Living With Lies Trilogy (Books 1, 2, and 3 of The Dancing Moon Ranch Series) (21 page)

Maybe because she made wise choices.

***

Justine reached over the stall door and placed her hand against the neck of the horse. He didn't move, just stood chewing the grain she'd tossed into the bucket in front of him. His coat was smooth and soft beneath her palm. Strange, to be petting a horse and feeling a sense of calm. She leaned toward the big animal and inhaled, then moved closer and took a deeper breath. It wasn't a bad smell inside the stable—fresh straw in the stall, the tang of molasses in the grain, the scent of horse. She moved her hand over the bony hump of the horse's withers but couldn't reach any further. She'd never imagined that petting a horse could seem, profound.

"You're kind of big," she said to the horse, but didn't know why she'd talk to a dumb animal. Still, the horse stopped chewing and flicked an ear in her direction. "So you understand humans," she said to him, finding a little chuckle in her throat to be talking to a horse. Sean wouldn't be caught dead talking to a horse, or petting one.

She put her nose to the horse again, so the tip touched his coat, and inhaled. "I wish I knew your name," she mused. The horse raised his head and bobbed his neck.

"Dan," a voice came from the direction of the stable entrance.

Justine turned around and stared at the man from the cabin. Was he as totally out of his element as she? She had no idea what his element was. She knew nothing about the man, not even his name, and for now, she didn't want to know it. She didn't want to get close to the man.

She turned back to the horse and stroked his neck again. "Well, Dan," she said, "I've enjoyed this chat, but I think we're done here. Someone just broke the spell." She turned and started toward the door, but the man clearly planned to block her exit.

His eyes roamed up and down the length of her, as he said, in a sober voice, "Why did you come down last night, and why did you run off?"

"I wanted to see what you were doing," she admitted. She hadn't told him that before, only that she was restless and couldn't sleep.

"Why?" He reached out and pulled on the zipper tab, opening her jacket.

"I was curious," she said, wondering what he intended to do, yet making no move to stop him. One of her shortcomings. Leaving herself wide open to disappointment.

He raised his hand to the collar of her western-cut shirt. "You didn't sleep in this morning. I saw you leave. Was it to buy this?" His fingers toyed with the collar, but the heel of his hand was against her chest.

"I'm trying to fit in," she said, looking steadily at him, finding him looking back, although his fingers were still on her shirt collar. Most men would have tugged on her shirt and pulled her to him and kissed her by now. She was ready for this one to, but if he did, she'd be disappointed. She wanted to believe he'd be different, yet, she didn't know why it mattered. He didn't matter. He was just a nameless man, nothing more.

He zipped up her jacket and dropped his hand. "Did you finish the book? Your light was on till five this morning."

"So, you were watching," she said, still looking at him. The lines of his face were hard—the angle of his jaw, the jut of his chin, the ridge of his brow. Put together, he was a man's man. Nothing soft to lean against, just hard, unyielding muscle. Yet, she had to resist the urge to place her hands on him where his parka gaped open revealing a plaid wool shirt that hugged a thick chest. Not a western-cut shirt. This man was not a cowboy.

He touched her chin to raise her gaze from his chest, and said, "I saw your light from my bedroom window. I thought you might look out again."

"Don't you ever sleep?" she asked, moving her chin from his finger, wanting to break the connection.

He shrugged and dropped his hand. "I get by on little sleep. It's become a pattern. Did you rearrange the ending of the book?"

"I never finished it," she said. "The words kept drawing me into the mind state of the author. I'd go back and ask, what was he thinking when he wrote this scene?"

"What scene?"

"Different ones. When he found the bodies of the women and children. I couldn't help wondering what kind of mind would write such a gruesome scene. It was very graphic, and very disturbing… women and children mutilated."

"It's a book. Pulp fiction. Trash. No one died."

"How do you know? The author's mind is twisted. Maybe he knows too much. Maybe there's something he wants the reader to know about him so he can be stopped."

"Do you always get into the head of the author when you read a book?" he asked.

"No, only this one. He's different."

"How so?"

"His writing is gripping. And vivid. And troubling." She moved away from the man so he was no longer in her personal space where he could reach out and touch her. He hadn't tried again, but she didn't want to be disappointed. Still, she waited for his reply, but he didn't respond because his eyes were fastened on something behind and above her.

She glanced over her shoulder and looked up to see what had captured his attention and saw, hanging from a beam, a rope with a hook on the end of it, which she figured was for lifting hay. But when she turned to the man again, his eyes were fixed on the hook, and his face was drained of color, and he looked as if he'd seen a ghost. Or maybe something out of his past.

And then she realized it was the face of a man in shock.

Expression frozen. Eyes dilated. She saw his hands start to tremble, like a man with palsy, and he started shaking all over. Then he clenched his fists and turned abruptly and left. She again looked up at the rope with the hook.

Then it came to her.

The scene in the book. Women and children, mutilated. And hanging from hooks.

She realized then who the man was and knew he'd witnessed the gruesome scene he'd described in his book, that the ghosts from his past were still haunting him.

Knowing he was in trouble, she started after him...

CHAPTER 2

Heart racing, sweat pouring down his face, soaking his shirt, Brad ripped the wool thing from him, heard it tearing, couldn’t get it off fast enough... felt the vise grip in his gut...  saw the hooks through their bellies... a little girl not more than five... a castrated boy... a pregnant woman whose breasts had been cut off... eyes bulging... faces distorted.

Death. Everywhere around him... Death hanging from hooks...

He started trembling... shaking uncontrollably... jaws clenched... teeth chattering... couldn't stop... the hooks... bodies hanging... pulse racing... mortars firing... frozen in place... hooks everywhere...  and death...

And then her arms were around him...

"Yvette?" She didn't answer, just lay on the bed beside him, holding him, running her hand up and down his back until the images begin to recede. Still, he couldn't stop the shaking. But she was there. Yvette had come again. Soft, and warm... He nuzzled for her breast... wanted to be flesh on flesh... snaps came apart... his mouth captured her nipple and took it in... perverted... needing his mother's breast... Yvette was here... understanding what he needed... what it took to make the images go away... her body against his... arms around him... hands stroking him...

He let out little plaintive sounds that helped quiet his heart and settle his breathing, all the while she rubbed his back and stroked his head and let him suckle until the sound vibrations in his throat ceased, and he could hear her heart beating steadily, and the images gradually released their grip, and he could drift into mindless sleep...

He awakened sometime later, stirred by movement beside him. It was okay. The memory was still there, but he could deal with it now.

And then he saw her standing above snapping together the front of her western shirt. No bra. Just a shirt. "Who's Yvette?" she asked.

"No one. Someone long ago." He didn't want to talk about Yvette to this woman. Yvette was the only person who'd ever seen him like that, curled in a fetal position needing his mother's breast to stop the rush of adrenaline that made his heart seem about to explode, and release the vise gripping his gut, and keep his eyes from feeling like they might pop from their sockets. She came to the hotel to meet him and found him after he'd trashed the room, shaking and incoherent. She knew intuitively what he needed and gave it to him. Not sex—that came later—but a warm body to hold, and hands to stroke him, and a breast to suckle while he negotiated the demonic minefield playing out in his mind and allow him to drift off to a place where he could become disassociated enough from the world around him to slip into a state of emotional numbness.

"You loved her," the woman said.

"I only knew her for four days," he replied, dragging himself up to sit propped against the pillow, on top of covers still damp with his sweat.

"But she was there when you needed her," the woman pointed out.

Brad looked at the woman. "You should go now," he said, angry that she'd seen him that way. Yvette had been the only other one to do so.

The author's mind is twisted... maybe there's something he wants the reader to know about him so he can be stopped...

The woman knew too much. She'd gotten into his mind and that bothered him. Readers weren't supposed to get into the mind of the author, only the characters. He wasn't his character in the book. That was a different man. But this woman saw through it, saw into his soul, and he wanted her to go, leave him be to lick his wounds alone, but instead of leaving, she sat on the side of the bed.

"You saw that scene," she said, looking at him but not touching him. "You were there in the Sunni Triangle and you saw it and you can't forget. You wrote about it to forget but it won't go away."

He let out an ironic laugh. "So now you know what wasn't mentioned on the back cover of my book. Brad Meecham's a pathetic shell of a man who needs his mother's breast." He shoved a cigarette between his lips and struck a match. He hated the things, but they took away some of the anxiety, and he could suck like a man. He took a long draw and exhaled. "I couldn't even screw you," he said. "Too pathetic to get it up."

"I didn't come here for that," she replied, looking at him, not with disgust but with understanding. No, not understanding. Pity. A pathetic man needing pity.

He took another long draw, and exhaled. "Then why did you come?"

"You needed someone," she said, her hands clutching her forearms.

"Do you always give men everything they need?" Harsh, and she didn't deserve it, but he hated the useless man he was when it happened… hated that she knew. Normally he slammed his fist into something to get back to reality, but she came to him in the throes of it, and in his distorted mind he saw Yvette with her gentleness and her warm body and he took what she offered. Only once before had he done that with Yvette. She made it seem right then. But looking at the woman staring at him, knowing it had been her, it seemed perverted. He also hated that he wanted her and could have her right now. She was sitting there, waiting for him to take her.

The daughter needs to get away from men... all her life she's been used and dumped...

The woman shrugged as if the hurt in her eyes didn't matter, and said, "I can't be Yvette, but I don't regret what I did, and I don't fault you for what you did. You needed to get through it. I was here so just leave it be."

He took another long draw on his cigarette. "Can you leave it be?" he asked, pride motivating him to ask, humiliation wishing he hadn't.

She stood. "If you mean, will I say anything about what happened. No." They both knew that what happened was a pathetic man needing his mother's breast. "Have you talked about what you saw to anyone besides Yvette?" she asked, making no move to leave.

He looked at her, standing over him and peering down at him, and said, "I wrote about it. It didn't help." He flicked his ashes into a dirty coffee mug to give him a reason to look away. The woman knew too much about him. She'd peeled away years of armor in an instant, took him back to infancy and exposed him, and he didn't even know her name.

"Talking's different from writing," she said. "Readers don't care who you are. All they care about are your fictitious characters. They matter to readers. Readers cry over them. But no one's crying over you and you're hurting."

"I'm fine," he said. "It was the hook in the stable. It won't happen again."

"Because you don't intend to go in the stable again," she said, peeling back another layer. "But you could see a hook at a butcher shop, or on the end of a crane at a building site, or holding up a car behind a tow truck. You have to confront your demons and get rid of them. You need to go back and look at that hook, and you need to talk. I'll listen."

"Who are you?" he asked. "I know you've been shafted by a man, many men, and you want my fictitious hero to lose his balls, but why are you at this ranch?"

"I had nowhere else to go," she said. "I'm pathetic too, showing up on my little sister's doorstep because, well you know the rest."

"The woman who owns this place?" Brad asked, surprised. He never would have guessed this woman could be related to the sweet, pretty wife of Jack Hansen. He'd told Jack why he was there, but not the particulars. Writer's block and some war correspondent memories getting in the way, he'd told him. Jack talked some about dealing with the past, and the man had insight. A little too much he thought at the time, which was why he'd cut the conversation short when Jack was about to hone in on the real reason. The man had come to terms with his demons—his ex-wife killing his infant son—leaving things open to talk things out later, if he wanted.

"Yes, Grace is my sister." The woman shrugged. Then she let out a little ironic chuckle, and said, "She always made the right choices. I wish I could be more like her."

Brad was curious. It was an odd statement coming from this woman, odd, because the woman was stunning, and witty, and smart, but men took from her what they wanted and messed with her mind and she let them do it. He was doing it now, reasoning why it would be okay for him to grab her wrist and pull her down on top of him. He'd already felt the length of her body against him, but for a very different reason. Now he wanted what she was trying to stop herself from doing. "If you try to be like your sister you'll lose your soul," he said.

"But men would treat me differently," she replied. "You wouldn't talk to Grace the way you talk to me. You wouldn't have asked her to come to your cabin."

Brad took another draw on the cigarette, not because he needed it now, but to keep from reaching out and grabbing the woman. He'd have her out of those clothes in an instant, and she'd have him out of his just as fast. Two wounded animals screwing the hell out of each other to clear their minds of everything else. But that wasn't going to happen. "Your sister wouldn't have told me before she'd even said hello that she wouldn't go to bed with me," he said.

"I wanted to make sure you understood." She wasn't being flippant, just explaining, in simple terms, who she was. A woman who was too beautiful for her own good, who'd been told from infancy that she was beautiful, and who'd found early on that her beauty would open doors for her, mostly doors to men's bedrooms, but she didn't learn that until Elliot, whoever the hell he was. But she got to keep the Jag. He'd noticed the car the day the woman arrived. Silver and showy, a different kind of fish out of water, but now the woman needed some clarification. "What I understood when you told me you wouldn't go to bed with me was that you were thinking about it. Why else would you bring it up?"

She shrugged. "Because that's what you were thinking."

"Maybe, but you were too, and you are now," he said, knowing he was right. The woman was no longer an enigma, but he still couldn't seem to cut her loose.

She thrust out her chin. "I just told you I want to be more like my sister," she said, a little glint of defiance returning to her eyes. She was wounded but she had spirit. He liked that. He also wanted her, and she was primed to let him use her like other men had, but he'd never be able to live with that. "If you want to be more like your sister, you have to stop giving men what they want, and you have to stop the sex talk."

She shrugged into her jacket and zipped it closed. "It's what men expect, and I've been doing it so long I don't know how to stop."

"Then I'll give you your first lesson." He ground out his cigarette, stood and walked up to her. Tugging her zipper open again, he unsnapped her shirt with one swift movement, kissed her on the neck, and said to her, "Raise your knee and shove it into my balls."

"What!?

He kissed just above her breast. "You heard me. Knee the hell out of my balls. Stop what I'm about to do." He trailed his tongue over her chest, avoiding her breasts.

"I can't," she said, "I'll hurt you."

He could feel her breath heavy against the side of his face as he made patterns against her chest with the tip of his tongue. "I'm a man," he said. He trailed his tongue over the top swell of her breast and wondered why she didn't stop him. He could feel her apprehension, yet she did nothing, and he was beginning to feel like shit with what he was doing. But the woman was reaching out, and he intended to get his point across. "I don't care if I hurt you," he said. "I don't even care what your name is. I just want to get inside you. Now raise your knee." He dragged his tongue over her nipple and she let out a little sharp gasp. Still she did nothing, just let him have his way with her, years of giving men what they wanted before dumping her.

"I can't do what you want," she said.

"If you don't, I'll strip you of whatever's left of your self-respect and pin you to the bed and take what I want."

"I don't believe you'll do what you're threatening," she said, her voice shaky, yet not making any attempt to shove him away. "I trust you."

He stopped what he was doing, looked at her, and said, "Why in hell would you?"

She held his gaze. "Because I know you. I got into your head in your book. I was here when you saw your mind demons and couldn't fight them off because you were paralyzed by them, and I feel good because I was able to help get you through it. I'd do it again, and give you more if that's what you needed."

"Hell," he said, refastening her shirt, one snap at a time, covering what he wanted, knowing he could never touch her again, not that way. "Who made you like this?"

"No one. It's just the way I am."

"You're not a whore."

"I got to keep the Jaguar."

"Severance pay. You earned it." After he'd zipped her jacket, he asked, "So, what’s your name?"

"Justine," she replied. "Justine Page."

"Okay, Justine Page," he said. "If you won't double me over with your knee then turn and walk away from me. You have that power."

Which she did, without saying goodbye, and without looking back.

But after she shut the door behind herself, Brad realized she was the one woman he wanted and would never have, because he wouldn't screw her over unless he put a ring on her finger, which he wouldn't do. He didn't care that she'd used other men, or let them use her; he could push all that aside. But the one time he put his faith in for better or for worse, he returned home from the horrors of war, with his demons tormenting him, to find his wife, the only person who could help drive them away, in bed with another man. He wouldn't be that fool again.