Steadfast (True North #2), Page 3

  Slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, he slid past me and into the auditorium. I closed the door, all huffy, and the new breeze chased another ten programs off their metal chairs.

  He surveyed the mess with a frown. “You need a hand?”

  Did I? Probably. But I wasn’t going to ask. Jude made me feel jumpy. “I got it,” I said, diving toward the nearest row of chairs, plopping programs onto the empty ones as if my final grade depended on it.

  Where I was frantic, Jude moved like a cat—all confidence and no hurry. That sleek body slid into the row where I’d begun. He bent over, showing off a very fine ass, plucking programs off the floor and putting them back onto the seats.

  I watched him out of the corner of my eye, trying not to be obvious about it.

  He paused to glance at the front of a program. “A band concert? I didn’t know you were in the band.”

  “I’m not.” My brain snagged on the notion that Jude had noticed me. Sort of. Well, noticed the band and my absence in it. I filed that away to worry about later.

  “Then why is this your problem?” he asked, holding up the program.

  “Good question,” I grumbled. “If you want something done by someone who never complains, I guess you ask a goody-goody choir girl.”

  “Huh,” Jude said, slowly placing another program on a seat. “Thing is, I’m not convinced you’re as good a girl as everyone thinks.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said immediately. Because I was exactly as good as everyone thought. And I was really freaking sick of it.

  He wasn’t looking at me, so I almost missed his next words. “Naw. I saw you throw away that note on Mr. H’s desk.”

  My hand froze on the next folding chair. I didn’t think anyone had seen me do that. “Mr. H is a dick,” I said quickly. It was true, too. The teacher had snatched that note from a girl in our geometry class who he always picked on. She’d turned red when he’d dropped it on his desk, so I knew the contents would embarrass her.

  When I’d gotten up to sharpen my pencil, Mr. H had been at the other end of the room, helping a basketball player with his homework. With a single flick of my finger I’d sent the note into Mr. H’s garbage bin as I passed by.

  Jude gave me the hundred-watt smile again. “See? Not such a good girl.”

  The idea that he thought so made me feel prickly hot. And not in a bad way.

  For two months after that odd little exchange, we had no more interaction. But whenever he entered a room, my face felt hot and the back of my neck tingled with awareness.

  Jude ignored me until one afternoon when I was alone in one of the little practice rooms off the music wing. I was working on a vocal piece for the Vermont All State Competition, and I really wanted to win. I’d had the foolish idea that my father would take my musical ambition more seriously if I could demonstrate that I had potential. I was preparing “Green Finch and Linnet Bird” from Sweeney Todd, because it showed off my soprano range.

  I’d sung it a million times already, and I knew the piece well. But my delivery was unsatisfying, and I couldn’t figure out why. A change of key hadn’t helped, either. I was hitting the creative wall and frustrated as hell over it. I remember slapping my finger down on the iPod wheel to stop the music, then yelling “FUUUUCCCCCCKKKK” at the top of my lungs.

  It wasn’t like me. I didn’t even know where that obscenity came from. It was probably the first f-bomb I’d ever said out loud.

  From the other side of the practice room door came laughter. I jerked the door open, wondering who had heard.

  When I popped my head outside, I saw Jude leaning against the hallway wall, grinning at me. “Problem?” he asked in that smoky voice.

  I looked both ways down the hall before answering him. “Just frustrated.”

  “Reeeeeally,” he said, his tone full of suggestion. “Maybe I can help with that.”

  I flushed immediately because he’d almost made a sexual reference. And Jude exuded sex, which was a subject I knew nothing about. “I doubt it, unless you’re a vocal performance expert.”

  He toyed with an unlit cigarette between two fingers. “That’s an awfully frilly song you’re singing in there. Anyone might be frustrated.” He gave me a slow, distracting smile.

  Jude’s quick diagnosis of the problem was annoying, yet it was a frilly song. It required a ton of control and a tight vibrato. But it came out sounding… constricted.

  He was right, damn it.

  “Maybe,” he said, tucking the cigarette into a case in his hand, “the stakes aren’t high enough? The birds are trapped in their little cages. So what? They have brains no bigger than your fingernails. It’s a good-girl song. There’s nowhere to go with it.”

  It stunned me that he’d listened so closely to the lyrics. Because Jude never appeared to listen to anyone. It was part of his too-cool-for-school vibe. I didn’t know what to think about that.

  So I argued with him. “It’s a metaphor, okay? The singer is trapped in her lecherous guardian’s home, pining for freedom. And he wants her body. How are those stakes not enough?”

  Jude rolled his eyes. “See, it is a good-girl song. The frightened virgin singing to the birdies. Nobody could rock that song. Now, if she wanted her guardian, that’s a song I’d like to hear.”

  Whoa. I needed to end this conversation, stat, because I was having trouble holding Jude’s storm-colored gaze. My eyes kept wandering over to check out the smooth curve of his biceps where they emerged from his black T-shirt. I could only see partial tattoos, and I wanted to see the whole picture. “Well.” I cleared my throat. “I don’t think the judges would like your version.”

  He just grinned, training those dark gray eyes on me. And I was staring. Again! “Fine. But what does a bad girl sing at this thing? Whatever it is, you should sing that.”

  I was still staring when he winked and walked away.

  A week later I’d received a “picket fence” score (a line of perfect 1 ratings) singing the very naughty “Defying Gravity” from Wicked. It was a bad-girl song to its very core. I’d taken Jude’s advice, and it had made all the difference.

  Under the conference room table, someone kicked my foot.

  Yanking myself back into the present, I found every face turned in my direction. Beside me, Denny looked pointedly down at the caseload folder in front of me.

  With my face burning, I flipped the cover open. “Sorry,” I stammered. “Last week we closed four cases and got seven new ones for a caseload gain of three. One of those is a re-admit, which falls to Lisa. Two are brand new. One of the new cases is pediatric.”

  Our director nodded from the end of the table. “Tell me about the pediatric case.”

  Luckily, I knew the details without looking. “Eighteen-month-old girl recently diagnosed with profound hearing loss.”

  “How does it take parents so long to figure that out?” Denny wondered aloud.

  I’d met this family, and I had a theory. “This is a single mother who lives with her parents. She seems like an awesome mom, honestly.” Even though she was only nineteen, I’d been impressed with her devotion. “She’s young, and this is her first child. So she didn’t have a lot of basis for comparison. Also, she spends so much time with her baby, I think she’s just really used to nonverbal communication. After the baby missed some speech milestones, the pediatrician started asking questions.”

  “Sophie, would you like to be the primary?” my director asked.

  “I’d love to,” I said quickly. It was a good sign that he’d asked me to take the file. And what a great case! Nobody was dead or dying. There was only a cute, happy toddler who happened to be deaf. My role would be to help the family find therapy and services that they could afford.

  He nodded at me. “Very well. Come to me with any snags. And you’ll give us an update at next week’s meeting.”

  “Yes, sir.” Even after my years with Jude, my old good-girl habits were still there, shimmering just below the surfac
e. And sometimes they were really fucking useful.

  We adjourned, and I went back to my desk determined not to slide back into a Jude-induced panic. But I was still unsettled. I must have been, or else I wouldn’t have made the mistake I made next.

  “Sophie, are you really okay?” Denny stood over my desk, concern in his eyes.

  I avoided his chocolate gaze. “Yep. Promise.” If I told him who I’d seen this morning, he’d guess where my head was right now. But I didn’t want sympathy, and I most certainly did not want to talk about it. The only way to survive living in a small town with Jude was to keep my own counsel.

  “How about you prove it by going bowling with me tomorrow night.”

  “Bowling? Are you a good bowler?” I looked up then and saw all the usual signs—nervous eyes and a shy, hopeful smile.

  Fuck.

  “I’m a terrible bowler,” he said quietly. “But that just makes it more fun.”

  Aw. I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. But we were friends. And it was just bowling. “Sure,” I said, knowing it was a bad idea.

  The way his face lit up when I said yes made me feel guilty already. “Awesome. I’ll pick you up at seven.” Then he ran off before I could change my mind. Smart man.

  I tossed my empty latte cup in the trash and leaned back in my office chair. Damn you, Jude Nickel. See what you made me do?

  Chapter Three

  Sophie

  Internal DJ Tuned to: “Crazy” by Aerosmith

  Thursday, I rushed home to make lasagna for dinner. That way there’d be leftovers, and I’d enjoy the fruits of my labors even though I wasn’t dining with my parents tonight. Denny had texted me earlier asking if we couldn’t make it 6:30 instead, so we could have dinner at Max’s Tavern before bowling.

  That made it more like a date than I would have wished. But I said yes, because haggling over a half hour only made me more of a bitch.

  I’d removed the lasagna from the oven already, but it was still a volcanic temperature. So I dashed into the dining room to set the table. Earlier I’d asked my mother to handle that, but she hadn’t bothered. Big surprise.

  Mom wandered into the dining room just as I counted the napkins out of the hutch. I had to stop myself at three. Even three years later, I was regularly tempted to add one for Gavin. I used to mention things like this to my mom, hoping that talking openly would make it easier for her to move past her grief.

  It didn’t. And tonight I didn’t need to start her on a weeping jag right before it was time for me to run out of the house. “Here,” I said, handing her the napkins. “What shall I pour you to drink?”

  She took the napkins, but ignored the question.

  Holding in my millionth sigh, I went into the kitchen to pour her a glass of iced tea and my father a glass of wine. I poured an inch of wine for myself, too, before setting everything on the table.

  My father came downstairs just as I began cutting the lasagna into squares. How do men do that, anyway? It takes a special kind of skill to show up precisely when all the work is finished.

  “Evening, Sophie,” he said, taking his place at the head of the table. Although he hadn’t been in the military for twenty years, he still had the haircut and the bearing. And a stiff greeting was the only kind I ever got from my father. Three years later, I was still being punished for my role in Gavin’s demise.

  “Evening,” I murmured, sitting down to only a nip of wine.

  “You’re not eating?” he set a piece of lasagna on mom’s plate and then eyed the empty space in front of me.

  “I have a date.”

  My father’s body went rigid. “With who?”

  Wow. Watch Daddy panic. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed that Jude was back in town. Just to fuck with him, I waited a beat too long to answer, while his eyes bored into mine. “Denny from the hospital,” I said casually. Honestly, it was hard not to crack a smile. Because the look on his face was priceless.

  “That had better be true,” he said, setting down the serving spoon.

  “Why would I lie?” I asked softly.

  “Why did you used to?” he returned.

  Well, touché. Score a point for Dad. In high school I’d done a lot of sneaking around with Jude, and more than once I’d been caught in my lies.

  Jude and I had started up shortly after our discussion about music outside the practice rooms. One rainy October day he offered me a ride in his car. Instead of driving me home, he’d brought me to a coffee house in the next town. For three hours, my hands sweat with nerves while he told me funny stories about learning to fix cars. I laughed too loudly about the time he’d left a tire iron on the roof of somebody’s car and had to cruise around the neighborhood until he found the car in question so he could get it back.

  Staring into his silver eyes, I attempted to hold up my end of the conversation. His attention was like a laser beam—bright and impossible to ignore.

  When it was time to go, we’d had to run across the rainy parking lot to his car. When the doors were shut, Jude cranked the engine. “The car needs a minute to warm up,” he’d said. “How shall we spend the time?”

  “Thumb wars?” I suggested. I held out a hand to him. (I remember feeling impossibly bold for suggesting this.) I had no experience with boys, because nobody wanted to try anything with the uptight police chief’s daughter.

  So I didn’t see it coming. He grabbed my outstretched hand, then leaned across the gearshift and brushed his lips over mine. “You’re so fucking cute,” he whispered. And then he slanted his mouth right down onto mine and kissed me.

  Still shocked, I let out the least sexy noise in the world—something like “errrf!”

  Apparently, all engines did need a warmup. My first reaction was shock. I could barely believe that Jude Nickel’s mouth was teasing mine. On the first kiss, I could taste the peppermint tea he’d been drinking and feel the scrape of whiskers against my face. But his lips were soft, and when he pressed closer to me, I melted into him. And when he coaxed me into opening up for him, I was just gone. Our first kiss lasted half an hour.

  By the time Jude drove me home, my lips were swollen and bruised. I’d never been kissed like that before. When he pulled up in front of my house, I practically stumbled up the drive. I was late for dinner, with my father peering out the window as I slammed Jude’s car door.

  I was glad of the rain, because my panties were so wet that I’d feared it would show through my jeans. But the rest of me got drenched just from running into the house.

  “Where were you?” my father bellowed when I stepped into the kitchen.

  “Choir practice ran late,” I said.

  It had been my first Jude lie. But not my last.

  “Sophie,” my father brought me into the present and out of my reverie again. I was having a lot of those this week. “Did you know that punk was back in town? Has he tried to contact you?”

  I shook my head. “I only learned it by accident. If you’re so worried, why didn’t you warn me? Seriously. I could have used a heads up.”

  My father grunted. “Because I hoped he wouldn’t stay.”

  “I won’t be seeing him,” I promised. Not that I owed my father anything. But he was easier to live with when he thought you were on board with his wishes. And Jude’s silence had made it perfectly clear that we didn’t know each other anymore.

  “He’s slick,” my father said, serving a portion of lasagna onto his own plate. “He’ll tempt you.”

  My inner seventeen-year-old wanted to roll her eyes. Dad had cast Jude as the serpent in the garden from minute one. After it became obvious that Jude and I were dating, he’d warned me away. My brother had been his ally in this war, ratting me out when he saw Jude and I together.

  “What do you want with that loser?” my brother had asked. “Skinny asshole thinks he’s God’s gift. I could drop him with a single punch.”

  I’d never listened to either of them. Because even though Jude coaxed
me into doing a whole lot of things that would have turned Dad’s hair white, he was a devoted boyfriend. And Jude listened to me, the way my parents never did.

  My senior year had been rocky at home, with my father on a tear all the time. It was the first time in my life when I hadn’t cared what my father thought, and that drove him crazy. Even though I knew that listening to my own heart was important, Dad’s disapproval was still hard on me. It bothered me that he’d always loved Gavin best, because Gavin was the lacrosse jock. My brother wasn’t a nice person, but still our father saw him as the perfect son.

  And that was before Gavin’s death. Now? My father could barely stand to be in the same room with me. Forking lasagna into his mouth, he gave me a familiar warning glare.

  There was a knock on the front door. Denny to the rescue! “Got to go!” I said. My father actually followed me to the door. “Jesus, Dad. I’m almost twenty-three.”

  Ignoring my objections, he swung the door open to reveal Denny standing there in khakis and a turtleneck sweater. He looked like the very model of an acceptable date.

  I pushed past my father, which probably made me look rude. But when your father treats you like a teenager forever, these things happen. “Bye, Dad!” I said at the same moment that Denny opened his mouth to greet my father. Grabbing Denny’s hand, I tugged him off the porch.

  “In a hurry?” Denny muttered, jogging ahead of me to open the car door.

  “Yep. Thanks.” I got in and pulled the door shut.

  He climbed into the driver’s seat. “Did your father just give me the once over?” he laughed. “That’s kind of cute.”

  “No, it really isn’t.”

  “Well at least he cares,” Denny said.

  I didn’t want to argue with Denny. “I guess.”

  He flicked his eyes over to me. “You think he doesn’t?”

  I held in my sigh. “I think he likes reminding me that I have shitty judgment. It was me who brought the Evil One into our midst,” I explained. “He’s never going to forgive me. Every morning I ask myself why I’m still living here. And then my mother does something dotty and I feel guilty enough to make it through another day.”