In This Town
“I won’t be anything,” Tori said, rinsing the coffeepot before filling it with chilled, distilled water, “because I’m not going.”
Nora stared at her as if she’d suddenly declared she was going to shave off her eyebrows. “Of course you’re going.”
“Why? Because Layne wants me to? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m working and I will continue to work until my shift ends at two. I’m not about to drop what I’m doing, leave Celeste in a bind and abandon my customers and coworkers just because my older sister decrees it.”
Layne wasn’t the boss of her. A fact her older sister didn’t seem to be aware of.
Tori hated that Layne demanded she drop everything whenever the whim hit her. Tori may not be the assistant chief of police like Layne or an attorney like Nora, but she had a job, one she took seriously. One she couldn’t afford to be away from—literally. Ever since her divorce, she’d barely been able to make ends meet.
No one told her the price of freedom would be so damn high.
“I don’t think Layne would’ve asked you to leave work if she didn’t feel it was important,” Nora said, proving that, despite her angelic face, she could be as stubborn as her sisters. “So, come on.” She clapped her hands lightly, her tone high-pitched as if she was calling a hesitant puppy. If she whistled, Tori might have to hurt her. “Let’s go.”
Tori turned on the machine. “Look, don’t think you can avoid me for weeks—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nora said, her arms crossed, her cheeks pink.
“—and then waltz in here and make demands. I’m not going. Deal with it.”
“First of all,” Nora said, hurrying after Tori as she walked toward the other side of the restaurant, “I haven’t been avoiding you.”
Tori stepped into the large alcove separating the dining room from the kitchen. “Ever since you started sleeping with Griffin York you’ve barely been around. Does he keep you chained to the bed?”
Sharon Cameron’s booming laugh drowned out whatever Nora had been about to say. “He could chain me to the bed,” Sharon said. “I’d even bring my own restraints.”
“Not helping,” Tori called to her coworker as Sharon took several place settings back into the dining room.
Patty Tarcher, a rotund, gray-haired, sixty-year-old grandmother of ten set food-laden plates from the order window onto a tray. “I say enjoy it while you can,” Patty told Nora. “Once they hit fifty, men’s libidos drop like a rock in the ocean. Never to be seen again.” Balancing the tray with one hand, she snagged an extra set of silverware off the long table behind them and peered over the top of her glasses at the sisters. “That’s why God invented those little blue pills. Things are magic, I tell you. Pure magic.”
“Way more information than anyone ever needed to know,” Tori said.
“Thanks, Patty, but Griffin’s and my relationship isn’t based solely on sex,” Nora said, humor underlying her prim tone.
Patty frowned. “Now that’s a shame. Those are the best kind.”
Tori and Nora watched Patty leave. “Oh, my God,” Tori breathed. “I’m going to need to scrub my brain to get rid of the image of Patty and Stan putting that little blue pill to use.”
Nora’s lips twitched. “Isn’t Stan the guy who plays Santa at the annual Christmas party?”
“Ugh. Stop. Now I’m imagining him dressed as a jolly old elf.” At Nora’s laugh, Tori grinned. “I miss you, baby girl.”
For some reason, that comment made Nora look guilty. Tori’s eyes narrowed. No doubt about it, something was going on—she just had no idea what. But she was sure whatever it was, Griffin was to blame.
“I miss you, too,” Nora said, rearranging the stack of wrapped silverware. “I’ve just been busy—”
“Tori,” Celeste Vitello, the café’s owner, called from the other side of the window. “Order up.”
“Busy,” Tori repeated, placing plates onto a tray. “Right. Too busy for your family.”
Nora sighed. “You know it’s not that way between me and Griffin, right?”
“Not what way?”
“Just sex.”
That was Nora’s first problem. She should keep whatever was between her and Griffin purely physical. Keep her heart out of it. “Does it matter?” she asked, lifting the tray and walking into the dining room.
Never one to give up anything easily, Nora caught up with Tori as she set omelets in front of a twenty-something couple.
“Of course it matters,” Nora said when Tori returned the tray to the alcove. “You’re my sister.”
“And yet you continue to ignore my sage advice about Griffin.”
“Because you’re wrong about him.” Her tone gentled. “He’s a good man. I lo—”
“Oh, no. No, no, no.” Tori covered her ears. “Do not start spouting off about your great love for him. Let me keep believing it’s only physical between you two and will someday soon come to an end. It’s the only way I’ll be able to sleep at night.”
Nora crossed her arms. “You know, instead of blaming me for this perceived distance between us lately, you might want to start considering how you’re partly to blame.”
Tori’s eyes widened. “Because I don’t like your boyfriend?”
“Because you don’t respect my ability to make decisions for myself. Most women would be happy to hear their baby sister is in a serious, committed relationship with a man who loves her.”
Tori couldn’t help it. She laughed. “Honey, I’m not most women.”
She may not have Nora’s brains or Layne’s ability to frighten the masses with one scowl—and legally carry a gun—but she did know men. It was one of her greatest strengths. And Griffin York was trouble.
Okay, so he was the best kind of trouble, the kind that came wrapped in a brooding, darkly handsome, super sexy package.
A pretty exterior for sure, but underneath? A cynical, bitter person who only hurt those who tried to get close to him. Who tried to love him.
Took one to know one, after all.
“Speak of the devil,” she murmured as she stepped out to check her customers’ drinks and noticed Griffin come in through the front door. The man looked like the poster child for the Bad Boy Club in his work boots, faded jeans and battered leather jacket.
She crossed to the drink station only to be followed by Nora. A moment later, Griffin joined them, making Tori feel cornered.
“Is she coming?” he asked Nora.
“Yes,” Nora said at the same time Tori spoke.
“No.”
He rubbed his thumb along the underside of his jaw. “Glad that’s cleared up.”
Nora took a hold of Tori’s arm and gently tugged her into the hallway. “I’m sorry this is a bad time for you,” Nora said, and Tori knew she meant it. Nora rarely said anything she didn’t mean. Tori almost envied her ability to be so open and honest. So willing to put her true self out there for others to judge. “But we all know this must be about the case.”
The case. Their mother’s murder case. Tori bit the inside of her lower lip. Hard. She was tired of hearing about it, thinking about it. It was over. Done. The man who’d killed their mother eighteen years ago, who’d left Valerie Sullivan’s body to rot and decay like so much garbage in the woods, was dead himself.
As his son stood before her, looking so much like his father, with his dark, tousled hair and slight dimple in his chin, it was all she could do not to throw herself at him, slap and scratch him. Try to inflict some of the pain her mother had suffered at his father’s hands on him.
“There’s nothing to discuss,” Tori said, hating that she cast Dale York’s sins onto his only child. Especially when so many people cast her mother’s sins onto her. “No sense rehashing it all. It won’t change anything. Won’t bring Mom back or ensure that Dale is rotting in hell as punishment for what he did.”
“I could carry her out of here for you,” Griffin said to Nora, conveniently pretending Tori hadn’t spoken.
He’d fit in with her family just fine after all. They tended to ignore her, too. Underestimated her.
“We could toss her in the trunk,” he added. “Let Layne deal with her when we get to the station.” He rolled his shoulders as if warming up for some heavy lifting, his focus on Tori, his gaze assessing. “What do you go? About one twenty-five?”
A sound of outrage escaped her even as she sucked in her stomach. “I’ll have you know—” she jabbed a finger at Griffin’s chest, wished it was a fork “—I weigh one-fifteen.”
Give or take…oh…five pounds.
“If you say so.” Then he smirked.
Her hands fisted. God, what she wouldn’t give to knock that stupid grin off his face.
She tossed her hair back, her high heels bringing them almost eye to eye. “Listen, as much as I’m sure you two enjoy playing Bonnie and Clyde in your spare time, leave me out of it. Because if you lay one greasy finger on me, I’ll have Layne arrest you for assault after I’ve taken my hedge clippers to your—”
“Now, now,” Nora said. “No need to get all threatening and violent. It was only an idea.” She patted Griffin’s arm. “A sweet one.”
Tori gaped at her usually levelheaded sister. “There is something seriously wrong with you. What did he do? Perform a lobotomy on you while you were sleeping?”
“We need to go,” Griffin told Nora.
She sighed, as if dealing with Tori taxed the last of her usually limitless energy and patience. Well, it wasn’t exactly a day at the beach on Tori’s side of things, either.
Nora nodded. “I guess we’ll just tell Layne she couldn’t get away.”
It took a moment for Tori to realize she was the “she” Nora was talking about. “Okay, first of all, I’m standing right here and you acting as if I’m not is really irritating. Secondly, I don’t need you or anyone making excuses for me.” Didn’t want anyone doing so. She stood up for herself. Took care of herself.
After she’d realized the hard lesson that no one else was going to take care of her.
Too bad taking care of herself and her son wasn’t as easy as she’d thought it would be.
Nora sent her a beseeching look, one made all the more powerful by her sister’s sweetness. “Layne really wanted us both there. She wants you there.”
Tori’s resolve started dissolving like sugar in hot water. “I guess she’s going to be disappointed, then,” she said lightly before brushing past Griffin and heading back to work.
But guilt nudged her, hard and insistent as a toothache. Damn Nora. Damn Tori’s love for her. That’s what love did. It trapped you. Made you worry all the time about pleasing someone else, about putting your own wants and needs aside.
Love made you weak.
And Tori couldn’t afford to be anything but strong.
CHAPTER TWO
“WHAT ARE YOU doing?” Celeste Vitello asked Tori.
Tori set a stack of dirty dishes into a heavy, plastic bin. “Giving Mr. Jeffries a lap dance,” she said dryly, glancing at her boss. “You?”
“Now that is a horrifying thought.” Celeste’s dark, wildly curly short hair was held back from her face with a wide, black headband making her brown eyes appear larger, her cheekbones more pronounced. A white apron covered her stretchy black pants and orange T-shirt. “And while I admire your clever wit as much as, if not more than, the next person, shouldn’t you get going? Layne wanted you at the station at nine and it’s already eight fifty-five.”
Using the back of her hand, Tori brushed her long bangs aside. “Not you, too.”
“Me, too, what?”
“You’ve joined the Layne Brigade,” Tori said, tossing silverware into the bin with a loud clang. “Bad enough she sent Nora over here to fetch me like I’m some sort of disobedient child, now you’re waving at me from the front seat of the bandwagon? For God’s sake, don’t drink the Kool-Aid, people. Fight the power.”
She wasn’t surprised Celeste knew about Layne’s important meeting. Layne probably called her, too. Or else Nora had swung by the kitchen to tell Celeste Tori was being stubborn.
Nora always had been a little tattletale.
Celeste pressed the tips of her forefingers against her temples as if seeking inner peace or warding off a headache. “Times like this make me wonder if you and Layne will ever outgrow your sibling rivalry.”
“She started it.”
Layne always started it with her judgmental attitude, bossiness and overinflated sense of superiority. As if she had some sort of holy light shining down on her just because she was the firstborn.
Celeste shifted out of the way of a customer, smiled and greeted him before edging closer to Tori and lowering her voice. “I’m officially giving you the time off. Now go be with your sisters.”
Tori didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to fall into line just because Layne demanded it. “Thanks, but I’d rather finish my shift.”
She gathered the crumpled napkins and empty containers of creamer and tossed them into the bin. But she felt Celeste watching her, studying her. It was annoying. Unnerving.
Not that she’d ever let anyone see even the slightest hint of nerves, of doubts. People saw only what she allowed. Her thoughts, her feelings were her own until she decided to share them.
“Patty,” Celeste said to the other waitress as she walked past, “could you cover Tori’s tables? She has a family emergency.”
“Sure thing. Here,” she said to Tori, “I’ll take that back for you.”
But when Patty took a hold of the bin, Tori’s fingers tightened. A subtle tug-of-war ensued, causing the dishes to clank together. Patty’s eyes flashed and she yanked hard. Tori’s grip slipped. She stumbled back, bumping into the table with enough force to knock it against a chair.
With a triumphant grin, Patty tossed her head and walked away.
Tori straightened and stepped toward Patty’s retreating back, ready to…well…she wasn’t sure what exactly but she was afraid it included her lunging at the older woman and taking her down in a headlock.
Knowing Tori all too well, Celeste blocked her path. “Let’s go to my office. We can discuss—”
“There’s nothing to discuss.” Fighting her building temper, Tori smoothed her skirt over her hips, tugged down the hem. “I’m not leaving.”
Celeste raised her eyebrows. “My office. Now.”
Damn. Celeste rarely used that no-nonsense tone with anybody, let alone Tori, which only made it that much more effective when she did resort to it.
Aware that they’d drawn several curious glances, Tori forced her lips up into her patented coy smile and sauntered across the dining room. Kept her movements graceful and unhurried even when she reached the empty hallway.
At the end of the hall, she entered the office. Weak sunlight filtered in through the two narrow windows, casting shadows on the dark carpet. Framed photographs of Tori and her sisters, along with one of their father, Tim, and Celeste decorated the wall to her left. Several smaller ones, all of Tori’s son, Brandon, ranging from newborn to last year’s school picture, were scattered on the bookshelf to the right. A huge, ugly cherry desk that had belonged to Celeste’s grandfather took up more than its fair share of space, along with a three-drawer metal filing cabinet and two wooden chairs.
Walking in, Celeste flipped on the overhead lights then shut the door.
Tori crossed her arms. “I cannot believe you played the boss card on me.”
Okay, so technically Celeste was her boss. But in addition to that, she was also her father’s girlfriend and before that she’d been her mother’s best friend. Celeste had been one of the few people who’d seen something valuable in Valerie Sullivan.
And in Tori.
Celeste loved her without expectation, without judgment. Some days Tori thought she was the only person who did.
“I do whatever it takes,” Celeste said as she sat behind the desk. “You know that.”
She did. Tori admired her for it and for what she’d made of her life. Celeste had her own successful business, one she’d built by herself from the ground up. The only thing Tori didn’t understand was why Celeste gave her heart to men whose only real love, their obsession, was the sea.
Maybe it was in her blood. Her grandmother had married a fisherman, and her mother eloped with a navy petty officer, only to be left alone when he chose the sea over his young wife and baby daughter. At nineteen, Celeste lost her fiancé when the fishing boat he’d been on had gone down during a Nor’easter.
And now, for the past eight years, she’d been in a relationship with Tori’s father, another fisherman who always, always, chose the call of the ocean over her. Just as he’d done with his wife and daughters.
Which proved that no man was worth giving your time, your attention and most especially your heart to.
“Sit down,” Celeste said, gesturing to the chair in front of the desk, “and tell me what’s going on with you.”
Tori plopped onto the chair. “Nothing’s going on. Since when is wanting to cover my own shift, my full shift, a crime?”
“Honey, you were fighting a woman twice your age over dirty dishes.”
“Patty’s stronger than she looks. Those water aerobics are really working.”
“I’m sure they are.” Opening a drawer to her right, Celeste pulled out a bag of mini chocolate bars. Tori didn’t think it was a coincidence Celeste’s stash of candy and the loaded handgun she kept for protection were housed in the same space.
No one touched Celeste’s chocolates without permission.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, taking three candies from the bag before sliding it toward Tori.
Her voice was kind, worry clear in her brown eyes. It reminded Tori of when she’d sat in this very same chair as a scared, pregnant teenager. Only they knew Celeste was the first person she’d told. The person who’d held her as she’d cried, more terrified than she’d ever been in her life. So afraid of disappointing her family, of Greg turning his back on her, of being responsible—completely, totally, fully responsible—for the life growing inside her.
Humiliated and angry that she’d ended up just like her mother.
“What’s the point of my going?” Tori asked, unable to stop the words from spilling out. “No matter what evidence they found or new theory Layne has, it won’t change anything.”
She wanted to move forward and forget the past. Not rehash it.
“Don’t you want to know what happened?” Celeste asked quietly. “Don’t you want to know the truth?”
Tori didn’t believe in the truth. It was too easily manipulated, too easily hidden. She should know. Her own life was nothing but smoke and mirrors, shifting and reflecting what she wanted people to see. Giving them only what she wanted them to have.
“The truth is that Dale York killed Mom. And now he’s dead. What else is there?”
She didn’t expect a real answer but the look on Celeste’s face told her the older woman was keeping something from her. See? Everyone lied. Everyone kept secrets. Even someone as good and honest as Celeste.
“What’s going on?” Tori asked, her fingers aching from gripping the arms of the chair so tightly.
Unwrapping a candy, Celeste glanced around as if someone was going to suddenly materialize out of thin air to overhear their conversation. “I think Layne might be in trouble.”
Tori exhaled a short laugh, the tension in her easing. “My big sister doesn’t get into trouble. She gets everyone else out of it.”
Layne had always been there to help Tori and Nora with their homework, made sure they had dinner, lunch money and went to bed at a decent hour. She’d been more of a mother to them than Valerie had ever been.
She never let her sisters forget it.
Tori appreciated the sacrifices Layne had made, how she’d taken care of them. She also resented the hell out of her for not seeing that she and Nora no longer needed her to be their substitute mom. They needed her to be their sister.
“Donna called me,” Celeste said of her good friend and Chief Taylor’s secretary. “She told me Mayor Seagren and the district attorney had an early morning meeting with both Ross and Layne.”
“Ross and the mayor are always huddled up about something.” Billy Seagren loved nothing more than hanging out at the police station. She wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t asked Ross to make him some sort of unofficial deputy complete with shiny gold star.
“A special investigator sent from the attorney general’s office was there, too. Donna isn’t sure what’s going on but there’s been some sort of complaint against both Ross and Layne. Something is wrong,” Celeste said. “I can feel it. And I think you should go to this meeting, not because Layne told you to, but because she needs you there.”
Her mouth twisting, Tori tucked her hair behind her ear. Layne didn’t need her. No one did. Not her sisters or her father. Not even her own son.
“Can I get back to work now?” she asked, sounding as petulant and defiant as Brandon. That he came by his attitude naturally only irritated her more. Would it kill him to mimic a few of her positive traits?
Celeste sighed, her disappointment clear. Nothing new there. Tori was always disappointing someone. “If that’s what you really want…”
“It is,” Tori said, already walking out of the office. She headed toward the dining room, but stopped at the doorway, her stomach turning. Whirling around, she crossed to the break room, circled the table, her stride short because of her tight skirt.
The guilt was back. As if she didn’t have enough of the useless stuff already. She was a mother, wasn’t she? She’d been dealing with guilt on a daily basis ever since Brandon was born. Was she good enough? Smart enough? Did she have enough patience? Give him enough time and attention and love?
It had only increased since she and Greg had told Brandon they were splitting up a year ago. She’d seen the accusation in her son’s eyes. He’d known she’d instigated the divorce, blamed her for ripping their family apart. He’d yet to forgive her.
So, yeah, full quota of guilt here, thanks just the same. And Layne did not need her. She prided herself on not needing anyone. It was a sentiment—one of very few—she and Tori shared. One learned by watching their parents’ dysfunctional marriage, by having a selfish, vain mother, a father who ran off to sea every chance he got.
It was too risky to count on someone to be there for you. Better, safer, to rely on yourself.
Besides, it shouldn’t matter to Tori what was going on with Layne. They weren’t close, not like Tori and Nora. Or at least, she and Nora had been close until her baby sister decided to hook up with the son of the man who’d killed their mother.
Discovering the truth about their mother should have brought them together, but instead they’d drifted apart. Living their own lives.
Whatever trouble Layne was in was just that. Hers. Tori had enough problems of her own to deal with.
She grabbed her purse from her locker and headed back into the hallway. Celeste stood in the kitchen doorway talking with Joe, the café’s breakfast cook. Tori kept her gaze straight ahead as she passed them.
“Hey,” Celeste called, stopping Tori at the door. “Let me know as soon as you find out what’s going on.”
Tori lifted a hand to indicate she heard then hurried outside. The sun peered through the clouds and a cool breeze lifted the ends of her hair as she clicked the unlock button on her car keys. She slid behind the wheel of her ancient Toyota, cranked the engine and pulled out, heading toward the police station.
Family ties. They bound and choked and twisted and tangled a person up until they couldn’t break free. But if you took on one Sullivan, you took on all of them.
God help you then.
* * *
THE BRUNETTE KNEW how to make an entrance.
She demanded attention. Walker studied the woman gliding into Chief Taylor’s office, her heels tapping against the floor. A lot of it.
A small smile playing on her lips, she slid her gaze around the room before landing on him. Though her expression didn’t change, he had the sense she was sizing him up, trying to figure out how big of a threat he was.
Her eyes met his and attraction, instantaneous and primal, slammed into him, had his next breath lodging itself in his chest with painful intensity. Jesus, but she was like a walking wet dream, all lush curves, long legs and full, slicked red lips. Her hair was chin length, the ends razor sharp, with a heavy fringe of bangs.