Falling For Rachel - Stanislaskis 3 Part 16

Freddie's smile bloomed warm and her fledgling woman's heart tapped a little faster. He'd noticed her. "Mama's my stepmother, technically. I was about six when she and my father got married."

"Oh." A step, he thought. That was something he knew about, and sympathized with. "I guess it was a little rough on you."

Though she was baffled, Freddie continued to smile. After all, he was talking to her, and she thought he looked like a rock star. "Why?"

"Well, you know..." Nick found himself fl.u.s.tered under that steady gray stare. "Having a stepmother-a stepfamily."

"That's just a word." Gathering her nerve, she sat on the arm of the couch beside him. "We have a house in West Virginia-that's where Dad met Mama. He teaches at the university and she owns a toy store.

Have you ever been to West Virginia?"

Nick was still stuck on her answer. It's just a word. He could hear in the easy tone of her voice that she meant just that. "What? Oh, no, never been there."

Inside the warm, fragrant kitchen, Rachel was laughing with her sister.

"Katie certainly knows how to snag her man."

"It was sweet the way he blushed." "Here." Nadia thrust a bowl into her eldest daughter's hands. "You make biscuits. The boy had good eyes," she said to Rachel. "Why is he in trouble?"

Sniffing a pot of simmering cabbage, Rachel smiled. "Because he didn't have a mama and papa to yell at him."

"And the older one," Nadia continued, opening the oven to check her ham. "He has good eyes, too. And they're on you."

"Maybe."

After smacking her daughter's hand away, Nadia replaced the lid on the pot. "Alex grumbles about them."

"He grumbles about everything."

Natasha cut shortening in the bowl and grinned. "I think it's more to the point that Rachel has her eye on Zack every bit as much as he has his on her."

"Thanks a lot," Rachel said under her breath.

"A woman who doesn't look at such a man needs gla.s.ses," Nadia said, and made her daughters laugh.

When her curiosity got to be too much for her, Rachel opened the swinging door a crack and peeked out. There was Sydney, sitting on the floor and keeping Brandon entertained with a pile of race cars. The men were huddled together, arguing football. Freddie was perched on the arm of the sofa, obviously in the first stages of infatuation with Nick. As for Nick, he seemed to have forgotten his embarra.s.sment and was bouncing Katie on his knee. And Zack, she noted with a smile, was leaning forward, entrenched in the hot debate over the upcoming game.

By the time the table was set and groaning under the weight of platters of food, Zack was thoroughly fascinated with the Stanislaskis. They argued, loudly, but without any of the bitterness he remembered from his own confrontations with his father. He discovered that Mikhail was the artist who had crafted the sculpture on the piano, as well as all the pa.s.sionate pieces in Rachel's apartment. Yet he talked construction and building codes with his father, not art.

Natasha handled her children with a deft hand. No one seemed to mind if Brandon created a racket imitating race cars or if Katie climbed all over the furniture. But when it was time to stop, they did so at little more than a word from their mother or father.

Alex didn't seem like such a tough cop when he was being barraged by his family's teasing over his latest lady friend-a woman, Mikhail claimed, who had the I.Q. of the cabbage he was heaping on his plate.

"Hey, I don't mind. That way I can do the thinking for her."

That earned an unladylike snort from Rachel. "He wouldn't know how to handle a woman with a brain."

"One day one will find him," Nadia predicted. "Like Sydney found my Mikhail."

"She didn't find me." Mikhail pa.s.sed a bowl of boiled potatoes to his wife. "I found her. She needed some spice in her life."

"As I recall, you needed someone to knock the chip off your shoulder."

"It was always so," Yuri agreed, shaking his fork. "He was a good boy, but-What is the word?''

"Arrogant?" Sydney suggested.

"Ah." Satisfied, Yuri dived into his meal. "But it's not so bad for a man to be arrogant." "This is true." Nadia kept an eagle eye on Katie, who was concentrating on cutting her meat. "So long as he has a woman who is smarter. Is not hard to do."

Female laughter and male catcalls had Katie clapping her hands in delight.

"Nicholas," Nadia said, pleased that he was going back for seconds, "you will go to school, yes?"

"Ah... no, ma'am."

She urged the basket of biscuits on him. "So you know what work you want."

"I... Not exactly."

"He is young, Nadia," Yuri said from across the table. "Time to decide.

You're skinny." He pursed his lips as he studied Nick. "But have good arms. You need work, I give you job. Teach you to build."

Speechless, Nick stared. No one had ever offered to give him anything so casually. The big, broad-faced man who was plowing through the glazed ham didn't even know him. "Thanks. But I'm sort of working for Zack."

"It must be interesting to work in a bar. Brandon, eat your vegetables, or no more biscuits. All the people you meet," Natasha continued, saving Katie's gla.s.s from tipping on the floor without breaking rhythm.

"You don't meet a whole lot of them in the kitchen," Nick muttered.

"You have to be twenty-one to tend bar or serve drinks," Zack reminded him.

Noting Nick's mutinous expression, Rachel broke in. "Mama, you should see Zack's cook. He's a giant from Jamaica, and he makes the most incredible food. I've been trying to charm some recipes out of him."

"I will give you one to trade."

"Make it the glaze for this ham, and I guarantee he'll give you anything."

Zack sampled another bite. "It's great."

"You will take some home," Nadia ordered. "Make sandwiches."

"Yes, ma'am." Nick grinned.

Rachel bided her time, waiting until dinner was over and three of the four apple pies her mother had baked had been devoured. With just a little urging, Nadia was persuaded to play the piano. After a time, she and Spence played a duet, the music flowing out over the sound of clattering dishes and conversation.

She saw the way Nick glanced over, watching, listening. As cleverly as a general aligning his troops, she dropped down on the bench when Spence and Nadia took a break. She held out a hand, inviting Nick to join her.

"I shouldn't have had that second piece of pie," she said with a sigh.

"Me either." It was difficult to decide how to tell her the way the afternoon had made him feel. He wouldn't have believed people lived this way. "Your mom's great."

"Yeah, I think so." Very casually, she turned and began to noodle with the keys. "She and Papa love these Sundays when we can all get together."

"Your dad, he was saying how the house would get bigger when the kids left home. But now he thinks they'll have to add on a couple of rooms to hold everyone. I guess you get together like this a lot." "Whenever we can."

"They didn't seem to mind you brought me and Zack along."

"They like company." She tried a chord, wincing at the clash of notes.

"This always looks so easy when Spence or Mama does it."

"Try this." He put his hand over hers, guiding her fingers.

"Ah, better. But I don't see how anyone can play different things with each hand. At the same time, you know."

"You don't think about it that way. You just have to let it happen."

"Well..."

She trailed off and, unable to resist, he began to improvise blues. When the music moved through him, he forgot he was in a room crowded with people and let it take over. Even when the room fell silent, he continued, wrapped up in the pleasure of creating sound and feeling from the keys.

When he played, he wasn't Nick LeBeck, outcast. He was someone he didn't really understand yet, someone he couldn't quite see and yearned desperately to be always.

He eased into half-remembered tunes, filling them out with his own interpretation, letting the music swing with his mood from blues to boogie-woogie to jazz and back again.

When he paused, grinning to himself from the sheer pleasure it had given him to play, Zack laid a hand on his shoulder and snapped him back to reality.

"Where'd you learn to do that?" The amazement in Zack's voice was reflected in his eyes. "I didn't know you could do that."

With a shrug, Nick wiped his suddenly nervous hands on his thighs. "I was just fooling around." "That was some fooling around."

Cautious, trying to put a label on the tone of Zack's voice, Nick glanced back. "It's no big deal."

Grinning from ear to ear, Zack shook his head. "Man, to somebody who can't play 'Chopsticks,' that was one whale of a big deal." Pride was bubbling through the amazement. "It was great. Really great."

The pleasure working its way into him made Nick almost as uneasy as the criticism he'd expected. It was then he realized that everyone had stopped talking and was looking at him. Color crept into his cheeks.

"Look, I said it was no big deal. I was just banging on the keys."

"That was some very talented banging." With Katie on his hip, Spencer moved to the piano. "Ever think about studying seriously?"

Flabbergasted, Nick stared down at his hands. It had been one thing to sit across the table from Spencer Kimball, and another entirely to have the renowned composer discussing music with him. "No... I mean, not really. I just fool around sometimes, that's all."

"You've got the touch, and the ear." Catching Rachel's eye, he pa.s.sed her Katie and changed positions with her so that he sat with Nick on the edge of the piano bench. "Know any Muddy Waters?"

"Some. You dig Muddy Waters?"

"Sure." He began to play the ba.s.s. "Can you pick it up?"

"Yeah." Nick laid his hands on the keys and grinned. "Yeah."

"Not too shabby," Rachel murmured to Zack.

He was still staring at his brother, dumbfounded. "He never told me.

Never a word." When Rachel reached for his hand, he gripped hard. "I guess he did to you." "A little, enough to make me want to try this. I didn't know he was that good."

"He really is, isn't he?" Overwhelmed, he pressed his lips to Rachel's hair. Nick was too involved to notice, though several pair of eyes observed the gesture. "Looks like I'm going to have to get my hands on a piano."

Rachel leaned her head against his shoulder. "You're all right, Muldoon."

It took him nearly a week to arrange it, but taking another deep dip into his savings, Zack bought an upright piano. With Rachel's help, he dragged furniture around the apartment to make room for it.

Puffing a bit, her hands on her hips, she surveyed the s.p.a.ce they had cleared under the window. "I wonder if it wouldn't be better against that wall there."

"You've already changed your mind three times. This is it." He took a long pull from a cold beer. "For better or worse."

"You're not marrying the stupid piano. You're arranging it. And I really think- "Keep thinking, and I'll pour this over your head." He caught her chin to tilt her head up for a kiss. "And it's not a stupid piano. The guy a.s.sured me it was the best for the money."

"Don't get started on that again." She eased closer to link her arms around his neck. "Nick doesn't need a baby grand."

"I'd just like to have done a little better for him."

"Muldoon." She pressed her mouth to his. "You did good. When's it supposed to get here?" "Twenty minutes ago." Wound up, he began to pace. "If they blow this after I went through all that business to get Nick out for a few hours-''

Rachel interrupted him, amused and touched. "It's going to be fine. And I think it was inspired of you to use beer nuts to get him out of the way."

"He was steaming." With a grin, Zack dropped down on the couch.

"Argued with me for ten minutes about why the h.e.l.l he had to go check on a missing delivery of beer nuts when he was getting paid to wash dishes."

"I think he'll forgive you when he gets back."

"Hey up there." Rio's musical voice echoed up the stairway. "We got us one fine piano coming in. Best you come down and take a look."

Rachel tried to stay out of the way-though several times, as they muscled and maneuvered the piano up those steep stairs, she wanted to offer advice. The best part was watching Zack, which she did the entire time the instrument was hauled, set into place and tuned. He worried over the piano like a mother hen, wiping smudges from the surface, opening and closing the lid on the bench.

"That looks real fine." Rio folded his ma.s.sive arms over his chest. "Be good to have music when I cook. You do right by that boy, Zack. He's going to make himself somebody. You'll see. Now I'm going to fix us something special." He grinned at Rachel. "When you going to bring that mama of yours by here so we can talk food?"

"Soon," Rachel promised. "She's going to bring you an old Ukrainian recipe."

"Good. Then I give her my secret barbecue sauce. I think she must be a fine woman." He started out just as Nick came clattering up the steps.

"What's your hurry, boy? Got a fire in your pocket?'' "d.a.m.n beer nuts" was all Nick said as he pushed by. He swung into the apartment, ready for a fight. "Listen, bro, the next time you want somebody to-" Everything went out of his mind when he spotted the piano standing new and s.h.i.+ny under the window.

"Sorry about the wild-goose chase." Nervous, Zack jammed his hands in his pockets. "I wanted to get you out so we could get this in." He s.h.i.+fted back on his heels when Nick remained silent. "So, what do you think?''

Nick swallowed hard. "What did you do, rent it or something?''