by Lucy Connors
“Caleb? One of the—the bodies?” Caleb had been a year ahead of me in school. He was a good guy. We’d played football . . . and now he was gone?
“He went to work for the Whitfields this summer on the ranch,” I said after a moment, making the connection.
“Yeah. I’m not sure if Richard Whitfield even notices the faces of the hired hands, but their foreman had gone to the airport or something, so I got stuck asking that asshole to come out,” Pa said. “Now get out of here. Make sure your brother goes too, and takes his idiot friends with him. Tell him that if I see a single civilian on this scene after the next three minutes, I’ll have one of my deputies arrest him for obstruction.”
He turned and took a long look at the fire. “That trailer is probably going to blow again, and the explosion could kill even more people if we’re not careful. Who the hell knows what kind of chemicals are in the back where the flames are just reaching now?”
Without another glance at me or at Ethan, Pa took off after Whitfield, leaving me yet again to be the go-between in his weak-willed attempts to control Ethan. The anger caught in my throat dropped down and took up residence in my gut.
I wanted off this merry-go-round.
We’d had months of peace while Ethan had been locked up, especially after I’d finished my required hours of community service. I hadn’t minded the community part of the gig—I’d always gone with Mom to her various causes and events, anyway—but the service part had been cleaning up the side of the highway. Long hours out in the fierce Kentucky summer sunshine hadn’t done much for my mood or my patience, which had been the opposite of what the asshole judge had planned.
“Maybe this will wear you out, so you can stay out of trouble,” he’d said, peering at me over his half-glasses and sneering. I’d heard later that his sister’s nephew had been best friends with one of the guys I’d hurt. Nepotism was alive and well in Whitfield County, and it had jumped up and kicked me in the nuts.
In spite of that, it had been a fairly peaceful summer. While Ethan had been in jail, Jeb had played at being the big boss, but he didn’t have the brains or the balls to take Ethan’s place, and everybody, including Jeb, knew it. Pa had never been able to stand up to Anna Mae, either, but she’d been unusually quiet with Ethan away. Plotting, probably, like a spider in her hillbilly lair.
I headed toward Ethan, picturing his reaction to being threatened with arrest by his own father. Maybe he’d freak out completely, and I’d get to punch him after all, so the evening wouldn’t be a total loss.
Just then, a Chevy rolled up and parked. The truck from the side of the road, I realized. A man I didn’t know jumped out and ran past me toward the fire, and when I turned back toward the truck, the girl who’d silently stared at me before was doing it again.
All thoughts of Ethan and arrests scattered, and I stared stupidly back at her.
Beautiful.
Shouts from behind me snapped me out of it, as the emergency personnel kicked it up another notch in their efforts. The fire roared like a wild, living thing and the heat was intense now, even this far away. If county legend was true and Rhodales all did end up in hell, this was a damn good preview.
And yet there she was—looking like a lost angel with her blond hair whipping in the hot wind.
My brother and his goons fired up their bikes, and I ran toward her.
“We have to get out of here. That trailer is going to blow,” I told her. “Get back in your truck and follow me out.”
I was three strides past her when I glanced back and realized she hadn’t moved. I turned around.
“Did you hear me?”
Her cool gaze was like ice shivering over the exposed surfaces of my skin as she studied me. Judged me, maybe.
Dismissed me.
She shrugged—the slightest of movement of her shoulders. Suddenly I wanted to shout at her, or shake her, or throw her in the truck and drive away with her.
I did none of those things.
“My father is the sheriff, and he said anybody who isn’t out of here inside of three minutes will be arrested,” I said, as calmly as I could. “That was two minutes ago.”
She raised one delicate eyebrow. “Then I guess he’ll have to arrest me, because Pete just headed toward the fire and I’m not leaving him.”
CHAPTER 3
Victoria
He was gorgeous: tall, dark, and definitely dangerous. The gleam in his bright blue eyes told me he wasn’t used to anybody defying him, and his sculpted cheekbones and long, lean body told me that most girls wouldn’t want to even try. But I wasn’t about to leave Pete there, so he’d have to get over it Waves of dark hair brushed the collar of his leather jacket when he turned his head, and suddenly I knew that this was the boy from the motorcycle. I started to say something—what, exactly, I didn’t know—but then he grabbed my arm, and I instinctively shoved him away, pushing against a shoulder that was all hard muscle. He immediately let go of my arm and took a half-step back.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you, but it’s not safe here. You need to leave, now,” he said, glancing at the fire and then at me.
“I’ll leave when Pete is ready to go,” I said.
I started to turn away, and the jerk had the nerve to pick me up by the waist and start walking toward the truck. I pushed at the steel band of an arm that was still holding me pinned to his body, but it was like trying to move a thousand-pound horse who’d decided to lean on me while I brushed him.
“Let. Me. Go,” I gritted out from between clenched teeth.
“That trailer might blow up again, and you could get hurt, and then some of these folks would have to waste time taking care of you instead of stopping the fire,” he said, and I could hear the exasperation in his voice. “Is that what you want?”
When he put it like that, it sounded reasonable. “Fine. Let me down.”
He stopped and put me down, but stood staring at me as if he didn’t really believe I meant what I’d said. Suspicion or confusion drew his eyebrows together, and I caught myself wanting to reach up and touch his face. Smooth out the lines of distrust in his forehead. What was the matter with me?
I started running for the truck, just as a group of motorcycles revving nearby roared toward us. One veered close, and the boy grabbed my hand and pulled me behind him. He flipped his middle finger at the guy who’d swerved toward, rather than away from, us.
“I’d rather you keep your hands to yourself,” I said, hating that I sounded like a disapproving schoolgirl.
He laughed and shook his head and pointed to my truck. “After you, Princess.”
I glanced over at the fire. “But Pete—”
“Can catch a ride when the fire is out. Let’s go.”
I finally nodded and ran for the truck and climbed in, and jumped a little in surprise when he appeared behind me and shut my door for me. I turned the key Pete had left hanging, and the truck fired to growling life.
“I don’t even know your name,” I said stupidly through the open window.
He grinned, and something rusty stuttered in my chest as the simple act of smiling took his face from stern to beautiful. I caught the gasp in my throat before it escaped, so it turned into a coughing fit, instead.
No doubt I was impressing him with my smoothness more and more every second.
I resisted the urge to pound my face on the steering wheel and instead turned to look in the rearview mirror so I could back up and get the heck out of there.
He stopped me with a hand on my arm, this time gently, as if afraid I’d bolt again. I stared down at his strong tanned fingers, stark against my too-pale skin.
“My name is Mickey Rhodale.”
“Victoria Whitfield. It’s nice to meet you,” I said politely and completely inappropriately for the occasion, as years of conditioning rose up inside me to turn eti
quette into farce, yet again. In Connecticut I’d once said “Bless you” to an indie rocker who’d just slammed too much cocaine up his nose, and I’d been famous around school for it for months.
But Mickey didn’t laugh. Instead, he studied my face as if it held the answer to a question he needed to ask.
“It’s nice to meet you, too, Victoria. Now get your pretty ass moving.”
Furious once again, I gunned the gas and got out of there.
• • •
By the time I pulled up the long, curving driveway to Gran’s house—which I guess was my house now, too—all thoughts of mysterious hot guys scattered, because the sheriff department car parked in the driveway had its lights flashing and a deputy in the driver’s seat.
I left the keys in the ignition and hit the door running. What had Melinda done this time? The front of the house was empty, but I heard voices coming from the room Gran called her parlor, and I ran across the foyer to find out what was going on.
Gran, Mom, Melinda, and Buddy were all grouped on and around the overly formal furniture, and their reactions ranged from surprise to joy to disappointment, depending on the face and who was wearing it.
Buddy hurled his compact body at me and nearly knocked me flat on my butt.
“You’re home, Vivi! I missed you every day, and Mom won’t let me go out to the horses on my own, and Melinda is always grouchy, and so is Dad, but I beat the Elite Four at Pokémon Black on my Nintendo DS!” he rattled off in one long breathless sentence.
My sister walked slowly and carefully across the room to hug me. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused.
“Hello, Victoria. We’re having a tough night around here,” she said, enunciating very carefully in that way she had when she was high or drunk. As if saying, “No. I’m. Not. Drunk,” very precisely would somehow convert wishful thinking—or defiant denial—into fact. I hugged her warily. Some things hadn’t changed.
“Call your sister Victoria, Timothy. We don’t use nicknames,” my mother chided my brother, who’d only and always been called Buddy by everyone else but her.
Buddy rolled his eyes up at me, careful that she wouldn’t see. “Do you want some lemonade? Mrs. Kennedy makes it fresh. I’ll get you some,” he said as he escaped the room.
Mom held out her arms and, after a barely noticeable (I hoped) moment of hesitation, I walked over and hugged her. She’d gotten even thinner since August, but I only had a moment to worry about whether or not she’d been eating before Gran was there, gently nudging Mom to one side and throwing her arms around me.
“I missed you so much, girl,” she said fiercely, and probably nobody but me noticed the shine in her eyes. “What took you so long? I thought your flight got in at four.”
I started to explain about the fire, and Pete, but before I could get to the part about the amazingly bossy Mickey Rhodale, the tension in the room snaked its way past my exhaustion into my consciousness.
“What is it? What’s going on? Why is there a cop out front in the sheriff’s car?”
There was a confusion of voices telling me bits and pieces and rumors and truth. It took me a few minutes to get the story straight, especially because it seemed they were trying to hide what we were talking about from my little brother, who’d come back with a slightly sticky cup of lemonade for me.
The gist was that Caleb, one of our new ranch hands, whom I’d met last summer and remembered as a nice guy with tons of freckles and a big smile, might be a casualty of the same fire I’d been reluctant to leave. My dad had gone with the sheriff to see if he could identify the body, leaving a deputy here, which explained the cop and the car out front. In fact, Dad must have even been there when I was, and we just hadn’t seen each other in the confusion, which wasn’t surprising with all of those fire trucks and so many people running around.
The body.
I started to shiver, and a bone-deep chill settled into me, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast or slept much in days. Gran noticed. She scooped up a quilt from its cherrywood stand and wrapped it around my shoulders, urging me to sit down. Even Mom stepped up, heading to the kitchen to make tea and sandwiches—which was a wasted effort, since nobody seemed to be able to eat. And then we sat, waiting for more news about the fire.
Any news. News about Caleb, or why the sheriff wanted Dad, or whether anybody else was hurt . . . the room was shadowed by the threat of a tragedy we didn’t yet know how to define.
Waiting for Dad or Pete to call. Minutes, quarter hours, and then an hour counted off on the incongruously curlicued art deco clock on the mantelpiece, and still we waited without word.
Finally, as much out of a desire to avoid the sight of Melinda’s strained face as from exhaustion, I leaned my head back on the couch and closed my eyes. Unfortunately, the scene with Mickey immediately started to play itself out in my memory.
Now get your pretty ass moving.
Who talked like that? Especially to someone he’d only met a few minutes before?
“Do you want to play my game with me?”
Buddy, sprawled on the floor playing his video game, glanced up at me hopefully and then snuck a glance at the clock and my mother, clearly expecting her to send him to bed any minute. His mutinous expression said it all: Nine-year-old kids never got to have fun in this family.
I almost smiled, but the weight of the situation and the stern faces of past generations of Whitfields, staring disapprovingly down at me from their gilt-framed glory on the walls, quickly flattened the urge.
“Sure,” I said, hoping to forestall the bedtime argument.
I sat down on the floor with him, and Buddy taught me the seriously complicated rules of one of his video games, while Melinda paced the room like a caged wild thing. My mother watched my sister stonily, pale with either nerves or rage. It was usually hard to tell with Mom.
“Ha!” Buddy grinned up at me and pointed to the screen. “You just got killed by the eighth-level wizard’s apprentice, Gwork.”
I pretended to be horrified. “You’re the dork. I’m not a dork.”
Buddy laughed. “Not dork. Gwork.”
“Now it’s definitely bedtime,” my mother announced, crossing her arms and tapping her foot.
I felt an unwelcome flutter of familiarity at the gesture that had once cajoled and threatened my own nine-year-old self into bed. Buddy apparently knew enough not to argue, so he hugged me, hugged Gran, and trudged up the stairs toward his room.
“Brush your teeth,” Mom called up after him, and he waved one hand in acknowledgment, a forlorn little figure marching to his certain doom.
Mom and I exchanged a grin at his resolute martyrdom, but it wasn’t until she put her “perfect Mrs. Whitfield” mask on afterward that I even realized it. Her first unrehearsed smile in ages, probably, and I’d nearly missed it.
Melinda, oblivious to anything but whatever inner torment was clearly hurting her so much, whirled around and tripped over Gran’s embroidered footstool. She nearly fell but managed to right herself at the last minute, while I watched her with a weirdly peculiar sensation of embarrassment and guilty contempt, as if I were a spectator at a really terrible play.
Mom finally lost it. She shot up out of her chair like a horse from the starting gate. “Sit down, Melinda. Just sit down, already. Haven’t we got enough to deal with right now? Poor Calvin—”
“Caleb,” my sister corrected, biting off the word. “You don’t even know his name?”
Buddy appeared in the doorway, wearing his blue-and-white striped pajamas and looking freshly washed. He made a face at my mom before she could say anything.
“Yes, I brushed my teeth.” Then he ran over and hugged me again.
“I missed you, Victoria,” he whispered in my ear. “Nobody else makes them stop fighting all the time. I miss my friends from the city, too,” he said, raising his v
oice, “but Gran says we can get a dog.”
“I missed you, too, sweetie. I’m glad to be—”
“No pets in the house,” my mother interrupted. “I know I’ve said that at least a hundred times. I have allergies. It’s bad enough I have to live around all these horses. We’re not bringing an animal inside the house, too.”
Gran and I traded a glance over Buddy’s head. Buddy ignored Mom, or at least didn’t answer, instead running back out of the room. Seconds later, we heard his feet thumping up the stairs. A hot spike of guilt stabbed at me. I’d left him in the middle of Mom and Melinda’s drama. Not that I’d had much choice. Mom was a proud alumna of the same boarding school she’d shipped me and, briefly, Melinda off to. I wondered how hard she was taking it now that neither of us had made it to the end.
She’d certainly become even more shrill since August, when I’d left for school. Life at our house had been really stressful all summer—we’d finally started to realize how far under Dad had gone with his business. For some stupid reason, though, he’d kept up the pretense that everything would be okay for long enough to send me off to school again. As he always said, the neighbors saw your outside, not your inside, and they judged you by it. So the surfaces in our family were as reflective as mirrors—hard, shiny, and with no depth at all.
“I didn’t want you to have to leave that school you love so much,” he’d said when he’d finally made the phone call that there was no more money for tuition.
Rick, my older brother, was already at college, but there was no talk of bringing him home. To be fair, his football scholarship paid for almost everything, but even if it hadn’t, Dad would have found a way to keep him there. Rick was the heir apparent, of course. What Rick wanted, Rick got.
The truth was that I wouldn’t really miss Connecticut; I preferred Kentucky autumns and winters. But I’d miss my friends. We’d promised to keep in touch, but Facebook and Skype were never quite the same as dropping into each other’s rooms at any hour of the day or night. Maybe at least Simone and I would keep the promises we’d made to stay in touch; we’d been roommates for two years, after all.
