by P. G. Forte
And, really, it cost her so very little to beg.
“Please, Ryan? It’s just that tonight, I...” Her voice trailed off and she felt her heart constrict as she thought about it. Thought of poor Selke lying cold and still in the other room. Quickly, she shoved the thought aside. She couldn’t bear to deal with that right now: it was too soon. She knew about grief – more than anyone should ever have to.
Grief was dark and noxious and it lay in her heart like a warm pool of tar, ready to pull her in and trap her. She couldn’t go there now. She’d have to wait ‘til time had cooled it down, laid a layer of ash upon its surface thick enough to bear the weight of all her memories. Then, maybe, she could walk there and survive.
“Look, Ryan, I really don’t care if we do nothing but hold each other. I’d just... I’d just rather not be alone tonight. Besides, there’s always morning, you know?”
He groaned, and pulled her a little closer. “Oh, honey, I guess... if you really need me to stay with you— I gotta tell you, though, my leg’s usually at its worst in the morning.”
“All the more reason then,” she said as her heart skipped a couple of beats. Honey. God, she loved the way he said that. “That way if it’s still bothering you when you wake up... I can give you another massage.”
He looked at her searchingly and she could almost feel the uncertainty in him. She tried to smile reassuringly, but her heart was suddenly in her throat. Oh, hell. Maybe she’d gotten things backwards? Maybe sex was the only thing he wanted from her tonight? And if he couldn’t have that – maybe he really did prefer to be alone? After a long while he sighed again and she felt something inside him give way.
“Okay,” he said, tightening his grip around her until she almost couldn’t breathe. “Okay. I won’t promise this will be the most exciting evening you’ll ever spend with me, but... sure, if that’s what you want... I’ll do it. I’ll stay.” Siobhan felt a curious rush of euphoria. She couldn’t say why, but she felt as if some invisible barrier had just collapsed.
He sounded weary as he added, “But no promises, right?”
“Right,” she said as she hugged him back. “No promises. No promises, no pressure, no problems.”
She wasn’t looking for exciting tonight, anyway. They’d had enough excitement for one day. She just wished he could’ve promised her a little peace of mind.
* * * *
“So how do you think the dog got in there in the first place?” Ryan asked, much later that night, as they sat on the porch drinking tea. “I mean, it couldn’t have happened while we were away, ‘cause the door was closed when we got back.”
Siobhan thought about it for a moment. “I guess he must have followed me in this morning, and I didn’t notice.” Just like she hadn’t noticed that the cage hadn’t been latched properly. Just like all the other things she hadn’t noticed over the years, until it was too late.
The night had turned surprisingly sultry; damp and warm, filled with the croaking serenade of tree frogs. She’d walked his dog for him, and fixed them something to eat, and gotten him some fresh clothes to wear—the same clothes he’d changed out of that first night, after she’d knocked him off his feet down at the beach. He’d looked at her strangely when she’d first given them to him. Probably wondering why, in three weeks time, she hadn’t ever once mentioned that she still had them.
“Have you been sleeping in this, or something?” he’d asked, holding the conspicuously wrinkled T-shirt to his nose for a moment.
Siobhan shrugged, feeling suddenly embarrassed. “Maybe. Just these last couple of nights.”
Just since they’d become lovers, and things started going so horribly wrong. Just to remind herself why it was she was willing to court even more disaster.
“I like that,” he murmured, as he pulled her close for another kiss. She believed him, too. She could hear the satisfaction in his voice.
And, now that she was feeling vulnerable herself, she could kind of see his point about it: the feeling sucked. Especially when she’d found herself clinging to him a little longer and more tightly than usual. Especially when she had no idea if he felt the same way about her.
“It’s a pretty big coincidence, when you think about it,” he said now, his eyes observing her above the rim of his mug.
She frowned. “What is?” His tone was making her uneasy. She could almost hear the wheels turning in his head, and this was one subject she definitely did not want him thinking too hard about.
“The timing. The dog just happening to get stuck in there on the same day the bobcat’s cage was left unlatched. It’s kind of weird.”
“Mm,” she answered, vaguely; thinking that it wasn’t all that surprising, really. That’s exactly how those things did happen. How they’d always, always happened. In the worst possible way. And at the worst possible times.
She thought, briefly, about telling him that. Thought about telling him about some of the other incidents that had occurred in her past. She even thought about telling him that he’d better get used to it. That things like this were likely to keep right on happening, for as long as the two of them were together.
But she wasn’t sure he’d want to keep seeing her if he knew how dangerous she could be, and she wasn’t yet ready to give him up. So, although she was aware of him; sitting there in the semi-darkness, watching her curiously, she kept her mouth shut and her thoughts to herself.
* * * *
The man chuckled gleefully. He was a genius. There was no doubt about it, no other word that fit. A fucking, absolute, bloody, goddamned genius. He hit the accelerator hard and followed the twisting coast road as it curved and turned, passing the slower moving cars as if they were standing still.
He knew he should slow down. He knew he had to blend in and avoid notice, but it was just so hard to keep from gloating this evening.
The dog. The fucking dog. That mangy piece of shit was finally history.
Oh, man, he’d been wanting to take out that damned dog for such a long time; but the time and the circumstances had never been right. Until today.
He threw back his head and let out a howl, loud enough to split the night. Smiling as he remembered the sounds the dog had made as the cat attacked it. He howled again. Why not? There was no one around to hear him. No one around to stop him.
He smiled even wider at that thought – a real shit-eating grin, he was sure. No one would ever stop him. Not now, not ever. Not in a million years.
He was untouchable. Unreachable. Unstoppable.
He was a god.
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* * * *
Chapter Twenty
* * * *
“Wow. It’s big, huh?” Dan stared at the painting which still took up way too much space in the living room.
“Yep,” Nick answered, with a tired sigh as he rubbed the back of his neck. It was Saturday morning, and Dan had stopped by to drop Mandy off on his way to work. Nick took another sip of coffee from the cup he held cradled in his hand. For almost two weeks the damn painting had sat there. Like a houseguest who just wouldn’t leave. The weird thing was, he was almost getting used to it.
Dan sipped at his own coffee. “Where are you going to put it?”
Nick shook his head. “No idea. Scout said she’s going to rearrange some things, but so far...” So far, nothing had happened. Nothing except that he’d given up hoping that she might actually ask for either his help or his opinion.
“Oh, lord.” Dan rolled his eyes towards the ceiling as he chuckled sympathetically. “Don’t you hate it when they do that?”
“Mm,” Nick murmured evasively, wondering just who in the hell ‘they’ was supposed to be. It seemed to him his cousin had always been more than willing to accommodate her husband, for all the good it had done her lately.
“So, uh... Lucy tells me you’ve been working kinda late, these last couple of weeks. Does that have anything to do with this?” Dan gestured at the painting. He sounded slightly apologetic, and N
ick was pretty sure Lucy had put him up to asking.
Shit. He loved his cousin, but he sure wished she’d learn to mind her own business. And that went double for Dan – who was certainly in no position to offer marital advice to anyone at the moment.
Nick scowled at his friend. “Yeah? That’s funny, ‘cause according to Scout, Lucy’s been saying the same thing about you, too. What’s your excuse?” But he was pretty sure he already knew the answer to that one. Hell, if he were trying to keep a secret from Lucy, he’d make damn sure he spent as little time with her as possible, too. She might not be psychic, but she had damn good instincts. But Dan was married to the woman, how long did he think he could stonewall her? “Or shouldn’t I ask?”
“Excuse me?” Dan’s face assumed its most mulish expression.
Before he met Dan, Nick had always considered his cousin Lucy to be the stubbornest person on the face of the earth. It was anybody’s guess how the two of them ever came to terms about anything. The prevailing theory was that they worked everything out in bed.
“C’mon, Dan. After eighteen years? She was bound to notice that you’d suddenly changed your work habits, you know.”
Dan shook his head. “Nothing sudden about it. We’re always busy this time of year. Lucy knows that.”
“Right.” Nick sighed. Sure, it had to have been a shock for the man to have learned, years after the fact, that someone had claimed him as the father of their child. It was no wonder he was having a little trouble dealing with it – even if it wasn’t true, as he continued to claim. But sooner or later—
“You’re gonna have to talk to her sometime, Dan. You can’t just act like it never happened.”
“Oh, sure I can.” Dan took a last sip of coffee and put the mug down on a nearby table. “Not that I have any idea what you’re talking about, bud. But uh, thanks for the coffee. I guess we’ll see you guys tomorrow, huh?”
Tomorrow. Sunday dinner with the family.
“Yeah. Sure. Tomorrow. Just like always,” Nick said, giving up the attempt to try and talk some sense into the other man. Sometimes, you had no choice but to let people follow their own paths – even when you could see where it would likely take them. Right smack into hell.
* * * *
Siobhan paused in the act of pulling a sweater out of her closet and frowned at the clothes heaped at the bottom of the big armoire. It was true she wasn’t particularly compulsive about putting her things away, but she knew damn well she hadn’t left them like that. Of course, they could have all just slipped off their hangers at the same time, but this was already the third incident she’d noticed in the past couple of days.
Things had been moved, or were missing from their usual locations. Or showed evidence of having been put hastily back. Some vague sense told her that someone had been in here recently. That someone had been going through her things. It didn’t take a lot of thought to come up with the most likely suspect. Ryan had been almost the only other person here, after all. And ever since the since the night of the bobcat incident, he’d been a little too quiet.
Luckily, there’d been no new disasters since then, but she knew better than to let herself relax. In fact, as the days passed she’d grown progressively more anxious. Had her subconscious mind – or whatever part of her it was, that insisted on punishing her over and over again – finally decided she’d paid enough? She was almost afraid to put words to the thought. Or to the fragile hope that had inspired it.
Would she really be able to move forward with her life after all this time? Was there a chance that they could actually make this relationship work?
Well, no! Not if he’d taken to spying on her they couldn’t! How would she stand it, if she’d finally reached the point where she could maybe love again, only to have it all fall apart because she’d once again chosen the wrong man to love?
She didn’t know how much he knew, or had guessed, about her state of mind. But these last few days his eyes had seemed to follow her every move with an intensity that was almost frightening; and with an interest that seemed at times to border on obsession. And now this.
Furious and frightened, Siobhan pulled her sweater on and stomped back out to the porch where she’d left Ryan brushing his dog. The weather had grown cold again, and windy. A new storm was brewing. They were in for a very bad night. Maybe in more ways than one.
“If there’s something you want to know about me, Ryan,” she began, too angry and too hurt to bother with any kind of preamble. “You could just ask, you know. There’s no need for you to go pawing through my things.”
He looked at her, studying her face intently for a moment before asking, “What are we talking about now?”
“What are we talking about?” She clamped her jaws shut to keep from screaming, and counted to ten before continuing. “We’re talking about invasion of privacy Ryan. That’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the fact that, in the last few days things – my things – have been moved, tampered with, disrupted.”
He nodded slowly, his face expressionless. “If this is your way of saying we’re spending too much time together, how ‘bout we skip the hysteria? Just tell me to back off for a while, if that’s what you want.”
Her breath huffed out in a rush. Fueled by a sudden sense of misgiving, her temper flamed higher. “You’re saying you haven’t been snooping around in my apartment?”
A small, insufferably confident smile played about his lips as he resumed brushing the dog’s coat. “There’s one thing you can be very sure of, sweetheart. If I did decide to go through your things, you wouldn’t know about it. Not unless I had some reason for wanting you to. What is it I’m supposed to have been looking for, by the way?”
“How the hell should I know?” she asked, frowning fiercely as she lied. The box where she kept mementos of her daughters had been left partially open – as if he didn’t know that! And the envelope containing the locks of hair she’d saved from Emily’s first haircut had been moved from its place in her bureau drawer. “And for your information, I don’t think it’s all that hysterical for me to expect a little privacy in my own home. In fact, I’m pretty sure there are laws that give me that right. But perhaps you think having a badge means you’re above the law?”
“Okay. You know, it really sounds to me like you need some space tonight,” he said, putting down the brush and coming to stand in front of her. He rested one hand on her shoulder, and used the other to tilt her chin up.
His eyes were warm and dark, but his smile had turned regretful, she noticed.
He studied her face for a moment, and then sighed. “Maybe I should just go home now.”
Maybe you should just shut up now, she thought resentfully. “Oh, right. Good idea. I wouldn’t want you to feel pressured into staying, or anything.” Jesus Christ, she was risking insanity for the sake of this relationship. He couldn’t even deal with a little righteous indignation without bolting for the door? How disappointingly typical.
“So, fine, then, Ryan. What are you waiting for? Go! And while you’re at it, maybe you should just mmph!” She shut up abruptly as his lips came down on hers, warm and demanding. His kiss as good as drugging her.
It wasn’t fair, Siobhan thought, as she felt herself melt against him. It was just so incredibly unfair that his kisses should have this effect on her and still leave him untouched and in control of himself.
But maybe not in complete control. He was breathing pretty heavily too, come to think of it.
“Siobhan,” he murmured, his voice little more than a raspy whisper. “I don’t know what this is about and I really don’t care. If you want me to stay just say so. You make the rules around here, sweetheart, not me. But I’d appreciate it if you’d make your decision pretty quick. And please... stop thinking I can read your mind. Because I can’t.”
“Stay,” she answered thickly. She started to pull him back in for another kiss and then stopped, embarrassed as she heard what she’d just said. Surely tha
t sounded too much like the kind of order she’d give to a dog?
She pushed him away again. “I’m sorry, Ryan. I guess maybe I flew off the handle a little. It’s been a difficult week.”
His eyes gleamed with sudden humor. He reached one hand up to touch her hair. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I’d been wondering where that temper of yours had gone to. To tell you the truth, I’d almost begun to miss it. I figured it was only a matter of time before it resurfaced.”
Temper? Oh, that was lovely. She felt herself getting angry all over again. That’d teach her for trying to apologize for something that wasn’t even her fault. And what the hell was he talking about, anyway? “When did I ever—”
“Oh, please, sweetheart. You tried to bite my head off the very first time I met you.” Ryan smiled reminiscently. “Way back in September.”
“The first time—? At the wedding, you mean?” She stared at him, outraged. “What are you talking about? I did no such thing!”
“Mm-mm,” he murmured, with a small shake of his head. “The time before that. You know, at the Cleanup?”
She stared at him blankly. “You were at the Cleanup?”
A small frown creased his forehead. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember?”
No, she sure did not remember. The Coastal Cleanup was one of the big environmental events of the year, it drew scores of volunteers, most of whom made very little impression on her. But Siobhan was reasonably certain she’d have remembered if she’d actually lost her temper with one of them.
Not that last year’s Cleanup had been at all typical – not with a murder occurring right in the midst of it and— Omigod.
“You!” She felt her mouth drop open. “You were that obnoxious cop who took all my waivers? I don’t believe this.” She struggled to pull herself out of his arms, but he tightened his grip around her.
“Hey, I was just doing my job,” he said, with the same stubborn intractability she remembered all too well now. “You were the one who was being unreasonable.”