Games of the Heart (The 'Burg #4)(4)

This didn’t connect. Standing at the back of the viewing chamber in a funeral home during her brother’s memorial service, she didn’t look like a rebel. She looked like a confident woman who knew who she was but who was also in pain.

“What’s she rebelling against?” Mike asked.

Debbie’s head cocked irately to the side. “Uh…everything?” She asked just as she answered. “She’s Dusty, Mike. You know how she is. She’s a pain in the ass. She always has been even way before everyone saw it. Rhonda’s a freaking mess. Those boys are numb. Mom and Dad are close to losing it. And what does Dusty do? I’m hundreds of miles away, just like her, trying to deal with Rhonda, Fin, Kirb, set up a funeral for my freaking brother and she’s handing me shit. I didn’t need shit. I needed help. I have a job, a home, a life and I had a brother to put in the ground and she’s handing me shit. Same old Dusty. It’s never changed.”

Back in the day, Mike had not understood Debbie and Dusty’s relationship. Whereas everyone adored Dusty before she’d turned, Debbie hadn’t. She’d explained more than once how her little sister worked her nerves, not occasionally, often. They fought all the time.

But even with Debbie’s explanations, Mike didn’t get it.

At first, he’d thought it was because Dusty often pushed her way in when Mike was at their house to be with Debbie. He had to admit, this was frustrating considering the fact that, if he had his chance, he wanted to be making out with Debbie and feeling her up and he couldn’t do that with an animated twelve year old around. Strangely, Dusty, being Dusty, he always got over his frustration quickly and started teasing her to make her giggle, trading wisecracks, something Dusty was really good at, and just goofing around. Debbie liked attention and he figured she didn’t like her little sister taking his. Mike tried to stop it but he couldn’t. Dusty was that appealing.

Later, after he’d taken Debbie’s virginity, their relationship hit a different zone and he was far more capable of gently extracting Deb and himself from Dusty. He was a teenage boy so he had better things to do than goof around with a thirteen year old kid.

Even so, Debbie’s attitude toward her sister never changed so he knew it wasn’t that.

He never got it except to think that when Dusty changed, Debbie always saw something others had not until it came out.

Still, this time, it didn’t connect. The Dusty standing at the back of the funeral home was not the Dusty he last saw twenty years ago. And she had no anger in her face, no hardness.

Just pain.

“If she’s here, she’s protesting,” Debbie went on throwing her hand back at the house. “Leaves me, Mom and Dad, Rhonda, the kids all to deal so she could have her little drama. Well f**k that. We’ve got enough real drama to handle. She can have her own imaginary one. Dusty was always good at living in an imaginary world.”

Mike wanted to know what Dusty was protesting. He also wanted to know what shit she gave Debbie about the funeral. And he wanted to know these two things more than was healthy. He understood it immediately. And it annoyed him.

It also annoyed him because he couldn’t deny that Debbie was right. Dusty appeared at the service but disappeared before she even spoke to her grieving parents, sister, sister-in-law and nephews. She didn’t deign to appear at the graveside. And now, with a house full of people which would mean, in a couple of hours, a house full of mess that would need to be cleaned up, she was nowhere to be seen.

Evidence was suggesting she hadn’t changed. She’d gone from a generous, fun-loving child to a selfish, sullen teenager, skipped town the minute she could and stayed away as much as she could. Her brother was dead, his family, which was her family, suffering and she was absent.

“Sorry, honey,” he muttered. “Shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

Her smile was small but it was sincere when she whispered, “If you didn’t, I couldn’t bitch about it. So…thanks.”

“You know where I live,” he told her. “As long as you’re here, you need to bitch or anything, find me.”

Her head tipped to the side and she studied him again before saying softly, “And you haven’t changed either. A woman meets a lot of men in her life. They all have types so they all have titles. Sucks for me that when I was too young to get it, I met The Good Guy.”

He didn’t know if he heard regret in her voice or not. He also needed to shut this down. He enjoyed Debbie in high school. But with her tailored, expensive suit, her sturdy, low-heeled not stylish pumps, her minimally made up face, her hair cut in a short style that meant she didn’t have to waste precious time to fashion it, time she could be using to make money and bust balls as an attorney, she was not his thing. He couldn’t say she wasn’t attractive. What he could say was for reasons he didn’t get and didn’t want to, she did her damnedest to hide it. He’d learned to pay attention, read the signs, weed out the red flags and move on. He’d learned the hard way. Twice. He wasn’t going through that again.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” he muttered, leaned down, brushed his lips against her cheek then straightened away. Even as he moved back several inches, he lifted a hand to give her upper arm a squeeze before he continued on a mutter, “You take care.”

Debbie Holliday was far from dumb. She saw the brush off and he registered when she did. This meant her earlier comment held regret. She was hoping for reconciliation. Not, he knew, a real one. No, she wanted a reminder she was alive. She wanted to participate in the good parts of living. She wanted familiarity and nostalgia. She wanted her ex high school boyfriend to f**k away the pain of losing her brother.