Tough Love

“La, la-la, la,” Tabitha said, her fingers in her ears as she kept walking.

Stack grinned at her back.

Huh. Vanity looked from one to the other, and a warm, peaceful sort of contentment settled over her. The siblings understood each other and cared enough to tease their way through major disagreements. That was nice.

“Now what?” Stack asked her. “You’re getting melancholy.”

She huffed. “I’m not tired, not melancholy, not weak.”

He tugged on a lock of her hair. “God forbid you be human.”

“I was just thinking it would have been nice to have a brother or sister.”

Tabitha glanced at her. “You’re an only child? Oh, how tragic.”

Stack gave his sister a light shove. “Not everyone is saddled with a lunatic for a sibling. Nothing tragic in that.”

No, Vanity thought, not tragic. But there’d been so many times she would have given anything for a sibling. “Yes,” she answered Tabitha. “I was the only one.”

Which explained why she inherited everything from everyone in her family. If only they hadn’t all left her the same year. Not that they’d ever really been there anyway.

When they were, there’d been no teasing, no laughter.

And sadly, never enough love.

CHAPTER FIVE

“NO.” THE HEAVY DARKNESS filling the near-empty parking lot carried sound over the damp pavement. From necessity, Stack kept his voice low so it wouldn’t resonate to where his mother sat in her car with Vanity helping her to get comfortable.

Odd, how they’d bonded so quickly. He’d never seen that before, not that he’d brought many women around to meet his mom, but the few times he had—usually when a family affair required a date—she’d been politely distant and quietly critical.

Not so with Vanity.

In fact, Vanity had stepped seamlessly and effortlessly into the spot of doting daughter, a spot Tabby left unfulfilled.

“What do you expect me to do?” Tabby didn’t bother keeping her voice low. Stack wasn’t sure she knew how to whisper, or when it’d be a good idea.

Like now.

In his best I’m-not-giving-on-this voice, Stack growled, “She can’t go home alone, Tabby. Forget it. If she can’t stay with you, she can come to my place.”

“You’re never there,” she reminded him, throwing her arms up in another melodramatic display. “Just how do you think that’s going to help?”

“I’ll work it out.” How, he didn’t yet know. But he wasn’t about to let her—

“And who’s going to watch my dogs?”

Slowly, he swung his incredulous gaze around to stare at her. Seriously? That was Tabby’s top concern? “Keep. Your. Voice. Down.”

“Those dogs love her, and she loves them.”

Feeling red-eyed and mean, Stack frowned at her. The growl went deeper, and meaner, when he reiterated, “Mom is sick and hurt. She can’t be your damned dog sitter.”

“Then who? Because I have to work, and if I leave them alone in the apartment, they bark, and the landlord has already told me that if it happens again, I’m out. I can’t lose my home. It’s close enough for me to walk to work—”

“You have a car.” He knew because he’d bought it for her.

Her face pinched. “I’ve been letting Phil use it.”

Oh, fuck, no. Phil had said they’d ridden in separately, but he hadn’t thought that much about it, not at the time.

Sawing his teeth together, Stack counted to three, and then to five, and finally to ten before he thought he could speak reasonably.

Letting the issue of the car go for now, he concentrated on the most pressing issue. “Why can’t fucking Phil watch the dogs?”

Gasping as if he’d struck her, Tabitha withdrew. For only a second her bottom lip trembled, then she stiffened her mouth and her spine. “Phil helps a friend at a bar—”

“Helps how? By drinking?”

“—and he looks for work, you know that, but he—”

“Jesus, Tabby.” Exhaustion suddenly hit him like a ton of bricks. Emotionally, physically. Vanity might be superhuman, but apparently he had some weaknesses. “Stop, okay? Just stop. We both know Phil isn’t trying to find a job.”

“Is too!”

He swept out an arm. “Everywhere I look, there are help-wanted signs!”

Another gasp. “You can’t expect him to work at a convenience store or gas station.”