by Jenna Barton
“Nothing,” I said and made a show of sisterly, compassionate smiles and sitting close to her on the sofa once I’d scooted the plate of sauce-soaked enchiladas across the coffee table. “Tell me what happened with Dante.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does,” I said.
“I’m not educated enough for him or something.” She turned hardened eyes toward my front windows. “He wanted to send me to…I don’t know, some kind of class.”
“Class?” I was prepared for a drunken argument or one of Dani’s intermittent spending sprees, but not this. “What kind of class?”
“I don’t know, Erin. Like…you know, business classes. If I’m going to help him manage the vineyard, I have to go to business classes.”
“So he offered to help you with your education, which will help you help him make his business more successful, and make the two of you more financially stable, and then broke up with you?”
Her chin lifted. “No.”
“No?”
“No, he broke up with me after I told him to go fuck himself for trying to change me, and if I’m not good enough for him now, I’ll never be.”
“Dani, I don’t think this sounds like—”
“No, that’s exactly what it is. Mom’s an embarrassment and I’m nothing but a waitress with a decent face and a nice pair of tits. Once that goes, he’ll leave me anyway and find another ornament.”
Wincing, I passed my hand over my face, sighing. “I think you missed the point, which, by the way, sounds like the opposite of what you think Dante is doing. Did you actually ask—”
“Look, Erin, I didn’t come all this way to hear your judgment too. I have to be back at work on Tuesday morning. I just need to get my head together for a couple of days so I can figure out my next move and I’ll be off your ass, okay?”
“Dani…”
“No, just…whatever!” She stood abruptly, pushing past me. “Do you have any more beer somewhere?”
I rose too, following her to the kitchen. “No, only what’s in the fridge.” Walt had brought a six-pack the previous Sunday evening to accompany our pizza and the remaining four had sat, unnoticed, since.
“When did you start drinking beer?”
My phone sounded an incoming text. Of course it was Walt. Of course it was.
Ready for dinner?
“Dani, I need to make a call. I’ll be back.”
I was going to hide from my sister in my own house to call him.
He answered right away. “Hey, where are you?”
“I’m sorry, I got a call and Lucy said you were doing something with a—” What did Lucy call it? A swinging tail? “I’m at home, but I’ll be back.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.” I closed the bathroom door behind me. “Yes, Sir, I’m fine. My sister’s here.”
“In Callahan? At your house?”
“Believe me, I’m as shocked as you sound. She let herself in. I don’t know…something happened with her fiancé.”
“Shit, well…you stay there and take care of her. I’ll get Lu to DM for me and come over there in a while.”
“No,” I said too quickly. “Um…I have Lucy’s car. I’ll bring it back. Danielle’s been traveling all day and probably wants to sleep.”
Mr. Jensen from next door knew Walt, but my sister didn’t. I’d kept him a secret from Kathy and Danielle, too covetous of him and everything that was growing between us to share with them.
I passed the kitchen, very purposefully not looking at the bottles and discarded take-out package abandoned on the table where Walt and I always had breakfast.
“Dani, I need to return my friend’s car. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Hey, wait—whose car?” Her footsteps echoed behind mine. “Are you going back to your party? Hang on, I want to go too. I could deal with some new people—”
“No,” I said, again too fast. “I’m just going to return Lucy’s car.”
Dani walked past me to the front picture window. “Damn, some car. That’s a new Range Rover. I should have been like you and went into computers. Those are fucking ninety grand, easy.”
“Ninety?”
“Yeah, for a base model.”
Lucy sent me off, down a narrow two-lane lake road in a ninety-thousand-dollar luxury steamship? I reached for the door. “I’ll be back, Dani.”
Before her protest could register, I pulled the front door closed and hurried down the steps. The front door swung open.
“I said I wanted to go too, give me a sec to change. I want to drive that thing.”
“Need to get her car back,” I called brightly over my shoulder. “I’ll be back soon.”
Chapter Nineteen
WALT DRAINED A COUPLE OF WATER BOTTLES and tossed them into the recycle bin in the mudroom. In the distance, he saw a flutter of flowered reddish-orange fabric exiting the kitchen.
There she was.
The main floor rooms were still sparsely inhabited. Most people who had arrived for August’s play party were downstairs in one of the playrooms or on the deep screened porch overlooking the lake, enjoying dinner. He passed Nerita’s boys, one bobbing his head as he offered a tray of berries, followed by the other who held a tray of champagne flutes, half-filled with a sip of champagne to follow the fruit.
Down the long hallway past the formal dining room, Walt could make out Tate and Erin around the clusters of people. They turned into the small room Tate called his reading room. It was usually off limits during parties.
Walt followed, pausing to say hello to a guy from Charleston he’d mentored a few years ago, and his new wife. It was their last time for a while, he reported. His girl was expecting a baby, already gone soft and pink with it. Walt congratulated them sincerely, the ugliness of the past couple of hours vanishing as he grinned at their questions about Erin, and at his own errant thought of her, turning rosy and round with a baby they’d made together.
That thought worked better than anything to stir him out of his funk. He left his friends, promising to introduce them to her later.
Raised voices and a quick scream sounded from Tate’s library. She’s in there. Walt hurried to the room.
He found her, across the wide, oak floor, and went to her, aware he’d passed a cluster of people but too concerned with getting to Erin to notice the players. Her hand slid into his.
“Oh God,” she whispered. “Walt…”
The room drew away from him. He could smell Erin’s perfume beside him and hear Lu’s voice in that same tone she used when her parents came down to Clemson to confront her about her girlfriend and he knew he saw Tate hustling that stupid secondary girl of Paul’s away from Luce, but none of it—even Erin—punched through the sound of Claire’s sobs. She sounded like a frail, wounded animal.
“Sir, please…” Kneeling at Paul’s feet, she wailed it again and again as she reached over her head to Paul’s arms. “Please, no. Please.”
And the bastard clicked open the safety release on her collar. “Claire, we’re through.”
That simple. No explanation, no listening to Claire’s broken-soul weeping, no consideration for what he’d done to this woman who’d loved him and served him and followed his every fucking rule for close to fourteen years. Done. Just turned his back on her.
Like Melissa turned her back on him.
Walt felt his feet moving under him, saw in periphery Tate kneeling beside Claire as he pulled her to him, knew Lucy was right behind him, headed for Paul, just like he was.
It felt good, heaving the guy’s waspy body up and into the walnut bookcases, and the sounds of something rattling away and crashing a second later on the wood floor rounded out the angry concert of sound and emotion that had been playing out in his head all evening.
Behind Walt, Tommy hauled at his shoulder. “Hey, man, what the fuck?”
What the fuck was that Paul Saldino was about to need the services of a surgeon—and a dentist.
“Walt,” Lu said, stepping between him and Tommy. Her low, even voice slaked off enough adrenaline to let Walt take a single, ragged breath. “Walt, stop.”
Paul still grasped and clawed at Walt’s arms. He wrenched his head in Lu’s direction, hissing, “You stay out of this, you bitch.”
Walt’s hand twitched around the edge of Paul’s leather vest, itching to curl into a fist. “You better watch your fucking mouth, asshole.” He rattled Paul against the bookcase again, just so he knew things were about to get painful and ugly.
“Walt? Sir?”
Sir?
Erin. She could see all of it. The brutish, violent parts of him people had taunted out of him his entire life. And she saw it now too.
Oh, fuck…not her too. Not Erin.
He drew his hands away, not giving a single shit about Paul staggering to the floor or the sounds of a second casualty when a heavy book tumbled from the bookcase and sent a plume of yellowed pages into the air. Walt rubbed his hand over his face, stepping back enough to open a face to face audience for Lu with Paul. Her hand cracked hard across his face, opening a thin, red seam on his bottom lip.
“Don’t you ever call me a bitch again. Now, you get your things from the mudroom, you take this girl, and you leave.”
Standing, Paul wiped at his lip and coughed out a hollow laugh at her. “You can’t tell me what to do. This isn’t your house and I’ve paid to be here.”
Tate rose from Claire’s side, thrusting his hand into his pocket. Stopping at arm’s length, Tate dropped a pile of hundreds at Paul’s feet and glared at him. “That should more than cover your refunded dues for the remainder of the year—and for that matter, your gas back to town. You have twenty minutes to leave my property.”
“Fine.” Paul swung his hand wide, laughing as he shook his head. “Fine. This—all of you—you’re all bullshit. All of you. You’re no more BDSM than a dime-store wank book.”
Walt took a step forward. “Believe the man said it’s time to get out of his house, Paul.”
Paul turned to Walt, sneering. “Little big Top, you touch me again, and I’ll have you arrested.”
Walt stepped back, shoving his hands into his pockets. The muscles in his jaws throbbed, sending sharp, crunching pain down his shoulder as he screwed down the need to strike out hard and without rest at something threatening the people he only wanted to protect. He couldn’t move, couldn’t look around the room for Erin, couldn’t let her see him turned powerless and unable to take care of them. He didn’t want to look into her eyes and see himself, debilitated, and reflected back to him.
The room fell into heavy silence. In the worst kind of encore, Paul’s new girl stomped across the room on her candy-apple plastic boots, a rhinestone-crusted leash in her own hand, and picked up the cash at his feet.
“It’s okay, whatever. This place is bullshit. We’ll use this for a vacation together. Alone. While she packs up her stuff. Let’s go, Sir.” She hooked her hand through Paul’s elbow and steered them to the doorway.
The room fell silent with their exit, stirred only with the sound of Claire’s soft sobs.
Across the room, Erin cleared her throat. “Wa—Um…I’m sorry,” she said and flinched, like she was scalded by the sound of her own voice.
The first expectation he’d given her. No more I’m sorry’s.
He tipped his head toward her, hoping she’d get it. But rules didn’t matter right now. There was more than her obedience to something he’d asked her to do and was meant to help her, anyway. After all, he wasn’t Paul.
Erin looked away, her eyebrows drawn tight over her eyes as she twisted her fingers in the hem of her pretty, coral dress. “I need to go too. My sister is…she’s in my house. I need to go home and check on things.”
“Sure. Okay.” He managed a small smile.
She knelt beside Claire and said a few words, and they hugged.
Walt gathered his toybag and stepped to the hallway, stood by the door, waiting to return Erin to her tidy little house for the evening. He felt like the big, bad wolf getting ready to drive Little Red Riding Hood back to her grandmother.
Once Walt closed the door behind me and crossed to the driver’s side, I looked to his truck’s steering column, silently willing it to start without shuddering and jumping. His temperamental clutch might be his last straw.
Until the moment he started across the small library where I’d left Claire in Lucy’s care before I drove home to check on Dani, I’d not seen Walt angry. Really incensed-angry. And he was Walt, the man I’d always considered “Sir,” but had come to think of as “my Sir,” a mental and emotional shorthand for safety and consideration and care. His ability to threaten or even purposefully injure someone as a result of his size and strength was something I never considered.
But it was possible. I’d just watched it happen. He was close, really close to hurting Paul. In the abstract, I would have supported him, maybe even encouraged his defense of Claire. But the reality of a large, powerful man unfurling that kind of rage was something I’d never witnessed. The things we did together and called play only skewed different than the assertions of dominance and power I witnessed him unleash toward Paul because of intent and trust. Someone could make a the case that what we did together—what I agreed to, what I asked him for—made me just as wronged as Claire.
He sat beside me, closing the door with a soft thud after himself, clearly exhausted. After a few seconds’ silence, he took a deep breath and leaned back, resting his head against the glass behind him. His hand turned over on the seat between us, palm open. I covered it with my own.
“You okay?” He opened one eye, glancing at me.
“I’m—” I began and swallowed at my dry throat. “I’m more concerned about you.”
“Just need some quiet, to get out of here for a while.” He squeezed my hand. “How do you think your sister would be with me at your place tonight?”
And Dani’s surprise appearance in my living room, of course, added to the fallout from Paul and Claire. Our weekend had started so well, a whole two days together without interruption after the hectic early days of August at his forest that kept us snatching time together in brief hours rather than days.
My phone chimed. “You have to be kidding me.”
Walt turned his key and mercifully his truck started. “Work?”
“Of course,” I said. “I need to call in.”
“Go ahead. I’m going to go through town for some dinner. I never ate. Want anything?”
“No, thanks.”
I lifted my phone to my ear and waited for my admin to answer. It was a simple issue of a few dropped characters from the script I’d written for monthly maintenance to our center’s first layer of network security, but took her several tries to stop the install and back my machines out, then start again. I nibbled at my thumb, listening to her executing commands, huffing over them, and restarting, over the entire drive back to my house. We turned on to Sycamore Street just as I ended the call.
It was the kind of predicament that turned me useless. Walt needed a calm place to have dinner, be quiet, possibly just sleep off the effects of the evening’s high emotion. Despite what I witnessed happen to Claire after so many years taking care of others, and the events I observed in the months I’d known her, I wanted to give that to Walt. He made things better for me, so often. I wanted to do the same for him. Dani’s presence would make that impossible. He wouldn’t relax around her. She was going to be livid about him. She always rearranged things to suit her whims without a thought of what others wanted. Or, really, what I wanted.
Walt parked, not in my drive, but along the sidewalk in front of my house.
“I don’t think you’ll be comfortable, after…you know, um…everything, here tonight.”
“Not sure I would be either, to be honest. Why don’t I walk you to the door so you can introduce us, and I’ll go on home?” He stretched over a deep yawn. “Don’t think I’ll
make it much longer anyway.”
I nodded and reached for the door handle, then let my hand drop. “Sor—I mean…hmm.” Finally I tucked my hand in the fabric draped over my legs.
“Hey, it’s okay. Open your door if you want, or wait for me if you want. Right now I don’t care how you get out of the car.” He gave me a tired, shallow smile and got out. I waited, my fingers on the metal handle, finally opening the door just as he reached my side, a semantic sleight of hand I promised myself was compromise.
As we crossed the narrow patch of grass in front of my house, Walt reached for my hand. I curled two fingers around his. Every step toward the front door screwed my throat tighter.
“Dani?” I called, stepping aside for Walt to enter. “Are you awake?”
After a rustle of sheets and the sound of what was likely the bedside table rattling against the wall, she stepped from my spare room, eyes blinking hard over blotchy cheeks. She’d fallen asleep crying. All the markers were there.
Walt stepped to my side.
“Rin-Rin?” She said her childhood name for me in a voice creaky with sleep as she shuffled down the hall. “I thought you were coming right—Who’s this?”
Walt’s hand rested on the center of my back, our arms touching. If the who was not obvious, then what surely was. But Dani had to. She just had to.
“Erin, who is this?”
“Hey there,” Walt said, stepping forward. “I’m Erin’s boyfriend. Walt Easton. Nice to meet you.”
I was still turning my head to him, still sent gaping and fluttery-eyed over hearing him say boyfriend when he said what he was to me—because he didn’t usually have to say it, our people just knew—and still feeling the heat of his hand on my skin as he squeezed my shoulder, when Dani did it. She never met a social cue she willingly picked up when she could just kick it to the moon.
“Boyfriend? I had no idea my sister was even dating anyone.”
After twenty of the most awkward minutes of my recent adult life, Walt made his apologies to Dani and me. He’d had a hellacious day, he promised. Needed to get into my own bed where he said, solemnly, he belonged.