Pucker Up by Valerie Seimas Page A

demolishes
things.  He doesn’t get hammered.”
    “Are
you trying to use every euphemism for drunk that you know in this
conversation?”
    “Ha
ha.  I’m totally serious, Mel.  I’m worried.”
    Melody’s
expression sobered.  “I know.”
    The
line was quiet for a moment, both of them lost in thought.  “Why would he buy
you snow tires?!”  Harmony burst out first.
    Her
sister shrugged.  “I don’t know.  We finished lunch, and he asked how my car
was.  I told him everything was fine, but he just kept pushing it.  It was like
he was running down a list of all the things that might be wrong with it, like
he wanted there to be something he could fix.”
    A
wide smile appeared on Harmony’s face.  “I knew it!”
    “What?”
    She
rolled her eyes.  “Aren’t you supposed to be the logical one?  Shouldn’t you
know what Uncle Dust wanting to fix things means?”
    Melody
looked startled.  “You’re right.  I can’t believe I missed that.”
    “Well,
I’ll cut you some slack.  You haven’t asked for a bedtime story in years, Miss
College.  I, on the other hand, channel my childhood way more often.”
    “He
always wants to fix things after he tells us about Ally.”
    Harmony
smiled.  “ Ally and the Truly Remarkable Happily Ever After .  God, he was
bad at bedtime stories the first time he told us that.”
    “I’m
pretty sure he’d never told one before.”                         
    The
sisters shared a look, both of them remembering the same thing.  Just a month
after their mother died, still unable to sleep through the night in their new
home, their new uncle, the one who liked to growl a lot, took them upstairs to
tuck them into bed so they wouldn’t see Peter crying.  He tried to get them to
sleep and ended up with a story none of them would ever forget.
    “He
cried that first time,” Melody said.  “Never did it again though, no matter how
many times we made him tell it.”
    “Which
is why we always thought the girl was real.”
    “So
what are we saying?”  Melody asked.
    “Something
must of reminded him of Ally when he was visiting you.  Reminded him hard.  Maybe
Ally looked like your idol Madison Duncan?”
    Melody
rolled her eyes.  “Wouldn’t we have noticed if he squirmed every time we made
him watch one of her movies?”
    “You’re
right.  More likely she looked like Eric.”
    Melody
laughed.  “Now you’re reaching.  Mystery not going to get solved tonight.”
    “You’re
right again.  Uncle Dust could totally land a hottie.”
    “He’d
have to growl a whole lot less.”
    “Maybe
he used to.”
    Faith
stood in the kitchen and stared at the plate in the sink, her mind still too
jumbled to think anything even resembling straight.  Things had been fuzzy and
incoherent since Jackson dropped his bombshell.  Her fretful night of sleep
hadn’t helped at all.  She was completely useless now – a software update that
crashed all the servers.  Where was she supposed to go from here?
    She
was married.  She was someone’s wife.  This was not the way she saw herself
when she looked in the mirror.  She was a single, carefree pop singer.  The
most connection she had to another living thing was her cat, and she outsourced
most of Citrus’ care to people that didn’t wander for a living.  How the hell
was she supposed to be part of a unit now?
    Which
didn’t even take into account who she was paired up with.  Only the most
dangerous guy she knew.  Not because he was deadly with a weapon; he was deadly
to her sanity.  That rainy day she’d left and vowed never to go back; the part
of her that wanted a family and a brooding man and a lemon tree, that died. 
She’d had to bury it, or she’d never been able to get up off the floor.  Now
she was friendly and encouraging, optimistic and dedicated, sunshine and
unicorns; she dealt with the other angrier things when she couldn’t ignore them,
a steam kettle that whistled to