A Smile as Sweet as Poison (20 page)

Hazel’s throat threatened to close up. “He really can’t stay—”

“Oh, it’s no problem.” He shifted out of the way of the open car door and nudged it shut. “I’d love that, ma’am. Hazel?”

Trapped between a rock and the proverbial hard place, his gaze licking the back of her neck and heat radiating from his body to hers, to the crisp, blossom-scented air around them, Hazel clamped her mouth shut. Lack of protest always equaled consent, in Malcolm’s book.

He trailed her into the house.

Chapter Fourteen

Glasses of lemonade and plates of cold cuts and fresh summer vegetables arranged between them, Hazel and Malcolm sat on wicker armchairs in the den. The cresting moon and the lamps from the living room bathed them in a faint, discreet glow. Neither spoke until Inès had finished laying out the picnic spread.

“What do you want?” Hazel volleyed once they were alone. She barely resisted the urge to bolt out of her seat. The door was still open. She could make a run for it—and after that? All escape routes ended with her having to face her parents. With having to explain.

Malcolm took a sip of lemonade and smacked his full, handsome lips. “To catch up. I must say, when I heard you ran off to LA, I was so wounded. You’re not the west coast bimbo type—”

“The fact that you think you know what
type
of woman I am is hilarious,” Hazel snorted. Except she wasn’t laughing. She’d never been able to deride Malcolm like Sadie did her Dominants—the good and the bad ones alike. His aura of authority frightened her. His presence had always quelled her flippancy. One look and she was cowed, ready to bow and scrape until he forgave her.

More often than not, he’d handed out his pardons by having her do something particularly awful to Penelope. Or the other way around. It had worked every single time.

“Of course I know,” he scoffed. “I
made
you.”

His cool self-assurance reminded Hazel of Dylan on those few occasions when they butted heads. Perhaps if she hadn’t met Dylan, if she hadn’t taken him up on his offer, she wouldn’t have known the difference between strength and ego.

“How’s that?” Hazel wondered aloud. “You think I wouldn’t have discovered that I get off on a paddle or a whip without you?”

Malcolm bit into a slice of cheese, as nonchalantly as if they were talking about the weather. “You, with all those Missouri Princess Pageant medals?
Please
. You’d be married to some all-American white-bread imitation of daddy dearest, pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen.”

Hazel toed off her flats and folded one bare ankle over her knee. It stung that he would use something she had confessed to him in a moment of weakness to mock her. It was no less than what she expected of Malcolm.

“I suppose it’s not
much
better to know you’re slumming it in California,” Malcolm went on, “but at least your life isn’t boring. Tell me about those men of yours. Two at a time—you must have learned a thing or two since college.”

I had to learn to trust again, yeah. You took that from me.

She couldn’t beat Malcolm at his game. She had tried, over the years, to make him see how much he’d hurt her. She had even pleaded with him to take down the videos, when they first surfaced.

He’d claimed his laptop had been stolen, and all the home movies they’d made vanished with it. He told Hazel it wasn’t his fault.

“What’s it to you? You have Penelope. You’re happily married… My love life has nothing to do with yours anymore.”

“You’ll always be one of my girls. Penelope understands that.”

Penelope would gladly chop me up and feed me to the birds
. Hazel flexed her hands against the armrests of her seat. “Do you love her?”

“With all my heart.”

“And did you ever love me?”

Malcolm seemed surprised at the question.

Hazel went on before he could answer, “Because if you did, you’ll leave me alone from now on. Whatever we had, good and bad and everything in between—that’s over. Let me suffer the consequences of my choices in LA.”
Alone. Without you. Without the reminder of every wrong choice I made
. She was wary of begging. Malcolm could be so volatile that he’d as soon accept her pleas, magnanimous to the last, as accuse her of making him out to be some kind of monster.

He was silent for a long moment, tearing a slice of supple, juicy roast to pieces with his fingertips. When he spoke at last, the cadence of his voice was almost melodious. “You really do think the worst of me, don’t you? But if that’s what you want—if you think you’re better off in California, with people who don’t know how to appreciate you…” He shot her a smile. “You have my promise that I’ll stay out of the way.”

Hazel thought of snake charmers, her gaze not once leaving his. “Thank you,” she said, as if she meant it. She didn’t believe a single word.

* * * *

Somewhere, an alarm was ringing. Hazel pulled the pillow over her head in an attempt to drown out the sound. It didn’t work. The din slithered under the gaps between cotton case and top sheet to wage violent, bloody war against her eardrums.

Defeated, Hazel shoved the pillow aside.

Through narrowed eyes, she noticed her smart phone buzzing on the bedside table. It took a few fumbling tries before she could snatch it up successfully.

“Hello?” she muttered, holding the handset flat against her cheek.

“Rise and shine,” Ward sing-songed on the other end. “It’s almost seven!”

Hazel peeked at her Disney-branded alarm clock. The big hand read five to. “G’bye, Ward.”

“Wait, no. Don’t hang up! We’re at Penman.”

Nothing he was saying made any sense. Hazel frowned with eyes closed. “That supposed to mean something to me?”

“Give me the phone,” Dylan said on the other end, his voice slightly muffled. “Hazel, hi. Did we wake you?”

Hazel disregarded the question. “What’s Ward talking about?”
And why is he so cheerful at seven in the morning?
She regularly took comfort in his morning blues—they made hers seem so much less pathetic.

“I was going to call you when we made it to a hotel… We’re in Missouri.”

“Tell her about the plane,” Ward urged in the background.

Hazel jolted upright. “What do you mean… We said
Friday.”
And we said St. Louis.
Or she’d said it and they had agreed. It was almost the same thing. She dragged a hand over her face, brushing back tangled curls. “You’re serious.”

“Like a heart attack,” Dylan confirmed. At least
he
wasn’t gloating. “We’re close to Dunby, we wanted to come pick you up, for Friday… Do you know the Penman? It’s a small airstrip—”

“Yeah.” The puzzle pieces clicked into place, revealing a whole at once vague and electrifying. They were here. They were maybe twenty minutes out of town. “What did Ward do,” she wondered, already kicking off the covers, “hijack the flight to St. Louis?”

“Ah, no. He flew us down.”

“Ward flew a plane.”

Dylan hummed in acquiescence.

“He has a
jet
,” Hazel clarified, finding the need to spell it out before she could digest the news. “How… Why am I surprised? Of course he does.”
CEO,
a pedantic little voice whispered at the back of her mind.
Ritchie Rich.

In an attempt to play it off, Dylan said, “Don’t get your hopes up. It’s only a Cessna.”

“Hey!”

Ward’s protest triggered a soft laugh from Dylan. “I know it’s not what we talked about,” he told Hazel, “but we thought we might as well make a holiday out of it.”

“The way business has been going,” Ward groused in the background.

Dylan ignored him. “Are you very angry?”

Standing barefoot in front of her wardrobe, Hazel almost missed the question. “Hmm, what? No…” It was a knee-jerk reply, a feature of her adoration, but she was surprised to find it was also true. “Wait, if I say I am, will you make it up to me?”

“Any way you want,” Dylan promised.

“Give me half an hour.”

“For what?”

Hazel seized a pair of jeans and a tank top and tossed them onto the unmade bed. “What kind of hostess would I be if I let you two fend for yourselves?” She could be ready in ten minutes.

She hadn’t allowed herself to think of how much she’d missed Dylan and Ward until this very moment. The need to see them, to hold them close erased all other thought.

It was a race to get ready once she’d hung up the phone. She showered hastily, shivering beneath the bracingly icy spray because she couldn’t wait for the hot water boiler in the basement to kick in. A cursory tug of the brush through her hair and she was pulling her clothes on, then hastily slipping sneakers onto her feet. There would be time to tidy up later.

“Where are you going?” a voice stopped her when she was halfway down the stairs. Her mother.

Hazel trooped down the final few steps at a more sedate pace, pulse still thumping wildly in her ears. “Out.”

She had forgotten that her parents were early risers. Her father drank his first and only coffee of the day before dawn. Her mother was an adept of big breakfasts, to be enjoyed leisurely before school or work.

Seeing her parents at the dining table now brought back memories of trudging down in the mornings as a kid and being told not to slouch, not to neglect chewing her food. She remembered being given the same jam-filled buns as her brother for a while, allowed the same delicious spreads. Then middle school had rolled around and their mother had decided Hazel’s eating habits required correction. Raw apples had replaced cinnamon toast. Skim-free milk had replaced the creamy hot cocoa she used to drink.

“Actually,” Hazel said, blinking away the lingering hurt, “can I have the car?”

“Which one?” her father wanted to know.

“Why?” asked Mrs. Whitley.

Neither of them thought to grant her the keys without prior interrogation. Trust was costly in this house and Hazel had little credit left with either one of her folks.

“Never mind, I’ll run to Buddy’s and borrow the truck.” If there was one thing Dunby residents had in abundance, it was gas-guzzling cars. With virtually no other way to escape small town isolation, they built large garages and spent their Sundays scrubbing hoods and windshields.

Hazel had less-than-fond memories of doing such chores growing up, always with the hope that she would be allowed to drive around as a reward. It had rarely worked out that way.

“Wait,” her father grunted, when she made to turn for the door. “Keys to the Durango.” He held them out by the loop of the keychain.

Half-expecting him to snatch them back once she’d approached, Hazel accepted the offer.

“Thanks.”

“Fill her up before you come back.” Mr. Whitley went back to his breakfast—mind bogglingly, what looked like a plate of steamed vegetables and breaded tofu.

From the corner of her eye, Hazel saw her mother’s gaze linger on her. But there was no addendum, no
you can take the car if
. Hazel turned on her heel and stalked out of the dining room before these pod people were replaced by the parents she had grown up with.

* * * *

The airstrip came into view long before Hazel got close enough to the airfield to look for a parking spot. There were plenty among the weeds and brambles. Fields bordered the ribbon of the road on either side, some left to turn fallow, others bursting with leafy greens. Hazel maneuvered the Dodge as best she could, only vaguely aware of the proportions of the car around her.

There was no one barrier at the airstrip and no one to stop her driving right onto the tarmac. A few small planes lay parked in the single hangar, tarp canopies fluttering in the early morning breeze.

Hazel drove as close to the one on the tarmac as she dared and killed the engine.

“Dylan!” she shouted, all but launching herself through the driver’s side door.

The nearby hangar echoed with her cry. Dylan’s answering
oomph
as he caught her in his arms was comparatively polite.

“And he says he has no luck with the ladies!” Ward groused from where he was leaning against the side of the plane in a charcoal shirt with the sleeves rucked up to the elbows. His suit jacket drooped, folded, from one shoulder. He looked as if he’d just left the office.

The jet behind him was nothing to scoff at. While low on the ground, its wingspan was impressive. Hazel counted three windows on the side facing her. She hadn’t known Ward collected toys that could literally kill him. She should’ve expected it. He was the ‘live fast, die young’ type. She told herself that wasn’t why she liked him.

Hazel rocked back on the balls of her feet, a retort tangling in her throat as Dylan kissed her.

He kissed her softly, like he did in the mornings, when she was too groggy to respond, or after a scene, when Hazel was so greedy for tenderness.

“Hey,” he murmured, pulling back.

“Hey…”

Dylan grinned, his cheeks dimpling. “Nice car.”

“You think you’re the only ones who can shock a girl?”

“Oh,
this
girl is very shocked,” Ward said, feigning a gasp and a fluttering of lashes as he pressed a hand to his cheek in mock astonishment.

Hazel tipped her head against Dylan’s shoulder. “Someone had their Wheaties this morning.”

“Try a protein bar and more Red Bull than I’ve ever seen a man drink in an hour.”

Dylan’s report was met with an eye roll as Ward pushed off the white-painted hull of the jet. “The other option was falling asleep at the wheel, so to speak. Then who’d you be kissing?” he asked Hazel. “Don’t answer that.”

He claimed her mouth hard, something greedy and punishing in the flick of his tongue against her teeth. Hazel didn’t even think to deny him access. She had missed their hands on her, their body heat cocooning her on both sides. But this wasn’t the place she wanted to make up for the lacking. She turned her head slowly, giving Ward plenty of warning before she pulled away.

“How about we get you some breakfast? I know a place not far from here…”