The Girl Most Likely To... (20 page)

Yep, Matt said. And if it weren't for that little misunderstanding, we would have found you a lot sooner.

Damn! Aidan's eyes sparkled. So you went out west to look for us? He addressed the question to Riley, but Matt was in cop mode and couldn't be stopped.

You bet. I did all kinds of public-record searches and made some calls, but I couldn't find any trace of you or your mom, in California or anywhere else. Neither did the P.I. we hired.

You really hired a private detective? Aidan seemed incredulous.

Sure did, Matt went on. After he came up with squat, we decided to go see for ourselves. Your dad here Matt angled his thumb at Riley. He took an unpaid leave of absence from his practice to look for you. Matt chuckled. I flew out to help him on weekends and when I could get time off. We never found you, but we got to see a lot of the country, that's for damn sure.

Aidan's expression suddenly went serious and he turned to Riley. I had no idea you did all that, Aidan said, obviously trying to hide the emotion he was feeling. Thank you.

Riley nodded. I just wish I would have done a better job.

Don't listen to him, Matt said. He followed every lead he got, and he got quite a few. It's amazing how many people said they'd seen a woman of your mom's description with a boy in tow over the years. How many states did we end up going to, again?

Riley would never forget. Seventeen.

Aidan's mouth dropped open. You drove all those places?

Riley nodded.

Shit, Aidan whispered. After a long moment of silence, he started to laugh.

Matt laughed, too. Yeah. You were probably sittin' around thinking your daddy didn't give a damn about you, right about the time he was staying at that health hazard of a motel in Montana, the one where the heater vent smelled like dead weasel. What town was that, again?

Helena, Riley said, carefully gauging Aidan's reaction to all this.

Right, Matt said. We put close to fifteen thousand miles on that old truck.

Hey, Aidan, Riley said, knowing he needed to stop Matt before he began reminiscing about what they'd ordered for lunch in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. All Matt's saying is, we tried our best to find you, and I was madder than hell that I had to come home empty-handed.

Aidan nodded.

I'd do it all over again, too.

Yeah. Aidan scooted his chair back. I'm going to run to the men's room.

Catch you in a minute.

Riley watched his grown son stroll through the cavernous old warehouse restaurant, shoulders square and straight as he moved. This was a hell of a lot for a kid to be taking in all at once.

Is he all right? This has got to be a total mind fuck, Matt said, taking a sip of his beer.

For all of us.

Don't do it, Bro. Matt's expression went hard. Don't go see her.

Riley shrugged. I have no choice.

Sure you do. We all have a choice.

All right, so I choose to talk with her.

Matt rolled his eyes.

Kat and I are nothing but one big ball of unfinished business and half-truths, and I'm not leaving here until we deal with some of it!

Matt shook his head. Remember that day I said you were too closed up and should talk about things more?

Sure.

I liked you better that way.

They sat in silence until Aidan came back.

He looked calm, and smiled at both Matt and Riley. This has been an amazing day. I mean, in some ways it feels like a dream, but I look at you guys and I know it's very real. It's just going to take some getting used to, I guess.

Riley smiled back. The important thing is we've made a start.

Aidan nodded, pulled out a pen from his pocket, and clicked it open. Got a piece of paper?

Riley didn't, but he handed Aidan one of the extra bar napkins on the tabletop and watched him scrawl some numbers on it. Aidan shoved it back toward Riley when he was done.

It's Mom's address and phone number.

Riley felt his pulse skitter. Uh, thanks, he managed. But I already have it.

Aidan grinned. Cool.

Hey, before you put that thing away Matt pointed at Aidan's pen. Is there any chance you might be able to get me a number for Nola D'Agliano?

Aidan let out a boisterous laugh and Riley heard the echo of Big Daddy in the cadence of it. It's D'Agostino.

Matt nodded. No wonder I couldn't find her.

Oh, man, Aidan said, shaking his head.

What? Matt sat up straighter. Not a good idea? I just wanted to ask her out for coffee or something.

Aidan snatched another napkin from the table and began writing on the back of it. No, no, it's fine, he said. I was just thinking that you're exactly Nola's type. He finished with the last few digits and handed the napkin to Matt with a sheepish grin.

Oh yeah? Matt waited for more details, but Aidan seemed to enjoy teasing him. Come on, man; aren't you going to help out your old uncle here?

What is it that makes me her type? My looks? My personality?

The fact that you're not Italian and you have a job. That about does it.

Matt's face went blank.

See, she's always talking about how she's sworn off men, Italian men in particular. All her husbands have been Italian, and most of them either were unemployed at the time they married or got that way real quick.

Nola earns good money as a paralegal.

One of Matt's eyebrows shot high on his forehead. How many husbands were there?

Three.

Matt whistled.

But none of them lasted very long, Aidan added, as if that would be reassuring.

Matt grimaced. You're not saying they're all /dead/, are you?

Aidan and Riley howled with laughter. Not that I'm aware of, Aidan said, catching his breath.

Riley patted Matt's arm. This sounds like a match made in Hades.

You should know, his brother snapped.

Kat sat in the fading evening light, her legs tucked up underneath her, the mug of cocoa now cold in her hand. On the side table was the book she'd been reading, one she'd originally bought to enjoy on the beach, but mindless beach reading it didn't turn out to be. So now that she was back in the privacy of her own little city apartment, she'd spent most of the day with her nose buried in the print, reading about the psychology of suppressed memorieswhy they pop up when they do, how to handle them, and why people push them down in the first place.

She was hoping the book might help her remember everything that had happened in her dad's studio the evening she left Persuasion. It seemed impossible that the memory had ever existed in one piece in her brain, because she didn't even remember when she'd begun to forget. A week after she came to Baltimore? A month? Two years? She'd never mentioned anything about that night to Phyllis or Nola, because until recently she didn't realize there was anything to tell.

Kat rubbed hard at the back of her neck, pressing her fingers into the knotted muscles. The first snippets of memory about that evening had come when she and Nola sat in the ER of Davis Memorial, staring at Kat's father's limp hands. But the event didn't really come alive until the other day on the beach, talking to Jeff. When she'd said it out loudtelling him a story like it had happened to someone elsethe memory had suddenly become real, taken root, and she'd been drowning in the emotional fallout ever since.

She needed a break. Kat got up out of the old chair and stretched, reaching toward the ceiling and then down to her toes. She shuffled to the bathroom and threw cold water on her eyelids, noticing the tanned but frowning face staring back at her from the mirror. She was thirty-seven now. She wasn't a girl running away anymore. She was nobody's victim and she wasn't hiding a damn thing from anyone. On top of all that, thanks to Phyllis, Kat would never have to rely on anyone for anything again for as long as she lived.

Whatever she had to deal with, she'd deal with it, whether it be something outside herselflike Aidan's furyor something inside herself.

Like her own buried memories.

Leaning closer to her reflection, Kat studied every fine line that fanned out from her eyes, every freckle that had survived the Fifth Avenue glycolic acid facial. She was still pretty enough. If she decided she wanted a man's company for casual dating, she could probably find a good one if she really put her mind to it.

Stranger things had happened.

Kat patted her face dry with a towel and headed into the kitchen to get a snack. On her way she flipped on the remote to her new Bose CD changer, and her apartment came alive with Bonnie Raitt's slide guitar and sweet lament. Kat sang along, slapping together a turkey and Swiss on rye as she wailed about good lovin' gone bad, and had just taken a large bite when she heard the banging sound. /Great/. Kat tossed her sandwich to the paper plate. She'd been sitting down here quiet as a dead mouse the whole day, and the second she turns on some good music, Mrs. Brownstein starts pounding on her floor with her broom handle. Kat really looked forward to moving into the row house when it was remodeled. At least at Phyllis', there were no upstairs neighbors, and the shared walls were thick enough to give a person some privacy.

Kat turned the volume down until Bonnie's roar became a mewl, and took a seat at the dinette table. Just as she got another big bite into her mouth, the banging started up again. This time, it was her front door.

Kat was pissed. She'd lived under Mrs. Brownstein now for twelve years, and the older that woman got, the crankier she became. The broom had been plenty to get the message across. There was no need to come down here and make a fuss in person.

Kat flung open the door, already aligning her gaze to where she expected to find a pair of crinkly, angry eyes behind thick glasses. Instead, she encountered a man's chest. Not just any man's, either. She didn't need to adjust her gaze upward to know it was Riley.

You've got something on your chin, he said, and because he said it in that unmistakable West Virginia baritone, Kat thought it was just about the sexiest sentence she'd ever heard in her life. She reached up to wipe away the mayonnaise, but Riley got there first, running his finger just below and to the left of her bottom lip.

She refused to look up at his face. She couldn't handle this. Why did he come here? He was about to get married! This was just torture! Oh, but she had to lookshe knew he would be taking that dollop of mayonnaise and putting it in his own mouth, and she just had to watch! When it came to Riley Bohland, she'd always been so damn /weak/!

Kat raised her chin and dared to look at him. Riley was grinning, and his rich blue eyes were laughing, and he took that bit of mayonnaise and opened his gorgeous, soon-to-be-married mouth and flicked out his tongue to gobble it right up.

Kat thought she'd wet herself.

This is so unfair, she whispered, not even realizing she'd said it out loud.

It's about as fair as it gets. Now that I've dropped by unannounced the way you did, I'd say we're even.

Kat shook her head, overwhelmed at all the reasons that this was such a bad development, the most important being that Riley was engaged. Coming in a close second was that little complication that she hated him, followed by the fact that she was probably still in love with him.

Really, all she wanted was to jump him right now, in her doorway, and give Mrs. Brownstein something to bang her broom about for once. But she wouldn't.

Aren't you going to invite me in?

Kat snorted. I think not.

Why's that?

I'm eating.

I'll keep you company while you eat.

No thanks.

Then come out somewhere with me.

I'm not dressed.

Then put on those slutty fur-trapper boots I liked so much and let's go for a walk.

Kat's mouth fell open. My /what/?

What you're wearing is fine, but if you're not comfortable for some reason, just put something else on.

Kat looked down at herself and laughed, knowing full well that her ratty cotton sweatpants and T-shirt weren't even fit for the Early Bird Tavern at the corner, an establishment famous for its complete lack of standards of any kind.

I don't want to put anything on.

That'll work, too, Riley said, grinning.

This isn't a good idea, she said.

C'mon now, Scout. Riley winked. You know you're going to let me in.

At the sound of that ancient nickname, Kat gasped. She stared at Riley in wonderyet another detail from her past she'd managed to shove down.

Or maybe, if she believed the stuff she'd been reading in that book, she'd blocked the nickname from her memory because the idea that someone ever loved her like thatthen dumped herhurt too much to handle.

Riley continued to smile down on her, and she knew he was thinking of that day long ago, just like she was. They were ten years old, on the playground near the monkey bars. She was wearing her Girl Scout uniformproudlybecause her troop had a meeting after school, when Riley and a bunch of boys laughed and told her she looked stupid. I'm a Scout, Kat had replied emphatically. You guys are the stupid ones. The name stuck. But as time went on, Riley decided he was the only one allowed to use it. Travis Butrick called her that once, by the water fountain, and Riley had decked him. They both got detention. /Travis Butrick? They used to call him Butt Head, didn't they?/ Kat blinked, dragging herself back to the present. You need to leave, she said.

Riley slid one of his sneakers over the threshold. I need to stay. We've got some serious catching up to do.

Kat tried to close the door, but his foot acted as a stopper. Please, Riley. Don't do this.

I just spent the whole day with our son, Kat.

All the strength drained from her arms. At that instant, Kat knew she would be letting Riley in, no matter how huge a mistake it was.