She felt it her duty to try to reason with him. “I don’t think you should go in there.”
“You stay in the car, honey. It won’t take long to look around. I’ll be right back.”
As she grudgingly watched him walk up to the front door, she put a shaky hand on top of Pepper’s head. Feeling seven years old again, she told the dog, “He’ll be sorry he went in there, won’t he boy?”
The minute Jake stepped inside the marble entryway, a creepy feeling he couldn’t explain hit him in the gut. Closed up now for almost two weeks, the house smelled musty. As he looked around at the furnishings, the whole place seemed as if it lacked any kind of warmth.
But right away he saw evidence that someone had definitely tossed the place. He examined the front door, found no sign that it had been tampered with, nothing to indicate anyone had gained entry by any other means than using a key. He made a mental note to check the other doors before he left.
Every stick of heavy furniture in the living room and dining area had been set off to the side of the rugs, as though the intruders had been looking for something in the floor—like a floor safe maybe.
The condition of the house told him they hadn’t found what they’d been looking for either. After stepping around overturned furniture, he headed in the direction of the kitchen. Here every drawer, every cabinet, even the pantry had been ransacked. They’d opened cereal boxes and strewn food all over the kitchen floor.
After checking the back door and the doors leading to the terrace and finding no broken locks, no forced entry, he went back to his original assertion.
Whoever had done this must have had a key.
From the kitchen he used the back staircase leading to the second floor. Once he got to the landing, he began mechanically checking out each bedroom one room at a time. He found each one in as bad a shape as the rest of the house. They’d left no stone unturned when it came to their search.
Inside the master bedroom he noted the cleanup crew had done a half-assed job after the murder. Here, the pale Berber carpet still held that unmistakable brownish stain where blood had congealed.
Staring at the crime scene now took him back to another time, another place, when he’d walked into another bedroom, the one that had belonged to Claire when he’d found her bloodied body. And it suddenly hit him that there was no way Kit could have walked into this house and dealt with this particular scene.
Under his breath, he cursed Connor Boyd for sending Kit back here. What would have happened if she’d come upon this room by herself?
Ten minutes later, he again stood in the center of Alana’s overly-decorated French living room, surrounded by what he was pretty sure used to be ugly Louis XIV antiques. It looked as if someone had taken an instant dislike to her taste in furniture and hacked each piece apart before scattering the contents throughout the room.
Back in the car Kit fidgeted, checked her watch every few minutes, and decided Jake had been in there a really long time. When Pepper started to whine, she realized the dog needed a potty break. As she cut the Jeep’s engine and opened the door, she watched as Pepper sprinted off and immediately hunkered down on the lawn to take care of business. Kit shook her head and muttered, “Alana sure wouldn’t have liked that.”
After locking the front door, for all the good it did, Jake found Kit and Pepper standing on the front lawn about forty feet from the car. The first thing he thought was that she’d overcome her panic attack and left the car. That was a good thing. But the minute he approached her, the minute she heard his footsteps and turned to look at him, he knew something was wrong. She had that distant look in her eyes that he’d seen so many times in the last couple of weeks, but this time it was as if she really were physically faraway from him.
And it scared the shit out of him.
“Kit, are you okay?” He felt stupid asking. He knew she wasn’t. He could see it for himself. “I don’t think Alana would be too happy if she could see the house now. They trashed the place pretty good.”
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I don’t care what they did to it as long as I don’t ever have to see it again or go inside again. It’s a shame they didn’t burn it to the ground, don’t you think? It would have looked so much better in ashes or rubble. They could start over then. The new owners could build something new from the ground up, something suited to a family, a real one.”
“Well, it’s your house now, Kit. You can...”
But she didn’t let him finish. She whirled to face him. “You just don’t get it, do you? It’s not my house. It was never my house. Growing up here…” She caught herself. “Yes, it appears I’m going to end up with it after probate. They’ll force me to take it. But it’s not my house. It was never my house. Living here was never a home, more like prison.”
Jake reached for her, and placed his hands on the small of her back, gently nudging her toward the car. “We need to get out of here.” He directed her in the general direction of the car. “Coming here wasn’t a good idea.”
But walking toward the car also meant walking toward the house and all at once Kit stopped and turned to face him. This time with more control, in a level voice, without emotion, she said, “You want to know what happened here, Jake. Where should I begin? How about when I was very small and Alana bought me a playhouse. It had wonderful toys inside: a tea set, cute little furniture. It’s my first memory.
“Any little girl would have loved a playhouse like mine. And I did until she locked me up, locked me inside and wouldn’t let me out, wouldn’t let me out to eat or go to the bathroom. That playhouse became a prison, my personal little-girl prison when I was no more than three. And it was just the beginning of things to come. Any time Alana wanted me out of the way or wanted to punish me for some reason, she’d lock me inside my playhouse. Sometimes I was there for a really long time. It happened over and over and over again. So many times, I can’t count. Do you know what it’s like to be locked inside a small space, unable to get out to use the bathroom, or to get something to eat when you’re hungry? I’m convinced there were times when she forgot I was there. It might be a paradise of a playhouse on the outside, but inside, it was a cell for a little girl.”
Her voice caught before she continued. “But it didn’t take long for me to outgrow my playhouse, and when that happened, I was locked in an upstairs closet, Alana nicknamed Kit’s Closet; I was in the dark for hours; sometimes, depending on her mood, it was for more than a day without food or water, unless, of course, the housekeeper or the cook would hear my kicking and screaming, take pity on me, and sneak me something to eat.
“Come on Jake, this is what you want to know, isn’t it? You want to hear all of it, don’t you? Would you like to see the closet just off the alcove upstairs where Alana locked up her willful daughter to keep her in line more times than I care to count?” She moved past him toward the house, “Let’s go take a look at the upstairs closet for old time’s sake. How about it? Let’s go back inside.”
Before she took another step, Jake grabbed her arm. “Honey, look at me. Look at me, honey. It’s okay to get angry. You can be goddamned angry at Alana for what she did to you.”
As if not hearing him, she went on, unemotionally. “Then there were all the beatings, the broken bones, the bruises; let’s skip all that boring stuff and just fast forward to when I was twelve. One night she and my father were arguing. My father had told me he was finally taking me away from here, finally getting me out of the house. So I went upstairs to pack. But I heard them arguing, and I knew I needed to intervene because he’d promised me many times that he would take me away from here but for some reason he always ended up backing down, giving in, always, always leaving me here. I remember thinking, please don’t change your mind this time don’t leave me with her again. So, I came into the room, and I saw that Alana had a gun. I heard her tell my father that she’d see me dead before she’d let him have me. When Alana saw me in the doorway, she turned around with the
gun, faced me, aimed it directly at me, and then deliberately pulled the trigger. But as I watched her aim, I turned at the last minute and the bullet went into my shoulder, my upper arm.” Absently, her right hand moved up to her left shoulder and she rubbed the spot as if it still hurt.
“A twelve-year-old girl sees her mother intentionally point a gun and fire at her because she’d rather see her dead; I can still hear the gun go off, remember the sound it made, the searing pain, all the blood. I woke up in my own bed. She’d paid a doctor to come to the house.
“Of course, my father was nowhere in sight. That was the worst part, you see, about that night, my father leaving me here with Alana…again. That hurt far more than the bullet ever could.” A sob broke out of her throat. “I left this house at sixteen and I want no part of it now.”
Jake brought her into him. He stood there with his arms wrapped tightly around her. She was trembling again so hard her teeth chattered. The realization hit him that it was better she got all of that out of her now with him rather than with St. John. They stood there like that until Jake said, “Kit, I’m sorry you had to go through all that. Do you feel better talking about it?”
“No. Do you want to get away from me now?”
“I don’t understand?”
“Leave. Do you want to leave?”
He started closing the distance to where the Jeep was parked, walking her toward the car once again with his arms wrapped around her. As they got closer to the car, however, she stopped and said, “No, I mean hearing all that—don’t you want to leave me? You can’t possibly want to be with someone like me.”
He stood there smiling, and tucked several strands of hair behind her ear. “Honey, I want to be with you for as long as you’ll have me. Hearing all that stuff once, we never have to talk about it again unless you want to.”
“Okay.”
She’d thought once he found out he wouldn’t want her. Her revelation had shaken him right down to his soul, but for her sake, he tried to appear outwardly unaffected.
For a long time, he simply held her, trying to get his bearings. He wanted to ask the question, but fear had him holding his tongue. He wanted to ask the question that nagged at him. Was there more? What else had she suffered in this house, at the hands of Alana or rather, at the hands of one of Alana’s special friends? He wanted to ask the question, but didn’t dare, couldn’t.
He’d wanted her to tell him, confide in him, hadn’t he? Was he really prepared to hear the answer? And what would he do, could he do, if there was more? But now he racked his brain to think of some way to get her to switch gears, get her mind off the humiliation of what she’d told him, if only briefly.
He picked the silliest and most stupid thing he’d ever done as a child and gave it life, hoping it was enough. “Now it’s my turn to tell you something about my childhood, something embarrassing, something no other living soul knows.
“One summer night when I was nine, I was bored with nothing much to do. So I got on my bike, rode down to the square in this little town where we lived at the time. I ended up behind Chang’s Cleaners & Laundry. There was this mass of lint behind the building. I mean a huge ball of this stuff just sitting there waiting for a dense kid like me to come along with matches. Yeah, I was carrying matches—had considered I might try cigarettes at some point, but anyway, I had matches on me. I got curious wondering if this huge ball of lint would catch on fire. So, being the inquisitive and slightly stupid kid I was, I lit a match and threw it into this enormous ball of lint. I waited around but nothing happened so I lit another one and then another. After I’d tossed in close to six matches I waited around, but still nothing. I thought, okay, lint doesn’t burn. Bored, I hopped back on my bike and rode down the alley the way I’d come and the next thing I knew, I heard sirens, fire engines approaching from several different directions. The police showed up and everyone was rushing over to the dry cleaners. I rode my bike back up the street and watched as the firemen donned their equipment, pulled out their hoses to fight the fire that I’d started. It took three engines to put out that fire. Lucky for me, no one got hurt because Chang’s had been closed for several hours. I set fire to a dry cleaners, almost burned the place down. It was the last time I ever set fire to a bunch of lint and the last time I ever played with matches.”
Kit grinned at the stupid story. “No one found out it was you?”
“Nope. I was so ashamed I never confessed. You’re the first. And now you know I was an arsonist at nine.”
His story had gone a long way to take the edge off her abysmal tale. Grateful, she said simply, “Thanks Jake. I needed that.”
He kissed the top of her head; let his hands wander down to her waist and up her back before bringing her mouth up to meet his. Her lips parted, and he felt her melt into him. His body reacted as it always did. “I like you better naked.”
Kit pushed back long enough to catch her breath and look into his eyes. “Your car or mine?”
His eyebrows went up in mock surprise. “I liked it when I woke up this morning and you were exploring my body. Anytime you decide to ravage me in my sleep, or get carried away, which brings up…We haven’t talked about birth control...”
He saw her visibly pale.
“Oh. Well. I can’t be a mother.”
Jake’s heart skipped a beat. He wanted to make sure he’d heard her right. “You can’t get pregnant?”
“No. Well. No. Not that. Well. I don’t know. I mean...I just can’t be a mother.”
He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “Why do you say that, Kit? I’ve seen you with Sarah. You look at her as if you want one of your own.”
“Well…I…just because I want a baby…doesn’t mean… Sarah goes home at night…and I…I just don’t think…I just can’t…be a mother.”
He set her back from him to look directly into her eyes, but she dropped her head, wouldn’t meet his. He lifted her chin up, forcing her to look at him. He kept his gaze locked on hers, until she finally said, “Okay. What if I…I might…I might turn out…I might be mean like Alana. Abuse usually cycles. And I’d rather die than be like that.”
“Oh, honey.” Pulling her back into his chest, he told her, “Stop that. You’re nothing like Alana. You couldn’t hurt a child. I’ve watched you with Sarah. I’ve only seen two other women, my sisters, care for a baby as well as you care for Sarah. And Kit, they’ve both been mothers a long time.”
He thought of something and asked, “Kit, how long have you had Pepper?”
Puzzled at the change of subject, Kit tightened her brow. “What? How long? Well. Almost six years. I took him from a puppy mill when I was a sophomore in college. I don’t mean I stole him or anything. The SPCA busted this puppy mill and they had all these different kinds of puppies that were in really bad shape. It was on the news. Pepper was one of the puppies that almost didn’t make it. He was really sick. That’s why he isn’t exactly the brightest bulb on the tree. We weren’t even supposed to have dogs in our apartment, but I wanted Pepper so much that Baylee helped me sneak him in, and when Pepper needed to go out, we’d wrap him up in this old blanket we had and take turns carrying him up and down the stairs so the neighbors wouldn’t know we had a dog. But then the apartments got new owners and…”
Jake listened patiently letting her rattle on in typical Kit-fashion until she’d finished with her story, and then said, “See Kit, you can’t even stand to see a dog mistreated. In the six years you’ve had Pepper, how many times has he peed on the carpet and you beat him for it.”
Appalled, Kit put her hand to her mouth. “I’ve never hit Pepper; not once, not even when he did worse than pee on the carpet. And it was quite a challenge getting him housebroken since he isn’t the smartest dog. I never…I wouldn’t do that.”
“See, you treat your dog better than Alana treated you. And let’s not forget about Baylee. Her childhood was abusive, maybe not like yours, and yet it didn’t stop her from having a child. She has
Sarah now. She’s a good mother from what I’ve seen. You’d be a great mother, Kit, and don’t you believe otherwise.”
“You’d trust me to care for a child.”
“In a heartbeat.” And then he brought her into him and crushed his mouth to hers, gave her a searing kiss. As his hands moved from her waist, down to her rear end, more solemnly, he whispered, “I love having my hands on you.”
“I love feeling your body on top of mine, feeling the weight of it on me.”
Getting seriously aroused now, he countered with, “I love being inside you.”
“I love having you inside me, coming inside me.”
Hot. It was suddenly very hot.
Just as he unbuttoned her jeans, a car pulled into the driveway, parked behind his Mercedes, putting an end to the moment.
Reluctantly, quickly, he buttoned her up, and stared down Connor Boyd, who looked like a late-thirties carbon copy of his younger brother, Collin.
Even when the man walked up to where they were standing beside Kit’s Jeep, Jake never dropped his arm from around Kit’s waist, and she didn’t bother stepping back.
“I didn’t know you two knew each other,” Connor lied.
“Yeah, we get that a lot,” Kit said to Connor in an amused tone, though her eyes never left Jake’s.
Still staring at Connor, Jake said flatly, “You shouldn’t have suggested Kit come back here, Boyd. What I can’t figure out is why you wanted to meet with her, here of all places, specifically today. What did you want?”
A sheepish look crossed his face. “She needed to check the place out, protect her investment. Think ahead about what needs to be done to put the house on the market. I am, after all, the attorney of record handling Alana’s probate.”
“Screw this house, screw probate. You sent her to a recent crime scene by herself without so much as preparing her for what she might find inside.” He finally let go of Kit long enough to open the Jeep’s door, called to the dog to jump into the front seat ahead of her, and said to Kit, “Are you okay to drive?”
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