More Than She Expected

“So did you get the blocks and stuff for the wall?” He threw her a look. “I think that’s called an opening gambit,” Abby said, and he grunted again. “Oooh...frowns and grunts?” She planted her skinny butt on the crappy folding chair across from his equally crappy metal desk. This was a salvage company, not some chi-chi Manhattan office. “Intriguing. But God forbid you clue me in.”

He caught the edge to her voice, tossed it aside. Whatever was going on inside his aching head—and right now, he couldn’t explain it even if he wanted to—it was none of his sister’s business.

“Back off, Abs,” Ty said, reaching for a bottle of pain reliever in his desk. He dumped out a couple of pills, tossing them back without water. With a pushed-out sigh, Abs got to her feet; a moment later he heard the water cooler’s glug-glug as she filled a paper cup.

“Here,” she said, handing him the cup, which he drained.

“Anything of interest happen while I was gone?”

“Not really. Couple of lookie-loos. One couple redoing their house, though, looking for some vintage stuff. I think they’ll be back.” She paused, her gaze sharpening in a way that put Tyler on immediate alert. “The bank called.”

Crap. “Oh?”

“Yeah.” His sister crossed her arms over a paint-blotched T-shirt that emphasized how uncurvy she was. “Why didn’t you tell me you tried to renegotiate the loan?”

Tyler sighed. “Meaning they said no, I take it.”

“I don’t know, they wouldn’t tell me. Since you didn’t include me from the get-go—”

“I was putting out feelers, Abs. That’s all. To see if it was even feasible. I didn’t sign anything, so it’s not like I left your name off—”

“No, you just left me out. As usual. I thought we were supposed to be partners? I mean, are we having trouble making the payments? Not that I’d know, since when I tried to get into the accounting program, you’d changed the password.”

Tyler frowned. “I changed that password a month ago. And I told you the new one. Which you obviously never tried to use.”

Her mouth thinned. “Maybe I didn’t think I needed to. Because I trusted you.”

“Or because, as you’ve said countless times, you hate numbers.”

“I hate going to the dentist, too, but I deal. And I have a right to know what’s going on. Without having to look it up for myself in some cockamamie computer program that makes my eyes cross. Dammit, Ty—I’ve worked every bit as hard as you to get this place up and running! Invested every bit as much in it, too! Emotionally and financially!”

And those pain meds could kick in anytime now. “I know you have, honey. Which is why I didn’t want to say anything until there was something to say. I didn’t want to worry you—”

“Because...you didn’t think I could handle it, what?”

“So sue me for wanting to protect you—”

“I don’t need to be protected, I need to be included! And not only when it suits you, dumbbutt. But why am I wasting my breath? Since you never have, not really. Hell, none of you have—”

“What are you talking about?”

“You, Ethan, Matt, even Bree...it’s like the four of you are all in this secret club or something, because you’re all adopted and I’m not. And I’m the baby. So double whammy, right?”

Tyler almost laughed, which only got him more glaring from his sister. “If it makes you feel any better, we don’t share much with each other, either. Except for maybe Sabrina and Matt, because they’re twins. But the rest of us...” He shook his head. “Trust me, you’re not missing out.”

Breathing hard, Abby kept her gaze glued to his for several seconds, then marched back to the cooler to get her own cup of water, which she downed in three swallows. “You know what?” She crumpled the tiny paper cup, slam-dunking it into the garbage can by Ty’s desk. “You’re right,” she said, sounding a little less steamed. “Because this whole family’s a bunch of emotional retards, aren’t we?”

“What?”

“No, it’s true. We all talk at each other, but nobody talks to anybody. Not really. Well, I don’t know about Matt, now that he’s got Kelly and the kids, maybe he’s loosened up a bit. I hope so, anyway, for their sakes.” She sighed. “And I get it, that simply because we’re family, that doesn’t mean we’re obligated to talk about our innermost feelings and all that crap. And I’m every bit as guilty of that as the rest of you. But...”

Planting her hands on the desk, Abby leaned forward. “This is supposed to be a partnership. So no more keeping secrets about the business, or I’m outta here.” She straightened, her arms crossed. “Got that?”

Tyler kept his smile under wraps, that the toddler who used to follow him around like a puppy—when he was a hard-assed adolescent who definitely did not want some baby tagging along behind him—had turned into such a fierce little thing. He also knew her threat was a lot of hot air, because, like she’d said, she’d poured her heart and soul into making this venture work. Sometimes, even more than Tyler. So it would probably take a lot more than his occasionally keeping her in the dark to make her walk away. Piss her off, absolutely. But she wasn’t going anywhere.

Any more than he was about to change how he did things. Not anytime soon, at least. Because as smart as Abs was, and as good an eye as she had—and as much as Tyler truly respected both of those things—his sister also had a bad habit of letting her feelings get the best of her...an indulgence Tyler hadn’t allowed himself since the fourth grade. He had no problem with Abby giving her heart free rein as far as the esthetic side of things went. But the business end, the money end—for that, you needed a clear head. Focus. Not muddied emotions.

Because all emotions did was mess things up. Make you feel like you’d lost control. Not going back to those days, boy. Ever.

So, yeah—the nuts and bolts that kept this whole thing going, and from going under...that was his province. And he wasn’t about to give it up. However...in the name of familial, not to mention workplace, peace, he supposed he could throw the glowering young woman in front of him a stick.

“Got it,” he said, then picked up the phone, punching the conference call button. “Wanna listen in while I talk to the bank?”

After a moment, Abby nodded, then sat back down, apparently mollified, and Tyler released a long breath that took at least some of the headache with it.

Chapter Three

Seated at her kitchen table, Laurel grinned over her cup of tea as she watched her grandmother contort her eighty-five-year-old body to look out the kitchen window while she washed up the lunch dishes. At, it wasn’t hard to guess, Tyler digging a trench for the wall.

“You do know I have a dishwasher, Gran, right?”

“And you do know he’s taken his shirt off, right?”

“I do now.”

Marian McKinney twisted to frown at Laurel over her shoulder. “And you don’t want to come see?”

“Not particularly,” Laurel said with the most nonchalant shrug she could manage. Tyler in a muscle-hugging T-shirt already left nothing to the imagination. Tyler without the T-shirt...

Yes, she—and her bouncing baby hormones—had gotten over whatever had sent her into a tizzy a few days ago. But still. Some things were best left unseen.

Or thought about.

“And you, Gran, are a dirty old lady.”

Her grandmother swatted in her general direction, flinging water and Palmolive suds across the floor. She had a hot date later, apparently, so was all decked out in a bright purple pantsuit and the diamond studs Grampa had given her for her fiftieth birthday, her glistening white hair appropriately poufed for the occasion.

“I’ll take dirty over dead any day, believe me.”

“Does what’s-his-name know this?”

“Thomas. And if he doesn’t—” she turned, her pale blue eyes twinkling behind her trifocal lenses as she dried her hands on a dish towel “—he’ll soon find out.”

“You hussy.”

“Damn straight,” Gran said, neatly folding the towel before hanging it back up, then carrying her own tea over to sit for a few minutes before she left. Every Saturday, come hell or hurricane, they had lunch—a tradition they’d started when Lauren was in kindergarten, only broken during those years she lived in New York. This time was theirs...and Laurel wasn’t sure which one enjoyed it more.

Despite Gran’s oft-verbalized discomfort with Laurel’s decision to be a single mother. Not because her grandmother was a prude—obviously—but because—