Whispers

by Lisa Jackson

  Harley didn’t respond, just glowered at Weston as he tugged thoughtfully on his lower lip. “Can’t seem to make up your mind between Kendall or that Holland girl.”

  “Her name’s Claire.”

  Weston’s grin twisted a bit. “I gotta tell you, I don’t know what it is you see in that one.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “She’s pretty enough, but she doesn’t have the ass or the tits of her sisters. Not worth tossing over Kendall Forsythe. Now Kendall, there’s an interesting one . . .” He leaned forward a bit. “. . . I’ve heard that her cunt is like hot honey—sticky, sweet, and moist.”

  Paige gulped.

  “She doesn’t let just anyone get into her pants, either, so consider yourself one of the chosen few.”

  “Shut up, Wes.”

  “I’d give half my trust fund just to see if it’s true. But I didn’t come looking for you to discuss your love life.”

  “Good.”

  “Dad’s going to the attorneys’ office in the morning and redraw his will.”

  “So—?”

  “He’s not happy that you’re consorting with the enemy, so to speak. It could cost you.”

  “He can go to hell.”

  Weston shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you? You could be cut out of millions because you’re obsessed with Claire Holland.”

  A muscle worked in one corner of Harley’s jaw, and he had the decency to look awash in guilt. Good. He deserved to feel lower than a slug’s belly.

  “You know, I understand your fascination with becoming the rebel and dating the daughter of Dad’s enemy, but you’d better learn to play your cards right. Your timing’s all wrong. I’m telling you, Dad will cut you off.”

  “So what do you care?”

  “Me?” Weston’s lower lip extended thoughtfully. He shoved a hunk of shiny hair from his eyes. “I don’t really give a flying fuck what you do.”

  “Then why’re you here?”

  “I don’t like any of us being duped by the Hollands or anyone else for that matter.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Claire Holland has you wound around her finger so tight it’s turning red and threatening to fall off.”

  “Bull.”

  “Get smart, Harley. It doesn’t help any of us if you look like a lovesick, pussy-whipped fool.”

  “What about you and Crystal?”

  Crystal Songbird? The Indian girl who worked for the Hollands? Weston was dating her?

  “Crystal’s safe.”

  “Why?”

  “She knows all I want is a good lay. Nothing more. She’s willing to give it to me.”

  “And what does she get out of it?”

  “Besides the best sex she’ll ever experience? Trinkets.”

  “Trinkets?”

  “You remember, like the beads that were used to buy Manhattan? I buy her earrings and clothes and whatever she wants.”

  “She’s your whore.” Harley’s voice was filled with disgust.

  “Don’t let her hear you say that. She’s part of a very proud people, you know.” Weston’s laugh was nasty.

  “Proud enough that her old man would probably cut off your balls before he scalped you. You’re sick, Weston.”

  “No, Harley. Just smart. Crystal’s a good choice. Not because she’s a descendant of the local chief, but because she’s poor. You’ll find that women without money are willing to do whatever you want just for a few nice words and a gift or two. Poor women are simple.”

  “Christ, Wes, that’s pathetic.”

  “It’s the way the world works.”

  “As I said before, you’re sick.”

  “Not all of us can be monogamous, Harley. In fact only a damned few of us feel the need to be that noble. You, apparently, are . . . right?” There was enough guileless innocence stamped over Weston’s face to suggest that he was tormenting his younger brother in his own unique way. “You’re true to Kendall, I mean Claire.”

  Paige tensed.

  Harley seemed to have had enough of his brother’s advice—bad or good. Red-faced, he turned, but not before Weston caught his arm. “Hold on a minute. I didn’t mean to insult you, not really. I even understand about the Holland girls being fascinating in the forbidden fruit kind of way, and once the old man changes his will and I know my inheritance is secure, I might just want me a piece of Holland ass myself.”

  Harley yanked his arm from his brother’s grip. “Stay away from Claire.”

  Weston rubbed his chin and his eyes narrowed. “How about a wager?”

  Harley’s expression was incredulous. “You want to bet?”

  “Mmm. That I can get one of the Holland girls to bed before the end of summer.”

  “Leave them alone.”

  “All of them?” One of Weston’s eyebrows rose a fraction. He loved a challenge. “Don’t tell me you’re banging all the sisters,” he accused. “Wouldn’t that get old Dutch’s goat if all of his precious daughters were fucking a Taggert?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The old man. He would absolutely piss his pants, wouldn’t he?” Weston’s grin was pure evil and Paige realized again what a mean bastard he really was. His sexual fascination with the Holland girls bordered on sick, but then that wasn’t really a surprise.

  Harley lunged, reaching for Weston’s neck, but he missed as Weston sidestepped him, grabbed an arm, and twisted it around his back, causing Harley to grimace in pain. “Don’t be greedy, Harl. There’s more than enough Holland cunt to go around.”

  “You’re a perverted bastard.”

  “Probably. It runs in the family, though, doesn’t it? At least I’m not swearing undying love for Lady Claire while balling Kendall out in the woods.” He shoved Harley away, and Harley stumbled against the rail. Shadows from the branches overhead crossed his face.

  Paige’s stomach turned. Poor Kendall.

  “You’ll get yours,” Harley warned.

  Weston laughed. “I hope so. And yours as well. Wouldn’t it be something to be able to say that I’d gotten three pieces of Holland ass? I wonder what old Dutch would think about that?”

  Disgust and humiliation contorting his features, Harley walked under the deck’s overhang and out of Paige’s view. “Watch your back, Wes.”

  Paige heard the sliding door whoosh on its track only to shut with a hard thud that shook the house. He was such a wimp! He should have punched Wes’s lights out for all his comments about Kendall. Weston was one of those egomaniacs who Kendall said thought with their dicks instead of their heads. Squinting against the afternoon sun, Weston slowly lifted his head and before Paige could duck inside, his gaze touched hers. “Get an earful?” he asked, clucking his tongue and shaking his head as a malicious grin stretched wide across his face. “Vicarious thrills, Paigie?”

  Paige wanted to tell him to go to hell, but she knew better, had seen the blistering side of Weston’s anger more than enough times. As a younger boy he’d beaten the tar out of Harley, lured squirrels with peanuts only to shoot them with slingshots, and kept track of how many cats, raccoons, and possums he’d killed with his car. Weston had a mean streak that ran deep and scared Paige. Rather than dig herself a deeper grave by arguing, she slid down the wall, her cheeks burning. He’d known she was listening all along, and he’d ridiculed Harley anyway. Her fingers curled against the baseboard.

  “You know, Paige, eavesdropping can only get you into trouble. ’Course that’s probably what you want, isn’t it? Some kind of trouble to liven up that dull life of yours?”

  She swallowed back the urge to cry. How many times had he humiliated her while she was just a pudgy kid who thought her older brothers were gods? Well, she knew better now. Weston was a cruel son of a bitch and Harley—he needed a spine transplant in a big way.

  She heard Weston’s laughter, aimed straight at her, and she cringed inside. She knew that she was often the butt of his jokes, had seen his friends try to repr
ess grins when Weston had whispered something ugly and they’d all turned to look at her, realized that he was saying filthy things about her. Just a few weeks ago he’d even made the comment in her earshot, that she was probably the reason his father had strayed. Neal had taken one look at his pathetic daughter and decided never to risk having any more kids with Mikki, so he’d started “screwing around.” Weston’s friends, college men who had once been members of Weston’s high school football team, didn’t know that Paige was hovering on the stairs, listening to them as they played pool in the basement recreation room. They’d laughed at her expense and one of them had made some comment about how no boy would ever want to get into her pants and fuck her unless he put a bag over his head first.

  Paige had slunk up the stairs and cried for over an hour, her only retribution being to steal a sick porno movie that Weston had hidden in the bottom of his athletic bag, under his football shoes. Paige had swiped the tape and left it where her mother was sure to find it. There had been hell to pay and Mikki had smashed the tape with Weston’s favorite golf club, then broke the pitching wedge for good measure.

  Paige had, in her own way, triumphed. She’d learned over the years how to deal with her perverted older brother, but never before had his poison extended to Kendall. Now that Weston had targeted her, things had changed.

  And Kendall might be pregnant.

  Gnawing on her lower lip, Paige scooted to the far side of her room where her stuffed animals, legions of them, stood guard in a built-in cupboard. The largest was a panda bear that flopped over in a little chair. Paige slid her hand behind the panda’s back to a small slit in a seam behind one black leg and there, buried deep in the stuffing, she felt the cold hard muzzle of a small gun, the pistol she’d swiped from her mother’s room weeks before.

  She’d been snooping in Mikki Taggert’s bedside table when she’d come upon the gun, tucked beneath tissue boxes, sachet packets, a bundle of sickening old love letters, and two pairs of reading glasses. At the time she didn’t know why she’d felt a need to own the small weapon that seemed forgotten, though loaded.

  Paige had felt a thrill at the pistol’s cold touch, a sensation of power she’d never before experienced. At that moment, she knew that gun had to be hers. Over the years she’d stolen other items, a ring from Nana when she was still alive, a key chain from a local store just to see if she could shoplift and not get caught, a lighter from Harley, a tube of lipstick from Kendall, but never a weapon. This was different. She fingered the smooth barrel a second, licked her lower lip, then propped the panda back in his chair.

  She had no use for a gun. No need of a weapon. No reason to keep the little pistol, but, she decided, hearing the rush of the river slicing through the canyon and smelling the acrid scent of smoke as Weston lit up, hell would freeze over before she’d give up the gun.

  For the first time in her miserable life, Paige Taggert felt as if she had the upper hand.

  Eight

  If he had any brains at all, he’d leave her alone. The Hollands were trouble, and Kane didn’t have to look any farther than his old man to see what could happen if a person were to become involved with them. Squaring a chunk of fir on the old stump he used for splitting kindling, Kane raised his ax, swung down hard, and cleaved the wood into two pieces that spun onto the ground.

  Sweat ran down his back and his shoulders began to ache, but he picked up another piece of green wood and settled it onto the stump. Pa’s old dog gave a halfhearted woof from the front porch as the mail truck slowed at the end of the lane.

  “Go fetch the mail!” Hampton, unshaven, his gray hair down to his shoulders, rolled his wheelchair onto the porch, sending the old hound through the rails as he grabbed the cane he left near the door and pounded on the ancient floorboards.

  With a final swing of his ax, Kane split the knotty fir and headed off to the main road. Today was the fifth of the month, just about time for the monthly anonymous check to be waiting in the box. He felt his father’s gaze, angry and unforgiving, boring into his naked back and heard the slap of the arthritic dog’s gait behind him. Hampton’s jealousy was an emotion he didn’t bother hiding from his son.

  “You’ve got two strong legs,” he often said, glowering from the confines of his wheelchair, his eyes red from drink. “Get me another bottle.” Or, on other occasions, he’d be more scathing. “If I still had my legs, I’d do twice the work you do around here, boy.” Then there was the maudlin. “I loved her y’know, your ma, that is. Loved her more than any man has a right to love a woman, but I wasn’t good enough. Not without my legs. Nah, she didn’t want to be married to a cripple. Would rather be a rich man’s whore.”

  Kane gritted his teeth time and time again and suffered his father’s insults because he felt sorry for the old man who was forever reliving the accident that altered the course of his life.

  “It’s all Dutch Holland’s fault y’know. The cable snapped on my harness while I was topping up on the south ridge. Faulty equipment, if you ask me, and that paltry little settlement wasn’t enough.” Hampton had stared across the lake to the Holland lodge, always lit like a damn Christmas tree. “Him and all his money. Fancy wife and three snotty-nosed girls. And what do I get out of workin’ my butt off for him, eh? A broken back, a pissant parcel of land, and this!” he’d said, banging his useless cane against the metal frame of his wheelchair. “I hope Benedict Holland roasts in hell.”

  It never ended, Kane thought as he opened the mailbox and disrupted an industrious spider trying to spin a web in the shade between the box’s flag and latch.

  The envelope was there. Flat and thin, it was tucked into a stack of bills that would probably go unpaid for another forty-five days. But tonight Hampton Moran would dance with Black Velvet and tomorrow he’d get drunk with Jack Daniel’s. By Wednesday he’d be back to his cheap rotgut, which would last until the fifth of August.

  Kane scooped up the mail as the hound sniffed in the brush. It was time to leave Chinook and a thankless father. He lifted the envelope to his nose, hoping for the scent of perfume or the faint whiff of cigarette smoke, anything that might remind him of his mother, but smelled nothing. Scowling, he set off for the front porch, knowing full well that he’d have to help his dad to bed tonight.

  “Come on, boy.” He whistled to the dog and knew that Pop was right about one thing. Benedict “Dutch” Holland was one miserable son of a bitch. But that bastard had somehow sired the most interesting girl Kane had ever met.

  Something was wrong. Claire could feel it in her bones; hear it in the words Harley hadn’t said. Hanging up the phone in the front hallway, she felt empty inside and wondered, not for the first time, if her sisters and father had been right in warning her against dating him.

  “Trouble in paradise?” Tessa asked as she breezed toward the stairs. A Diet Pepsi dangled from her fingers, and her skin was tanned and oily from the past two hours sunbathing near the pool.

  “Everything’s fine,” Claire muttered, irritated that her sister seemed to read her thoughts at all the wrong moments. The house smelled of Ruby Songbird’s barbecue sauce, and she could be heard humming while working in the kitchen.

  “Is it really, fine, I mean?” Tessa’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “You know I saw Harley with Kendall the other day.”

  Claire’s heart sank, and she wanted to scream at Tessa that she was lying, but she bit her tongue. “You did?”

  “Mmm. Down at the marina. If it’s any consolation, it looked like they were fighting, but they were definitely together.” She took a swallow from her soda and continued up the stairs, nearly running into Miranda at the landing.

  “Are you giving her a bad time again?” Randa asked, eyeing Tessa with the older sister glare Claire recognized. It had been focused often enough in her direction.

  “Just a little advice.”

  “Maybe she’s had enough.”

  Claire couldn’t believe her ears. Randa was always worrying that her younger sist
ers were flirting with danger, that they didn’t use the brains God gave them, that they were forever getting themselves into trouble. Today she seemed carefree as she slipped down the final few steps. Dressed in shorts and a sleeveless top, she had a beach bag slung over her shoulder. Peeking from the open bag were a beach towel and her dog-eared copy of The Clan of the Cave Bear.

  Tessa leaned over the rail from the stairs above. “I just think that if Claire’s going to date one of the Taggert boys, she should concentrate on Weston.”

  Miranda stopped dead in her tracks. “You’re kidding.”

  “No way. Weston Taggert’s everything Harley’s not—hand-some, athletic, sexy—”

  “—trouble of the worst order,” Miranda filled in through suddenly tight lips.

  “Maybe I like trouble,” Tessa teased, lifting her soda to her lips and drinking.

  “Not his kind. I’m not kidding, Tess.”

  “You don’t even know him.”

  Miranda flushed. “He’s a bastard with a capital B.”

  “Oooh,” Tessa said, grinning that she’d managed to goad ever-cool Miranda.

  “Believe me, he’s bad news.”

  “Oh, that’s enlightening!” Tessa took another pull from her drink.

  “Harley’s a sweet kid,” Miranda clarified, touching Claire on the arm. “If you like him, okay, I can maybe understand it, even if dating him is a big hassle here in this house, but Weston . . .” Her eyes, cold as an arctic sea—found her youngest sister. “He’s the worst kind of trouble a woman could possibly find. It has nothing to do with Dad’s stupid feud.”

  “So look who’s suddenly the goddess of love. The one of us who doesn’t date.”

  “Low blow, Tessa,” Claire said.

  “Well, it’s true.” Tessa leaned over the rail, her breasts propped on the smooth banister, the fingers of her free hand clinging to the carved wooden bear standing on a nearby post. “What would Randa know about men, or boys, for that matter?”