by Josh Lanyon
“I think the idea is we might want to stay in contact with each other.”
“I guess,” John said in the tone of someone who did not believe it for one second.
Present company not included though. I hoped he continued to feel that way. John seemed to have run out of things to say.
By then we had reached the cliffs. As we walked along the path overlooking the old summer rentals. I saw a tall woman with long, curly brown hair sitting behind one of the cottages, smoking.
“Hey,” I said, catching his arm. “Does that look like Sally to you?”
“Where?”
I pointed. “Down there in the cottage with the lavender window boxes. Damn! She’s gone inside now.”
I wasn’t sure if the woman had seen me pointing, but she had definitely scurried inside.
John looked taken aback. “You think Sally’s here on the island?”
“No, of course not.” I could hear the doubt in my own voice.
But it had certainly looked like Sally, and I couldn’t shake the feeling whoever the woman was, she had disappeared into the cottage because she’d noticed our approach.
I expected John to quote me all the reasons the woman couldn’t possibly be Sally, but to my surprise, he said, “Why don’t we walk down and find out?”
We took a couple of minutes to find the crooked path through spiny yellow gorse that smelled unexpectedly like coconut. Sand and small pebbles skittered under foot, and John reached out a helpful hand. I linked fingers without hesitation. Holding hands with John felt natural, felt right.
When we finally reached the cottage with the lavender window boxes, the curtains were drawn and no one answered our knock.
“Now that’s weird. She definitely went inside.”
“Wrong cottage?” John suggested.
“No. It’s the right cottage. It’s the only one with purple flower boxes.”
We knocked again. Still no one came to the door.
“Maybe she went out for a walk while we were looking for a way down to the beach,” John said. “Or maybe she takes the No Solicitation thing very seriously.”
“Maybe she’s hiding on the other side of the door, listening to us,” I said. “Maybe we’re scaring her.”
A floorboard creaked on the other side of the door.
John and I looked at each other.
I said, “Either way, I’m starting to feel uncomfortable.”
He nodded.
We didn’t say anything on the climb back up the path. I knew we were both thinking the same thing. The woman I’d seen couldn’t have been Sally, but it sure had looked like her—and Sally had been a smoker too. Of course, lots of people smoked. Still. Why hadn’t the woman answered the door? I was pretty well convinced someone had been in that cottage.
“The thing is,” I said, as though we had been debating out loud, “there isn’t supposed to be anyone else on the island but Vanessa, her employees, and the tour guests.”
“She must work for Vanessa. Maybe she’s one of the salmon farm employees.”
“The salmon farm is on the other side of the island. I guess she could be household staff, but why would she live down here? It’s not like there’s a shortage of rooms at the castle.”
John said, “Maybe she’s hired to take care of the cottages.”
“But then—”
“Or maybe she likes her privacy. Or she could be a squatter. She could be a crazed fan.”
I’m not sure why, but the memory of standing in the Highland Museum of Childhood studying that elaborate open-faced dollhouse came to me. Each tiny room like the set of a play. And each little play an act in a larger story.
I said slowly, “Or she could be Sally.”
John stared at me for a moment. “Or she could be Sally.”
Chapter Eighteen
Vance met us as we were trying to retrace the way back to our room.
We had taken a wrong turn on the second—third?—floor, and John was complaining that he’d been in fun houses that were less confusingly laid out, when Vance called to me. He sounded out of breath, as though he had been pursuing us over field and farm, and for all I knew, he had.
“Hey,” I said warily. I couldn’t recall Vance voluntarily speaking to me ever before.
He looked unusually overwrought, but that was largely due to his hair which more and more appeared to have been styled by Edward Scissorhands.
His pale eyes bored into mine. “Can I have a word?”
“Sure,” John said. “The word is not now.”
That protective streak of John’s was kind of entertaining, but it wasn’t necessary. “That’s two words,” I told him. To Vance, I said, “Yes. If you make it snappy.”
John gave me an on-your-head-be-it look and kept walking as Vance fastened a hand on my arm and drew me to a small alcove behind a blue-and-gold arras depicting hunters closing in on a strangely sanguine unicorn.
I freed myself from his grip. “Do you mind?”
He scowled. “I do mind, yeah. I know what you’re up to, Carter.”
“What I’m up to?”
“First you accuse me of attempted murder—” I tried to interrupt, but he kept talking. “Then when that didn’t work, you made up this idiotic story about Rose being murdered and Sally being eliminated as a witness.”
“I didn’t make up any story,” I said indignantly—and probably a little guiltily.
“And now you’re trying to suggest that someone’s after Daya.”
“What the hell are you talking about? When did I ever mention Daya? I don’t think I’ve even had a conversation with her.”
Vance didn’t hear a word I said. “All in an obvious, pathetic attempt to get Trevor back.”
“To get...” I didn’t have to pretend to be astonished. I was floored. “You’re delusional, Stafford.” I started to walk past him, but he stepped in front of me. I glanced longingly at the staircase behind him, but resisted temptation.
“Don’t you have any pride?” he demanded.
I shot back, “Don’t you?”
He seemed to lose color, although I can’t say the lighting was exactly flattering to either of us. I was probably the same shade of mortally offended beige.
His voice trembled, though that would be anger as much as anything. “Trevor and I are together now. Whatever you had with him is over. It’s history. You’re history.”
“You don’t have to convince me.” I was pretty mad myself.
“Meaning Trev is the problem?” Vance gave a theatrical laugh. “Ha! Right.”
A door opened to the right of us and Edie Poe looked out. Her eyes widened and she hastily closed the door again. Great. In thirty seconds the Poe sisters would probably have their water glasses pressed to the door.
“No, I don’t mean that because—” Once again I broke off as another door opened. Roddy poked his head out, spotted us, and withdrew like an alarmed turtle. I finished, “—there is no problem. I’m not sure what this is supposed to be about, but I don’t want Trevor back.”
Vance gave another of those loud, disbelieving laughs.
I lowered my voice. “And he doesn’t want me back.”
“I know he doesn’t, but you keep coming up with these ludicrous attempts to get his attention. He doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Oh my God. Are you serious? That’s what this is about? He was talking to me today because, A, it’s not fucking high school, and B, like the rest of us, he loves a good mystery, and thinks there might be one developing right under our noses. That’s the total extent of what’s going on. So relax.”
“You’d like that!”
“I would, yeah. I bet everyone on the tour would.” I was mad enough to plow through him, but that time Vance didn’t try to stop me. He stepped aside and I continue
d to the staircase, heading up to the room I shared with John.
Honestly, it was laughable. But I didn’t feel like laughing. Slamming the door and taking a couple of turns around the long room helped a little. What helped more was the reflection that I honestly didn’t care what Vance or anyone else said, let alone thought. I didn’t want Trevor back. Heck, I hoped he and Vance would be happy together, although it was looking less and less likely to me.
John was in the bathroom shaving while he hummed “A Hundred Pipers,” one of the more annoying pipe tunes from the day’s travels. Or rather, the piped version was annoying. There was something kind of endearing about John’s baritone rendition.
He could up and gie me a blaw, a blaw any time he wanted...
My third loop around our basketball-sized court of a room, the bathroom door opened and John stuck his head out. “Good. You’re back.”
“Mostly.”
“What was that about?”
“Who knows? Vance is tired of my shameless chasing after Trevor.”
His dark brows shot up. He had very expressive eyebrows.
“He’s convinced I’m manufacturing mysteries out of coincidence in my desperate attempt to get Trevor’s attention.”
John stepped out of the steamy bathroom, tying a white towel around his lean waist. “You’re not really bothered by that, are you?”
“Yes and no. It’s ridiculous—and I think even Trevor knows it’s ridiculous. But purely from an ego standpoint...it does kind of bother me that they, Vance at least, have gone around telling everyone I’m stalking them.”
“I think by now most people have had enough time to make their own minds up about who’s preoccupied with who.” Despite that reassurance, John’s gaze was uncomfortably direct. “But you had to expect some pushback when you decided to come on the tour knowing they’d be here too.”
“Yes.”
He waited while I struggled with it.
Finally, I admitted, “I don’t think it was a conscious decision, but I realize now that maybe I did kind of hope that me being here would put pressure on them, maybe even spoil the trip for them. I don’t want Trevor back—and I haven’t for a long time—but I wanted him to regret leaving me. I wanted him to be sorry. I wanted him to want me.” I made a pained face. “I feel like a dick even admitting this in private.”
John shrugged. “He hurt you. They both did. It’s natural that you’d want...”
“Revenge?”
His grin was crooked. “Revenge seems kind of strong.”
“There’s a lot of it in Scottish music,” I said gloomily.
“Well, luckily we’re not in a musical. What puzzles me is what you were doing with Temple to start with.”
I sighed. “He was really a lot of fun at first.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“He was. He seemed to fit in with my family and friends. Although now he says he was just being polite.”
“Because nothing’s more polite than pretending to be someone you’re not.”
“And I felt like it was time to settle down. Most of my friends were married and having kids. Trevor really wanted it. To move in together. To be a couple. I don’t know. It seemed like the natural next step.”
John made a thoughtful sound.
I said carefully, “I thought at the time what I felt for Trevor was the most I was going to feel. I didn’t realize—it didn’t occur to me there might be...more.”
John’s eyes gleamed. His mouth curved in a sexy grin. “No?”
“Er, no.”
“But now?” He was walking toward me again, and the knot in the towel around his waist began to undo.
“Now I realize—” The words caught in my throat. His towel dropped over my feet as he reached me, and his mouth covered mine.
A gentle kiss. A nuzzle of soft lips, the exchange of uneven breaths. His tongue touched my lower lip in playful seduction. I liked the gentleness and the playfulness. I closed my eyes, stopped thinking about Trevor. Trevor Who? I couldn’t remember what we had been talking about—I was just glad we had stopped talking. Everything seemed to have narrowed to this: the taste of John, the pound of his heart against mine, the feel of his arms pulling me close, closer.
Our mouths brushed again, locked in warm, wet suction. The hunger was sudden and fierce. I pressed my tongue to John’s and he moaned, opening to me, half-swallowing me. I’d forgotten kissing could be like this. Sweet and hot and dizzying. I’d forgotten what it was like to be passionately aroused, to yearn for someone’s touch with an almost physical ache. I was flooded in feeling, dissolving in the need for more, the need for John and only John.
My arms wrapped around him, I pressed closer, feeling the poke of his arousal through my now painfully constricted jeans. I shivered in sensory overload. Need was a hot, aching, desperate thing, and it seemed to take forever to get out of my clothes, even with John’s help—or possibly because of John’s help—I had to tear my mouth away and gulp a breath, almost lightheaded from lack of oxygen.
I managed to shove down my jeans and briefs without injuring myself, stepped out of them as John tripped over his towel and knocked us both to the nearest bed. I liked that he was laughing too, and that his hands were shaking, and I liked the flushed size of his cock nudging my own and the faint smell of soap and sex.
“Your hair smells like the sea breeze and your mouth tastes like honey,” he said, and that I didn’t laugh at because he sounded almost wondering.
His hands shoved under my buttocks as my hands fastened on his hips. We humped and heaved against each other. Awkward and ungraceful, and then miraculously working it out, falling into rhythm, hips rocking against each other, cocks banging painfully, pleasurably, rough and ready...give and take.
I gulped, “John. God, John... I think I—” but managed to swallow it. I think I might be falling in love with you. Not because it wasn’t true, but because it might be true and it was too soon to say so.
I didn’t know when he came. I was too lost in my own reactions. Release flooded through me. Sharp, intense, almost piercingly sweet. We lay slumped together for long, shuddering moments. John’s face was pressed into my throat, his arms still wrapped around me.
He moved his head a couple of times. It could have been in negation. I thought it was more disbelief—because I felt the same way.
Eventually, I said, “When I first booked the tour I would never have believed that this was how it would end up.”
John rolled onto his side facing me. He smiled faintly. “When I first booked the tour I would never have believed this was how it would end up.”
“I bet.” I liked the blunt handsomeness of his profile. Could imagine looking at—and liking—that profile for the next fifty years. “About being on rebound.”
He raised his gaze from my mouth to my eyes. “Mmm?”
“This isn’t a rebound thing for me.”
He said ruefully, “But you can’t know that yet, can you?”
“I think I can. For one thing Trevor and I have been over for ten months, nearly a year. My feelings for him died before we finished divvying up the CDs. What I told you earlier is the truth. What drove me to go on this trip was mostly ego. I wanted him to see he’d made a mistake.”
John didn’t say anything, but I had his full attention.
As hard as it was to admit, I needed to get this out. “But his leaving me wasn’t a mistake because we weren’t really happy. In the end, it’s the way he did it that made me so bitter, rather than the fact we split up.”
The gravity of John’s face relaxed into a startlingly affectionate smile. “See? If nothing else—” He broke off as the sound of a gong reverberated from below. “What the hell was that?”
“The dinner gong, you barbarian.”
“The dinner gong? That sounded like we just
declared war.”
I sat up. “Hopefully not. I’m already going to be so late.”
He caught my hand and pressed a kiss to the palm. “But worth it?”
“Definitely worth it.” I jumped off the bed and headed for the bathroom.
“Do you want me to wait for you?” John rolled off the bed. He pulled on a fresh shirt, white with blue pinstripes, and began to do up the buttons.
“No. I’ll meet you down there.” I smiled at the marble bust he’d nearly throttled earlier, and then stopped in my tracks. “Oh. My. God.” I slapped my forehead. “Of course.”
I turned back to John, who looked alarmed at whatever he read in my face.
He rose and came toward me. “What’s the matter?”
Funny, how natural it felt to walk right into his arms. “I just figured it out.”
“You just figured what out?”
“All of it. This whole crazy setup. At least I think so.”
“O-kay,” he said in the tone of one humoring the patient.
“How the hell did I not realize when I found that key in the flower vase?”
“Uh...”
“That was right out of one of Vanessa’s books. Talk about obvious!”
John said, “I hate to disappoint you, but I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
I could barely contain my excitement. “Don’t you see, John? All of it, I mean. This castle and Rose’s sudden death in the night and her missing journal and then Sally’s disappearance?”
John’s eyes narrowed, and I could see he was now on the same track. “You’re saying this is like one of Vanessa’s books?”
Okay, sort of on the same track.
“No,” I said. “Not remotely. It’s like one of those murder mystery dinners!”
“Uh...okay. Oh. I see.”
“Have you ever been to one?”
“Nope.”
“I have. A bunch of times. And that’s what this reminds me of: a super well done How to Host a Murder. They have tours and cruises and train rides too.”
“Who does?”
“Event planning companies. Granted, I’ve never seen one that lasted for more than a few hours. It would be hard as hell to keep up the illusion. But I bet they have them.”