Down the block, a dog barked, another answered, and a car horn beeped twice. It was a typical summer evening, the sun lowering in the western sky, sending shadows skipping alongside Lauren.
Coming up the sidewalk to her front porch, Lauren opened her purse and fumbled inside for the key. She was tired, bone weary, and was looking forward to a long, relaxing shower before fixing something light for her supper. She opened the outside screen door, stepped onto the porch and stilled, her gaze going to her right to the porch swing hanging from the ceiling.
“Hi,” he said, coming slowly to his feet from his place on the swing.
Lauren stared at him for a moment then looked back at the street. His car was nowhere in sight. She returned her gaze to him. “Why are you here?” she asked.
He took a step forward and saw her stiffen. He stopped. “I wanted to explain.”
Lauren’s brows rose. “I’m sure you don’t owe me any kind of an explanation, Mr. Cree.” She saw him wince at her use of his formal name.
“I think I do,” he answered. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other like an errant schoolboy. “I think you’ve somehow gotten the wrong impression and I need to rectify that.”
Her gaze jerked away from him and she stepped closer to the inside screen door, put her hand on the handle. She stilled then turned her face toward him. “I don’t believe there is anything you need to rectify. I would appreciate it if you would leave now.” she opened the door.
“Lauren, please,” he begged, stepping to her in one lithe bound that surprised her with its quickness and fluid grace. He was like the cat that had passed her on the sidewalk, moving so lightly on the balls of his feet, she hadn’t heard his approach. With his black jeans and shirt, his dark hair, the image of the exotic feline she’d seen flashed unbidden across her mind.
“There’s nothing we have to say to one another, Mr. Cree,” she told him, putting the screen of the door between them. She looked at him through the mesh. “I’ve had a very tiring day and I’d like to rest.”
“Someone told you I was with a woman,” he interrupted. “Is that it?”
Lauren’s face flamed, but she continued to look at him. “Your personal affairs are none of my business.”
“Then make them your business,” he bit out. “If I could have called you, I would have. It was business, nothing more, and I wasn’t where I could get hold of you.”
A look of disbelief crossed Lauren’s face. “I don’t suppose there were phones where you were.”
His face turned bitter. “I wasn’t allowed to use the gods-be-damned phone!” he snarled. “It was a business matter, Lauren. Strictly business.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, jamming her door key into the lock. She twisted it with shaky fingers and turned the knob, pushing the heavy pine door open into the riving room.
“Will you at least let me come in and try to explain?”
She shook her head. “My neighbors are watching.”
“Then stay out here and talk to me, Lauren.”
“No,” she said. She turned to face him. “I really would like it if you’d go now.”
He reached out and grabbed the door edge. “Not until we’ve talked.”
She pulled the screen door away from his grip and hooked the latch. It wasn’t any real protection, especially against a man as powerful as she realized Syntian Cree was, but it put a barrier between them she saw that he accepted. “I told you, no.”
“At least tell me what’s made you so angry with me.” His hands were on either side of the door frame as he peered through the screen at her.
Lauren sighed. She hated confrontations. “Just go,” she asked in a tired voice. “I really don’t want to get into this tonight.”
Hope flared in his expression. “Will you have lunch with me tomorrow then?” She was already shaking her head in denial. “Why not?” His tone was more hurt than belligerent.
“Mrs. Hellstrom is coming over tomorrow. She’s invited me to lunch.” She saw his lips purse. “There’s a lot to be done at the store.”
“What did she tell you about me?” he demanded, his voice angry.
Lauren’s forehead crinkled. “Who?”
“Angeline Hellstrom.”
“Nothing,” she answered, wondering why the bookstore owner’s name sounded like a curse exploding from Syntian Cree’s lips.
“Did she tell you I was with her?”
True astonishment spread across Lauren’s face. She stared at him. Finally finding her voice, for he seemed to be waiting for her answer, she asked, “Were you?”
He searched her face. He saw the hurt, saw the tremble along her lips that she was so desperately trying to hide from him. He knew if he lied to her, if she caught him doing so, it would be the last time she’d give him the chance to be a part of her world.
“It was business,” he said in a low voice. “A business arrangement.” He shook his head. “It meant nothing to me.”
Her gaze involuntarily slid down him then moved up in shock to his face. “You’re a gigolo,” she breathed, her brows drawing together in stunned realization. Even as he shook his head at her conclusion, she nodded. “You are. That’s exactly what you are.” she watched as his face seemed to turn dark with shame and she thought she had hit upon the source of his money, his expensive car and luxurious home. What better playing ground for a man such as he than the white sands of Florida’s Panhandle?
“You are wrong,” he said.
“Were you with Mrs. Hellstrom?”
“Aye, but—”
“The entire two weeks?”
He let out an angry breath. “Damn it, yes, but let me explain—”
“Did you sleep with her?” Lauren countered, emboldened by the anger growing inside her that this man had fooled her so completely with his slick manners and smooth voice, that Mrs. Hellstrom had not bothered to tell her that Syntian Cree was off limits.
Syntian didn’t say anything for a moment; instead, he looked into her waiting face, trying with his gaze to make her understand.
“Well?” she flung at him. “Did you sleep with her?”
His voice was small, low. “Aye.”
Lauren’s face turned pale. “And she paid you for it.”
He squeezed shut his eyes as though he were in pain. “No, Lauren, no. It isn’t like that.”
“She called and you went to her,” Lauren accused. “Just like that?” She snapped her fingers. “She tells you to jump and you ask how high? Is that it?”
He flinched. “It’s not what you think, Lauren.”
She glared at him through the screen. “Does she give you money?” He was shaking his head. Her voice rose. “Clothes? Cars? Property?” Her eyes raked him with disdain. “How does she pay for your sexual favors, Mr. Cree, or is your expertise in that department gratis to any woman who wants it?”
He looked at her: at her anger flashing at him; at the way her lips were straight lines pursed tightly together; at the way she stood so rigidly behind the safety of the screened door; at the look on her pretty face that told him she would never again trust him or want anything to do with him. His shoulders sagged, his hands sliding down the wooden doorframe beneath the contempt and disgust he saw settling in her expression and he slowly shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said so softly she barely heard him. He lowered his hands from the door and stepped back. “I’m sorry I bothered you, Lauren.”
She watched him turn, push through the outside door and cut across her yard toward the street. He never looked back as he headed down the sidewalk to the streetlight. She slowly closed the door, shutting out the sight of him.
Maxine Fowler lunged out of her car and trod up the sidewalk to her daughter’s porch and snatched the screen door open.
“Lauren!” she bellowed, coming up to the inside screen and finding it locked. She rapped smartly, loudly on the doorframe. “Lauren, open this door!”
Lauren sighed, gritti
ng her teeth to the strident voice yelling at her from outside. Now was not the time for her mother to make one of her sporadic yearly visits. She neither needed, nor wanted to endure, one of the tyrannical, blistering diatribes her mother was accustomed to delivering whenever she came to call.
“Lauren!”
The screen door rattled with a vicious jerk.
“I’m coming!” Lauren called out, clenching her hands into fists as she hurried to the door. She twisted the dead bolt on the outside door, pulled the door open and reached out to flip the screen door latch off. Before her mother could snatch the door open and bulldoze her way in, Lauren turned and walked through the tiny dining alcove to the kitchen beyond.
“Where did you go?” she heard her mother yell. The sound of heavy footsteps rattled the cheap china in Lauren’s sideboard.
“I’m in here, Mama,” she managed to say through clenched teeth. She winced as her mother slammed through the swinging door from the alcove into the small kitchen.
“I want to talk with you, missy!” Maxine Fowler snapped without preamble.
“I know,” Lauren sighed, filling her teakettle with water.
“Don’t you get huffy with me!” Maxine growled. She looked around the kitchen and sniffed her disdain at the cleanliness and orderliness of her daughter’s little domain. “Show me some respect or I’ll know why!”
“Would you like a cup of tea, Mama?” Lauren asked as she placed the copper kettle on the stove and turned on the heat.
“I would like an explanation of just how you finagled your way into being given the management of the book store!” her mother demanded. “Just what did you do for Miss Whore of Babylon to warrant such a promotion, I want to know!”
A muscle in Lauren’s jaw clenched tightly as her teeth crunched together, but she was able to face her mother with a steady gaze, something she never thought she’d be capable of doing ever in her life, and explained how the job came to be hers.
Maxine Fowler’s stare narrowed into a thin slit of mistrust. “I don’t believe that’s all there is to it.”
“You can believe whatever you wish, Mother,” Lauren told her as the kettle began to whistle. She turned to pick it up and found her wrist in a vicious grip as her arm was twisted away from the stove. She yelped as the pain of her mother’s fingers dug into her flesh.
He almost turned around at the red light, almost started back to the house. The old woman’s angry, insinuating words had been enough to make him furious, but the pain she had caused Lauren had speared straight through him like an arrow. He was quivering from head to toe as the grip on Lauren’s wrist tightened and her faint whimper of hurt sliced into his brain. He glared at the little house down the block, piercing wood and stabbing through walls until he saw the scene that was playing across his vision like a motion picture. His breathing was ragged: coming in heaving gasps that pushed from him like small explosions. The heat in his face was rising along with the building rage and he dug his fingernails into his flesh to keep from bellowing out in absolute primal fury .
“Don’t you ever sass me, missy!” Maxine Fowler shouted at her daughter as she pushed Lauren’s hand down toward the floor. Her strong fingers, the fingers of a professional typist with decades of practice, gripped her daughter’s wrist in such a punishing hold she felt the bones grinding against one another. “You know better than to sass me!”
“Mama, please!” Lauren gasped, tears flooding her eyes. “You’re hurting me!”
He took two steps toward the house then stopped. If he barged into Lauren’s home at that moment, he knew he’d snap her mother’s body in half without the slightest regret. A red haze of rage was spreading around him already: a haze filled with running blood, tearing muscle and pulverized bone. It was all he could do to stay where he was, his temper like a white-hot probe jabbing into his being. He opened his mind, let the force inside him that had controlled him for centuries reach out, gathering, bringing together the elements around him, coalescing the vibrations humming through the air into one direct beam of concentrated design.
Maxine Fowler smirked with satisfaction. She shoved Lauren away from her, smiling as the young woman came up painfully hard against the porcelain of the old Youngstown sink and slid down to the red and black asbestos tile floor, cradling her injured wrist in her right hand. She was looking up at her mother with shock. She whimpered and flinched as her mother bent over her.
“Don’t you ever sass me again, Lauren. Do you hear me?”
Lauren nodded. As her mother straightened and moved away, Lauren breathed a sigh of relief. She pushed herself from the floor and stood uncertainly next to the sink.
Maxine reached for a napkin and blotted her perspiring upper lip, unaware that a malevolent force was building outside.
He could not harm the old woman, but he wanted to. He wanted to hurt her as she had hurt Lauren. Not enough to cause serious damage, but enough to revenge the pain the old woman had caused. But there was something he could do and his eyes flared with vindictiveness. His thoughts, his powers spiraled together into a thick mass of anger then turned to heat .
“Now,” Maxine stated, pulling out one of the vinyl chairs of the red chrome dinette set. She sat down and regarded her daughter. “What else is that witch having you do for her?”
Lauren’s shoulders sagged. “Mama, please. I just manage the bookstore. That’s all.”
Maxine snorted. “For now, maybe, but that whore will be sending you men callers. You mark my word!”
He stopped, the heat of his building revenge glowing around him like a mirage. He listened, heard the words as clearly as though he was in the room, and the power of his anger changed, shifted subtly, and he smiled so evilly the birds in the branches above him flew away in sudden alarm .
“It’s not like that!” Lauren cried. “Mrs. Hellstrom’s not like that!”
“Don’t you tell me what that bitch is like,” Maxine Fowler said. “I’ve known her a lot longer than you, missy. I know how she gets her money, don’t you think I don’t. And don’t you think the whole town don’t!” Her gaze narrowed. “All them old men she marries up and die in a year or two. Don’t leave their money to nobody but Angeline Hellstrom, neither.” She sniffed. “Wouldn’t surprise me none if the bitch don’t kill ‘em. You remember that Judy what’s her name what murdered her son on the Blackwater, the one they call the Black Widow? That’s what Angeline Hellstrom is as sure as I am standing here! She kills them old farts or gets one of her men to!”
“Men?” Lauren asked. A surge of unease shot through her belly. “What men, Mama?”
His mind released the hold he had on his anger, sending the sustained effort of his thoughts directly toward the little house midway the block. He folded his arms across his chest and watched as the revenge he had formed slid unerringly toward the woman who had caused it.
Maxine Fowler waved a hand in disdain. “That bitch has every swinging dick in this county and five others slobbering after her. She can get ‘em to do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do.” she tapped her index finger on the tabletop. “The woman is a witch!”
“Mama.” Lauren sighed, more than aware of her mother’s propensity to call any woman she didn’t like a witch. “Mrs. Hellstrom’s been very good to me.”
“She wants something from you,” Maxine interrupted. “And to get it, she’s gonna put temptation in your path, missy. You mark my words!”
“What kind of temptation, Mama?” Lauren sighed again. She became aware of the shrill shriek of the teakettle boiling away on the store. After an uneasy glance at her mother, she reached out to take the kettle off the stove with trembling fingers.
An undulating wave of heat passed through the screen mesh of the porch, wafted under the doorjamb and slithered along the floor to the kitchen door. It slid unseen under the base of the door and wafted toward Maxine Fowler.
“She’ll send a man,” Maxine Fowler prophesied. “A man who’ll be just too good to be true.” She w
atched her daughter carefully for any hint that just such a thing had already happened.
Lauren put her back to her mother as she poured the hot water into the cup with its tea bag draped over the side. Her heart was hammering in her chest and she knew if she were to turn so her mother could see her face, the older woman would know there was a man who had already entered Lauren’s life.
The wavering movement reached the chrome legs of the dinette chair in that Maxine sat and slithered up one shining surface. Where it passed, the metal turned hot with an alien heat that gave off no color or sense of warmth .
“That man will woo you, missy,” Maxine crooned in a smirking voice. “He’ll tell you how pretty you are and how much he likes you.”
The heat crawled up under Maxine’s flowered dress and onto her thigh, curved over it, slid down between the crease where her thighs touched and spread its ghostly tendrils under the leg bands of her panties. It reached out to touch her then oozed through the crisp curls of her pubic hair and entered her .
Maxine drew in a shuddering breath. She seemed to lose her focus, her body tensed, and she became aware of an infused heat inside the little kitchen. Absently, she reached out and put her hand on the table and began to rub her palm across the red Formica top of the table. Her voice changed, became softer, dreamy.
“He’ll put his hands on you, his body against yours.” Her eyes, intent on her own reflection in the gleam of the Formica’s surface, had become glazed as she spoke. “He’ll kiss you so deeply you’ll think your soul will be drawn out through your mouth and into his. His tongue will slip down your throat and his manhood will leap against your belly like white heat.”
Lauren, her face red, turned around to stare at her mother. There was a look unlike any Lauren had ever seen on her mother’s slack face. Maxine Fowler’s pupils were dilated, fixed on something Lauren couldn’t see. Her right hand slid off the tabletop and fell to her lap where it began to twist in her lap, her fingers gripping and pulling at the material of her dress, inching the fabric up her thighs. There was such naked hunger in her mother’s face. It sent a shiver down Lauren’s spine.
NightWind 1st Book: HellWind Trilogy Page 11