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Chapter 1
Rose dragged the roll of tape across the top of another box. “Happy fortieth to me. Every woman wants to pack up what is left of her life on her birthday. Hallmark has an entire section of cards devoted to birthday packing. They are between the ‘Oh, I forgot it was your birthday’ and ‘What was your name again?’ sections.”
Plain brown boxes surrounded her. It is incredibly humbling to see the last twenty years of her life stuffed into a few dozen boxes and stacked in an almost empty room. The real estate sign in the yard had a shiny sold sticker on it. The sale had been surprisingly quick and simple for such a large house. The paperwork was done through email. If only the divorce paperwork were that simple. Such is life, as her granny used to say. It was time to move on. In two days another family’s excited voices would echo off the walls.
Her new apartment was a shoe box compared to this place. Dusting furniture no one ever sat on was depressing. There was no room for depression at her new address. The house was too big for the two of them from the start. Actually, one person. She didn’t need a four bedroom, three bath house with an overpriced security system. Who needed a security system with every feature under the sun? What did she need to be protected from, the mailman? It was no longer her problem.
Wiping the sweat off her brow, she scanned the contents of what was once her living room. There were a few boxes with Lucas’ name on them. Lord only knew if he was coming to get them. Raising her brother had been a challenge. A challenge like going for a little boat ride in the middle of a hurricane is a challenge. If there was trouble within a hundred miles, Rose could safely assume Lucas was planted firmly in the middle of i.
His panache for trouble, a charming grin, and slow southern drawl came from their father. Lucas had the uncanny ability to find some of the worst people on the planet. Then he did everything in his power to irritate them. It was the one thing she wished didn’t end up being like father like son. In the debate of nature versus nurture, genetics won on that one.
They all shared the same blonde hair and blue eyes, but that was where the similarities stopped. Rose was steady and reliable. The only thing that got her in trouble was her quick mouth and a sense of humor not everyone understood. Hurt feelings, confusion, and misunderstandings were her kind of trouble.
The same could not be said for her father or her brother. With an encyclopedia-sized criminal record under her father’s name, it was no wonder her mother ran when she had the chance. The last thing her father did before he died was deliver Lucas to her doorstep. It was a shock to find out she had a six-year-old half brother at the age of twenty-four, but it never stopped her from raising him the way she wished she had been.
“Lot of good that did me,” she muttered to herself as she did one last check of the upstairs. Room after room was empty. “I guess I should feel glad I was never attached to this house. Kind of hard to get attached when there was nothing here I wanted.”
Running her hand down the ornately carved banister brought a sense of longing for what could have been. Rose made her way down the stairs, calculating how much more work she had to do before she could call it a day.
His boxes were stacked in the dining room. She wasn’t sure when Warren was coming to pick his things up or if he was sending someone from his crew to get them. It would probably be Brooks. Warren’s best friend picked up the slack for her soon-to-be ex-husband. It didn’t matter who got Warren’s belongings. As long as they were gone before the new owner moved in, who carried them out the door was irrelevant.
The stuff she planned to give away sat in the den, waiting for the truck to come. Cardboard boxes littered the rooms signaling the end of their life together. Rose knew she was supposed to feel sad. Sad would come eventually. The only thing she could bring herself to feel was tired. Tired of fighting to be a priority. Tired of dates and vacations being postponed at the last minute because work called. Tired of feeling like the housekeeper instead of his wife. All for what, a few extra zeros in their bank account? She would give it all up in a heartbeat if it meant Warren would magically remember she had a pulse.
Warren had been a good husband until he wasn’t. There was romance in the beginning. It was more than romance. It was an all-consuming need that burned between them. Then life happened. Job promotions meant more responsibility and more time away from home doing God only knew what. Being ignored over the last year made the decision easy.
She wasn’t an unreasonable woman. She knew he had to work. However, when she could count on one hand how many times she saw him in a month and had fingers left over, it was too much. Active duty military did that, not private sector security. She lived through that when he was deployed shortly after they were married. Those times were different. Knowing he was at the office or on a job close enough to stop by, yet chose not to, made her feel like his housekeeper. Repeatedly being so close but so far away was the breaking point.
Rose didn’t believe for a second that the world would quit turning if Warren came home once a week for dinner. There was always a client who needed his undivided attention. Who knew working a security gig would turn into the mess they were living in now? Were there that many wealthy people who needed someone to watch over them? Apparently, there was, or Warren wouldn’t be working so much.
She wished she could say there was another woman, but there wasn’t. The culprit was time. Time and distance. The job required more and more of his focus until he was gone for weeks at a time. They simply grew apart and into people neither one knew anymore.
“And now here we are, twenty years of marriage divided into two rooms. I need a drink.”
Rose’s bare feet padded silently across the hardwoods into the kitchen. It was the last room she had to tackle. She was keeping everything. It would take some creativity to get the contents of her kitchen to fit into her new apartment. That was a problem for later.
Opening the fridge, she took out the last beer. The cool air spilling out of the fridge felt heavenly. Standing with the door open, soaking up as much of it as she could. The Texas summer sun was brutal today. Even with the air conditioner running constantly, it was hard to keep the house cool.
Before she could twist the top off the bottle, the tones that made her eye twitch interrupted her moment of bliss. Whoever thought harp music was a suitable doorbell needed serious therapy. Nothing was heavenly about it. Reluctantly placing her last beer back on the shelf, Rose shut the fridge and went to see who was at the door.
“I hope it is the truck I’m waiting on.” Rose stopped with her hand on the doorknob. “Please let it be no one I know. Let it be the junk guys, the wrong address, or an attorney for a distant relative that died and left me a secluded cabin in the middle of nowhere.”
A fist banging on the other side had Rose scowling in annoyance.
“Listen up, asshat,” she rumbled, swinging the door open. “If you damage my door, I will be forced to damage your ass.”
“Your sister has more balls than you do, kid.”
Rose bit back a groan when she saw two men holding up her brother on her front porch. Lucas was barely able to stand on his own. Both his eyes were blackened and swelling. His nose sat at an odd angle. Blood dripped from each nostril. The trail of blood from his nose joined the one from the split in his bottom lip. Red goo ran down his chin and dripped onto his shirt. It didn’t take a genius to figure out he was in trouble. Again.
“Damn it, Lucas.”
“So, she does know you.” The man behind the two goons holding her brother chuckled. “Now it is time to see exactly how much she likes you.”
“Rosey, please,” Lucas blubbered.
“What did he do?”
“You sure you want to discuss this on the front porch where all your neighbors can see?”
