Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (9 page)

“I don’t know, Brax,” she whispered, “I might
beg you first.”

Chapter Five

Maggie Felman stared at the chalky gray mass
on the platter. She’d made Carl his favorite, liver and onions with
bacon. Personally, she found it disgusting. Eating organ meat was
akin to cannibalism. But she was trying very hard to follow her
brother’s suggestions. Just as Tyler said, she was giving Carl the
benefit of the doubt.

Carl wasn’t trying. The bastard.

She’d kill him when he got home, absolutely
kill him.

Staring once more at the ruined meal, she
wrinkled her nose in distaste. Why had things gone so wrong? And
when? Three months ago, four, six, a year? She couldn’t pinpoint
it, except that she got the sense it was about the time Carl got
into the outhouse thing. Or maybe bat shit had finally rotted what
little brain he had in the first place.

She pursed her lips. That wasn’t nice. She
took it back. She’d never thought of Carl as a jobless loser, no
matter what anyone else said. After all, she’d married him because
she’d been attracted to his anti-rat-race philosophy. He made money
in...offbeat ways, and they were certainly far from destitute.

Though the medical insurance bothered her.
They weren’t getting any younger, but Carl saved money by getting
one of those policies that covered only the major stuff. But there
was also a lifetime dollar limit. That’s what terrified her. Her
dad’s medical expenses had been astronomical. She’d hid all her
anxiety from Carl, which caused her to worry even more, and she was
pretty sure ulcer treatment wasn’t considered major.

It had gotten to the point where they
couldn’t even communicate in bed. When they made love, it was
perfunctory. They used to make beautiful love together. She just
couldn’t remember the last time.

Maggie swiped at a tear that had slipped down
her cheek. Another followed. Her marriage was falling apart. So was
her life. As much as she’d hoped, she knew Tyler’s visit wasn’t
going to fix anything.

The front door opened and closed. Not Tyler.
She’d sent him off to Simone’s. She’d wanted an extra hour or two
to create this wonderful, stupendous, fantastic alone time with
Carl. And Carl had ruined it all, as he’d ruined everything else
with his silences and his office locking mechanism.

“You’re late,” she snapped when she heard his
footsteps behind her on the kitchen floor. “The liver is ruined.”
She opened the door under the sink and slammed the plate against
the side of the garbage can until the leathery mess slid off into
the trash liner.

“I didn’t know you were cooking. You haven’t
cooked in a long time.”

Her self-pity died beneath another onslaught
of anger.

She turned on him, narrowing her eyes. She
was so angry she could barely breathe. “What? You think Hamburger
Helper isn’t cooking? You think it doesn’t take time to thaw the
hamburger and brown it and add the noodles and stir and stir and
heat up a can of corn to go with it?”

Her husband, the filthy rotten bastard,
backed up two steps. “Uh, no.” He clutched a paper sack to his
chest and watched her with a wary gaze.

That pissed her off more. “What have you got
in there? Porno magazines? Is that what you do all night in your
stupid trailer?”
Is that what you do when you should be spending
time with me, making love, real love, with me?

“No. It’s...uh...it’s...uh...”

“Cat got your tongue?” She waved the cleaver,
so angry she could smack him upside the head with the flat
edge.

He eased around her. She turned with each
step, making sure he got the full effect of each eye-stabbing look
she threw at him.

He pointed. “Trailer. Talk later.” One step,
then two, closer to the back door.

“Yeah, the trailer. Well, you can sleep out
there, for all I care.” Her temper rose with every word, as if she
couldn’t keep them inside any longer. “In fact, you can just drop
dead, do you hear me?” Finally she was shouting at him, and it felt
so good. “Drop dead, Carl!”

He dashed through the back door at that last
soul-freeing bellow. Damn him. Moments later, she heard the trailer
door bang. She could even imagine the lock slamming home. Locking
her out.

Then her own words came back to haunt her.
The fury whooshed out of her as quickly as it had come. She sagged
against the counter, deflated.

Tyler would kill her. She’d handled it wrong.
She’d ruined their evening as surely as Carl’s tardiness ruined
their dinner.

What was wrong with her? What was wrong with
them
? She folded her arms on the counter and, still
clutching the cleaver in her hand, laid her head down.

She didn’t have energy left to cry.

* * * * *

Brax took his movie, but left the licorice.
Simone sat in her rocker on the porch chewing thoughtfully on
another piece as she stared off in the direction his truck had
disappeared.

He hadn’t kissed her goodnight. He’d touched
her face, run his thumb over her bottom lip, then held her close
for five seconds. It was too long and nowhere near long enough. He
hadn’t kissed her, but he’d wanted to. He’d been hard against her,
and she knew he must have felt her beaded nipples against his
chest.

The evening had been such exquisite torture.
She’d never met a man who understood how incredibly erotic the
whole tease thing was. Men weren’t built to withstand teasing. They
had a name for women who did that, and it wasn’t pleasant. The male
gender didn’t get how good it could be.

But Brax did.

He hadn’t told her that teasing was fine if
she slept with him in the end. Part of the game, the part that made
it even hotter, was not knowing. Even
she
didn’t know if
they would. Until this afternoon, the answer would have been a
definite no. Now, she wasn’t so sure. It was almost worth the
possibility of embarrassment and rejection to see how good it could
be. Dangerous, though. She might lose more than her control.

After this evening, she liked the man, not
just his hunky body or his cheeky grin. He played her weird
games—she admitted they were weird—he laughed at his mistakes, and
he was honest-to-goodness sweet to Maggie. What kid brother cared
if he scarred his sister for life? That’s what kid brothers
hoped
to do.

Not that Simone had firsthand knowledge. No
kid brothers, only her sister, Jackie. Jackie hadn’t pulled a prank
since...well, never. Ariana Chandler didn’t tolerate pranks from
little beauty pageant queens, particularly not her daughters.

Sometimes Simone wished Jackie
had
played a joke, even if it was on her only sister. Jackie didn’t do
naughty tricks, she didn’t lie, and she always followed the
lifesaving creed:
If you can’t say something nice, don’t say
anything at al
l. Most of the time, Jackie
didn’t
say
anything, especially around their mother.

She had the sudden urge to call her little
sister. It wasn’t terribly late, if Jackie was home and not
attending some elaborate gala. She dialed Jackie’s private
line.

“Hello?” Her sister always answered the phone
tentatively, as if she were sure of neither her caller nor
herself.

“Thanks for the clothes,” Simone said,
remembering her mother’s admonition.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I tried to say it wasn’t such a good
idea.”

“It was a wonderful idea. I loved them.” Some
lucky lady shopping at Goodwill was in for a treat.

“I know how you really feel, so thanks for
saying that.”

Simone’s thoughts regarding the care package
were not Jackie’s fault. It would have been blasphemy to mention
that perhaps her sister deserved better than to have to wear size
zero clothing as well. Simone decided to move the conversation
forward. “You’ll never guess what I did tonight?”

Someone else might have suggested something
outrageous, like a Lady Godiva-like ride through the streets of
Goldstone. Jackie just said, "You know I’ll never guess.”

Jackie didn’t like guessing games. One could
say the wrong thing, and that made a girl vulnerable. Jackie was
ultra-careful. Living with their mother, she had to be.

“I watched
The Wizard of Oz
with a
man. And he was the one who brought over the movie.” Okay, she’d
suggested it earlier in the day, but he didn’t have to take her up
on it. They hadn’t watched much of it either. They hadn’t even
played the jitterbug sequence. Simone didn’t care.

“Someone in Goldstone appreciates
The
Wizard of Oz
?” Jackie didn’t say it the way her mother did,
with that high falsetto I-find-that-hard-to-believe tone. Jackie’s
voice was never steeped with judgment, but always...neutral.

“He doesn’t live here. He’s visiting his
sister.”

“I’d like to see Goldstone. At least once.”
Wishful thinking murmured in a wistful tone.

“You could come for a visit.”

“Mother’s not going to visit Goldstone.”

“I meant
you
could come. Alone.”

“Oh.” Jackie was only two years younger, but
she’d never lived outside of Ariana Chandler’s household, and
Simone was beginning to think she never would. True, Jackie had her
own suite of rooms with her own entrance. If she didn’t want to see
Ariana for days, or even weeks, she didn’t
have
to.

Ariana, however, didn’t raise her daughters
that way. They dined together every night. MOTHER carefully
selected Jackie's clothes, Jackie’s hairstyles, Jackie’s friends,
and Jackie’s opinions. It was Ariana’s way of taking care of
Jackie.

Simone had dealt with her mother’s
overbearing good intentions by running away to college right out of
high school.

Which was why she’d also run into a few
problems along the way, her mother had stated flatly. The only
thing Ariana had approved of was Andrew. She’d adored him, his
Stanford degree, his Porsche, his proper East Coast well-to-do
parents, and the way he kissed Ariana’s hand when she’d deigned to
visit twice yearly.

God, she was depressing herself. That wasn’t
why she’d called her sister. She’d called because Jackie was her
best friend, and, like a starry-eyed teenager, she’d wanted to tell
her sister all about Brax.

“It doesn’t matter about you visiting,
Jackie. I know you’re really busy and don’t have the time.” She
offered Jackie that excuse. “I only called to tell you all about
him
.”

“Yes,” Jackie answered breathlessly, with the
tiniest bit of emotion and excitement in her voice. “Tell me all
about him.”

For the next few minutes, they
oohed
and
aahed
together like the innocent, happy, carefree
teenage girls they’d fantasized about being.

She was still smiling when she hung up.
Someday she would get Jackie to visit. They could have such fun.
Mr. Doodle would adore Jackie. Simone hugged the phone to her chest
and stared out into the night beyond her porch. Though the moon was
at its smallest crescent, stars sparkled. Jackie should see how
beautiful the desert was at night, without city lights obscuring
the sky or the stars.

Something moved beyond the end of the lane.
Hers was the last trailer, and the road at that point led up to the
town’s park, a dirt lot with strategically placed plastic trash can
lids to simulate a baseball diamond.

The shadow was too big for a coyote, and it
didn’t move with the loping amble of the wily animals.

Her skin prickled. For a moment, she felt as
if the thing crouched and watched
her
. She had the sudden
terrible feeling it, whatever it was, had been watching her the
whole time she talked on the phone with her sister.

For a moment, the crescent moon slid behind a
cloud. When it slipped out again, the shadow at the end of the lane
was gone.

Simone rubbed her arms. It was her
imagination playing tricks on her. Silly. Still, she locked up
tight, both the porch screen and her front door.

* * * * *

Brax hadn’t asked Simone a single pointed
interrogative question. He didn’t care. In fact, he’d revealed more
about himself than he’d learned about her. He didn’t care about
that either. Simone wasn’t sleeping with Carl. She wouldn’t do that
to Maggie. That secret email was not about an affair. Something
else, not that. He’d stake his tarnished reputation on it. Maybe
Carl was hitting up Simone for love life advice. He might even have
asked her to write a story with which to surprise and delight
Maggie, a peace offering to fix whatever was wrong in their
marriage. Yeah. That explanation set well with him.

Brax was whistling when he entered the front
door, which opened straight into the main part of the trailer.
Ahead was the kitchen and kitty-corner, the den, where Maggie sat,
staring sightlessly at the TV.

She sat cross-legged on the couch, arms over
her chest, her chin drooping. There was not a smile within a mile
of her.

Damn. The little talk with Carl had probably
degenerated into a big argument.

Brax dispensed with the formalities and sat
on the heavy lacquered wood coffee table in front of her. “What’s
wrong?”

She stared at his chest as if she could see
right through it to the TV. Her eyes were red rimmed, her cheeks
blotchy, and telltale tears left tracks down to the edges of her
mouth. “He’s out in his office.”

“What did you say to him?”

She looked at him sharply. “I didn’t say
anything inflammatory.”

Whoa, girl.
He held up his hand. “I
didn’t mean that you did. But what happened?”

“I made dinner. He came home. He went out to
the trailer. And he’s been there ever since.” Her lower lip
trembled. “He didn’t even eat dinner, and I made his favorite.
Fried liver smothered with onions and bacon. I had to throw it all
away.”