Superstition by Karen Robards Read Free Book Online

behind.
    “Hurry up,” Nicky growled in her sister’s direction as the Neon sped past them down the driveway. She was still watching the flying pea gravel that was stirred up in the other car’s wake when she was distracted by Uncle John and Uncle Ham, who appeared on either side of the Honda, opened the back doors, jumped inside, and slammed the doors shut again.
    Just like that. Nicky was left with nothing to do but blink in surprised dismay at the closed door nearest her.
    Life on the island: It always had been, and evidently always would be, a never-ending three-ring circus. How could she have forgotten what it was like? The constant commotion was the reason—one of the reasons—she rarely came home anymore. Unlike her nearest and dearest, she liked things calm and well organized and predictable.
    “Wait a minute,” she protested, sliding into the driver’s seat and slewing around to look at her uninvited male relatives. Not that she didn’t love and appreciate them, of course, but keeping tonight’s chaos level as low as possible seemed the wise thing to do. Leonora all by herself was more turmoil than a full-blown hurricane. Add in her sister, and . . . “Livvy’s coming. There’s not going to be room.”
    The left rear door opened, cutting Nicky off.
    “I’ll scoot over.” Uncle Ham suited the action to the words. Livvy plopped into the backseat in the spot he had vacated and closed the door. Given Livvy’s bulk, the three of them were wedged in tighter than tennis balls in a vacuum-packed can, but they looked perfectly happy. Anyway, Nicky was out of time to argue.
    They were due to be on the air, live, in eighteen minutes. Hopefully somebody—“Where’s Marisa?” Nicky asked as she started the car—was setting up. Leonora liked things done in a certain way, and, as their family mantra put it, “If Leonora ain’t happy, ain’t nobody gonna be happy.”
    “She left,” Leonora said coldly. As Marisa was her mother’s longtime assistant and faithful friend who knew just how Leonora liked things done, such coldness could only mean that Marisa had failed to take Leonora’s latest attack of diva-ism seriously enough.
    “She went on over to the Old Taylor Place to start getting things ready,” Uncle Ham explained. “We were supposed to bring Leonora with us.”
    Good job, guys, Nicky wanted to say as she threw the car into drive, but she didn’t. Leonora, in her queen-of-the-universe mode, was more than a match for Uncle Ham—indeed, more than a match for most people.
    “Seat belts.”
    Nicky threw the reminder over her shoulder as she swung around in a tight circle that barely missed clipping her mother’s husband, who’d stepped outside the garage just at that moment, probably drawn by all the commotion. The doorway behind him backlit his tall, well-built form and thick, white hair. Sixty-seven years old, he had the calmest disposition of anyone Nicky had ever met. Which, she supposed, was how he had survived six years of marriage to her mother without going totally bonkers.
    She waved at him through her window. As her front bumper whizzed by, a scant few inches from the knees of his dark-blue slacks, he simply smiled and waved back at her. Then he was out of sight, and Nicky sent the Honda rocketing down the driveway so fast that churned-up pea gravel peppered the closed windows.
    “Whoa,” Uncle John said, grabbing the back of her seat. “You might want to slow down a little, Nicky dear.”
    Nicky did, just long enough to turn left out of the driveway onto Atlantic Avenue, which was a straight stretch and practically deserted, and which she knew like the back of her hand—certainly well enough, under the circumstances, to speed as necessary. And it was necessary. She, personally, was sweaty and flush-faced and about as camera-ready as Livvy. And her mother still had to be powdered, pacified, and put into position. And . . .
    She wasn’t even going to let herself think about any