Turn My World Upside Down: Jo's Story Read online

“Nah. You would have found a way to complicate things anyway,” Sam said, still smiling. “It’s your nature, Jo. Go with your strengths.”

  Jo looked at her and laughed shortly. Damn if she hadn’t missed her smart-ass sisters the last few months. Even when they were driving her nuts, they were at least a distraction.

  Taking another sip, she glanced at the pile of paper-wrapped shingles stacked at one side of the roof beside a roll of tarpaper. “With you here, we should be able to get most of the roof done today. Finish it off tomorrow or the next day,” she said quickly. “And we’ve got to get out to Mrs. Phillips’s house to give her an estimate on expanding her back porch and screening it in.”

  “Uh-huh,” Sam said, taking a small sip of her latte. “I heard the Money Fairy had been by over there. Loretta Phillips has been wanting to enclose that porch for years.”

  The Money Fairy.

  Cash.

  Damn it, even when she wasn’t actively thinking about him, he found a way back into her brain. Was that fair? And thinking about Cash naturally brought up memories of the night before and something cold and ugly gnawed at the pit of her stomach as she recalled the rest of it.

  Telling him about Steve.

  Reliving that long-ago night until it was all as fresh and clear in her mind as her last trip to the dentist.

  “Okay, talk.”

  “About what?”

  “About whatever’s putting that look on your face.” Jo frowned, deliberately made the attempt to smooth out her features, and looked at Sam through wide, innocent eyes. “Finish your latte and let’s get to work.”

  “Josefina Angela Christina Marconi,” Sam said softly, “I never thought you’d be too scared to tell me what you’re thinking.”

  She flinched at the use of both her middle and confirmation names. That was pulling out the big guns. “Nobody said anything about being scared.”

  “So?”

  “Fine.” She blew out a breath, looked dead into Sam’s eyes and said, “I had sex with Cash last night.”

  Sam’s eyes popped open wide enough that Jo was pretty sure she could see right through them to the back of her sister’s skull. “Well, that’s disappointing.”

  Not the reaction she’d been expecting. “Why?”

  “Because I’ve never seen you look more miserable. He’s either not very good at it, which his reputation clearly indicates is not true—” She tilted her head to one side to stare at her. “Or there’s something else you’re not telling me.”

  And for the first time in . . . ever, she thought about it. Oh God, she seriously thought about telling Sam the truth. For about five whole seconds, before she dismissed the idea completely. And how sad was that? she asked herself silently. That she could tell Cash Hunter the whole truth, but couldn’t face her family with it?

  Her throat tightened as she fought to breathe, to drag air into lungs that felt sealed shut. Stupid. Opening up that wound last night had left it raw and bleeding and too easily noticed. She hadn’t been able to hide her misery from Sam today—and she’d been pulling it off successfully for ten years. So how was she going to manage to hide it all again? To push it back into the cold black pit of her heart where it had festered so long in silence?

  Panic reared up inside her. She couldn’t. Couldn’t tell them. Couldn’t see their faces fill with pity or, worse . . . shame.

  She’d simply have to find a way to face her past and let it go.

  Sure. No problem.

  “Nothing satisfies you, does it?” Jo snapped, taking another long gulp of her coffee in a vain attempt to ease the chill beginning to crawl through her. “I finally tell you what you want to know and you think there’s got to be more.”

  “Isn’t there?”

  Jo pushed to her feet and automatically shifted into the cautious position she used when walking around a roof. She might be on edge, but she had no intention of going over that edge and hitting the ground like an overripe watermelon. “No, there isn’t. I’m fine. Cash is fine. Sex is fine. Now can we work?”

  “Jeez,” Sam muttered as Jo stomped off across the roof, sending loose shingles falling like black rain to the ground. “Who knew having sex could make you crabbier than not having it?”

  Cash felt as if his guts were on fire. On fire and being twisted. By a giant, cold hand.

  Yeah. That about covered it.

  Opening the door to the guest cottage, Cash stepped inside and paused to take a quick look around. He smiled, despite the rampaging thoughts thundering through his brain. No matter how messed up the rest of his life might look at the moment, at least this was coming together.

  It was finished.

  Or should be.

  Technically, the place had been completed six months ago. But he’d kept finding new things to add. New things to tempt his mother with. He wasn’t such an idiot that he didn’t know what he was doing.

  He wanted to make Kate Hunter a place so nice that she’d finally want to stick around. To put down roots. To be more than a kind stranger in her own son’s life.

  The windows were covered by lacy swatches of fabric that swung low across the glass and then were gathered back by more lace, tied into bows. Sunlight splintered through the leaded windows and lay in diamond-shaped patterns on the gleaming wood floor. The walls were a pale golden oak, much like the main house, but here, there was something more feminine about it.

  He’d hung pictures on the walls, spread area rugs on the floor, and furnished the place with feather-soft chairs and lamps that looked as if Tiffany himself had designed them. There was a tiny kitchen filled with every convenience he could think of. The small bedroom had a mural of a cloud-filled summer sky on the ceiling, courtesy of Sam Marconi. And the luxurious bathroom boasted a spa tub that Mike Marconi had wired complete with stereo speakers fitted into the garden window. The Murphy bed Jo had built for the living room would do for any of Kate’s friends who might like to stay over, and the deck spearing off the back of the house held a brick fire pit and built-in padded benches.

  “This time she’ll stay,” he murmured, and ran one hand across the smooth edge of a built-in bookcase as he walked through the cottage to the back door and the deck beyond.

  There were just a few more things to finish back here, then it would be ready. He stepped outside into the cool shadows of the pines surrounding the house and took a deep, satisfying breath, grateful to have thoughts of Jo gone—and just like that, she was back.

  Front and center in his mind.

  And the twisting fury that clamped at his guts returned in full force. He wanted to go into the city, find Steve Smith and beat the living shit out of the man. But it wouldn’t change anything. Wouldn’t help Jo. Wouldn’t change what had happened—or hadn’t happened—between them.

  Absently, he picked up the propane torch, turned it on, then snapped the sparker in front of the escaping gas. A blue-white flame shot from the end of the torch and Cash reached for the goggles he’d left on one of the benches.

  He bent then to focus the heat on the planks of the picnic table, running it carefully back and forth against the grain, giving the table the look of aged wood.

  Ordinarily, work helped. Distracted him. Forced him to concentrate. But Jo was too deeply entrenched in his mind to be ousted that easily.

  “Damn it,” he said aloud, since no one was there to hear him anyway. “She thinks she’s dealt with it. Thinks she’s moved on.” But she was still too trapped in the past to see the present, let alone the future.

  It had stung more than a little, knowing that she’d held back from him the night before. Even with her in his arms, he’d sensed her distance. Known that she wasn’t participating. Heard every false cry and rehearsed moan and felt it slap at him.

  Always before, he’d found a way to touch a woman without being touched himself. He’d protected his own heart, safeguarded it by taking more pleasure in giving pleasure than in receiving. Not that he was a saint or anything. He enjoyed sex. He just
didn’t want to get involved.

  So why the hell was he involving himself now?

  Because Jo hadn’t enjoyed herself? Was being a lousy lover the secret to making a woman stay?

  Scowling, he left the torch flame in one spot too long and saw the wood blacken and begin to curl. Irritated as hell, he shut it off and set it down before he set fire to the whole damn place.

  No.

  This wasn’t about getting a woman to stay.

  Jo wouldn’t be staying with him.

  Neither of them wanted that, anyway.

  And yet . . .

  Knowing that he had touched her flesh, yet had never come close to touching her soul, tore at him.

  And just for a minute, he wondered if any of the women he’d been with over the years had felt the same way about him.

  Jack led the way.

  He’d been to Cash’s house so many times, he figured he could ride his bike there in the dark. But he was just as glad it wasn’t dark. He had the feeling the woods were probably pretty spooky at night time. But right now, with sunlight coming through the trees, it was kind of pretty.

  Not that he’d say that out loud or anything.

  “How far away is it?” Justin demanded from behind him.

  “Really close,” Jack shouted back, amazed again that Justin was like his best friend now. Once Cash had taught him how to throw and he’d made the baseball team, Justin had stopped teasing him and now they were friends.

  Maybe living in Chandler wouldn’t be too bad after all.

  Especially if he could make Jo and Cash like each other enough to get married. And then he could live out here in the house by the lake and he and Cash could go fishing like Cash said they were gonna do sometime. Cash was really great. He never got mad and he knew lots of cool stuff and he didn’t mind showing Jack how to do it, too. Like working with his tools and stuff.

  “You gotta see it,” Jack said, still really excited because Cash had let him help finish the deck on the cottage.

  “You got to use the tools?” Justin didn’t believe him, not really, but that was okay. Sometimes even friends needed proof.

  “Yeah, even the torch, and that was really cool ’cause you have to use goggles for safety and everything—”

  “Wow.” Justin kicked it up a little until his bike rolled right alongside Jack’s. The heavy rubber tires jolted over the rocks in the road but neither boy seemed to mind. “My dad never lets me help him do stuff. I think it’s ’cause he cusses so much when he works on stuff in the garage.”

  “Cash doesn’t cuss,” Jack said, and enjoyed having a guy to talk about. His papa was really nice, but he wasn’t like the other fathers. He was kind of old and didn’t really have a lot of time to do fun stuff or anything.

  When the boys rounded the bend in the road, the guest cottage was there, sitting in a splash of tree-dappled sunshine and looking like something out of a fairy tale. They dropped their bikes on the front yard and raced each other around the side of the house to the back deck.

  “That’s really awesome,” Justin whispered, and took the steps in a couple of quick jumps. His sneakers hit the wood deck with a thump and he walked around in a slow circle looking at everything.

  Jack was right behind him and he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and rocked on his heels a little, like Cash did sometimes. “I helped him make that fireplace, too, and mixed cement and everything.”

  “Cool. So what’d you use the torch on?”

  “The table,” Jack said, and pointed to where the propane torch and starter were still lying in the sun. “You use the flame to make the wood look really old.”

  Justin frowned. “But it’s new.”

  “Yeah,” Jack shrugged. “But people don’t want it to look like it is.”

  “That’s dumb.”

  Jack thought so, too, but he wasn’t about to say so. “Cash says it’s called ‘distressing.’ ”

  “Show me how you do it.”

  A ping of caution erupted in Jack’s chest. He looked around, half expecting to see Cash come walking out of the woods to ask what they were doing. But he didn’t. He must be at the workshop up by the big house. But then why’d he leave the torch? Maybe he was coming right back.

  “Come on, show me,” Justin was saying as he picked up the torch and shook it.

  “Don’t do that,” Jack said, and moved to grab it from his friend.

  Justin swept his blond hair back from his head and frowned. “Then show me. What’s the big deal? You said Cash lets you do it.”

  “Yeah . . .” But Jack’d never done it by himself before.

  “So?”

  “Okay,” he said, figuring he could turn on the torch and show Justin and then have it all off and put away before Cash came back. Nobody would have to know.

  Carefully, he put on the goggles, and when Justin laughed, he did, too, forgetting about the nervousness sliding through the pit of his stomach like black oil. Then he turned on the propane tank and heard the hiss as the colorless gas escaped.

  “Sounds like snakes.”

  “Yeah,” Justin said, and picked up the spark maker. He liked this part best, because it was sort of like magic. Just press the sparker thing together in front of the gas and the little spark set off the propane and made fire.

  The whoosh of flame smothered the hissing sound, and Justin said, “Cool.”

  Jack grinned to himself as he aimed the stream of flame at the tabletop. The wood blackened and smoked as he moved it carefully, just like Cash had shown him how to do.

  “Lemme try it,” Justin demanded.

  “Just a minute,” Jack argued.

  “C’mon!” Justin gave him a shove and Jack shoved him back.

  “Wait your turn,” he warned.

  “You had your turn, now it’s mine,” Justin said, and grabbed for the propane torch.

  Jack laughed and yanked it out of his reach, but when Justin grabbed again, Jack stumbled and his grip on the torch dissolved.

  It clattered onto the deck, rolled a few feet, and still spitting flame, landed up against the wall of the cottage.

  “Uh-oh!” Justin’s eyes bugged out and he took off, running for the front yard and his bike.

  But Jack couldn’t go.

  Flames were licking at the bottom of the wall. “Oh no . . .”

  Fear licked at his insides as quickly as the flames were beginning to chew at the wall. He ran to the torch, but when he tried to pick it up, he burned his hand and dropped it again. Tears blurred Jack’s vision, but he saw the torch roll away from him until it landed near a pile of old paint rags.

  Terrified, jack felt the blistering heat reach out and punch at him as, in the next second—whoomph!—the torch and rags created a giant fireball.

  Thirteen

  Cash smelled the fire before he saw it.

  For a second or two, he stood stunned outside the workshop, trying to figure out what the hell was burning. Then he saw the smoke twisting up from the tree-tops in sinuous swirls of gray and black and knew it was the cottage.

  He broke into a run, his long legs eating up the distance in seconds, and as he ran, he pulled his cell phone from his jeans pocket.

  The thick stench of acrid smoke reached for him and stung his eyes and throat. He heard the snap and crackle of flames devouring wood and punched in 911 on his cell.

  “Fire!” he shouted when the operator answered. “On the lake road, behind the Van Horn house.”

  He was already snapping the phone closed when he heard the high-pitched scream.

  Heart in his throat, he left the road and took a shortcut, pushing through the trees and bushes separating him from the guest cottage. The wind kicked up, sending the smoke at him in thick waves driven by heat. Long branches tore at him, swiping at his face and arms.

  “Cash!”

  Jack’s voice lifted again, higher this time, colored by panic and pain.

  Blood hammering through his veins, heartbeat crashing in his che
st, Cash fought the mind-numbing fear threatening to choke him. Plunging through the last of the overgrowth surrounding the tiny house, he stepped into a clearing filled with the bright, wavering light of flames.

  Incredible heat washed over him and he felt the sharp sting of it searing his skin. His eyes watered, his breath strangled. He coughed, and held his forearm up to his face. The fire roared at him with a kind of savage hunger as if daring Cash to come closer.

  But Jack was there, huddled on the deck, trying to inch away from the inferno gathering strength with every second.

  Forgetting everything but reaching the boy, Cash jumped onto the deck and raced to Jack’s side. Kneeling beside the boy, he felt the incredible heat of the fire singeing his back and a part of him wondered if his black T-shirt was on fire. Didn’t matter if it was. He had to move Jack. Get him to safety. Couldn’t wait for help. “Are you hurt?”

  “My arm and my hand,” the boy said, tears making clean streaks in the soot smeared across his face.

  The kid’s left arm looked . . . wrong, and there were blisters forming on his right palm. Tiny cuts up and down his arms bled tiny streams of red and there was a knot on his forehead the size of Cash’s fist.

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s okay,” Cash said quickly, scraping his hands up and down the kid’s body checking for further injuries with a brusque thoroughness that belied the trembling inside him. “Don’t worry about it. Everything’s okay. Fire department’s coming. And I’m getting you out of here.”

  He scooped the kid up carefully, cradling him against his chest, and when he stood up, he winced at Jack’s soft moan of protest. Everything in him tightened like piano wire pulled to the point of snapping. He felt the boy’s pain and fear as if it were his own and the tremors within kept right on coming.

  Glancing over his shoulder then, Cash watched as the flames lifted, reaching for the overhang of roof and the new shingles. Fresh paint on the walls buckled and peeled away from the wood, dropping into the hungry flames like snowflakes into hell.

  The hiss and crackle of the flames sounded like demonic laughter and as he watched a section of the roof collapse he knew the joke was on him. All the time and effort he’d put into this place and now it was going to be nothing more than a pile of embers in the woods.