On the Ropes (9 page)

“Top shelf in the pantry. I caught Toby in the bag.” Seth cast his stepson a chastising glance.

Toby gave his best innocent angel look in return and settled onto the big sofa with his tablet computer.

Janette moved shyly toward the counter.

When she was at work, she exuded such confidence. She was a force to be reckoned with. Away from work, she seemed very unsure of herself—as if she didn’t know how to navigate free time the way she did her professional life. Then what she’d said about not fitting in with her family came back into his mind. Perhaps her expectations of how people would behave were skewed.

“Jan, are there discount superstores in Bermuda?” Stephen asked.

He held down the coffee carrier while she twisted one of the cups out and then grabbed one for himself.

“No,” she said. “Nothing that large.”

“Oh, well, you’ve got to experience it firsthand,” Meg said with a snicker and rubbed her ribcage right over her heart. Reflux, he bet. She probably shouldn’t be drinking coffee.

She grabbed one.

“I mean, what’s more American than having your ankles run over by people who can’t steer their shopping carts and waiting in line for twenty minutes because although there are twenty-five check-out lanes, only four of them will be open on a Saturday.” She held up the appropriate number of fingers. “
Four
.”

“It’s a pet peeve for her,” Seth said apologetically.

“Perhaps I’ll skip it, then.” Janette emptied a couple of sugar packets into her cup. “I’ve probably had more fun having teeth pulled.”

Meg shook her head, and there was a bit of fire in her eyes. Stephen attributed it to hormones, but he couldn’t say for sure. His sister tended to express passion over the most unexpected scenarios. “Oh, no. You have to go. I’m pretty sure that’s an item on the U.S. citizenship exam.
What is the maximum number of check-out lanes a superstore can have open at once?
”

“It’s a good thing I’m already a citizen. That’s the kind of trivia I’d prefer to not have cluttering my brain.”

Meg gawked at her for a moment, and turned to Seth. “Of all your friends, you’re the only one left. Why aren’t you a citizen yet? Grant went through the process. Curt got naturalized last year. You’re the holdout. Got plans to divorce me and hightail it back to Russia?”

Seth just blinked at her.

Stephen felt a nudge against his bare foot and looked down to see Jan tapping it with her heel. He looked up at her and easily read her expression as, “What’s that about?”

He leaned in and whispered, “Has to be the hormones. She doesn’t usually jump to conclusions like that.”

She chuckled, and when Meg turned to her, Jan stared down into her coffee cup. She couldn’t stop laughing, though, and no matter how annoyed his sister was about it, it was worth pissing Pregzilla off if it got a smile out of Jan.

“I’ve been busy,” Seth said. “I’ll do it as soon as the babies are born.”

“You’ll be
more
busy then.”

He cringed, but not even he would try to refute Meg on that last point. “I’ll look into it next week.”

“Thank you. I’m sure your unborn children would love it if the risk of their father being deported was brought down to a manageable zero percent.”

“I’m not going to get deported, kitten.”

“Sorry if I can’t take your word for it, honey.”

Meg sidled over and stood on the other side of the counter from Jan. She opened her coffee cup, and Stephen let out a relieved exhale that it was at least half milk. She dumped some sugar into it.

“What was your path to citizenship, Janette? I’m just curious because I’m guessing you’re quite a bit younger than Seth and you’ve lived in Bermuda for a while, haven’t you?”

Stephen wanted to reach across the island and give his sister a little shake, but surprisingly, Jan answered.

“I’ve lived in Bermuda most of my life, but I was born in the U.S. I didn’t have to do any extra work to become a citizen. I’ve always been one.”

He looked at her with shock.
Now
she wanted to freely share?

“Oh. How’d you end up in Bermuda?”

Jan met her gaze. “My father is Bermudian. My mother was unable to care for me, so he and his family took me in.”

“So, I guess they weren’t a couple. At least, not for long.”

“My limited knowledge is that they weren’t together for very long at all.”

Meg opened her mouth as if to say something in response, but closed it. Maybe she didn’t want to pry. While Stephen was glad his sister wasn’t the type to push limits, she’d managed to get more information out of Jan in just a couple of minutes than he might have gotten in an entire day. She wasn’t intimidated by Meg. Had nothing to lose by telling her things.

He put his hand on the small of Jan’s back and rubbed a little circle. She looked back at him and offered a weak smile, so he pulled her back against his front and rested his chin on top of her head.
Unable to care for me
, she’d said. What had happened? And had it contributed to her general distrust?

She ran her thumbs over the veins on the back of his hands and relaxed against him.

There you go, sweetheart.

Meg stirred her coffee and pulled her bottom lip between her teeth as she looked down.

Seth brought over the donut bag. “Do you get to the U.S. often?”

“No,” Jan said. “I haven’t been here since I was almost five. I can’t even say that so much has changed, because I don’t remember a whole lot. I hope to spend some time getting reacquainted this week and maybe next week. I’m on leave from work, so my stay is open-ended.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” Stephen said. He wanted Meg and Seth to keep her talking, but he couldn’t help feeling a bit bruised. She was prepared for a stay of several weeks, and she’d probably be bouncing around the East Coast taking in the sights. He would have done that with her.

Well. If he didn’t have to be back at work first thing Monday morning.

Shit
.

Maybe he could beg off. He had all that vacation time to burn up. He was a partner, they really
couldn’t
say no.

“I didn’t want you to feel obligated,” she said.

“Are you kidding me?”

“Do you intend to stay?” Seth asked. “In the U.S., I mean. Bermuda is lovely, but…”

“Small. I know. And I’m sort of limited as to what I could do there professionally. I’m ready to try other things, and, yes, I’d given some thought to remaining in the States. There’d be some logistical issues to work out, obviously, but I’m looking into it.”

“What’s your training in?” Meg asked. “Hospitality management?”

Jan laughed and stopped rubbing Stephen’s hands. “No. It may seem totally off the mark, but I studied to be a schoolteacher. I couldn’t find a teaching job immediately, so I took a clerk job at the resort. The rest is history.”

Meg groaned. “I don’t know how it is in Bermuda, but in the U.S., if you want to be a teacher, you’d better be ready to get a roommate. The pay sucks.”

“That’s discouraging.”

Stephen shot daggers at his little sister over Jan’s head. Roommate?
Really?

Meg just sipped her coffee and stared back. Maybe he couldn’t blame her. She didn’t know what his plans were. All she knew was that he’d been chasing Jan. She knew his past and that he’d dated somewhat indiscriminately as a younger man. But what she didn’t know was that he’d learned exactly what he didn’t want in a partner from doing that. When he figured out what he did want, he went after her, and he believed that person was standing right in front of him. Fuck, he’d never wanted to take care of a woman before.

“Can we go swimming?” Toby asked.

Stephen was going to give that kid five bucks later for breaking up the tension.

“Uh, I don’t know.” Meg walked away from the island and grabbed the magnetic grocery pad off the freezer door. “We need to go get food and supplies. Stephen, where’d all the housekeeping supplies go?”

He rolled his eyes and eased away from Jan’s back to check the pantry. “Cleaning company stole them?”

Save for the broom and dustpan, the pantry was empty. Even the box they kept rags and spray bottles in was gone. So were the paper towels. They always had a warehouse store-sized sheath of them. Did they need to start writing their names on shit in their own house? How fucking tacky was that?

“Put propane for the grill on that list,” Seth said. “They took that, too.”

“Who the hell steals propane?” Jan asked, and her tone was righteously indignant. She kind of sounded like a Scott.

Meg plucked her cell phone out of her purse and punched in some numbers. She put it to her ear, wrote “EVERYTHING” on the grocery pad, then circled it. “Someone who’s about to have their contract cancelled. Come on, Janette. We’re going to the store.” She waved Jan on and walked to the stairway to the parking pad. “You boys do a walkthrough and send me a text message with all the stuff you can’t find.”

Toby sighed. “I’m never going to the beach.”

Stephen gave Jan a reassuring nod toward the door and mouthed, “She’s harmless.”

She mouthed back, “Good to know,” and followed Meg downstairs.

When the bottom door shut, Seth moved over to Stephen and asked quietly, “Where are you sleeping?”

“That’s…
complicated
.”

“Like, marriage-of-convenience complicated?”

“No, like, I’m-trying-not-to-scare-her-off complicated. Fucking Derrick spilled the beans about certain predilections. I’m surprised she didn’t run screaming.”

“Maybe there’s a reason why she didn’t.”

“Hmm.” Stephen hadn’t considered that. He’d just
assumed
she wouldn’t be into it.

“Divide and conquer?” Seth said at normal volume and cut his gaze over to Toby, who had his chin hooked over the back of the sofa and was pouting at them. “I start upstairs, you start down here. We’ll meet in the middle and get this done before Meg makes it to the store.”

“Sounds like a plan. Hear that, Toby? You’ll be on the beach before lunchtime.”

Toby sighed and flopped onto the cushions.

“Drama king.” Stephen smiled and started opening cabinets. Maybe one day, he’d have a little freckled drama king of his own. Before now, he hadn’t really thought it’d ever happen. All he did was work and it was hard to imagine anything else in his life. But, maybe the prospect of the
right
woman had changed his outlook. What good was money without a family to spend it on?

Stephen’s sister was a maelstrom of efficiency. She moved about the store at a rapid clip, barely glancing at the items she tossed into the two carts. Janette had figured out her system fairly quickly—food in one cart, everything else in the other. She even organized the cart contents by product shape and weight to facilitate sensible bagging.

Stephen was right. Meg
was
a bit obsessive.

“Are you picky about food?” Meg asked as they passed sporting goods and headed back to the grocery area they’d only hit the edges of.

“Not particularly. I prefer it to be as fresh as possible and with ingredients I can pronounce for the most part, but generally, I’ll eat what’s available.”

“Cook much?”

“Daily.”

“Great! That can be your job while you’re here. My lower back feels like I’ve got a band of flamenco dancers stomping on my spine. Don’t tell my husband. He’d keep me on my ass until delivery, and I’ve got shit to do.”

“How far along are you exactly?”

Meg stopped in front of the Bran-O cereal and placed two boxes into Janette’s cart. “Almost seven months. I had back issues with Toby, but he was just one kid. I imagine my legs will be numb within six weeks at the current rate.”

“Well, it’s a lot of baby to be carrying around.” Somehow, Janette didn’t think Stephen was the kind of guy to eat Bran-O’s. She grabbed a box of puffed rice cereal from the bottom shelf as Meg launched herself down the aisle. Where the hell did she get the energy?

Meg piled three dozen eggs, butter, cheese, and a couple of gallons of milk into Janette’s cart, and returned to the cooler for juice. “I always get the kind with extra pulp,” she said with a sardonic laugh. “Stephen hates it.”

“You two seem to really enjoy antagonizing each other.”

“We certainly do. Come this way. We need to get detergent, and then cut back down the aisle for meat. I always get that and produce last.”

“Sounds like a plan. But you two
do
like each other, don’t you? That much is obvious.”

“Sure we do. Some days more than others. Typical sibling relationship. Most of the time, we try to take care of each other, but there’s a tiny compulsion toward fratricide. Maybe it’s a caveman throwback. Fewer kids means more attention from your parents and more food to go around. Don’t tell me you don’t feel the same way about your family. Do you have siblings?”

“Uh…”

Meg picked up a pink soap bottle and blue one, eyed them, and returned both to the shelf in exchange for a dye-free version. She put it in her cart. “Oh, God. You have to think about it? I know I must be stepping into something I shouldn’t be. The last time I was with someone who had to think about whether or not she had siblings was my friend Erica. She was at the wedding. You might remember her.”

“The Cuban?” Janette flitted through her mental Rolodex and tried to match the resort guest with her partner. There were two Irishmen. Hers was the blond one.
Curt
, maybe.

“Right, that one. She’s from one of those incredibly dysfunctional families that happen to not believe in divorce. So, it doesn’t matter how miserable everyone is, they stay together because of cultural stigmas. All the kids grew up angry and depressed. I wouldn’t say she hates her sisters, but whatever sentiment exists on the tier right below that one would be it.”

“Oh. Well, it’s not like that for me.” Janette followed Meg down the aisle.

Meg picked up a large bottle of laundry detergent and set it at the back of her cart. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. Family shit is touchy. On most days, I didn’t want to talk about my divorce because I thought forgetting about it was best.”