He bent, grabbed her shirt, and shot it at her chest. Her reflexes caught it.
“Get dressed,” he said. “And go, if that’s what you want. But I won’t be a part of your punishment, or whatever this is. I love you too much.”
The door slammed shut behind him and she slipped the shirt up over her shoulders and started to button it, but her hands were shaking too hard. And then her legs were shaking and the boots couldn’t keep her up anymore.
She slid to the ground, a sob breaking through her chest, right through her ribs.
This was what she needed to do.
And because it hurt, she knew it was right.
The next morning, the demon was back, but worse. Worse than ever. And the voice … she realized now, the voice wasn’t her mother’s.
It was hers.
And Tara Jean, battered and bruised, didn’t have the capacity to fight. Didn’t even know why she should. Why she should try to be anything but what she was.
Getting into the black leather pants took an act of physics and athleticism not unlike the pole vault. The boots laced up the back, up to her knee, and the heel was red and three inches high. The thin white sweater seemed demure until she put it on, winding the long, gauzy tails around her waist over and over again until she looked like a good-girl dominatrix.
From under her sink she dug out her hot rollers, putting her hair up into big floppy curls, then she lacquered them with a pound of hair spray. Scrunching and spraying until she looked like a monument to big hair. A monument to Texas femininity.
She finished it off with the holy trinity: red lipstick, black eyeliner, and big hoops.
On the countertop her cell phone buzzed. Just as it had ten minutes ago. She didn’t have to look at the display to know it was Claire Hughes.
She was now a half-hour late for that meeting.
And the pain, the pain was almost gone.
Her head ached and burned where Luc had pressed his forehead to it last night. Her flesh remembered the touch of his hand. The way his skin looked like liquid gold, felt like silk, tasted like salt and sugar under her lips.
But slowly, bit by bit, staring at her cold eyes in the mirror, she convinced herself that it was all a dream.
And it was over.
She willed the woman in the mirror to believe it, to turn her heart to stone, her mind to a sharp blade, cutting out the tenderness, the sweetness, the heat and fury—every single memory and emotion attached to Luc Baker. Until they lay in ribbons, broken and bleeding, all attachment to her gone.
Leaning toward the mirror, she ran a finger around the edge of her lips.
This wasn’t a mistake—the clothes, the hair, the stone-cold look in her eyes.
This was Tara Jean Sweet.
Victoria tried not to feel assaulted by the ambiance of Applebee’s. Honestly, between the music (far too loud) and the kids screaming (totally unchecked), it was like being slapped in the face with noise.
“Table for one?” a young woman asked, her brown hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail, the enthusiasm faked. She had a button on her shirt asking people to ask her how much she loved it here. Victoria had the feeling that if she were to ask, the girl might cry.
“I’m … I’m ah …” She looked over the woman’s shoulder and saw a familiar gray suit jacket on a man at the bar. The curve of his shoulders, however, was not so familiar.
Dejected, those shoulders said. And all the excitement she’d had for this illicit date fizzled.
I don’t want to play cheerleader tonight, she thought with a heavy sigh. She’d done enough of that in her marriage. It was the one aspect of being a widow that she was beginning to enjoy—not having to be responsible for some fragile man’s mood.
But perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps those shoulders did not say dejected. Perhaps they said “slight shoulder injury from an intense squash game.”
Yes, she liked that much better. Though, frankly, she wasn’t all that interested in hearing the play-by-play of a squash game.
She’d had enough of that, too.
Frankly, she just wanted to flirt. To feel pretty, maybe even sexy. She had in fact worn her tightest jeans, the dark wash, with her gold sandals. And she’d left her hair down, pleased with how it had stopped falling out now that she was away from New York and Toronto. The stress of her life.
Really, all she wanted was to make out in the parking lot.
Was that too much to ask from an illicit afternoon date at Applebee’s?
No. It wasn’t. She had the feeling it happened all the time.
She stepped up to the bar, to Dennis’s shoulder, expecting him to turn to her with a wide smile, but he didn’t. He slowly drained the last of the beer from a big pint glass.
“Dennis?” she said, and finally he turned.
Her heart folded up shop and closed for the night at the sight of him. Disheveled. Unshaven. His eyes were dark and bloodshot. He smelled of a two-day bender.
She reeled back.
“Hey now, princess, how are you?”
The “princess” rankled. It really did, but she managed to smile.
“You all right?” she asked.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” His voice lost its happy drunk effect and seemed mean. Toward her.
“You don’t look so good.”
“Well.” His eyes were shrewd, malicious, and this was a side of him she’d never seen. It made her clutch her purse a little closer. “I think you can blame that little fact on your brother.”
“My brother?”
“I can’t prove it, of course, because your brother is slick like that, but he hired people to get me out of town. To scare me away from you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Don’t be a bitch,” he moaned, and she snapped back, slipping her purse strap over her shoulder. She’d been called enough names to last a lifetime. And Dennis Murphy was clearly not the man she’d hoped he was.
Without another word she turned on the heel of her little gold sandals, which frankly, now that she thought about it, looked cheap and awful, and headed back to the hostess station, the front door, and the wide world beyond.
She heard a mumble and a crash and she could feel him behind her, a few steps.
“You all right?” the hostess asked as she passed, and Victoria managed to give the woman a reassuring smile as she hit the doors and the heat of the parking lot.
She was halfway to her car before Dennis caught up to her, grabbing the inside of her elbow and spinning her around so hard she nearly fell.
“Do not touch me!” she hissed, all that anger she’d swallowed rising up like a suppressed indigenous tribe, with arrows and rocks and hate.
“Listen, Victoria.” She wondered how she ever could have thought him handsome. He was hideous. She jerked her arm, but he held on so hard she’d have bruises. “I need you to walk back in there and sit down with me. You need to tell your brother to leave me the fuck alone.”
“Not on your life. I’m not interested in dating you, Dennis. Not anymore.”
“Dating?” he howled. “You think we’re dating? You stupid little rich girl. I wouldn’t date you if you were the last pair of tits on the planet.”
Her blood roaring in her ears, embarrassment and anger giving her superhero strength, she tore away from him, her arm stinging, her hand numb, and she turned and ran for her car, fumbling with her keys, tears of anger and fear burning in her eyes.
Wrong. So wrong. Again.
Her chest heaving, she tried to get her keys in the door but her hands were shaking and suddenly he was there, batting the keys to the ground, grabbing her purse.
“I need money.”
“I don’t have any,” she snapped, pulling her purse back.
“Please, you think I believe that crap about you giving all the money back to the people your husband fleeced?”
He was rifling through her stuff, tossing things onto the cement like they were garbage, a package of Kleenex, her su
nglasses, Jacob’s school picture.
“Give me that, you asshole!” she yelled, jerking the purse.
But Dennis barely even looked up. With the assurance of a man with too much practice, he lifted one hand and cuffed her so hard she fell back against the car, her ears ringing.
Gasping, she tasted blood and carefully crouched, picking up her keys. She’d leave the purse, along with what was left of her dignity and pride, on the asphalt with her Kleenex. She just needed to get out of there.
In the distance a siren wailed, the sound so jarring she dropped her keys again. Dennis looked up, like a wild dog sensing trouble, and Victoria saw the hostess standing in front of the doors, her hand shielding her eyes.
“I called the cops!” she cried, and Dennis mumbled something under his breath, digging out the little bit of cash she had in her purse.
Victoria’s vision went red, her body numb with shock and adrenaline, and she didn’t even feel herself doing it, didn’t even know she was going to, before she put her hands on his shoulders. He shrugged, looking up at her ready to spit more hate, more poison on her already poisoned face, but before he could do it, she brought up her knee, bony as all get-out, and drove it right into the soft, gooey center of his testicles.
He went blue, then red, gasping for air. The purse fell to her feet, and his body toppled soon after.
In the distance the sirens were getting closer and the hostess was cheering and for a moment, the sight of Dennis Murphy brought to the ground by her was so delicious she lifted a hand.
Took a little bow.
But she had no intention of talking to the cops, of explaining what she was doing here in her gold sandals with her hair down, with a disgusting pig like Dennis Murphy.
With hands as steady as a surgeon’s, she picked up the crumpled dollar bills that had fallen from Dennis’s fingers. Her son’s picture went into her back pocket. Like a ballast for a ship, the picture kept her steady.
“Come near me again and I’ll have you arrested,” she said, cool and calm, as imperial as she ever was without even trying. She smiled into his sweating, wheezing face, wondering how in the world hoofing this man in the balls had made her feel better than she had in a year.
Really, she thought, sliding behind the wheel of her car, starting it up and carefully stopping at the stop sign at the edge of the parking lot, before leaving the scene of a crime.
I should have kicked a man in the balls years ago.
chapter
28
Luc crouched in front of Jacob and pulled on the skate’s laces. The familiar smells of the arena failed to make him feel better about the shit storm his life had turned into.
Celeste had called an hour ago telling him that Tara Jean had left the ranch. Up until that moment, he hadn’t really believed that she would do it.
“She looked like a hooker,” Celeste added.
“Mom—” He’d sighed, flinching on Tara’s behalf at the word choice.
“Fine. Call girl. What’s going on here, Luc?”
“She’s leaving, Mom. She’s …” Scared. Broken. “Leaving.”
“I’m so sorry, honey.”
“Me too, Mom.”
So now, he had no career.
No Tara.
But the arena was still here. Home in a way that nothing else ever was.
“Too tight?” he asked his nephew. “Can you wiggle your foot?”
Jacob nodded, his face set on perma-beam. Victoria had called Luc an hour ago, asking him to pick Jacob up from the rec center. She’d gotten held up somewhere and was running late.
The second Jacob saw Luc he asked if they were going to go skating. And frankly, Luc couldn’t think of a better reason to step past the parasites demanding a statement he wasn’t quite ready to give and back into the arena.
“Tie them super tight, Uncle Luc,” Jacob said. “I go really fast when they’re tight.”
Luc smiled despite the hole in his chest.
“Luc?” a man’s voice asked, and Luc stood from the crouch, his head spinning slightly at the change in altitude. He turned and found Randy Jenkins, looking gray and stone-faced. Tyler stood behind him barely holding back tears.
“Go on out,” Luc said to Jacob, helping his nephew onto his feet. “Billy’s waiting for you.” He watched Jacob, one hand on the wall as he hobbled across the mats toward the ice.
Luc took a deep breath, preparing himself for the unknown, and turned around only to see Randy step back while Tyler stepped forward.
For a moment, Luc wanted to lay the kid out. Payment, perhaps, or to teach the guy a lesson. He wasn’t sure which. All he knew was that this kid was part of the end of his career and while he couldn’t fight the headaches or the doctors or the reality of his situation, it would feel good to take out his losses on the short-tempered player in front of him.
“I’m so sorry,” Tyler breathed, looking at his shoes while tears ran sideways out of the corner of his eyes. “I didn’t think you’d go down like that. I didn’t know you had a head injury. I didn’t mean—”
“It was a cheap shot.” Luc bit out the words and the kid just nodded. “Look at me,” he demanded, and Tyler finally lifted red-rimmed eyes. “Use the words, Tyler. Be a man.”
“It … it was a cheap shot.”
“You want to be a professional?” Tyler stared blankly at him. “Do you?”
Tyler swallowed. “Yes.”
“Then it’s time to grow up. Learn to control yourself out on the ice. Your temper. Your anger. All of it. Lock it down.”
Tyler nodded like an eager pupil, or a criminal being let out on leave. Randy stepped forward and clapped a hand on his son’s shoulder.
“Head on out to the car,” Randy said, and Tyler nearly ran from the room.
“He’s pretty eaten up over what happened,” Randy said.
“So is my brain.”
Randy’s mouth fell open and Luc managed to laugh. “It was a bad joke.”
“I don’t find this funny. You haven’t issued a statement. The rumors are getting worse in the press. We haven’t heard from your lawyers or from the team—”
“Lawyers?”
Randy swallowed and pulled himself up a few more inches. “Are you going to sue us?”
“Sue?” The thought hadn’t occurred to him. “God no. Look, Randy, I … this is an old injury. And if it hadn’t been your son, it would have been a player on the team as soon as we got back to practice and … you know, I might not have come away from it so well. So, no. I’m not going to sue you. But if your son wants to skate, tell him to be here at seven a.m. on Monday—I need some help with the peewees.”
“Thank you, Luc,” Randy said, relief running off the man like sweat. Luc accepted his thanks and bit back the urge to extend his own.
Because oddly enough, Tyler Jenkins might have saved his life.
The sunlight made Victoria’s face look like the scene of a battle. It was red and swollen, her eye was puffy, her lip was fat and kept cracking, spilling new blood over her teeth. There was no way she could see Jacob like this.
She needed a few hours to try to make her face look better.
She slunk into the house, surprised at the quiet. Pleased with the peace in the big rooms, filled with sunshine.
Despite the fat lip and black eye, she felt … good. Happy.
This house’s bad memories didn’t haunt her anymore.
If it wouldn’t make her lip bleed, she might actually smile. Laugh, even.
Marvelous thing, kicking a man in his balls. She would recommend it to anyone. Maybe she’d write a self-help book.
Now, that would be funny.
She grabbed a tea towel and some ice from the kitchen and found herself reluctant to hide in her room. She’d done enough of that. Instead she found her feet leading her out to the barn.
After a very slow start, Victoria had learned to love horses. Besides her brother, they were the only bright spot of her summers at the ranch.
/> The barn was still full of horses. And the sun sliding through the wide windows baked the hay and dirt, and bees buzzed around in low, lazy circles, and it was a lot like she remembered as a kid.
In the far corner, a black horse lifted its big head, getting a look at her as she walked down the center of the barn.
“What’s your name?” she murmured, scratching the white star between the horse’s eyes. “Star?” The horse only blinked. “How about Midnight?” The horse gave her nothing. “Black Beauty?”
“Patience,” a low, deep voice said from behind her and she jumped, startling the horse, who huffed and pranced, scattering dust motes like glitter.
It was Eli, of course. Standing in a long beam of sunshine from the open door. His hat was low over his eyes, shading his face. But the sunlight hit the skin of his neck, the bit of chest revealed by the open collar of his shirt, and turned him to gold.
He was beautiful. A perfect statue of masculinity. David brought to life and wearing cowboy boots. Did he have to be so … masculine? It was slightly vulgar. Unnecessarily earthy.
“Hey, Eli.” She ducked away from him, hiding her face.
“What are you doing in here?”
“I like it in here. It’s quiet. Is that all right? I’m not … you know … touching anything.”
“It’s fine, Victoria.” His voice straddled a weird line between fond and patronizing, and she forced herself not to care.
“I do remember you, you know,” she said, reluctant to leave even though she knew she should. She ducked around the opposite side of the horse as he stepped into the stall. “From when we were kids.”
He was silent and she, uncorked from her afternoon of violence and self-recovery, couldn’t stop talking. “I didn’t recognize you at first. You’re so different.”
“So are you.”
The wild bark of her laughter startled the horse and Eli clucked under his tongue, stroking Patience’s neck.
“Sorry,” she murmured.
“It’s all right.” He was crouched, looking at the horse’s hooves, checking its shoes.
In the quiet, she knew he was thinking of that girl she’d been. Two years older than he. Glasses. Pudgy and bookish, utterly and totally intimidated by everyone around her. A disgrace to her glamorous and hard-living mother.
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