Brown-Eyed Girl Read online

  Steven gave Sofia a caustic glance. “Of course not. But it’s still better than dressing like the featured performer at a strip club.”

  “Steven, that’s enough,” I said sharply.

  “I’m going to fire you for sexual harassment,” Sofia cried.

  “You can’t fire me,” Steven informed her. “Only Avery can fire me.”

  “She won’t have to if I kill you first!” She leapt toward him, holding the starfish like a weapon.

  “Sofia,” I yelped, grabbing her from behind. “Take it easy! Put that down. Jesus, have you both lost your minds?”

  “Someone around here has,” I heard Steven say. “Unless the plan is to flaunt Sofia as millionaire bait.”

  That did it. No one insulted my sister that way. “Tank,” I said in a murderous tone, “get him out of here. Throw him into the pool to cool him off.”

  “Literally?” Tank asked.

  “Yes, literally throw him into the pool.”

  “Not the pool” came Steven’s muffled voice. Tank already had him in a headlock. “I’m wearing linen!”

  One of the qualities I appreciated most about Tank was his unqualified allegiance to me. He hauled Steven out of the kitchen, lumbering like a small bear. No amount of struggling and swearing would dissuade him.

  “If I let go of you,” I said to Sofia, who was straining to break free, “promise not to follow them outside.”

  “I want to watch Tank throw him into the pool.”

  “I understand. So do I. But this is our business, Sofia. We have work to do. Don’t let Steven’s lapse of sanity interfere with it.” When I felt her relax, I dropped my arms from around her.

  My sister turned to face me, looking furious and crestfallen. “He hates me. I don’t know why.”

  “He doesn’t hate you,” I said.

  “But why —”

  “Sofia,” I said, “he’s an asshole. We’ll talk about it later. For now, let’s get to work.”

  When I saw Steven two hours later, he was mostly dry. He worked on the finishing touches of the mini golf course, positioning an old-fashioned diver’s helmet so a golf ball could roll up a ramp into the front porthole.

  As I approached, he spoke tersely while adjusting the ramp. “Dolce and Gabbana shorts. Dry-clean only. You owe me three hundred bucks.”

  “You owe me an apology,” I said. “This is the first time you’ve ever been less than professional during a job.”

  “I apologize.”

  “You owe an apology to Sofia.”

  Steven remained mutinously silent.

  “Care to explain what’s going on?” I asked.

  “I’ve already explained. Her outfit is inappropriate.”

  “Because she looks cute and sexy? It’s not a problem for anyone else. Why does it bother you so much?”

  Another stony silence.

  “The caterers are here,” I finally said. “The band is arriving at eleven. Val and Sofia have almost finished decorating the indoor areas, and then I’ll have them start on the patio tables.”

  “I need Ree-Ann to help with the cabanas.”

  “I’ll send her out.” I paused. “One more thing. From now on, I insist that you treat Sofia with respect. Even though I’m technically in charge of hiring and firing, Sofia and I are equal partners. And if she wants you gone, you’re gone. Understood?”

  “Understood,” he muttered.

  As I headed back to the house, I passed Tank, who was carrying two huge bunches of helium-filled balloons for the dessert arcade. “Thanks for helping me with Steven,” I said.

  “You mean tossing him into the pool? No problem. I’ll throw him in again if you want.”

  “Thank you,” I said with grim amusement, “but if he steps out of line again, I’ll throw him in myself.”

  I returned to the kitchen, where Ree-Ann and the caterers were uncrating sets of plates and glassware for the indoor dining area.

  “Where’s Sofia?” I asked.

  “She went to say hi to some of the Travises. They just arrived.”

  “When you’re done with the plates, Steven needs you to help him with the cabanas.”

  “Sure thing.”

  I went to the main living room to find the group standing at the row of long windows with Sofia. They looked out at the pool and patio area, exclaiming and talking and laughing. A small dark-haired boy jumped up and down and tugged on the hem of Jack’s shirt. “Daddy, take me outside! I wanna go see! Daddy! Daddy —”

  “Hold your horses, son.” Jack ruffled the boy’s hair gently. “They’re not ready for us yet.”

  “Avery,” Ella exclaimed as she saw me, “what an amazing job you’ve done. I was just telling Sofia that it looks like Disneyland out there.”

  “I’m so glad you’re happy with it.”

  “I’m never having a party without the two of you again. Can I keep you on retainer like lawyers?”

  “Yes,” Sofia said immediately.

  Laughing, I turned my attention to the baby in Ella’s arms. The infant was adorably chubby and pink-cheeked, with big blue eyes and curly blond hair pulled up in a topknot.

  “Who is this?” I asked.

  “That’s my sister, Mia,” the little boy answered before Ella could reply, “and I’m Luke, and I want to go to the party!”

  “It’ll be ready soon,” I promised. “You can be the first one to go outside.”

  Deciding that it had fallen to him to make introductions, Luke pointed to the couple nearby. “That’s my aunt Haven. She’s got a big tummy. There’s a baby in there.”

  “Luke —” Ella began, but he continued earnestly.

  “She eats more than Uncle Hardy, and he could eat a whole dinosaur.”

  Ella clapped a hand to her forehead. “Luke —”

  “I did once,” Hardy Cates said, lowering to his haunches. He was big and ruggedly built, a good-looking man with the bluest eyes I had ever seen. “Back when I was a boy camping in the Piney Woods. My friends and I were chasing armadillos across a dry river bottom, and we saw a big shape moving through the trees…”

  The child listened, enraptured, as Hardy told him a tall tale about a dinosaur being pursued, lassoed, and eventually barbecued.

  No doubt the prospect of marrying the only daughter in the Travis family would have deterred more than a few men. But Hardy Cates didn’t seem like the type who was capable of being intimidated. He was a former roughneck who had started his own oil recovery company, going into spent fields to extract leftover reserves that bigger companies had left behind. Ella had described him as hardworking and wily, covering up his outsize ambition with plenty of laid-back charm. Hardy seemed so affable, Ella had said, that people were fooled into thinking they’d gotten to know him, even though they hadn’t. But the Travises all agreed on one thing: Hardy loved Haven intensely, would have died for her. According to Ella, Jack had facetiously claimed he almost felt sorry for the guy, being wrapped around his little sister’s finger like that.

  I reached out to shake Haven’s hand. She was delicately pretty, with dark winged brows. A Travis, unmistakably, although she was so much slighter and smaller than her towering brothers that she seemed to be a half-scale version. She was far along in her pregnancy, her ankles swollen and her stomach so heavy that it made me want to wince in sympathy.

  “Avery,” she said, “it’s so nice to meet you. Thanks for doing this.”

  “We had a lot of fun,” I said. “If there’s anything we can do to make the party more enjoyable, just tell me. Can I get you some lemonade? Ice water?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “She should be drinking something continuously,” Hardy said, coming to his wife’s side. “She’s dehydrated and retaining water.”

  “At the same time?” I asked.

  Haven smiled ruefully. “Apparently so. Who knew it was possible? We just came from my weekly checkup.” She leaned against Hardy, and her smile widened. “We also found out that we’re havin
g a girl.”

  Luke received this announcement with a look of disgust. “Awwww…”

  Amid the general congratulations, I heard a familiar deep voice. “That’s good news – we need more girls in the family.” My heart kicked into a faster pace as Joe entered the room, lean and athletic in a pair of board shorts and a blue T-shirt.

  He went straight to Haven, gathering her in a careful hug. Keeping her at his side, he reached out to shake Hardy’s hand. “Let’s just hope she has her mama’s looks.”

  Hardy chuckled. “No one’s hoping for that more than me.” They prolonged the handshake for a couple of extra seconds, in the way of good friends.

  Joe looked down at Haven affectionately. “How are you, sis?”

  She looked up at him with chagrin. “When I’m not throwing up, I’m starving. I have aches and pains, mood swings and hair loss, and this past week I sent poor Hardy out for chicken nuggets at least a half-dozen times. Other than that, I’m great.”

  “I don’t mind going out to get you the chicken nuggets,” Hardy told her. “The hard part is watching you eat them with grape jelly.”

  Joe laughed and grimaced.

  While Ella engaged the parents-to-be in a conversation about the doctor’s visit, Joe came to me and bent to kiss my forehead. The touch of his mouth, the soft rush of his breath, sent a ripple of excitement down my spine. After the long talks we’d had, I should have felt comfortable with him. Instead I was nervous and oddly shy.

  “You been busy today?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Since six.”

  His fingers tangled gently with mine. “Can I help with something?”

  Before I could reply, more of the family arrived. Gage, the oldest Travis sibling, was tall and athletic like his brothers, but his manner was quieter, composed, in comparison with their rough-and-tumble charm. His eyes were a striking pale gray, the light irises contained in darker rims.

  Gage’s wife, Liberty, was an attractive brunette with a warm, open smile. She introduced me to her son, Matthew, a boy of about five or six, and his big sister, Carrington, a pretty blond girl in her early teens. Everyone was laughing and talking at once, at least a half-dozen conversations happening simultaneously.

  Even without prior knowledge of the Travises, I would have perceived instantly that they were a close-knit bunch. You could see and feel it in the way they interacted, with the familiarity of people who knew one another’s schedules and habits. The genuine liking between them was unmistakable. These were not relationships that would be set aside lightly or taken for granted. Having never been part of such a group, or anything remotely similar, I was fascinated but leery. I wondered how you could become part of a family like that and not be subsumed.

  I stood on my toes to murmur near Joe’s ear, “I have to carry some things out to the mini golf course.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  Although I began to tug my hand free, Joe’s grip tightened. Amusement sparkled in his eyes as he murmured, “It’s okay.”

  But I pulled away, reluctant to make any kind of demonstration in front of his family.

  “Uncle Joe,” I heard Luke ask, “is that your girlfriend?”

  I turned crimson, while someone choked back a laugh.

  “Not yet,” Joe said easily, holding one of the French doors for me. “You have to work a little harder to get one of the good ones.” He accompanied me out to the patio and reached down for a bag of miniature golf clubs and a bucket of balls. “I’ll carry these,” he said. “You lead the way.”

  As we walked across the patio and past the row of poolside cabanas, I debated inwardly about saying something to him, about giving his family the wrong impression. I didn’t want them to think there was anything going on between us other than friendship. However, this didn’t seem to be the right time or place to discuss it.

  “Everything looks great,” Joe said, taking in the arcade dessert buffet, the band setting up near the house.

  “Considering how little time we had, it’s not bad.”

  “Everyone appreciates the effort you put into it.”

  “I’m glad to help.” I paused. “Your family seems really close. Even a bit clannish.”

  Joe considered that and shook his head. “I wouldn’t say we’re clannish. We all have outside friends and interests.” As we walked over a section of mowed green lawn, he said, “I’ll admit, we’ve seen a lot of each other since Dad died. We decided to start a charity foundation, with the four of us as the board of trustees. It’s taken some time to get it up and running.”

  “When you were growing up,” I asked, “did you have the usual fights and sibling rivalries?”

  Joe’s mouth twitched as if he were amused by a distant memory. “You could say that. Jack and I nearly killed each other a couple of times. But whenever we got too rough, Gage would come and beat on us until we settled down. The way to earn a surefire killing was to do something mean to Haven – kidnap one of her dolls or scare her with a spider – Gage would come after us like the wrath of God.”

  “Where were your parents when all of that was happening?”

  Joe shrugged. “We were left on our own a lot. Mom was always cochair of one charity or another, or busy with her friends. Dad was usually gone doing TV appearances or flying overseas.”

  “That must have been difficult.”

  “The problem wasn’t Dad being gone. The problem was when he tried to make up for lost time. He was afraid we were being raised soft.” Joe gestured with the bag of clubs. “See that retaining wall over there? One summer Dad had a truck unload three tons of stone in the backyard, and he told us to build a wall. He wanted us to learn the value of hard work.”

  I blinked at the sight of the dry-stacked wall, three feet high, extending approximately twenty feet before tapering to the ground. “Just the three of you?”

  Joe nodded. “We cut rock with chisels and hand sledges, and stacked it, all in hundred-degree heat.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Ten.”

  “I can’t believe your mother allowed that.”

  “She wasn’t happy about it. But once Dad put his foot down, there was no changing his mind. I think when he’d had a chance to think about it, he was sorry about having made the job that big. But he couldn’t back down. To him, changing his mind was a weakness.”

  After setting down the clubs, Joe went to pour the golf balls into a painted wooden container. He glanced at the wall, squinting against the sun. “It took the three of us a month. But when we finished building the son of a bitch, we knew we could rely on each other. We’d made it through hell together. From then on we never raised a fist against each other again. No matter what. And we never took Dad’s side against each other.”

  I reflected that while the family’s wealth had conferred many advantages, none of the Travis offspring had escaped the pressures of expectation and obligation. No wonder they were close – who else would understand what their lives had been like?

  Pensively, I wandered to the first hole of the mini golf course. The ramp on the diver’s helmet didn’t look quite straight, and I went to fiddle with it. I rolled a ball up the ramp and frowned as it bounced off the edge of the helmet’s porthole. “I hope this is going to work.”

  Joe pulled a club from the bag, dropped a ball to the green, and putted. The ball rolled neatly across the green, up the ramp, and into the porthole. “Seems fine.” He handed me the club. “You want to give it a try?”

  Gamely, I placed a ball on the green and took a swing. The ball careened up the ramp, bounced off the helmet, and rolled back to me.

  “You’ve never played golf before.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked dryly.

  “Mostly because you’re holding the club like a flyswatter.”

  “I hate sports,” I confessed. “I always have. In school, I avoided gym class whenever possible. I faked sprains and stomachaches. On three different occasions, I told them my parakeet died.�
�

  His brows lifted. “That got you out of gym class?”

  “The death of a parakeet is not an easy thing to get over, pal.”

  “Did you even have a parakeet?” he asked gravely.

  “He was a metaphorical parakeet.”

  Laughter danced in his eyes. “Here, I’ll show you how to hold the club.” He reached around me. “Wrap your fingers around the handle… No, left hand. Rest your thumb farther down the shaft… Perfect. Now take hold below with your right. Like this.” He shaped my fingers around the grip. I took an extra breath to make up for the one that had stuck in my throat. I could feel the rise and fall of his chest, the solid, vital strength of him. His mouth was close to my ear. “Feet apart. Bend your knees a little and lean forward.” Releasing me, he stood back and said, “Swing easy and follow through.”