by Kim Karr
His throat wobbled when he swallowed like he was trying to get past a lump of emotion he couldn’t swallow. “It just doesn’t feel right. I tried to reach Wilhelmina, but she’s not answering. She’ll know something. I’d bet on it.”
This wasn’t going to be good. I shivered, the repercussions of unburying secrets not the only thing causing dread to knot in my belly. “Maybe we should leave well enough alone?”
As he looked away, I couldn’t help but think everything about him was changing. The way he sat so taut and filled with tension. The way he sounded. The way he squeezed his hands and fists like he was mad at the entire world. “I can’t do that, Paris.”
I shivered again and then took the bottle I’d set down and brought it to my lips.
Snapping his head in my direction, he watched as I sipped it and noticed when I made a face as I did. When I was done, he took the whiskey from me to tip it to his own lips and then he set it down.
Soon after, he pulled that joint from behind his ear and placed it between his lips, lighting it. The flame illuminated the features of his face and he looked so lost, so alone so desolate.
This was the Tyler I remembered all too well.
Tyler
I HATED EVERYTHING about my father. From his name to his quick hand to the smell of his cologne.
The sad thing was I couldn’t remember a single day in my entire life that I’d actually liked the prick.
He was a gambler.
An alcoholic.
A womanizer.
An egomaniac.
I closed my eyes and inhaled, when I opened them I watched the orange tip glow in the dark. Numbness was always the only way I could deal with him. It helped me forget. Him. Me. The fact that we were fucking related. What I did.
“So, do you want to talk about why you think your father would have had anything to do with my sister’s death?” Paris asked.
Exhaling the smoke through my nostrils, I did my best to sound like I was laughing. “Talk about my feelings toward Corky? I think I’ll take a hard pass on that one.”
“Okay, then. Great conversation, Tyler.” Outstretching her arm, she tried to take the blunt from my hand.
Smoking and drinking was not her thing despite the party girl image she’d created for herself, so I moved it out of her reach.
“What? You don’t know how to share?” she said.
I gave her a slow shook my head. “You don’t need any of this shit. It’s too strong.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “You’re not the only one who gets to find a way to forget. That was my sister’s diary we just read. The girl I thought was perfect and turned out was anything but.”
“Touché.” After taking another inhale, I decided to pass it to her. “One hit. That’s it,” I said, smoke streaming from between my lips as I spoke. I already knew she probably wouldn’t even be able to take one but arguing about it with her was useless.
“You’re not my boss,” she said as she placed the blunt between her lips and attempted to inhale but ended up coughing until I thought she might vomit instead.
“Give me that,” I told her, grabbing it and stubbing it out.
She waved her hands to try to fan the smoke away and kept right on coughing.
I laughed so loud I swore I would have woken up the neighbors if she’d had any. “Still not much of a party girl, are you?”
While still hacking, she threw me the middle finger.
The action was so unlike her, it broke me out of my dire mood. Grabbing her upright finger, I said in jest, “Oh, fuck me? Is that right?”
She nodded and started to laugh. That’s when the coughing finally subsided.
“I like fuck you much better,” I growled.
“We need to discuss London and Corky, Tyler.”
Shaking my head, I leaned over and put my lips on hers, effectively shutting her up with a kiss that screamed distraction.
It was desperate.
Needy.
And frenzied.
Something I needed.
I wound a hand in her hair and kissed her wildly. Without breaking our connection, I dropped the bottle in my hand and didn’t even care that it was spilling all over. And then I scooped her up beneath her knees and cradled her to my chest as I carried her into the foyer. I kicked the door shut with my boot and set her on the entry table, too desperate for her to have to wait one more minute.
Whatever was on it crashed to the ground but neither of us seemed to care.
I peeled away her blanket and then her shirt until she was naked before me.
“I need you.”
“I know,” she breathed.
With our eyes locked, our bodies buzzed with an electric need. The heat around us was too hot to stand and I stripped my coat off, leaving me naked from the waist up.
Her gaze was so lustful that I didn’t wait another minute to kneel between her thighs. She splayed her legs wide open for me, the soft, pink flesh of her sex glistening in the crystal chandelier overhead.
She was too good for me.
And I was too much of a bastard to let her go.
She rested a foot on my shoulder, inviting me to take what we both knew was already mine. I trailed a finger down the slit of her pussy and then slid it inside her before licking her clit in one rough swipe that had her calling out my name.
Demanding pleasure.
Pleasure that I gave her freely.
I licked and stroked her until she trembled with climax and then I lifted her in my arms so she could wrap her legs around my waist and just held her to me.
“Sometimes I really hate you,” she whispered into my ear.
I knew that, of course.
I was a selfish, egotistical, bastard, a lot like Corky, and she was everything I wasn’t. Good. Kind, Gentle-natured. Except when she was with me.
She really was too good for me.
We were fire and ice.
Hot and cold.
Good and bad.
“Sometimes, I really hate me, too,” I whispered back, taking the stairs that would lead us to her room two at a time.
When I reached the top landing, she pulled back and stared at me with those eyes that told me she could see into my soul, and I had to look away. Too afraid she was looking for the light inside me but all she could see was the darkness.
She slid down my body and placed both feet on the ground, but this time she didn’t leave. Instead, she took my face in her hands. “I don’t disagree with you Tyler about any of this, but you have to let me in. Promise we will talk to Wilhelmina together. Find out whatever it is that was buried and if there was something, we will face it together.”
I nodded at her, knowing she was right.
“Promise me, Tyler, promise me you won’t shut me out,” she demanded.
I bent to kiss her softly this time. “I can’t make that kind of promise, Love, you know that. But I do promise I’ll try not to.”
I honestly thought it was possible.
She slid her hands around my shoulders and hugged me close to her body.
I held her back just as tightly. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
When I pulled back I said, “Now, how about make-up sex? I heard it’s fantastic.”
Much to my surprise, she didn’t protest, so I slung her over my shoulder and carried her to the bedroom.
Tyler
I TRIED TO put it out of my mind.
The nagging feeling that whenever my father was involved, there was trouble.
I’d spent the early morning surfing the net for details on London Fairchild’s auto accident.
I found none.
It was too long ago to have hit the electronic age.
After I helped Paris pack up a few things, I told her I had to run out. I went over to the Public Library and pulled microfiche film from the St. Helena’s paper.
There was one article and it simply stated, “Young girl dies in car accident.”
That w
as fucking it.
The entire article just mentioned her accomplishments and the future she would never know.
By the time I got back to the Fairchild Estate, everyone had arrived to move Paris over to California Jane’s.
I tried to act like I was okay.
Like nothing was wrong.
Didn’t flinch when I saw the boxes labeled, “London’s room,” although I knew the diary had to be in there.
I even swallowed down whatever bitterness was trying to crawl its way up my throat all fucking day long. But everyone knew I was on edge. I nearly ran over Julian in the hallway when I was bringing one of the boxes up the stairs.
“Ty, you got a second?” he called when I didn’t stop.
“Not now,” I ground out. “Got shit to get done. Later, okay?”
“Ty?”
I stopped, impatience burning as I turned to look at him.
His brows had drawn together in concentration. “What’s going on with you?”
I shook my head. “Like I said, later, okay?”
“Yeah, fine.”
No way was I throwing that shit about London and old man out there in middle of this.
Just as I reached the bedroom door, Julian called out. “Darcy and Lane are bringing dinner. You cool with that or should I tell them to cancel?”
I paused and smiled. “No, don’t cancel. I’m fucking famished, man.”
“You sure?”
He was fishing again, but I ignored his ass and strode into the bedroom.
“Oh, good,” Tabitha said when she spotted me, “we need your help.”
“Oh good. I can hardly wait,” I retorted, setting the box down and rubbing my hands together.
Tabitha punched me in the arm. “Come on, this is supposed to be fun.”
I wiped my brow. “Fun. What are you talking about? Can’t you tell, I’m having a fucking blast?”
The room had been painted some kind of berry color and all new furniture had been delivered today, compliments of Wilhel-fucking-mina. Our wedding gift or some shit.
I told the old lady to save her money.
Tabitha came at me with a hammer. I almost jumped back, but then grabbed it when she said, “Here, be a man and pound a nail into the wall over the bed. You can do that, can’t you?”
I glanced at Paris with her smooth ponytail hair and sexy-as-fuck jeans and gave her a wink. “Yeah, I’m really good at pounding.”
Tabitha shook her head. “All you men are the same. Sex. Sex. Sex. Did you know sex is on a man’s brain every seven seconds?”
“That’s a little extreme,” I rolled my eyes.
“It’s true.”
Paris giggled and I eyed her. “Watch it or you’ll be sleeping alone in this big, new bed tonight.”
“Why is your wife sleeping alone?” Grayson asked as he brought the last of the boxes in and tossed them to the ground.
“Hey,” Paris protested in jest. “That could be fragile.”
“It’s labeled purses,” he came back at her.
Tabitha marched over to the toolbox to pick up a nail and then glanced up at her husband. “Ty doesn’t believe me that men think about sex almost eight thousand times a day.”
Grayson rolled his eyes. “Dude, haven’t you learned yet, you never go head-to-head with Tabitha because you can never win.”
Grabbing the metal rod from her outstretched hand, I strode past Paris and let my fingertips trail across her ass as I headed toward the bed. “I forgot that the Wit and Wisdom Blog she follows religiously is jam-packed with important facts like that.”
That earned me the middle finger.
I went about my manly duties and hammered the nail into the wall where she’d marked an X and waited for her to hand me a picture to hang on it. “Better not be a pic of Gray’s dick,” I mused as she unwrapped the brown paper.
“Dude, that would be awesome,” he shouted, fist pumping. Then he lowered his voice and glanced at his wife. “It’s not, right?”
She shook her head. “See, not even seven seconds and it’s sex, sex, sex.”
Okay, so maybe she had a point.
Paris continued pulling clothes from those suitcases that had been laying on her floor unpacked almost two weeks ago and walked into the closet. I took that as a good sign. She had been quiet all day, but I knew she was thinking about the same thing I was—Corky and London.
I took the picture without looking at it, hung it, and then turned to hop off the bed.
“Hold on,” Tabitha called.
“What?” I asked.
She flicked a painted fingernail against her teeth. “It’s crooked. A little to the left.”
I tilted it.
She crossed one arm and rested the other on it. “Too much. Back the other way.”
I moved it back.
She still didn’t look pleased.
“Let me see,” I said and jumped off the bed near where the empty suitcases now laid.
I looked at the picture and felt all the wind get knocked from my lungs.
Tabitha looked satisfied with my reaction.
Paris came back out of the closet that very moment and I grabbed her by the waist, covering her eyes and whisking her around. “What are you doing?” she laughed, a little breathless.
I took my hand from her face and pointed. As soon as she saw it, she gasped in delight.
The picture was of the two of us on our wedding day walking down the stairs at the courthouse, her beautiful red hair blowing in the breeze as she smiled. And fuck, if I wasn’t grinning like a motherfucker.
Tabitha clapped her hands together. “Do you like it?”
“It’s beautiful,” Paris said, leaning her hot little body against mine.
I gave Tabitha a nod and mouthed, “Thank you.”
“A dick pic would have been better,” Grayson mused, and we all laughed at that.
Just then a horn honked from outside.
“Oh, Darcy and Lane are finally here.” Tabitha was practically drooling as she spoke.
“What? Did they bring the Chippendales or something?” I asked.
That earned me another bird.
“I’m the only Chippendale she needs,” Grayson retorted, chest puffed, arms crossed.
She grabbed her husband by his man bun and yanked him to the door. “Emerson is staying with my parents tonight, so do you think you could wear a bowtie?” she whispered, but it was still loud enough for us to hear.
Paris and I stood looking at the photo. “That’s proof right there you really did want to marry me,” I said, pointing.
She turned on her heels and waltzed into the bathroom, closing the door on my face as I followed. “Keep dreaming, party boy, I was just glad to be leaving.”
I had to laugh.
She definitely gave as good as she got.
Paris
I WASN’T EXPECTING a family affair.
Pausing at the mirror at the bottom of the stairs, I took a moment to re-tie my new, glossy red hair into a fresh tail. When I was done, I simply stared into my own eyes, watching the spark grow brighter in the deep depths every second.
This was a new beginning for me. Something I’d longed for. A sense of belonging. It seemed like a million years ago when I’d come down these very steps looking for the same women who were now in the kitchen.
My kitchen.
It sounded a little odd, even in my own head.
I’d never really had a my. Sure, I’d had apartments and condos, but nothing I thought of as truly mine.
Not until now.
Tyler just had that way about him of making me feel like I belonged.
He always had.
Smiling at my reflection, I gave myself one final look over and then walked into the kitchen to see if I could help.
The guys were in the rec room playing pool, but the girls were nowhere to be found.
The kitchen was empty but the mix of delectable aromas hit me right away. I was starving. Hors d’oeuvre
s lined the counter and at least ten different bottles of wine were opened and spread throughout.
I spotted both California Jane and Highway 128 and smiled.
Nice touch, ladies.
I crossed over and poured myself a glass of white, opting for the California Jane because I felt like a Pinot, not because it was better or anything like that. Then I simply stood there, holding the glass, looking out in the softening light over the hills to the pretty little pond I could hardly see any more due to the overgrowth that surrounded it.
Still, it was beautiful.
Perfect.
“God! Do I need some of that!” Darcy strode in with a box of cupcakes in her hand and practically slammed them down. Her brunette hair was styled in a neat bob, and her eyes, bright and blue, rolled as she poured herself a glass of red wine. “Lane is relentless.”
I grinned at her. “What can I do to help?”
She let out a huge groan as she dropped down to sit on the barstool. “Nothing,” she sighed. “Sorry if I’m cranky. It’s just I worked late last night and then Lane had me running around all day. I’m exhausted.”
“You’re not cranky,” I laughed. “I promise.”
Darcy wore high-waisted jeans and a silk blouse that tied at the neck with a simple pair of diamond earrings. No nonsense. I liked that about her. She took a sip of her wine. “Oh, I needed that. Much better now.”
The back door opened and the gust of cold wind brought both Tabitha and Lane, each carrying tin-foiled trays in their hands.
I set my glass down and hurried to them. “Let me help.”
Lane set her load down and waved me away. “We got it. Relax.”
Darcy eyed her over the rim of her glass. “Are we done yet or do we have a fire station to feed, as well?”
“Excuse me for wanting to have enough food,” Lane retorted. She was so elegant. With her shiny black hair pinned up in a chignon, her red cashmere sweater with its faux rhinestone collar, her fine black slacks, and those pointy flat shoes, she really did look like the perfect politician’s wife.