by Eboni Snoe
“Thank you for a nice evening, Cay.”
“You know you don’t have to thank me.”
“I hope you’ll forget the little spat we had earlier.” She wrapped her arm through his.
“It’s forgotten already, Sherry,” he replied.
“I’m glad.” She lifted onto her toes and gave him a prolonged kiss before they entered the house.
Sasha felt like a spy. But although it had not been her intention to eavesdrop on anyone’s conversation, she was secretly glad she had. It helped to clear her head and put things in perspective. Olive Knowles appeared to be right. Sherry had worked too hard at being the mistress of Guana Manor to give up on that dream now. She would continue to press her affections on Cay, and from where Sasha sat he didn’t appear to mind. How long would it be before Sherry convinced him to take her up on her offer? Sasha knew from personal experience that Cay was a passionate man. His brother, Wally, had been dead for over two years. It wasn’t inconceivable to think Cay could eventually turn to Sherry. After all, how much could one man resist?
Sasha believed there were no bounds to what Sherry might do to seduce Cay, and that was another reason for her to keep her distance. She did not want to be a casualty of the ongoing saga of the Ellis family.
In that moment Sasha made up her mind. She would leave Guana Manor in the morning. The condition of her property didn’t matter. Even if she had to rent a boat, she was going home one way or another.
Chapter 13
“I’ve been looking for you.” Cay stepped out onto the tiled veranda.
“You sure weren’t looking very hard.” Sasha couldn’t suppress the retort.
“Do I detect a hint of anger?” He sat down beside her.
“Not in the least.” Sasha got up. She didn’t know where she was going, but she wasn’t going to sit there and have a pleasant conversation with Cay.
“So I finally caught you in a lie.” Cay caught up with her and matched his steps to hers.
“If that’s what you’ve been trying to do…congratulations.”
“Hey” —Cay stepped in front of her— “won’t you let me explain?”
“Like I said before, you don’t have to do me any favors.” She walked around him.
“Now, this is the Sasha I know,” he teased.
“And it’s the only one you will ever know if this is the way you plan to go about it.”
“What if I change my approach?” Cay stepped in front of her again and put his arms around her. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t here to eat dinner with you, Sasha. Some unexpected business came up.”
“If your sister-in-law is the unexpected business you had to tend to, it’s your house, you could have done it here.” Sasha tried to walk away but Cay stopped her.
“What are you implying?” His tone turned serious.
“I’m not implying anything. I said what I had to say.”
“So you believe I left so I could be with Sherry?” His eyes narrowed. “What kind of man do you take me for?”
“No different from any other. It’s obvious Sherry’s got the hots for you, so…” Sasha looked away.
“But she was my brother’s wife. And that is all she ever will be.” Cay firmly, but gently, took hold of Sasha’s chin to force her to look into his eyes. “Understand?”
“What difference does it make if I understand or not? You can do—”
“I’m growing tired of this game you’re playing, Sasha.” Cay squeezed her chin. “You were so angry with me that you couldn’t stand to sit beside me. Now I tell you what you were thinking was not true, and you try to worm your way out of it. I’m beginning to think you’re a coward when it comes to facing your own feelings.”
“I don’t have to explain my actions to you.”
“You don’t have to, but I want you to.” Cay’s thickly lashed eyes pierced Sasha’s. “Can’t you understand that? You try to act like it’s me who’s so unreachable, but I think you’ve played the games you’ve played for so long you don’t know how to do anything else,” he accused her.
“You don’t know anything about me, about my past. And I can assure you” —she looked into his eyes— “this is not a game.”
“Then prove it to me, Sasha.” His eyes burned into hers. “Under this beautiful moon. Prove it to me.” His words were like silk. “Show me how you really feel.”
Sasha looked at Cay’s lips as he brought them close to hers. He was offering them to her, but this time he would not be the one to seal the kiss. She would have to meet him halfway.
“Kiss me, Sasha. Right now. Right now.” Cay’s husky voice droned in Sasha’s ears.
Cay’s lips were mere inches away from hers, and Sasha could feel herself being drawn in. She wanted to feel his lips against hers again. To experience the pleasure it gave her. She wanted it more than anything and there was no holding back. Hesitantly, her lips touched his. It was a gentle truce, but moments later the heat between them surged.
“No. Wait,” Cay said gently, tugging at her arm. “Let’s go over here.” He led her to another veranda, where he sank down on a chaise with an uncertain Sasha beside him.
“I don’t know about this,” she protested, her voice trembling.
“I do,” Cay confirmed as he wrapped her in his arms. “I’ve never had a woman affect me the way you do.” He kissed Sasha’s protesting lips. “I hear myself talking to you and I don’t recognize my own words. I have to know if you are all my imagination believes you are.” Cay smothered his own words when he pressed his lips firmly against Sasha’s. “I want to know you, Sasha.” He spoke against her lips. “Know all there is to know, and maybe, just maybe, I will be satisfied.”
Cay’s kiss was the sweetest kiss Sasha had ever known. She wanted to wallow in his arms. To give him what he wanted because it was also what she wanted. Sasha knew she had never given herself to a man like she could give herself to Cay. It was a wondrous yet devastating realization. Devastating because for him she knew this was just a means to an end. To Sasha, making love to Cay would be only the beginning.
Cay leaned back and tried to pull Sasha closer, but something hard pressed against his back. “Wait a minute. What is this?” He bent forward.
“It’s a book.” Sasha pulled the book from behind him. “I got it out of the library.”
Cay took it out of her hand and started to put it on the table, but the title stopped him. “Stones of Atlantis.” His expression turned wary. “Where did you get this?”
“I told you, it’s a book I got out of your library.” Cay’s reaction puzzled her. “Should I have checked with you first?”
“No,” he said quickly. “I simply thought this book had been thrown away with the others.”
“Why would you want to throw it away? I think the subject is fascinating, especially since you have some of the stones they describe here on Guana Estate. Haven’t you ever been curious about them?”
“No,” was his monosyllabic reply.
Sasha could feel him withdrawing. “Obviously somebody was, or the book wouldn’t be in your home.”
“It belonged to Precious.”
“So you wanted to throw it away because it was hers.” Sasha sat up. “Throwing her books away isn’t going to make you forget her, Cay.”
“There is nothing that can make me forget her,” was his deadpan reply.
For Sasha it was a reality check. Why had she allowed herself to be coerced into this? Before Cay showed up on the veranda, she had convinced herself she wanted no part of the Ellis clan and its problems. Still, she let herself be talked into kissing him. And what did she find out? Not only was she competing with Cay’s live-in sister-in-law but his dead wife as well.
“Well, if nothing can make you forget her why are you throwing away her books and trying to bury that spring, the one I want to make a living off of, that reminds you of her? If nothing or nobody can make you forget her, what is the point?” Sasha freed herself from his grip.
�
��What do you know about that?” Cay’s eyes narrowed.
“I know enough” —Sasha moved to the edge of the chaise— “that I should kick myself for even being over here with you. With the way it’s going, in the end, people will probably think I’m crazy, too, for getting involved with you.” As soon as she said it Sasha regretted her impetuous words.
“Crazy, too?” Cay’s face became a mask.
“I’m sorry, Cay.” She touched his arm. “I didn’t mean that. I’m so mixed up I don’t know if I’m going or coming.”
“So who did you think was crazy?” His eyes cut into her. “Precious?”
“I haven’t thought about it,” Sasha said with a sigh. “I simply heard she had some problems before she died, that’s all.” She tried to stand up, but Cay took hold of her arm.
“And was I one of her problems?”
“What?”
“You heard me.” His voice was harsh. “Was I the reason she died?”
“Now I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sasha shook her head.
“You think you know so much.” He tightened his grip. “They must have told you that she died because I wouldn’t give her what she wanted. That she refused to take the antibiotics the doctors prescribed for her. That she wanted the springwater instead. Precious believed it would cure her. The one damned thing that led to her illness in the first place…she believed it could cure her.”
“I didn’t know that.” Sasha tried to extract her arm, but Cay wouldn’t let her.
“Oh, you didn’t? Well, let me tell you about it, so you’ll have all your ducks in a row the next time you judge me.” He leaned in closer. “Precious refused to take the medication, so I refused to bring her the water. She was too weak to go get it herself, and I wouldn’t allow Olive or any of the others to do it. I was sick and tired of her fantasies that were taking her further and further away from reality. I thought withholding the water would make her take the antibiotics. That she would give in to me so I could give in to her. But she never did. In a way she was headstrong just like you.” His eyes searched her face but he didn’t seem to see Sasha. “Her reality was the only reality, and there was no room for anything else. I believed if I could make her see the truth like the rest of us saw it, it would prove the things she believed didn’t exist. Atlantis. Healing springwater. Ascension. I thought I could make her face reality and come back to us.” Cay turned quiet. “The slash in her foot was a simple cut, but within forty-eight hours her condition turned critical. The doctor never expected such complications or he would have put her in a hospital.” His hand dropped to the chaise. “In the end I went to get her the water, even though I never believed it would cure her. She died moments after I returned.”
Sasha was at a lost for words. “I-I didn’t know that, Cay.”
“There’s so much you don’t know about what has taken place here on Magic Key.” His emotionless eyes looked at her before he walked off into the dark. “And that’s something you should never forget.”
Chapter 14
Early the next morning Sasha returned to the Bethel House. She asked Baltron to give her a lift. She was shocked by the flurry of activity in the front of her house.
“What’s going on?”
“You didn’t know that Mr. Cay arranged to get this place cleaned up?”
“No, he never said a word to me about it.” Sasha looked around her.
“He’s like that, you know. Likes to take charge of things,” Baltron replied.
“Well, I guess it’s okay when it’s his things he’s taking charge of. But when it’s somebody else’s, he could at least tell them.”
She got out of the Cadillac and walked across the damp grass. She almost collided with two men coming through the front door carrying her bleach-stained couch.
“Wait a minute. Where are you taking that?”
“We’re going to give it to the Goodwill.” The worker smiled, showing a set of beautiful white teeth. “It smells like hell, but after a good washing and a few days of sitting out in the sun, it can be a nice gift for one of the families that lost their homes during the storm.”
Sasha had been on the verge of protesting, but after hearing the man’s explanation she didn’t know what to say.
“Thanks, ma’am, for your contribution.” He continued to talk over the arm of the couch. Then he looked behind her. “Looks like we have good timing. I guess that’s your new furniture arriving.”
Sasha turned and saw a Beacon’s Furniture truck pull up behind the Cadillac.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Her mouth dropped open. “He ordered new furniture for the house.”
“Looks that way,” Baltron replied, walking toward the truck with his arms folded.
Sasha watched the Beacon’s driver and a fellow worker hop out of the cab and briskly walk to the back of the truck. The driver threw open the double doors. Sasha and Baltron walked up behind them.
“Good morning. Got your new furniture right here, ma’am,” the driver said in a cheery voice. Then he called to his coworker, “Al, let’s take the couch off first.”
“No, hold it,” Sasha said firmly. “I didn’t order any furniture.”
“I thought you said this was the right address, Al,” the man said to his partner.
“It is.” He took the pink slip out of his pocket. “Three-forty Bimini Lane. It says so right here.”
“This is three-forty Bimini Lane, but I didn’t order any furniture. I can’t afford this,” Sasha tried to explain.
The driver took the slip from Al. “It says it was paid in full.” He looked confused.
“I can believe that,” Sasha replied. “But I don’t want it. You’ll have to take it back.”
“Take it back?” Al whined.
“That’s right,” Sasha confirmed. “Take it back.”
“Lady, we’ve got five other deliveries packed behind yours. The only way we’re going to be able to deliver them is in the order that they’re listed here.” The driver fingered his clipboard.
“But you don’t understand—”
“No, you don’t understand. We’re on a tight schedule, and in order to meet it we’ve got to carry out the instructions we were given from the office.” He looked up at the sun that was climbing in the sky. “We’re supposed to deliver a living room set and a bedroom set to this address, and that’s what we plan to do. You can take it up with the person who bought it for you later.” His eyebrows rose meaningfully.
“I’m going to call Cay right now.” Sasha turned toward the house.
“It’s not going to do you any good, Ms. Sasha. He’s gone out of town for two weeks.”
“For two weeks!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Baltron replied. Sasha could tell he was getting a kick out of this.
“Careful, Al,” the driver instructed. “You almost hit the side of the truck.”
The two men walked past Sasha. “You need to tell us where to put these, ma’am.”
Exasperated, Sasha followed them. “Oh, okay.” She had never encountered this kind of situation before. Cay had totally taken over. He had workers coming and going, and men taking furniture out of the house, and new furniture being put in. On top of that, he had left for two weeks without saying a word.
Sasha told the movers where she wanted everything placed. Once they were done she realized the new furniture was nearly a carbon copy of the old. Cay had remembered how the house had been decorated, even though he hadn’t been inside for years.
He had said nothing could ever make him forgot Precious. To Sasha, this was proof of how tightly the past still held him.
Baltron closed the door behind the last worker. “Now it looks as good as new in here.” He walked down the short hallway and looked in the rooms.
“Yes, exactly the way it looked before Precious died,” Sasha said, feeling heavy.
“Not exactly. After that, Hazel made a few changes. You know she let Precious have the run of the house, while s
he was satisfied with the back room. After Precious died she moved her bed into the room where your bed is now.”
“I didn’t know that.” Sasha saw the room with different eyes as she focused on the rainbow decal stuck on the sliding glass door.
“That door and the patio were put here because this wall faces the east. Precious called the east the place of the rising sun. Of beginnings. You see those little shelves all along the side?”
“Uh-huh.”
“All of that was Precious’s doing. Hazel used to have all sorts of African violets growing in pots on those shelves. Hazel and Precious thought a lot alike, but Hazel held tight to her African roots. She believed neither plants nor people could flourish without a strong root system.”
“Are there any pictures of her?” Sasha walked over to the sliding glass door.
“I think Olive’s got some in an old photo album she keeps underneath the bed. Maybe we can show it to you sometime.”
“I think I’d like that.” Sasha’s interest was piqued. “How did Hazel and Precious end up in such a close relationship?”
“It was the strangest thing.” Baltron leaned against the wall. “I remember the first time they met. It was like old friends reuniting. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn they had arranged it.”
“Really?” Sasha sat down in a rocker.
“Um-mm. Precious had seen the Bethel House from the road during her first visit to Guana Manor, but she never met Hazel. It wasn’t until after she and Cay were married that they met. Precious liked walking, and sometimes she would pass by the Bethel House during her outings. Well, when we were returning home one day, she told me she wanted to go up and introduce herself.” He walked over and adjusted the globe of the ceiling fan. “Hazel was standing in the door. We got out of the car, and she held the screen door open until we arrived on the stoop. Now, you’ve got to understand. Although the feud between the Bethels and the Ellises had been over for generations, there was sort of an understanding that the people from Guana Manor and the folks here on the Bethel property didn’t socialize together.”