Notorious Page 14

  You're a stupid, unnatural girl.

  No. No, dammit, I am not. Hayley told you so, Mama!

  I will never, as long as I live, forget the day Hayley did so. No one ever championed me to my mother before. As long as I can remember, Mama told me I would never amount to anything. She said I would never be as smart or as pretty as my friends.

  I will admit the old bitch did not mention the shortage-of-beauty part the day Hayley stood up to her. That particular day her harangue focused entirely on my supposed lack of intelligence.

  Man. I can still feel the heat of the late August afternoon, can still hear the drone of the blades on the old-fashioned overhead fan as it lazily moved the stagnant air.

  Mama gives me a look of utter contempt when I fumble straightening the stack of towels she just informed me are not folded correctly. “How can one person be so blessed stupid?”

  It is not the first time she has attacked my competence. Unfortunately, repetition does not prevent me from feeling helpless and clumsy every time I hear it.

  “Will you get on with it!” she snaps impatiently, the intense scorn in her pale blue eyes skewering me. “It's not a complicated task, Patsy Ann. I swear, if you graduate this year it will be by the grace of God and nothing else. It is a mystery to me how you managed to make it this far.”

  Someone taps on the wood-framed screen door and I turn to see Hayley Granger standing on the other side. Oh, God, just let me die now. The door hinges creak as Hayley pulls it open and her voice is quiet and contained when she inquires if I am ready to go. All I can do is stare at my feet in numb misery as she pulls the wadded towel out of my hands, efficiently folds it and adds it to the stack. I watch her make short work of folding the remaining towels and then follow her to the door.

  But once we have pushed through it, Hayley pauses and looks back at Mama. "You know, Mrs. Dutton," she says with even-voiced politeness, "perhaps if you weren't always riding Patsy so hard you would see, far from being stupid, she is actually one of the smartest kids in our graduating class."

  Of course from that moment our lives were indelibly entwined. No one had spoken up for me like that before. Not one single, solitary soul had ever bothered to insert herself between me and Mama—let alone to tell the old bitch, without actually uttering the words, that she was full of shit . God in heaven—I never felt such joy!

  So why would I give a great goddamn when Hayley became the scandal of Lincoln High a short while afterward? Mama gloated unmercifully, of course. And in my heart of hearts, I know that ordinarily I would have gone with the flow of popular opinion and dropped Hayley like a red-hot spud. Instead I stood firm and refused to let anyone utter innuendoes about her in my presence.

  A car pulling up to the curb out front jerks my attention back to the present. Looking out the window, I see Joe climb out of the car, and everything else is immediately forgotten.

  I reach the door before he makes it halfway up the front walk. Opening it wide, I hold it ajar as he approaches, then stand back. "Please," I say when he hesitates on the threshold. "Come in."

  He does and with disappointment I notice his hands are empty. "I hoped to see your bag."

  "I'm not moving home, Patsy."

  I have never understood what men want, Joe least of all, but this is too much. "Why not?" I demand hotly, then immediately adjust my tone of voice. "I have done my best by this marriage, Joe."

  "I'm sure you have, but—"

  "Don't I keep an immaculate house?"

  "Yes."

  "Don't I always have a hot meal waiting on the table when you get home from the office?" At his tight-lipped nod, I say in a carefully non-confrontational tone, "It is not always easy, you know. I have responsibilities and stresses in my job, too. But I have done it all the same. I have been here to grant your every wish."

  “Maybe I don't want my every wish granted," he interrupts. "Did you ever think about that? Did you ever consider just once I would rather have a partner than a personal servant?"

  Rage, thick and black as crude oil, bubbles inside me. I open my mouth to unleash a few home truths but then snap it shut, the words left unsaid.

  "What?" he demands.

  "Nothing," I say calmly, refusing to acknowledge negative feelings, never mind express them.

  "Dammit, Pats! If you have something to say, just come on out and say it. Get it the hell off your chest."

  "There is nothing on my chest, Joe."

  He spits something obscene and rams his fingers through his hair. Controlling himself with a visible effort, he draws a deep breath and slowly lets it out. "No," he agrees flatly. "I can't imagine you ever cutting loose to the extent where you might actually allow yourself a reaction like anger or hurt. That would be way too messy, too human. Or hell, it would be socially incorrect, which would be even worse, wouldn't it? At least according to your interpretation."

  "There is no need to mock me, Joseph."

  Joe blows out a gusty sigh. "You know something? I'm not. I am honest-to-God not mocking you. I'm just…tired. I can't live like this any longer. Do you hear what I'm saying? I cannot live in dread of upsetting your carefully structured world. I am sick to death of constantly fearing this will be the one change I suggest that upsets all your rules and routines."

  He looks into my eyes as if searching for something, but I do not have the first idea what he wants. I hear his words clearly enough. I just cannot absorb their meaning. My tense shoulders slump when he suddenly sighs again, because this one sounds scarily resigned.

  "I'm going upstairs to get some things,” he says flatly. “Then I am going back to the Inn. But tomorrow I'm gonna start looking for a more permanent place to live."

  For a long time after Joe departs with two fully packed suitcases and a box, I wander the house. By the time I end up in the master bedroom dusk has cast shadows across the floor. Minutes tick away as I stand in the middle of the room staring vacantly at the wall I had personally given a faux antique leather finish.

  Then I shake myself free of the funk that has me in its grip, cross the room to the closet, and pull out the compound bow I bought to surprise Joe that night.

  The night he first walked out.

  I look at it gripped in my white-knuckled fist while a host of suppressed emotions clamor inside me. The red bow, faintly dusty but still festive, taunts me. Oh, God. My inclination is to rip and to rend and to shred the damn thing until it is nothing but a smear of red threads on the carpet.

  Of course I do not. Mature women do not throw tantrums like spoiled children. I gently untie the ribbon and set it aside. Holding the compound bow by its smooth fiberglass grip, I raise it into the approved shooting stance.

  Joe will be back. He has to be. I only learned to handle a bow in the first place because he has a passion for hunting with them. He will not forsake me now. Not after everything I have gone through for him.

  I nock an arrow and struggle to pull the bow string back. The draw weight is geared for Joe's strength, of course, and I cannot get it to move more than obstinate fractions of an inch at a time. Stubbornly, I renew my efforts. Arms quivering, I am about to give up when I suddenly muscle it to a place where the cables kick in, making it draw back more easily. From there I pull the bow string back in a steady, smooth motion. I twist to take mock aim first at my reflection in the mirrored closet door, then at the framed wedding photo of me and Joe that sits on his highboy.

  I have actually become uncommonly proficient on the compound bow. Wouldn't mama have been amazed? Too bad the old biddy up and died before I could prove to her I am good at something. As for Joe…well. Did he appreciate his wife's proficiency, even a little? Perhaps at one time. But he sure as hell does not seem to any more.

  Well, never mind. He will be back. It is not as if he thinks I am stupid or anything. He is simply going through a midlife crisis, that is all this is. One hears all the time about men suddenly doing crazy stuff to prove to the world they are not getting old. I just have to be p
atient. I have to keep my mind occupied until he comes to his senses.

  He will be back.

  Stupid, unnatural girl. You just keep telling yourself stories. You never did have the brains God gave a peanut.

  "Damn you, Mama. Shut…the hell…up!" Whipping around, I release the bowstring and watch dispassionately as the arrow shoots across the room to enter the wall with a resounding thunk. Plaster explodes and the arrow quivers where it buried itself a good two inches into the lath.

  “Close but no cigar,” I mutter. Plaster dust, trickling in a lethargic stream from the hole in the wall, piles upon the framed photograph of Mama, and I turn away. Clearly I need to get back to regular practice; my arrow missed by a good inch. Because, face it.

  With no cigar, close isn’t worth shit.

  Thirteen

  Jon-Michael lay on his back on the couch, staring up at the high ceiling and brooding. When it got him goddamn nowhere, he rolled off the couch and prowled barefoot around his loft apartment. Three times he passed by his office, an area set apart from the open space by a wall of stair-stepped glass bricks. After the fourth pass-by, he went in and dropped into his chair. Gripping the edge of the desk in both hands, he looked down at the piles of notes and sheets of graph paper cluttering the desk top. And blew out a long, weary breath of exasperation.

  What the hell. Mildred Bayerman had been pressuring him with phone calls about it ever since the Fourth of July dance. He might as well draft a formal proposal of his ideas for expanding Olivet Manufacturing. At least then he could tell her he was working on it.

  It turned out applying himself to the project felt good—even if he could not visualize giving an actual presentation to the board of directors. But searching for the most viable way to convince a group of technological dinosaurs of the need to enter the twenty-first century helped focus his mind on something other than Hayley Prescott for longer than five minutes running. And that was a welcome break.

  He managed to lose himself in the intricacies of the presentation for well over an hour. Little by little, however, pieces of his Wednesday night, no, Thursday morning encounter with the maddening brunette began to intrude on his concentration. He tossed his pencil down in disgust and gathered his papers together. Wrestling them into a rough sort of order, he leaned back in his chair, knowing damn well he wouldn’t accomplish another thing today.

  When she had first walked off and left him treading water in the cold, black, pre-dawn lake, all he had felt was a shitload of fury. He told himself she was nothing but a vicious cock-tease and any thoughts of love he had harbored were strictly borne of the moment, fathered by a surfeit of male-patterned horniness. If he were smart, he’d concluded, he would chalk it up to a date, or encounter, or sex or whatever gone wrong and write her off. Once and for all. Because who the hell needed the aggravation?

  Once his sexual frustration had worn off, however, he’d conceded he was kidding himself. What was more, if he ever hoped to get back in Hayley’s good graces he would have to work for it, because no way the first move would originate with her.

  He needed to do something. He had no idea what, but he had to come up with a way to make amends. And it had better be now, too, if he didn’t want her staring right through him as if he didn't exist the way she’d been doing damn near exclusively since she had first rolled into town.

  Because while his anger had been fueled by surging testosterone and as quickly forgotten, Hayley’s was all too real. And unfortunately all too justified. Her fury was fed by the memory of an actual injustice. The true miracle here was that she had managed to act with any civility toward him at all.

  He could hardly believe he had told her he loved her that long ago night by the lake.

  At the same time part of him could envision it all too easily.

  There had always been something about her that drew him like a fish to the lure. Something deeper than her killer smile or round butt. Perhaps it was her refusal to be impressed by his wealth or his charm. Or maybe it was her way of saying what she thought, instead of paying lip-service to what she thought he wanted to hear as so many had done. He wished he could remember the emotions of that night. If they were anything like last night—

  Then, yeah, he could envision saying the words.

  Problem was, he had failed to live up to his pretty declaration. Had not behaved like a man in love. He had acted like the eighteen-year-old self-indulgent rich-kid budding alcoholic he had been at the time.

  It was a little late in the game to beat himself up over it, however. All this had happened a long time ago and he was a different person than he had been back then. Not to mention the Catch-22 aspect scratching in the back of his brain. Yes, he had thrown away the opportunity for something special that night.

  He couldn't help but wonder, though, how long it would have been before his drinking managed to destroy whatever had begun to grow between them. When he had awakened with a pounding head, a roiling stomach, and an absolute black hole where the previous night's memory should have been, it had changed him irrevocably. Shaken to the core, he had heard his sexual exploits repeated back to him by the friends he had told in unforgivable detail and knew he needed to make a serious change in his life.

  He had felt apologetic for years afterwards, but he didn't have a thing to apologize for now. He had been sober for more than a decade. When he told her he loved her last night, she could not have been any more surprised to hear the words than he had been. But he acknowledged the truth of them…and knew it hadn't been Black Velvet talking. Neither had it been his dick.

  He had to wonder, though, why she'd surrendered up her virginity to him all those years ago. Because he had told her he loved her? Or had the words been said in the heat of the moment or even later after the orgasmic bliss had faded?

  Had she said them back?

  Part of him wanted in the worst way to back off, to retreat behind the protection of the social mask he had perfected before he hit puberty. Its practiced charm had shielded him from rejection over the years, and now with only the smallest effort on his part it could continue to do so.

  Another part urged him to rear up on his back legs, beat his chest and drag Hayley off by a fistful of her thick hair. That part wanted to hold her prisoner until she understood just who was boss around here. Until he convinced her he had grown up and was no longer the self absorbed ass he had been back when.

  An infinitely more mature part of him put on his shoes and socks, collected his wallet and let himself out of the loft.

  Son of a bitch! Ty Holloway wanted to put his fist through the nearest wall when Kurstin walked through his doorway and told him the news. He stared at her incredulously. "Are you fucking kidding me?" he said. "How did the media manage to track her down so quickly?"

  Kurstin gave him a puzzled look and he scrambled to cover himself. "I mean, you’d think their first inclination would be to search for her in New England, wouldn't you?" Get a grip, man, he cautioned himself. It will be all right. You still have the inside track. It didn’t stop him, however, from muttering, "Fucking vultures."

  And saw nothing ironic in the sentiment coming from him.

  "You sound like Jon-Michael." Kurstin kicked off her shoes. "And not to sound insensitive or anything because Hayley is my best friend in the world, but I skipped lunch today and it’s catching up with me. You have anything to nibble on?"

  "Come on," he invited and led her to a seat at the breakfast bar of the digs Patsy found him. He watched Kurstin kick off her strappy heels before he rounded the counter to see what he had to offer.

  She had come straight from work to his townhouse and he eyed her in appreciation as he put together a snack and poured her a glass of wine. She was so elegant with her impeccably groomed blonde hair, tasteful makeup and long demure skirt, underneath which she had crossed her legs in a manner that struck him as anything but demure. At the same time, she was approachable and warm as she sat there with the top two buttons of her silk blouse und
one, swinging a bare foot and smiling at him whenever he looked her way.

  He slid a plate in front of her and came around to sit with her as she ate. It was time to kick his proposed seduction into high gear.

  He told himself it was strictly business when he leaned over to kiss her the instant she swallowed the last bite. He removed her wine glass from her fingers, set it aside, and moved in closer.

  For the story, he reminded himself moments later as he dropped the whisper-thin silk onto the bedroom carpet and peeled her bra away.

  She was his ticket to moving up the food chain, and he was not about to forget it. But when her head thrashed from side to side on the pillow and he slid deep inside the slippery clasp of her body with a powerful thrust of his hips, potential for a Pulitzer prize-winning story was not the uppermost thought on his mind.

  Bluey's was a three ring circus, and Hayley feared she was the dancing bear. She struggled to stay calm while a flood of out-of-town media jockeys jostled for space at the bar, yelling drink orders and attempting, many of them at the top of their lungs, to elicit her life story. They were rude and pushy and showed not the least compunction about elbowing the regular patrons out of their way. Even Marsha and Lucy had a difficult time getting close enough to the bar to place their orders.

  "Hey, Hayley!”

  She looked up and a strobe went off in her face for the third time in as many minutes. The current contender for her attention called, "Have you talked to Senator Jarvis yet?"

  She blinked against the blue spots floating in front of her eyes. But to answer the question, yes. She had taken the senator’s call but told the woman she was not putting herself even more firmly in the paparazzi’s crosshairs to further the senator’s agenda. Jarvis was well known in New Hampshire for trying to get the death penalty back in play.

  Not that she was sharing that conversation with the press.