by Jan Coffey
That was all it took. Léa was barely able to snatch the towel off the chair before he whisked her into the laundry room and shut the door behind them.
He tried to suckle her breasts. She fought to unzip his shorts. The dryer rumbled on in the small room, masking the noises caused by their impatience.
“I know I promised you slow.” He lifted her onto the dryer.
“Slow is overrated.” She locked her legs around his waist.
He drove into her. Léa’s hands and legs and mouth drew him close. Never in her entire life had she felt more alive than she did now.
Mick took hold of her buttocks and thrust himself deep into her at a quickening pace. Léa met his every stroke, rocking on the warm machine to receive him…to pull him deeper into the very core of her. He was so large, so potent. The fit was perfect. The rising thrill almost unbearable. The sounds he was making in her ear so primeval.
As she cried out from the power of her release, she felt his entire body go rigid as he too exploded. They clung to each other for several moments, a breathless tangle of limbs and bodies.
As if on cue, the drier buzzer sounded.
Chapter 18
“I have to meet a couple of people downtown. Are you sure you can’t call someone to come and stay with you?”
“Stop worrying!” Heather grabbed Léa by the shoulders and pushed her toward the front door. “Just go and come back. Dad said he’s picking you up here at noon. Just do it.”
Léa planted her feet. “Then you’re coming with us to Doylestown. You and Mick could get some lunch while I go to the hotel for my things.”
“Wrong again, contestant, but thank you for playing.” Heather opened the door. “I want to make some calls to my friends. You two will just have to last a couple of hours without me.”
“Heather!” Léa turned in the open doorway. “I’m worried about you being alone here. Some creep did really knock me in the head in the backyard.”
“Daytime. Every busybody in the neighborhood is awake now and on guard at their windows. I’m fifteen. I have a killer dog. And I’m half a foot taller than you.”
“In your dreams! Okay, maybe with your clogs on.”
Heather stood up straight, looking down on Léa. “Besides, my looks are intimidating enough to scare the shit out of anyone.”
Léa flung her arms around the teenager. “Well, that’s definitely not true.”
The unexpectedness of the hug threw Heather for a loop. Then, she shocked herself further by returning the embrace.
She pulled back abruptly. “Get going.”
“Here’s my cell phone.” Léa stuffed the thing in Heather’s hand. “Turn it on. Leave it on. And take it with you if you leave the house. And everything next door can wait until we get to it together later.”
“Get going!” She pushed her new friend out the door.
Heather held on to Max’s collar and leaned in the doorway as she watched Léa walk down the street.
“Time to go to work,” she announced excitedly to the dog the minute Léa disappeared from sight. She charged upstairs and into her room.
The thought of doing something nice for Léa had been tugging at Heather’s mind since yesterday morning when she’d read that article. She had been thinking about how much Léa must have been doing without over the past few years. As the solitary caregiver for someone with late stage Alzheimer’s, as the problem solver for a brother who was in a jam he would probably never get out of, as the provider of everything, Léa was a person who needed to have something given back to her. But presents weren’t what Heather was thinking about.
An old pair of blue jeans were ready on Heather’s bed. After changing into them and pulling a white T-shirt over her head, she had to take a second look in the mirror at the new stranger staring back.
How weird to see that stranger smiling at her in the mirror.
Max stayed right on her heels when she went down into the basement for some work gloves and a painter’s cap. A couple of minutes later, the two of them darted out the back door.
The idea had come to her this morning. No sweat, Heather had thought. She would have the front room painted by the time they got back. It was perfect.
The full garbage bags and the old, rolled carpets and the other junk they’d dragged out yesterday were all still piled at the end of the driveway by the carriage house.
She and Max walked in through the back door. The place already looked so much more livable without all the junk. Heather found the paint and the rollers and brushes in the dining room. Luckily, Léa had picked the same boring color of eggshell for every room.
Max followed her down to the basement. There was a pile of old sheets and blankets she’d spotted the day before. They stunk, but they’d make perfect drop cloths.
When she came back upstairs, the dog stayed behind. To him, that cellar must have had more interesting smells than a cat convention in July. She dropped the bundle of cloths in the back parlor, shook a large sheet loose, and turned to walk inside the living room.
A face was pressed to the glass panel of the front door, and Heather screamed and jumped backwards.
Max came up basement stairs in a shot. Heather covered her mouth in embarrassment and leaned against the wall to catch her breath. She recognized Chris, waving at her through the glass, but Max didn’t. The dog jumped up against the door, barking furiously.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Chris’s muffled voice came through the door. Heather could barely make out what he was saying over the growling and barking of the dog. She opened the door.
“You scared the shit out of me, Chris Webster.”
Max was still going bonkers, so Heather held on tight to his collar.
“I didn’t know if anyone was in or not,” Chris said, keeping a safe distance from the dog.
“I think Miss Manners generally includes ‘knocking’ in her answers on this topic. I don’t recall ‘look in’ being on her list of appropriate ways to approach a home you don’t live in.”
“I had to deliver some flowers for my boss.”
“You work for the flower shop?”
“No, the drugstore,” Chris replied over Max’s continuing fierceness. Chris threw him an uncomfortable glance. “Mr. Rice, the pharmacist, picked out this thing for Ms. Hardy. He told me to drop it off while I was doing my prescription deliveries this morning.”
Two days ago, Heather had hated Andrew Rice for not filling her prescription. By this morning, however, the man had been reestablished as ‘pretty okay’ in her mind. Right now, she wasn’t sure how she should feel about him, considering he was sending Léa flowers.
“So where are they?”
Chris looked confused.
“The flowers? Where are they?”
“Oh! Hang on. I’ll get them.” The lanky teenager hopped over the broken steps and went to his old station wagon parked out front. In spite of her misgivings, Heather had to approve of the pharmacist’s taste when Chris took the big basket of wild flowers out of the back of the car.
“Where should I leave them?”
“Why don’t you bring them in?”
He looked warily at the growling dog.
“Come on! Max won’t bite.” She stepped inside, pulling the dog with her. “Right there, by the window looks good.”
As soon as he put the flowers down, she let go of Max. The dog rushed over and started sniffing Chris’s sneakers and cuffs.
“He likes to smell everything. You can pet him if you want. He really won’t hurt you.”
He tucked his hands in his pockets instead. Heather studied him for a couple of seconds. Now that she wasn’t mad at the world, she admitted that he had turned out pretty cute. He was tall, maybe as tall as his dad, Reverend Webster, the Presbyterian minister in town. And he was getting broad and muscular across the chest. It wasn’t just his buff looks. There was also a sense of confidence about him that Heather liked.
He was obviously not happy wit
h the dog’s attentions, but he was definitely not afraid.
“Sorry I don’t have any money with me, so I can’t tip you or anything,” she said just to start up the conversation.
He shook his head and smiled. “By the way, what are you doing here?”
“Working.” She picked up one of the sheets and shook it out. “Scraping, painting, doing repairs. Whatever needs to be done.”
“Is your dad renovating this dump?”
“No, I’m working with Léa. The two of us are working on it. And it’s not a dump.”
He rolled his eyes at her.
“Well, it won’t be when we’re done.”
Chris started walking around and peeking into the rooms.
“So the rumors are true. She is sticking around.”
Heather somewhat selfishly wanted it to be true. “Looks like it.”
“And the famous kitchen.” He stood in the doorway, staring in. “I’m surprised she doesn’t freak out every time she walks in here.”
“I don’t know why she should.” The comment irritated Heather. “That happened twenty years ago. Plus, she has her head screwed on tighter than most of us.”
He turned to her. “That’s not what they say.”
“Who? The people in this pathetic little nothing town. What would they know? Léa hasn’t been around since she was eleven years old. And since then, she’s done a lot with her life. Didn’t you read that article in the paper yesterday?”
He shook his head. “I was just telling you what people say.”
“Well, don’t! People don’t have any license to gossip about her just because she’s a Hardy.” Heather took the sheets and blankets to the front room and started spreading them on the hardwood floor. Chris followed her and stood in the doorway.
“No reason for you to get so p.o’d, Heather. People always gossip.”
“No, they don’t. I wasn’t deaf or blind the last time I was around. I saw the shit that was going on with Marilyn.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Everybody in town saw it. But God forbid that anyone should whisper a word about the daughter of one of our oldest families. The woman was a whore, but would anyone even…”
The words caught in Heather’s throat as she looked into Chris’s face. She hadn’t seen him walk across the room. His blue eyes looked fierce as he stared at her.
“You’re looking even hotter now than when you left.”
“I—”
“And I thought you were a babe, then.” He reached out and gently fingered the earrings that lined her ear. “Did you really mean it on Saturday when you said you were permanently unavailable?”
A shiver ran through Heather’s body when his finger skimmed over her neck, just below the ear. When she said nothing, he smiled and let his hand trail down her back, finally hooking a finger into the low waistline of her jeans.
“I…I wasn’t in too good a mood that day.”
She moved away from him. She felt hot. Excited. But all of a sudden, he seemed so much older, more experienced than she was. He’d changed a lot.
“I have tons to do here, Chris. I think you should go.”
His hands were once again tucked into his pockets.
“Can you get out tonight?”
She hesitated.
“We’ll take it really slow, Heather.” His eyes were soft, gentle. He looked again like the teenager that she used to know. “We’ll go to a movie, and I’ll bring you back.”
“Okay.” Heather said on impulse. “I have a doctor’s appointment at five. Pick me up at six thirty, next door.”
He beamed her a smile as he walked out the front door, and she stood staring out the window at his back.
Who’d have thought that Chris Webster would turn out so hot, after all?
~~~~
“This is not the same person that I married. It’s impossible to believe she is the mother of my children.”
“I know this is difficult for you to swallow.” The lawyer gathered up the investigator’s report Ted was scanning. “But going up against someone with her kind of money and her connections, it never hurts to be prepared.”
Prepared? They were more than prepared! There was enough dirt here to bury that woman for eternity. And right now, after everything she’d put him through, that was exactly what he wanted to do. Bury her.
Chapter 19
Léa took her time walking downtown. She had so many things racing through her mind, so many feelings whirling within her. Everything was becoming so complicated. She needed to simplify.
She stopped to pick up a newspaper. The woman at the register remembered her and was actually very friendly. Léa bought stamps at the post office. Still, she arrived at her destination fifteen minutes early.
She passed the empty park bench on Main Street. The words Gift of the Torchbearers of Freedom were emblazoned on it. It felt far too awkward and obvious just to sit down and stare at everyone passing by. She walked to the next intersection and glanced at the line of storefronts on both sides of the street. Reaching the last building on the park side of Main Street, she noticed a preppy, slightly overweight man hurrying across the street. The balding, middle-aged man had a newspaper tucked under his arm, and he looked right past her. There was something vaguely familiar about him that made Léa pause and look again.
She remembered seeing him in the courthouse, during the trial.
The man seemed oblivious to everything and everyone on the street, as if the weight of the world were on his stooped shoulders. It wasn’t until she saw him take a key out of his pocket and open the front door to Hughes Grille, that she realized the connection.
He was a Hughes. Certainly too young to be the Mr. Hughes who had run the Grille in her own father’s time, but perhaps a son, she thought.
Léa glanced back at the bench near the entrance to the park and wondered if she should consider this man among the people mentioned in the letter. Marilyn’s Hate Club.
She turned around and headed back along the street to the bench. A moderate amount of traffic rolled past.
Léa recognized Stephanie’s gray Cadillac, parked across the way in front of the Franklin Trust Bank.
Bob Slater, the founder of the bank, had run it for at least thirty years. He was also Stephanie’s second husband. Charlie Foley, Stephanie’s first husband and Marilyn’s father, had been the owner of the mill and at one time had owned practically everything worth having in Stonybrook. He’d passed away, some ten years ago, leaving everything to his wife and daughter. Bob Slater, at that time a healthy middle-aged widower, had married Stephanie a year later.
During the few short years that Ted and Marilyn had lived together as a couple outside of Stonybrook, Léa had seen Bob and Stephanie maybe a half-dozen times, all on the occasion of one of the girl’s christenings or birthdays. At the beginning, Léa had chalked up the couple’s coldness to the normal divisiveness of social and class difference. She’d thought that because of those barriers, perhaps the Slaters would never accept the Hardys. But as the years had passed, Léa had seen a steady warming of Stephanie toward Ted. In fact, after his separation from Marilyn, Léa had heard her brother say that his mother-in-law was in favor of him getting custody of the girls. None of that mattered after Ted was arrested for his family’s murder. Stephanie had lashed out at him harder than anyone else.
Léa sat down at one end of the bench and opened the newspaper on her lap. She lowered her sunglasses and glanced over the top of the paper at the people coming and going on the street. She looked at the cars pulling into parking spaces and the strangers getting out of them. The buildings were all familiar, but the faces meant nothing. Twenty years was a long time to be away, and Léa questioned how she would make any sense out of the cryptic letter when she couldn’t even identify the people.
Reaching inside her purse, she took out the envelope and read the words again.
Ten o’clock Monday morning sit on the bench by the Ma
in Street entrance to the park. You’ll meet Marilyn’s Hate Club. They will all ...
“Léa!”
She folded the letter and stuffed it inside her purse. A buxom redhead, a little older than herself, was careening across the street toward her. She was squeezed into a black top with matching tights, and her outfit accentuated every curve. Her makeup had been applied with tremendous care and her hair was fashionably cut. Léa watched her approach with growing curiosity.
“You are Léa Hardy, aren’t you?”
Léa nodded hesitantly. The woman had friendly green eyes, and she was stretching out her hand before she even reached the bench.
“Sheila. Sheila Desjardins. I went to high school with your brother. You remember me, don’t you?”
Léa smiled and stood up, accepting the handshake. “I think I do. You used to live a couple of streets up from us, didn’t you? Your parents had an old St. Bernard that slept in the shade in front of the garage door.”
“That was us!” The woman beamed. “My parents sold that house back in ‘93 and moved to Florida. I really wanted to buy the place myself, but it was just too big a mortgage for one person to handle. But I’m renting an apartment just up the street from the house now. Are you waiting for someone? Can I sit with you?”
“Sure.” Léa gathered up the papers, making room for her to sit.
“It’s so nice out here. A perfect spot.” Sheila did a quick survey of the people walking past and sat down next to Léa. “You’re probably wondering what the heck I’m doing wandering the streets with no purse or anything.”
“No. Actually, I wasn’t. But—”
“My cut-color-foil appointment called and canceled five minutes ago. Can you imagine the woman’s nerve?”
“I can’t.”