Seducing Celestine (18 page)

Celestine stomped to the door, ready to give him a piece of her mind. However, she had to stop mid-stomp as her head was spinning and it felt like a piece of her mind might actually fall out through her ear. She grabbed the nearby doorjamb. The drugs were fabulous for pain but she felt as woozy as hell on them. A soft knock sounded at her door. Okay, not Nick. He would have bowled straight in or kicked the door down.

Celestine shuffled slowly to the door and opened it.

“Holy snapping ducks!” Her mouth dropped open in amazement. “What are you doing here, Grace?” Her sister never willingly sought her out. What the hell did this mean? Was it like some omen of doom? Or maybe it was like the first flower of spring. Nah, with their track record it had to be doom. Celestine watched as her sister gingerly stepped over the threshold in a pair of shoes she just knew did not come from Kmart during their thirty-percent off footwear sale. Her whole outfit would have cost more than Celestine’s monthly rent. Celestine knew objectively her strawberry-haired sister was beautiful to look at. Celestine wasn’t jealous of that. She knew that outside beauty was just a shell and that it was what was inside that counted. The problem was neither of them really knew what was inside the other.

Grace grimaced at the bruising to her sister’s face. She positively blanched when she saw the bandages on her wrists and ankles.

“Oh God, Celestine.” Grace swayed on her spiked heels and gasped at her in horror. “You look awful, Celestine.”

Celestine smiled at her sister’s words. If it had of been anyone but Grace she would have been offended. But the one thing that they did have had in common was they often said things without thinking of the consequences.

“Gee, thanks, Grace.” Celestine had redressed in the same clothes at the hospital she had been wearing for days. She knew she was not a pretty picture at the moment but then her looks had never been of paramount importance to Celestine. To someone like Grace, a person who was never anything but immaculate, she must look like a bag lady on a bad PMS day.

“Oh no, I don’t mean it like that.” Grace hastily corrected herself, her hands fluttering in apology. “It’s all been such a shock. The kidnapping, your injuries and everything.”

“Well, I’d agree with that.” This was kind of weird. Grace never usually cared one way or the other about Celestine. That was their relationship. It wasn’t horrible. It just was what it was. This sudden appearance looking like she actually cared was weird.

“So, why are you here, Grace?” What exactly was the reason for her sister to appear? It was not like Celestine had anything she could possibly want.

“Your boyfriend Nick.”

Celestine looked at her uncertainly. What did Nick have to do with this? Was he her boyfriend? There was nothing boylike about him.

“Uh-huh…” Celestine murmured, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“He rang me when you were kidnapped. He seemed to think I did not care about you.”

“Oh yes?” Well, this was a surprise. Clearly whatever Nick had said to Grace had shaken her up enough to haul her ass to her trashed home to see her.

“I know we’ve never really gotten on, Celestine, but in the last couple of days I have been thinking a lot about us.”

Okay, this was now freaking her out. People like Julia she could deal with as you always knew where her sort was coming from. But Grace was an unknown quantity to her.

“Really?” There had to be something more to this visit. Grace was looking at her all sincere and sisterly. Had the drugs she had taken for pain put her in some weird bizarro world?

“Yes and do you know what I’ve realized, Celestine? We are exactly alike.”

Are frigging not
, thought Celestine, her eyebrows arched in disbelief at her sister’s words.

“We both act shallow,” Grace announced as if it was an important discovery for her.

As if
!

“I’m shallow, Grace?” Celestine was tired, in pain and did not need insults from her sister, the Queen of the Shallow.

“Yes, you’re shallow because you don’t want to get involved with anything or anyone so you glide on the surface of life.”

“Do not…” Celestine muttered. This woman was related to her by blood but not understanding or knowledge.

“Where’s Nick now?”

“I just needed time to think about him…us…but that does not mean I am shallow. It means I’m being careful.” Anyone could see that was there was a difference. Okay, maybe not much of one but still a damned difference.

“Why do you feel the need to be careful?”

“It’s complicated.” Celestine hated being put on the spot to counter questions she knew she only had half-assed answers to.

“Do you love Nick?”

Celestine blew out a tired sigh.

“It’s not that simple, Grace.”

“What’s the problem? Scared of getting involved? Scared that you may turn out like our parents?” Grace knew she had hit the nail on the head.

“Yes, damn it!” That was the crux of Celestine’s problem. “Aren’t you?”

Grace nodded in simple understanding.

“I was for the longest time until I met Ben.”

“I’ll be honest, Grace. Your husband is the one thing I like about you.”

Grace laughed out loud at her words. She was not offended.

Celestine smiled in amazement.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you laugh.” It was a nice sound.

“Do you want to know why I’m shallow and a lot like you…and no, not for whatever reasons you are dying to interrupt with.” Grace looked at her sister meaningfully. “I’m shallow because I pretend not to care about anything but the superficial. We both act shallow so we don’t get hurt. We learnt that from our parents at a young age and never really learnt to snap out of it.”

“They probably tried to be good parents.” Celestine wanted to believe they had.

“But not enough,” Grace responded.

“No, probably not.” Their parents were gone and blaming them was pointless.

“After I spoke to your Nick about the ransom money—”

“He’s not ‘my’ anything,” Celestine interrupted her. “And, I’ll be honest, Grace, I wouldn’t have forked out ransom money for you straightaway either.” Which really didn’t mean a lot because Celestine was stone broke and walking anyway.

“Whatever…” Grace raised her hand as if it was of no consequence now. “So after Nick called and had a go at me, Ben then turned on me, telling me what an awful sister I was. I was stunned but I thought about what he said and I suddenly realized, in the midst of everything else that was going on, that we are both alike. We’re both scared of screwing up something important so we pretend we don’t care.”

Celestine could not deny a word of what Grace had said. It was all true. Celestine was scared of screwing up what she had with Nick so she kept telling herself it was just sex and it would not last. She was basically sabotaging any chance of her own happiness because she was scared.

“I can’t remember the last time we ever had a real conversation, Grace.”

“I think it would have been when we were six or seven and you butchered the hair of my Barbie doll and swore blind it would grow back.”

“I lied, get over it. Besides, that Barbie had some kick-ass attitude going on.” Celestine laughed as she remembered back to when she and Grace were kids.

Grace shook her head, a sudden sadness coming into her eyes.

“We don’t converse well in our family, do we? We have to change that, Celestine. I’m not saying we’re going to become best friends and close sisters overnight but I want to give it a try.”

“Wow!” Sisters? She and Grace? It was a thought that came out of left field. Maybe they could be. It would not be easy. They would both have to change and compromise for it to work. Problem was change and compromise was not handled well by either of the Holt girls.

“What?” Grace saw the surprise on her sister’s face. “I’m not a complete cow, you know.”

“Well, no, not a complete one,” returned Celestine overly sweetly.

“And you’re not exactly the sweetest, most biddable person in the world either, Celestine.”

“No, it’s a shocker but I can be an utter bitch.”

Celestine’s words prompted them both to suddenly laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Two people who avoided each other for most of their adult lives, now attempting to make amends. The situation had the potential to crash and burn or to slowly rise to something better. But it was something worth taking a chance on.

“So how did you and Nick meet?”

“He climbed in through the window of my friend’s house looking to have sex with my friend but got me instead.”

“Uh…” Grace had no idea how to respond to that.

“The sex was earth-shattering.”

Grace shook her head and smiled as if she wasn’t sure where to go with that answer.

“Are you happy, Celestine? Are you in love with Nick?”

“The happiness question I’ll have to get back to you on.” Celestine wasn’t really sure what constituted happiness. That Nick made her smile and feel good was possibly the best measure of happiness she had. “As for loving Nick, the sex is fantastic but how did you know you loved Ben?”

Grace’s eyes lit up as if remembering how she realized she loved her husband.

“I have to admit I did not want to love Ben. But he was so persistent and loving. It was so overwhelming to someone who had never really been loved in any way before.”

Yep, Celestine knew that feeling.

“Nick’s like that.”

“And you want to run and hide?” Grace guessed accurately, seeing Celestine’s surprised reaction to her words. “See, we are alike. I wanted to do the same thing. But then, look at our parents, they were not good role models to teach us about loving. They were cold people.”

Yeah, they were. However, both she and Grace were adults now and could not blame everything in the past for decisions made in the present or future.

“Do you ever get scared you’ll hurt Ben?” That was what worried Celestine most. After being alone and looking after herself for so long she was scared she would not be able to handle being with Nick, that she would hurt him.

“You have to take a chance.”

Celestine tilted her head on an angle and looked at her sister as if really seeing her for the first time.

“Are we in a parallel universe or something, Grace? Is it really you and me standing here talking like actual sisters? Are we—” Celestine stopped suddenly as she heard a noise from the bedroom.

“What was that?” Grace asked in alarm, a carefully manicured hand going to her chest in startled surprise.

Celestine started to walk toward her bedroom to check out the noise.

“In light of everything that has been happening to you, shouldn’t you call the police before you go looking for trouble?” Grace followed reluctantly behind her.

“Nah, I’m sick of being a victim. I want to kick ass first and ask questions later.” Celestine was bruised, cut and battered but she had had enough. “What more can happen to me, Grace?” She walked defiantly to her bedroom. She looked inside at her bed.

“Holy frigging hell!”

It wasn’t Goldilocks on her bed. It was Lester and he was way too ugly and smelly to be part of a fairy tale. He looked like death. His hair was matted to his head, he was pale and shivering and his bloody toe had bled all over her bedspread. Celestine remembered how the police reported they had not caught him yet. He had obviously been in the house all along. On her bed. A bed she would now have to burn after Lester’s disgusting personage had been on it. She looked down at Lester. He did not look good normally but now he looked positively awful. Celestine guessed a mixture of blood loss and infection was the cause. His foot was a bloodied mess.

“Oh yuk! Who is that?” Grace yelped in disgust when she saw Lester.

“This is Lester, my kidnapper. He shot his toe off…don’t ask. It’s a long, stupid story.”

Lester sat up woozily and waved a knife at them. In the state he was in he could barely be able to cut bread, let alone attack someone.

“I want the money.”

“Now, Lester, you know Julia took off with the money and left you to rot.” Celestine just wished he had not decided to do it on her bed.

“But it’s mine and I want it!” Lester part roared, part groaned but mostly drooled out.

“I believe the Rolling Stones summed it up best with the lyrics ‘You can’t always get what you want’.” But… “you get what you need”…and Celestine needed Nick.

“I’ll kill you.”

If Lester was going for threatening he was failing badly.

“So scared—not.”

“I mean it.”

“Sure, you do.” Celestine leaned over the bed and took the knife easily from his loose handhold. It was a knife from her own kitchen. It wasn’t a good choice for menacing. It was okay for peeling potatoes but that was about it. She looked over to where Grace was punching in a number on her mobile.

“You have an interesting life, Celestine,” Grace murmured, then spoke quickly to the police, advising them of the situation.

“Until I bought the car from hell several weeks ago my life was boring. I had never been carjacked, shot at or kidnapped. The most daring thing I did was to allow a bill to remain unpaid for a couple of weeks until I could scrounge the money together.”

“And you’d never been loved before either.”

“No and it’s on a par with being kidnapped but not as painful.”

“And there is the bonus of ‘fantastic’ sex.” Grace looked at her sister speculatively. “Did Nick really come through the window and have sex with you?”

“Yeah, he calls it a ‘moonlight ride’. And it’s worth every damn penny.” Celestine looked down at Lester. He was asleep, dead or comatose. None of the three particularly interested or worried her. That would teach him for shooting at a poor defensive lizard.

“So what are you going to do about Nick?” Grace looked at her sister with a mixture of admiration and query. “You are pretty fearless when it comes to dealing with this bloke but what about someone who matters?”

Yes
,
that would be Nick
…
hmm
…

“I think I’m going to have to borrow a ladder.”

“You’re not going to…”

“Yeah, why not? I think it’s time for a ride in the moonlight.”