But he had a feeling Steven wasn’t entirely sane, which was supported by the fact that, despite Paul’s obvious physical advantage, he came back with, “It is my business when a handyman hooks himself up with a wealthy woman. My father’s wealth, I might add.” He pointed his index finger in Paul’s face. “I’ll be checking up on you. Has she given you money yet? Is that why you’re here, ‘working’ on Saturday?”
Paul saw red. He took the final step that brought him so close there was no space left between the two men. He grabbed Steven’s finger and shoved the other man’s hand away from his face. What he wanted to do, was itching to do, was to twist his finger till it broke. Better yet, to wrap his fingers around this prick’s neck. “Listen, you worthless piece of—”
“Paul!” The voice that interrupted him was Kayla’s. It stopped him in midsentence. He made no move on Steven, but he didn’t step back, either.
Kayla rushed toward them, her stepdaughter-in-law and the two children trailing after her. As she approached the three men, she was shaking her head. “I will not have this, not on my property! Steven, please leave. Now. If you don’t, I’ll get a restraining order.”
“You can’t get a restraining order to keep a man away from his own property.”
“Maybe not, but I can sure get one to keep you away from me!” She stormed over to the large SUV they’d arrived in, pulled open the passenger doors and waited there, her arms crossed over her chest. The woman meant business.
Terri was the first to move, herding the two girls in front of her, then settling them in the back seat before taking her place between them. Whatever she said to Kayla, Paul couldn’t hear because he was still keeping an eye on Steven.
Joe was the next to approach the car, where he got into the driver’s seat.
The last to walk over was Steven. He was still radiating anger and resentment, but either Paul’s threatening presence had finally worked or he’d decided nothing else could be accomplished today. Wordlessly, his mouth tight with repressed fury, he got into the passenger seat, closed the door and stared straight ahead.
As Joe backed the car down the driveway, Kayla waved to the girls and watched as the SUV disappeared around the curve that led out to the main road. When they were gone from sight, she stayed there a moment longer, then turned back and headed for Paul, who was waiting for her.
As she approached him, he held up a hand, palm out. “Before you bite my head off, I got it. No violence allowed.”
“Right.”
“But you didn’t hear him, Kayla. Now that he knows my name, he’ll be checking me out.”
“I have no doubt he will. And if you’d laid a hand on him, you’d be in cuffs and back in jail by nightfall. You don’t want to mess around with him, Paul. He has clout, just like his father had. Walter was an ex state senator, the family’s been powerful for decades. Whatever you do, don’t let Steven provoke you. It’s how he operates, getting people riled up, and it gets him his way.” She stood a little taller, brought her shoulders back. “Not this time, though.”
“Damn straight. You were great.”
She gave a mirthless laugh. “For the moment, anyway.” As though all the fight had suddenly gone out of her, her shoulders sagged and she rubbed a hand over her face.
“Are you okay?” Paul asked her.
“I hate what just happened. Walter would have hated it, too. He was so good himself, and he wanted all of us to get along.”
Not for the first time, Paul was irritated at hearing Walter Thorne spoken of as if he walked on water. Every time Kayla referred to him, she got this look on her face—adoration, admiration. Like the guy had been right up there with Gandhi and JFK.
“For all of you to get along,” Paul said sourly, “Steven would have to have a lobotomy.”
His wry comment had the desired effect. The worry lines disappeared and Kayla broke into a wide grin. “Sounds like a plan to me.”
Good, she was back, in the present, with him.
And now, where were we? He didn’t say it, but he wanted to.
He would toss the words off, easily, casually. Get her to remember that right before their unexpected and unwelcome visitors, he and Kayla had been about to do what he’d been wanting to do since he’d first laid eyes on her—get her naked and sink into her, as deeply as he could. It seemed to him that she’d not only been willing, but eager, to let that happen.
The arrival of the Thorne family had jettisoned that little plan, but not the effect on his body. He’d ached for several frustrated moments afterward. Right now, he wouldn’t mind aching some more. The relief would feel so good.
But he could see from the expression on Kayla’s face that, for her at least, the moment had passed into history.
Damn.
“I’m going inside to call Lou, see what’s up with Bailey,” Kayla announced. “And I’m also going to fix something to eat.”
She didn’t say “Can I fix you anything?” Or “Care to join me?”
Disappointment flooding him, he watched as she walked into the house. “I’ll finish up the wood before I leave,” he called after her.
“Thanks,” she said, her back to him, the direction of her thoughts obviously the polar opposite of his.
Damn. One more time.
Chapter 8
Kayla breezed out of the house, purse and keys in hand, and walked briskly toward the car. “Paul?”
She waited while he stacked the last piece of wood, then glanced at her. “Yes?”
“I’m going into Susanville to check up on Bailey.”
“Okay.”
She stopped, had a thought, then turned toward him. “Why don’t I drop you at Hank’s so you can get your things? I can pick you up on your way back.”
He frowned. “Oh.”
“Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
“No. But are you sure you still want me to move in?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Narrowing his eyes, he studied her for a moment before nodding slowly. “So it’s going to be like this, huh? We’re not going to talk about it—what happened before your visitors came.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. ‘Oh.’”
She lowered her head and studied the nails on her free hand. She felt all squirmy inside. She really didn’t want to deal with this, not now, not before she had a chance to put it in perspective. There had been so much heat between them, and she’d felt so out of control. She wasn’t sure she liked the feeling.
And then the Thornes had descended, Steven spitting out venom, making everyone uncomfortable. It was all too much—the kiss and Steven and the rat and poor Bailey. All she wanted was to pull a Scarlett O’Hara and think about it tomorrow.
Sighing, she lowered her hand, looked up and met his hard, challenging gaze. “I’m sorry, Paul. Can we kind of, well, discuss it later?”
Something flickered in his eyes—disappointment? hurt?—before he answered her. “Hey, you know what? We don’t have to discuss it at all.”
Oh, no. She had hurt his feelings. “Paul, I didn’t mean to—” She walked toward him, reached out a hand to touch him. “I mean, I really need to see how Bailey is, and—”
He held up a hand, signaling that she could stop her tap-dancing. “Forget it, okay? You can drop me off at Hank’s and I’ll get my stuff.”
Her arm fell to her side. She could pursue the discussion, try to let him know of her confusion. Instead, she took the coward’s way out. “Okay. Well, then. Good.”
He reached for his shirt. She watched him briefly, then quickly turned her attention to the sky, afraid that it might appear she was ogling him. Which she seemed to do on a regular basis. Were those clouds up there rain clouds?
Her attention was diverted by the sound of an engine. She looked past her car to see a large brown delivery truck coming toward her. She watched as the vehicle pulled up and stopped. The UPS driver hopped out, reached into his truck and brought out a large package.
&nb
sp; “Kayla Thorne?” he asked her.
She walked toward him. “Yes?”
“Sign here, please.”
She did, curious as to what the package could contain. She hadn’t ordered anything from a catalog, and her lawyer always sent legal documents by the firm’s courier. After she finished signing, the driver handed the package to her. It was as high as it was wide, only it wasn’t at all heavy.
As the driver got into his truck and then backed out, she glanced over at Paul, who stood near the woodpile, his shirt half buttoned, watching her.
She smiled. “I have no idea what this is.”
She shook the package, but there was no rattling, just a small thud. “As you heard, it’s my birthday next week. I’ll be thirty, so I suppose this could be some kind of present. Although I can’t imagine who it would be from.”
She’d already received something, now lying unopened on the kitchen counter, from Joe’s family. She was thoroughly estranged from her own; the one aunt she’d kept in touch with had died two years ago. She had no childhood friends, as the family had rarely stayed in one place long enough for her to make lasting connections. And the few acquaintances she’d made in Albany were just that, acquaintances. Walter had been the only real friend she’d had.
“Unless Walter left instructions,” she said, still thinking out loud. “It would have been just like him. He was the kindest man.”
Paul watched Kayla playing with the package, for some reason not ripping it open, the way most people would. And at the mention of the late Walter Thorne, he was aware of that familiar twist of jealousy in his gut. He hated that he was so susceptible to that ugly emotion, but he hated even more the thought that another man—even from the grave—might still have this kind of effect on her.
“I’m being silly,” she mused aloud again. “Of course it’s not from Walter. He would have had to know he was going to die to arrange a posthumous gift.” She sighed. “Wishful thinking on my part, I guess.”
Again, she shook the package, then directed a happy grin at Paul. “What do you think? Should I wait till my birthday to open it?”
The look on her face got to him. She was like a kid, a happy kid at her first Christmas. He had to wonder just how many times she’d been given anything that made her smile with excited anticipation.
“Hey, go for it,” he told her, his previous annoyance with her now history. “You deserve a present.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Think so?”
“I know so.”
She grinned again. “Well, if you say so…”
He watched as she set the package down on the hood of her car, then ripped open the outer wrapping. Inside there was a smaller package, the name of a famous, upscale shoe designer written across the top in large script.
“Shoes?” she said. “I don’t remember ordering any shoes.”
Women and their shoes, Paul thought, turning away and heading for the rear of the house. He needed to grab his backpack, which was lying on the porch.
“Oh, God, no!”
Her cry of fear set up a flutter of bird wings out of the trees and made Paul stop dead in his tracks. Reversing direction, he sprinted over to her, just in time to see her clamp her hands over her mouth, her gaze directed at a snake as it slid over the side of the box, now overturned on the ground. It was black, no markings that he could see, but he wasn’t close enough to really discern them if they existed.
“Stay still!” he yelled, heading for the woodpile and the ax.
But by the time he got back to Kayla, he was too late. The snake, moving like lightning, had slithered off toward the house and was just disappearing underneath.
Kayla was shaking so hard he half expected to hear her teeth clattering. Leaning the ax against the car, he pulled her to him, held her tightly, rubbing her arms up and down and saying whatever words of comfort came to him. “Settle down, now. It’s gone. It’s okay.”
The rescuer, he thought with irony. Again. It seemed to be his role where Kayla Thorne was concerned.
“Take a deep breath,” he told her, trying to soothe her terror even as he silently cursed the creep who had sent the thing. Steven Thorne? Her brother Jay?
To her credit, she tried. She inhaled deeply, exhaled. “Again,” he told her, and she did as instructed.
Her shaking abated slightly, and he continued to rub his palms over her back, kneading the tightness there as best he could. His gaze lit on the shoe box that had contained the snake. There were air holes punched in it, but she must not have noticed them before opening it.
Who the hell would send a snake by courier? And how had it been done? “Did you get a good look at it?” When she nodded against his chest he went on. “Were you able to see its markings?”
She nodded again but couldn’t seem to get any words out.
“Come on,” Paul said, “let’s go inside, get you a glass of water.”
“In-inside? No,” she managed to gasp. Lifting her head from the protection of his chest, she pointed a quivering finger toward where the snake had disappeared.
“It’ll stay underneath the house,” he told her. “Trust me, it’s more scared of us than we are of him.”
She shook her head. “Not p-p-possible.”
“Okay, then.”
He took her keys, which she had set down on the hood next to her purse, and with one arm around her shoulders, led her to the passenger side car door. He pulled it open and helped her into the seat. Then he went around to the driver’s side, settled himself in the seat and looked over at her. Her face was completely drained of color. Her hands fidgeted in her lap, and he took them in his own and rubbed them. Her fingers were ice cold.
“Kayla, tell me what you saw.”
“It…it was dark, black, really. It had a…pattern on it, but I couldn’t really make it out.”
Not an innocent garter snake, for sure, Paul thought. Which was the limit of his knowledge of reptiles.
She gazed at him with wide, vulnerable blue eyes. “Do you know what kind it was?”
He shook his head. “Not a clue.”
“What do we do now?”
He wanted more than anything to remove the fear from her eyes. “Don’t worry. I’m going to call the cops again, and we’ll preserve the package and its wrappings, for fingerprint testing. Then I’m notifying Animal Regulation or Fish and Wildlife, whatever they call it up here, and get them up here right now. You just stay put.”
He moved to get out of the car, but she clutched tightly to his hand. “Don’t leave me.”
“Stay here,” he said firmly. “Keep the door closed. I’ll take care of it. Okay?”
She inhaled another deep breath, then nodded.
Fueled by rage at whoever was doing this to her, Paul stomped into the house, got Kayla a glass of water and brought it out to her. She swallowed it all without taking a breath, like someone stranded in the desert for days who had come upon a water hole.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice weak, then wiped her hand across her mouth. “I told you I hate rats, but I’m truly, deeply terrified of snakes. Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. Sit tight.”
Returning to the house with the glass, he found the card left by the two state cops the other day and called the older one, Sergeant Miles. He wasn’t in, so he left word that there had been a further incident and requested that whoever was on duty needed to come by.
He glanced out the window toward where Kayla sat in the car, door shut, staring straight ahead. She was all right, for the present, anyway. It took him a while to find the number of Animal Regulation, but he finally got to them. They promised they’d get someone up there as soon as they could.
He checked the kitchen for cracks or holes the snake might crawl through and found none. Then he filled the water glass again. He headed outside, opened Kayla’s door and got down on his haunches, facing her. The color was returning to her face.
“How are you doing?” He handed her the g
lass and she took it without drinking it.
“I hate this about myself,” she said with disgust, staring ahead of her and not at him. “I’m such a stereotype. A woman who is terrified of snakes.”
“Hey, snakes are pretty scary.”
“But I’ve always had this…ungodly fear of them. I think it’s because my brothers used to…” She let the sentence trail off, just shook her head, shuddered some more.
“Your brothers what?”
She didn’t answer, took a sip of water. Then she frowned, as though mulling something over. Turning to face him, her gaze troubled, she asked, “Do you think it was Jay?” Then she added, “But why? If he wants money from me, what could this possibly accomplish except to scare the living daylights out of me and make me even angrier with him?”
At the mention of her brother, Paul felt his body stiffen. “When you put it that way, it does sound crazy. But from what you say, he’s not the most rational being on the planet. And while we’re at it, think about Steven Thorne. He’s got a couple of screws loose up there, too.”
Again, the frown line formed between her brows. “No, he wouldn’t do this. It’s not his style. He likes to fight through his lawyers.”
He gazed at her, wondering if she was right and wishing he had a lot more answers. This being in limbo made him feel impotent. “It’s time we put this all together,” he said, “try to make some sense of it. You up to it?”
When she nodded, he ticked off the known facts on his fingers. “Okay. Sunday night, someone puts chicken bones in the compost heap, the kind that attract wild animals. That’s meant to frighten you. Tuesday night, a dead rat is left at your door, one more way to frighten you. Then he or she, or they, escalate the pressure: Last night, Friday night, Bailey’s attacked, probably by a human being. And now, Saturday afternoon, a snake is delivered.”
Rising out of his crouch, he stood, put one hand on the top of the open car door, the other on the roof, and stared down at her. “Kayla, you need to face facts. Someone is out to do you some serious harm.”
Her eyes widened; his pronouncement had stunned her. “Wh-what do you mean?”
Whispers in the Night Page 13