Stone Kissed (17 page)

***

Kelsey waved at them as Grant and Delia walked through the door. “Heard a new bird singing out front all morning long. It’s good luck!”

Delia stumbled and Grant caught her elbow. She closed her eyes to keep from looking back out the door. She would kill Frank. Him and his little bird.

“You okay?” Grant asked.

“Peachy.”

Her father shared her mood. “You back, Wolverton? What are you doing here?”

“Keeping Delia company.”

Father lifted his head, his good eye narrowing to match its scar-hatched, wounded mate. “Don’t like you ‘keeping company’ with my daughter.”

“Dad,” she admonished, but both men ignored her, staring each other down until her father dropped his gaze. Delia turned on Grant and hissed under her breath, “Out.”

She pressed her palm to his chest, and, to her relief, he let her propel him back into the antiseptic green hospital hallway. “He’s about to go into surgery. Have some respect.”

“Respect? For Vernon Forrest?”

“He’s my father. You don’t understand what that means, do you?” Her guilt slapped her even as the words slipped out. He’d told her his own dark, scratchy secrets, without her having to wheedle them out of some bust on a shelf or a figurine in a dusty corner.

“No. No, I don’t.”

He was honest with her. She could be no less. “I’m sorry. I’m just worried. I know the other surgeries went well, but this is his
face.
”

He pulled her into her arms. “Why not wood?”

She was both startled and impressed he’d made the leap. Grant might not believe she could speak to statues, but he had been listening to her.

“I don’t know. Only stone. Whole stone, carved by human hands. Resin, bronze, or cast figures don’t resonate like whole stone.”

Grant kissed the top of her hair. It was such an intimate, affectionate little kiss. If she wanted, she could allow herself to believe he meant it.

“You don’t have to stay, Grant.”

Instead, he turned her around and steered her back into the room. “Vernon, I intend to marry your daughter.”

Her stomach pitched and her skin went cold.

“Delia?” her father asked.

“It’s okay, Dad,” she heard herself say, feeling the quake begin deep in her belly. She had no place to run, to hide or cool off. Grant had invaded every secret shadow space in her weird little world. She had no walls left to shelter her, inside or out—and even if she had, they couldn’t withstand the shaking as it amplified, spread through her fingertips and blurred her sight. Her voice vibrated from fury and fear. “I will handle this.” Her eyes honed in on father’s tray. “You finished?”

He nodded warily.

She picked up the bowl of breakfast grits and dumped it on Grant’s shirt. She lifted her other palm and began rubbing the sticky paste in rough, fast circles.

Grant scraped some off his shirt and licked his finger. “Lotta sugar in this, Forrest. Hope you’re not diabetic.”

“Nope. Hinky ticker, though. So the doctor tells me.”

“She may need some time to get used to the idea.”

“You jerk.” She was dismayed by the half-sob in her own voice, “Get out of here now.”

“Now, Delia.” Her father straightened in his bed. “You might want to listen to what the man has to say. He’s worth a lot. You could do worse.”

Grant reached for the cloth napkin on her father’s tray. She was quicker, however, and snatched it up, shoving in his hand and pushing him back.

“Go clean yourself up.” She was decisive. She was assertive and proud. “I’ll see you tomorrow and we’ll go over the punch list before the movers bring in the rest of the furniture.”

“Delia.” Grant’s voice was soothing.

Her face crumpled and she slapped her hand to his chest. “Get out,” she growled and slapped him again. As she raised her palm a third time, Grant dropped the napkin and took her wrists, pulling her palms into his chest.

“Shh, sweetheart.”

“Miss Forrest,” Nurse Reynolds called from behind him.

Grant ducked his head, forcing Delia to meet his gaze. “His face will be fine, Delia.”

“Miss Forrest, you have to calm down. You’re causing a disturbance.”

“Me? He said he was going to marry me!”

“Well, congratulations, dear! Do you have a ring yet?”

“No, I do not have a fucking ring.”

“Delia,” her father barked.

She stilled. Grant’s grip loosened, ever so slightly, and he ran his thumbs gently along the soft skin on the inside of wrists. “Sorry, Dad.”

“You’re just stressed.” The nurse shook her head at Delia and reached for the tray, which she passed to the orderly in the hall. “Please get Mr. Wolverton some clean scrubs on your way back from the kitchen. We can take care of Mr. Forrest.” She turned back to Delia’s father. “The OR is prepped and it’s time to get you settled in, Vern. Dr. Phillips has had her coffee and she’s ready to go.”

“Coffee?” Grant asked.

“Don’t you worry. I’ve seen her stitches, and she’s as steady as rock. But she’s much easier on the nurses when she’s had her cuppa. When’s the wedding?”

“July.”

“There is no wedding,” Delia said.

Nurse Reynolds raised an eyebrow at Delia’s father and reached around Grant to pull a wheelchair into the room.

Grant released Delia and reached for her father. “Come on, Dad.”

“Don’t call him that,” Delia pleaded.

Grant transferred the light bundle her father had become from the bed into the wheelchair. “July,” he repeated, as Nurse Reynolds rolled her father away.

“I want a private nurse, Wolverton,” her father called back. “Make her pretty.”

“Full service,” Grant promised.

Delia made a fist and pounded him in the shoulder, then stalked past him to her place behind father in the short parade to the operating room.

***

Shreds of the man’s clothes carpeted the bloody linoleum floor. His wallet and keys were in her purse. Fortunately, this was the end unit and it was the middle of the day, so no one heard when Cecily slammed his pelvis into the floor, cracking open the bones and bursting the sack of skin like the pop of a vacuum-sealed potato chip bag. Another pop, and his ribs collapsed together in a brittle heap.

She couldn’t figure it out. Picking up a stranger in a rest area was a known recipe for disaster. And yet they always looked surprised when the youthful brunette, who was much sexier and cleaner than any rest area whore in known history, crushed them between her thighs.

She grabbed an empty plastic trash sack and the bottle of bleach from her trunk and returned to the room. As she scrubbed a chunk of flesh from the baseboard, her to-do list clicked neatly into place in her mind. First, Uncle Vern. Second, Grant Wolverton. Would she need to kill Delia? She hoped not. But Cecily knew better than most not to leave loose ends.

“No,” Delia said again.

Grant had laid it all out for her methodically, had explained why it was the perfect solution for both of them. He told her she’d have her house and be able to take care of it. She’d never need to find an outside job. She’d be close to her father. He’d even offered to renovate the old caretaker’s cottage and make it accessible. If she insisted, he’d sighed, the old man could even live in the main house with them.

His arm rested across the green plastic chair back, a band of heat across her shoulders. He surrounded her with his scent, the smell of bleached cotton and spice and man that made it all but impossible to resist the urge to bury her face in his chest. His siren-seductive words wrapped around her as he offered her every secret fantasy she hid even from herself. He cocooned her with the promise of almost-bliss, almost-happiness, almost-love. She was frozen to her chair, her eyes glued on the window set into the green door across the waiting room.

An alarm ripped her from her reverie. Lights flashed over the door of the operating room and she bounded up. Grant placed his heavy hands on her shoulders as her palms slapped the little window. A host of gowned hospital staff pushed past, brushing the two of them out of the way. Grant pulled her back.

“My father.” She strained to pull herself free.

“Sssh, Delia. Let them do their work.”

“No!”

“Delia.” He breathed into her hair. “He needs them right now.”

“You’re right.” Delia deflated. “He doesn’t need me.” Her stomach felt hollow. Grant’s arm wrapped around her waist to warm and fill the gap. He enveloped her arms and chest, the rough cotton fabric of the borrowed blue scrubs soaking up the tears on her cheek. His lips rested in her hair.

“But I do,” she dreamt she heard him say, his voice less than a whisper.

“Wake up,” she whispered to herself. If the statues could do it, she really had little choice.

“He will, Delia.” Silly Grant. He though she was talking to her father. And maybe she was.

She pressed her face back to the small window, through which the doctors and nurses danced their peculiar choreography, each step precise, each gesture coordinated. Lift and lower paddles. Formation open. Two dancers—one standing, one supine—and
jolt.
Pass the paddles—two step in, one steps back. She felt herself swaying slightly, rocking forward into the cold door, rocking back into the solid warmth of Grant’s protective heat. He held her firmly but allowed her to rock with the rhythm of the doctors and nurses as they danced for her dying father.

One note, one high keening note, pealed like a drone of a bagpipe. Her father’s soul was sliding away on that note. Could she sing it? No. It was too high, out of her range.

And then, as suddenly as it began, the note was gone, replaced by a rhythmic blip. The dancers as one fell back, leaving only Dr. Phillips, a nurse Delia didn’t know, and Dr. Bustamante shaking his head over Dr. Phillips’s shoulder. They turned in formation and came out into the waiting room.

“He gave us a scare,” Dr. Bustamante said. “The surgery was beautiful—Gwen, you are an artist. But we’ll keep a close eye on his heart.” He peeled off his gloves and pulled a paper towel from a dispenser over the sink next to the door to wipe his brow. “Getting too old for this, I don’t mind telling you.”

“Don’t tell us,” Grant said. Delia looked up at him in surprise. “If you don’t have the capacity to care for him here, let us know and we’ll move him.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Delia muttered, but she felt better for his gruff arrogance. It was easier, by far, to be annoyed with Grant than to be scared for her father. “Leave the man be. Thank you, Doctor.” She looked into Dr. Phillips’s warm brown eyes. “Thank you for fixing his face—”
I can say it I can say it I can say it,
“—and for saving his life.”

***

After they moved her father to recovery, Delia was allowed to visit him. She leaned over him and whispered, “I forgive you,” because she did forgive him. The father whose scarred, misshapen hand she held was a new creation to her. He hadn’t been a great father, but he’d been the best he could be. He wanted them to be a family together and she was ready now. She whispered as much to the non-responsive, bandaged figure in the hospital bed.

When she was beyond exhausted and ready to leave, Grant steered her past St. Francis, giving the old statue a nod of his own, and tucked and strapped her into the car.

They rode in silence, to her great relief. If Delia tried really hard, maybe she would be able to convince herself that his “proposal” in her father’s hospital room had been just another delusion on her part. Unfortunately, she had a history of believing her own delusions.

In spite of his claim to want to retire and live in Steward House, to live with her, she knew better. Crazy Delia, surrounded as she was by a chaotic carnival of living stone, didn’t fit Wolverton’s ideal of the appropriate wife. Hell, she barely qualified as a mistress. She worked for him. She slept with him. She loved him, but he didn’t know that. Surely she could salvage that one little bit of herself.

“Get a couple days’ worth of clothing.” Grant took her purse and unlocked her apartment door. He held it open so she could step in. “You’re staying with me.”

She wouldn’t—she didn’t have the energy to slip out again and chase down Bert, so she would stand guard here. But neither did she have the energy to argue with Grant. As soon as she got in her door she would send him away.

The apartment was unusually quiet, except for a soft squeal and a muted sigh. Delia flipped the light and the sighing stopped. As her eyes adjusted, she froze, willing Grant back.

Sophie and Dorrie, the shepherdess, lay entwined on the counter with Dorrie’s foot between Sophie’s thighs. Dorrie pulled her mouth away from Sophie’s right breast and smiled at Delia. She was eight inches shorter than Sophie, which made them look more comic than erotic.

“Grant, why don’t you wait for me in the car?”

“You’ll come back with me?”

She was as surprised as he was. But her father had almost died, and Sophie and Dorrie were having sex on the counter, weren’t they?

Yes. Yes, they were.

To hell with it. To hell with playing nanny to a bunch of rocks.

Delia twisted around and leaned back to block his view as the figurines rolled apart and solidified into their original forms. Grant wasn’t looking at Delia either, however—he was looking across the room at Romana on her plinth. Her head was slightly inclined, and next to her stood Bert—who should have been in his corner by the front door.

“You rearranged.” Athena, who sat directly above Grant on the shelf over the door, looked down at his head, and then focused her blank stone eyes on Delia.

“Don’t worry, dear. We do know better.”

Grant followed Delia’s gaze, twisting to look up at Athena. “Cute.” he said dryly. “What are they saying?”

“They are saying they don’t like these new positions,” Delia ground out. “They are politely asking to be replaced in their initial positions, where they belong. They’re stones, Grant.” She slid her hand behind herself to stand Sophie and Dorrie upright. “They’re happier staying put where they belong.”

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

“Tell him you’re too good for him,” Brogan growled from his vantage point at the end of the galley counter by the kitchen wall. The leaves of his cheeks had flared up off the stone base.

Grant’s brow furrowed as he looked at Brogan.

“His…teeth.” Grant shook his head and took a step into the room. He nodded at Bert. “And the tip of his ear is bent.” Grant folded his arms and leaned against the counter. Behind his back, Sophie lifted and arched, pressing her breasts toward the back of his jeans. Delia swooped in and snatched the statuette. “When did he break, Delia?”

Well, crap. She could hardly tell him the truth and she was too tired to invest in a lie that would make her look, at best, too incompetent to care for his sculptures.

“Do you or don’t you want to have sex with me?” She pressed her chest to his and slid Sophie down the counter away from the shepherdess.

His pupils dilated, his nostrils flared and he settled his hand on the small of her back.

“Stupid question,” Brogan snarled.

“Stupid question,” Grant replied.

“Then get your ass out to the car and I will be there in two minutes.” She snatched Dorrie from behind him and wove around the counter to place her back on top of the fridge.

***

Grant waited instead by her closed door, inspecting the cracked, patchy parking lot and the green water of the kidney-shaped complex pool.

“No, Bert!” he heard her say. “You do not get to watch.” He winced at the thumps and scraping noises as she shifted the statues back in place. “You and I are going to have a talk when I get home.” She sounded like a mother scolding her teenage son. Like she might scold his son one day.

Delia was far from perfect. She was a liar. She was delusional. She was a thief—a piss-poor one, but larcenous nonetheless. He knew her provenance and didn’t think much of either Vernon Forrest or his new hometown’s pastime of building myths around Delia’s family history.

But Grant could live with misdemeanors. Nothing Delia had done came close to what he himself had seen and dealt with during the life and death of his mother—and he’d survived with few traceable scars. Grant could cushion Delia, protect her and, when necessary, cage her so that she would neither be tempted nor able to commit any large betrayals.

This affectation of hers was manageable. Whether she was so immersed in her own delusion that the town bought into the myth, or whether they had created the story of the Steward witches and programmed her to believe it, was irrelevant. The solution was obvious. He’d keep her here. In this sleepy little hill town, her stories could be as wild and imaginative as she liked. He’d protect her from derision. He’d raise their sons to be compassionate and understanding, and to indulge their mother as good sons should. Their daughters would be polished and sweet, like their aunt, and generous and creative, like their mother.

“What the hell?” She yanked open the door. The curls along her jaw shook with fury. “I told you to get in the car. Are we going to have sex or not?”

***

Cecily was brimming with the buzz off her last kill, which was good because she needed to be fast, fast, fast. And fast she was, shaving at least an hour off her return drive from North Carolina to Stewardsville, in spite of the winding passes through the hills.

The hospital, by contrast, was asleep. Cecily stole a quick kiss from the sullen orderly who came to the rear door at her knock—Jimbo’s replacement on the night shift, no doubt. She took the guy’s keycard and left him in the gravel under the great green dumpster. Then, for the hell of it, she lifted the dumpster a couple inches and pulled it over him, pinning the shoulder of his scrubs to the ground. Let him try and figure that one out.

Cecily snuck down the hall as quickly and quietly as Delia herself. Forrest was the only overnight surgery patient on the board, and the nurse at the desk was so into her game of Tetris she didn’t see Cecily scuttle past.

She hated sneaking around. Every cell in her body wanted to hoist that bitch up out of her chair and toss her up into the fluorescent tube lights just to watch them shatter. But she knew her goal, knew her plan and wasn’t about to fuck it up.

In the end, killing Vernon Forrest was like eating celery, costing her more energy to suck him dry than his life force replaced. His face was heavily bandaged, so she could barely latch on. He tasted bitter, of anesthesia, and he hadn’t even known she was there. Hell, he probably still didn’t know he was gone.

Code blue sounded. She had only seconds, so she sprinted past the desk, knowing she was barely more than a white ripple in their perception since she’d had the presence of mind to wear her own Naughty Nurse costume, which blended into the walls.

She slammed the rear door shut behind her and turned for her car.

Directly before her stood the statue of St. Francis.

“What the fuck?” she hissed, and then she heard a moan. The orderly on the ground beneath the dumpster rolled his head to the side. Any minute now he’d see her, see the statue. Unless she killed him too.

But she didn’t have the fucking time or, quite frankly, the need. And the statue…the statue raised its hand to her.

Cecily stepped back and kicked the orderly in the head. The statue was slowly lifting its other hand to her and she made a decision.

“You want me, big boy? Well, let’s go.”

She wrapped her arm around its waist and grunted. The fucker was God-knew-how-many pounds of solid granite, and she felt the tendons in her shoulder give in an exquisite scream of pain. But she had him. She hoisted him onto her shoulder and, stumbling for balance, lurched her way across the parking lot to the unlit corner where she’d left her car. His hands slid around her throat, but she laughed, peeling back the cold fingers and tossing him off her into the backseat.

According to the clock on the dash, it was almost dawn. She had to get rid of the glob of granite and soon.

She knew just where the chunk of stone belonged. “Come on, St. Francis. We’re going to do right by Carl Benson.”

***

Grant’s car followed hers to the bed and breakfast. Delia had insisted on driving herself and he relented without a murmur. She turned her Beastie Boys CD to full volume and blasted her way through town, refusing to think or question or doubt.

At Blossom’s Folly she made a beeline for the stairs. Grant slid in his key and jerked the door open with more force than was called-for. She pushed past him and yanked off her T-shirt.

“Delia?” His voice was wary.

She shimmied out of her jeans and threw them over the chair, then she turned to face him, feeling ridiculous in her bra and panties. She clenched her fists, raised her chin and waited. His eyes upon hers were thundercloud gray. He unbuttoned the top three buttons of his shirt, and then muttered a curse.

Grant engulfed her, winding one arm around her back and sliding the other hand to cup her breast. He closed his lips over hers and invaded her mouth with his tongue. She fought back, sucking him in, biting down on his lip. Her breast swelled to meet the demands of his palm. He scraped the edge of his thumbnail over her rigid nipple and Delia hissed.