Richard Savage's Blog: The Anniversary, page 5

The Reclaiming of Charlotte Moss

The Reclaiming of Charlotte Moss
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Heather M. Walker
The Reclaiming of Charlotte Moss

Some people celebrated the finalization of a divorce with a glass of good champagne. Charlotte Moss began her celebration with a pair of sexy panties.
Charlotte had always known that the purchase of lacy red and black thong panties would signal the beginning of the reclaiming of herself. Now, she finally held them in her hands, and she found it such a strange and taboo feeling to run her fingers over the silken fabric; the feel of it so soft and dangerous against her fingers. The bra that matched the panties was beautiful; red and black lace with just a wisp of silk, and an underwire that promised a sensational amount of lift and separation. The fabric felt so naughty that she began to blush, hardly able to look the cashier in the eye as she paid for her goodies.
Gifts Of Passion was a beautiful and enticing store. Charlotte had yearned to shop there since it had opened in the mall a year ago, but, up until now, she had never dared to enter. The variety of items displayed in the window hinted at every manner of passion, from delicate and sweet to darkly erotic.
She blushed as she felt the excitement of something new take her over. There were more than just pretty, lacy underthings. Pink and white almost innocent, feminine camisoles sat next to items more foreign to her; leather and imitation fur, exotic buckles and straps, satin and silk. The store showcased a new world that had been off limits for her for far too long. Having her freedom back was exhilarating and terrifying all at once.
Stepping into this wonderland of eroticism was the most exciting thing she had done since she’d married Mark seven years ago. The feeling that she was her own person and not the property of some control freak husband was sweet and something she had waited a long time for.
When she’d walked into the mall, she had seen a stand that sold finely crafted cosmetics. Excited at the idea of finally wearing makeup again, she decided this was her next stop. She enjoyed picking out eye shadows in colors that were soft and shimmery, turning iridescent as the light caught them. She also bought liquid black kohl, blush, volumizing mascara, and sizzling pink lip gloss that the sales lady promised would give her a pleasant tingle as it plumped her lips for a sensual pout.
When she bought the fancy makeup she hadn’t in the past been allowed to wear, the giddiness of it sent her heart racing. She could still hear Mark’s rough voice in the back of her mind, telling her how dirty she was to even think of putting on makeup and pretty, feminine clothes.
With a smile, she dabbed the shimmery pink eye shadow on the back of her hand, turning it in the light to enjoy the way it sparkled. Perhaps it would accentuate the newly found gleam of freedom in her eyes, she thought with a smile.
Her memory went back to the last time she had applied makeup. Mark’s control had increased gradually over time. She had taken it as a sign of him wanting to be a loving husband, taking care that others wouldn’t take advantage of her. As his control of her got stronger, simple requests became thinly veiled threats if she did not obey him.
At first, before the marriage, she was happy to comply. She enjoyed wearing makeup and experimenting with it before she met Mark, but she knew she could live without it if it meant making Mark happy. At this point, she had still loved him.
But then the day came that marked the beginning of the end. When she was about to leave for work, in a small act of defiance, she had applied a light shade of pink to her lips. He had seen it and had become angry, accusing her of having an affair with someone at work; which, of course, hadn’t been true.
He’d grabbed her hand roughly and had dragged her into the bathroom, where he had washed her whole face vigorously with a hot washcloth. He’d scrubbed on her face hard enough to hurt her, and had ignored her tears and pleas to stop. He’d yelled at her for defying him, telling her no woman of his would dare to act this way against him.
His control had gotten worse day by day, as if he were God, and she a petty little toy.
Though he had never struck her, he had deflated her self-worth psychologically. He had done this so well that he had almost managed to convince her that she was nothing without him, and that she could not survive without him in such a hostile world.
Some tiny, divine spark in her heart had told her these were cruel, terrible lies, and she was wise enough to pay heed to that divine spark. In secret, she had begun to save money from her job as a waitress at the Down Home Diner downtown. It wasn’t much to start with, but after his control had tightened and become more demoralizing, she had known she had to save enough money to rent a studio apartment. She worked harder, taking double shifts and doing her best to be kind and courteous to her customers. It had paid off. She got bigger tips, and was grateful for the hours she worked. Often she was exhausted, but glad to be away from Mark. No longer did his behavior seem chivalrous to her as she saw it for what it was; control and abuse.
With her makeup bought and packaged in pretty pink boxes, it was off to The Classic Woman. As she casually looked through the clothes for the perfect outfit, she recalled the only kind of clothes Mark would let her wear. He had made her wear long, matronly dresses that came to her ankles, with no patterns or features to make them pretty or feminine. Everything she had owned for the past seven years was plain and drab, as if she belonged to some extreme religious order that allowed no personal freedom of expression. She had longed for lacy dresses, even something soft and girly like pink cotton skirts with delicate frills.
Mark had told her if she wore them then God would see her as a harlot and a sinner, and he would have no such woman as his wife. He hadn’t allowed her to style her hair, telling her that to cut it was a sin, and that her hair was her crowning glory. Yet, were she to try to wear her long locks loose and flowing, he was horrified, and made her tie it up immediately in a simple knot on the top of her head. Her beautiful red ringlets were his and his alone to see.
She began to wonder what it had been about Mark that had attracted her to him enough to make her marry him. He was tall, dark and handsome, and at first his commanding ways made her think that he loved her.
She had already untied her hair, letting its soft ringlets cascade down her back. She even got some smiles from the men she passed as she shopped. It felt good to be seen, instead of being a shadow that had no identity of its own.
As she saw the attractive men looking at her with appreciation, she smiled as she thought of how Mark had accused her of having an affair. Though she never would have dared, the truth was she had often fantasized about it. Her favorite customer, a handsome young artist with hazel eyes, long blonde hair and sensual lips had been prominent in most of her fantasies.
With a wistful sigh, she returned her focus to buying her new clothes. She could still hear Mark’s voice in the back of her mind telling her what a sinful harlot she was. It took a great effort to silence these thoughts, but as soon as she touched the soft V-necked blouse that had a light dusting of sequins on it, she knew she had to buy it. She felt that it was the perfect balance of fierce yet feminine, and would embolden her in her new life as an unmarried woman. It was beautiful; white satin with gold sequins sparking at the cleavage. How lovely her breasts would be, she thought, accented by the subtle sparkle of gold around them and held up by the pretty bra she had bought just moments ago.

The Postman’s Daughter

The Postman’s Daughter
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Sally Anne Palmer
Chapter One

I am dead, my love. The words of his last letter haunted me, whispering through the darkness when I tried to sleep. How did he know? And, more importantly, was he right?
If I hadn’t got lost, maybe everything would have been different. I remember I was walking home from the library, via Poplar Park and Charlotte’s house, trying to recall the name of every book I’d ever read and thinking about Charlotte’s news. The blackout rules had been in place for more than a year so every house I passed had stuffed up its windows and doors with new curtains, old sheets, sacks or bits of rag depending on style and circumstances. But in East London, where I’d lived all of my eighteen years, some of the houses didn’t have any windows left and the doorways of others spilled darkness onto the street. The zeppelins had been bombing us for two years, once or twice a month, and I was used to watching the sky.
That night though, it was cloudless, festooned with stars and when I realised I was lost, I wasn’t worried. I followed steep brick walls around corners, crossed roads, squinted at illegible street signs and all around me I had the sense of people, pressed in behind the walls, talking, shouting, living, somewhere close by. The East End was like that, everyone on top of everyone else, but it was home and at that moment I was glad of it.
Overhead, but still some distance away I caught the first faint rumbles of thunder so I picked up my pace. A couple more turns and the walls got bigger, stretching further up into the sky and coating the pavements in thick shadow. I began to have trouble seeing my feet and I stretched out my hand to one side, trailing my fingers over the rough walls as a guide.
The lack of windows and a faint, acrid smell told me I was near a factory, although which one, I wasn’t sure. I heard the thunder throbbing through the sky above, some way behind me but coming closer by the minute. I buttoned my coat, began a slow trot through the gloom and promptly tripped over.
A hand shot out of the darkness, grabbed my elbow and arrested my fall. “You shouldn’t be here,” said a voice, overly loudly and with an arrogant tone I didn’t care for.
“I’m quite aware of that, thank you,” I retorted, and tried to wrest my arm back, but the fingers of my unknown assailant were pinched tight. “If you would kindly stop breaking my elbow and tell me how to get to South Street, I’ll be on my way.” My mother always said I was blunt, by which she generally meant rude, but I hadn’t paid her any attention since I was twelve years old and I usually spoke to people exactly how I wanted.
The man in the darkness did not let me go. “South Street? That’s about two miles in the other direction. Are you stupid as well as lost?”
“If you don’t let go of my arm I’ll be stupid, lost and calling for help.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“You’ve said that already, although it’s clearly alright for you to be here, lurking around at night assaulting young women.”
“They’re coming,” he said.
I instantly felt sorry for him, and slightly guilty for the rudeness. I couldn’t tell much about him apart from that he was taller than me, older than me and also from London, but I’d seen enough young men back from the front by now to know that the damage wasn’t always on the outside.
“Alright,” I said, straightening up. “If they’re coming, where should I be?”
I could hear an exhalation and the man bent closer as his fingers relaxed. “About two miles in the other direction, I would think. Come on.”
He stepped out of the shelter of the wall and in the dim starlight his face was as white as bleached bone, eye sockets gouged out of shadow. Still holding onto my arm, he stepped off the kerb as if he could actually see it, and steered me across the road.
“So, who’s coming?” I asked carefully, because the answer might well be flying monkeys or God or something else that I’d have to pretend to believe in.
I glimpsed the turn of his head towards me as he said rudely, “Who do you think?” A long line of shadow snaked down the right side of his face, cutting across a cheekbone, ending in a ragged patch by his mouth.
“Someone with better manners, I hope.”
Our footsteps tapped across the cobbles but the noise was muffled by a sudden rumble overhead as the thunder muttered to itself impatiently. We’d reached the corner of the road now, turned right and passed under a railway arch I didn’t remember seeing before. The man stopped short, span both of us round and raised an arm dramatically at the sky. “They’re coming.”
I blinked at the clear night and wondered vaguely where the thunder was coming from since there weren’t any clouds. I waited for a heartbeat, two, nothing happened. “Do you think they could come a bit quicker? If you asked them nicely?”
I saw the flicker of movement in the darkness as the man’s shoulders straightened, heard his indrawn breath. “You want me to ask them to come quicker? I should be the one shouting for help. Hey you – the attacking German air force. There’s a girl here who wants you to hurry up!” he yelled.
Then the most enormous plane I’d ever seen shattered the calm sky with a throbbing shout of noise. The roar it made was immense, deafening, battering the air out of the way with two screaming engines, trailing a curtain of sound that was so loud, so all-encompassing I couldn’t think about anything else. I felt the man’s grasp on my elbow release, and his fingers creep down my sleeve until he was holding my hand. But the plane overhead held all my attention, all my awareness. I knew I should run. Hide somewhere. Get underground. But there was a brick wall against my back, a man’s hand holding mine and a clutching, clenching fear in my guts that wouldn’t let me go. The quality of the sound modulated, shifted, differentiated itself into a more immediate low whistle that started quietly, and then expanded and expanded until the drone of the plane was obliterated and the whistle sliced through my eardrums.
The bombs fell. There was a split second of silence, and then the explosion. The pavement beneath my feet shuddered. The brick wall shook behind my back, and then spat dust all over my head. A hot wind licked my cheeks and my eyes were full of fire. Red flame smeared the darkness as the factory against whose walls I had been stumbling not ten minutes before disassembled itself at speed into brick and plaster.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, a rough shake. The man next to me said, “You shouldn’t be here.”
In the firelight I could see him clearly for the first time. His face was thin, gaunt even, the pale skin marred by a thin thread of scar tissue which stretched from just behind his ear to the right hand side of his mouth. I guessed his age as around thirty, and, apart from the scar, he seemed uninjured, although when he glanced down there was something not quite normal about the way he was looking at me.
“Oh,” he said. “That’s new. I mean, you’re new. That is, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you were going to happen.”
I gestured at the burning building, which felt slightly more important than his inarticulate introductions. “Shouldn’t we go and help?”
“No, there was no one inside. I already checked.”
“But we could put the fire out or something. Maybe. I don’t know. How can you have checked?”
“Easily. I got in through one of the doors at the back and had a look around.”
“No, I mean, how can you have known to check? I haven’t seen German planes over London before. How can you have known there would be a raid tonight? How did you know that the factory would get hit?”
“It wasn’t a factory, it was a works. Tanners Steel Works to be exact. Not that I know what the difference between a factory and a works is.”
“Is that your best attempt at changing the subject? How did you know that factory would get hit?”
“Lucky guess?”
“Rubbish. Practically the only thing you’ve said to me tonight is “you shouldn’t be here” and “go away”. You were lurking around it. You knew it was going to get bombed. How?”
“I didn’t tell you to go away. I wanted to, but I didn’t actually say it. South Street wasn’t it? Come on.”
And he jammed his hands into the pockets of the long black coat he was wearing and strode smartly away. It wasn’t all that easy to storm off though, because every house now had an open door and every inhabitant of every house was taking advantage of their open door to chat to their neighbours. Amidst the roar of the flames and the odd plink of exploding brick I caught fragments of conversation.
Air raids in London were a regular occurrence, and they usually managed to kill a handful of people, but we were protected now by searchlights, by a smattering of our own airborne defences, but mostly by the great British weather, which had managed to produce enough fog and cloud and even snow during 1916 to keep the Germans at bay. Besides, someone had managed to shoot down an airship with a new kind of ammunition only a couple of months ago and the parts had been sold to help the war effort, so they weren’t unbeatable. That was the sort of thing people liked to talk about after a raid.
I weaved through the street on the trail of the suspicious man in the suspicious black coat who had suspiciously known exactly when and where the Germans were going to strike.
“Are you a German?” I asked his retreating back.
“No. Are you a German?”
“Of course not. Two of my brothers are away fighting them.”
“Poor Germans. Turn left.”
I got no more conversation out of him all the way home. At the end of South Street, he paused, waited for me to walk past.
“Thank you for bringing me back,” I said. “I’m also grateful not to have been killed.”
He nodded in my direction and turned on his heel. “We’ll meet again,” he said.
“Do you know where? Or when? It’s just that I’d prefer you not to jump out at me from the dark again Mr…?”
“I know exactly where,” he said.
Even back then, I didn’t know whether or not to believe him.
Chapter Two

My house was the sixth one on the right from the top of South Street, the only place I’d ever lived. I was born on my parents” bed like my three brothers before me, which made for a strong sense of community, as well as a really stained mattress. Our house was quite large as it had three bedrooms and its own toilet in the garden although we would quite regularly find some of our older neighbours in there using it as their own toilet too.
I ran down the narrow passageway between our house and the one next door, counting off eight steps before reaching for the gate. The alley was dark even at noon on a sunny summer day and in winter in a blackout, memory was the only map. I unclicked the latch, swung the door, stepped down into the brick yard and saw immediately that there was something wrong.
The back door was open and from inside I could see a candle flickering on the kitchen table, doling out slices of light to one portion of the room then another as it guttered in the draft. My mother had let the range go out. That was probably some kind of commentary on the fact I was back so late, since the task of keeping the home fire burning had been delegated to me about six years ago and since then my mother had deliberately forgotten the location of the matches on a number of occasions. I went inside, hung my coat on the back of the door and threw some wood on the fire, lighting it with the candle. This took far longer than it should have done, because even though we had six rooms in our house and were better off under the new coal rationing than lots of people, we were still hoarding it against a cold winter. By the time I’d finished, my mother had opened the door to the kitchen.
“Oh,” she sighed. “Ivy. I thought you were your father.”
“What’s happened, Mother? The door was open.”
“Your brother.”
“Tom? Philip?” The rush of hot panic was instant and uncontrollable. “What happened? Did you get a letter? A telegram?”
My mother was dismissive, something she had practised extensively. “It’s much too late for the post, you know that. Alfie is missing.”
That was panic of a different kind, a worn and threadbare alarm that I was always half expecting. My eldest brother Alfie was different to other boys. His difference wasn’t something you could name or label, he didn’t have a missing hand or two heads and people walked straight past him in the street without a second glance, but if you spent any time with him it became his defining feature. I was sure he loved me, in the same way he loved all his family, and his collection of shells from the beach and the stick he found in the park. His loves were fierce, but easily picked up and just as easily put down again. He spent so much time listening to other people he rarely remembered to speak.
I picked up my coat again and shrugged it on. “I’ll go and look. Did he take anything with him?”
My mother shook her head, sighed, and dropped heavily onto the kitchen chair. “He’ll be the death of me, that boy.” She was always saying that, but it hadn’t happened yet, unfortunately.
Alfie was a creature of habit, and that creature was probably a squirrel, because he loved to collect things and he had a special brown bag to hoard them away in. If he hadn’t taken his bag, that meant he wasn’t out on a forage, so I started next door. I rattled the letter box, which hadn’t been polished, and dislodged a few flakes of paint from the door. Mrs Norton would be inside but she was probably already in bed, because with a husband and a son gone to fight she seemed to be finding fewer and fewer reasons to get up. I knocked again, and then called through the letterbox. “Mrs Norton, have you seen Alfie?”
There was no reply so I moved onto our next neighbour, Mrs Carmichael, who was opening the door even as I raised my hand. She had at least six children, most still in shorts, and consequently liked to get out of the house as much as possible. She stepped out onto the pavement and pulled the door to, which didn’t quite muffle the odd yell and the stench of drying wool.
“Alfie’s missing again, Mrs Carmichael. Is there any chance you’ve seen him?”
Mrs Carmichael was one of those plump, rosy cheeked women you see on posters advertising the countryside, the sort of woman who always wears a flowery dress and a white pinny, in which she’s probably concealing a freshly baked apple pie or two.
“Not as such, Ivy love. But I did hear a big bang a while ago that might have been him.”
“That was an air raid Mrs C. A factory exploded. Alfie didn’t do it, I promise.”
“Of course not, love, of course not. Although I did hear your mother yelling a lot afterwards.”
“Do you remember what she was saying?”
“Oh no, I wasn’t listening. It was Margery’s bath time and Peter was winding her up something rotten so we had a lot going on here too. But I may have heard your mum telling Alfie to eat his potatoes and cabbage because there wasn’t anything else, and Alfie obviously didn’t and I didn’t blame him really because your mother over boils her cabbage, as you know. And Alfie still wouldn’t eat it so your mother said she’d been working her fingers to the bone to put food on the table, although she did get that cabbage for a knock down price from Mr Murphy yesterday because it was on the turn and anyway, I think that was when Alfie left. Your dad came round looking - I think he was off to the pub next.”
“Thanks Mrs C, that helps a lot.”
She watched as I turned right and headed down the length of South Street towards the White Star. The pub on the end of our road served the whole street, in theory, but with the price of beer and the scarcity of supply these days what it mostly served was the solitary few who could afford it, and my dad. Alfie had tried to go there every week since he was ten years old, because once Mrs Reckitt, the landlord’s wife, had a leftover meat pie and took pity on his heavy sighs and air of desperate longing. The pub didn’t actually serve food, no one could afford to give away that much meat these days and Mrs Reckitt moved out to her daughter’s in Folkestone six months ago, but Alfie didn’t realise any of that.
I poked my head around the door into what was effectively someone else’s front room. The chairs were harder, and there were more of them, gathered around assorted mismatched tables but the room wasn’t much bigger than our parlour and back room combined, with a pine table in the corner that Mr Reckitt used as a bar.
“Ivy Drummond, why are you out so late? And on your own too?” Mr Andrews was sitting at the closest table to the door, waiting to find fault with whatever came through it. He was an old style military man, which meant he’d fought in the Boer War and consequently had an unusual fondness for both shouting, and the curl of a luxuriant moustache.
“Yes sir, sorry sir. Have you seen my brother Alfie at all? Sir.”
“I saw him heading over towards the school about an hour ago. Your father’s gone to find him. You’d best get home and wait. A girl your age shouldn’t be out walking the streets late at night on your own. It isn’t safe. There’s a Hun on every corner.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Of course, sir. Anything you say, sir.”
“Go home, Ivy.”
“Sir.” Mr Andrews liked everyone to show him the respect he deserved, and I tried, I really did, although every time I said “sir” I was thinking “idiot”. I let the door swing shut and then walked deliberately away from home and followed the trail of Alfie’s stomach towards South Street School, home of school dinners.
South Street Elementary was a three storey, red brick, no nonsense educational establishment, on top of which some enthusiastic architect had misplaced a white bell tower, too small and off centre, which made the school look as if it was wearing a miniature top hat and was closely associated with the word “jaunty”. As I reached the end of the street and rounded the corner I began to hear faint sounds of shouting, or raised voices, bouncing off the pavement, rebounding around walls in little balls of noise. The streets were otherwise silent, and the dark windows of the houses reflected back untrustworthy skies. A few more steps and I could pick out individual voices, a few more and I turned into the alleyway which led to the back gate.
Directly in front of me was Alfie’s back, tall, broad of shoulder and great with muscle and in front of him, my small, slight dad, whose eyes widened a bit when he saw me approaching, before he gave a tiny shake of the head. He had his hand out in front of him, a placatory gesture.
“Now, Alfie. Leave it. Come home with me. Leave it, boy.”
“Yeah, that’s it doggy. Go home with Daddy. Unless you want this.” I saw in the shadows, close to the gate, David Andrews, whom I had refused to kiss on the last day of school because he was just too pretty. His hair was blonde, soft and wavy, his lips a glorious rosebud pink and his wide spaced, cerulean eyes were full of a brutal, undiscriminating malevolence of a kind you only find in the very mad or the very stupid. And pigs.
Alfie took another step forward, shaking his head.
“What’s the matter Fido? Do you want this? Come on then, come and get it. Come here boy, there’s a good doggy.” David Andrews was waving something around in the dark but I had a pretty good idea what it was.
Alfie shuffled forward again.
“Leave it son, I’ll get you another one.” My dad blocked Alfie’s path, but it wasn’t David Andrews he was protecting. “Come home Alfie, come on.”
“Hey, doggy, is this a family outing? Your sister’s behind you. Where’s your brothers then? Where’s your brothers, Fido?”
My dad half turned. “Be quiet David, or I’ll have to tell your father.”
“They’re in France, aren’t they doggy? I bet they’re having a great time without you aren’t they? Beating up the Hun, kissing all the girls without you following them around on your lead. They couldn’t wait to get away from you could they?”
“David,” my dad snapped.
Alfie didn’t react, simply stood still but I could tell he wasn’t listening this time, he was waiting.
“Come on then doggy, let’s play fetch shall we? I’ll throw your stick and you can fetch it back, you’d like that. That’s the only thing you’re good for. Fetch, doggy, fetch. “
“David.” Dad turned a bit more, broke eye contact with Alfie.
“Oh alright, Mr Drummond, I was only playing.”
There was a movement in the darkness and then a sharp crack as David broke the stick against the school wall. Everything that happened next was inevitable, everything.
Alfie charged, straight through my father who lurched awkwardly into the brick wall and fell to the ground with a cry. I heard three wet crunches as Alfie’s fist met David Andrew’s hitherto perfect features and bludgeoned them into a mess of blood, gristle and snot.
I shot to Alfie’s side but I knew better than to try to touch him. “Alfred Drummond. Stop.” I called loudly, and calmly, because with Alfie, it was all about the tone of voice. Alfie’s meaty right arm slowed in its backward arc. “Arms by your sides. Turn around. Go and stand by your father. “
Alfie would have made an excellent soldier. He was very good at following orders. Alfie shuffled backwards towards Dad with one long, lingering look at the broken stick.
David was whimpering to himself, curled in a ball on the floor, blood oozing between the fingers he had clamped around his nose.
I crouched next to him and whispered. “If my brothers had heard any of that you’d be lying there with a couple of broken arms as well as that nose. If you bother Alfie again, I’ll break them myself.”
He was still crying when I walked away. “Alfie. Help Dad up. Let’s go.”
Alfie heaved Dad effortlessly to his feet, but Dad was rubbing his elbow slowly. I put my arm around his waist.
“I think he’s broken my arm, Ivy.”
“I doubt it Dad, he didn’t push you that hard. David’s bound to go straight to his father, so we can expect a visit tomorrow. Or maybe tonight, depending on how much David cries. Let’s get you patched up first.”
“Are you alright. Alfie?” called my father with a backwards glance, and Alfie didn’t reply, already scanning the ground for replacement vegetation.
“Of course he’s alright, Dad. Do you know what he was doing out on his own?”
“Your mother said he wouldn’t do as he was told.”
“I heard he was told to eat his cabbage. “
“Really? Dear God, that’s a disaster. That means I’ll have to eat it when I get home. And what were you doing out on your own Ivy? I trust it wasn’t cabbage related?”
“I was reading in the park, and then I was reading in the library, and then I went to Charlotte’s house to do some more reading, but we got carried away talking about the characters we were reading about,” I lied.
“I’m going to assume that “characters” is code for boys,” interjected my dad.
“I don’t think Shakespeare wrote much about boys Dad, at least, not the sort of boys that you’re talking about.”
“You should be talking about boys Ivy, at your age. You do too much reading.”
“I have an interview for a job, Dad. First thing tomorrow morning right there at that school.” I jerked my head towards it. “I’m going to be an English teacher. They will expect me to know how to read.”
“And I expect you to be an eighteen-year-old girl, Ivy. Not an old lady with a job who spends all her free time as a nursemaid to her older brother. “
“There’s a war on, Dad.”
“There won’t always be a war on. You need your own life. It’s my job to look after you. Alfie is my responsibility.”
I shrugged. “Alfie is everyone’s responsibility. And I want to work. If there wasn’t a war I probably wouldn’t get the chance. How’s your arm?”
“For me to deal with. Are you alright back there, Alfie?”
The heavy thud of my brother’s boots on the pavement was his only response.
I changed the subject. “Did you hear the air raid, Dad? It was a plane. I saw it. Six bombs straight down. It blew up a factory a couple of miles away. Or maybe it was a works. What is a works anyway?”
“No idea. What were you doing a couple of miles away?”
“Well that was the thing. I was so busy thinking about boys that I got a bit lost and ended up walking down a street next to the works. Then this man grabbed me, said I shouldn’t be there and manhandled me under a bridge.”
“What I said about boys? I take it back. Are you hurt? You don’t look hurt. A bit dusty maybe but that’s not unusual for you, it comes with the reading. You saw an air raid and you just walked away without even a scratch? That’s amazing Ivy. Incredible. What the bloody hell were you doing out on your own in the first place?”
“I told you, I got lost.”
“No daughter of mine gets lost. What the bloody hell were you doing near an air raid?”
“That’s what I’m saying, Dad. I didn’t know there was going to be an air raid, did I? There weren’t any zeppelins or anything. No noise except for thunder and then this plane flew out of nowhere and started dropping bombs. But the man I was with, he did know. I was right next to the factory when it exploded, I’d be dead if he hadn’t been so rude. ‘You shouldn’t be here, you shouldn’t be here’ he kept saying. So when it blew up, I wasn’t.”
“Who was the man?”
“I don’t know. But I was wondering – what sort of person knows there’s going to be an air raid?”
“What sort of person manhandles a young woman under a bridge?”
“The same sort of person who’s already checked there’s no one in the factory. So do you think it’s a bit odd, Dad?”
“I think it’s a bit suspicious. You say he was just waiting for the factory to blow up?”
“Seemed like it.”
“And was he at all…foreign? I mean, that’s a stupid question because most of them don’t even sound foreign, or look foreign these days.”
“He said he wasn’t German, if that’s what you mean.”
“Well he’s not going to say he’s German is he? No one’s going to admit to that any more. And you didn’t know him at all, he wasn’t from round here?”
“I wasn’t round here when I met him.”
“Good point. You’re forbidden from going out on your own after dark for the next two months. I think I’d better tell Andrews about this.”
“Oh no, Dad. Really?”
“Yes. This man sounds strange. Andrews is responsible for civil defence. He needs to know.”
“I don’t care about Mr Andrews. It’s November. It gets dark early. With the daylight saving that means you basically want me home before lunch.”
“It’s that or eat the cabbage, Ivy.”
We turned into the alley next to our house and I stretched out my hand in the darkness. We crossed the yard, finding the back door closed and the curtains drawn, and then my mother in the kitchen, boiling a kettle on the range for tea.
“Jack,” she shrieked, as soon as the door opened. “Jack. Did you find him? What’s happened to your arm? Does it hurt? Sit by the fire and let me have a look. Alfie, take your shoes off, take your coat off and then sit down at that table and eat your cabbage.”
Alfie, hulking in the doorway behind me, breathed out heavily but said not a word. I tugged the edge of his sleeve, bringing him into the circle of light thrown by the candle, still guttering on the table. “Go to bed, Alfie. I’ll take you out for breakfast in the morning.”
Alfie didn’t acknowledge either instruction, but clumped off in the direction of the stairs, his boots still firmly laced.
My mother shot me a sour look as she helped my father take off his jacket. “Excellent work, Ivy. Now he’ll think all he has to do is wander off and then he doesn’t have to do as he’s told.”
“He’s twenty-two, Mother. He doesn’t have to eat cabbage if he doesn’t want to.”
“Ladies. I will eat the cabbage. I’ve been looking forward to it. Now, can someone find something to put on my arm?”
My dad sent me to bed with a nod of the head, but I was glad to go. Talking to my mother was like drinking cod liver oil – it was probably the right thing to do but it left a nasty taste in the mouth.
My bedroom was at the top of the stairs on the right. It used to be Tom and Philips” bedroom before they went away, and it still had that dank, slightly sweaty air about it that boys’ bedrooms tend to get if you don’t leave the door open. I hadn’t moved much around since they left except for pulling Tom’s bed away from the window and pushing it as close to the wall as possible. I found if I had bad dreams it helped to have something solid at my back.
I shucked off my boots, tossed my skirts, stockings and my high necked white blouse onto the chair beside the bed and collapsed under the blanket.

The Otherling

The Otherling
https://amzn.to/2E5oIL7
Heather M. Walker
Prologue

Deep in the infernal glow of Hell’s belly, the Old Ones began to stir. Called forth out of a dreamless slumber by a growing sense of tension, where they had remained undisturbed for millennia, they awakened. Languidly they spread their scarred, battered wings and stretched their crooked limbs as their ancient eyes began to open. A growing sense of tension and unease began as a subtle stirring in the air and rose until it permeated Hell, down to the chambers in which they had slept undisturbed for millennia. Anger at being disturbed rose like bile in their throats. Ancient mouths filled with rows of hooked fangs yawned and snarled. Yet the Wise Ones knew, it had been no creature of Hell that had summoned them, no foolish mortal in the land of the Above that had recited age old incantations of beckoning. Things in the land of the Above were changing, shifting the balance of Good and Evil towards the powers of the Light. Narrowing newly opened eyes, the daemons concentrated and followed the signature of energy to its source in the world of mortals. The hideous ones smelled this change with flared nostrils, letting it fill their rotten lungs until it burst forth into their minds with a certain knowing.
A woman, innocent and naive, young and beautiful, unaware of the part she would play in the war to come. She would be easy enough prey, as the pure ones always were. There was no true need to worry; what match would she be for beings such as they?
She was enough of a threat to have awakened them, the oldest beings of diabolical renown, granted reprieve from the sufferings and tedious happenings of Hell. How this could be was unknown, and caused a commotion of growls as the Old Ones ascended from their sulfurous tombs. With growing blood lust, the need to destroy and devour filled them with powerful, hateful energy, filling their bones and sinews with the raw need to spill blood and ravage souls.
Having been newly born from the encrusted pits of Hell, they rose to their full heights, and shook off the filth in which they had slept for millennia. The sense of urgency washed over them, filling them with the need to act now before the powers of Good became absolute.
A figure stood among them, guiding them in the awakening. His long red hair spilled past his shoulders in a wave of crimson, flowing out around him as though it were dancing in some unseen tide of water. His wings were huge and mighty, far larger and more magnificent than any of the beings which stood before him.
“Rise my children,” He spoke, his eyes on fire, his voice both beautiful and terrible. “Your time to awaken has come. In the land of the Above, she grows in her powers, she can no longer be ignored. Destroy her and the one who will protect her, in any manner which you deem fit. For if you do not, the powers of the Darkness will lose its foothold on the mortal world, perhaps irrevocably. Arise and go forth, unleash your fury!”
With war cries, screams and growls they answered him, heads thrown back on terrible necks, great, clawed hands beating on scaled and rotted chests. One by one they opened the great expanses of their leathery wings, ready to burst forth from Hell and contaminate the world of the Above.
Smiling, the figure stood proudly in the chamber of Hell which had held the oldest, most monstrous of his children.
It was time for war.
Chapter One

Catharsis, The journal of Professor Sebastian James Bainbridge

Friday, August 5th

Today is the kind of day that slowly eats me alive. One of those where irritations gnaw at my nerves like parasites, with vicious smiles and blinking, glittering eyes that peer straight into my soul and see every sin I have ever committed. The kind of day where I am once again reminded of the circle of nothingness I tread in, living the same day over and over without respite, without change, without fail. On days like this, I get stuck in my own head, trapped in the morbidity that breeds there, like some stinking, rotting macabre thing, repulsive and yet endlessly fascinating. Thoughts spin and twirl and dance in the shadows of my consciousness, flitting about as if trying to dart out of my direct line of sight, teasing me with flailing limbs and gnashing teeth that sit in mouths speaking words I can’t even begin to fathom. Thoughts that lure me in, daring me to dance with them, to become lost in their world and partake of things which would stain me inextricably, should I be so haphazard in my judgment. I have seen where these dances lead; to the corners of my sanity. These morbid, hateful thoughts lick the gashes inflicted by this morose mental ballet, and then reopen the lips of my wounds, for no other reason than to see the blood run again.
Today, I am reminded again that I am not like others and never will be. Not that I would want to be so dense, so lost in my own flesh that I could never see the spirit and sparks of divinity, both dark and light, which dwell within. Yet, some days I wish I did not know such things; that I was not privy to my own past and the things I’ve learned, most by outright suffering. There are days when I wish I could be bathed clean of the darkness that hides inside me, allowing me to forget the things I’ve done, things I’ve been forced to do, before finally walking away. No, that’s not entirely correct. I can’t walk away from this thing, any more than I could outrun my own shadow. It is part of me, though I hide it well. Not that I have to hide the darkness from these silly, flesh beasts that call themselves human. They tend to reason away what they don’t understand, as if logic alone, however unlikely, is some sort of sacred balm to the inexplicable. I could make my eyes burn in their sockets and melt down my cheeks, and they would shake their heads and clear their throats nervously and say, “It’s the heat you know; what I saw simply cannot be.” Turning back to me they would smile uncertainly, silently begging me to agree with them, and then that would be that, the whole thing never to be thought of again. How easy, how simple, to think in such a way. Self-delusion, I suppose, is preferable to opening the mind and pontificating upon such things.
I digress. Suffice to say it was one of those days I am not fond of, when the dark, inky questions that reside in my secret places rear themselves for contemplation. I am not given to deep wells of emotion, but the anger that ignited in my chest today was slow to burn out and haunted me quite thoroughly. Not that anyone noticed and not that I was about to share this fact. What would be the point? Those that don’t already outright fear me, regard me as something of an anomaly anyway, so why give them more fodder for gossip and self-indulgent, meaningless ruminations? That I even walk among them is something I’ve been questioning, more and more, as of late. I am not ready to get into that, however; not just yet.
I am not altogether certain why I am even penning this, other than for some form of catharsis to exercise this demon of anger burning in me. I have kept this inside me for far too long. Everyone, even those like me (and I am not the only one, oh no, not by far!), need some form of release, and so here I am, black and gold Waterman pen pressed to parchment, trying to get the ghosts out of my head.
My name is Professor Sebastian James Bainbridge. At least it has been my name for long enough that it doesn’t sound foreign to me any longer. As to my name before that, well, we’ll get to that, won’t we?
I work at the University of Doltree, Georgia, teaching World Religions and philosophical musings to undergraduate students who, more often than not, are wayward souls that don’t seem to care about or understand anything I am trying to teach them. It is far more likely that they’re more concerned with sex, parties, and other irrelevant drivel that, ten years from now, won’t matter one iota. Ah, youth. Perhaps I only envy them, yes? I wonder what it’s like to be so carefree; to just simply not know. Sometimes I want to shake them; to burn sense into them with the sheer force of my will alone. It has been many years since I have had a remarkable pupil. Someone with the courage to question me, to argue some sort of point or another, or to care, even remotely about the polytheistic principals of Hinduism or the Five Pillars of Islam. I am resigned to this fact, realizing that most students see my course as some form of extracurricular escape and not something to be taken seriously.
Though previously I bemoaned my life’s redundancy, I did not mean my teachings and my classroom. I was speaking more of the way I live my life among these…people. Trying to be like them, or at least convince them (or myself) that I am more like them. It is tiring. I do find comfort in my classroom, in the feel and smell of ink on old pages, of words written long ago from the voices of men and women that were the finest minds of their time, of any time. I find peace in my routine, in the padded arms of knowledge, in the questions of the soul, in ancient rites and prayers and stories. It is the one thing I do enjoy, despite the dewy eyed uncaring youths.
I did not expect the administration to upend my peaceful routine. Beginning next week, when classes start for the year once more, I will no longer be teaching my classes alone. I am to have a young woman as an assistant, and a barely post pubescent one at that! An “expert in occultism”, I am told. Mrs. Tanner, the Chancellor, put it this way: “Your students are not engaged in your teaching, Sebastian, and attendance and enrollment are suffering. This is an attempt to garner more interest in the subject, and for your class.” I fought the urge to curse the brown wiry hair off of her head right then; to grab the silly rainbow glasses she wore on the thin perch of her nose and toss them across the room, for no other reason than to see the shock on her face, and to release the anger that had kindled itself in my chest, the same anger that, like a phantom, had been clinging to me tenaciously throughout the day. Instead, I composed myself and folded my hands in my lap.
“I assure you, I am more than capable of introducing occultism into the curriculum,” I told her, in a way I hoped was both calm and convincing. “There is no need to force upon me another person who will most likely end up in my way. It would be unfair to this new teacher, to put him in such a position.”
There was a brief twinkle in Mrs. Tanner’s eyes, then, “You mean to put her in such a position.” She paused to let this sink in before she continued. “I am afraid it has already been done, Sebastian. She starts next week. Her name is Annaleah Grace, and she will be here tomorrow to meet you and take a tour of her new campus. I expect you to be gracious.”
I closed my mouth at this. Gracious indeed! “Of course, Mrs. Tanner,” I said. What else could I have said? The outrage was there, like a hot coal, but I refused to lose my dignity. It seemed I had little choice in the matter, so what would be the point of showing her the enormity of my displeasure? I am not in the habit of making myself into an ass.
I’m glad I that I took up my pen. Writing seems to have calmed my nerves considerably, though I’m no happier with the situation. Perhaps, going forward, it would suit me to keep this journal of sorts, lest I uncharacteristically, in my infernal fury, hex the tongue out of someone’s mouth.
I wonder about this Annaleah Grace. I was told she is young, a mere baby of twenty-three. What could she know? How could she possibly add anything of use or interest to my classes that I myself could not, were I given a chance? Ah, such speculation is futile. There is nothing to be done about it now. Tomorrow I meet her.
I am not entirely sure that I will not give her a hard time.

~SJB
Chapter Two

The Untethering

Annaleah drifted comfortably in the space between consciousness and sleep, her mind gently shifting from the significance of tomorrow's meeting to more fanciful, whimsical things. Muted lights flickered beneath her lids, forming images that flowed from one pattern into another, a kaleidoscope of movement and color.
As her breathing slowed and deepened, she felt her focus become more internalized. Leaving the sensations of her body behind, ethereal pictures danced before her, pulling her further into unconsciousness. As the world of dreams began to take shape, she felt a peculiar awareness that she was weightless, as if she were floating through the ether towards whatever land her dreams would deliver her to. It was a calm, peaceful experience, one she let herself be transported into without effort or concern. She was no stranger to meditation, and that was what this felt the most like to her; a wonderful, serene meditation where a profound order was reached. Chaos seemed like a distant notion, discord like a rumor yet to be proven. Here, in this perfect microcosm of serenity, her impression of weightlessness increased. It deepened into a feeling of floating, an untethering from all that was not incorporeal. It felt like being released, a freedom which brought a budding elation.
The jubilation was something she fully embraced, wanting more. Seldom had she felt so liberated, so in the moment, so close to something unfathomable and paradisiacal.
Then, something cool, hard and flat pressed against her cheek. It was sudden and unexpected, and it startled her into opening her eyes. Confusion gave way to fear, as she tried to understand what was going on. Was she was pressed against...the ceiling? How could that be? She wanted to turn over to see if it was true, and as the thought was formed, she found herself turning over, without conscious effort.
She looked down and there she lay on the bed below, her long blonde hair pooled out over her azure pillow. Her creamy skin looked supple and spectral as the moonlight filtered in from the open curtains. Her lips were parted slightly as she slept, her expression placid. Emanating from her midriff was a shining silver cord, which snaked its way upwards to her astral form, connecting them both together.
As she gazed down at her sleeping form, something to her left caught her eye. A furtive movement from the shadows revealed a large hulking figure that was quick and somehow sinister, peeling itself from the darkness and carrying within it the promise of unfathomable wickedness.
Annaleah watched in terror as the monstrous form moved to hunch beside her. Curiously unable to look away, she took in the abhorrent shape that was darker than the blackest shadow she had ever seen. A strange mix of horror, wonder and confusion raged within her; never had she seen anything like this in all her years of exploring occultism. She had read of shadow people and evil creatures, but this was her first time seeing what she had for so long researched. It looked as if it were made from congealed oil, undulating within itself. Its head and shoulders were humanoid, but its arms were too long for its body, thin, spindly and insectile, terminating in barbs. These it waved over her, performing strange movements over her sleeping form. A chittering sound came from it, as if it were speaking a bizarre incantation in the language of some terrible, insect God.
Annaleah tried to scream, but no sound came. Now instead of a wonderful, weightless feeling, she was paralyzed with fear, unable to move or cry out. As if hearing her unuttered wail, the creature turned its awful head and fixed its gaze on her where she floated against the ceiling. It scrutinized her with glowing scarlet eyes, which emitted a foul light enough for her to see the horror that was its mouth. Jutting out from each side of its open jaws were what appeared to be mandibles, each one spread out wide and wavering, the sickening sound of chittering coming out of it louder and stronger, building upon itself like some repugnant prayer to a God she couldn't even begin to contemplate. Terror pierced her, pinning her motionless to the spot in which she hovered.
"Oh Goddess, please let me wake up!" Annaleah pleaded in her mind, unable to say the words aloud. Still the creature chittered, now ceasing its strange movements over her body. As the sound intensified it stood up, reaching a long arm upward. Its blood red eyes shone with ferocity, malice thickening the air between them.
Annaleah was certain she was about to be skewered, panic now a super nova inside her. "WAKE UP!!" She pleaded with herself, "Oh please wake up!"
Suddenly, she was falling. The sensation of weightlessness was over all at once as she plummeted back towards herself. To feel her soul re-enter her body was immediate and jarring. It stole the breath from her and made her heart gallop. Instantly she sat bolt upright in bed, winded, gasping for the breath her soul’s entry had stolen from her.
She instantly looked to the spot where the creature had stood, and was only faintly relieved to see nothing there. She scanned the room for the presence, and even though she saw nothing, she could still feel it in the room with her. She was bathed in a sheen of sticky sweat, still too stunned to scream. Exhausted, she crumpled onto the bed, too spent to cry.
She had an idea as to what the creature must be, something that clawed its way from the depths of Hell, be it a demon, a shadow person, or a malevolent thought form someone had conjured to terrify her. Why was it here, she wondered, and why now?
Annaleah was a white witch, one who did no harm to others, believing in the law of three; what you send out into the world, weather it is good or bad, will return to you threefold. She had always done her best to be polite and to offend no one. What had she done to attract such a malicious creature to her? Whatever the reason it had visited her, she knew one thing. It had meant to harm her.
Gathering whatever modicum of strength she had left, she lifted the pentacle which hung on a silver necklace against her chest. Squeezing it in her hand, she said, "Mother, Maiden and Crone, come to my side and bathe me in your light, protect me from that which seeks my harm and from all forms of darkness and negativity. Give me strength to repel that which is formed in shadows, and never leave my side. As I will it, so mote it be."
***
From the darkness of the shadows, where the moonlight failed to fall, it hid, listening. It saw the astral light of protection fall upon Annaleah, and enraged, turned to go back to where it had come from.
Through gnarled teeth and dripping mandibles it wailed, though Annaleah, now returned to her body and no longer in astral form, could no longer see nor hear it. So close, it had been, to ripping out the silver cord and being rid of her forever.
Now the Light had come, and was ever growing around his prey. Should he dare to stay longer, it would grow bright enough to sear his etheric form, perhaps even wounding him permanently. This little human was powerfully protected.
In one last act of hatred and defiance, it stretched over her praying form. Careful not to touch the light of protection surrounding her, it screamed and shook with the force and effort of its cry.
Let her have tonight. They would come for her soon enough.

The Love She Wants

The Love She Wants
https://amzn.to/2PquWar
Mila Winters
Chapter One
There were times in life when Kayla had to rock the boat in her relationship in order to get what she wanted. Tonight she needed to do some serious rocking. She just hoped it wouldn’t ruin things with her girlfriend Tommie. The blood rushed in her ears. She licked her lips a couple of times to ease her nervousness. If she didn’t act confident, there was no way she was going to convince Tommie to try something different tonight. With a deep breath and a saucy smile on her lips, she sauntered into their bedroom, a big black dick in her hand. Laying on the bed waiting for her, Tommie eyed the thing suspiciously.
“What is that?” Tommie’s guarded voice pounded against her and Kayla hesitated before answering.
“I found it in the back of the closet when I was cleaning last week.” She held the strap-on by the harness with two fingers, letting it sway between them. “I thought it might be fun if we used it tonight.” She tried to sound nonchalant, confident even, but her voice cracked, ruining the effect.
“I didn’t even realize it was still in the house. I thought I got rid of it a couple of years ago.” A hot blush ran up Tommie’s cheeks and her eyes didn’t quite meet Kayla’s.
A sinking feeling spread through Kayla’s limbs, but she refused to admit defeat. “Well, you didn’t and since we have it, I thought maybe we could put it to good use. For old times’ sake.”
Tommie eyed the strap-on as if it were liable to bite. “I don’t think so.” Reaching out, she plucked the leather and chrome harness out of Kayla’s hand and tossed it over her shoulder. Kayla watched with mournful eyes as it landed on the floor with a thunk, her hopes going with it.
“I’d rather make love to you with noting between us. No leather, no chrome or brackets. Just you and me and all this beautiful skin I love.” A bite of disappointment stung her as Tommie leaned down and placed deliberate silken kisses all over her body. Torn, she let out a soft sigh of desire. It was hard being disappointed when her body was slowly burning up, but she couldn’t help but feel something was missing. Mentally sighing, Kayla allowed herself to be distracted from her mission tonight. With a soft moan she allowed Tommie to roll her to her back and enjoyed the pleasures only Tommie could provide.
*
“Honey, do you ever think about the night we met?” Kayla wondered as she lay sprawled next to Tommie. She’d tried letting the subject of the strap-on go, but she couldn’t, particularly when Tommie lay beside her, slightly out of breath, her skin still glistening with sweat. The last hour spent with each of them on their backs at one time or another had been amazing. And yet once her legs had stopped shaking and her heart had stopped throbbing in her ears, a sense of loss had swelled inside Kayla, threatening to consume her. This wasn’t the first time she’d felt this sadness, but tonight she could better describe the problem.
“Not really.” Tommie pulled the covers close and rolled over, facing the wall.
This was going to be harder than she’d thought, but she had to persevere. Tommie had distracted her with her hands and lips and tongue, but she wasn’t going to be ignored again.
“Really?” She sat up in bed and pushed herself against the headboard. “I think of it all the time,” she said to Tommie’s rigid back.
The silence greeting her was discouraging, but if she let it drop now, who knows when she’d get the nerve to bring it up again. “When I first saw you, I thought you were the hottest girl I had ever seen. I was so excited when you came up to me and asked to dance.” Looking over, she noticed Tommie’s shoulders relax slightly.
“I had to meet you,” Tommie admitted. “You were the sexiest, most alive person I had seen, ever. I wanted to know what you tasted like, felt like. I wasn’t going home that night without you with me.”
Hearing Tommie describe her this way made her feel confident. “I’m so glad you insisted I go home with you. It was without a doubt the most erotic moment I have ever experienced. I came so many times that I think I passed out for a bit.”
“You did.” Kayla heard the pride in Tommie’s voice.
“When you dropped your pants and whipped out your dick, I knew I was in for something out of the ordinary.” She peeked at Tommie from beneath her eyelids hoping to see some encouragement. What she saw was a mulish set to Tommie’s mouth.
“I don’t really want to talk about that night anymore, Kayla.”
Ouch, that hurt. The door she’d pried open slightly slammed back into her face. Not ready to let the subject go, Kayla tried once more. “Okay, then let’s talk about tonight. Why did you blow me off when I suggested we use the strap-on again?”
She could feel Tommie’s agitation growing. “I don’t like to talk about that type of stuff, Kayla. My past is my past and I’d like to keep it that way. You know how I feel about our sex life, so just let it drop, please. What we have is amazing. To ask for anything else is dangerous and makes me uncomfortable.” She scooted closer to Kayla and gently took her lips. “Let’s focus on what we do have, not on what we don’t.”
Kayla allowed herself to be seduced back onto the bed and into Tommie’s arms, but later that night when Tommie lay next to her softly snoring, she couldn’t stop thinking about what could be.
Chapter Two
“Earth to Kayla, you there?” Her friend Tiffany was leaning over her, waving a hand in her face, startling Kayla back to the coffee shop where they were enjoying a Sunday together. Tiffany sat across from her and looked her up and down.
“Girl, you were a million miles away, what’s up?” Tiffany leaned in, a speculative look in her eye. Leave it to Tiffany to catch her thinking about sex. For a moment she considered lying, but why bother? Tiff could always tell when she was blowing smoke up her ass. Besides, that’s what friends were for right, to spill your guts to and reveal incredibly embarrassing things. She’d spent more than enough nights on the phone listening to Tiff moan about her love life. Now Tiff was going to get her chance to hear Kayla moan a little. Hopefully they’d both survive.
Taking a deep breath, the words rushed past her lips before she could consider the consequences.
“I was thinking about last night with Tommie.” Her cheeks warmed at the confession.
Leaning over the table, Tiffany snatched the croissant off of Kayla’s plate, and lazily chewed on half. “You mean the last time you…” her hands made an obscene gesture and Kayla slapped them down, looking around the room praying no one had seen the gesture.
“Yes,” she whispered forcefully.
“Hmm, must have been really good if it’s got you in a daze today.” A knowing smile crossed her lips.
“I wish,” Kayla rolled her eyes and shook her head no. “Sadly, I wasn’t daydreaming about how good it was. I was thinking about how incredibly disappointing it was.
“Ah,” Tiffany nodded sagely, “trouble in paradise. I’ll be honest, that surprises me. You guys have such great chemistry. I can’t believe Tommie isn’t knocking it out of the ballpark in the bedroom.”
Kayla’s chin fell into her hand. “We do have great chemistry and Tommie is amazing in bed…” And it was frustrating as hell it wasn’t enough anymore. And incredibly sad. She had found the woman of her dreams, but apparently she still wanted more than Tommie wanted to give.
“But…” Tiffany urged her on. “That sounds like y’all aren’t having awesome sex anymore.” Shaking her head, Kayla couldn’t help another sigh
escaping her lips. “No, we’re not and it is killing me.”
“So what’s the problem?”
Kayla took a sip of her quickly cooling tea and took a moment to gather her thoughts before answering. “Have you ever had really good vanilla ice cream?”
Tiffany looked down her nose at her friend. “Are you kidding me?”
“Bear with me. I’m not talking good vanilla ice cream that you can find in any old grocery store. The kind that tastes sweet but still makes you want chocolate or strawberry instead. I’m talking about the kind of vanilla ice cream made in little mom and pop shops.” She closed her eyes in sensual delight. “Where you can taste the thick cream and the vanilla bean bursts on your taste buds like little surprises. You eat it and it’s amazing. It makes you go, who the hell needs chocolate and strawberry, this is way better than anything else. That’s what sex with Tommie is like.”
“So y’all are having this amazing politically correct sex and it is driving you crazy.”
A gasp of surprise escaped Kayla. Apparently she could keep nothing from her friend. She wouldn’t have called their sex life politically correct, but it was. When Tommie had rebuffed her in bed last night it had hurt like hell.
Tiffany let out a snort. “You didn’t think I could read between the lines? Girl, please, you compared your sex life to vanilla ice cream.”
“I know. But good vanilla ice cream,” Kayla mumbled.
“You’re so full of it.” Tiffany said.
“You’re right, and I’ve been fantasizing about my own sex life. That first time with Tommie was like vanilla ice cream topped with the most amazing, decadent, rich hot fudge.” Kayla closed her eyes for a moment and sighed. There was just nothing like it.
“Now you’re making me horny and hungry.” Tiffany popped another bite of pastry into her mouth. “Drop the food analogies, you’re killing me.”
“Okay, no more analogies. It’s just that when we hooked up at the club, it was so passionate and raw. Then the second time we were together, I was just so happy that the best sex of my life had walked back into my life again. I didn’t even question the fact the sex was good, but not the same.”
“Then for God’s sake, tell Tommie you want to screw like you used to. It is not like y’all can’t recreate that night over and over again,” she said wistfully.
Tiffany was between men. Kayla knew the drought wouldn’t last long, but while she was in it, Tiffany wouldn’t let her friends forget it. Kayla figured she did it so her friends would start setting her up on blind dates. It usually worked.
“It’s not that easy,” Kayla mumbled. “I’ve tried telling her, but Tommie isn’t interested. She doesn’t feel comfortable being aggressive in bed or using a strap-on. She said that she doesn’t like the idea of participating in patriarchal sex or mimicking hetero norms. An old girlfriend told Tommie real dykes don’t do the butch-femme thing. She just wants to eat my cookie and lets me eat hers. I mean, it didn’t bother me at first that the biggest thing she ever put inside me was a finger. The more I got to know Tommie, the more I liked her. She was more than the hot girl in the club with abs to die for.”
“Tommie does have an amazing body.” Tiffany agreed, waiving over a waitress to refill her coffee cup.
Kayla waited for the woman to leave before continuing. “Don’t get me wrong, I adore that body, but she’s so much more. She’s also the gentlest person I know. And so considerate, it’s ridiculous.” Looking around the room, Kayla leaned toward Tiffany and lowered her voice. “Unfortunately, she’s too considerate. She wants to make sure that we are equals in all areas of our relationship, including in bed.”
She drew a deep breath and let it out. “To her that means sweet, loving sex. She doesn’t want to wear a strap-on and screw me or do much beyond kissing, petting and oral.” Frustration rose up in her chest and for a moment she wasn’t sure if she could continue. It took her a moment to get the next words out. “The connection I feel with her in bed is intense, but lately I’ve felt like a dynamic is missing.” She dropped her gaze, watching her finger glide around the rim of her mug.
“The closer we’ve gotten emotionally, the less willing Tommie has been to be aggressive in bed. I miss her taking charge in the bedroom.” Kayla shrugged her shoulders. “Apparently what was fine for a one night stand isn’t appropriate for her girlfriend.” A wistful sigh escaped her. “I just wish she’d throw me on the bed, spread my legs wide and make me take a strap-on.”
Tiffany fanned herself with a napkin. “Damn, that’s hot. Now you’re making me want to try some lesbian loving” she said dabbing at her cleavage. “So why don’t you just tell her how you feel? Like you said, Tommie is very considerate. Don’t you think she’d consider throwing you on the bed and pumping you a few times?”
Kayla threw up her hands in frustration. “I have talked to her. She says she doesn’t want to be that woman anymore. She doesn’t like the idea of me being on my back and her running the fuck. Thanks to her ex, she has a total mental blockage with top-bottom relationships in bed. For a while I convinced myself our first time was so intensely hot because we were total strangers hooking up in a club. And that’s partly true, but now I can admit it was also because of the swagger she had when she was packing and the way she used that strap-on.”
Tiffany laid her hand on top of Kayla’s, a concerned look in her eye. “Let me ask you something. You love her right?”
“Absolutely. I can honestly say that she’s the best person I know. I’ve never felt this safe or so happy in a relationship. She takes care of me like no one else and she really listens to me and wants to understand me, even when we’re fighting. The only place there is a disconnect in our relationship is our sex life.”
“Can you see yourself with her for the rest of your life?”
Not even hesitating, Kayla gave a quick nod yes.
“So are you prepared to live the rest of your life without having the sex you want?”
The bottom of Kayla’s stomach fell away and a groan escaped from deep within her gut. Leave it to Tiffany to ask the one question she didn’t have the answer to. Ever since the debacle of last night, that same question had spun around in her head like a dog chasing his tale. She didn’t know if she could live the rest of her life without ever again being pushed onto the flat of her back, heart beating double time as Tommie leaned over her. To never feel Tommie holding her down on the bed with that hard black dick pushing into her until she cried out in submission seemed too scary to consider. Her pussy would never feel so full again, swollen with her juices and excitement. Sex was always hot with Tommie, but to never feel the lick of that particular flame was devastating.
Chapter Three
“You’re so excited, you’re practically dancing before we’ve even started the lessons,” Tommie grumbled as she opened the studio door for Kayla.
Ignoring her mood, Kayla stepped into the studio, grabbed Tommie’s hand and dragged her inside. Yes, she was excited. Tiffany’s question had haunted her for days and she still didn’t have an answer. One night while in bed unable to sleep, it occurred to her Tommie just needed a push. Their first night together had proved Tommie craved being a top in the bedroom. She just needed to be reminded what it felt like to be the dominant in the relationship.
Taking tango lessons were the perfect way to nudge Tommie into being the butch Kayla knew she wanted to be. The incredibly hot push-pull dynamic between masculine and feminine would be hard for Tommie to resist. As much as she liked to say she didn’t want their relationship to fall into stereotypical roles, the dance’s sensual movements were bound to call to her inner top. Once awakened, Kayla hoped Tommie would let her butch side come out to play.
Convincing Tommie to come had taken some effort, but Kayla had wanted to learn how to tango ever since they had rented Moulin Rouge. The passion, the heat and the excitement of the dance pulled at her. She had made Tommie watch the scene over and over again until one day she couldn’t find the movie anywhere. Tommie had claimed it was lost, but her eyes hadn’t quite met Kayla’s when she’d said it. After not finding it for weeks, Tommie had sheepishly given her a copy for her birthday. When Kayla had begged for lessons to celebrate their upcoming anniversary, Tommie had reluctantly agreed.
Tommie had let herself be pulled into the studio. She’d rather be just about anywhere else right now.
“Have I thanked you today for doing this for me?” Kayla leaned her head against Tommie’s shoulder and shivers ran through her body. But then Kayla always made her shiver. The girl was like sex in kitten heels and could seduce her into doing anything.
Formal couple’s dancing wasn’t her thing. And not because she didn’t have rhythm, far from it. It was just the idea of role playing made her itch to let her dominant side take over. And the last time she had done that, she’d been shamed for her natural inclinations. It was safer to stick to activities that didn’t remind her of what she used to be like.
“Passion is all that matters with tango, their instructor, Senor Montez, purred seductively as he stood in the front of a roomful of eager students. “And if there is no passion, there is no tango.” His voice rose, vibrating with emotion. Thrusting his finger toward the door, he declared, “If you cannot generate heat while doing this dance, then you might as well go home now. There are no halfhearted attempts at the tango. You must put your soul into it.”
Kayla’s hand trembled with excitement before giving Tommie’s a reassuring squeeze. How like Kayla to be aware of her trepidation even while Kayla herself was in a state of bliss. No one knew her like Kayla, and with that squeeze, her tight chest eased. Passion was good, but you had to make sure not to take it too far, or you’d find yourself doing things you shouldn’t, like treating the person you love most in the world like a piece of meat.
“The tango started in the slums of Buenos Aires.” Senor Montez continued, “It was created by people who could not afford physical comforts, so they found comfort in each other’s arms. For a moment, time stood still. Poverty and helplessness didn’t matter, because they had this dance.” He surveyed his audience, making eye contact with each person in the room. “And when you dance, you must also stop time, for each other and for anyone who is watching you.”
A wave of apprehension swept through her, and for a moment Tommie wondered if her legs would hold her up. There was no way she was going to survive these lessons with her sanity intact. Needing to calm down, she took in a few deep breaths. If she was lucky, no one except maybe Kayla would notice. Fainting in front of the other nine couples was not something she wanted to do today.
Anticipation was thick in the room as students lined the walls watching Senor Montez in the center of the dance floor, waiting to see what he’d do. He didn’t keep them waiting for long. He nodded to his long limbed partner across the room from him, and she prowled closer, circling before stopping in front of him and placing her right arm lightly on his shoulder.
“It is very important to determine who is the dominant one and who is the submissive one in the tango. This is usually easy to decide, however, a few of you have some decisions to make.” Senor Montez inclined his head in the direction of the two guys before acknowledging them. Tommie’s gaze landed on the other gay couple. Was it going to be hard for them to decide who was doing what? Kayla caught her eye, the question passing between them. Ropes of tension twisted across her shoulder blades while Kayla just shrugged, leaving the decision up to her.
“Please decide now who will take the masculine role and who will take the feminine role. A clear distinction is essential for this dynamic to work.”
Sweat pooled under her arms. This shouldn’t be a hard question. One of them would have to take the lead or her gift to Kayla would be a failure and for Kayla’s sake, she really wanted her to enjoy this. God, she didn’t want to follow Kayla around the dance floor. It would feel awkward and unnatural. The last time she’d played a girly girl was prom and it had been all she could do not to dip her date.
“So Miss Dawson, who’s leading, you or me?” Kayla lifted her eyebrows, clearly trying to diffuse the tension that had wormed its way between them. “I don’t mind taking the lead if you don’t want to,” Kayla offered.
She heard the words coming out of her girlfriend’s mouth and realized her hesitation might have cost her dearly. The disappointment settled in her chest and squeezed her heart. If she didn’t do anything, Kayla would take the lead. She wouldn’t actually say this out loud to her girlfriend, but she wasn’t a follower. “No” she blurted. “I don’t mind taking the lead. That is if you don’t mind?”
Kayla shrugged her shoulders good naturedly. “Makes me no never mind. I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable. This isn’t normally what you think of as fun so I’m just happy you’re willing to do this with me.”
Senor Montez clapped his hands, pulling their attention back to him. “Gentlemen,” he cleared his throat, his eyes darting their way. “Rather, leaders, I want you to take control in this dance.” He placed his arm around his partner’s waist, his other arm stretched out to take her hand.
Kayla looked at Tommie expectantly, as if waiting for her to take control. Tommie’s hand tingled lying on her girlfriend’s bare shoulder. It was amazing how silky Kayla’s skin was. Her hand casually caressed her skin. Kayla’s shiver of delight mirrored her own as desire pooled between her legs.
“Ladies, or rather followers, put your hand on your partner’s shoulder,” their instructor commanded.
“You might want to stop petting me and pay attention to Senor Montez.” Kayla’s warm breath caressed her ear and neck and she jumped. Tingles ran up and down her arms and back. It was almost scary how easily Kayla could affect her. She was in trouble. Playful Kayla was dangerous. A flush washed through her as she remembered the last time Kayla had been this playful. What had started as a contest at a restaurant to see who could build the most elaborate sundae, ended at home with them competing to see who could eat the most maraschino cherries off the other’s stomach in ten seconds. Not surprising, after one round they’d abandoned the competition and decided to eat cherries out of each other’s pussy instead.
“Pull her close to you, show her who is in control.” Senor’s voice sounded in the distance as if he were speaking through a filter.
He didn’t have to tell her twice, Tommie pulled Kayla in close, enjoying the feel of their chests brushing against each other. Well, Kayla’s full breasts were brushing against her rather flat chest. Not that it mattered, Kayla had enough chest for both of them. Her eyes slid down her baby’s face to land on her bountiful breasts peeking out of Kayla’s hot pink tank top. Tommie couldn’t help but notice her chest moving up and down faster than normal.
“Um, Tommie, my eyes are up here.” Kayla tugged her even closer. “You can’t lead a dance staring at my boobs. Maybe I should take charge.” She said, laughing.
For one more moment she let her gaze linger on her girlfriend’s bounty before meeting her sparkling eyes. “That won’t be necessary. I got this,” she said, hoping she was telling the truth. Kayla made for a very easy distraction.
“Gentlemen, step back with your left foot, ladies move forward with your right.” Their instructor gave out a frustrated growl. “Rather, leaders,” he paused, “you know what I mean.”
It was as if this is what she was supposed to be doing all her life, leading Kayla around the dance floor, taking control, seducing her. Senor Montez might be the one barking out orders of the basic tango step, but she was the one in charge of the experience. Looking into Kayla’s eyes said it all. This was exciting, almost like when they first met. Tommie pulled Kayla in even tighter, their breasts brushing up against each other. Beneath her crisp white shirt, her nipples hardened into sensitive pebbles that chaffed with her every movement. Clearly, being this intimate in public was more exciting than she had thought it was going to be. She pulled Kayla even closer in her arms. Lost in their cocoon, Senor Montez’s directions almost passed her by.
“You’re having a lot of fun right now.” Kayla murmured, a slight smile tilting her lips up.
“And how would you know that, babe?”
Kayla leaned in and brushed against Tommie’s rock hard nipples. “Because, you’re about to cut me with those,” she said slyly and then gasped when Tommie quickly twirled her.
“It seems that you are ready for something new,” Senor said disapprovingly, his stern gaze lingering on them. “Now that we’ve learned the basic step, I want to teach you the introduction.”
“See, you’ve made him mad,” Tommie scolded.
“Uh, un,” Kayla shook her head and her lush fro swayed with the motion. “Senor sees those nipples of yours and he does not approve.” She tweaked a hard bud sending lightening through Tommie’s whole body and she wondered if passing out on the dance floor was bad form.
“Ladies, in this dance it is the man who controls everything. He tells you when to move, he tells you where to move. You are at his whim.” Senor looked at each woman on the dance floor as if imparting the secrets of the world. “You must bend to him and his desires. And yet, you are the seductress, you are the one who makes pursuit worthwhile. You must seduce your partner into wanting you, in wanting to engage in the dance. He might control you on the dance floor, but it is you who controls his passions. You are the one who approaches him and demands his attention. In order to do that, you must be worthy of it. You have seen my partner Sierra engage me in the dance, seduce me in to pursuit. It is now your turn to learn your vital role in this dance—seductress.”
Sierra was a beautiful woman, no doubt. She was sexy as hell when she showed the women in the room how to approach their partner. But she had nothing on Kayla, who was a quick study, quicker than Tommie had ever imagined. Kitten heels, ripped jeans and tank top seemed to disappear and it was as if Kayla had transformed herself into a woman on the streets of Buenos Aires.
Kayla circled slowly, taking in Tommie. In her khaki pants and white shirt, she looked amazing. Kayla’s hand touched the cool shirt right over Tommie’s heart. By looking at her you wouldn’t think she had been affected by the tango. Every hair was in place, her breathing was even and no flush covered her cheeks but her heart beat furiously against the wall of her chest. Tommie may say she didn’t want a butch femme relationship, but she obviously liked it when Kayla was girly and Tommie was calling the shots. Granted it was on the dance floor, but that had to count for something. Eyes demurely cast down, her hand slid over Tommie’s muscled chest, coasting across her hard nipples, down her side and around her back, pausing to quickly squeeze her tight ass before landing on her shoulder.
“You’re going to pay for that Kay,” Tommie mumbled before grasping Kayla’s other hand in hers. Tommie’s callouses reminded her she really wasn’t one to mess with. Her honey was strong, though she’d never used that strength against her. Images of lying across Tommie’s lap flashed in her mind. Bare bottomed, Tommie was warming her ass with that strong hand, the callouses keeping her from feeling the sting of her slaps. But damn, Kayla could imagine feeling them very well.
“So what are you going to do, put me over your knee and punish me?” The low pitch in her voice gave away what direction her mind was taking. It would have been more embarrassing if she hadn’t caught sight of the fire flaring in Tommie’s eyes before trying to quickly tamp it down.
“Don’t be ridiculous babe.” Tommie smiled wickedly. “But I might just make you clean the dishes all by yourself for a week if you don’t behave.”
“Oh, you’re no fun,” she said pouting, before leaning up for a kiss. She tasted Tommie’s faintly sweet lips, before dipping into her hot mouth. Tommie had the most amazing mouth. She had to pull back or she’d start humping her girlfriend right here in class. “You know you were thinking about it too.” She whispered, her hand reaching again to squeeze her girlfriend’s ass.
Senor Montez interrupted her before she could say more. “Okay, ladies and gentlemen. That is enough for this week. Go home and practice what you’ve learned. And remember, the tango has nothing to do with political correctness. You know you are doing it right if you get lost in your partner. Be prepared to work, next week you will to learn how to do the ocho.
And with another loud clap of his hands they were dismissed.
“So what do you want to do now?” Kayla raised her eyebrows suggestively. Between the dance and the image of Tommie spanking her, she was ready to go home and have some fun.
“Don’t look at me like that, Missy. We promised Linda we’d be at the bowling alley in like twenty minutes.” Tommie pointed at her watch. “And no, that is not enough time to fool around, so get your mind out of the gutter.” Kayla pouted all of the way to the car. If she was going to leave unsatisfied after class, maybe tango lessons weren’t such a good idea after all.
*
If it hadn’t been Linda’s birthday, Tommie would have chosen sex with Kayla over bowling with their friends. But ditching a friend on her birthday was a pretty crappy thing to do, as much as she really wanted to. Her gaze lingered on Kayla’s chest for the hundredth time today. Sadly, the beautiful mounds were now covered by a cardigan. If she’d had her way, they’d invest in a portable heat lamp, so Kayla could wear skimpy tops everywhere they went no matter the weather. It was a sin to keep her assets covered up like she did through almost half of the year. Of course the sweaters did make it easier for them to keep bowling dates with their friends.
They spotted the women across the room, and unable to resist, Tommie’s hand landed on Kayla’s back, steering her through the maze of tables. The nap of the cotton sweater was annoying, but touching Kayla made it worth the annoyance.
“Hey ladies, glad you could make it.” Linda stood up and kissed them both on the cheek before ushering them into their booth. “We were afraid we were getting stood up.” She gave them both a stern look before breaking into a smile.
“Hey Faye.” They both nodded to the seated woman. Even though they’d met Linda and Faye as a couple, Tommie sometimes wished Faye would stay home when they went out. There was just something about Faye that just rubbed her the wrong way, probably because she always seemed to give her opinions when they weren’t asked or needed. Kayla tried to make her feel better by reminding her that Faye was a hairdresser, but that didn’t mean she got to comment on her personal appearance.
Tommie didn’t lean over the table and tell Faye she should stop eating chocolate muffins, ‘cause her wide ass was getting wider by the day, so Faye should keep her mouth shut about her cut being too butch. The comment still stung, even if she would only admit it to herself. Tommie’s hand ran through her short locks, restlessly. She’d never looked good with long hair and hated the feel of it brushing against her shoulders. Faye should just keep her opinions to herself. But it was Linda’s birthday so she was going to try tolerating the woman.
Kayla leaned over and bussed Faye on the cheek before sitting down, but Tommie shook her hand and no, that wasn’t acting too butch.
“You ready to get annihilated?” Faye grinned while she put on her own bowling shoes. It was going to feel good tromping her at her own game. Only a smidge of guilt pricked Tommie for planning to ruin Linda’s day. Faye could be a big baby sometimes.
Tommie had been focusing on racking up strikes when a young couple decided to choose the lane right next to them. Maybe it was the fact that they were another interracial couple or that they were sitting so close to them, but Tommie couldn’t stop looking at them out the corner of her eye. The guy was good looking, tall, with deep dark skin. The girl with him was a typical blond, nothing that would normally catch her eye and yet she couldn’t help looking surreptitiously at them, while she pretended to listen to Faye talk about one of her more difficult customers. The guy kept his hand on his girlfriend’s thigh, and looked deep into her eyes whenever he talked to her. The passion for each crackled in the air between them. Tommie looked around briefly to see if anyone else could feel it, but no one else seemed to notice. Her chest muscles squeezed in anticipation as his hand move slowly up the woman’s pale thigh and paused at the hem of her short skirt. Tommie’s breath rushed out when the girl smiled flirtatiously at him while pushing his large hand back down her leg. Not to be denied, the guy leaned over and took his lover’s lips. Tommie could almost taste the strength and passion in that kiss and her heart beat faster.
His large hand crept behind the woman’s delicate neck and furrowed into her silky yellow hair, getting a firm grip on her skull, forcing her even closer to his body. He slanted his lips against hers before stopping to nip at her neck, eliciting low pitched moans from his partner. He moved closer still, this time both of his hands in her hair, consuming her. The woman had thrown her arms around his wide shoulders and her hands twisted passionately in his hair. They didn’t seem to care they were in public.
The air was being sucked from Tommie and still her eyes wouldn’t let go. Damn, but that was hot. The guy wanted to kiss his woman and she just let him, hell more than let, she submitted to him. And she was enjoying every minute of it. Tommie squirmed in her seat, suddenly aware of the dampness between her legs. What the guy was doing was so wrong, but damn it seemed so right.
“Ugh, how disgusting.” Faye’s voice broke through her dazed thoughts. “Like that’s what I want to see on a Saturday afternoon.” She nodded her head at the couple still in the grip of the embrace. “Does he have to hold her like he owns her?”
she muttered as if afraid of being heard despite her tough talk. “Why doesn’t he take the he-man act out of here and get a room. They look like a throwback from the 50’s.”
Suddenly hot, Tommie pulled her eyes away from the couple and studied the table’s red and white checked pattern. She would have missed the glint of understanding in Kayla’s eyes if she hadn’t squeezed her too hot hand, pulling her attention away from the table.
“Oh, I don’t know. I thought it was kind of hot,” Kayla smiled mischievously, bringing Tommie’s hand to her lips, “the way he held her without caring who saw.”
Of course Kayla would read her thoughts and try to ease her embarrassment. Too bad she couldn’t make these urges to top her go away.
“Sure you’d say that.” Faye rolled her eyes at Kayla. “You used to do guys. I bet you love that Tarzan macho shit. Only a gold star would know what I’m talking about. Right guys?” She looked from Linda to Tommie and back again, waiting for them to agree.
It was hard holding her tongue, but she did. Playing Tarzan to Kayla’s dusky Jane would be amazing. But she wasn’t going to stand up, pound her chest and tell everyone who would listen that being a top was her hottest fantasy. Her silence was damning and Kayla’s obvious disapproval rolled over her like a wave. It seemed to last forever and she began to squirm under Kayla’s dark gaze.
“Okay Kayla, you’re up.” Faye patted Kayla on the head.
Tommie let the out a breath of relief when Kayla focused her attention on the ten pins. Picking up her bowling ball, Kayla wiggled her ass until she was in the perfect position and let the ball fly down the lane. Before the last pin tumbled to the floor she had already turned her back on the lane.
“Gold star or no gold star, it was hot,” Kayla said, scooting into the seat next to Tommie and plugging the strike into the scoreboard. Times like this, she realized, loving Kayla was so damn easy.

The King’s Blade

The King’s Blade
https://amzn.to/2E6pnvP
L.J. Dare
Chapter One

St. Mary’s Loch, Scotland. Spring, 1401

Lady Megan MacKelloch sidled past the tinker’s wagon and the men attempting to pull it up the steep muddy hill. She shook her head as she fought her way up the soggy path. She was glad it was them and not her attempting the impossible. Pausing to catch her breath at the top, she rested against a boulder. Bridget was going to be a sorry sister when she caught up with her. Filling her lungs, Meg straightened then, wiping the sweat trickling off her brow with the back of her hand, she narrowed her gaze on the make-shift village below. Struggling down the rain-soaked hill would be as nothing compared to finding Bridget amongst the hastily constructed vendors’ stalls erected for the convenience of those attending the King’s Justice Council. She scanned the village then found her eyes focused on the gray stone structure of St. Mary’s kirk. Baron Maxwell had warned them to stay away from the proceedings. Too bad Bridget refused to heed everything their new step-father asked. Meg hardened her jaw, not about to cover for Bridget this time.
Gathering her skirts in one hand, Meg started down the slippery slope, grabbing onto scrub branches to slow her sliding descent. A rolling rumble sounded from above. She frowned as she gazed at the clear blue sky. Ugh! More rain meant more mud to fight through.
“Look sharp below.”
Meg twisted as she realized the warning came from behind. Briefly, she caught a glimpse of the run-away wagon before the rain soaked path gave way, sweeping her downhill in the sliding mud.
“A-a-a-h,” she shrieked then, clamping her jaw, she stared in fascinated horror as the path’s fast moving debris gathered speed; carrying her in the swift moving muck to the village below. Terror clenched Meg’s stomach as realization struck.
“I’m going to … die.” The reality of her words roared in her ears as a tight fist closed over her heart sending it into painful palpitations. The word ‘can’t’ roared in her ears as a renewed sense of preservation swept through her. Frantically, she grabbed at and missed latching onto a scrub branch as she swept by it. “Uh-h-h,” she grunted in feverish disappointment. Scanning ahead for another bush she spied the cesspool sitting at the bottom of the hill. Desperate to save herself, she dug in her heels to slow her descent, but her delayed reaction catapulted her through the air to land in the mud … with a splat.
Stunned, she lay for a moment. Then, lifting her face, she opened her eyes and stared at the mud. Merciful heavens, had she just survived meeting the Grim Reaper?
Her senses seemed to come alive as she pushed her aching upper body out of the cold, overpowering stench. She shivered as she leveled herself to her knees and peered through the mud dripping down her forehead.
Hastily, she made the sign of the cross. A sudden light-headedness overcame her as she heard chatter and crude laughter. Turning, she spied a crowd gathering beside the refuse pond where she knelt.
Obviously, she wasn’t dead.
Her heart sang in relief at the realization, but that turned to quick dismay as another tremor seized her.
“Ach,” Meg said as she wheezed from the frigid water saturating her garments all the way through to her skin. This time she could really claim ‘wrong place, wrong time.’ But would anyone believe her?
Quivering with cold, she pushed to her feet as the cart splashed to a stop a few feet away. Her knees buckled. She plopped back into the mud, profoundly thankful at finding herself safe. “O, blessed St. Columbine, thank you for your protection,” she muttered as she stared at the wagon sinking into the mud nearby. But her gratitude turned quickly into annoyance as she stared at her best cotehardie covered in filth.
Struggling to her feet, Meg frowned as she peeled off the bedraggled veil clinging to her neck. The overpowering stench and particles of rotting food and human waste clung to every part of her. She shuddered then gritted her teeth at the smell.
Although grateful to be alive, she couldn’t help but wonder if this wasn’t all part of the Almighty’s punishment; an act of penance being meted out to her as contrition for causing the deaths of her father and brother. A cold lump settled once again inside her chest at what she’d done. Bowing her head, she began, “Lord, thank you for…” Additional words froze her lips. Hadn’t she learned by now that asking for help from the Almighty gained her nothing?
She took a quick breath then straightened. She had more urgent problems she needed to solve, like how she was going to explain yet another disaster to her mother, and confess that she’d lost her sister among the crowd roaming the main village thoroughfare.
Meg took a deep breath to slow her breathing then wished she hadn’t. Scrunching up her soggy, smelly skirt, she lifted one booted foot from the sucking mud and struggled to find a firm foothold on what she believed to be solid ground. She raised her head hoping to find Bridget perusing one of the vendor stalls. But with hundreds attending the King’s Justice Council at St. Mary’s Kirk, the jostling crowd obscured her view.
“Look at the wet hen,” a thick border voice shouted.
Meg dipped her chin. Hadn’t she learned that the best way to handle a situation like this was to ignore the ignorant jeering? She gritted her teeth as she heard a few in the crowd chuckle.
“Nay, looks more like a scarecrow,” a mocking bass voice said.
“A stinking one,” a high-pitched twang added.
She took a bracing breath as laughter rippled through the crowd. This wasn’t the first time she’d been the brunt of someone’s joke, she reminded herself.
“Nay, it’s a nightmare to scare our bairns,” a female said as the crowd roared with laughter.
Meg twisted, opened her mouth then stopped. She’d been taught to respond to the less fortunate with kindness. That if she couldn’t be gracious to them then she wasn’t to say anything at all. Searching for those mocking her, Meg realized that she’d turned too late to find the culprits.
“Allow me,” a rich baritone voice said from somewhere behind her.
Caught off guard by the velvet tone, Meg turned then barely managed to control her gasp when she caught a brief glimpse of the man’s tall form. Suddenly, the cold and wet no longer mattered. Struggling to breathe through her own foul odor, her eyes rose to his clean-shaven square jaw, skimmed past his quivering nostrils only to be trapped and held by the kindest set of gray eyes she’d ever encountered. And to think she had always considered the color gray cold.
Her heartbeat raced then slowed. What would her aunt, the mother superior at the convent think if she knew her niece, the most recent pledge, had been cataloguing a man’s features like that? She caught her breath as he quirked his sleek black brow at her. Heavens, he must surely think her a twit standing in the vile pit gaping up at him!
Meg pulled herself together at the thought. “Thank you, kind sir, but I’m afraid I can’t accept your chivalrous gesture,” she said, knowing her brisk tone ran counter to her thumping heart.
“Why?” the man asked, his powerful body moving with an easy grace as he extended a hand toward her. “You’ve not offended me. After all, I’m standing upwind of you,” he added as a smile curved his lips upward.
“Too bad I’m not as fortunate,” Meg muttered as her eyes focused on his clean, calloused palm then shifted to her own filthy hands. She flushed with humiliation. Why would he stop to aid her? Hadn’t she been warned about all the clansmen attending the King’s Justice Court? But surely, if this man had been a part of the jeering crowd she would’ve noticed him. Her wet toes curled inside her muddy boots as she admitted to herself that she found the man’s polished manners a welcome change. But what if she was wrong? She eyed him for a moment then made a shooing gesture with her hands. “I prefer to do this my own way. Now, please stand aside.”
“Good manners dictate I assist you,” he countered, extracting a kerchief from inside his cuff.
“Anyone ever call you obstinate?”
He flashed her a grin. “All the time.”
She gazed at him then sighed, realizing she’d best not let her foolish pride get the upper hand. But, sweet angels! Just because the man had a fine set of gray eyes, a kind smile and a voice like velvet didn’t mean that she should trust him. She managed a nonchalant shrug. “Be assured then the consequences and my odor rest in your hands.”
“Whew! She has a point, Lord John,” a man, shorter in height by several inches, said as he stopped beside her rescuer. “The Kirk’s doors close in a few minutes,” he added as he waved his hand in front of his face.
“True.” Her rescuer nodded. “This will only take a moment. My lady,” he said, turning back to her, “please, take a hold of the kerchief and I’ll pull you onto solid ground.”
Afraid the man might disappear in a blink, Meg seized the pristine white square. She wasn’t sure how it happened but, in a flash, she found herself standing on firm ground with the man’s soiled kerchief wadded in her fist. Quickly, she opened her hand, ready to offer him the return of his muddy linen.
He took a step back and raised his hands as if in surrender. “Please keep it with my compliments.” Before she could gather her scattered wits, the man gave her a courtly bow.
“Adieu, my lady, until we meet again.” Pivoting, his dark blue cape swirling around his deerskin boots, he disappeared amongst the now quietly gaping crowd.
“But wait, I didn’t have a chance to…” Meg began as she pressed the hand containing his wadded kerchief to her chest as her sister, Bridget, skidded to a halt beside her.
“Meg, you must…” Her sister panted out of breath then paused. “Gracious, what happened to you? You stink!”
“I know, but…”
“Never mind,” Bridget said, airily flicking her hand in dismissal. “Did you see him?” she asked as she took several steps backward. “Did you?”
“Who?” Meg pulled the ruined skirt of her cotehardie away from her shivering body. With her feet half-frozen, she knew the discomfort stamping her feet would bring. Although mimicking her sister’s temper-fits might have its merits.
“Why, the King’s Blade of course,” Bridget said, switching her head from side to side searching the crowd. “Where did he go?”
Meg stared at her sister. Maybe she ought to pay more attention. In the future, it might keep them both out of trouble. She frowned. “Who are you looking for?”
“The King’s Blade; you know, the Earl of Crawford’s second son.”
Meg bit her bottom lip. Right now, her concern centered on how to explain things to her mother. Carefully, she tucked the wilted, soiled lemon and cloves scented kerchief into her cuff.
“Don’t you ever pay attention to anything that’s happening?” Bridget asked, as if she were the elder with the right to admonish a younger sibling.
“Occasionally, I do,” Meg admitted, holding her burdensome wet skirt away from her cold, trembling body.
“Then you know who I’m talking about.”
“Not really.” Meg shrugged, trying to shake off the excess debris caught in the folds of her garment. What did she care if some Earl’s son was a blade or not? It had nothing to do with her.
“How could you not!” Bridget said, pressing her hand over her nose.
Meg shrugged. “Easy; I have enough keeping track of you. I’m not about to worry about some blade I neither know nor care about.”
“Oh-h,” Bridget said with a disgusted wave. “You’re impossible. I don’t know why I…” She paused. Leaning forward, she narrowed her eyes. “Do you know all I can see of you is the whites of your eyes?” She let out a sharp laugh. “Mother’s going to be furious when she catches a glimpse of you all covered in muck.”
“And you’ll relish every minute of it,” Meg muttered. Since experience had taught her to complete dreaded tasks first, she waved her hand in the direction of the Maxwell campsite. “Let’s get this over with.”
She took a quick peek in the direction the stranger had gone, hoping for another glimpse of him. While she might be able to wash the stink and stains away, Meg knew she would never forget the stranger or his kindness. She rested her hand over the kerchief tucked safely beneath her cuff. Although she doubted she’d ever meet him again or have the chance to thank him for his compassion, at least she could dream of the event.
***
Lord John Lindsay, second son of the Earl of Crawford, and better known as the King’s Blade, slipped into the crowded vestibule as the Kirk’s bell pealed. He grinned as he thought of the lady he’d just pulled from the cesspool. In his line of work he didn’t often get to save someone. He sobered at the thought, realizing he’d best turn his focus to his duty.
Giving a nod, his two men closed the heavy studded doors and dropped the bar locking all inside. His muscles tightened in readiness as he moved down the congested center aisle. He paused to observe his men stationed strategically around the inside of the church’s gray stone interior.
With the exits secured and all the spectators’ weapons confiscated, John tipped his head and quietly acknowledged Andrew, his best friend. Beside Andrew stood Torrin Byers, John’s second in command, both positioned near the dais constructed to replace the main altar. On the raised platform sat the seven members of the King’s Justice Council. Behind them stood a contingency of their own armed men, ready for anything the unruly Johnstones might attempt.
He stared at the seven men as he waited for the proceedings to begin. Presiding over the council, Sir Gilbert Maxwell sat at the far end of the table. A man, John knew, who believed in one’s right to live in peace; a man not afraid of making difficult decisions.
John hadn’t looked forward to the beginning of this trial. In fact, he dreaded the outcome. Although the King’s justice would be served today, it was bound to stir up additional trouble among the feuding families living in Scotland’s border area. People who needed to find peace and gain a sense of pride in their country, not more animosity.
He shook his head. No question, the killing, raping and pillaging had to cease. Since one of his main duties lay in enforcing King Robert III’s decree of establishing peace in the border area, he understood that meant all offenders must be brought to justice. The Crown didn’t need dissension amongst its subjects. The threat of England invading Scotland on the pretext of ferreting out rebels was enough concern, without adding in more carnage and resentment existing between the clans. Yet there had to be a way to deter those committing the atrocities. He rubbed the back of his neck.
He peered at the three Johnstone men on trial for murder, rape and malicious destruction of property. He choked back the rancid taste of bile rising in his throat. He’d punished many miscreants in his time as the King’s Blade, but he’d never met three more despicable men deserving of death.
The heat of contempt raced through his veins as he narrowed his gaze on Willie, the Chief of the Johnstone Clan and the perpetrator of the crimes that had been committed. A stout, crude man who ruled with an iron fist, barked orders and manipulated people for his benefit. But Willie’s first born son, Fergus, ran leagues ahead of his father in cruelty. John’s lips curled in disgust as he leveled a stare at the arrogant, humorless Fergus. He hardened his jaw as he thought of Fergus’ attacks and how he’d discovered that Fergus had carved his mark in his victims before he’d slowly skinned them alive. He’d investigated many crimes and arrested many criminals, but the most egregious of the many was Willie’s second son, Desmond.
John clutched the hilt of his sword. A black haze seemed to rise before him as he fought back the compelling need to ram his sword through Desmond’s chest, stilling for all time the villain’s beating heart.
Taking several deep breaths, John removed his hand from the sword’s hilt and flexed his fingers. He knew his retribution would come eventually. Desmond, a sneaky, shallow-minded whiner trapped in a boyish body sat confidently before him. John drew in slow, steady breaths as he thought about the satisfaction he would feel while carrying out the sentence that held Desmond accountable for the raping of the nuns at the Convent of the Blessed Heart. His heart twisted with the knowledge that Desmond’s death wouldn’t stop his aunt from having to live with the shame and degradation of the violation. It was because of her brave assistance that John and his men had tracked and pieced together this case for the Crown. John straightened. No matter what, his aunt’s bravery would count for something. Yet he’d learned there were no guarantees. Not even physical evidence, victim’s accounts or, in this case, the pasteboard tarot-like clue that had led to the apprehension of the Johnstones was a sure thing. Sometimes John felt justice needed the assistance of ‘the King’s men’. And he would make no apology for being a member or.
“Hear ye, hear ye,” the clerk of the council announced in a stentorian voice as he tapped his staff on the stone floor. “The sentencing phase of the King’s Council is now in session; the Honorable Sir Gilbert Maxwell, presiding.”
“Proceed with the reading of the charges as levied by the Crown against Sir William Johnstone, Fergus Johnstone, and Desmond Johnstone,” Sir Gilbert directed.
John scanned the crowd and quickly located the other two members of the Johnstone Clan allowed into the proceedings; men loyal to Willie’s brother, Archie. John nodded as two of his own men moved to stand behind Archie’s loyal supporters.
“Judged and found guilty of the multiple murders occurring in the villages of Milltown and Mouswald, for the pillage and rape of the nuns at the Convent of the Blessed Heart and the willful destruction of the home and property of Baron Giles, this case now enters into the sentencing phase. How say you, Sir Hugo Turnbulls?”
The burley, apple cheeked Scot stood then smiled. “Death,” he bellowed.
A light effervescent bubble of joy burst inside John’s chest. He grabbed his sword’s hilt as Fergus jumped up and planted his feet wide. “You’ll regret that,” he snarled, baring his teeth.
Although John considered the seriousness of the threat, he couldn’t help but gloat. One vote down; six more to go. He relaxed his grip on his sword as his friend Andrew placed his massive hand on Fergus’ shoulder and forced him back into his seat.
“Just remember, I know your daughter’s chamber is second on the right in your family wing,” Desmond chanted then grinned as he cracked two of his knuckles with loud pops. The crowd gasped and began whispering.
John’s breathing slowed. He narrowed his gaze waiting in anticipation for Willie’s response.
But Willie’s nostrils only flared and he said nary a word.
John frowned, waiting for Willie’s outburst that never came. His frown deepened as the clerk tapped his staff on the floor, restoring calm. “How say you, Sir Walter Olivers?”
The stooped shouldered elderly man stood slowly and brought his shaky hand to his forehead. “I need time to think. Please come back to me when you’ve polled everyone else.”
John tightened his grip on his sword as Fergus hooted in triumph. Why would anyone need to request a delay?
John hardened his jaw as he observed Willie’s confident smile; a smile that revealed all his yellowing teeth. Meanwhile, Desmond banged his fists on the table in rapid succession
The clerk thumped his staff on the floor then raised his voice subduing the noisy crowd. “How say you, Sir Thomas Armstrong?”
The crowd whispered in hushed, expectant murmurs.
Like the crowd, John waited with baited breath.
Armstrong’s square jaw jutted out. “Death with confiscation of all property,” he said with a crisp nod.
Veins popped in Willie’s neck.
“We’ll burn you out,” Desmond threatened.
“Your eldest lass is mine,” Fergus yelled as spittle sprayed from his mouth. “I’m coming to get her.”
“Hang ‘em high,” came a shout from somewhere in the back of the Kirk
John pivoted, searching for the culprit, not about to allow anyone to interfere in the proceedings. No matter how he felt about the Johnstones, no one other than the King’s Council would be allowed to serve up justice this day.
The clerk struck his staff loudly on the stone floor once again and then cleared his throat. “How say you, Sir Kenneth Elliot?”
Elliot unfolded his lanky form from out of his chair and stood, rocking on the balls of his feet. He stared into space for a moment then shrugged his shoulders. “I vote for property confiscation”.
John glared at Elliot. What retribution had the Johnstones threatened this man and his family so that he would buckle to their intimidation?
The three Johnstones whooped and hollered. “Praise be, the angels are on our side,” Willie exclaimed over all the noise.
Desmond roared in laughter as Fergus shouted. “Think you got us now, Maxwell?”
John felt his muscles bunch at the taunt. He readied himself to spring forward and add his weight to Andrew’s in subduing Fergus. However, the clerk knocked his staff several hard times on the floor bringing all back to order.
“How say you, Sir James Kerr?” the clerk asked.
John studied Kerr as he stood. Caught in the riptide of uncertainty, John fought his way through the current of doubt to observe Kerr’s ruddy cheeks reddening.
As if Kerr had just completed a hard day’s labor, he mopped at his perspiring forehead then in a gruff voice exclaimed. “Death.” Then, turning to face the Johnstones, he flashed them a cold smile and resumed his seat.
“Thank goodness,” John muttered as cheers erupted in the room. All he needed was a simple majority vote rendering the death verdict and he would be able to swiftly carry out the King’s justice. Anticipation hummed in his veins like a deep tone quivering in the air above a plucked string psaltery. But with three votes for death and one for confiscation he’d best not get the cart before the horse.
Narrowing his gaze, he studied the three men yet to vote then eyed the clerk of the court, who gave a small shrug. Quickly, John turned to note Willie’s ashen face
Next to him, Desmond waved his fist at Kerr and shouted. “You’ll regret this.”
Fergus jumped to his feet and pointed a stubby finger at Kerr. “All you have is mine.”
Finally, in his attempt at restoring peace in the courtroom, the clerk pounded his staff against the floor and then called. “How say you Sir Alexander Younge?”
John took a steadying breath, puzzled by Willie’s silence. He wondered if the Chief of the Johnstone Clan had finally surmised that neither he nor his two sons would be set free. John leaned forward to observe the reed-thin Alexander Younge.
With his gaunt leathery cheeks covered in a grizzled beard, Younge wobbled to his feet. “Property confiscation,” he said in a hollow voice.
John had to admit that he wasn’t surprised by Younge’s decision, for Younge’s wife had been a Marjoribanks, a sept of the Johnstone Clan.
“Yea!” Desmond whooped loudly.
“I told you he’d vote our way,” Fergus boasted.
Willie slammed his fist into Fergus’ jaw, silencing him as the crowd booed and hissed.
John darted forward but Torrin; John’s second in command, had already grabbed Willie and had forced him back to the bench.
John took a step back and noted that Andrew had also released a moaning Fergus.
The clerk whacked his staff up and down repeatedly to gain control until he finally declared. “Now, how say you Sir Walter Olivers?”
The elderly man stood once more. “Confiscation.” He wheezed then sat.
John stared at the Council members for a moment in stunned disbelief then watched as Desmond punched Fergus on the shoulder. Then with a loud clan yell of “Light thieves all,” he pounded on the table.
Willie frowned. “Fire and brimstone,” he said. “We’re doomed.”
“Nay,” Fergus shouted. “I told you, we’d go free.”
The clerk pounded his staff on the corner of the table then raised his voice to gain everyone’s attention. “With three votes for confiscation and three for death, the decision rests solely with Sir Gilbert Maxwell.”
The room became eerily quiet as Sir Gilbert stood. So silent, John could hear the twittering of the pipits nesting in the rowan trees outside. He held his breath. Would Sir Gilbert do the safe and expedient thing and vote for confiscation or would he stand for the King’s justice?
Sir Gilbert turned and faced the Johnstones. “Your family retains what lands they have inscribed in the property book of the Crown’s Assurances. But, I hereby render the verdict of death by hanging with your sentences to be carried out immediately.”
Chaos erupted.
John and his men swiftly moved in as Fergus jumped over the table and lunged in Maxwell’s direction. Intercepted by a member of Turnbulls’ security, he was restrained by Andrew. Desmond wrestled one of the Armstrong guards for a weapon but failed in his endeavor.
“You’ll die for this.” Willie threatened Maxwell. “The Johnstones will destroy all you hold dear.” Although subdued, the Johnstone cries of retribution continued to fill the Kirk.
John moved through the churning crowd toward the vestibule then unbarred the door. Promptly, his men led the three struggling Johnstones outside to stand before the elderly priest in charge of St. Mary’s.
Raising his aged hand, the priest made the sign of the cross. “We have learned from the Bible that if you push a man, fling anything at him, strike him in any way with the intent to harm him and he dies, then you are guilty of murder.” He paused then cleared his throat. “Before you stand in presence of God and his eternal judgment; do you wish to confess your sins?” he asked as he stepped slowly toward Willie.
“Nay, stay away.” Willie yelled then covered his ears. “You can’t justify our deaths with Bible verses.”
“And here’s my answer, old man,” Fergus said then spat at the priest, his spittle landing short of his mark.
“Won’t ever hear me say I did nothing wrong,” Desmond said, puffing out his chest.
The priest paused a moment. “Then may the Lord Almighty have mercy on your souls,” he said as he made the sign of the cross. Then stepping aside, he hobbled slowly away.
John turned toward Sir Gilbert, ready to offer assistance in obtaining an additional security force for Sir Gilbert’s journey home, but the man shook his head. About to persist, John paused as he remembered his grandfather favorite saying that ‘while one might lead one’s horse to the water trough, one couldn’t force him to drink’. Dipping his head, reluctantly John conceded to the Councilor’s wishes.
“Proceed with the execution,” Sir Gilbert proclaimed then moved back to stand with the other members of the King’s Council.
John squinted into the afternoon sun as he watched his men position the condemned men beneath the ropes looped over the sturdy branches of the Rowan trees. As the King’s Blade, he had a job to do. But lately, with his aunt as one of the Johnstone victims, he’d begun to surmise that he’d lost his objectivity.
So, did he really serve justice? Or had he slipped down that slippery slope of righteousness and plunged into the unfathomable depths of vengeance?
Chapter Two

A fortnight later

The wispy fingers of uncertainty curled around Meg as she tugged the pelt higher over her shoulders. Still half asleep, she lay listening to the snatches of murmured conversation beyond their sleeping cart. Voices, not raised or discordant, but quiet, furtive almost, as if the speakers were afraid others might be alarmed by what they were discussing.
So, what had really happened back at St. Mary’s Kirk?
The question had her clenching her jaw. She knew for a certainty that no one would ever tell her a thing. The urge to pound something coursed through her as she wondered when men would finally realize that females also had minds and thoughts of their own. That they could reason for themselves. She paused, straining to hear then realized that if she wanted to know things, she would have to discover them for herself by keeping her eyes and ears open. She chewed on her bottom lip until she identified Sir Gilbert as one of the participants planning what seemed to be the best way to travel toward the Solway area. She yawned. If some of the men were awake that meant the orange and purple glow of daybreak would soon be peeking over the mountain tops.
Frowning at the uneasiness that had begun to twist and tie her stomach into a large tight knot, Meg rubbed her thumb over the now clean kerchief she kept hidden beneath her cuff. Although she would’ve liked to have sighed over her rescuer and his kind gray eyes, something still nagged at her consciousness.
Unable to distract herself from her jittery jangle of nerves, she rolled slowly onto her back so as not to disturb her mother and sisters sleeping next to her in the cart. She grimaced as her anxiety grew like oats boiling over the sides of a blackened pot.
If only she could wish away the remainder of the journey, then her life with the Poor Claires could begin and...
Agh! If wishes were kings then surely she’d be a princess.
Her eyes popped open. Hadn’t she worked long enough in the royal nursery to realize that was the last thing she wanted? She inhaled sharply then relaxed. Without a thought, her thumb found her talisman and traced over the swan monogram above the initials ‘JDL’ on the kerchief.
Suddenly, a sharp nudge interrupted her contemplation and she swallowed back a moan.
Unfortunately, the nudge became a relentless series of pokes.
Hoping to avoid escorting one of her sisters outside into the early morning darkness, Meg closed her eyes, blocking out the meager light flickering from the new-fangled lantern sitting on the driver’s seat. Finally realizing the pokes wouldn’t cease until she responded, Meg groaned, softly, “Oh-h-h.”
Then opening her eyes, she raised her head from the plaid she’d used as a pillow and clenched her jaw. Ach! Of course, it would have to be Bridget tormenting her this early in the morning!
As she stared at her sister, Bridget jerked her thumb in the direction of the back flap then scrambled across their mother and young step-sister, seeming not to care whom she woke on her way to the privy.
Remembering the warning her new step-father had issued ‘about always staying together’, Meg struggled out from beneath the furs and shook the wrinkles from both her cotehardie and the mantle she’d slept in. She paused as she felt a tug on her cloak. Meg bent her tall form to meet the gaze of her sleepy-eyed step-sister. Placing a finger over her own lips, she gestured toward the back flap. Her lips quirked at Elise’s eager nod.
After fastening Elise’s cloak, Meg poked her head through the back canvas. A chill settled around her ears as she swung her legs over the back gate and dropped to the dew-lined grass. Adjusting her mantle, she glanced toward the popping and crackling of the dancing flames as they lit and consumed the twigs in the predawn morning.
“’Bout time,” Bridget grumbled, her white puffs of breath visible in the flickering light of the campfire. Then, hopping from one foot to the other, she tossed her black single-braid of hair over her shoulder and scurried toward the boulders and oak trees ringing the perimeter of the camp.
Meg sighed as she lifted Elise from the back. Although only six years difference in age separated her and Bridget, they lived worlds apart in temperament. She couldn’t ever remember a time when she’d been that impatient, that surly, or that spoiled. She clenched her jaw, forcing the uncharitable thoughts away. She’d been disciplined too many times by her mother for her unruly words to ever utter such judgments aloud.
Taking a deep breath, Meg smiled at her young step-sister, Elise. “So, are you in as big a hurry as Bridget?”
Flashing a mischievous grin, Elise shook her head sending her blonde curls swirling about her shoulders.
“Good.” Meg whispered as she observed Sir Gilbert conversing with his troop leader near the fire as he sipped from a cup. She glanced toward the sky turning pewter then noted the awakening men. As she refocused her gaze on the fire, she observed her step-father dip a second cup for her mother then turn toward them.
“Good morrow, Lady Megan,” he said. A smile lit his lined face as he walked toward them.
“The very same to you, Sir Gilbert,” Meg returned with a smile, enjoying the cordial greeting game they’d played ever since he’d begun courting her mother. “Elise and I were about to venture over beyond.” She jerked her thumb in the direction of the woods, glad the semi-darkness hid her flush of embarrassment at mentioning so private a moment.
“I see you’ve taken my warnings to heart.” His smile grew as he bent and planted a kiss on his daughter’s head without spilling a drop from the steaming cups.
As Meg inhaled the smell of savory thyme spiced chicken broth, her stomach gave a low grumble. She blushed at the all too human failing, hoping he hadn’t heard.
“I’m impressed with you, Lady Megan.” Sir Gilbert said. “You’re a credit to the Maxwell family.” Straightening, he shifted his gaze to his daughter. “I know you’re still half asleep, Poppet, but stay close and do whatever your sister Megan says,” he warned as he set both cups of broth inside the cart.
“Yes, papa,” Elise said as she rubbed her eyes.
Meg smiled. No wonder her mother blushed and stammered so much since her marriage to Sir Gilbert. Like her mother, she had come to realize that within the gruff exterior of the fierce Marcher Lord resided the kind heart of a man who loved her mother fiercely and deeply cared for his new family. She realized that she could safely leave her mother and sister in his capable hands and get on with her own life in the convent.
“I thank you, sir, for your vote of confidence,” she whispered then grinned, “and I’ll be sure to keep both my sisters away for a few extra minutes while you wake Mother.” She was unable to prevent her grin from becoming another full-fledge smile.
“I knew I could count on you.” He chuckled. “You are a most thoughtful daughter.”
“And you, Sir, are proving to be a most excellent father,” Meg said. Taking her sister’s small hand, an imp of mischief prompted her to call back as they moved off toward the tree-ringed perimeter. “And give Mother several morning pecks from all of us, please.”
Meg thought she heard, ‘cheeky lass’ as she glanced back then, imitating Bridget, she flipped her chestnut waist length braid over her shoulder. She chuckled as she approached the ring of boulders. They’d been so blessed with the advent of Sir Gilbert in their lives. Maybe now, the pain of the last few years would fade from her mother’s and sister’s memories.
Meg rubbed the heel of her hand over the sudden burning ache in her chest at the thought. She squared her shoulders, knowing that soon she would rectify her part of that past. But for now, she had a job to do. Glancing over her shoulder, she spied some of Sir Gilbert’s men beginning to cast aside their blankets.
Ach, they’d best hurry! Meg knew no matter what warnings Sir Gilbert had issued, Bridget wouldn’t stay close to the campsite.
She bit back her gnawing sense of irritation as they slipped beyond the camp’s perimeter and didn’t find Bridget waiting for them. It appeared that, once again, Bridget had, with deliberate intent, moved beyond the boundary line Sir Gilbert had established last evening while the camp was being set up in the small glen ringed on three sides by trees and boulders.
“Is Bridget lost?” Elise asked as her small hand curled inside Meg’s.
“I hope not,” Meg mumbled, grateful that at least one of her sisters followed directions. “But with Bridget, who knows,” she added, noticing that her breath hung suspended for a moment in the cold, gray dawn before dissipating. A raven trilled nearby. Her throat constricted and she took several deep breaths, shrugging off her creeping misgivings. Yet a raw shiver trembled through her, chilling her to the bone.
“Bridget,” she called softly. “Bri----get.”
Expecting to be challenged at any moment by the posted sentry, Meg frowned when nothing happen.
Had the man already returned to camp? If so, then they’d best be quick about their business.
Meg wrinkled her brow as she caught a strong whiff of garlic. “We need to hurry and find Bridget and return to camp,” she said, as a dark panic swept over her. The urge to run and hide coursed through her, but she shook it off, denying the sensation. She had a job to do and she wasn’t about to again be found derelict in her duty.
She stared at the path meandering deeper into the forest. Although the bushes remained in shadows, she could see the outline of the trail leading deeper into the woods. The only direction she realized Bridget would’ve gone.
Meg ground her teeth together. Enough was enough. It was time to take things in hand and teach Bridget a lesson. Right now she and Elise ought to march right back into camp and leave Bridget stranded alone in the woods.
Another raven’s call, this one close by, halted Meg in the center of the path. She shivered in the cold morning air as she watched the silhouette of the bird soar, dancing high above her head in the dawn’s early light. She thought of her grandmother’s Celtic superstitions then shook her head. Ravens could no more predict death than she could ascertain when the wind blew or the rain fell.
Another shiver swept through her as more birds took to the sky, joining the dance. The last time she’d seen such a large flock of ravens had been eight years ago. She shook her head. She wouldn’t think of that day, at least not now, not when everything depended upon her doing things right. She broke into a cold sweat as she took a last glance at the soaring birds then nudged Elise forward. There was nothing she could do about the past but carry the guilt. However, she could alter the present if she could find Bridget and get her back to camp before too much time had elapsed. Then she would let their mother teach Bridget the lessons of self-control. Squaring her shoulders, she swiped her sleeve across her wet brow.
Although following the narrow footpath meandering around the rocks with thorny bushes snagging at their clothing didn’t improve Meg’s temper, hearing the sounds of rushing water did. Relief flowed through her although she realized they had traveled quite a distance away from the camp. But, at least she knew exactly where to find Bridget.
Stepping from behind a rowan tree, Meg spied her sister slapping a stick on the water and then watching it arc into the air.
“Meggie,” she heard Elise say. “I need to use…”
“Back there,” Meg gestured toward a Hawthorn bush they’d just passed. She wasn’t about to shift her gaze from Bridget and give her another chance to disappear again. She did however note what shrub Elise scampered behind.
“Wouldn’t something closer to camp have suited you just as well?” Meg asked, stalking toward her sister. “Or did you intentionally mean to disobey our father?”
“He’s not my father, nor will he ever be,” Bridget said, punctuating each word by beating the water with her stick. “And it’s your fault.”
“I know,” Meg whispered, rubbing her chest hoping to ease the fierce pain her sister’s words caused. “Don’t you realize that I’ve lived every moment of the last eight years knowing I caused the deaths of our father, brother and seven clansmen? Do you think it’s been easy living with that knowledge? I’ve done everything I could to atone for it. That’s why…”
“But you’re the oldest; you should’ve done what you were supposed to do.” Her sister straightened. Whacking a stone into the water with her stick, she bent and viciously began pounding the water again. “And how could Mother so easily forget our father and marry that man?” she asked as streams of water arced and hit Meg.
Meg jumped back. Taking a deep, slow breath, she released the air trapped in her lungs. While she accepted the truth of her sister’s accusations and even understood her hurt and anger, at some point, Bridget needed to grow up and learn to deal with reality.
Feeling a bit more in control of herself, Meg nodded. “Granted, he’s not our birthing father, but he is our mother’s husband now. And regardless of what name we call him; he’s the man we owe our allegiance to.” She gave a small shrug. “Besides, he makes Mother smile. And after everything she’s been through, she deserves some happiness. So, the sooner you accept they are married, the better off we’ll all be.”
“You mean, toady up to him the way you have?” Bridget asked as she turned and charged toward Meg bandying the stick in her hand.
Meg grabbed the swinging weapon and yanked it from Bridget’s hand. Surprisingly, the cudgel came away swifter than anticipated. Although her ankles wobbled, she managed to maintain her balance. A golden glow of gratitude swept through her that she hadn’t fallen at her sister’s feet and become yet another object of her sister’s ridicule.
“What did you expect?” Meg shook the stick at her sister then flung the branch away with all her might. It sailed over the stream and crashed in a Hawthorn bush on the other side. “I know you hated it, but let me remind you that we had to live at the Convent until Mother could seek the Queen’s help.” Quickly, she raised her hand to stop Bridget’s objection. “Personally, I thank Queen Annabelle for sending Sir Gilbert and his daughter our way.”
“But she’s such a nuisance, always demanding something,” Bridget whined in her high irritating tone.
“Good grief!” Meg bristled then shook her head in an attempt to control her ire. “She’s only six. She’s naturally curious. All she really wants is for us to take a moment and answer her questions.” She took a swift, calming breath. “Remember, this is all new to her,” she continued. “She was an infant when her mother died.” Feeling less nonchalant than she hoped she appeared, Meg shrugged. “Elise has never had a mother and older sisters before. So, of course, we’re a novelty to her. Just give her some time and she’ll settle in.”
Bridget scrunched up her face like a withered apple left in the cellar too long. “But does she have to cling to Mother so?”
“Ah-h,” Meg replied as realization dawned like daybreak. “That’s what’s wrong with you. That big, ugly worm of jealousy is a nibbling away at your inners.” A spurt of inspiration rushed through her as she leaned toward her sister. “And it’s all because Mama no longer coddles her little Bridgie-widgie.” Arching her brow, Meg grinned, eager to finally have an opportunity to deliver a coup de grace. “Surely, even you should’ve realized by now that Mama’s priority must be Elise.”
“Oh-h-h,” Bridget huffed, shaking her fists. “What do you care? Sir Gilbert will send you back to Edinburgh or secure a wealthy husband for you from among his border friends. And all the while I’ll be stuck in the back of beyond caring for a nosy, half-wit step-sister.”
“Sh—shush,” Meg hissed as she took a menacing step toward Bridget. “Lower your voice before she hears you.”
“You mean you brought her with you?” Bridget gasped then raised her palms up in open supplication. “Oh, how could you?”
“Unlike you, I don’t intentionally defy authority.” Meg shook her head. “Nor do I have the audacity to think I can dictate my own terms.”
“Surely, even you know I’m not foolish enough to think that?” Bridget asked, before flashing her a cold smile.
Meg stepped toward her sister. “And I suppose you’ll now inform me that you don’t willfully distort the truth to gain your own ends?” A cold cloak of determination swirled around Meg as she placed her fists on her hips. “And you’re wrong about my future. I have neither the dowry nor the looks to attract a husband. Therefore, as soon as you…”
“What you choose to believe about yourself is your problem.” Bridget said. Stepping back, she dipped her head regally. “But time will show that I’m right.” She gave a self-righteous smirk as she lifted her nose into the air. “I’m simply reminding you that Sir Gilbert did say we could come as far as this stream.”
Meg scowled. “Did he?” She couldn’t clearly remember, since she’d been eavesdropping on whispered conversation between two of Sir Gilbert’s Knights about someone at St. Mary’s Kirk called ‘Johnstone’. She brightened. Then raising her chin, she narrowed her gaze, not about to allow her sister’s decade and five years’ experiences get the upper hand over her own much more seasoned wisdom. “Or is this yet another attempt to make me look stupid?”
“Most of the time you don’t need my help,” Bridget retorted. Her smug, know-it-all grin oozed like the honey Meg had often poured over the scrapes, cuts and wounds she’d tended while working in the royal nursery.
She opened her mouth to deny the validity of her sister’s statement then snapped it closed. Who was she to deny the truth? She was tall, unsightly and, most of the time, stumbled over her own two feet. “Aye, so I’ll concede you that point,” she admitted, wryly.
“I’m cold and hungry and I want to go back.” Elise moaned as she moved toward them.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re one very intelligent young lady?” Meg asked as she bent toward her sister to help adjust her cloak.
Elise shook her head, her brown eyes nothing more than narrow slits. “Most of the time people say I’m nothing but a nuisance.”
“That’s because you ask too many questions,” Bridget fired back.
“Bridget,” Meg said, cringing at her sister’s rudeness, “please, temper your speech and apologize, now.”
Bridget glared at her for a moment. “Fine,” she said, “but one of these days you’ll all be sorry you treated me so rotten.” Pressing her fist against her mouth, she hurried back toward camp.
Meg waited until Bridget had disappeared from view before she knelt so that she could be at eye-level with her young sister. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, “but it’s going to take Bridget more time to adjust to being a part of this new family.”
“Why doesn’t Bridget think we love her?” Elise asked, her small head held at a perplexed angle.
Startled by such a mature observation in one so young, Meg paused. “My Grams used to say that in order to love someone, first you must love yourself,” she said, “and I don’t think Bridget has learned that lesson yet.”
“When did you?” Elise asked.
As Meg stood, she felt her face slowly heat. “Let’s say that I remember what it was like before you and your father came into our lives,” she said as she slipped her hand over Elise’s and nudged her up the path. “A lot of bad things happened to us. And Bridget probably doesn’t remember much.” She paused, then refrained from saying it was either that or Bridget chose not to remember. She glanced down at her new sister.
Elise smiled up at her. “You know, Papa likes you,”
Meg couldn’t help but return the smile. “And how can you tell?”
“His eyes smile when he talks to you,” Elise replied as she stooped to inspect a black tipped white arrow protruding from the center of the pathway.
Meg’s hand trembled as a knot formed in the back of her throat as she watched Elise pull the arrow by its shaft from the ground. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the arrow hadn’t been in the middle of the path when they’d passed the spot a while ago. Had it been there, she would’ve either spotted it or tripped over it. Swiftly scanning the forested area, she frowned. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Taking a quick breath, she glanced at her sister. “And what would you say you have there?”
“Papa would say it’s a fine dove’s feather,” Elise responded holding the arrow up for inspection. “Magnum’s been teaching me how to make them, but we use goose feathers.”
Meg tightened her hold on her sister’s fist, hoping Bridget had run safely back into camp.

The Crimson Z

The Crimson Z
https://amzn.to/2EepMMw
Robert Cloud
Lee Rush
Richard Savage
Abby Blythe
Kara Elsberry

Standing atop of a ladder that was perched precariously against the outside awning of the old, brick building Zachariah’s hands struggled with the last knot of the banner that proudly announced that the Grand Opening of The Crimson Z would be on October 31st. The arthritis in his gnarled and tired knuckles made it the most difficult knot to tie. His hands already ached from the work they had done in getting ready for the opening of the new location of his jewelry shop.
It had been a tradition for generations that whenever the shop moved that the new opening would occur on Halloween. He did not intend to change that tradition even if his tired aching bones were screaming from exertion they were not used to. At his age he should be home enjoying his retirement years but the life and craft of a jeweler was all he knew and was all he had. He knew if he stopped working he would waste away to nothing.
Halloween was still a week away and if he was going to be ready to open the doors on that day there was still a lot for his old body to accomplish in those seven days. He would be done in time but only barely. How he wished for the days when his body was younger and did not hurt all the time. Hell, he was so old that even he did not know his age. At his last visit to the doctor’s office the doctor had said he was in great health for a man approaching a hundred. Was he a hundred years old? It seemed like he was much older than that. He could remember things that would be impossible for him to remember if he were only one hundred, but maybe they were the memories of his own father or grandfather that had crawled into his mind and took residence as if they were his own.
He looked down the rungs of the ladder. His knees trembled as he began to lift his foot to step down. He tightened his grip upon the rung for he was not certain that the aching joints in his knees would allow him to climb down again. With pain flaring in his arthritic hands he held tight as he raised his foot to take that first step. Just then a sudden shadow loomed down and passed over him. It was larger than a bus yet looked like a giant bird. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, they had to have played tricks on him for its neck had extended forward of its body much farther than any bird he had ever seen and its tail looked more like the tail of a serpent but the tail ended in a barbed spike. Its wings were so wide that the tips were hidden by the shadows of the buildings upon each side of the street.
He watched as it disappeared and then closed his eyes thinking it had to have been his imagination. When he opened them he saw the shadow returning toward him and as it passed over him the wings of the shadow came together as if to lift the great beast into the sky. A sudden downdraft of wind hit the old man hard and he had to fight to keep from being knocked off the ladder. His eyes watched the shadow as it began to get smaller. Quickly the old man turned his head sending a sudden blinding streak of pain into his neck but his gaze caught nothing in the sky that could have made such a shadow. There was but one lone plane and it was too high in the sky and to the wrong side of the sun to have cast any shadow at all. Even if it had been in the right location to cast the shadow it would not have explained the sudden gust of wind.
The old man shook uncontrollably for a moment as his hand rubbed the aching hump at the base of his neck. Slowly he righted himself and tried to think rationally. He was not a child. What did he think he had seen? A dragon?
A memory returned to him of a long time past when he and some of his friends would be taken by such flights of fancy. They would dash off into the fields of their fathers and protect the flocks of sheep from dragons and other monsters. They would wave branches about like swords to ward off the predators of the skies. No dragons, giants or other beasts would lay one hand or claw upon any of the wooly flock of their fathers, but that was when he was a child of seven or eight. He rubbed his temples and then his forehead as he tried to remember, how long ago was that? He could not recall.
Once again he looked down the rungs of the ladder and with his knees still trembling both from his age and from the rush of adrenalin caused by nearly falling he began to descend yet he had only taken two steps down when again he was interrupted. Age had taken many things from him but one thing that it had left him was his hearing. That sense was startlingly acute even for a young man. Not one sound got past the old man’s ears. He even knew exactly how many mice had taken up residence in his apartment above the store and he left them little crumbs of food as they were his only friends.
He heard the sound of wheels skating upon the rough concrete of the sidewalk. He looked up to see a young child of maybe seven streaking along upon a pair of those things that he thought he had heard a young man call roller blades. The skater was pretty good for someone so young. The long hair streaming from beneath the child’s helmet led him to believe the skater was a girl but he had been fooled more than once, yet the grace of the skater reinforced his conviction that the child was indeed a girl.
In this small village of Hudson Falls there were not many people on the sidewalk at this time of day and the skater skirted around the few that were there like it was more a dance for her than a mode of transportation. The old man’s eyes grew wide as he saw the door of the Rexall Drug Store open. The skater was too busy skating around the cluster of people standing in front of the used furniture store and did not see the glass door. It was directly in her path and the old man started to call out to warn her but his aged lungs could no longer hold the breath of his more robust years and his voice did not carry loud enough for her to hear. At the last moment the skater made a sudden and quick move to dart around the door. The skates screamed as they flew out from under her and the girl’s face slammed into the open door as her knees and hands scraped against the rough concrete like cheese on a grater.
He continued to descend the ladder carefully. He wanted to rush faster so he could aid the little girl but he worried if he tried to move too fast that it would be himself in need of an ambulance therefore he went slowly. Still his eyes never left the girl or the door.
He watched as the person whose arm had been holding the door when the child had hit it darted out and knelt beside the crying child. The young lady, who could not yet be out of her teens, set her packages down and began rummaging through her purse. She pulled out a handkerchief and what looked like a wet wipe of some kind. By the time he was again standing on firm ground he could see that the young lady had the situation well under control. The young woman helped the girl to her feet and wiped the last of the tears away with another of her wet wipes and then the girl began to skate away. As she neared the only scratches his eyes caught upon her were a couple of small ones upon her lower shins. They were nothing that would mar what turned out to be a lovely little girl. He smiled at her as she neared but she did not see him instead she turned and waved to the young woman that had helped her and then darted past him with the grace of a dancer. He had been nothing in her life but an insignificant obstacle upon her journey.
The resiliency of the young had always amazed him. She had rebounded so quickly it was as if nothing had happened and he could hear the chiming of her laughter as she rounded the corner just beyond him.
His ancient bones creaked and complained as he turned back to look at the young lady who had caused the accident. Of the two she was the one that seemed to have had the worst of it though he could see no sign of any physical injury.
It amazed him that even from a distance of nearly half a block he could make out the wet trails that the tears had left on her cheeks. Her green eyes glistened with more tears that were readying to fall as she paused and placed her face into her hands and wept in silence. He queried himself, how was it possible to see the color of her eyes from that distance, hell he could even read the small lettering on the packages that lay on the ground at her feet. Surely someone his age should be almost blind. Instead he could see things he should only be able to see if he were looking through binoculars or a telescope.
The young woman knelt to pick up her two small bags. While she gathered her items she stopped and continued to cry a moment longer, holding her handkerchief to her eyes to hide the tears. Two older boys walked by her one pushed at the other laughing and nearly knocking his buddy into her, yet neither of them seemed to even notice she was there. He grumbled under his breath at the disrespect that young people of this era had. In his day a gentleman helped a lady in distress even if only for a moment or two. He just could not fathom the indifference of young men. It was not even a matter of being a gentleman anymore but just common courtesy, and it definitely was not that the young lady was unattractive. She did not dress to show off the beauty that lay within her but he could feel the stirrings within him that made him wish he was young again.
Slowly she stood and began walking in his direction, her right hand darting up and trying to wipe the tears away from her eyes. As she neared him he was struck at how much she reminded him of someone but he could not place who. Yet his heart began to pick up its pace and suddenly shyness overcame him. He felt as if he were a young lad about to ask the most beautiful girl in town for a date. His heart leapt into his throat as he thought she was going to pass him by but suddenly she paused. He began to dance back and forth upon his feet like an anxious young child desperate to see Santa. He could not understand what was wrong with him. He hadn’t felt like this about anyone since the passing of his wife many years ago and this was only a little girl. Why was he acting as if this was the most important moment in his entire life?
Slowly she turned her eyes upward and she looked up at his sign and then back to him and said, “Mister, your sign is up backwards.”
He gazed up, stared at the sign a moment, then laughed, and while still looking at the sign said, “Well my bones can’t handle another trip up that ladder today. I will have to fix it tomorrow.”
“I don’t mind fixing it for you, Sir,” the young lady said in such a sweet voice that he could feel his heart melting.
“But… but… you are wearing a dress?”
“Not a problem,” she said. She sat her packages down and unhooked the strap from her purse. She took one end of the strap and attached it to her belt behind her back and passed it between her legs and then fastened it to her belt in the front. The belt pulled the hem of her dress up and closed the opening making a type of pants.
He watched her ingenuity stunned. She must have seen the look upon his face for she quickly explained, “I always wear dresses and at school I often help decorate so I have learned a few tricks to keep the boys from looking up my skirts.”
He did not have time to say a word before she darted up the ladder and within no time she had the sign righted and was back down and had her purse reassembled. He smiled at her and thanked her profusely.
A gust of wind caught her hair and tossed it across her face. She flipped her head to get the hair out of her eyes. The wind however carried with it the still lingering scent of her tears as well as a light dusting of perfume. The fingers of the past wrapped around him reminding him of something from his childhood, a scent that his mother wore, a flower, but he could not place it. He suddenly felt an even stronger need to at least talk to this young lady for a little while. At the rate his heart was responding to her there was little doubt in his mind that if she wanted it he would offer her any piece of jewelry in his store for just a few moments to stare at her lovely smile. His late wife would have called him a foolish old man but he still felt like a young man in his old body.
She smiled at him and though she seemed to be happy he could sense that there was an incredible sadness within her that was far deeper than what could be explained by what had happened down the street. Again he was not certain how he knew that, but there was no doubt in his mind that this young woman was troubled. She lifted her hand as if to wave and he could sense she was about to say she had better get going.
The thoughts that went through his head then passed within a flash. He knew that she was a very special young lady. The very fact that he could feel her inner emotions without her saying a single word told him that there was something within her that was calling out to him. Then the shadow of the old drake passing overhead loomed in his mind and another memory of his past shot out of the darkness. The harbinger of an omen. Maybe it was more than his imagination. He felt deeply that he had to help this young lady in some way, he was not yet certain what she needed or how he would help but he knew he had no choice.
Before she had the chance to say anything he spoke, “Would you care to come inside and sit for a bit? I saw what happened down the street and you seem to be quite shaken by it. Besides, I at least owe you a drink for helping me with the sign.”
She nodded and he opened the door as a gentleman should and allowed her to precede him into the establishment. The young woman stepped inside and paused just inside the door. As he stepped in behind her he could see her looking about at all the display cases. They were empty and the place looked barren but the old building had a charm of its own.
He flipped the light switch just inside the door and the overhead lights illuminated the place casting out the shadows and then the tension in the young woman seemed to evaporate. He suddenly realized that she was the first person, other than himself, to enter The Crimson Z since he had decided to relocate there, “Welcome to The Crimson Z,” he announced.
The young woman laughed and said, “For all there is to it.”
Then she added, “Will you be ready to open in time for your Grand Opening?”
“I am old but I believe I can make it in time,” he said, as he walked toward the back of the store to go to the little kitchen area. “Would you like a soda, or something else?” He hollered back and asked.
“Do you have any bottled water?” she asked.
“Yes, I have some from Saratoga Springs. I kind of like it, it has a sweet taste.”
“That is good, I prefer things without additives,” she responded.
He brought back out two of the bottles. As he passed by a mirror on the wall it began to rattle and he whispered to it, “Not now Lilith, it is not time.”
“Excuse me, Sir. What did you say?” she asked.
“I just said to myself ‘Be still, Silly it is not your time.’ It was nothing”
The girl looked at him quizzically so he tried to come up with a reasonable explanation. He hated to lie, he always had but he did not know how to explain the rattling mirror and Lilith to the young woman. Maybe he would in time if she stuck around, but if he tried now she would be out that door and running down the street in a matter of seconds. “You are such an attractive young lady and my heart was racing just thinking of being alone in this dark store with you. But as you see I am an arthritic old man and you are in no danger.”
He felt ashamed for he had actually told her two lies. Outside he had felt old and arthritic but once he had stepped through the doors and into the realm of The Crimson Z it was as if half his years had melted away from him. He no longer hurt and his hands and bones were in nearly perfect shape again.
The young girl giggled and smiled brightly as she blushed, “Thank you, I am not so pretty, but I already knew I was safe with you. I could see it in your eyes. I get feelings about people, and you have a very good heart.”
He handed the young woman her bottle of water and then opened his own. He laughed to himself thinking when bottled water had first come out he had sworn he would never spend even a single penny on the stuff and now it was about the only thing he drank. He did have a couple cans of soda in the refrigerator for guests but he never touched it. The young woman began to lean over the counter and look for something. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“I was looking for a trash can for this wet wipe. I could not throw it on the street. I just do not like to litter, besides, people are funny about things covered with blood.”
He held out his hand, “Hand it to me, the main trash can is in the back. I am still setting up shop so do not have anything really ready yet. Other than the treasures display case over against that wall nothing has been set up.”
She dropped the wet wipe in his hand and then turned her gaze in the direction he had pointed. She could feel her eyes growing big as she looked upon the deep red of the rich mahogany case. She was not a good judge of height but it nearly reached to the ceiling so she guessed it stood nearly eight feet tall and was at least six feet wide. The front was divided into three panels. The lower one foot stretched the full width of the cabinet and then the upper portion was divided into what looked like two doors. Across the top was a decorative scrolling that had the phases of the moon carved into the scroll work.
However the most striking feature was a deep intricate carving across the faces of the two doors. It appeared to be a tree, but one that was bent to form a very stylistic shape that resembled the letter Z. The roots were twisted and gnarled from the right across the bottom to the left and became the base of the trunk of the tree but they were more than that for they also looked like they were the feet of a startlingly beautiful but completely naked woman. She leaned to the right, her legs crossed slightly, she was naked and it actually caused the young woman to feel herself blush as she looked at how sensual the woman was, yet she was still the trunk of a tree.
One of the tree woman’s arms crooked above her head and it and her hair became the branches which intertwined across the two doors. Down at the base one of the tap roots descended and connected to a circle that surrounded the entire work. Connected to the circle at twelve equidistant points were characters that she recognized from the Hebrew alphabet.
The young woman had never imagined anything like this in her life. The entire cabinet was the most strikingly beautiful piece of furniture she had ever seen. She could not even begin to imagine what kind of treasures it might hold within that he would defer to them and not to the cabinet itself as so valuable.
The old man turned and left the room as she began to walk over to the case. When she got closer she noticed that the engraving that formed the pattern was more than simply a deeply carved line. There were raised portions within the lines so she inspected them even closer. In the poor light it was hard to tell but it looked like there were some strange characters carved within the lines.
“Yes, the case is a beauty.” She nearly jumped out of her skin as she had not heard the old man approach and he was less than a foot behind her. She turned and stepped away a bit, smiling at him. She did not feel frightened of him it was just that she was not used to having people get that close to her without her noticing them. He continued, “It is a copy of the original that was made when the original store was open.”
The old man laughed and placed a key into a hidden spot at the bottom of the doors, “Don’t go asking me how long ago that was because I have no idea. It has been in my family for many generations.” Then he sighed, a deep, heavy sigh and added, “It looks like it will pass into the hands of my great-great nephew though for I have no son to pass my trade on to.”
With a twist of the key the two great doors swung open almost magically. The backs of both doors and the interior behind them were lined with red velvet. Sliding glass doors further divided the case and protected the pieces of jewelry within.
She stared in awe at the hundreds of pieces adorning the shelves. There were rings, bracelets, necklaces, pendants, cameos, and many more items and each one looked as if it were crafted with a care and artistry beyond anything she had ever seen or even imagined. She had seen exceptional jewelry before. Her mother wore very expensive pieces but what was in this cabinet was far beyond anything she had seen even in museums. The craftsmen that had made these pieces of jewelry were true masters and she had no doubt that she was looking at the finest works that had ever been created.
Her gaze was caught by an exquisite golden ring, like two coiled serpents, that held the very first place within the cabinet. Her eyes were drawn down to a pendent that looked so delicate that she was sure it would crumble beneath the touch of a feather. All the upper shelves were mostly full but once in a while there would be a blank space as if a piece was missing from the collection. She continued with amazement through the various pieces, a set of pendants all alike except for a size variance, a bracelet of gold and lapis which were one of her favorite gemstones. All the pieces were of gold, some had silver in them some had gemstones others did not.
Finally her gaze lit upon the bottom shelves and she noticed that they were empty like they were waiting for new pieces that had yet to be made.
She started to turn wanting to ask him about the blank places in the collection but before she said a word he was answering as if he had read her mind. “The blank places are for pieces that have been sold. In time it seems that all the pieces that are marked with the jeweler’s mark of The Crimson Z find their way back to this shop so it has been a tradition to leave the spots open.”
She could feel her own eyes widen at the thought that somehow the pieces always returned. Could that mean that they were somehow magical? She imagined them being woven with some special enchantment that enveloped the person that bought them and then when the person was no longer in need of the magic the piece would mysteriously find its way back into the hands of the owner of The Crimson Z. She turned and looked at the empty places amongst the jewelry and wondered what wonders those pieces were weaving in the lives of the people that possessed them.
Her gaze drifted amongst the variety of rings, chains, charms, earrings, and other jewels that had every size and type of gemstone imaginable. Slowly she turned towards him and smiled broadly. “Did you make all of these?”
He laughed, “Sometimes I feel like I did. They mean so much to me. But that ring of coiled serpents up in that corner is several hundred years old. Do you think I could have made it?” He smiled at her and raised an eyebrow, “Surely you do not think I am that old?”
She smiled, “Well, I guess not. You are old, but not quite that old.” She smiled teasingly and added, “At least I do not think so.”
The old man wiggled his eyebrows and she realized he had seen through her tease. She giggled. There was something about the old man that made her feel very warm and safe. If she had had a grandfather she would have hoped he would have been a man like this man. She held out her hand, “My name is Melanie it is nice to meet you.” Then as an afterthought, something she thought a gentleman of his era might like, she curtsied.
The old man’s face brightened, “My, that is something I have not seen in a very long time. I did not know anyone even knew how to do that anymore.”
Melanie laughed and said, “I saw it in an old movie once. I thought it was sweet so I practiced it. I never thought I would do it. Yet, you seemed like someone that would appreciate it, and it felt right.”
He took her hand, kissed it and then bowed to her, “Why thank you, Miss Melanie, it was indeed a pleasure.”
She giggled shyly, the kiss was a little more than she had anticipated and her heart raced. Why would an old man kissing her hand cause her heart to race? And make her feel giddy?
The old man added, “Most people call me Zach. My last name is Zachariah and it is where the Z in The Crimson Z comes from.”
Melanie giggled again, everything seemed so formal. Yet she felt it was somehow more. Her own heart was telling her she needed it to be more. She did not know why, but she felt comfortable around this man. It frightened her a little, that it was the first time she had ever met him and she was having such deep emotions but all her life she’d had feelings about things and they had never steered her wrong. She knew that she would be safe with this man and she knew that he was going to play a major role in her life.
She smiled at him and said, “It has been a true pleasure to meet you, Zach… um, Mr. Zachariah.” She lowered her gaze to the floor and thought. It did not feel right calling him by the name Zach as everyone else did. That just did not show him enough respect and yet calling him Mr. Zachariah seemed too formal, almost like it was distancing him from her and she did not want that.
There were no adults in her life that she was close to other than a couple of teachers, and even more disturbing to her was that there were no male figures in her life at all. She did not hang around the boys her age because she could tell all they wanted from her was to get under her dress. They did not care that she had a mind and a heart. They were too worried about their own hormones, and what conquests they could brag about to the other boys.
Something about this man told her she would be safe. Even if he saw her as a sexual being he would not pursue it. She raised her head and looked at him, she could tell from the look on his face that the look on her own face had caused him to worry, “Excuse me, Sir. It just does not seem right me calling you Zach, and I know it is proper to call you Mr. Zachariah however I am worried that that would send you a message that I want to be distant from you, and I do not.
“I would like to be your friend. I would like to come and visit and talk with you more. Would it be alright if I call you Papa Zach? That is how I would refer to a grandfather if I had one and it would mean a great deal to me to be allowed to show you that respect.”
“I do not know what I did to earn the respect, but I would be honored. You certainly may call me Papa Zach.”
She smiled brightly and said, “Papa Zach, you said you were not done unpacking. Could you use some help? Your sign says you will be opening next Friday, and tomorrow is Saturday. I could come and help you.”
The melody of her voice as she said the word ‘Papa’ catapulted Zachariah’s mind back to a moment in the past, to a happy time when his mother had called his father ‘Papa’ and it warmed his heart to hear the lovely young lady call him by that name. His gaze had also drifted to the floor while his memories of his loving parents and the love they shared filled his head. He suddenly realized that it had gone quiet in the shop except for the girl’s exuberant breath. He looked up at her. For a moment he had forgotten the question she had asked him. He quickly replayed her last words through his mind and then it returned, she had asked if he could use some help, and he could see from the bright look in her eyes that he would have a bit of an argument with her if he were to say no. Yet there were things about this girl he already felt that told him he wanted her near. He could feel her emotions coming off of her like radiant heat from an old wood burning stove. He could see occasional flashes of light dance around her, little bits of energy that clued him in that she was more than just a special girl in her polite and sweet nature. This girl had a gift that was something he needed to be close to. It made him feel alive and even younger than the magic of his shop. His heart felt youthful for the first time since the death of his wife.
Yes this girl was far more special than any of the other clients that had come into his shop but most importantly she had given him the first of the elements of the commission. She had given him a gift of blood of an innocent child. Now he had to wait for her to commission a piece of jewelry. It was imperative that she be around as much as possible and even though that was part of the requirements which he had to fulfill, it was something his heart was more than pleased to follow. He hoped that what she would ask for would be something very special so that he could put all of his heart and soul into its design. He wanted to create for her something that would help her feel how beautiful she truly was.
He smiled, “I guess I have made you dance long enough for your answer. Melanie, you are welcome to help but I do not have any cash on hand. I have not sold a piece in quite some time and all my money is either tied up or has gone to paying the rent on this place and buying back one of the treasures.”
“Oh no! No, Papa Zach. I don’t want to be paid. Well, if you want to pay me you can tell me some stories about the treasures. I get the feeling from the way you say they return to you that each of them has a special story, almost magical and my curiosity about them is piqued. Besides I love to listen to stories from older people about the past. People my age just do not respect the generations of the past and there is so much rich history in their tales and legends.” She looked at him. He could see the anticipation building to where she was almost dancing before he finally gave his answer.
“Yes.” He smiled for to hear the respect in her voice about history was just one more thing that made this young girl so special to him. She truly was a treasure. He already knew she was more valuable than all the treasures in that cabinet combined for she was a living, breathing jewel.
“Yay!” She jumped up and down and kissed his cheek. Then she walked backwards toward the door, he watched as she turned her head every once in a while as if she were trying to make certain she didn’t bump into something as she headed for the door, but she kept looking back to him to make eye contact as she spoke to him. “Papa Zach, I am sorry I cannot stay longer but dinner will be on the table soon and I do not want my mother to worry. I will tell her about you and this place and she may stop in to check it out to make certain it is what I say it is. I will be here bright and early tomorrow. Just tell me when?”
“It is Saturday get here when you feel like it. I am usually up before the sun.”
She ran to the door then stopped ran back and kissed his cheek again, “Thank you, thank you,” she said then ran out the door. The last thing he heard was her singing happily, as she was nearly halfway up the block.
As the sound of her voice faded, the mirror on the wall began to rattle. Zach got up and walked over to it. “Quiet, Lilith. Do not be jealous. I know she is young and sweet but I still love you my wife. I have loved you since the day I laid eyes on you and I will always love you.” Softly he stroked the glass of the mirror and slowly it settled down. Zachariah felt a cold tingling at the front of his skull, he could remember a time when it was warm and pleasant but that had ceased long ago and now it felt more like icy fingers reaching into the frontal lobe of his brain.
Zachariah, the blood of this child that she brought you, I can tell it is truly an innocent this time. Zachariah could feel a quivering of those cold tendrils as he felt her excitement.
“What has happened? Why has it taken so long? I do not remember ever getting this old before.”
It has not been that long, my love. Living in New York and Boston finding innocent children was hard to do. When the blood of a non-innocent is used you do not regenerate as much. The last time you only gained back ten years. That was only thirty years ago. Your body is the same as a man who is one hundred and ten.
“It is not that the magic is getting old?”
No my love. He remembered one of the things that had always been a strong hatred for Lilith was to see a child harmed or abused. It was one of the few times he could recall while they were married that she had actually gotten violent with someone. Innocence is harder to find. These are days of child molestation, and parents teaching their children to hate others because of race, or religion. Even small children steal, lie, cheat and not just little innocent things of growing up but things of a malicious nature so they are not innocent. Their blood is not as strong.
“Oh yes. Now I remember. Back in the 1920’s wasn’t there one time when the blood actually caused me to age?”
Yes, the little monster was killing cats and dogs when he was only three and four years old. He killed his sister when he was six and his parents when he was seven. We happened to get his blood when he was eight. We were both weak because it had been sixty years since the last time we’d had an innocent and I could not tell his blood was tainted. It nearly killed you my love. A sudden memory a fiery flash in her eyes surfaced, eerie almost supernatural, he could not recall when it happened but he remembered the feeling that it was not right. That night when I became corporeal all I could do was hold you in my arms. We were lucky that another innocent came only a couple of days later or you might have died and I would have been forever trapped in this mirror.
“Well, Melanie has to commission a piece for me to work on for the blood to work. I do not know how to get her to get the courage to do that. Maybe just bide my time.”
The mirror began rattling again, Melanie, is it! This had better just be business Zachary or when I get my body back you will wish it had been.
Zach smiled then his heart grew cold as he suddenly remembered the cruel temper Lilith had shown when she had been even the slightest bit jealous. Though there had been no reason for her to be jealous her hatred would boil within her until she exploded and hell’s fury would be unleashed upon the object of her jealousy.
“There is nothing to be jealous of Lilith. Look at me I am an old man, she is still a child she could not possibly see anything in me. You know I would be a fool to care for anyone but you.” He prayed with all his heart that that would ease her temper but there had been times that nothing he would say would douse the flames once they had been lit.
We will see Zachariah, and you had better not be lying to me. He could almost feel her smile wickedly at him. It was a strange sensation to know what her spirit was doing even though she had no form. Why did you not tell me Zaven had appeared?
“Zaven?”
I can see him in your mind, you old fool! Have you lost your memory of him already?
The image of the shadow was pulled into his memory by the icy tendrils, forced there for him to see again and relive. His heart raced wildly, he had not known she could force him to recall memories and see things from his recent past. He wondered if she could only see things he had seen or if she could see and feel all his thoughts, if it was the latter he was a dead man.
He tried to build a barrier in his mind to protect those other thoughts just in case and as he did he began to distract her by discussing what she wanted to hear, “It had been so long since Zaven had been a harbinger that I had not even recognized his sign. The shadow nearly scared the wits out of me.”
Yes, my Love, Zaven has searched long and hard this time, we could not afford to have the child be another monster. Someone like that would surely kill you this time, it could have last time.
Zach leaned forward and kissed the mirror, “You will see Lily it is only you I love and I am looking forward to holding you in my arms again, even if it is only for a night. Now I need to bid you a good night, I suspect the girl will be here before I normally get up in the morning so I am going to set my clock an hour earlier.
Good night, my love.
***
The bell at the door chimed before his coffee had even finished percolating. Quickly he walked to the door but just before he got there he remembered that once he opened that door he would appear to be every bit the old bent arthritic man she had seen outside the day before so he slowed and bent over and shuffled the last few steps to the door so that the change would not be so dramatic and sudden that she might notice a shift in his appearance. It was difficult for him to maintain the posture though for he was excited about her arrival, feeling more like a boy opening the door for his girlfriend than an old man opening one for his assistant.
Slowly he opened the door and Melanie smiled up at him, “Good morning, Papa Zach,” she almost sang then she stepped around him and nearly danced into the shop.
He watched her as she walked about looking at everything. There was a bounce in her step like she was filled with exuberance. He wondered if it was the joy of having someone to talk to, for he had felt that emptiness and sadness in her the day before. Perhaps it was from how excited she had seemed about the idea of him telling her the stories. Could it be that all her happiness could be wrapped around the thought that when she had finished her tasks for the day she would get to listen to one or more of the tales of the treasures?
Whatever it was it was filling his heart to see her in a much happier state of mind than she had been in the day before. Still there was a barrier within her that he could feel that was holding her back from releasing her true joy. Something deep inside her that was dark and sad kept her from truly knowing what happiness really was.
“Melanie,” he said, “why would you rather be here helping an old man on a Saturday morning than out with your friends.” Zachariah was afraid he already knew the answer but he had to hear it for himself.
The young girl found a rag and some cleaner and had already begun cleaning the glass display cases. She looked up and said, “I really like to be of use to someone.”
“Oh, sweetheart, I know young girls like you have lots of friends and you usually go places and talk about boys and shop on Saturdays. Why are you here and not with them?”
She looked at him and smiled, “Oh, I am your sweetheart am I, you dirty old man.” Then she laughed but the laughter slowly faded and he could see tears begin to form in the corner of her eyes so he walked over to her.
“Listen, Melanie, you can tell me. I do not know anyone else to tell, so I will be your confidant, and your friend.”
She walked around the cabinet and wrapped her arms around him, he had not expected that and it shocked him, yet somehow it seemed right too. He knew she could trust him, maybe somehow she knew it too. She looked up to him and said, “I don’t have any friends. They make fun of me because I don’t wear jeans and gym shoes but dress up all the time except for when I had classes that required me to wear other kinds of clothes.
“I just want to dress this way. No one makes me. I prefer to dress like a woman and not be sleazy and slinky. I don’t like the types of tight fitting clothing that the girls wear that show off their bodies. I want to be attractive, but refined, like a southern belle, or a princess not a teenage vamp trying to lure her boyfriend.
“So they all make fun of me and don’t want anything to do with me. I eat lunch alone in the library. I study alone.” She laid her head against his chest and added, “You are the first person in ages that has tried to be a friend to me that did not try to lift my dress.”
Then she stepped back and wiped her eyes and said, “So, Papa Zach, I am with my friend. I am here and I am helping him get ready for a very important day for him.” Then she turned and went back to scrubbing the glass without another word. Zachariah almost felt like a heel for having pushed that confession out of her but at the same time he felt warm inside for it was true he did like the girl and would be her friend, her true friend.
For hours she worked hard at scrubbing the glass of the cases. Every so often she would look up at him and see him going over some of the drawers of the jewelry that would stock the outer display cases, his eyepiece examining each piece meticulously. It was odd how close she had come to feel to him in such a short period but she already felt like she had known him for a very long time. There was something about him that touched her deeply and made her feel warm and comfortable, almost loved. It was a feeling she had never felt before. Melanie could not understand the reason she felt like this but it was wonderful, and she wanted more of it. She wanted to be with Papa Zach as much as she could because the time with him seemed to make all the pain and loneliness of her life disappear. She had not lied to him about truly being alone. Even her own mother did not love her. She made no qualms about telling her every day that she did not.
Melanie could feel the tears come to her eyes again but as she did, she looked up at Papa Zach and she no longer felt the need to cry. Instead, she felt the need to run over and jump in his arms and hug him like she had never hugged anyone in her life. She smiled to herself, what were these feelings within her. He was an old man and she would be eighteen soon. Their ages were too far apart, why would she feel this way toward him and in such a short time? Yet there was no doubt that her heart beat a little stronger every time she looked at him.
It also had to be her imagination but when he was inside his shop he did not appear to be as old as he had when she had first seen him. He appeared to be much younger, sturdier, stronger, but that was impossible. It was like he was two different men.
There was only one other thing that held as much fascination for her as did Papa Zach and that was the mysterious cabinet. Though she did not look at it nearly half as often as she did him, she still looked at it quite a bit. She glanced up as she finished cleaning the glass of the last case and it was just past six. She decided to let her curiosity have a little freedom.
She got a can of spray wax and some clean cloths and walked over to the cabinet, but as she looked at it she realized that it did not need waxing. Papa Zach had given her the key to it earlier so that she could clean the glass inside it as well, so she slid the key in the lock and as she twisted it she heard a slight click and like magic the two doors began to open slowly on their own. Her eyes again grew large as she became transfixed by the startling beauty of the masterpieces that aligned the shelves within. She reached toward the glass but her hand paused short of it, fear filled her. She just did not feel right.
The jewelry inside was worthy of being in the Smithsonian or the Louvre but not touched by someone as plain and unattractive as she was. Somehow she felt if she were to clean them she would taint them and they would lose their value. Slowly she lowered her head feeling as worthless as her mother had always told her she was.
She knew he was standing behind her long before he spoke. It was unusual that anyone could get so close to her without her noticing but there was just something so unique about the old man that not only made her comfortable about him but made her know she was safe. She had no need to have her guards up when he was around. It was as if he and she had been friends since time had begun and she trusted him like she trusted no other.
“So, I guess you are ready for your first payment?” He spoke, his voice not the quivering voice of a man that had to be past a hundred but the voice of a strong young man. His voice alone sent shivers down her spine making her feel as if it entered her soul and caressed her heart. If there was not such a huge age difference she felt that a man like Papa Zach would be a man she could live with forever. He continued with his soothing tone, “I promised you a story about these pieces, is there one that draws your attention and summons you to hear its story more than any of the others?
Melanie looked at all the pieces and immediately knew what piece she wanted to hear about. There was something about it that drew her more than the others. Though it was exceptionally crafted it looked like it may have been the first piece that the master worked on before he had perfected his talent.
“Go ahead,” Zachariah urged her, “pick one out.”
She turned to him and tears were in her eyes as she said, “Papa Zach, they are so beautiful, I am afraid to touch them. I am just a plain girl I do not compare to these at all.”
Zachariah took her by the shoulders, looked into her eyes, and said, “Of all the jewels in the world there are two that sparkle brighter than any gemstone and those are your eyes. Of all the treasures in the world there is one that is more finely crafted than any craftsman could ever dream of making and that is your soul. You have no reason to doubt your value you are the greatest jewel in this room. So slide open the doors and choose a piece of jewelry for me to tell you a story about.”
Melanie could feel her heart melting; no man had ever spoken to her like that. No one had ever placed such a value on her. Suddenly she felt very beautiful at least in the eyes of Papa Zach. She turned and pushed the doors aside and reached toward the very first piece in the collection, a ring that was made of a pair of entwined serpents. Before her fingers touched it she heard a gasp from behind her and turned to look at Papa Zach. He had gone white, even whiter than his frail translucent skin was in its normalcy.
”Is something wrong, Papa Zach?”
“Sweet girl, I promise I will tell you the ring’s story, but I ask you let it not be today? I need time to get used to the idea of that one. There are some personal feelings that lie deep within my family’s memory on that piece.”
Melanie nodded and then said, “Well then, you mentioned some pieces of legendary proportions. A story perhaps that is filled with a magic that is unbelievable?”
Papa Zach’s color returned quickly and he smiled. Slowly he reached for a pendant that dangled from a chain of gold so delicate it looked like it was spun from the silken web of a spider. The pendant was that of finely etched foil leaves of gold wrapped about one another to forever capture the beauty of a real rose in the soft metal. It was lightly etched with a webbing of gold lace about the rose. To Melanie it looked like if you were to even touch it within the gentlest of grasps that it would be crushed beyond repair.
“The story behind this piece is one of those of myth and legend. It encompasses creatures long forgotten and others greatly misunderstood. It’s about love between two of these that cursed them beyond the end of their days. Yet it is a story of such profound beauty and love that it touches the heart like few others. Oddly the story is a story told by yet another creature of legend. It is told from the heart of the son of one of the two accursed lovers as he tells it to one he loves but knows he is doomed to never be able to truly love.” A tear slid down Zach’s heavily wrinkled cheek and got lost in one of the canyons of his age. Melanie felt her heart tug and she wanted to reach out to him but saw him straighten his shoulders as he began to unfold the tale before her.

The Christmas Wedding

The Christmas Wedding
https://amzn.to/2So7MnB
K.L. Ramsey
Chapter One

Lorna sat in a corner booth at Scrumptious trying to console Sunny as she practically threw herself into the banana split that Piper had put on the table in front of her. At five months pregnant, Sunny was barely showing but the girl sure could eat. Even before she was pregnant she could hold her own with the guys when they all went out, sometimes eating a whole pizza by herself. But now that she was eating for two Sunny was an unstoppable eating machine.
“He’s gone. Just left town without a word to anyone. Who the hell does that?”
Sunny looked at Lorna as if she had answers and shoved another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. How she could eat and cry—at the same time—was magical to watch. Every time Sunny sobbed she shoved another spoonful in as if trying to self-soothe. Lorna wanted to laugh but knew that Sunny was in no way ready to find any of this comical.
She rubbed Sunny’s back, trying to comfort her but failing miserably.
“I know, honey, Aaron is a complete jerk.”
“How can you be so cold, Lorna?” Sunny gasped, shoving in another spoonful of ice cream. “He’s the father of my child, even if he doesn’t know it yet.”
Lorna rolled her eyes.
“Explain to me again why you didn’t tell him about the baby.”
Sunny stopped eating as if trying to figure out how to answer Lorna’s question.
“He wouldn’t talk to me; it’s been months since he has said even two words to me. I don’t know what you think I should have done. Maybe a billboard or a text message—would that have been appropriate, Lorna?”
Her anger was almost easier to deal with compared to her sobbing into her ice cream. Still, Sunny’s mood swings were giving Lorna whiplash.
“I just think that if Aaron knew that you were carrying his baby he might have stuck around. He didn’t just run off; he’s taken a job in California. Tag said that he’s training firefighters out there for the next few months.” Lorna took Sunny’s napkin and wiped the chocolate fudge from her chin. The poor girl was a mess.
Sunny nodded her head. “I know that he’s working; it doesn’t make any of this easier though. If he really cared about me, he would be here wiping chocolate from my chin, not you.”
Lorna tossed the napkin onto the table, ready to throw in the figurative towel too.
Piper pulled up a chair from another table and joined them.
“Don’t you need to run next door and check on Sawyer? He probably needs some help with dinner. Poor guy really did a number on his shoulder.”
Lorna wanted to kiss Piper for tag teaming in on her conversation with Sunny. Honestly, she was ready for a break.
“Well, if you think you girls will be able to carry on without me. I do need to run a few errands. And yeah, I’ll check on your bodyguard.”
Lorna slid out from the booth and gathered her bag. She had opened the ice cream shop today, just as she had done every day since Piper and Tag married, two months ago. While they were away on their extended honeymoon in Europe, Lorna had run the shop. Now that Piper was back, she had cut back her hours to keep up with her volunteer work at the library.
The library had laid her off earlier that year because of budget constraints, but she couldn’t just leave them hanging. Budget cutbacks were a pain, but Lorna didn’t mind volunteering to help out. Besides Scrumptious, the library was her favorite place in town. She loved the smell of the old books and the quiet of people getting lost in whatever book they were reading. Her most favorite part of her day was when the little ones ran in, pulling their parents by the pants leg, trying to get the best spot for story time. Each morning, she read to a group of preschoolers, which didn’t help with her own personal yearning for a little one. But, at her age, that ship had probably already sailed.
She lived next door, in the house that she and Piper lived in after Piper’s parents died. Now she lived there with Jonathan Sawyer, Piper’s sinfully sexy, much too young for her, bodyguard. After Piper inherited millions from her grandmother, she needed to hire a bodyguard to help her with the nosey reporters in New York. When Piper moved back to Colorado, to marry Tag, she brought her bodyguard with her. Lorna knew that her niece did it partly to piss her off. She knew that Lorna found Jon Sawyer sexy as hell but much too young, so Piper stepped in and brought him back home. Her thoughtful niece even moved Sawyer into her old house, with Lorna.
Last week, Sawyer was picking up Tag and Piper from the airport and had a little run-in with a crazy woman and two of her very large suitcases. Apparently, said crazy woman took one look at him and tripped over her own feet, landing on poor Sawyer. As he caught the woman, her suitcase slammed into his shoulder, dislocating it. Tag insisted on taking him to the hospital for x-rays and, with Piper fussing over him, Sawyer couldn’t refuse. He had his shoulder reset and had to keep it immobile for a week or two while wearing a sling. He was practically useless and was driving Lorna crazy. He walked around the house shirtless, because, according to him, it was easier than trying to get a shirt on. She imagined that pulling on a shirt would be painful, but seeing him walk around the house with his chiseled abs, and a chest that was screaming for her to run her hands all over it, was agony for her.
She stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things and then she ran to the library to check out two books that she had reserved. She had decided that if she couldn’t have what she wanted, namely Sawyer, she would read romance novels that had happy endings. At least she had her books, and her fantasies of Sawyer stripping her bare and taking her on the kitchen table, to keep her company. Maybe romance novels weren’t the best for her overactive libido.
She let herself in the front door, arms loaded with bags from the grocery store, not wanting to wake Sawyer if he had been able to get some sleep. She heard him, late at night, roaming the house. She wanted to go to him, ask him if she could do anything for him, but she was afraid of what his answer might be. She noticed the way that he watched her, not missing his heated gaze or the way he used every excuse he could to touch her. She felt like a boxer, dodging and bobbing to miss his grasp.
When he had moved to Colorado, three months prior, he’d asked her out a few times. She’d always had an excuse ready, not wanting to tell him the real reason she didn’t want to date him. She’d run out of excuses when he asked her to go as his date to Piper’s wedding. He’d known that she was going to be there–and that she didn’t have a date–so she’d broken down and reluctantly accepted.
Her duties as Piper’s surrogate mother had kept her busy most of the day, but during the reception, when he’d asked her to dance, she couldn’t refuse. He’d pulled her into his hard body and practically engulfed her. He stood at about 6 feet 4 inches and she could feel every one of the muscles that pressed up against her, holding her tight against his body. And his eyes—they were the most soulful brown eyes she had ever seen. Every time he looked at her she felt as though he could see right to her soul. She had played a dangerous game, agreeing to attend Piper’s wedding with Sawyer.
As soon as the bride and groom had disappeared into their cabin, Lorna had snuck off and run back into town. Her plan had seemed like a good one until Sawyer showed up thirty minutes later, mad as hell that she’d ditched him. She hadn’t thought through the whole part of them living under the same roof when she’d run to her car and hightailed it back down the mountain.
Sawyer had demanded a come-to-Jesus conversation that involved her telling him the embarrassing truth that she couldn’t date him because he was just too young for her. At forty, Lorna didn’t think that she should be dating a man who was just thirty-five.
She raised Piper after her parents died, and, at that time, she hadn’t been sure that she wanted kids of her own. Really, the thought wasn’t one that she’d felt was safe to entertain. She hadn’t dated a whole lot over the years. What man would want to take on a woman who was responsible for raising her traumatized niece? She wouldn’t have traded her time with Piper for anything. Piper was like her own daughter, not just her niece. She’d understood what she was possibly giving up when she’d agreed to raise Piper and she would do it all again.
But Sawyer had made her want things, and that had felt dangerous. She wasn’t sure she had the right to want a man or a family at her age. Sawyer had assured her that their age difference didn’t matter to him, but he might not have felt the same way in a few years, when she’d be too old to have kids. He’d have come to regret choosing her, he might even have grown to resent her, and she couldn’t have faced that. It had been easier to nip the whole idea in the bud than to try to figure out the what ifs.
***
Sawyer heard Lorna come through the front door and his heart started pounding in his chest. Every damn time she entered the room, his body reacted as if he’d just run a marathon. Lorna Sanders was driving him crazy and he couldn’t figure out what the hell to do about her. He knew that Piper and Tag were good with him wanting to date Lorna. Before he’d asked her to be his date, for their wedding, he’d talked to Tag. He’d wanted to make sure that, as his employers, they were both okay with him dating Lorna. He hadn’t wanted to cause any waves in his working relationship, especially since he really liked his job. Being Piper’s security detail had proven to be far from boring.
Since moving to Colorado, Piper had had quite a few reporters sniffing around from New York. For the most part, the locals just accepted Piper’s inheritance and left her alone. The reporters, from out of state, were basically harmless; they just wanted a story. But that was the last thing that Piper or Tag needed. Sawyer had made sure that the reporters got the message to leave and not come back, before they could disturb the newlyweds.
Tag had insisted that they go on their honeymoon alone and Sawyer couldn’t blame him. The last thing he would want, on his honeymoon, was another guy hanging around. He knew that Tag could single-handedly manage Piper’s security, but they still kept him around. He also knew that part of his job description was to amuse Piper while chasing Lorna; but, damn it, he didn’t want to have to chase her. Lorna had put her defenses up as soon as he moved to town and he wanted to tear every damn one of them down.
She’d told him that he was too young for her, but his response to that argument was, “fuck that”. Lorna had some bizarre notion that she was old. All he saw when he looked at her was a fucking amazing woman. She was the hottest, sweetest, sexiest woman that he’d ever seen. Her long dark hair was usually pulled back but, at night, when she wandered around the house in her short shorts and see-through tank, she let her hair fall over her shoulders. It drove him damn near insane and he spent most of his time around her hard as a rock.
Lately, she had been making him most of his meals, while he was out of commission from his stupid shoulder injury. He’d caught her singing and dancing in their little kitchen while making him breakfast and he’d had to go back to his room to take a cold shower. He didn’t know how much more of Lorna’s resistance he could take before he had to move out of Piper’s house. He could only be pushed so far before he snapped, and he was right on the verge of losing his tightly reined in control.
Sawyer met Lorna on her way into the kitchen, her arms loaded down with groceries and books. God but she loved her books. Her bedroom was full of stacks of them that she’d read, but she insisted on keeping them because she might need to read them again. Yet, every time she came through the front door, she had her arms full of new books. He couldn’t help but smile at her, as he took one of the bags. It was about all he could handle, one-handed.
“Hey, you picked up groceries after working all day?” Sawyer put his bag on the counter and grabbed the second one from Lorna’s arms. He didn’t miss the way her eyes flared when he brushed her bare skin with his finger. He knew that Lorna wanted him, but she kept up those damn walls that were nearly impossible to break down.
“Yep, and I ran to the library. They had some books on hold for me.”
He searched her bag and noted that they were all those romance books that she seemed to love. Half-naked men and swooning women adorned every cover. If only she would let him in, he could show her that real life was so much better than a made-up book.
He looked Lorna up and down, noticing how tired she seemed. She was running herself ragged between the ice-cream shop and volunteering at the library and now having to practically take care of him. He couldn’t wait to get out of his sling next week and return to work. He liked pulling his own weight around the house, too. He was usually the one who ran to the grocery store between his shift watching Piper, fending off the occasional nosey reporter and volunteering for the local sheriff.
He’d found that, while his job more than paid the bills, he needed something more, to fill his lonely days and especially nights. He hated that he couldn’t find a way through Lorna’s defenses and he was about to give up trying. He’d met Joel and the small town’s sheriff had offered him a job on the spot. Apparently, Tag had gotten to Joel first and had talked Sawyer up. He’d barely even shaken the sheriff’s hand before he’d been offered the job—well, if working for free could be called a job. He’d taken the position, hoping that it would lead to a full-time, paid offer, but mostly because it would give him some much-needed time away from Lorna.
The woman drove him crazy. The more he pushed, the move she shoved back. Her lame excuse about not wanting to date a younger man was the craziest he had ever heard. He knew that she was attracted to him; he felt it every time they touched. He knew she felt it too, the way her breath caught each time they passed too closely in the hall. It was like an electric charge between them; it was undeniable. Lorna had found a way to refuse them both, and it was wearing him down more and more, with each passing day.
He thought about moving back to New York and taking another assignment, but nothing was waiting for him there. He finally had friends in Colorado, and he respected both Piper and Tag. In the few short months that he’d been working for Piper, she had become more like the little sister he’d never had. He could relate to both her and Tag, since he never knew either of his parents. He’d been raised in the foster system from the age of three, with no memories of his mother or father. When he’d tried to find them, after turning eighteen and being released into the world by the state, he’d been told that his mother had died when he was ten. There was no father listed on his original birth certificate, so he’d given up, joining the Army and devoting his life to whatever cause Uncle Sam told him was important.
He’d planned on staying in the military and making a career of it until his unit was hit by an IED. He’d been on his second tour when his unit was targeted. Everyone in his group had been killed except him and one other guy. He’d escaped with a few minor scrapes and a broken leg, while his buddy had lost his eyesight and his left arm.
After he’d been discharged, he’d wallowed in pity and self-loathing for surviving while his friends—men who had become like brothers to him—had come home in caskets. He’d allowed himself a year to sulk, and then he’d pulled himself out of the pit that he had dug.
He’d found a private detective agency that was recruiting ex-military to protect high-end clients. He’d loved his job but hated New York. When Piper had asked him to follow her back to Colorado, he’d jumped at the chance. Knowing that Piper’s sexy-as-sin aunt would be hanging around seemed like a bonus; well, until Lorna started giving him the cold shoulder. He’d never worked so hard to get a woman’s attention in his entire life, but she was worth it. He just needed her to accept that, eventually, she was going to end up in his bed.
He and Lorna moved around the cramped kitchen, putting away groceries. He couldn’t help himself; when she bent down to put the produce into the fridge, he groaned. Lorna turned to face him, her expression a cross between amused and turned-on. He’d spent the last few months hiding the way he felt about her. Once she’d told him that she wasn’t interested in him, he’d decided that he wasn’t going to hide his feelings anymore.
“Are you in pain, Sawyer?” Lorna crossed the kitchen to grab her bag of books.
He knew that it was a risk, but he was tired of sitting on the sidelines, waiting for Lorna to come to her senses. Sawyer pulled her into his arms, causing her to drop her bag, books spilling all over the kitchen floor with a thud.
“Damn it, Lorna, I’m not in pain. Well…I am…but not the way you’re thinking.”
Lorna didn’t make a move to escape his hold; he took that as a good sign.
“Is it your shoulder?”
Lorna’s hands skittered up his shoulder and he felt her touch as if lightning had passed straight through his body. He pulled her tighter against his chest, leaving her arms with no place to go but around his shoulders. She felt like heaven up against him. Memories of Tag and Piper’s wedding came flooding back. The way she let him hold her, moving them both across the dance floor…honestly, it had been the best night of his life, right up until she’d bolted and run back to their house.
He’d been confused and had blamed himself for making her uncomfortable enough to leave her own niece’s wedding. That had lasted until she’d explained that she ran because she was a whole five years older than him. He knew damn well how old Lorna was and he didn’t give a fuck. She was the sexiest woman that he’d ever met and when she touched him he felt things that he’d never felt for anyone else. In the weeks since the wedding, he’d spent his time volunteering for the sheriff, fantasizing about the most stubborn woman that he’d ever met and taking a lot of cold showers.
Lorna still made no move to detangle herself from his hold. Her eyes darkened as she leaned into his embrace. He knew that she wanted him every bit as much as he wanted her. It was now or never. He dipped his head to take her lips with every ounce of passion that he’d had pent up since meeting her. As he licked his way into her mouth, her breathy sighs and moans told him that she was on board. He walked her backward, trapping her against the refrigerator as he nipped and bit at her already swollen lips. Lorna didn’t put up a fuss as she pulled his head down to get a better angle.
She devoured his mouth like a starving woman and then pulled away from the kiss.
“Sawyer, we can’t.”
He could tell that she was going to withdraw and that was not an option. This was the furthest she’d ever let him in; he wasn’t about to back down so easily.
“Jon,” he sighed, pulling her in for another consuming kiss. Again, she didn’t put up a fuss. She seemed turned on by the whole scene. He pulled her long auburn ponytail from its holder, letting her hair fall around her face.
“God, you are so fucking beautiful, Lorna.”
She tried to take a step back from him but, wedged between his body and the fridge, had no place to go. She placed both hands flat on his chest and he didn’t miss the way her fingers flexed as she ran them down his body, resting on his waist.
“Sawyer.”
He covered her mouth with his good hand, stopping her from saying her next thoughts out loud.
“I need for you to call me Jon, Lorna. I’m Sawyer to people that I work for and to my friends. To you, I want to be someone more…personal.”
Lorna’s eyes flared again and he could tell that she liked the idea of getting more personal with him. Hell, he’d let her get as up close and personal as she wanted.
“This is a bad idea…” she hesitated, “…Jon.”
Sawyer couldn’t help himself; he groaned at the sound of Lorna calling him by his first name. No one had ever done that. When he’d been passed from foster parent to foster parent, they’d liked to keep things as impersonal as possible. That made it easier when something went wrong and he had to move on. So, he got used to everyone calling him by his last name and it just stuck. In the military it was normal. No one ever called him Jon, but he really liked the way Lorna said his name.
He closed his eyes, just for a second, so he could get himself together. His mind was racing with all the dirty things that he wanted to do to her, right there in their kitchen. He was pretty sure that Lorna wasn’t ready for any of that yet.
He swallowed hard.
“Say that again, Lorna.”
She looked confused for a moment and then seemed to catch up.
“Jon.”
He groaned against her lips as he crushed his mouth against hers. He felt a fierce need to mark her as his. He nipped and sucked his way from her lips, down her neck.
She let him get to her shoulder before she said his name again. This time, it sounded more like a warning.
“Jon.” She sighed and gently shoved him back, freeing herself from his hold. She escaped to the other side of the kitchen, using the distance that she put between them as her safety net.
He knew that pushing her was a bad idea. He’d pushed at Piper’s wedding and Lorna had ended up leaving. He knew that he was in no condition to chase her if she decided to bolt. So, he gave her the space that she craved and waited for her to make the next move.
“We just can’t do this. I won’t let this go any further when it can’t work between us. I’m so sorry, Sawyer.”
He nodded curtly. Hearing her use his last name again told him exactly where they stood. They were back to formalities and that felt like a punch in the gut. He knew what a brush-off felt like; he’d had enough of them growing up. But watching Lorna put her walls back up and retreat from him hurt like hell.
“Please don’t tell me this has to do with the crazy idea that you are too old for me.” He took a step towards Lorna and she held up her hands as if trying to stop him.
“Sawyer, please don’t dismiss my feelings. I don’t know what you want from me. I’m forty years old and I’m not sure what my next chapter even looks like. I’ve already raised my sister’s child and I’m not sure that I have it in me to start all over.”
Sawyer shook his head at her words as she bent to pick up her books. “I get no say in any of this, do I, Lorna? You have ignored my feelings and made the decision that we won’t work out. You don’t know that we’ll crash and burn because you won’t even give us a chance to get off the ground.”
Lorna gathered her last book into her bag and stood in front of him.
“You don’t know that we’ll work out either, Sawyer. The difference between you and me is that I’m not willing to let you break my heart.”
He couldn’t help himself, he pulled her back into his body, snaking his good arm around her slim waist.
“Lorna, I’d never break your heart, just give me a chance.” Sawyer could see her thinking through his words and he saw the moment she decided that giving him a chance was a bad idea.
She shook her head.
“I’m so sorry, Jon. I just can’t.” She kissed his cheek and pulled away from him, making her way upstairs to her room.
He felt his body flinch when he heard her door close. He was afraid that she was so determined to shut him out that he might never find a way to reach her. He was committed now, more than ever, to show her what they could have together. Just one taste of Lorna had proven to him that they were right together, age difference be damned!
Chapter Two

Lorna pulled the thick sweater around her body and shivered at the cold that crept into the shop as customers came and went. The unusual heat of late summer had faded into a very chilly autumn.
Life had fallen back into step around town. Piper and Tag still acted like silly, lovestruck newlyweds. Sunny’s belly grew as her pregnancy progressed.
She found out that she was having a little girl and her due date was the middle of January. Sunny tried to put on a happy face for everyone but it was hard to watch the sadness that crept in every time she asked Tag about Aaron and he told her that he had no news. Lorna wished Sunny would just let Tag tell Aaron about the baby, but she also understood that Sunny didn’t want Aaron coming back to town just because he felt obligated to take care of her. At some point, she would have to tell Aaron that he was a father, but she was able to convince Piper and Tag that Aaron couldn’t do anything for her until the baby came. She said she just needed a little more time to get over Aaron before he became a permanent fixture in her daughter’s life. Tag seemed to accept that Sunny needed time, but also made her promise to tell Aaron about the baby before her arrival. Poor Tag was truly stuck in the middle of the whole mess and Lorna really felt badly for him.
Things between Lorna and Sawyer had become more strained. Since their kiss in the kitchen, he had all but avoided her, which made living in the same house difficult. He took extra shifts at the Sheriff’s Office, even taking a paid position. He still worked Piper’s security but found that things were pretty quiet in their little town, leaving him extra time for his second job. He worked crazy hours and came home after midnight most nights.
Lorna caught glimpses of him in his uniform and the sight did strange things to her body. She wanted him with every fiber of her being, but she also knew that Sawyer deserved more. He should have the young wife and babies—the whole nine yards. She didn’t know if she could give him everything that he should have, so she kept her distance and denied every craving she had for him.
She volunteered at the library but had fewer hours to give since she’d taken over the ice-cream shop from Piper. She knew that her niece wanted to spend more time on the adventure program that she and Tag had started for at-risk kids. She was so proud of Piper for using her inheritance for such a worthy cause. Pipe was also finishing up college, so her plate was full. Lorna had been involved with Scrumptious from the start—she’d helped her sister when she opened the place—so she knew the ins and outs of running the shop. She spent most of her waking hours there and hoped that would take her mind off Sawyer, but she wasn’t that lucky.
Lorna was determined to move on from lusting after the town’s newest most eligible bachelor. She would just leave that to the younger women in town. Moving out of Piper’s home was going to be her first step. After Christmas, she would find a little place in town to rent or even buy. She had some money saved up and she was ready to find her path in life, one that didn’t run directly into Sawyer every time she went for a midnight snack. Just the other night she’d caught him in the kitchen, making a sandwich in his boxer briefs. She was going in to refill her water bottle and had dropped it on the floor. He’d immediately turned and given her the hottest up-and-down perusal she’d ever had.
The man made her feel naked, even in her ratty old bathrobe that hung open to reveal her boxers and t-shirt. She never fussed with too much makeup but knew that her bed-mussed hair and freshly-washed face was probably a scary sight to behold.
Sawyer’s muscles bunched and his shoulders tensed as he nodded in her direction. He didn’t say a word, not even her name and—dammit—she wanted to hear his gravelly voice whisper her name.
She was being just as much a coward as he was, getting her water and practically running back up to her room. She barely slept that night as pictures of a nearly naked Jonathan Sawyer played through her fantasies.
The next day, he was up and gone before the sun, leaving her feeling both relieved and sad. Something between them had gone from polite and flirty to downright uncomfortable and dismissive, and she just wanted out. She missed the Sawyer who used to tease her about working in the library and being a book nerd. She missed the way they did dishes after sharing a meal. She would wash, and he’d dry—they had found a perfect rhythm, and she’d ruined it by saying yes to his invitation to be his date to Piper’s wedding.
Heck, they were fine after the wedding; it was that kiss in the kitchen that pushed their friendship into an early grave. The way that he’d kissed her that night had made her knees week. She’d thought about all the things that she wanted to say yes to, but her head had kept screaming at her to tell him no, so that’s what she’d done. She’d thought that they would be able to find a new balance after that night, but Sawyer had shut her out—completely—leaving her no opening for any semblances of a cordial relationship.
So, after Christmas, she would find a place and let Sawyer have Piper’s old house all to himself. She was sure that he wouldn’t be alone for too long after she moved out. There were women lining up around the corner of the Sheriff’s Office, just to have coffee with the man. She was always finding baked goods in their kitchen, usually with a little note with some woman’s name and a heart with an arrow through it. It felt like a knife to her gut every time he brought home a pie or some muffins and put them on the kitchen counter, almost like a trophy. She was reminded daily that he had other younger, willing prospects and that hurt.
Lorna was wiping down the counters while the last few customers lingered in the corner booth. It was just about time to close the shop for the night and she was ready. Her feet were killing her and she couldn’t imagine anything better than a hot bath and a good book.
The bell over the door chimed and Lorna looked up to see a good-looking man, with salt and pepper hair, walk in.
“Are you still open? If not, I can just leave.”
He seemed almost nervous and Lorna found that quality enduring. A part of her wanted to scream that the shop closed in five minutes, but the nice girl in her shoved the mean bitch aside and told him to have a seat at the counter.
“Thanks, I appreciate it.”
The guy winked at Lorna and she felt her face get hot, a nervous giggle bubbled up. She rolled her eyes at the thought of acting like a silly school girl just because a good-looking man winked at her. She needed to get herself together and act her age.
“What can I get for you?” She almost wished that he wanted something easy, maybe a single dip cone, but she knew she couldn’t be that lucky.
“This is going to sound crazy, but I’m not really an ice cream kind of guy. I was just hoping for something hot, coffee maybe.” He looked so hopeful that Lorna couldn’t help her laugh.
The last group of customers had finished and were heading out the door. She waved to them as the door snapped closed behind them. She shivered at the cold air that filtered in.
“It sure does feel like snow.” She absent-mindedly rubbed her arms through her sweater.
“So, um…coffee?”
The poor guy looked so hopeful she almost hated telling him no, but they didn’t serve coffee.
“I’m sorry, but we don’t have coffee. Have you tried the bakery, next door?”
Sunny’s bakery should still be open, although she was probably getting ready to close for the day too. Poor girl could barely stay on her feet all day with the pregnancy.
“Naw, they were closed for the night. You were the only shop open on the block. I just got into town and was hoping to find a place for dinner. You don’t have many choices here, do you?”
Lorna laughed. “Nope, sorry. We are as small a town as they come. So, you’re not from around here?”
Lorna finished cleaning up behind the counter and moved around it to sit next to the guy.
“I’m Joseph Lewis, by the way. Please call me Joe; all of my friends do.”
He extended his hand and Lorna shook it, not quite knowing what else to do. Most of her customers that came in wanting ice cream didn’t introduce themselves and shake her hand. Of course, they didn’t get many out-of-towners this time of year.
“Lorna,” she said. “So, where are you from Joe?”
He seemed to squirm in his seat at the question. Maybe he wasn’t used to people making personal inquiries. She instantly felt bad for prying.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stick my nose in your business.”
Lorna made to stand up, but Joe’s hand on her arm told her that he was okay with her question.
“No, it’s fine. I’ve been in a car by myself for days now. I’ve forgotten how to be polite. I’m from New York, just passing through. But this little town seemed so peaceful that I thought I’d spend a few nights.”
His smile seemed forced and Lorna almost laughed. She held back, not wanted to insult the poor guy. He was probably exhausted from traveling halfway across the country.
“I was just in New York this past summer, with my niece.” Lorna tried to relax but she really wanted to get home and put her feet up. That bath and book she was hoping for earlier were feeling like just a dream now.
“Really? Did you like my city?”
Lorna pulled two glasses down and poured them each a glass of water. Joe seemed like he wanted to talk and she didn’t mind. He was nice and, if she was honest, easy on the eyes. If she was going to give up a relaxing evening at home, spending time with Joe didn’t seem such a hardship.
“I did like New York, although I don’t think that I could get used to the hustle and bustle. My niece was saying goodbye to a family member and doing some business. We weren’t there long.” Lorna sipped her water and noticed that Joe seemed a little nervous.
“I don’t miss the busy New York lifestyle, if I’m being honest. I was born in Queens and I miss my family, but they are all gone or moved. I just have a brother left there, so it was time for me to branch out and see some of the country. I’m not getting any younger and my brother is busy with his life right now, so it was time.” Joe shrugged.
“What do you do, you know, as a career?” Lorna knew that she was prying again, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.
“Ah, you know, a little of this and a little of that. I got into some trouble as a kid, trying to keep up with my two older brothers. Anyway, I never got into the whole school and college thing, so I became a mechanic. I dabbled in a bunch of other areas when things got tough, but my job at the body shop usually covered most of the bills.” Joe sipped his water.
“So, is it just you or do you have a husband and kids waiting for you at home that I’m keeping you from?” Lorna barked out a laugh, causing poor Joe to jump.
“Sorry,” she said, putting her hand on his arm.
“No, I don’t have a husband and kids at home, or anywhere for that matter.”
Lorna removed her hand, not wanting to seem too familiar.
“I raised my niece after her parents died,” she said. “This is actually her shop, I just run it for her now that she’s married.”
Joe nodded, looking around the ice-cream shop.
“Well, it’s a real nice place you have. Although I will never understand the appeal of ice cream in the winter. In my town, places like this close down for the winter.”
Lorna smiled. Most out-of-towners felt the same way about ice cream in the winter. Maybe it was just a Colorado thing, people loving ice cream all year long.
“You aren’t the only out-of-towner who’s said that. I guess we are a special breed out here. We like ice cream whether it’s hot or snowing. My sister loved it so much that she opened up this place. It was hers and my brother-in-law’s before they died.”
Lorna shivered again. She was starting to think that Joe might be onto something with wanting a cup of hot coffee, even if it would keep her up half the night. Thinking about Sawyer usually did that to her anyway.
“I know this is going to sound crazy, Joe, but would you like to grab a cup of coffee with me?” Lorna saw the way he hesitated, as any rational person would. For all he knew she could be a serial killer.
“Isn’t everything in town closed for the evening?” Joe looked confused. “Were would we go?”
“I live just next door, and I promise I’m not a serial killer.”
Lorna held up her right hand as if swearing an oath. Joe laughed.
“Well, okay. I would love a cup of coffee with the prettiest girl in town.” Joe stood and waited for Lorna to gather her things from behind the counter.
“I hardly think that you are qualified enough to make that call, Joe. Didn’t you just say you’re new to town?”
Joe looked a little flustered until he saw the small smile on Lorna’s face. Realizing that she was joking, he seemed to relax a little.
“Well, I can’t imagine anyone else even holding a candle to you, Lorna.”
Joe helped her on with her coat and waited for her to shut off the lights and lock the door.
“My, you are a sweet talker, Joe from New York. My house it that little pink one, next door. Shall we?”
Joe held out his arm as if they were going to a formal dance and Lorna couldn’t help her giggle as she looped hers through his and led the way to her house.
Coffee with Joe and then maybe she could squeeze in a hot bath before bed. She thought her night was looking up until they made their way into the kitchen and came face to face with Sawyer.
Shit! She hadn’t thought about him being home from work this early. He was usually at the station until well past midnight, but he’d chosen tonight, of all nights, to come home early. Just her luck!
***
Sawyer had had a shit day at work; the colder temperatures had turned people a little crazy. Instead of staying in and keeping warm, the usually quiet, calm people of Harvest Ridge had gone a little wild. He’d put out four bonfires and broken up three domestic disputes. All he wanted to do was go home, find Lorna and tell her how stupid he was.
He’d spent the better part of two months ignoring her and he was completely miserable. In his mind, it was a great plan. He was going to give her the cold shoulder and pretend that he didn’t want her. Play hard to get. Apparently, Lorna didn’t mind the silent treatment; she seemed to move right on with her life.
He was pulling out a pan of lasagne that he’d made, knowing that it was one of her favorite meals, when he heard her come through their front door. The problem was, Lorna had brought home some guy with her and it was everything he could do not to punch the asshole in the face and drag Lorna off to his bed.
Lorna froze when she saw him standing in the kitchen, putting the hot pan on the table that he’d set for a cozy dinner for two. And the guy she’d brought home ran right into the back of her. Sawyer would have laughed if he wasn’t so pissed about the whole scene.
“What’s all this?” Lorna nodded to the table, looking back up at Sawyer.
“It’s dinner. I thought I would do something nice for you and we could talk. I think the real question here is who the fuck is he?” Sawyer nodded to the guy plastered up against Lorna’s back.
“Sawyer, this is Joe. He came into the shop at closing time and wanted a cup of coffee.” Sawyer nodded, trying to follow along.
“So, you brought him home for a cup of coffee? You don’t even know him.”
He could see Lorna’s defenses go up as she took off her coat. Joe was helpful and hung it on the back of their sofa with his, making himself right at home.
“We know each other Sawyer. I told you, he came into the shop and we started talking and, well, here we are.”
Lorna walked into the kitchen and Sawyer caught a whiff of her strawberry shampoo that drove him crazy. He needed to keep his temper in check and get rid of fucking Joe.
“Just have a seat in the family room, Joe, and I’ll bring our coffee in there.”
Sawyer tossed the oven mitts back on the counter and turned off the oven. If Lorna wanted to entertain a stranger, she could do it without an audience.
“Sawyer, you are welcome to join us, if you would like.” Lorna looked at the table full of food as if waiting for an invitation to dinner.
“Gee, thanks, Lorna. You bring some strange guy, from God knows where, into our house and I’m supposed to sit and have coffee with him? For all you know, he could be an ax murderer. Did you think about that before inviting him in?”
Lorna’s smirk just about sent him over the edge. He wasn’t quite sure what was so amusing about the way this whole evening was going, but he wanted to be let in on the joke.
“He’s from New York, Sawyer. He seems harmless enough. I was more worried that he would think that I’m a serial killer, so I haven’t given much thought as to him being an ax murderer.”
Lorna put the coffee cups on a wooden tray that she kept on the kitchen table. She grabbed the pot of coffee and found her way into the family room where Joe was sitting in Sawyer’s favorite chair. Son of a bitch!
Sawyer sat directly across from Joe and started asking questions before Lorna could even hand him his coffee.
“So, what brings you all the way out here, Joe?”
Sawyer was trying for casual, but this guy really made him restless. Something wasn’t right about a guy rolling into town, on his own, and ending up at a strange woman’s house. Was he expecting Lorna to be alone? Had Sawyer being there ruined his plans?
Joe’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes and it seemed a little too forced.
“I’m just passing through. I decided to see the country and this little town just felt like a good place to stop and look around.” Joe took the coffee mug from Lorna and shook his head when she offered him cream or sugar.
“So, this is just a trip for pleasure, and you just happened to land in our little town.”
Sawyer felt Lorna’s eyes on him and he could feel her anger. She was just going to have to get used to the fact that he was going to look out for her, whether she liked it or not. Protecting Piper meant that he protected her family. This guy blows in from New York and shows up at Piper’s ice-cream shop—Sawyer wasn’t buying it. Joe’s arrival seemed too much like a bad coincidence. There had been a few nosey reporters circling around town, after they got wind of Piper’s inheritance. Joe could easily be masquerading as just a normal guy, passing through town, but Sawyer thought that his story just wasn’t adding up. If he was snooping around to get the scoop on Piper, Sawyer would send the guy packing. He wouldn’t lie—sending Joe on his way would give him great satisfaction. The way Joe was looking at Lorna made him want to throw the guy through the front door.
“Yep, I’m just seeing the country and happened upon your little town. It’s quaint, nothing like the Big Apple. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many stars.”
Sawyer knew what Joe was talking about—Harvest Ridge was nothing like New York—but he still wasn’t buying it.
“Do you usually go home with women you just met, Joe? I mean, Lorna here could be a serial killer.”
Joe looked Lorna up and down and Sawyer didn’t like the way his eyes lingered as he took her in. Sawyer couldn’t help his growl as he got up to stand between Lorna and Joe’s wandering eyes. He wanted to punch the smirk right off Joe’s cocky face.
“That’s enough,” Lorna shouted. She stepped around Sawyer to face Joe. “Listen, I think that this was a bad idea. I didn’t know that my roommate would be home early this evening.”
Sawyer growled from behind Lorna, but she didn’t seem to be fazed by his outburst.
“Yeah, sure. I would like to see you again, Lorna. How about dinner?”
Sawyer stepped back in front of her, putting himself between them.
“No, she will not be going to dinner with you, Joe.”
He spun around to face Lorna. He wasn’t above begging, but he wished he didn’t need to. Lorna looked mad enough to spit nails. She wasn’t going to listen to reason so he was going to need to resort to begging. That worked for him.
“Please tell me that you aren’t considering going out, by yourself, with a total stranger. God, Lorna, that’s crazy. You don’t know him!”
He knew he was yelling but he didn’t care. There was no way that he was going to let the woman he cared about go out with a complete stranger. If she wanted to go out to dinner, he would take her. Hell, he wanted to go out with Lorna, on a real date, more than anything. That she was considering an offer of a night out with some guy she’d known for all of fifteen minutes, pissed him off.
“I don’t need you to tell me what I can and cannot do. I am a grown woman and can make up my own mind.”
She looked around Sawyer.
“Yes, Joe. Thank you for the invitation. I would love to go to dinner with you. How about tomorrow night, say seven?”
Joe stood, looking pleased with himself.
“I’ll pick you up here then. Good night, Lorna.”
He showed himself out the front door, Lorna followed him and locked up.
Sawyer could feel his heart racing; he felt like he’d just ran a marathon. What the fuck just happened? One minute, he was making Lorna a nice meal, preparing to apologize for being a complete ass these past few months, and now she was going out on a date with some strange guy from New York.
He could feel her anger from across the room, as she entered the family room, gathering her things.
“Good night, Sawyer.”
She turned to go up the stairs and he wanted to stop her, demand that she talk to him—listen to him. But he knew that demanding Lorna do anything was futile. She was as stubborn as they came. He needed to calm the hell down and regroup, but, first, he needed answers. Like, who the fuck this Joe guy was and why he was sniffing around Lorna. Sawyer trusted his gut and, right now, it was screaming at him that something wasn’t right with their new friend Joe.

The Caretaker

The Caretaker
https://amzn.to/2PnM5S1
Carol Schoenig
Chapter One

“Mom, you can’t do this.”
Phae sucked in a deep breath and counted to ten. “Kera, I am your mother. I am 64 years old. I can do whatever I want. I appreciate your concern, but I’m going whether you like it or not.”
Pinching her bottom lip, Kera said, “I think you should see a doctor, Mom. I don’t believe that you're being rational.”
Phae glared at her daughter. She didn’t know if she wanted to laugh, cry or be angry. She could feel a knot forming in her stomach as indignation jolted through her body. “What are you insinuating, Kera; that I can’t make decisions for myself?” Phae could feel her face getting warm as her temper flared. “I can assure you I have been making decisions for this family since before you were born. Always putting everyone else’s needs and wants first.”
Phae took a deep breath. She looked across the room to where Kera stood with her palm over her mouth and her eyes shimmering with tears. For an instant, Phae saw a little twelve-year-old girl who needed her mother’s understanding, not the thirty-eight-year-old teacher and mother of three that Kera had become.
I’m handling this poorly, she thought. I don’t want to argue with my daughter. She walked over to Kera and wrapped an arm around her.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean for it to sound like I think you’re incompetent.”
Leading Kera over to the bed, Phae pushed aside her packing.
“Sit, Kera. Maybe I can help you understand.”
Phae began to pace and wring her hands, contemplating how to explain her decision without sounding as if she regretted her life.
“I didn’t finish college. I worked and supported my parents and siblings, adding to the family coffers. When I met your Dad, I was taking a few night courses on architecture. I dreamed of becoming an architect and design fabulous buildings. I dreamed of going to Europe to see the ancient ruins and the architecture in Italy, Greece, and Spain.”
Phae expelled a whoosh of breath. “Your father swept me off my feet at nineteen. We got married, and I left my parents’ house and moved in with your father. I was blessed with two beautiful children. Your brother was a honeymoon baby, and you came along two years later. Your Dad didn’t want me to work. He believed he was the breadwinner, and we would get by on what he brought home. Life pulled me along, and I went wherever anyone needed me to be. I was happy with my life. I took care of you kids and took care of my parents and your Dad’s parents when they got old until they passed on.
“Kera, I don’t regret my life. I loved your father; I love being a Mom and grandmother, but at this stage of my life, I need an adventure. I want an adventure. I want to see a little of the world before I die. I had hoped when your father retired he might be more open to traveling. He died before we even had a chance to discuss it.”
With pleading eyes, she implored Kera to understand. “I’m not waiting for someday anymore. My someday is here. I want to take advantage of this opportunity to live in Mallorca; to see the things I’ve always wanted to see. I want to be on my own and not have to worry about pleasing anyone but myself. I know you are concerned for me. Tell me what you are afraid of...”
“I’m worried about if you get sick or have a heart attack, or get mugged.”
Phae shrugged. “Even if I didn’t go, those are all possibilities.” Phae walked over to the dresser. She picked up her cell phone and two boxes. “I got a new cell phone number that permits me to call or text internationally. As a going away gift, I bought you and your brother each one.”
“What if you decide not to come back?”
Phae looked over the top of her glasses and smiled. “Really? This is my home. My family is here; you, your brother and my wonderful grandchildren. Besides, I’m looking forward to you all coming for a visit.”
Kera cocked her head to one side and responded with, “Mom, what am I supposed to do for nine months while you are away?”
“Live your life, honey. That is what I am going to be doing.” Kera rose and hugged her. “I’ll miss you. And I’ll still worry. Send lots of pictures, okay?”
Phae stroked her daughter’s cheek, pushing hair away from her fair face. “I’ll miss you too. Now help me finish packing.”
Chapter Two

Phae had been in Spain for three days. She had spent the first two days scrubbing the kitchen and bathrooms. Today she was going to reward herself by going outside to tackle the gardens. The wisteria and climbing David Austin roses were in need of pruning. The wisteria was a mass of tangled stems devoid of blooms, where they should have had clusters of grape like flowers. The roses were blooming, but not as full as they should be. The dead flowers needed to come off. The branches of both the wisteria and roses needed to be shaped.
Opening the garden shed she found a six-foot ladder. Carefully, she opened it and placed it near the arbor. Grabbing the pruning shears and a pair of gloves, she began pruning. She started at the bottom and worked her way up. Lost in her thoughts, she hummed and pruned. She climbed up to the next step of the ladder and held on to the arbor with one hand, stretching to reach the last straggling branch.
Finn rounded the corner of the drive. Movement near the top of the arbor startled him. He looked again. A large brimmed green hat bobbed and swung. His heart pounded in his chest and a knot formed in his stomach at the sight of the woman on the arbor. If she falls, she will go tumbling down the rugged hillside. The thought of the injuries she might sustain had his heart racing.
He got out of the car and sprinted to the arbor. As he approached, he saw the ladder begin to wobble. The ladder crashed to the ground and left the woman clinging to the arbor with both arms, her feet were flailing.
Phae’s hat had slipped over her eyes, and she couldn’t see a thing. As she dangled from the arbor she heard her daughter’s voice warning her to be safe. If she let go she would tumble down the hill, and who knows how badly she would be hurt. She would dread telling Kera about this predicament when she came home. The thought of falling had a certain appeal, if it meant she’d avoid Kera’s condemnation. Suddenly she felt an arm at her back and under her knees.
“Let go. I’ve got you,” said a deep, authoritative voice.
Strong arms were holding her. Trembling, she turned from the arbor and pushed the hat up so she could see who had rescued her. Wisps of her hair still covered her eyes. When she blew them away, she saw a square-jawed man. His steel-gray eyes peered down at her and his grip on her tightened, his expression stern as his frown deepened in confusion. “Who the hell are you?”
She glared at him. “Put me down. I belong here. I’m the caretaker. Who are you? You’re trespassing on private property.”
“I highly doubt you are the caretaker. I’m the owner, and I had specific requests of the agency.”
Phae could feel the heat rising to her face. She felt at a disadvantage while he held her in his arms. “Could you please put me down?” she asked, biting her lower lip.
Gently, he lowered her to the ground. Phae was still a little shaken, and wobbled when he released her. He grabbed her elbow to steady her. Mortified that she had accused him of trespassing on his own property when he’d rescued her, she cleared her throat. “I’m not sure what you expected. I was told you wanted a grandmother to care for your home and daughter. I am a grandmother.
She lowered her eyes. “Please forgive me for accusing you of trespassing. I didn’t know who you were, and you scared me.
He let go of her elbow. “Sit,” he said.
Her eyes grew wide. She squared her shoulders and jutted her head up to look him in the eyes. “Did you command me to sit, as though I were a dog?”
It had been a long time since anyone had challenged him on his words or actions. For a petite woman, she was feisty. He liked that; it shot a flicker of life through his heart. He hadn’t felt like that in a long time.
He motioned for her to sit. “Let me introduce myself. Finn Callahan. Perhaps we should start over.” Finn observed the look of panic cross her face. “I promise I won’t bite.”
Her eyes darted from the bench to his face. To put her at ease he said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to sound like a command. I’ll sit as well”. Finn eased his tall frame onto the bench. “You nearly gave me a heart attack, dangling from the Arbor.”
She removed her hat and gave him a little smile. “I don’t know what I was thinking taking such a chance. It was rather scary, wasn’t it?”
“So, you’re the caretaker?” Finn didn’t usually engage in small talk, but this woman had scared him into being concerned for her safety. He gave her a sideways glance. “I have no reservations that you will protect my property the way you stood your ground. But who is going to be watching over you?”
When she looked at him, with those hazel eyes he thought his heart did a flip. “What made you want to leave your home and come to Spain?” Finn asked.
Phae let out a soft sigh. “I watched a documentary on Mallorca and the lemon and lime groves. The beauty I saw in the country, and the people, captured my heart; and it has been a dream of mine.” She giggled.” It may sound crazy, but I rented out my house and put my things in storage. That is how much I wanted come to Spain.”
His breath caught in his throat. He had a profound need to know more. “What did your children say about this?”
She looked up to the heavens. “I had to remind them that I’m an adult. I’m getting on in years and this is on my bucket list.” She laughed.
Finn didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or frown so he smiled. He couldn’t help but wonder what else was on that bucket list.
He was fascinated by her and listened to her animated story. He saw several strands of gray in her auburn hair as it caught the afternoon sunlight when she turned her head to look at him. A scattering of freckles danced across her high cheekbones, drawing his gaze to an oval shaped face with only a few wrinkles near her eyes; hazel eyes that were expressive and held gold flecks when she was excited.
Renting her home and storing her possessions had taken a lot of courage and confidence. He liked that he didn’t feel like he had to walk on eggshells around her.
“Where is home?”
She inhaled deeply and released her breath. “I’m from Glendale, Wisconsin. I have two children and four grandchildren. My grandchildren range from two to ten years of age. I was married for twenty-seven years before my husband became ill and left us.”
Finn noticed her voice drop and the smile leave her face. He was familiar with that kind of pain.
“You said something about an adventure earlier,” He asked, hoping to see the warmth light her face again. She put her hands over her face, clearly embarrassed by what she’d said earlier. “It was foolish babble,” she said, as she placed her hands back in her lap.
The adventure statement had intrigued him. He wanted to hear more. “I would be disappointed if you didn’t tell me. I used to be adventurous.” He gave her a quick wink and an enticing smile.
She gave him that mysterious smile again. “I want this job. When I was a young girl, I dreamt of becoming an architect and traveling abroad to see the world’s great buildings. Instead, my husband came into my life, and it went in a different direction.” She sighed. “I never had the opportunity. I decided I would take this job so I could experience another part of the world”. Her eyes took on a dreamy quality. “Encounter other cultures.”
Finn liked visiting other countries as well, but his wife hadn’t wanted to leave her homeland. Over the years, he’d been married, his travel changed to trips back and forth from the United States for work to Spain to be with his family.
“Then you must be sure you take time to explore Mallorca while you are here. Mallorca is the pleasure island of Spain. I would recommend you drive up to the Tramuntana Mountains. They wrap around the most inspiring hill towns, fishing villages and quiet beaches. It is said that one does not need to root for lotus fruit because the scenery works its own spell.” There was silence as he remembered his experience.
His eyes returned to her face. He found her to be charming and entertaining. Just what his daughter needed.
She tilted her head and looked at him. “I’m curious. Why do you want a grandmother to take care of your daughter?”
Finn walked over and picked up the ladder. “My daughter is twenty. She will be returning here for the summer. I want someone who can make her cookies and spoil her with attention.”
He rubbed his toe in the dirt thinking about the last summer they’d spent here. He felt a stab of familiar pain in his chest. “She has not been here since her mother died when she was eight, and I am not sure how she will react.”
“Don’t you think it might be better if you were here?” Her eyes followed as he continued to stir the dirt with his toe. Phae fanned herself with her hat. Finn noticed her face and arms were getting red. “We had better get you out of the sun before you turn into a lobster.”
“I was thinking the same thing. I don’t know about you, but I’m thirsty. I made fresh lemonade from the lemon trees in the back.”
Chapter Three

“Lemonade sounds fantastic.” Finn stood to go into the house and waited for Phae to rise.
As she stood up, she swayed a little. Finn offered his hand. She hesitated, but finally took it. This was the second time he had touched her, and the second time he’d felt like he was standing on a live wire. Disappointment filled him when she released his hand.
They entered the yellow and white kitchen. As he stood in the dimly lit room, sadness swept over him. While Phae got glasses and poured lemonade, Finn looked around the kitchen.
He had not been in the house for ten years. Memories of coming home to find his wife in the kitchen, humming, filled him with sorrow. He could almost feel his little girl running and jumping into his arms, “Daddy, Daddy!” she’d squeal. Now the kitchen just looked old, dark and out of date. It felt empty.
The scent of pine teased his nostrils and brought him back to reality. Angelina was gone, and his daughter, Izzy was grown now. She’d be returning to connect with her past in a few days. By the time Izzy arrived, he’d be back in the United States, lost in his grueling schedule.
Phae handed him the lemonade and waited for him to take a sip. He raised the glass to his lips and took a large gulp. “Aghhh.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and sucked in his cheeks. It was the worst lemonade he’d ever tasted. It had shocked him out of his reverie.
“Oh my gosh,” Phae stammered, “I’m sorry. I forgot that I ran out of sugar this morning.”
He wondered what she was up to as she ran from the kitchen. She returned with several packets of sugar. “Here, I found these in my purse.”
She took his glass. Her hands shook as she stirred in the sugar. He moved closer to her. He wanted to ease her nervousness to let her know he wasn’t angry about the lemonade; though it had been awful. He longed to touch her, but he couldn’t risk scaring her away. She was the right person to watch over Isabella. He didn’t want to muddy things with a flirtation or worse, and an affair, especially one that would end up being a long distance relationship. Besides, she would be gone in six months. Anything between them would be more like two ships passing in the night than a lasting relationship. Besides, he had a strict rule about getting involved with his employees, and she was an employee.
He saw the mirth lingering in her eyes. She looked up at him tentatively as she handed him the glass. There was no more than six inches between them. Her clean, sweet scent drifted to his nose reminding him of sunshine and honeysuckle. He gazed into her eyes and took the glass. He didn’t want to be, but he was drawn to her.
She stepped back putting distance between them as if she felt it too. “Are you okay now? I am so sorry about the lemonade.” She moved to the kitchen table and took a seat.
Shrewd move putting the table between us. He thought.
“We were talking about your daughter.”
He took a seat opposite her. He twirled the remains of the lemonade.
She rested her elbows on the table, clasped her hands and rested her chin on her hands. “You’re not sure how she will react when she comes here. Don’t you think it would be better if you were here?”
He put the empty glass down and squeezed the bridge of his nose. He grappled with telling her what had happened between him and Izzy in the aftermath of his wife’s death. She was a mother with two grown children. She’d stuck by her children, raising them alone when her husband had died. Phae had been through the teenage and early adult years with her children; maybe she could offer him some advice. “We don’t have a relationship. It’s my fault, and I don’t know how to fix it.”
She lowered her elbows and leaned further into the table with her fingers touching to form a steeple. He held his breath waiting for her to condemn him.
Instead, she said, “Tell me what happened.”
He couldn’t bear to look at her. “Isabella was eight years old when her mother died. We left two days after the funeral. We haven’t been back since.”
He could feel his heart tightening as he talked. “We returned to the United States, and I sent her to a private school. At first, we talked a couple of times a month. But I didn’t know how to deal with a sobbing child. At holidays, rather than have her come home, I sent her to my brother’s home in Iowa. “He gulped down the lump in his throat, remembering how Izzy had begged him to come back.
He played with the glass in his hand. He kept his eyes on the table, studiously studying the rings of condensation the glass left. “I wasn’t capable of caring for a grief stricken child. I was struggling with my own pain. I threw myself into my work during the day. At night, I’d drown my sorrows in alcohol. I didn’t want her to see me like that.” He sat there and remembered how, at first, she would cry and ask when he was coming to get her. After a while, she’d stopped asking, and he’d ceased making excuses; but it hadn’t gotten easier.
His heart shattered thinking about what he had done. How self-centred he had been. As time went on, he’d improved. His work kept him busy, and the company grew. He managed to get himself off the bottle. He tried dating a few times, but by then the gulf between him and Izzy had grown. He shook his head. “I was a terrible father. I abandoned my daughter when she needed me most.”
Finn ventured a glance at Phae. He wanted to see her reaction, though he dreaded seeing his self-condemnation mirrored in her eyes. Instead, she just sat there, listening. He stood up and paced back and forth between the table and the stove. He found moving around gave him the courage to continue. “We didn’t talk very much after that, mostly messages on an answering machine, or e-mails. We seemed to miss each other’s calls. We would see each other maybe four times a year. We didn’t have much to talk about, because by then we had become strangers.”
Phae looked at him. Surprise and disappointment shone in her eyes.
“A month ago, Izzy sent me an e-mail. She told me she wanted to come to Spain for the summer. She wanted to see the house where she was born and where she’d spent the first eight years of her life. I told her I had to think about it.” He rubbed his right temple. “After how I treated her, I couldn’t deny her this request. Besides, the villa is sitting here rotting away. A decision needs to be made about the property.”
His body was wound tight, and he was perspiring. He held his breath and waited for her to say something. He could imagine her taking him to task for the way he’d abandoned Izzy, but it wouldn’t be anything that he hadn’t already done himself. He just hoped that after hearing all this, she would stay for Isabella’s sake.
Phae cleared her throat. He held his breath. “Finn, people grieve in different ways. Some people do as you did; throw themselves into work and drinking. I threw myself into a flurry of activities. I didn’t have the financial luxury to send my children away. I can’t say if I would or wouldn’t have. “
Finn was surprised by her comment. He had never thought about what he would have done if he hadn’t had the money to send Izzy away.
“I believe you did the best you could, given the circumstances. I also believe sometimes it is more difficult for a man to take over the role of mother and father than it is for a woman.”
She came to him and put her hand on his shoulder. “I don’t know whom I feel sadder for, you or Isabella. You may have lost your wife, but Isabella lost her mother due to illness, and then she lost her father, and she didn’t know why.”
Finn looked at Phae and saw tears shimmering in her eyes. He felt so ashamed; not just for what he’d done to Izzy, but for the feelings that stirred inside him. He longed to have someone touch him with gentleness and caring. But this woman was his employee.
“I’m not sure I understand what you want me to say to you. I only know that it is never too late to tell children I’m sorry, or I love you.”
When she walked away from him, a shiver ran through his body.
“My suggestion is that you call her. Tell her you’re sorry and that you love her. Then I think you need to find time to be here when she is here.”
Her words rang in his ears. She had a way of getting him to think about different perspectives; about what the right thing to do was. She hadn’t judged or found him a selfish jerk; she’d listened, acknowledging both his and Izzy’s grief, then she’d pointed out a way forward.
Phae picked up the glasses and rinsed them out. She patted him on the shoulder and left the room.
In a couple of minutes, she returned with an overnight bag. “I’m heading down to the hotel. Let the agency know when it is okay for me to return.”
He wanted to beg her not to leave. He didn’t want to be alone in this house with ghosts and painful memories. He was also afraid that, if she stayed he would regret it. He couldn’t deny that he found her attractive. Finn had the sense that, if they’d met under other circumstance, they would have become friends, maybe lovers. He had to be honest with himself; he wanted more from her than sympathy. He’d not felt connected to anyone since his wife had died. With Phae, there’d been a connection, and he found himself reluctant to let it go. “Let me take that, I’ll walk you out to your car.” They walked in silence. He tossed her bag into the backseat and opened the front door for her.
They stood there for a moment as the setting sun cast a warm glow across the valley. He reached out and stroked her face. He enjoyed the softness of her cheek. He lifted her chin and gently pressed his lips to hers.
He felt her hand slide between them, separating them and pushing him away.
“Finn, I didn’t come to Spain to look for romance. I’m your employee. I don’t want any complications.”
Her rejection hurt, but it brought him to his senses. She was right. She was his employee, and he should have kept things strictly professional. He hadn’t intended to make things awkward for her. He wanted her to stay and take care of Izzy.
He watched Phae drive away until the car was no longer visible. When it disappeared from sight, he felt more alone than ever.

The Brute and I

The Brute and I
https://amzn.to/2PqqzvP
Suzanne Smith
Chapter One

I turned the brass knob quickly, the nauseating fist of fear hitting me hard in the belly as I looked up and saw Marco standing on the other side of the bedroom door. He stood eerily still, close to the center of the doorway, not moving a muscle and not saying a word.
His beautiful brown curls lay flat and matted against his forehead and the jeans he wore were caked with dirt. The putrid stench of whiskey that bounced off his body burned my nostrils.
I began to tremble as his bloodshot eyes cut through my flesh with surgical precision, darting down to the tattered straw suitcase that I held in my hand, then back up to my face.
The sting of his threatening words was fresh in my mind, “Don’t try to take anything from me Alex or you will regret it.” I let the suitcase slip from between my shaking fingers as if detaching it from my body would keep me safe. Judging by the snarl on Marco’s face, it would not.
Acting on survival instinct, I hunched my shoulders into a tight ball, just as my cousin Chris used to do in the face of my father’s assaults, trying to make my body small enough to fit into the narrow space under Marco’s right shoulder. Go Alex. Now!
I ducked until I was beneath his immediate reach but my shaky legs slowed me to almost a crawl and he easily subdued me. With little effort, he shoved me deep into the arms of his favorite leather recliner.
He kneeled at the foot of the chair, his powerful legs binding mine between them like bookends as his hands pinned my fingers down at my side. I was not physically strong enough to overpower him. There was no escape.
The words let me go froze in my throat. He could crush my skull or snap my neck if he wanted to. I was completely at his mercy and I knew it. I felt his grip tighten as he began to speak.
“Didn’t I warn you never to take anything from me?”
He squeezed my hand even tighter. I was not going to scream. I was in agonizing pain but wounded pride kept me silent. I heard the bones in my fingers begin to crack.
“Is what’s in that suitcase worth your life?”
I bought my eyes up to his but the weight of his stare was so fierce and full of hatred that I turned my face away. He locked my slender jaw between his thumb and forefinger and raised my face until our eyes were in perfect alignment.
“Don’t you dare turn away from me again.”
I didn’t. Even when he took his hands away. I sat there staring right into his emerald eyes silently praying for a miracle. Praying that he would either pass out soon or forget that he was so angry at me.
The longer I stared at him, the more aware I became of how clear his eyes were becoming. There was hardly any redness to them now and I began to fear that he was quickly sobering up and was neither going to pass out nor forget anything.
“Answer me,” he said in a gritty voice. “Is what’s in that suitcase worth your life?”
He paused for a moment. I felt a cold chill run down my spine. I sensed that his hesitation was not to give me time to answer but because he had another life threatening question to pose.
“Is it worth your new lover’s life?”
He knew about Jake! I bit the inside of my lip. The bitter metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I wondered if Marco had already confronted Jake. Maybe beat him or done even worse. The image of Jake’s bloody corpse sprawled out on his soft leather sofa made me gag.
Had Jake’s desire for me gotten him killed? I struggled to push the unnerving idea to the back of my mind, comforting myself with the thought that even if it were true, Jake was not an innocent victim. Nor was he a victim of circumstance.
He had known the risks. He was aware of how jealous Marco could be. He had found that out when he’d put his hand on my leg and Marco had almost broken it. Besides that, if Marco had attacked him, Jake was a man and at least stood a fighting chance. The only defense I had was my wit.
There was nothing I could do for Jake. Whether he was dead or alive, he was not here now. I knew if I was going to leave this room tonight, I needed to focus. Focus on making Marco remember how much he loved me. Work on taking Marco’s memory of Jake out of the equation. I had to make him believe that my infidelity was a mistake, one that would not be repeated.
“I’m so-sorry.” I heard my voice crack as I spoke. “I made a mis-” Dread stopped me in mid-sentence as I watched a single teardrop roll down his cheek. I had never seen him cry. But if there was one thing that I knew about Marco it was that he was not a man to suffer alone.
I remembered the night he’d talked about the drunk who had run his mother and father off the road. He’d told me that he was in such pain he would have murdered the man with his bare hands if he could have found him. I felt the goose bumps cover my skin as I recognized the same pained angry look on his face now as he’d had then.
How should I answer him? Were the contents of that suitcase worth my life? Worth Jake’s life? What did he want to hear? Yes? No? Which answer would soothe him?
“It’s a simple question,” he said abrasively. “Give me an answer.”
Seething anger mixed with fear deep inside me as I shot a quick glance at the suitcase on the floor. I was entitled to everything in that suitcase. I considered it compensation for the articles of worth that Marco had forced me to compromise.
My heart when I had found out that he had screwed Nurse Betty in our bed. My soul when I had screwed Jake just to even the score.
My dignity had been destroyed. There was a price for that. If I left without that suitcase I had sacrificed everything I was for nothing.
As I squirmed in my seat contemplating which answer to give, I began to think about the only other time I had felt so gutted and angry. It was when I was in the seventh grade and the class bully Tommy Weazz had stolen every penny of my lunch money for the entire month of September.
When I had finally found the courage to conk him on the head with my wooden baseball bat and he had run away whimpering, I had known that he would never bother me again.
The sense of victory that I felt in the face of Tommy’s defeat had made me feel stronger than I had ever felt in my life. On that day, I vowed never to be a victim again.
I cringed as I realized that despite that vow, I was Marco’s victim now. Pinned in the chair with my back against the wall and my eye’s fixed on Marco’s rock solid frame, I felt that same frustrating feeling of helplessness creep through me.
It felt as if I were a person of no consequence, with no control over my own destiny, easily discarded, like yesterday’s trash. I despised that feeling, of being dead while I was still alive.
Which answer would soothe Marco? I didn’t care. I was done letting him control my words. My thoughts. For once I was going to say what I felt, not what I thought he wanted to hear. A savage blend of courage and stupidity twisted and turned in my belly, my common sense buried underneath the potent mix as the words shot up my throat.
“Fuck you. I’m taking what’s mine.” His laugh was cold. My body began to shake as he squeezed my legs tighter between his.
“That is why I fell in love with you. You simply cannot back down from a challenge. You would rather die than give up. You really believe that what’s in that suitcase belongs to you?”
My own deafening silence stabbed me in the brain. I wanted to scream out my answer. Yes! It belongs to me. But fear sealed my lips shut. I could see the beads of sweat form on his forehead.
“I would admire your perseverance. Truly I would. If only you weren’t such a greedy psychopathic bitch hell bent on destroying me.
“The sad truth is that I would have given you anything that you wanted. All you had to do was ask. But that’s not your style, is it? You don’t want anything given to you. You want to take.”
His face looked old and haggard. Like a man at the end of his life instead of in his prime. There was no doubt in my mind that I was responsible for his frail demeanor. A feeling of bittersweet vindication swept through me as I realized the bleak consequences of my payback.
“How many times have you told me that you hated Jake? Yet you fucked him. I’ll bet you didn’t even give it a second thought. Do you know how that feels?” He asked in a battered voice. “The futility of loving someone who considers you insignificant?”
Of course I knew how that felt. I had felt exactly that way on my last birthday. All year long, I had waited to share that special day with Marco. But now, it filled me with loathing. I would always remember it as the day Marco left me alone to be with her. It infuriated me to hear him speak of himself as if he were a faultless victim.
“At least I didn’t screw Jake on your birthday. Or in our bed! Like you did that stuck up bitch from Simply Elegant Nurse Betty.”
“Yes,” he said in a hushed tone. “That was my intention.”
I had to strain my ears to hear him. It seemed as if he was trying to reveal a part of himself that I had never seen before. A facet of his personality he both wanted me to see and wanted to keep hidden at the same time.
“I tried to convince myself I was still a man with a will of my own. That you were replaceable. But I couldn’t go through with it.
“When I touched her all I saw was your face. Your scent was still on the pillows. I pushed her away and she started crying and ran out of the room. I haven’t seen her since.”
Grief spread through me like wildfire. If what he said was true, not only had I abased myself before Jake for no reason but I had gone from being the betrayed to the betrayer. I felt a sharp twinge of pain touch my heart, the unmistakable cloud of guilt riding on its wings.
“That happened the day after I asked you to marry me. After you turned me down and cut me to the quick. Maybe on some level, I wanted to punish you for saying no. I don’t know.”
I saw a soft pleading look in his eyes as if he needed me to understand how deeply my rejection had hurt him.
“Nothing happened between Betty and me. As far as your birthday, I spent the entire day and night in a drunken stupor in Bice, the dive across the street from your school. Alone. Not fit for company.”
My heart began to soften. I wanted to offer him comfort and sympathy. To take him in my arms and tell him that Jake meant nothing. That I was sorry. If I could undo it, I would.
But how could I be sure he was telling the truth? I had seen the way that he and Nurse Betty had looked at each other.
How his eyes had focused on the strip of lace that had barely covered her breasts. The way she had teasingly run the tip of her tongue across her lips, so sexually explicit it had made me blush.
I had been consumed by jealousy that day at Simply Elegant. I remembered thinking that if it hadn’t been for me standing between them, they would have screwed right in the middle of the boutique isle.
Humiliation rushed through me as the image of Nurse Betty and Marco fondling each other in our bed flooded my mind. I felt blindsided like a prizefighter knocked down by a sucker punch.
I scarcely believed that I was stupid enough to give credence to Marco’s vile lie. That I would even for one second consider it possible for him to have laid next to such a wanton vixen without anything having happened between them.
Heavy tears rolled down my cheek. Despite all my protests and all that had passed between us, I was in danger of falling in love with him all over again.
I hated this weakness in myself. The flaw in my psychological makeup that made it possible for him to exert such control over my emotions.
“I’m telling you the truth about Betty,” he said in a stern voice. “Deep down inside, I think you know it.”
I was lost. He broke my heart when he touched me. He broke my heart when he didn’t touch me. It was as if I didn’t even have a heart unless he willed it so.
If I stayed here any longer, I was certain that I would surrender. Give every part of myself to the vulnerable boy who sat before me now. Do my best to ease his suffering.
My blood began to boil as a fierce wall of determination built up inside me. I knew what I had to do. I had to force his hand before he could tear my defenses down and make a fool of me again.
He was either going to have to set me free or kill me. I refused to live life crawling on my hands and knees. Bowing down before him and being nothing more than his air-headed concubine. This sadistic mockery had gone on long enough.
I was not going to apologize for Jake any more than he was going to apologize for Nurse Betty. I twisted the corner of my lip upward. I felt the river of blackness bleed into my soul as I took what may have been my last breath.
“Well, I can’t say the same for myself. The second Jake touched me I completely forgot what you looked like. As far as his smell, let’s just say that I was too busy with other things to notice it.” My heart leaped out of my chest as he lunged forward and wrapped his strong hands around my throat.
“You are enjoying my emasculation aren’t you?”
He squeezed tighter and tighter as I struggled for air. I tried to pry his thick fingers off my neck but succeeded only in breaking the tips of all ten fingernails. I had no strength left to fight him. I felt my body go limp with exhaustion.
There was no way I could escape the dire consequences of betraying him. I was naive not to have listened to his warning. Gullible to have thought that the depth of his affection would guarantee my safety.
When I felt the bones of my windpipe begin to shatter, I knew even if I could have broken free from his death grip it was too late to make amends.
Maybe it was because I was becoming lightheaded from the lack of oxygen. Or maybe it was the fear of death that had made me delirious. But as the beat of my heart began to slow and my heavy eyelids started to shut, all I could think about were the quiet candlelit dinners that Marco and I had shared at Giuseppe’s. The serene midnight strolls that we had taken down the fragrant flower laden Rue Boulevard. The lazy Sunday mornings that we had spent lying in bed, our glistening bodies so exhausted from hour after hour of lovemaking we had scarcely been able to move.
I felt confused. My mind was saturated with regret. The same strong fingers that had gently caressed every inch of my soft pink flesh with such erotic sweetness so many times before now attacked me with unrestrained brutality. I had no air left in my lungs. I would have begged for mercy if I could have spoken.
I was running out of time. With every iota of strength that I had, I grabbed the baby finger on his left hand with both of mine. I began twisting it as far back as it would go, trying to break the sturdy bone, hoping the pain would distract him just long enough for me to break free.
It was no use. The thick bone would not budge. All hope was gone. The arrow of resignation lodged its sharp point in my brain as I realized that I was going to die.
The only future I had was here and now. This god-awful purgatory, too far from paradisiacal heaven and too close to earthly hell. A dismal feeling of finality spread through me as I realized that I would never see my mother, father, or cousin Chris again.
I wished I had told my mother and father how sorry I was for my defiant outbursts. I wanted to let my cousin Chris know that I was wrong for not supporting him when he had needed me the most. Our differences seemed so petty.
It saddened me to know that it was too late to change any of that now. When I saw the room go black and felt my knees buckle beneath me, I knew I was out of time. This was it. My twenty-one years on this earth would be wiped out without a trace.
I wondered if I would still be able to feel the pain in my twisted limbs when Marco shoved my lifeless body into the trunk of the Mercedes.
If I would still feel the breathlessness when he buried my bones beneath the fertile black soil of some remote cornfield.
Would he wake up screaming with remorse and drenched with sweat, haunted by his crime for all eternity? I hoped so.
My body went numb and my mind became docile. I was completely at peace, immune to sight and sound. Weightless as a feather. Like the essence of my person had been siphoned out of me. I did not know if I was dead or alive.
My serenity was disrupted by an uncomfortable rocking sensation. It seemed as if my body was moving back and forth like someone was shaking me. Then I heard a strange noise. An abrupt coughing wheezing gurgle.
It took me a few seconds to realize that it was the sound of me gasping for air. My throat felt sandy and dry. It was hard to swallow my own saliva. I slowly opened my eyes, blinded by the light at first, but clearly able to see after a few seconds.
Marco’s face was just inches from mine, his body bent over me on the hardwood floor. I could see the tears rolling down his cheek. He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me off the floor.
I wanted to pull away from him but I didn’t have the strength. My brush with death had left me as weak as a newborn kitten. Even with the throbbing pain in my neck and the sensitive feel of the jagged edge of my broken fingernails scraping against the panels of wood flooring, I was thankful to be alive.
Never again would I take life for granted. Or how much I loved and would miss my mother, father, and Chris. I was ashamed that it had taken me until now to realize this.
I winced when Marco put his hand on my throat. My body stiffened with the petrifying thought that he was going to finish what he’d started. When he began to gently massage my neck, I felt my muscles relax.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He gently cupped my chin in his hands and raised my face until our eyes locked. The intensity of his passionate stare seared the very fringe of my soul. I had always loved this about him. His unguarded display of emotion. Until tonight, when it had almost gotten me killed.
“You kept pushing and pushing me. When you started talking about Jake, I lost it.” He hung his head.
“I know I can’t take back what I did. But I would give anything not to see that frightened hateful look in your eyes. Can you ever forgive me?”
I didn’t answer right away. Not only because I couldn’t think of what to say but also because my throat was so sore I didn’t know if I could speak.
“You’re-you’re right.” I had never heard him stutter before. “Of course you can’t forgive me. There is no excuse for being a coward or acting like an animal.” He bowed his head as if he were ashamed. “I swear with all my heart it will never happen again. All I want to do is talk.”
My fear began to dissipate as I looked into his eyes. He looked shattered. Like my father had looked when he talked about his dead friend Lenny. I could feel the chafe in the back of my throat as I spoke.
“I believe you. Please. Just let me go home. We can talk when we have both calmed down.” A sense of relief washed through me as he stood up and walked to the big bay window. He was still close to me but far enough away that I could have gotten past him if I moved quickly.
I got slowly to my feet, giving myself a few extra seconds to figure out what to do next. If I stayed I knew I ran the risk of his hot temper flaring up again. My words had to be chosen carefully. But what if I ran? What if I was not quick enough to get past him? That was certain to bring out his anger. I watched him lower his head and rub his thumb against his temple.
“My head is killing me. Serves me right for acting like a drunken fool.”
I was sure that most of the booze was out of his system now and the discomfort of his newly acquired hangover was dulling his senses and slowing him down. I knew that if I was going to run, this was the perfect time.
My eyes darted nervously from one end of the room to the other, fixing an escape route firmly in my mind. Courage percolated inside me. This was it. The only chance I might get to save myself.
I slowly leaned forward and began rocking back and forth. Marco was still rubbing his temples seemingly unaware of any movement I was making. I felt my hands start to sweat as I began the mental countdown. One. Two. Three. Run Alex.
A paralyzing plague spread through every part of me. My feet were heavy as if they were encased in cement blocks. My arms were stiff and bent at the elbows. It was like I was shackled by some invisible force.
My own behavior baffled me. All night long I had struggled to get away from Marco. Yet now that I had the opportunity I hesitated. I asked myself why I chose to remain here a second longer, in this dreary pit of defeat that had almost become my tomb.
Maybe I was afraid of failing and feared the repercussions of a failed escape attempt. Maybe I was simply too terrified to run, frozen with fear, but didn’t want to admit it even to myself. Maybe I wanted to prove to Marco that I was no coward, that I was strong enough to stand my ground.
I tried to convince myself that it could have been any one of these things but in my heart, I knew better. I was confident that I was quick enough to make it past Marco. He had placed himself far enough away from me to make that possible. I was not frozen with fear. My body was pumped up with adrenaline and ready to go. Marco already knew that I was no coward. The fact that I had come here tonight instead of going home to my mother was proof of that.
My head began to throb as I thought of the one reason that fit. It fit as neatly as the final piece in a jigsaw puzzle. I didn’t run because I didn’t want to. I didn’t want freedom. I wanted Marco.
I felt pathetic. I realized that no matter what he had done, I didn’t have the strength to break the bond between us. The eternal tie that linked my heart to his. I wondered if he knew that about me. If he could look inside me and see that I needed him to make me feel whole.
Shame kicked me hard in the stomach. Maybe he did. Perhaps that was why he had stepped back. Not to give me a chance to run to freedom, a chance he knew I wouldn’t take, but to let me see how much of a slave to love I really was. The pained look I saw on his face inspired a strange brew of hostility and pity in me.
“I’m not a fool. I know once you leave this room I may never see you again. I will not try to stop you. But please tell me before you walk out of my life forever. What changed between us?” The gentle tone of his voice oozed with sincerity. “Is it that you no longer find me physically attractive?”
I looked at the thick brown curls that framed his piercing emerald colored eyes, the deliciously bowed arch of his full pink lips, the smooth olive skin that stretched tightly over his tall tan muscular frame. He was a masterpiece, the embodiment of masculine perfection.
“That’s it, isn’t it Alex?”
I remembered when our love had been in its infancy. I had been happy to see the eyes of every woman in Marco’s bar Vive open wide when Marco walked their way as if they had been zapped by a welcome jolt of energizing electricity. It made me feel good that they all wanted him but I had him.
But I had been young and inexperienced, not sophisticated, with nothing to offer him but my fresh freckled face. I knew that this shallow attribute may have drawn him to me, but I was certain it was not enough to hold him.
A lack of self-esteem had built up inside me until I had begun to feel threatened by even the smallest gesture of female flirtation, like his friend Jocelyn sitting too close to him at Vive.
It was too demeaning to tell him that the problem was that I found him too attractive, that I was insanely jealous of the provocative feminine behavior that he probably didn’t even take notice of. “No Marco. That’s not it.”
“Is it the way I talk? Am I too blunt?”
The fact that he had not been afraid to say what he meant no matter how trivial or how important had been refreshing in the beginning. When he had first told me that he loved me, he had said it with passionate conviction. It had been quite a welcome change from my ex-boyfriend Jamie’s stuttering attempt at expressing his affection.
But the more insecure I became in myself and the less sure of my ability to hold onto him, the more I began to imagine that the day would come when he would no longer be able to tolerate the sight of my face. He would not hesitate to express his hatred with the same clarity as he expressed his love.
The thought of him voicing his rejection had terrified me. What if I shared this fear with him tonight and he told me I was right? He did hate me. Once the words were spoken, there was no taking them back. I would be destroyed. I forced my eyes to meet his hoping this small assertive action would hide how cowardly I felt. “No Marco. That’s not it.”
“What is it then?”
The curt tone that I heard in his voice made me realize how impatient he was growing with me. He had told me more than once that my tendency towards skirting around the truth drove him crazy.
I wished I shared his confident flair for getting directly to the point but I didn’t. When he locked the fingers of both his hands together and began tapping his forehead I knew I had driven him to his wit's end.
“I can’t read your mind Alex. You have to tell me what’s going on.”
I was choking on my own sense of inferiority. I knew it was not his fault that I felt threatened by his desirability. Nor was it his fault that I was afraid of his frank manner of speaking. Truth be told, his beauty and his honesty were the very reasons that I had fallen in love with him.
“Marco I-” I wanted to tell him everything. How insecure I was in myself and how scared I was of losing him. That I felt lost without him by my side. But I was afraid that once he saw this clinging childlike side of me, it would drive him away, right into the waiting arms of the confident and beautiful Nurse Betty.
“Tell me what you are feeling.” I saw the anguished look spread across his face as he took a step closer. “Please don’t shut me out.”
A flush of optimism stirred deep inside me. I began to believe him, to trust that he’d sympathize with my obsessive fear of rejection, find my frailty a source of empathy and not amusement.
I knew if I didn’t want to lose him forever, I had to bear my soul, open my heart to him and pray he wouldn’t break it again.
I walked toward him cautiously. I was uncertain if my honesty would be met with praise or ridicule.
“I got scared.” My body began to tremble as I gazed into his eyes. “I was afraid that you were going to leave me. That is what changed between us.” He closed the small gap of space between us and gently took my hand in his.
“What did I do to make you think that?”
“It’s...I know I don’t have anything to offer you.” I swallowed hard. “Jocelyn. Nurse Betty. What do I have that they don’t?” He pressed my hand to his fast beating heart.
“This.” He spoke barely above a whisper but the blistering blaze that flashed in his eyes emphasized the truth of what he said.
I felt loved and protected. I knew it was ridiculous to feel this way, especially since he had just tried to kill me, but I did not have the will to resist. He wrapped his arms around my waist.
“I’m sorry I hurt you Alex. I never meant to. When I found out about Jake it broke my heart.”
My fear began to flicker. I realized how short-sighted I had been in only considering how my words would affect his anger. I had no control over how his own words would affect his anger. I had to get his mind off Jake.
“Please. I don’t want to talk about Jake.”
“I don’t want to either, Alex. But we have to. We need to talk about what happened with Jake.” I felt the tension in his hands as he pulled me closer. “Jake and your special room.”
Chapter Two

Marco was the only person I had told about my special room, that unique, anesthetizing place in the back of my brain that instantly dulled and disintegrated even the most painful of my memories, like the death of my beloved aunt Millie.
He and I had been so close then that there was no part of me that I hadn’t wanted to share with him. Now that we had grown apart, knowing that he had the power to invade this sensitive area in my brain whenever he wanted made me feel vulnerable and intruded on.
It was puzzling that he would bring it up now when he had never brought it up before. It seemed so out of context. I had no idea what he wanted me to say.
“I don’t understand.” The troubled expression on his face sent a spike of alarm through me.
“Your special room. That place in your brain that transforms even the worst of memories into almost no memories at all. Dilutes them. Makes them pale and distant. No longer offensive. Is that pretty close to how you described it to me?”
I was surprised that he not only remembered the conversation that we had about my special room but that he had such a clear understanding of what it was.
“Yes.”
“Is that where you put the memory of your father’s drunken fits?”
The memory of my father’s last drunken tirade, when he had tried to strangle Chris, was harmless now, buried safely behind the walls of my special room. It irked me that Marco wanted me to dredge it up tonight when I already felt so despondent.
“Yes.”
“The quarrel you had with your best friend Emme before she left town?”
I had vehemently defended Marco when Emme had attacked his character, calling him crude and violent, telling me that I did not belong with him. She had been right. I felt like such a fool now for not listening to her. “Yes.”
“The memory-,” he paused, “of sleeping with Jake?” The accusatory tone in his voice burrowed its way into my soul. I had never felt so guilty.
I couldn’t imagine what connection Emme, my father, Jake, and my special room had but I knew from the strained look on his face that the connection could not be a good one. “Yes.” My voice crackled with anxiety.
A feeling of desolation imposed itself deep inside me as I studied the teardrop that hung on the wisp of his lower lash. My love had destroyed him just as his love had destroyed me. I wished that we had never met. I wondered if he felt the same way. The sad look in his eyes told me that he did.
“I envy you. To have that built-in cleansing niche in your brain. All your bad memories boxed up. Your feelings and emotions blunted, tidy and under control. I wish I could think of death and betrayal as no big deal, like you do, just let it roll off me like water off a duck’s back.”
It made me angry to listen to him berate me, portray me as such a shallow person. But it hurt my feelings too, to think that he actually saw me that way. I watched the corner of his lip curl up as if he were disgusted with me, maybe even a little jealous.
“You must feel very privileged.”
“I do.” A knot of nervousness twisted in my stomach as I watched the color drain from his face.
“That is the problem. Emotions and feelings are not neat and tidy. You can’t just box them up in a room all by themselves and disconnect them from the rest of your brain.”
The way the veins in his neck began to pulse reminded me of my history teacher, Mr. Rogers, and how frustrated he used to get with me when I came unprepared to class or when I missed the point of the lesson. “I don’t, well I do-” He had me tripping over my words, “I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t. Let me make it clear for you. Your special room isn’t so special. What you do with your memories, separating and categorizing them, detaching them from any feeling and any emotion, is not normal.”
He looked more serious than ever as if he was desperate for me to grasp what he was saying. I felt myself becoming defensive. I didn’t know why he insisted on portraying my special room as some sinister garden of evil instead of the godsend that it was. “Why Marco? Why is being able to control how you feel a bad thing?” His sigh was long and drawn out.
“It isn’t. As long as you acknowledge why you feel what you feel. But you can’t just pretend that you don’t have feelings, that they don’t exist because they offend you. Anger. Sorrow. Guilt.
“You have to give them the respect they deserve, let them run their course. They are what make us human.” A repugnant scowl crossed his face. “You can’t just remove your conscience like it’s a pebble in your shoe. That is something only a psychopath would do.”
Only he would have the nerve to call me a psychopath when he had just tried to kill me. My shock loosened my tongue.
“My conscience is fully intact.”
“Is it? Is that why you were able to sleep with Jake, a man you hate?”
I hated the righteous gloating look in his eyes. Everything that I had said tonight seemed to come back to Jake. It pissed me off that Marco conveniently chose to ignore the fact that I had gone to Vive that night looking for him. If he had been at home like he should have been, Jake and I would never have crossed paths.
I did not want to make him any angrier but my pride would not let me sit silently and tolerate this insult. “There is nothing psychopathic about me sleeping with Jake. The truth is that Jake was there for me when you weren’t, when you left me alone to be with Nurse Betty.”
As scared as I was to say it, I felt stronger than I had all night, as if expressing myself had somehow made me free. “I went with Jake because he offered me comfort.” I cowered as he jerked his hands from my waist and stepped back as if I had the plague. He had the most incredulous look plastered across his face.
“Are you listening to yourself? Do you know how crazy you sound? You hate Jake but being in his company in your darkest hour comforted you? Any normal person would have been repulsed by the thought of sleeping with their enemy when they were at their most vulnerable.”
He was controlling the conversation again. Controlling me again. Even the soreness that still radiated from my neck could not keep me silent. “Then you tell me, Marco. You seem to know me better than I know myself. You tell me why I went with Jake.” I wanted to smack the condescending smirk right off his face.
“To punish me. Because you knew it would hurt me like hell and because you convinced yourself that it would not bother you at all. That you would just bury it in the back of your brain, in your special room.” The scornful tone of his voice cut me like a knife. “One of life’s little unpleasantries never to be thought of again.”
On some level, I knew that he was right. I had been furious when I found out about Nurse Betty. Maybe I had used Jake to punish him and make him suffer as I had. Maybe I had thought that my special room would buffer any long-term feelings of humiliation that I might have had. But that wasn’t what happened. I felt the stiffness in his body as he drew me closer. His eyes bore into mine.
“I’m right, aren’t I? About Jake and your special room? Screwing Jake didn’t bother you at all, did it?”
The hostility in his voice jolted me back to the dreadful night that I had slept with Jake. The moment that I had climbed out of his bed I had realized that my special room had failed me. I had felt sick to my stomach and my head ached. The sense of humiliation and degradation I had felt had been overwhelming.
I had wondered why my special room had been so effective in blocking out the painful memories of my aunt’s death, my father’s inebriation, and my friend Emme’s alienation yet did nothing to shield me from the humiliation that I had felt after I had slept with Jake.
There was only one answer that made sense. Control. I’d had no control over the cancer that killed my aunt, the pathological need that had driven my father to drink, or the innate desire that Emme had to express her hatred.
Because I had been powerless to stop any of these events, I did not feel responsible. It was not fair for me to have had to suffer the painful consequences of God’s twisted will or to be injured by other people’s damnable behavior. I had felt fully justified in burying these memories behind the walls of my special room without giving it a second thought.
But I had had control over what had happened with Jake. I did feel responsible and guilty. My special room had slammed its door in my face, offered me no reprieve for my suffering.
This penetrating plague of accountability had eviscerated me, made me feel unworthy of Marco’s love or trust. He had been right to hate me. I was an absolute horror of a person.
Disgust lodged itself in my brain as I remembered the velvety feel of Jake’s manicured hands against my bare flesh, the high pitched groan in his voice as he had reached the pinnacle of his pleasure, the lecherous look in his bright blue eyes as he’d waved goodbye to me.
I wished that Marco could see into my soul, know that I had been affected, realize that the mistake I had made with Jake would haunt me forever. “No. You are wrong.” I heard the pleading need for him to understand my pain in my voice. “It did bother me to sleep with Jake!”
“But for how long?” The hard look in his eyes made me shiver. “An hour? A day?”
It wounded me that he believed that I could dismiss what had been one of the most horrific experiences in my life as if it had been no more than a bad meal I had eaten and later purged out of my system. The muscles in my jaw tightened.
He glared at me as if he was shocked at my anger. “Don’t look at me like I’m crazy. I know that you’re not a psychopath. I know you have feelings. But you need to stop doing what you’re doing. You need to stop shoving every feeling that you find distasteful into that diseased part of your brain that tells you it’s good to be numb. That deludes you into thinking that your father’s alcoholism doesn’t bother you and neither does losing your best friend.”
He shut his eyes tightly as if he were trying to block out a disturbing image. When he opened them again, his gaze was steady on mine. “That makes you think that it doesn’t bother you that you screwed a man you can’t stand the sight of.”
I felt hollow. Like a scooped out shell of a human being. I hated him being inside my mind, twisting and turning my way of coping with tragedy into something ugly. I wanted to kick him out of my head but I didn’t know how. Every muscle in his face looked tight.
“You think you have gotten rid of the bad memories, but you haven’t,” he said in a voice devoid of pity. “You have just postponed feeling what you should have. The anger you feel towards your father. The regret you feel over losing your best friend. The humiliation you feel over fucking Jake.
“The bottled up pain that is attached to these memories, that you think you so cleverly dismissed, will come back to bite you in the ass.” His voice rose like it always did when he was agitated.
I was sorry that I had put my trust in him. I had told him about my special room in confidence. Now, he was using it as a weapon against me, turning my way of dealing with life’s catastrophes into a despicable weakness. He was making me out to be some psychopathic bitch.
A heavy jabbing sensation laid siege to my chest. Who was he to tell me who I was? Analyze me like I was a mentally deranged patient under his care? I took a deep breath, exhaling slowly as I tried to regain my composure. “That’s not true.” My body grew rigid with fear as he grabbed me by the shoulders.
“It is true,” he snapped. “Maybe that is exactly what’s happening between us now. Maybe that pain that you thought you were rid of has resurfaced. Reinvented itself. Disguised itself as jealousy, insecurity. Maybe that’s why your perception of reality is so distorted.”
I felt my temperature rise with the sting of his words.
“Maybe that’s why you are so emotionally unbalanced.”
My body felt as if it was exploding from the inside out. Perception of reality distorted? Emotionally unbalanced? Marco had screwed Nurse Betty in our bed and kicked me to the curb like an unwanted dog.
If he thought I was going to accept his adultery with a smile on my face he was sadly mistaken. Only the recent memory of how painful it was to have his hand crushing my windpipe stopped me from telling him to go fuck himself.
“My perception of reality is not distorted. The reality is that you fucked Nurse Betty, in our bed!” I flinched as I remembered the sharp post of Nurse Betty’s hideous hand designed earring stabbing me in the finger as I dusted around the foot of our bed. “Should I have been jumping up and down with joy over the fact that you were leaving me to be with her?” I was angry and hurt. My fingers balled into a fist. I wanted to punch him as hard as I could, to hurt him as badly as he had hurt me.
Both of his hands clamped down on mine, securing them in place as if he knew I was getting ready to attack him.
“Listen to me. If that were the truth and if it were Betty I wanted why did I ask you to marry me?”
His question made me feel conflicted. I wondered if he had proposed as a cruel joke. But in a deeper part of myself, I knew what marriage meant to Marco. He held the vows solemn and eternal. It seemed unlikely that he would ever take any aspect of holy matrimony in jest.
Had he proposed just for show, so he could appear as an honorable man doing an honorable deed? Given that Marco was not a man concerned with appearances or public opinion, this seemed even more unlikely. Confused, I forced my eyes to meet his definitive gaze.
“Answer me. Why do you think I asked you to marry me?” His voice was sharp and demanding.
I felt myself shrink as his fingers tightened around my wrist. “I don’t know.” But I did know. There was only one explanation left. He had asked me to marry him because he loved me. My gut began to twist with regret.
I remembered how badly I had behaved the night he proposed. He had kneeled on one knee and asked me to be his wife. My short cold refusal had brought tears to his eyes.
I hadn’t intentionally meant to hurt him but I know I did. He had taken me by surprise. I hadn’t been prepared for his proposal. Panic had made me speak without thinking.
He’d had no way of knowing that I didn’t refuse his offer of marriage because I didn’t love him. I had refused because I was afraid.
Afraid that over time the warm love and yearning we felt for each other would evolve into frigid hatred, just as it had between my father and mother. I had wanted to explain it to him, but he’d run out of the room so fast I had never gotten a chance.
A heavy mist of remorse settled in my heart. Maybe I was responsible for driving him away. If I had been more honest about my feelings then, we wouldn’t have wound up here now, with Jake and Betty jammed between us. The fragile look on his face touched my soul.
“I need an answer. I need to know the truth of why you refused me.” His voice was subdued like it had been the night he talked about his mother’s death.
I felt like I was suffocating, drowning in a black river of misery. I didn’t think of myself as religious but I swear that if God had swooped down from heaven this very moment and granted me one eternal wish, it would be to erase the memory of that night from both our minds.
To reverse the event that set our love affair on this irreversible course of infidelity and hatred. My hands fell limp at my sides as Marco loosened his grip.
“I asked you to marry me because I love you. Why won’t you believe that? I have never wanted anyone else. That is something you fabricated all on your own.” The smooth even inflection of his words told me that he was speaking in earnest. “You’re fucked up but I can fix you. Let me in your heart.” The breeze of his breath touched my cheek as he leaned in closer. “Let me in your head.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Fix me? Was he going to glue the broken pieces of my heart back together? Try to stitch the holes in my shredded soul? Was that what I was to him? A broken doll that needed mending?
The bitter memory of him and Nurse Betty together fueled my voice. “If I’m fucked up Marco it’s your fault.” He cast his eyes away like I had hit a nerve.
“You need to understand that I was very angry at you. I was becoming more and more afraid that someday you would tire of me and shove me in your special room.” His words were hesitant. “Convince yourself that I never existed, turn me into an invisible, nonessential person.”
He looked broken as if his spirit had been snatched out of his body. I wanted to take him into my arms, to assure him that his love was embedded so deeply into my soul that he would never be a diluted memory. My body began to sway as he gently stroked my hair.
“I didn’t know how to fight it, that impenetrable glitch inside your head. The invisible monster that was stealing you away from me. I felt so helpless.” He hung his head as if he were exhausted and no longer had the strength to fight.
I felt wretched. I had done this to him. Stripped him of his virility. Taken away his zest for life. I asked myself how I could have been so oblivious and disconnected.
I had no idea that Marco was in silent competition with my special room and that he was at war with an enemy he couldn’t see, or that he was fighting a battle he felt he was losing.
I wondered how it was possible for his feelings of weakness and helplessness to have had escaped me, that all I had been able to see was the way that he had distanced himself from me and the disinterest he had shown whenever I expressed my anger or jealousy.

Sympathy Dance

Sympathy Dance
https://amzn.to/2SCJWUI
Sue McConnell
Chapter One

“You could have said no.” Cheyanne looked up at him with a pout on her pretty coral lips.
He looked down at her but quickly diverted his eyes when he couldn’t ignore her cleavage peeking out of her silk top. He had never noticed how busty she was before. He swallowed hard and prayed she couldn’t hear his heart pound.
She blinked her long lashes and he nearly groaned. These feelings weren’t supposed to be happening. He had only agreed to come with Cheyanne because her big brother had laid it on thick begging Wyatt to take her to the dance. She had just returned home before the holidays and didn’t have a date to the Red Reef annual New Year’s Eve dance. Jess wanted to enjoy it with his bombshell girlfriend, but if Cheyanne didn’t have a date, his mother would have hounded Jess to take Cheyanne until his father grew sick of it and demanded the same. So Wyatt in a weak moment had agreed.
“I could have stayed home with Windswept.” Cheyanne swept a wispy curl from her eyes.
Her hair smelled like vanilla and was pulled into a loose bun that let tendrils of curls frame her face making her big dark chocolate eyes pop. “Your horse? Am I that bad of a date that you’d rather be home with your horse?” He covered his heart. “I’m hurt.”
She grinned. “There’s the Wyatt I know and love. For a minute there I thought I was going to have to carry the whole night.”
“Sorry.” Was she wishing she hadn’t come? “You could have said no.”
“I tried that. When I found out Jess had asked you, I was furious and refused to go, but Daddy said he wouldn’t have me home alone moping around. If I returned home, I had to be part of the family and had to pull my weight. For some reason, it’s important for a Bradshaw to be at this overdone shindig.”
Wyatt didn’t know exactly what had happened to bring her back, but he’d heard she was still butting heads with her father.
Still, six months ago, she had left with Dean Watson, a smart-ass brat that had tagged around after him and Jess. Now that she had come home she hardly gave him the time of day. It made him strangely attracted to her.
“It is a little bit over the top, isn’t it?” The hall was decorated with silver and white streamers and sparkly balls hanging from the ceiling. Red Reef did this every year, and everyone who was anyone in Red Reef came to rub elbows. He sighed. He wasn’t one to dwell on these kinds of things. He’d rather rope a calf than attend this fancy dance with his best friend’s kid sister.
“It looks like a prom dance.” She shook her head and her hair tickled his chin. “Why do people get so into these stupid things?”
“You sound like you hate it here.” He wondered why she had come back, but no one in the Bradshaw family was talking, not even Jess. “Why did you come back?”
Cheyanne chewed on her cheek and Wyatt watched, mesmerized by the movements of her mouth.
She looked over his shoulder into the distance. “Let’s just say once Dean and I tried to live together, I realized the big city life wasn’t for me. I missed Windswept and the city was loud.”
Wyatt smiled, pleased at the news. Dean was a selfish jerk and wasn’t good enough for her. “It wasn’t as rosy living with him as you thought?” She could be a fireball at times, but she had a heart of gold.
She shook her head and released a long exhale, her breath warming his skin. “You can’t believe how horrible it was.” She bit her bottom lip. “So horrible that I swallowed my pride and came home to a father I knew would gloat over my failure.”
Wyatt frowned. “I don’t think that’s it.” He remembered how her father had moped around after she’d moved away, disappearing for hours on his prize stallion. “Your father missed you immensely. Jess said he was impossible.”
“Well, he aimed a barb or two at my ego, but I took it because as much as I hate to say it, he was right.” She shrugged. “I don’t belong in the city.” She smiled. “I belong here where I can help on the ranch. Jess tells me the accounts and records are a mess since I left.”
Warmth spread through him from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. “So, you’re staying?”
“Yep. Maybe not at the ranch for the rest of my life, but here in Red Reef.”
Wyatt grinned. He wasn’t sure why that made him happy, but he didn’t question it. He wasn’t a fancy man and sensed Cheyanne wasn’t a fancy woman. After all, she didn’t like the big city and would rather work at the ranch. For the last hour, they had carried on a conversation that didn’t bore or annoy him, and he found he was enjoying her company. The dance wasn’t as much of a waste of time as he'd imagined it would be. He’d like to spend more time with her, but he’d have to get past Jess and her father first.
“What are you grinning at?” Cheyanne scrunched her brows together. “Are you going to tease me about not making it in the big city too?”
“Of course not.” At one time, he probably would have and back then she would have deserved it. Tonight he wanted to reassure her instead. It amazed him she could change this much in six months. “Actually, I’m glad you came back.” So much so he was on a dance floor with her when he had two left feet.
What had come over him?
She cocked her head. “Really?”
He didn’t like the way her brown eyes probed at him as if she was looking deep into his soul. He didn’t let anyone know his deepest desires, yet he felt like he could share them with Cheyanne. “Yeah. Everyone is happy about it.” He tried to cover up how much he wanted to keep her in his arms even after the dance ended. Jess would kill him if he put the moves on his baby sister.
“With everyone teasing me about how I couldn’t handle the big city life, I doubt they're that happy to see me back.”
Her hand came up to his neck and she played with a strand of his hair, causing a bolt of desire to surge down his shoulder and arm. “It’s true, trust me.” If she knew all the dirty thoughts that were flashing through his brain, would she want to run for the hills?
“You didn’t even say goodbye to me when I left.” Her lower lip protruded.
He stared at her pretty pout, wanting to kiss it away. He cleared his throat. “I just realized how much I missed you.”
“If I recall it right, you always told me I was a pest.”
“I was wrong.” She used to annoy him with her wild antics to get his attention. Yet since she had returned home, she hadn’t paid him much mind. He wondered what had happened during her time with Dean. It seemed to have made her even more stubborn, yet had it had added a softer side to her. He had never been this intrigued by a woman or this curious about what made one tick.
She grinned. “Best compliment I’ve heard since coming back, especially coming from you.” She gave him a quick kiss on his cheek. “This night might not be as much of a waste of time as I thought.”
Wyatt touched his cheek, wishing she would have given him a slow kiss on the lips instead. “Anytime.” He pulled her closer and she laid her head on his shoulder, and they swayed to the music. He inhaled a deep breath sucking in her scent.
Cheyanne looked at him as the pace of the music picked up. “Let’s get something to drink. I need to rest my aching feet.”
“Sure.” He held out his arm and she slid her hand around his forearm. He wasn’t ready to let her go. “We can sit over there.” He pointed to an empty table in the corner. “I’ll get you a drink. What would you like?”
“Just a soda, please.”
He didn’t need any liquor to make his head lighter than it already was. She was like a drug that had his heart tripping all over the place.
Wyatt watched her while he waited for the bartender to bring him their drinks until he was pushed from behind. He turned around to give the jerk a piece of his mind, but closed his mouth. Jess. Why did he feel like he had just been caught ogling Jess’s sister?
“Hey, what’s up?” Wyatt glanced at Cheyanne again.
Jess nodded toward Cheyanne. “Nothing. I bet she’s making your evening miserable.” Jess shook his head. “I know what a pain in the ass she can be.”
“No, she’s not.” Wyatt had been guilty of thinking of Cheyanne as a pain in the ass too, but hearing Jess call her that now made his muscles in his neck tighten and he felt the need to defend her. “She’s different now that she’s back, don’t you think?”
Jess shrugged. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“She seems a little more . . . mature I guess is the right word.”
“Mature? How?”
“I don’t know.” Wyatt ran a hand through his hair. “Do you know what happened between her and Dean?”
“Hell, no and I don’t want to. She’s better without the jerk, if you ask me.” Jess waved the bartender down and ordered a beer. “Why are you so curious?”
He shrugged “I just thought maybe you would know. She hasn’t said anything to me.”
“Why would she?” Jess paid the bartender and grabbed his beer. “Don’t worry about it. You’re her date, but I don’t expect you to be her shrink. Mom can do that.” Jess stepped away from the bar. “Just get through this, and I won’t ask this of you again. I know it’s a drag, but I really appreciate it.”
Wyatt shook his head and grabbed his drinks. He’d never paid much attention to how crass Jess could be, especially about Cheyanne, but now it made him want to sucker punch the smugness out of him. He walked over to their table and set her soda in front of her. She had taken off her shoes and was leaning over to rub her feet. He had a clear view of the top of her breast, and he couldn’t help but stare. All he had to do was reach down, and he could cup that delicious breast in his hand. He took a slug of his beer, swallowing hard, and sat in the chair across from her.
“Your feet hurting?”
She nodded sitting up. “I hate shoving my feet in these contraptions.” She took a sip of her soda.
Wyatt watched her lick her lips with the tip of her tongue. He imagined kissing her until her lips were swollen and bruised. He closed his eyes and tried to get his mind out of where it shouldn’t be. “Why don’t you let me rub your feet?” He motioned for her to place her foot in his lap.
“Don’t mind if I do.” She grinned and plopped her foot on his leg.
He started to massage at her blood-red painted toes. She gasped and jerked her foot, grazing his growing hard-on and causing him to almost drop her foot. Her eyes widened and she gave him a knowing smile, turning him on more. His thumb rubbed over a callous on her big toe, and he concentrated on it giving it gentle strokes. Her soft moans pleased him and urged him on.
“That feels so good.”
Wyatt squirmed in his seat. “There’s more where that came from.” He rubbed her tight calves. “I’m never sure why women put their pretty feet into those things.” He nodded toward her shoes.
“Because they make our legs look long and lean. Men swoon over long legs.” She shrugged. “It’s the male species’ fault.”
Wyatt choked on his laugh. “Oh really? I’ll have you know a woman can look just as sexy in a pair of cowboy boots, which is what I prefer.”
“Now you tell me.” She leaned forward. “I could have spared myself and worn my boots.”
He nodded and studied her full lips, wanting a taste. The noise of the dance hall dimmed around him. He was just about to pull her forward when she stiffened.
“Hey, what’s going on here?” Jess stood over them with a confused frown.
Wyatt jumped back and Cheyanne’s foot dropped with a thud. “Nothing. Cheyanne’s feet are sore.” Wyatt leaned back in his chair and rubbed his neck.
“Spoiled as always.” Jess slurred his words.
“You’re drunk.” Cheyanne rolled her eyes and looked around the room. “Where’s your lovely date?”
“She’s in the ladies room.” Jess stumbled to a nearby chair and fell into it. “So I thought I’d come and visit with you.”
Cheyanne raised her eyebrows. “Big of you.”
“Stop being such a brat.”
Wyatt watched the exchange between the siblings and felt torn. Before Cheyanne had left, he would have joined Jess in picking on her unmercifully, but tonight he thought Jess was being juvenile.
“Why don’t you go find your date?” Cheyanne's face tensed up, and Wyatt wished he could see her dazzling smile again.
“Why are you so intent on getting rid of me?” Jess scowled at Wyatt. “What are you hiding?”
Wyatt stretched out his legs trying to stay cool. “I’m not hiding anything, you fool, but I don’t want to listen to the two of you fight either. You’re giving me a headache.” He winked at Cheyanne trying to signal to her he didn’t mean her.
“I’m sure it’s Cheyanne giving you the headache and not me.” Jess sneered, slurring his words together.
“You’re too funny,” Cheyanne hissed through her teeth. “You’re the one that is going to have the headache tomorrow and I’m going to make sure you feel it.” She reached for her shoes. “I think I’ve had enough. I’m going home.”
“What’s the matter, little sister?” Jess gave a lopsided smile. “You want to leave before midnight because you have no one to kiss?”
Cheyanne glared at him. “I do have someone to kiss, you jerk.” She grabbed Wyatt’s shirt, pulled him forward with amazing strength and kissed him hard. “See?” She glared at Jess. “I can kiss any guy in here.”
Wyatt closed his eyes for a second. That wasn’t the type of kiss he wanted. He wanted it slow and long. This felt more like he was being used.
Jess gave a hollow laugh. “Are you kidding me? You may have kissed Wyatt, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t want to kiss you.” Jess patted Wyatt on the back. “I feel for you, bro. You’re going to have a long night.” Jess stood up. “I’ve got to go find my date.” He gave Cheyanne a sloppy hug and she shrugged it off. “It’s okay, Cheyanne. Someday you’ll find your frog to kiss into a prince. Just keep trying,” he slurred. He winked at Wyatt before staggering away.
Cheyanne slapped the table. “He’s such a mean drunk. I don’t know how you put up with him.”
Wyatt rubbed his mouth. “Was that kiss for his benefit, or did you really want to kiss me?” She had stirred something in him he couldn’t identify, but he knew it went past lust.
She grinned. “Why, did you like it?”
Wyatt frowned. “Just answer the question.” He wasn’t going to play in the Jess-Cheyanne feud.
“Come on. You’ve known I wanted to do that for years, but you weren’t interested.” She ran a hand up his leg and stopped inches before his awakening erection. “Have you changed your mind?”
It would only take one movement, and he could have her in his lap, and he could be kissing her into submission. First, he had to know this meant more to her than just trying to prove a point even if the throb between his legs said otherwise.
“You’re my best friend's sister, and I’ve known you for years.” However, now he saw her as a desirable woman. No woman had flipped his heart as much as Cheyanne had tonight. “I’m not going to ruin that friendship or lose your father's respect if this is a one-time deal.”
Cheyanne leaned back in her chair. “Why does it always have to boil down to my family? Everyone is concerned what my family will think.” She frowned.
Wyatt wanted to kiss the frown away and bring back her gorgeous smile. “What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “Dean was always worried that my family would consume me, so he talked me into leaving, but when we got to New York, he changed.” She grimaced. “He became this egotistical jerk, and he didn’t think I’d fit in with my cowboy boots and western slang.” She chewed her bottom lip. “He wanted me to look like I do tonight all the time, but that’s not me.” She shook her head and sighed heavily. “My dad warned me, and God forbid he was right.”
“I’m sorry for your ordeal with Dean.” He wanted to take her hurt away.
She looked around the dance hall. “I wanted to start the New Year with a fresh start and avoid questions about Dean and me.” She played with her skirt. “He’s happy in New York and I’m happy here.”
Wyatt rubbed his lips together. “You don’t look happy.”
She gave him a weak smile. “I’ll get there as soon as this night is over.”
Wyatt wanted to wipe the sadness from her face. He stood up and held out his hand to her. “Come on.”
“I don’t want to dance anymore.” She slumped in her chair.
“We’re not.” He smiled. “We’re going to get our jackets and leave.”
She frowned at him. “Why, was Jess right?”
Wyatt shook his head. “No, Jess was wrong.” He was going to prove it to her and make this the best New Year’s Eve she had ever had. “If I’m going to give you the kind of midnight kiss you deserve, I want it to be where we’re both comfortable without anyone staring at us.” He grabbed her hand since she didn't take the hand he'd offered. “Trust me.”
She grinned. “I do.”
“We are going to bring in the New Year in style. Our style.”
“And what exactly is our style?”
“You’ll see. Come on.” 
Chapter Two

Cheyenne snuggled into the warmth of her sheepskin jacket and stared out the car window as country music floated around them. He’d stopped at his house and changed before making a quick stop at her parents’ house where she was staying for now.
The way he smiled at her and that he had been the only person to support her homecoming, made her feel like she could talk to him and he’d understand and not judge her. Still, he had been one of the many to tell her she was making a huge mistake following Dean to New York. After he heard what Dean had done to her, would he tell her he'd told her so or would he tell her father or Jess? They’d never let her forget what a mistake it had been, and she'd never be able to put her time in New York behind her. Wyatt had never been this serious with her before, and she wanted to trust him.
“You know I’ve always been a confident person. I don’t know if it was because of Dad insisting I always be strong or if Jess is right and I was just spoiled.” She turned to look at him. “Soon after we arrived in New York, Dean started to strip away my confidence with his constant criticism. First, it was an offhand comment about how I wasn’t high quality like the New York women he met. Then, he started to voice those comments in front of his coworkers at the fancy parties he loved so much. He acted like I came from the hills and wouldn’t know a diamond from a ring from a Cracker Jack box. He loved to belittle me, calling me country bumpkin and making fun of what I wore and how I talked. He became a different person from the one I knew.”
“What a frick’n jackass.” He reached for her hand and she grabbed it. “Sweetheart, you have always been strong. I remember how you used to demand Jess and I do what you wanted to do. I never want to see you be anything but the strong willed woman that you’ve always been. I think you made the right decision to come home.”
Cheyanne nodded. After the first and only slap from Dean, she had known she couldn’t stay with him. “I don’t doubt it, but it makes me angry I let him do that to me.” She played with his fingers. “I knew I couldn’t be with him anymore, so I packed my bags and took the first flight home. I didn’t even tell him, I was so furious.” She shrugged. ”The kicker is he never even took the time to contact me and ask why. I meant nothing to him from the time we landed in New York.”
“He’s a jerk and now that you’re home you can start over again.” He ran the back of his hand down her cheek. The way he touched her made her feel cherished in a way Dean never had. Wyatt turned onto a trail. The truck jostled on the bumpy road and Cheyanne tightened her hold on Wyatt’s hand. “Are we going to Gazer’s Point?”
Wyatt grinned and nodded. “Is that all right?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s the perfect spot to watch the New Year’s Eve fireworks. It’ll be nice and cozy. Hopefully with only the two of us.”
Gazer’s Point looked down over the town and had long been the hot spot for teenagers to make out. Cheyanne had never been there with a boy, yet here she was with Wyatt, her first crush. She hadn’t realized he was so sweet, but tonight he was treating her like a princess and that was just what she needed.
Cheyanne smiled because luck was on their side. The ledge was empty and they were alone. When he backed up the Trailblazer and parked it close to the ledge’s edge, Cheyanne looked at Wyatt confused. “Aren’t we facing the wrong way?” She didn’t care what way they parked as long as they remained alone. This had been her fantasy since she was a teenager, but she'd never thought it’d come true. Now that it was happening, she didn’t want anything to ruin it. She wanted the night to end just like this. With just the two of them.
He squeezed her hand and laughed. “I thought we could put the back seat down and watch the fireworks from there as we’re enjoying champagne, crackers and cheese, and sausage.”
“Champagne?” Didn’t he remember she didn’t care for champagne? It reminded her of the women he always went for - women that wouldn’t be caught dead without their high heels. She thought he had changed, but maybe he hadn’t and she still wasn’t his type. She bit her lip. “I never pictured you as a champagne kind of guy.” She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but she'd had enough champagne in New York to last her a lifetime.
He shrugged. “I’m not really, but I had this bottle sitting around and you seemed like the best person to share it with.”
She cocked her head. “How old is this bottle?”
He grinned. “Old.” He shook his head. “I picked it up years ago when I sold my first prize bull. Then you got thrown from your horse, and I volunteered to help out at the ranch while your parents were at the hospital with you. I never got a chance to drink it, so I put it on a shelf for when something else special came up.”
Warmth spread through Cheyenne’s chest. He thought she was special. She would have given anything to have this night happen years ago, before Dean. Life would have been so different if he had showed interest in her back then. “Thank you for thinking I’m special enough for you to drag out this dusty bottle of champagne, but you do realize I’m not really the champagne kind of person either, right?”
He nodded. “I figured, but I thought I’d give it a try. I brought orange juice to make it taste better.” He wrinkled his nose.
She chuckled. “Okay.”
Wyatt opened his door. “Shall we?”
Cheyanne nodded and got out of the truck. She watched Wyatt take great care laying out a blanket in the back of the vehicle. He took out a couple of long stem champagne glasses and a tray of cheese and sausage and set them in the middle of the blanket. She left him to finish and walked a few feet away from the vehicle to stare at the big wide open sky which was filled with hundreds of twinkling stars. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her sheepskin jacket and sucked in a breath of the clear mountain air. She had missed this so much. New York had been stifling with the stale smell of the subway and exhaust from the cars, with the constant sounds of honking and shrill ambulance sirens. The quiet of the mountains comforted her.
A cold gust of wind kicked up, causing her to shiver. Wyatt came behind her and put his arms around her. She laid her head back on his shoulder and rubbed her cheek against his. “It is so beautiful up here with the thousands of lights down there and stars shining up there.” She shivered again.
He squeezed his arms tighter around her. “Are you cold?”
“A little, but I like your arms around me.” She snuggled his neck. “It feels right.”
“Why don’t we get inside the Trailblazer? I have it all ready.”
Cheyanne didn’t want to leave the warmth of his embrace. Part of her felt like she was dreaming and she never wanted to wake up, but Wyatt released his hold and he nudged her to the vehicle. “Come inside out of the wind.”
She crawled inside and he put the tray of food between them. She sensed he was pulling away from her. Of course, he’s pulling away. She would never be his type anymore than she was Dean's type. She swallowed her sigh. He handed her a glass of orange juice and champagne and she took a sip to cover her disappointment. “This really isn’t too bad.”
Wyatt took a cracker and put slices of cheese and sausage on it before popping it into his mouth. “Let me know if you get too cold.”
If she did, would he take her in his arms again? “I’d be warmer if we snuggled together,” she suggested.
Wyatt fidgeted.
“Are you uncomfortable?”
He shook his head and pursed his lips.
“What’s going on, Wyatt?” He was avoiding looking at her. Had he decided he'd made the wrong decision, a mistake bringing her here? “I get the feeling you’re having second thoughts about coming up here.” She wondered why he wouldn't look at her? “Are you?”
“No, are you?” He stared into her eyes. “Are you sure you want this because I don’t want to screw anything up for you.”
“How would you do that?” His mixed signals were making her dizzy. When she came back she’d known she’d have to swallow her pride and eat crow, but tonight she had let Wyatt in on her secrets and now she wondered if that had been another mistake. “Maybe we should go.” She sat on the tailgate and shivered not only from the cold outside but from the cold inside as well.
Wyatt sat next to her rubbing his shoulder against hers. “Can’t you see how much I’m enjoying myself?”
She pursed her lips. “But you don’t want anything romantic with me.” She nodded, but refused to look into his eyes for fear of what she would see. “I know this wasn’t part of the deal.” She didn’t know why she thought it’d be any different tonight. She’d let him suck her in like a fly to a spider and she’d fallen for it. Her heart was heavy and she wanted to be alone. “I get it, Wyatt.”
“It’s not like that.” He leaned forward.
She blinked away the tears before he could see them. “We both know that if it weren’t for stupid Jess strong-arming you, you wouldn’t have taken me to the dance which led us here.” She sighed. “Let’s just chalk this up to another one of my mistakes and end this.”
“It may have started that way, but it’s been the best night I’ve had in a long time.” He rubbed her back. “Cheyanne, look at me.”
His smooth tone, like she was the most important person in the world, sucked her back in. When she looked at him, his eyes held a sadness that told her he was trying to let her down easy. “But you don’t want anything more between us.” She took a deep breath. “I feel even more stupid now.” She jumped off the tailgate and stared over the ledge at the city below. She had left a man who demeaned her only to be right back into the same situation. Except this time, it was Wyatt who she’d loved from afar, which made it hurt that much worse.
“Cheyanne, please don’t.” He came up behind her to massage her shoulders. “It’s not like that.”
She moved away, swallowing the lump of anger that burned in her throat. “You’re off duty, so you can stop with the pity.” How could she have trusted him? She had poured her heart out to him. Damn, what if he told her parents? She growled under her breath. She had wanted to forget her time in New York and start fresh.
Wyatt spun her and held onto her forearms, his jaw tight. “That’s not the way it is.”
“Then enlighten me.” She ground her teeth together.
He pushed his fingers through his hair producing a wild mess. “This isn’t a conquest mission on my part. You’re making my heart beat out of my chest and my head spin.” He grabbed her hands in his. “I never felt this way about any woman before and I’m not sure where to go with it.”
Cheyanne’s heart skipped. “Then what’s the problem?”
Wyatt released her hands. “You’re Cheyanne Bradshaw.” He shrugged. “Do you have any idea how influential your father is in this town?”
Cheyanne stared at him dumbfounded. She’d had no idea Wyatt was afraid of her father. She shrugged. ”If I let Dad run off every man who shows any interest, I’ll never be married.”
He shook his head. “He has the power to crush me, make me lose everything I’ve worked for.”
Her stomach sunk. ”What does he have on you?” Obviously it was something big to have him this frantic.
Wyatt avoided her eyes and looked into the distance instead.
She knew her father held extreme power in Red Reef, but she'd never thought he’d use it to control Wyatt. She remembered when he lost his parents at seventeen. A tornado had swept through the town destroying several ranches, but Wyatt’s ranch got hit the worst. His grandfather had been too crippled to rebuild it, and her father had taken Wyatt under his wing helping him rebuild. Anytime Wyatt needed help, her father was had been there. She'd always thought her dad considered Wyatt more of an adopted son than anything else. So what could her father possibly have on him?
“Wyatt, my father has always been there for you. I can’t imagine he would do anything to ruin you. I think you’re taking this too far.” Her father loved power, but he wouldn’t hurt the ones he loved.
He shrugged. “You might be surprised.”
Why was he being so secretive? She squeezed her hands into fists. Whatever it was, she couldn’t imagine it would be bad enough to keep him from wanting a relationship with her. Using her father as an excuse to keep her at arm’s length made her see red. If he didn’t want a lasting, passionate relationship with her, she didn’t want anything to do with him. ”I think you should take me home.”
Fireworks lit up the sky, illuminating Wyatt’s stiff jaw. She itched to touch him, to smooth away the tension. Instead, she pushed her hands deep into her jacket pockets. “Happy New Year, Wyatt.” It wasn’t the night she’d envisioned when they drove up here, but she wouldn’t let him string her along.
He looked at her with darks eyes. “Happy New Year.” He released a heavy breath of air. “Oh, hell.” He grabbed her face in his cold, rough hands and brought his lips to hers.
The kiss started out urgent, startling her. When he softened it, she grabbed his jacket in her fists pulling him closer, afraid he’d come to his senses. He tasted of smoked sausage and orange juice. As she had feared, he pulled away too soon and she tightened her grip on his jacket. He laid his forehead against hers, his breath tickling her nose.
He growled and pulled out of her grasp. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
She licked her bruised lips, the disappointment weighing heavy in her lungs making it hard to breathe. She didn’t want to hear any more excuses from him. Since he wasn’t willing to be honest with her, she didn’t want to waste another second in the cold. ”Can we go now?”
“It’s probably for the best.” He sighed. “I’m sorry…”
She held up her hand. “I swear if you say you’re sorry one more time, I’ll punch you in the gut.”
He smiled. “I bet you will.”
She rolled her eyes and got into the Trailblazer. Her eyes stung and she blinked away the tears while listening to him pack up the champagne and food. If he didn’t hurry up, she’d walk home herself. The sooner she got away from him, the better.
He got in beside her and started the truck before turning the heat on high. “Cheyanne, I wish things could be different, but I’m not in a position to give you what you deserve.”
She scoffed. “You have no idea what I deserve or even who I am. I’m not the same person that left here six months ago.”
“I know that.” His hands gripped the steering wheel.
“I don’t think you do.” She chewed the side of her cheek. “It doesn’t matter because you haven’t changed.” She shrugged. “You’re right. I do deserve better and someday I’ll get it.” She squeezed her hands into fists, her nails cutting into her skin. The pain would keep her from crying. “Please take me home so we can both forget about this disastrous night.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
The silence on the drive home almost suffocated her. She held onto her anger to help her keep the tears at bay. She’d be damned if she’d let another man see her cry. This year she was going to reclaim the strength that Dean had stolen from her and that Wyatt had finished off.
Her house was dark except for the porch light she had left on. She didn’t wait for him to come to a full stop but opened the door. He grabbed her arm and she looked down at his hand. “Let me go, Wyatt.”
“Not just yet.” He shut off the engine. “I can’t let you go until I know you’re okay.”
She plastered on a smile. “I’m great.” She yanked her arm from his grasp. “Look, we had a good time and it didn’t work out. It’s no big deal. You’ll go back to your life and I’ll continue on with mine.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
The sound of pity in his voice strengthened her resolve to shove this evening to the back of her mind and never think of it again. “I’m fine.” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself into thinking you’re that important to me.” She jumped out. “I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
“Cheyanne…”
She slammed the door shut, not wanting to hear another word. The sooner she got away from him, the better. The night was over and a new year was beginning, and she planned to make it her best one yet. Alone.