by Jenny Penn
“Trust me, I am.”
* * * *
Happy to see her mom go, Kitty Anne quickly took off in search of GD, anxious to put Rachel and her plan into motion. She wished she could have talked with both him and Nick, but it was too important to wait for that miracle to happen.
In the past week, the three of them hadn’t gotten a single opportunity to simply talk freely and privately. She missed that about as much as she missed the sex. They had fun together, and her mother had ruined that. It was just another reason she had to go.
That problem would have to wait. Right then she had a bigger one, finding GD. Kitty Anne searched high and low before she was pointed in the direction of the back pond. Apparently, he and Kevin had struck out to go fishing along with several other boys. He was, no doubt, chaperoning, meaning there was no private word to be had with him now.
There was just the chance to hang out, and she wasn’t going to miss that.
Grabbing up a fishing pole, Kitty Anne headed out after them but didn’t make it all the way down the path before she got distracted by the sight of several more boys crawling through the grass with shoeboxes that had small holes cut in. As she paused to study them, Kitty Anne recognized the chirp of crickets coming from the boxes when inspiration hit.
Knowing she didn’t have a lot of time to see her plan through, Kitty Anne solicited the boys’ help, which wasn’t hard. Her mother hadn’t exactly been winning over any fans among the boys. They lined up to not only help but also to peek through the window in the hopes of seeing Lynn Anne’s reaction to the surprise they’d left inside her trailer.
At least they made it out in time.
Kitty Anne, on the other hand, got caught as her mother came sweeping in through the front door as though she was gliding on the air…and she was smiling. Kitty Anne blinked as she stared in amazement at her mother’s grin.
Something wasn’t right.
“There you are, Kitty Anne. I’ve been looking all over for you. I need to tell you that Mr. Davis is planning on towing my home back to its proper place this afternoon.” Lynn Anne paused to smile down at her daughter, seeming completely unaware of Kitty Anne’s wide-eyed stare.
“You’re leaving?”
“I know you’re worried about your reputation, but I’ve had a long talk with Mr. Dickles—”
“Mr. Dickles?” This really was too much. “What happened to warning me that I’d have to take that fleabag down to a free clinic for weekly shots given all the sluts he probably kept about the place?”
“What can I say?” Lynn Anne shrugged as she all but danced past Kitty Anne and into the closet. “At least he can afford to keep sluts.”
“He bribed you.”
And had won their bet.
“He really is a wonderful man,” Lynn Anne insisted as she started to collect her figurines. “Do be a dear, honey, and go down to the camp and see if you can round up some boxes. I really would like to secure some of my belongings before they’re knocked about again.
Instead of obeying, Kitty Anne trailed after her mother into the bedroom, where Lynn Anne started to collect her pictures and pack them into her dresser.
“Just what did Nick buy you off with? Jewelry? A new car? A vacation?”
“Try a house, honey.” Lynn Anne cut her off with a smirk that assured Kitty Anne her mother felt no shame about accepting such an outrageous gift. “And I’m talking about a three-bedroom, two-bath, three-thousand-square-foot minimum…because, after all, those are the requirements for all homes built in The Oaks.”
“The Oaks?” Kitty Anne gaped at her mother. “Are you insane? Those houses cost well over three hundred grand. You can’t take that kind of money from Nick.”
“And why not?” Lynn Anne paused to cast Kitty Anne a pointed look. “You don’t turn down gifts, Kitty Anne. It’s rude.”
“That’s when somebody is offering you a piece of pie!”
“Yes, well…Nick’s offering me the whole pie, and I’m not fool enough to spite myself out of pride.”
“Oh please.” Kitty Anne rolled her eyes at that lie, completely disgusted by both her mother and her boyfriend. Both of them had clearly lost their minds.
“That’s exactly right,” Lynn Anne declared as she crossed the room to rest her hands on Kitty Anne’s shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “If you have any brains, you will do whatever it takes to keep that man pleased. Whatever he does to you—get over it. Whoever else he does—forgive him. As long as you’re breathing…he hasn’t gone too far.”
Kitty Anne’s mouth dropped open as she stared at her mother in blatant shock. Years ago Lynn Anne had taken a stand and kicked Kitty Anne’s dad to the curb when he’d dared to raise a hand to her. The man had left and never returned. Kitty Anne had been raised to be glad he was gone.
No father was better than an abusive one…or so her mother had preached, but now? Years of struggling and suffering in different ways had clearly demented her mother. That was all Kitty Anne could think.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” Clearly she needed to step in and put some sanity back into this situation because her mother had finally lost all of hers. “I can’t let this happen.”
“Excuse me?” Lynn Anne stepped back, releasing Kitty Anne as if she’d become hot to the touch. “Let? Did you say ‘let’ to me?”
Lynn Anne laughed as she shook her head and moved back toward where she’d left a pile of pillowcases she was clearly intent on taking with her. She paused, though, before continuing to fold them, tilting her head and frowning as she appeared to be listening to the air.
“Did you hear that?” Lynn Anne asked, turning to cast a concerned look in Kitty Anne’s direction. “It sounded like something…I don’t know. What is that sound?”
“Mother, focus,” Kitty Anne snapped as Lynn Anne stepped back at the bed to stare at it in confusion. “You are not moving into The Oaks.”
“And why shouldn’t I?” she asked, abandoning her investigation of the bed to draw herself up haughtily and glare down her nose at Kitty Anne. “Don’t you think I deserve to live in there?”
“What you deserve is not the point! The point is that Nick—”
“He wants to marry you. Did you know that?” Lynn Anne asked, cutting right through Kitty Anne’s complaint and, no doubt, hoping to distract her. “He told me so himself, and if you have the sense that I hope you have, you’ll say ‘yes.’ Then he’ll be my son-in-law, and it is perfectly normal for a son to provide for his mother.”
There was a strange and twisted logic to that point that made it hard to refute, leaving Kitty Anne uncertain of what to say. It would have been hard anyway to get the words out through the frustrated knot of tension balled in her throat. The exasperation needed an outlet, though, and she turned to bang her head against the wall as Lynn Anne glanced back at the closet.
“Did you hear that? I think there is something in here.”
Lynn Anne followed her own comment over to the closet, leaving Kitty Anne standing there with her forehead pressed into the wall. She stared at the paint job, noticing that this close up it no longer looked as smooth as it did at a distance. In the background, she heard her mother continuing to comment to herself.
Those curious little questions erupted into a scream that fled all the way out the front door while giggles and chuckles erupted outside the window, proving the boys were still around. Her mother quickly took notice of that fact, and Kitty Anne heard her chasing them away while Kitty Anne just stood there, trying to figure out what she was supposed to do now.
There was nothing she really could do.
Nick had full authority over his money, and she had absolutely none over her mother. If the two of them conspired to be crazy, then, short of trying to find a judge to commit both of them, Kitty Anne was out of options. That didn’t mean she was going to accept her defeat quietly.
Straightening up and starting after her mother, Kitty Anne decided that if Nick was going to pay that much the
n they should, at least, get the full package. There would be no more hiding the truth of their relationship, and neither would there be any judgmental comments from her mother if she wanted to stay on the payroll.
Kitty Anne found her mother panting outside with a hand flattened over her chest and her complexion pale in the sunlight. Her shock was obvious, but far from over.
“There are snakes in the closet!” Lynn Anne gasped out between panted breaths. “A whole pile!”
“Yes, I know.” Kitty Anne smiled, giving in to the childish urge to taunt her mother. “I’m storing them there for the time being.”
“You’re storing them?” Now it was Lynn Anne’s turn to gape at her daughter in wide-eyed shock. “They’re snakes! You don’t store snakes!”
“Some people do. Some people even keep them as pets.” Kitty Anne stalked slowly up on her mother with each word, letting them roll off her tongue with a slow, dangerous drawl that had Lynn Anne backing steadily away from her. “Of course, some people like to be kept as pets while others like to do the keeping.”
“And just what is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that Nick isn’t going to cheat on me. He isn’t going to beat me, and he’s not in charge of this relationship because I’m not for sale and he knows better than to ask if I have a price.”
“Oh please.” Lynn Anne snorted and rolled her eyes in a gesture that was all too familiar. “You’re talking like a naive ninny.”
“I’m talking like a woman who is in love and is loved,” Kitty Anne countered, refusing to allow her mother’s cynicism to infect her anymore. She was free and unable to control the smile that thought spread across her face. “And not by just one willy.”
Lynn Anne stilled at that clarification and slowly straightened up as her comically dismissive expression tightened into a very serious one. “And just what is that supposed to mean?”
“It means this nilly”—Kitty Anne jammed a finger into her chest, making sure her point was clear—“is a two-willy woman!”
“And just what is that supposed to mean?”
“I’m in love with GD, too.”
There. She’d said it. It felt as if she’d walked off the edge of a cliff and was now free-falling, but Kitty Anne knew that she’d made the right choice. Even if she hadn’t, it was too late to go back now and she had no reason not to nosedive into the battle roaring her way.
“It means that I love both of them…at the same time.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Lynn Anne narrowed her gaze on Kitty Anne, clearly having decided that was the only explanation for the things she was saying.
“Far from it,” Kitty Anne assured her mother. “And just so you know, it’s not all about the sex. We love each other, respect each other, trust each other. It’s a relationship, and one that shouldn’t have to be paid for, but since you feel a need to extort my future husbands—”
“Extort? Husbands? Do you hear yourself?”
“—then you’re going to give something back.”
“Give something back?” Lynn Anne continued to parrot Kitty Anne’s words as if every other one was a new shocking revelation.
“Yes, you’re going to give us and all the children we have…unconditional love.”
“Kids?”
“Yes, kids!” Kitty Anne nodded, finally responding to her mother. “Probably lots of them, too. So what’s it going to be? You going to take the house, shut up, and show up with a smile on your face when commanded, or you going to give in to that urge and say something nasty?”
Lynn Anne appeared to consider that for a moment, her gaze drifting over Kitty Anne’s shoulder before returning as she gave her daughter a stiff nod. “Fine, but I might make some renovations to the house you picked out.”
“Done.”
It wasn’t Kitty Anne who signed off on the deal, but Nick, who spoke from behind her, startling Kitty Anne into twirling around to find both him and GD smiling down at her. She didn’t know how long they’d been there, but they’d clearly heard enough of what she had to say.
“And you…” Her mother turned her gaze back on Kitty Anne. “I’m going to leave you in charge of packing up my stuff since you decided to childishly infest my trailer with snakes. Trust me, if you don’t get all those snakes out of my trailer, you will hear about it. Now go and fetch my purse and keys, and I’ll leave you to your…men.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Kitty Anne bit back a smile and turned to demurely scurry back into the small trailer and fetch the items her mother had requested. She saw the story she’d dropped on the table while arguing with her mom and snatched it up, too. She returned the purse and keys to their rightful owner and stood there, watching her mother walk away, knowing that, despite her words, Lynn Anne was well pleased.
After all, her mother wasn’t without her own kinks.
“Well done,” Nick congratulated her, drawing her attention to the two men watching her like predators did prey. “You got rid of the wicked witch. Now how are you going to get the snakes out of her trailer?”
That brought a laugh to Kitty Anne’s lips as she shook her head at Nick. “The same way they got in there. I’m going to ask the boys to round them up.”
“You would.” GD snorted with a roll of his eyes before narrowing his gaze on Kitty Anne, his smile taking on a lecherous turn. “You’ll also be wearing my collar.”
“I might.” Kitty Anne returned his smile, knowing hers was tilted more toward a smug smirk that only widened as his grin dipped. Hers followed suit as she remembered the papers clutched in her hand. “But first, you need to see this.”
All teasing aside, they needed to talk about Kevin.
Chapter Twenty-Five
GD took a deep breath and released it, but it didn’t help ease the tension gripping him as he once again stared down at the words typed clearly on the page before him. The kid either had an active imagination or now he had his answer for why Lana was paying Gwen off—she’d started the fire.
It made a perfect kind of sense, except for how Gwen had come to know what Lana did.
“He might have made it up.” That was all GD had to cling to. Given the frown that marred Kitty Anne’s features, she didn’t want him to have even that.
“Clearly he was there when the Davis brothers’ barn caught fire,” Kitty Anne admitted, but that was all she was willing to give. “But then so were a lot of people. So I’m not sure why you continue to blame Kevin.”
“Because he was caught by the police with a gas can,” GD shot back.
“So? Lots of people have gas cans!”
She wasn’t wrong about that, and there was no point in arguing the matter with her. Lana was the one GD needed to be having a word with.
“I got to go.”
“Go?” Kitty Anne blinked, glancing between him and Nick in confusion. “Where? I haven’t even gotten around to hiring you.”
“You’re planning on hiring me?” That caught GD’s attention. “To do what?”
“To prove Kevin’s innocence. Duh!” Kitty Anne rolled her eyes as if that was obvious, but GD continued to stare at her as if she’d grown a second head. It wouldn’t have shocked him if she had.
“Rachel and I—”
“Rachel and you?” That had Nick jumping in as his gaze narrowed on Kitty Anne. “You told her?”
“Yes, but—”
“I knew it!” Nick raised two angry fists into the air and flailed them about as he let out a shout of frustration. “Ah!”
“Are you done?” Kitty Anne snapped with obvious exasperation. “Because we have more important things than your obsession with Rachel.”
“I am not obsessed.”
“And she’s not going to rat Kevin out,” Kitty Anne retorted. “And just where are you going?”
Her attention shifted back toward GD as he inched toward the door. So much for his attempt to escape when she wasn’t looking. Kitty Anne clearly was not going to let him escape without ha
ving her say first.
“We have to discuss this and figure out what we’re going to say to Kevin. You know, this may be the very reason he didn’t want to meet his sister because he thinks all of you think he’s guilty.”
“Then we need to know if he is,” GD insisted. “And there is only one way to do that.”
“You’re not going to interrogate the kid,” Nick warned him, his annoyance shifting along with his alarmed look. “Because I can’t allow that.”
Nick was Kevin’s de facto guardian, and GD knew he wouldn’t let anybody near the kid, at least not without a lawyer. As if he could get past Kitty Anne, who would probably try to smother the kid like a hen did eggs.
“You can rest easy, man, and you, too, beautiful,” GD assured them both, unable not to be slightly insulted that they thought they had to protect Kevin from him. “I’m not looking to convict here. I’m looking for the truth.”
“And how are you going to find it?” Nick demanded to know.
“I’m going to have a conversation with the blackhaired beauty Kevin mentions,” GD swore, causing Kitty Anne to straighten up with a round-eyed look of amazement.
“You think you know who she is?”
“I have a pretty good idea of who she might be, and no, I’m not telling you who until I have more answers, but I will go get those answers now…if you let me.”
“You’re not going anywhere without me.”
“Or me,” Nick chipped in as he rose out of his seat.
“Oh, for God’s sakes, you two.” GD groaned, feeling very put upon in that moment. This was turning into a circus. “I have to go to the club.”
“Fine.” Kitty Anne nodded, clearly not about to miss this trip. “Let me grab my purse.”
“Kitty—”
“I’m coming.”
And that was that. GD could recognize the finality in her tone and caved with ill grace.
“Fine, but it’s going to cost you…no more games, no more questions. It’s time you wore my collar.”