Dead People (23 page)

She gasped. A bonfire?
Her
house? No!

“I met your boss yesterday.”

What?
No! Kurt would’ve told her.

“Give him a message for me,” Luke continued. “Tell him before he gets the house, I’ll burn it down.” Without another word, he stalked away, the water bottle in his hand halfway to his mouth.

Tricia sagged against the counter. What happened between Kurt and Luke? Why didn’t Kurt tell her? They’d slept together last night. He’d slunk into her bed when she was half asleep and snuggled against her, no sex, just sleeping.

Damn him. Whatever happened must have made him look bad, and men hated looking bad. He was probably thinking of a way to put a spin on it.

Shaking with anger, she pushed away from the counter and stomped out of the kitchen and down the hall. Forget about the chocolate she was going to scarf down. Her stomach was twirling like a roller coaster. If she tried to eat anything she wouldn’t need a finger down her throat to get rid of it.

Okay, that avenue was out for now, Kurt buying the house and her getting it through him, even if it meant marriage to him, a man who wasn’t that successful. She’d have to find another way to get what she wanted. Because she wasn’t giving up. Ever.

She turned into the library...and her bad day got worse.

Cassie was in the library already. Nothing unusual about that. She was often there. She sometimes read books out loud while waiting for Isabel, books she thought Isabel would like. By authors like Jane Austen, Mary Higgins Clark and Jayne Ann Krentz.

But today she wasn’t reading. She was kneeling, setting a pile of books on the wooden floor, about ten stacks on the floor around her. Then she stood and grabbed another armful.

“Why are you emptying the bookshelf?” Tricia asked.

Cassie started, glancing at the shelves and then at her, panic and furtiveness crossing her face. Guilty of something, though she quickly covered up with a plastic smile and a blank expression that Tricia knew too well. One she’d practiced in the mirror for hours.

“Are the shelves dusty?” Tricia heard her voice rise, querulous and bitchy, but for once she didn’t give a shit how she sounded. “I only work here part-time. I can’t do everything.”

“It’s nothing like that. Isabel’s avoiding me today. I had some free time, and I just...” Cassie set the books next to the other pile.

“You just decided to dust?” Tricia let the sarcasm drip from her tongue.

“Dusting is the last thing on my mind. I was...looking for something.”

Tricia narrowed her eyes. “Jewelry?”

“No! A book. I was looking for a book.”

The phone’s rude ring made Cassie jerk. The reaction of a guilty woman.
 

Not taking her gaze off Cassie, Tricia strode to the library desk and grabbed the receiver. “Luke River’s residence.”

“Is Erin home?” a woman asked.

The front door slammed. Erin. Cassie turned and put a hand on either side of a two-foot row of books. She didn’t move, but her head turned slightly, as if she was aware of Tricia staring at her.

What was Cassie up to?

“Hello?” the woman asked. “Are you there? Hello?”

“She’s here. Just a minute.” Tricia walked backward, hearing Erin’s muffled footsteps in the hall. Gritting her teeth, Tricia turned and hurried out of the room, loping toward Erin, holding the phone out to her.

“You have a call.”

Erin frowned suspiciously. For once, Tricia didn’t have the patience to try to coax her. The little bitch was as impervious to her charms as her father and Tricia needed to make sure Cassie wasn’t stealing anything. Tricia shoved the phone at Erin, Erin’s hand coming up automatically, her fingers curling around the smooth plastic.

***

Erin’s voice was pitched high, almost...happy. Rubbing her lower back, Cassie headed toward the doorway. The air swished. In her peripheral, she saw Isabel floating alongside her.

Cassie didn’t stop to talk to Isabel. Instead she poked her head out into the hall. Erin stood about ten feet away, a hundred-watt smile lighting up her small face.

“Mom! You called!”

Unease snaked into Cassie’s stomach.

Tricia speed-walked toward Cassie, her eyebrows raised inquiringly. Cassie ignored her. She had a bad feeling about this phone call.

She should take this chance to talk to Isabel. Or else pull her head back into the library and take down more books. Erin wasn’t any of her business, Isabel was. She should go right now.

But she stayed where she was. Air pulsed next to her, Isabel watching Erin too.

Frowning at Cassie, Tricia stepped into the library.

Chapter Thirty

“Baby, I’ve missed you,” Erin’s mom said.

Erin felt dizzy. How had her mom gotten through? It didn’t matter, she was on the phone right now.

Hunching her shoulders, Erin glanced up at the ceiling. She shouldn’t have called out so loud a few seconds ago. If her dad heard her...

“Are you all right?” she said, her voice lowered, a little louder than a whisper.

“What kind of question is that? Of course, I’m all right. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“No reason.” Oh no, her mom was high. When she was high, she got mad fast. Like a match meeting dynamite, her mom used to say with a laugh. Erin never laughed back. “Don’t get mad at me.”

“I’m not mad, I’m sad. I’m sad all the time.
He
took you away from me.”

“He did.” The best thing to do was agree. Erin leaned against the wall, her back curved forward like a bow, her free arm clutched around her ribs.

“He wouldn’t have known except you called the cops.”

Though Erin tried to stop them, hot tears burned her eyes. “I called 911, not the cops. You were bleeding. I couldn’t let you die. The ambulance lady said you were almost dead.”

“Don’t be stupid. People say that stuff so they can sell my story. I would’ve been fine. I never died any of the other times, did I?”

Erin put her knuckles inside her mouth to stop herself from sobbing out loud. Her mom hated it when she cried.

“What? All of a sudden you’ve got nothing to say?”

Erin dropped her fist from her mouth. The back of her hand was damp from her saliva and tears mixed together. She wiped her hand on her pants and then wiped her dripping nose on the back of her hand. “The ambulance lady stopped the bleeding. She saved your life.”

“Baby, I’m all alone. Without you, I may as well be dead.”

“I didn’t want to go.” Erin heard her voice wobble.

“Then you shouldn’t’ve called 911. The whole world thinks I’m an unfit mother. Every time I go outside the vultures are waiting, snapping pictures of me, trying to catch me drunk or high. Wouldn’t that make their miserable little lives happy?”

A sob escaped Erin’s mouth, and she shoved her fist back in it. She rocked back and forth against the hall wall, silent.

“Are you crying?” Her mother’s voice thickened. “I’m sorry, baby. It’s not your fault, it’s all mine. I didn’t mean any of that. Don’t cry. Please, don’t cry.”

Footfalls hit the hallway hurrying toward her. “What’s going on?” her father demanded.

Erin jumped, the phone clamped to her ear. “Dad?”

“Fuck! Don’t tell him it’s me, or I’ll get in trouble.” The phone clicked, then a dial tone droned in Erin’s ear.

She stared up at her dad, unable to stop the tears leaking down her cheeks. His eyebrows sliced downward, then his face twisted like a monster in a movie.

“Who was that on the phone?”

“Nobody.” The second she said it, Erin wished she’d said one of the names from her class. But the kids in her class all knew one another for years and years, and they hardly talked to her.

That was okay with her. Like her mom said, they were losers. She didn’t care if they didn’t sit with her at lunch or invite her to their parties.

Her dad’s mouth tightened like one of his guitar strings. He held out his hand for the phone. “Give it to me.”

Erin threw it on the floor and saw it bounce before she turned and ran toward the staircase. “I hate you! I want to go back to my mom. I’ll never love you. Never.”

She sprinted up the stairs.

***

Luke fought down a desire to run after Erin. What the hell did he know about ten-year-old girls? Her mother was a drug addict, but Erin wanted to go back to her. It didn’t make sense. He was doing every damn thing he could think of to make her happy. He’d bought her clothes, a computer, a bedroom set. He’d bought the house for her, for Christ sake.

And she hated him.
 

“Luke, I’m so sorry.” The voice was soft, feminine. Something in Luke’s chest leapt. Cassie.

He turned and saw Tricia looking stricken, not Cassie with her usual glare.

“I was busy when the call came,” she said, “and forgot all about giving her calls to you.”

Anger and frustration poured into him, red and vivid and destructive. He clamped his teeth together, holding back words that wouldn’t change anything that just happened.

“I’m really, really, really sorry.” Her forehead was corrugated, her mouth and eyes wide with pleading. “I hate to hurt Erin.”

“It’s okay, we all make mistakes.” He heard the stiffness in his voice. He wanted to smash something. He wanted to shout at her. He wanted to fire her, but then he’d have to find someone else. What a fucking mess.

She stepped in closer. Tears swam in her eyes, the hall light finding sparks of greenish-blue fire. Her mouth trembled. Her skin was like cream, her eyes like jewels, her face flawless.

A thin layer of his anger softened, and a tightness in his chest loosened. She was so damn young and, yes, pretty, he couldn’t deny that.

A shuffle came to his ears, a shoe sliding on the wooden floor. He glanced over Tricia’s shoulder and saw a shadow against the wall.

Cassie.
 

A breath later, she melted back inside the library.

Tricia’s hand touched his arm, and he wrenched his gaze back to her face. “Erin doesn’t connect with me.” A sob wobbled in her voice. “No matter what I do. I feel really, really awful about it.”

“It’s not your fault. Erin was messed up long before I laid eyes on her.” He glanced down the hall again. No shadow, no Cassie.

“I still feel bad.” Her hand slid up to his shoulder. Her voice turned husky. “Let me make it up to you.”

Once again, her voice yanked his attention to her face. She worshipped him with her eyes, not like the “what’re you looking at?” glare Cassie normally shot at him like a warning missile.

“Luke?” Tricia leaned forward, her pelvis touching his.

His body responded. How could it not? She looked like a nymph with her creamy complexion, the light in her eyes as brilliant as the North Star on a clear night. And her skin was so tight he could bounce quarters off it.

A flash of movement caught his attention. He raised his gaze from Tricia’s and peered down the dark hall. Was someone standing in the hall, watching them?

His lips formed the word,
Cassie.

The urge to say it out loud was strong. But he wasn’t so dumb as to do it with Tricia plastered against him. The fullness eased from his genitals even though Tricia sighed, her breath warm against the spot between his neck and his shoulders.

“Thanks for the offer, but I’m fine.” He curved his hands around her shoulders and propelled her backward.

Her mouth opened and closed twice before words came out. “You don’t want me.”

Jesus, what the hell was he doing? First Cassie, now Tricia. Who was he going to assault next? The school bus driver? She was his mother’s age but, hey, she was female.

“I’m your employer.” He dropped his hands when she was a foot away. “I’d be taking advantage of you.”

“You don’t want me,” she repeated.

Christ, he hated it when women didn’t pretend everything was all right. Professor Higgins
nailed it. Why the hell couldn’t women be more like men?

The movement came again in the corner of his eye. His gaze flickered from Tricia’s upset face. A figure turned into the hall. First he saw the round globes of Cassie’s breasts, then the curvy line of her hips.

“Don’t you have anything to say?” Tricia’s voice shrilled.

Luke stepped back. “I’m a bad bet, Tricia. You’ll be happier with someone your own age.” He gave a decisive nod. An old battle tactic in the war between the sexes. Say your piece, then get the fuck out of Dodge before the bullets flew.

He glanced at Cassie striding toward them.

“Is everything okay?” Cassie asked.

“Hunky dory.” He stepped around Tricia. “I’m going upstairs to see if Erin needs me.”

He retreated before either of them could stop him. He wrote songs in his studio. That’s the venue he chose to spew his emotions. Not in a hallway with two women.

Laughter cackled. Isabel.

Christ. That made three women. How’d he get so fucking lucky?