Devon shrugged.
“Come along.” Without moving her feet, Devon slid along through wispy clouds behind her old teacher. “You have earned another chance to move up.”
“I have?”
Mrs. Highbarger inclined her head slightly. She still wore that hideous purple suit with the gold buttons, but Devon supposed it wasn’t her fault someone had buried her in that fashion-hell-no. Although it must have been hanging in her closet when she’d died.
“I’m going to heaven now?” she asked.
“The choice is yours.” As if they stepped onto an invisible escalator, they moved up through the clouds.
“Okay. Let’s go.” After the hell of Walmart, she was ready for heaven.
“Not yet. The gift you granted the woman you wronged in your life has righted some of the harm you caused while you inhabited your earthly body.”
“Huh?”
Mrs. Highbarger looked back over her shoulder at Devon. “In the long run, your gift actually helped more than harmed.”
“It did?”
“Surprised?”
Shocked. Hadn’t she cursed what’s-her-name with bad dates? Which the woman had richly deserved for trying to steal Devon’s man. “Of course not.”
God knows when you lie.
Oops. “Did she find someone?”
They stopped, and the clouds gathered and formed a filmy television screen. Images of a football game played out across the surface, and Devon recognized Zach standing on the sidelines. He looked as handsome as she remembered.
“What’s he doing?”
“Watch.”
He called a few plays, made some hand signals, then stood on the sidelines as the Cedar Creek Cougars snapped the ball. “Is he a coach at my old high school?”
“Yes.”
“I thought he took a job with ESPN.”
“He stayed in Cedar Creek for your daughter.”
“Oh.” Devon was glad. Tiffany loved her home and her friends.
The image cleared and re-formed and a silver Cadillac Escalade’s headlights cut through an inky night and burned up the flat Texas highway. Zach sat inside, his thumbs tapping the steering wheel. She recognized the impatient gesture and smiled. In her way, she’d loved Zach. He’d given her what she’d wanted and cared about most. Money and position. Their child.
“How’s Tiffany?” she asked her old teacher. She really didn’t worry about her daughter. She knew Zach would take care of her, but she missed her baby. Death changed a lot of things, but it didn’t change that.
“She’s well.”
The Escalade pulled up to a curb, and Zach got out and walked to the front door of a condo. He knocked, the door opened, and what’s-her-name stood in the threshold wearing what looked like a black slip that hugged her body. Devon gasped as Zach stepped inside and wrapped her in his arms.
“Oh hell, no! This can’t be happening.” Death changed a lot of things, but not a strong emotion like hatred. She watched Zach devour the woman’s mouth. Over the course of their ten-year marriage, he’d been with other women. She’d known and hadn’t cared. The day she’d decided to move back to Cedar Creek while he had to live in Denver, she’d known he’d fill his needs with someone else. She’d expected him to, and as long as he avoided getting caught in a sex scandal, she was happy with the arrangement. He could sleep with whomever he wanted—except that woman.
“How did this happen?” Devon stepped forward and waved her arms and hands until the image dispersed.
“Every date she’d gone on for the last three years has kept her single.”
“Why hasn’t the curse—or gift, I mean—worked on Zach?”
The old teacher shrugged. “God works in mysterious ways. Perhaps it is fate.”
“So they’re together?”
“The relationship is new, but yes. In part due to you. If not for your hand in things, she might have married someone else.”
Devon folded her arms across her suit. This could not be happening. Some people didn’t understand what it was like to have things that belonged to you taken away. To watch your momma’s car repossessed, your furniture removed, and your house foreclosed. Her momma’s second husband had cleaned out her bank account, and they’d lost everything. Like beggars, they lived off the kindness of relatives until Momma had found a rich man to marry and replaced it all. Devon had hated living like that, but she’d learned a valuable lesson. Win at all costs and don’t let anyone or anything take what belongs to you.
Ever.
“You said I’ve earned another gift.” She unfolded her arms. “Right?”
“Yes, but you don’t have to use it on the woman you wronged this time. That wrong has been corrected, and you can use this gift to serve mankind. You can do wonderful things. Help end poverty or aid in the research to find cures for diseases. I suggest you use this gift for the greater good.”
Greater-schmater.
I suggest you don’t do what you’re thinking.
She’d never listened to Mrs. Highbarger, and she wasn’t about to start now. There was one thing to do. One thing that Zach had always resented and hated her for. One thing he would hate what’s her-name for, too. She closed her eyes, and said, “There. It’s done.”
Mrs. Highbarger shook her head, highly disappointed yet again. “You still don’t learn,” she said, as her image began to shimmer.
“She can’t have him!” Devon hollered. “What’s her-name was always jealous of me. In the sixth grade, she took Tinkerbell away from me. Then she tried to take Zach, but he was mine!”
As before, the teacher took a step back through sliding glass doors that suddenly appeared. The doors whooshed closed, and the gray mist formed solid walls. Devon’s skin tingled as her beautiful Chanel suit warped and faded into a horrible polyester floral-print dress with a big lace collar. The hem hit her just below the knee and she looked like an escapee from 1983.
She looked beyond racks of clothes, shelves of towels and sheets, to a big wall of automotive tools. “Where the hell am I?”
A gentleman with a friendly smile and the name Norman sewn above the pocket of his polo walked toward her.
“Hello,” he said. “Welcome to Sears. Home of fine Craftsman Tools.”
Chapter 12
Zach lifted his face and watched Adele’s eyes turn a shade darker. “Are you going to invite me in?”
She nodded and took a step back into the house. “Did you win your game?”
“Yes.” He followed.
“What was the score?”
“I don’t know.” He brought his mouth back down to her soft lips. He tried to keep it gentle, to ease into it, but Adele wasn’t playing around. The kiss she gave him sucked away any thought of gentleness. It was all slick tongues and carnal implications. Which was fine with him. Sometimes you had to go at it hot and hard and get the first one out of the way.
He kicked her front door shut and brought her body against his, so close he felt the imprint of her against his chest. Her hands slid over his arms and back, greedy as if she couldn’t get enough. He liked knowing he did that to her. God knows he couldn’t get enough of her.
He’d left her at four that morning, and sixteen hours later, here he was again, back for more. He’d driven like a madman from Amarillo to get to her, and he hadn’t even known if she wanted to see him.
Her hand slid down his waist to the front of his pants. She squeezed his erection and caressed him through the denim. Desire, hot and gripping, tightened his scrotum, and he had to lock his knees to keep from falling.
He lifted his face and came up for air. “I couldn’t stay away.”
“I’d hoped you’d stop by. I went to the E-Z Mart.” She slid two fingers inside the top of her slip and pulled out a condom wrapped in black plastic. “When I set the box of magnums on the counter, the clerk’s eyes bugged out of her head.”
God, he loved that she was prepared. He took the condom from her and stuck it in his back pocket. “Wh
at would you have done if I hadn’t shown up?”
“Tracked you down.” She pulled his green-and-black sweatshirt over his head and reached for his belt. “I don’t have your phone number, so I couldn’t call and ask you to come over.”
“We’ll fix that.” He grasped the bottom of the little black slip she wore and drew it up to her waist. “Later.” His hands found her bottom covered in the small silk panties. As she pulled at his belt, he lowered his face to the curve of her neck and opened his mouth against her soft skin. “I like this.” She smelled of flowers and he kissed his way across the top lace of her slip.
“I bought it this afternoon. It’s sexier than the old T-shirt.”
“I like the T-shirt.” He grabbed her wrists to keep her frantic hands from finishing things before they started and pinned them behind her. “Not so fast.” Her back arched, and he buried his face in her cleavage. He rubbed his cheek against her breasts and sucked her hard nipples through the slick, silky fabric. He loved her breasts. In his hands. Mouth. Against his chest.
“Let go. I want to touch you.” She fought against his grasp, but he wasn’t ready for her to touch him. Not ready for it to be over. He might not remember a book he’d once given her, but he remembered this. At least his body did. He felt twenty-two again. As if they were picking up exactly where they’d left off.
He let her wrists go, and she reached for the front of his pants. She pulled and unzipped and shoved her hand inside. Her soft palm wrapped around his dick, and he nearly lost control before he was inside her.
“Baby, you have to slow down.” He turned her and pulled her back into his chest.
“No,” she whispered, raised her hands, and brought his mouth down to her. “Later.”
She gave him a long wet kiss, drawing out his will to slow anything down. He loved the way she touched him. How she let him know how much she wanted him. He’d been with women who’d done anything and everything to fuck a football player, and he could always tell if a woman was feeling it or just trying to impress him. Adele wasn’t putting on an act. She wanted him every bit as much as he wanted her. And he wanted her. In every savage beat of his heart. In the dark place in his soul that wanted to push her down and rub his face against her, lick her up one side and down the other, and plunge deep into her hot, wet body.
He reached for her hands, which were on the back of his head, and brought them down in front of her. Then he bent her over, and she grabbed the edge of a table in the entryway. He pushed her panties down her legs and palmed her smooth behind. He loved her round butt almost as much as her breasts. He pulled the condom from his pocket as his pants slid down his legs, and the belt buckle hit the floor with a thud. “Spread your feet a little bit for me,” he said as he pulled himself out of his underwear and rolled the condom down his shaft.
She did, and he slid his hand over her bottom and between her legs. She was wet and ready, and moaned deep in her throat as he parted her and teased her slick flesh. Her back arched as he positioned himself and slid into the hot, gripping pleasure of her body. She was incredibly tight around him, and he pulled almost all the way out, then sank into her. He pushed her hair to one side and lightly bit the side of her neck. Mine, he thought, his body covering hers. She pushed her bottom against him, wanting more. He gave it to her in long, powerful thrusts. He drove inside again and again, his heart pounding in his head as he felt the first tightening pulse of her orgasm. It milked him, pulling a release from deep in his belly that went on forever. He thrust into her, hard, and the thin condom barrier burst. A gush of fiery liquid heat surrounded him, pulled him deeper, and sucked him dry. The most intense pleasure he’d ever felt in his life rippled through his body, and he closed his eyes. It spread fire across his skin, grabbed his insides, and stole his breath. His heart pounded in his head, and he thought he just might have died and gone to heaven.
“Fuck.”
Adele tied the black robe around her waist and walked out of the master bathroom and headed toward the sounds in the kitchen. Zach had just given her the best quickie of her life. It had been hot and intense—then he’d slipped from her body, pulled up his pants, and moved to the bathroom down the hall without a word.
He stood at the kitchen sink, filling a glass with water. His back was to her, the light overhead picked out golden strands of his hair and poured over his bare shoulders, the hard planes of his back, and the indent of his spine. His pants hung low on his hips.
He turned and lowered the glass. His pants were zipped, but he hadn’t buckled his belt. “The condom broke.”
“I know.” He’d been an athlete. His marriage hadn’t been good, and she figured he’d been with more than his share of women. She grabbed his glass and drained it, wishing that it had been something a bit stronger. Like a Limoncello or a snakebite. She would not freak out, she told herself. Not yet. “Let’s talk about that.”
As he refilled the water, he looked at her across his big shoulder. “I haven’t had sex without a condom since the night Tiffany was conceived.”
Relief eased the tension in her back and the knot in her stomach, and brought a smile to her face. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Then I don’t think we have a problem.” She took the glass from his hand, and confessed, “I haven’t had sex for a really long time.”
“How long?” He turned toward her and shoved his hip into the counter.
She took a drink and handed it back. “Three years ago, when I broke up with my boyfriend. He started acting so weird that I had myself tested, and I’m clean. We don’t have a problem.”
He lowered his gaze to her belly. “My guys are swimming upstream searching for your egg, and you don’t think that’s a problem?”
She shook her head. “I have an IUD.”
“What’s an IED?” He took a drink, and his brown eyes watched her over the bottom of the glass.
“IUD. Intrauterine device. It’s a form of birth control.”
“How effective is it?”
“The IUD has a failure rate of 1 percent.”
“Are you sure?” He set the glass on the counter, and a frown wrinkled his forehead. “I don’t want another child.”
Adele knew she shouldn’t feel insulted, but she couldn’t help it. He was suddenly looking at her as if she was the enemy. “I’m sure. I had one of my yearly visits to the doctor a few months ago, and the IUD was right where it’s supposed to be. Believe me, Zach, I don’t want a child right now. That’s why I have birth control implanted in my body.”
“Devon said she was on the pill when she got pregnant, but she lied.”
She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “Do you think I’m lying to you, Zach?”
“You wouldn’t be the first woman to lie about something like that.” He tilted his head to one side and studied her.
She’d never been accused of lying about birth control. And being compared to Devon made her want to punch him. “Then you need to leave.” Instead of hitting him, Adele walked out of the kitchen and moved to the front door. She wondered if this was part of the curse. Zach was normally a rational guy, but at the moment he was being crazy. He’d turned into a jerk, but unlike the latest victims of the curse, she was not so forgiving.
She picked up his sweatshirt from the floor. What kind of woman lied about birth control, she fumed.
Apparently Devon.
Adele tucked that bit of info away to think about later. “Don’t compare me to other women. I wouldn’t lie about something like that,” she said as she held the shirt out to him. “It’s insulting even to think I would.”
“I’ve never had a condom break before.” He took the shirt and pulled it over his head.
“So?”
“So why now?” He shoved his arms in the sleeves and pulled the sweatshirt down his chest and stomach.
Adele’s brows lowered over her eyes, and she tried to control her anger. “I don’t want your child, Zach. I’m leaving as soon as Sh
erilyn has her baby and is able to take care of herself. I’m not ever coming back, and the last thing I want is to be some jock’s baby-momma and raise a kid by myself.”
“But you wouldn’t raise the kid by yourself.” He pulled his keys from the front pocket of his pants. “I wouldn’t allow that to happen, and I think you know it.”
That did it. “You’re the one who showed up on my door tonight, and now you’re acting like the broken condom is my fault! As if I did something to it.”
“It was your condom. Any sane man would wonder—”
“Leave!” she interrupted as she opened the door and pointed out into the dark Texas night.
“Jesus, why are you so mad?”
She pushed on his chest until he stood on her porch. “This may come as a shock to you, Zach Zemaitis, but not every woman in this world is lyin’ and dyin’ to birth your baby. Some of us actually find the thought horrifyin’.”
“There it is.” He actually smiled. “When you’re mad, your accent comes back.”
“Good, then you should be able to understand this. Go fuck yourself, and don’t ever show up on my porch again!” She slammed the door as she heard the last few words of her own voice in her ears flattening all the vowels as if she were a Texan. Only her momma hadn’t raised her to swear. Her momma hadn’t raised Sherilyn to swear either, but both of them seemed to be cursing with alarming frequency. For that she blamed Zach and that jerk William. She’d like to blame the curse for turning Zach into an idiot, but couldn’t. No, Zach hadn’t needed any outside help. He’d turned all on his own.
Zach paused as he moved through the living room and glanced at the portrait of Devon hanging above the fireplace. Adele thought it was spooky. He tilted his head to one side and looked up into Devon’s green eyes staring back at him. He didn’t think the portrait was spooky. The special soft light hit it, as if it were hanging at the Met, making it more narcissistic than spooky. Not that he really thought about it one way or the other. It had been more than three years since Devon had died, and unless someone brought her name into the conversation, he didn’t really think about his dead wife all that much.
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