Page 83 of Hold

“Don’t put yourself out.” Thea could have done a backstroke in the sarcasm.

She got out of the car at Cat’s house with lead feet, gave a shave-and-a-haircut knock on the pocked wooden front door that was as old as the house, and pushed it open. “In the back!” her brother-in-law’s voice called out, and she followed it to the comfortable family room with its ugly squashed chairs and couch and large-screen TV on the wall.

The boys piled onto the couch, where their cousins were playing a computer game. Thea was relieved to see that the game was appropriate for Benji’s age. Antonio was good about that kind of thing. In seconds, they’d forgotten the adults existed. Thea was glad to see it. Jake needed a few hours just to be a regular teenager again.

Antonio, compact, square, and Italian, got out of his seat, abandoning a newspaper, and came over to hug her. “Ciao, cara,” he said.

“Ciao yourself,” she replied. To her nephews she said, “Everyone enjoying your summer? Behaving yourselves?”

“Yes, of course.” Antonio’s dark eyes raked hers. “But someone perhaps has not?”

Here we go. She brought herself to her full height, which was taller than Antonio’s, and opened her mouth, but he smiled. “I am not serious, Thea.”

“How is she?” she asked.

He knew she meant Cat. “She would prefer to hear these things from you. So remember, when she is angry, it is because she loves you.”

“Yeah, well, she must love me a whole lot.”

Antonio smiled indulgently. “It is how she expresses it.”

The man was nuts about her sister and had been for twenty years. Thea wondered what it was like to be able to rely on that kind of devotion.

I’m crazy about you, T.

She sighed. “Better get scratched sooner rather than later.” Antonio didn’t stop her from leaving the room.

Cat wasn’t in the kitchen, the mudroom, the yard, or the formal living room. Thea went up the wide staircase, her hand running lovingly over the old wooden stair rail that had seen four generations of abuse from Fielding children. Cat and Antonio loved this house and had kept it in the family for all their sakes.

Cat had been all the mother she could be to Thea, even when Thea had stolen her thunder by becoming pregnant when Cat was. And when she’d had Benji and hit rock bottom, Cat had been there to pick her up and tell her she was doing the right thing by throwing Gabe out and trying to build a life without him.

She tried to remember all these things as she went to beard Cat in her own den: her bedroom. It was in the corner tower of the house, with a fine 180-degree view of the street from the bay windows. Cat was reading in the rocking chair that had belonged to their grandmother, the chair Thea had nursed Benji in until she moved into the house they’d found for her.

She put her arms around Cat from behind, embracing the chair at the same time. Cat didn’t react at first. Thea hugged harder. “I’m going to squeeze a hello out of you,” she said.

“You’re jamming my shoulder blades into the chair!” Cat yelped. But at least it had gotten her talking. Thea let go and took the other chair, a more modern easy chair their father had loved.

Cat had inherited the same coloring as the rest of them: thick, dark hair, dark-brown eyes, the expressive eyebrows, and, when she felt like it, the giant Fielding smile. Right now, though, she was all about glowering.

Thea felt like a chastened child but ignored it. She was thirty-five and well past being told off by Mother Cat. “Come on, then,” she said. “Have at it.”

“Have at what?” Cat looked out of the window. “I love hearing important details about your life from your children. Why would I want to know before they tell me?”

“I didn’t know how to tell you. Or what to tell you.”

She certainly wasn’t going to tell her about Liam. Sam was one thing. Cat would complicate everything. She’d probably say Thea shouldn’t be dating at all, with the boys so vulnerable. Not that Thea and Liam had dated. They’d just…

Sweated and moaned and held fast to each other and given each other everything… until I took it all away.

“Hey.”

“What?” Crap. Cat had been talking.

Cat scowled. “I said, are you going to tell me now? You must have come up here for some damn reason.”

Thea took a deep breath. “Okay. So he’s back. He wants us back. He has a job he says is permanent. He’s sorry.”

“He’ssorry?” Cat’s voice rose to a squeak.

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