Stone Kissed (9 page)

To her disappointment he didn’t. She was furious with herself for her foolishness, and irritation overcome caution. Her feet slapped against the kitchen floor.

“Who are you?” The woman’s voice sliced through the hazy blue dawn air like a switchblade.

Delia dropped her purse and ducked instinctively behind the kitchen counter. Peering up from her hiding place, she saw a slim beauty in a white pantsuit. Her red hair was bound up in a perfectly sleek chignon and she held two dark leather suitcases at her side.

Delia knew she looked ridiculous with her tangled bed hair poking over the top of the counter. The way out lay beyond the redhead, so Delia snatched up her purse and stood.

“I’m leaving.” She stepped out to pass the…what? Girlfriend? She couldn’t think about that now, couldn’t allow the white scream building in the base of her skull to pour out of her face in a wave of noise and tears. She’d been stupid, stupid,
stupid.
She had to escape.

But the woman blocked her, cocking her head and looking her over. “Seriously. Who are you? He never brings women here. Doesn’t want to contaminate my happy little home, you know?”

“Your home?” Worse and worse.

The redhead held out her hand and Delia stared at it, realizing too late the woman expected her to shake it. “I’m Miranda.” She smiled and spoke as if Delia were a child. “I’m Grant’s sister.”

“I’ve never seen you,” Delia blurted.

“He’s protective. Doesn’t allow photographers within shooting distance. So did he kick you out, or are you sneaking away?”

“Stop, Randi.” Grant leaned on the door frame, his unbuttoned jeans slung low on his hips. His posture was relaxed and easy, but his voice was as cold as his silver eyes.

“Grant! Surprise.”

He shook his head at Miranda. Delia took advantage of the moment to scoot past her, but she pulled up short when she reached Grant.

“I called you a cab, I’ll send a moving truck over in one hour,” he told her. His corded arms were folded across his well-muscled chest. He stepped to the side to let her pass.

“I don’t need—”

“One hour.”

“Jeez, Grant, at least offer her a cup of coffee.”

“Randi, please.”

He sounded weary. She fought the urge to turn around and look at him, to see if his voice matched his face. Had she done that? Was he unhappy she was leaving, or just unhappy his precious sister had been exposed to his latest piece of ass?

Delia scuttled past the oasis, and the voices behind her dropped to hushed, angry whispers.

“Weren’t you good enough, little bird?” Bast called.

“I’m not a zero, at least.”

“Zero? What’s a zero?”

Was she good enough for Grant? Probably not. He’d enjoyed himself with her, but he was the type of man who did, wasn’t he? He probably slept with willing women all the time. Beautiful, accomplished, polished women who were worthy of a proper introduction to his sister.

She was not in Wolverton’s league.

She shoved the door open and left without looking back.

***

For once Steward House was empty. Grant was out of town and, oddly enough, so was Delia. Cecily stepped over a pile of planks on the floor and sniffed in derision. When she was mistress of the estate, she would strip this place down to its bones and start over, but she’d done her due diligence investigating Grant. Her soon-to-be-second-husband would be able to afford it.

His minions had done quick work, often with him right in the thick of it. It was charming how he played man-of-the-manor, joining the blue coveralled ants as they stripped out the ragged fabric from the windows and cut salvageable sections from banisters and paneling with admirable speed and precision. They were in the process of gutting everything blackened and burnt from the insides of the house, but Cecily still found traces of her fire—the odd scorch mark on the still-exposed beams.

Regardless of what she’d told the old biddies in the historical society, Cecily hated this house. Even now she felt cold in here although it was a balmy for an April evening. She belonged on this land as much as Delia did, but these bricks closed around her, smothering her.

Cecily checked her cell phone again. It had been six hours since she’d left messages in her parents’ voice mailboxes. She missed them, Daddy especially. Their house still felt empty, even though she’d had it to herself for three years.
I met a man
, she’d said, knowing it was a guaranteed teaser her mother wouldn’t be able to resist—although not for the normal reasons.

“You’re a good girl,” her mother had repeated
ad nauseum
throughout Cecily’s adolescence. When Ricky Taylor had brought her home from her first official date looking ten years older than his fellow varsity ballplayers, her mother had pushed her into the house, and then turned in the doorway back to Ricky. Pulling her thick pink chenille robe around herself, she’d squinted up at his face, and poor Ricky had just stood there blushing. Then mother clucked her tongue and shut the door softly against him.

“Please, Cecily. Be careful.” Mom had pulled Cecily’s fingers into her own bony hands.

“Mom, I can take care of myself.”

“That’s not what worries me. I’m not blind, Cecily. Nor am I stupid.”

“I never said you were stupid.”

“Never mind.” Her mother closed her eyes and shook her head once, slowly. “You keep a quarter in your purse and another between your knees. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am.” She didn’t want to talk about sex with her mother. They’d never spoken about these things before, and the whole conversation made her legs squirm. She hitched up the low rise back of her newest pair of jeans, and tugged down the hem of her new gingham halter.

“Won’t do any good, will it, Cecily?” Her mother called after her, and Cecily looked back. Mom looked old, old, old. “You are what you are, I guess. Just be…discreet.”

But she hadn’t been careful enough. And when, after failing at marriage, Cecily came back to her parents for comfort, for family, they’d left her.

Wolverton would be her gift to them, her peace offering. He was perfect, a gift from God. He had mountains of money and virility.
Vitality
. If she were cautious and prudent, if she traveled and made a point of only seldom eating in her own bed, she could keep him for years.

Wolverton had possession of her land, and he acted as if he intended to keep it. She would keep it too. The two of them would be engaged by the first of June. With a small destination wedding, she could even be a June bride.

She was hungry and it was most annoying. Something about this house drained her faster than usual. Picking her way through the kitchen to the back, she went out to her hole and her shovel.

“No new messages,” Delia’s answering machine said.

“I could have told you that,” Brogan added.

“Aren’t you a know-it-all?” Romana said.

“I know more than you, Lassie.”

“Listen, half-head—”

“Stop. Please stop.” Delia pulled her bath towel tight and dropped back onto the red futon. Grant hadn’t called. Not once in over a week. Nor had he come back to Stewardsville.

She had no right to be petulant. After all, she hadn’t called him either. Besides, it was easier to concentrate at work without him on his knees before her, prying nails out of boards with a claw hammer. Instead she sweated and scrubbed and hammered in drywall with the crew, trying her best to focus on the house instead of watching every vehicle that pulled up the drive.

Delia stuck her swollen thumb in her mouth. Today she’d only smashed it once, which was progress.

She pulled on her clothes and the noise swelled up around her again. Since she brought Brogan and Athena back from the city, the statues were noticeably more talkative than before, and Grant, unfortunately, was their favorite topic of conversation.

“If she were nicer to him, we might get to see him again,” Sophie insisted.

“That’s Delia,” Athena explained from her new perch above the doorway, “She’s always been picky.”

“I am not listening to this.” Delia yanked her shoelaces tight. “I’m going to see Father.”

“Why put your nose in the air when it can be…elsewhere?” Sophie asked.

“Where else would she put her nose?” Bert asked, “Hers isn’t very functional.”

“Come here, big boy, and I’ll show you where to put it.”

“Enough!” Delia shouted as she snatched up her bag. “What has gotten into all of you?”

She came out of her room each night, pleading for them to be quiet so she could get some sleep. She heard them through the door each afternoon before her key turned in the lock. When she left for Steward House or the hospital, their voices followed her down the concrete stairs to the parking lot.

And these conversations! Sophie had never had the time of day for Bert before, but now she was full of innuendo and—inviting him to move?

Inviting him to
move.

Even now, their silence was short-lived. As Delia reached for the doorknob, Romana spoke up. “Sophie is right about one thing. You should use what your god gave you. Men like him don’t come around every day. After five centuries, I should know.”

“What did you say?”

“You should use—”

“Not that. About the centuries.”

“I said, after five centuries, I know a thing or two about men.”

“Don’t listen to these trollops,” Brogan said from his perch against the counter wall.

“If you had it, you’d use it too,” Romana retorted.

“Use what?” Bert asked.

Delia pulled the door shut, dropped her bag back on the counter and sat on the couch. She scanned them all—the shepherdesses clustered atop the short refrigerator, Sophie dancing next to Athena on the counter, Romana on her plinth along the wall beside the bathroom door. Bert flanked the front door in the narrow space between the hinges and the window. Together they chatted, squabbled, complained and laughed, their lively voices ebbing and flowing in continual conversation as if Delia were not even there.

As if she were not even there.

Something tickled at her memory.
Time.
It had to do with time.

“Romana, how old are you?”

“Don’t tell anyone, but I’m five-hundred and three.”

“You don’t look a day under a millennium,” Brogan said. He was flirting. Brogan the gruff was flirting with the armless torso on the plinth.

“How old are you, Brogan?”

“About nine hundred fifty, I guess. I don’t know exactly.” He was close enough—she’d narrowed down his abbey to three different ruins in Ireland.

“Where are you from?”

“Ireland. Bunch of monks. Dull lot, those.”

Delia felt absurdly relieved at his vagueness.

“Now the O’Malleys, who housed me until the Great Hunger, were a lively lot,” he continued. “Dancing every night—until they couldn’t.”

“Delia, are you feeling well?” Athena asked.

Delia shook her head. The blood was pounding in her ears.

“Her Grandma had a restorative for times like these, but I don’t think Delia has the right bottle,” Bert added.

She turned and stared at the rabbit. He remembered her grandmother. Not Grandmère, but her honest-to-goodness grandmother. And why wouldn’t he? He’d spent more years in Grandmother’s care than he had weeks with Delia.

Her statues around her were full of new stories they’d never told before. They were evolving, becoming smarter, sharper, deeper—and she knew in her gut it was her fault.

Reality won’t change just because you refuse to face it.
Although she itched to bolt to the quiet safety of the hospital, Delia’s visit with her father would have to wait. Rubbing her eyes, she picked up her pencil and flipped to a fresh page in her sketch pad.

“Brogan, you’re the oldest. Aren’t you?” Delia paused, but no one else piped up to lay claim to the honor. “Let’s start with you. Tell me everything you remember.”

She lasted three hours before escaping to her father’s hospital room, which was far less stressful than listening to the sculptures squabble or pester her about Grant. Their stories were still boiling in her head. Brogan told of the O’Malley family dancing in the kitchen and then dying on the floor of starvation. Sophie sang the lullabies Josephine Baker had sung to her tribe of adopted children. The shepherdesses described how Mr. Throckmorton, Esquire would bend the maid over the games table in the parlor and have his way with her while Mrs. Throckmorton putted golf balls on the front lawn of their Maryland estate. Each tale ended with the same placid announcement: “And then they died.” Death held no weight with the sculptures.

They’d finally removed Father’s respirator. While she’d been making love—no, having sex—with Grant in the city last week, they’d removed Father’s respirator. She should have been here instead. It would have been better all around if she’d stayed at her father’s side instead of throwing herself into Grant’s bed.

With only the feeding tube now threaded through his nose, her father looked even more frail, oddly enough. More mortal than before. She pulled out the tube of lip balm from the drawer next to his bed and painted it carefully onto his slack, chapped lips.

Dr. Bustamante stopped in while she was sketching a long curve that was anything but architectural. “He’s making good progress, Miss Forrest.”

The swelling had diminished in the last few weeks. She could see tufts of hair on the right side of his head and the pink puckered skin up where his ear used to be. His left eye was covered, but Dr. Bustamante said it was not fused as he’d first feared. Father might even be able to see rough shapes and colors. In addition to loops of bandages down his arm, her father now sported a green hospital gown.

The good doctor patted her arm absently as he went through his litany about her father’s improved skin color, his catheter and the small, unfocused twitches he made in response to external stimuli.

Delia nodded through all of it, feeling his hand on her arm and wondering at her lack of response. He was a reasonably attractive man for his age, wealthy, a professional, in good physical condition—even if he was a bit older than she. Why didn’t his touch buzz through her like Grant’s did? What random fault in her wiring made her desire a man who was so beyond her, her only role in his life could be temporary entertainment while he played with his new toy property? Dr. Bustamante was friendly and personable—unlike Grant. She never had to make conversation while the doctor was around.

“…every reason to expect him to regain full consciousness soon.” Dr. Bustamante had an expectant smile on his face.

“That’s good.” She showed the expected teeth as she turned her fake smile on her father. Was she ready for him to wake up? Would she ever be ready for that?

Not today. She didn’t think she could deal with one more shock or change.

After the doctor left, Delia sketched and talked, telling the silent figure breathing in the bed about the progress on the house and even a few of the stories from the statues.

“Just so you know, I’m still crazy.” Delia frowned at the drawing in her lap—a sketch of a very different man in a very different bed. She blushed. The likeness was excellent. She knew which creamy-bronze pigments she would use to bring him off the page. Immersed in her self-torture, she was completely unprepared for the hoarse rasp.

“De-a.”

She looked to the door of the room at first, but no one was there.

“De-a.”

She closed her eyes, swallowed, and forced them open.

His lips were slack.

“De-a.”

Was his right eye open? She dropped the sketch pad, stood and leaned in for a better look—maybe, maybe just a slit. The heart rate monitor beeped faster.

He said her name again, “De-a. Gim-me.”

“Give you what?” she asked, looking around the room in panic. “Water? I can get you water, maybe.” But the feeding tube ran into his stomach.

The call button. The nurses and doctors had pointed it out at least a dozen times. She slapped at the wheeled tray table. Where was the damn thing? She found the remote dangling down the side of his hospital bed, and jammed her index finger into the button over and over.

Seconds later, Nurse Reynolds pushed through the closed door and rushed to her father’s side, blocking Delia’s view. Kelsey Hardcastle followed, twisting her pregnant belly to the side so she could wrap her arms around Delia. She pulled Delia back to allow three others in.

“Shh. Sweetie.” She handed Delia a tissue.

“I’m not crying.” Delia blew her nose hard.

“Happy tears. It’s been a long few weeks, but your daddy’s going to be all right.”

She continued to pat Delia’s back as Delia sobbed into the shoulder of Kelsey’s stork-covered scrubs. Kelsey thought they were happy tears. She had no idea, no idea at all. But at the moment, neither did Delia.

***

Grant barely glanced at the cherry blossoms. His thoughts bubbled and burst with each footfall. Only during his fourth loop around the Mall did Grant notice that Randi’s monologue about her upcoming trip to Venice had faded. He looked back and she was ten paces behind him. Sheepishly, he slowed until she caught up.

“Frustrated, much?” she coughed out. A red curl had escaped her ponytail and was glued to her cheek. Her face was almost as red as her hair.

“Sorry.”

“You’ve haven’t visited your…house…since I got back. She didn’t seem type…make you run.” She puffed out her words, but he heard the smile in her voice.

“I’m spending time with my sister,” he ground out.

“I’m capable of entertaining myself. You should call her.”

“You can have the shop,” he announced in order to distract her. It was difficult enough to get Delia out of his mind without his sister pestering him about her.

“In Stewardsville?”

He nodded, turning his gaze to the monolith in front of him. “It’s small. About eight hundred square feet. But the property adjacent is vacant. You can use it for your warehouse. Rent will be a quarter of what you’re paying now.” To his sister’s credit, she was paying her own rent. In spite of Lars’s disapproval, Grant still kept an eye on her books—thankfully, Randi never changed passwords, and Heart of Glass was networked into the Wolverton servers anyway. She’d paid off his microloan six years ago and never looked back. He was really quite proud of her.

She acted as if she hadn’t heard him. “When are you going back?”

They veered off by habit to the side street where he’d parked the car.

“I don’t know.” He opened the car door for her.

She placed her hand on top and looked up at him, her green eyes full of amusement. “You’re going nuts up here, Grant. For your sake and mine, go back.”

Grant grimaced. He shouldn’t be surprised by now that his sister was able to read him, but he needed to regain control. “What about the shop?”

Randi removed her hand and dropped into the car. They’d ridden halfway home in silence when Lars’s voice came over the phone speaker. “Grant, he’s awake and talking.”

“When?”

“Just this afternoon.”

“Shit.”

“How do you know, Lars?” Randi glared at the speaker.

“I didn’t realize you were there, Randi.”

“Is this not good news? The guy’s been in a coma.”

“The arsonist is still out there,” Grant said.

He’d wait a few days. Delia wouldn’t take it well if he went rushing in with his questions. Delia wouldn’t take it well when he came ambling in with them, either, but his consideration for her feelings couldn’t get in the way of his quest for the truth about Steward House. The house had an enemy and Grant would find him, by fair means or foul.

***

Grant returned the day after her father began speaking. Delia didn’t kid herself it was a coincidence. Yet he picked up a drill as if he hadn’t been away, and the other workers made space for him on the cross beam as if he were just another average Joe who’d never left.

“Travis, would you please cut me a three-by-three section of this panel?” Delia hefted a large chunk of wallboard she’d rescued from the heap by the dumpster, the last remnants of a painstaking demolition.

Travis grunted his assent and shaved the edges off the piece from her bedroom. She had a good idea what she’d find when she soaked the top two layers of wallpaper off. When she was seven, she’d lain on the floor against the wall in the corner of her room, picking at a loose spot of paper. The pale green floral print had given way to cabbage roses. The cabbage roses had given way to thick mauve and cream stripes. And beneath the stripes, if she remembered correctly, hummingbirds in brilliant colors had rested among a network of curling brown vines.

Delia hosed the flat section with a low-pressure stream, enjoying the cool splash of the water onto her tanned ankles. She considered turning the hose on herself. In the unusual heat of early May, she’d dry out quickly. Her old denim cutoffs weren’t quite Daisy Dukes, and her new pink T-shirt was too thin. But it was a good color, according to Sophie, and lifted up the tan in her skin. Bert had told her she looked pretty when she left the apartment in the morning. He’d always been sweet-natured, even if he was now exhibiting a disturbing new curiosity about some of the sexier song lyrics. Over their protests, she’d taken to setting the radio on the oldies station or leaving the television on the local PBS affiliate when she left the house.

“Need help with that?”

Grant stood before her, the sun glowing through his curly dark hair and lifting the tips up into gold. His sunglasses blocked his expression, but the curve of his mouth kicked up into something suspiciously like a leer. He was in a threadbare white T-shirt himself, with the pink face of Mr. Bubbles on its front. She pointed at it and smiled herself.

“Randi gave it to me years ago. Said it looked like me.”

“Oh yeah. Nail on the head.”

“Delia.” He stopped, pulled his thumbs out of the pockets of his ever-so-tight jeans and reached one long, dark, muscled arm toward her. She stepped forward, but his hand brushed past her and picked up the hose. “I’ve had a large estate deal come up.”

She turned away from him. He owed her no explanations and she didn’t want him to see how much she craved them.

“Isn’t there a safer way to do this?”

“I’m not preserving it, I’m copying it. These older, hand-painted papers have much larger pattern repeats. This was expensive stuff—Great-Grandpa spared no expense.” She peeled back the third layer to reveal the bright red-and-yellow flashing on the back of the first bird. “See that? It’s the work of Bellarneau.”

He moved in next to her. The warm day got hotter. She ignored the brush of his thigh against her buttocks. She ignored his hand at her waistline, even though her belly warmed where his callused palm rested between the hem of her shirt and the top of her shorts. She ignored his chin resting on her head and continued doggedly to explain, rambling in excessive detail about the French artisan and the history of the wet flap of paper in her hands. She felt his breath brush across the top of her scalp and the attendant tingle racing down her spine, jolting her through her fingers, her toes, her core.

Delia couldn’t take any more. “I am sorry, Grant. I don’t come with the house.”

She’d been proud of her line as she’d practiced it, muttering it under her breath while she hoisted buckets of debris over the side of the rented construction dumpster and chanting it in her head like a mantra during her morning jogs. Aloud in the blue haze of the morning air, however, it just sounded childish.

The hand at her waist stiffened and the breath in her hair froze.

“No,” he replied slowly. “I haven’t yet seen you come here.”

If he pulled her into himself and claimed her mouth she would claw into him, she would melt him with every last bit of passion she possessed. If he was hot, she would ignite him.

But he didn’t. Damn him.

“Stop it.” Her voice broke. “Stop touching me.” She looked at the rented white canopy in the front yard to see if the crew unloading the reclaimed oak beams could hear her furious whispers.

“I haven’t touched you in ages.”

“How could you have? You weren’t here.” She flushed with humiliation and he released her wrist. She turned her back on him and hunkered in front of the slab, peeling slowly to expose the rest of the paper.

“Come to dinner with me tonight.”

“I have plans.”

“How is he?”

Delia shrugged, refusing to answer. Grant had already heard way too much.

“Has he said anything?” he pressed.

She huffed a sigh. “He doesn’t remember large chunks of the last few years. Of course, there wasn’t much for him to remember.” Her voice dropped in bitterness and guilt. “He’s led a rather plain life. And he does not remember the fire.” She dropped the wallboard onto the ground and held up the paper she’d rescued, pretending to examine it.

Grant knelt beside her and traced his finger over a bright green hummingbird. He smelled of clean sweat and the pine woods and she wobbled as she fought her desire to lean into him.

“I’ve got reservations at this Fleur de Lis place.”

“Good for you.”

He stood and his shadow cooled her, protected her from the sun. “It’s time for a progress report, Delia, and I’ll have it over dinner. I’ll pick you up at eight.”

Work. He wanted to talk about Steward House, and she was, as always, an utter fool.

“At the hospital.” She didn’t want him anywhere near her apartment. Especially not now. She knew none of the neighbors could hear the constant cacophony, but sometimes Mrs. Pevensky stared at her just a little too long from her lawn chair next to the dingy complex pool.

Grant stepped back, taking with him the protection of his body from the sudden shaft of sunlight that cut her in the eyes. Delia winced.

“Get some sunglasses—you’re hurting your vision.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” she muttered. He might be right. She’d imagined some things in the last couple days—a flicker of a leaf, a twitch of an ear. She already heard voices. She didn’t need eye trouble on top of everything else.