Mine (11 page)

The waitress cleared their plates and topped off their coffee cups. Mark stared into his, suddenly quiet.

“What’s up?” Courtney asked.

“Nothing.” He cleared his throat.

His uncharacteristic lack of eye contact made her squint at him. “You think I don’t know you better than that?” She grinned to take any sting away.

“I’m just being mushy. Feeling a bit lonely lately.” He tried to steer away from the subject, and Courtney knew he worried about reminding her that she was also alone.

She simply nodded in understanding. “Me, too, honey. What about that girl you met last month when you were out with the guys? Ever call her?”

Waving the memory off, he replied, “I waited too long on that one. She’s seeing my buddy.”

“Ow.”

“Yeah. My fault for dragging my feet, though.”

“You know…” She hesitated, wondering if she should even think about heading down the path in front of her, lest she overstep her bounds. Making a decision, she continued. “You and my friend Lisa seemed to get along great that night at your house. She’s single.” She sipped her coffee and watched his face. “And she thinks you’re cute.”

He blinked at her, a look of confusion crossing over his features. “She’s…?”

Courtney waited for him to continue, tried to help him along. “She’s…what? Hot? Not your type? Female?”

“Straight?”

It was Courtney’s turn to be speechless for the moment. When she found her voice, she began to laugh softly, with realization. “You thought she was gay?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Mark said, sitting back in his chair, his face scribbled all over with “duh.” “You brought her. She’s your new friend. I guess I just…assumed.”

It made perfect sense, Courtney had to admit it, and it explained his strange mood of excitement and sadness during the football game. It had never occurred to her that he thought Lisa was off-limits. Shaking her head at their lack of communication even after knowing one another for so long, she said, “Yes, she’s straight. And you should definitely give her a call.” Studying his face, seeing the anticipation, the possibility, the desire for her approval, Courtney loved him even more than she thought possible.

“You wouldn’t mind?”

She smiled widely and covered his hand with her own. “I wouldn’t mind at all.” She pulled out her cell phone, pushed a couple buttons, and rattled the number off for Mark to jot down on a napkin. “I’ll give her a heads-up that I shared her number with you.”

He didn’t revert back to his teenage years, as most people would have. He didn’t ask her any more about what Lisa thought of him, or if Courtney thought Lisa would say yes. He simply nodded once, said thanks, and sipped his coffee.

Courtney continued to grin and tried not to think about what a great couple they’d make. “So,” she said after a minute or two of silence. “Predictions for today’s game?”

He groaned like a man in pain. “We’re going to get our asses kicked.” Into his cup, he grumbled, “I hate the fucking Patriots.”

*

Bandero was an upscale restaurant that specialized in pretentious Southwestern cuisine and overpriced drinks, but it was her mother’s favorite, so Rachel didn’t have a lot of say in the matter of where they’d meet for lunch on Tuesday. She was right on time, as always, and wasn’t surprised that her mother had arrived first, as always. Alice Sullivan was already occupying her favorite table in the corner by the back window and she was already sipping on one of the restaurant’s enormous signature margaritas that, in Rachel’s opinion, were long on the sour mix and short on everything else. Rachel took a deep breath and steeled herself for the next hour and a half, vowing to not let her mother bait her and to not pick a fight of her own.

“Yeah, good luck with that,” she muttered under her breath as she zigzagged through the crowded and noisy tables toward the back corner.

Alice was dressed in her usually impeccable style of designer pantsuit and too much jewelry. Today’s choice was a deep eggplant color with an ivory silk blouse underneath and a bright, multicolored silk scarf knotted loosely around her neck. Her bottle-blond hair had been tinted recently and looked very modern, easily taking ten years off her appearance. Hair color was where the similarities between mother and daughter stopped, though. Where Rachel had crystal blue eyes, Alice’s were hazel. Rachel was tall and lean, Alice was rather short and a bit on the plump side, despite her penchant for whatever fad diet was in the news at the time. She carried herself well, though, and had a confidence level that caused heads to turn when she walked through a room.

Alice looked away from the window and watched her daughter’s approach.

“Hi, Mom.” Rachel bent and kissed Alice’s cheek.

“Don’t you eat?” Alice asked by way of greeting. “You’re too thin.”

“I’m not too thin, Mom.” Rachel took a seat across the table from her and unfolded her napkin. “How are you?”

Alice sipped her drink and waved a hand dismissively in the air as she began to unload about her lazy husband, her stupid clients, her annoying coworkers, and her irritating neighbors.

Rachel ordered a glass of chardonnay in preparation for the lunch, and felt her eyes glaze over as she listened to her mother’s usual negative diatribe. She tried to will her mind back in time, back twenty-five years or more, when she remembered her mother as happy, smiling, and loving. It was before her father left, and Rachel was eleven or twelve. Emily was five years younger. The older Rachel got, the harder it was to remember the details, but she always tried to put herself back there in an attempt to drown out the depressing droning on of what Alice had become. Rachel could be seemingly focused on Alice’s face, apparently paying rapt attention to whatever was being complained about at the moment, but in reality, she was back in time. She was fondly recalling the smell of home-baked chocolate chip cookies waiting for her after a long day at school. She was remembering Alice trying to teach her how to crochet and young Rachel not quite able to twist her long, gangly fingers in the right directions. She could almost smell the fresh flowers that always adorned the interior of the house and the laundry on the line, flapping in the gentle breeze and soaking up the incomparable scent of the outdoors.

Alice had launched into how appalled she’d been by the uncleanliness of a house she’d recently been asked to sell when she was cut off by the blessed appearance of the waiter.

“Would you care to hear our specials?” he asked cordially.

“Absolutely,” Rachel replied, before Alice could dismiss him. She wanted to keep him at the table as long as possible. He went on for several minutes, describing each special in mouthwatering detail. Rachel didn’t really listen—she’d already decided on the chicken Caesar salad—but she let him ramble on as she nodded politely after each selection.

Once the waiter had taken their orders, Alice dove right back in. “I see you sold the place out on Wayworth. What did you get for it?”

“Three-eighty,” Rachel replied, knowing so instinctively where this was going that she almost mouthed her mother’s response with her.

“Oh, Rachel, you could have gotten another twenty thou for that house.” Her expression showed a sliver of disgust at her daughter’s incompetence.

“Well, the seller was perfectly happy with the offer and was ready to move on.”

“You’re right. Who needs another twelve hundred dollars in commission?”

“I do just fine, thank you.” Rachel tried not to give her answer through clenched teeth, but failed miserably.

“I’ve been telling you for years, dear, you need to work on that killer instinct. You’d make a lot more money.”

Rachel nodded and finished off her wine, signaling the waiter by holding up her empty glass and pointing to it. Desperate to change the subject, she asked, “Have you talked with Emily lately?”

Alice scoffed. “I called her on Saturday, but
he
was there, so I didn’t talk long.”

He
was Rachel and Emily’s father. According to the Book of Alice, he was the sole reason for any and all difficulty in Alice’s life and she rarely used his name. “Bitter” wasn’t a strong enough word to describe Alice’s feelings about her husband leaving her a quarter of a century ago, and don’t get her started on “that slut” he’d married less than a year after their divorce. Her death a few years earlier had served him right, according to Alice. Finally, punishment from above or some such justification, the warped logic of which made Rachel’s head spin.

“Oh.” Rachel found it strange that the only time she ever felt an inkling of protection for her father was when her mother disparaged him. In those instances, did Rachel feel a little too much like her mother? The thought made her enormously uncomfortable and, as usual, she steered the conversation in another direction. “Well, she’s feeling great. No more headaches, but the cravings won’t go away.”

For a split second, Rachel was sure she saw the Alice of thirty years ago in the glow that zipped across her face. “She mentioned that earlier in the week when we talked. It was salt and vinegar potato chips at that point.”

Rachel grinned. “It’s saltines with peanut butter now.”

“Ugh.” Alice shook her head with fondness. “I remember those days.”

“You do?”

“Oh, yes. With you, I was traditional. Chocolate ice cream all the way. For months. With Emily? Baked potatoes. With bacon bits…remember those things in the jar?”

“The fake bacon you sprinkled on salads?”

“Exactly. I must have gone through twenty jars of those damn things during my pregnancy with her.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Oh, yes.”

The waiter arrived with their lunches, and unfortunately for Rachel, that was the end of Alice’s fond reminiscing. She was immediately on to less pleasant things, as if she realized she’d ventured into the wrong arena and quickly backpedaled. Rachel sighed internally as Alice began complaining about the newest realtor in her office.

Over the years, Rachel had perfected the art of pretending to listen. It had served her well growing up in a house filled with the depression and bitterness of her mother, and she’d discovered fairly recently that it actually helped her in her job, too. Not that she always tuned people out, but just like a bartender, people seemed to want to unload on their realtor, tell her all the reasons why they were selling or why they bought or what was so great—or so awful—about the house. Most of the time, this information was very useful. But on occasion, she’d ended up with a client who just liked to talk. On and on and on. Her talent for appearing as though she was paying rapt attention had become a gift and she used it well.

Now, as Alice droned on about the audacity of the new guy, Rachel found her thoughts drifting to the voice-mail message she’d received Sunday night from Courtney. It was a complete fluke that she hadn’t answered; nine times out of ten, she had her cell phone clipped to her waistband even when she was puttering around her apartment. Sunday night, however, she’d left it on the dresser on vibrate and had wandered into the kitchen in a robe to get something to drink. She hadn’t heard the buzzing sound and hadn’t bothered to look at the phone again until Monday morning as she got ready for work. She was actually surprised by her own surprise at finding the message from Courtney thanking her for the invitation to the volunteer happy hour on Friday. She was also taken off guard by the giddiness that seeped in at Courtney’s acceptance.
I’d love to go with you,
were her exact words. Rachel could still hear them replay in her head, Courtney’s exact inflections and tone of voice intact. It embarrassed her no end that she’d saved the message and had listened to it more than once during the day.

Who the hell
am
I?
she wondered, not for the first time since she’d met Courtney McAllister.

The salad was quite good, she noted as she quickly checked back into the one-sided conversation taking place before her. Alice was still rambling, her scowl accentuating the deep crevice that had taken up residence between her eyebrows. Rachel nodded and made a sound that conveyed her attention. Then she returned to the more pleasant thoughts of Courtney. What the hell was it about the woman that drew Rachel so strongly? She couldn’t seem to put a finger on any one thing. Courtney was extremely attractive in the physical sense, for sure, so there was definitely that. Those green eyes of hers… Rachel mentally shook her head.
God, those eyes.
Rachel had never understood what it meant to be lost in somebody’s eyes until Courtney had looked directly at her. In addition to the beauty of her face, she had a trim, athletic body, the kind Rachel had always found most attractive—though she suspected beneath the jeans, sweats, or shorts lay some very feminine curves…

Okay, okay,
Rachel’s brain snapped, stopping her in midthought.
She’s fun to look at; we’ve established that. Big deal. What
is
it that’s pulling you?

It was her face, something in her face that Rachel found…magnetic. The kindness in her face? The gentleness in her tone? The obvious intelligence? There wasn’t much that was sexier than a smart woman. Or was it that little bit of sadness that made people want to take care of her, protect her? Maybe a combination of all of it?

Rachel Hart was not easily drawn to people. It just didn’t happen. She had dated. Of course she had dated. She’d even had a couple of somewhat-long-term relationships, but nothing, nobody, ever stuck. She was a loner, she was set in her ways, and she liked it that way. As Jeff’s voice interrupted her thoughts to tease her with “control freak” comments, she tried hard to block it out. She didn’t need anybody, nor did she really want anybody. She liked her life the way it was, her routine the way she planned it, and things were fine. There was a little part of her that cringed inside, worried about somebody like Courtney coming in and messing everything up, disturbing the order and causing unpredictability.

But those eyes…

Rachel gave her head a quick shake and focused across the table.