At Any Price(61)

With a shuddering sigh, I moved around that apartment like a mindless robot, getting the things I needed done before dressing in a pair of white Capris and a pale blue T-shirt for the barbecue.

***

Once again, Adam was prompt when he came to pick me up to take me to his uncle’s house. He opened the door for me and I settled into the vintage leather seats of his Porsche.

His uncle lived in the next city over from mine, Tustin, near the rolling hills that swept toward the canyons in OC’s backcountry. The homes here were nice. Not mansions like in Newport, but upper-middle-class homes with established but not wealthy inhabitants. And it was in the long white driveway of one of these that Adam parked his car.

We were hardly out of the car before two young boys—no older than six or eight, came racing out of the house. “Adam!” they shouted, clearly excited.

Adam bent and scooped up each one in a muscular arm, pulling them off the ground. “Holy crap!” he said with an exaggerated groan. “You two are getting heavy.”

“Put me down!” one of them said. I pegged him to be a few years older than his brother, as he was slightly bigger. Other than that, it was difficult to tell them apart. They had similar features and their hair was the exact same color. “DJ, I get to drive first!”

But the younger one had caught sight of me and tried to squirm out of Adam’s hold, his eyes widening and jaw dropping. “Adam brought a girl,” he said in clear disbelief.

I laughed—I couldn’t help it—especially when Adam rolled his eyes, dropping both the boys and putting his hands on their heads. “These two knuckleheads are Gareth and Dylan—we call him DJ. They’re my cousin Britt’s kids.”

DJ was still staring at me in wonder and approached me while his brother Gareth hopped into Adam’s car and started making pretend motor noises while tugging at the steering wheel. “Hi,” he said with a cheeky smile. “You’re pretty.”

“Well, thank you,” I said, laughing.

“Are you Adam’s girlfriend?”

“Uhh,” I said with a glance at Adam, who seemed more amused than embarrassed.

“Stop putting the moves on Emilia, DJ.”

DJ turned to his cousin. “Why’d you bring a girl? You never bring girls.”

“I’m sorry? Did you forget your cootie spray?” Adam said.

Soon, Adam was ushering me inside, leaving his cousins out in the driveway to pretend-drive the car with the strict instructions that they were not to touch the gearshift or the emergency brake. Clearly he trusted them, and that this was all the supervision they needed. I could hardly believe he’d let those kids fiddle around in that car, which was clearly worth a fortune.

“Don’t worry. They get bored with it after about ten minutes,” he said.

In quick succession, I was introduced to four more people, all full-sized. The first two were Britt, Adam’s cousin, and Rik, her husband—the parents of the two out in the front.

After initial introductions I thanked Britt for teaching Adam how to dance. “He taught me the foxtrot and blamed it on you,” I said with a grin and Britt shot an amused look at Adam.

“All that bitching and yet he still remembers all the dances—and is using them to impress the ladies. Why am I not surprised?”

“Hey, I was bitching about the arm twisting—I mean literally.” Adam turned to me. “She’d sit on me and twist my arm up behind my back until I agreed to be her partner.”

Britt snorted. “Let’s just say that I weighed a bit more than Adam back in those days.”

I couldn’t help giggling at the mental picture.

Next, Adam introduced me to his uncle, Peter Drake, a tall, thin and soft-spoken man. He wore a silly barbecue apron with writing on it that said, “I’m grilling the witness.” Adam’s Uncle Peter must have been tipped off that I was coming because he showed absolutely no surprise that I was there.

“Welcome,” he said. “How do you like your steak?”

“Medium well,” I said. And he shuffled out the back door with a plate of raw meat.

Adam was called away to make a phone call—no surprise. He worked even on Sunday during a family dinner. I had no idea how long he would be, so I wandered off to see what kind of trouble I could get into.

I knew Adam had another cousin about his own age but I didn’t see him until I ambled down the hall to find the bathroom. On my way back, I saw movement in one of the bedrooms and poked my head in.

“Hi,” I said.

A tall man in his midtwenties sat at long L-shaped table that held two nicely tricked-out computers. He was bent over something tiny, holding a paintbrush in one hand. He looked up at me and just as quickly jerked his eyes away. He was a good-looking man—clearly a trait that ran in Adam’s family—but he was dressed curiously, with a mismatched sweater vest pulled over a plaid shirt.