Scarlett Heart (The Scarletts

by Brenda Barrett

  "How many lovers have you had, Raine?" He asked deciding to break through the armor tonight instead of leaving it alone as he usually did.

  Raine swung around to look at him so fast he was sure she was going to have a pain in her neck later.

  He glanced at her as they headed up the hill. "It's a perfectly reasonable question. I don't want names or places or any of that, just a number."

  "None of your business." Raine growled. "My sexual history does not concern you!"

  Noah turned into her avenue and then stopped at her gate before he responded. "I kind of expected this reaction. You act like an outraged virgin every time the word sex or lover or anything remotely intimate comes up. Who are you really, Raine? The prude, the mistress, the home wrecker, or the virgin?"

  Noah asked the last one softly.

  Raine reached for the door handle but he locked the door from his side.

  "Sorry, no storming off ." Noah turned to face her. "You are going to answer my questions tonight. After that, you can leave."

  Raine swallowed. "Noah please...this is unnecessary."

  "If you and I are going to have a relationship I want it based on honesty," Noah said it forcefully. "You are hiding lots of stuff from me. I am no fool, Raine. I can see that something is off. You want to draw me closer. You know you do, but you keep pushing me away."

  Raine inhaled shakily. "Noah, I am sorry but I don't want a relationship with you. I...I..." her lips trembled. "There is no space in my life now for anything like that. I am on the verge of graduating college. I have a career to forge for myself and I..."

  Noah waited for her to continue, but she paused, looking through the windscreen. A car passed them on the avenue, its light highlighted the tears in her eyes. Noah released the lock on the door.

  "Goodnight Raine. I'll have the mechanic drop off your car in the morning."

  "How much do I owe you?" Raine asked her voice husky.

  "Nothing," Noah said softly. "Consider it a perk of being employed at Bookalicious."

  She got out of the car, and grabbed her laptop bag close to her as if she was warding off some kind of evil.

  "Bye Noah. I am sorry."

  Noah didn't bother to answer. He watched as she opened the door to her place and then he drove away.

  ****

  Raine felt as if a thousand blocks of cement was weighing on her heart. She went inside her apartment and then slumped on the bed in the half dark. She had well and truly done it, pushed away a perfectly good man because of the mad situation she had found herself in through no fault of her own.

  She swiped away tear after tear. They were coming fast and furious, flowing down her cheeks unchecked and she couldn't stop them. She had just essentially alienated Noah from her life and she actually loved him!

  These past couple of weeks had highlighted just how different Noah was to anybody else in her life. He was a genuinely nice person. And she had the feeling that their relationship could have withstood the test of time. If they were different people.

  If she was different.

  If she didn't have baggage.

  A brief knock on her door had her jumping off the bed like a shot. Who could that be?

  She didn't have visitors here, especially not at night. She looked through the peep hole and saw Bradley looking pointedly at his watch and about to knock again.

  She opened the door before he could and frowned. "What on earth...?"

  She exclaimed as he pushed his way past her. His companion followed him sheepishly, pulling a suitcase behind her.

  "Cassie!" Raine looked between her brother and her sister and locked the door.

  "I thought I had escaped both of you when I moved here. You said you wouldn't bother me anymore." She pointed at Bradley furiously. "And you…" She almost growled as she stared at her sister. "Nearly a year ago you told me you had a better life with your German boyfriend..."

  She couldn't quite voice what Cassandra had done to her and to Dean. She looked at her selfish pouting sister and asked with all the energy drained out of her voice.

  "What are you doing here, Cassie?"

  Bradley was the one who answered. Cassie was too busy hanging her head and looking like a whipped puppy.

  "She doesn't have anywhere to stay. I came looking for you tonight but Noah stopped me in the parking lot at your school."

  Raine looked at Cassie balefully. "I don't want her here."

  Cassie blinked. Her overlong eyelashes looking like curly fans.

  "I know I don't deserve your mercy, Raine. I know I messed up before but..." Her lower lip trembled. "I have nowhere to go. Bradley said that Whitney is watching him closely. He can't get a place for me to stay and I am not going back to Paddington and Mama. I can't."

  "Not my problem," Raine said mercilessly looking at both of her siblings. "I have in the past couple of years, bailed you out of one scrape after the other. I have endured people thinking you were my lover," she pointed at her brother.

  "I have had to deny knowing you, Cassandra Green, pretend to be your roommate while you trick one man after another to look after you."

  She looked into her sister's pretty face. "You killed Dean as surely as if you had cut his car brakes and you..." she pointed at Bradley, "you have turned me into a liar. Get out of my apartment both of you. I do not want to have anything to do with you!"

  She pointed to the door.

  "Come on Raine," Bradley pleaded, "let her stay for the rest of the week. By the end of the week, she should be out of your hair. Garrick has been asking for her, it wouldn't take long for him to move her into his place. He is single now, doesn't have a woman."

  Raine closed her eyes. "I don't want to hear this."

  "I never like when you act so pious Raine. You are just as much a part of this as we are. If you didn't get that scholarship from the hotel you know you'd be in the same situation as Cassie."

  "No, no!" Raine almost screamed it. "I work for my money. I have always worked for my money. I don't use my looks to get men or women to take care of me. You are both the same. You have no scruples! You are both morally bankrupt!"

  Bradley shrugged nonchalantly. "If I didn't get that bookstore, you wouldn't have been working money. Remember that! You were living off the proceeds of my whoredom and you had no problems with it. You can act as if you are better than us Raine but you are a beneficiary of my good fortune, so that makes you an accessory."

  He headed to the door. "You two work out your differences. Raine, I don't have to remind you to keep your mouth shut. I have a couple of other sisters to support in Paddington."

  He exited the house.

  Raine slumped down in the couch across from Cassie and then got up. "I am going to bed."

  "Where should I sleep?" Cassie asked her retreating back.

  "I don't care." Raine slammed the bedroom door shut and locked it for good measure.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Raine woke up in a foul mood. Not even back to back sermons from Pastor Marshall could put her to sleep, she wasn't interested in praying either.

  She was as guilty as Bradley charged.

  As much as she liked to deny it, she was just as messed up as her siblings. Maybe the apple hadn't fallen far from the tree. Maybe they were all under a generational curse, the curse of greed, and even though she was trying to break it she had succumbed.

  She had lived with Bradley when she just came to Montego Bay a few years ago and she had stayed at the place that she knew he could only afford because of Whitney's money and he had bought the bookstore because she was bemoaning the fact that she needed a flexible schedule to juggle work and study.

  He had put her in charge for that very reason.

  She hadn't been kidding when she told him that he and Cassie were the same. Cassie had left St. Mary with one intention in mind and that was to capitalize on her looks and marry a rich man and Bradley had returned to Jamaica with the same intention—marry a rich woman.

  They both
thought she was doing things the hard way especially when Bradley had gotten a foothold in the rarified world of the super rich. He had discretely arranged for both her and Cassie to meet his friends but she had never been interested in any of them.

  She padded to the living room and headed for the kitchenette. Cassie was fast asleep curled up in the couch like an innocent baby. She was short enough to hold in the settee comfortably. She was the pocket-sized beauty in the family.

  Everybody knew that Cassie was facially the best looking one. She inherited her mother's shape, curvy in the right places, her father's light skin tone, a straight as an arrow nose and perfectly oval features.

  With a few slaps of makeup she could be transformed into a living doll.

  Raine deliberately slammed the kettle on the stove, even the deaf could hear the bang.

  Cassie stirred and almost fell off the settee. She frowned and then blinked her eyes several time and focused on Raine.

  "You are a sight for sore eyes, Rainy."

  "You are not to use the hot water," Raine said grumpily. "Do not rummage through my things and invade my privacy. That's an order!"

  Cassie rolled her eyes and then turned her back to Raine.

  "You don't have any privacy to invade. You are still boring. Don't worry, I'll soon be out of your hair."

  "I dearly, dearly hope so." Raine folded her arms over her chest. "I thought you were going to marry Sven and live happily ever after in Germany. What happened?"

  "He bored me." Cassie grumbled, "and Germany is cold. "I don't mean ordinarily cold. It was bitter this winter and I hated staying inside all the time and he worked too hard, and he accused me of flirting with his friends. He gets jealous for no reason!"

  Raine bit her lips so hard she tasted blood.

  "Typical! You are so predictable. I have no doubt you were flirting with Sven's friends. You are a nightmare to have around. I wonder what took Sven so long to kick you out."

  "He didn't kick me out." Cassie got up and stretched. "I left. He is not rich in Germany, just ordinary. I thought when he was here for vacation and splashing cash around that he was well off but he is not." She shook her head and her long straight weave flashed around her face. "He lives in an apartment, which was not as nice as the one we lived in at Rose Hall Suites."

  Cassie shuddered. "Tiny apartment, cold weather and he wanted sex like every night. the guy was insatiable."

  Raine closed her eyes. "Why did you go after Dean, Cassie?"

  "I was bored, I didn't have any boyfriend at the time." Cassie shrugged. "He sold the farm he had all of that cash. Don't look at me like that, Raine. I didn't kill Dean."

  "You practically did," Raine hissed. "You played him. You conned him. You used him. If you hadn't done all of that he wouldn't have lost concentration on that road and died."

  "Don't throw any of your guilt on me," Cassie was quick to retort. "If you hadn't brought him to the apartment that night, I wouldn't have seen him. We wouldn't have hit it off. Let's face it Raine, he preferred me over you. You were just his high school girlfriend with whom he didn’t leave first base. I was a real girlfriend to the guy. He liked it when I did this little thing to his..."

  "Shut up!" The whistling kettle interrupted Raine's bitter retort. She turned off the stove and silently prepared the peppermint she had chosen. She was feeling so angry she felt like wringing Cassie's neck.

  They should have had this conversation last year but Cassie had left the country with Sven only leaving her a cryptic little note on top of a green dress that she had borrowed from Raine's closet.

  Here is your dress, the note had read. Gone to Germany. I may or may not return.

  She had left the night after Dean died. No remorse, no acknowledgement that the man that she had successfully wrapped around her little finger and had funding her lifestyle had died.

  Raine sighed shakily. To be fair she had been the one to open the door that night when Dean had showed up at the apartment. She had told him that Cassie was not to be trusted around men but he had been so blinded by her sisters beauty that he wouldn't listen.

  He had called her jealous, which was true, to a point. She had liked the idea of them getting to know each other as adults and maybe rekindle what they had, but Dean had taken one look at Cassie after visiting her in Montego Bay to realize that all his long held ideals of him and Raine being together for life was just that, a fantasy.

  Cassie with her sultry prettiness and her seductive pout was more appealing. The first night he had come to the apartment he had barely told her goodbye. She hadn't even known he was seeing her sister until Cassie had casually mentioned that she had gotten Dean to buy her a Mercedes—the car he crashed and died in.

  That fateful night when he had shown up at the apartment ready to deliver the car, she had been the one to answer the door with a scowl on her face. A very real hatred for Cassie was threatening to overcome her logical thinking.

  It had given her great pleasure to tell Dean to go right on into Cassie's room because she was expecting him.

  She had known Cassie was in there with Sven, her new tourist pick up. Knowing Cassie, they wouldn't have been in there playing Scrabble.

  Dean had confidently gone to her room door and opened it. Raine would never forget the look of utter shock on his face when he came back to the living room. He hadn't even told her goodbye. He had lost it, storming out of the apartment like a man possessed.

  At the time Raine had felt happy that he had seen her sister for what she was. How was she to know that he would have met in an accident and died?

  Maybe Cassie was right, she had been a jealous toad. Dean could have been spared the graphics and he'd still be alive—broke and discarded by her flighty sister, but still alive.

  She was the guilty one and she continued to be guilty because she protected her sister and brother like a dutiful sucker. Even sacrificing her relationship with Noah for them. She was pathetic.

  She gulped down some of the hot tea, burning her tongue in the process. She didn't speak to Cassie for the rest of the morning.

  She was about to call a cab for work when a man in coveralls knocked on her door, gave her the keys to her car and told her to have a good day.

  The car was detailed and clean and drove like it was new.

  She almost relented and called Noah to thank him for getting her car fixed but it made sense that Noah stayed far away from her, especially now that Cassandra Green was around.

  He needed to stay far away from Cassie.

  Dean had been heavily in lust with Cassie.

  She shuddered to think about Noah and Cassie together. It would be a disaster but if he had recognized her with Dean's heart, what would he do when he found Cassie?

  She couldn't bear thinking about it. Cassie would have no problems sucking him into her little web. She was every man's dream. Those were Dean's exact words when she had asked him why he was going out with Cassie.

  Raine sighed. She had no doubt Cassie would be Noah's dream too.

  If Noah fell for her sister she would just curl up in a hole and die.

  ****

  Noah was a sucker for punishment. He exited the gym with sweat flowing freely down his face. He probably had overdone it with the weights. His legs felt wobbly and his heart was racing as if he had done a couple of rounds of cardio instead of weights.

  His phone vibrated and he checked it. It was a message from Reuben. This Saturday night, Lisa's pre wedding dinner at my house. All white dress code.

  Noah sighed. He had forgotten about his sister's wedding.

  He approached the kitchen and got another text: whose place are you staying? I hope it's mine. Ashaki and I would love to have you and what was her name again? This one was from Oliver.

  He texted back: Her name is Raine. And yes, we'll stay at your place.

  He stood at the kitchen doorway for a while contemplating his assumption that Raine would even want to go with him. She had told him in no uncertain terms l
ast night that she wasn't interested in him, which was crazy because they had been getting on so well. He saw the way she looked at him when she thought he wasn't looking. That wasn't a woman who didn't want to have anything to do with him.

  He wondered for the hundredth time since last night what was the reason for the sudden frozen reaction from her. It couldn't be that he asked her how many lovers she had? No, it was more than that.

  Dotty walked into the kitchen humming a song, "Will you still love me when I am no longer young and beautiful." She reached in a cupboard for a container.

  "Dotty, really?" Noah laughed, "I'll love you regardless."

  "Noah," Dotty spun around. "You startled me! What are you doing there?"

  "Thinking." Noah exhaled noisily.

  "About what?" Dotty wrinkled her brow and looked at him.

  "Raine." Noah pushed his phone into his track bottom pocket.

  "I like her," Dotty said. "I approve."

  Noah didn't mention Raine's association with Bradley; that approval would turn into something else.

  "I like her too." He sighed. "But it seems as if she doesn't like me back."

  Dotty laughed. "Ridiculous. Which woman in her right mind would see all that..." Dotty pointed to his body in a sweeping motion, "and not stay up at night plotting how to get you to marry them."

  Noah grinned. "You have always been super good for my ego."

  "If Raine is a normal red-blooded female she loves you," Dotty said crossing her arms over her bosom. "I mean, one look from those eyes and she would already be hypnotized. Have you ever seen yourself in the sunlight?" Dotty asked. "You shimmer. You are such a beautiful man with that glint of red in that brown hair and that glint of green in your brown eyes and your body, it's just right."

  Noah bent over laughing. "Anything else?"

  "You are rich, honey. You have a successful career. You are caring and considerate. You don't drink or smoke. You go to church. You are not a man whore. Very fastidious with your choice of partners. You think children are a blessing, and you want a couple of them."