Stone Kissed (14 page)

“You never told me that.”

“Shit. Never told you anything.” His shoulders shuddered and his face squinched up. Her belly gave an answering jump. He shook his head and she shook hers and then they were laughing. She reached for his hands and he wrapped them around hers and they were laughing together as they’d never done in her memory.

Through her tears Delia said, “You didn’t do it.”

“Of course not.” Her father’s face fell, and he pressed his lips together before continuing. “I was that bad of a father, wasn’t I? My girl thinks I would burn down her house.”

She heard the chair scrape, felt the rustle and heard the agent excuse himself. She’d forgotten he was even there.

The tension slid down her neck and arms and melted into the seat beneath her ass. Her jaw, which had been locked, released and she shook with relief.

“I believe you,” she said, and he nodded at the sheet.

***

Delia spent the day with him, taking breaks for meals and to call over to Steward House. She took him out for a walk, rolling him past Frank to show her father off to the statue—but quickly, because, once again, the bird was on the wrong shoulder. They watched reruns of four sitcom episodes she’d already seen with Brogan and Athena the first time around in D.C., laughing with him as if it were the first time.

She must have dozed off. She awoke after ten, her back sore and her face numb from lying with her head on the thin mattress beside her father’s knees. She was still groggy when she walked out to the parking lot, and she jumped when she saw the dark figure of a man leaning against her car. But her heart rose with treacherous joy, which she shoved down fiercely. She masked her unreasonable delight with a scowl.

“What do you want?” She nudged him to the side to put her key in the lock. Did her shoulder rest against his forearm a moment too long? Probably.

“You didn’t show up today. I thought I’d check on you.”

“I was with Dad.”

“So he’s ‘Dad’ now?”

She bit her lip and jerked the car door open, bumping him back slightly as she did so. “Why are you here? No date tonight?”

“No,” he said. She could hear his smile even though her eyes were screwed shut with mortification. “I came for a walk. It’s time I met some of your other friends.”

All the pain Delia had carefully walled away in the back of her skull flooded down her spine once again. She collapsed into the driver’s seat. “I don’t think so.”

“Come on, Delia.” His voice was low and husky, his freshly showered curls damp against his cheek and forehead. She had to consciously will her weak legs to pull themselves into the car.

As she reached for the door handle, his tall, powerful body blocked the way. He loomed over her, and she wanted to reach for him, pull him down into her and let his warmth melt away the ice in the pit of her stomach.

“How was your dinner?” she spat. Clearly the devil had taken over her mouth again.

“Let’s take a stroll through downtown. We’ll grab a drink at the Apple Tree. Visit some gnomes.”

She leaned her head on the steering wheel and shut her eyes. He placed his hand on her shoulder, and her breath stilled. She forced herself to exhale. “You’re not the first.”

“I figured that out.”

“No.” She snapped her head up. “You’re not the first person I’ve told. The shrink in college said one symptom does not a diagnosis make.”

He peeled off his jacket, stepping back to hold it forward for her. “Let’s start with St. Francis. What did he say about your look today?”

“Don’t do this to me, Grant.”

He didn’t move. He just held the jacket. She looked up at his welcoming smile in the moonlight, and she felt her lips part and her chest swell. Her body invited him to take her, her heart begged him to keep her.

And her hands, her faithless hands, snatched his jacket from his fingers and pulled it on. He lifted her out by one of those hands as if she were a lady and then draped his arm around her narrow shoulders as if they were best friends. “I’m not trying to torture you, Delia. I’m trying to understand.”

“Understand what? All we have to do is get your house finished. Then you can settle into your new role as landed gentry and I get out of your hair.”

It was such a lie. She had no intention of leaving Steward House. She was going to expand his collection, make Steward House into a part-time museum so that he could make money off it during the weeks and months he would be away. Curator, she’d decided this week. That was the job title she wanted. Caretaker would work too.

And that was all she wanted. This twisting jealousy and twining desire were the effects of loneliness, fantasies and exhaustion. Time, food, rest and routine would fix it all.

“Is that what you want, Delia?”

Delia wanted to rip open her own ribs and pass her heart to him with both hands. No. Better that he pity her for being crazy than to tell Grant Wolverton she was in love with him—and would be until the stones of Stewardsville were nothing but sand.

“I guess I want you to meet Frank,” she forced out through gritted teeth. She would take him on his little stroll. If God and sculpture were kind, they’d be cold and silent and still. She would talk to them and he would laugh at her. Maybe then she’d be able to let him go.

“Frank” told a scowling Delia that Grant’s jacket suited her. Grant had to agree. Her skin glowed above the black leather, and her eyes were as large and dark as a pond at twilight. He wanted to kiss her, but he didn’t. She was jealous, which was usually a cue that he’d let the relationship go on too long, but instead of depositing her in her car and sending her back to her apartment, Grant followed her as she stalked through Stewardsville’s downtown.

Television voices sang through the open windows of the homes they passed. Neighbors sat in their front-porch gliders enjoying the moon. Twice, men Grant had met on the search party called him over to shake his hand. They didn’t say much to one another, because there was little to say. Everyone tasted the same ash-flavored failure. Cardinal was on his way out of town. The Benson case would soon be as cold as the water trickling among the stones in the old quarry.

Tonight, however, was for and about Delia. Having her at his side warmed him as nothing else ever had. He was as bad as his mother. He was an addict, hooked on Delia Forrest.

The neighborhood off Main was mixed residential—a restored Craftsman bungalow squatted next to a brick ranch with cracked windows and weeds in the drive, which reminded Grant of the house he and Randi had lived in during Mom’s last year. Uncle Gary had been okay, even when he was stoned. Grant and Randi had slept under his porch swing most nights, and his sister had lined up the gnome and two stone squirrels to stand sentry at the top of the steps.

“Lawn ornaments.” He stopped on the sidewalk. “No gnomes. No flamingoes.”

Delia tugged his wrist, and Grant found himself being dragged down the sidewalk by a woman little more than half his size. She moved fast, her juicy little ass swinging in rhythm as she marched him past the Main Street storefronts, past the western cluster of flamingo-free houses and up the cemetery hill.

“This is Hey.” She stroked her hand over a weathered limestone lamb. Grant knelt before the Bolger grave, but Delia turned away from him and strode up the walk toward the gated plot at the top of the hill. Her hips rolled fluidly, and the rivets on the pockets of her jeans glinted in the moonlight.

“Are they ghosts? Do they haunt their gravestones?”

Delia laughed. “Isobel—on the left—” she clarified as he circled the monument with the carved twin girls, “—says there are no such things as ghosts. Nothing so insubstantial could really exist.” She hopped up, twisting midair to sit on the raised hump between the twins. “Annie, here, isn’t so sure.”

She wove a three-way conversation among the figures and herself, and Grant was utterly charmed. Once she let down her guard Grant saw only generosity in the way her smile flashed in the moonlight at the stone girl with her broken pigtail.

Sure, she’d attempted to appropriate his property, but he’d have done the same for his sister, for his family, which is what she claimed these carvings were to her. In spite of her delusions, Delia was a good person. Like Randi. Like Lars. People like them were rare and precious.

Grant, however, was not a good person, which meant he had infinitely more tools at his disposal to keep Delia Forrest where and how he wanted for as long as he desired. He could quit her cold turkey, or he could take his fill of her, develop a tolerance, a resistance, an immunity. And when the day came that his need faded, he could set her aside slowly, carefully, respectfully. They’d both benefit from the affair. He’d make sure of that.

She had her back to the statues and was glaring up at the moon. Her large dark eyes peered over the collar of his jacket. It was a balmy, late spring night, but she’d slid her hands into opposite sleeves and was rubbing her upper arms on the inside.

“What are they saying now?”

Delia glanced at the imposing, faceless
pleurant
that guarded the mausoleum. She was a gorgeous piece, with highly detailed folds. A shaft of moonlight lit her elegant stone fingertips as if she were about to lift the veil and reveal what hid beneath it. Grant shuddered.

“Grandmère is pleased I brought you. She’s never met one of my gentlemen callers before.”

“Gentleman caller?”

Delia slid off the monument and brushed against him. He reached to hold her, but she turned to walk the three yards to the
pleurant
. Alarmed for reasons he couldn’t name, Grant wrapped his arm around Delia’s waist from behind and placed his other palm on her cheek. She tilted her head away and pushed his arm lightly, but with no real resistance.

“No.” Delia turned her neck to look back at the shadow-black twins. “I seriously doubt if they’re honorable.” She twisted, elbowing out of his arms and shook her head at the
pleurant.
“There’s no need for that,” she said—to
her
.

A cloud passed over the moon and the old stone figure darkened. Grant fancied that if he touched the edge of the veil, he, too, could lift it away. Delia’s delusions were infecting him again. “What are you discussing?”

“Nothing.”

Honorable what? Intentions.

Why would she bring up his intentions? Was Delia angling for marriage?

Delia wouldn’t be the first woman to push for a merger with Wolverton International—good God, the Johnson harpy had all but laid the prenup on the table before crawling onto him herself. But Delia…appealed. He was in a graveyard at night with a woman who was convinced that she could converse with statues, and the idea of making a permanent arrangement with her made sense.

What was marriage anyway, but an affair made contractual? His mother hadn’t bothered with it. His grandfather had extolled its pragmatic virtues. His colleagues very frequently fucked theirs up, but only because they got caught when they broke rules. He was better than that.

Grant faced the beautiful-horrible
pleurant
.

“My intentions, madame, are to retire and make Steward House my home.” He expected Delia to give him a smile, to throw him a bone for playing along. Instead, however, he heard his own voice echoing in the darkness. Although the two of them stood alone together in a graveyard, Grant felt as if a host of witnesses had heard him make a sacred vow. “Delia.” He broke the moment deliberately, forcing off the chill riding up his spine. “Dinner.”

She glared up at him, her eyes huge in the moonlight. “What is that? You speak to me as if I’m some kind of house pet.”

“I’m sorry.” He soothed her, smoothing a stray curl back from her temple. She was highly touchable, was his Delia, small curves and gentle undulations over a wiry, flexible core. Sex with her was amazing. Great mergers had started with less. “Come back with me. I’ll feed you. Again.”

Delia licked her lips subconsciously and desire flooded into his groin so fast it was almost painful. She nodded at him, wary calculation in her eyes. “So we’re finished with the walk of shame?”

“No more walk of shame. I promise.” She didn’t understand what he was promising. He wondered if he understood himself.

***

Grandmère had been gruff, almost as bad as Brogan. When she began babbling in French about
vâches
and
lait,
Delia rushed Grant down the hill. Yes, she knew making love with him again was the worst idea she’d ever had—the old stone hadn’t needed to yell that out after them. Yes, she knew lovemaking required, by definition, love. The Fullilove cherub hadn’t needed to sound so smug.

But she also knew what they didn’t—she did love Grant Wolverton, and so the requirements, de facto, had been met. She would sleep with him tonight because people got cancer and drove their cars into ravines, and because for the last hour and a half she could barely think of doing anything else. She would walk right past Bea at the front desk of Blossom’s Folly, would climb into his bed and have him because she wanted him.
She
did.

***

“This is your idea of a midnight snack?” she asked, as Grant leaned across the counter of Lily Lane’s galley kitchenette and topped off the wineglass upon which Bea had, in a fit of craftiness, painted a white lily to match…well, everything in his suite.

“It’s not midnight.” He handed her a potato masher. She lifted it up in front of her face, twisting it and turning it sideways as she made a show of examining it closely.

“You know, the stuff in the box is good. They even pre-season it for you.”

Grant looked up from the onion he was dicing to give her a withering look.

“I bet Bea’s got leftovers in her kitchen.”

His lip twitched. “Mash,” he insisted, and didn’t speak again.

He planned to stay. Grant stated before Grandmère and Delia’s family he was going to live here, to live in Steward House. She could see him almost every day.

She wouldn’t survive it. Her scheme to weasel her way in as caretaker of Steward House, to install her father in the cottage out back and spend her days giving private tours of the home was wrecked. Grant was supposed to be an absentee landlord. No one, neither flesh nor stone, had expected him to stay. Her plans hinged on him flitting in on the odd weekend for a little rest. And maybe a little recreation too.

She could become his housekeeper. But if they continued this…thing between them, she would erode away. And when she imagined him with another woman—like Cecily—a shaft of pain shot through her heart, shattering it like a piton striking ice.

“Impressive.” He took the wide, shallow bowl from her and examined the lump-free paste she’d made of his potatoes. He was huge in the cramped kitchenette, but graceful just the same, laying the salmon in the sizzling garlic-and-onion-buttered cast-iron pan.

Pounding and grinding the potatoes had helped Delia burn through some of her anguish, but it had done nothing to kill her desire. Neither had the glass of red wine. Nor, for that matter, did the second glass of wine. She heard her own pulse in her ears, felt it at the base of her collarbone. Her shirt felt too tight.

She forced herself to make small talk. “Where’s your sister?”

He glanced at his watch. “At this hour? Leaving the glassblower’s shop. She should be back at her hotel suite soon.” His eyes flickered to the phone.

“You keep close tabs.”

“There were kidnapping threats when we were younger.”

“So that’s why I’ve never seen photos of her.”

“That’s why.”

“You’re such a big brother. I don’t have a big brother.” Delia shook her head for emphasis, but her ears didn’t keep up with her eyes, so she stopped shaking her head. “Don’t have anyone but Father.”

“Grandparents?”

“All dead. But you knew that.” She shook her finger at him. “I think he might have a brother somewhere, but he never talks about him. It would have been nice to have an uncle or cousins or something.”

“They’re overrated.”

“Do you have uncles?” She tilted her head in curiosity, and then righted it again. The whole ears-not-following-eyes business was becoming annoying. She took another sip.

“Yes.”

Delia waited, but he said nothing else. “I never read about them. Aren’t they part of the Wolverton dynasty?”

“There is no dynasty.”

“Of course there’s a dynasty. Your great-great grandfather traded furs and his son opened the first shop and your grandfather built the first auction house and you—” She pointed her half-empty glass at him, “—you have done the family name proud, which is odd.” She set the glass down, staring at it as if it could answer her question. “Because they never mention your mother. Or your father.”

“Nothing to mention. I have the Wolverton name for a reason.”

She nodded, which was kind of fun. “For the dynasty.”

“For the business. It’s just a name, Delia.” He put the knife down on the counter and leaned in as if he wanted her to back away, but instead she leaned in, too, her lips merely inches from his. His breath tickled her nose. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“That is so, so sad.”

His head whipped up and he turned his back on her, thunking the wooden spoon against the inside of the saucepan of thickening potatoes. She focused on his hands as he washed out and dried the wooden bowl, and then began preparing the salad. He moved with the speed and skill of a professional magician, each identical cucumber slice falling into the bowl with perfect precision. He turned lithely at the waist to add in the hardboiled egg, his fingers fanning the slices over the spinach leaves. She leaned forward to watch the sinews in Grant’s forearms as he filled her plate and extended it to her.

“Delia?” She started, looked up to see him smiling at her. “Are you going to eat now?”

Oooh, but he was a bastard. She could see him reading her face. She knew that he knew she was thinking,
Sex, sex, sex me now
!

Fine. Two could play this game.

She reached into the salad, picked up a cherry tomato and slid it slowly between her lips, letting him see a flash of her tongue before she closed over the fruit completely. He leaned across the counter until his face was only a couple of inches from her.

“I’m hungry, Delia.” His eyes trapped hers.

Delia swallowed convulsively and choked on the half-chewed tomato chunk. She banged her palms on the countertop, trying to get air. She barely felt the rush of breeze as Grant vaulted lightly over and wrapped his arms around her waist. But she felt the hard jerk in her abdomen as he dug his wrapped fist into her belly. And she felt the pop of the cherry tomato as it shot out of her mouth and splattered on the kitchenette’s faux-granite counter.

As she collapsed back into him, Delia knew she would never, ever, be able to look at him again. She’d reached the bottom of rock bottoms.

He slid his arm under the back of her knees and hoisted her. Her eyes screwed shut, Delia didn’t protest when he sat on the crackling sofa cushion and pulled her onto his lap. When he asked her if she was all right, she nodded blindly, refusing to open her eyes. He chuckled into her hair, however, which roused the heat within her.

“Are you okay?”

She pushed up by way of answering. “Oh, hell.” The blood in her head drained into her belly and she plopped back down into his lap.

“You need to lie down.” Grant shifted his weight out from under her.