I wouldn’t give up.
I would fight.
Chapter 8
I woke to an empty bed and the sound of the shower pelting against the provider of a sweet angel’s voice.
Allie sang some parts of a tune and hummed others.
Propping my hands behind my head, I lay in the bed listening to her, hoping I was the reason she was as happy as she sounded.
Outside, it was dark. The only light in the room was the blue beams of the alarm clock radio beside the bed. It was late.
My stomach growled. I shook my head.
Food.
At a time like this?
I had just battled and came out victorious over the most important obstacle I had ever bounded, and food was all I could think about.
The rush of water splashing against the shower floor in the bathroom suddenly turned to a drip and cotton brushed against a metal bar. Oh, to be the towel she’d just taken and wrapped around her body. I knew what she meant when she said she could be inside of me and not be close enough.
My heart skipped.
Down boy, I chided myself. You’ve seen her before. This isn’t new.
Wrapped in a plush yellow towel, Allie strolled out of the bathroom, humming more softly as she rang her hair dry. Beads of water glistened on her long, silky legs.
I turned over and propped on my elbow to admire the view. “A woman of many talents.”
She jumped, then jerked her towel tighter. “You scared me.”
“Come here.” I moved over to make room.
With reluctant steps, she walked to the bed. She bit her lip.
I held out my hand with a grin. “Now you’re afraid of me?”
She sat on the side of the bed and faced me, her wet hair cascading down her shoulders. “I’m not afraid. But you talk in your sleep.”
Uh-oh. I flitted through scenery of vague dreams from the bout of sleep, but nothing stood out. I loosened my grip on her hand. This was not good. When had I started talking in my sleep? Or had I always talked in my sleep and just had no one to inform me of it? “What did I say?”
Allie twisted a dark chocolate tendril of hair. “Nothing I could make out. Just garbled words about Sage.”
I lay flat on the bed. I might as well get it over with. I did have her secluded on an island.
She couldn’t exactly flee the premises. The farthest she could go was five acres away and sit on the beach until she was calm enough to speak to me. Calm enough to realize this is what I’d contended with all my life.
Grace’s undying antics.
Would she go back home and try to fight Grace as soon as we pulled up to the front entrance or would she listen to me and let me handle things the way I knew would keep her safe?
When would I finally find a way to trust Allie completely? It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her enough to tell her the truth about things, it was just… She never listened to me when I told her she was in danger. I couldn’t lose her again.
“I don’t remember dreaming.” I scoffed hoping she’d drop the subject. I still hadn’t planned out the conversation. It had to be perfectly executed. I couldn’t get all tongue-tied and say something stupid like I normally did.
“You were probably worrying the way you always do. You said something about her being dangerous. Even when you’re sleeping you’re terrified of losing me.”
“The thoughts never leave my mind.” Different horrid ways Allie could end up dead strobed through my consciousness so much that they preoccupied me most days.
She took my free hand and absently spun my ring around my finger. Without looking away from the repetitive action, she tilted her head thoughtfully. “That’s what scares me so. I’m afraid you’d do something terrible to keep me safe, and I’d have to live without you.”
How had she done that? Had someone talked to her?
She stopped. “Shelby called and asked if we could come home because she needs help with a project you and she started before you left. She said it was important.”
Shelby had opened her big mouth. That was it.
I was going to throttle Shelby when I saw her.
“I thought I said no phones.” I sat up jerking the sheets with me.
Allie stood and crossed the room. She pulled a drawer and found undergarments. “I know, but it wouldn’t stop ringing. I thought something might be wrong.”
My voice was strained as it crossed tight, angry vocal cords. “And was there?”
If Shelby had spilled any sort of bad news on Allie, so help me….
“Other than needing you to call her as soon as you woke, that was it.” Allie regarded me with intensity.
That was too close a call.
I had to find a way to tell Allie the truth. I’d plan it out in the shower and then take her on a walk. Maybe if I gave a few of the hundreds of times Grace had found a way to molest me as examples, the news of her latest scheme might not get me in as much trouble. I’d decide under the hot spray which ones.
Unashamed, I sauntered into the bathroom.
“They are like all the other workers at that house. Helpless without my guidance.” I turned the faucet over to red and tested the water until it was just right. I poked my head out of the bathroom. “When I’m done, we’ll eat. I know you must be starving.”
Allie stood in the same spot, stuck in a blind stare at the bathroom door. She jumped when I caught her frozen in whatever little fantasy had begun inside her head. The shower spray drowned her thoughts to inaudible whispers. Probably a good thing.
“Are you okay?” I couldn’t help but smirk.
“I… It was dark last night. That was…” She shook her head, addled.
“I forget that you’re a little less accustomed to me than I am to you.” I stifled a laugh. “And for the record. When you came out of the bathroom in just a little towel, you’re lucky you made it across the room without being eaten alive.”
Allie’s flustered look drained to horror as she clutched her towel against her. As if it would protect her. Yeah.
When she caught my joke, she cocked her head. “It’s a good thing I used up almost all the hot water.”
After shutting the door on her smile, I forced myself into the shower. If I didn’t practice brutal self-control with that woman every second of the day, we’d never make it out of the bedroom.
* * * *
Refreshed but strangely exhausted, I stepped from the shower. I chose four incidents of Grace’s worst tricks to find a way into my arms over the years. There’d been the time in the woods when I was sleeping and she’d found a way to wake me out of a dead sleep. She’d made herself look like Allie. I’d kissed her and knew it wasn’t my beloved. Then there was the next time in the 1970s that in the likeness of Allie, she’d disappeared into a dressing room and lured me in. It didn’t take long at all to realize my mistake. Then, one time not too long before Allie had shown up on the property, I’d given in to a bottle of expensive whiskey I’d found in the basement to drown the pain. Grace had almost had me in the bed with her. That time had been the closest because she’d had so many years of practicing to look, sound, and act exactly like Allie.
The possibility that those situations might not be enough to convince Allie that I was innocent aimed right at my good mood and shot it down like a fighter jet with me in its sights.
In 1879, Grace Rollins dug me a pit so deep only a pinhole of light speared the darkness at the bottom. After spending a hundred years there and making no progress climbing up the wall of her prison, I’d given up until Ava had thrown me down a ladder.
Allie and the seemingly perfect tools to imprison Grace.
Even then, fate had a way of righting itself.
Allie and I weren’t supposed to be together.
This little getaway island fantasy would have to end, but I could see no way out. Every possible outcome was Allie’s devastation.
In trying to have her
, I’d made our situation inordinately worse.
The house was quiet. No Allie sounds. No Allie thoughts. A note on the bar told me why.
I’ll be at the main house with Nelvi. She came down to ask what we wanted for dinner. I volunteered to help her heat something up. Love, Your Wife.
I reread the last line about ten times, then put the note down. When she called herself mine, I could only experience more joy in her embrace. But it was bittersweet. It would end.
Fighting the fatigue of the years, I yanked my phone from the kitchen drawer and stalked to the living room. I sat on the warm red sofa. The color was supposed to ease tension, but it would take more than aesthetically pleasing surroundings to ease my apprehension.
Flipping open the phone, I stared at it for a few long seconds.
I wasn’t in the mood to hear the argument the twins would put up.
They wouldn’t give up as easily as I had. They were fighters.
I used to be. In that first life.
Every time I thought life was going to give me lemonade, shit pie got slung in my face. So after years of the stench, I’d gotten used to it.
The phone rang twice when Shelby picked it up. “This had better be Cole.”
“And if it wasn’t?” I crossed my feet on the black marble coffee table.
“I’m glad you weren’t my twin brother. I would have eaten you in the womb.”
I played with the fringe on the pillow. “You sound troubled.”
“Troubled? Oh, you think you’re cute. Me and my sister are bending over backward to keep this skank pacified while you’re off in la-la land? She’s more psycho with skin on than she ever was in ghost form.” I was almost afraid Shelby’s hand would reach through the phone to strangle me.
“So Grace is being her normal sweet considerate self, I take it.” I sank back into the plush sofa.
“What in the Sam Hill were you thinking, leaving us here to contend with her. Do you know she’s already trying to redecorate the whole damn place? Apparently, she’s taken a liking to baby-shit green!” I held the phone back as she vented. My temple throbbed.
“Okay, calm down. This will be over before you know it. I know I’ve already piled an ass load of things on your plate, but I need you to do a few more things for me.”
“I already feel a hissy fit coming on.” A noise rustled on the other end. “Okay, I’m sitting down. I’ve got you on speaker so Kaitlyn is filled in too. Go ahead.”
“Do you remember the crate I moved from the fourth floor sitting room to the attic?”
“Yes. Another time you hid something from Allie.” Shelby was definitely a grudge-holder.
“I need you to look through it. It belonged to the witch that put the curse on Annabeth and me. It’s unlikely, but maybe it has something in it we can use against Grace while she’s in Sage’s body. If not, I know Allie would like to have all the pictures of me and my family. From that time period.” I paused. “Beyond that, I need someone to make my funeral arrangements if the week is up, and we don’t have a plan in place. I don’t think I want to be bothered with them if a week is all I have with Allie.”
I waited for Shelby to flip stupid. She would before Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn was always a little less hotheaded.
The phone rustled again. “You’ve just rendered Shelby speechless. Which never happens. We’ve sat back and watched how you groomed the statue’s flowerbeds, stared at the same spot every night for over a year because you knew it was where Allie had taken her last breath, and how you totally changed when she first arrived on the property. I’ve never met a man who lived his life around a woman the way you have. We think you’re amazing, and Shelby just has a very difficult time putting all that into words. You’re not just an employer. You’re a friend. And family.”
“Which is why I trust that when the time comes, you’ll do what you have to do. I know beating Grace is almost impossible. I don’t hold you two responsible for what she does. But I do appreciate all you’ve done. If we don’t make it through this, I… I’m forever indebted to you. Both of you. And I promise when I’m dead, in ghost form or whatever, the time I am forced to spend with Grace will not be vacationing under an umbrella in Tahiti. She knows nothing of torture.”
“I seriously don’t think you have to do this. Allie is stronger than you give her credit for. She can withstand more than you think she can. But your death is one thing she wouldn’t make it through.” Kaitlyn’s voice was wrought with worry.
From somewhere off in the room, Shelby said, “I’m Cole Kinsley, and I kill myself every time life doesn’t go my way.”
“She’s pacing a rut in the floor, isn’t she?” I planted my forehead in my hand, guilt knotting my stomach.
“Yup.” Kaitlyn made the P pop.
“Then I’ll ask you. Will you prepare the eulogy? I don’t think Allie will be in any condition.”
Shelby screamed, “Wait a minute. You don’t actually think we’re going to beat Grace. You think she’s already won, and you weren’t going to come home before you committed suicide. You would have let Allie find you there dead, wouldn’t you? Did you give us busy work that you were sure we couldn’t solve so we’d shut up while you lived out your last few days with Allie in peace? And all because you don’t want to take chances.”
I held the phone back a little.
“Are you completely out of your rabid-ass mind?” Anyone across the room could have heard her.
“You are so in trouble,” Allie said from behind me.
The three most important women in my life were pissed at me simultaneously.
I took my feet down as Allie rounded the sofa and stood with her arms crossed in front of the coffee table. “Allie just walked in. I need to go.”
Allie’s incensed glare bore into me.
“Maybe she can talk some sense into you. I’m done. I’ll be over here kicking this ghost bitch’s ass. When you get home, I might just do the same to you,” Shelby said.
“I’m going to hang up now. Please tell Allie we all love her and that our goal in hiding this situation was not to keep her out of the loop and devastate her simultaneously, but to try to give her a happy wedding. One she couldn’t have here. Good luck,” Kaitlyn said.
“I’ll tell her.” I said my good-byes and hung up.
Allie had turned to face the opened door where the breeze shook the emerald leaves of the trees.
I stood but didn’t dare approach her.
Not this time. She was too angry.
Her shoulders quivered. She sniffled.
“I swear on my life that I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just wanted to give you a dream wedding and keep you safe in the process.” I ached to go to her. I had threatened her life, killed her, then left her after she was brought back and none of those times had she ever been this mad. I could smell the rage in her blood.
“Is that what you thought you were doing? Keeping me safe? I call it lying.” Allie sniffled again and kept her back to me.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “It was lying, but I…”
Allie’s voice shook. “How would I have found you? Poisoned? Wrists slit? Hanging from the top bar at the tennis courts?”
After one hundred and forty some years, I’d heard enough husbands and wives argue to know the man was always wrong. We were. There was no getting around it. Women were inherently smarter than we were at working out problems.
I didn’t have an answer.
Allie walked around the sofa and into the recesses of the house without looking at me.
I followed her.
She jerked suitcases from the floor and tossed them on the bed.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to do what you do to me. I’m going to let you wonder.” She yanked one of the heavy drawers open. As she slapped wads of clothes into her suitcases, she left my clothes still neatly stacked. She rushed around the room, brushing past me without a glance. She to
ssed the last of her shoes in a carry-on bag and zipped it shut.
“You can’t go back there.” I stood helplessly in the doorway.
Allie spun around.
“If she finds out that you know who she is, she might kill you just for sport.” My heart lurched at the thought.
“I can and I will. I’m pretty sure you don’t own me. And you can’t make decisions for me. I don’t feel like talking. Right now, I’m not too sure I want to be married. Not to someone who only lets me be involved in snippets of his life.” Tears filled her beautiful eyes. “I can make this easy for Grace. You can have her. You already chose her. Again.”
I hit the doorframe.
Allie jumped.
“This is why I don’t want to tell you things. I can’t have you running straight at Grace without the ability to fight her. She killed you once, and she’d do it again.”
“So did you. But I made it through it.” Allie crossed her arms. “All these years of doing the same things over and over, and you haven’t learned anything. She won then. She’s going to keep winning until someone does something about her. Just think about it this way. She’s my sister. We came from the same place. I’m pretty sure the same devious, scheming nature lives somewhere inside of me.” Allie straightened with squared shoulders. “I can take her down with her own weapons.”
In danger of ripping it off, I gripped the doorframe. “I can’t let you get killed to protect me.”
“I’m not fighting her for you. I’m fighting her for me.” Allie shoved past me.
* * * *
Allie barely spoke more than three words on the plane.
She texted vigorously, stared out the window while she waited for return texts, and kept the phone angled so I couldn’t see.
I slapped my head back on the headrest. “Okay. I get it. You’re pissed.”
She stared straight ahead with her lips pursed. “Pissed is the understatement of a century and a half. I’ve never been this angry.”
Ever Tempted Page 11
