Poison Flowers

• Other Bella Books by Nat Burns
  
• About the Author
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• Chapter Sixteen
  
• Chapter Seventeen
  
• Chapter Eighteen
  
• Chapter Nineteen
  
• Chapter Twenty
  
• Chapter Twenty-One
  
• Chapter Twenty-Two
  
• Chapter Twenty-Three
  
• Chapter Twenty-Four
  
• Chapter Twenty-Five
  
• Chapter Twenty-Six
  
• Chapter Twenty-Seven
  
• Chapter Twenty-Eight
  
• Chapter Twenty-Nine
  
• Chapter Thirty
  
• Chapter Thirty-One
  
• Chapter Thirty-Two
  
• Chapter Thirty-Three
  
• Chapter Thirty-Four
  
• Chapter Thirty-Five
  
• Chapter Thirty-Six
  

Copyright © 2013 by Nat Burns

Bella Books, Inc.

P.O. Box 10543

Tallahassee, FL 32302

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First published 2013

eBook released 2013

Editor: Medora MacDougall

Cover Designer: Judy Fellows

ISBN 13: 978-1-59493-321-9

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

Two Weeks in August

House of Cards

Identity

The Quality of Blue

The Book of Eleanor

I’d like to dedicate this book to my two daughters, Jessica and Rachel, who, even when very small, showed infinite patience as they waited for mom to scribble yet one more story.

Many thanks to Bella Books, my home away from home, and to my sweet editor, Medora MacDougall. What would I do without her calm advice? Also thanks to those friends who pre-read
Poison Flowers
and shared their advice and approval. It was much appreciated.

Nat Burns lives in beautiful Albuquerque, New Mexico, truly the Land of Enchantment, where she writes full time, helped by a houseful of cats.
www.natburns.com

“Hey, baby, what you doing out here all by yourself?”

The young man appeared before her with such abruptness that she gasped and choked, breaking into a spasm of coughing. She held up one hand, gesturing for him to wait as she struggled for control. The youth, no older than seventeen certainly, turned to his handful of friends and snickered at her predicament. They responded with muffled laughter.

Eyeing them as she tried to still her spasming throat, Marya knew a moment of fear. She had an open mind, always had. She truly believed in freedom of expression. Yet she also knew the dangers arising from substance abuse and irresponsible young people. It wasn’t the group’s abundance of tattoos and piercings that alarmed her nor their choices of black leather as accouterments. It was the challenge of their eyes as they watched her. She could see them making judgments: How much harm would come to them if they harmed her?

Marya wished suddenly that she had driven away upon first spying the then-distant quartet of young people. They had been strolling carelessly along the edge of the sand and loudly whooping out their indignation at being baptized by the ever-moving waves. Their rowdy behavior should have been a clear indicator that she didn’t want to be alone in their company.

“Hey, is that your Trooper up there?” asked a young girl, her bleached hair colored bright pink on one side, baby blue on the other. “How ’bout you take us for a ride? Ricky, make her take us for a ride.”

She watched Marya intently, pale blue eyes heavily outlined in black kohl and mascara. The other girl in the group, thinner, with long blond hair blowing across her face, watched her as well.

“Yeah,” chimed in a young boy who had a fine silver chain running from his nose to his ear. “We wanna go into the strip. You take us, lady?”

“No, I’m sorry,” Marya choked out finally. “I have someone waiting for me. I’ve got to get there as soon as I can.”

“Is it a boyfriend,
señorita
?” This was asked by Ricky, the first one who had spoken, the one she immediately recognized as the ringleader.

“That’s none of your business,” she said as she rose to her feet. She patted sand from her hands and started to move away.

“Hey wait, lady, you got sand all over you!” The two boys descended on her and began playfully slapping sand from her bottom and legs as they circled around her, shouting encouragement to one another. The girls watched and shouted suggestions.

“Look here, you two!” Marya said loudly as she stilled and stood her ground. “I want you to stop this right now.”

“Or what, sweet thing? I’ll tell you what, you gonna give us a ride into Myrtle Beach, that’s what.”

Ricky moved close, too close for her to be comfortable, and she, without even thinking about it, crouched into defensive mode, calling upon her years of taekwondo training. But before she needed to defend herself, a spate of rocks came whistling out of the sky. One struck the chain-faced boy on his shoulder; he yelped as the group turned to face the attacker. To her surprise, it was a short, stocky woman. She stood barefoot on the beach, her light cotton pants rolled to her knees and a loose button-down shirt billowing in the ocean wind. Her hair, cropped close, appeared pure white and actually gleamed in the slanting sunlight.

“Oh shit! It’s her!” one girl blurted in a
sotto voce
exclamation.

“I see her,” said the ringleader in a harsh, disparaging mutter. Another rock sailed toward them, so quickly that Marya didn’t even see the woman move. It found its mark, on the ringleader’s thigh, and he growled as he clasped his leg in both hands. He glared at the woman.

“Get on with you,” the woman called, her voice low and bearing an undeniable ring of authority. “I’ll not have you on my property. I’ve told you that too many times. I’m getting tired of repeating myself.”

Silence fell as the ruffians mulled over the implied threat. Finally, cowed and with much impotent glowering and muttering, they moved as one unit up the beach in the direction from which they’d come.

Marya breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed her posture. Impulsively, she rushed toward the woman and threw her arms around her shoulders in a quick hug of gratitude.

“Thank you, thank you,” she said. “I was beginning to get worried.”

This close, Marya could see the woman’s face. She realized she was older than she was by more than a decade and was handsome, with smooth, defined features and striking blue eyes. Suddenly feeling foolish, she stepped back, hands twitching nervously at her sides.

“Aren’t you going to say something?” she asked after many moments of silence had passed.

“You should be worried,” the woman said in a hard, pedantic tone. “I can’t believe you were stupid enough to be out here alone, with evening coming on. I particularly resent you adding to the trouble I already have with these kids.”

She looked Marya over with mistrustful, dismissing eyes. “You’re not much above a brat yourself, are you? Get on off my property, or I’ll call the cops and have
your
ass hauled in.”

With that comment, she turned and walked away from Marya, her strong legs and feet churning sand.

Bewildered and unbelievably hurt by the stranger’s irritation, anger stirred in Marya. She had never been what one would call coolheaded and suddenly she was seeing red. And, of course, her mouth shot off, taking on a life of its own.

“Could we
be
any bitchier?” she called after the woman. “You’re just damned lucky those kids didn’t decide to gang up on your ass. One day those rocks won’t cut it anymore and then what will you do?”

Her rescuer ignored her, mounting the wooden porch steps that led to the interesting house that had drawn Marya into this little drama. Marya made her way up the sloping, grassy hill toward her car.

“I hope your damned house falls off into the ocean,” she muttered, just for good measure.

She turned once at the top and studied the scene below. The road offered a wide green shoulder before sloping into a scenic expanse of tan sand and dusky blue ocean. The large house just past this stretch of beach angled away from the sea and its appearance had snared her interest as she drove by. The house was crisp white against the cobalt of the water, a two-story Cape Cod with a wide, wooden porch that jutted out over the ocean. It was an unusual style for this area. Yet whoever built the house had planned wisely, for although the house site appeared to be centuries old—judging from the amount of seashore that had eroded from around it—the solid home rested sturdy on a dais of huge stones, some naturally occurring, others appearing to have been laid like puzzle pieces and mortared together.

Earlier, guiding her car over a sloping dune, Marya had pulled onto the grassy expanse that demarcated the beach from the highway and sat a moment savoring the sound of waves coming ashore. Eventually lulled into obedience to the water’s call, she had left the car and meandered across the sand, further drawn in by a lavender banner atop a flagpole that snapped with high energy in the ocean wind. It drew her attention for it appeared a statement, mounted as it was in an offshore rocky formation. Though she had walked as close to the water as it was possible to do without sacrificing her sandals, she saw no indication of what it signified.

“Probably a landmark for boats, so they’ll stay away from her,” she told herself now as she laid one hand on the hood of her car, preparatory to leaving.

Dim lights had brought several of the house windows to life, and she caught a glimpse of the white-haired woman as she passed by just inside one of them. Who was she? And why did she seem to hate people so much? More importantly, why did she seem to hate
her
?

The girl had been feisty. Dorry could appreciate that. She watched through the window as the redhead mounted the grassy dune separating Dundun Beach from the highway, noting how her lithe form made her appear to float above the flora.

Though she was small, her arms had been strong when they hugged Dorry close.

Dorry took in a deep breath, reliving, for a brief moment, how that embrace had affected her. It had been such a long time since anyone had held her. As if facing death, she had, in that moment, seen her life flash before her eyes and realized how solitary she had allowed it to become. She closed her eyes and savored anew the memory of a soft, slightly rounded body pressed to hers. Her thoughts flew to other embraces, long ago, from a body even more full, more voluptuous. A body that smelled like the Far East from a rich, heady perfume. A body that she had loved to distraction.

Dorry turned from the window and studied the living room of her home. She enjoyed the monotone simplicity of this room, the richness of the brown on brown. The wood of the walls and floor had been salvaged from shipwrecks and polished to a smooth sheen by her paternal great-grandfather. He’d been a sailor and had built this home so his wife and six children could watch as he passed by on his way to Begaman Harbor, some thirty nautical miles north, when he was scheduled to come home. Those were big days in the Wood household. Grandma Ashton had beamed with joy as she told young Dorry about his homecomings when she was a girl. He was always laden with presents for his children, and their mother had always prepared a feast of good food to celebrate the event.