by Gigi Moore
His mother pointedly put down her knife and fork and folded her hands on the table beside her plate before turning in her chair to face Ki.
He could have been wrong, but was that a grin and a wink she gave him?
“Is this true, Hezekiah? You have no complaints?”
Oh, he had complaints, but they had nothing to do with his mother or how well Lucy cooked in the kitchen and cleaned the house and everything to do with his sexual frustration.
“Mother, Lucy is an exemplary wife and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop passing judgment on a woman you’ve only just met.”
“I had no idea that’s what I was doing, but if I have concerns about the woman you’ve chosen to take as your wife, I feel it’s my duty to voice them.”
Lucy abruptly stood up and threw her napkin down on the table. “I’m sure we’re all well aware of your concerns by now, Margaret, as you haven’t been shy about voicing them since I arrived. I, however, have a few concerns of my own that I will, out of respect for my husband’s relationship with you, not voice. Now if you’ll excuse me, I fear I’ve suddenly lost my appetite.”
Ki watched as Lucy left the table, shoulders straight and head held high. He felt like applauding her restraint and was on his way to follow her up the stairs when his mother caught him by the wrist and jerked him back down to his seat.
“Well, she is a spirited one. I’ll say that for her.”
“I need to go up and speak with her.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort.”
“But Mother—”
“I’ll go up, since I’m the one who made such a mess of things.”
His mother was intimating that she was wrong, even a little bit?
Ki gaped as she rose from the table, delicately patted at her mouth with her napkin before placing it on the table beside her plate and smoothing her hands down the front of her dress. When she turned to leave, Ki caught it again, a tiny wink.
Ethan laughed before raising his cup to his lips to take a sip of his coffee.
“What is so funny?” Had Ethan caught the grins and winks, too?
“Your mother and your wife are a handful. I don’t envy you, my man.”
Ki didn’t envy himself either.
* * * *
Tarnation, why had she let that highfalutin woman make her lose her temper?
After the fight with Cody at Winchester’s, Lucy felt totally justified for her moment of weakness and her desire to not want to deal with another unpleasant situation by telling off Ki’s mother. She still felt a mite of a coward for throwing up the sponge and letting that woman run her out of her own kitchen with her uppity manner.
The minute Ki had introduced her with her four hoity-toity names Lucy had known she was in for a rough ride.
Times like these Lucy wished she was more like Maia, Sabrina, or Rebel. Those women wouldn’t have had a qualm about telling Mrs. Benjamin-Sachs exactly where she could go. Lucy didn’t even think it was a matter of them all being older than her. She could picture all three of her friends acting the same way as girls, always out front in any group, the leader of their packs. Not like her, who had turned into a wimpy mouse of a woman who wouldn’t stand up for herself.
There had been a time, back before her momma had died and her daddy had sold her down the river, when she had been bold and wild. There had been a time when she had, in her matchless tomboy way, challenged boys to games of skill and agility, usually coming out the victor. She had just as easily turned around to ask one of those same boys to a dance when it hadn’t even been a leap year. There had been a time when she hadn’t cared a lick what anyone thought of her or the company she kept.
Lucy jerked up her head at the sound of a sharp knock on the door.
More than likely it was Ki coming to beg her forgiveness for allowing his mother to run roughshod over her, although he had stood up for her right nicely, if in his calm and proper citified way.
She was staring at the door, trying to decide whether or not to let him come in, when another knock sounded on the door.
Lucy sniffled and blew her nose into her hanky. “Please go away, Ki.”
“It’s not Ki. It’s his mother…the ogre. May I come in?”
“Haven’t you done enough damage for the evening?” Lucy asked before she had a chance to think about it and heard a resounding laugh on the other side of the door.
“Apparently not, which is why I’ve come to finish the job.”
Lucy watched in disbelief as Ki’s mother opened the door, stepped into the room and closed the door behind herself as if she had been invited.
“Please, do come in.” Lucy smirked.
“I do believe I will.” Margaret crossed the plush-carpeted floor to Lucy’s and Ki’s large four-poster bed and Lucy begrudgingly admired the woman’s tall graceful figure as she approached and sat on the bed beside Lucy, again uninvited.
She had to be in her early fifties, yet her skin had the well-preserved suppleness that made her look no more than thirty-five. Lucy put it down to tame living in the Old States.
Despite Margaret’s dark-brown hair and green eyes, it was still evident that she and Ki were related. Ki had inherited her long lashes, dimples, and full lips. In fact, Margaret could have easily passed for Ki’s older sister if one ignored the tiny crow’s-feet.
Lucy wondered what Mr. Benjamin had looked like, and was sure Ki had gotten his light, golden-brown hair, blue eyes, and sculpted jaw from his father.
“You may not believe this, but I was you way back when,” Margaret said.
No prelude, no apology, just right to it. Lucy couldn’t help but respect someone who just got to the point of the matter the way Ki’s mother did. Was this where Ki got his arrogance and poise from? “I find that hard to believe.”
“Believe it. It’s true.” Margaret reached over to pat Lucy’s hand.
“Then why were you so…” Lucy wanted to say mean, but she refused to be the whiner that Margaret already surely thought she was.
“Mean?”
“I was going to say unpleasant.”
“You say tomato.” Margaret waved an imperious hand in the air. “I had to be sure that you were strong enough for Hezekiah, that you could deal with his ambitions, that you could handle the stress of being a wife to someone as charming and demanding as him without melting like an ice cream cone in the sun. He’s not the easiest person to know or with whom to live.”
Aside from always expecting to get his way, Lucy didn’t think he was all that difficult, but she could still see what Margaret meant. She had seen peeks of his “strong personality” in the lawyer’s office. He wasn’t a man it was easy to say no to, which made her wonder all the more how she had so far gotten away with not letting him bed her yet. Not that she could talk to his mother about this latter tidbit. “I think I can handle Ki.”
Margaret’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I thought I could handle his father. For a while I did handle him and his demands. I gave up school, put my career on hold to marry him because I wanted to be a good wife and support him.”
“But you loved him, too, didn’t you?”
“Our love for each other was never in question. Love, however, isn’t always enough. It isn’t the end-all and be-all fairy tale we women have been led to believe. And the handsome prince with the larger-than-life personality that swept me off my feet and refused to take no for answer wasn’t exactly prepared to handle the routine minutiae of our day-to-day married life.”
What was Margaret trying to say? That Ki was like his father, and was going to be a pig-headed, selfish husband? He couldn’t be worse than Rance. Lucy didn’t think anyone could be.
“I know Ki’s faults and strengths better than anyone. He’s honest and thoughtful, stubborn and impulsive, and as passionate and driven as his father ever was.
“I just don’t want you to get swallowed up by the glamour of your husband’s desires and lifestyle like I did. I don’t want you to forget
that you’re an individual with desires and wishes of your own. You have opinions that you shouldn’t keep to yourself, not when to be silent would be to your detriment.”
Lucy looked into Margaret’s earnest green gaze, shaken by her intensity, hearing the wisdom that came from experience and age.
When Ki knocked on the door and came in a few minutes later to switch places with his mother on the bed, Lucy looked into his heated sky-blue eyes and shuddered with the knowledge that her moment of truth had finally arrived and she was helpless to resist him.
Chapter 16
Prentice thought he heard someone outside whispering his name right before pebbles striking the mullioned front door became a distinct clatter.
Dinner had been finished a while ago, at least by him and Margaret.
Ki and Lucy hadn’t reappeared since the earlier fiasco when Margaret and Ki had gone up to smooth Lucy’s ruffled feathers. Prentice had thought about going upstairs himself when Margaret had come back down, but two was company and he would have been a third wheel had he gone to join Ki and Lucy. Besides, those two had some serious issues they needed to iron out privately, the least of which was how to handle a third party in their bed.
“Ethan!”
Someone was out there urgently whispering his name.
Prentice closed the book he had been reading and got up to go answer the door.
He should have been upstairs in bed by now, but had been too wired. Not to mention he hadn’t wanted to be in the immediate vicinity when Ki and Lucy finally got it on. He knew it was a way overdue inevitability and judging by the look in Ki’s eyes when he had left the dinner table earlier, Lucy had been about to get her world truly rocked.
That absurd jealousy that had been arbitrarily assailing him since he had taken up residence under the same roof as the objects of his desire, struck him now. The idea of Ki making love to Lucy and not him, the idea of Lucy feathering light kisses down Ki’s lightly furred chest to Ki’s cock and not Prentice’s cock, left a bad taste in his mouth. He felt like the unpopular kid in school, the only kid who hadn’t been invited to the coolest party of the century.
Prentice opened the door and froze when Ginger flung herself at and wrapped her arms around him in a fierce, tight hug.
“Oh, Ethan! I’ve missed you so much.”
Prentice recovered from his initial shock to finally grasp her by the biceps and drew back to look at her. “What are you doing here this time of night?”
“I couldn’t wait another minute, and when you didn’t visit or come by to talk to me like you said you would, I just figured something was wrong, that you had been turned against me or something, and then when I went by your house and your mother told me what had happened, how you had left and come here to live, I finally got up the nerve to come see you, so here I am.” Ginger took a deep breath and smiled.
Well, if that wasn’t the longest sentence he had ever heard!
“You can’t be here, Ginger.”
“But—”
“C’mon.” Prentice came out onto the porch, closed the door behind him and caught her by the arm to frog march her down the steps.
“Why can’t I come inside?”
“It’s way past any decent hour for visitors to come a-calling.” Damn, he was talking like the natives now. “I’m sure you snuck out and your mother and father don’t know where you are.” The idea unsettled him, especially since he had learned that Kurt McCall was the town’s gunsmith. Knowing the man had all those weapons at his disposal was not comforting in the least. Prentice did not want the guy assuming he had kidnapped his precious daughter. He did not want the guy to have a reason to come out here for a visit looking for Ginger or to go postal on the first people he came across—namely Ki, Lucy, Margaret, and him.
For the first time since the newlyweds had taken him in, Prentice began to realize that his uncertain circumstances and presence might be putting them in real danger.
He quickly shook the thought and what it might mean from his mind. He had something else important he needed to handle first and continued.
“Oh, this is so romantic!”
Oh for Christ’s sake!
Prentice hadn’t had any intention of taking the girl on a dreamy, tender and secret rendezvous, but he could see where the starry-eyed chit would get the wrong impression upon seeing the gazebo. Beneath the light of the moon, the colorful floral arrangement scattered around the trellis, not to mention the flowered path leading to the structure, could seem like a romantic setting to someone as love starved as Ginger seemed to be.
Prentice almost felt sorry for her, but couldn’t afford that luxury, not here, not now.
Was he being too harsh? He thought he was being practical rather than callous, but since he’d come back from the dead and had had a chance to consider in retrospect all the things he had done to people in his previous incarnation, maybe he was just a coldhearted bastard.
Follow your heart, Prentice.
He smiled at Brielle’s words.
Prentice used to think he was like the Grinch, that his heart was two sizes too small, or encased in ice or—as a few of his past lovers had maintained—that he didn’t have a heart at all.
“Ginger, I didn’t bring you out here to fulfill any romantic fantasies of yours. This is just a convenient spot to talk some sense into your head before I take you home.”
“Is it that Lucy woman?”
“What?”
“You’re in love with her now?”
“Of course not. Lucy’s a married woman.”
Ginger sniffed. “That never stopped her from flaunting and selling her wares all over town when she was married to Rance.”
Prentice gritted his teeth, took a deep breath, and counted to ten before he spoke. “I’m surprised at you for giving credence to gossip, especially such mean-spirited gossip. I thought you were a good churchgoing girl.”
“I am! It’s just that I heard some things and, well…she doesn’t have the best reputation.”
“And what will people think of your reputation if they were to find you out here in the middle of the night with me?”
Ginger opened her mouth to speak when some rustling from the bushes behind the gazebo caught Prentice’s attention. He automatically pushed her back behind him and peered into the darkness.
“Whoever you are, come out now and show yourself,” Prentice demanded, not thinking the stalker might have a gun and he himself didn’t even carry one. He’d never had to before, because he’d had his powers.
A moment later, the bushes parted and a young man stepped from behind them, hands jammed into his jeans pockets as he kicked the dirt with his boot and averted his eyes.
Prentice amended his first thought, since this guy was barely a man, certainly not much more than a boy. Gangly and towheaded, he couldn’t have been much older than Ginger if he was a day. “Who the hell are you and who invited you to the party?”
The kid raised his head, drew back his shoulders, and defiantly jutted his chin. “Don’t pretend you don’t know me, Ethan Crawford, when you stole my girl.”
“Tanner, I am not your girl,” Ginger said. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“You know how your parents feel about—”
“I don’t care how my parents feel about me seeing Ethan. I’m not going to be your girl just to please my parents.”
“Your father ain’t going to take too kindly to finding out you snuck out of your house to come a-calling on Ethan in the middle of the night.”
“You’re not going to tell him.”
It wasn’t a question and Prentice was impressed with the girl for her stern tone. She seemed to know exactly where she stood with Tanner. In fact, she all but had him wrapped around her little finger from what Prentice could see.
Could this awkward man-child have had anything to do with Ethan’s death?
There was no denying Tanner’s jealousy. Prentice felt it in every fiber of his being when
the boy glared at him as if he wished him harm. He certainly didn’t look like he had the balls to shoot a peer, but then how much balls did it really take to shoot someone in the back?
“I came to take you home, Gin-Gin,” Tanner said.
“Don’t call me that.”
“You used to like when I called you that.”
“I was a kid then.”
And she wasn’t now?
Prentice had to keep reminding himself that in Ethan’s reality, he wasn’t much older than Ginger and Tanner, but in his reality, he was ages older with a lot more experience and he could have told both these kids that love was transient if it existed at all. He could have told them that this crush just wasn’t that serious and they both needed to get a grip.
It was time to put a stop to the Ginger and Tanner, As Elk Creek Turns soap opera.
Before Prentice could speak, though, Tanner reached around him to grab Ginger’s arm.
“You’re coming back with me.”
Ginger tried to jerk her arm away, but Tanner held firm. “You’re hurting me, Tanner.”
That was all it took for Prentice to see red. Instinctively, he flung out his psychic feelers and when nothing happened he reached out a hand to remove Tanner’s hand from Ginger’s arm.
The whelp drew back a fist and punched him in the jaw.
Completely unprepared for the attack, or the speed and power of its delivery, Prentice went down on his butt, hard. Served him right for underestimating what he considered a scrawny geek. He wouldn’t do it again.
He had never really been in a fistfight before. As physically fit as he had been in his former incarnation, he had never needed to physically defend himself. It had probably been the only disadvantage to having had his powers. He had tended to rely too heavily on them, using them like a crutch as he had just now.
“Tanner, what have you done?” Ginger knelt beside Prentice and put her hand on his shoulder. “Ethan, are you okay?”
He shook his head to clear it, working his jaw back and forth as he glared up at Tanner.