After the Night (15 page)

Very quietly, handling everything through the agency so her name didn’t appear anywhere that it might cause an alert, she got the utilities turned on, the house cleaned, and gleefully shipped her furniture to her new home. Only a month after Gray had run her out of town for the second time, Faith pulled her car into the driveway of her house and .looked at it with extreme satisfaction.

She hadn’t bought a pig in a poke. Mr. Bible had arranged for her to look at photos of the house, both inside and out. The house was small, only five rooms, and had been built back in the fifties, but it had been remodeled and modernized with an eye toward selling it. The previous owner had done a good job; the new front porch went all the way across the front, and there was a porch swing at one end to lure the new inhabitants out to enjoy the good weather. Ceiling fans at each end of the porch guaranteed that the heat would seldom become too uncomfortable. Each room inside also had a ceiling fan.

Both bedrooms were the same size, so she had chosen the back one for herself and converted the front one into a home office. There was only one bath, but she was only one person, so she didn’t expect to have a problem with that. The living room and dining room were pleasant, but the best thing about the house was the kitchen. Evidently it had been remodeled several years before, because she couldn’t imagine anyone spending the money to customize a kitchen when a more standard approach would have made the house just as saleable and cost a lot less. Someone had loved to cook. There was a six-eye cooktop, and built-in microwave and conventional ovens. Floor-to-ceiling cupboards all along one wall provided enough storage space for a year’s worth of food, if she so chose. Instead of a work island, a six-foot butcher-block table occupied the middle of the
room, providing plenty of work space for any culinary adventures. Faith wasn’t that enthralled with cooking herself, but she liked the room. She was, in fact, thrilled with the entire house. It was the first place she had ever lived that belonged to her; apartments didn’t count, because she had rented those. This house was hers. She had a real home.

She was fizzing with internal delight when she drove into Prescott to stock up on groceries, and take care of two necessary errands. Her first stop was the courthouse, where she bought a Louisiana tag for her car and applied for her Louisiana driver’s license. Next was the grocery store. It was a subtle pleasure to shop without thought of cost in the same store where the owner had once followed her around every time she came in, eyeing every move she made to make certain she didn’t slip something into her pocket and walk out without paying for it. Morgan had been his name, she remembered, Ed Morgan. His youngest son had been in Jodie’s class.

Leisurely she selected fruit and produce, putting each selection in a plastic bag and twisting a green tie around the bag to close it. A gray-haired man in a stained apron came out of the stockroom carrying a crate of bananas, which he began arranging on an almost empty display shelf. He glanced at her, then looked back, his eyes widening in disbelief.

Though his hair was a great deal thinner and what was left had changed color, Faith had no trouble recognizing the man about whom she had just been thinking. "Hello, Mr. Morgan," she said pleasantly as she wheeled her buggy past him. "How are you?"

"R-Renee," he sputtered, and something in the way he said her mother’s name made Faith freeze inside, and look at him with new eyes. God, not him, too! Well, why not? Guy Rouillard hadn’t always been available, and Renee wasn’t the type of woman to deny herself.

Her smile faded, and her voice cooled. "No, not Renee. I’m Faith, the youngest daughter." She was incensed on behalf of her childhood self, constantly humiliated by being treated like a thief, when all the while the man who had
made such a production of following her around in the store had been part of the pack of hounds baying after her mother.

She pushed the buggy on down the aisle. It wasn’t a large store, so she heard the flurry of voices as he hurried to tell his wife who she was. Not long afterward, she became aware that she had picked up a shadow. She didn’t recognize the teenage boy, also wearing a long, stained apron, who blushed uncomfortably when she glanced at him, but it was obvious he’d been told to make certain everything went into the buggy and not her purse.

Her temper flared, but she held it in tight control and didn’t allow herself to be hurried. When she had gotten everything on her list, she wheeled the buggy to the checkout counter and began unloading it.

Mrs. Morgan had been operating the cash register when Faith had entered the store, but Mr. Morgan had taken over the duty and his wife was watching intently from the small office cubicle. He eyed the groceries she was unloading. "You’d better have the money to pay for all this," he said unpleasantly. "I’m real careful who I take a check from."

"I always pay cash," Faith retorted coolly. "I’m careful who I let see the number of my checking account."

It was a moment before he realized he had been insulted in kind, and he flushed darkly. "Watch your mouth. I don’t have to take that kind of lip in my own store, especially from the likes of you."

"Really." She gave him a smile and kept her voice low. "You weren’t that particular when it came to my mother, were you?"

The flush faded as abruptly as it had come, leaving him pale and sweating, and he cast a swift glance toward his wife. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Fine. See that the subject never comes up again." She pulled out her wallet and stood waiting. He began pulling the items down the counter, punching in prices as he went. Faith watched each price as he rang it up, and stopped him once. "Those apples are a dollar twenty-nine a pound, not a dollar sixty-nine."

He flushed again, furious that she had caught him in an
error. At least, she assumed it was an error, rather than deliberate cheating. She would make certain she checked every item on the sales receipt before leaving the store. Let him get a taste of what it was like to be automatically assumed dishonest. Once she would have backed down, humiliated to the core, but those days were long past.

When he rang up the total, she opened her wallet and pulled out six twenty-dollar bills. Normally her grocery bill was less than half that, but she had let herself run out of a lot of things rather than going to the trouble of moving them, so she had to restock. She saw him eyeing the cash left in her wallet, and knew the story would fly around town that Faith Devlin had come back, and was flashing a roll that would choke a horse. No one would think she had come by it honestly.

She couldn’t tell herself that she didn’t care what the townspeople thought; she always had. That was one of the reasons she’d come back, to prove to them, and herself, that not all Devlins were trash. She knew in her mind that she was respectable, but she didn’t know it in her heart yet, and wouldn’t until the folks in her hometown accepted her. She couldn’t divorce herself from Prescott; this town had helped shape who she was as a person, and her roots went deep. But wanting acceptance from the people here didn’t mean she would let anyone insult her and get away with it. As a child she had been quietly obstinate about going her own way, but in the twelve years since she had lived here, she had grown up and learned how to stand up for herself.

The same boy who had followed her in the store carried the bags out to her car. He was about sixteen, she guessed; his joints still had the looseness of childhood, and his feet and hands were too big for the rest of him. "Are you related to the Morgans?" she asked as they walked across the parking lot, with him pushing the buggy.

He blushed at being personally addressed. "Uh, yeah. They’re my grandparents."

"What’s your name?"

"Jason."

"I’m Faith Hardy. I used to live here, and I’ve just moved back." She stopped at her car and unlocked the trunk. Like
most teenage boys, he was interested in anything with four wheels on it, and gave it a good look. She had bought a solid, reliable sedan rather than a sports car; the sedan was better for business, and it took a certain type of attitude to drive around in a sports car anyway, an attitude Faith had never had. She had always been older than her years, and stability, dependability, were far more important to her than speed and flashy looks. But the car, a dark, sophisticated European green, was less than a year old and had a certain style to it, for all its reliability.

"Nice car," Jason felt moved to comment as he transferred the groceries from the buggy to the trunk.

"Thanks." She tipped him, and he looked at the dollar in surprise. By that, she could deduce that either tipping wasn’t the norm in Prescott, or people usually carried out their own groceries and he had been pressed into duty so he could see if she kept the inside of her car clean, or something like that. She suspected the latter; the nosiness of smalltown people knew no bounds.

A small, white Cadillac wheeled into the parking lot as Faith was unlocking her car door, and abruptly braked as it came even with her. She glanced up and saw a woman staring at her, dumbstruck. It took a moment before she recognized Monica Rouillard, or whatever her name was now. The two women faced each other, and Faith remembered how Monica had always gone out of her way to be nasty to the Devlins, unlike Gray, who had pretty much treated them normally until Guy had disappeared. Despite herself, Faith felt a flash of pity; if her suspicions were right, their father was dead, and they had gone all these years without knowing what had happened to him. The Devlins had suffered because of Guy’s actions, but the Rouillards had suffered, too.

Even in the shadows of the car, Faith could see how pale and strained Monica looked as she stared at her. This was one confrontation that would be best postponed; though she intended to stand her ground, there was no need to flaunt her presence in the Rouillards’ faces. Turning away, she got into her car and started the engine. Monica was blocking her so she couldn’t back out, but the space in front of her was
empty, so there was no need. She simply drove out through the empty parking slot, leaving Monica still sitting there staring after her.

When she got home, she found several faxes waiting for her, all from Margot. She put up the groceries before settling down in the office to take care of whatever problems had cropped up. She enjoyed the travel industry; it wasn’t without its share of headaches and crises, but for the most part, by the very nature of the business, the customers were upbeat and excited. The agency’s job was to make sure their vacation tours were properly booked, with reliable accommodations. They gently steered vacationers away from inappropriate tour packages; for instance, a family with small children probably wouldn’t be all that pleased with a cruise on a party ship geared more toward adult pleasures. Her employees knew how to handle things like that; most of the problems that came Faith’s way were of a different nature. There was a payroll to meet, tax forms to complete, an unending parade of paper. Faith had decided that she would still handle the payroll, with the pertinent information faxed to her from the four office locations every Monday morning. She would do the paperwork, prepare the checks, and Express Mail them on Wednesday morning. It was a workable solution, and the convenience of working at home delighted her.

The biggest inconvenience was still doing her banking in Dallas, both business and personal, but she had decided against transferring her funds to Prescott or even Baton Rouge; the Rouillard influence had long arms. She hadn’t checked to see if the family owned the new bank in town, because it hadn’t really mattered; whether they owned it or not, Gray would have a lot of pull. There were rules and laws in banking, but in this part of the state the Rouillards were a law unto themselves. The balance in her accounts, even copies of her canceled checks, would be easy for Gray to get. She had no doubt that he could also cause trouble for her by delaying credit for checks deposited until the last possible minute, and bouncing her own checks if he could. No, it was best to keep her account in Dallas. Gravel crunched in the driveway and she looked out the
window to see a sleek, gunmetal gray Jaguar come to a stop. Resigned, she let the curtain fall back into place and pushed her chair away from the desk. She didn’t have to see who got out of the car to know who had come calling, just as she knew this wasn’t the Welcome Wagon.

Going into the living room, she opened the door as she heard footsteps on the porch. "Hello, Gray. Please come in. I see you’ve given up your ‘Vettes."

Surprise flickered in his eyes as he stepped over the threshold, immediately overwhelming her with his size. He hadn’t expected her to calmly invite him inside, the rabbit offering the hospitality of its burrow to the wolf. "I’m slower in a lot of things than I used to be," he drawled.

It was on the tip of her tongue to say, "Better, too, I suppose," but she bit the words back. She doubted that Gray Rouillard would be making suggestive remarks to her, of all people, and if she took it as such, he would think it was just what he might have expected from a Devlin. There was no room for normal flirtatious byplay between the two of them.

The weather was hot this late spring day, and Gray was dressed in a loose, white cotton shirt that was open at the throat, and khaki linen trousers. Curly black chest hair was visible in the open vee of the shirt, and Faith forced herself to look away, conscious of a sudden difficulty in breathing. He brought with him the fresh, earthy scent of clean sweat and the animal muskiness of man. She never had been able to decide what color his scent was, she thought dazedly, inhaling his rich, subtle odor. His physical impact made her senses reel, just as it always had. Nothing had changed. It hadn’t been the unexpectedness of seeing him the last time that had so shaken her; the old reactions were still there, still potent, undimmed by time and maturity. She looked at him with hidden, helpless rage. God, this man had all but ground her into the dirt, and wouldn’t hesitate to do it again; what was
wrong
with her that she couldn’t see him without feeling that hot, automatic tingle of excitement?