DONKEY: A Stepbrother Sports Romance (With FREE Bonus Novel Charged!) (38 page)

There was a moment of silence in the room, broken only by the clatter of ice in Alexis’s glass.

“Fuck you”, Gracey said, before she burst into tears and ran out of the room.

“Fuck”, Alexis barked, spittle flying everywhere.

“I can make him mine”, Pandora said, cutting through the awkward silence Gracey’s dramatic exit had left. “I just need a bit more time.”

Alexis sipped her whiskey and lit a cigarette, coughing smoke out into the room. “Make her fuck him”, she said. “That’s your task now. Do whatever it takes, but make her fuck him. I refuse to lose this house. Fuck.”

Alexis knocked back her whiskey.

“And you two, if I find out either of you are lying to me about Philip, I’m going to kill you before the police get a chance to drag you in, do you hear me?”

“Yes, Mom”, Pandora and Isabella responded in unison.

D
etective Foster was thinking about Alexis when the report came in. There was something about the leather skinned trollop that stuck with him. He found himself imagining her in all manner of pulse quickening positions he once practiced with assiduity with his now ex-wife and as much as it disgusted him, he couldn’t help himself. It was problematic, not only because he suspected her of wrongdoing, but because the thoughts left him both horny, and with chills down his spine. It was a confusing matter he’d much rather do without.

“You’re going to want to see this.”

Foster eyeballed Benjamin Pope and then eyeballed the report that he’d slid across his desk like a bribe. The words he picked out were digitalin, traces, massive quantities, Gracey and beyond reasonable doubt.

“Gracey”, he said. “The butter wouldn’t melt.”

Benjamin nodded gravely. He was a square jawed man from a family of square jawed men, with square jaws that went hundreds of years back into his heritage. He was the kind of man who made love in one positioned only, considered penne arrabiata pushing the boat out a little too far and always looked better with glasses on, even with his eyes closed.

“Traces of it all over her room”, he said, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “She didn’t try and hide it well at all. Or she tried to hide it and didn’t do it well at all. We need to wait for another report to tell us that.”

“And the rest of the house? The mother, Alexis? Pandora?”

“The rest was clean.”

Detective Foster looked stern. The report seemed to suggest an open and shut case, it seemed to suggest that Gracey, the one person who sat by her stepfather while he tried to hold desperately onto his quickly fading life was responsible for putting him there, but something didn’t sit right with him. It was never this open and shut. There was still no motive. Yes she might have felt guilty which was why she was there at the hospital in the first place, but why do it? Why kill him at all? Foster knew what he needed to do. He needed to get Gracey back in, there was no doubt about that, but more than that, he needed to know exactly what kind of relationship Gracey had with Leighton Tempest. As far as he could tell, Leighton Tempest was as clean as a kidney dish. He had a soft spot for beautiful women, but didn’t any man? What was he still doing here anyway? Why was he still hanging around when the inheritance had been granted already, alright restricted due to the temporary injunction Foster had managed to get in place, which wasn’t really anything but a delay for the inevitable anyway, but granted all the same? They both knew that as soon as Tempest’s crack team of lawyers managed to get it seen to in court, the money would be back on its way, and that was probably in the process of happening already. There was something else keeping him here, and Foster wanted to know what it was. He was hoping Gracey would be the one to tell him.

“Digitalis”, Detective Foster said, testing the words on his tongue.

“It’s a brutal poison”, Benjamin said, a flicker of excitement chasing across his lips. He enjoyed his job, and there was something about the use of digitalis in this particular case that fascinated him. He’d first heard about the poison from an Agatha Christie novel and hadn’t encountered it at work until now. When he’d been given the case to work on, he’d had a bit of a geekgasm.

“How would she know how to use it?”

“Well to be honest”, Benjamin said, taking a seat that hadn’t been offered to him, and standing up again almost immediately when Detective Foster gave him an inhospitable look. “I don’t think she did. If she had, he wouldn’t have spent a week in the hospital in a considerable amount of pain. Unless that’s exactly what she wanted. We’d have to wait for the psych evaluation for that.”

“Or a confession”, Detective Foster added.

“That would work too”, Benjamin said, a man of facts and figures.

“Is there any way that this could have been planted in her bedroom?”

“There were fingerprints on the container that matched Gracey’s. It’s possible of course, but at the moment it doesn’t look good for her. You’d have to interview her to make absolutely sure. You know without video cameras or eye witnesses we wouldn’t be able to be one hundred percent-”

“Thank you, Benjamin.” Detective Foster said, cutting him off mid sentence.

“Is there anything else you’d like me to do, sir?”

Foster’s steely gaze told the lab technician everything he needed to know. As far as the tests were concerned, the fat finger of guilt pointed directly at Gracey Logan, now all the Detective needed to do was find out why.

A
ll Gracey had ever wanted was to go to University and get out of her shithole town and backwards, fucked-up life. It didn’t even matter to her what she studied. She was interested in a wide range of different subjects and would have been equally happy studying French as she would have been psychology. It didn’t matter. What she did, mattered less than the fact that she was doing it. No one else in her family had ever been to University, and neither had they been interested in it. Pandora found happiness in her ability to manipulate other people, much like her mother, and as long as Isabella had enough time to daydream, she was the happiest person on the planet.

She had never felt close to her sisters, not even when they were growing up. Pandora had long been a role model until Gracey developed her own identity and realized the things Pandora wanted were shallow and superficial, and she’d just never been able to communicate to Isabella in the ways she’d always hoped. Isabella never really paid her younger sister that much attention, deciding to fall in step with Pandora and side herself with the more popular girl of the two, so they never really developed much of a connection together.

Isabella was a typical middle child. A daydreamer with little ambition and even less motivation. Gracey couldn’t even say what it was that Isabella wanted from life, and that bothered her. She wasn’t completely stupid, but she wasn’t intelligent either. It was like she just didn’t get it, or didn’t see the point in trying. She could see Pandora manipulating her but Isabella didn’t look like she felt manipulated. Philip absolutely hated her as well. Of all three girls, Isabella was definitely his least favorite. He was horrible to all three of them, but to Isabella, he was intentionally cruel. He would attack her personally and say the meanest most upsetting things to her as though somehow he had been personally disappointed by her progress in life. In typical fashion, Isabella just shook it off.

University was a long distance off now. So much for the promise her stepfather had made to send her off to the school of her choice in the summer, all expenses paid. At her current rate of three shifts a week, it would take her until graduation age just to pay for the first year. She’d managed to save up a bit of money, but she needed to pay for travel and accommodation, before even starting up at school. There was always the possibility of finding more bar work, but to hold down a job and study, when all she wanted to concentrate on was getting through school, it sucked, no matter how she looked at it.

She hadn’t noticed Leighton come in. She hadn’t noticed she’d been cleaning the same glass for five minutes either, desperately trying to get rid of a watermark that showed no intentions of moving.

“Busy?” Leighton said.

She recognized the voice and it sent shivers up and down her spine. How could he do that? How could one man get to her so efficiently? She guessed that the answer lay in the fact that Leighton Tempest was no ordinary man. Gracey put down the glass and composed herself.

“It’s been kind of quiet”, she said, looking out to the near empty bar area. “I thought you’d left town already.”

“I’ve still got business here”, Leighton said, without feeling the need to clarify exactly what that business might be.

Gracey could hardly look at him. Every time she did she felt like she was going to melt. Would it be that bad to say yes to him, if the offer was still there? It might help her family. Hell, it might get her to college. But then if she let herself, and he left her, what would happen then? He had that look, and besides which, she’d done her research too. Leighton Tempest, the man who never just sticks to just one girl. Gracey wasn’t sure if her heart could take it, but then she wasn’t sure how much longer she could resist either.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you”, Leighton confessed. “The injunction on the inheritance was lifted permanently. It was unlawfully placed to begin with.”

“What does that mean?”

Gracey had been anxiously cleaning the bar top when Leighton took her hand in his. He waited until they looked at each other, and waited again until he was sure. The feeling wasn’t going away. The longer he left it, the stronger it got.

“You’re leaving.” she said, a statement rather than a question.

“I’m not leaving until I get what I’ve come for.”

“What if what you’ve come for isn’t available?”

“I believe that’s just a matter of time.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Let’s just say it’s a gut feeling.”

Gracey smiled sheepishly.

“Will you sell the house?” she asked.

“If I did, I wouldn’t know where to find you.”

“I’d be around.”

“What about the rest of your family?” Leighton asked.

Gracey blinked softly. “They’d make do, don’t you think? They’d have to.”

“You don’t care about them so much?”

“They don’t care about anyone but themselves. It might do them good to be out on their own for a while, fending for themselves.”

“And you?”

“I’ll make do. I always do.”

Her eyes locked with his again and she smiled sweetly when she saw the way he was looking at her, a grin that lit up her whole face. “It wouldn’t be so bad. I’ve kind of always hated that house anyway.”

“It doesn’t suit you”, Leighton suggested.

“No?”

“No.”

“What would suit me instead?”

“Somewhere you can’t get lost.”

“Getting lost is exactly what I want.”

“Somewhere you can’t get lost in the past then”, Leighton said.

Gracey drew away from the counter to take her breath. “That, for sure”, she said. “Isn’t that what we all want?”

“Maybe”, Leighton said. “At least those of us who have shared the same experiences.”

“Are you telling me there’s a soft centre under that hard exterior?”

“A hard exterior has just been exposed to the elements for too long. It’s always soft underneath.”

“Is that right?”

“That’s a promise.”

“Have you even met my mother?”

Leighton couldn’t help but laugh. “Soft all the way to her core.”

“She wants me to seduce you, you know that?”

Leighton raised his eyebrows. “Is that right?”

“She thinks that you’ll let us stay in the house if I do. She wanted Pandora to do it, but I guess she failed. She thinks I might have something over you.”

“Something over me?”

“Like you won’t be able to resist me.”

“She’s a clever woman, your mother.”

“She’s a lot of things, my mother.”

“Well”, Leighton said. “Are you going to?”

Gracey paused before she answered, letting the tension build up.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Leighton smiled. He knew exactly what that meant. Gracey held his gaze and smiled too. It was weird, but it was almost as if they’d communicated without the need for speaking. It was almost as if she’d finally said yes to a question that had been posed at the very beginning of time. It made her heart leap around in her chest like it was untethered. She could feel parts of her body that she didn’t know even existed. She was tingling all over with anticipation, desire, excitement. Was what she was going to do wrong? Taboo yes, but wrong? Whatever it was it felt urgent and necessary and absolutely unbelievable. The moment was cracked by the strains of a familiar voice.

“Gracey. Are you going to stand there chatting all day, or are you going to do the work I pay you to do? Sorry guy, but this isn’t what I’m paying her to do, and you ain't even got a drink in front of yer.”

It was Gracey’s boss, Derek, a thin-skinned, oily-faced man with high blood pressure and a weak bladder.

Leighton turned to him “How much are you paying her?” he said.

“Come again, chief?”

“How much do you pay her?”

Derek eyeballed Leighton, cocking his head to the side like a spaniel, trying to work out meaning in the question he had been asked.

“Don’t worry”, Gracey whispered to him. “That’s not necessary. Sorry, Derek, I’m coming. Leighton was just passing by.”

“Yeah, well, pass by and drink, or pass by when she’s off the clock.” Derek mopped sweat from his neck with a dirty flannel. “Those restrooms ain't going to clean themselves.”

“What time do you finish?” Leighton asked.

Gracey looked briefly at the clock, at Derek who was tutting and shaking his head and then back to Leighton.

“If I do what my mother wants, are you going to go back home tomorrow?”

“Come on”, Derek shouted.

“That depends on how well you do it”, Leighton said with a smile.

Gracey watched him spin around on his bar stool and walk towards the exit. “Bye Gracey”, he said.