Sinful Suspense Box Set (30 page)

Gideon held back a smile as he pulled out a chair for Rose. “Apparently, not as good as you, Harold.”

The unsteady finger pointing returned. It seemed to help Harold focus on whoever he was talking to. The finger came toward me. “You know why I call him big six?” He answered himself before I could put forth a guess that it had something to do with Gideon’s size. “It’s because Gideon Jarrett is the strongest man I know.”

Rose covered her mouth to keep back a laugh.

“I’ll let you all get back to your date. I need to sit down so the room can stop spinning,” Harold muttered and wandered unsteadily away.

“Will he be all right?” I asked.

“Sure. After a long night of throwing up, he’ll be fine.” Jackson put out his cigarette. “This joint is closing in on me. It’s a warm night. Palmer’s Mill is just a mile from here. Would you like to take a walk, or are you too tired?”

I glanced down at my shoes. They were definitely pretty and definitely highly impractical for a walk.

“That’s right. I forgot your glittery shoes.” He turned to Gideon. “Do you mind if we take off with the car for an hour? Then we’ll swing back to pick you up.”

Gideon looked at Rose, who looked more than happy to have the man to herself for an hour, even if it was inside a crowded club. Jackson’s brother seemed just as pleased with the prospect.

Jackson took hold of my hand and navigated a path through the dancers and drinkers. Like he had mentioned, it was a warm night, but there was still a stark difference between the thick, almost misty, atmosphere of the speakeasy and the fresh night air. A tiny shiver shook my shoulders.

“Are you cold?” He went to take off his coat.

“No, I’m fine. It actually feels refreshing. The air inside was making me a little sleepy. We’ve been up since dawn getting everything ready for opening day.”

He pulled his coat back onto his shoulders.

I smiled at the gentlemanly gesture. It was easy to believe that the tall, handsome and extraordinarily confident man next to me had been a war hero. “Thank you, anyway.”

I climbed in while he cranked the motor on the Model T. It wobbled side to side as the motor sputtered and chugged.  He climbed in, took off his fedora and combed his fingers through his hair. He dropped the hat into the backseat and grinned, almost shyly at me. Again, I smiled.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Nothing. It’s just that for a moment there you looked like a boy going out on his first date. Sort of comical, considering it’s you.”

He faced the road. The lines on the side of his mouth creased with a lazy smile. “This date is different. I’ve never gone out with an Enchantress before.”

“I promise not to cast any spells on you.”

“Too late.” He looked at me. There was no smile or humor this time. “You have me completely bewitched already.”

It was my turn to look shyly away. He’s a practiced sweet talker, I reminded myself.

The landscape passed by in dark, billowing shadows of overgrown shrubbery and trees that had grown unmanaged and unfettered for years. The only sign of life on the vast stretch of land was the occasional hanging silhouette of a massive owl floating down to nab some unsuspecting field mouse or rabbit.

“You don’t like to talk about the war much,” I said breaking the silence. “Can’t imagine how hard it was.”

He didn’t say anything, but his throat moved with a swallow beneath the white collar.

“Forgive me. It was a mistake for me to bring it up.”

He pulled the car off on a rough swath of road. I clutched the door to keep from being tossed around.

“I was nineteen,” he said quietly. “I thought I was invincible when I signed up. Tough as nails, as they say.” A sad chuckle tumbled from his mouth. “It took me a few long months on the front-line to knock me back down to earth.” He pulled the car along a path that traveled parallel with a quietly meandering river. A half-moon showered an old mill and the surrounding water with silver drops of light. The mill’s imposing wheel stood stock-still in the slow moving water. The mill’s wood siding, bleached white from the elements, seemed to glow in the dark. A thick carpet of green moss that looked almost teal-blue in the starlight softened the rough, splintered edges of the deserted structure. That same lush mound of moss lent its ripe, verdant aroma to the surroundings.

There was a touch of melancholy in Jackson’s expression, and I silently chided myself for bringing up the topic of war. Just as the subject of my mother’s death was a bitter topic for me, France was obviously a distressing subject for him.

He took my hand again. I found myself enjoying the small sense of proprietorship that seemed to come with the way he held me. I’d never wanted to belong to any man, but having someone like Jackson around to feel loved and safe would make it worth giving up a smidgen of independence. But it was a fleeting thought. This was a short term, frivolous friendship and nothing more. It was entirely possible that he would bore of me much sooner than the six weeks. There was always that dreaded possibility that his interest would wane by the time he dropped me back at the carnival tonight. I hoped not, but I had to expect it from a man like Jackson.

He led me to a soft, clean spot of grass near the riverbank and beneath the shadow of the old mill. He took off his coat and was about to place it down on the grass for me to sit on.

“No, please,” I said, “this is an old dress. Your coat will be ruined.”

“It’s an old coat.” He stretched the coat out and waved his hand for me to sit.

He leaned his forearms on top of his knees and stared out at the water. “On nights like this, sometimes you can spot a blue glow, swamp gas, coming from that green marshy area around the mill. Comes from some of the plants and animals beneath the surface. It happens usually when we’ve had a long stretch of hot weather. Not sure if it’s been warm enough.”

“The weather is certainly changeable here. After that rainstorm, Buck was worried we wouldn’t be able to open on time. But the ground soaked it up quickly.” I looked around at the picturesque surroundings. “This spot is lovely. But I don’t think it would be as beautiful without that mill perched out on the riverbank.”

“That old place, what most people would call a relic and some would even prefer to see torn down, has so much character. Lots of stories to tell. It’s more than a century old. It has seen this river swell up and over its banks, and its seen the water withdraw, starved for a current, its critters wandering aimlessly on the nearly parched riverbed waiting for relief.” He removed his hat, placed it down and leaned back on his hands. “This might sound odd coming from someone who has lived in a rural setting all his life, but architecture has always been fascinating to me. By far the best part of being a soldier was getting to travel through Europe. The architecture is astounding, and it’s different in every country.”

“And those countries are so much older than our own. I imagine there was a sight to see on every corner.”

“It kept my mind off of the real reason I was there.” Jackson looked up toward the dark sky. The moonlight cast shadows on his perfectly sculpted face. He was so handsome it almost hurt to look at him. Especially now, with the solemn expression, an expression that seemed to indicate that he was about to spill something painful, something that was constantly eating at him but that he’d buried, just as I’d buried the horror of my mother’s death. There was a deepness in his soul that I would have never guessed existed. It seemed I had judged him too quickly. An unfortunate set of circumstances always seemed to land me in his path at times that didn’t place him in the best light.

He sat forward and rested his wrist on his raised knee as he gazed out at the mill. “There was this soldier named Ben. He was a member of my regiment, and we bunked in the same barracks in Camp Upton. It’s where we finished our training before being shipped overseas.” His deep, rich voice had already imprinted itself in my mind, and the sound of it now, as it coasted out over the flowing water, made my throat tighten. “He was one of those nervous, fidgety types,” he continued. “Even moved around in his sleep.” He laughed quietly. “Ben was always scratching his head, and I would kid him that he should have left his fleas at home with the family dog. He managed to pick up a postcard at every stop, Paris, London, even small farming villages in the middle of the country. Some were pictures of famous churches or rivers, others were pictures that went with the war, patriotic slogans, the Red Cross flag, even soldiers washing their faces outside the barracks.” He looked over at me for the first time since we’d sat. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this story. I never talk about the war.” He reached up and brushed a strand of hair off my face. His fingertips touched me briefly, but it felt like a caress.

“I want to hear it. Please, go on.”

“Ben wasn’t much of a writer.” He chuckled. “He’d scribble out just a line or two. He was a terrible speller, so he’d always give me the card to double check before he handed it off for mailing. ‘We made it safely to camp.’ ‘Saw this and thought of you.’ ‘Just off to bed’. ‘Best regards from Ben’.” Jackson smiled. “And my favorite, ‘send money, I’m busted’. That was when we were still in the states. Those notes were short but cheery, as if we weren’t heading into anything worse than a trek across Europe.”

I picked up a blade of grass and twirled it absently in my fingers. “Was he writing to a sweetheart?”

“Someone named Barbara. He didn’t say who she was, but it seemed pretty clear she was his sister. I think he would have preferred to have me think it was his girl back home. On one note he wrote—” Jackson stopped to think, “something about his mother. ‘Tell mama not to throw away the old wine press in the cellar. Uncle Don wants it’. And then there was the comical exchange about the boots they’d sent him. He complained on the first card about them being too stiff and couldn’t they have found a better pair. Two cards later he was saying that the boots had been softened by wear and that he could probably do all right with them.”

“I imagine with all the walking soldiers do, the comfort of boots is pretty important. I couldn’t even manage a one mile walk in these shoes.”

He reached down and touched my ankle with the pretense that he was looking at my shoes, but my half bare legs seemed to be his real focus. His fingers grazed along my ankle and lower leg for just a second, but the heat of his touch spread all the way up my thighs. A breath caught in my chest. I released a disappointed, silent sigh as he drew his hand away.

“Once we got to Europe, he continued writing the postcards. Made me feel pretty guilty for not writing more myself.”

“To your sweetheart?” I teased. I’d said it lightly, but from his reaction, it wasn’t a light subject. He shook his head in response. It seemed, once again, I’d prodded too far.

“The tone of Ben’s notes, still just as brief of course, had darkened. As we got nearer to the front-line he wrote ‘pray for me’ at the bottom each time. He knew. We could all sense how brittle our existence had become in the midst of the war.” A weak, forlorn smile broke out on his face. “On one card he wrote ‘thank god for the boots you sent me’.” Jackson stared down at the grass below him and ran his palm over it. “We were in a trench in the middle of a French battlefield. The artillery had come to a lull and things were tense but quiet. There’s plenty of waiting in battle. But it’s a hard wait, not like waiting in line at the butcher shop. You wait to see if that was the day that would change your life forever, or if it would be your last day on Earth. Extreme hunger had turned our minds to home cooking, and we talked about how much we missed it. We were both having a smoke.” He paused and his story seemed to have taken him back to that moment in time. Crickets peddled their noisy legs in the grass near the riverbank and the water swooshed quietly along. Suddenly the setting seemed as melancholy as the man next to me.

“Ben was telling me about his ma’s cherry cobbler. Like always, he took his helmet off to scratch his head. There was an explosion, a grenade. Shrapnel flew at us. Ben was still smiling about his ma’s cobbler when a shard split his skull open. If he’d had his helmet on, it might have saved his life.” He sat still for a second, then looked at me. “See, you’ve already cast a spell on me. I’ve never told that story to anyone. Not sure what it is about you, but I feel like I can tell you everything. I’m comfortable talking to you, like we’ve known each other for a long time.”

“I feel it too. It’s nice. My strange lifestyle makes it impossible to have friends other than the people who travel along with us. And sometimes, strongmen and snake charmers don’t make the best confidantes. Even Buck and I rarely see eye to eye on things. Rose is my closest friend, but we’re so different. Which reminds me, we should be getting back to them. Rose and I have to be up early to help with the clean-up. Those crazy carnival goers barreled through the midway like a hurricane. We had a good turnout today, but I’m worried Buck picked too remote of a location. People around here will tire of the shows and run out of spare money, sooner rather than later.”

“You might be right. Once the novelty wears off, ticket sales might slow. But there are still some of the nearby cities, Alexandria and Arlington. If Buck put posters up across the bridges, you’d get visitors from across the Potomac too.” Jackson stood up. His white shirt looked bright against the dark backdrop of the mill. He held out his hand for me to take. I picked up his coat as I stood. I brushed it off and handed it back to him with a nod of thanks.

I kept my hand in his as we hiked back to the car. His grip was strong and warm and protective. It was a good hand hold.

“I’m sorry about your friend, Ben.”

He nodded. “Yeah.” A thin layer of clouds had blocked out some of the moonlight, but the shreds of light coming through gleamed off the slate gray car. We stopped before getting in, and I glanced back at the scenic place we’d just left.

“Trees and moss and water sure beat the midway. Sometimes it feels like I’m growing up in an artificial world of striped canvas and carnival posters. Thank you for bringing me out here. It’s much more my cup of tea than the speakeasy.”

He held his hat but hadn’t put it back on his head yet. I wondered if, and even hoped that he had plans to kiss me. I peered up at him, and that winning smile shot up on one side of his mouth.