by Sandra Brown
She hoped he would enlighten her as to who and how many. Better yet, she wished he would tell her that he was through with other women now that he'd slept with her. But he remained as silent and still as a wooden Indian. It piqued her that he revealed nothing while she held nothing back.
"Dammit, say something."
"All right." He pushed himself away from the drain board. When his bare toes were only inches from hers, he reached down and grabbed a fistful of his shirt, hauling her up by it. "Get back to bed."
Minutes later, they were lying amid the sheets that smelled muskily of him, of her, of sex. She was lying on her side, facing him. His face was nestled between her breasts. He was softly caressing her nipple with his tongue.
"I've wanted to do this for a long time," he mumbled.
Schyler had conveniently dismissed her concerns for the time being. Cash had the right idea. Ignore tomorrow. Let the devil take it. Live for the moment. She might have to pay the piper a king's ransom later, but right now, with his mouth warm and urgent against her breasts, she didn't care.
"You're not going to say something corny like, 'Since the moment we met,' are you?"
"No. I wanted to do it even before we met."
"Before we met?" She looked at him with a puzzled expression. He eased her to her back and propped himself up on one elbow, leaving his other hand free to fondle.
"The first time I remember noticing that you weren't a little girl anymore, we were in the Magnolia Drag. I must have been eighteen, nineteen. You came in with a group of your friends. You were all acting silly, giggling. I guess you were still in junior high. You ordered a chocolate soda."
"I don't remember."
"No reason you should. It was just an ordinary day to you."
"Did you speak to me?"
He laughed bitterly. "Hell no. You would have run in terror if the scourge of Heaven had spoken to you."
"Is that when you rode the motorcycle?" He nodded and she laughed. "You're right. It would have been compromising to my good reputation to even say hello."
"If Cotton had gotten wind of it, he'd've had me castrated. I was banging everything in skirts that said yes. In fact, I was in the drugstore buying rubbers. I'd just paid for them when you came in. I decided to stick around. I ordered a drink at the fountain."
"Just so you could watch me?"
He nodded. "You had on a pink sweater. Fuzzy. A fuzzy pink sweater. And your breasts, or tits as I thought of them then, were making me crazy. They were small. Pointed. But they made two distinct impressions on the front of your sweater." He played with her, his motions as idle as his speech. "I made that vanilla Dr. Pepper last for more than an hour, watching you while you fed quarters into the jukebox and gossiped with your girlfriends. And the whole time, I was wishing I could reach up under your sweater, where your skin would be warm and smooth, and touch your pretty little breasts."
Schyler was mesmerized by the story. Cash stared into her wide, glassy gaze for a long time before leaning down and moistening her tight nipple with his tongue. Years of wanting went into each damp stroke.
"I knew better than to fantasize about you," he murmured. "I'd already been with more than my share of girls, but they'd all been willing partners. I never took unfair advantage of any of them. You were way too young for a man with my vast experience." He moved his face back and forth in the valley of her breasts. "Do you think I was perverted?"
"Very."
He raised his head and grinned. "But you like it?"
"Yes," she admitted with a self-conscious laugh. "I guess every woman likes to think she's been the object of a fantasy at least once."
"You were that, Miss Schyler. You were that. I was a white trash, bastard scum. You were the reigning princess of Belle Terre. I was grown. You were just a kid. You were so far out of my league, it wasn't even funny. But I had no control over myself. I wanted to touch you."
"Because you couldn't."
"Probably."
"We always want what we can't have."
"All I know is, I got so hard I hurt," he rasped, brushing a rough kiss across her lips. "After you and your friends left the drugstore, I got on my bike and drove to the edge of town. I parked and masturbated." He kissed her hard. "One phone call and I could have had a girl under me in five minutes. But I didn't want one. I wanted to get off, thinking about Schyler Crandall." Again, he kissed her. Harder.
"I've never seen Belle Terre at dawn from this side of the yard," Schyler remarked from the cab of Cash's pickup. "I've viewed sunrises from my upstairs window, but never from the outside looking in."
"I've never seen it any other way."
Her head came around quickly, but his expression didn't suggest hostility. It didn't suggest anything. She tried to lighten the mood. "I feel foolish, sneaking in at dawn."
"I wonder what your company thinks about you being out all night."
"Mark! I forgot about him. I really should be there when he wakes up." She placed her hand on the door handle, but was reluctant to officially end the night. "What are you going to do? Go back to bed?"
"No."
"Surely you're not going to work this early." The sky was still gray at the horizon.
"I've got other things to do."
"At this hour?" His eyes became even more remote. It was a visible transformation. "Excuse me," Schyler said testily, "I didn't mean to pry." She shoved open the door, which still bore Jigger Flynn's bullet hole, and got out.
"Schyler?"
"What?" She spun around, angry with Cash for not being more affectionate and angry with herself for wanting him to be.
"I'll see you later."
His steamy look melted her thighs and her resentment. His expression and tone of voice intimated he would be seeing a lot of her later. With a slow, possessive smile, he shoved the pickup into gear and drove off.
Chapter Forty-five
Jigger woke up with a painful erection. Before he remembered that she was no longer there, he rolled over and reached for Gayla. Instead of warm, wonderful woman, he came up with a handful of grubby sheets.
Cursing her for not being available when he wanted her, he stumbled into the bathroom and relieved himself. Glancing in the mirror over the chipped, stained sink, he hooted in laughter at his reflection. "You'd make a vulture puke." He was uglier than sin. His beard stubble showed up white on his loose, flabby jaw.
Too much whiskey last night, he thought. He released a vile-tasting belch. His eyes were rivered with red streams. There was a large hole in his dingy tank T-shirt. It was a miracle that his voluminous boxer shorts kept their grip on his skinny ass.
He was hobbling back to bed, when he abruptly stopped and stood still. He had just realized what had woken him.
"What the hell?" he mumbled. He had never heard anything like that sound. He shoved aside the tacky curtains and peered through the grimy glass. A ray of sunlight pierced his red eyes, stinging him as if he had been speared through the back of his skull. He cursed viciously.
Once his eyes adjusted to the light, he blinked the yard into focus. Nothing unusual was going on. The puppies were yapping at their dam, demanding breakfast. Everything was normal.
Everything but that sound.
Jigger's gut knotted with foreboding. He had razor-sharp instincts about these things. He could smell trouble a mile away. That sound meant bad news. Menace. But where the hell was it coming from?
Compelled to find out, he didn't bother with dressing. Knobby knees aiming in opposite directions, he walked through his shabby house. It had really gone to seed since Gayla's defection. Mice scattered like a sack of spilled marbles across the linoleum floor when he entered the kitchen. Jigger cursed them, but otherwise ignored them. He pulled open the back door and pushed through the screen. The dogs in the backyard pens began barking.
"Shut up, you sons of bitches." Couldn't they tell his head was splitting? He raised a hand to his thudding temple. "Jesus." The blasphemy was still
fresh on his lips when he spotted the oil drum.
It was a fifty-five gallon drum, silver and rusty in a few spots, but otherwise in good condition. It was ordinary.
Except for the sound it emitted.
Jigger recognized it now. It was a rattler. A hell of a one if the racket it was making was any indication of its size.
The drum had been left square in the middle of his yard between the back door and the toolshed. But by whom, Jigger wondered as he stood there with his hands propped on his nonexistent hips, staring at the dram in perplexity. Whoever it was had been a cagey bastard because his dogs hadn't made a racket. Either it was somebody who was used to handling dogs or it was somebody, or something spooky. Whatever it was, it was fackin' weird. Goose bumps rose on his arms.
"Shit!"
It was just a snake. He wasn't afraid of snakes. When he was younger he'd traveled all the way to West Texas several times to go on rattlesnake roundups. That had been a helluva good time. There had been lots of smooth booze and coarse broads, lots of snake handling and one-upman- ship. He'd lost count of the rattlers he'd milked of their venom.
No, it wasn't the snake that bothered him. What was giving Jigger the shivers was the manner in which the snake had been delivered. If somebody wanted to give him a present, why didn't he just come up and hand it to him outright? Why leave it as a surprise for him to discover while he still had a bitchin' hangover and before his morning coffee?
Coffee. That's what he needed, coffee dark as Egypt and strong as hell. He needed a woman here every morning to j get his coffee. Yes, sir. He'd look into that today. He'd find a new woman. He had put up with that black bitch far too long. He needed one who didn't sass, one who kept her mouth shut and her thighs open. He was coming into some money soon, a goddamn fair amount, too. Nothing to sneeze at. With that, he could buy the best pussy in the paiish.
This mental monologue had given Jigger time to walk all the way around the drum, inspecting it from all angles. Thoughtfully, he scratched his nose. He scratched his crotch. The lid of the drum was anchored down with a large rock. He reckoned he ought to open it and look inside to see just how monstrous this rattler was.
But damned if that sound wasn't getting to him. It was playing with his nerves something fierce. That snake was good and pissed off for being confined to that drum. He tried to remember just how far raiders could strike.
He recalled one guy who was a fanatic about rattlers. He'd told Jigger that one could strike as far as he was long. Jigger hadn't believed him at the time. He was a bom liar, and a Texan to boot. Besides, he'd been drunk as a fiddler's bitch and his tales had been nearly as tall as the blond broad who'd been straddling Ms lap and licking his ear.
But now, when such information was critical, Jigger wondered if the fellow knew what he was talking about. Yet it could be that it only sounded noisy because it was in the bottom of that hollow dram.
"Hell yeah, that's it, don'tcha know. It just sounds big."
He approached the drum with garnered bravery, but as a precaution, he carried a long stick of firewood with him. His nerves were jangling as energetically as the rattler's tail when he knocked the rock to the ground, using the piece of firewood.
He moved the stick from one hand to the other, while alternately wiping his palms on the saggy seat of his boxers. Then, reaching far out in front of him, he eased the end of the stick under the rim of the drum's lid and carefully levered it up.
A bluejay squawked raucously from the tree directly overhead. Jigger nearly jumped out of his boxer shorts. He dropped the stick of firewood on his bare big toe.
"Goddammit to hell!" he bellowed. His cursing sent the pit bull bitch into a frenzy. Snarling and slavering, she repeatedly threw herself against the kennel's fence. It took several minutes for Jigger to quiet her and the litter and to scare off the territorially possessive bluejay.
Scraping together his courage again, Jigger picked up the stick and wedged it under the rim of the lid. He prized it up no more than an inch, but the volume of the sinister sound increased ten times. Jigger approached the drum on tiptoes, trying to see into it, but he could see only the opposite inside wall.
Taking a deep breath and checking to see that nothing was behind him, he flipped the lid to the ground. At the same time, he leaped backward like an uncoordinated acrobat. His heart was beating so quickly it reverberated in his eardrums, but nothing drowned out that deafening, nerve- racking, bloodcurdling sound.
No snake came striking out. He crept closer to the dram and peered over the edge, leaning forward as far as he dared.
"Jesus H. Christ."
He couldn't see all of it. He could see only a portion of a body that was as thick as a muscle builder's bicep. Quickly he scouted the yard for something to stand on. Spotting a bucket in a pile of junk, he brought it back to the drum at a run and uprighted it. Then he stood on it, still a safe distance away, and got his first full look at his snake.
It was a monster, all right. Coiled several times around the bottom of the drum, he estimated it to be eight feet long. Six minimum. It filled up a good third of the drum. Sticking up out of the center of that deadly concentric coil was a rattling tail that looked like it would never stop. It shook so rapidly, it was impossible to count the individual rattles. But it was a great-granddaddy of a rattlesnake; it was mad as hell, and it was his.
Jigger clapped his hands in glee. With childlike delight, he clasped them together beneath his chin. He stared in wonder and awe at his marvelous gift. Eve's serpent couldn't have had any more sinister allure. It was entrancing to watch something so consummately evil, so gloriously wicked.
Everything about it was corruptly beautiful—the geometric pattern of its skin, the obsidian eyes, the forked tongue that flicked in and out of the flat lips, and that incessant rattle that was ominous and deadly.
Quickly, but cautiously, Jigger replaced the lid of the drum and weighted it down with the rock. He wasn't really worried that the snake could get out. If it was capable of striking over the rim of the drum, it would have by now. That snake was mean, diabolically so. Jigger instantly developed an attachment to it.
He loved his snake.
He ran for the house, full of plans on how to capitalize on the gift. It was a gift. He was sure of that now. Whoever had left it meant him no harm. He reasoned that it had been left by somebody who owed him money. That could be just about anybody in southwestern Louisiana. He wasn't going to worry about that now. His head was too full of commercial plans.
First, he'd have a flyer printed up advertising it. By nightfall his yard would be crawling with customers who wanted to see his rattler. What should he charge? A buck a peek. That was a neat, round figure he figured.
He entered his house through the back. The squeaky screen door slammed shut behind him, but he didn't hear anything over the clacking noise that his fabulous rattler made. In Jigger's opinion, it was music.
Chapter Forty-six
Cotton was a trying invalid even on his good days. Within a week of his homecoming everybody at Belle Terre was tempted to smother him in his sleep.
Tricia's affected bedside manner, never very extensive, was expended after the first day. She met Schyler in the hall. "He's always been a contrary old son of a bitch." She spoke under her breath so he wouldn't hear her through the walls of the study-bedroom. "He's even worse now."
"Tolerate his moods. Don't do or say anything to get him angry."
Schyler feared that her sister and Ken would become impatient about selling Belle Terre and broach the subject with Cotton. Dr. Collins had reiterated when she brought Cotton home that he was still a heart patient and must be treated carefully no matter how irksome he became.
Tricia didn't take Schyler's admonition kindly. "You're worried about that, aren't you? Is that what's keeping you up nights?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Come now, don't play innocent. Clever as you've been," Tricia said with a sly s
mile, "you haven't hidden your comings and goings in the middle of the night from us." She shook her head and laughed lightly. "Honestly, Schyler, you have the most appalling taste in men. A fairy antique dealer and a tom-catting white trash."
"And your own husband," Schyler shot back. "Insult my taste in men and you're insulting yourself. Don't forget that I picked Ken before you."
"I never forget that." Tricia smiled complacently. "And apparently neither do you."
Schyler let the argument die instantly. Insult swapping with Tricia was a tiresome exercise in futility. She could never top her sister's pettiness. As long as Tricia left Cotton alone, Schyler didn't care what she thought of her or the company she kept.
Ken avoided seeing Cotton after paying one obligatory visit to the sickroom soon after Cotton arrived. In fact, Ken kept to himself most of the time. His mood was volatile. He drank excessively and frequently carried on furtive, whispered telephone conversations.
He was particularly acerbic toward Schyler. She supposed he was still pouting because she hadn't loaned him the money he had requested. The telephone calls were probably from impatient creditors. Because of his financial difficulties she felt sorry for him. He was a grown man, though; it was time he learned to sort out his own problems.
At first Gayla was so shy around Cotton she could barely be persuaded to enter his room, but they had soon fallen into an easy rapport. He seemed to have entirely dismissed her years with Jigger and teased her often, recounting times in her childhood when she'd been a trial to Veda.
Eventually Gayla's guard relaxed. An unspoken bond developed between the two of them, which wasn't completely surprising. Each was recuperating from an assault. When no one else could convince Cotton to eat food he didn't like or to take his medication or to do his regimen of mild exercises, Gayla could.
He and Mrs. Dunne nearly came to blows the first day he was home. She had a tendency to mother him as she had her sick husband. Cotton couldn't stomach that and let her know it in no uncertain terms. Mrs. Dunne's maternal instincts gave way to a military bearing that clashed with Cotton's temper. Once the air had been cleared, however, they developed a mutual, if grudging, respect for each other.