French Fried Read online

  I’d barely had a chance to let the thought register when something pinged against the pavement around me. A few somethings, in fact. It wasn’t until then that I realized Muriel and Ben were tossing hard candy wrapped in bright red paper.

  “Red-hot?”

  The question stroked my ear, and I didn’t have to turn around to know who’d asked it. But then, the temperature out there on the sidewalk shot up a couple dozen degrees and the sun, pleasantly warm before, suddenly felt as if it were scorching my cheeks. I turned, anyway, only too aware that when I did, I’d find myself face-to-face with—and lips dangerously close to—Declan Fury.

  I was never really sure how I managed to smile when Declan was around. I mean, what with feeling as if I needed to struggle to catch my breath. Smile, I did, though, in that oh-so-California way designed to tell him that the San Andreas might shake, rattle, and roll me, but he never would.

  “They’re not Red Hots,” I said, with a look at the candy he dangled in front of me.”Those are small and cinnamony. These are—”

  “Sweet and tempting.” He held one of the wrapped candies so close to my nose, I had to cross my eyes to see it. “Like me.”

  The tempting part was right.

  The sweet . . . I wasn’t so sure. But then, Declan had a reputation around town, and not just when it came to women. See, while he was technically the manager of Bronntanas, the gift shop everyone simply called the Irish store because they could never remember the real name of it, he was also an attorney. And not just any attorney. In the months since I’d worked at the Terminal and listened to our patrons chat and gossip and discuss all things Hubbard, I’d learned that Declan had one client and one alone—his huge family. Rumor was, his uncle Pat was involved in the local mob and that Declan’s role in the family business was to keep each and every one of his relatives far away from trouble and out of jail.

  Having grown up in the foster system, I can’t say I know a whole lot about families. I can say that having met Declan’s father, his mother, his assorted brothers and sisters and in-laws along with a variety of nieces and nephews and cousins . . . well, I can’t imagine it was an easy task.

  As for the rumors . . . like talk of Rocky’s excessive drinking and Rocky being crazy, I wasn’t about to believe what I didn’t see with my own eyes, and so far, the only thing I’d seen was that Declan was as delicious as any guy I’d ever met, far more interesting than the run-of-the-mill Hubbardite, and twice as tempting as any hard candy in this or any other parade.

  And I wasn’t going there.

  The reason was simple—I had no desire of starting up a relationship with a guy as family centered, reliable, and just plain nice as Declan.

  Not when I had no intention of sticking around.

  “Hey, it’s not the apple in the Garden of Eden!” Declan bumped my nose with the wrapped candy. “Come on, give it a go.”

  I plucked the candy from his hand and was rewarded with a thousand-watt smile that crinkled the corners of his gray eyes.

  “Some parade, huh?”

  A fire truck was just passing by, screeching its siren, and I pressed my hands to my ears and waited for the worst of the racket to simmer down.

  “Some parade,” I said.

  For reasons that always escape me, Declan isn’t nearly as impressed by my Hollywood background as the rest of the known Hubbard universe. But then, maybe he’s caught on to how my career as a personal chef ended badly when Meghan Cohan accused me of leaking information to the media about her teenage son’s drug addiction.

  Just for the record, I didn’t do it.

  Just for the record, Meghan wasn’t the type who made those sorts of distinctions.

  I was out on my True Religion jeans–covered butt, at loose ends. Meghan, no slouch when it comes to knowing the cream of society, the up-and-comers, and the just plain powerful, poisoned the pool of potential employers and that left me no place to go but Sophie’s Terminal at the Tracks.

  Did I sigh just thinking about it?

  I guess so, because Declan’s brows rose a smidgen closer to his dark, always tousled hair.

  He glanced to where Rocky was watching the parade with rapt attention, then back toward the Taco Bell, and I got the message.

  I stepped to the back of the crowd with him.

  “Some parade,” I said because really, when you’re in the middle of Nowhere, USA, watching elementary school kids troop by dressed like little Statues of Liberty, there’s really not much else you can say.

  Apparently, Declan didn’t have that problem. “So is it true?” he asked. “Last night at the bookstore, did Rocky really—”

  “Even you?” I propped my fists on my hips. “Can’t you just cut the poor woman a break? Obviously, something was bothering her.”

  “And obviously . . .” Since I guess it wasn’t so obvious after all, Declan pinned me with a look. “I wasn’t going to criticize. I’m just concerned, that’s all.”

  Of course he was. If there was one thing I’d learned about Declan in my months of working across the street from him, it was that once he made a friend, he took that person under his wing and was just as loyal and just as unwavering and just as gosh-darned stubborn about what he could do for that person as he was when it came to his own family. And just for the record, that was plenty loyal, absolutely unwavering, and as gosh-darned stubborn as any person I’d ever met.

  I was a case in point.

  See, though I was still grappling with how I felt about him, Declan had decided early on that I was his friend. Just as early, he made it clear that he was all set to take that friendship to the next level. Sexual tension, sexual attraction, and heated exchanges (not the angry kind) aside, he’d helped me solve the murder of a man whose body was found at the Terminal the day I arrived in Ohio.

  And none of that friendship or heat mattered, I reminded myself, since I wasn’t planning on staying around.

  Then again, Declan had also helped me organize our first ethnic food extravaganza (yes, it was Irish food), going so far as to share family recipes and even members of his family, who showed up at the Terminal to entertain the crowds with rollicking Irish folk music.

  And that didn’t matter, either. I wasn’t staying.

  I let go a long sigh that was lost in the noise of the police cars that rolled by with their light bars flashing and their sirens whooping.

  “Rocky lost it last night,” I said, sidestepping a group of teenage guys who walked out of Taco Bell with bags full of food. “She started reading the book and then she started talking about her friend Marie back in France and then . . .” I shrugged inside my denim jacket because I couldn’t explain and I didn’t understand and it was impossible to put it all into words, anyway. “That’s when she accused Aurore Brisson of stealing Yesterday’s Passion.”

  From where we were standing, Declan had a perfect view of Sophie and Rocky. Their backs were to us, but I could see that Sophie was waving like mad at the cops as they went by. Rocky was looking farther up the street, toward the kids and the cars and the couple of rudimentary floats that had already passed by.

  “That’s not like her at all,” Declan said.

  “And she was wearing sneakers,” I added, and to his credit, he didn’t ask what the heck that had to do with anything and just took my word for it that it confirmed what he said.

  “Sophie says it’s because Rocky’s speaking at the peace symposium and she’s nervous about it,” I told Declan. “She might be right.”

  “Maybe.”

  It wasn’t what he said that—let’s face it—was just about as unrevealing as anything out of the mouth of an attorney could be.

  It was the way he said it.

  “What?” I asked Declan. “You know something’s going on.”

  “Did I say that?”

  I stepped back, my weight against one
foot, and refused to look away from him, even when some politician with a better pitching arm than Muriel Ross beaned me with a butterscotch. “You didn’t have to say it. Come on, Declan, share. Sophie’s worried about Rocky. If you know something’s going on—”

  “Lawyer-client confidentiality,” he said.

  Which didn’t exactly convince me.

  “Rocky’s not a client. You don’t have any other clients except your family.”

  He had the nerve to grin. “Sometimes I make an exception.”

  “So Rocky is your client! And she’s having legal problems? That would explain why she’s acting so strange.”

  “It might. If I said she was a client. And if I told you she had legal problems. Which I didn’t. Which I couldn’t. You know, on account of—”

  “Lawyer-client confidentiality.”

  We finished the sentence together, our voices blending and overlapping with the unmusical notes of a polka band that oompahed by, accordions gleaming in the afternoon sunlight.

  Declan was as exasperating as every other lawyer in the world, and my glare should have told him so, but all it did was make him look more smug than ever.

  “Well, if you’re going to be cryptic, I can’t help you. You want to know what happened with Rocky last night, but you’re not willing to tell me anything that you know. Rocky caused a scene. That’s no secret. Whatever the reason—”

  “Let’s just hope it doesn’t happen again.” Declan pointed toward the street, where a champagne-colored convertible was just going by with Aurore Brisson in it, acknowledging the crowd, her arm as stiff as her spine, her hand barely moving.

  I knew the exact moment she caught sight of Rocky over there on the curb because Aurore’s breath caught and her cheeks puffed. She held her head very high and very steady but she couldn’t control her expression nearly fast enough. There it was for all the world to see: the narrowed eyes, the clamped lips, the little tremor that raced along her jawline and caused her to tremble. Rocky may have been talking crazy over at the Book Nook, and she certainly never explained herself, but Aurore Brisson didn’t care. Rocky was an embarrassment, an embarrassment who’d taken the spotlight off Aurore Brisson, and she hated Rocky Arnaud for it.

  My mind raced and took my imagination along with it and automatically, my gaze pivoted to Rocky. I half expected to see her charge at the French author, and when I saw instead that she was focused on the grandstand that had been erected in the middle of the street fifty yards ahead of where she stood, I let go a shaky breath of relief. The marching band was poised around the grandstand, stepping in place to the beat of “America the Beautiful.” The politicians and the wannabe politicians were clambering up the steps of the grandstand, still waving for all they were worth. The elementary kids in so many aluminum foil Statue of Liberty crowns were lined up on either side of the street, ready to welcome the town’s guest of honor.

  He arrived in a red car decked out with blue and white streamers, a nice-looking middle-aged man with dark hair and a neatly trimmed beard.

  “Andrew MacLain,” Declan yelled into my ear, because I guess I wasn’t supposed to be able to remember. But I did. Anyone who’d seen a Hubbard newspaper in the last month, listened to a Hubbard radio broadcast, or caught the news on the local Youngstown station knew about Andrew MacLain.

  Art historian. Museum curator. The expert on the Statue of Liberty. Emphasis on the the.

  As if he had to prove it, MacLain waved to the crowd with one hand while with the other, he held up the coffee table book about the statue he’d authored in a hey, look at me, I wrote a book sort of way.

  His car slowed just as it approached where Sophie and Rocky waited, and I watched Rocky swing her gaze from the grandstand to the man who was The Man when it came to the Statue. He’d be the guest of honor at the night’s fireworks extravaganza, and the next day MacLain would speak to a standing room only crowd at the library.

  Hey, it was Hubbard and there’s not all that much to do on Sundays.

  Rocky had already bought the book; she’d stopped at the Terminal the afternoon she picked it up at the Book Nook, and I knew she was excited about the talk and the stellar reputation of the man who was giving it. Though she was in the front row, I saw her stand on tiptoe as if that somehow would allow her a better look at Andrew MacLain.

  Just as quickly, she settled herself, and again her gaze swiveled to the grandstand, then back again to MacLain.

  Sophie whispered something in her ear and Rocky flinched.

  Declan was looking where I was looking and he saw what I saw. That was a good thing—it meant I didn’t have to explain when I said, “I’d better get over there and see what’s going on.”

  I left Declan somewhere behind me in the crowd when I inched my way to the curb.

  By the time I got there, MacLain’s car was already stopped at the grandstand and the historian—book still raised, his arm must have been getting tired—was just getting out.

  “So?” I wound an arm through Rocky’s and made sure to keep my voice light. “What do you think? Does he look like the kind of guy who knows everything there is to know about the Statue of Liberty?”

  “He looks . . .” When Rocky turned away from the grandstand, her eyes were wide and her face was pale. “He looks . . . exactly . . . he looks exactly like I thought he would look,” she said. She untangled her arm from mine and she didn’t bother trying to negotiate her way through the crowd. Rocky took off running down the middle of the street, away from the grandstand and the parade and the Statue of Liberty expert, as if her life depended on it.

  Chapter 3

  By the time the parade was over and we got back to the Terminal, there was a message waiting for us on voice mail.

  “Sophie . . . Laurel . . .” Rocky’s voice was tight and high-pitched, as if she couldn’t catch her breath. “I’m sorry I ran out on you like that. I just . . .” She cleared her throat. “What with thinking about the Statue of Liberty and history and . . . well, it all just overwhelmed me and I had to get out of there. I hope you understand. I know you do. You two . . .” Her voice caught. “You’re good friends and I’m grateful to have you in my life. I’ll see you tonight at the fireworks show. I promise! I’ll be there . . . how do you say it? With bells on!”

  Only she wasn’t.

  Earlier in the week, we’d told Rocky we’d meet her that night near the entrance to Harding Park, and when she didn’t show and over by the baseball fields the mayor launched into the first of the night’s speeches, we figured we’d missed her and she’d already settled herself somewhere in the crowd. I set up the folding chair we’d brought along for Sophie and had a look around.

  No Rocky. Not anywhere.

  But I did bump into Declan.

  “You’re alone? The family’s over there . . .” He tipped his head in the direction of what looked to me to be a sea of folding chairs, blankets, and baby strollers that had been set up near the playground on one end of the park, close enough to where the fireworks would be shot off to give the Fury family ringside seats, and just far enough away to keep the littlest kids from being startled by the noise. When I glanced that way, at least a dozen people waved. Ellen, his mother, always looked just a tad too eager to see me, and I wondered if it was because her youngest child was in his midthirties and she saw his possibilities for love and romance passing him by.

  I hated to be the one to tell her that if she was looking for me to be the solution to the problem, she was looking in the wrong place.

  Her husband, Malachi, was a big man with a dark, bristling beard and the same sort of flyaway hair that always made Declan look as if he were going someplace in a hurry or just finishing up with something he shouldn’t have been doing. Malachi waved, too, but his smile wasn’t as open or as accepting as Ellen’s.

  I wasn’t surprised.

  Declan was one of a long
line of Travellers, those Irish who are sometimes mistakenly thought of as Gypsies, and though he’d told me his family had been what he called settled for a couple of generations, there were still countless aunts and uncles and cousins who maintained the age-old lifestyle, hunkering down in one place for the winter, then traveling in the warm months in search of work. There were legends that claimed that the Travellers were descended from Irish bards who’d once roamed the countryside from castle to castle, entertaining lords and ladies with stories and song.

  I couldn’t say if that was true.

  I did know that like those bards of old must have, Declan had a honeyed tongue and a way of telling a story that made me feel as if I’d been hypnotized, hanging on every word. Like the rest of his family (and believe me, there were a lot of them), he was fiercely loyal, implicitly devoted, and faithful to a fault. This branch of the Fury clan may have been settled for sixty years, but old habits die hard and I knew that no matter how welcoming Ellen might be, Malachi was still having a hard time accepting an outsider. Especially one from California.

  I’m not complaining. I’d grown up in foster care, and until I was taken in by Sophie’s sister, Nina, when I was fourteen, I’d had too many homes to count. Family was not something I understood, or something I felt comfortable with. Declan’s family overwhelmed me.

  Next to Malachi sat Claire and Bridget, Declan’s sisters, and they looked happy enough to see me, as did his brother Brian and his wife, Nora, who were nearby. As for the assorted nieces and nephews who jumped up and down to get my attention and called out things like, “Uncle Declan has a girlfriend,” I smiled and waved and turned away as quickly as I could rather than handle the tsunami of attention. While I was at it, I scanned the chairs set up all around them.

  There was no sign of Rocky.

  “The fireworks are going to start in a couple of minutes,” Declan said, and just as he did, the mayor stepped back up to the microphone.