Cursed by Love (10 page)

“I’ll manage,” she said, dizzy from
keeping up with his chameleon-like changes.

“I’ll call if I get finished soon.”

“No! I, mean, no, don’t bother. It’s
been a long day. I’ll probably turn in early.”

“Okay, then.” He reached out and stroked
his fingertips across her cheek, ever so lightly. “I’ll call you tomorrow to
see if you uncovered anything new. Be careful on your way home. And call me
immediately if you see anything suspicious.”

Molly watched him turn and settle his
broad shoulders into a posture of steely determination as he went. Always so
tense. Her fingers covered her cheek, caressing the spot where his touch
lingered. Reeling in a surge of desire, she glanced away and waited while Gabe
clamped on his helmet and climbed onto his Harley.

His headlight, as he backed down the
drive, picked up the glint of something shiny at the edge of the yard. Hopping
out of the car, she imagined the implication of finding a new lucky coin at
this moment.

“Everything all right?” Gabe stopped the
Harley and called out before pulling into the street.

“Sure, fine.” She ducked her head,
feeling a little foolish at being caught down on her knees, combing the grass.
“Just looking for a little luck.”

“You won’t find it there.”

“You don’t think so?” Her fingers closed
on the silver object that earned a frown. He was right this time. Nothing lucky
about a crumpled foil gum wrapper.

“Nope. Like I tell my relatives who are
always on the lookout for get-rich-quick schemes, luck is perseverance meeting
opportunity.”

“Where’s the magic in that?” She
remembered the day she’d found her first lucky penny. She’d won the school
spelling bee that afternoon, defying all expectations to the contrary. Was the
victory due to good luck that her stiffest competition left school with a nasty
case of food poisoning, or was it due to all the practice drills Molly had
endured? Either or both.

“We make our own magic through
preparation and hard work,” he said with a wink.

“Now that’s an empowering thought.”

And looking at the certainty on that face
in the shadows, she almost believed him.

After scanning the hall, Gabe unlocked
the outer door to Contract Communications. His sister sat behind the front desk
and flashed him a look of relief. After hours, she usually worked in his
office. But then, she’d been known to randomly roll from room to room on the
lookout for the best aura. Or
Feng
Shui
, or some crap like that.

But damn, kooky ideas or not, there
wasn’t much she couldn’t handle. If he read her so-happy-to-see-him expression
right, things were worse with Quigley than Granddad had led him to believe.

“Are you alone?” Sierra asked, craning
her neck to look past him. “Did you just get here?”

“You saw me come in. I’m all alone.” He
spread his arms and turned in a circle to prove he wasn’t concealing anyone or
anything. “I came as soon as Granddad called.”

“Yeah, but I thought I heard you—or
someone
—out
in the hall a few minutes ago. Maybe more than one set of footsteps.

“Nope, just got here. Just me.” He
pocketed his keys and headed for his office, confident she’d follow. She rolled
her wheelchair silently behind him as he wondered about the possibility of someone
else roaming the outer corridor at this time of night. The thought of an
intruder breaking in when Sierra and Chloe were here alone at night gave him
the chills. “I didn’t notice anything unusual. No strange cars in the parking
lot.”

Sierra shrugged. “Probably nothing
then.”

“You sure?” He settled in his chair.

“Can’t prove otherwise.” She glided to a
stop in front of his desk.

Leaning his elbows on his desktop, he
leaned forward. “So, what’s up?”

“A glitch. Nothing more. I’m sure I’ll
have it fixed soon. Granddad shouldn’t have bothered you.”

“He said the Quigley job crashed.”
Gabe’s stomach had been tied in knots ever since he got the word. He flipped on
his computer and waited for the project files to come up. “That’s more than a
glitch. If old man Quigley bails on us, that’s a catastrophe. I’ve been holding
his hand for two weeks now to keep him from bolting. What the hell happened?”

“Hey!” His highly-sensitive sister
tossed her long, dark hair over her shoulder, causing her chandelier earrings
to jingle. “Don’t take that tone with me, bucko. I’m doing the best I can.”

Her defensiveness deflected the
frustration he’d unfairly shot in her direction. Leaning back to regroup, he
lobbed her an apologetic smile. “Which is usually pretty damn good, so quit
dodging and tell me the truth.”

“Let me work on the system a little
longer,” she suggested. “After I troubleshoot the commands that Dominic
installed, I’ll know more.”

“The commands that
Dominic
installed?” Gabe sat up straighter and began tapping through the series of
screens, searching for the corrupt file. “Why was that seventeen-year old kid
installing the new system? He’s brilliant, I’ll give him that, and he’s going
to know more than the rest of us put together one day, but that day’s not here
yet. Uncle Harold was supposed to run the trials, or I never would’ve left.”
Her silence spoke volumes. “So I’ll bite. Where’s Harold?”

“He went out for a while.” She adjusted
one of the half-dozen clanking necklaces that glittered against her purple
tunic. With a half-smile, she reached over and picked up an object from the
basket of stress-relief toys on the corner of his desk. No surprise his sister
had grabbed one of her favorites, a squishy gel-filled tube shaped like a fat
polish sausage.

He stifled a groan. “I don’t need this
right now.” He stopped keyboarding and held up his right hand to ward off more
bad news. “Don’t tell me he slipped off to the casino again.”

“All right.” While her tone remained
even, he noticed the sausage jumped from one hand to the other faster than
Ping-Pong balls in a championship match. Even Gabe, not one to read a lot of
symbolism into other people’s actions, recognized the significance of the
phallic-shape Sierra twisted and tortured on a daily basis. More than a few of
the men in her life had screwed her over, providing her with a higher ratio of
misery than any woman deserved.

With a sense of dread, he lifted an
eyebrow. “But he did?”

She squeezed too hard, and the hotdog
shot across the room. With her hands empty, his sister examined the lavender
polish on her long fingernails, rather than meet his eyes. “Maybe.”

“Damn!” He shook his head over the
all-too-familiar scenario. Many of their financial woes stemmed from Uncle
Harold siphoning off their profits, before Gabe shut off his access to anything
but piddling amounts. “And I guess he took the fifty dollars from petty cash,
too.”

He rapped his clenched fist sharply
against the dark mahogany desk. One of his treasures, a vintage Barry Larkin
Cincinnati Reds
bobblehead
doll, nodded up and down.

Because she watched him with a worried
gaze, he gripped the arms of his chair for a moment, breathing deeply. Counting
to ten and then twenty, he reined in his anger and frustration. He returned his
attention to his computer screen and keyboard. Technical problems were easy.
Given enough time he could always solve them. Personal and family problems were
another story.

“You’re not going to be too hard on him,
are you?” Sierra chewed the inside of her cheek. “You know he can’t help it.”

“I’m sick of that excuse. If I’m pushed
to, I’ll buy the notion that his gambling addiction is an illness, but he could
sure get his butt to his Gambling Anonymous sessions more often. He has to
start showing more responsibility around here. When he lets the company down,
he lets us all down.”

“Re-
spon
-
si
-
bil
-
i
-
ty
.” Sierra repeated the word after him, measuring out each
syllable and pursing her purple-painted lips. “That’s an interesting concept.
Except for you, the responsibility gene is missing in the DNA of the other Shaw
men. Maybe from all men, period.”

“Probably not
all
men.” Gabe put
up a token defense for his gender, even though he couldn’t be sure they
deserved it. He didn’t stop clicking through commands when he glanced her way.
“Maybe not even all
Shaws
. You’re forgetting about
Granddad.”

She pulled a disbelieving face. “Don’t
let him fool you. He grew into dependability pretty late, and he still has some
crazy-ass moments. Until Dad ran off and left us on Granddad’s doorstep, the
old man led a pretty colorful life.”

“Yeah, but he put all that behind him
when he had to. And I say, it’s time Uncle Harold steps up to the plate, too.
We can’t carry him forever.”

“He’s not that bad. You let Harold’s
resemblance to Dad sway your opinion. Remember, he stuck around and raised
Terry, even when that wasn’t easy. And he does a lot to help out with Dominic,
because Aunt Carlotta’s a total fruitcake.”

Gabe shook his head, visualizing yet one
more of his eccentric relatives. “She’s a Shaw, isn’t she?”

“Touché.” She grinned and shrugged.
“Things aren’t so bad that we can’t carry him a little while longer, are they?”
The gaze of her eerie amethyst eyes settled on his face. They seemed to poke
around in all the dark, unsettled corners of his brain.

 “Nah, we’re fine.” Gabe negated
their problems and kept his tone light while mentally juggling the last of
their resources. He relied on her too much as it was and she carried heavy
burdens of her own. “But we need the Quigley money. We need to fix this program
before tomorrow, and we don’t need any more screw ups from Uncle Harold.”

Wheeling around the side of his desk,
she placed her hand on his arm. “I’ve got some money saved if you need it.” She
said it so casually he knew his attempt at reassurance hadn’t fooled her.

He felt a twinge, an almost
imperceptible pain in his chest that hit him sometimes when she caught him
unaware. Her strength, courage, and loyalty snuck up on him and tore up his
heart.

Gabe patted her hand, but waved the
offer aside. “That’s your money, Sierra. I know you’ve been saving to get a
place for you and Chloe.”

“Yeah, but we don’t really need our own
place, unless you want to get rid of us. Chloe likes living with you and
Granddad, and it gives me two live-in babysitters.”

“You have no privacy, no space of your
own, and you could have the same two babysitters on a moment’s notice no matter
where you lived. You know we’re both crazy about Chloe.”

“She is a charmer.” Sierra jingled her
bracelets. “But privacy and space are overrated. I’m here or at my day job most
of the time anyway.”

He smiled to keep from grimacing.
“That’s another thing I’ve been meaning to mention—you work too hard.” It
gnawed at him that she had to keep her day job with an accounting firm because
Contract Communications couldn’t provide the health insurance she and Chloe
needed. He felt like such a loser for not being able to do more for them.

Sierra scoffed. “And you don’t? You’re
here twenty-four/seven. And we used most of your money to keep this place going
this long. I don’t know why you won’t use mine. I’m part of this business too,
you know.”

He did know. She was the heart and soul
of the place. If it wasn’t for her and Chloe, and Granddad, he’d cut the others
loose and let them sink or swim. But the four of them had been through too much
for him to let that happen. “We’d be sunk without you. Sometimes I think you
really are the only sane one in the whole family.”

“Sane, but crippled.” Keeping her tone
light, she slapped the inert legs beneath her
floaty
skirt. No stranger would have detected the bitterness in her tone, but Gabe
picked up on it. “We all have our idiosyncrasies and limitations, Superman.
What about you? Anything besides kryptonite?”

The conversation had been floating in
emotional waters for longer than he could take, and Gabe turned back to his
computer screen. He should probably check his email. “Well sure, I’m totally
nuts, obviously, or I’d still be working at P&G pulling down six figures
and having to look for ways to spend my money.”