“So you think she abandoned us.”
“Stella wasn’t meant for marriage or children. You and I both know that about her. Wes tries to make excuses for her, but he wasn’t there the night she packed up her shit and left.”
No. Wes, the second oldest of us, had been away at a friend’s house. I could remember how cold it was sitting out on the front porch steps with Stan waiting for him to come home so we could tell him what had happened. We knew that Wes had to know what had happened before he came into the house, because our father was barely hanging on.
He’d yelled and screamed at her the entire time she’d packed. Stella hadn’t said a word. She continued to pack and pack until she had every sock, every shirt accounted for. Then, despite his attempts to prevent it, she’d taken her things out to the car and left.
“I kept wondering why she wasn’t packing my stuff.”
“I know.” Stan groaned a little. I knew this was the last conversation that he wanted to be having with me. “Why are you thinking about this stuff?”
“Did Dad kill himself because she left?”
“Jane, rehashing all of this stuff isn’t going to change anything.”
“Stan.”
“Dad killed himself because he hated his life and wanted it to end. Was it because Mom left? God knows. I mean, she’d been gone for years at that point. I know they still saw each other, kept in touch. In some ways it was like their marriage hadn’t really ended.”
“The day I was shot…when I was laying on the road waiting for help to come, I kept telling myself that I couldn’t die, that I couldn’t die on you.”
“And you didn’t.”
“I didn’t.” I pressed my lips together and looked around the park before I continued. “Why didn’t we know how sick Dad was?”
“Sick?”
“Heartbroken, crazy, depressed…whatever he was. Why didn’t we know?”
“We hide the parts that hurt the most.”
13
“Fuck me runnin’ backward.” I sucked my finger into my mouth and glared at the pot of boiling spaghetti.
“I wouldn’t know how to start, but I would love to try.”
I glanced over my shoulder and glared at Mathias. “It was an expression, not a suggestion.”
“Too bad.” He came fully into the kitchen and slid up behind me.
“I burned my finger.” I turned as he pulled me into his arms, and I looked over his face. “You look…irritated.”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “Your friend Charlie is sitting across the street in his car.”
Oh for the love of all things holy. “You’re shittin’ me, right?”
Mathias laughed and shook his head. “I wouldn’t joke about something like this. Did you know that you drop your g’s when you’re irritated?”
“I’m southern. That’s what we do. Are you sure it’s him?”
“Yes, quite sure.”
“Well, goddamn it! What am I going to do about him?” I left his embrace, growling, and went into the living room. At the window, I had a clear view of the street and of Charlie in his stupid little red sports car. “Okay, he’s either waiting for me to come out or working up the nerve to come knock on my door.”
Mathias walked to stand beside me and looked down to the street. “He’s waiting for you to come out.”
“How do you know?”
“He has the car running, for one. I expect if you came out and got in your car he’d follow you.” He wrapped one arm around me and pulled me away from the window. “There are a few options. One, I can call over a couple of guys to warn him off. Two, we can call the police and you can report him for harassment. What do you know about the stalking laws in the area?”
“Not much. Never needed them.” I crossed my arms over my breasts and went back into the kitchen. “If I call the cops my brothers will find out.”
“How?”
“The cops will run my name, and my brother has my records flagged. He called me about the thing out at Lisa’s.”
“I don’t blame them for watching out for you, even in such a limited way.”
“Yeah.” I lifted the lid on the sauce and stirred it. “Get the strainer out of the cabinet.”
“I thought you didn’t cook.”
I laughed softly. “I don’t normally have stuff around to cook. I eat out a lot or have sandwiches. After our mother left us, I did all the cooking at home. Dad and my brothers were all thumbs in the kitchen. When Wes moved out into his own apartment, Stan and I were afraid he’d starve.”
“Jane.”
“I know.” I took the strainer from him and placed it in the sink. “I’m thinkin’.”
Charlie Wallace was a pain in the ass. A huge pain in the ass, but he’d already demonstrated to me that he was more. I poured the water off the pasta carefully and then dumped the pasta into the strainer. The activity wasn’t proving to be any kind of distraction. I knew enough about this behavior to understand that it really wasn’t my fault, but I felt guilty anyway.
Maybe somewhere along the way I’d done something to make him think that there was more between us than there really was, at least on my end of things.
“If I told you I didn’t want to see you anymore, what would you do?” I looked toward him and found him frowning. “Hypothetically speaking, of course.”
“Of course,” he repeated, and sat down at the kitchen table. “I’d go get some beer, go to my brother’s place, and spend the remainder of the evening complaining to him about you.”
“And tomorrow?”
“I’d be hung over.”
“Okay, so on Friday?” I glared at him.
“I’d send you flowers and try to get you to meet me for lunch. Thinking maybe that I could talk you out of it.”
“And if I refused?”
“I’d delete your phone number from my cell phone, pick up a fine-ass woman in a bar, and spend the weekend fucking her.”
He had reduced me to an entry in his cell phone. “You jerk.”
“Hey, you hypothetically dumped me.”
“So why isn’t Charlie drinking with one of his friends or finding some woman to bone?”
“Because Charles Wallace is the kind of man who doesn’t like to be told no. His parents have given him everything he’s ever asked for. Women don’t normally tell him no, and those who have, in his mind, just don’t understand how perfect he is.”
“Oh that’s crap…he wasn’t that good in bed.”
“But he thinks it. Trust me, he thinks it. And he also thinks that you don’t know what’s good for you.”
“Are you trying to make me homicidal?” I dumped the pasta into a serving bowl and went back to the sauce on the stove.
“No. I’m giving you the information you asked for.”
“I’ve got another alternative.” I grabbed the bottle of wine from the counter and offered it to him. “Tomorrow, I’m calling his mother.”
He took the bottle and cleared his throat. “Jane, that’s just not right. Why don’t you just call the police?”
“What? Are you saying his mother is worse than the police?”
“Let me just say this…if I ever make you so mad that you want to call someone to come take care of it…I prefer the police to my mother.”
“So, what’s so scary about your mom?”
“Nothing. She’s an amazing and beautiful woman.” Mathias tossed my bath poofy to me and reached for the soap I was motioning to. “I’d just rather go to jail than have her give me that ‘I’m so disappointed in you’ look. Most men would.”
I took the soap and lounged back in the tub. “I see my mom a couple of times a year. Usually on my birthday or Mother’s Day.”
“Do you wish you had a better relationship with her?”
I shook my head. “I used to. I mean, there were certainly moments in my life when I desperately wanted her to be there for me and she wasn’t. Now I just wish I understood what was so horrible about life with her
family that she had to run away from it.”
“And if you knew? Would it make her leaving okay?”
“No.” I shook my head. “She broke too many promises that night for it to ever be okay.”
“Did your dad ever talk about it?”
“No. But her leaving ruined him. She broke his heart and it never mended. It was like an open wound in him every day until the day he ate his own gun.” I massaged soap into the poofy and put the soap bottle aside. “I don’t really want to talk about this.”
“You have the bolt locks on, right?”
“Yeah, why?”
He laughed softly. “I’d rather not have to deal with your psycho ex bareassed.”
“I guess we should check to see if he’s still out there.”
“I’ll do it when we’re done.” He lifted my foot up onto his chest and used his thumbs to rub my instep. “No more looking out windows for you tonight.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Why is that?”
“Because when we get out of this tub, I plan to lay you out on the bed and make a meal of you. I won’t have you being distracted.”
I swallowed hard. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to be distracted.”
My bedroom was pitch dark when Mathias came back in. He pulled the towel from his waist and tossed it aside, and I relaxed. Obviously Charlie had given up and gone home. I watched silently as he moved to the end of the bed.
“Lay down and spread your legs.”
I did as he instructed, spreading my legs wide and lifting my hands above my head. His hands grasped my ankles, spread my legs farther, and held them there. Cool air drifted over the exposed and heated flesh of my pussy, and I moved against the pleasure of it briefly before I stilled. If he’d wanted my full attention, he certainly had it.
He moved fully onto the bed and knelt between my legs. “There is something so honest and bare about you. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I love it.”
Mathias released my ankles, and I resisted the urge to move from the position he’d placed me in. His hands ran upward over my legs and then down my thighs. I was soaking wet and he’d barely touched me.
“You don’t play games. There is nothing coy about your passion.”
My hips jerked upward as he pushed two fingers, with no warning, into me. Gasping at the hot, vivid invasion, I closed my eyes and began to rock against it.
“Yes, just like that. You don’t hide your pleasure or deny yourself.”
He leaned down then and slipped his tongue between my labia to tease at my clit. I jerked against each flick of his tongue, my hands fisting in the pillow above me on the bed. His fingers pulled free of my clenching entrance and he slid both of his hands under my ass.
I started to move against his mouth, taking the thrusting of his tongue while his name poured from my mouth like a prayer. He lifted his head abruptly, pulled me forward, and buried his cock in me hard.
An orgasm rushed through me, and I came in a blind moment of pleasure and pain that left me breathing raggedly and clutching at his thrusting body. I wrapped my legs around his waist and held on tight.
Mathias slowed his pace and began to stroke into me leisurely, allowing the orgasm that he’d given me to ebb away. I moaned against his mouth and shuddered when he slipped his tongue into my mouth. Tasting myself on his lips and tongue turned me inside out for a few seconds. My eyes watered, and I dug my hands into his back. My fingers slipped on his sweat-dampened flesh as I lifted myself up off the bed to meet the thrust of his body.
He lifted his head and met my gaze. “More?”
“Yes.” I nodded and arched under him. “More.”
He lifted off of me and pulled his cock free. “Get on your knees.”
Doing as he requested, I couldn’t help but smile the moment he grasped my hips and urged my thighs farther apart. I moved back against him and laughed when he forced me to remain still. Mathias pushed his cock into me and held me there for a few unbearable seconds.
Then, when I thought I couldn’t take any more, he started to move. And God, could he move. Fisting my hands into the blankets, I held on for dear life and took each pounding thrust with pleasure.
“Yes.” I arched under his hands and sucked in air as he dug his nails down my oversensitive back.
His hand slid under me, and he pressed two fingers to my throbbing clit. “How’s this?”
“Perfect.” I lowered my face to the mattress as he began to stroke my clit in unison with the thrust of his cock into me. “Just perfect.”
I came in a sweet rush, and if he hadn’t wrapped his arm around my waist, I would have fallen. He moaned as my pussy clenched around his invading cock and jerked against me hard as he came.
“Okay, so Mrs. Wallace agreed to meet you for lunch at Lillian’s Café at noon. You aren’t to be one minute late.”
I glanced up from my handheld and looked over at Casey’s face. “He’s stalking me of all things.”
“Oh good lord.”
“So I’m going to have a little talk with his mother.”
“He’s a mama’s boy, so it might work.” She dropped her gaze to the notebook in her hand. “Lisa Millhouse called and wants to see you and Mercy out at her place at 4:00 this afternoon, if you are available.”
“Confirm that with Mercy and tell Lisa yes for my part in it.”
She nodded and jotted down a note. “Mr. Montgomery asked me to remind you that you would like to sit in on interviews for permanent security personnel.”
“When?”
“He has two this morning starting in twenty minutes and four tomorrow.”
“Get the times situated and rearrange my calendar as needed.” I swished my chair around, looked at the glass wall briefly, and then refocused on her. “The blinds look good.”
She tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear and cleared her throat. “I’m going to have to take a leave of absence soon.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I’m going to need intensive counseling to nurse the unrequited interest lurking in my heart.”
“Connor is playing hard to get?”
“Connor is playing deaf and mute.” She pursed her lips and then sighed. “I dropped half a box of stupid files in front of him yesterday. He helped me pick up the mess and all but patted me on the head. I spent the rest of the freaking afternoon putting all that paperwork to rights for nothing.”
“Maybe you should try indifferent and cold?”
“That’s my plan for next week.”
“Or you could just walk right up to him and tell him you’d like to use him sexually for several hours.”
“Several days,” she corrected.
“Honesty can’t hurt.”
“Sure it can. Honesty can hurt a lot.” She frowned as she said it and then nodded as if she was agreeing with herself.
“But how much anticipation can you take before it’s more frustrating than fun?”
“Good thought.” She stood and clicked her pen. “I’ll work on this and remind you before your lunch. I did some of your e-mail this morning, but then it got a little crazy so I didn’t get to much of it. I’ve marked all the items that require a personal response from you.”
“Thanks.”
“That’s why I get paid the big bucks.” She offered me a little salute and closed the door behind her.
Could honesty hurt? Yes, maybe it could. There was a very selfish part of me that wished my mother had continued to live the life she had with our family rather than walking out and leaving us all. She wasn’t happy in the home she’d made for my family. Maybe she never was. In today’s age, she never would’ve gotten married at all.
It’s amazing how a few decades could change the way people view the world and their place in it. There were women all around me who would never marry, never have children, and not live to regret it at all, but I knew I wasn’t among them. My biological clock wasn’t hammering on me, but there were t
imes when I could feel it start to tick a little faster.
I had a great life already. Even if I counted my pansy, mama’s boy stalker, things weren’t all that bad. I had a great apartment, an excellent job that I loved, and a man who thoroughly filled my every need. Never before had I allowed myself to fall so deeply and so fast into a relationship. Sex was great, and I’ve certainly never denied myself in that arena, but maybe that was mostly because I got something of a late start.
Deanna Lee Page 22