Cry Wolf

by Romy Lockhart

  “Eh, how bout lunch tomorrow?” I ask.

  “Where?”

  “There’s a little cafe on the road into town. It’s attached to the only B&B in the area, so I’m guessing you know about it already.”

  He doesn’t confirm it, but he nods after a second’s pause. “I’ll meet you there at midday.”

  He walks off quickly, as if he can’t get away from me fast enough. Hilarious, considering he seemed so keen to make a date. Men. I don’t think I’ll ever understand them.

  I head back into the bar and everyone shuts up at once. Killed the conversation, did I? Wonder why that might be.

  Fergus drinks quietly, his thoughts elsewhere. It’s kind of strange to have someone so young in beside the older guys, basically doing the same keeping to himself kind of thing they’re doing. He looks over every now and then and I think he’s about to attempt to start a conversation, before he thinks better of it. His gaze drifts to Mr Peterson and he goes back to drinking.

  “Another?” I ask, picking up his glass.

  He seems to think about it, before shaking his head. “A coke please.”

  Okay. So he’s not really here to drink then. I didn’t think so.

  I get him his coke and Mr Peterson watches me in silent judgement. I’d probably ignore it if I were the wilting wallflower type. “Got something to say?”

  “That was your husband right there?” he asks, as if it was five minutes ago that the aggressive blond showed up acting like a wife-beating piece of scum.

  I wonder how to answer that. So far Mrs Wallace thinks my husband is a cowboy boot wearing brunette called Dick. I probably shouldn’t complicate things. Still...

  “He’s a work in progress,” I tell him.

  “He seems like he needs taught a lesson or two,” Mr Peterson tells me.

  I shrug. “We can’t all be perfect.”

  I’m winding him up, of course, but he probably doesn’t know that.

  “He seemed okay to me,” Fergus says, in a lame attempt to kiss my ass before he asks for a favour kind of way. He shrugs.

  I laugh. “He’s an arsehole, but he’s my arsehole.”

  “Everyone needs an arsehole,” he jokes.

  Ah, Fergus. I’m glad you’re here. You’re half-decent company on a piss-boring night like this.

  “I think I’ll shut this place early tonight guys,” I say, for the benefit of the geezers in the room. “Like half eleven-ish.”

  I need my beauty sleep for my date which I’m sure isn’t going to end up as a some kind of weird murder attempt, even if the guy seems to be a little bit psycho.

  “So how did you two meet?” Fergus asks.

  I smile. “He arrested me at a protest rally in London.”

  “Seriously?”

  I nod. “I joked about preferring being cuffed to a bed and he laughed. Asked me out for a date after I got released. I didn’t expect it to be more than a fling to be honest, but I guess we just hit it off.”

  “That’s a great story,” he tells me. “Hope I wind up with one like that.”

  “You’re not seeing anyone?” I ask, feeling a little better now that I don’t have a hint of desperation in my tone. He’s sweet, but he’s too young for me. And apparently I might have some options now while I’m in town.

  “I was, but she kind of wanted to break up before we head off in different directions.” He shrugs, but I can tell he’s still pretty cut up by it. “I guess it makes sense. It just kind of sucks.”

  “I get that,” I tell him. “She didn’t deserve you, Fergus. Remember that when she calls you from wherever she winds up.”

  “You think she’ll call?” Hope lights his eyes. Oh, he has it bad.

  I nod. “She’ll find out what guys are like in the big bad world and she’ll realize what she threw away. It’s kind of a cliché, but those are so common because they’re true.”

  “I didn’t even think of that.”

  Probably shouldn’t have told him. He looks like his mind is working overtime, trying to work out how he can use this information to win her back.

  “I’ll tell you something, Fergus. If you take her back when she calls, you might end up back together for five minutes, but it won’t last.”

  “But I thought you said...”

  “She’ll miss you, but she’ll realize it’s not going to work while you’re apart. You’ll realize it too. It hurts more the second time the same person breaks your heart. I don’t want that for you.”

  I shudder when I realize how old and motherly I sound right now. If someone had told me the same thing when I was younger I would have told them to feck right off. Fergus is too nice to do that, and he’s probably too thoughtful to ignore what I’ve told him. I don’t think it’ll stop the inevitable, but now he’ll likely over-think the situation and beat himself up over whatever decision he makes.

  “You know what? Feel free to ignore this dour old bitch. I’m sure it’ll all work out fine.”

  He smiles, and that glimmer of hope lights his eyes again. He’ll be fine.

  Broken hearts heal. Or so I’m told anyways.

  The night wears on and I end up closing the bar at eleven. Fergus is still hanging about, and I let him help me clean up when the old duffers leave. He clears his throat and I wonder what’s up.

  If he wasn’t afraid to talk about a girl in front of the old men, what is he afraid to bring up?

  “You alright there, Fergus? Only it seems like you’ve had something on your mind all night.”

  “It’s about what happened to you twenty years ago,” he tells me, his face flushing adorably.

  I clamp down on my initial reaction. If I talk to him like I spoke to Kev, he’ll rush off and I’ll never know what he’s all wound up about.

  “Oh, aye,” I say, “What about it?”

  He breaks eye contact so I start wiping down the already clean counter.

  “I saw something out there a few nights ago. Same place you did.” His voice is shaky and he’s scratching nervously at his arms, making red marks in his pale, freckled skin.

  I can’t think what to say. I expected questions, sympathies, or maybe an apology for the way his grandparents spoke about me at the time. Anything but this.

  “You saw something? Like what?”

  He swallows, before he clears his throat again and says, “A girl. A woman, I mean. In a red dress. Red hair too. Like mine, I mean. Not like the colour red.”

  He’s rambling, and if this were anyone else I was talking to, I might think he was winding me up.

  “The woman I saw was in a red dress. She had ginger hair too.”

  He nods. “That’s why I had to talk to you.”

  “This makes no sense,” I tell him, thinking out loud. “The woman I saw died. I watched it happen.”

  “And then the body was gone,” he says, his voice quiet. He doesn’t want to remind me of the part where I turned out to be a crazy ass liar, I guess.

  “So what you’re telling me is you saw a woman who looked like the same one I saw die, in that cornfield, twenty years after she died?”

  He nods. “I know... I know how crazy it sounds. I just. I know what I saw.”

  “Three nights ago?” I ask, wondering if it’s a coincidence that he saw her the night I came back to town.

  He nods again. “She was just running and I ran after her but it was dark and I lost sight of her.”

  I think it over. He saw a ghost? Maybe. I guess. Some people swear blind spirits are real. He imagined it? Probably more likely since it’s the simplest explanation. I don’t know why he’d hallucinate something so specific, but maybe the story haunted him when he was growing up.

  He was a baby when it actually happened so it’s a little weird that it would affect him so much.

  “Maggie, I don’t know if you realize this, but after that happened I looked up the original date of the incident. It’s twenty years to the day in two days time.”

  Okay, maybe he’s kind of obsess
ed with it. I guess it was like an urban legend around here, except that it was real. To me, at least.

  “I just... I needed to talk to someone about it. Someone who’d understand,” he tells me.

  Understand? Oh, yeah, right. I saw something that night and nobody believed me.

  “You believe me, right?” he asks.

  I nod slowly. “I believe you, Fergus.”

  He blows out a relieved breath. “That’s a weight off.”

  “Now go home to bed and stop thinking about chasing strange women across the cornfield.”

  He snorts a little as I kick him out. I lean against the door for a second, remembering that night. Not that I’m ever likely to forget it. It’s not the sort of thing you ever forget.

  It’s a little weird how long it’s been. Twenty years. I finish closing up and lock up the bar, marvelling at how quiet it is outside. I might have been born here, but I’m a big city girl through and through. I learned that the minute I left this place. I need the bustle. Getting lost in a crowd.

  This place is pretty boring. I mean it’s peaceful right now, kind of soothing in a way. But give me a week of this and I’ll be pulling my hair out. I’ll get the listing sorted for the house in the morning. The lawyer agreed to make a house-call. Said he has some news for me.

  Wouldn’t say what, the big tease, but I guess it might be something to do with the estate. For all I know, my parents were in debt up to their eyeballs. Wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out I have to sell the house just to get the money to cover something else.

  I stop walking to stare out across the landscape, wondering if I really saw what I did that night. I’ve been through all the possibilities before. Most of them were suggested by the police. I heard my parents worry over a few of the less savoury ideas when they thought I wasn’t listening.

  It had been so damn vivid. So real.

  It couldn’t have been a dream. I know that. I feel it. I wasn’t dreaming. Never really had such a thing as a nightmare before it happened. After? Night terrors set in. For months. Hell, for years.

  No, it wasn’t a dream, but I’ll be damned if I know what it was.

  My beautiful, relaxing sleep is shattered by an insistent shrill ringing that seems to just pierce right through me. I groan as I shift in the bed and hammer the top of the alarm clock. The noise doesn’t stop, and the damn thing falls to the ground and I hear something snap off.

  Ugh. It wasn’t the alarm.

  What then? I stifle a yawn, realizing finally that it must be the door.

  Who the hell is... Oh crap. The lawyer. I haul myself out of bed and swipe at my hair as I kick the alarm clock out of my way and rush down the stairs. Ugh. I’m going to make such a good impression with my morning breath and baggy tracksuit. At least he’s only here for business, I suppose. It would be so much worse if he was a romantic prospect.

  I yank open the door and see my fake fiancé with his finger leaning on the button of the damned bell. No wonder it won’t stop going off. I see I named him appropriately. He really is a Dick.

  “Cut that out,” I scowl at him, folding my arms. “What do you think you’re doing turning up here at the crack of dawn playing with my bloody doorbell?”

  He takes his finger off the ringer. “Well, for starters it’s hardly the crack of dawn. It’s after nine.”

  “Nine am?” I stare at him like he’s grown horns. “You think it’s acceptable to blast a stranger’s doorbell at that time in the morning do you?”

  He smirks a little. “You said to come back in the morning.”

  “I also said not too early. This is too early.” I start to close the door on him.

  He laughs. “Seriously? You’re up now.”

  “No, I’m bloody not, I’m half asleep. As if you couldn’t tell by the state of my hair.”

  His gaze drifts there when I don’t close the door completely. “I like a nice bed head. It’s sexy.”

  “Ugh, I knew you were a weirdo.” I mean it’s kind of nice that he’s not agreeing that I look a right mess, but still. Who says things like that? Seriously.

  “So?” he asks, looking at me expectantly.

  “So, what?”

  “So did you get the rings off?” He glances at my hand, the one that’s holding the door open, and I think he knows very well that I didn’t get them off.

  “The damn things are stuck fast. I hope you don’t have a girlfriend out there looking for them because she’s not getting them back anytime soon if you do.”

  He smiles. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “Then do you mind explaining to me why you were carrying around a set of rings like this?”

  He hesitates. “I don’t think you’d like the answer.”

  Right. Probably a grave-robber then. Damn. I need to get these things off.

  “Well, don’t worry. I’ll find a way to get them off. Just come back later.”

  “Later?” he asks, raising his eyebrows. “But you’re working later.”

  “After work.”

  He frowns. “You’re meeting Lukas for lunch.”

  Oh my God. These weirdos definitely know each other. Why am I not surprised?

  “So I am. As if it’s got anything to do with you.”

  “It’s got everything to do with me,” he tells me, a hint of a growl in his throat as his gaze cuts through me.

  Damn. What is it about a growl that starts my engines? I blink, shaking off the idea of grabbing the front of his T-shirt and pulling him inside.

  “I’ll be closing the door now. Meet me after work, or don’t. See if I care.”

  I close the door quickly and lock it, waiting and listening. I hear him sigh loudly and curse a little before he walks away.

  I don’t know what the hell is up with those two, but I’m going to find out.

  I check the time on the living room clock above the mantle before I head to the bathroom to shower. The lawyer said he’d be round after ten. A more reasonable time than quarter to nine in the damn morning. I try to loosen the rings with shower gel, and a bar of soap that I mangle in my hands as I keep trying. I’m left wondering how the hell they slipped on so easily when they won’t come off for love or money.

  Sighing, I give up and finish washing before stepping out of the shower and getting ready for the day. I put on the clothes I’ll wear to work later, considering I’ll be talking to the lawyer, heading for lunch then pretty much opening the bar. I consider one of the two sets of sexy underwear I own and reject the idea out of hand. Lunch dates don’t usually end in the bedroom.

  Much as I might be attracted to the sullen blond, I don’t want to give him the wrong idea. I’m suspicious of him first, attracted to him second. Not the other way around. I just need to make myself believe that. I’m meeting him to work out why him and his friend are such weirdos, not to find out how good he is between the sheets.

  I’m drinking a cup of tea, surfing channels on the TV when the doorbell rings. This time it’s a normal couple of rings like it’s supposed to when you press it once and leave it alone. I guess my lawyer is here.

  I don’t know exactly what I’m expecting when I open the door, but it’s not another hunk of a man.

  My jaw drops. The guy standing in front of me isn’t my lawyer. He’s forty years too young to be, and way too gorgeous. He has short jet black hair, pretty blue eyes, high cheekbones and a razor-sharp jaw-line. He’s probably six foot something and he’s even more built than the weirdos.

  What the hell is going on right now? Why has Widow’s Walk become a sudden hangout for hotties? And why are they all showing up at my door?

  Not that I’m complaining, exactly.

  “Um, hello?” I ask, waiting for the stranger to tell me what he’s actually doing on my doorstep.

  “I’m Sebastian, I work with your estate lawyer, Harold. He couldn’t come today. He’s had some bad news and had to take a leave of absence. I’ll be handling your case now.”

  “My case?” I fr
own at him. “I’ve been given the house and the bar. What else is there?”

  “That’s what I’m here to talk to you about.”

  Right. Yeah. Not weird at all.

  “Oh, come in then,” I say, holding the door open for him.

  He comes inside and I usher him into the living room.

  “Can I get you anything?” I ask as we sit. “Tea, coffee...” A lower back massage that gets way too handsy? So sue me. He has a nice arse.

  “No, I’m fine,” he says, with a smile.

  Ah, he has a nice smile. Genuine and easy. Makes his handsome face seem even more appealing.

  “Well, then...”

  He nods, getting a file out of his briefcase. “This is something that was... misplaced... when the will was originally read out.”

  “Misplaced?”

  He shrugs, avoiding my gaze, before meeting my eyes. His are a soft, clear shade of aquamarine with silvery flecks that make them seem to sparkle in the light. This man was made to be a movie star, or a model, or maybe just famous for being sexy. I mean that’s all it takes with some celebrities these days, right?

  “Harold is a great guy, and he’s good at his job. He can just be a little... forgetful.”

  I think about it and realize he’s right. The couple of times I spoke to the old guy he seemed a little ditzy. Still, he’s supposed to be a professional. This is kind of messed up.

  “So what did he miss out telling me?”

  Sebastian smiles. “Oh, don’t worry. It’s nothing bad.”

  I feel my shoulders relax at his reassurance, as if the tone of his voice has some magical power over me. “So, what is it?”

  “There’s a stipulation on the additional pages that were misplaced. Your parents had a trust fund set up for you, but you can only access it if you hold onto the house for a year and run the bar on the same rota they worked.”

  “O-kay,” I say, trying and failing to hold back a snort. “I’m sorry, but I’m not staying in this town for a year.”

  He smiles. “That’s your choice. I’ll give you the rest of the information and you can get back to me when it suits you.”