by Jule McBride
She glanced at him. His shoulders and chest were the color of dark chestnuts shining under sunlight, and a tangle of hair she knew to be as soft as spring rain ran between his pectorals like a blond river. Darker blond whiskers roughened his strong jaw, making him look rangy and dangerous.
Joanie had planted her manicured hands furiously on her hips, stabbing her own skin with the squarish opal-colored nails. Her lips were pursed tightly, while the nostrils of her straight nose flared as if she’d smelled something foul.
“I should have known,” she muttered, shifting her gaze to Ariel. “It’s not even him.” The woman was shaking with rage, from head to foot, and the controlled sound of her voice was probably the most frightening thing about her, since she was hovering on the edge of violence. Ariel could only pray her relatives or a guest didn’t hear her.
“Keep your voice down,” Ariel urged.
“Where is he?” Joanie demanded, looking around, clearly not intending to go anywhere.
“What?” Ariel managed to say, annoyance coursing through her as she followed the other woman’s gaze. Joanie was looking around, as if she expected to see her husband come from the bathroom or leap out of the armoire.
As Ariel forced herself to get up, she said, “Do you really think I’m entertaining two men up here?”
“I know damn well you are,” Joanie charged, her flashing eyes piercing Ariel’s. “So does everybody in Bliss. The news of how you were skinny-dipping with him yesterday at Panty Point is all over town. He went back to his office dripping wet.”
Ariel knew defending herself was useless, but she decided to try for once. “He wouldn’t leave me alone, and I pushed him into the spring.”
Joanie rolled her eyes. “We all know what you are.”
What you are. The words reverberated, feeling like slices of a knife. “He’s not here,” she ground out. “He’s never been here.”
She wouldn’t have let Studs Underwood in the door, unless it was to question suspects about the missing recipe book, and he hadn’t even done that. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have let his boot heel defile the floor of the place she called home. More than anything, she’d never wanted her relatives to know the extent to which she’d been ostracized. And yet, even though that had been her choice, she’d resented their lack of intervention, too. Because deep down, she guessed she really hadn’t thought they would know how to help. They were so naive. So schoolmarmish.
The few incidents she’d mentioned, they’d pushed aside, as if to say they were inconsequential. Besides, they’d always thought her so perfect. They couldn’t imagine anyone mistreating the girl they loved so much. They’d just thought her a loner, the same as them, and had assumed she’d loved her chosen freedoms—the hours of riding and drawing. And, well, of course she had.
And anyway, what would they have been able to do? Sell Matilda’s house, pack up and leave their home of so many generations, just to get her out of Bliss? Fat chance.
Joanie was glaring at her. “When did he leave?”
“He was never here.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“He wasn’t here,” Ariel repeated.
“We both know he was.”
There was something lethal in Rex’s voice that got Joanie’s attention. “You’re the sheriff’s wife. Is that right?”
She drew herself up to full height. “I am.”
“Your husband’s not here. He hasn’t been here. He’s never going to be here.” He eyed Joanie a long moment, then added, “If he lays a hand on Ariel, I’d probably kill him. Now, get out, lady. You’re ruining my morning.”
“Oh,” Joanie said lightly. “I can see that. It looks as if you two have been having a grand old time. Just the kind Ariel has always shown the boys.”
Thankfully, Rex heeded Ariel’s warning glance. She wouldn’t have a man defending her. She didn’t need that. Still, when Joanie leaned and lifted the scarf that had been tied to his ankle, it was tempting to give Rex the go-ahead.
Staring down at the scarf, Joanie rubbed it between her fingers and thumb, then she let it drop as if it were something dirty. With that one gesture, she seemed to sully everything Ariel had shared with Rex the night before, but Ariel continued to bite her tongue, knowing that what the other woman wanted most was for Ariel to become hurt and defensive.
Slowly turning, she sent Ariel a pointed parting glance over her shoulder, as if to say the scarf had said it all.
Ariel felt emptied out inside, and worse, when her eyes trailed Joanie’s retreating form to the door, she saw Great-gran, Gran and her mom huddled in the doorway, standing so close together that they might have been one person, all wearing white aprons over uncharacteristically bright floral-print dresses. Before Ariel could contemplate that, they separated, just long enough to let Joanie pass, then huddled back together like a football team after a particularly difficult play.
“We heard a ruckus,” Gran said weakly when Joanie was gone, her hair in disarray, as if she’d come running fast. She was pressing one hand to her heart worriedly and, in the other, she held a wooden spoon splattered with pancake batter.
Great-gran nodded, and Ariel’s heart wrenched. She was the spitting image of Gran, a petite woman with wrinkled skin and a ramrod-straight posture, except that with greater age, she’d shrunk, becoming even shorter. She was wielding a spatula. Probably, they were still cooking breakfast. She’d grabbed a broom for good measure. “Why, Ariel, we thought maybe some of the guests were having a fight,” she offered, her china-blue eyes widening as they focused past Ariel’s shoulder.
“We thought some sort of domestic violence might be happening,” added Gran with concern, speaking the phrase domestic violence as if she’d only known that to exist on other planets before today, certainly not in her home.
Ariel’s mother’s eyes were also fixed on the great beyond, and Ariel was hardly going to turn around. She just hoped Rex had pulled the covers over more of himself than the square of lap he’d covered for Joanie.
“Are you all right?” her mother asked.
She managed a nod, her eyes skating to a dot behind her mother’s head, avoiding her gaze. The witches of Terror House had never been forthcoming with regard to personal relations, especially not when the questions involved intimate relations with men. And if they had been, Ariel suddenly fumed, then finding her sexual self would have been much easier. She’d have come into her own sooner in life and without so much unnecessary pain. Maybe, like Joanie, she’d have been married years ago and had kids. She wouldn’t have felt so much career pressure, to succeed and prove herself. Oh, she wasn’t given to blaming others. She believed in taking personal responsibility, and she always would. She even owned up to her worst choices. In, fact, she especially owned up to her mistakes. But in this one area…
All the fantasies she’d had twenty-four hours ago about dating her boss, Ryan, dislodged from her mind entirely. They seemed silly and juvenile compared to what she’d experienced with Rex last night and the complexities of her past in Bliss.
“Please,” she suddenly muttered, speaking with uncharacteristic anger. “Can everybody just please leave?” When her relatives actually looked at Rex, as if she’d meant him, she clarified, “You.”
Shock and hurt appeared on their faces, and suddenly, Ariel was seized by another bout of pique. She was tired of the lies and secrets she associated with this place. As far as she was concerned, everybody in Bliss except her needed to have their heads examined. She couldn’t get back to Pittsburgh fast enough.
Yes, that’s what she needed, a gritty steel town without illusions. Everybody lied here, whether it was Studs, who kept pretending she was in love with him, or the women she’d lived with all her life, or Joanie who had always lied to herself about the true nature of her husband’s character.
“Of course we can leave,” her mother said tightly. “We were just concerned. We overheard Joanie Underwood say something about you having affair with her
husband, and…”
Ariel’s lips parted. “You believed it?”
Great-gran wrung her hands. “Well, we didn’t think so.”
“But,” Gran quickly said, “you’re entitled to your secrets. We all are.”
Spoken like a true widow of Bliss. Ariel supposed they were referring, too, to her secrets about the man who was still in bed. “Oh, yes,” she couldn’t help but say, teetering on the edge of reason. “We are entitled to them, aren’t we?”
“Ariel,” her mother said in warning.
Everyone knew what she’d meant. So, why not say it? The last fifteen minutes thoroughly encapsulated everything that was wrong with her life. Studs had attacked her yesterday, and last night had been everything she’d always dreamed of with a man….
Quickly, she pushed aside the thoughts. Because that sweet chapter had passed swiftly enough into history, hadn’t it? The next thing she knew, Joanie Underwood, who’d snubbed her in school and had always called her names from the back of the school bus, was hulking over her and Rex, turning their lovemaking into something vile. Why had Ariel thought she could come back here and change anything?
Her eyes were still on her mother’s. “I don’t even know who my dad is,” she muttered. “After all these years.”
Her mother looked stunned. “I…didn’t know you still wondered. You quit asking so long ago…”
She quit asking because no one would tell her anything and because sheer survival in high school had overtaken her energies. Was her mother joking? “He’s my father,” she said, her eyes challenging the woman she loved most in the world. “Of course I wanted to know.”
“We can talk,” her mother said levelly. “Any time.”
Like always, it was as if years were stripped away whenever that stranger was referenced. Her mother’s pain was obvious. It was one reason Ariel had never asked to divulge more. She also suspected that her own fantasies about the mystery man might sustain her better than whatever grim reality was there to be discovered. Whoever Ariel’s father was, Samantha Anderson had loved him, and the man left her. Most of Ariel’s life, that information had been enough. Who wanted to care about someone who abandoned those who loved him? Who wanted to chase after a phantom, like a fool?
“That’s all,” she managed to say, wondering at the ease of this…that she could simply sit down with her mother and a cup of tea, and hear all the real-life secrets of the widows of the house, including the identity of her father. “After all these years? Hmm. And maybe you can tell me whether you killed all the men you were supposed to have married,” she muttered, angry at the world and wanting to hurt them all.
Her relatives stared back, stupefied. “Don’t act as if you never heard the rumors that fly all over town,” she said.
“We’d heard kids think we’re witches,” said Gran, mortified. “But now they’re saying we killed some men…?”
Ariel was clutching a sheet around her and a naked man was in her bed. Definitely, this was not the time for any of this. “They call our house Terror House,” she forced herself to say. “And the kids think we’re witches. You’re all widows, who buried their husbands in shallow graves on the mountain.”
“Oh my God,” her mother said.
Great-gran wasn’t as put off by the idea. Ariel could swear she heard her mutter, “I wish that’s what I’d done to him.”
Gran suddenly gasped. “Oh, no!” she exclaimed. “Can you smell that? Something’s burning in the kitchen!”
“The waffle iron!” her mother nearly shouted. “I left batter in it!”
Saved by the bell. Ariel smelled burning blueberries now, and as she watched her mother whirl, her stomach rumbled. “We’ll talk whenever you’re ready,” her mother called over her shoulder. And then she was gone, with Gran speeding after her. Great-gran moved as fast, the broom she’d brought doubling as a cane.
At the last minute, she lifted it, using the handle to push shut the bedroom door, leaving a deafening silence. For a moment, Ariel simply stared, stunned at what had transpired. Suddenly, her life seemed as airy, light and insubstantial as the scarves strewn on the bed. Nothing more than a breeze might have blown it all away. Hours ago, she’d been driving into town, knowing exactly where she was headed and why….
She wasn’t surprised to feel two warm hands settle on her bare shoulders, urging her to turn around. He hadn’t brought the sheet with him, so he was butt-naked. Gorgeous, too. His eyes were intense and so blue that they almost looked violet in the streaming sunlight.
The cold light of day, she thought. Even with him in front of her, enticingly naked, her mind was still on the previous encounter. Not that speaking with her mother would bring any new answers into life. So what if she learned the man’s name? He’d always been gone and he’d never been a part of her life. That was the important thing. She was grown now; she didn’t need a father. She needed…
A partner. But this morning, Joanie had brought back all the old feelings.
“You’d better go,” she said.
Surprise registered in Rex’s eyes. “What?”
“You heard all that.” She’d almost laid bare the past and had demanded some semblance of the truth from her flesh and blood. Now, that was a red-letter day. She really was so tired of lies. But how much should she tell Joanie about her husband? Wasn’t a woman supposed to figure out for herself that her husband was a horse’s behind? And even if she told the whole truth, would the woman believe her?
She eyed Rex. How much truth had really been in what they’d shared last night? “You said you had to head out early this morning.” She glanced around, her gaze settling on a travel alarm. “They serve breakfast in about a half hour,” she added. Whatever was left that was still fit to eat. And now, she thought, she didn’t exactly feel like running downstairs to help finish making it. Everybody had been concerned, and she’d lost her temper. But then, they were closemouthed, and it had cost her….
So, maybe a part of her wasn’t really sorry she’d just rocked the boat. She wasn’t sorry they’d caught her in bed with a man, either. She was tired of pretending the sexual part of her life didn’t exist at all.
He was still staring at her as if he’d never seen her before, and that, more anything, made her ache. Last night, he’d felt like what she’d read about in a new-age book, a soul mate. But who was she fooling? Her life in Bliss had always been full of lies and accusations. Now she wanted to remember last night just as it had felt to her then. It could stay crystalized in her mind as one night that was absolutely perfect.
“Really,” she murmured. “I’d better go change. We…” Her voice trailed off.
Wordlessly, he waited.
“…We can eat together before you go.”
Turning, he went over to his duffel, pulled out a pair of jeans, thrust his arms into a shirt, which had been stacked in the duffel, still wrapped in the launderer’s cardboard. She watched, half in awe, as he strode around the room, then into the bathroom and out again, using the wide arc of an arm to simply sweep the rest of his belongings from the tabletops into the duffel.
Apparently, that was how Rex Houston packed. She guessed working all over the world taught a man to travel lightly and pack in minutes. He paused by the bed and stared down at it, taking in one of the scarves, one other than that which Joanie had touched. She imagined he was considering taking it with him as a souvenir.
She didn’t blame him. Suddenly, she wanted something of his, to remember him by. A picture, maybe. A shirt she could sleep in that held his scent. But he walked to the door and swung it open. “Don’t worry about breakfast,” he muttered as he crossed the threshold, tossing a last glance over his shoulder. “I’ll pick mine up on the road.”
And then he was gone.
11
“SHE’LL EAT BREAKFAST with me before I go,” Rex muttered, repeating Ariel’s words as he reached for a cell phone from the dashboard and dialed the CDC. As the phone rang, he climbed into the mobile lab, pu
lled the door shut, then stared through the windshield at the house. It was the wrong thing to do. Right now, he…hated her. Loved her, too. Or at least, he loved her as much as a man could love a woman he’d only known for a day.
Someone picked up. “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Atlanta.”
“Jessica Williams please. Rex Houston calling.”
“Sexy Rexy, huh?” The operator giggled. “It may take a while to get her on the line.”
He sighed. “What’s she doing? Her nails?”
“You’re in a bad mood.”
She didn’t know the half of it. “Take your time. I’ve got all day,” he said. The phone clicked and an instrumental version of “Love Me Tender” began to play. Right now, hearing it made his skin crawl and he could only hope Jessica would hurry.
He wanted to make sure she’d been busy, finding him a nice assignment at the far edge of the world, away from Bliss, West Virginia. There was no stopping the tide of emotions, although he knew they were out of proportion to the situation. Right now, it was taking everything he had not to go back inside and tell Ariel exactly what he thought of how she’d handled Joanie. Why had she put up with the woman at all? But then, what right did he have to confront Ariel…?
He was nothing to her, right? Nor she to him. Wham bam, thank you ma’am…She’d just made that clear. Yeah, this was just a one-night deal. A blissful daylong interlude where he’d forgotten reason and fallen into a realm of pure sensation, plummeting over the edge and flying through the night with her only to crash….
Well, maybe her accusers were right. Maybe Anderson women bewitched men, singing to them like the sirens of ancient Greece. Maybe they’d called men toward Terror House, after all, breaking them into tiny pieces against the rocky shore. Rex pushed aside the thoughts, not really believing them. But Ariel had definitely…captivated him. She was so like her name, which conjured airy, winged creatures with wands, dressed in filmy white gowns.