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Small, thin, her youthful mahogany-brown hair at odds with the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, she’d always been an outspoken bundle of energy—the opposite of her laconic, grumpy husband.
The ceiling above them shook. Footsteps thundered across the floor. “I’ll go check on the kids,” Matt said, starting to rise. “At this rate, you aren’t going to have a house left.”
“Just sit yourself down.” Ed lifted his coffee cup and waved it in the general direction of the ceiling. “If my two haven’t come through the floor yet, then two more buffalo up there won’t matter. We’ve got things to discuss.”
Matt hesitated, then relaxed in his chair and studied his older brother. Ed was forty-five, just ten years older than Matt, but he looked like the far side of fifty with that gray streaking at his temples and the extra thirty pounds of belly. “Any response to our advertisements?”
Ed shrugged. “It’s still off-season for new construction around here. Remodeling jobs have been steady all winter. Enough to keep the home fires burning.”
“What do you have lined up?”
“A gift shop up in the foothills scheduled for the end of April. A new home to start in mid-June. That gives us a month for a kitchen over in Fairfax and—” he smirked “—a designer smokehouse.”
“A what?”
“You know—rich California yuppies, not too concerned with cost? They want it to match the house.”
Starting a new construction business involved a lot of risk, and Matt had invested everything he owned in this move.
Given their rocky relationship in years past, working with Ed might be the biggest challenge of all. “Things are looking good, then?”
“Yep.”
Nina backed through the swinging door with a loaded tray in her hands. “Here you go, guys.”
She poured more coffee and passed out slabs of warm blackberry pie smothered in homemade ice cream—sheer delight on a plate.
Matt grinned. “Thanks, this looks wonderful. Should I call the kids?”
“They had theirs in the kitchen already. Blackberries and this carpet just don’t mix. Believe me.” She set a carafe of coffee between them, then zipped into the kitchen. The woman never, ever sat still.
Ed forked up a chunk of pie. “Like your new place?”
“Great view, privacy, but it needs work. I knew that going in, though.”
After wolfing down his pie, Ed shoved the empty plate toward the center of the table and lifted his coffee cup. “You ever go back, just look around?”
Matt didn’t have to ask what he meant. “Never.”
Ed grunted.
Some things were worth remembering, some were best forgotten.
Only in fragments of dreams did Matt ever see the house back in Chicago where he and Ed had grown up—the place where they’d managed to survive by knowing when to disappear and how long to be gone.
The irony was that while Matt had never touched a drop of alcohol, Ed had followed in the old man’s footsteps. Fortunately, during the last five years, he’d managed to stay dry...or so he said. Matt hoped it was true.
“I hear you got a new neighbor up on Coyote Hill.” Ed casually hooked a booted foot over the opposite knee, but there was an edge to his voice that hadn’t been there before.
“Surprised me. The place was empty when we were looking at property.”
“Seen her?”
An image of Jolie Maxwell flashed through his mind as Matt finished the last bite of his pie and laid his fork across the plate.
Not just pretty, she was more than that, with all that strawberry-blond hair and those big blue eyes—or were they green?
When she smiled, her face transformed into downright beautiful.
