A hushed stillness enfolded the house as Jake stood over Margot’s bed and watched her sleep. In an hour, the first rays of the sun would touch the sky, but for now only the stars and moon illuminated her bedroom.
Earlier that evening, he’d had to get away from the house and Margot. He’d been too angry, too frustrated, and too damn close to spilling his guts about Miracell, Miltronics, and every sick detail. Jake had a pretty damn good idea Margot didn’t know what was going on, and he wanted to keep it that way. He needed to keep her safe for John. He owed his friend that.
She lay on her side with a cheek pressed to her pillow, exposing the long, smooth column of her throat. Moonlight cast her neck and limbs to cool, silver marble, but he knew her skin would be warm against his hand. The temptation to touch her overwhelmed him. He wanted to stroke his lips and tongue along the sensitive spot below her ear and feel her pulse quicken with desire. Oh, God. How would she react? Would she arch her throat up against his mouth, would her body grow taut beneath him as he buried his hands in her thick, raven hair? He curled his fingers into fists at his sides.
She’d kicked off the top sheet, and her silk gown had twisted up around her thighs and pooled around her hips, leaving a healthy expanse of long, creamy legs.
Jake caved into temptation. Leaning forward, he trailed fingers over the satin skin of her calf, up around to the side of her thigh. She felt beautiful to the touch. He moved his hand up to the curve of her hip, inching the material higher until the fabric bunched up into his palm.
Her scent wrapped around him, womanly and exciting. Breathing deeply, he edged closer and eased down on the side of the bed. As the mattress sighed under his added weight, she shifted and turned onto her back. He stilled. A sigh slipped from her parted lips, but she continued to sleep, oblivious to him and the desire ragging through his body.
He glanced over at her night table and saw the empty wine glass. She was dulling her pain, her anger, all her feelings beneath a haze of alcohol. And there was nothing he could do to stop her.
“Margot,” he breathed her name. “How can I help you when I can’t even help myself?”
~~~~~
It was just past 9:00 in the morning when Margot stepped out of the double doors of the post office. She almost went back inside when she saw Carl leaning a large boned hip against the side of her Cherokee she’d parallel parked along the road. She tightened her grip on the handle of the plastic postal bin she used to mail her book orders.
“Just what I need,” she muttered between stiff lips.
“Hey, Margot.”
“Hi, Carl.”
She hurried past him to the rear of her 4X4. Maybe if she kept moving, he’d take the hint. Nope. No such luck. He was right there beside her when she opened the back hatch and tossed the bin in the back. Carl had a hand on the hatch before she had a chance to close the car or protest.
“Here, let me.”
He slammed it shut with enough force to rock the vehicle.
“How about we go to Pinetop for dinner?” he asked, his breath a cloud of warmth against the frigid air. “Hell knows you don’t get out enough. I bet you can’t remember the last time you went out to a dinner or a movie.” He rocked back on his heels and stuffed his bare hands into the pockets of his navy, down jacket. “It’s not healthy.”
“I’ll be the one to worry about my health, Carl. But thank you.” She added the last for his sister, Joyce.
“Oh, come off it, Margot. What’s a bit of dinner? It’s not like I’m asking for sex.”
She flinched. For some reason she hadn’t expected something like that coming from Carl. He might hit on her, but he’d never been crude. Even if for some bizarre reason she found him wildly attractive, she still wouldn’t be interested in any relationship, especially with a man like Carl. He retained too many antiquated ideas about women. Plus, she’d had more than enough with Malcolm.
“Carl, I’m not interested in dating right now. I’m not ready. It’s too—”
“Soon?” His thick lips thinned. “Give me a break, Margot. It’s been a good two years since you divorced Malcolm and came back here. You can’t live locked up in that house of yours forever. And the drinking sure as hell isn’t helping. The way you’ve been going at it, you’re going to kill yourself. You know John would flip out if he saw you hitting the bottle like you’ve been doing. Joyce’s real worried about you. We all are. You’ve got to cut it out.”
Shock left her momentarily speechless. “I can’t believe Joyce’s been talking to you behind my back! What else have the two of you been talking about? My sex life? Has that also come up? Is that why you mentioned it?”
He raised his hands from his pockets. “Now don’t get all emotional on me. Joyce was just thinking of you.”
As he shifted, the sun glanced off the shield attached to his dark blue jacket, reminding her that he was a cop. It was enough to smother the nasty retort on her tongue. “I’ve got to go. I’m starting to freeze out here.”
She skirted around Carl to get to the driver’s side. Unlocking and opening the 4X4 with a fumbling hand, she jumped inside and slammed the car door right behind her. After starting the Cherokee, she guided it away from the curb with a tight fisted grip on the cold, leather steering wheel. She turned off the main street, and Carl’s pudgy figure disappeared from the rearview mirror.
She couldn’t believe Joyce had opened her mouth to Carl of all people. Granted, he was her brother, but he was also a notorious gossip. Anything Carl heard, he repeated within a twenty-four hour period. Joyce knew that. The whole town probably now knew every miniscule, boring detail of her life.
God, she wondered what everyone in town was saying about her. Was she now the town drunk? The crazy woman up at the house raving on about ghosts and other nonsense? Or the frigid bitch that couldn’t get a date if her life depended on it?
Okay, so maybe she was exaggerating, but hell. It hurt to have her best friend talking about God knew what behind her back. Darn it. Days like today, she wished she’d stayed in Boston where a person could lose themselves in anonymity, not some sick Payton place, where a person stepped out the front door and everyone knew the color of their underwear.
As Margot pulled up the drive, she quickly noted the absence of Jake’s pickup. Now he was a different story. She didn’t know him enough to tell whether or not his words were coated with lies. He was a mystery. And she hated mysteries.
What could he be doing right now? Or for that matter, what in the world had he been doing since he’d arrived at her door step? Margot hadn’t seen him once during the day or heard anyone mention him in town. She would have thought she’d get one or two comments regarding Jake from someone.
Maybe it was about time she asked where he disappeared to during the day. She frowned. He had her constantly thinking, wondering and questioning him. He was in her thoughts far too much. So much so that he was materializing in her dreams. And they weren’t just innocent dreams, she admitted as she slipped from the car. They were vivid, erotic dreams. Even with the snap of winter around her, she felt her face warm with the memory.
In the dead of night, she’d fantasized about him coming to her room. Without a word spoken, she’d sensed not only his desire, but also his need. The taste of his finger upon her lips, the scent of his male body had been so real. At times, she could swear they were a reality and not a fantasy.
Just this morning as the first light of dawn touched the windows, she’d woken. Her sheets had been down around her ankles and her nightgown had twisted and hiked up to her waist. She’d lain there, body flushed, hot and damp, her breasts swollen and heavy, and she’d been overwhelmed with such a frightening feeling of intense desire.
Enough. She closed her eyes against the hunger. It had been too long since she’d slept with a man. Since Malcolm. She hadn’t had the guts to move past the point of friendship with anyone else.
She hurried across the crackling snow and up the steps to the porch. That’s when she saw the front door. She’d thought—no, she knew she’d locked up.
The door now stood ajar, the wood along the jam frayed and splintered. It wouldn’t have taken much for someone to force their way in. What with the wood being old and the lock not the latest technical gadget.
That same someone could be inside the house this very minute. Fear crawled up her spine as she stepped back. She should do the logical, sane thing by getting back in her car. But since when had she ever done anything logical recently?
She stepped gingerly inside and glanced around. Nothing looked touched, but as a precaution she left the front door open. She walked further down the hall and peered into the kitchen. That’s when she saw what they’d done. She stood frozen, as if coated in ice, and as easily shattered.
Whoever had been here was long gone, leaving behind their apathy and malevolence. Cabinets and drawers stood half-opened with pots and pans spilling out from within. Kitchen utensils lay scattered across the counters and floor. The dishes. At least some of the dishes had been left alone. In a daze, she sidestepped a clay pot, shattered and lying on its side, the plant inside uprooted and the dirt splattered across the white linoleum. Glass crackled beneath her feet.
Why? Why would someone do this?
She swallowed. They couldn’t have gone through the whole house. Raped every room. Could they? Pivoting, she hurried from the kitchen, the need to know catapulting her down the hall and into her den, her sanctuary, the place she could hide and—
Her worse fears struck her head on.
Shelves lay barren. Books and more books had been tossed onto the floor, their pages creased and mangled from others piled on top of them, their boards bent backward, ruining fragile spines and hinges.
“Margot?”
She opened and closed her hands. Pain closed around her throat and strangled the ability to speak. She stepped over a mound of modern fiction hardbacks and worked her way to the corner of the room and her personal bookcase. These were the books she’d put aside, the rare, expensive volumes she’d kept for sentimental and investment reasons. The window case had been shattered, the lock meaningless. Shards of glass dotted the carpet and volumes.
The person or persons who’d swept through the house had turned vicious, even vindictive here. She lifted a book on top of a pile of ruined volumes. The boards had been ripped from their bindings, the pages torn, the jagged papers flung everywhere.
“Margot!”
The sound of steps rushed across the hall.
“Oh, no!” Joyce cried from somewhere behind her. “What happened? Who did this?”
“I—” Margot cleared her throat and dropped the book to the floor. “I don’t know.”
“We need to call Carl. Get him over here. Now.”
“No.”
Joyce’s raised her brows. “What do you mean, ‘No’?”
“Just that.” She rubbed her mouth with a palm. “I don’t want everyone knowing about this. I don’t want every little detail of what happened here brandished about.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Someone just trashed your house. Are you seriously going to let them get away with it? They could come back. This time you might be in the house when they do.” Joyce gasped. “You weren’t here when—”
“No.” Margot sighed. She gripped the bridge of her nose with a thumb and forefinger and closed her eyes briefly. “You’re right. I hate the idea, but I do need to report it. At least for insurance purposes. It’s just I don’t trust Carl to keep it quiet. Or you for that matter right now. You’ve been talking about me to your brother behind my back. Things I thought were private—things I thought were just between the two of us.”
Joyce flushed. “Yes, well. I’m concerned. We all are. You’ve been acting stranger than—” She bit her lip.
“Stranger than normal?” Margot finished for her. She should feel hurt, offended, but strangely didn’t.
“That came out the wrong way.”
“Yes, well, why don’t you call your brother?” she asked instead of getting into a confrontation. Now wasn’t the time. “While you’re doing that I’ll go see what upstairs looks like.”
Margot went through the second floor, mindful of not touching or moving anything for Carl. She found Marmaduke, safe and unharmed, hidden under a chair in one of the guest bedrooms. Thank goodness the vandals hadn’t hit that room or the other guest rooms. But they’d hit her bedroom. Hard. With complete carelessness and disregard for anyone else, they’d shoved her mattress to one side, upended drawers and tossed her clothing aside. Tampons, hair ribbons, sheer, dainty nylons and undergarments littered the floor. Anger, hot and corrosive, eroded away the hollow, numb feeling in her gut.
Why? What had she ever done to this person to make them lash out at her like this?
When she came back down, Joyce was waiting by the base of the stairs. Margot saw the question in her eyes. “There’s three bedrooms upstairs. They went to work on my room but didn’t mess with the others. I don’t know why.”
“Maybe they heard your Cherokee and took off before you came in,” Joyce suggested
“Is anything missing?” Carl asked from the front entrance. He rubbed the dirt and snow from his boots onto the mat. The front door still stood open, allowing winter air to sweep inside and chill Margot’s already cold body.
“Nothing that I can tell.” She rubbed her arms. “The TV and radio are still here.”
“What about guns?”
“No. I’ve always hated the things.”
Carl disappeared into the den. “Holy shit.”
A few minutes later he came out with a grim expression. “It almost looks like they were looking for something. That or they’ve got it in for you real bad.”
Margot grasped the glossy wood top of the stair, newel post.
“You don’t have any enemies that would do something like this, do you?” Carl asked.
She rested her chin against the top of her hand, closed her eyes and tried to think. It took all of a second to come up with a name. Tension rolled through her. “There’s Malcolm. He’s been in town.”
“He’s got a temper.” Frowning, Carl rubbed the back of his neck.
“But it doesn’t seem his style,” Margot quickly argued.
Carl’s gaze narrowed. “What about this guy? This renter of yours Joyce has told me about? Where’s he at?”
“He’s usually gone during the day.”
“Where to?” He shifted and hitched up the side of his pants with his belt loop. “Seems awfully strange. Why hasn’t anyone mentioned him in town?”
“I don’t know!” She shook her head, getting completely frustrated. She hated how Carl had a very valid point and she couldn’t give him a straight answer. “I don’t keep tabs on him. He’s just renting a room for a couple of weeks. He knew Johnny. And he needed a place to stay.”
“He did? What’s his name?”
“Jake Preston.”
“Well, I’ve yet to see him here or in town. No one’s mentioned him or seen him either.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“Of course he isn’t,” Joyce cut in.
“Now, don’t get emotional on me, Margot. I’m just trying to get a picture here.” Frowning, he rubbed his chin slowly. “Let’s see. What else can you tell me about this Jake?”
Margot leaned heavier on the newel post. She didn’t know a thing other than what Jake had told her. God, she was beginning to feel and sound stupid. “He worked at Miltronics. The same place as Johnny and Malcolm.”
“Is that it?”
Carl didn’t say it but it was there in his face. Also Joyce’s. Skepticism. “Yes.”
That one word tasted like curdled milk. She was coming out looking like a complete flake.
“So you’re renting a room to a guy you hardly know. Seems to me like you’re not making very good judgment calls these days.”
“You might be right, but do you have to point it out?” Margot straightened. “You know, I’m getting sick of this attitude of yours.”
He looked almost as frustrated as she felt. “What do you expect, Margot. You’re not helping me out here. This Jake—no one’s seen. You’ve talked about him but no one’s yet laid an eye on him. It’s not like he can lose himself in Greyson. People notice someone new. Maybe that bottle of yours is finally—”
“Carl!” Joyce protested. “That’s enough! You’re being far too hard on her.”
Margot slapped a palm against the newel post. “You don’t believe me! Well, let me show you something, Mister!” She pushed off the wood beam and strode down the hall to the room Jake had been using.
At the doorway, she flung her hand out and pointed. “See? Does that look like my imagination?” For just a moment, one split second of time, Margot did wonder, until she glanced inside. The vandals had also struck this room. The mattress sagged half off the box spring and onto the floor, clothing littered the floor, but the dresser drawers looked untouched. Almost as if she’d interrupted them in the middle of their destruction.
“Hmmm.” Carl was back to frowning again. “How well does he know Malcolm?”
Again she really couldn’t answer him. “I didn’t get the impression they were real close.”
Joyce grasped her brother’s elbow. “Come on, Carl. Let’s give it a rest. Margot’s had her whole house destroyed. Being grilled is the last thing she needs right now.”
“Just do what you have to and please go.” Margot followed them back down the hall and to the front door.
“I’ll be out of your hair once I dust around this door and a couple of other places.” He rubbed his chin. “You’re going to have to get a new lock and fix that door jam.”
Margot sighed. “I’ll give Charlie a call. He’s the best, or should I say the only, handyman we have around here.”
Joyce wrapped an arm around her. “While you’re on the phone, I’ll start cleaning up the downstairs guest bedroom.”
Less than an hour later, Carl left, but Joyce remained to help. By late afternoon, though, Margot had managed to get Joyce out the front door. She’d wanted to help more, but Margot wouldn’t have it. The locksmith had come and gone, while the kitchen and a good part of the downstairs had been cleaned. They hadn’t worked on her bedroom or den. Margot wanted to do those on her own. That way if she broke down, she’d do it privately.
From the kitchen window, she watched Joyce’s Land Cruiser disappear through the trees as she gripped the counter with two hands. With everyone gone and time to herself, the events of the day were crowding in on her.
She didn’t want to go in the den, didn’t want to face the destruction...and the pain that would come with it. But she had no choice. She needed to make some sense of all the chaos. Her computer was waiting with orders. Orders that paid the utilities and the food in her kitchen.
She grabbed a full bottle of Beaujolais and a wine glass. She needed something to help her through that room. To hell with what people thought of her drinking. She didn’t give a rat’s ass. Let them judge. They hadn’t walked in her shoes.
Stepping over to the doorway of the den, she faltered. The magnitude of the mess spilling across the room slapped her with vicious hands. To think someone she might know did this. But could it be Malcolm? Was this his way of getting back at her? He’d never forgiven her for being the first to file for the divorce. His damn ego might have spurred him on. After all, he’d always had to have the last word. Maybe this was his way of showing her once and for all.
Still standing in the hall, she glanced over at the guest bedroom. Could Jake be behind the vandalism? His room, although messy, didn’t compare to the magnitude of the den’s destruction. If he did happen to be the vandal, he would never have left his room untouched, not if he had an ounce of intelligence. Suspicion would have pointed to him otherwise.
She strode into the guest bedroom. She put the wine bottle and glass on the dresser and eyed the room with belligerence.
Did Jake have something against her? If he was the person behind this, what could she have ever done to have him feel like he had to hit back at her? Or was he in fact searching for something? But to be so vindictive about it seemed so sick, so personal.
She grabbed the neck of the wine bottle, uncorked it, and filled her glass. She blinked back tears. Whoever did this wasn’t going to make her cry.
Glass in hand, she walked over to the door leading into the adjoining bathroom. The small window across the sink and mirror did little for illumination, so she flipped the switch, flooding harsh, florescent light into the cubicle. Toothbrush, mint toothpaste, a black comb rested along the lip of the porcelain sink. Nothing unusual and nothing here that someone could hide.
Then she glanced at the opaque, ice blue shower curtain drawn completely across the bathing area. Someone might have slipped back into the house after Carl had left. They could have hidden in the bathroom while she’d been cleaning another part of the house with Joyce. Someone could be behind the shower curtain right now.