DONKEY: A Stepbrother Sports Romance (With FREE Bonus Novel Charged!)

by Stephanie Brother

  “Or a confession”, Detective Foster added.

  “That would work too”, Benjamin said, a man of facts and figures.

  “Is there any way that this could have been planted in her bedroom?”

  “There were fingerprints on the container that matched Gracey’s. It’s possible of course, but at the moment it doesn’t look good for her. You’d have to interview her to make absolutely sure. You know without video cameras or eye witnesses we wouldn’t be able to be one hundred percent-”

  “Thank you, Benjamin.” Detective Foster said, cutting him off mid sentence.

  “Is there anything else you’d like me to do, sir?”

  Foster’s steely gaze told the lab technician everything he needed to know. As far as the tests were concerned, the fat finger of guilt pointed directly at Gracey Logan, now all the Detective needed to do was find out why.

  Chapter 13

  All Gracey had ever wanted was to go to University and get out of her shithole town and backwards, fucked-up life. It didn’t even matter to her what she studied. She was interested in a wide range of different subjects and would have been equally happy studying French as she would have been psychology. It didn’t matter. What she did, mattered less than the fact that she was doing it. No one else in her family had ever been to University, and neither had they been interested in it. Pandora found happiness in her ability to manipulate other people, much like her mother, and as long as Isabella had enough time to daydream, she was the happiest person on the planet.

  She had never felt close to her sisters, not even when they were growing up. Pandora had long been a role model until Gracey developed her own identity and realized the things Pandora wanted were shallow and superficial, and she’d just never been able to communicate to Isabella in the ways she’d always hoped. Isabella never really paid her younger sister that much attention, deciding to fall in step with Pandora and side herself with the more popular girl of the two, so they never really developed much of a connection together.

  Isabella was a typical middle child. A daydreamer with little ambition and even less motivation. Gracey couldn’t even say what it was that Isabella wanted from life, and that bothered her. She wasn’t completely stupid, but she wasn’t intelligent either. It was like she just didn’t get it, or didn’t see the point in trying. She could see Pandora manipulating her but Isabella didn’t look like she felt manipulated. Philip absolutely hated her as well. Of all three girls, Isabella was definitely his least favorite. He was horrible to all three of them, but to Isabella, he was intentionally cruel. He would attack her personally and say the meanest most upsetting things to her as though somehow he had been personally disappointed by her progress in life. In typical fashion, Isabella just shook it off.

  University was a long distance off now. So much for the promise her stepfather had made to send her off to the school of her choice in the summer, all expenses paid. At her current rate of three shifts a week, it would take her until graduation age just to pay for the first year. She’d managed to save up a bit of money, but she needed to pay for travel and accommodation, before even starting up at school. There was always the possibility of finding more bar work, but to hold down a job and study, when all she wanted to concentrate on was getting through school, it sucked, no matter how she looked at it.

  She hadn’t noticed Leighton come in. She hadn’t noticed she’d been cleaning the same glass for five minutes either, desperately trying to get rid of a watermark that showed no intentions of moving.

  “Busy?” Leighton said.

  She recognized the voice and it sent shivers up and down her spine. How could he do that? How could one man get to her so efficiently? She guessed that the answer lay in the fact that Leighton Tempest was no ordinary man. Gracey put down the glass and composed herself.

  “It’s been kind of quiet”, she said, looking out to the near empty bar area. “I thought you’d left town already.”

  “I’ve still got business here”, Leighton said, without feeling the need to clarify exactly what that business might be.

  Gracey could hardly look at him. Every time she did she felt like she was going to melt. Would it be that bad to say yes to him, if the offer was still there? It might help her family. Hell, it might get her to college. But then if she let herself, and he left her, what would happen then? He had that look, and besides which, she’d done her research too. Leighton Tempest, the man who never just sticks to just one girl. Gracey wasn’t sure if her heart could take it, but then she wasn’t sure how much longer she could resist either.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you”, Leighton confessed. “The injunction on the inheritance was lifted permanently. It was unlawfully placed to begin with.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Gracey had been anxiously cleaning the bar top when Leighton took her hand in his. He waited until they looked at each other, and waited again until he was sure. The feeling wasn’t going away. The longer he left it, the stronger it got.

  “You’re leaving.” she said, a statement rather than a question.

  “I’m not leaving until I get what I’ve come for.”

  “What if what you’ve come for isn’t available?”

  “I believe that’s just a matter of time.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Let’s just say it’s a gut feeling.”

  Gracey smiled sheepishly.

  “Will you sell the house?” she asked.

  “If I did, I wouldn’t know where to find you.”

  “I’d be around.”

  “What about the rest of your family?” Leighton asked.

  Gracey blinked softly. “They’d make do, don’t you think? They’d have to.”

  “You don’t care about them so much?”

  “They don’t care about anyone but themselves. It might do them good to be out on their own for a while, fending for themselves.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll make do. I always do.”

  Her eyes locked with his again and she smiled sweetly when she saw the way he was looking at her, a grin that lit up her whole face. “It wouldn’t be so bad. I’ve kind of always hated that house anyway.”

  “It doesn’t suit you”, Leighton suggested.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “What would suit me instead?”

  “Somewhere you can’t get lost.”

  “Getting lost is exactly what I want.”

  “Somewhere you can’t get lost in the past then”, Leighton said.

  Gracey drew away from the counter to take her breath. “That, for sure”, she said. “Isn’t that what we all want?”

  “Maybe”, Leighton said. “At least those of us who have shared the same experiences.”

  “Are you telling me there’s a soft centre under that hard exterior?”

  “A hard exterior has just been exposed to the elements for too long. It’s always soft underneath.”

  “Is that right?”

  “That’s a promise.”

  “Have you even met my mother?”

  Leighton couldn’t help but laugh. “Soft all the way to her core.”

  “She wants me to seduce you, you know that?”

  Leighton raised his eyebrows. “Is that right?”

  “She thinks that you’ll let us stay in the house if I do. She wanted Pandora to do it, but I guess she failed. She thinks I might have something over you.”

  “Something over me?”

  “Like you won’t be able to resist me.”

  “She’s a clever woman, your mother.”

  “She’s a lot of things, my mother.”

  “Well”, Leighton said. “Are you going to?”

  Gracey paused before she answered, letting the tension build up.

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  Leighton smiled. He knew exactly what that meant. Gracey held his gaze and smiled too. It was weird, but it was almo
st as if they’d communicated without the need for speaking. It was almost as if she’d finally said yes to a question that had been posed at the very beginning of time. It made her heart leap around in her chest like it was untethered. She could feel parts of her body that she didn’t know even existed. She was tingling all over with anticipation, desire, excitement. Was what she was going to do wrong? Taboo yes, but wrong? Whatever it was it felt urgent and necessary and absolutely unbelievable. The moment was cracked by the strains of a familiar voice.

  “Gracey. Are you going to stand there chatting all day, or are you going to do the work I pay you to do? Sorry guy, but this isn’t what I’m paying her to do, and you ain’t even got a drink in front of yer.”

  It was Gracey’s boss, Derek, a thin-skinned, oily-faced man with high blood pressure and a weak bladder.

  Leighton turned to him “How much are you paying her?” he said.

  “Come again, chief?”

  “How much do you pay her?”

  Derek eyeballed Leighton, cocking his head to the side like a spaniel, trying to work out meaning in the question he had been asked.

  “Don’t worry”, Gracey whispered to him. “That’s not necessary. Sorry, Derek, I’m coming. Leighton was just passing by.”

  “Yeah, well, pass by and drink, or pass by when she’s off the clock.” Derek mopped sweat from his neck with a dirty flannel. “Those restrooms ain’t going to clean themselves.”

  “What time do you finish?” Leighton asked.

  Gracey looked briefly at the clock, at Derek who was tutting and shaking his head and then back to Leighton.

  “If I do what my mother wants, are you going to go back home tomorrow?”

  “Come on”, Derek shouted.

  “That depends on how well you do it”, Leighton said with a smile.

  Gracey watched him spin around on his bar stool and walk towards the exit. “Bye Gracey”, he said.

  “Eight o’clock”, Gracey shouted, just before Leighton slipped through the doors.

  Derek mumbled. “What’s he got that I ain’t hey?” he said, the flannel going to the back of his neck again. “You’re lucky you’ve still got a job flirting with non-drinking customers such as you have been. Good looking ones as well. I can’t have it.”

  Gracey could feel her heart thumping away in her chest all afternoon. Had she agreed to something she had to now go through with? She couldn’t wipe the smile off her face if she tried.

  Chapter 14

  Pandora had kind of half melted into the sofa. She was busy glowering at Alexander who was doing as best a job as he could by glowering back.

  “I’m so bored”, Pandora complained after a while, breaking off the contest and letting the poor dog go back to trying to sleep.

  Alexis had taken to the seat near the window so she could spot cars coming up the drive. She was hoping for Leighton, but half expected the next to be another police car. If her daughters weren’t capable, she’d damn well try herself. She was well aware the injunction had been lifted, her lawyer had called her earlier in the day. She felt like she was on borrowed time.

  “Go out if you’re bored”, Alexis said, without looking at her daughter. She had concerns of her own without having to play mother to a grown up daughter.

  “And do what exactly?” Pandora huffed. “I don’t know if you’ve realized it yet, but we are broke.”

  “Then get a job like your sister”, Alexis snapped.

  “Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”

  Alexis made a sound that could have equally well come from Alexander. It was a kind of deep guttural huff that can only be made with an empty stomach and a voice box made hoarse from a twenty a day habit.

  “Did you do it, Mommy?” Pandora asked.

  “Did I do what?”

  “You know, sneak in here, tip it into his drink, pretend nothing happened. I won’t tell if you did.” Pandora had a huge grin on her face.

  “Don’t be preposterous”, Alexis said. “I’d at least make sure the money was coming to us beforehand. I was ready to wait it out. The rate Philip was going, it wouldn’t have taken more than a few years. No, whoever did it, did it because they hated him. This wasn’t about the money at all.”

  “I reckon Gracey did it”, Pandora said, for no other reason than to prolong the conversation.

  “All three of you could have done it for all I know. You weren’t exactly quiet about your dislike of the man.”

  “She’s the only one who’s clever enough to know where to get the poison”, Pandora went on without considering what her mother had said. “I’ve seen the books she’s got in her room, all that stuff about herbs and nutrition and botany and chemistry and stuff. She’s a proper know-it-all. I reckon she was planning it for a long time and just waited for the right moment to make it look like he’d had a heart attack.”

  “He did have a heart attack”, Alexis corrected her.

  “Yeah but only because of the poison. Don’t you remember when she went schitzo when she was eight and tried to stab him with a pair of scissors? What if she does it to the rest of us as well?” Pandora said, sitting bolt upright on the edge of the sofa, the idea just coming to her. “I mean she could poison any of us, couldn’t she?”

  Alexis gave her daughter a dismissive look. “That was Isabella, and it wasn’t a pair of scissors, it was a letter opener.”

  “It’s the same thing. What if she’s knocking us off, one by one?”

  “I thought your sister was the one with the vivid imagination.”

  “It doesn’t take a genius to work out what could happen”, Pandora said, scaring herself now. “I mean if she’s already done it once, she’ll have got a taste for it. What if she does it again? We should call the police, none of us are safe.”

  “You’d call the police on your own sister?” Pandora didn’t notice it, but there was a hint of curiosity in the way Alexis asked the question.

  “I would if she was going to kill us.”

  “Your sister might be the only person who can save us from getting chucked out of this place”, Alexis commented.

  “Yeah right. Even if Gracey lets Leighton get into her panties, there’s no way he’s going to stick around. We’re finished whatever happens. As soon as Leighton decides to kick us out, he will. It doesn’t matter how long you sit there waiting for him to come back, the next time he does it’ll be to tell us to leave.”

  Alexis didn’t even humour her daughter with a response.

  “It’ll need more than just some tight, frigid virgin to keep us here”, Pandora said, the words trickling off her lip-glossed lips with ease.

  “Then what do you suggest, smart-ass? I’m not the type to beg like a scolded dog.”

  “I don’t know”, Pandora complained. “Maybe if they did it together.”

  “Did what together?”

  “You know, bumped off Philip. If they both did it together then he wouldn’t be able to inherit the house. You know, if he was in prison for the rest of his life. Duh.”

  Alexis turned to her, a cloud of smoke streaming from pursed up lips that looked like a pair of prunes squashed together.

  “They’d have to give it to us”, Pandora went on.

  “He wasn’t here. None of us even knew him before Philip was in the hospital.”

  “What if we said that we did though?”

  Alexis shifted her weight towards her daughter and narrowed her eyes into perfect slits.

  “Go on”, she said.

  “It would be our word against his. It’s what the police are looking for, isn’t it? Motive.”

  Alexis made a noise like a growling dog again.

  “Did you poison him?” Alexis asked. “I swear to God I’ll kill you if you did.”

  “Mommy”, Pandora protested. “I’m telling you it was Gracey. She did it with that sexy businessman Leighton. Do you want to know how I know?”

  “How do you know?” Alexis asked suspiciously.

  “I saw
her do it”, Pandora said.

  “You did, did you?” Alexis said, her eyes so narrowed they were almost closed completely.

  “I saw more than that”, Pandora confessed.

  “What more did you see?”

  “I saw Leighton here, a week before Philip died.”

  “Leighton?” Alexis said flatly.

  “That’s right”, Pandora said, her heart racing with the lie. “He was here at the house, and he was there at the bar. Isabella saw him too. I’m surprised you didn’t. Perhaps you did and you didn’t even realize it.”

  Alexis stubbed out her cigarette. “You’re playing a very dangerous game, Pandora.”

  “It’s not a game Mom, It’s the truth. Just ask Isabella.”

  Alexis shook another cigarette out of her pack. It was the very last one.

  “They’re going to get into trouble aren’t they?” Pandora asked, her eyelids fluttering like butterfly wings. “I think we even have the death penalty in this state, don’t we? I mean, stabbing someone with scissors is one thing, but murder-” Pandora paused to put on her best theatrical voice “-I mean murder, that’s serious isn’t it? People hang for that.”

  “You’ve been watching too much TV”, Alexis said. “They abolished the death penalty two years ago.”

  “Oh”, Pandora said, “Well, they didn’t abolish prison, did they?”

  Alexis didn’t need to turn around to know a car was pulling up the drive, she could hear the sound of the tires on the gravel.

  ***

  At three am, at Philip’s memorial, wind rushing through the trees above them, and no other sound but the distant hoot of an owl, a hooded figure with a baseball bat entered the correct combination code to access the inner section of the tomb and pushed their way confidently through the gate.

  It didn’t take them long to smash the urn of ashes to the ground, nor crack the piece of contemporary art into several large pieces. When they were done, they spat on the spilled mess that was once Philip Mandrake De Vries, and stamped what was left of him into the ground, the baseball bat almost broken in two, and sweat soaking into the hoodie they wore to cover their face.