Night Moves: Dream Man/After the Night (5 page)

They woke Scottie, and she heard him grunting, but he didn’t cry, so she remained in bed. She wouldn’t have liked traipsing into the boys’ bedroom in her nightgown—in fact, she would have gone cold with dread—but she would have done it if they’d scared Scottie and made him cry. But Nicky said, “Shaddup and go back to sleep,” and Scottie was quiet again. After a few minutes, they were all asleep, the chorus of snores rising and falling in the darkness.

Half an hour later, Jodie came home. She was quiet, or at least tried to be, tiptoeing through the shack with her shoes in hand. The stench of beer and sex came with her, all yellow and red and brown in a noxious swirl. She didn’t bother to undress but flopped down on her cot and heaved a deep sigh, almost like a purr.

“You awake, Faithie?” she asked after a moment, her voice slurred.

“Yeah.”

“Thought you were. You should’ve come with me. Had fun, lots of fun.” The last sentence was deep with sensuality. “You don’t know what you’re missin’, Faithie.”

“Then I don’t miss it, do I?” Faith whispered, and Jodie giggled.

Faith dozed lightly, listening for Renee’s car so she would know everyone was safely home. Twice she came awake with a start, wondering if Renee had managed to come in without waking her, and got up to look out the window to see if her car was there. It wasn’t.

Renee didn’t come home at all that night.

Three

“D
addy didn’t come home last night.”

Monica’s face was tight with misery as she stood at the window of the dining room. Gray continued eating his breakfast; there wasn’t much that could curb his appetite. So that was why Monica was up so early, since she usually didn’t crawl out of bed until ten or later. What did she do, wait up until Guy came home? He wondered with a sigh what Monica thought he could do about their father’s hours; send him to bed without supper? He couldn’t remember when Guy hadn’t had women on the side, though Renee Devlin had certainly had a lot more staying power than the rest of them.

His mother, Noelle, didn’t care where Guy spent his nights, so long as it wasn’t with her, and simply pretended that her husband’s affairs didn’t exist. Because Noelle didn’t care, Gray didn’t either. It would have been different if Noelle had been distressed, but that was far from the case. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Guy; Gray supposed she did, in her fashion. But Noelle intensely disliked sex, disliked being touched, even casually. For Guy to have a mistress was the best solution all around. He didn’t mistreat Noelle, and though he never bothered to hide his affairs, her position as his wife was safe. It was a very Old World arrangement that
his parents had, and one that Gray knew he wouldn’t like at all when he finally decided to get married, but it suited both of them fine.

Monica hadn’t ever been able to see that, however. She was painfully protective of Noelle, relating to her in a way that Gray never could, imagining that Noelle was humiliated and hurt by Guy’s affairs. At the same time, Monica adored Guy, and was never happier than when he was paying attention to her. She had a picture in her mind of how families should be, close-knit and loving, always supporting each other, with the parents devoted to each other, and she had been trying her entire life to make her own family match that picture.

“Does Mother know?” he asked calmly, and refrained from asking if Monica really thought Noelle would care even if she did know. He sometimes felt sorry for Monica, but he also loved her, and didn’t deliberately try to hurt her.

Monica shook her head. “She isn’t up yet.”

“Then why worry about it? By the time she gets up, when he comes in she’ll just think he’s already gone somewhere this morning.”

“But he’s been out with
her!”
Monica whirled to face him, her dark eyes swimming with tears. “That Devlin woman.”

“You don’t know that. He could have gotten into an all-night poker game.” Guy did love to play poker, but Gray doubted that cards had anything to do with his absence. If he knew his father, and he knew him very well, Guy had far more likely spent the night with Renee Devlin, or some other woman who caught his eye. Renee was a fool if she thought Guy was any more faithful to her than he was to his wife.

“You think so?” Monica asked, eager to believe any excuse other than the most likely one.

Gray shrugged. “It’s possible.” It was also possible a meteor would strike the house that day, but not very likely. He drank the last of his coffee and pushed back his chair. “When he comes in, tell him I’ve gone to Baton Rouge to look over that property we were talking about. I’ll be back by three, at the latest.” Because she still looked so forlorn, he put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her. Somehow
Monica had been born without the decisiveness and arrogant self-assurance of the rest of the family. Even Noelle, as remote as she was, always knew exactly what she wanted and how to go about getting it. Monica always seemed so helpless against the forceful personalities of everyone else in the family.

She buried her dark head in his shoulder for a moment, just as she had when she’d been a little girl and gone running to her big brother whenever something had gone wrong and Guy hadn’t been available to put things to rights again. Though he was only two years older, he had always been protective of her, knowing even as a child that she lacked his own inner toughness.

“What do I do if he
has
been out with that slut?” she asked, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

Gray tried to stifle his impatience, but some of it leaked through in his voice. “You don’t do anything. It’s none of your business.”

She drew back, stung, and stared reproachfully at him. “How can you say that? I’m worried about him!”

“I know you are.” He managed to soften his tone. “But it’s a waste of time, and he wouldn’t thank you for it.”

“You always take his side, because you’re just like him!” The tears were slowly dripping down her cheeks now, and she turned away. “I bet the property in Baton Rouge happens to have two legs and big boobs. Well, have fun!”

“I will,” he said ironically. He really was going to see some property; afterwards was a different story. He was a strong, healthy young man, with a sex drive that had shown no signs of slacking off since his middle teens. It was a persistent burning in his guts, a hungry ache in his balls. He was lucky enough to be able to get women to ease that hunger, and cynical enough to realize that his family’s money added to his sexual success.

He didn’t care what the woman’s reason was, whether she came to him because she liked him and enjoyed his body, or whether she had her eye on the Rouillard bank account. Reasons didn’t matter, because all he wanted was a soft, warm body beneath him, taking his surging lust and giving him temporary ease. He’d never loved a woman yet, but he
definitely loved sex, loved everything about it: the smells, the sensations, the sounds. He was particularly entranced by his favorite moment, the instant of penetration when he felt the small resistance of the woman’s body to his pressure, then the acceptance, the sensation of being taken in and enveloped with hot, tight, wet flesh. God, that was wonderful! He was always extremely careful to protect against unwanted pregnancies, wearing a rubber even if the woman said she was on birth control pills, because women had been known to lie about things like that and a smart man didn’t take chances.

He didn’t know for certain, but he suspected Monica was still virgin. Though she was far more emotional than Noelle, there was still something of their mother in her, some deep remoteness that so far hadn’t let any man get too close. She was an awkward mix of their parents’ natures, receiving some of Noelle’s cool distance without any of her self-assurance, and some of Guy’s emotionalism without his intense sexuality. Gray, on the other hand, had his father’s sexuality tempered with Noelle’s control. As much as he wanted sex, he wasn’t a slave to his cock the way Guy was. He knew when, and how, to say no. Thank God, he seemed to have better sense picking his women than Guy did, too.

He tugged on a strand of Monica’s dark hair. “I’ll call Alex and see if he knows where Dad is.” Alexander Chelette, a lawyer in Prescott, was Guy’s best friend.

Her lips trembled, but she smiled through her tears. “He’ll go find Daddy and tell him to come home.”

Gray snorted. It was a wonder how Monica had reached the age of twenty and learned absolutely nothing about men. “I wouldn’t bet on that, but maybe he can ease your mind.” He intended to tell Monica that Guy was in a poker game, even if Alex knew the number of the motel room in which Guy was screwing the morning away.

He went into the study from which Guy handled the myriad Rouillard financial interests, and where Gray was learning how to handle them. Gray was fascinated by the intricacies of business and finance, so much so that he had willingly bypassed a chance to play pro football in favor of plunging headlong into the business world. It hadn’t been
that much of a sacrifice for him; he knew he was good enough to play pro, because he had been scouted, but he knew he wasn’t star material. Had he given his life to football, he would have played eight years or so, if he’d been lucky enough to escape injury, and made a good but not spectacular salary. What it came down to, in the end, was that, as much as he loved football, he loved business more. This was a game that he could play much longer than he could football, make a hell of a lot more money, and was just as dog-eat-dog.

Though Guy would have burst his buttons with pride if his son had gone into pro football, Gray thought he’d been somehow relieved when Gray had chosen to come home instead. In the few months since Gray had gotten his degree, Guy had been happily cramming his head full of business knowledge, stuff that couldn’t be gotten from a textbook.

Gray ran his fingers over the polished wood of the big desk. An eight-by-ten photograph of Noelle was positioned on one corner, surrounded by smaller photos of himself and Monica at various stages of growth, like a queen with her subjects gathered around her. Most people would have thought of a mother with her children gathered about her knee, but Noelle wasn’t in the least motherly. The morning sunlight was falling across the photograph, picking up details that usually went unnoticed, and Gray paused to look at the still image of his mother’s face.

She was a beautiful woman, in a totally different way from Renee Devlin’s beauty. Renee was the sun, bold and hot and bright, while Noelle was the moon, cool and remote. She had thick, sleek, dark hair which she wore in a sophisticated twist, and lovely blue eyes which neither of her children had inherited. She wasn’t French Creole, but plain old American; some folks in the parish had wondered if Guy Rouillard wasn’t marrying beneath himself. But she had turned out to be more queenly than any Creole born to the role could have been, and those old doubts had long since been forgotten. The only reminder was his own name, Grayson, which was her family name, but as it had long since been shortened to Gray, most people thought it had been chosen because of its similarity to his father’s name.

Guy’s appointment book was open on the desk. As Gray hitched one hip onto the desk and reached for the telephone, he ran his eye down the appointments listed for that day. Guy had an appointment with William Grady, the banker, at ten. For the first time, Gray felt a twinge of uneasiness. No matter what, Guy had never let his women get in the way of business, and he would never go to a business meeting unshaven, and without a fresh change of clothes.

Quickly he dialed Alex Chelette’s number, and his secretary answered on the first ring. “Chelette and Anderson, Attorneys at Law.”

“Good morning, Andrea. Is Alex in yet?”

“Of course,” she replied with good humor, having immediately recognized Gray’s distinctive deep voice, like smoky velvet. “You know how he is. It would take an earthquake to keep him from coming through the door on the dot of nine. Hold on and I’ll get him.”

He heard the click as he was put on hold, but he knew Andrea too well to think that she was buzzing Alex on the intercom. He’d been in the office often enough, as both child and man, to know that the only time she used the intercom was when a stranger was in the office. Most of the time, she simply turned around in her chair and raised her voice, since the open door of Alex’s office was right behind her.