Chapter 11
11
MICKEY
“ W ell fuck me,” I mutter to myself while pouring two fingers of whiskey into a glass and draining it in one gulp.
I’m pissed at myself for how far I let that conversation get. I get back to work and try to ignore the riot of sensations rocketing through my body and the constant loop of her words on repeat in my brain. Harder than I ever have. That is an image that is permanently seared into my memory now.
I should’ve left well enough alone. I should’ve promoted that greasy nephew to cover for Benny Ragucci. At least I wouldn’t be tempted by him. Tempted to jeopardize my longest friendship, to cross the line with an employee. To do more than have a filthy bad-idea fling. To lay my damn heart at her feet like an offering.
Because I love the way she looks at me, and the way she teases me and laughs and tries so damn hard to be perfect at everything. How she doesn’t want to let anyone down. Not me, not my organization, not her brother that hardly pays attention to her. Even though it sounds to me like everybody has let her down time and again all her life.
The next day, Rory and I go for lunch after a meeting uptown. He asks me how his sister is doing with the job.
“She still staying with you? You oughta know,” I shrug.
“We don’t talk much. It’s weird. I didn’t have much time for her when she was a kid because the age difference. It’s not like I wanted to sit around and play Barbie and crap like that. Now she’s back home for a while and doing shit like trying to make Mom’s meat loaf recipe and asking why I’m not staying home to eat.” He shakes his head. “If I wanted a ball and chain, I’d get hitched.”
“Think maybe she just wants to spend time with you?” I hazard. It’s mixed up, the way I feel about this story he’s telling me. He’s my best friend, so my knee-jerk reaction is to say, ‘hell no, you’re a grown man she can get over it’. But this is Katie and all she wants is to get to know Rory better as adults now. I can tell how it hurts her when she goes to the trouble to look up their mom’s meatloaf recipe and make it for him and he acts like a jerk. So part of me feels disloyal to him about taking her side, but the rest of me wants to knock sense into him.
“It can’t be that bad to have actual blood family that wants to hang with you.”
“Are you taking her side?” He nearly chokes on his beer.
“Not taking sides, just sayin’, if she did something nice for you like cook a dinner and you got no emergency you gotta get to, sit your ass down and be nice. Talk to her about old times or what you did today or if the meatloaf was hard to make. Make a fuckin’ effort is all I’m sayin’. I wish I had family alive I could still talk to.”
I take a bite of my burger and wait for him to clap back at me and tell me to mind my damn business. Instead, he drains his beer.
“I dunno what to do, Mickey. She’s back after six years away. I don’t know how to be around her since our folks are gone. It’s like she wants something from me and I dunno how to give it to her. I wish she’d go back to LA. I don’t like her mixed up in the syndicate even just working at the Oyster in a boring office. Part of me’s worried she’ll get her hands dirty trying to help or whatever. She’ll end up caught doing something illegal and it’ll fuck up her career for the rest of her life. She was better off out in California. I felt good about that, her getting away from this place and going out where it’s warm, have a better life. I helped with her college, you know?”
“You did? Good on you.”
“She thought it was all from Mom and Dad. They saved some for her college, but it wasn’t enough for her to finish, not the way shit costs nowadays. So when she’d message me and ask how much was left in the account or whatever, I’d just ask what she needed. I know she got by on a lot less than she could have used. Katie worked the whole time she was in school. Even with my help and what Mom and Dad had put back, she hustled. Answered phones, waited tables, did data entry and some bookkeeping and shit. I was so damn proud of her, a hard worker, always got her eye on the goal. Damn near broke her heart to have to quit and come back here.”
“That’s tough,” I say, not really knowing how to comment on this. He’s proud of her, but has he ever told her that? And he wants her to go back to LA as fast as she can? I have the uncomfortable feeling of being at cross purposes with my best friend and top lieutenant for the first time.
“Really is. I thought she’d do great out there. I guess there’s a shit ton of accountants out in LA and they got bigger degrees and connections. She says she’s gonna work on her CPA while she’s here, but I ain’t seen her do it. She’s wastin’ time makin’ meatloaf and corned beef and cabbage—okay, the corned beef and cabbage was fantastic, but I’d rather she do her CPA and get outta here.”
“Did you tell her that?” I ask.
“I told her she don’t gotta cook for me, we’re not roommates. She’s just using her old room till she’s back on her feet.”
“What do you suddenly have against Boston?” I ask, indignant.
“Nothing, man. I love Boston. You know that. But I want my baby sister out of here and away from the business. I’d never forgive myself if she got mixed up in the dangerous shit. She’s better off out in LA.”
“You can tell her that. If you think she doesn’t know why you blow her off and never go home when she’s there, explain it to her like you did just now. I know it’s awkward as shit, but do you want her thinkin’ you just don’t want her around? Because acting like you want her gone and not telling her why is shitty.”
He shrugs. “I guess. You know I don’t like to get all emotional.”
“I know you don’t, but this is your family, your blood. And you’re damn lucky to still have some left. Some of us don’t have that luxury. Don’t fuck it up.”
After lunch he goes to one of the warehouses to check on a delivery and I have a meeting at The Oyster. Once it’s done, I see a message from Katie on my phone. She needs to see me today and offers to meet me wherever I want.
In my office at the Oyster now. That okay ? I ask. She gives a thumbs-down.
Where ? I reply, wondering what this is all about.
She says she’ll meet me at the café across from the Pearl in an hour. I wrap up my business at the Oyster and head over there. I’m early but she’s waiting. I clock that it must be her day off because she’s in jeans and a sweatshirt, strawberry blonde hair in a messy ponytail. I sit across from her and wonder when all the tables in this goddamn city got shrunk down. Everywhere we go, our legs brush against each other. It doesn’t matter if she’s got on denim and I have on a light wool, I feel her like the heat of her skin is bare on mine. She’s drinking water and a waiter brings her a cup of tea with a coffee for me. I glance at her for a second and take a sip.
“That’s how you like it, right?” She says and she looks smug, not really asking. She knows I take two sugars no cream. I nod and thank her.
“What’s goin’ on?” I ask.
“I dind’t want to come to your office because I would’ve had to go home and change clothes. I can’t go in the Oyster looking like this.”
“Like what?” I say.
“Like I went to the bank and the laundromat and the grocery store today, not like I’m an accounting executive.”
“You can dress however you want. Nobody at my office is gonna say a word.”
“They’d want to. I’m still a new hire and I don’t want to seem like I don’t care.”
“You can wear a damn sequin dress if it makes you happy. Tell me what’s up, because it sounds like you’re meeting me on your day off.”
“It’s too important to wait and I didn’t want to tell you over the phone.”
I cut my eyes to her, then I take out my phone and shut it off. She does the same. She takes out her notebook, the same one I gave her that night in the crow’s nest when she took the job. She hands it to me and I scan her notes, flip a couple of pages.
“You think Ragucci was making mistakes?” I inquire.
“No. I think it’s something else,” she says carefully.
“Money’s going somewhere,” I supply. She nods.
“You looked at both sets of books.”
“Of course.”
“It’s nowhere?’
“Gone.”
“How much?” I glance at her notes again. “This?” I indicate a number, six figures, near the bottom of the page.
“At least.” Her face is grim.
“We’ll follow up on this and get to the bottom of it. Sal might be able to help you investigate.” He doesn’t seem as worried or angry as I thought he’d be.
“Have you talked to your brother by chance?”
“He texted me a short bit ago,” she says softly. “Said he’s proud of me and wants better for me than this. And he says you handed him his ass for being a jerk about the meatloaf. Thanks for that.”
“I just suggested he should stop being a shithead.”
She laughs. “It’s Rory, you know? At least he talked to me. I told him I like it here. I’ve started my prep course for the first test, did that weeks ago. He keeps offering me money to pay for all of it. I think he wants me out of here as fast as possible,” she says. It’s obvious this hurts her feelings.
“If you don’t like staying with him, I got a couple of buildings in the neighborhood with apartments.”
“I know you do,” she says wryly. “I looked over all your holdings. But I don’t want to move. Like he says, I’m not here for that long. I heard back from Benny yesterday, and he says rehab is going well. He gets tired easy but they say that’s normal. He gave me a couple tips on how to pick out specific techniques when I go over the financials. I didn’t bother him about this discrepancy, and I won’t unless you think I need to.”
“No, you’re right. Let’s give him time to get back on his feet. For the time being, just be proud of the fact you found something missing when my top accountant didn’t catch it last month. It’s not everybody can say they got one up on Benny Ragucci,” I say, trying to let her know I’m impressed with her.
“I’m gonna head home now. Besides you got plenty to do without me hanging around on my day off.”
“You’re always welcome there. Your fingerprint’s on the lock, Katie,” I say, stating the obvious. We haven’t spoken of our mutual attraction since that conversation and it’s for the best. We both decided to behave like adults and coworkers. Leave that nonsense in the past. I try to tell myself that’s my goal, to keep this all business.
We cross from the café to the Pearl, still talking. I insist on sending her home in one of my cars. We walk around the back. There’s a couple guys hanging around by the corner of the small private parking lot and it sets me on high alert. Nobody loiters around here. We’ve got cameras and security and the fact is you’d have to be a complete dumbass to do a deal on my property in this city. I tap my phone and tell the guy on the door that I want these people cleared off my block.
In seconds, two big guards exit the back door and head for the pair of men. Jeremiah, who’s worked security for me for years, tells them that they’re trespassing on private property and they should get lost. The taller of the two losers shouts back something profane. My security men head toward them, but they come closer instead of backing down. I hear Jeremiah’s stern and commanding tone as he tries to talk them down but the tall one’s getting irrational, wild. He’s on something that’s for damn sure and I don’t want him on my property or anywhere close to Katie.
“Come on,” I tell her. She’s standing by the car, hesitant.
“It’s not necessary,” she says, eyes on the disturbance unfolding a few yards away from us. “I can drive myself. Hey! What the fuck?”
I grab her in my arms and turn her so she’s against the car, shielded by my body as I hear the glass break. One of the loiterers has thrown a rock in our general direction and busted a car window. I glance back and see my men have the guys on the ground now.
There’s no threat. Some idiot got high, tried his luck dealing in the wrong place at the wrong time. I tell myself it’s over and we’re fine. But when I turn her around, I run my hands down her arms, over her back, as if I’m checking for broken bones or something. She seems shaken but okay. When she looks up at me, there’s a scratch on her forehead, a bright line of blood welling near the hairline.
“Shit, you’re bleeding,” I say.
I wrap an arm around her shoulders and usher her inside.
“I’m fine, Mickey. I swear. I’ll go home and put a band aid on it. It’s no big deal,” she’s babbling, too bright and cheerful, too dismissive. It’s going to hit her in a second and I want her somewhere safe and quiet when it does.
She doesn’t object when I guide her onto the private elevator and we head to the crow’s nest. Once we’re inside the room, I go to the bar cart and pour her a finger of whiskey. She shakes her head.
“No thanks,” she says.
“Drink it,” I tell her. “It shook you up whether you wanna be a cowboy about it or not.”
She sits not at the table but on the couch, legs tucked under her. I grab a blanket off the back of a chair and put it over her. She sips the whiskey, winces, then says, “That’s pretty good.”
“Irish, of course,” I tell her and she barely manages a half smile for me.
I get the first aid kit and clean the cut on her forehead. She shuts her eyes, holds still as I clean her up and bandage it. I’m aware of her paleness, the blue veins on her eyelids, the almost translucent skin and the tremble of her lips. I feel pent-up, like I want to roar and break things, destroy the fool who threw a rock and caused her any pain. Instead of raging, I put the first aid stuff aside and take her hand.
“Your hands are cold,” I complain. She shifts a little beside me on the couch.
“I’m freezing,” she admits, “It’s not even that cold outside.”
“It’s the shock and the stress,” I tell her.
“I thought he had a gun. I thought he shot at us at first,” she says in a low whisper.
I can’t help it then. I stroke her hair, kiss the top of her head. She moves into my arms and nestles against me, feeling small and cold and shaky. I kiss her forehead, rub her back, trying to get warmth back into her, to cherish and protect her. That’s the word, cherish. It keeps coming up and I’m not the most comfortable with it, but here we are.
“I’m so cold, Mick,” she says, her wide eyes still frightened, her gaze locking with mine. “Make me warm.”
I don’t need her to ask me twice.