A Ring for Rosie. Maggie Wells
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sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“You know, you have bit of an accent when you get mad,” Georgie commented, cutting her apology off neatly.
The heat in her cheeks kicked up a notch. Rosie shook her head, but the gesture was more reluctant acceptance than denial. “It’s not really mine. I borrow it.”
Georgie gave a short laugh and uncapped the other water bottle. “Borrow it?”
“From my mother.” She gave a wry twist of her lips. “I was born in Humboldt Park, grew up near North Avenue and Pulaski.” She paused. “Your father was not very popular there.”
This time Georgie laughed for real. Her father, the former mayor of Chicago, had been beloved by the city’s Irish, Italian, and Polish enclaves but never quite connected with the Latino population of their fair city. More than one candidate from her old neighborhood had challenged his incumbency, but none succeeded. No, Gerald Carson, legendary operator of the Chicago machine, had been brought down by internal factions and his own hubris.
“True, but Gerry is doing well there.” Georgie was referring to her brother’s campaign to be elected to the city’s highest office, of course. “I think the English-to-Spanish dictionary I bought him for Christmas really paid off.”
Rosie couldn’t help but laugh when she pictured perfectly groomed Gerry Carson sweating and tugging at his thick chestnut hair as he laboriously translated his speeches from his diction-perfect English to the rapid-fire mutation of Spanglish of her childhood. “I guess it did.” Rosie studied Georgie for a long moment. “You are a good sister.”
“He’s a good brother.”
Georgie’s eyes shone with sympathy. “What did James do?”
“What? How did you—”
“You’re here, chomping on shortbread peens and fuming over Megan, Queen of Mayhem. I’m no mathematician, but…”
Until that moment, Rosie hadn’t given much thought to the fact that the bane of her existence was also Mike’s sister. She needed to watch what she said. Despite her color-by-numbers hair and funky style, Georgie wasn’t as freewheeling as she might like the world to believe. If what Mike said about her was true, Georgie cared deeply about the people around her, even if she did everything in her power to pretend she was tough as nails.
Rosie exhaled through her nose and the tension seeped from her bones. She and Georgie were on the same side. Of course they were. Georgie and Mike had been tripping along calmly before Hurricane Megan blew into town and tried to shake her brother’s confidence in his relationship with Georgie. At a children’s birthday party, no less. Georgie and Mike had a good thing going, even if Mike was too cautious for his own good. Their relationship was getting deeper, more real. Even from her seat on the sidelines, Rosie could see the connection between them. And Megan had seen the opportunity to get into his head.
Now she would get into James’s head. And the boys. What about the boys? Could they survive their mother’s intrusion in their young lives?
“She moved in with him.”
“James took her in, huh?”
Georgie’s question jolted her from her thoughts and plopped her right back down in reality. Sighing, Rosie bit the tip off the second cookie and chewed methodically as she nodded. “He did.”
“But what was he supposed to do, right?” Georgie turned to a rack of treats waiting to be shelved and plucked two more penises from the assortment. “She is the mother of his children.”
The soft-spoken understanding in the other woman’s tone unleashed a hot rush of tears. The unwelcome moisture scalded her eyes, but Rosie blinked rapidly, refusing to let them fall. She’d shed too many tears over James Harper. “I hate when people skirt justice on a technicality.”
Georgie laughed, then saluted her with the pink-frosted wanker. “Amen.”
Rosie sucked in oxygen and tamped down on her churning emotions. She’d cried the day she first met him. Not because of anything he did or didn’t do, but, more disturbingly, for no reason at all. She wasn’t a crier. Never had been. Even when she was a girl. She got her backbone from her mother, a woman whose picture should have appeared next to the word ‘stoic’ in the dictionary.
But she’d cried after meeting James. Not a silent trickle of a single tear, or a delicately ladylike breakdown, but a big, fat, ugly cry. Thankfully, Colm and Mike had taken James out to lunch to celebrate the partnership and the company’s rebranding as Trident Security. She’d been invited, of course, but begged off. She’d time needed to regroup.
“He’s a fool.” Georgie brushed cookie crumbs from the corner of her mouth.
“Yes, well, he always has been.” She lifted her chin up to punctuate the statement. She didn’t need to add that she’d been one, too. For him. Since the moment she first laid eyes on him.
At the time, she’d thought the jitters the tall redheaded man stirred in her was a sign she’d found The One. Now, she wondered if all the fluttering hadn’t been her body’s attempt to batten down the hatches. The moment they left, she’d locked herself into the tiny tiled room and let the tempest inside of her out. The crying scared her. She wasn’t the kind of woman given to great big heaving sobs. She was absolutely certain the stuttering breaths were a precursor to hyperventilation, and lived in fear of fainting. What if they found her there, in the ugly bathroom with the fixtures she’d hosed down with bleach, and grout that hadn’t been white since the Nixon administration? She hated her outfit. Mike’s ex-wife had looked so chic in her beige twin-set, Rosie had bought one almost exactly like it. Except, on her, the subdued color screamed: “trying too hard.” She wasn’t the tall, willowy, law school type. No, she was strictly night school, T.J. Maxx, and practically invisible to the opposite sex.
“I cannot keep doing this.” Rosie shook her head and took another greedy bite.
Georgie leaned back against the case and studied her closely. “Keep doing what? Eating cookies? I beg to differ. I have dozens more in the back,” she added with a nonchalant wave of her hand. “Eat all you need.”
Suddenly, Rosie was acutely aware she’d stormed into this kind woman’s business and disrupted her entire day. “Oh my.” She closed her eyes with a grimace. “I’m so sorry. I will pay for them, of course. I had to get out of the office, and I didn’t know where to go, and I wanted to…”
“Bite off a certain man’s most prized possession and pulverize his manhood with your powerful molars?” Georgie supplied helpfully. Rosie must have look startled when she met her gaze, because Georgie laughed. “Please. Do you know how many of these I chow down every time I have to wait for Mike to come to his senses on stupid stuff?”
“I imagine quite a few. He’s stubborn.” Rosie gave a sympathetic wince. “You must be a patient person.”
“I’ve gained six pounds.”
Eying the baker’s curvy but slender figure, she snorted softly. “I doubt you have.”
“I have,” Georgie tossed off a sassy shrug. “I force Mike to kiss every inch of them.”
“As he should.”
“Exactly.” Georgie pushed away from the case. “But if you mean you can’t keep sitting there waiting for James to look up one day and realize you’re the one, I’m afraid you’re right. You need to move on.”
Embarrassed, Rosie shoved the rest of the cookie into her mouth and busied herself with the cap on her water bottle. “Do they all know?”
Georgie gave her a sympathetic pat and nodded. “Yeah. And before you ask, yes, James knows, too. Which makes him even more of an idiot in my opinion.”
Rosie waited for the hot flush of humiliation to come. When it did, she didn’t bother to try to hide her cheeks. What was the point? Everyone knew. Even