Jar Of Dreams Part 13

This was what it was like, she realized, when you really fell in love with someone. It took over a part of your heart you didn't even know you had.

And now that she knew she had it, she wasn't sure what to do with it. "Yes," she said, "I'd like to go."

"Good." His smile wrapped itself around her. He gestured at the papers she still held. "It's poker night and we're meeting for beer and brats first. Do you want me to drop those off at Kelly's office on the way? She'll still be there."

She tucked them into a manila folder and pa.s.sed it to him. "Thanks."

He kissed her, a leisurely meeting of lips and just the very edges of tongue that did strange things to her pulse rate, right there in front of Aunt Gert and the nosy kitten sitting in the flower pot on the kitchen window. "Later."

She nodded.

When he'd gone, she went to let Kinsey into the sun porch, picking the cat up to exchange solemn stares before delivering a head-scratch. "What do you think about the situation?" she asked.

Kinsey b.u.mped her fuzzy black head against Lucy's chin.

"You're absolutely right." She stroked the cat and put her down. "Definitely some new clothes."

Boone smiled at the receptionist at the law firm. "Is Ms. Brennan busy or is she sleeping again?"

"I heard that!" came from the wide hallway between the two rows of offices. Kelly appeared, her arms full of file folders. "I'll see him, Bridget," she told the woman at the front desk, "but don't worry about coffee. He'll probably spill it on the carpet. Come on back, Boone." When he joined her, she handed him the folders. "Here. Make yourself useful."

Her office was large and bright, and he glanced around appreciatively, his gaze coming to rest on the framed cartoon panel across from her desk. "Ah." He walked over to it, reading the introduction of Daphne into the "Elmer and Myrtle" strip as though he hadn't written the words. He turned to his sister. "Did you know right away Daphne was you?"

She rolled her eyes at him. "Duh. A lawyer wearing a beauty pageant sash and a prom gown into the courtroom? Giving the judge a ration of s.h.i.t right off the bat? What was my first clue?" She took the folders and set them on her desk.

"As I remember it, you did have a fondness for formalwear." He grinned at her, wishing it could always be like this when they talked. He didn't really know why or when they'd started creating sparks of contention with nearly every conversation, but he'd like to end it. To go back to being the protective older brother she liked.

"I still do," she admitted, "but I never entered any beauty pageants and I never wore taffeta to court. It wrinkles too easily and has to be dry-cleaned every time you wear it."

He nodded toward the panel. "Did it bother you?"

"At first it did, but then it became an a.s.set being thought of more as a wardrobe and a hairstyle than as a litigator. Going up against an opposing attorney who doesn't take me seriously can be a good thing."

"I'm proud of you." Then he wished he'd kept his mouth shut when tears flooded her eyes.

"Thank you," she said quietly, and went behind the desk, staring fixedly at its messy slate top. When she looked up, her eyes were clear again. "You've never told me that before. I wanted that so much, you know. When I graduated from Notre Dame, then law school. When I pa.s.sed the bar. And, Lord, when I made partner d.a.m.n near right out of the gate...it was... I just wanted so much for you to be proud of me. I wanted to be as important to you as-oh, not Maggie, but Crockett, anyway."

"Kelly." Boone stood still, stunned by her words. "Of course I'm proud of you. I've always been-"

Her laugh sounded more splintery than mirthful. "Well, if you have, I haven't known it. I knew Uncle Mike and Aunt Gert were, but you were always more in tune with Crockett-then with Maggie-than with me, I always felt like Kelly the afterthought who couldn't be anything but pretty and dumb. That's why Daphne was hard to take at first. I knew you took care of me, sort of, but you hadn't had any choice after we lost Mom and Dad."

"You're my little sister," he protested. "Taking care of you and p.i.s.sing you off are parts of the brother job description I took very seriously and still do. And you've never been an afterthought."

She nodded at the cartoon panel on the wall. "Perception, you know-maybe mine was off. I don't know. But when I was in love with Crockett, I felt like his relationship with you was more important to you both than his with me was. When he fell in love with Maggie, then when you fell in love with her too, it was the loneliest I'd felt since the accident."

Oh, good G.o.d, why didn't I know? How could I not know? "Kelly," he said again, moving forward, toward her. "I didn't realize how you felt. I'm so sorry if-"

He stopped halfway to the desk when she shook her head quickly, sharply. "No. I'm mature enough to know it was me, and G.o.d knows, I loved Maggie too. No matter how I tried to put how I felt into words, it sounded as though I blamed her, and I didn't. Ever. When she died... G.o.d, I'd have gone in her place if it had kept you from being hurt that much. I would have, Boone, I swear. But then I couldn't help you. Even though you and he barely spoke, it was Crockett who was able to bring you comfort. That one day you came back from sitting by the river and he was there with you? It was as though you'd been delivered."

She tried to laugh, but it caught in her throat. "And I was glad. I was. But I was jealous too. I wanted to be the one who was there for you, not Crockett. I feel as though you never want to spend time with me."

"That's not true." He hesitated. "Well, maybe sometimes it is. Because you act as though you're the only one with work to do or a schedule to keep. I want to be there for you, but you never have the time. Isn't that true, too?"

She lifted her chin. "I don't want to be just a responsibility, Boone. To anybody."

"You're not just a responsibility, but you're my little sister," he repeated. "I'm always going to feel like watching after you is my job. But if you're b.i.t.c.hy every time I see you, if you're p.i.s.sy with Aunt Gert because she doesn't let you boss her around, if you're constantly rude to a woman I care a lot about, then you're right-I don't want to spend a lot of time with you." He caught and held her gaze. "That doesn't change anything. I'm still proud of you for what you've accomplished."

"Well." She cleared her throat and reached to straighten the stack of files threatening to slide off the desktop. "What brings you down here? You haven't visited my office since... Well, ever, I guess. Even when you and Maggie made out your will, we did it at Aunt Gert's, not the office."

He handed her the folder containing Lucy's papers from Virginia. "Lucy asked if you'd take a look at these when you have a spare minute. They're about the sale of her property in Virginia. You can bill her if you want to."

"Oh." She scanned the letter on top. "She'll probably be glad to get this behind her."

"I don't know about that. I don't think she does, either. She feels about it a lot the way we feel about Louisville. It's not home anymore, but yet it is."

Kelly waved him toward a client chair. "Did you ever read the news stories about the fire in their restaurant?" She sounded professional-cool without being cold.

He stiffened. Let it go, Kelly. Let it go. "No."

"I did. Long before she told anyone what had happened, when Aunt Gert was still telling me to mind my own business. I know you don't want to hear this, but it was ugly, Boone."

"She told Gert. That was all that really mattered."

Lucy's file slipped from Kelly's hand. She pushed it aside. "She did? When?"

"Before they decided to open the tearoom. She didn't want there to be any unpleasant surprises."

"Why didn't Aunt Gert tell us? She knew we were concerned." Kelly pasted on a smile when the receptionist arrived with coffee. "Thanks, Bridget. Did you bring my brother a bib?"

"I figured you'd loan him one of yours," the woman said cheerfully, setting the tray on the credenza under the window. "I'm off now if you don't need me for anything else. Don't forget to go home at some point." She smiled at Boone. "I enjoy your cartoons. Especially Daphne. She reminds me of someone-I just can't think who." Her gaze slid sideways toward Kelly.

"Thank you." He accepted the cup Bridget offered and waited until she'd left the room, grinning back over her shoulder at her boss. "Aunt Gert doesn't want us breathing down her neck, second-guessing her decisions. You know that."

"I know." Kelly sipped from her cup, scanning Lucy's papers with sharp eyes. "These seem to be in order, though I'll read them more thoroughly. Did she have any specific questions?"

"I don't know. Do you want her to call you?"

"No. I'm going over to have dinner with her and Aunt Gert. I'll ask her then." She shuffled the letters into a neat pile, taking longer than necessary to straighten five or six sheets of paper, then pushed them back inside the folder. "Don't you ever worry about these fires, Boone? Don't you wonder? There was another trash fire yesterday in the Dumpster behind the library. Abby, the librarian, just happened to see the smoke when she came back from an appointment. I know Lucy'd been there because I saw her when I dropped off a sack of books for the book auction."

He didn't answer until she lifted her gaze to meet his. "What I wonder," he said quietly, "is what made you decide you weren't going to like her. She hasn't done anything to anyone, yet you made up your mind the first day she came to Taft-before you knew anything about the fire or her father-that she was bad news. You had no idea Gert was going to ask her to be a business partner or I was going to...like her, yet you took it upon yourself to judge her and find her lacking."

Kelly's face lost color under its perfectly applied layer of the Lancome he was pretty sure she owned stock in. "Her license plate-" she picked up the pen he and Maggie had given her when she graduated from law school and bounced the end of it on the blotter, "-showed she was from Richmond. Before she ever mentioned Crockett's name-she called him Noah or Father Crockett, I don't remember which-I knew they were connected. There she was with that hideous old car and no money to speak of, dressed like a 1960s flower child. For all we knew, she was someone Crockett found on the street, but Aunt Gert greeted her like a long lost and dearly loved relative."

"Kind of like she and Uncle Mike greeted us."

Irritation flashed across Kelly's features and the pen thumped again. Harder. "You're comparing apples to oranges. We were children. We were relatives. By marriage, I know, but they never made any differentiation between us and Crockett."

"Relatives who moved in and turned their lives upside down."

"We made them happy." She stopped. The expression in her eyes was heartbreaking in its anguish. "Didn't we? They gave us everything. Didn't we at least give them that?" Thump, thump, thump.

"Of course, we did." Boone kept his voice patient, reaching across the desk to take the pen out of her hand and lay it down. "Lucy does too. Aunt Gert is crazy about the tearoom, and Lucy works herself to a nub to make sure it goes okay. I don't really think she does that just for herself, do you?"

"That's my whole point. She's a stranger to all of us. How should I know why she does it?"

"You know everything else," he pointed out, "and you still haven't given a reasonable explanation for not liking her. It's like you're jealous of her."

Kelly got up, going to the credenza for the coffee carafe. She came back and refilled their cups. Her hand shook a little-the rhinestones on her nails twinkling with the tremor. "Maybe I am." She sat down again, cradling her cup as though she were cold. "Unless I miss my guess, you're falling in love with her. Aunt Gert thinks she's in line for sainthood. Crockett-" She stopped abruptly.

Crockett. Ah. There's the rub.

"They're friends, Kell." Although once upon a recent time he'd wondered. "And he's a priest." It was a cruel reminder, but he knew as well as anybody what it did to a person to want what couldn't be had. Maggie's face and the sound of her voice flitted across his consciousness with the thought.

It made him smile.

"I know." Kelly picked up the pen.

"Lucy and I are going to Virginia this weekend. We'll be seeing him." Crockett had been excited when they'd called to see if he'd be available for the weekend. He offered up a friend's beach house for their use.

"Give him my best."

Kelly's voice was so prim it made Boone want to laugh, but he didn't. Sadness lurked in the depths of her brown eyes and removed the humor from the situation. "Okay." He sighed and got up. "I'm going to be late for beer and brats." He leaned across the desk to kiss his sister's cheek, taking the thumping pen out of her hand again. "See you later."

"This seems all right." Kelly came into the kitchen and handed a file folder to Lucy. "If you have objections to them naming the restaurant Dolan's, we can see what we can do, but it doesn't appear they're trying to take something that's rightfully yours."

"No." Lucy slid the folder under the pickle jar. "It's kind of nice, really, that Dolan's will still be in that spot. Mostly I wanted to be sure that I'm not selling the name. Although I don't plan to open a restaurant aside from the tearoom, if I ever did, I'd want to be able to call it Dolan's."

"You can do that."

"Thanks for checking." Lucy gestured awkwardly. "Will you send me a bill or would you rather I wrote you a check now?"

Kelly hesitated, her gaze slipping away from Lucy's. "Neither." Her smile was small, but it was there. "Let's call it a favor."

Lucy thought she'd almost rather be beholden to the devil himself. She swallowed. "I don't-"

"I owe you." Kelly's voice was brisk. "That day when Crockett came, you rescued me and I never even said thank you, though I probably did say some other things."

"Oh." Lucy shrugged. "That was a girl thing. I imagine you'd do the same thing for me." She wasn't sure she really believed that, but it was something she'd like to be wrong about.

"I don't know." Kelly smiled again, albeit ruefully. "Do you still carry around a broken heart and a grudge you should've gotten over fifteen years ago?"

Lucy shook her head. "No, but it's probably only because I saw the movie Pollyanna about a hundred times so I was able to convince myself I was glad Scott Knight jilted me. You know, before I found out he was an a.s.shole as opposed to after the wedding."

"Girls." Gert's head appeared around the door into the sunroom. "You need to come on or I'm going to eat without you."

"You and Boone are going to Virginia this week?" Kelly led the way to join Gert at the table.

"For a few days. Even playing tourist at Virginia Beach."

"That will be fun."

"I hope so. I've never been on a real vacation. When Dad and I went somewhere, it was to check out other restaurants. Get new ideas. Recreation was secondary." She smiled, remembering. "When I drove to Taft, it was the farthest I'd ever been from home, and it was an adventure even before the van decided to require hospitalization. I ate fast food, spent a night in a motel all by myself without waking up every ten minutes to check for fire and find my father..." She stopped, the words fading away as pain took an uninvited twirl though her.

"Kelly and I took a trip like that after Mike died." Gert pa.s.sed the mashed potatoes. "The boys were in college, and we drove all the way to Pennsylvania to watch them play basketball. Remember, Kell?"

Kelly's eyes softened. "I do. It was fun. We stopped and did things just because we could and no one got mad when we had to go to the bathroom. It was the first time I ever drove on an interstate highway."

"And even then she drove better than Boone," Gert said dryly. "It explains a lot. Law school and those kinds of things. She always knew where she was going."

"Yeah." Kelly spoke quietly, as though she were talking to herself. "And G.o.d forbid I ever admitted to taking the wrong direction, since I knew where I was going and all."

"Sometimes, though-" Lucy formed her potatoes into a rose with her spoon, "-you can only get to the right turn by going the wrong direction to begin with. Don't you think?"

Kelly's expression was skeptical. "Is that your story? Yours and Pollyanna's?"

"Sure is." Lucy grinned at her. "And we're sticking to it."

Chapter Thirteen.

The new property owners were nice people who owned other restaurants in other cities. They wanted to hang a large picture of Johnny and Lucy in the foyer of the new Dolan's. Lucy gave them a copy of her favorite photograph of her father.

"He was the heart of it, not me," she said. "And there are still people who think I had something to do with the fire in the building. He'd appreciate your respect for what he did." She hugged Andy, the chef, and drew away. "You're part of that heart too." Her throat felt raw. "Thank you for being the brother I never had."

He nodded, squeezing her hands. "I'd rather work with you than anyone I know."

When she left the site with Boone, she knew she probably wouldn't go back. Her stomach shifted as it had when the plane had taken off from Louisville. But flying had been a pleasant new experience-saying the final goodbye to Dolan's and Andy left her more than a little melancholy.

"Let's go to the cemetery," she suggested, "then pick up Crockett and drive on out to the beach. I don't think there's anything left here for me."

"Works for me." Boone grinned. "If you'd feel safer, we can fly to Virginia Beach. They have shuttles, and I don't badger the drivers to go faster, no matter what Aunt Gert may have said about that. At least, I don't anymore."

She laughed. "I'll risk the drive. I'm brave."

The cemetery was quiet, but bigger than she remembered. For a couple of minutes, she stood frozen in place outside the rental car, confused and feeling a vague sense of loss because she wasn't exactly sure where Siobhan and Johnny were buried. "Over here," she said finally. "I think."

"I was mad at my parents for a long time for leaving us." Boone handed her one of the bouquets of flowers they'd brought. "Well, Kelly and I both were, I guess. Did you feel that way with your mother?"