After the Night (32 page)

He lowered his head and kissed her, the pressure hard and ravaging, while he tugged her blouse loose from the waistband of her skirt. When it was free, he thrust his hand beneath the cloth, burrowing under her bra to close his fingers on the satiny mound of her bare breast. "You know what I want," he said roughly, moving more fully onto her and pushing his muscular legs between hers to make a place for himself.

She knew. She wanted it too, so fiercely that the need almost obliterated all other considerations. His callused fingers plucked at her nipple, rolling it between finger and thumb. She wanted his mouth there, sucking strongly. She wanted him to take her, here on the grass with the hot sun burning down on their bare bodies. She wanted
him,
forever.

"Tell me," he said. "Tell me why." The words were muffled against her throat as he trailed kisses down to her collarbone.

She blinked, staring up at the clouds in confusion. Then the meaning of the words washed over her like a dash of ice water. He wanted her – the thick ridge of proof pushed against her loins – but while she had been lost in the fog of desire, his brain had been clear, still working, still trying to get answers.

With a hiss of rage she erupted, shoving against him, kicking. He rolled off of her and sat up, looking like a half-naked savage with his hair tangled around his face and his dark eyes narrowed with dangerous lust.

"You bastard!" she spat, so angry she was quivering. She surged to her knees, hands clenched into fists as she fought the urge to hurl herself at him. Now wasn’t the time to challenge him physically, not with his entire big body taut with the need to mate. Control, his and hers, was stretched to a hairsbreadth; the least pressure would snap it. He waited, poised to meet her attack, and she saw the sexual anticipation hot in his eyes. For a long moment they faced each other, until gradually she forced herself to relax. There was nothing to be gained in this confrontation.

There was nothing to be said, either. Perhaps she hadn’t exactly started the fire, but she had certainly fanned the flames by caressing his nipples the way she had. If things had gone beyond what she wanted, she had only herself to
blame.

At last she got to her feet, moving stiffly. Her skirt was torn, her panty hose shredded down one leg. She turned away, only to find herself caught again, this time by a handful of skirt. "I’ll take you back," he said. "Let me get
the horse." "Thank you, but I’d rather walk," she replied, the words
as stiff as her body.

"I didn’t ask what you wanted. I said I’ll take you back. You shouldn’t be wandering around in the woods by yourself." Not trusting her to remain there if he released her, he began dragging her along in his wake.

"I wandered around them by myself for over half my life," she growled.

"Maybe so, but you aren’t doing it now." He slanted a brief, hard glance her way. "It’s my land, and I make the
rules."

He kept his fist twisted in her skirt, so she was obliged to keep step with him or have her clothes torn off. They walked past the boathouse and around the slough, a distance of about a hundred yards, to where Gray had hobbled the stallion so he could graze. At his whistle, the big, dark brown animal began moving toward him. To her dismay, there was no saddle anywhere in evidence.

"You rode him bareback?" she asked uneasily.

His dark eyes glinted. "I won’t let you fall."

She didn’t know a lot about horses, having never been on one, but she did know that stallions were fractious animals, difficult to control. She tried to back away as the horse ambled closer, but Gray’s grip on her skirt kept her at his side.

"Don’t be afraid. He’s the sweetest-tempered stallion I’ve ever seen, or I wouldn’t be riding him without a saddle." The horse came within reach and he caught the halter, crooning praise into the pricked ears.

"I’ve never been on a horse," she admitted, staring up at the big head as it lowered. Velvety lips whuffled at her arm, scooped-out nostrils flaring as he caught her scent. Hesitantly she put out her hand and stroked above his nose.

"Then your first ride will be on a Thoroughbred," Gray said, and lifted her onto the broad back. She clutched at the thick mane, alarmed by the height at which she found herself, while the living platform beneath her moved restlessly.

Gray gathered the reins, then caught two handfuls of mane and swung up behind her. The stallion skittered beneath the extra weight, making Faith catch her breath, but Gray’s touch, and the sound of his voice, soothed him immediately.

"Where did you leave your car?" he asked.

"On the last curve before you get to the shack," she replied, and those were the only words spoken during the ride. Gray guided the horse through the trees, avoiding low-hanging limbs, walking him around obstacles. Faith held on, acutely aware of Gray’s bare chest against her back, and of the way her buttocks were nestled against his crotch. His muscular thighs hugged her hips, and she felt them clenching and relaxing as he guided the horse. They reached the road far too quickly, but in another sense the journey had taken a small eternity.

He reined in beside her car and swung to the ground, then reached up to catch her under the arms and lift her down. Suddenly alarmed that she might have lost her keys in the scuffle, she patted her skirt pocket, and heard the reassuring rattle. She didn’t want to look at him, so she took out the keys and turned to unlock the car.

"Faith."

She hesitated, then turned the key in the lock and opened the door. He stepped forward, and the expression in his eyes made her grateful for the car door between them.

"Stay off my property," he said evenly. "If I catch you on Rouillard land again, I’m going to give you the fucking you’ve been asking for."

The next day, Faith found the note inside her car, lying on the driver’s seat. She saw the folded piece of paper and picked it up, wondering what she had dropped. She unfolded it, and saw the block letters:

DON’T ASK ANY MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT GUY ROUILLARD SHUT UP IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU

She leaned against the car, a light breeze fluttering the paper in her hands. She didn’t lock her car at home, so she didn’t have to wonder how the note had gotten in there. She stared at the paper, reading it again and wondering if she had been threatened, or if the writer had simply used a familiar phrase.
Shut up if you know what’s good for you.
She had heard variations of it a hundred times, with only the command changing. The note might or might not be a threat; likely it was more of a warning. Someone didn’t like her asking questions about Guy.

Gray hadn’t left the note. It wasn’t his style, for one thing; he had delivered his threats in person, and spelled them out. The last one still had her rattled. Who else would have been disturbed by her questions? There were two possibilities: someone with something to hide, or someone who thought to curry Gray’s favor.

She had been on her way to town for yet another fact-finding mission, this time to try having a word with Yolanda Foster, so there was a certain irony to the timing of the note’s appearance. After a moment’s consideration, she decided that she was still going to try. If the writer wanted her to take the threat seriously, he or she would have to be more specific.

First, though, she carried the note inside and locked it in the desk, being careful not to handle the paper more than necessary. In itself, this wasn’t something that warranted calling the sheriff, but if she received another, she wanted to be able to present both of them to him for evidence. She wasn’t eager to see the sheriff in any case. She had a stark memory of him standing beside his patrol car, beefy arms folded as he approvingly watched his deputies empty the shack of the Devlins’ belongings. Sheriff Deese was thoroughly in Gray’s hip pocket; the question was whether or not he would do anything even if she received a death threat.

The note properly stored, she drove to town. Lying in bed last night, unable to sleep, she had planned her strategy. She wouldn’t call Mrs. Foster; that would give her a chance to refuse a meeting. It would be best to take her by surprise, face-to-face, and slip in a few questions before Yolanda got over being startled. She didn’t know where the Fosters lived, however, and the address in the phone book had been unfamiliar to her.

Her first stop was the library. To her disappointment, the chatty Carlene DuBois wasn’t behind the desk; instead it was manned – or girled – by a frothy little blonde who barely looked old enough to be out of high school. She was chewing gum as she leafed through a rock music fanzine. What had happened to the stereotypical librarian with her hair pulled back in a bun and reading glasses perched on a thin nose? The gum-chewing rock fan wasn’t an improvement.

Realistically, Faith knew, she herself was probably no more than four or five years older than the little librarian. Mentally and emotionally, however, she wasn’t even in the same generation. She had never been young in the way this girl still was, and she didn’t think it was a bad thing. She’d
had responsibilities from an early age; she could remember cooking when the iron frying pan had been too heavy for her to lift, and she’d had to stand on a chair to stir a pot of beans. She had swept with a broom that was almost twice as tall as herself. Then she’d had Scottie to care for, the greatest responsibility of all. But when she had finished high school, she’d been prepared for life, unlike kids who had never taken care of anything and had no idea how to cope. Those "kids" were still running back to their parents for help when they were twenty-five.

The girl looked up from her magazine to pull her bubble-gum pink lips into what passed for a professional smile. Her eyes were so heavily lined with black that they looked like almonds in a pit of coal dust. "May I help you?"

The tone was competent, Faith thought with relief. Maybe the girl was just stuck in makeup limbo. "Do you have maps of both the town and parish?"

"Sure." She led Faith to a table on which a large globe stood. "Here are all the maps and atlases. They’re updated yearly, so if it’s an older map you need, you’ll have to go to the archives."

"No, I need a current map."

"Here you go, then." The girl pulled out an enormous book, easily three by two feet, but she handled it easily as she placed it on the table. "We have to seal the maps in plastic and put them in the book," she explained. "If we don’t, they get stolen."

Faith smiled as the girl left her. The solution made sense to her. It was one thing to fold a map and put it in your pocket; spiriting out a huge, plastic-encased sheet would take some ingenuity.

She didn’t know if the Fosters lived in town or out in the parish, but she looked first in the town map, running her finger down the list of streets printed on the back. Bingo. Noting the coordinates, she flipped the page and quickly located Meadowlark Drive, in a subdivision that hadn’t existed when she had lived here before. With a name like Meadowlark Drive, she should have known. Land developers were an unimaginative bunch. After memorizing how to get there, she replaced the map book and left. The librarian
was engrossed in her magazine again, and didn’t look up as Faith passed the desk.

Prescott being the size it was, finding Meadowlark Drive took less than five minutes. The subdivision included acreage, rather than just lots, so the houses were fewer and farther apart than normal. There probably weren’t many people in Prescott who could afford to build there, either, as the houses looked to be in the two-hundred-thousand range. In the Northeast and along the West Coast, they would have been worth a cool million, easy.

The Foster house was designed to look like a Mediterranean villa, nestled comfortably amid huge oaks draped with Spanish moss. Faith parked in the driveway and walked up the brown brick pathway to the double front doors. The button for the door bell was disguised amid some scrolls, then discreetly lit so people could find it. She pressed it, and heard the chimes echo through the house.

After a moment there was the rapid tapping of heels on a tiled floor, and the right half of the door was pulled open to reveal a very pretty middle-aged woman, stylishly clad in slim taupe pants and a white tunic. Her short, ash brown hair was a tumble of curls, swept to one side, and she wore gold hoop earrings. Startled recognition flashed in the dark blue eyes.

"Hello, I’m Faith Hardy," Faith said, hurrying to correct the woman’s horrified assumption that she was Renee. "Are you Mrs. Foster?"

Yolanda Foster nodded, evidently struck speechless. She continued to stare.

"I’d like to talk to you, if it’s convenient." To tilt the answer in her favor, Faith took a step forward. Yolanda fell back, in an involuntary gesture of admittance.

"I really don’t have much time," Yolanda said, her tone apologetic rather than impatient. "I’m having lunch with a friend."

That was believable, unless Yolanda always dressed at home as if she were the nineties version of June Cleaver. "Ten minutes," Faith promised.

Looking puzzled, Yolanda led her into a spacious living room, and they sat down. "I don’t mean to stare, but you
are
Renee Devlin’s daughter, aren’t you? I heard you were in town, and the resemblance – well, I’m sure you’ve been told it’s startling."

Unlike a lot of people, there was no censure in Yolanda’s tone, and Faith found herself unexpectedly liking the woman. "Several people have mentioned it," she said dryly, earning a chuckle from her hostess that made her like her even more. Liking her, however, didn’t deflect Faith from her course. "I want to ask you some questions about Guy Rouillard, if I may."