Beth Andrews - In This Town

“I won’t be anything,” Tori said, rinsing the coffeepot before filling it with chilled, distilled water, “because I’m not going.”

Nora stared at her as if she’d suddenly declared she was going to shave off her eyebrows. “Of course you’re going.”

“Why? Because Layne wants me to? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m working and I will continue to work until my shift ends at two. I’m not about to drop what I’m doing, leave Celeste in a bind and abandon my customers and coworkers just because my older sister decrees it.”

Layne wasn’t the boss of her. A fact her older sister didn’t seem to be aware of.

Tori hated that Layne demanded she drop everything whenever the whim hit her. Tori may not be the assistant chief of police like Layne or an attorney like Nora, but she had a job, one she took seriously. One she couldn’t afford to be away from—literally. Ever since her divorce, she’d barely been able to make ends meet.

No one told her the price of freedom would be so damn high.

“I don’t think Layne would’ve asked you to leave work if she didn’t feel it was important,” Nora said, proving that, despite her angelic face, she could be as stubborn as her sisters. “So, come on.” She clapped her hands lightly, her tone high-pitched as if she was calling a hesitant puppy. If she whistled, Tori might have to hurt her. “Let’s go.”

Tori turned on the machine. “Look, don’t think you can avoid me for weeks—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nora said, her arms crossed, her cheeks pink.

“—and then waltz in here and make demands. I’m not going. Deal with it.”

“First of all,” Nora said, hurrying after Tori as she walked toward the other side of the restaurant, “I haven’t been avoiding you.”

Tori stepped into the large alcove separating the dining room from the kitchen. “Ever since you started sleeping with Griffin York you’ve barely been around. Does he keep you chained to the bed?”

Sharon Cameron’s booming laugh drowned out whatever Nora had been about to say. “He could chain me to the bed,” Sharon said. “I’d even bring my own restraints.”

“Not helping,” Tori called to her coworker as Sharon took several place settings back into the dining room.

Patty Tarcher, a rotund, gray-haired, sixty-year-old grandmother of ten set food-laden plates from the order window onto a tray. “I say enjoy it while you can,” Patty told Nora. “Once they hit fifty, men’s libidos drop like a rock in the ocean. Never to be seen again.” Balancing the tray with one hand, she snagged an extra set of silverware off the long table behind them and peered over the top of her glasses at the sisters. “That’s why God invented those little blue pills. Things are magic, I tell you. Pure magic.”

“Way more information than anyone ever needed to know,” Tori said.

“Thanks, Patty, but Griffin’s and my relationship isn’t based solely on sex,” Nora said, humor underlying her prim tone.

Patty frowned. “Now that’s a shame. Those are the best kind.”

Tori and Nora watched Patty leave. “Oh, my God,” Tori breathed. “I’m going to need to scrub my brain to get rid of the image of Patty and Stan putting that little blue pill to use.”

Nora’s lips twitched. “Isn’t Stan the guy who plays Santa at the annual Christmas party?”

“Ugh. Stop. Now I’m imagining him dressed as a jolly old elf.” At Nora’s laugh, Tori grinned. “I miss you, baby girl.”

For some reason, that comment made Nora look guilty. Tori’s eyes narrowed. No doubt about it, something was going on—she just had no idea what. But she was sure whatever it was, Griffin was to blame.

“I miss you, too,” Nora said, rearranging the stack of wrapped silverware. “I’ve just been busy—”

“Tori,” Celeste Vitello, the café’s owner, called from the other side of the window. “Order up.”

“Busy,” Tori repeated, placing plates onto a tray. “Right. Too busy for your family.”

Nora sighed. “You know it’s not that way between me and Griffin, right?”

“Not what way?”

“Just sex.”

That was Nora’s first problem. She should keep whatever was between her and Griffin purely physical. Keep her heart out of it. “Does it matter?” she asked, lifting the tray and walking into the dining room.

Never one to give up anything easily, Nora caught up with Tori as she set omelets in front of a twenty-something couple.

“Of course it matters,” Nora said when Tori returned the tray to the alcove. “You’re my sister.”

“And yet you continue to ignore my sage advice about Griffin.”

“Because you’re wrong about him.” Her tone gentled. “He’s a good man. I lo—”

“Oh, no. No, no, no.” Tori covered her ears. “Do not start spouting off about your great love for him. Let me keep believing it’s only physical between you two and will someday soon come to an end. It’s the only way I’ll be able to sleep at night.”

Nora crossed her arms. “You know, instead of blaming me for this perceived distance between us lately, you might want to start considering how you’re partly to blame.”

Tori’s eyes widened. “Because I don’t like your boyfriend?”

“Because you don’t respect my ability to make decisions for myself. Most women would be happy to hear their baby sister is in a serious, committed relationship with a man who loves her.”

Tori couldn’t help it. She laughed. “Honey, I’m not most women.”

She may not have Nora’s brains or Layne’s ability to frighten the masses with one scowl—and legally carry a gun—but she did know men. It was one of her greatest strengths. And Griffin York was trouble.

Okay, so he was the best kind of trouble, the kind that came wrapped in a brooding, darkly handsome, super sexy package.

A pretty exterior for sure, but underneath? A cynical, bitter person who only hurt those who tried to get close to him. Who tried to love him.

Took one to know one, after all.

“Speak of the devil,” she murmured as she stepped out to check her customers’ drinks and noticed Griffin come in through the front door. The man looked like the poster child for the Bad Boy Club in his work boots, faded jeans and battered leather jacket.

She crossed to the drink station only to be followed by Nora. A moment later, Griffin joined them, making Tori feel cornered.

“Is she coming?” he asked Nora.

“Yes,” Nora said at the same time Tori spoke.

“No.”

He rubbed his thumb along the underside of his jaw. “Glad that’s cleared up.”

Nora took a hold of Tori’s arm and gently tugged her into the hallway. “I’m sorry this is a bad time for you,” Nora said, and Tori knew she meant it. Nora rarely said anything she didn’t mean. Tori almost envied her ability to be so open and honest. So willing to put her true self out there for others to judge. “But we all know this must be about the case.”

The case. Their mother’s murder case. Tori bit the inside of her lower lip. Hard. She was tired of hearing about it, thinking about it. It was over. Done. The man who’d killed their mother eighteen years ago, who’d left Valerie Sullivan’s body to rot and decay like so much garbage in the woods, was dead himself.

As his son stood before her, looking so much like his father, with his dark, tousled hair and slight dimple in his chin, it was all she could do not to throw herself at him, slap and scratch him. Try to inflict some of the pain her mother had suffered at his father’s hands on him.

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Tori said, hating that she cast Dale York’s sins onto his only child. Especially when so many people cast her mother’s sins onto her. “No sense rehashing it all. It won’t change anything. Won’t bring Mom back or ensure that Dale is rotting in hell as punishment for what he did.”