Authors: Brandon Massey

Within the Shadows (25 page)

BOOK: Within the Shadows

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Who is this woman that you’ve brought home, Andrew?
The ominous Vincent Price voice he’d given to the animals had kicked into his mind again.

“Maybe it’s not hungry,” Carmen said. She placed the shrimp near the feline’s front paws. “Here’s some food, kitty. Nice, juicy shrimp. Want it?”

The animal ignored the morsel and stared at them.

“Since when does a cat not even sniff some food like that?” he asked.

“What’s wrong, kitty?” she cooed. She reached to stroke the cat’s fur.

The cat bared its teeth. It hissed.

She drew back. “All righty, then.”

He heard a rustling sound behind them. The other two cats had crept closer. Muscles tensed, they also glowered at Carmen.

We don’t like this woman of yours, Andrew. She doesn’t belong here.

He wondered if he was attributing overly human thoughts to the cats. Why would they dislike Carmen on sight? It was a ridiculous notion.

But the creatures’ threatening body language was unmistakable.

He put his hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go inside.”

She didn’t argue. She came into the house with him.

When he looked one last time at the cat sitting on the car, it swept its tail across the hood and batted the shrimp to the pavement.

Chapter 25

H
e had left the computer on, in case Sammy opted to type another message while he was away. He and Carmen gathered in front of the laptop. There were no new messages. Andrew’s last question—
Why do you say I’m in big trouble now?—
remained on the screen, unanswered.

Carmen scanned through Sammy’s misspelled sentences. “Vocab of a kid is right. I wonder if he
is
a child.”

“That’s another question we can ask him whenever he shows up again.”

“He’ll be back soon, I bet,” she said. She yawned. “What time is it?”

“Half-past ten.”

“I need to run. Gotta work tomorrow.”

“You have to leave so soon? Hang out for a while, watch a movie with me.”

He kept his tone playful, but he seriously wanted her to stay longer—to spend the night, in fact. Romance wasn’t on his mind. Fear was on his mind. With Mika roaming in the night dwelling on her deranged, obsessive thoughts about him, he no longer felt secure in his own house.

This isn’t over—and you can’t hide from me.

His anxiety had a good basis. He recalled how, last night, Mika had prowled through Carmen’s place and left behind her thong, undetected by the security system or either of them, as if she were as elusive as a disembodied spirit.

“You’ve talked me into it,” she said. “I’m not too keen on you being alone here anyway, with psycho chick running around. Not to say that you can’t take care of yourself, but you know what I mean. Strength in numbers and all that.”

“Does that mean you’re gonna spend the night, too?”

“We’ll see.” She smiled.

He smiled, too—to conceal his relief. For Carmen, “we’ll see” meant “yes.” Although, like virtually all women, her language was as mysterious to him as ancient hieroglyphics, he’d managed, over time, to decipher the true meaning of a handful of her statements.

In the entertainment area of the basement, he dimmed the lights and put a film on the projection screen:
Love and Basketball
. It was one of Carmen’s all-time favorites.

He reclined on the sofa and rested his feet on the leather ottoman.

“Wow, I can’t believe you put on this movie,” she said. Sitting next to him, she propped her feet on the ottoman, too. “What have I done to deserve this?”

“Helped me cope. I really mean that. Thank you.”

She patted his leg. “I got your back, honey. Anyway, you need me right now. I can tell you how psycho chick thinks.”

“How’s that?”

“ ’Cause I’m a woman. It takes a woman to understand a woman.”

“But you said she’s crazy.”

“She
is
crazy, but in a way that makes a twisted kinda sense.”

He turned to face her. “Break that down for me.”

“Okay,” she said. “You and her slept together—”

“Carmen—”

“Let me finish, there’s a reason why I’m telling you this. I’m not judging you, only stating a fact.”

“All right.”

“For most women, sex is the most intimate act in the world. When a woman has sex with a man, she naturally starts to feel attached to him, in more than a physical sense. She bonds with him emotionally, mentally, spiritually. It’s like a soul connection.”

“Not all the time. Some women can hit and run like men.”

“True, but women who do that are only looking for fun, a little tune-up. If the woman is in a frame of mind of wanting to have a serious relationship with you, and then she sleeps with you—she’s gonna feel that soul connection, Drew.”

“I knew I was going to regret it,” he said. “Before we got to that point, I was having second thoughts. But I ignored that little voice in my head telling me to slow down.”

She touched his arm. “That was your intuition. Part of you knew that you were walking into a bad thing.”

“She called me her soul mate, too. How could she say that after knowing me for one day?”

“You said yourself that she was needy. You know how it feels to want something so bad that it hurts?” Her gaze searched him.

“I’ve felt that way sometimes, yeah.”

“We all have,” she said. “When you give someone hungry for that certain thing a little taste of it, well, they can lose control—especially if it seems that they might lose that thing after waiting for it for so long.”

“So I give her a taste, and she decides that I’m her soul mate.”

“It’s like love at first sight. Think about your last serious girlfriend. I remember you told me that after your first date with her, you knew you wanted to have a relationship with her. You
knew
.”

“Good point. But I don’t feel the same way about Mika that she feels about me. She said she knows I love her.”

She frowned. “The knowing you love her part—that’s a touch of her craziness there, something I don’t understand. But I know why she keeps chasing you. Did your ex-girlfriend know after the first date that she wanted you to be her man?”

“It took a couple of months. I had to pursue her, convince her.”

“In Mika’s warped mind, she sees it the same way. She thinks she has to pursue you, and that you’ll finally come around one day, let your guard down, and be her man. The big problem—and it’s
our
problem—is her way of going about winning you over.”

“Yeah, following me around, throwing temper tantrums and flipping over furniture—definitely a big problem for us.”

“ ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ ” she said. “But I bet she’ll be super-sweet the next time you see her, apologizing for how she behaved. The classic nice-and-nasty pattern.”

“Doesn’t matter how sweet she acts. Nothing’s gonna make me change my mind about her.”

“Yup, you gotta stand firm. I hope I’m wrong, but I think this is a long way from being over. Psycho chick ain’t gonna give up easily.”

Her words evoked his worries again. Bands of tension squeezed his chest. The projection TV was the only light source in the basement; the shadows in the room appeared darker than before, as if hiding something malevolent.

He edged closer to Carmen.

Barefoot, she wore shorts and a halter top. Delicious warmth radiated from her body.

Nonchalantly, he placed his hand close to her leg.

Desire bolted through him. He didn’t know whether the lust came from a reflex reaction—his seeking a calm oasis of intimacy in the midst of his fear—or was a natural expression of his growing feelings for her. He’d felt attracted to her countless times before, but not usually as strongly as he did now.

She crossed her legs on the ottoman. He looked at her pedicured feet, slender ankles, toned calves, firm thighs.

He’d never forget how it had felt, the one time they’d crossed the platonic line, to hold her close and kiss her.

Nope, man. Forget it. You can’t go there with her again. Not now.

It was the same voice that had warned him about going to Mika’s hotel suite. The whisper of intuition. He knew he had to listen to it. He couldn’t touch Carmen until he was prepared to come clean about his feelings. It wouldn’t be fair to her, and she probably wouldn’t tolerate another just-friends-kissing episode without demanding a serious talk about the direction of their relationship.

He clasped his hands in his lap and watched the movie with her in friendly silence.

As Andrew had assumed, Carmen decided to spend the night. By the time the movie concluded, it was after midnight. She said she was too weary to make the thirty-minute drive home to Marietta. She would sleep in the guest room.

While she prepared for bed, he checked to ensure that all of the doors and windows were locked. It was a nightly habit for him, but in light of Mika’s invasion of his life, the task had taken on greater importance.

In the living room, he peeled back a curtain.

Outside, a pair of small, glowing green eyes watched him from the bushes.

Those damned cats. They were getting on his last nerve.

And they’d threatened Carmen, too. That pissed him off—and concerned him.

Something about these animals wasn’t normal. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was, but they made him uneasy.

Tomorrow morning, he would call the city’s animal control unit. Maybe they would pick up the cats and take them to a shelter. The felines had to be strays.

Upon finishing his circuit of the house, he returned upstairs and activated the security system from the control panel in his bedroom. Then he checked the laptop in his office.

Still no message from Sammy. But he left the computer on.

In the guest room, Carmen was pulling back the sheets on the twin-size bed. Her back was to him. She wore one of his Atlanta Braves T-shirts, the fabric ending just beneath her hips.

It was impossible to ignore how well the shirt displayed her lovely figure.

She looked over her shoulder, smiled. “Caught ya.”

If he’d had a lighter complexion his skin would have turned as red as a tomato.

“I wanted to ask if you needed anything,” he said in a low voice.

She slid onto the mattress, one leg tucked underneath the other. She wore a faint smile.

Although she wasn’t wearing lingerie, she looked as sexy to him as a model in a Victoria’s Secret catalog.

Before he knew what he was doing, he crossed the room. He rested his hands on her shoulders and leaned closer to her.

She stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“No friends with benefits, Drew,” she said.

He stiffened. “Can a brother at least get a good-night kiss?”

She rose off the bed. She wrapped her arms around his waist, stood on her tiptoes.

He tried to kiss her on the lips. She turned her head and gave him a chaste peck on the cheek.

“Good night,” she said. She patted his head, as if he were a little boy whom she was sending off to bed.

“That’s cold, Carmen.”

“You get up at six, right?” she asked. “I’m gonna set the alarm in here, but please check on me to make sure I’m up. I’ll need to go home to get ready for work.”

He sighed loudly. She only looked at him, arms crossed over her bosom.

“All right, I get the point,” he said. He backed up to the doorway. “I’ll check on you at six. Good night.”

She smiled sweetly and waved.

In his bedroom, he lay on his bed in the darkness.

Carmen had made it clear: she wasn’t going to fool around with him any more, not as long as they continued to call themselves just friends. It frustrated him, but he had to respect her hard-line stance. She was doing what was necessary to preserve their friendship. He couldn’t fault her for that—especially at those times when he lacked the willpower to rightfully keep his hands off her.

Nevertheless, the other side of the mattress was cold as he drifted to sleep.

Chapter 26

N
ight. A roiling charcoal sky and a fine, cold drizzle as abrasive as broken glass.

In his dream, Raymond stood in front of the mansion again, in the muddy driveway. A child version of Andrew approached the front door.

He shouted the same command that he’d said in vain, countless times: “Stay outta that house, boy!”

BOOK: Within the Shadows

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