Knowing You (32 page)

“It wasn't like that.”

“Sure seemed that way to me. What do
you
call it?” She held up one hand to keep him quiet. “No. Never mind. I don't even want to know. God knows what you're thinking that you
didn't
write down. Besides, this isn't just about us, anyway. It's not even all about that stupid list. I mean, sex is all fine and dandy—”

“Fine and dandy?”

She ignored him. The list still stung, but there was more at stake here than a list that hit every last one of her insecurities. “We have to think about how this affects everyone else. There are more than just the two of us involved here, you know. What about Mama? What about Nick? And Carla and—hell. Everybody?”

He stared at her blankly. How had they gone from a spreadsheet to his family?

Then he got a bead on what she'd just said. “How about
Nick?
” he asked dangerously. “How … about … Nick?”

“Yes. Your brother. Your twin. That Nick.”

“Why are we giving a damn about Nick right now?”

“We're giving a damn because he's family. That's why. Because he's …
family
and—
you're
the one who brought him up by putting his name on that list. Never mind.” She shook her head, refusing to think about that again. “I'm just saying that we have to think about the family.”

“And how about yours? How about little sister Debbie?”

“Her, too.”

“Doesn't it get old, Stevie?”

“What?”

“Saving the whole goddamned world?” So much for keeping quiet. Frustration tugged at him, but he scraped one hand across his face and blurted, “Christ, Stevie, do you have to rescue the whole damn universe?”

“What?”

Stunned surprise shadowed her eyes, and he told himself to shut up and let her walk away. But he couldn't stop. Hell, he didn't
want
to stop. This had been coming for a long time. Might as well get it said. Maybe once it was out in the open …

“You heard me.” He threw his hands wide, then let them fall to slap against his thighs. “Jesus. All you've done is take the ‘blame' for everybody's troubles and problems.”

“That's because some of them
were
my fault.”

“How is that possible?” he demanded, staring into her blue eyes and watching as anger slowly overcame the misery he'd seen there before. “Just how do you get to be the damned center of the universe? How is
everything that ever goes wrong anywhere
your
fault? Your problem to solve?
You should have been home to answer a phone you didn't know was going to ring? You shouldn't have rushed into Debbie's life and thrown it into turmoil?
”

She didn't like having her own words thrown back at her and actually winced as he said them. “I didn't say that, exactly.”

“You don't have to say it,” he said, snorting a choked-off laugh. “You
live
it.”

“Wow,” she countered, folding her arms across her chest like a shield. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Amazing Paul, mind reader extraordinaire.”

“Cute,” he snapped. “But I don't see you denying it.”

“Of course I deny trying to save the world. It's … dumb.”

“That's what I've always thought.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Think about it, Stevie,” he said, leaning toward her as he grabbed her shoulders in a tight grip. “You've spent most of your life waiting around for Joanna to love you the way you want her to.”

“Shut up,” she said, but the words came out soft, squeezed past a sudden cold, hard knot in her throat.

“And Nick,” he went on, his brown eyes flashing in the dim lamplight. “You loved him despite how he acted. You kept trying to save him from himself so he'd see you and love you the way you wanted him to.”

“I loved him, once.”

Paul winced as if she'd landed a hard blow to his ribs. Even the past tense of the word
love
didn't take the sting out of it completely. “I know. But he didn't
love you, not the way you deserved to be loved, and you never saw it.”

She gave him a long, slow look up and down, then said softly, “There's a lot of things I never really saw until just now.”

He smiled tightly. “That's real good, how your eyes go all icy and your voice gets as snotty as Joanna on one of her best days.”

Stevie sucked in a breath. “Good shot. If you're keeping score, that was a direct hit.”

“I'm not trying to hurt you.”

“Well, you're doing a hell of a job.”

He hadn't meant to hurt her. But he was. He could tell by the look in her eyes, and it was killing him. Yet he knew that stupid list had pushed to the surface what he'd been trying to hide. And he was damn tired of walking on eggshells when it came to what he was feeling about this woman. They were finally standing on the edge of a cliff. It was either get across it or jump in the hole and forget about living.

Tears stung the backs of her eyes, but Stevie refused to give in to them. She wouldn't cry. She wouldn't let him know that he was hurting her. That he was getting to her more deeply than anyone ever had before.

He moved his hands, cupping her face between his palms, staring down into her eyes, forcing her to meet his gaze. To feel what he was feeling. To know what it was costing him to say these things.

“Even the animals, Stevie. The cats and dogs you bring home. You're saving them, too. Now you have a new cause. Debbie. Not that your sister isn't a worthy cause, but damn it—”

She pulled away from him, eyes blazing.

He raked his fingers through his wet, soapy hair. “You save everyone but yourself.”

One tear defied her best efforts and rolled along her cheek. She rubbed it away with the back of her hand. Then she inhaled sharply and exhaled just as fast. “Why are you talking to me like this?”

“Because I'm tired of not being seen, Stevie. You know why you never noticed me in all these years?” He shook his head slowly. “Because I didn't need saving. You didn't have to rush in and rescue me, so you couldn't see me.”

“That's not true.”

“Yeah, it is.” Scraping one hand across the back of his neck, he looked like he wanted to strangle something. “You keep saving the world, hoping it'll change to the way you want it. Well, instead of trying to save the damn world, why don't you try to save yourself?”

“And your way's better?” she asked, when she could think again. When the chill of his words had eased enough that her brain was able to work again.

“My way?”

“The good son,” she said, daring him to disagree. “The responsible one. The one who never disappoints. Always in Nick's shadow. Content to stay there, then bitch because he doesn't get noticed.”

“Score one for you,” he said softly.

Stevie's heart ached.
This
was exactly what she'd been afraid of. Agony pooled in the pit of her stomach and sent long, reaching fingers out to every corner of her body. Her love for him had ripped apart a friendship she'd always held sacred.

Hurting him was the last thing she would ever want to do. Yet here she was, going for his soft spots, just like he'd done to her. Because they knew each other so damn well, they knew where the skin was the thinnest, the nerves closest to the surface.

But she wouldn't do it anymore.

“I'm not interested in playing this game—or
any
game with you, Paul.” She wiped at her streaming eyes with impatient hands, then a harsh, throat-scraping laugh erupted from her. Turning around sharply, Stevie made a break for the front door. “I'm outta here.”

“You're leaving? You lose an argument and leave? Just like that?”

“I didn't
lose
, Paul,” she said, tears clogging her throat. “
We
did.” She grabbed his car keys off the table in the foyer, yanked the front door open, ran outside, and crashed into Nick's chest.

“Hey…” He held her back and away from him, his smile slipping into a worried frown. “What's…?”

“Oh, drop dead,” Stevie muttered, and shot past him, taking the steps at a run, then racing across the yard to Paul's car.

“Stevie!” Paul was just a few steps behind her. He couldn't let it end like this. Damn it, they hadn't settled anything.

And he couldn't … wouldn't let it end this way. He'd halfway hoped that she could love him as much as he loved her. Now he might never know—just because of that Goddamn list.

No. To have it all trashed at his feet was something he refused to accept. Refused to give up on. If that meant taking on Nick and Mama and the whole
Candellano bunch, then so be it. And he wasn't going to let her leave, half-naked and in
his
car, for God's sake.

Nick grabbed at him. “What'd you do to St—”

Without even slowing his pace, Paul slammed his fist into Nick's jaw, then kept going. Barefoot, he ran out into the yard, calling her name like a maniac, in time to see Stevie steering his car down the drive, spinning gravel into a wild fantail behind her.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

S
TEVIE MADE THE DRIVE
to her place in record time. Would have been even faster if Tony Candellano hadn't pulled her over for speeding.

“This just keeps getting better and better,” she muttered. She could still see the shock on Tony's face when he'd noticed that she was driving Paul's car, wearing a man's robe and pretty much naked beneath it. Thank God she'd had the sense to put Paul's robe on—otherwise, every last Candellano man would have had the chance to see her naked. At least Tony had been so stunned, he hadn't remembered to give her a ticket. Oh, yeah.

The perfect end to the perfect morning.

Her sometime-lover and ex-friend had humiliated her and embarrassed her with that stupid list. She leaves without her clothes—in a stolen car—and gets caught by the cop brother of said ex-friend.

If she'd read this in a book, even she wouldn't believe it.

Wrapped in her own robe, she clutched Paul's to her chest and walked across the room to the window that overlooked the alley where she'd left his car. Afternoon sunlight glittered on the gray 4Runner sitting behind her own little car. They looked so cozy, side by side. And yet they didn't go together at all.

Sort of like her and Paul.

She lifted his robe to her face and breathed deeply, inhaling his scent from the soft, faded terrycloth. Tears burned in her eyes and she paid no attention at all as they rained down her face. She had no one to hide them from now. No reason to pretend her heart wasn't breaking. And just like that, a brief, fierce crying jag hit, leaving her weak and wobbly. A few minutes later, she wiped her tears on Paul's robe and muttered, “Love sucks.”

Sniffing, she glanced across the room to Scruffy, curled up on the sofa. “Ironic, isn't it, Scruff?” she asked. “Just when I figure out I'm in love with him, I find out that I didn't even really know him.” Her fingers dug into the robe, squeezing the thick fabric tightly. “He made a
spreadsheet
, Scruff,” she said, as if she still couldn't believe it. “A list to help him keep from caring for me.”

It still stung. She'd lost her lover. The man she loved. But more than that, she'd lost her friend. Because how could she ever look at him again? How could she ever talk to him, knowing that while he was smiling at her, touching her, loving her, he'd be jotting mental notes and adding to his “list” of her apparently numerous faults?

Anger sparked inside her, sputtering to life in the pit
of the dark, empty hole at the bottom of her heart. But the hurt was so much bigger than the anger, the pain was overwhelming. Still, her brain worked. Tugging at that last scene with Paul. Pulling at every thread to every conversation. Reworking it, analyzing it. But no matter how she looked at it, she kept coming back to that list.

She'd thought he was different. She'd thought that he at least
cared
. But he'd turned out to be just like Nick. Like her mother. Not only didn't he love her … he'd taken it to new levels. He'd actually gone at it scientifically and figured out just
why
he shouldn't love her.

Stevie'd known all along that this time with Paul would end. “But it could have ended better than this,” she said tightly, fighting a new wave of tears as she threw the window open and leaned out. Tossing his robe high, Stevie watched it take flight, dancing through the air, catching the slight wind, spreading out as if it were a pair of wings attached to some giant mythic bird. It seemed to take forever for it to land, and when it did, it hooked on the raised antenna of the 4Runner and lay still and flat, like a flag on a windless day.

Like her heart.

“There you go, Paul,” she said, and closed the window again, locking it tight against the outside world. “Now you don't even have to speak to me to get your robe.”

Turning away from the window, she let her gaze slide across the room. Sunlight glanced through the shining glass panes, filtering into every corner of the room, banishing late-afternoon shadows. Yet it did absolutely nothing to the darkness within her.

She walked to the sofa and curled up in the corner. The TV was on—just for company—the strident tones of the talk show host breaking into the silence that seemed so oppressive. Scruffy scooted in close, cuddling up against her. Stevie idly ran her fingers through the little dog's soft fur and smiled to herself despite her inner misery when Scruffy flopped onto her back for a better rub. “At least you love me, huh?”

So that was it, she thought. She could see her future mapped out in front of her as clearly as if it were highlighted on an atlas. She'd live right here over the Leaf and Bean. In these few small rooms. With a succession of dogs and cats, she'd shuffle through her life, smiling at customers and crying herself to sleep. She'd dream every night of a love she'd known too briefly, and always, she'd wonder, what if?