Dream a Little Dream (Chicago Stars, #4)(115)

“I’ll do my best.”

The moment he disappeared into the family room, Rachel rose from her stool. Both brothers watched her, their expressions bewildered. As Cal set Rosie down, Rachel reached inside herself for some well-deserved rage, only to find an uneasy jumble of frustration and a twisted sort of understanding. Love had a lot of faces to it, and she was looking at two of them right now. How wonderful it would be to go through life supported by these men, no matter how misguided they were.

She spoke quietly. “I don’t really care whether you believe me or not, but, just to set the record straight, Gabe’s wrong. I’m not the one who vandalized the drive-in. That isn’t to say I wouldn’t have done it just for the reason he mentioned, but the fact is, I didn’t think of it.”

She went on, determined to clean the slate as best she could. “And Odell didn’t take my shoes. Gabe threw them out the car window on the way over here.”

When Cal spoke, his tone lacked its customary antagonism. “What does Gabe mean that he asked you to marry him, and you’re thinking about it?”

“It means I told him no.”

Ethan frowned. “You’re not going to marry him?”

“You know I can’t. Gabe’s a soft touch. He cares about me, and that makes him protective. I guess it’s a Bonner family trait.” She cleared her throat, forced out the words. “Getting married is the only way he can think of to keep me out of trouble. But he doesn’t love me.”

“And you love him, don’t you?” Ethan said gently.

“Yeah.” She nodded. Tried to smile. “A lot.”

To her dismay, her eyes filled with tears. “He thinks I’m tough, but I’m not tough enough to spend the rest of my life wanting what I can’t have, and that’s why I can’t marry him.”

Her toes tickled, and she looked down to see that Rosie had discovered them. Glad of the distraction, she dropped onto the black marble floor and sat cross-legged so the baby could crawl into her lap.


A sound came from Cal that was part sigh, part groan. “We screwed up big-time.”

“We!” Ethan retorted, just as Gabe reappeared from the family room. “I wouldn’t have had her thrown in jail! And I wouldn’t have bribed her, either, Mr. Big Shot Billionaire!”

“I’m not a billionaire!” Cal exclaimed. “And if you had my kind of money, you would have done exactly the same thing!”

“Children, children,” Jane admonished. And then, without warning, her hand flew to her mouth and she burst out in laughter. “Oh, my goodness!”

They all stared at her.

“I’m sorry, but it just hit me . . .” She calmed herself, then began laughing again.

Cal frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“I—Oh, dear . . .” She whipped a tissue from a box on the counter and dabbed her eyes. “I forgot all about it till now. We got the strangest note in the mail yesterday afternoon. I was going to ask you what it meant, but then I started thinking about Bose-Einstein condensates. BEC atoms,” she added, as if that explained it all, “and you brought Chip home with you, and it slipped my mind until now.”

Cal regarded her with the patience of a man long accustomed to living with a woman obsessed with things like Bose-Einstein condensates. “What slipped your mind?”

Jane chuckled, then walked over to to a small pile of mail lying on the counter space next to the pantry. “This note. It’s from Lisa Scudder. You remember. She’s the mother of the little girl Emily who has leukemia. We made a contribution to her medical fund last fall, but she acknowledged that months ago, so I was confused.” Jane started laughing again, and all three Bonner brothers frowned. They clearly saw nothing funny about a child with leukemia.

Rachel, however, was very much afraid she understood the reason for Jane’s sudden burst of merriment. Why hadn’t Lisa waited as she’d asked?

She grabbed Rosie and hopped up from the floor. “I think it’s time I got Edward home.” She thrust the baby toward Ethan. “Gabe, would you mind driving—”

“Sit!” Jane commanded, pointing toward the floor.

Rachel accepted the inevitable and sat.

Rosie let out a squeal and reached for her. Ethan put her back down, and the baby promptly returned to Rachel’s lap where she busied herself playing with the buttons on the front of Rachel’s dress. In the meantime, Jane started laughing all over again, and Ethan couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Really, Jane. If you saw how sick that little girl is, I don’t think you’d be laughing.”

Jane immediately sobered. “Oh, it’s not that . . .” Another giggle slipped out, followed by more laughter. “It’s just that Rachel . . . Oh, Rachel.” She gasped for air. “We got a thank-you note from Lisa Scudder. Rachel gave Cal’s blood money to Emily’s Fund!”

All three men stared at her. Cal glared. “What are you talking about?”

“Your twenty-five thousand pieces of silver! Rachel didn’t keep it. She gave it all away!”

Gabe looked down at Rachel. He seemed confused, like someone who’d just heard the earth was round instead of square. “You didn’t keep any of it?”

“Cal really made me mad,” Rachel explained.