Текст книги "Family Love"

Автор книги: Liz Crowe

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

Chapter Thirteen

The church was no better than an oven in the middle of a desert in a heat wave. I couldn’t imagine why Cara thought having her wedding on what was traditionally one of the hottest weekends in the middle of the summer was a good plan. But she did look pretty in her simple, sundress-style wedding dress that I knew probably cost thousands of dollars, given her fiancé’s family money.

I sat with Mama, although we had not spoken two words after that little altercation by the pool. I, for one, didn’t care if she never spoke to me again. My mind was full of escape plans and alternatives to those, even as I had to admit I was still, for some reason, reluctant to leave Lucasville. I’d grown comfortable here, too comfortable it would appear, if my mother’s goading earlier in the day wasn’t hint enough.

But at that particular moment, no one looked more miserable than Kieran. We were a few pews up from him, since he and the other three had shown up late, just in time to see the bridesmaids and Cara process down the aisle. I’d turned once to check on him, as had Mama. His jaw was clenched. Sweat poured down his face.

The strange thing was, Dominic looked even more distraught. I certainly hoped he didn’t also have a thing for Cara. Jesus, Lord, as if one pair of brothers tangling over a woman hadn’t been enough.

Cara and Kieran had been together from the beginning, at least as long as I had memory of him. She’d been kind of adopted by us early on, once my mother figured out her daddy was a drunken abuser, and before he up and left her and her mama high and dry in the trailer park.

Lindsay always did have a kind heart for strangers in dire straits. Another thing I never understood: how come she could hardly stand the sight of me, but would take in strange kids, dogs, cats; even once, memorably, a baby goat that had gotten loose from a farm a few miles down the road.

“What’s wrong with Dom?” I whispered, my sudden concern for him outweighing my need to ignore her.

She frowned and turned slightly, flapping the wedding program in front of her flushed face. I held the top of my dress out from my skin, seeking a smidgeon of relief from the stifling heat. When she turned to face the front again, her lips were pressed tight together and the program flapped faster.

“What’s wrong?” Daddy asked from her other side.

Mama shook her head and kept staring forward, where Cara now stood by her future husband, a drop-dead gorgeous man, and as we all knew, rich as God himself.

There was a long, very awkward pause, as if the couple was supposed to say or do something, but had forgotten it. The minister looked at them, an expectant expression on his face.

“Stop,” a voice said from behind me.

I did not have to turn to realize it wasn’t Kieran who spoke. While Antony bore a nearly perfect physical resemblance to our father, Dom’s low, raspy voice could have come directly from his throat.

I closed my eyes, realizing something else about the situation … when it wasn’t Cara who turned around to meet the eyes of the speaker, but her fiancé, Kent.

“Oh, Lord,” Mama said, flapping that program and starting to rock back and forth a little. “Oh, my dear, sweet Lord.”

I bumped her shoulder. She frowned at me. Sweat dripped onto the hands I had tightly clenched in my lap.

Daddy turned to see what all the fuss was about. “What in the hell?” he asked, looking across Mama’s wildly fluttering program at me. “I thought that was Kieran’s old girlfriend.”

I blinked. My throat had closed up. I glanced behind me again and noted that Aiden was standing next to Dom now, trying to pull him out. Kieran was staring down the aisle at Cara, who’d turned along with Kent.

“Stop,” Dom croaked out again, looking gaunt and haunted. Aiden touched his arm, but Dom shook him off, shoving past him into the side aisle.

The low murmuring that had begun with Dom’s first interruption ramped up. Daddy stood, half turning, so he could both watch his sons and keep an eye on what was going on at the altar.

Kent had dropped down to the steps. Cara crouched beside him, arm around his shoulder, lips to his ear. The overheated air crackled with tension.

“Lindsay, you’d best be explaining this to me,” Daddy said in a low, ominous tone.

Mama just kept waving her program, so fast her hair flew around her face. Her eyes were closed. Her lips moved as if she were praying. When I looked at my brothers, there were only three of them. Dom had disappeared.

Kieran dashed out after him. Daddy and Mama followed, but I kept my eyes pinned on the couple that was supposed to be saying their “I do’s” right about now. Kent looked crushed. Cara, resolved. When she smiled down the aisle at my relieved-looking red-headed brother, I figured we’d be having another Love family wedding soon.

Whatever was going on with Dominic and Cara’s fiancé, I figured we’d also be dealing with, in typical Love fashion. My father roared at Kent when the guy headed out, presumably to find Dominic. I couldn’t recall when I’d seen his face so red, heard him speak such hurtful words, even relative to the one son he clashed with most often and most brutally.

“I won’t have that in my house, Lindsay. I tell you I won’t have it.”

He stomped out. Mama collapsed in a pew. A scrum of well-meaning friends with water and fans and whatnot surrounded her. I watched Kieran drop to one knee in front of his high school sweetheart.

“Dear Jesus, what has he done now?” Antony asked, coming up next to me, his face a mirror image of our father’s. I knew he did not mean Kieran.

Chapter Fourteen

Lucasville

One Year Later

I woke to the sound of my parents arguing.

This had been my alarm clock most days, for a full year since that horrific almost-wedding between Cara Cooper and Kent Lowery.

The big reveal—that my brother Dominic, the consummate ladies’ man and champion female heart-breaker, father to one child as yet un-introduced to the Love family thanks to an adventure/mishap in Germany a few years prior, had been having an affair with a man for the past year—had proven too much for my traditionalist father.

Mama didn’t care for it, I’m sure. But she was not about to cut her son out of the family as Anton had done at a typical, fraught, family gathering a few weeks after the event.

It had made for the brightest, loudest, most explosive, and scariest fireworks I had ever witnessed between my parents. Afterward, my father had been relegated to a cot in the pole barn, while my mother fumed and slammed shit around in the house during her waking hours.

The day after Dom tore out of the driveway on his Harley—after coming within an inch of a fistfight with our father —I sneaked out of the house and found him recuperating at a familiar hiding place.

About five miles out into nowheresville, the Brantley’s farm was home to a hot new trend in eating local and organic. Not to mention Diana Brantley, Dom’s very first girlfriend.

Diana and her sister Jen had transformed the debt-riddled mess of a tobacco farm their parents left behind into a trendy business, basically by selling whatever Diana grew in her garden or shot and killed and dressed on her own, at her sister Jen’s cute little downtown deli. “Brantley’s” was now a huge phenomenon. I’d even seen the Brantley name on a menu at a pseudo-locavore joint in the city, praising their goat’s milk cheese.

Most importantly, though, the place served as my tormented brother’s haven and always had. Dom had not treated Diana well. Everyone in town knew that. But whenever he needed a place to hide out, it’s where he went, and she didn’t seem to mind. Of all the women in my brothers’ lives—and there had been a fair few, including a couple of them they’d fought over—Diana was the only one I ever truly considered a sister.

When I pulled into her long gravel drive, I was happy to see my instincts were spot on. Dom’s Harley was there; along with Diana’s vintage Ford pickup with the word “Brantley’s” painted on the tailgate.

“Come on in, Angel,” she said, gesturing with her potato peeler. “Pull up a chair.”

“Got another one of those?” I asked, pointing to the implement in her hand.

“Of course. Second drawer.” We peeled about three pounds in comfortable silence. The only noises came from the cow making a low mooing sound every now and then and the clanking of the bells around her goats’ necks.

“So, where is he?” I drank two big glasses of water and waited for her to fess up that he was upstairs in her bedroom.

“In the haymow, last I saw him.” She started chopping the tubers and tossing them into a giant soup pot already warming on the stove. “He could probably use the company.”

“What is this I hear about the handsome new vet in town?” I bumped her hip with mine. “He’s making an awful lot of house calls out here lately.” She blushed.

“Can’t a girl have any romantic secrets?” She brushed a lock of her dark blond hair off her forehead with the back of her hand.

“Not in this stupid town, and you know better than most folks.”

“True.” She smiled at me. “And you? Will I be receiving a weddin’ invite soon, future Missus Robert Foster?”

“Oh, Lord, no. I broke it off with him last week, actually. He was making too many settling down noises for my taste.”

“Good for you. He’s a twit.”

I laughed. “Yeah. He has a humdinger of a skill set, though, I can assure you.”

“Again. Good for you. Now move on and find someone with that, plus a brain in his fool head.”

“That’s the plan.” I wiped my hands on a towel and picked up a knife. She shot me a glance.

“No. Go on and see your brother. He could use family right now, I think.”

I sighed and leaned against the sink. “It’s pretty bad, Di. The worst. And that’s saying a lot.”

She put down her knife and gazed out the big kitchen window. “He was a total mess when he came in here last night. I … I did what I could.” Her blush gave her away.

“Dominic doesn’t deserve you,” I said, putting my hand on hers. She shook me off and started chopping again, violently, as if to purge something, or perhaps imagining my brother’s nuts under her knife, which no one would necessarily blame her for.

“Yeah, well, he can stay out there a bit longer,” she said, not looking at me. “But we’re gonna be renovating the barn soon.” She put her wrist to her forehead and sighed.

“Oh? What for?”

“Jen and Dale have a wild hair about turning it into a … a … I don’t know … place for small events. I don’t want to. But I’m gettin’ outvoted.”

“Well, that will be nice.”

She made a dismissive noise. “Whatever. I think it’s dumb. But it does mean Mr. Love will need to find himself a new place to hide.”

I patted her shoulder and headed outside. I found him with his legs hanging out the upper level window of the barn, half-empty bottle of bourbon in one hand. “Well, if it isn’t the one sibling I can always count on to distract negative attention from me,” he said, patting the hay-strewn floor next to him. “Cop a squat, sister. Have a drink.”

I sat but waved the bottle away. “No, I’m meeting with Gayle over at the dance studio later. Don’t want her to smell booze on me during a job interview.”

He pulled away, looking shocked. “Job interview? That mean you’re gonna stick around? I think you should go back to New York. I fuckin’ would if I had half a chance.” He took a long pull from the neck of the bottle. “Fuckin’ Anton.”

“You look like ten miles of bad road, brother,” I said, reaching out to touch the road rash on his face. “You skid out?”

“Yeah,” he said flinching. “Among other things.” He glanced over his shoulder.

“You’re such a pig, Dom.” I swung my feet alongside his. “Poor Diana.”

He snorted before taking another long drink. “Oh, I think ‘Poor Diana’ isn’t the right phrase.” He side-eyed me. “I met her new man. He’s quite the specimen.”

“Jealous?”

He shrugged.

“You should be, and it would serve you right.” I leaned into his shoulder. He put an arm across mine, and we sat a while, contemplating his misery in silence.

“I didn’t. I mean, I did, but … shit,” he finally said, tossing the empty bottle down onto the grass, sending one of Diana’s barn cats yowling into the bushes. I put my hand on his jeans-clad thigh.

“I don’t care, Dom. You’re still my brother and I love you. But I don’t know how we’re gonna fix this thing. Mama and Daddy squabble over you every dang day. He’s out in the pole barn, and Mama claims he’s not comin’ into her house unless he apologizes to her and to you.”

“That’ll happen right about when Diana’s goat sprouts wings and flies off.”

“I guess.” I bit my lip. “Did you love him?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Fuck.” He jumped up and stomped away, leaving me staring out over the wide expanse of Diana’s pasture.

The next week I started working a few classes with the little girls at my old friend Gayle’s dance studio. She was competing with a couple of the bigger ones in Lexington and Louisville, but had a great location and facility, with two full-sized rooms, and was planning her second recital. I’d heard about her losing her assistant, which turned out to be another juicy story. The girl had flat-out seduced one of the dance daddies and busted up a marriage. My timing, showing up the next week after getting that tidbit through the grapevine, had been prudent.

It wasn’t really fun, but it provided both a distraction and income. I’m fairly certain I don’t have a teacherly bone in my body, but I needed the money, and was not about to go back waiting tables at the Love Pub. No way.

The first weekend after being gainfully employed doing at least something with my God-given talent and skills, I went out for drinks in Lexington with Gayle and her sister. We met up with a few of her sister’s friends at one point, and ended up at a small nightclub, which shocked me. I would never have dreamed the silly little jumped-up horse town with a college in it like Lexington would have such a place.

But it was new, and loud, and bright, and sold overpriced drinks, so I guessed it qualified. We did a few shots on top of the wine we’d had with dinner, which sent me into a lovely zone where I got out on the floor and danced and danced, half unaware of people watching me. But the other half—the one that’d spent years dancing in front of an audience—was fully cognizant of the admiring glances and flat-out stares. At one point, a strong arm encircled my waist and pulled me close. Face to face with one of the hottest dudes I’d seen in a while, I smiled.

Sweaty and thirsty, I grabbed his hand and pulled him to the bar. “Buy me something,” I said, leaning over and letting him leer at my cleavage again. “This shit ain’t free,” I said as I leaned away from him.

He laughed and raised a hand without taking his eyes off me.

I studied him through my boozy haze. He was tall, with a fit torso, and dancer’s legs and ass. He had a long face, full lips, deep green eyes, and dark blonde hair. He was, in a word, fuckable. Which turned out to be true, many times over that night. And a lot of nights after that. By the end of that month, I’d moved into his surprisingly suburban house, and we’d begun shopping for furniture.

Chapter Fifteen

“So,” Mama said, handing me a bowl of green beans to snap. “We ever gonna meet this new mystery man?”

“You know I don’t care for you living out there,” Daddy chimed in, wiping his face with a paper towel. He’d been allowed in the house, based on some compromise that meant he was still not allowed in his bedroom. He poured himself a glass of tea. “It’s not proper.”

“I invited him to Sunday dinner,” I said, stringing and snapping away. “Next week.”

“Well, you could have warned me,” Mama claimed, mildly.

“Just did, I think.”

Daddy snorted. I expected their usual routine—significant glances culminating with his calming hand on her shoulder. But she kept her eyes on the pie dough. He waited a few minutes, then gave up and stomped out. It beat the arguing, I supposed.

“These beans are terrible,” I said, holding up several spindly ones.

“Out of season,” Mama said, calm as she could be. “Gonna snow next week,” she said.

“Mmm-hmm,” I said, content with the ensuing silence, since I didn’t have to actually live here anymore.

“This man—does he have a name, or what?”

“He does,” I said, dumping what few ends and strings I’d collected into the trash.

When I turned, Mama was staring down at her flour-covered hands. A tear slid down her cheek. I froze. I hadn’t seen her cry in a while. She was doing the full-on stoic, all-is-well-but-for-my-husband-sleeping-in-a-different-room thing, and had been for so long I’d almost forgotten how miserable it was around here.

Damn Dominic.

She swiped her face, leaving a trail of flour. I wiped it off and sat, taking her hand in mine.

“Mama, you are ice cold. And you’re skinny. I know you’re not eating.”

She glowered at me and yanked her hand away. “Don’t you mother me, young lady. I still have all my faculties.”

I leaned away, relieved at the return to our usual style.

“Well,” she snapped, slapping the piecrust into the dish and pinching the edges with the sort of firm determination you’d put into taking a college exam.

I stood up and stretched. I was sore from all the acrobatic sex, which had taken a turn for the rough lately. Not something I discouraged, but not something I’d ever really fantasized about, either.

“Well, what?” I couldn’t help but tease her. It was a small satisfaction, but one I treasured.

“That man you’re shacking up with? That so-called businessman that no one knows a single thing about. Him?”

“His name is Daniel, Mama. Daniel Callahan. And he’s an investor. An ‘angel investor.’” I hooked my fingers around the words the way she always did.

Her face got even paler. The hand she put to her throat shook. She stood up and put the pie crusts in the warm oven. I waited for more commentary, but none seemed forthcoming.

“Hey, I heard Aiden’s agent might have sold his book to some movie producer.”

She remained turned away from me. “Yes, so I understand,” she said. “He’s in New York for his first big-shot signing next month.”

“I know you’re proud of him.” I tossed her this bone, feeling superior now in my position as girlfriend of a rich, sexy, wonderful, mystery man.

She leaned against the sink, looking at the ceiling. “Yes, Angelique, I am. Although for the life of me I can’t imagine why anyone cares a hoot about that silly story.”

“It’s terribly romantic,” I reminded her, grabbing my purse.

“No. I assure you it’s not.”

“Oh, Mama. I wish you and Daddy would kiss and make up.”

She slumped, looking even older and smaller than she’d seemed a few minutes before. I put my arm around her shoulders. She stiffened. I moved away from her, relieved we’d hit that magic status quo once again.

“I have a date. And an early morning tomorrow at the studio.”

She waved me off. “Go on. Have fun with Dan the mystery man.” She shot me a small smile.

I had my hand on the doorknob when she called my name. I turned.

She had her arms crossed and looked utterly miserable. “I’m glad you’re here still. Thank you, I mean …” She dropped her arms to her sides. “For staying. I look forward to meeting him, your … new man.”

I drew myself up, and allowed the words to fly out of my mouth without thinking first. “Well, I guess you should know that the only reason I did stay is because of Daniel.”

She frowned before letting her face go neutral. “Whatever it takes, I suppose.”

She and I glared at each other, the years and years of unspoken, suffocated emotion between us like a thick, impenetrable fog.

“Bye,” I said, waltzing out and slamming the door in direct contradiction of long-standing family rules.

The tears came later, when I ran into Dan’s house and threw myself at him, cursing a blue streak.

The official Sunday dinner-slash-meet the boyfriend was a strained affair. Daniel was one of those guys who never met a stranger, but I got the feeling that his zeal in trying to make my parents approve of him was not going over well at all. It infuriated me because I knew they were bound and determined not to like him, no matter what he said or did.

“So,” my mother said, once we’d finally made it to coffee and apple pie. “An investor, are you, Dan?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, smiling. But I could tell he was fraying around the edges. My mother will do that to you, I’d warned him. He’d been gripping my hand under the table so hard my knuckles ached.

“Hmm,” she said, taking another tiny bite of pie, then putting her fork down.

That sort of ended the meal on a note symbolizing the whole event. Daddy had said little, but shook Daniel’s hand as we left, gave me a hug, then headed outdoors, even though the snow was starting to fall and the temps had dropped.

We didn’t say much on the thirty-minute ride to his house. He kept a death grip on the wheel. When I touched his thigh and let my fingers travel up the inseam of his dress trousers, he grunted. “Not now, Angelique.”

I withdrew, willing to let him get past the whole thing on his own. When he wanted to be left alone, it was best to do that, I’d learned.

He helped me out of the Mercedes then unlocked and opened the front door for me. As I was taking the second or maybe third step into the Italian-tiled, cathedral-ceilinged foyer, something shoved me from behind. I stumbled, surprised, but not really worried. Until the “something” hit me across the face, pressed me up against the wall and ripped off my skirt and panties.

“Hey, damn it,” I said, but my voice was small. We’d been heading in this direction for a few weeks now. “I’m not really in the mood, Daniel.”

He backhanded me before I could get out another word. I screamed, shocked and now legitimately afraid of the looming presence of my usually solicitous, if a little overbearing, boyfriend, the man I’d allowed myself to entertain actual wedding fantasies about.

He had a grip on my arm and was unbuckling his belt with the other hand. I tasted blood and fear and my first tickle of anger.

“Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?” I squirmed and tried to shake off the vise-grip of his fingers. “Jesus. Calm down, already.”

“Shut up, bitch,” he said, grabbing my leg and yanking it up before shoving into me hard, before anything resembling the usual amount of preparation. It hurt. Bad.

But this was my boyfriend, after all. And he was usually such a sweetheart, always buying me stuff. We’d gone car test-driving the day before, and he was leaning toward a BMW convertible, he’d said with his adorable grin.

All of these things ran through my brain while he rutted and grunted and fucked me as if I was no more than a prostitute … no, a sex doll. When he ripped my shirt and bra, then squashed one of my breasts in one hand while he kept hammering me up against the wall so hard my lower back hurt, I protested, hoping he’d gotten this thing out of his system and we could start over, square one, mutually pleased by the sex as usual.

The shock and pain of the next blow to my cheek forced the tears I’d been holding back to run down my face. He kept thrusting, wrenching my nipple, his neck pressed against my face while I counted down from a hundred, willing him to finish.

He did, of course, and pulled out of me so fast he was still coming. I dropped to the cold tile floor, in shock and pain from my face and nose and nipple to the harshest pain between my legs. I felt ripped, shredded, and pissed off, but too scared at that moment to act on it. Sniveling, I let my legs sprawl out in front of me while I tried to pull the tattered edges of my shirt together.

He stood there, breathing heavily, the smell of his spunk filling my nose, while I sobbed, unable to make myself stop. When he touched my shoulder, I spit out a curse and crawled away until I hit the bottom step, then pulled myself up.

“Oh, God, oh, honey I’m sorry, baby, Angel, my sweet Angel.” His deep voice hit me hard. I turned, my shock expanding to epic proportions at the sight of tears in his eyes. “My darling, I don’t know what came over me. I’m … Oh God, your face. Honey, please let me …”

I reached out for him, let him catch me in his arms, carry me to the huge claw-foot tub and gently wash me, even between my legs, as he soothed, kissed, and made promises.

Promises, it turned out, he never intended to keep.