16. The Perfect Sister
sixteen
The Perfect Sister
Grace took the main elevator downstairs as quickly as she could. She had just about had it with Cait’s invasively self-serving attitude. Multiple times in the past several days, Cait had sworn there was no urgency behind her insistent attempts to reach out. Every single time, Cait had been firmly told to respect Grace’s working hours if there was no emergency.
Had Cait called and left a voicemail the previous night? Or during the standard lunch hour? No. And there were enough other messages to assure Mikey had retrieved what Grace had missed.
By the time the elevator popped her out on the ground floor, Grace had worked herself into a ranting mood. Which was a terrible mood to be in when walking into a fairly public, much more crowded space. The lobby floor was almost always busy to some degree. Phones ringing, multiple voices talking and pretending they weren’t distracted by the overlapping conversations nearest them.
So the angry woman at the front desk, holding up her line, did not help.
A security guard hovered over the woman that could only be Grace’s sister, his expression making his discomfort clear. “Ma’am—”
Dyed platinum hair emphasized the swing of her head as Caitlin cut him off. “Do not call me that! Do I look old to you? If you aren’t going to help, then quit hovering. You’re making me uncomfortable.”
Too many people were watching. Was the lobby always this crowded in the afternoon? Or was it just Grace’s bad luck? Grace angled her way through the throng of nosy employees who apparently had nothing better to do and raised her voice to be sure it carried over the next bit of nonsense her abrasive sister was about to spew. “Caitlin. Stop harassing our security guard or I will help him throw you out.”
Cait, the security guard, and even the receptionist on the other side of the desk, all cut their attention to her. As did nearly everyone else.
Cait huffed with clear irritation, lifted a purse from the counter, and shoulder-checked the security guard as she marched up to Grace. “Grace Mariner, where the hell have you been? I was starting to think you were being held hostage in there. You haven’t answered your phone since Monday .”
Grace really wanted to take hold of her sister’s somehow still perfectly smooth braid and drag her out the door, and then slam it shut in her face. But she would not do that. Least of all with such an audience. Instead she lifted her chin. “And on Monday you insisted there was no emergency. I believe that’s why, when I was told you’d repeated that claim to one of my bosses, I chose not to rush calling you back. You haven’t left me a message since.”
Cait rolled her eyes. “Who leaves messages anymore? Try answering your phone while it’s ringing once in a while, Grace. I can’t believe you made me come all the way out here to have a conversation with you!”
Grace pulled in a breath.
The security guard, having moved close enough to speak quietly, cleared his throat. “Ms. Mariner, is everything all right?”
Cait turned a nasty glare on him. “ Why are you still hovering? Are you some overgrown peeping tom? Get away from—”
“Oh my gosh, Cait, shut up !” Grace snapped, hissing the words. She ignored her own flush of embarrassment and looked over at the wide-eyed man. “Yes.” No. “I’ve got it from here. Thank you for your diligence.”
“Uh, sure.” He cleared his throat again. “Of course, ma’am.”
Cait visibly twitched.
Grace reached out and latched on to sister’s arm, dragging her forcibly toward the nearest pathway to the back. She debated taking her sister all the way upstairs. They could argue in relative privacy, sure, but Cait had no claim for being there. She had no claim for being on the property at all. On the flip side, Grace couldn’t think of anywhere else that would allow her to at least still answer calls and perhaps take important notes. Upstairs it is.
“Grace, slow down, I can hardly walk,” Cait whined as Grace adjusted course for the security check point.
Grace released her altogether and pointed. “You go through there. I’ll meet you on the other side.”
Cait blinked, turning her gaze to the machine. It made no secrets about being what it was and she balked. “You want me to walk through a metal detector? Can’t we just talk in another room?”
Grace glared at her. “You showed up at my place of work, once again disrespecting that I actually have a very important job, and you think I will just blow it off to cater to your whim-of-the-week?” She pointed out, in the direction of the exit. “That’s your other option. Leave and take the next flight home, because I am busy and frankly ticked off. Choose, right now.”
Cait sighed as if greatly inconvenienced. “Fine, fine.” She started toward the machine.
Grace lost sight of her for nearly thirty seconds, watching as Cait’s purse was scanned and passed across the small conveyor belt system. Grace made no attempt to pick it up, choosing to wait beyond the space for guests allowed through and watching her sister’s behavior.
Now that she’d gotten what she wanted, Cait seemed to be in a much better mood. She even smiled a little flirtatiously at the man who returned her purse. It made Grace want to be ill. “Okay, now where to? Do you work on an upper floor?” Cait asked, eyeing the bank of elevators.
Grace ground her teeth. “You never listen to anyone but yourself, do you?”
“What are you talking about?”
Grace moved to the non-private elevator that would take them up and tapped the button. Of course, it opened immediately.
Cait cut her off, striding swiftly into the box as if she owned the building.
Further irritated, Grace followed her in and pressed the necessary button. “I’m only taking you up to my office because I’m tired of trying to speak the information into your self-absorbed brain,” she said. She adjusted to face her sister, standing sideways to the doors, and crossed her arms. “But understand that this is my place of work and my job takes priority. It’s barely after two in the afternoon, Cait. You aren’t the queen of the goddamn world. So when work needs my attention, work will get my attention.”
Cait rolled her eyes. “You always have been so dramatic,” she said. “Probably why you never kept a boyfriend.” She waved a hand dismissively, blatantly ignoring Grace’s sound of disapproval. “I think I can occupy myself if you need to take a call or something, Gracie.”
“A lot of what I deal with is privileged,” Grace said. The elevator settled with a gentle motion. “So you may get kicked out at any moment.” She personally hoped it would come to that, but until then, and before Cait could try cutting ahead again, Grace stepped off the elevator. She swept one arm out, toward the offices visible through the glass partitions. “Welcome to the offices of Mr. Dante and Romeo De Salvo.”
Cait followed her quietly around the corner, into the space that Grace generally occupied.
Grace tapped on the tablet on the desk to make sure she hadn’t missed a notification, then turned around and motioned to the chairs against the window-wall. “You can sit there. This is my office. This is where we can talk.” Maybe if her boss was a dozen feet away, she wouldn’t fall into a screaming match with her sister.
Cait snorted, her brown eyes dancing with amusement. “Gracie, please. You don’t have to put on with me.” She pointed to Dante’s closed office door. “That’s the owner of the company, right? Obviously, this office belongs to someone else. I want to see where you really work.”
Without looking away, Grace took another step to the side and reached down, resting her fingers on top of her personalized nameplate. “Take all the time you need to read the letters. I know attorneys like bigger words.”
Cait stared for several long seconds, her eyes widening. “Is this some kind of prank? I thought you were a receptionist, or a secretary. Mom said you were a secretary.”
Grace curled her fingers around the nameplate. “Mom stopped caring what I told her about my life in junior high . I’m amazed she still remembers I exist.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Cait shook her head and set her purse down on one of the chairs. “You seriously work up here?”
“There are only four offices up here,” Grace said. “The office of the CEO, COO, and their respective assistants.” She motioned toward Dante’s door, as Cait had previously done.
Cait looked around again, as if taking it in with an entirely new perspective. “Well. Maybe you are doing all right for yourself, then, Gracie.” She smiled across at her. “Seems like being the woman with the most power around here, you ought to have a few minutes for your big sister.”
Seriously? Grace folded her arms carefully over her chest. “Just being a woman doesn’t give me more authority at someone else’s business, Cait. I thought you were a lawyer?” She dragged in her breath. “Now will you please tell me what is really going on? There has to be something actually going on for you to be constantly calling, and now for you to be here. You’ve never come out to see me in all the years I’ve been in Jersey.”
Cait pouted. “Maybe I missed my baby sister.”
“And maybe you’ll get sick of me when I need somewhere to crash after you cost me this job.”
“There you go being dramatic again,” Cait teased. She folded her hands pleadingly. “I’ve been thinking we could spend some girl time together. Take a few days, maybe do some shopping, some sight-seeing, spoil ourselves at a spa or two—it’ll be fun, and we haven’t done anything like it in forever.”
Grace fought not to gape. “If by that you mean we’ve literally never done it in our entire lives.”
“Sure we have.”
“More importantly,” Grace insisted, “I can’t just up and leave. If you really wanted ‘girl time’, you should have sent me a message so I could put it in a schedule.”
“You never would have agreed.”
That was probably true. Still, Grace argued. “You think just showing up unannounced like this is better? You think I’ll be more willing to just waltz off with you?”
Cait stepped forward and latched onto Grace’s left wrist. Her grip was just firm enough that her fingers pressed painfully into the edge of the stitches still covered beneath a layer of gauze and sleeve, and Grace yelped reflexively from the sharp zing of pain. Cait immediately let go, hands up as if she was being held at gun point. “What’d I do?”
Grace cradled her wrist, the pain already receding and humiliation rushing in in its wake. “Nothing,” she said, too weakly.
“That was not nothing, Gracie.”
Agitation resurfacing and helping to smother out her embarrassment, Grace said, “I really don’t want to talk about it, Cait. You just shouldn’t be grabbing people like an impulsive child.”
Cait scoffed and moved her hands to her hips. “Oh, so once again, everything is my fault? Shame on Cait for living, is that it?”
“You cannot be serious right now.”
Cait swung her pointer finger out, nearly smacking Grace in the process, and practically shouted, “You just faked an injury on me!”
“I did no such thing!” Grace hissed. “And keep your voice down.” Why was it so hard to have a conversation with her sister? Was it her? She’d seen Cait have rational, calm conversations. Why could the two of them not have one?
Cait crowded her again, deliberately reaching for Grace’s forearm. “Really? You’re trying to tell me you’re hiding something under this designer sleeve? What, did you roll out of bed and bruise yourself in the fall?”
Grace yanked her arm away before her sister could close her grip, the motion throwing Grace faintly off-balance. She scrambled to catch herself on the edge of her own desk, still pinned by her bullying sibling. “No, I didn’t roll out of bed. Back off, Cait.”
Cait didn’t, her eyes narrowing. “Finally got yourself a new guy and he’s already leaving the wrong kinds of marks, then?”
Indignation surged and this time it was Grace’s voice that went up. “No, dammit!” She clamped her lips shut, heart racing. Her head was starting to hurt, too.
“Well what other explanation could there be?” Cait reached again for her arm. “Just let me see. There’s no need to protect—”
Grace smacked her sister’s hand away. “There are plenty of possible explanations, Caitlin. And I already told you I do not want to talk about it. Let me breathe!”
Cait’s brow furrowed, an undeniable light of challenge in her eyes. “Said every domestic violence victim ever. Gracie, I see it all the time, but almost always after it’s gone on way too long. Take advantage of your big sister’s expertise.” She finally got her fingers around Grace’s wrist.
“Ladies. What’s going on here?” Dante asked, standing suddenly in his office doorway.
Cait leapt back as if she’d been caught misbehaving and swung her attention over to him. Her gaze swept up the length of him blatantly.
Grace really wanted to smack her sister upside the head, for more than one reason. They were both married, and there was nothing subtle about the heavy black and red ring on his hand. Instead, she straightened from her backward leaning position and forced herself to unclench. It was still an effort to calm her voice, despite that she wasn’t at all mad at him. “I apologize, Mr. De Salvo.” She motioned to the woman she was sure he already recognized. “This is my sister, Caitlin Hawkins-Burke. She dropped by unexpectedly. I’m so sorry if our conversation got too loud.”
Dante spared a fleeting glance at her ogling sister, then narrowed his eyes at her. “What’s the matter?”
Cait put her hands on her hips. “ You don’t happen to be the abusive one, do you?”
“Cait!”
“I beg your pardon?”
Cait motioned to her. “Gracie has some kind of bruise she won’t show me on her wrist. Obviously, someone’s mistreating her. I assumed she had a guy she hadn’t told me about, but maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Plenty of bosses are abusive to their employees.”
Grace was mortified. She wanted to throw up, but not until after she picked up her computer monitor and bashed her thoughtless sister’s head in. “Caitlin, what is the matter with you? You can’t go baselessly accusing people of assault!”
“But it’s not baseless,” Cait replied, tossing a frown in Grace’s direction without fully looking away from Dante.
“It is completely baseless.” Grace drew a breath. “I am so sorry, Mr. De Salvo—”
Dante held up a hand, keeping his frown aimed at her sister. “Then you’ve made up your mind, have you? Whatever it is Grace is refusing to show you, it must be my fault? And your foundation for that assumption is … that I am male, her employer, and such things have been known to happen in the world?”
“What’s your counter?” Cait challenged.
Dante didn’t blink. “Your sister and I were in different parts of the city when it happened.”
“Awfully convenient. Did you also happen to lose your phone after or shortly before?”
“ Damn , you’re exhausting,” Mikey said, stepping out of Dante’s office, phone in hand. He looked between all of them and settled his gaze on Grace. “Romeo’s on his way up.”
Grace almost felt like she was betraying someone with the wave of relief that washed through her, but there was no denying it. She was safe in the office, but she was safest with Romeo.
“Who are you?” Cait asked. “Wait, Romeo? The COO, right? I have a bone to pick with that jerk.”
There went the sense of relief. Grace bit back a groan.
Dante tipped his head. “This is my youngest brother, Mikey. And if you’re referring to the way Romeo spoke to you on the phone yesterday, I’d recommend saving your breath.”
“For all our sakes,” Mikey said, not quietly enough to hide.
Cait cut a glare at him. “You’re a real charmer, aren’t you?” She looked between them. “It’s no wonder Gracie’s afraid to come forward.”
“You want me to come forward?” Grace heard herself ask. A strange out-of-body experience took over her. “How about I just come forward with everything everyone’s ever done to me, then? How about I start with how it is I spent nearly two whole years grounded for stealing money and random valuables from the house when you were the real culprit?”
Cait turned this time and gaped at her.
“Or about why it is my one toe is prone to breaking and always hurts like hell in the cold weather?” She couldn’t make her mouth stop now. “Or about the way my perfect sister was really the one who chopped all my hair off when I was ten, but then she waved the scissors at me and said she’d find something else to cut if I ever told Mom or Dad?”
“Jesus, shut up already, Gracie! We were kids, okay?”
Some part of Grace registered movement in her peripheral vision. Some part of her knew it was Romeo coming around the corner. But she was in it now and had to see it through. “You treated me like it would ruin your whole life if Mom or Dad ever said one single word of praise to me! You made it your mission not just to be better, but to sabotage me at every damn opportunity.” Tears of frustration blurred her vision. “Did I get a better score in a class you’d taken years earlier? Well, let’s make sure Mom and Dad understand how thoroughly dumbed-down the academic system has become even in the short time since your tenure. So it’s ‘poor Grace’ instead of ‘well done, Grace’. You have kids now, you should have some idea what that does to one.”
Indignation sparked in Cait’s eyes. “Oh my God, you’ve really let this job turn you into a bitch, Gracie. All I’ve been doing is trying to help.”
Something made a solid clunking noise on the desk behind her, but before Grace could turn to look, Romeo had his arm around her shoulders and his hand in her hair. He deftly avoided the remaining butterfly stitch as he turned her toward him like they weren’t at work at all. “Yeah,” he said, the derision in his tone making it clear which sister he was speaking to. “You’ve been doing a real great job of that, haven’t you?”
Mikey whistled. “And now I understand why she worked so hard to be perfect all these years.”
Nobody spoke for a long second. Then, in a cooly calculating tone, Cait said, “Oh, I see. It was you. The jerk on the phone. You’re the one beating my sister.”
Romeo tensed. “Fucking excuse me?”
“Your brother tried covering for—”
Grace pushed away from Romeo and spun around, shoving her sleeve up to reveal her gauzy wrist. She ripped at the gauze until the stitches showed and held her arm out awkwardly. “I was in a car accident , Cait. You know—shattered glass, fire, blood, hospitals, all that. It was not the fault of any man in this room. There was some stupid protest on the road. Next thing I know, I’m upside-down and bleeding. Are you happy now?”
Caitlin blinked at her, her mouth open and gaping and for once blissfully soundless.
“And with that, Caitlin, I’ll ask you to leave,” Dante said.
“I’ve got medical on the way up,” Mikey said.
Romeo pulled Grace back toward him with a gentle, guiding touch. “Let’s get you sitting down, angel,” he said. “You’re still supposed to be avoiding over-exerting yourself, remember?”
Grace dragged in a deep breath. “I’m fine.” Other than that she felt wildly emotional and her head kind of hurt. She supposed that last part was relevant. “Okay. I’ll sit.”
Romeo helped her walk around to her seat behind the desk, pulling her chair out for her.
“Were you really in an accident?” Cait asked quietly. “Why didn’t you call?”
Grace frowned.
Romeo gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Why would she? You haven’t been close in years. She called me —her fiancé. I’m taking care of her.”
“F-fiancé?” Cait nearly screeched the word. “You can’t be getting married while I’m getting divorced! It’s not right!”
Grace lifted her head again, staring up at her sister. She saw Dante’s frown in her peripheral vision, but she couldn’t help herself. “Again?” There was a reason her sister had two different surnames. It was ironic probably, considering Cait was a divorce attorney.
Cait drew her shoulders up. “Yes. Again. It’s a long, obnoxious story and I don’t want to get into it. That’s the real reason I came out here, okay? I thought I’d crash with you for a while.”
“No.” The word was out of her before the fear even fully processed.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“Caitlin,” Dante said. “My office is not the place for your personal problems. You’ve caused enough drama today. In light of the fact that we will soon be family, I would prefer not to involve security in your removal—but I will.”
Cait frowned up at him briefly. “I’m trying to figure out where to go, all right? My suitcases are in my car.”
Guilt threatened somewhere in the depths of Grace’s stomach and she averted her eyes, using the distraction of the distant chime of the elevator as an excuse. Except her gaze caught on something else. A beautiful, bright red, potted amaryllis suddenly resting on the far side of her desk.
Romeo… Grace reached up and curled her fingers around the ones he still had on her shoulder, feeling so much more settled. It was arguably stupid. She looked at Cait again. “Go to the airport, Cait. I’m busy and you’re not staying with us.”
“You would just throw me out like that?”
“You have two children to think about,” Grace argued. “Don’t abandon them. Go to Mom and Dad’s if you need to get away.”
Caitlin glanced to the side as two men in scrubs bearing DSI logos on the chests stepped into the room. She shuffled back and huffed. “Fine. I don’t know what I even expected.” With a dismissive flick of her wrist, she scooped up her purse and let herself out. Just like that.