Enticement

by Madelynn Ellis

  Evie glanced at her poor fingernails. A week of studiously attempting to ignore all the rumours circulating about her and the boys had reduced them to ragged stumps. Without thinking, she popped her thumbnail in her mouth and attempted to bite. The act earned her a withering glare.

  “I catch you chewing these and you’re in for it,” Molly said as she lay out a set of fake nails on the side table attached to the chair. “Just chill for a while; this won’t take long. I just need to sort your cuticles out first.”

  Molly set to work, soaking her nail beds. Evie allowed her attention to stray in Lillianna’s direction. Her friend, who was being unusually quiet, stood by the window, with a nail art leaflet held loosely within her grasp. However, her attention was clearly on whatever lay beyond the blinds, the cord of which she twitched the moment Molly’s head turned, to reveal a panoramic view into the neighbours lounge.

  “You could’ve just called, Lilli, and stood in the dark, although the business is appreciated.” Molly gave Evie a broad smile, which she barely noticed. her thoughts already back on the subject of her past sexploits and how exactly to dress them up for Kit’s consumption. Maybe if she spun him something about an old temping job and seamed stockings, except he’d probably realize she was lying, and she wasn’t sure he’d get off on the whole naughty secretary thing.

  “Ahem!” Lillianna’s sharp cough cut through Evie’s thoughts. She glanced up and realized that Molly’s neighbours were home. Jason and Saul were the lead singer and bass player from Kirkley’s hottest band. Admittedly, their only competition was dad rock quartet Bill and the Teds, but the pair were certainly lust worthy, especially when they poured themselves into tight outfits and got up on stage. Currently, they were stripping off creased business suits.

  “Should we be watching this?” Embarrassed, Evie dipped her chin so that her hair fell down across one eye and partially masked the view of Jason slipping off his trousers. Molly, she noticed, paid the window no regard.

  “Shell pink, okay?”

  “Fine, just nothing garish.”

  Lillianna stopped fanning the nail art leaflet and hunched against the curtain cord, her nose almost poking between the slats of the blinds as she sought the ideal viewing spot. She perched one cheek of her curvy bottom on the windowsill.

  “Lilli, I’m not actually interested in watching them bumming one another.” Evie’s brow further creased as more gym-toned muscle was displayed along with two pairs of tight white boxer shorts. It wasn’t that she wasn’t curious, it was just she knew how mortified she’d be if she found out someone had been spying on her, especially given what she’d been up to recently with Kit and Ross.

  “They don’t,” said Lillianna.

  “They’re not gay,” added Molly. “Or if they are, they’re hiding it well, considering the collection of groupies they have.”

  “Yeah, yuck, Evie. I don’t get off on that stuff, unlike you. What’s the attraction in knowing they can have fun without you?”

  There were numerous attractions, none of which Evie felt like listing, including symmetry for one and satisfying some plain old curiosity for another. And that was before she considered the more taboo aspects, or exactly how big a turn on it was watching Kit and Ross make love and knowing they weren’t going to push her away if she wanted to join in.

  “I always thought you liked staring at men’s butts.” Evie set to chewing the inside of her cheek in place of her nails. Having stripped off, neither of the men seemed in any hurry to pull anything else on.

  “Huh! I like digging my nails into their butts, Evie.” Lillianna flexed her fingers in a clawing motion and gave a yowl. “Preferably while they’re astride and think they’re in control. I’m all about eyes, not arses.”

  Which explained her interest in Kit, who was a little too slender to have the world’s finest arse, but had eyes like the souls of the world.

  “Do we need to psychoanalyze your biggest fear while you’re sat in that chair?” Lillianna slinked across the floor, somehow moving in steel-tipped stiletto heels, a heavily beaded dress, and with six dozen bangles up her arms, without making more than a whisper of sound. She stretched over the lower half of Evie’s chair, so she could meet her face to face at close quarters. “Terrified they’re going to leave you out, are you? You wouldn’t be the first.”

  Molly’s head jerked up from its hunched position over Evie’s nails. “It’s true that you’re having a threesome, then? It’s not just some gossipy rumour.”

  “No—no!” Evie pushed Lillianna away and tried to get up, only to have Molly’s grip tightened upon her arm.

  Flummoxed, she gazed into the hazel of Molly’s eyes trying to figure out the question. “Oh,” she said, realizing Molly had taken her no to Lillianna’s teasing as a denial of the relationship. “In truth…Well, sort of…ish.” She sat back down with her arms folded, blushing furiously, her lips clamped together for fear of any details escaping.

  “It’s a full-on, stinking ménage a trois.” Lillianna clacked her heels. “It’s only the fact that one of them is Ross that’s stopped me pulling you limb from limb yet. Never did get what Kit saw in him, and I’m not the only one.” With an irate waggle, she returned to her position by the blinds. The two men from next door were now sitting side by side on the sofa in their boxers, evidently waiting for something.

  Meanwhile, Molly’s gaze remained fastened upon Evie, her hazel eyes bronze flecked with worry. “Oh!” she pursed her lips, as if she wanted to say more, but wasn’t sure if she should, or how to go about it either. A surreptitious glance at Lillianna didn’t seem to help with the decision. “I hoped it was just a rumour…for your sake. He’s not just bad, Evie. He’s downright evil.”

  So folks kept suggesting, not that any of them came out and said specifically why he’d earned such a reputation. “Really?” She tried to catch Lillianna’s eye, intending to press her for the answers she promised, but her friend studiously ignored her.

  “Drink?”

  Molly’s pleasant face set into a grimace as she spooned granules into two mugs and dumped a teabag into a third. “I can’t believe Ross has got you involved with him. I know they’re old friends and Ross has never acknowledged what happened but…”

  “What happened? What are you talking about?”

  Horror shot through Molly’s already drawn expression, causing a flight of anxious butterflies to tear about inside Evie’s stomach.

  “You mean Ross hasn’t…or Lilli? Shit! They’ve not told you?”

  In her alarm, Molly missed the cups and tipped milk over the work surface. Evie lurched to the rescue with a strip of kitchen towel. “You’re telling me you don’t know what he did?” Molly snatched up a packet of biscuits and munched her way through two without seeming to notice. “Goddamned Lillianna, that’s why she brought you here, isn’t it? Wouldn’t dare say anything bad about him herself, in case it got back to him. Coward,” she snapped loud enough for her voice to carry through to the conservatory. “And as for Ross… Jeezus, that’s so irresponsible. I thought he was better than that.”

  She led Evie through to her miniscule lounge, which was rather overcrowded by a large aspidistra, and thrust a framed photograph at her. “This is Sammie, my sister.”

  Evie took a good look at the old photo, sensing a sort of reverence on Molly’s part. The image was of two women in their late teens or early twenties, dressed for a night on the town in microscopic skirts and vest-type tops. Molly was instantly recognizable, despite her hair being a good five shades darker than her current bleached-blonde. Her sister had an easygoing smile, tainted by a hint of slyness around the eyes, although she was undeniably pretty.

  Molly took the back the picture and replaced it on the book case. “You’ve never heard of her, have you?”

  “I didn’t realize your family was from round here.”

  “They moved.”

  Sensing impending doom, Evie mentally braced herself for the details of a road accident o
r drunken misadventure. Drugs were out; Kit was far too clean living for that, although maybe this would explain his obsession with green tea and muesli. Maybe it was something simpler like he’d got the girl pregnant and bailed on her. She hoped not. She didn’t have much respect for people who wouldn’t accept responsibility for their actions, and she didn’t want a reason to dislike him.

  “Just tell me, Molly.”

  “He killed her.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, I can’t prove it. But I know he’s responsible. They found her clothes in a ditch. Wallet too.”

  Evie gawped at Molly, completely dumbstruck. There weren’t really words to express the shock and disbelief that flattened her thoughts. Kit a murderer… Ridiculous. Sanity prevailed. She shook her head. “No. Oh, no.”

  “It was fine between him and Sammie while she was going along with his pervy demands, but it was a different matter once she started saying no,” Molly explained.

  “No.”

  Molly didn’t seem to hear Evie’s denial; she just kept layering on the dirt, thicker and thicker. Painting an image of a man so alien to what Evie knew of Kit, the dichotomy finally snapped her out of her stunned daze.

  Yes, admittedly, Kit played hard and fast with his sexual morals, but that hardly made him evil. And he’d shown no indication of being the sort given to violent rages. Molly’s account just didn’t tally up straight.

  Evie gulped a mouthful of steaming coffee to dislodge the lump in her throat. The liquid scalded her tongue, and brought stinging tears to her eyes, but also finally loosened her tongue. “You’re mistaken, surely. Not Kit. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. That’s not him.”

  Molly abruptly pushed herself upright and paced around the coffee table. “You don’t know what he’d been asking her to do. It wasn’t the sort of stuff you wanted passing around the neighbourhood. It was disgusting. Really crude.”

  Disgusting as in threesomes and anal sex, Evie wondered, though she kept the thought to herself. There’d be no placating Molly’s moral outrage.

  “Was he charged?” she asked, fearing for a moment that the six year stint in Japan was fiction to camouflage a stint in jail.

  Molly shook her head. “The police reckoned there wasn’t enough evidence. No signs of any obvious scuffles and they never found her body. They just stuck her on the missing persons register and forgot about her.”

  “But Kit—”

  “Was the last person to see her and the only one with a motive. Of course, he denies everything. And your boyfriend backed him up.”

  “Ross!”

  The possibility that he was somehow involved in this too threatened the contents of her stomach. Evie flailed blindly seeking a reassuring purchase, some slice of sanity, but there was only Molly and her vitriol, black tears streaking her face where her mascara had run.

  Evie rose and hurried back to the conservatory. If the police hadn’t charged him, there had to be reasonable doubt despite Molly’s insistence.

  “Did she tell you?” Lillianna turned her head as Evie pulled a tenner from her purse and left it on the leather chair as payment for her nails.

  “Why didn’t you?” Still fevered with shock, Evie stared at her friend. Lillianna refused to make eye contact.

  “Not everyone sees it the same way as Molly.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  Lillianna thoughtfully chewed her lips. “I don’t know. I can’t deny that the relationship was rocky. They were both pretty wild, but on the other hand, regardless of what I think of Ross, he’s always been honest. I don’t think he’d lie even to cover Kit’s back. He claimed Kit was with him so he couldn’t have had anything to do with it, in case Molly didn’t say.”

  Lilli dug her teeth so hard into her lower lip that they came away stained with burgundy lipstick. “I’m sorry, Evie. I just thought you should know, and I figured they hadn’t told you.”

  Snapshot images of Kit touching her, of the three of them entwined, were suddenly overlaid with the frozen image of Sammie smiling and her body lying naked in a ditch.

  “Go home, Evie. Talk to Ross. Talk to Kit. Draw your own conclusions.”

  “Right.” Evie glanced up and caught a glimpse of the scene playing out next door. Jason and Saul smeared in baby oil, Greek wrestling, while a woman in thigh high leather boots and a PVC cat suit half-heartedly flogged them with what looked like a suede jellyfish. “I thought you said it was kinky, not surreal.”

  “It’s kinkier in my head. There’s a bit more sand in there and some trees, and they have two nice matching slave collars, and when they’re disobedient I have them lick my shiny boots clean. She—” she nodded at the woman, “—isn’t exactly cut out for the role. She’s much better as the naughty nurse, or the naughty schoolgirl, the naughty anything, really. She’s pathetic when they make her top. One of these days, I’m going to work up my nerve and offer to give them a proper work out.” She tugged the cord so that the blinds swivelled, obscuring the view. “I didn’t do this to wreck it for you, Evie. I just thought you deserved to know a bit about him. I’d hate to think you got yourself into something without ever having seen the full picture.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kit was sitting on the sofa playing video games when Evie arrived home. He had his long legs, encased in supple black leather, folded up before him, so that the controller rested upon his knees. Evie remained in the doorway to the lounge for several moments looking at him. It wasn’t specifically nerves that held her there, more a heartfelt desire to be able to read what lay beneath his outward visage. He’d blown into their lives like a whirlwind, changing everything, reshaping everything in new and interesting ways. She loved him for it, and no number of unfounded accusations changed that; still it struck her how very little she did know about him, and how secretive he and Ross had been over the past.

  “Hey,” he said, spotting her. He patted the space next to him and offered up a welcoming smile. “Been out somewhere?”

  “Molly’s, getting my nails done.” She took a tentative step forward, trying not to seem too uptight, and raised her hands to show him.

  “Not bad.”

  “Ross not back yet?” She went back into the hallway and took off her coat.

  “He sent a text. Said he’s been called out to some farm to help deliver a calf. I figure he’ll be awhile. I stuck lasagne in the oven.” Kit came over to the lounge door and watched her pottering about at the bottom of the stairs. “Something on your mind?”

  “No.” Evie sucked the end of her new acrylic thumbnail. It tasted vile.

  “I’ll put the kettle on, shall I? I thought maybe you had a nice story lined up for me, since we’ve got a bit of quiet time together.” The way he said nice implied dirty.

  She had a story, but not one he’d appreciate hearing. Evie left him to fix the drinks and sat down at the bottom of the stairs. Really she wanted to ask Ross about the allegation first. He wouldn’t outright lie to her face, even if he was being cagey. It seemed unbelievable that despite three years together he’d never mentioned that someone he knew from the village had vanished, even when they’d been desperately waiting for a house here. You’d have thought he’d want to be anywhere else. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure she knew Ross all that well anymore.

  She gave a deep sigh and rubbed her eyes. When she opened them up, she found Kit knelt before her, holding two steaming mugs, with a liquid sheen of concern glazing his dark eyes.

  “What’s up?”

  When she looked down at the mugs to avoid his gaze, he rested his hand upon her knee.

  “Evie? Did something happen while you were out? Did you run into Tony again?”

  Hell, she’d almost forgotten Tony. Clearly he took Molly’s view of the situation.

  She shook her head, and relief visibly washed some of the strain from Kit’s features. It came right back again as soon as she began talking. “I’ve been hearing things. Things about you and the past.”

  Kit rubbed
the tip of his tongue against his upper front two teeth. “Where’d you say you’d been?”

  “Molly’s. Molly Dean,” she replied, taking one of the offered mugs.

  Kit took a nervous slug from his.

  “She says—”

  He fell away from her, shaking his head. “Don’t. I know what she says.”

  “But did you?”

  Horror crept across his face, followed by waves of crushing disappointment, betrayal and distrust.

  “Kit, I’m sorry, but you have to realize I want to know what’s going on. I kept hearing these whispers that you were a bad boy and I just thought you’d been the village teenage tearaway, but what Molly’s accusing you of is way more serious. I mean, what happened?” She stretched forward to grasp his arm, but he shuffled backwards out of reach. “Tell me, please. I’m trying not to judge. I just want to hear your version of events.”

  He didn’t answer, just stared at her like a hunted beast.

  Behind him, the front door swung open. Ross loomed up, his face cast in shadow. “What’s going on?” He dropped his work bag at his feet.

  Kit remained silent.

  “I asked about Sammie,” Evie stammered. “And why neither of you thought it important to mention her.”

  Ross’s gaze swept between her hurt and Kit’s blanched expression. “Holy fuck!” he swore and pushed his hand into his hair. “I was going to tell you. There’s just never been a good time.”

  “When the hell did you think was going to be a good time? Every bugger in this village seems to think he’s responsible for her vanishing and you were waiting for the right moment to mention it.”

  Okay, so that outburst had just undone everything she’d been painfully trying to avoid. There was enough doubt in her words for it to sound as if she believed in Kit’s guilt.

  “Vanishing—that’s a good one!” The little bark of laughter Kit gave caused a knot to tighten in her guts. “It’s certainly the most complimentary way of putting it I’ve heard so far. Like I’m a stage magician and I’ve poofed her to some alternate dimension from which I can pluck her back for dramatic effect. Only, I don’t know where she is. It’d make life a hell of a lot easier if I had the answers everyone seems to think I have.” He turned on the spot and bolted out of the open front door.