Echoes (25 page)
"No more trapdoor? I'm seriously disappointed."
"It's still there," Rese said. "And the old stairs at both ends, the iron gate in the tunnel, and the mechanical door in the pantry. Too much history to lose all that, but I suspect the entrance we opened was original to the working vineyard, sealed up later."
"That's what Lance thought too," Sofie said. "It had been buried on the outside, probably since Prohibition."
"Uh . . ." He honed in on the thing that had really struck his interest. "What mechanical door in the pantry?"
Rese took a plate of cheese and apples from the refrigerator. "You show him. I don't like that door." She headed out of the room.
Sofie got up and opened the door of a pantry the size of a small bedroom. Jarred peppers and tomatoes lined the shelves, along with wheels of cheese in hard rinds. He ducked around the restaurant-quality cookware hanging from the ceiling. At the back wall, she stooped and reached beneath the lowest shelf. He heard a click and then a whine as the wall swung open.
"Holy secret door in the wall." How many places could boast invisible doors and hidden cellars? "What's not to like about this?"
"Rese got trapped behind it. Alone. In the dark."
"She doesn't strike me as skittish."
"Everyone has trigger points."
He looked through. "Can we go down?"
"Will it ruin it for you?"
"I don't know."
"Only the two ends still look like a cellar."
"I think I can take it."
Sofie flipped a switch. A bare bulb lit their way without spoiling the ambience. He descended the wooden stairs to an area that still contained racks of old bottles. The musty scent triggered his penchant for underground places.
Ahead, a wall had been framed and finished with a door. Sofie opened it, flipped another switch, and let him into a magical space of mirrors, polished floors, and a ceiling painted midnight blue with stars and comets and meteors that blended at the midpoint into clouds and daylight.
"I'll put the sound system here." She motioned to the right of the door, where the wall was unmirrored, and a CD player was plugged into the wall.
Reflected in all the mirrors, it seemed as though she surrounded him, and he'd baldly lied when he'd told himself she didn't matter. He was more than enamored. He was smitten. He wanted her more than he could recall desiring anything in his life.
Catching his expression, she folded herself into her arms. "Do you want to sleep with me?"
His breath escaped. "Yes."
"Is that all you want?"
"No. But it's high on my list." No sense denying what he'd already shown her.
"It isn't going to happen."
"Okay."
"Don't you want to know why?"
"Why doesn't matter." He'd rather not hear that she wasn't attracted to him or interested in furthering a relationship. He didn't want her to say she no longer trusted him or . . .
"If Eric and I hadn't made the relationship intimate, I might not have gotten so caught up, so vulnerable." She sighed. "I won't make the same mistake again."
"I'm not Eric."
"Maybe not." She turned back. "But I can't trust you to decide what's right for me. I won't."
He nodded slowly. "Well, then . . . may I have this dance?"
She arched her eyebrow. "You're asking a former Broadway talent to dance in her own studio?"
He bent and pressed play on the portable CD player, without knowing or checking what she had in there. "It won't be what you're used to."
A smile touched her lips. "Makes me wonder what's under your Clark Kent façade."
"You think I pretend to be nice?"
"I think you pretend to be mild." She rested her hand on his shoulder with such poise it threatened every ounce of his self-control. But she'd made herself clear. Look but don't touch. Touch but don't incite.
He recognized the voice and guitar that started on the CD, a ballad Lance and another voice sang with that same gripping pathos he'd heard earlier in the house. Sofie waited for him to lead, and he did, the responsibility weighing as it never had before.
B
rad held the carved corner molding up against the juncture of ceiling and wall as Rese drilled the screw almost invisibly into a hollow in the pattern she'd repaired and refinished. From down below came the whine of saws and
pfftt-pfftt
of nail guns. She tried to block the sounds and focus on the task before Brad noticed anything wrong. She had control of it. But it wouldn't hurt to distract him. "Have you talked to your wife?"
"Ex." Brad shifted his hold. "And yeah. I talked to her."
"Really?" She hadn't expected that. She lined up the second screw. "And?"
"She called me a liar and pushed me out the door."
Her jaw dropped. Well, that just showed how pathetic she was about relationships. As if she hadn't realized it first thing that morning—with her mother. "Brad, I'm sorry."
He rubbed a fleck of something off the wood and slanted her a glance. "Then she came over to the house and demanded to know if I was serious."
"And you said yes?"
"I said I wouldn't joke about something so terrifying."
The sound of a saw set her teeth on edge and dizziness threatened, but she blocked it forcibly. "How romantic."
"Yeah, sort of ticked her off." He lifted the next section and held it in place. "When she got through pounding my chest and telling me I was the last person she'd ever marry—and we all know the fallacy in that—we made up and . . ." He shrugged.
"And what?"
"I'm not giving you the details."
"I don't want the details. I want to know if she said yes."
"She said maybe."
"Yeah?"
"Maybe Friday. If she can stand me that long."
She gripped the drill, trying to block the sounds from below. "Brad, that's . . ." Downstairs someone hollered. Her head spun.
"Rese?" Brad gripped her arm. "What's wrong with you?" He held on as she dropped to one knee.
"I need to get down." Stupid to think she could climb down eighteen feet of scaffolding, but the need persisted.
Brad crouched beside her. "Are you sick? Pregnant?"
"No, I'm not pregnant." She gulped back tears. She had never willingly cried in Brad's presence, though that one time silent tears had spilled when she'd been all but catatonic.
"What, then?"
She swallowed. "It's Dad's birthday."
"Oh man." He dropped down to sit beside her. "I didn't think. I'd have told you not to come in."
"Not come in? The whole reason I'm doing this is because of him."
"I thought it was me."
She pressed her hands to her face, fighting the tears with everything in her.
"That was a joke. Sorry. I don't know how to handle you like . . . this."
She could not stop the thoughts. Dad's big, capable hands. His strong back and sharp eye. The high standards that had formed her and Brad both. She had learned more from him than in all her courses at school. He hadn't been affectionate, but he'd been proud. And he'd carried her to safety on the worst night of her life.
This morning her mother had looked at her as though she should have died, her eyes deep, deranged wells. She had clawed her arms and demanded,
"Where is he? What have you done with
him?"
Was it even Dad she'd meant?
Over a year had passed since he'd died. Some days it didn't impact her at all. Some, like today . . .
"Don't go into that weird no-talking place, okay?" Brad jostled her.
"He should be here. He should not be gone."
"How long have you had the dizzy spells?"
"Since I came out of that weird no-talking place." Three weeks of shock, and then the long road back to proficiency in her chosen field.
"You didn't say anything? How many times have you been up on this stuff alone?"
"I can handle it. It's not usually this hard." But Dad would have turned fifty-two, and she wished he were there, working beside them.
"Flashbacks?"
"Not as many."
"Rese, doggone it. You should have told me."
"Lance knows. He's talked me through it."
"Well, that's great, except he's not here; he won't be here when you fall."
"I won't fall." Her head spun with the coppery scent of blood, so much blood. She shook as Brad took out her phone. "What are you doing?"
"I'm getting Lance."
"He's an hour away." Too far. Just as help had been too far the day she'd tried to keep her father's life from seeping away.
Brad called anyway. She pressed a hand to her forehead. She had never told Brad about that day, but they talked now. She told him everything that had happened. And then he told her things, and she told him others. For her father's birthday, they gave each other memories, some painful, some funny, mostly respectful, but not even his foibles were left unturned. They disagreed and argued and remembered. And then Lance was there.
He burst into the Nob Hill hotel and saw Rese side by side with Brad on the scaffolding near the vaulted ceiling. "Rese?"
She looked down. "I'm all right."
Brad shifted his position. "She's dizzy."
Lance frowned. Since she'd gone back to work with Brad, he had assumed she was over the flashbacks and dizzy spells. He'd been wrong. He climbed the scaffold, thinking what might have happened if Brad hadn't been up there with her.
"You didn't have to come," she said as he pulled himself onto the platform. "If Brad had just let me go down . . ."
"You got her?" Brad said, rising to his feet.
Lance nodded.
Brad pulled the cigarette pack from his pocket. "I'll have a smoke; then one of the guys can help me up here. Rese, you go home."
She shook her head.
"I mean it. I don't want to be filing insurance on another accident."
Rese pulled herself up by the scaffolding. "I will not quit."
Brad expelled an exasperated breath. "Go on. Get out of here."
She raised her chin. "He mattered to you too. If you can keep working, so can I."
"It's not a competition, Rese. Will you tell her?"
Lance looked into her face. He wanted to take her home, but if she needed to work through it, he'd give her that. "Rese?"
She turned to Brad. "What do you think Dad would say?"
"To you?"
"To any of us."
Brad hung his hands on his hips. "He'd say earn your pay or I'll let my daughter run your crew."
That surprised a laugh from her. "I deserved that position, even if you did get along better with the guys. I got more out of them."
"That's about what Vernon said."
She drew herself up. "I am not wasting his birthday crying."
"Well, I've got a job to do. I can't be watching that you don't fall."
Lance studied the operation. "You go ahead, Brad. Rese and I'll tackle this."
They both looked at him. He'd never intruded on their work before, and he half expected to be refused. Though he and Rese had worked together on the carriage house, since partnering with Brad she'd kept her professional life separate.
But she planted her hands on her hips. "We'll finish the cornice."
Brad stood a long moment, then shrugged. "Okay."
————
Driving home with Lance's motorcycle in the back of her pickup, Rese felt surprisingly whole. She and Brad had aired things that had been simmering in silence. Dad had not been perfect, far from it, but he had mattered to them.
So much of her work happened alone, and she loved the zone where her craft comprised her entire focus. Yet working with Lance had been wonderful—his smiles, his self-deprecating jokes. It brought back the first weeks they'd spent together restoring the carriage house and finishing the villa, planning the inn, its entertainment and marvelous meals.
She'd kept him out of this part of her life, afraid, maybe, that he'd pervade it so completely she'd have nothing of her own. But now she wondered why that had mattered so much. She glanced at Lance beside her. "Tired?"
"Yeah, actually. That was a lot of lifting."
It would not have fazed him before, but he was still regaining his strength and muscle. Physical labor might help that. "Lance, would you want to . . . do this again?"
"Work with you?" The look on his face sent a pang to her heart.
"Well, Star's home with Mom, and Sofie and Nonna can put together some pretty good meals."
"Pretty good?" He laughed. "Nonna's the master I learned from."
"I didn't want to hurt your feelings." Though he hadn't been anywhere near as sensitive about his cooking or anything except Brad since he'd come back. He'd been incredibly content with what little praise and attention he got. Where was the earringed pirate who had swung into her work site and taken over her mind?
"If we win one more bid, we'll need extra hands, and you know what you're doing."
His voice grew hoarse. "Would you like that?"
It surprised her how much. "I wouldn't turn you loose on anything that mattered."
He grinned. "There's the woman I know and love."
Good thing she wasn't standing. He'd just turned her to pudding.
"Okay." He nodded. "Put me to work."
"Don't you want to know what it pays?"
"Fagedda-bout-it. It's the benefits that count."
She frowned. "We will maintain a professional relationship."
His eyes creased. "Oh yeah, that."
"Like you got it the first time."
He tipped his head back recalling. "Weren't you the one who wanted a repeat of that particular violation?"
"I did not."
"Came to my door loaded for bear and hoping for an encore."
"If you can't behave, it won't work."
"Don't worry. I won't blow your cover."
"What cover?"
"Everyone knows you're tough as nails. I won't tell them you melt like a Popsicle in the sun."
"You are so not getting this job."
His smile raked her. "Get-outta-here. You need me."
"Like a banged thumb."
He laughed. "Okay. I promise to behave."
"Define
behave
."
He thought for a minute. "Hands off unless we're alone."