by Sheedy, EC
I wonder who he’s fucking….
Her stomach curled, and the hand she used to reach for her coffee shook. No. She wouldn’t think about that, couldn’t bear the images evoked. She’d been a fool to let him go. There must have been a way to hold him. Keep him.
He’d called only once, and typical Gus, the message left with Rodina was terse: he’d seen the nun “with no results.” And he’d see her again when he could. The “when he could” part pissed her off. But then he didn’t know that every day that nun spent in Mayday House brought Dinah closer to disaster, and she didn’t intend to tell him.
She cursed herself for the stupid whim that had caused her to involve him in this nasty bit of business in the first place, but looking back, why she did it was pathetically clear. It was rich-bitch Dinah Marsden’s twist on the old I-forgot-my-sweater trick, concocting a reason to contact him again, because she’d been terrified that when he left Miami, she’d lose him forever—a man who to this day she knew absolutely nothing about, other than how marvelous he was in bed. From day one her questions about his past met with rigid, unyielding silence and, truth be told, she hadn’t much cared. Pasts, as she well knew, often deserved to be forgotten—certainly hers did.
Then a couple of months after he’d come to live with her, he’d told her he needed new names and birth certificates for him and Josh, his little brother. It was the first of only two times he’d asked her for anything, and she’d complied, no questions asked. Not that asking would have done any good. Gus kept to Gus. Had in the beginning and had in the end.
Which made her even more of a fool for trusting him with Mayday House, something so critical it could destroy her life.
She hadn’t started out being a fool for him, had simply thought she’d procured a young, energetic lover, a plaything, someone she could control. Then one day everything changed; Gus changed—like all self-protective chameleons do. It amused her now to think she’d ever thought she controlled Gus Hammond.
She remembered the exact day when he took control. It was the day that stupid bitch, Idona, had asked to borrow him—for the fifth time. Dinah had said yes, afraid even then to admit her growing feelings for him—but, God, he was so beautiful, so maddeningly detached, so deliciously fuckable, yet always filled with that strange dark pride, that incredible inner assurance. Like a tall young king he was—even when she began sharing him with her friends. At first it was a lark, a way of proving she didn’t care, and a means of attacking that frustrating, untouchable pride of his that drove her crazy.
When she’d make a date for him, he’d given her one of his cool dark totally inscrutable looks, and said, “Where and when?” Never who, because the who didn’t matter.
Until Idona. Twice as wealthy as Dinah and ten years younger, she’d wanted to keep Gus, had asked him to move in with her, promised him the moon, and a few million stars to match. Dinah pulled in a breath; even now that moment of truth paralyzed her. When she’d confronted Gus, accused him of disloyalty, he’d looked at her, his eyes cold and unforgiving. “You’re the one with all the hot friends, Dinah. Me? I go along for the ride. Or should I say rides? You want exclusive, say so.”
She’d said “so” and he’d set out his conditions. No sex unless they both wanted it. A college fund for Josh, and night school classes for him—college after that. And no hassles when he chose to leave.
That was the day she’d fallen hopelessly, helplessly in love with Gus Hammond.
And if she was going to get him back, she’d have to take care of the nun and Mayday House herself—or at least help things along. She had a hunch who the nun was, but who the hell would have thought she’d show up now, at the worst possible time, in the worst possible place—that horrible old house.
Taking in another breath, she decided not to dwell on it, or the stupid nun.
Gus wasn’t so easy to put out of her mind. At least he hadn’t taken the escort job she’d sent his way. Okay, maybe she had been testing him, but dear God, she was happy he’d passed.
He’d been gone over two weeks, and it was like missing every second beat of her heart. She’d sworn she wouldn’t call, that she’d have more pride than that—but she had called. Hadn’t connected either time. And now here she was, a busy day to be scheduled, and all she could think about was Gus.
She was suddenly, abruptly, and absolutely goddamn tired of thinking about him. She needed to hear his voice.
“Cassie, get Gus on the phone, will you?”
Cassie, her nose, as usual, buried in one of her paperbacks, lifted her head and gave her another fish-eyed stare, thick with disapproval. “You sure?”
“Sure about what? Whether my pride can take it when he tells me to get lost?”
At first Cassie didn’t answer, her tight expression saying it all; then she said, “He’s all wrong for you, Dinah. You know that. He’s across the country. Let him be.”
Cassie was right, of course. Gus was the last man on earth she should care about. For one thing there was the age difference. Twenty-four years was twenty-four years no matter how many times she went under the knife. She was old enough to be his mother, Josh’s grandmother. Fuck!
“Just get him on the phone, will you?” Because if I don’t talk to him, I’m going to go crazy.
“Okay, if that’s what you want.” Cassie sighed, put down her book, and picked up the phone.
Dinah waited, tried to be cool, tried not to count the seconds until the call went through.
After what seemed forever, Cassie clicked off.
“Well?”
“There’s a message on his home voice mail, says he’ll be gone a week, maybe more, and to leave a message.”
A week or more. No way. She couldn’t bear it.
“Try his cell.”
Cassie dialed again. Listened. “Same message.”
“Check my schedule, see when I have a few days free. And if you can’t find any, make some,” she said, getting to her feet.
“Dinah … don’t.” Cassie’s face managed to look sympathetic and disapproving at the same time.
“Don’t what? Follow the man I love like some kind of aging rock groupie?” Don’t hurt like a young girl who’s lost her first love? Don’t be a foolish old woman who can’t accept an “I don’t love you.” as final?
“No, that’s not what I was going to say.” She clasped Dinah’s wrist “We used to be friends, Dinah, and I hate seeing you like this.”
Dinah put her hand over Cassie’s, meaning to yank it off. Instead she squeezed it. My God, I’m going to cry. I never cry… except over Gus.
She coughed, pulled her hand back, and brushed at her cheeks. “Deal with my schedule, Cassie. And get us tickets to Seattle ASAP.”
She walked out of the room. In fact, her decision to go to Seattle was perfect. She might be in love with Gus for all the wrong reasons, but she’d get him back, one way or another.
While she was at it, she’d do her part in getting rid of the nun and getting that filthy old mausoleum shut down for good.
CHAPTER 6
“Duke, what are you looking for?” Christiana, wearing running shorts, a high-cut tank top, and carrying a bottle of water, stepped into her home office just as Duke Thomas was closing the top drawer of her desk.
He turned from the task immediately and stepped toward her. “I was looking for that bottle of brandy the local station gave us.” His green-eyed gaze scanned her bared legs, then her naked midriff. He hooked a finger in the elastic waist of her shorts. “Now, I’m looking for a little pussy.”
Christiana took a drink from her bottle of water and set it on her desk. “You won’t find either one in my top drawer.”
“How about this one?” He tugged on her waistband until it gaped, raised an eyebrow, and looked inside her cotton pants. “Looks like pussy to me. Nice soft pussy.” Smiling then, he took her in his arms and nuzzled her hair. “And you smell fabulous.”
She knew he’d detoured from her question, but did
n’t much care. When she got this close to him, she didn’t much care about anything other than getting closer yet—and she had an hour before her magazine interview. Plenty of time. She pressed her body to his, rested her head on his shoulder, put her nose to his neck and breathed him in. He smelled … expensive. “You’re the one who smells good. Me? I probably smell like a wet dog. I need a shower.” She kissed his neck, then pulled back, again stabbed by curiosity. “And you know darn well I don’t keep brandy in my desk.”
He raised his hands in surrender, arched a brow, and smiled. “I wanted to surprise you.”
Christiana frowned and smiled at the same time. “What are you up to, Duke Thomas?” Her heart fluttered. Expectation unfurled.
He gestured toward her desk, the drawer he’d had open when she walked in.
Walking toward it, she glanced at him from over her shoulder. He looked exceedingly pleased with himself.
She opened the drawer and discovered a box, about eight inches long and covered in velvet. She ran an index finger along the long—wrong—form of the box, and the fluttering in her heart stopped, leaving it to sink. Inside the box, resting on black satin, was a double string of pearls. She hated pearls.
Pearls are for tears… . That’s what her mother always said.
“They’re beautiful, Duke.” She infused her voice with false sincerity. “Thank you.”
“I saw them last week, at a jeweler’s near the station. They seemed right for you.” If he noticed her lack of enthusiasm, it didn’t show. His pleased expression held.
“Yes, they’re perfect.” She looped them back onto their satin sheet and returned them to in the drawer. “I’ll wear them with my navy blue dress.” And look like a spinster aunt fresh out of mothballs.
“Now that’s amazing,” he said. “That’s exactly the dress I had in mind when I bought them.” He stopped. “Although they’ll be great on your black silk, too. Isn’t that what you’re wearing for The Benny Catz Show?”
The Catz show was two weeks away, and Duke was already focused on it. She should have guessed. “The Catz show is more of a twenty-something show, Duke, and black silk and pearls aren’t what you’d call cutting-edge fashion. I’ll look as if I’m attending an Italian funeral.” She’d been down this road with Duke before, so he knew she hated it when he did his Svengali routine, telling her what to wear, what to say.
“Which is why it’s so perfect,” he argued. “The pearls, the carefully arranged hair, the conservative clothing, they’re all about class, real substance—an image of a better saner time. It’s what you’re all about.” He gripped her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “Plus, it’s the real you, baby.”
The real you … Christiana didn’t think so, but then she’d been so out of touch with what she was for so long, she didn’t remember. She’d been too busy recreating herself—the way Duke wanted her to be and the role was beginning to chafe.
He kissed her then, brushing his lips over hers so softly he took her breath away.
Her heart thumped wildly, and she closed her eyes, placed her hands on his sides above his belt. The cords of his muscles were taut and hard. She ran her hands up, around his back, splayed them across his shoulders, and pulled him closer.
He deepened the kiss, slipping his tongue inside to taste and tease, then bringing his hands up to cover her breasts. “And while we’re speaking of substance …” He kneaded her breasts, catching her hard nipples in the space between his index and middle fingers, compressing gently.
Christiana drifted into the first simmer of need, the sensual fog that surrounded her whenever Duke touched her. She took his face in her hands, kissed him, long and hard, before pulling away. The kiss still burning her mouth, her lips moist from his tongue, her voice stumbled when she muttered, “I need that shower—”
He urged her down to the floor and stood over her. “What you need is your pants off—and this.” He undid his belt, unzipped himself, and exposed his erection. It emerged from his expensive slacks with a bravado earned inch by extended inch.
Her breath lumped in her throat, and she gasped for air before touching, then kissing the silken tip of him.
“Oh, that’s good. I’ll take all of that you want to give.” He put his big hands on her head.
She took him in her mouth, played with him. He groaned and shuddered, and she worked him more, took him to the edge—but only the edge. When she felt his pelvis thrust, the shudder in his thighs, she yanked off her shorts, stretched out on the floor, and spread her legs. The lips of her labia were already moist and hungry for him, rabid for him.
“Just a tease, huh?” He ran his tongue over his lower lip and smiled. “Can’t wait, baby?”
Of course, he knew he was right, knew the depth of her need, the harshness of her obsession for him. Her impatience to have him inside her, filling her with his thick, hard length.
When she didn’t answer, he chuckled, then knelt and lowered his body to hers. Bracing a hand on either side of her head, he plunged inside her, the stroke so powerful it shifted her up the carpet.
“Oh, God … yes,” she moaned. “More, Duke, more.”
He thrust again, and again …
Christiana tried to restrain the wave of her release, make the moment last—make Duke last. Then his thumb found her clitoris, rubbed and circled it. “Come on, baby. Come on …” He shifted his body, increased the friction, and rocked into her, deep, then deeper still, his moves hot, rhythmic, and demanding.
“Oh, God.” She clenched her eyelids tight, struggled to hold back, savor the anticipation, but it was useless. She came in the usual heart-pounding, mind-numbing rush that left her weak to the bone. One thrust later and Duke released in her on a long satisfied moan.
She lay back, her body slack, tired, sated and deprived all at once.
Duke, heavy on her breasts, groaned, then muttered hoarsely in her ear, “I have to say, Chris, you’re the best fuck I’ve ever had.”
Christiana turned her head, feeling the moisture fill, then seep, from the corner of her eye.
Pearls are for tears …
She wondered if he said the same thing to his wife.
The knock on Mayday’s front door was quick, sharp, and loud.
“Get that, Bridget, will you?” Keeley called over her shoulder, from the top step of the ladder, nearly knocking over her paint can in the process. She wanted to curse. She would have if she hadn’t decided to pull back on her use of bad language, which seemed to have increased with each mishap that came with home renovating.
“Okay,” Bridget said, looking relieved to abandon the task of emptying out the kitchen cupboards to ready them for Keeley’s unstoppable paintbrush.
She was back in seconds.
“Who was it?” Keeley carefully ran a putty knife over the fill she’d smeared over a gash in the wall.
“No one was there. Just this,” Bridget said, holding up a small package. “It’s addressed to you.”
Keeley did another careful drag over the fill in the wounded wall and descended the ladder. “Let’s see.”
She wiped her hands on the front of her coveralls and took the package from Bridget. Plain brown paper. Carelessly wrapped. No postage or shipping labels. Address printed in bold black liner. She turned it over. No return address.
Feeling her stomach flip uncomfortably, Keeley tightened her grip on the package and glanced at Bridget. “You didn’t see anyone?”
“Nope. It was propped against the door.”
The package seemed to heat up in Keeley’s hand.
Bridget went back to her cupboard cleaning. “Probably something from a neighbor. Mrs. O’Neil down the road, maybe. She was always dropping off stuff to Mary.”
Keeley nodded, telling herself she was being foolish, spooked by a plain brown wrapper. No doubt Bridget was right. She tore the tape off one end of the package and pulled back the wrapping.
“It’s a book,” she announced, feeling stupidly relieved. She wa
s reminded again of the way that strange phone call during her first few days in the house had put her on edge. Then she looked at the cover, a lurid near-photographic depiction of a woman tied to a chair with a man behind her holding a knife to her throat. Dripping from the knife, and raised by embossing, were drops of blood so deeply red they bordered on black. HOLY MURDER, the title of the book, was slashed diagonally across the cover in the same dark crimson.
A string dangled from the pages. A page marker. Something jittered along Keeley’s nape as she opened the book to where the string rested. Page 186. Some paragraphs were highlighted in yellow:
“What goes on here is my business,” he snarled. “And you’d be smart to remember that. So do what you’re told—and stay away from the cops.”
She glared at him, challenged him. “I’ll do what I want when I want. You don’t control me. You never did.”
Using the barrel of his gun, he lifted her chin. “I don’t want to control you, sweetheart,” he said, his lips curling, his words soft with threat. “I don’t have time for that. What I want is for you to clear out. Out of my life. And out of this town.”
“And if I don’t?”
His hard, merciless eyes saw the uncertainty in hers. “If you don’t, bitch, someone is going to get hurt. Really hurt. And that may or may not be you.”
Under the paragraphs, and written over the following text in the same heavy ink that was on the envelope, was some rough, childlike printing:
Don’t be stupid and don’t be brave. Get out now. Mayday House is not worth dying for.
Keeley closed the book, placed it on the table, and wiped her clammy palms over the paint-spattered fabric covering her thighs. Her breath crowded her lungs. Her brain grasped for a sense of things. For meaning.
The police. She’d call the police. They’d know what to do. She pressed a hand to her heart, willing it to settle, stop its arrhythmic, painful thumping against her ribs. The words from the book scattered across her vision, banners of warning.