by Libby Rice
“Always,” Rhea replied, her voice sickly sweet.
Trevor’s jaw bulged, but he let the discussion drop. A wise choice—when Kent didn’t get any more flack, he dug into his salad like the scuffle had never happened. Lissa soon learned why.
“Since Cole is so rudely avoiding dinner, Lissa, why don’t you tell us about yourself?” Kent took another bite and chewed expectantly.
It begins.
“Let’s see,” she said, pondering what to share. “I’m a painter from New York City. I started when—”
“What do you think of Cole?” Kent’s interruption said it all. A run-down on her life would be blah, blah, blah to these people. They had expectations. No doubt they hoped she and her host would make more than art.
Should she squash the dream now?
Rhea alone seemed unconcerned with Lissa’s impression of her brother-in-law. She inhabited her chair with the confidence of an athlete, slightly turned out as though she might bail any second if not sufficiently entertained. The sun was setting outside, and the shifting light caused the chandelier to reflect the sheen of her second-skin shirt. The fabric looked high-tech—part reflective, part mesh, a bunch of pockets around the waist for mini water bottles. Lissa half wondered if Rhea planned to jog back to Boulder.
Before Lissa could craft a hedging response to Kent’s question, the redhead filled in her own blanks. “You think he’s crazy.” The observation might have been keen, but it was delivered with a bored drawl that felt more contrived than disengaged.
A placating “no” wouldn’t do the conversation any good. “His grief’s too raw.” Lissa sensed in Cole the kind of pain that couldn’t help but bruise others. Already he’d made her face hang-ups she’d thought long buried in order to force compromises that felt one-sided.
Rhea threw a sidelong glance at Trevor, then shifted her gaze to Lissa and held. “Cole’s ready.”
Only if “ready” meant dictating unacceptable terms for Lissa to blindly follow. “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”
“Let me clarify.” Rhea’s expression remained bland, but the way she sat forward in her seat continued to betray a deeper level of engagement. “Cole was at the top of his game when Kate died. He fell far and fast. But now it’s time to return to normal. A man like that can’t sideline his gifts forever.”
He could, Lissa silently disagreed, if he continued to let Kate’s death hold those gifts hostage.
Kent eyed Rhea in mild reproach, shaking his head. “Easy when you say it fast, isn’t it?”
Lissa had been round and round the issue in her head. Losing Kate kept floating to the top. It was the only explanation for Cole’s über-strict adherence to realist ideals. Though Lissa didn’t doubt the link between Kate, Cole, and what she less-than-affectionately called Cole’s artistic “stuntedness,” she hadn’t been able to piece together a coherent explanation.
Grappling anew, Lissa opted to ignore the elk-loaf and focus on her Sangiovese, swirling the vine-ripened courage around her glass. “Cole told me she—”
“Committed suicide?” Rhea finished. Lissa couldn’t pinpoint why, but the woman’s demeanor felt too casual for the s-word.
“And?” There had to be a story. “From what I can tell, Kate was a lovely, prosperous woman in the prime of her life, with an obviously doting husband and everything going for her.” The kill-yourself angle didn’t compute.
Rhea fell silent at the frank assessment. Trevor’s attention passed between his wife and his uncle in darting glances, but those two had busied themselves with forks and knives like the food had taken first place at the state fair.
“There’s little to tell,” Trevor said finally, his expression closed, harsh even, making him look more like the sexy axe murderer she’d originally pegged him for.
Liar. There’s little you will tell. If all the cards were on the table like Cole’s relatives implied, they’d be more forthcoming. These three danced around their secrets.
Pushing her plate aside, Lissa sat back against her chair, cradling her wine glass and openly studying Trevor. Where Cole was all lean muscle and crackling anger, a mountaineer who looked like he could handle any obstacle life threw his way, Trevor was the actual mountain. At least thirty pounds of extra power packed Trevor’s towering frame. On one hand, he reminded Lissa of Sasha—large and loving and perhaps overly aware of his appeal. Scratch behind the ears and he’d probably roll over. On the other, he went disturbingly quiet when pushed, pulsing in understated menace. Get too close and the fire inside the mountain might erupt.
Meh. She’d take the risk.
Despite Lissa’s irritating tendency to incinerate from the inside whenever Cole came near, she wasn’t some pushover to back down at a withering look.
Never sell out again.
She’d been dragged into a minefield. Accepting Cole’s offer—finally stomping on the status quo—had been a huge risk that deserved more than a cheap excuse. Aw shucks, suicidal wife, didn’t cut it.
Lissa launched her offensive. “Drugs or alcohol? Money laundering? Did Kate give her car to the Salvation Army the week before?”
Chairs creaked like chirping crickets as all three of them shifted in their seats.
“Was she ill? Had she ever tried to hurt herself? Lost her job? Gotten arrested—?”
“Nothing like that,” Kent interrupted.
“Then ‘like’ what?”
Kent’s shoulders hunched. “Kate had her moments. I noticed weight loss a few weeks before but chalked it up to a fad diet. My wife was always trying to live on cabbage-and-vinegar soup.”
No wonder they feed Cole with such dogged resolve. Lissa sighed and re-reached for her plate, cutting the loaf into tiny pieces in an effort to be a good eater like Kent seemed to favor. “Moments?” Could be promising.
“Nothing much,” Rhea said, now staring at the ceiling. “Kate kept to herself.”
“How well did you know her?”
Rhea straightened and faced Trevor, not Lissa, when she said, “Obviously not well enough.” A tremor worked its way across those toned shoulders before she added, “We were friends once.” She sounded disgusted.
Lissa stilled her knife mid-stroke. “But no longer.”
Rhea’s attention snapped from Trevor back to Lissa. “She’s dead, so obviously not.”
First crickets and now hissing kitties. Quite the symphony. “Pardonne-moi,” Lissa apologized with a flourish. “You were no longer friends.”
“Oui,” Rhea snapped.
“Why?” Lissa mouth clamped shut at her overstep. “Never min—”
“No,” Kent cut in with an upheld hand. “I wouldn’t mind hearing the answer.”
Through gritted teeth, Rhea spoke, never turning in Kent’s direction. “You know the answer.”
“Yes,” came Kent’s light reply, “I suppose I do.” The sly up-tick at the edge of his mouth suggested his “knowledge” didn’t quite mirror Rhea’s.
Lissa’s head whirled with the implications of these people’s problems. Accidentally stumbling into a family feud was one type of complication she couldn’t afford. “Anyway, about Kate?”
Rhea piped up, her dislike increasingly clear. “Kate was kind of an introverted extrovert. Proper, composed, self-aware. She was that woman—”
“Yes, a perfect specimen with moments,” Lissa finished. “What if her fall was an accident? Why would anyone think she killed herself?”
She shouldn’t have bothered to ask. The most put together are often the closest to falling apart.
An abrupt slam sounded from the kitchen, and Lissa muttered a curse. Cole was back in residence, but she couldn’t say whether the noise signified his recent return from parts unknown or his reaction to hearing her interrogate his family. With the exception of Lissa, voracious eating commenced all around.
Cole strolled in, dusty and wind-swept from a night—not that she’d noticed—and day spent god-knew-where. He cradled a camera with a foot-long
lens and smiled at the group in a way he kept on lockdown with her alone. “Illustrious gathering we have this evening.”
A glimpse of affectionate humor lurked in Trevor’s answering gaze. “It was.”
An extra place had been set next to Lissa. Cole paused behind her on the way to his seat. Before she could guess his intent, he plunked the camera to the table and swept her hair aside. She’d worn it down to conceal the healing wound on her neck.
The collar of her shirt covered the old scar at her nape. Like the “dog bite” beneath her chin, no one—not even her family—knew the origin of the mark. Not until a week ago.
Not until Cole.
Right in her ear, he asked, “When did you remove the bandage?”
“This morning.”
“No swelling,” he observed.
“No.”
“Pain?”
“No.”
“Good.” He brushed her hair back into place and stalked to his chair, ignoring the collective gaping silence of their visitors.
Awareness rippled through each of Lissa’s senses—the spiced scent of her wine, the renewed weight of her hair brushing against her neck, the slow scrape of Cole’s chair as he slid it from the table.
He’d been so close, practically sweeping his lips over her sensitive outer ear while his family watched in rapt fascination. The feel of his hands, of his hot breath skating over her sensitive skin, left her both heated and embarrassed.
Expect me to fuck back.
But the moment didn’t last. Once seated, Cole struck without preamble. “I never said Kate fell.” Posture rigid and eyes defiant, he elaborated, “I said she flung herself. We know because of the trajectory of her body. She landed too far from the face of the rock.” Abruptly, he crashed his palm to the table. “There was momentum.”
Cole had overheard her questioning his family. A hand fluttered to her throat. “Where were you?”
“Texas.” Cole fisted a fork and stabbed an innocent chunk of meatloaf. “On a shoot.”
“I’m—”
He didn’t let her finish. “Yes, there was an investigation,” he said, adding, “however shoddy,” under his breath. “No, there wasn’t foul play.” With each blow, his voice descended. “She jumped, sailed, took a flying leap, whatever you—”
“I was going to say, ‘I’m sorry.’”
The tirade stalled. Her empathy had shut Cole’s mouth, but his furious gaze still blazed, beginning with her and then leveling on each guest in due time. One would think the messy hair and golden stubble would make him look him less intimidating. They didn’t. The lack of polish implied he cared little about anything other than grinding his adversaries to a bloody, protesting pulp.
Some advice, Cole whispered with his eyes. Leave me be.
Kent stared blithely back, his regard bouncing between Lissa and Cole with gleeful optimism. Trevor cocked his head, respectful but persistent. If Cole wanted his thoughtful, patient brother to let the subject drop, he’d have to do more than glare through the tension that thickened the air between the two men.
Of them all, Rhea managed to be the most interesting. She withered against her seat, losing the bulk of her earlier bluster in the face of Cole’s silent reprimand. Finally breaking eye contact, she returned her attention to the cooling meat on her plate.
Trevor’s hand covered Rhea’s with a squeeze, and Lissa examined the link. Mere physical closeness could never mimic the unspoken support Trevor passed to his wife through those entwined fingers. A responsive pang wrenched Lissa’s gut with an unexpected twist. Thus far, her time at Melina had focused on a loss that hinted at great love.
The type of love she’d never had to lose.
At last sighting, her ex-boyfriend had grown a pair of ironic mutton chops. Right now the man no doubt trolled some little-known burlesque show in the East Village, looking for a girlfriend in a statement T-shirt who took lunch hour tai chi classes and got hives at the mention of a chain restaurant. The child-woman would have to be an original, even in her vapidity, right down to an insistence on mono-bloom honey produced by itinerant beekeepers in central Turkey.
Lissa’s replacement would be an artist, of course, but an ego-boosting variant who created “cute” but non-threatening pieces no one took seriously.
Someone completely unlike Lissa, with her fire and her family. If the former escaped notice, the latter rose up, which meant Lissa had shared her lover’s struggle but never his starving until her every success had been called undeserved.
Lissa chewed on her lower lip. The bond between Trevor and Rhea reminded her she needed a hand to hold when the reviews ate her alive, not one to slap her on the back of the head and chide her for reaching too high in the first place.
Giving and receiving that kind of no-strings support sounded like a fine idea until Rhea shattered the reverie by slipping Trevor’s hold. A blatant flick of her wrist untwined her husband’s fingers. Gaze locked on the food, Rhea finally reached for the contraband butter with her now-free hand.
Slick, if one were, say, trying to escape freaky Cousin Herb at Thanksgiving Dinner, but her sexy-as-fuck husband? The one who was trying to take her side?
No. Just… no.
Cole took charge before suffering a single bite. He stood and leaned across the table, resting his torso on splayed fingers and straining arms. Flicking his chin toward the door, he said “Go. Please.”
The family began a slow scatter, technically not obeying but at least condescending to clear the table.
Lissa shot to her feet. After all her questions, she still had insufficient answers. If Kent and Rhea and Trevor withdrew, she’d be left with the man most determined to keep her in the dark.
The one she’d most like to see join her there.
Cole’s expression tightened. “Don’t even try it.”
Now what? “You mean doing what you say?” Lissa batted her lashes with feigned innocence. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Kent had disappeared into the kitchen, but Trevor and Rhea were making a snail look speedy.
Ignoring their continued presence, Cole said, “I’ve had enough of this.”
“Good.” Lissa couldn’t agree more. “You’ve spared yourself another ‘scene,’ and we can get back to the original plan. You photograph what you see, and I’ll paint what I—”
“Not that.” Cole’s hand slashed through the air. “I mean the incessant questions. You’re alone with my family for half a meal, and I arrive not to jokes and toasts, but to an interrogation.”
They started it.
“Consider it payback for five days ago when I asked you to select an indoor subject, and you picked a roll of toilet paper.”
“You got your revenge,” he grated, “when you snickered about it being an ‘apt choice’ given that my ‘work is shit.’”
She stacked Cole’s full plate on top of her own uneaten food, shaking her head. “That was for the day before, when you let Sasha into my room at five in the morning. He tried to jump onto the bed but only managed to ram the side of my mattress over and over again like a drunken sheep. Eventually I settled him down into a roaring snore that rattled up from the rug for the next three hours.”
“It’s a sign that he likes you.” The animal in question sprawled out at the end of the table and rolled onto his side with a groan.
“And a sign that you don’t.”
“Or a message that I’ll retaliate when you eat every Skittle in the house and leave all the empty bags piled on the kitchen counter.”
He’d noticed. “You know what? Maybe I asked your family about you”—she slid a glance toward Trevor and Rhea, both frozen in mid-step, backs to the action—“because I know you haven’t been honest, and even though I’m sleeping with him, your dog hasn’t spilled the goods.”
Cole pulled the plates from her grip and set them on the table a bit too carefully. Then he crowded her against the chair that threatened the wobbly joints at the backs of her knees. “And they’
re going to remedy the oversight? You think Rhea here”—the redhead flinched, keeping her head averted but making no move to disappear—“will roll over and lay me out like a Facebook timeline?”
“You know what they say. ‘If door number one disappoints because it hides a moody, uncooperative ass, check behind door number two.’”
“Right.” He ground his molars together with a cringe-worthy crunch. “And you know what I say.”
Yes, she did. Her eyes flew to his, but not in time to change what was about to happen.
Expect me to fuck back.
That furious mouth crashed into hers.
******
Her lips felt like satin fresh off a hot iron, the top a smidge fuller than the bottom, a perfect pout. At her startled gasp, he licked into her mouth. Deep. Then deeper.
“Like that?” he heard himself ask against her skin. He didn’t need an answer. Her body pressed against his, breath coming in rolling pants that sped faster and faster. Of course she did.
“No.” She gasped, then sank her teeth into his lower lip. The pinch wasn’t nearly enough. He needed—
Sensation shorted with a sudden and unwelcome realization. Slinging an arm around Lissa’s waist, he pinned her in the vee between her chair and the table. When he turned his head, he confirmed that his brother and Rhea still stood by, eyes peeled in what could only be called rapt fascination.
His family meant well. They did. Yet a clinging resentment overshadowed his appreciation for their interference. The invasions of his privacy had to stop. He finally wanted the freedom to be indiscreet, and he couldn’t with his family enjoying free reign over his house and grounds, their watchful eyes guarding him like he’d been the one to battle bouts of clinical depression.
Moments, Kent had told Lissa.
“I said leave.” His voice was soft, too soft, and Trevor reluctantly heeded the desperation he no doubt detected in the borderline plea. His brother grabbed Rhea by the wrist and pulled her into the kitchen, letting the swinging door flap in their wake.
A smooth pull dragged Lissa forward. She looked surprised—after all, Cole had given in to his need with no sign of second thought—but a hint of challenge shadowed her expressive eyes. The defiance of five minutes ago faded to speculative seduction.