Delaney stared at the closed door long after she heard his Jeep tear out of the alley. Her body still burned from his touch, and the thought of some sort of sexual payback didn’t sound all that unappealing. She turned back toward the room and picked up Nick’s txapel from the floor. She raised the beret to her nose. It smelled of leather and wool and Nick.
Chapter Thirteen
“Uncle Nick, did you see that movie on TV the other night about a girl who was kidnapped as a baby and she never knew it until she was like about twenty or something?”
Nick stared at his computer screen, going over the budget he’d projected on a home on the north shore of the lake. The foundation had been poured before the ground froze, and the roof put on before the snow. The home was close to completion, but the owner had decided on different fixtures throughout, and the finish carpentry was way over budget. Since business was slowing down, Ann Marie and Hilda only worked mornings. He and Sophie were alone in the building.
“Uncle Nick.”
“Hmm, what?” He deleted several figures, then typed in the new cost.
Sophie took a deep drawn-out breath and sighed, “You’re not listening to me.”
He glanced from the screen to his niece, then returned his gaze to his work. “Sure I am, Sophie.”
“What did I say?”
He added a restocking fee and reached for a calculator on the edge of his desk, but when he glanced at his niece again, his hand stilled. Her big brown eyes looked back at him as if he’d stomped her feelings beneath his work boots. “I wasn’t listening.” He pulled his hand back. “Sorry.”
“Can I ask you something?”
He figured she hadn’t dropped by his office on her way home from school to watch him work. “Sure.”
“Okay, what would you do if you liked a girl and she didn’t know you liked her.” She paused and looked somewhere over the top of his head. “And she liked someone else with really great clothes and blond hair and everybody liked her and she was a cheerleader and everything?” She returned her gaze to his. “Would you give up?”
Nick was confused. “Do you like a boy who dresses like a cheerleader?”
“No! Geez, I like a boy who dates a cheerleader. She’s pretty and popular and has the best body in eighth grade, and Kyle doesn’t know I’m alive. I want him to notice me, so what should I do?”
Nick looked across his desk at his niece, who was all shiny braces and had her mother’s Italian eyes that were way too big for her face. She had an enormous red pimple on her forehead that, despite her best efforts, would not remain concealed with the makeup she’d slapped on it. Someday Sophia Allegrezza would turn heads, but not today, thank God. She was too young to worry about boys, anyway. “Don’t do anything. You’re gorgeous, Sophie.”
She rolled her eyes and reached for her backpack sitting on the floor by her chair. “You’re no better help than dad.”
“What did Louie say?”
“That I’m too young to worry about boys.”
“Oh.” He leaned forward and grabbed her hand. “Well, I would never say that,” he lied.
“I know. That’s why I came to talk to you. And it’s not just Kyle. No boys ever notice me.” She dragged her backpack into her lap and slumped in the chair, a lump of misery. “I hate it.”
And he hated to see her so unhappy. He’d helped Louie raise Sophie, and she was the only female he’d ever felt completely free to show affection and love. The two of them could sit and watch a movie together or play Monopoly, and she never pried into his life or hung on to his neck too tight. “What do you want me to do?”
“Tell me what boys like in girls.”
“Eighth grade boys?” He scratched the side of his jaw and paused to think a moment. He didn’t want to lie, yet he didn’t want to spoil her innocent illusions, either.
“I thought since you have a lot of girlfriends, you would know.”
“A lot of girlfriends?” He watched her pull a bottle of green fingernail polish from her backpack. “I don’t have a lot of girlfriends. Who told you something like that?”
“No one had to tell me.” She shrugged. “Gail is a girlfriend.”
He hadn’t seen Gail since a few weeks before Halloween, and that had been a week ago. “She was just a friend,” he said. “And we broke it off last month.” Actually, he’d broken things off with her and she hadn’t been pleased.
“Well, what did you like about her?” she asked as she added a coat of green polish over an existing layer of navy blue.
The few things he’d liked about Gail, he could hardly tell his thirteen-year-old niece. “She had nice hair.”
“That’s it? You would date a girl just because you liked her hair?”
Probably not. “Yep.”
“What’s your favorite hair color?”
Red. Different shades of red all streaked together and tangled up in his fingers. “Brown.”
“What else do you like?”
Pink lips and pink boas. “A good smile.”
Sophie looked up at him and grinned, her mouth filled with metal and mauve rubber bands. “Like this?”
“Yep.”
“What else?”
This time he answered with the truth. “Big brown eyes, and I like a girl who can stand up to me.” And, he realized, he’d developed an appreciation of sarcasm.
She dipped the brush into the polish and went to work on her other hand. “Do you think girls should call boys?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Grandma says girls who call boys are wild. She says you and dad never got into trouble with wild girls because she never let you talk on the phone when they called.”
His mother was the only person he know who had the ability to see only what she chose and nothing else. Growing up, both Nick and Louie had found their fair share of trouble without the telephone. Louie had gone on to get a girl pregnant his last year of college. And when a Basque boy got a good Catholic girl pregnant, the result was an inevitable wedding at St. John’s Cathedral. “Your grandmother remembers only what she wants to remember,” he told Sophie. “If you want to talk to a boy on the phone, I don’t see why you shouldn’t, but you better ask your dad first.” He watched her blow on her wet nails. “Maybe you should talk to Lisa about all this girl stuff. She’s going to be your stepmom in about a week.”
Sophie shook her head. “I’d rather talk to you.”
“I thought you liked Lisa.”
“She’s okay, but I like talking to you better. Besides, she stuck me at the end of the bridesmaid line.”
“Probably because you’re shortest.”
“Maybe.” She studied her polish a moment, then looked up. “Do you want me to paint your nails?”
“No way. The last time you did that, I forgot to take it off and the clerk at the Gas-n-Go gave me a funny look.”
“Pleeaase.”
“Forget it, Sophie.”
She frowned and carefully screwed the cap back on her polish. “Not only am I last in the line now, I have to stand next to you-know-who.”
“Who?”
“Her.” Sophie pointed to the wall. “Over there.”
“Delaney?” When she nodded Nick asked her, “Why should that matter?”
“You know.”
“No. Why don’t you tell me.”
“Grandma said that girl over there lived with your dad, and he was nice to her and mean to you. And he gave her nice clothes and stuff and you had to wear old jeans.”
“I like old jeans.” He reached for his pencil and studied Sophie’s face. Her mouth was pinched at the corners like his mother’s whenever she spoke of Delaney. Henry had certainly given Benita reasons for bitterness, but Nick didn’t like to see Sophie affected by it. “Whatever happened, or didn’t happen, between me and my father, had nothing to do with Delaney.”