by Leslie Kelly
She supposed she ought to thank the aunts for one thing: they’d made finding out she was adopted a bit more bearable. She’d taken the news from her parents shortly after her twentieth birthday with surprising good grace. Surprising to them, she supposed. Considering she’d long wished she didn’t share the blood of the aunts, the news hadn’t been all that unwelcome.
Over the years, though she and her parents had lived in Connecticut—not too far away—the visits to Trouble had been few. Until a little over a year ago when her father, after having a massive heart attack, had elicited a promise from her to take over the care of his elderly sisters. She’d promised, of course. She would have promised him anything at that point.
Her father had, thankfully, survived and he and her mother had retired to North Carolina last fall. But because he’d been so weakened by the experience, Jen had insisted on keeping her promise. She loved him too much to allow him to deal with the old witches on a regular basis. That was exactly the kind of stress his doctor said could end up killing him.
Taking over the aunts’ mangled finances, she’d made sure their electricity remained on and their account at the grocery store was paid. Ida Mae and Ivy supposedly had money, each having been widowed by wealthy men—Ivy under suspicious circumstances.
But they were miserly and kept whatever they had well hidden. So it was a good thing Jen’s first two satirical advice books had exploded in popularity: she was supporting the pair.
She sensed her father wouldn’t be happy about that, but she didn’t want to bother him with it. Besides, what else did she have to spend her money on? It wasn’t as if she had a husband and kids. And though she liked nice clothes, she couldn’t see paying a fortune for them. She hadn’t wanted to give up the same rent-controlled apartment she’d been living in since she’d gotten her start as the “Single in the City” advice columnist at Her Life magazine fresh out of grad school. So her living expenses hadn’t gone up after her unexpected success.
And, the aunts lived in Trouble, Pennsylvania, which wasn’t exactly on the top-ten list of towns with a high cost of living. She wasn’t sure it would even hit the bottom ten, since it was a town only by the loosest definition of the word.
Still, she was paying the bills, which was why she’d come on this most recent trip. The aunts were both in their seventies, Ivy so frail she looked as if a falling leaf could knock her down. Jen wanted them to move out of their dangerous, death-trap old houses and into an assisted-living facility where they could torment professionals, rather than each other.
Preferably one far away from New York City.
The minute she’d mentioned the possibility, however, they’d made their position clear. They’d tricked her out of her shoes, out of her car, and stranded her in the middle of nowhere.
“Guess they didn’t like the idea,” she mumbled as she followed the dark, sexy stranger who’d come to her rescue.
“What?” asked the dark, sexy stranger in question as he came to an abrupt halt in front of her.
She almost walked right into him. Except she somehow didn’t, mainly by sticking her hand out so it landed hard on his back, sending him stumbling a step forward. “Sorry.”
“At least you didn’t knock into me with the hand holding the deadly weapon,” he said as he turned around to face her.
Though from some men the comment would have sounded teasing, he sounded very serious. As if he’d wondered if he’d been exposing himself to danger by walking in front of her…As if she might have cracked him over the head and stolen his car.
“I’m really not dangerous, you don’t have to be nervous about giving me a ride,” she said, trying to ease his worries.
Finally, a twinkle appeared in those dark, dreamy brown eyes of his, which indicated the man might actually know how to express good humor beyond that half cough, half laugh he’d let out earlier. “I’m so relieved.”
“I was mumbling about my aunts,” she said, wondering why she suddenly felt flustered.
“Talking to yourself, then?”
Again that twinkle appeared, and she wondered if he was laughing at her. But before she could decide, he swung around and started walking again, leaving her flustered. It was an unaccustomed feeling. And an unwelcome one.
Then she gave herself a break…. How could she not be feeling a little flustered when, for the first time in months, she’d met a very hot guy who didn’t want to throw her in front of a train because of the books she’d written?
A hot guy. Oh, yes, indeed.
Her aunts had consumed her thoughts, but nothing could stop the genuine, feminine response to a man like this one for long. Walking behind him, she couldn’t help noticing the way the man filled out his jeans. Perfectly.
A great male tush was probably the only thing that could distract her from the dark emotions she’d been having about her aunts, and she enjoyed the view during the last few steps to his Jeep. He was, quite simply, magnificent, from the tips of his jet-black hair to the bottoms of his feet.
She didn’t see a lot of sexy, rugged males these days, not since she’d left her columnist job at Her Life to focus on her books. The last two new men she’d met had moved into her apartment building in recent weeks. One, old Mr. Jones, looked like Frankenstein’s sidekick, Igor, and had already been over to borrow everything from the phone book to toilet paper.
Fortunately for anyone he might call, he hadn’t seemed to need them both at the same time.
But at least he wasn’t downright slimy. Unlike Frank, the new super hired by her landlord. At their first meeting, he’d made some pretty revolting come-on suggestions involving his tool belt, some chocolate syrup and a tube of lubricating jelly.
When he’d found out she was a published writer, Frank had started scheming. Claiming his grandfather had been somebody famous once, he swore he had tons of stories he could tell her. She, he proposed, could write the stories and they’d split the money fifty-fifty, getting rich together.
Uh…like she hadn’t heard that before.
But things hadn’t gotten really bad with Frank until he’d recognized her from the picture on the back of her latest book. All pickup attempts had ceased as he’d proceeded to blast her for making his last girlfriend dump him. It seemed the woman had grown a spine. Or some good taste. Or just a distaste for chocolate syrup and lubricating jelly.
Despite having a romantic track record that made Bridget Jones’s look stellar, Jen didn’t long to be standard bearer for hard-ass women. But if her books helped one woman decide to ditch a pot-bellied, greasy-haired guy with onion breath and jeans that hugged the crack of his butt, she figured her job had been well done.
Of course, she’d had to live with leaky pipes, stuck windows and a broken ice maker for the past few months. Not to mention hate mail and, recently, some disturbing phone calls that had forced her to have her phone number changed. Twice.
Despite what some men thought, Jen’s sarcastic books were meant more as black-comedy satires than advice-for-women pieces. Erma Bombeck with snark. Dave Barry with cattiness. That was what the reviewers said, anyway. Even with a master’s in psychology, she’d never set herself up as some kind of marriage counselor. The books were the result of letters she’d received from readers of Her Life, battle stories from friends and coworkers.
And her own experiences with men she’d dated, including four straight Manhattan losers interested only in money until 6:00 p.m. and only in sex until 6:00 a.m.
Women’s romantic misery was, after all, a universal, timeless theme. She’d even included some of her crazy old relatives’ tales. Aunt Ivy was a font of information regarding the battle of the sexes…and if some of the stories were true, she’d been a lethal weapon during that battle for many years.
But some men just had no sense of humor and didn’t get the joke. Probably, despite that tiny twinkle, like this one. The one whose jeans rode his hard body perfectly, hugging lean hips and enfolding some strong male thighs in their faded blu
e fabric. Those flinty brownish-black eyes might have shown a tiny hint of humor, but his short, barked laugh really hadn’t. It had sounded creaky, as if it didn’t get much use.
Nope, not much of a sense of humor here. Just as well. A jolly disposition wouldn’t go with that rock-hard jaw, wide, tightly controlled mouth and his thick, dark hair cut short and spiky. He looked like the type who should be dressed in army fatigues, holding an AK-47, blowing up buildings on a big screen at a movie theater. Tough enough to be dangerous…Sexy enough to be the next box-office action hero.
With about as much personality as a two-dimensional character. He was so sure of her he didn’t even wait to see if she was coming. Nor was he courteous enough to offer her any help. Her feet could be bloody stumps for all he knew.
This guy obviously hadn’t learned charm from his very eccentric grandfather, who’d been so gentlemanly he’d make a young Cary Grant seem like a bum. And to hear her aunts talk, he was just about as sexy, too.
Don’t go there, a voice in her head screamed as she remembered some of the innuendo the women had dropped after their meeting with Mr. Potts. She did not want to know what went on in the Feeney sisters’ bedrooms, especially since seeing the Kama Sutra sheets in Ida Mae’s washing machine.
Jen didn’t know which bothered her more—the idea of Ida Mae and Ivy sharing a man. Or the thought that her seventy-something-year-old relatives were getting it—wildly—while she hadn’t had even the most basic, boring, twist-push-thrust missionary sex in so long her diaphragm probably no longer fit.
“Buckle up,” her reluctant rescuer said as she got in the Jeep, casting a quick glance at the mixed-breed dog sprawled on the back seat. The animal barely lifted his head in greeting.
Man’s best friend was just as polite as the man in this case.
“Don’t worry, he’s friendly.”
Right. Just like his owner.
“The worst he might do is drool on you.”
Her pretty new Saks sundress was already windblown, grass-stained, and dinged with the gravel and road dirt her car’s tires had flung at her as she’d tried to chase down her aunts. A little dog drool probably wouldn’t hurt much.
“What’s his name?” she asked, mainly to fill the vehicle with conversation as they started to drive toward town.
“Mutt.”
“Mutt,” she repeated. “That’s all?”
The driver shrugged. “I tried other names. It’s the only one he even remotely answered to. So it stuck.”
Wonderful. A guy so cryptic and self-contained he couldn’t even be bothered to name his dog. Good thing he wasn’t in the running for Mr. Personality. And good thing she wasn’t in the running for a man. Uh-uh, no way.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like men—despite her books, she did like them. She especially liked having sex with them. Not that she’d had any recently—like, since her first book had been published and her then-lover had read it. He’d been out the door before she’d done her first book signing. Which had also been one of her last book signings considering the number of men who’d shown up to yell at her for ruining their formerly docile girlfriends and wives. Or shown up to make her see the error of her ways by using smarmy charm to try to pick her up. Ick.
That had been two years ago, and since then, the former Single in the City girl hadn’t had as much as a date. But she sure had made friends with the UPS delivery woman who regularly brought the plain brown wrapped packages Jen ordered from sites like havesexalone.com.
Not that it mattered. Her life was too full to deal with any more complications…male ones in particular. Especially moody, six-foot-two piles of hotness like the one sitting beside her. Whether sex with another person was involved or not.
She just couldn’t afford any distractions, not today when she was involved in World War III. Because they might have won the first skirmish by leaving her out here in the middle of nowhere and stealing her car. But when she found Ida Mae and Ivy, the war was really going to begin.
CHAPTER TWO
Widows get to wear black…which is so much more slimming than divorcée red.
—Why Arsenic Is Better Than Divorce by Jennifer Feeney
THOUGH HER SISTER WAS ENTIRELY convinced they’d taken care of their “little problem,” Ivy Feeney Cantone Helmsley—now just Feeney again—was still hiding.
Ida Mae might think they’d put a stop to the schemes of that girl, but Ivy wasn’t so sure. Despite not being a true Feeney—not one by blood, anyhow—the girl had shown some surprising resilience and spunk over the years. Ivy should know…she’d tried to break the child more than once. But the stubborn chit had kept coming around.
So Ivy wasn’t taking any chances. Which was why she was skulking, alone, in her basement. This was her regular hiding place, her security zone. She felt safe here, with Daddy clutched in her arms. Well, half of him, anyway.
“Force us out of our house,” she whispered, keeping her voice nearly inaudible. “She thinks she can make us leave our home? Well, she’ll have to find us first, won’t she, Daddy?”
That wouldn’t be easy. The one place the girl had always been frightened of was this cellar. Ivy couldn’t see why. Personally, she found the dankness of the musty, cavernous room completely comforting.
She supposed the girl’s fear could have something to do with the fact that she’d been locked down here for a few hours when she was ten or eleven. Ivy didn’t regret shutting her in. The little sneak had needed a lesson, and no real harm had been done, even if Jennifer’s father, Ivan, had read Ivy the riot act over it.
Funny…the girl had later stepped forward, telling her father she might have twisted the lock on her own, by mistake. Ivy had almost liked her that day, as much as she could like any nosy intruder. That was saying a lot since Ivy didn’t like many females, her sister included most times. Plus, her young niece had always been much too pretty for Ivy’s liking.
Ivy was the pretty one in the family. She always had been.
But she didn’t like the girl today—or trust her. Which was why she remained hidden.
Here in the dark, oblivious to the dampness of the rough stone walls, Ivy was free to look at her treasures without fear of interruption. Not from the girl, not from the girl’s parents, not even from Ida Mae.
If Ida Mae suspected what was hidden beneath the stairs, she might force her way down them. Which was why Ivy never let on that this was where she kept her most prized possessions. Let Ida Mae think they’d all been burned up in the fire that had killed Ivy’s husband and destroyed their home up in New York City back in sixty-six. Ida Mae didn’t have to know all her secrets.
To this day, Ivy remained frightened over just how close Ida Mae had come to finding out the most important one. Over a year ago, her sister had stumbled upon Ivy’s most precious container. When Ida Mae had seen Mama’s old knitting box in Ivy’s room, she’d demanded to know how Ivy could still possess it when it should have long since ceased to exist.
Ivy had had to protect the box and the secrets it contained, fighting Ida Mae with all her strength in order to do it. Then, though it had nearly killed her, she’d sent the knitting box away, far from Ida Mae’s prying eyes. Because her sister, too, knew the secret of the box, and she would easily find that which Ivy had for so many years concealed. And might try to force Ivy to destroy it, to protect that secret.
How ironic that she’d given her greatest treasure to the safekeeping of the very girl she now wanted to murder. Jennifer.
Ivy had actually entrusted the case and its precious cargo to Jennifer last year when her niece had been working on one of her books. The combination of her desire to hide the case from Ida Mae and her own vanity—since Ivy had been thrilled to think of her story immortalized in print—had made her entrust the container to Jennifer’s young hands.
Right now, she was angry enough with the girl that she wished she’d never given it to her. “No, no, not safe,” she reminded herself.
She didn�
��t fear Ida Mae. Ivy had felt a strange presence lately, as if someone had been in her house, touching her things. She’d been hearing whispers of people who couldn’t be there, seeing odd shadows on the floor. Finding things moved or missing. Getting calls from hateful-sounding strangers. So though she didn’t like to admit it, her most important possession was still safer with Jennifer.
Unless, of course, she and Ida Mae decided to kill the girl, in which case Ivy would still get her box back, since she, alone, knew where Jen had it hidden in her apartment.
“There’s still the rest,” she whispered, sitting in her usual spot and gazing across the basement as she so often did.
Every day, while her sister was next door taking her nap, Ivy would visit her past in the cellar. She’d lovingly open the sealed plastic bins and unwrap her treasures, one at a time. Like her photo albums. Her autographed LP’s from her favorite stars like Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens.
What an almighty crime that they’d all three gone down in a blaze of glory at the same moment. If any of them had been clients of her first husband’s, she’d have suspected him of tampering with the small plane they’d been traveling in. Such things weren’t, as she knew, beyond producer Leo Cantone, whose soul had been darker than Ritchie Valens’s thick, black hair.
Ivy thrust off the thoughts of Leo, whom she’d once loved, then grown to hate, and stroked the urn holding her father’s ashes. Well, half his ashes. Since the dust-up over Ida Mae’s hiding him in a sugar canister last summer, filling his real urn with ashes from her charcoal grill, Ivy had insisted they split him rather than passing him back and forth. She liked to think her half included Daddy’s big, strong arms and hearty belly laugh, but not his black, cheating heart, which had been the reason Mama’d probably killed him.
The women in her family could never abide cheaters. Or abusers. But especially not cheaters.
“My lovely things,” she whispered. Ivy longed to creep over there and open them, to lose herself in the images of her youth. Like the framed, autographed photo of her standing on a stage, flanked by Frankie Avalon and Bill Haley after one of Alan Freed’s rock-and-roll revues at the Paramount. Or the newspaper clipping showing a laughing, soaking-wet Ivy in a slinky gown rising out of a fountain after a party at the Ritz. A snapshot of her doing the twist with Leo at the Peppermint Lounge, him only as tall as her forehead, though seeming bigger because of his money and his presence.