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  While she talked, she began to twirl the knife around her fingers, switching it from hand to hand, rolling it around her knuckles, always ending up with it gripped in her right hand, ready for slicing. Then she turned it up a notch, increasing her speed so you could barely follow the knife as it swirled around her fingers before springing upward, flipping, and landing in a perfect stick at the center of the lemon.

  “It was important, you see, because it taught me people skills—how to talk to people and, more importantly, how to listen to them. Today’s bar customer might be tomorrow’s business client. Some of mine are.”

  She unstuck the knife from the lemon, then sliced a lime with blinding precision and speed. Chop, chop, chop. She paused. “You boys still thinking about leaving?”

  “N-n-no ma’am,” Dustin said. Robbie’s mouth gaped open, but he didn’t answer.

  She took two highball glasses from the cabinet and set them on the counter about two inches apart. Then she twirled and flipped the knife a little more in the showy pattern she’d used to impress bar patrons. Chop, chop, chop. The second lime was sliced, but this time its center slice popped up into the air, Autumn’s knife whipped out, and two neat halves fell, one into each glass.

  Autumn looked up at the boys, heaved a big sigh, and smiled. “My cousin Becki was like a big sister to me. Grieving for somebody you love is a private thing, you know? Gabe and I are both pretty private people.”

  Dustin nodded and looked about to burst into tears. Robbie just stared at her. Gabe’s head was bowed so Autumn couldn’t see her face. But this was as much for herself as for Gabe.

  “Cutting always calms me. I’ve been on edge all day about all these people coming here today, but I knew I couldn’t be selfish. Becki wasn’t their cousin, but they all loved her, too. And I expected everybody to respect the sign Gabe and I put up, asking people not to go into that room. You’ve upset Gabe, and you’ve upset me. I’m going to have to cut up a lot more stuff to calm down enough to sleep tonight.” She put her knife down, got a felt-tipped marker from Becki’s catch-all drawer, and plopped the cutting board on the bar in front of Robbie. “Put your hand on the board, Robbie, and spread your fingers.”

  He hesitated, checking to see that the knife was still on the counter. His hand shook, but he did as she asked. Dustin whimpered. “Don’t hurt him. We didn’t mean nothing.”

  Autumn traced the outline of Robbie’s hand on the board, then set the board back on the counter where she’d been slicing the fruit. “Gabe’s the one you should apologize to, Dustin.”

  He looked at Gabe, her head still bowed. “I’m sorry, Gabe. I really am. It was Robbie’s idea, but I was stupid to go in there with him.” His voice shook at first but grew stronger and more sincere. “I know you can’t forgive me, but I wish you could. Boys, well, Mama says we just do stupid things sometimes. I don’t know why. I’ll do anything to make it up to you.”

  Gabe finally looked up. “I’ll talk to Cat about it.” But her eyes were fixed on Autumn, rather than Dustin, and the source of the thunk-thunk-thunk.

  Autumn held the knife in her fist and was slowly stabbing each area between the fingers drawn on the cutting board. She looked at Robbie without pausing. “What about you, Robbie? Are you sorry?”

  Robbie’s eyes bounced from hers to the cutting board as the thunk-thunk-thunk of her knife picked up speed. “Huh?”

  Her knife was a blur, but she still didn’t look down. “Gabe’s waiting for your apology.”

  His face turned a brilliant red, and he glanced at Gabe. “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have gone in there. And…and I’m sorry for what I said when you caught us.”

  The sound of the knife biting into the wood stopped.

  “That piss-poor apology will figure into your sentence, I’m sure, but we’ll leave that to Catherine and Gabe to decide later.” She looked down at the cutting board. Most of the holes from her knife point were between the fingers, but two fingers bore distinctive marks. “Damn. I still can’t get this a hundred percent. Maybe if I used a real hand, it’d up the stakes enough that my brain wouldn’t let me miss.” She looked at Robbie’s hand resting on the bar, and he jerked it back out of sight. She shrugged and placed her own hand on the board. She started slowly, but with less aggression, so it was quieter than before. “I’m trusting there won’t be any type of retaliation against Gabe after you complete whatever task Catherine gives you?” Her knife was picking up speed again. Robbie nearly fell as he scrambled off his stool, his eyes fixed on her knife and her hand.

  “You’re crazy, lady.”

  She stopped and winked at him. “Don’t you forget that, or this—if you bother Gabe again in any way, you’ll have to deal with either me or Catherine. And you better hope it’s Catherine.” She tossed the knife into the sink. “All yours, Sheriff Cofy.”

  Chapter Seven

  Ed had stopped her with a finger to his lips, then Catherine followed as he quietly slipped past the screen door and they watched Autumn—all five-foot-five, 115 pounds of her—intimidate the two boys like a professional mobster. When she finally summoned him, Ed stepped forward.

  “Come on, boys. Your parents are waiting.” The boys streaked to freedom, even with the threat of parents waiting outside. “I’ll make sure their parents are clear about the restitution for their behavior.”

  “Thanks, Ed.” Catherine sucked in a breath to calm the mix of emotions tangled in her chest, in her belly. Autumn’s little display was foolishly reckless, an extremely questionable method of disciplining children, and so incredibly sexy. Gabe, however, didn’t seem as impressed.

  “I could have beaten him if you hadn’t stopped me.”

  Autumn moved to the sink and began washing her hands without answering Gabe’s complaint.

  Catherine went to Gabe and began to check her over. “Are you okay? You’ve got a pretty good lump on your forehead. Did Robbie hit you there?”

  Gabe carefully fingered her scalp. “I think I hit it on the coffee table. My back stings a lot. I might have got some glass in it.” Catherine gently pushed Gabe away so she could pull back the flaps of the ripped shirt. Gabe’s back was scratched up, either from glass or fingernails. Either way, the wounds would need to be thoroughly cleaned. “I saw Jody just a minute ago. She usually has her EMT box in her truck. She can clean up your back, but I mostly want her to check out your head.”

  Gabe had picked up the knife Autumn left on the cutting board and began stabbing it into the wood. Catherine caught her wrist. “Don’t play with—” She stared at the dark stain on the board. “Did you—” Her battle brain speed-read the signs. The blood wasn’t Gabe’s.

  Autumn still stood at the sink with the water running. Her shoulders were shaking, and she swayed a second before her knees buckled.

  Catherine sprang forward and caught Autumn in her arms before she hit the floor. When she straightened, she realized the sink was pink with watered blood.

  “Her hand’s bleeding. It’s dripping all over the floor,” Gabe said, jumping off her stool.

  “Grab a clean dish towel.”

  Gabe was already pulling one from a cabinet drawer and wrapping it around Autumn’s hand before tucking the hand up under Autumn’s shirt so it wouldn’t continue to dangle.

  “At least she’s wearing a red shirt.”

  Catherine stared at Gabe, who shrugged.

  “The blood stains won’t show up as bad.”

  Geez. The workings of that kid’s brain never ceased to amaze her. “Jody’s helping load chairs onto the trucks out by the barn. Tell her to bring her med pack.” Catherine’s last words were drowned out by the slamming of the backdoor screen and the slap of Gabe’s tennis shoes across the deck. Catherine shook her head. She hoped Gabe didn’t collapse herself after getting that hard knock on the head.

  She rounded the island and laid Autumn on the sofa, then elevated her feet with a cushion. Autumn really was pretty. Not just pretty. Beautiful. She had the same wide mouth and
big smile as Becki, but her lashes were darker and longer. When those lashes began to flutter, so did something deep in Catherine’s belly. Autumn’s full lips began to move, and Catherine withdrew, realizing she had unconsciously bent close, caught in the desire to touch her lips to Autumn’s forehead…and maybe her cheek. She shook herself when she realized she’d closed her eyes for a sliver of a second to imagine how her lips tasted.

  “Wha-what…oh, God. Tell me I didn’t fall out in the middle of the kitchen and cause a scene.” Autumn raised her hand to her brow to cover her eyes in dramatic fashion, only to bonk herself with her bandaged hand. She squinted at it. “Why does my arm look like a huge Q-tip?”

  Catherine chuckled, relief washing through her. “You didn’t make a big scene. Nobody was here but me and Gabe. I noticed you were swaying, then caught you before you hit the floor. The Q-tip is Gabe’s handiwork. She’s gone to get a friend to take a look at the damage.”

  “Please don’t take me to a hospital. Just thinking about sitting in an ER waiting room half the night makes me nauseous.” Autumn seemed to be recovering, refocusing quickly.

  “Jody’s an old army medic. She’s had to stuff guts back into soldiers to transport them. I’m sure she can handle a cut finger.”

  “You really want to see me puke, don’t you?”

  “Sorry. Didn’t know you fainted at the sight of blood and threw up at the mention of guts. I guess I shouldn’t show you the fingertip Gabe found on the floor until Jody’s reattached it.”

  Autumn stared at her. “That’s the second one.”

  Catherine frowned. “Second what?”

  “You made a joke. That’s the second time you’ve made a joke.”

  This remark surprised Catherine. “You think I don’t have a sense of humor?”

  “You’re always so broody. You need to lighten up. Gabe is broody, too, but I imagine Becki balanced her out. If I leave you two together all summer, you’ll both just sit around and brood.”

  “Will not.”

  “Will, too.”

  “Do I need to separate you two?” Jody stood by the kitchen island, a medic box in her hand.

  Gabe peeked around her. “I hate it when my guardians argue.”

  Catherine stood from her perch on the edge of the sofa and pushed an ottoman over. Jody sat, then carefully laid Autumn’s hand in her lap to unwrap it.

  “Ouch. You sliced this thumb pad pretty deep. The good news is that you got the pad, not a joint or a tendon that might affect dexterity. A couple of small stitches will fix you up.”

  “What’s the bad news?”

  “It’s going to be really sore for a while, and as it heals you’ll forget and grab something before you remember how sore it can be. Is that your dominant hand?”

  “No. I’m right-handed.”

  “Good.” Jody turned back to Catherine, who held out a shallow bowl and a couple of towels. “Thanks for reading my mind.”

  Catherine also placed a small trash can on the floor next to Autumn’s shoulder. “She gets queasy at the sight of her own blood, so you might want to keep this handy.”

  Autumn’s mouth twisted into a silent mock snarl, but her cheeks had gone from flushed to ghostly white, so Catherine settled on the end of the coffee table while Jody worked. “Who taught you that fancy knife work?”

  Jody placed the bowl on Autumn’s stomach and moved her hand over it to spray the thumb with a numbing agent. Catherine knew the lidocaine needle would come next, and so did Autumn, judging from the set of her jaw. “Little sting,” Jody murmured. Gabe hovered close at Jody’s shoulder, holding a flashlight to better illuminate the thumb and watching with fascination.

  “Or are you secretly a CIA agent, posing as a social-media marketing entrepreneur?”

  “What?” Autumn looked away from Jody bent over her hand to meet Catherine’s gaze.

  “The knife-twirling act. Pretty fancy.”

  “Oh. Some guy came into the bar one night when things were slow. He said he came to town for a knife and gun convention that had just ended and, after a few drinks, swiped the knife I was cutting fruit with and started twirling it. I thought it was really sick, so I asked him to show me. I wasn’t too good at it, but he turned up the next night with a better, more balanced knife. He came around every night for the rest of the week and coached me.”

  Catherine’s brain had stumbled about midway through the explanation. “You thought it was sick, so you asked him to show you?” Why would she want to learn something she thought was bad?

  “Sick means way awesome.” Gabe offered the translation without taking her eyes from the stitches Jody was making. “He probably wanted to jump your bones.”

  “Gabriella.” Catherine’s growled warning drew a casual shrug from Gabe. “Do you even know what that means?”

  In a likely preview of her teen years ahead, Gabe rolled her eyes. “Yes. Mama gave me the sex talk when I was eight and I asked her a bunch of questions about two dogs that were gettin’ it on in our yard.”

  “That’ll do it.” Autumn smiled, the distraction of conversation returning some color to her face. “But, no, he didn’t want to jump my bones. He was a bear and had someone he’d met at the gun show keeping him busy during the day. That someone had to go home to family at night, so he came to the bar to talk to me. At the end of the week, he was off to another gun show in another city. That’s how he made a living, selling guns and knives. But he left the practice knife for me.”

  “He was a Russian?” Gabe, her brow wrinkling, finally looked at Autumn.

  “Russian?”

  “You said he was a bear. Did you mean that he was from Russia?”

  Okay, the kid could wait a few years for the lesson on labels for gay men. Catherine jumped in. “Exactly. Russians make some of the best guns on the market.” She turned back to Autumn. “Well, your knife work was impressive until the part where you tried to slice off your thumb. You scared the bejesus out of those two boys. Their parents might sue you if the boys start having nightmares about someone chasing them with a knife.”

  Autumn grimaced. “I know. I’m already a bad guardian.”

  “No. It was crazy to watch,” Gabe said.

  “Twirling that knife got me big tips and jobs at better, more upscale bars, where I made a lot of contacts in Atlanta’s business community. That last part with the fingers was just something I saw in a movie. I obviously haven’t mastered it.”

  Jody straightened. “All done.”

  Autumn blinked. “Oh. Thanks. I didn’t feel a thing.”

  “Well, you will when the lidocaine wears off. You should try to elevate and ice it until you go to sleep.”

  “I’ll make an ice pack,” Gabe said.

  “I’ll get that,” Catherine said, stopping Gabe. “And another T-shirt for you. Jody needs to check out your back and that lump on your head.”

  Autumn studied Jody while she palpated Gabe’s lump, checked the reaction of her pupils, and then began cleaning the scratches and cuts on her back. She had seen the silver band on Jody’s left ring finger when she peeled off the blue sterile gloves to don clean ones before treating Gabe. “So…if your husband is waiting while you do this, he can come inside. It sounds like everybody else might be gone.”

  “Around here, Miss Swan, people just ask what they want to know.” Jody glanced at her and smiled before returning to her work. “My wife is an ER nurse. So many folks had plans to come to Becki’s memorial, she couldn’t find anyone to work her shift for her. I told her Becki would understand.”

  “Is there a factory around here that spits out handsome butch women?”

  Jody chuckled. “I haven’t noticed, but you could ask Susan. That’s my wife. She’ll probably tell you Cat’s the last eligible lesbian in town worth noticing. She let me know after our first date that I was off the market.”

  Autumn flushed. Probably the lidocaine in her bloodstream. “Oh, I’m not shopping. Not at all. I was making an observation. Butch
isn’t my type. I’m looking for someone who shares my interests—shopping, getting your nails done, spending a Saturday seeing every movie at a multiplex theater. That kind of thing.”

  Jody shook her head. “Well, Cat’s safe then. That woman would rather be whipped than to spend all day in a dark movie theater. Even if it was pouring rain, she’d prefer curling up with a book and a good cup of coffee.”

  “Safe from what?” Catherine emerged from the hallway with a T-shirt for Gabe in one hand and a cold pack in the other.

  “Nothing,” Autumn said quickly. “Jody was telling me about Susan.”

  Jody repacked her medical kit and handed off the small bin holding the trash from her work rather than Autumn’s regurgitated stomach contents. “Speaking of Susan, I better head that way. She gets off work in about twenty minutes, and I have a plate of food for her.” She stood. “Ed said to tell you everything is cleaned up. Anything that needed to stay here is in the barn. He put the chickens up for the night, too.”

  ***

  “Thanks, Jody. Any instructions for the walking wounded?” Catherine asked as she walked her out to the front yard where her truck was waiting.

  “You need to keep an eye on both of them. Gabe seems okay, but you probably should wake her up a few times during the night to check on her. And Autumn should keep that hand elevated and iced off and on for the next twenty-four hours. It’s going to throb like a son of a bitch, but a few Tylenol should make it bearable.”

  Catherine lowered her voice to a whisper. “Don’t say bear around Gabe. I don’t want to start that discussion again.” She cleared her throat and spoke in a normal tone. “I’ll take care of them.”

  Jody paused at the bottom of the porch stairs and turned to smile at Catherine. “I don’t expect that will be much of a hardship where Becki’s cousin is concerned. She’s a hottie.”

  “Aren’t you going to be late picking up Susan?”

  Jody laughed and climbed into her truck, waving before turning down the long drive.