Damon (4 page)

So I did what I’d always done. I went about my business. Into the house with Damon close on my heels, first to make sure Mama was still asleep, then into my room to kick off the new shoes that made my feet cramp, and put on my comfy sneakers.

Damon stood over me while I sat on the bed and tied the laces. I could block him out. I’d had a lifetime of practice.

In fact, his behavior seemed very familiar and comforting. This was what my life had been like.

I couldn’t always understand people. But this I could understand.

He deftly moved out of my way when I strode from the room. I needed to set out something for supper, and call Bella and tell her I wouldn’t be back in today. I couldn’t very well take Damon to the store with me.

Chester and Bella were of the few people who really knew what my home life was about, and they made concessions for me that I could never hope to repay. They’d promised my grandmother on her deathbed to watch out for me. And they did. I loved them like real grandparents.

I took out the hamburger I’d defrosted in the fridge and transferred it to a bowl. I lifted the bowl then froze in horror as I realized I was about to drink the blood pooled at the bottom of the bowl, right there in front of Damon.

Letting out a breath and harshly reminding myself not to act crazy, I dropped the bowl and reached for the phone.

With one step, Damon beat me to it, and held the receiver firmly against his chest.

“Who are you calling?” he asked.

“I need to call the store.”

“What about the sheriff?”

Well…. I couldn’t turn him in now that I knew what I knew. Or suspected I knew. I couldn’t turn him in any more than I could turn Mama in for throwing plates or books or hammers at me. He might be family. And my family was crazy. A simple fact.

I had to protect them. They had no one else in the world.

“I’m not calling the sheriff,” I told him. “I need to call the store.”

He stepped back and listened while I made my call, then he moved to the kitchen table and sat down.

Now he sat there as if we were old friends, spending some casual time together. He smiled at me and his eyes were clear and pleasant again.

And then I remembered something important. “Oh, crap. I have to clean the bank tonight.” I took a good look at him, wondering what I could do about this problem. “I fill in for Carrie McMullen when she has to be away. I can’t back out now. I promised her last weekend.”

“No problem,” he said. “I’ll tag along.”

“No. You’ll rob the bank.”

He shrugged, not seeming offended. “Then I’ll stay here.”

“God.”

“Do you want to go with white, or try something different?” he asked.

“With what? Oh, the paint. White. And the shutters hunter green.”

“I’ll get started on that in the morning.”

I set about making coffee, needing the caffeine boost to clear my mind. He might actually be doing me a favor, if he knew how to paint. I couldn’t really afford to have the house painted, but I was dead-set on making the outside of the house look nice. Even if it meant going without many things for the next few months, even coffee.

“I’ll buy the paint,” he said.

“Good. If I have to feed you and put you up with a room….”
And put up with you
. I wasn’t feeling very charitable now that I had two nutcases to look after and support. I loved my mother, but she had worn down my good graces over the years.

“And there are a few other things you can do around here. The bathroom needs caulking. A dozen little things like that. I had to take all the screens off Gram’s old room to replace the ones up front, so those windows are bare. If you open them, bugs will swarm in.”

“No problem,” he said. “Easy to fix.”

“And you’ll stay out of my room. No exceptions.”

He stared at me, and didn’t agree.

“Either stay out of my room or get out of my house.”

He crossed his arms and hiked his ankle up on his other knee. “I’ll stay out of there in the evening.”

“All the time,” I demanded. “I have to have one safe place in this world. One place all my own.”

“I might want to take a look in there.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t want you in there. Damon, god, I don’t want you snooping around in my things. It’s creepy. And really, really, unattractive. Besides, you’ve already seen it all.” That notion gave me chills. “I won’t forgive you for that.”

“I didn’t see everything.”

“You were in my panty drawer!”

“Just for a minute.”

“You’re conniving,” I told him, forcing my voice into a light, lilting song. “You’re baiting me and I won’t respond. You think I’ve never seen anything like you. I see it every day. You’re no original.”

I turned my back on him and concentrated on deciding what to do with the hamburger. A casserole would go farthest with three people. I took down my grandmother’s recipe file.

“I’m not who you think I am,” he said.

His voice sounded odd, distracted, and I frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not like her.” He pointed into the living room.

Realizing what he meant, I rushed to look around the corner. There stood Mama in her nightgown, staring at the stranger at the table. She was extremely relaxed and glazed, swaying where she stood.

“Are you up?” I asked her, rushing to wipe away the drool slipping down the corner of her mouth before Damon saw. “Why don’t you sit in your chair, Mama? You’re still half-asleep.”

“Who’s the fella at the table?” she asked.

“He’s an old friend. He won’t hurt you. His name is Damon.”

I sat her in her recliner and propped her feet up, then covered her legs with her afghan. “Sit here till you wake up. Supper’s in about two hours.”

“Okay, pretty face,” she said softly. I handed her the TV remote but she was content to just sit and listen to the voices in her head. They couldn’t harm her when she had her medication.

“Thirsty?”

“I drank from the sink,” she whispered.

Damon watched me as I returned to the kitchen. “Need me to peel the potatoes?” he asked.

His question almost slipped past me. “How did you know what I’m planning?”

“I can read your mind. I’m telepathic.”

Oh really
? “That’s a scary thought.”

“You think I’m weird,” he said. “Though it doesn’t take a mind reader to guess that. Everybody thinks I’m weird. I can deal with that. But I’m not like her. I’m not sick. I know exactly what’s going on. I see
everything
.”

Yeah, sure, whatever.
I didn’t feel like talking about Mama’s illness. “Where is your car?”

“In the garage.”

Well, I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d obviously decided to move in the second he’d found the house. “Did you rearrange the spare room?”

“I just stacked the boxes and stuff. Put my things away. Made the bed.”

I had to stop searching recipes and look at him. “How long were you in this house today?”

He shrugged. “Half hour. An hour, maybe.”

“I don’t believe you. That scares the daylights out of me. What if you’d been…? My mother was here all by herself.”

“I know. I saw her. I said hi.”

“How’d you find the house so fast?”

He grinned rather sheepishly. “I already knew where it was.”

“Then why did you act like you didn’t?”

“I wanted you to bring me here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw you leaving the first day I got here. I followed you to town and saw where you worked. Then I waited for you to talk to me.”

“You mean….” I walked over to stand by the table. “You were sitting out there day after day because of me?”

“Sure,” he said, as if his actions were perfectly normal.

“Why didn’t you just talk to me?”

“You wouldn’t have trusted me,” he said.

“I don’t trust you now. You lied to me. And acted really… weird.”

He shrugged. “I’m telling the truth now.”

“I don’t get you,” I said and turned away. I needed bread. I didn’t have any bread in the house. And I couldn’t find a can of cream of mushroom soup for the casserole.

“You do have a pretty face,” he said. “The prettiest I’ve ever seen.”

I sent him an annoyed glance. I wasn’t easily flattered. I’d heard it all before.

“I want you,” he said with a dark seriousness. “You are
life
. Life and blood and heat and…
wonderful
.”

Oh god. I did have a bit of the crazy gene in me because his suggestive statement made me go weak in the knees.

“You’re my cousin. Don’t say things like that.”

“I’m not your cousin.”

Apparently, he hadn’t come to the same conclusions I had. “We might have the same grandfather – biologically. My grandmother was sleeping with him. And my mother….”

“She’s not his.”

“How do you know?”

“Your mother is over fifty.”

“She’s fifty, even. So what?”

He sighed then smiled with patience. “My grandfather was out of the country between 1960 and 1965. Your mother was born two years after he left.”

“Gone out of the country where?”

“Just gone. He worked for an oil company. He traveled a lot back then.”

“So, what, you took the time to do the math?”

“I wondered, the same as you. My dad’s like her. Sick.”

“Your dad’s sick?” I pointed toward the living room. “Like her, sick?”

He shrugged and nodded. “Pretty much. He’s lived in a hospital for as long as I can remember. That’s why Granddad raised me.” He looked at me then, and realized he was only further convincing me we were related. “But I was adopted.”

“No, you weren’t.” I knew this to be fact. No agency in the country would have given my mother a child to adopt and if his father was sick enough to live in a psychiatric hospital, then he was worse off than my mother. Damon had apparently been with his grandfather at least since he was five years old - putting spiders on my face.

Not much had changed, metaphorically speaking.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m not adopted. But we’re not related. I’d be able to tell. And I can prove Granddad was out of the country when I said he was. I have papers and letters to my grandmother, still in the envelopes. Postmarked. If we’re related, it goes back farther than our grandparents. And then, it doesn’t matter, anyway.”

“Hmm.” I wasn’t sure I believed him, but supposing he was telling the truth, it cleared up a few things. And made a few things more complicated. I couldn’t decide if it meant Damon was still crazy, or… if I was the one. Or neither of us. Or both.

And did that mean I was still interested in starting something with him? My head began to throb.

“I need to go to the grocery store,” I told him. “I don’t have everything for the casserole.”

He stood up and blocked my path when I headed for the archway. I stepped to the side to go around him and he moved in front of me again. “Move,” I said.

He did move, to put one arm around my waist, and to lift my chin with his finger. He gazed into my eyes, seeming to be reading my mind, just as he’d claimed. “Let me come to your room tonight,” he whispered.

No, that was out of the question… probably.

He pulled me closer, until the heat of his chest burned into my breasts, and his breath tickled my lips. “I want to be with you, and hold you close, and discover life again. I’ve been lost for so long.”

I tried to push him away - a pathetic attempt because I really didn’t want him to let go of me. I was almost hypnotized by his heat and energy, and when he lowered his head to trail soft kisses over my neck, I lost all willpower.

I forgot my mother was in the next room, that this man seducing me was crazy, and that I didn’t need more complications in my life. I forgot everything except the feel of his warm, moist lips caressing my neck and jaw and lips.

He gripped my head to kiss me more forcefully and I leaned into him, parting my lips for his searching tongue. And then I fell lost in a dark, endless cave, sinking and drowning in warm water.

He thrust his tongue over mine until the ache between my legs grew unbearable, and I realized I might let him take me on the kitchen floor. In broad daylight, with my mother sitting and listening nearby. With a jolt and a groan, he wrapped his arms around me, crushing me against him, and thrust his tongue deeper into my mouth. His hands roamed over my body and landed on my butt, where he began a slow, dizzying massage, pressing me against the hard bulge in his pants.

My arms wrapped themselves around his neck and my legs parted easily and wrapped around his waist when he lifted me and carried me across the kitchen to slam against the far wall. Every slight sensation had turned into a frenzy of passion and he kissed me so hard my lips were bruised, our teeth clashed, and I didn’t care, I wanted more. I sucked on his tongue and tangled my fingers in his hair. He ground his erection against me, imitating the deep, rhythmic thrusts I knew I would soon feel inside me. If I didn’t do something to stop this. If I didn’t catch hold of my senses.

With his growl, he carried me into the utility room where he laid me back on the hard table there. He turned and slammed the door, then locked it. He moved toward me, slowly, his intentions alive in his eyes.

He lowered himself over me, warming me all over, and whispered words like, “I knew I would find you someday.” And, “Now we’re locked together forever. There will never be days of agony again.”

His words disturbed me, because hadn’t I known it, too? Hadn’t I told Bella he was a kindred spirit? Possibly even my soul mate?

Maybe there was nothing to be afraid of. So what if he was crazy? Didn’t that make him the perfect man for me?

I might have been strange in many ways, but I was just like everyone else in one way. I didn’t want to live my life alone. I wanted someone special there beside me.

CHAPTER THREE

Traffic was slow in the drugstore the next day, but I wasn’t in the least bored. Damon had followed me in to town so he could get the supplies to paint the house. But he’d followed me instead into the drugstore and was now loitering in the greeting card section, frowning wildly at one particular card.