Dead End Road

by Lori Whitwam

  “Sure, Mo. I want to go outside for a minute before it rains, anyway.”

  Seth introduced Monique to the guys, mentioning she owned ReVamped, and had some nice vintage leather jackets if they felt like doing any shopping. He watched the two women go out the door to the back patio, greatly enjoying the enticing sway of Abby’s hips as she walked. Despite all the shocks and traumas of the day, his number one priority was still to get back to her house, wrap his arms around her, and ignore the rest of the world for as long as they could.

  “Seth, did you really think that Stacy chick had anything to do with what’s happening?” Andy asked. “I mean, she’d been gone a long time.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. She was so intense. If something happened to get her thinking about us again, I could see her getting worked up enough to consider it.” Though, to be honest, Stacy struck him more like the ice-pick-through-the-heart type than a calculating mastermind.

  “Plus, it’s a lot easier to think about it being Stacy or Purcell or somebody else, rather than one of us,” Marshall added.

  Trent snorted. “One of us. Like I said before, bullshit.”

  “I know, man, I know,” Seth said. He hoped they would locate Drew Purcell soon, preferably carrying a little bottle with a skull and crossbones on it, and a suitcase full of bomb-making supplies. It sure would be good to have everything all tied up in a nice, neat package.

  He looked up and saw Abby standing inside the back door. Monique’s figure was retreating toward the front entrance. Abby crooked her finger at Seth in a “come here” gesture, her lips pressed into a hard line. He told the guys he needed to talk to Abby, and followed her out onto the patio. There were several wrought iron tables and chairs, and a few of the tables had bright green umbrellas.

  “Hey, darlin’, what’s the matter?” He wrapped his arms around her waist, and she lowered her head to his chest with a deep sigh.

  “After I told Monique about our eventful day, she had some news for me. And it was the last thing I needed to hear.”

  He leaned back, his fingertips under her chin, and tipped her face up so he could see her eyes. “What did she say?”

  “My rat bastard ex-husband, David Higgins, is in town. He was just in her shop fifteen minutes ago.”

  * * *

  Abby

  Abby dropped into one of the chairs and lit a cigarette. It had been some time since she’d smoked, and she couldn’t remember if it would raise or lower her spiking blood pressure, but she needed something to do with her hands. “I can’t believe he’s here. I haven’t seen him since the divorce, and didn’t plan on ever seeing him again. But they’re in town for Joyce’s sister’s baby shower, and he was just in ReVamped picking up some stupid antique baptism set.” If he was walking around Emporia’s small downtown area, he would be drawn to the Shamrock for sure.

  Seth plucked the cigarette from her fingers, took a drag, and set it in the ashtray on the table, exhaling a thin plume of smoke. He took her hand and pulled her onto his lap. “Very handy. Saves me the trouble of looking him up next time we play in Charlotte. I have to meet the man who was too stupid to hang onto you.”

  Abby rolled her eyes. “Believe me, you do not want to meet David. He’s a grade-A asshole.”

  They shared the cigarette until it was gone, and Abby was annoyed to notice that her hand trembled. Seth took her hand and brought it to his lips, kissing each finger before holding her palm to his cheek. She stroked her thumb over the stubble. An instant later she was lost in the comforting softness of his lips, her fingers sliding through his thick hair. Then her phone rang. Shifting on his lap with a disgruntled huff, she listened to several bars of “Make or Break” before she reached for her purse and retrieved the phone. “I’ve really gotta change that,” she muttered.

  “Don’t. Please?”

  She smiled at him, checking the display as the song continued to play. “It’s Mom. I’ll let it go to voicemail.” This bought her another minute or two for Seth-kissing before the phone interrupted with the beep indicating a message. She listened to it then said, “Mom says they’re leaving the house now.”

  “Good. The coast is clear.”

  “She left a note, but she had other very clear instructions.”

  “Which were…?”

  “Call her if anything seems strange, make sure to check the board-up job for leaks when it starts raining, and don’t let you go.”

  “Do I look like I’m going anywhere?”

  “I think she’s afraid I’ll chase you away.”

  “Will you?”

  “Don’t plan to.”

  “Okay.”

  “I know she’s serious, because she used my middle name for the second time today. She saves that for times she really needs to make a point.” She ran her hands across his firm shoulders and thought they probably had time for some more kissing.

  “What’s your middle name?”

  “Kathleen.”

  “Abigail Kathleen?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  His dimples reappeared, and one eyebrow lifted. “Abby-Kat?”

  “What?”

  “Abigail Kathleen. Abby-Kat. That’s what I’m going to call you.” He looked delighted at the idea.

  “No. No you are not.”

  “Am.”

  “I will not be pleased if you start calling me Abby-Kat.”

  “How about just sometimes?”

  Abby considered. “Maybe. But I reserve the right to smack you.”

  “Deal.”

  “What’s your middle name?”

  His eyes twinkled. “I’m not saying.”

  “Not fair. I told you mine. Now, what is it?”

  “I am not telling you.”

  “Why not? Is it horrible? Like Euripides or something?”

  “Worse.”

  Abby feigned acceptance. “Fine. I will find out, you know.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  Seth gathered her against him and kissed her neck. Goose bumps erupted on both arms, but their chill was offset by the heat gathering in her nether regions. Yes, it was time to leave. Any minute now. But first she had a mission. She kissed him again, and while his hands were busy working their way toward her bra strap, she targeted his back pocket. She could just reach the edge of his wallet. He was sitting on most of it, but a firm tug dislodged it, and she leaped to her feet and darted to the other side of the table.

  “Hey!” Seth laughed as he jumped up and grabbed for her.

  She zipped in and out of tables, staying just beyond his reach as she tried to flip open the wallet and see his driver’s license. They were both laughing so hard, it was a wonder they were able to run at all. He drew close and his hand brushed her hip, almost catching her belt loop, but with a twist and a yelp, she evaded him. She rounded a table in the middle of the patio and caught her foot on one of the heavy chairs. This slowed her down, and Seth caught her around the waist.

  “Gotcha!”

  “Rats. So close too.”

  “Know what we do to pickpockets in Texas?” He stuffed his wallet back into his pocket.

  “No. What?”

  “This,” He backed her against the wall of the bar and delivered the hottest kiss in the history of the world. At least, her world. Part of her mind reflected she had been kissed more in the past twenty-four hours than she had in the last six years. She wasn’t complaining. In fact, she was so pleased by the entire situation she did what she’d been thinking of doing back at Dash’s. She locked her arms tightly around his neck to support her weight while she lifted her legs and wrapped them around his waist.

  “Nice touch. Most pickpockets don’t do that.”

  “I’m not most pickpockets.”

  “So I noticed.”

  The only problem with her current position was she didn’t have any leverage to press her pelvis any more tightly to him, which was a crying shame. Happily, he anticipated her need and shifted his weight, pinning her more firmly to the
wall and giving her the intense contact she craved. From the feel of things, he was enjoying it too. The breeze wafted across her exposed lower back, spiriting away the perspiration from her short-lived attempt to evade capture.

  The bar’s back door creaked, but she chose to ignore it. The subsequent throat clearing, however, demanded attention. With a muffled groan, Abby lowered her feet to the ground and detached her lips from Seth’s. Looking over his shoulder at the intruder, she was glad she still had her arms around his neck, because she wasn’t sure her knees would have held her up.

  Standing there, his lip curled in a sneer of distaste, was her ex-husband.

  He’d changed a bit since she last saw him loading suitcases—and Duffy—in the back of his car. He was still about six feet tall, of course, and still had medium brown hair in an unimaginative investment-advisor-approved style. His brown eyes were still mocking. He had a goatee now, and while his shoulders were broad in an artificial, gym-induced way, his stomach had expanded. Too many rich client lunches, she surmised. He wore razor-pressed khakis with a royal blue golf shirt meticulously tucked and belted into submission. He looked at them as if they were something he would have to scrape off his loafers at the first opportunity.

  She got her legs firmly under her and straightened her posture. She removed her arms from around Seth’s neck, and he turned. As she stepped up beside him, he put an arm around her waist, and she could almost hear the wheels turning in his head as he assessed the situation. He gave David a slow head to toe evaluation, then squeezed her waist, letting her take the lead in this unwelcome encounter.

  “David,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Abby. I heard, but I had to see for myself.”

  Damn small towns. And Joyce’s mother was right up there at the top of the gossip food chain. Like a barracuda. “What did you have to see?”

  “That you’d hooked up with some singer and were making a fool of yourself.”

  “What I do is none of your fucking business.”

  “Oh, and language too. Joyce’s mother told us you met this lowlife, took him home, and he’s already brought you a bunch of trouble.”

  Abby lifted her chin and glared. “Why are you here? You didn’t care when you left, so I sure as hell don’t believe you care now. You’re just here to piss me off.”

  “Abby, you sound so bitter. I thought we put all that behind us.” He shook his head, its slow, steady motion like the pendulum in a dusty old grandfather clock in a maiden aunt’s sitting room. “I’m here to meet with Martin Sundegaard. He handles real estate now, and I’m selling the property my uncle had on Shedd Lake. But when I heard about you, of course I was concerned. I came to see how you were and found you here in public, attached to this person like a barnacle.” He stood there with his hands on his hips, a smug, superior smirk on his face.

  How had she ever thought he was attractive? The contrast between his rigidly maintained pomposity and Seth’s natural grace was mind-boggling. She must have suffered a head injury shortly after she met David that temporarily caused her to confuse “ass” with “class.”

  “Yes, and if you’d go away, I could get back to it,” she growled.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your boyfriend? Or have manners gone by the wayside along with your good judgment?”

  “Manners? Don’t you fucking dare talk to me about manners, you chicken-shit, dog-stealing asshole!” She felt Seth tense beside her and took a deep breath. She touched a hand to his chest to let him know he could relax. She would maintain control. She hoped.

  “Dog stealing? How can I steal something which was mine to begin with?” Abby opened her mouth to tell him exactly what she thought of the question, prepared to invent several new swear words to convey the depth of her disgust, when she observed a cruel glint in his eyes. Before she could figure out what that meant and prepare for more verbal assault, David said, “He’s gone now, you know.”

  No, she hadn’t known. Duffy would have been eleven years old. Not a puppy, certainly, but not an unheard-of age.

  “How?” Even as she choked out the word, she hated having to ask, hated needing anything from David Higgins.

  One corner of his mouth twitched, and Abby knew she definitely would not like what he had to say. “We put him down a few weeks ago. We found out Joyce is pregnant, and we didn’t want an incontinent animal around the baby.”

  Abby was so busy figuring out the most violent, bloody, horrific way to dismember her ex-husband she literally could not speak. Beautiful Duffy, gone, merely because he was an inconvenience. Just like she had been.

  “Oh, that was probably insensitive of me, mentioning the baby. It might be for the best you lost ours, though. You’re not exactly the maternal type.” He shook his head in mock sorrow. “I wouldn’t have had any trouble getting full custody now, though, with you rolling around in the gutter.”

  A red haze descended to cloud her vision. Maybe by letting him upset her so badly she’d already lost, but at the moment she didn’t care. All she wanted to do was claw the bastard’s eyes right out of his head. She took a step toward him, but Seth’s arm tightened around her, halting her forward momentum.

  “Abby,” he said softly, “look at me.”

  The instant she met his clear blue eyes, she was able to distance herself from David and his calculated insults. Seth smoothed a tendril of hair back from her face.

  “Let me see if I have this straight.” His voice was utterly calm, and his eyes never left her face, as if David weren’t even worthy of his recognition.

  “Go ahead,” she replied, surprised her voice sounded so steady.

  “This piece of shit is, I’m assuming, your ex-husband.”

  “Correct.”

  “The one who cheated and left you. Showing spectacularly bad judgment.”

  Abby nodded.

  “In the last couple of minutes, he has called me a lowlife and you a bitter, vulgar barnacle.”

  “Right again.”

  “And while standing there looking like he just stepped out of some tight-assed board meeting, he told you he killed your dog, he’s glad you lost a baby, you would have made a terrible mother, and are now a piece of gutter trash.”

  “I’d say you just summed it up.” It sounded ridiculous when Seth spelled it out that way.

  “That’s what I thought. I just needed to be sure, first.”

  “First?”

  “Uh-huh.” He gently guided Abby back a step. As he turned toward David he shifted his balance, drew back his right arm, and unleashed a very impressive punch, catching David right on the jaw. David reeled and stumbled against the table and fell with a meaty thud into one of the chairs. Too bad, actually. She would have liked to see him bounce on the patio a few times. It would have been easier to kick him that way.

  “Kick him?” Seth asked.

  “Whoops. Filter malfunction again. I’d been doing so well, too.”

  “Nothing to worry about. I wouldn’t have minded seeing some kicking, but we have better things to do.”

  David lurched to his feet, sputtering furiously about sucker punches and assault charges. He took a step toward the door to the bar, but Seth intercepted him.

  “No,” he said, his voice devoid of all inflection. “You need to be somewhere else right now.”

  David stared at him, clearly unable to believe anyone would dare tell him what to do. He adopted a posture that might have intimidated an underling at work, but wasn’t going to work on Seth. “I have. A meeting,” he said through clenched teeth. Abby suspected his jaw might not be working so well.

  Seth held his ground. “Pay attention, dickwad. That was not a suggestion.” He took a step forward, right in David’s face. “If you’re still here in sixty seconds, my little love tap is gonna feel like a kiss from your sweet old granny.”

  Abby put a hand on Seth’s arm. Any kind of violence or conflict usually made her very uncomfortable, Pam the Fangirl being the notable exception, and
she didn’t want to see this go any further. “David, how about you go down the street to the Fontaine. Totally upscale, much more your style.” She didn’t even try to keep the sarcasm from her voice. Luckily, David seized on her suggestion, recognizing an exit line allowing him to escape further ass kicking and pretend to retain some dignity.

  “But, Martin…”

  Abby cut him off. “Johnny’s behind the bar. I’ll tell him to send Martin your way when he shows up.”

  David straightened his belt and tried to pretend this was all his idea. “You do that. If this is the kind of clientele this place attracts, it’s clearly gone downhill.” He stomped off the patio and down the alley.

  Feeling drained and a little dizzy, Abby leaned against Seth. His fingers stroked at her nape until she took a deep breath and looked up at him. She knew what was coming.

  “Abby, about the baby…”

  “No.”

  “But, I…”

  She straightened and put as much strength into her voice as she could. “No, I am not letting David do this.”

  “Do what?”

  Her fingernails dug into her palms, and she hoped he’d understand what she had to say. “David is not going to force us to have this conversation here, on a bar patio, with all your friends waiting for us inside.” She made herself unclench her fists and softened her tone. “We will talk about it, but this isn’t the time or the place, okay?”

  Seth still had a worry line between his brows, but he nodded. “We’ll talk when you’re ready. Soon?”

  “As soon as I can.”

  They stopped by the bar to deliver the message to Johnny, who gave them a questioning look before shrugging and making a note on a cocktail napkin. When they arrived at the table, Trent immediately noticed Seth’s reddened knuckles. “What the hell were you doing out there?”

  Seth glanced around the table. “No big deal, y’all. Just met Abby’s ex-husband.” He examined his right hand and flexed his fingers. “I gotta learn not to go for the face. Hurts like a bitch every time.”

  Marshall laughed and gave him a playful punch in the shoulder. “Nice job. You’re out of practice, though. You’re supposed to use a bar stool. Can’t play guitar with a busted hand.” He picked up one of the last shot glasses remaining in the center of the table. “I assume the asshole had it coming.”