a bit dreamy, her face took on a quiet glow. She had her mother’s dusky skin and high, slashing cheekbones, her father’s smoky eyes and stubborn chin.
It made an arresting combination, again a romantic one. The gypsy, the mermaid, the faerie queen. There had been men who’d looked at her, taken in the delicacy of her form, and had assumed a romanticism and fragility—and never anticipated the steel.
It was, always, a mistake.
“One of these days you’re going to get stuck like that, then you’ll have to hop around like a frog.”
Kate sprang up, eyes popping open. “Brandon!” With a full-throated war whoop, she leaped across the room and into his arms.
“What are you doing here? When did you get in? I thought you were playing winter ball in Puerto Rico. How long are you staying?”
He was barely two years her senior—an accident of birth he’d used to torment her when they’d been children, unlike her half sister, Frederica, who was older than both of them and had never lorded it over them. Despite it, he was the love of her life.
“Which question do you want me to answer first?” Laughing, he held her away from him, taking a quick study of her out of tawny and amused eyes. “Still scrawny.”
“And you’re still full of it. Hi.” She kissed him smackingly on the lips. “Mom and Dad didn’t say you were coming home.”
“They didn’t know. I heard you were settling in and figured I’d better check things out, keep an eye on you.” He glanced around the big, filthy room, rolled his eyes. “I guess I’m too late.”
“It’s going to be wonderful.”
“Gonna be. Maybe. Right now it’s a dump.” Still, he slung his arm around her shoulders. “So, the ballet queen’s going to be a teacher.”
“I’m going to be a wonderful teacher. Why aren’t you in Puerto Rico?”
“Hey, a guy can’t play ball twelve months a year.”
“Brandon.” Her eyebrow arched up.
“Bad slide into second. Pulled a few tendons.”
“Oh, how bad? Have you seen a doctor? Will you—”
“Jeez, Katie. It’s no big deal. I’m on the Disabled List for a couple of months. I’ll be back in action for spring training. And it gives me lots of time to hang around here and make your life a living hell.”
“Well, that’s some compensation. Come on, I’ll show you around.” And get a look at the way he moved. “My apartment’s upstairs.”
“From the looks of that ceiling, your apartment may be downstairs any minute.”
“It’s perfectly sound,” she said with a wave of the hand. “Just ugly at the moment. But I have plans.”
“You’ve always had plans.”
But he walked with her, favoring his right leg, through the room and into a nasty little hallway with cracked plaster and exposed brick. Up a creaking set of stairs and into a sprawling space that appeared to be occupied by mice, spiders and assorted vermin he didn’t want to think about.
“Kate, this place—”
“Has potential,” she said firmly. “And history. It’s pre-Civil War.”
“It’s pre-Stone Age.” He was a man who preferred things already ordered, and in an understandable pattern. Like a ballpark. “Have you any clue what it’s going to cost you to make this place livable?”
“I have a clue. And I’ll firm that up when I talk to the contractor. It’s mine, Brand. Do you remember when we were kids and you and Freddie and I would walk by this old place?”
“Sure, used to be a bar, then it was a craft shop or something, then—”
“It used to be a lot of things,” Kate interrupted. “Started out as a tavern in the 1800s. Nobody’s really made a go of it. But I used to look at it when we were kids and think how much I’d like to live here, and look out these tall windows, and rattle around in all the rooms.”
The faintest flush bloomed on her cheeks, and her eyes went deep and dark. A sure sign, Brandon thought, that she had dug in.
“Thinking like that when you’re eight’s a lot different than buying a heap of a building when you’re a grown-up.”
“Yes, it is. It is different. Last spring, when I came home to visit, it was up for sale. Again. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”
She circled the room. She could see it, as it would be. Wood gleaming, walls sturdy and clean. “I went back to New York, went back to work, but I couldn’t stop thinking about this old place.”
“You get the screwiest things in your head.”
She shrugged that off. “It’s mine. I was sure of it the minute I came inside. Haven’t you ever felt that?”
He had, the first time he’d walked into a ballpark. He supposed, when it came down to it, most sensible people would have told him that playing ball for a living was a kid’s dream. His family never had, he remembered. Any more than they’d discouraged Kate from her dreams of ballet.
“Yeah, I guess I have. It just seems so fast. I’m used to you doing things in deliberate steps.”
“That hasn’t changed,” she told him with a grin. “When I decided to retire from performing, I knew I wanted to teach dance. I knew I wanted to make this place a school. My school. Most of all, I wanted to be home.”
“Okay.” He put his arm around her again, pressed a kiss to her temple. “Then we’ll make it happen. But right now, let’s get out of here. This place is freezing.”
“New heating system’s first on my list.”
Brandon took one last glance around. “It’s going to be a really long list.”
They walked together through the brisk December wind, as they had since childhood. Along cracked and uneven sidewalks, under trees that spread branches stripped of leaves under a heavy gray sky.
She could smell snow in the air, the teasing hint of it.
Storefronts were already decorated for the holidays, with red-cheeked Santas and strings of lights, flying reindeer and overweight snowpeople.
But the best of them, always the best of them, was The Fun House. The toy store’s front window was crowded with delights. Miniature sleighs, enormous stuffed bears in stocking caps, dolls both elegant and homely, shiny red trucks, castles made of wooden blocks.
The look was delightfully jumbled and…fun, Kate thought. One might think the toys had simply been dropped wherever they fit. But she knew that great care, and a deep, affectionate knowledge of children, had gone into the design of the display.
Bells chimed cheerfully as they stepped inside.
Customers wandered. A toddler banged madly on a xylophone in the play corner. Behind the counter, Annie Maynard boxed a flop-eared stuffed dog. “He’s one of my favorites,” she said to the waiting customer. “Your niece is going to love him.”
Her glasses slid down her nose as she tied the fuzzy red yarn around the box. Then she glanced up over them, blinked and squealed.
“Brandon! Tash! Come see who’s here. Oh, come give me a kiss, you gorgeous thing.”
When he came around the counter and obliged, she patted her heart. “Been married twenty-five years,” she said to her customer. “And this boy can make me feel like a co-ed again. Happy holidays. Let me go get your mother.”
“No, I’ll get her.” Kate grinned and shook her head. “Brandon can stay here and flirt with you.”