Eddie’s Prize (28 page)

For one wild second Lisa imagined slapping his face, but making a scene would be horribly embarrassing. “The answer is no.” She was surprised the words came out so clearly, considering she spoke through clenched teeth. “I love Eddie. We wouldn’t be having problems if you would just leave me alone.”

He glanced to the side and a strange, taunting smile curved his lips. As he pulled her into another slow, lazy turn, he pressed her against him, breast to chest, groin to groin. “You can’t blame me for Eddie’s stupidity.”

He let go of her hand to try to nudge her chin up. She stubbornly refused to look at him. “You’re embarrassing me,” she told him.

A hard hand on her shoulder dragged her away from Dane. She staggered, tripped over the hem of her dress, and fell on her ass. Golden hair gleamed in the lantern light as Eddie jumped forward to punch Dane in the face. Dane fell and didn’t get up. Eddie whirled and bent to grab her arm, dragging her roughly to her feet. His grip was so tight she thought he’d crush the bone. Tears of pain stung her eyes. He shook her hard enough her French twist began to unfurl.

“You look like a cheap woman from Omaha,” he hissed at her.

A sledgehammer slamming into her breastbone couldn’t have hurt more. “I do not,” she hissed back. “Let go. You’re hurting me.”

The rage on his face dissolved and despair filled his eyes before he closed them. “God, I wish you were gone,” he mumbled. “I hate the thought of enduring you for the rest of my life.” His fingers loosened on her arm, and his eyes opened to focus on her. “I have got to get out of here.”

He turned from her and pushed through the crowd. Lisa stared after him, a violent mix of pain and fury dancing in her stomach. If he had punched her, it couldn’t have hurt or humiliated her more. “Eddie,” she croaked.

He paid no attention, and soon he was gone. The music had stopped, either because the song had ended or because of the drama, and the dancers stood staring at her. In fact, just about every person in the arena was staring at her. Hannah was close, looking appalled. Her cousin Ruth was close too, but her face was gleeful. Lisa’s arm throbbed where Eddie had gripped it, an echo of her heart beating as it broke. On the floor a few feet away, Dane groaned. Lisa glanced at him with no sympathy and turned very deliberately away from him to walk to the head table. She made her steps steady, her face calm. People scrambled to get out of her way, and at first she didn’t realize why. Then she saw Hawk and Des had flanked her, and their glares cleared a path. She paused at the step of the platform to thank them, but they had already turned to leave her.

Lisa kept her head high as she took a seat at the Madisons’ table, grimly refusing to acknowledge the agony in her chest, the ache in her arm, or the low rumble of whispers from the dance floor. There was a fresh cup of cider there. She drained it.

“What in the hell was that all about?” Ray demanded.

She shrugged coolly. “Nothing important.”

“Is that why you didn’t want to dance with Dane, hey? Has he been causing trouble?” Ray slapped a hand down on the table. “By God, I’ll have a word with him.”

The threat made Lisa giggle. The strong cider sent her floating like an escaped helium balloon. Or maybe it was a reaction to Eddie’s cruel words. He wished she was gone. Only the years of smiling for the camera, whatever her feelings might be, allowed her to smile blandly at the dancers. She was floating above the pain, but she was afraid that wouldn’t last.

“I don’t think you need to do that, Dad.” Pain threatened to pop the balloon. She loved having a father. Was Ray still her dad or was that over? “Eddie made his feelings pretty plain.”

Darlene leaned over. “Eddie has a temper, but if you apologize to him, it will work out.”

Lisa’s mouth fell open. Apologize?
She
should apologize? For what? Punching her mother-in-law wouldn’t make anything better, so she controlled herself. How long was this agonizing party going to last? Lisa wanted to go home, to just get out of here so she could cry in private.

But what home? The little house she’d tried to so hard to learn to keep for Eddie? Was that home? No. Eddie didn’t want her. He wished she’d never come into his life. He didn’t want to endure her for the rest of his life. Heart surgery without anesthetic must feel like this. She wanted her house in California. She wanted tissues and wine and a box of chocolates and her stereo playing her favorite music. She wanted to stand crying in a hot shower until her skin pruned. She wanted to throw herself across her king-sized bed and scream her pain out loud.

Instead she kept her eyes resting serenely on the dancers, a small smile on her lips. She nearly cracked when Jelly, the sweet, young, teen-aged werewolf asked her to dance. She refused, but he looked so sad she let him sit on the stage beside her chair, his long legs dangling to the floor. Other men from the Plane Women’s House and the den came and sat with him, an honor guard to shield her from more pain.

She spent the next hour pretending she felt nothing, chatting occasionally with Jelly and Snake. Any other man who approached was met with a wall of werewolf bodyguards. The effort to present a serene façade made Lisa feel detached from the people and happenings around her. She just wanted to survive long enough to get some place private so she could break down. If the wolves hadn’t created a protective barrier around her, she would have failed.

“You make me feel safe,” she told Snake. “Thank you.”

He smiled bashfully. “Don’t like to see a lady cry.”

“I wasn’t crying!”

“No, you’re brave.”

Tears nearly escaped. “No, I’m not. You remind me of my brother.”

“I like that. I never had a sister.”

Finally, the band began to put away their instruments, and the wolves drifted away. Lisa hoped she could go home now, but there was one more thing on the agenda before the Gala ended. Ray stood, and three couples were pushed to the front of the crowd. One of the couples was Cory and Val, and another was Faron Paulson and Donna Morgan, a forty-something plane crash survivor. Lisa didn’t know the third.

It was the shortest wedding ceremony Lisa had ever attended. She congratulated Val mechanically. “I hope you’ll be very happy,” she told her friend with a hug.

Val returned the hug. It looked like she wanted to say something, but she hesitated too long. Lisa stepped back to let other well-wishers in.

Darlene told Ray to assign a few men to take her back to the house. Even through the glass bubble she had put around her emotions, Lisa was sorry Darlene was exhausted. Her face looked as gray as Lisa felt.

“I’ll go with you,” she said.

Darlene paused and then nodded. “Fine. Ray, me and the girls are heading home. Lisa, run find Bree so we can go.”

The sleigh ride through the dark town was cold, the wind cutting like an icy blade through the skirt of Lisa’s thin dress. As cold as the night wind was, her heart was even colder. When the sleigh pulled up in front of the mayor’s house, Bree grabbed her arm.

“Lisa, come stay with us tonight. It looks like Eddie must still be out. Your fire will be cold.”

The thought of losing her long-awaited privacy almost made Lisa snap. “No, thanks to you, I know how to get a fire going.”

The truth of that made Lisa smile more warmly. Darlene and Bree had taught her so much about how to get along in this world.

“Really, thanks. But I just need to be alone for a while.”

Lisa took her dishes, her work clothes, and her lantern and fled to her house. It was cold inside, but the coals in the kitchen stove weren’t entirely dead. Still wearing the party dress she’d been so proud of, she coaxed the coals back to life. She carried the lantern to the mirror in the bedroom and examined her face by its light. She didn’t look like a slut. Her makeup was minimal. Eddie must have gotten her confused with the woman from Omaha.

A tiny crack in her emotional defenses threatened to shatter the whole thing. Eddie. Why had he said it? Why did he say he wished she were gone?
Why?

From the first day of their marriage, she had tried to be what he wanted. She learned to cook. She learned to do laundry. She learned to not smile at men. But what had he learned for her sake? To talk out what bothered him? No. To stick around so they could work things out together? No. To share things with her?
No
.

Well, the hell with him. Lisa squirmed out of the dress and put on a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt, both pairs of the socks Bree had knit her, and boots. She had to leave here. This little house could have been a home. Lisa had bent over backward to make it a home. If Eddie had put in a tenth of the effort she had to make their marriage work, this house would have been a wonderful home for them and their children.

Carla would welcome her at the den, but how could she get there? A woman walking alone at night through Kearney to the den was asking for trouble. She had to figure out a way to get to the den.

She was still cold. She went back to the living room to put her coat back on. Through the picture window she saw Cory riding a horse down the street. That was her escape going by! She opened the door.

“Cory! Where are you going?”

In the starlight reflected on the snow, his face was a pale blur turned toward her. “I’m going to the Plane Women’s House to get Val.” A big grin parted his lips. “We’re married.”

“Yes, I know. Congrats! Would you mind waiting for just five minutes so I can come with you?”

Cory shifted his weight in the saddle before dismounting, throwing the reins over a fence post and walking up the path to the door. “Are you leaving Eddie?”

It was hard to say it. Even as hurt as she was, it was hard to put it into words. “Yes. I repudiate him. Will you help me?”

“Sure. I can take you to the Plane Women’s House. You shouldn’t stay there, though. It’s still in Kearney, and Eddie might try to take you back. Des wouldn’t like it and that would mean a fight.”

Lisa could imagine it. The werewolf Des had married the co-pilot and was the head of the Plane Women’s House now. Like Taye and his Pack, Des was protective of women. She shuddered. “I need to get to the den, but I can’t go out there myself. Maybe Des can get me there.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Just give me a few minutes to pack a couple things, and I’ll be ready to leave.”

“Okay.” Cory stepped inside and pulled off his hat.

Lisa went to the bedroom and changed into her long johns. It was the most inelegant and warmest article of clothing she’d ever worn. She put her jeans back on and another shirt, tossed her underwear and toiletries into a bag, and picked up her battered purse. She wouldn’t take anything else from Eddie. She’d taken more than enough from him for too long. Leaving her party dress crumpled on the bedroom floor, she left Eddie’s house and his life, just like he wanted.

Eddie’s paws throbbed with cold from running all night over icy fields. After leaving his wife in the middle of the Gala dance floor, he had made the beast run far into the country. The stupid creature hadn’t wanted to leave Lisa, but Eddie forced it to go. If he’d stayed, the beast might have forced a change right there in front of everyone, ruining everything. He despised having to endure the monster in his life. Why had he been cursed with the evil thing?

The sun was peeking over the icy horizon when he gathered his exhausted feline body to make the leap over the fence around the mayor’s compound. He barely cleared it. With the sun rising and people going about their business, he had to hurry to the barn where he could change back to human without being seen. It was hard to make the change, and Eddie was trembling by the time he stood on two feet, but he did it. The extra set of clothes he kept stashed on the upper shelf of the tack room was cold. Shivers coursed down his arms to set his hands to shaking as he dressed. What he needed now was food. He hoped Lisa had a big breakfast ready. After that, he needed to sate himself in his wife’s warm body

When he dragged himself up the steps to his house, he couldn’t smell any food cooking. Strange. For the last month the senses of his beast had remained sharp even after he made the change. He should have been able to smell even something bland like oatmeal, and Lisa never served him only oatmeal. Normally he could smell bacon, ham, sausage, or steak long before he came this close to the house. Something was wrong.

Alarm gave him an extra spurt of strength to run up the steps and into the house. It was dark. Cold.

“Lisa?” he called.

The kitchen was empty. He tested the stove with a hand to its door. Cold. Eddie ran to the bedroom. Empty, the bed neatly made. Her scent lingered in the air, but it wasn’t recent. His eye caught on a pool of blue. The dress she’d worn last night was tossed carelessly on the floor, but she wasn’t there.

Where was she? Oh, God, where was she?

His parents’ house. Relief weakened his legs at the thought. Sure, Lisa didn‘t know when he’d be back, so she’d gone to be with his mother and sister. Calmer now, he went across the yard to find her.

The kitchen was empty, the scent of fried eggs and potatoes heavy in the air. He passed through to the dining room where his father sat at the head of the table as usual, with his mother at the other end, her distended belly covered with a napkin. Bree was standing at their father’s chair serving the fried potatoes. She paused to smile at him when he came in, but he didn’t smile back. He sniffed the air, trying to smell his wife. Nothing of her was in this room.

“Morning, Eddie!” said Bree cheerfully.

His father jerked his chin in a nod, but his attention was on the potatoes.

“Lisa?” Eddie asked. “Where’s Lisa?”

When confusion bloomed on all three faces, he let out a groan. A shadow of something else joined confusion on Bree’s face. Guilt? He lunged at his sister and grabbed her shoulders.

“What?” he demanded.

“Edward!” said his mother.

He ignored the stern note in her voice and gave Bree a little shake. Potatoes tumbled off the serving dish. “You know something! Where is my wife?”

Bree shrugged her shoulders, trying to dislodge his hands. “I don’t know!”