“I DON’T LIKE THIS,” Patrick declared, sitting down at Anna’s kitchen table. He liked Anna’s kitchen, because it reminded him of his own, with its faded linoleum floor and solid red and white Formica kitchen set. And Anna’s kitchen smelled of food, while his just…smelled. He ate too much popcorn now that he’d figured out the microwave oven his daughter had given him for Christmas last year.
“Don’t like what?” Anna’s bulk was hidden by the refrigerator door as she removed pan after pan of Italian concoctions. “Hey, you want a beer?”
“I don’t like leaving Kimmy with that man,” he grumbled, taking the bottle of Budweiser Anna handed him. “Thanks.”
“He’s a doctor,” she reminded him. She lifted the lid off a frying pan and sniffed. “A man of science.”
“He’s not good enough for her.” The twist-off cap popped off easily and Pat took a healthy swallow. His own doctor had told him that one beer a day couldn’t hurt anything, not at his age. But Dr. Shaunnesy was pushing sixty, still smoked cigars and visited Ireland once a year. He wasn’t some pretty-face, fancy-ass surgeon who wouldn’t know good beer if it was poured on his Mercedes.
And Pat had noticed the Mercedes, all right, shiny as could be in the parking area north of Kim Cooper’s house. “Give me a Cadillac any day,” he said.
“What’s cars got to do with anything?” She arranged all sorts of pans on top of the stove and then took the cork out of a bottle of red wine. She drank a glass every night with dinner, Anna did. And had, she’d informed him once, since she was fifteen.
“I dunno. Can’t you do anything with that nephew of yours?”
“Robbie?” She turned from the stove and shrugged. “He says he’s asked her to marry him four times and she keeps saying no.”
Robbie Gianetto wasn’t the brightest light on the porch, in Pat’s opinion, but Kimmy was too young to keep grieving like this. Any port in a storm, he figured. Even as shallow a port as Anna’s thickheaded nephew. “She needs to get on with her life since things didn’t work out with Jeff.”
“Look who’s talking,” Anna said, shaking a wooden spoon at him. “Mary’s been gone five years now and you won’t even get on a plane and visit your sister.”
“I get out of the house enough,” he said. “I don’t have to fly to California to prove anything. I like my house just fine.”
“Humph.” Anna stirred the peppers in the pan, filling the kitchen with the aroma of good Italian cooking. “I like my house, too, but at least I get to Florida a couple of times a year to visit my sister and her son.”
“I don’t think much of Florida,” he declared, his stomach rumbling with anticipation. “And I don’t think much of that doctor fella either. He’s not good enough for Kimmy.”
“Somebody better be,” Anna said, waving the smoke away from her face. “She’s not getting any younger.”
“None of us are, Anna,” he said, taking another sip of ice-cold beer. “None of us are.”
“YOU’RE KIDDING. THE GORGEOUS Stuart Thorpe was here?” Kim’s twin sister leaned against the kitchen counter and retrieved her margarita. With short spiky red hair, gold hoop earrings and perfect makeup, Kate Cooper looked like a woman confident of her beauty. Her lime-green shirt fit snugly, as did the black Capri pants that hugged her legs. Kate had a gift for fashion and flair, while Kim had a talent for…babies.
“Yep. All six feet of him.”
“What’d you do?” She took a swallow of her drink and smiled. “See, isn’t it better with extra tequila?”
“I took pictures of his niece, which was why he was here.” Kim sipped her drink, then coughed. “Remind me never to let you near my blender again.”
“It won’t do you any harm.” Kate rummaged through the cupboards until she found a bag of tortilla chips, which she poured into one of Kim’s yard sale finds. “Where do you get this stuff? It’s chipped.”
“I liked it.” She wasn’t about to confess to buying it for fifty cents at a yard sale last summer. The blue and white bowl had flaws, but it held the exact amount of popcorn made from a microwave packet. “And it matches the tile.”
Kate turned and opened the refrigerator. “Do you still have that pineapple salsa I brought last week?”
“It’s in there, behind the milk.”
“I see it.”
Kim took her drink and the bowl of chips across the room to the small white couch and set everything in the middle of her coffee table, a mahogany relic leftover from their parents’ house. She’d painted it white and placed a piece of vintage fabric on top. The blue and pink rose material covered up most of the flaws and blended with the raggedy quilt folded along the back of the couch. The one-bedroom apartment she called home took up the second floor of the house that held their photography business, but it had grown obvious to both women that they needed the space to expand. The business they’d inherited from their father couldn’t keep growing unless they had more studio space in which to work.
Once Kate settled herself on the opposite chair, she kicked off her black mules and eyed her sister. “Tell me about him.”
“Who?”
“Your doctor.”
“He’s not my—” she began, but there was no point in disguising the truth. Her sister knew damn well that Stuart Thorpe had, at one time many years ago, been the man of Kim’s childish dreams.
“Did he say anything to you?”
“Just that it was good to see me.” Kate looked so disappointed that Kim almost laughed.
“He’s still one of the best looking men I’ve ever seen in my life,” she admitted.
“Call him. A weekend with a sexy doctor might do you a world of good.” Then she stopped, stricken. “I’m sorry,” Kate murmured, the smile gone from her face. “I shouldn’t tease, especially about this weekend.”
“It was a long time ago. And I can deal with it, honest.” She really, really hoped Kate wasn’t going to cry.
“Jeff was a real SOB.” Now her twin looked as if she was trying to blink back tears.
“Kate—”
“Mom and Dad wanted you to come to Florida this weekend. They wanted to spoil you and show you all the sights.”
“I know. Mom’s called every night this week hoping I’d change my mind.”
“She sent a ticket for you. It’s in my purse.”
It was silly to feel trapped by one’s own family, but Kim felt suffocated by their concern. She didn’t want her parents to worry; she dreaded hearing the concern in their voices when they called her to hint about taking a vacation right now.
And all because of Jeff, whom she thought was a good and decent man, had asked her to marry him. Two years ago she’d planned to get married this Memorial Day weekend. They’d set their wedding date, had a celebration dinner with their families gathered together at Jeff’s favorite steakhouse, and then four months later he’d confessed he’d thought it over and changed his mind. He was too young to settle down, he’d said. And then he’d run off with his nineteen-year-old office assistant, rumored to be pregnant with his child.
“I’d rather stay home,” she said, hoping Kate would understand. Kate usually did, despite their different personalities.
“Not all by yourself?”
“No. With a male stripper who’s going to fulfill my every fantasy.”
“You wish.” But Kate smiled.