We grabbed beers and headed into the den to the pool table. He took a cue down from the wall and handed it to me, then grabbed one for himself.
“Have you played before?”
I nodded. “A few times. All badly. I barely understand how it works. There are stripes, solids, and an eight ball, and we hit them in the pockets, right?”
He laughed. “Something like that,” he said, taking a sip of his pale ale and setting it down on the table. He removed his tux jacket and his tie, and tossed them on a chair in the corner of the room.
“Wait. You’re already taking off your clothes?”
“Consider it my handicap,” he said, then racked the balls.
He explained the basics to me, and I quickly processed them, since rules and games made fast sense to me. My challenge lay in the execution. I wasn’t known for my coordination.
Still, I was determined, so I pulled back the stick, stared at the ball, aimed squarely, and missed it by a mile. I laughed and brought my free hand to my mouth. “Oops.”
Then I removed an earring, tossing it on his pile on the chair.
“Want me to show you how it’s done?”
“I do,” I said, and he moved to my side of the table, behind me, then pressed his hand on top of mine, his chest along my back. As he positioned the cue just so, I felt him grow harder. I wriggled my rear as he shot the ball.
And missed too.
“Hey. Take off your shirt,” I said playfully.
“That wasn’t my shot! I was helping you set up.”
“Fine. Help me again,” I said in a flirty tone, and he lined himself behind me once more. I couldn’t resist. Screw pool. I dropped the stick, shoved all the balls randomly around the table, then turned around in his arms and laced my hands around his neck. I moved my lips to his ears. “You win. Strip me.”
He wasted no time, unzipping my dress in a flurry and leaving it a silky puddle on the floor. I backed up to the table and perched on it. “Show me where you’d touch me to land the shot.”
He gripped the back of my head, and whispered roughly in my ear, “Everywhere. Every-fucking-where on your perfect body.” And then he proceeded to do just that, teaching me pool in a whole new way.
60
Sophie
He was too cute to resist.
The way he wagged his tail and dazzled me with his puppy-dog eyes melted me.
“Fine, you win,” I cooed, kneeling to scratch Johnny Cash’s soft white chin. He lifted his snout for me, letting me rub him. When I rose, I reached for his leash from a hook by the front door.
I spun around, hunting for a key, and found an envelope with my name on it by the door. “Aha,” I said, like a treasure hunter who’d found the X marking the spot. Inside was a key and a short letter. Ryan had had to leave early, much too early, this morning for his drive to Hawthorne, and had insisted I stay and sleep in. I’d leave first thing tomorrow for Germany to pick up my long-awaited Bugatti, and we’d be a bit like ships passing in the night, so I loved that he’d left me my first real note from him. I unfolded the sheet of lined white paper.
By now, Johnny Cash is probably trying to convince you to take him for a walk. Please don’t feel that you have to give in, even if he bats those big brown eyes. He is a well-trained boy, and he will be fine inside the house during the day. Just take the key, and lock the door behind you.
Oh, I suppose this would be a good time to let you know that this is your key. I have nothing to hide from you, and my house is your house. If you feel like going for a swim, the fence is high enough that the neighbors won’t see you if you swim naked. If you do that, though, it would be great if you could send me a photo, as I think a shot of you in my favorite outfit would do wonders for me.
Also, I want to see you before you leave, but I don’t know when I’ll be back. I promise to call when I’m done, and then I’ll come see you, no matter how late it is. Because I can’t stay away from you, Sophie. I swear, I can’t.
I’ll be thinking of you. I’m always thinking of you.
Always . . .
I grinned wildly as my heart beat like a hummingbird’s wings. I tucked the note inside my clutch purse from last night. Smoothing a hand over the pink cotton of my sundress, I was grateful that I’d left this outfit behind last weekend, because it was far easier to walk a dog in this little number than in my violet evening dress. I had no change of shoes, though, so I’d be walking him in my Louboutins.
I shrugged happily. So be it.
I lowered my shades over my eyes, opened the door, then locked up behind me. Johnny Cash trotted happily by my side for the next twenty minutes as I click-clacked around Ryan’s neighborhood, soaking in the wide lawns, the gorgeous houses, and the palm trees that were ever present in our desert town. My skin heated up from the hot morning rays, and my shoulders started to bake. The dog panted heavily, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. When I returned to Ryan’s block, I spotted a young man walking up the steps to his house. The guy was wearing jeans and a red T-shirt. He knocked on Ryan’s door, then shifted back and forth on his feet.
He glanced around, scanning the porch, tapping his feet as he waited.
Odd. I tugged the dog closer to me.
As I neared the house, the guy was fidgeting, his right hand rubbing up and down his left arm, which was covered in tattoos. He sighed in frustration, then muttered something under his breath. His jaw was unshaven.
I narrowed my eyes.
Was he a neighbor? A deliveryman? He didn’t have a box or package with him. The pool guy? No supplies in his hand.
He turned and walked down the porch steps, heading to the sidewalk.
I flashed back to last night, to those names, to the details my brother had shared. Gangs, brokers, getaway drivers. My pulse jumped. Was he one of those guys?
Oh God. My skin prickled with fear.
Wait.
My logical brain took over, and I talked myself down. The people John was looking for were older—much older than this guy who barely looked old enough to drink.
Still . . .
His eyes were on his car, and I followed his gaze to a tan Buick parked in front of Ryan’s home.
Recognition kicked in. I remembered who he was. I’d seen him, and his car, at the community center.
I breathed more easily now.
I reached the walkway to Ryan’s house at the same moment the young man arrived at the sidewalk. I straightened my spine as a flurry of nerves skated over my skin. I was grateful to have the dog by my side. The collie’s ears pricked up, and he went on canine alert.
But I wasn’t entirely sure that I needed protection.
Something about his brown eyes seemed almost . . . hopeful. He kept running his palm up and down his arm. A nervous gesture perhaps?
He stopped short when he saw me. Classic deer in the headlights.
“Good morning. Were you looking for someone?” I asked, opting for directness.
“I’m looking for Ryan Sloan. Is he here?”
“You just knocked on his door,” I said, pointing to the house. “It seems he’s not in. But would you like me to pass on a message to him?”
He shook his head. “No. I’ll stop by another time.”
He turned toward his car, gripping the handle.
“Wait. I’ve seen you at the community center. Playing basketball,” I said, trying to figure out who he was. “Why are you looking for Ryan?”
“I need to talk to him.” He opened the door and got into his Buick.
“What’s your name?”
But he didn’t give me his name. He yanked the door shut and took off.
Johnny Cash and I waited until the guy’s car disappeared around the corner. My heartbeat slowed down, and I patted the dog on the head, glad I’d had a companion. I had no idea what to make of that young man. Why on earth would he need to talk to Ryan? Then it hit me. He might not be TJ or Kenny Nelson, but could he be related to one of those men? A son perhaps?
/> A chill shimmied through me.
When Ryan returned from Hawthorne, I’d tell him he’d had an unnamed visitor. For now, he had more important matters on his mind. Once inside his home, I locked the door, then checked again to confirm it was closed, then checked once more. I peered out the living room window, making sure the guy hadn’t circled by again. The street was quiet. I called a cab and headed home.
Today was not the best day to go skinny-dipping.
61
Ryan
Surprise her.
That was my strategy. It was a tactic I’d relied on in the military from time to time, and my mother needed to be treated like the enemy today with a sneak attack.
She was always most vulnerable when she didn’t expect something. As I turned into the parking lot, showing my ID at the gate, my stomach churned. I hated manipulating her like this, but I’d spent the drive fortifying myself, talking back to my fears, and kicking them aside.
Today I was on a mission, and my one and only goal was finding the facts.
Once inside the visiting room, after a hug and a hello, I launched into one of her favorite topics: the soap opera General Hospital.
Her green eyes lit up. Yup, that did it. Like a fisherman casting a rod, I’d dropped the lure in the water. She was the fish taking the bait.
She chattered on about the show, and because I had listened to a soap opera podcast on the five-hour drive, I was up to speed on which long-lost twin had reappeared, who had been kidnapped and sequestered away in a mansion, and who was pregnant with a secret baby.
Soon she was laughing, and I’d done it—I’d lulled her into a false sense of security. Tension curled through me, but this was the only chance I had to shock her into revealing the truth. I reached into my pocket to remove the pattern subtly. Under the table I unfolded it. Then I laid it on the wood surface, jammed my finger against the center of the paper, and interrupted her.
“Who are TJ and Kenny Nelson, and why are their names hidden in a code inside your prized dog jacket pattern?”
62
Dora
Shock.
It radiated through my brittle bones.
It swelled in my chest.
Those names.
God, those names.
All those names haunted me.
Was he truly saying them?
Names I only muttered at night when I couldn’t sleep.
My jaw dropped, my eyes widened, fumbling over my words. “What did you just say?”
Ryan was resolute, his eyes like bullets. “Mom, I know what this is. Don’t lie to me now. Please, God, after all I’ve done for you, don’t lie to me now.” He sounded so desperate. My sweet baby was so desperate. “Who are they, and what role did they play in my father’s death?”
“I don’t know.” I dropped my gaze to my hands, twisting my fingers together.
“You do, Mom. You do. You gave me this pattern; you asked me to keep it safe. I did that.” Exasperation seeped into his voice now. “I believed it was some kind of sign of hope for your future,” he said, brandishing the paper, faded and wrinkled from age, the thing I’d asked him to protect. “I kept it safe for you. I was even going to have a friend make the damn jacket for you as a gift, to cheer you up. But when she did, she figured out it wasn’t a pattern. It has addresses in it, and those addresses correspond to names, and one of those names is the man doing life for murder, and two of the others might be the broker and the getaway driver in the crime.”
I blinked, willing my face to remain stony.
My son pressed on. “Those other two names match the initials you told me last time I was here, when I asked you who Stefano’s friends were who were looking out for his son. You asked me if they were TJ and K.” He leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms out wide in a waiting stance. “The initials all line up. Talk to me, Mom.”
But talk?
How could I?
That’s what I wasn’t supposed to do.
I pursed my lips and squeezed my eyes shut. Sucking in all my own secrets and holding them in with my breath.
63
Ryan
I huffed through my nostrils. Enough. This was fucking enough. I wanted to slam my fist into the wood. To knock the damn table over on its side. To throw things. But I wasn’t that kind of a man. I didn’t do that on the ice, and I didn’t do it here. Violence begot more violence. Fear spawned more fear. I had to rely on my head and my heart.
“Don’t you dare shut down on me again,” I seethed, the words curling out of my mouth like hot smoke. “Don’t you try that routine with me. I have a right to know what I’ve been carrying around for you. It’s not a secret anymore. The pattern was made. The names are revealed.” I thumped my fingertip against the table. “Jerry. TJ. Kenny. They were in your pattern, Mom. Yours.” I pointed at her for emphasis. “I want to know why the addresses, and therefore the names, of those men were hidden in there. Because for eighteen years, you tricked me into thinking this was special to you. I kept it safe. Because I fucking love you, Mom.”
My throat hitched, and wild tears threatened to rain from my eyes. I stopped speaking, pressed my thumb and forefinger over the bridge of my nose, and pinched, keeping them at bay. “I love you, and I love Dad. I came to see you all the time, even when I was in college and when I had leave from the Army. I’m the one. I came here. I saw you. And I have been a messed-up son of a bitch most of my life because of this. Please, I’m begging you. Tell me something.”
My mother parted her lips and bit nervously on her thumbnail. Her eyes welled up. “Ry,” she whispered, like a fearful creature. “They told me not to say a word about anything. That’s why I gave it to you. To get rid of it. To hide it.”
I knit my brow. “Who? Who told you not to say a word?”
“Those men.”
But that didn’t add up. “Why didn’t you just tell me to throw it out?”
64
Dora
I glanced from side to side then under the table, checking for spies, for bugs. You never knew who was listening. Leaning across, I lowered my volume, whispering the truth. The truth was messy. The truth was I messed up. “I thought I’d gotten rid of that stuff already,” I admitted. I thought I’d gotten rid of all of it. “But then the cops came, and I still had it, and I couldn’t have you throwing out something the cops might think was evidence.” My lips quivered as I remembered those times, remembered how I’d tried then to protect him. “I didn’t want to put that on you, or make you responsible for that. I had you keep it, knowing no one would ever look inside my sewing pattern.”
His face pinched. “You played me for a fool.”
Tears welled, and I nodded, shamed by what he’d said. I had. I’d tricked him but only because I loved him, and all my other babies.
“Why? Why did you have it in the first place? Why did you put their addresses in there?” he asked, pressing on like a cross-examiner.
I twisted a strand of my hair back and forth, tight against my skull. A hard reminder to keep most everything inside. Most. “They were just my notes. That was all. They were notes about who I was meeting, and I was taking on so much extra sewing work to pay off my debt, so I wrote things down on my patterns.”
He huffed, his voice intense. “But this wasn’t on a pattern. It was in a pattern. It was part of the pattern.”
“I know,” I said through gritted teeth. “But I didn’t want anyone to know I was meeting them.” I dropped my forehead in my hands and hissed, “About the drugs. And I told you why. I wanted to try to stay quiet about the drugs in case I ever got out, and I fought so hard to have my conviction overturned.”
Ryan heaved a sigh. “You put their addresses in a pattern because you were meeting them about drugs, Mom? C’mon. Why would you do that?”
My jaw was set hard, because I had my reasons. Dear God, I had them. “I told you. I wanted to keep you all safe from them. I had to protect my babies. I had to.”
He stabbed
his finger against the table, pushing, pushing. “So you put the info about Stefano’s accomplices in a pattern to fucking protect us? You told me not to say anything about the drugs because you were trying to get out of here, but then you hid their addresses in a pattern. Something doesn’t add up.”
I flinched at his assessment, but didn’t answer, then brushed something off my shoulder. Lint. Were they doing my clothes wrong too? All I had to wear was orange—the least they could do was wash it without getting lint on it.
“Or was there something else going on? Did they have something else on you?” Ryan asked, and my sweet boy sounded like he was grasping at straws. Like his life was at stake if he didn’t know why I had to shield all those names so much.
I covered my eyes, giving him the truth. “I was scared. That’s why I hid the info. That’s why I didn’t want anyone to know the addresses and who I was meeting.”
He kept pushing, kept going, insistent, so insistent. “Why? What did they have on you? Why were you so afraid of them? What did you have to hide? What was so important about those names that you asked me to hide this pattern? Because if it was that goddamn important, it sounds like it was more than drugs. It sounds like you gave me your own notes for planning a murder. Is that what it was? Was this your goddamn blueprint?”
My Sinful Desire (Sinful Men Book 2) Page 24