Catch a Falling Star (12 page)

“I hate you,” she said to the empty room, but it wasn’t true. She wished it were. It would hurt less if she did.

Brianna stood on the sidewalk, blinking. For a moment she thought the Ford had been stolen. Then she remembered that she’d made a deal with the devil and she walked to the curb where the Toyota was parked. Red with a tan interior. She unlocked it, and cautiously got inside. It wasn’t brand-new, but it was a late model, and spiffy clean on the inside.

She opened the glove compartment and saw a blue folder with her name on it. Inside were the title and registration, made out in her name, plus the bill of sale. The gas tank was full. Way more organized than Richard had ever been in his life.

She tucked the folder in her purse since the title shouldn’t be left in the car, and drove to work. The car handled well, and she didn’t have to worry about the brakes failing or whether it would start after work.

And Richard was back in LA. So yay. What more could one woman want?

She’d barely seated herself at her desk when Heidi peeked around the wall of her cubicle and said, “Mr. G, line one.”

“What does he want now?” Brianna asked no one in particular, and forced herself to sound pleasant when she answered the phone.

“Good morning, Brianna,” he said.

“Good morning, Mr. G,” she said breezily. “I hate to be rude but I’ve got a meeting in about two minutes. What can I do for you?” She didn’t think she could stand his small talk today. Not today. Not after yesterday. Possibly not ever.

“What are her favorite flowers?”

Look at that, he could get right to the point when properly motivated. So, great.

“Tiger lilies,” she said.

“Of course,” he said. “I knew it wouldn’t be roses.”

“
I
like roses,” she said defensively.

He didn’t answer that, just said, “Thanks, Brianna!” and hung up.

• • •

“Hey.”

Natalie looked up from her lunch to see Joe crossing over to her. She was in the cafeteria at the student union, eating a sandwich she’d brought from home, and thinking it would be nice if she could start concentrating on her homework sometime soon. But she kept thinking of Saturday, an enchanted evening, and Matthias calling her on Sunday to ask her out for Friday, and every time she thought about it, her heart fluttered and she couldn’t remember what she was supposed to be doing.

“Hi, Joe,” she said, which he seemed to take as an invitation to sit across from her and take his own lunch out of his backpack. Well, she didn’t care. He’d blown her off when she’d asked him to study with her, and it had bothered her at the time, but it didn’t matter now.

“I’ve got an extra apple,” he offered, and since he was obviously trying to make amends she said, “Sure, thanks,” and he handed it over. It was a golden delicious, which was her favorite, so that was good. She crunched into it.

“How’d you do on that quiz? Wish I’d been able to study for it with you.”

“No problem,” she said, forcing a smile. “I got an A.”

“Good for you. I got a B. But I can still get an A in the class if I ace the midterm and final.”

Maybe if he hadn’t blown her off he could have gotten an A, too. She didn’t say that, although Brianna probably would have. “Can’t believe midterms are coming right up,” was what she did say.

“Me either. Want to get together on Friday to do some studying?”

Natalie blinked. She thought they weren’t doing that. She thought —

“I have a date on Friday,” she said. “I mean, I’m seeing someone, so — ”

“Oh, yeah, cool, that’s cool, I meant just as friends. If you can’t do Friday, what about Thursday?”

“Yeah,” Natalie said. “Yeah, I can do Thursday.”

• • •

He was such a doofus. Of course she was seeing someone, a girl like her. Who the hell did he think he was? When she’d asked Joe to study, he really hadn’t been able to do it. That damned Carl and his bad ankle had needed him to fill in. But he’d thought it was promising, that maybe he’d misunderstood why she had turned
him
down, and that if he just tried again, they could get together. And maybe … well, he’d been wrong, she was just being friendly. So that’s what they were going to be. Friends.

He looked at her, eating her sandwich elegantly, beautiful and assured and special.
Friends
.

Suddenly he wasn’t very hungry anymore.

• • •

“Did she like the flowers?” Mr. G asked, which, she was going to stick her ballpoint pen in his heart if he didn’t stop that.

“Loved them,” Brianna said, as she came into the echoing entrance hall. Beverly had opened the door for her, but Matthias had been right there with her, anxious to know if his efforts to woo Natalie were working. Which they were. So, great. She was so so happy for everyone.

“Thanks for coming by,” he said.

“If you’re going to host the … event here, then I’ll need to scope out the lay of the land.”

“Very good,” he said. “So obviously this is the entrance hall.”

Her entire house could fit in the hallway. That was depressing. She’d been here before with Anita, but she’d been in better spirits that day and so she hadn’t thought negative thoughts. She was thinking them now.

“It sure is,” she said.

“And here’s what my mother always called the living room.”

Which was the size of an extravagant hotel lobby, and furnished like one, too. She counted six sofas, three settees, and at least eight different chairs. Not to mention sideboards, end tables, sofa tables, lamps, curio cabinets, flower arrangements. With so much room between them you could host a skating party.

“The music room’s through here,” he said. “And of course there’s a ballroom upstairs.”

“Of course,” she said.

He brought her through all the public rooms in the house, a tour that took about an hour. If he hadn’t been leading her around she would have gotten lost. His house was bigger than the Cooper-Renfield Museum, which was saying a lot.

“You live here by yourself?” she asked when they were back in the living room.

“Yes,” he said. “None of the staff live in.”

None of the staff.
And in the moment she knew he wanted Natalie here, and her heart froze because Natalie could fit in here; she could fit in anywhere. That was from all those years in the hospital, trying to lessen the pain and the fear and the uncertainty by being the nicest child, the least complaining, the one who tried to please.

And why shouldn’t Natalie be here? Brianna couldn’t imagine herself living within these walls, couldn’t picture it at all. Which meant Matthias probably couldn’t either.

“So, I guess I still don’t know what your event is for,” she said, walking over to stare up at what was almost certainly an original Rembrandt, trying to get her mind off the thought of Natalie living here. “I mean, what are you celebrating or whatever?”

He hesitated. “I rattle around in this place. You’ve seen it now, so you know what I mean. So, I thought, what it needs is people in it. If I entertained more, then … I don’t know. Then maybe it would be the kind of place I could live in.”

He looked at her expectantly, like she might understand, but she sure as hell didn’t. He’d been living here all his life. And he was just now cluing in to the fact that it wasn’t how normal people did it?

“People don’t live in places like this,” she said. “People put on shows in places like this, they don’t
live
here.” She turned in a complete circle, taking in the “living room.” “I mean, you make it into a hotel or a museum or some kind of public space. Or you burn it to the ground. No one could
live
here.”

He looked like she’d just slapped him, which, okay,
learn to think before you speak, Brianna.

“So, no burning the place down?” she said. “Then let’s go back to your plan, which is to start entertaining more. Which is an
excellent
idea.”

“The flowers were beautiful,” Natalie said. Matthias had come to the door to pick her up. He was a total gentleman. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said.

“How’d you know tiger lilies are my favorite?”

“I have an inside track,” he said, helping her with her coat.

“Ah. Brianna.”

Brianna wasn’t here right now; she had a meeting with a Once in a Lifetime client, but she’d hugged Natalie and told her to have a good time before she’d gone off. She looked like she might have been crying, but she said it was allergies. But Brianna didn’t have allergies, so that was dumb. It was probably something about work. Brianna was always stressed about work.

“Where are we off to?” Natalie asked. “Am I dressed okay?” She had on a skirt and sweater because Matthias wasn’t someone you wore jeans and a T-shirt with, unless you were Brianna.

“You look lovely. I was thinking that little bistro, Genovese? If you like Italian.”

“Love it.”

“I don’t suppose you’re partial to Tokyo horror flicks?”

That made her laugh. “Not in the slightest. If you have your heart set on it, I’ll indulge you but, no, not much of a fan of Godzilla.”

“Then we’ll have to settle for whatever’s playing at the multiplex.”

Not a man with a lot of imagination, Matthias, but dinner and a movie sounded fine to her, so she smiled up at him and he said, “You make it hard for me to breathe when you do that,” and something shifted in the air between them and he leaned down and touched her lips with his. Just a gentle kiss, short, sweet, and then he was opening the door, saying, “After you.”

She got in the Lexus and said, “I love this car. Brianna finally got a new car — new to her anyway — and it’s nice but this is incredible.”

“Brianna got a new car? She finally replaced that old Ford?” Matthias asked, buckling up and turning the ignition key.

“Her dad gave it to her.”

“Her
dad
?”

“Yeah. He … well, this is Brianna’s story, I should let her tell it.”

“She told me her parents were gone.”

He sounded a little mad, like he thought Brianna had lied to him, so Natalie had to clear that up. “It’s complicated. You know her mom and my dad were married? My mother died when I was a little kid. So, that’s how Brianna and I became sisters. Then her mom and my dad were killed in a car accident. Her dad, though, he was — is — an alcoholic. He abandoned Brianna and her mom when Brianna was thirteen. Thirteen years ago, in fact.”

“And how is it he’s back in her life?”

“He got sober, I guess. So he wanted to say he was sorry.”

“After
thirteen years
he’s sorry?”

“That’s kinda Brianna’s reaction, too.”

“So how’d she end up with a new car?”

“I guess he said he wanted to help out, you know, things are tight with me in school full time, and she never went to college and Mrs. Curtin doesn’t pay her squat. Anyway, she said he could help out by leaving her alone, so he said he’d leave her alone if she took the car.”

Matthias shook his head. “That sounds weirdly like the exact kind of bargain Brianna would make.”

“I know,” Natalie said. “The rest of us would turn down the car and end up with the dad.”

He was quiet for a moment and then he said, “I guess that explains a lot,” he said. “That big Keep Out sign she’s got.”

Natalie tucked her hair behind her ear. “I guess if you’ve been abandoned by a parent, it’s hard to trust that other people won’t do it, too, so you try not to get in the position where they can hurt you if they leave you.”

“The dogs,” he said suddenly. “You.”

“Right. We’ll never leave her, not like that, you know. Walking out. But she’s pretty wary of everyone else.” She glanced up at him. “This is pretty private and it really should be Brianna — ”

“I understand,” he said. “She and I have talked about a lot of things but not this.”

Natalie tensed. What did “a lot” mean? Did it mean —

“I know about the leukemia, Natalie,” he said gently, as if he could read her mind. “It’s come up in conversation a time or two.”

She was kind of glad he said it out loud, but in a way she wished he hadn’t. She wished it just wasn’t there. That people could just know her for who she was, not as a survivor —

“I have to say I think you’ve been incredibly brave and … amazing,” he said.

Or that. Like she had had any choice. She had just done what she had to do. What else could she have done? It was
Brianna
who had had the choice, and chose Natalie.

“You didn’t have anyone — ”

“I had Brianna. All you need is one person, you know? Just that one person who won’t ever let you down.”

“Brianna’s a good sort,” he said.

“I’ve been cancer-free for five years. I was declared in remission two years after my last relapse. They consider you cured if you go ten.”

“Getting there,” he said.

“Getting there,” she agreed.

• • •

“Mr. G — ” That was Brianna. He smiled.

“Maybe you should call me Matthias,” he said. “Since I’m dating your sister.”

“Mr. G.” Or not. “I’m wondering if you’ve given any thought to your guest list? We need to have a general idea of whether we’ll be serving fifty people or five thousand.”

“I guess … I don’t know.”

“You know, you’re one of my more aggravating clients,” Brianna said. He suspected she didn’t talk to her other clients like that. “I can’t get started until we get some basic details straightened out. You know, like a date. And the number of guests. I’m starting to think you’re not serious about this.”

She was right. He had been playing with the idea. Now he needed to commit to it. If it was a disaster, it would hardly ruin his life. He dwelled briefly on the idea of having Natalie by his side as he greeted guests. That made him feel much better. Everyone would love her.

“Okay, March fifteenth, two hundred guests. Dressy but not formal. Cocktail party.”

There was a pause. “I didn’t realize you were capable of that. I’ll have some ideas together by the end of the week.”

“Thanks, Brianna.”

“Don’t mention it, Mr. G.”