Page 62 of Love Me Sweet

“Sounds dangerous and incredibly fun.” Sylvie couldn’t keep the smile from her voice.

“Tommy and I loved that tree.”

Tommy.Thomas. The brother who’d died several years earlier. Sylvie tried to piece together the few things that Andrew had said about him. He’d been older and involved with the family business. He’d died in a car accident on the way to a Red Sox game. Never married and no children. It wasn’t much, she realized.

“Did the Whitakers mind you were climbing their tree?”

He chuckled. “You’d think, because of liability and all that, but they didn’t. In the summer, Mrs. Whitaker--her given name was Fern--would bring out a silver tray of cookies and lemonade for us. Climbing, she’d say, was hard work.”

Impulsively Sylvie reached over and took his hand, lacing her fingers through his. She hoped the touch comforted him as much as it comforted her. “She sounds like a wonderful woman.”

“She was.” Affection filled his voice. “Tommy used to call her Granny Whitaker. I never had the guts.”

“I think I’d have liked Thomas.”

The hand she held tightened.

“You probably would have, everyone did.”

“What was he like?” She kept her tone easy, conversational as the darkness enveloped them in a warm cocoon.

“I’d say like my father, but knowing how you feel about him, that might give you the wrong impression.” Andrew chuckled. “But it’s true. Thomas was my father.”

“I can’t see your father climbing trees.”

“People grow up.” Andrew’s tone gave nothing away. “Sometimes, often, they lose that adventurous spirit.”

“Is that what happened to your brother?”

“Maybe. Probably,” Andrew added after a moment. “He loved the company, had been groomed to be my father’s successor. It was a perfect fit. Like my dad, he was a work-a-holic.”

“At least he took time out for baseball.”

Sylvie was unprepared for the oath that Andrew expelled and for the strained silence that followed.

Andrew turned off the highway toward Spring Gulch. It might have been wise to simply let the topic drop. Sylvie had never thought of herself as particularly wise.

“Does his death have something to do with baseball?” she asked. “I mean I know he was on his way to a game when he died but—”

“He was on his way to the game because I hounded him into going.” Andrew’s voice, low and guttural and filled with pain, tore at Sylvie’s heartstrings. “I was concerned about all the hours he’d been working. I pushed and prodded until he agreed to meet me at Fenway. If I hadn’t, he’d have been safe at the office, working.”

“You don’t know that. What happened to him was an accident. He could have been in an accident on the way home, or another day when he was going to the office.” The hand he’d released, now gripped his arm. “Inviting him to go to a game with you, hounding him to go to the game with you, doesn’t make you responsible.”

“Maybe not,” he said after a long moment, “but I wish things had been different.”

They’d reached the house that Sylvie had started to regard as ‘home’ and pulled into the garage. A thought occurred to her as they stepped inside the house.

“Is taking the COO position some kind of penance?”

He didn’t answer, just tossed his keys on the side table by the door and continued on into his bedroom. Several minutes later she heard the shower spray.

Sylvie stared down the hallway, unsure what to do. She didn’t have any experience with families. She wasn’t particularly good at interpersonal relationships. Her MO in the past had been to pull back or to run when things got sticky.

But she sensed even if he didn’t realize it, Andrew needed her tonight.

Returning to her own room, she got ready for bed. By the time she finished, the room next door was silent and dark.

Maybe he was asleep, she thought for a second, but knew in her heart that was only wishful thinking.

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