Tymber Dalton (31 page)

Julie chewed on that. “I hadn’t thought about it like that. I guess it would be a kind of karmic restitution, wouldn’t it? So much good coming from so much bad? Don’t tell Ms. Johnson you’ve let me in here or she’ll never sell you the house. That’s another reason you don’t have to worry about me saying anything. I’ll gladly ignore what you found, but please, let me keep studying this place.”

Matt smiled and held out his hand. “Deal.”

None of them had the energy to do more that evening. Julie agreed it was getting late, and emotionally they’d all been through a lot. “I want to go through the video footage and other data tomorrow and see if there’s anything else.”

Sami was content to let Matt make the plans. “Steve might be home from the hospital tomorrow. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“We need to deal with him, too,” Julie said. “I need to research the best plan of attack.” She looked at the secret room. “I suggest closing it and replacing the books. Don’t tell him you found it, see how he is when he gets back. We might have done enough to help him by getting rid of that desk and cleansing the room.” She swallowed hard. “And we need to find the clearing where George killed them. And the old well.”

Sami finally put two and two together. “The clearing, it’s where the cairns are, right? The old graveyard?”

Julie nodded. “Finding it might be easier said than done.”

“I can show you exactly where it is,” Sami said. “I’ve already been there.”

“You have?” Julie asked, surprised.

Sami nodded. “It’s just southeast of here. Steve went there the first night he sleepwalked. Didn’t I tell you?”

Julie stared at her for a moment and closed her eyes. “Goddess, I am
such
an idiot. I totally forgot. You did tell me. Can you find the clearing again where you heard the Indian girl crying?”

“I think so. We were moving pretty fast, but I bet I can find the trail.”

“I’ll need a few days. I want to find the plat maps anyway, see if anyone kept records on who was buried where in the cemetery. I can do a ritual over my great-grandfather’s grave then, too. Otherwise, we’ll have to blanket the entire area.”

They agreed Julie would come back Thursday morning. That would be enough time to get Steve home, hopefully start paperwork on the house, and maybe Sami and Matt could locate the well.

They helped Julie pack, and she hung another black onyx charm around Matt’s neck. “Humor me, even if you don’t believe, okay?”

He nodded, looking at Sami’s swelling brow. “Doesn’t protect against everything, does it?”

Julie followed his gaze. “No, that would take a crash helmet.” She gave them her home and cell numbers.

They watched her taillights disappear into the woods. Sami remembered something. “Oh! The digital recorder in the attic, I forgot all about it.”

“Don’t worry. She can get it when she comes back.”

It was late. Sami felt she’d been awake for weeks because of the emotional roller coaster from the day’s events. Had it only been this morning she’d been convinced Steve wasn’t drinking?

She needed a long soak. “I’m going to be a while. Feel free to use my shower.”

“I’m going to run to the store. I want to get a couple of things.”

“Like what?”

“Like a quart of orange juice and a bottle of vodka.”

“Oh, but we have our own stockpile of antique whiskey here,” she quipped. “Let’s break into that and go to town.”

He immediately picked up her sarcasm, returning it like a well-timed backhand. “What, and cut into our profits? Never. That stuff would be worth a fortune if we sold it.” He grew serious. “I’d rather drink gasoline.”

“Probably healthier, too. Hey, while you’re out, buy condoms. I feel like getting shit-faced and laid,” she only half joked.

He laughed, not meeting her gaze, and found his keys.

She went upstairs and heard him leave. Pog followed her and curled up in the bathroom.

We. If
we
sold it
, he’d said
.

She left the guest bathroom door cracked open.

It was the first time she’d been able to reflect on their earlier embrace. Truth be told, she hoped Matt would come into the bathroom. Then maybe she could talk him into bed.

Oh come on, Sami, you’re not divorced yet. That’s not right. Steve’s in the hospital recovering from surgery, and you’re thinking about seducing Matt?

When she found the whiskey bottle in the desk, if Steve had been there, she would have been tempted to use the axe on him. He was drinking again, without a doubt. Whether there were more secrets remained to be seen.

She remembered finding Steve on his knees in the office after he banged his head. What had he been doing on the floor?

Stashing the bottle, obviously.

After wrecking the desk, she wanted nothing to do with Steve, wanted the smell of the whiskey off her clothes, wanted no part of him anymore.

What she wanted were Matt’s strong hands catching her…

She sank lower in the hot water, trying to relax, a fresh ice pack over the bump on her head.

It was a reflex action, kissing Matt. She wanted Matt to take her right then, no turning back. To pull her away from Steve once and for all and give her every reason in the world to leave. To wrap her legs around him like she used to and…

God, his body felt good
. The way it used to feel. Judging from his reaction, he wanted her, too.

It would be wrong.

Would it? Steve tethered her to him emotionally with a series of lies. He wanted kids. He wasn’t drinking.
What else had he lied about? Isn’t that what he’d said in the hospital, that he was tired of lying?

How long had he been drinking again? Would she tap enough walls at the Ohio house and find a secret stash there, too? Or maybe being in this crazy place drove him over the edge once opportunity knocked.

She must have drifted, because the sound of the front door startled her. “Matt?”

“I’ll be right up.” She heard grocery bags rattle and the fridge door open.

A few minutes later, he stood outside the bathroom door. “I made you a drink.”

“Bring it in.”

“Sam—”

“Matt, please. I appreciate it, but drop the pretense.”

She closed her eyes and heard the door swing open. He touched the cold glass to her hand and she wrapped her fingers around it, brushing against his. He hesitated for a moment before letting go.

“Thank you.” She didn’t want to open her eyes and lose the fantasy she was working on. She brought the glass to her lips. Orange juice, vodka, and soda water.

She hadn’t had one of these in years. Not since…

Not since the night they made love the last time.

They had known then that they were breaking up, yet neither wanted to voice the finality of it. No fighting, no screaming. Just quiet agreement that Matt didn’t want to see anyone else, but he didn’t know if, or when, he’d ever feel ready to get married and have kids. For some reason she felt pressured to move forward with her life, wanting it all. She was published and independent, items crossed off her “life list,” and was in a hurry to get married, start a family.

He let her go, even introduced her to Steve at a party a few months later.

Look where it got her.

“It’s good, thank you.” She pressed the cool glass to her cheek.

“You’re welcome.” Ice rattled in his glass as he took a sip. “I think it’s time we have a talk.”

She nodded and sensed him sit on the edge of the tub.

“You know,” he continued, “it’s difficult for me to have a conversation with you lying there like that.”

“Like what?” She smiled, picturing his face.

“I think you know exactly what I mean, Sam.”

“What I know,” she said, “is I’m filing for divorce sometime in the next few weeks. I am a married woman who hasn’t had sex in over six months because her husband’s got some major issues that I no longer have any desire to work through. He’s lied to me. I’m done. I told him flat-out at the intervention that if he started drinking again, we were through. God only knows how long he’s been lying to me. Or about what else.”

“Then I’ll buy you a vibrator.”

His comment shocked her enough to open her eyes. He wore the half smile she loved, the one that always melted her. He was different in so many ways from Steve. Quiet, some would say withdrawn. She knew the truth, that he was more deeply intense than anyone suspected. He didn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve for the world to see.

“Maybe I’ll grow too attached to it,” she teased. “Not need a man anymore.” She lowered her eyelids in what she hoped looked a seductive manner. Her glass already half empty, he hadn’t made the drink as strong as she would have liked.

“Oh, I’m not worried about that. The point I’m trying to make”—he arched an eyebrow at her, making her giggle—“is you are still married. My best friend’s wife. Regardless of our history, or what he’s done, or how justified you are, we shouldn’t compromise ourselves.”

She took another sip. “That didn’t seem to be a problem earlier.”

He studied his glass. “I didn’t say I didn’t want to. I’m saying we need to keep things as uncomplicated as we can, mostly for your sake, until your divorce is final. If he thinks we’re in this together—”

“We are, aren’t we?”

He scowled at her again, ignoring her interruption. “If he thinks we deliberately planned this, it could get real ugly, real quick. I have to work with Steve, at least for a while. We have business contracts. The smarter we handle this, even if it means sacrificing for a while, the easier it’ll be on both of us in the long run.”

“I don’t want his money, Matt.”

“Did I say that? He can drag things out, deposition us, and bring out a lot of things that would make you and I look pretty horrible. We can spare him his dignity, at least. Maybe I can figure a way to gracefully bow out of being his agent.”

She drained her glass and handed it to him. “Can I have another, please?” she whispered.
Drunk, schmunk.
If her husband drank without provocation, wasn’t she entitled to get schnockered with the best reason of all?

Matt finished his, took her glass, and left the bathroom.

The ice pack had almost completely melted. She dumped it into the tub and dropped the plastic bag on the floor, running more hot water into the tub.

He returned with fresh drinks and retook his place on the side of the tub. “You know, it’s hard to sit here and look at you lying there like that.”

She smiled. “You said that already. That’s your choice, not mine. I already made a suggestion and you shot me down.”

“That’s not fair and you know it.”

“No, what’s not fair is I trusted him. I stayed with him when he was a drunk, and he told me he wanted the same things I did. I believed in him. I supported him and put up with his bullshit, and he robbed me of all the years I might have spent with you.”

There.
She’d said it. She gulped down half her drink, feeling the effects.

“Sweetie,” he said quietly, “we’d already broken up.”

“Yeah, but you can’t tell me we might not have got back together if I hadn’t met him.”

“You’re right. I can’t. Yes, we might have eventually got back together. God knows no one has ever lived up to my expectations since I lost you. I’ve regretted introducing you to Steve from the moment I saw how he looked at you. I knew the second he shook your hand he’d marry you. Do you know how hard that is, watching your best friend marry the only woman you’ve ever loved and knowing you were the dumb-ass who gave her away?”

He drained his glass in two swallows, ice rattling against the sides. She suspected he’d mixed his drinks a lot stronger than hers.

They let the silence lie between them for several minutes. Sami finished her drink and sat up, putting her glass on the floor next to the tub. She touched his wrist. “Please?”

He didn’t meet her eyes. “Sam, if we do—”

“Tonight. That’s all I’m asking for is tonight. Just one night. We’ll handle the rest later. But tonight, now…” She searched for the right words. “I want to feel the peace I used to feel when I was with you.”

He remained silent for a long time. “It’s wrong.”

“Please?”

He finally met her eyes. “I can’t tell you no. I never could.” Except for the one time that cost him their relationship.

She rose to her knees and gently stroked his cheek. “Then don’t.” She kissed him.

It felt like hours they sat there, tasting each other, remembering how it felt, the same and yet different and new. He put his glass on the floor, around the corner of the tub so he wouldn’t kick it, and turned to her, stripping off his shirt. She ran her hands over his chest, closing her eyes and breathing in his scent. He unwrapped the wet bandages from her hand and wrist, used a washcloth to sponge her flesh, kissed her hand, fighting the urge to rip Steve’s head off at the neck. The gouges were healing, but she’d have scars.