.

Plus, the way he did it was honorable in more ways than his love for Bev. To keep the shop’s records clean, he instructed Katrynn to actually move inventory with the money he gave her. He bought books. At her discretion, she took books from the shelves, and then donated them anonymously around Rhode Island—to libraries, nursing homes, hospice centers, homeless shelters, women’s shelters, and a crisis nursery in Providence.

Yeah, lots of warm fuzzies.

The phone on her desk buzzed an internal line, and Katrynn hit the speaker. “Yeah?”

Jamie’s high, schoolgirlish voice came into the room. “Hey—it’s almost four, and I’ve got that class tonight.”

“Right. Sorry. I’ll be out in a shake. Is there anybody in the shop?”

“Besides the hottie with the tool belt, you mean? No. Not for the past hour.”

Katrynn laughed. Jamie wasn’t even twenty, but it hadn’t dissuaded her from ogling John and his tool belt and not being subtle about it at all. “Okay. I’m gonna make myself some hot cocoa, and then I’ll be out.”

“Thanks!”

Katrynn turned off the speaker and closed the programs she had open on her laptop. Then she went into the staff room and made the cocoa. On a whim, listening to the faint, repetitive sound of hammering, she made a second cup.

Jamie cut loose as soon as Katrynn was in the front. She wasn’t one for lingering past her scheduled hours, whether she had somewhere to be or not. After Jamie sent her a breezy wave and went out the back, Katrynn crossed the shop, noticing how dark and gloomy the afternoon was. There hadn’t been a storm yet, and she didn’t think there was one in the forecast, but the sky was heavy and grey. The sun hadn’t even peeked out since the cold had come in.

She liked it this way, though, as long as she could stay warm, especially if she could stay home. It was cozy to be nestled next to a fire, bundled up in heavy sweaters and snuggled under her fuzzy purple throw, looking out the windows at a dense grey sky.

And snow days were the best—days where you didn’t need an excuse to stay bundled up like that for the entire day with a book. Perfection. She hoped they’d get a storm before spring pushed winter out completely.

The doors to Chris’s room were open, and Katrynn stopped in the doorway and watched John hammering a bookcase together. Leaning against a wall were trimwork pieces that he had brought in the day before.

His fight with Atticus had caused a surprising amount of damage, mainly because they’d crashed into a bookcase and caused a domino effect. After a week, the room was still in pieces. He’d cleaned out the mess and built three big new cases, but that was all—and they weren’t stained or trimmed or otherwise close to completion. Katrynn was beginning to think John wasn’t working at his fastest pace. His face was healing faster than the room was.

He’d left her alone every day that they’d both been here; he’d come in around two or three in the afternoon, announce himself, and start to work, then pack up and leave when they closed the shop at five. Katrynn had been glad of that. She hadn’t wanted to see him or talk to him, and she appreciated that he was finally respecting her space.

But in the past couple of days, she hadn’t felt that sour twist in her belly when he was around. She guessed she was getting over her hurt feelings.

She didn’t know what impulse had struck her that had her standing in the doorway holding two mugs of hot cocoa, but she was more or less over her mad for…well, for everything he’d done. She missed being comfortable talking to him. Maybe that was why she had hot cocoa.

When he stopped hammering, she jumped into the silence and said, “Hey.”

He looked up, clearly surprised. “Hey. Oh—sorry I didn’t close the doors. I didn’t want to risk gouging them while I moved these cases around.”

She’d told him when he’d come in to make his plans that she wanted him to keep the doors closed while he worked, to minimize the disruption.

“No, it’s fine. We’re slow today, so you’re not bothering anybody.”

“Nobody but you.”

“I’m not bothered.” She lifted one of the mugs a little. “Hot cocoa?”

He slid his hammer into his belt like he was holstering a pistol. “Cocoa?”

She shrugged and felt herself blush a little. “It’s too late in the day for coffee. I get jumpy, and then I can’t sleep. Plus, chocolate is never wrong.”

“Good point.” Stepping around his materials, he came to her and took the mug she’d offered. “Thanks.”

For a few moments, they stood there, sipping their cocoa, while the silence between them grew oppressive.

John broke it. “I don’t know what I should say to you. Everything I say pisses you off, or hurts you, and I don’t want that.”

She supposed they had to at least get this out of the way. “I don’t want to talk about…that. You’ve apologized, and I learned some things, and I want that to be that.”

His sigh told her that he wasn’t satisfied with what she wanted, but he didn’t push the point, and that, she thought, was progress. What he did say had such a yearning tone, though, that Katrynn almost lost her sudden resolve to close the issue between them. That tone hurt her heart.

“Are we still friends, Katrynn?”

In her memory, she could hear his voice in a tone like that, saying words that made her think she mattered. Words he didn’t remember saying.

Katrynn looked up into his eyes—his beautiful hazel eyes that seemed to change colors, ranging from light brown to dark green, depending on the light. He looked like such a good guy, with his stubble of a beard, his messy dark hair, his gentle smile. The John she’d known before that night, the John she’d been with that night—that John was a good guy. She could have fallen in love with that man. She’d been ready to leap right off the edge for him and not look back.

The John who didn’t remember her, however, the John who had torn up the shop—was she even friends with him? Did she want to know him at all?

She took another sip of her cocoa. “I think we could be friends again. We could try.”

His smile spread into a grin. “I’m glad. I’m so glad.”

~oOo~

The next day was just as cold and grey, and still there was no storm. The sky seemed to loom like a hulking thing over the Cove, threatening to make them all pay for the mild season they’d had so far. The wind blustered and faded, blustered and faded, and the surf crashed against the shore like a child throwing a tantrum.

A day like this was bound to be deadly slow in the shop.

Katrynn opened the shop alone, got the lights on and the Franklin stove going, made a big pot of coffee, and then busied herself designing a new display for the front windows. Something about warmth and comfort. Good books for snuggling up with on a cold winter day.

When Bev had hired her to manage Cover to Cover Books, Katrynn had been barely out of college. She’d worked a lot of retail, but she’d not been in any way qualified to run a shop. She’d been at the beach for Labor Day weekend with her boyfriend at the time, and she’d seen a ‘Help Wanted’ sign in the window while they had been ambling down the street in search of dinner. On a whim, she’d gone in, meaning to apply for a clerk position. She’d struck up a conversation with Bev, and before she went back out and found her fella, she’d had an offer to be manager, contingent upon a resume that corresponded with what she’d told Bev.

That had been easy—she’d told Bev she had a degree in English and that she’d worked in the campus bookstore but she had no management experience whatsoever, unless summer camp counselor counted. Bev had laughed and said she had no ownership experience, either, so they could learn together.

And they had. Luca Pagano had helped them understand how to structure the accounting and things like that, and he and Katrynn had worked closely for several months—hence her big ol’ crush on the guy. That and his good nature. And his incredible hotness. But if anybody was more married than Nick, it was Luca. And Katrynn wasn’t the kind of person who tried to put herself in the middle of somebody else’s thing.

While she and Bev had bumbled up the learning curve, Nick had kept the shop solvent. And now Bev and Katrynn knew what they were doing. Bev was great at negotiating with wholesalers and publicists, and she planned their events. Katrynn was great at the actual store—knowing why something was selling, how to make something sell, how to merchandise the shop to be inviting and shopper-friendly, and how to keep the atmosphere the way they liked it. They were a great team. They were friends. Katrynn thought Bev was probably her best friend, though she didn’t know if Bev would say the same. Bev had a lot more people in her life loving her than Katrynn had in hers.

About an hour after she’d opened the shades and unlocked the front door, while she sat on the ledge of the front window, taking down the Atticus Calhoun display, she saw Bev’s Mercedes SUV go by down Gannet. She waved as Bev headed toward the alleyway that would take her to their tiny back lot, but Bev must not have seen her. A few minutes later, she heard the back door slam open; the erratic bluster of the wind must have caught it. Then she heard it slam shut, and Bev yell, “Fuck you!”