Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria Read online

  I looked back at Nick. He stood stock-still, as if transfixed.

  Dammit! I was about to dump Brett for him. Was he still hung up on his ex-fiancée? Was I about to make a big mistake?

  I couldn’t take it. I had to get out of that office. “Good luck with the dates,” I managed as I bolted from the room, blinking back tears of frustration.

  Just when I thought I had things sorted out they got all screwed up again.

  I’d better move fast or I could lose Nick forever and spend the rest of my life wondering what might have been.

  chapter five

  Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

  Tuesday after work, I stopped by a neighborhood Italian restaurant and picked up two orders of manicotti to take home. I was about to break Brett’s heart. The least I could do was fill his stomach first.

  Despite the delicious smells emanating from the take-out bag, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to eat. My stomach had shrunk into a tight little ball.

  Brett and I had been dating for a few months now, ever since last spring when we’d met at a charity event at the Dallas Arboretum. The firm he worked for had sponsored the event. Brett had taken my ticket and captured my interest. For several months things had seemed nearly perfect. But then Nick came along and got me all discombobulated.

  I greeted my cats as I came through the door with my briefcase in one hand and the bag of food in the other. Henry, my oversized Maine coon, glanced my way from atop the TV cabinet with his usual look of disdain. Anne scampered out from under the couch and followed me to the kitchen, interrogating me all the while. Meow? Meow? Meow?

  I glanced down at her. “You ask too many questions, you know that, Annie girl?” Despite the third degree she’d given me, I fed her a tuna treat and ruffled her ears affectionately once I’d deposited my briefcase and the food on the counter.

  On my drive home, I had convinced myself that Nick’s reaction to seeing Natalie’s photograph was perfectly natural and didn’t mean anything. He hadn’t seen her since they’d called off their engagement shortly before a violent money launderer forced Nick into a three-year exile in Mexico. If she’d still meant anything to him, he would have looked her up himself, right? Sure. It had only been the surprise of seeing her face come up on the screen that had set him aback. No sense postponing my let’s-take-a-break discussion with Brett.

  It had been a while since I’d broken up with a guy, so I was a little out of practice. One of my college boyfriends had made breaking up with him easy. Telling someone you never wanted to see him again was fairly easy when he showed up at your door with a hickey on his neck that you hadn’t put there. Jeez. Did the guy think I was blind? Most of my other breakups had been relatively amicable, the fact that the relationship wasn’t going anywhere obvious to both of us. But with Brett things would be difficult, especially since I wasn’t exactly breaking up with him for good. Rather, I’d just be seeking permission to date another man and evaluate my feelings before making a more definite decision.

  I was scared, to be honest. Part of me still wondered whether it could be a mistake, whether raising the subject would backfire on me. There would be things about Brett I’d miss, like playing with his dogs at the park, laughing together over ridiculous British comedies, daringly sampling unusual ethnic foods. Heck, Nick thought an egg roll was an extreme culinary adventure.

  Still, as much as I adored Brett, there was no denying that Nick and I were more alike at the core, that we understood better what made each other tick. The fact that I could totally be myself with Nick said a lot, too. It wasn’t that I had to hide my feisty side from Brett, because he often found my unconventional nature to be exciting. But he worried about me, too. Despite my pledge to be honest with him, I found myself conveniently leaving out the details of my job that would cause him anxiety. And as classy and sophisticated as Brett’s parents were, they could sometimes be a tad too conventional. Nick’s mother, on the other hand, was warm and open and down-to-earth, the kind of woman who would make a wonderful mother-in-law and grandmother.

  I dragged myself upstairs and changed into a pair of wrinkled jeans I scrounged from the floor. I really needed to get on my laundry. The pile had expanded from the hamper to a laundry basket beside it.

  I slid out of my work shirt and into a T-shirt I’d picked up at a Toby Keith concert a couple of years ago. I didn’t bother freshening up my makeup or brushing my hair. If I didn’t look too good, maybe Brett would find it easier to let me go.

  I went back downstairs to wait, pouring a tumbler of peach sangria to fortify myself. I simultaneously dreaded what I had to do and wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. I wished someone would invent a time machine so I could fast-forward to tomorrow morning, when I’d tell Nick I was a free woman and wanted to give the two of us a try.

  I wondered how Nick would react when he heard the news. Would he grab me in a hug? Maybe plant a big ol’ kiss on me?

  Dare I dream of more?

  I glanced at the clock. Brett wouldn’t be here for a quarter hour. Just enough time to call my mother and fill her in. She’d encouraged me to give Nick a shot when she’d met him a few weeks back. She’d be glad to hear I was finally heeding her advice.

  I dialed my parents’ home number, and after the usual preliminaries—“I’m fine,” “the cats are fine,” “the weather’s fine”—I told Mom about my plans to put Brett on the back burner.

  “I know it’ll be hard, hon,” she said, “but you’re doing the right thing.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I know so.”

  Sounded like Mom was speaking from experience. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Did I ever tell you about Candy Cummings?”

  “Sounds like a stripper name.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” My mother harrumphed. “Candy was this cute little thing on the drill team. Your dad had a crush on her our senior year of high school.”

  What? My parents had been high-school sweethearts. They’d met their sophomore year in biology class and married just a year after their graduation. They seemed so content, so perfect for each other, that I’d assumed their relationship had been smooth sailing from the start. Had this Candy been a bump in their road?

  Mom sighed. “I caught your father sneaking glances at Candy several times in the cafeteria. She was a total twit, but something about her got your father’s motor running.”

  Urk. I didn’t want to think about my father’s motor, running or not.

  “Anyway, I knew if he didn’t take Candy for a whirl he’d spend the rest of his life pining for that high-kicking nitwit. I wanted him to be sure about me. So I cut him loose for a while.”

  “If you love something, set it free?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And what happened?” I asked.

  “The two of them fell in love, moved to a castle, and lived happily ever after.”

  Obviously that didn’t happen or I wouldn’t have been having this conversation. “Smart-ass.”

  For once, Mom didn’t threaten to break out the Ivory soap and wash my mouth. She must’ve realized she’d earned the curse. “Your dad took Candy out on a couple of dates. Meanwhile, I went out a few times with the captain of the chess club, a boy named Randall. Smart as a whip. He’d grown a few inches over the summer and gotten his braces off, and heck if he hadn’t become quite the catch. He had all kinds of potential, too. Ended up becoming a research scientist. Last I heard he was working on a new treatment for diabetes.”

  I glanced at the clock. Only five minutes now until Brett’s ETA. “Can you get to the point, Mom?”

  “Okay, hon. Point is, once your dad spent some time with Candy, he realized that as cute as she was, she wasn’t the right girl for him. She was shallow and spiteful and full of herself. He came running back to me.”

  “And you welcomed him back with open arms?”

  “Heck, no! I made him beg and plead and make a fool of himself for me first.”
>
  Mom might be forgiving, but she wasn’t a pushover. “Good for you.” The fact that Dad groveled said a lot, too. He was a proud man, not prone to displays of humility. If he’d been willing to beg to get her back, he must have known, without a doubt, that Mom was the girl for him.

  I hoped that Brett would be as understanding as my mother had been when I asked for a chance to try things out with Nick. I also hoped Brett would give me a second chance if things with Nick didn’t pan out. I hoped, too, that I wasn’t being overly hopeful.

  “You know,” Mom said, “I should look up that Randall on Facebook.”

  Dad might have gotten over Candy, but that wistful note in my mother’s voice told me Randall might be the one she thought about on those cold and lonely winter nights when Dad and my brothers went off to the deer lease. Maybe she dreamed about Randall putting her in checkmate or capturing her queen.

  “Speaking of high school,” she said. “We’ve got our forty-year reunion coming up. I was thinking I’d come to Dallas on Saturday to look for a new dress to wear.”

  “So you can look good for Randall?” I teased.

  “So I can look good for your father,” she said, after a brief pause adding, “okay, maybe for Randall, too.”

  A knock sounded at the door and, despite my mother’s pep talk, a sick feeling came over me.

  “Gotta go, Mom. See you Saturday.” I ended the call, shoved the phone into my pocket, and opened the door to find Brett on the porch. With his sandy hair, boyish good looks, and lean but muscular build, he was easy on the eyes.

  Brett wore a suit tonight. His job as a landscape architect required him to be two people—a smart businessman who could land high-dollar contracts for major landscaping projects and an artist of sorts who used foliage as his medium. He was good at both sides of the business, earning him a reputation as the must-have landscape designer in Dallas. His reputation was beginning to spread nationwide as well. The country club gig he’d recently completed in Atlanta had put him on the short list of potential landscapers for an extensive job at a resort in Palm Springs that was undergoing renovation.

  As we sat at my kitchen table eating our manicotti—well, Brett was eating his while I was merely poking mine with a fork and moving it around on my plate—I took a good, hard look at him, knowing it might be one of my last. Brett was a caring and thoughtful guy, intelligent and hardworking, too. His skills in the sack weren’t bad, either.

  But whether he was The One remained to be seen.

  Still, even though I’d fortified myself with a glass of sangria, I felt my conviction slipping as I looked at Brett. I drank another glass, only half-listening to Brett prattle on about a big new gig he’d landed with the city of Grand Prairie’s Parks and Recreation Department, the upcoming fall planting season, expected rainfall amounts predicted by The Old Farmer’s Almanac. My thoughts now loosened somewhat by the alcohol, I realized if I wasn’t convinced by now that Brett was the man I was meant to spend my life with, I owed it to myself to take a chance with Nick. Yep, as hard as it would be, telling Brett we needed to take a break was the right thing to do.

  When we finished the manicotti, I rinsed the dishes and stuck them in the dishwasher. Despite the two glasses of sangria I’d polished off, my nerves were still on edge. I led Brett to the living room, but rather than sitting next to him on the couch for our usual presex make-out session, I took a seat on one of the chairs. He cocked his head and gave me a questioning look.

  Damn! Did he have to look so sweet and concerned and unsuspecting? I felt as if I were about to kick a puppy.

  I took a deep breath, looked at Brett, looked away, looked back at him. No sense putting things off any longer. This wasn’t going to get any easier. It was now or never, Tara. “Brett, I—”

  Bam!

  My front door flew open and banged against the wall of the foyer as my best friend, Alicia Shenkman, stormed in. As always, Alicia was impeccably dressed in designer jeans, wedges, and a black tunic-style top with a red sash around her waist. Her platinum hair hung in asymmetrical, angular lines on either side of her face. Ultrachic.

  As much as I loved Alicia, her timing tonight totally sucked. I regretted giving her a key to my place, at least until I saw her face contort in grief. Something was wrong. Something big. She rarely cried. She didn’t like to risk runny mascara.

  I stood from my chair. “What’s wrong, Alicia?”

  “Men suck!” she shrieked.

  I looked from her to Brett. He looked from me to Alicia. Alicia looked from me to Brett.

  “Sorry,” Alicia told Brett, choking out her words. “I didn’t realize you were here.”

  “Some kids were tossing a football in the street earlier,” he said. “I parked down the block.”

  Tears began to stream down Alicia’s cheeks, leaving the dreaded dark, mascara-tinted rivulets on her skin.

  Tears. The cue for any man in the vicinity to hightail it to safer territory.

  Brett slowly rose from the couch. “Um … I think I’ll go, give you two some time alone.”

  “Thanks, Brett.” Alicia flopped onto the couch as soon as he vacated it.

  I walked him to the door and he gave me a quick kiss on the forehead.

  “We’ll talk soon,” he said.

  I forced a smile I didn’t feel. “Sure.” He’d told me earlier that he’d be tied up the rest of the week. I wouldn’t be able to see him in person again until Friday evening, but I wasn’t about to put things on hold with him by phone. That would be disrespectful and wimpy. Unfortunately, this delay meant I’d have to put off telling Nick that I was available.

  Damn. Damn, damn, damn!

  chapter six

  A Friend in Need

  As soon as I’d shut the door on Brett, Alicia broke out into an all-out wail. “Three years!” she sobbed. “Three years I’ve been dating Daniel! And for what? He’s never going to marry me!”

  She began blubbering so profusely I couldn’t understand most of what she was saying, though I made out that Daniel was somehow both “a miserable son of a bitch” and the man of her dreams who she hoped would “rot in hell” yet also “realize what a mistake he’d made and come crawling back.”

  How long a crawl would it be from hell?

  I went to the kitchen, poured Alicia a big glass of peach sangria, and grabbed some napkins. I brought the drink and napkins to her, taking a seat beside her on the couch.

  She slugged back the drink in ten seconds flat. Impressive. I hadn’t seen her do that since back in our college days when we’d gone barhopping on Sixth Street in Austin.

  “My mother was right!” she cried, setting the glass on the coffee table. “Why would a man buy a cow when she’s giving away the milk for free?” She bent over, sobbing into the wad of napkins clutched in her hands.

  “Come on.” I put a hand on her back. “You know that’s not true. Marriage isn’t just about sex.” Heck, from what I could glean from my married coworkers, marriage was hardly about sex at all. Seemed like once people said “I do” they didn’t actually do it anymore. “Daniel’s not like that. He loves you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” she spat, glancing over at me. “Then why did he freak out when I told him I was tired of shacking up and wanted to get married?”

  “You told him that?” I knew Alicia wanted to marry Daniel someday, but I’d never felt any sense of urgency on her part. She loved the yuppie lifestyle, having a professional career, living in a downtown loft, spending her big paychecks on nice clothes at Neiman Marcus and fancy meals at trendy restaurants.

  “It just sort of slipped out,” she said. “Our neighbor’s sister was visiting with her new baby and we saw them on the elevator and something came over me.” She dabbed at her eyes. “I realized I’m ready for the next phase, Tara.” She dabbed again. “It’s clear Daniel isn’t.”

  “He’ll come around,” I said. “Just give him some time.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ve been together for
years. How much more time does he need?” She sighed and slumped back on the sofa, her tears dwindling to a mere trickle. “I’m thinking about putting myself back on the market.”

  I wasn’t sure what to tell her. What did I know about love and relationships? Not much. Fortunately, she was only looking for a sympathetic ear, not advice.

  “I’ve got some news, too.” I gave her the full scoop. That I’d decided to give Nick a try. That I’d planned to break things off, at least temporarily, with Brett. That I’d planned to tell Brett tonight.

  Her eyes grew wide and she sat up. “Oh, shit. Did I screw that up?”

  Royally. “It’s fine. I can tell him later.” And meanwhile I would pray that Nick hadn’t reconciled with Natalie or started something with one of the seventy-one other women who’d expressed an interest in dating him. Of course there was always Sergio, too. Those biceps had indeed been impressive. Maybe if things didn’t work out with Nick or Brett, I could convince Sergio to switch teams.

  My doorbell rang. “I wonder who that is?” I hadn’t expected this many people to come to my door until later in the month for Halloween trick-or-treating.

  Alicia put a hand on my arm. “If that’s Daniel, tell him I don’t want to talk to him. That I need some time to think.” Despite her words, her eyes gleamed with hope. She wanted Daniel to track her down here, to prove how much he cared.

  I went to the door and put my eye to the peephole.

  “Is it Daniel?” Alicia whispered. She’d stood from the sofa and was looking at me expectantly.

  I shook my head.

  “Figures!” She flopped back onto the couch and began to wail again, muttering about the “stupid jerk” whom she was “so in love with” who she’d hoped would “drop dead” and/or “get his shit together and grow up.”

  I opened the door. DEA Agent Christina Marquez stood on my porch, her long black hair hanging loose over a zipped purple hoodie. She wore yoga pants and a pair of cheap black flip-flops. Christina was tall, busty, and gutsy. She and I had teamed up recently to take down a drug-dealing, tax-cheating ice-cream man, and we’d remained friends ever since. She’d even helped me out on a later case, acting as bait for a bunch of thugs sent by my target, a violent loan shark.