A Ring for Rosie. Maggie Wells
Читать онлайн книгу.
He hooked a right onto the quiet residential street between Milwaukee and Western avenues. The properties ran the gamut from rundown to completely refurbished, but the majority fell somewhere between. The building where Rosie lived was a quiet, semi-gentrified three-story walk-up popular with the nursing staff from nearby Saints Mary and Elizabeth Medical Center. The narrow courtyard featured two bare-branched buckthorn trees, an assortment of ill-trimmed evergreens, and a concrete sidewalk stretched in spokes to five separate entrances.
James pulled to a stop beside two snow-banked vehicles and shifted the car into park. Looking anywhere but directly at her, he nodded to the white-draped lumps at the curb. “I guess we know who takes public transportation around here.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. She knew the owners of both vehicles. Only an act of God to get them out of their prized parking spots any time before a spring thaw. “Yeah. They both work at the Academy of the Sacred Heart. No bus pass needed.”
“No vehicle needed. Why do they bother?”
Irked that he showed an ardent interest in her neighbors’ commuting habits but couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge the kiss they shared minutes before, she gathered her purse and tote. “I often ask myself the same question.” She cringed at the waspish sting in her tone but refused to apologize for it. “Goodnight, James.”
Reaching for the door handle, she turned and blew kisses to the twins. “Buenas noches, mis queridos. Se bueno.” She stepped out into the bracing cold.
“Buennochas!” they called back, flinging exuberant kisses her way. She gave James a tight smile. Seconds before the door closed, she heard Jeffie ask, “Aren’cha gonna kiss Rosie good night?”
Rosie didn’t wait around to hear James’s answer. Ducking her head, she lifted a hand in farewell, darted between the parked vehicles, and bounded as gracefully as she could onto the shoveled sidewalk. Two quick toots of the horn signaled the Harper men’s departure. Pulling her keys from her coat pocket, she fingered the master for the security door as she quickstepped to the courtyard’s innermost entrance.
Of course James wasn’t going to kiss her good night. Silly Jeffie. She bit her lip as she slid the key into the lock. Of all the Trident kids, Jeff Harper was the one with the tightest grip on her heart. Perhaps because they were kindred spirits. Quiet, but not truly shy. Watchful. Maybe somewhat wary. But steadfast. Oh, so steadfast.
Plunging into the overheated foyer, Rosie fell back against the door and waited until she heard the reassuring click of the old-fashioned latch. Sometimes, particularly in extreme weather, the old door warped and stuck, leaving the six units served by the single stairwell vulnerable to access by outsiders.
She stood there, grasping her handbag to her stomach as she waited for the warm air to thaw her lungs. Yes, she and Jeffie were two of a kind. Perfectly nice people—the kind everyone likes to have around, but most invite as an afterthought. The type who hung back hoping to be noticed and appreciated for who they were. If only by one person.
But James seemed determined to remain oblivious. If he were to notice her—notice her in the way she wanted to be noticed—he would have long ago. The kiss was a fluke. An anomaly. A freak accident.
Pushing away from the door, she started the long trudge up the steps to her third-floor apartment.
He hadn’t meant to kiss her. The expression on his face when he pulled away said so as plain as day. A few years ago, she might have ignored the look of stunned panic, but she was older and much wiser in the ways of James Harper now to fool herself.
Tomorrow morning they would be right back to business as usual. They’d been here before. There’d been a handful of lingering hugs, one rambling, drunken “I love you, man” speech given at her graduation party, and too many accidental boob brushings over the years for her to expect anything more.
Huffing, she stopped on the landing outside her apartment door and stared at the faded old lettering marking unit 2B. Swallowing hard, she forced herself to dismiss the notion of her apartment number as a sign. They were not meant to be.
“Ten bucks says he pretends he never kissed me.”
As always, she spoke the words aloud to seal the deal in her brain. And as reinforcement to the truth. She and James were not to be. The following morning, he’d come into the office and act as if nothing was out of the ordinary. And because she loved him beyond any scrap of reason or good sense, she’d let him.
And the collection at Our Lady of Perpetual Suffering would be ten dollars richer the following Sunday.
Satisfied with the bargain, Rosie let herself into her apartment. She locked the door behind her and dropped her purse, hat, gloves, and coat to the floor in a heap. Blinking rapidly, she toed off her rubber-treaded boots, then padded her way to the sofa. She’d give them precisely ten minutes this time, she decided as she situated herself in her favorite spot with her favorite throw pillow cradled in her lap. After all, there was an actual kiss involved this time. Exhaling loudly, she hiccupped on a sob, then let the tears she’d been swallowing for the last fifteen minutes roll.
* * * *
He fucked up. He’d fucked up big.
James’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. He pointed the car northeast, heading away from the biggest mistake he’d made in years, and for the safety of his Edgewater home. Rocking impatiently in his seat, he tuned out the chatter and bickering coming from the back seat in favor of talking to himself.
“Carp, carp, carp,” he whispered almost inaudibly, instinctively using the toddler-friendly version of the word he really wanted to use. His kids might be a handful at times, but there wasn’t a damn thing wrong with their hearing.
“Daddy’s cussin’,” Jamie, who’d never quite mastered any type of whisper, said.
“I’m not cussing,” James shot back.
“You said ‘carp, carp, carp.’”
“Carp is a fish, not a cuss word. I was thinking about fishing.” An utterly ridiculous statement, considering they were in the dead of winter. But time wasn’t a rigid construct for his kids.
“Will you take us fishin’?” Jeff perked up in his booster.
“Sure,” James answered as he hooked a sharp right turn. “We’ll wait for warmer weather, though, huh?”
Unlike time, comfort was a concept his boys grasped fully. When he glanced into the mirror he saw them both nodding like bobblehead dolls. James didn’t bother confessing he’d never been fishing in his life. Sure, he’d gown up with a great big lake practically at his doorstep, but his father hadn’t been the type to toss a line in. His dad was more the kind to chase his secretary around the desk for sport.
And now, in a slippery move, despite years of careful and methodical resistance, James had proved the apple had dropped right at the foot of the old tree.
He’d kissed Rosie.
And the truly pathetic thing was, he hadn’t even given her a good one. Giving the steering wheel a thump of frustration, he braked for the stop sign at the corner of his block. He’d thought about kissing her for years, and now? He’d betrayed everyone—Rosie, his partners, his kids, and himself—with the world’s lamest peck.
Wheeling into the alley leading to his detached garage, James gritted his teeth in frustration. All the promises he’d made, both silent and spoken, were broken by a kiss no more passionate than one a guy would give his grandmother.
And he’d imagined so many kinds of kisses. How could he resist? Rosie Herrera was the definition of forbidden fruit. Of course he wanted a taste of her.
He heard the unmistakable click of a seatbelt catch as they waited for the garage door to rise. Without checking to see who the culprit was, he issued a blanket order. “Click it. We’re not home yet.”
“Almost,” Jamie argued.