Without waiting for Del’s response—clearly, one wasn’t expected—she tugged open the glass-paned front door and clomped out onto the slate gray porch, the surface marred with smudged workboot footprints. Del followed. The drizzle had turned to sleet, clicking on the porch overhang, bouncing like tiny white bugs off the winter-dry grass out in the yard; Del frowned, silently questioning the wisdom of Cora’s driving on what could easily become icy roads. He also knew better than to call her on it.
“So,” she said, her face smothered in breath clouds as she looked out over her whitening lawn. She yanked on a pair of driving gloves, taking her time smoothing them over her broad knuckles. “You gonna bring the baby to Elizabeth’s for Thanksgiving?”
Del stuffed his fingers in his jeans pockets, grateful he hadn’t yet removed his down vest if the woman was going to conduct a conversation outside. Elizabeth Louden Sanford was his stepsister, his father Hugh having married Elizabeth’s mother Maureen about a year and a half ago. To make things more complicated, Elizabeth’s husband Guy not only brought three children of his own to the marriage, but was the youngest of five sons. In what had to be either the world’s most courageous or dumbest moment, Elizabeth had volunteered to host Thanksgiving for everybody. At last count, Del’s father had said, the guest list was about to pass fifty, and still climbing.
“I haven’t decided,” he finally said. “That’s a lot of people to subject a certain someone to. I’m just not sure…”
Uh-oh. Cora was giving him her Look. “I swear to Heaven, child—when they pass out the award for Overprotective Father of the Year, you’ll win, no contest. You really gotta do something about those trust issues weighing you down, you know? Wendy loves being with people. She’ll be fine, if Paranoid Papa will give her half a chance. Okay, baby,” she continued without waiting for Del’s response, since clearly, nothing he could possibly say was worth listening to. “I’m going on to the store, then out to the airport. I should be back by one at the latest. You need me for anything?”
Del swallowed a smile. Cora drove his guys to distraction. Knowing she’d be gone for three hours would probably make their day.
“Nah. I think we can manage. I’ll be in and out myself, though. What with the holiday coming up and everything, we’re busting butt all over town today.”
“Huh,” Cora said, not paying any attention. She glanced at her watch, invoked the Almighty’s name and vanished. Del yelled, “Drive carefully,” as soon as he was sure she couldn’t hear him.
He stood on the porch for a moment, thinking about the conversation. About Wendy. About his—yeah, he’d admit it—obsessive need to protect her. He supposed it was only natural, considering. Still, Cora was right. Putting Wendy into a new situation was always harder on Del than it was on his daughter. But even though his kid was a fighter—yeah, a champ!—and even though it would take far more than throwing her into a crowd of strange kids to knock her for a loop…
He let out a long, ambivalent sigh.
Two clients later, in the midst of assuring Mrs. Allen that her stove would indeed be ready to go by that afternoon, his cell phone chirped at him. He’d no sooner said, “Yo,” than he was assaulted by a torrent of words from one really mad woman. The connection wasn’t wonderful, but he made out several choice cuss words, an injunction against nature in general and ice storms in particular, and two very distinct phrases: “won’t be ready until late today” and “her plane’s due in forty-five minutes!”
“Cora?”
“Well, who the hell else would be calling you to go pick up someone at the airport?” That came through clearly enough.
Uh-oh.
“Cora—why on earth are you calling me? I’m backed up clear to Canada—”
“Baby, you think I don’t know that? And I’m really sorry, I am, but I’ve called everybody else I can think of and you’re the first person to answer their damn phone.”
Great.
“Cora, I—”
“Oh, thank you, baby! And I’ll make it up to you, I swear. It’s just that the child’s all broken up about her grandmother and everything, you know—?”
Del didn’t have the heart to point out the “child” had to be significantly over thirty.
“—anyway, you got something to write down the flight number?”
With a sigh, Del pulled out a small notebook and pen he always carried with him from his back pocket, duly recorded the information. Clearly, strong-willed females were part of his karma.
“So, what’s she look like? Galen?”
“Oh, Lord. I haven’t seen her in years. She sent me a wedding picture, though. Poor baby. She’s a widow, did I tell you? Oh! And another picture, maybe four, five years ago. Don’t imagine she’s changed much since then. Longish red hair. Dark, like she uses henna on it except this is natural. Real fair skin, some freckles, maybe, I don’t exactly remember. Kinda tall, I guess. Slender. Eyes like those pictures of the Caribbean. Green blue. Pretty girl. You can’t miss her. Okay, this man is giving me a look like I don’t want to know how much this is going to cost me. I’ll see you back at the house.”
Well, that was that. Del hooked the phone back onto his belt, one eyebrow crooked. Red hair and green-blue eyes, huh?
“Mr. Farentino?”
Mrs. Allen was standing far too close, mouth pursed, hands clasped, one of those women to whom lipstick and a housecoat meant “presentable.”
“Does this mean you’re leaving? Before my stove is installed?”
“Now, Mrs. Allen,” Del said in his divert-the-potential-hysteria voice, flashing her his famous, and woefully unused, female-snagging smile. He fetched his vest from where he’d draped it over the back of a kitchen chair, slipped it on. “You gonna trust me here or what? I promise, Dan and Lenny’ll get you all fixed up, okay? By three o’clock this afternoon, you’ll be baking pumpkin pies in that baby, no problem.”
He was out the back door before she had a chance to point out the stove hadn’t even arrived yet.
Chapter 2
Where was Cora?
Swallowing down yet another surge of the nausea that had plagued her since the plane left Pittsburgh, Galen scanned the waiting room, already filling with passengers for the next flight out. She felt like a pack mule. Her purse strangled her diagonally from left shoulder to right hip, her carry-on bag and winter coat crushed the fingers of her right hand, while a beleaguered whimper floated up from the small plastic pet carrier clutched in the other. Amazing, how heavy it was, considering the animal in it weighed about as much as a hoagie. A small hoagie. A hank of hair had slipped out of its clip to torment her cheekbone, but if she put everything down, she’d never figure out how to pick it all up again. Underneath her five-year-old black sweater, she shivered. And not from cold.
All around her, winterized bodies swarmed and jostled each other, the cacophony of voices drowning out intermittent PA announcements and tinny music. Heavens—she hadn’t actually seen Cora in something like twenty years. Tears bit at Galen’s eyes as something close to panic tangled with the queasies. Baby whined again; Galen automatically offered some vague reassurance, as if the thing could hear, let alone understand, her.
She shut her eyes, hauled in a lungful of air. She’d been cloistered even more than she’d thought if a simple trip could throw her this much. True, she’d only flown once before—with Vinnie to St. Thomas for their honeymoon—but she was a grown woman, for heaven’s sake. Not a little kid. Her stomach heaved again; sweat broke out on her forehead, trickling down the side of her face.
“This is crazy,” she muttered to herself, beginning to re-think dumping at least some of her load before her fingers fell off. One corner of her