Winning Over Skylar

“Hey, I told you Mom was an honest-to-gosh redhead,” Karin whispered. “Listen to her go.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You should have heard when she went off on the principal. The school didn’t want me taking classes with sophomores and juniors ’cause I’m not fourteen yet, and boy, did she get hot. I was waiting in the secretary’s office and wasn’t supposed to hear, but they were talking real loud.”

A stab of envy hit Melanie. She didn’t think her own mother would do something like that. Aaron had acted as if she was buying drugs instead of studying, and now Mrs. Gibson was sticking up for her. Aaron was just like the other family she’d stayed with, though what he’d said about hoping to spend more time together was nice—not that she wanted to hang around a brother she hardly knew.

“It must have been awesome.”

Karin shrugged. “I guess. And I’m glad they gave me the classes I wanted. My...my dad used to calm Mom down when she got upset. He’d tease her, saying she had a hair-trigger temper and knew how to use it. That made her laugh, though I’m not sure why it was funny.”

Her face was really sad, and Melanie didn’t envy her any longer. Karin’s dad was dead; he’d died in a car crash a year ago in August. Her father wasn’t around much, but he was alive.

“I know what you mean. It’s like when they say my mother has a credit card and knows how to use it,” she said quickly. “That’s totally lame. Everybody knows how to use a credit card.”

“Maybe it’s a gag from an old movie. Not a cool movie like Star Trek, but something else.” Karin wrapped her apple core in a napkin and tucked it into her pocket. The argument outside had ended, or gotten quieter, and they couldn’t hear it any longer. “Your brother won’t keep you from coming here, will he?”

“I hope not.” While Aaron hadn’t forbidden her to visit the Nibble Nook, Melanie knew he didn’t like it. “But he’s just my half brother. My mother is our father’s sixth wife. Um...his sixth ex-wife. So we hardly know each other,” she said hurriedly. Aaron was unpopular in Cooperton; she didn’t want anyone thinking they were close.

Karin blinked. “Ohmigod, your dad’s gotten married six times?”

Melanie cringed. People were curious about her father getting married and divorced so often. The newspapers called him “S. S. Hollister, the man with an ex-wife in every port.”

“More than six now. He gets married a bunch.”

“I’m never getting married,” Karin announced. “I’m going to be a scientist and find the cure to everything. Like colds. I hate colds.”

“Me, too,” Melanie agreed, relieved at the change of subject. She liked that Karin didn’t seem to know or care about the crap about her family.

It was strange to feel like an only child when she had four half brothers and three half sisters, all with the same father and different mothers. Well, except for April and Tamlyn, who were twins. You couldn’t talk about “our” parents, just my mother, and their mother, and our father. And some of her ex-stepmothers had kids by other marriages, making it even more tangled.

Of course, since Aaron was the oldest, he probably had it the worst. She wasn’t the youngest, though; Pierre was just seven and he was an obnoxious brat.

“We better get out of here.” Crouching, Karin crept back to the rear storage room to keep from being seen through the windows. She straightened and opened the refrigerator. “Do you want milk or anything?”

“No, thanks,” Melanie said absently. She was looking at a photograph on the wall over a small desk in the corner. It was Karin and Mrs. Gibson, a smiling man she knew was Karin’s dad and two older people. She pointed to them. “Are they your grandparents?”

“Yup. My dad’s mom and pop. They live a few miles away in Trident where they run the Nibble Nook Too. The Nibble Nook also used to be their hamburger stand, but they gave it to my dad when he married my mom.” She sat on the desk and swung her legs as she drank a carton of milk.

“What about your grandparents on your mom’s side?”

Karin shrugged. “She doesn’t like talking about them.”

That made Melanie feel better.

Maybe everybody had family who weren’t so terrific. And most of her brothers and sisters weren’t too embarrassing. There was Aaron, and after him, Jake and then Matthew. Jake and his mother were famous photographers, and Matt was a playboy, same as their father.

After Matt came the twins—April and Tamlyn were gorgeous like their Las Vegas showgirl mother, but didn’t act bigheaded. It would be fantabulous to have their figures. Melanie had never met Oona, who was closest to her in age, but she’d had to watch Pierre once when they were both visiting their father. The little monster. She was personally in favor of putting him in a cage and feeding him through a hole.

“Melanie,” called Aaron from outside the hamburger stand. “Get your books. I’m going home early.”

“Coming,” she called back, wrinkling her nose.

* * *

AARON TRIED TO make small talk with Melanie as he drove to the house, but her monosyllabic responses didn’t help.

One of his biggest challenges was figuring out how much freedom his sister should be given. Her mother had mentioned a need for strong discipline, which struck him as ironic since Eliza only saw her daughter a few weeks out of the year. How would she know? Still, while he didn’t want to treat Melanie the way he’d been treated as a kid, for her sake, he also didn’t want to make the wrong choices.

He sighed as he pulled into the driveway. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about going to the library, but when I saw you at that hamburger joint I figured you’d...”

“Lied,” she finished flatly.

“You know I don’t approve of the Nibble Nook.” He wasn’t prepared to put the place off-limits, but he did want to discourage her from going there. He’d had a brief fling with Skylar in high school, and she was hardly the influence his sister should have in her turbulent world—it was tough enough being one of S. S. Hollister’s kids, a man who collected and discarded wives with casual speed. She certainly didn’t need a smart-mouthed, troublemaking high-school dropout as a role model.

Melanie released her seat belt. “Why don’t you approve?”

“Cooper Industry employees are the Nibble Nook’s main customers, and some of them don’t like the new rules I’ve had to make,” he said. It was a valid concern, just not the whole truth.

“Yeah, right.” She got out, slammed the car door as hard as possible and stomped toward the house, her heavy book bag slung over her shoulder and other books clutched in her arms.

“Leave the books. I’ll bring them,” he urged.

She didn’t stop and Aaron grimaced.

There was a shred of truth in Skylar’s accusations. Melanie needed more attention, but there just weren’t enough hours in the days. Take the house for example...the lawn needed mowing and the gardener had quit. There weren’t any other gardening service companies in town, and the local kids didn’t seem interested in earning money by doing yard work.

For that matter, the house was another complication he hadn’t anticipated. Originally he’d moved into an apartment over the company’s business offices, which had been used only once by his grandparents when they were remodeling the kitchen and bathrooms in their house. But when his former stepmother had asked him to take Melanie for the school year, he’d found something more suitable for a teenager.

His cell phone rang and he pulled it out. “Yeah?”

“This is Jim Browning, down at the plant,” said a vaguely familiar voice. “I got your number from Peggy in the main office. Mr. Cooper always wanted us to ring if there was a problem.”

Aaron let out a breath. “What can I do for you, Mr. Browning?”

The employee droned on, detailing a minor issue with the processor for boxing up one of their products, a type of flavored tortilla chip. Cooper Industries produced a wide variety of items, and Aaron reminded himself that making snack foods might not be the same as creating life-saving drugs, but they were important to the company.

“I understand,” Aaron finally broke in. “You’ve arranged for repairs and the boxes can be manually sealed in the meantime.”

“Er...yes, sir. I’m sorry I bothered you, but Mr. Cooper did insist....” The foreman’s words trailed off uncertainly.

Aaron drew a calming breath, realizing he’d probably been too abrupt. The people in Cooperton were chatty, while he wanted to get to the point and stop wasting time. “It’s fine. Your instructions may be modified in the future, but in the meantime, you’re following procedure. Thank you.”

He turned off the phone with relief. He’d left a lucrative CEO position in the computer industry when his eightysomething grandfather finally decided to retire, but he never expected it to be so tough. George Cooper had been an old-school manager, with every decision, large and small, going across his desk. Basically, the place was still being run like a small mom-and-pop shop, rather than a major business producing dozens of different convenience-food items. Responsibility needed to be spread among divisions, with midlevel managers taking the lead on day-to-day operations—except the company couldn’t afford that type of reorganization for a while.

Aaron dropped his keys in his pocket and walked into the house. His grandparents had halfheartedly offered to let him move in with them, but it wouldn’t have been good for Melanie. His sister wasn’t related to the Coopers except through their ex-son-in-law, and they weren’t the warmest people in the first place. He knew; he’d grown up with them. And no matter what Skylar thought about him, he refused to inflict their idea of hospitality on his sister. Even if he didn’t know what was best for a teenage girl, he wanted Melanie to be happy.

“Melanie?” he called. “What do you want for dinner?”

After a long minute she appeared at the top of the stairs and stared at him coolly. “You mean you’re asking?”

Oh, God.

Pain throbbed in his temples. She was usually very sweet and accommodating—almost too accommodating—but apparently he couldn’t say anything right at the moment. Not that Melanie didn’t have cause to be touchy—he’d royally stuck his foot in his mouth—but if this was what it meant to be a parent, you could keep it.

“Yes, I’m asking,” he said as calmly as possible.

“Whatever I want?”

Yeah, she could have whatever she wanted...as long as it came from a restaurant that delivered or had a take-out menu. He didn’t cook. Toast, oatmeal and coffee in the morning were the extent of his culinary skills.

“Within reason.”

Melanie lifted her chin. “I’ll take a chicken sandwich and sweet-potato fries from the Nibble Nook.”

“That isn’t within reason. You know the Nibble Nook is closed for the day.”

“Then I don’t care. I have geometry problems and an English assignment to finish.” She turned and disappeared.

The afternoon just kept getting better and better. Aaron arched his back, trying to release the tension. He really had to deal with the yard. The neighborhood association had written, complaining about the length of the grass. Why anybody minded, he didn’t know. This wasn’t the garden district of New Orleans, it was a little town that rolled up its sidewalks at night and on Sundays.

Despite his grandfather’s expectations that he would eventually take over one day, Aaron had never wanted to live in Cooperton again...and yet here he was. Of course, coming back would have been easier if George Cooper had retired before the business had fallen apart. Once Aaron got it viable again he’d have to evaluate whether he was going to stay, or consider other options.

Putting on jeans and a work shirt, Aaron went out to the garage. The rented house hadn’t come furnished, but he’d seen a lawn mower and had a couple of hours of daylight left to work.

Forty minutes later he was hot, sweaty, and his shoulders ached. He gazed perplexed at the mower that refused to start; he was a novice at cutting grass, but it shouldn’t be tough to figure out. The mower had gas, and he didn’t think it was terribly old. Yet the damn thing wouldn’t go. Maybe the gardening service used to bring their own equipment because this one was broken.

Frustrated, Aaron shoved the mower back into the garage and headed into the house. The service had told him they were overextended with customers and regretted terminating him as a client, but their regrets didn’t help him get the lawn mowed.

In the kitchen he leafed through a stack of menus. They hadn’t ordered pizza in over a week, and Mama Gianni’s also had a decent chicken Greek salad. Pizza from Vittorino’s Italiano was better, but they didn’t deliver except on weekends. He dialed Mama Gianni’s and ordered the Meat Lover’s special and a family-size salad. Yet as he hung up the phone, he heard Skylar’s voice in his head.

Do you even know what pizza she likes?

Shut up, Skylar, he ordered silently.

She hadn’t changed much since high school—she still had that gorgeous auburn hair and green eyes...and a mouth that wouldn’t quit. She’d sassed the teachers, cussed out the principal, gotten suspended more than once for breaking every rule in the book, and finally dropped out before graduation. It was ironic that a girl who’d skated through classes by the skin of her teeth was now diligently overseeing her kid’s homework. And she wondered why he questioned if she might be a bad influence.

Yet a part of him didn’t blame Skylar for being antagonistic. She’d represented a challenge when they were kids—his pals had dared him to nail her and he wasn’t proud of his teenage self for taking that dare, or for dropping her once he’d done it. No woman, young or old, appreciated being treated that way. It was also hypocritical to think her sexual activity in high school was any more questionable than his own.

When the food came, Aaron ran upstairs to tell Melanie. She was in front of the television, watching a baseball game. She didn’t look up, just nodded and said she’d come down after a while.

“Don’t you want to eat together?” The question had nothing to do with Skylar; he’d already thought they should share more meals. At the same time, he didn’t want to force anything on Melanie—until recently they’d been little more than casual acquaintances.

“I don’t care.”

I don’t care... How many times a day did he hear that from her? Good Lord, teenagers were impossible, and Aaron felt a fleeting sympathy for his grandparents. He wasn’t close to them, though his grandfather had supposedly “groomed” him to take over the company...mostly with lectures about the value of hard work. Nonetheless, it couldn’t have been easy to take on a resentful kid, tired of being shuffled between his divorced parents and other relatives. That was one of the reasons he’d agreed to have Melanie live with him for the year. He could have refused, but he knew what it was like to be a Ping-Pong ball in someone else’s battle of wills.

CHAPTER TWO

SKYLAR PULLED A casserole from the freezer and put it in the oven to heat. She liked cooking; she just didn’t enjoy it after spending hours over the Nibble Nook’s fryers—the volume of French fries and onion rings they went through never failed to astonish her. As the owner, she filled in wherever necessary, and today the fry cook had phoned in with a child-care problem.

Tiredly she pressed a hand to the aching small of her back. The long, hard days used to be more fun. Jimmie had made everything fun, no matter what they were doing.

The cat walked into the kitchen and stared at his empty bowl in dismay. He meowed plaintively.

“Karin?” she called. “Bennie has to be fed and his litter box scooped.”

“The first play-off game is on.”

“Then you’d better hurry,” Skylar said. “We’ve talked about this. You wanted a cat and he’s your responsibility.”

“But Mooommmm, I—”

“Now, Karin. He’s hungry.”

Karin stomped into the kitchen. “He isn’t mine, not really. Bennie always ends up with you in the morning. He’s supposed to sleep with me. It’s like I’m kryptonite or something.”

For an instant Skylar wished she could have a single evening free of teenage angst. “That’s because he keeps getting kicked off the bed. You thrash around and when he’s had enough, he goes someplace quieter.”

“I do not.”

“Trust me, I couldn’t keep a blanket on you, even as a baby. A professional soccer team doesn’t kick that much.”

Muttering under her breath, Karin poured food into the cat bowl and petted Bennie, despite her sulk. It wasn’t easy insisting she take care of her chores—she used to watch the baseball play-offs with her dad, and Skylar could see the weepy melancholy beneath her daughter’s defiant surface. The previous autumn Karin had sobbed straight through her favored team’s sweeping victory; hopefully this year wouldn’t be as bad.

“Here,” Skylar said. “I made a snack for you to eat during the game. And there’s caffeine-free cola in the fridge. I’ll bring dinner in when it’s ready.” Normally they ate meals at the table, but this wasn’t a normal night.

Karin brightened and took the bowl of fluffy buttered popcorn. “Gee, thanks, Mom.”

When Karin was back in the family room, Skylar sat at the kitchen table, feeling melancholy herself. She wasn’t a baseball fan, and it used to drive her crazy during the play-offs and World Series to have Jimmie and Karin riveted to the television. More than once, a game had gone into extra innings or there’d been a rain delay, and he’d let her stay up to the bitter end, even on a school night. When she fell asleep at school the next day, there would be the inevitable phone call from her teacher, who was always mollified by Jimmie’s abashed apology.

Skylar would give anything to have those days back.

Instead, she had Aaron Hollister and his sister and her temper getting her in trouble. She had to be more careful. Aaron hadn’t seemed interested in Karin in their encounters, but she couldn’t take any chances. She refused to think of him as Karin’s father. Jimmie was Karin’s dad. He’d soothed her as a teething baby, been scared stiff when she broke her collarbone in the fourth grade, saved for her education and welcomed each and every sticky child’s kiss and homemade Father’s Day card. Skylar ached at the memories—Jimmie romancing her as a new mother had been one of the biggest surprises of her life. They’d gotten married when Karin was four months old—he’d simply refused to see any reason they shouldn’t be together.

She glanced around the kitchen, shivering though it was warm. She’d had such a good life with Jimmie, so much better than she had ever expected to have. He’d loved Karin without reservation, and his family had accepted them both. The Gibsons must have been worried for their son in light of her youth and disreputable upbringing, but they hadn’t shown any hesitation. If Jimmie loved her, that was all they’d needed to know.

But Jimmie was gone now. If he were here, he would reassure her that Aaron or his family couldn’t possibly hope to get custody of Karin after such a long time. It was a worry that Skylar had harbored over the years, pushed into the background of their lives together, yet still there.

Bennie rubbed against her leg, purring madly, and she reached down to stroke him.

“Hey, boy,” she whispered. “You should go in with Karin. She needs you.”

He wandered toward the door. She could swear that he’d understood, though being a cat, he had to show his independence. Anybody who said felines were just selfish little beasts was wrong. No matter how egomaniacal, Bennie was fond of his humans. He just had to act as if everything was his idea—dogs were far more direct with their affections.

She got up and gathered a basket of laundry. The problem with housework was that it was never done, especially with a teenager in the house. Why her daughter had to change clothes ten times a day was beyond her. When she was that age she had been lucky to have four or five outfits, much less an overflowing closet.

Skylar winced. Back then, clothes were the least of her problems. The police and her teachers had labeled her incorrigible, and she’d come close to self-destructing. Her mother and father hadn’t noticed—they were too busy having public screaming matches and getting arrested for bashing in the windows of a neighbor’s car or some other drunken behavior. Skylar had both envied and resented the other kids for having nice, ordinary parents who didn’t knock them around, the way her parents did when they were tired of beating on each other.

Yet somehow, for reasons beyond understanding, she’d believed in the fairy-tale family, and Aaron’s family had seemed oh-so-respectable from the outside. That could be why she’d finally gone out with him. She hadn’t realized that being rich and publicly proper didn’t mean a thing. You could still be a louse.

The phone rang, and Skylar hurriedly started the washing machine before answering.

“It’s me, dear,” said her mother-in-law. “Are you busy?”

“Hi, Mom. No more than usual.” Skylar tucked the receiver under her chin as she folded clean towels. “What’s up?”

“Nothing. But Joe has the baseball game on, and I was wondering how it’s going over there.”

Skylar pictured her daughter’s stormy face. “The way you’d expect. Karin is watching, too.”

“I figured she would be.”

They were both silent for a long moment. Skylar wished she could tell Grace about her confrontation with Aaron, but she’d never discussed Karin’s biological father with her in-laws. Jimmie was the only one who’d known it was Aaron Hollister. Well...almost the only one.

It was odd. She would have sworn that nobody had guessed she was pregnant when she dropped out of school, and she’d deliberately moved to Trident to keep anyone from guessing. Yet S. S. Hollister had tried to give her payoff money after Karin was born. Skylar figured Aaron must have put it together and told his father—but if she was wrong and he didn’t know that Karin was his biological child, or had made himself forget, she’d rather keep it that way.

Payoff money...Skylar gritted her teeth. As if she’d gone to them for support or something else. She had ripped the check in half and told Sullivan Spencer “Spence” Hollister exactly what she thought of him and his son and where he could stuff his money. He’d simply laughed and walked away...forever, she hoped.

“Oh. Sorry, Grace, what was that? My mind was drifting,” she apologized, realizing her mother-in-law had broken the silence with a question.

“I just asked how Karin is doing in school so far. She was obsessed with her studies last year.”

“She’s no longer obsessed,” Skylar said drily. “This afternoon she informed me that her geometry problems are lame and aliens have replaced the principal with an android look-alike who drinks double espresso lattes all day and plots ways to kill students with boredom.”

Grace chuckled. “Good Lord. Aliens?”

“Yes. She’s now into Star Trek. Yesterday I found her practicing the Vulcan hand signal for ‘live long and prosper.’ At least I think that’s what it was, not something rude.”

“She wouldn’t have to practice that.”

Skylar instinctively looked at her fingers. No, you didn’t have to practice rude gestures. She’d begun flipping birds at her teachers in junior high school...a piece of information she’d prefer her daughter didn’t find out. Karin may have heard stories about her mother over the years, but since she hadn’t asked any questions, she probably wasn’t taking them seriously.

“When did this new interest in science fiction begin?” said Grace.

“That weekend she was sick and we couldn’t come for dinner. One of her friends loaned her a set of the Trek movies. Two days and half a bottle of cough syrup later, she was a fan.”

Grace chuckled again. “That’s our Karin. When she embraces something, it’s with all her heart.”

They chatted another few minutes before saying goodbye.

Skylar put the clean linens away and went to check on Karin in the family room. Things had been awfully quiet—no yelling at the pitcher, no declarations that the umpire needed glasses, and no shouts of triumph or despair.