by Lucy Connors
“You’ll have to convince them that you can identify him as the perpetrator, for sure,” Victoria said.
“Perpetrator?”
She grinned shyly. “I like police shows on TV.”
I pointed at the enormous flat screen. “Should we watch one? Solve somebody else’s problems for a while?”
“I’ll make popcorn.”
The bowl sat untouched, though, while we watched the show’s crime scene investigators wrap everything up neatly in the space of forty-three minutes or so. Or, at least, Victoria watched it. I mostly watched her, captivated by the way the strands of her hair caught the light. Enjoying the feel of her body next to mine on the couch, my arm around her shoulders and her head leaning back against my chest. I forced myself to keep from touching her, other than holding her hand, because I didn’t want to push anything on her that she wasn’t ready for.
During the final ten minutes or so, Victoria kept glancing at me and then down at our clasped hands, and I got the feeling she was trying to work up to something. When she switched off the TV, she took a deep breath and turned to me.
“I’m here alone tonight. Is there any chance you could stay?”
Chapter 47
Victoria
Mickey’s eyes flared hot, and I’d never seen blue eyes burn like that before. I suddenly had a hard time breathing.
“Are you asking me—”
“No! No, I’m not—I can’t. Not yet.” My cheeks were burning. “I just want you to hold me for a while. Is that asking something unreasonable? I completely understand if it is.”
He looked down for a moment, and adjusted the pillow over his lap, and I suddenly understood. For a girl who grew up around horses, I was being pretty stupid. “Never mind, I’m an idiot. What was I thinking—”
“Victoria, I’d love to stay with you for a while. I can sneak in my window when I get home. I’ve done it before, when I stayed out too late with the guys.”
“I’ll just . . . I’ll give you a minute, and I’ll be back.” I ran down the hall to my bedroom, my heart pounding in time with my feet. What had I been thinking? Mickey wouldn’t want to hold me platonically. He’d been with girls before. He’d think I was stupid. . . .
I stopped and stared at myself in the mirror.
No.
I wasn’t an insecure little girl. Mickey wanted to be with me. He’d said he was falling in love with me. He’d risked everything to be with me. He wasn’t going to change his mind because I didn’t take my clothes off for him.
He wouldn’t have been worth my time if he did.
I washed my face and put on a nightgown, then threw it off and changed into old sweatpants and a faded T-shirt, and then I went to get Mickey. He met me in the hallway, as if he’d been afraid that I’d disappear.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” His voice was as gentle as his touch as he moved a strand of my hair behind my ear. “I can tuck you in and get out of here. Just say the word.”
“I want you to hold me,” I said, and he smiled.
I took his hand and led him to my room, but I didn’t give him much time to look around at the mess before I turned out the light, so only the soft light from the hall illuminated the room.
“Looks kinda girly,” he teased.
“You should see Melinda’s room, the one that used to be mine. It’s all ruffles.”
“I’m allergic to ruffles,” he said solemnly.
I laughed and climbed onto my bed, on top of the covers, and pulled a thick spare quilt over me. Then I held out my arms and, after hesitating for a few seconds, he sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off his boots, and then lay down on his back next to me.
I curled up next to him, with my head on his shoulder, and shivered a little. I felt daring and delightful and dangerous all at the same time. He curved his arm underneath my shoulders and shifted around a little to get comfortable, and I reached across his hard stomach to take his other hand in mine.
“I’ve never been in bed with a girl before,” he admitted, and I snorted.
“Really? You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s true. Backseat of a car, front seat of a truck, in a barn once, but never in a bed.”
I stiffened and tried to pull away, but he pulled me closer.
“You knew I wasn’t a virgin, Princess. I can’t rewrite history just because I finally found you.”
“I wish you could.” I hated every one of those girls.
He laughed, and his chest rumbled beneath my cheek. “Yeah, well, when you told me you’d kissed boys before, I wanted to track them all down and punch them.”
I smiled. “That’s more like it. Except for the punching part.”
“I’m done with punching. I swear it.”
“Are you going back to school tomorrow?”
“I’m going to try. I’d rather be there than at home doing any new horrible chores Pa can come up with.”
“Is the garage finally clean?”
“Sparkling. I hope never to see the inside of that building again,” he said fervently, and I started laughing.
“You sound like me when Pete first taught me how to muck out stalls. Do you have any idea how much a horse can poop?” I shuddered.
“Just when I think you’re a delicate, fragile princess, you say something like that and I get an image of you shoveling out mounds of horse shit,” he said.
“Makes you hot, doesn’t it?”
When we stopped laughing, the irrepressible tidal wave of an enormous yawn swept me under, and I realized how little sleep I’d actually had since Friday’s ordeal.
“This is going to sound unbelievable, but I think I’m going to fall asleep,” I whispered, hardly believing it myself. I’d expected to be so awkward and overly excited about having him in my bed, even on top of the covers, that I’d never fall asleep.
Instead, I was already halfway there, surrounded by the safety and comfort of his strong arms.
He groaned. “It is a little bit unbelievable, kind of like how old sweats can be so sexy when you’re the one wearing them.”
I smiled a private smile and reached up to kiss him softly on the cheek.
“Does the back door lock automatically?”
“Yes.”
“Then get some rest, Victoria. I’ll let myself out once you’re asleep.”
He kissed me on the forehead, and then he stared up at the ceiling and started to tell me a long, complicated story about a man who loses the woman he loves, finds a treasure, and is later finally reunited with her again. Slowly, bit by bit, I relaxed and drifted off, content in the sure knowledge that we were going to figure this all out.
It wasn’t until I was almost asleep that I realized he’d been telling me the story of The Count of Monte Cristo. Lots of people had died in that book. I hoped he wasn’t drawing a parallel.
When I woke up in the morning, with the sun streaming into the room like a promise, Mickey was gone, and Gran was yelling my name from downstairs. I swung my feet out of bed and kicked over a pair of boots.
Big boots.
Mickey’s boots.
Oh, crap.
Chapter 48
Mickey
Mickey, wake up!”
Victoria’s scent, that unique mix of sunshine and sugar that was all her, surrounded me, and I pulled her close before I ever opened my eyes, knowing it was a dream but wanting to kiss her, anyway.
Dream Victoria had morning breath.
Shit. That meant I had morning breath, too—which meant it was morning, this was not a dream, and I was still at her house, on the couch in her TV room where I must have fallen asleep sometime after I’d sat down with the lame-brained idea of keeping watch for a while.
I sat up fast, and our foreheads knocked together.
She sat back, rubb
ing her head and wincing. “Just like a fairy tale.”
A new voice sounded from the doorway. “So what does that make me? The evil witch or the big bad wolf?”
“Gran!” Victoria fell back on the other side of the couch. “Look! Fully dressed. We were talking, and we just fell asleep. I mean, I fell asleep in my room, and Mickey fell asleep here. Nothing happened, I promise.”
I jumped up off the couch and tripped over the coffee table but—just barely—managed not to fall on my ass. “Ma’am. I’m really sorry to be here, but Victoria’s telling the truth. We were talking, and she started to fall asleep, and I must have been so tired from cleaning out the garage for four days straight—”
“Enough! You’re dressed. I can see this was no den of sin. Meet me in the kitchen in ten minutes for coffee.”
I started to sit back down, and she pointed at me. “Not you, Sunshine. You get your butt downstairs right this minute.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll—”
“You’ll make a pot of coffee, if you know what’s good for you, Mickey Rhodale,” she ordered, and I knew enough to get moving.
The matriarch of the Whitfield clan was a tiny thing, and kind of sweetly grumpy looking in her purple jogging suit, but I had no doubt she employed plenty of people who could kick my ass physically when she was done kicking it verbally, so I’d have to try my best to be charming and throw myself on her mercy.
She glared at me when I walked past her.
Yeah. I was doomed.
• • •
By the time the two of them came downstairs ten minutes later, Victoria’s grandmother still in her track suit and Victoria in clean clothes and wet hair, holding my boots; I had coffee ready and had set out the cream and sugar. Mrs. Whitfield narrowed her eyes at me, but then nodded.
“So, let’s have a little chat,” she said.
“How is Melinda?”
She stared at me, but she must have seen that I was sincere, because her shoulders lost a little of their aggressive readiness and relaxed.
“She’s ready. She wanted this, and they tell me that’s the first step,” she said.
“I thought you were staying later,” Victoria said, and then she seemed to realize what she’d said, and she winced. “Not that I was plotting anything. I only meant—”
“They told me that they like for the clients to get started on the program without long, drawn-out good-byes, so I hit the road when I woke up. And trust me, I’d know if you were plotting anything, because everything you feel shows up on your face.”
I realized it was true; it was why Mom had known I had good reason to hope, and it had been one of the reasons I’d been drawn to Victoria from the first time I’d met her. She didn’t have a single artificial or deceptive bone in her body.
“I hate that, you know,” Victoria grumbled. “I could never get away with anything, growing up.”
“We had enough trouble with Melinda,” her grandmother said tartly, pouring herself a cup of black coffee.
Victoria, on the other hand, used three spoonfuls of sugar and half a cup of cream in her coffee. I watched as she prepared this hideous concoction, and then I looked up and met Mrs. Whitfield’s eyes and realized we were both grimacing.
“Little coffee with your cream?” I poured my own. Black.
Victoria shrugged and smiled. “Mock me if you like. I’m used to it. I don’t like the taste of coffee much on its own.”
Mrs. Whitfield cleared her throat and put her cup down. “We’d better talk about this, and then I never want to hear about it again.”
“The coffee?” Victoria smiled, but it was shaky. “We can talk about coffee as often as you want to.”
“It’s entirely my fault,” I said. “I was supposed to go home as soon as Victoria fell asleep, but I—”
“No, it’s my fault,” Victoria broke in, giving me a frantic look. “We were talking, and one thing led to another—no. No! Nothing led to nothing. I mean, just talking things. Not naked things. I mean, oh, crap, I’m saying this all wrong.”
“I think I get it,” Mrs. Whitfield said dryly. “Amazing as it might seem to the two of you, I was a teenager once. However, I might be the only adult Whitfield who would understand, or at least the only one who would let Mickey leave without stringing him up.”
I wanted to hug the old lady. I settled for grinning at her. “I bet you were a beautiful teenager, just like your granddaughter.”
“Shut up now, Mickey,” she advised.
“Shutting up now.”
Victoria drank some of her coffee, looking from me to her grandmother, before she finally spoke again. “I don’t really understand. I mean, I’m thrilled you’re being reasonable, but what you said—about your father-in-law. And you know Mickey is a Rhodale, so . . .”
“You’re wondering why I’m not getting the shotgun, like I heard Anna Mae did?”
“Something like that.”
Mrs. Whitfield sighed. “I probably would have done it, just last week. But Pete getting shot was a scary wake-up call. We can’t continue on like this, and maybe you two will be the ones to help us all get past this insanity.”
I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing. All my life, Pa had told me that old lady Whitfield blamed a Rhodale for killing her husband’s father. Now she was prepared to accept me in her granddaughter’s life?
Or maybe I was pushing it. Not stringing me up was still a far shout from accepting me.
“You have your grandmother’s eyes,” she said suddenly.
Victoria tilted her head. “You knew Mickey’s grandmother?”
“Samantha Rhodale and I were best friends, before the tragedy pulled us apart,” Mrs. Whitfield said, her gaze turned inward, probably to a sixty-year-old memory.
Then she turned those sharp blue eyes on me. “Let’s all hope the mistakes of the past won’t taint the future, but I have to admit I don’t think much of the chances.”
“Oh, Gran! That’s exactly what we were hoping. If you were on our side, it would help.”
“I’m on nobody’s side but my horses,” Mrs. Whitfield said sternly, but she patted Victoria’s hand. “All I can do is pray that this thing between you doesn’t destroy the whole family.”
“Maybe you can explain what your son is doing in his new real estate venture?” I knew I wasn’t helping my cause, but I needed to understand what the hell was going on. “Ethan and Anna Mae seem to think he’s buying up all the property he can get his hands on in order to bring more horse people and other rich folks in, and drive property taxes up so high it will run ordinary people out of the county.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Victoria said darkly.
“He might be trying, but he doesn’t have enough money to buy much right now, not that my son’s business dealings are any of your concern, young man,” Mrs. Whitfield said.
I started to back down, but I couldn’t leave it like that. “They’re my business if it’s starting the feud sh—, uh, stuff, all over again, ma’am.”
“I promise to keep an eye on it. I won’t discuss it any further, but I won’t let this leftover anger from the past destroy our family.”
I started to answer her, but she shut me up with a look.
“Either of our families, young man. I hope it doesn’t destroy either of our families.”
Chapter 49
Victoria
When we went out to the truck, Gus and a few of the ranch hands were out in front of the barn, and I practically felt the virtual scarlet A painted on my chest blaze so fiercely that it was a wonder it didn’t set the entire ranch on fire. On her very first night alone, the perfect Whitfield princess had invited a boy to sleep over. They must all think I was a slut.
I glanced over at them again but, other than Gus lifting a hand in a wave, none of them seemed to be paying any attentio
n to me at all. This was small-town Kentucky, though—we’d probably be the talk of the Dairy Queen by lunch and the VFW lodge by nightfall.
I suddenly realized that it really didn’t matter if everybody gossiped, because those people had nothing to do with my life. Sure, they’d talk about me for a while, but then they’d move on to someone more interesting. I was behaving as if I were Melinda when her addiction had her by the throat, believing that the universe revolved around me, when in fact I was only hanging on to the spinning earth by my fingertips like everybody else.
Perhaps humiliation bred clarity. I’d certainly never forget looking up and seeing Gran standing in that doorway.
On my way to school I dropped Mickey off where he’d left his bike.
“Are your parents going to be really angry?”
“They probably don’t know I was gone. They leave for work before I get up, so they usually don’t come in my room.” He flashed a smile. “I’m seventeen, not seven, in spite of the way your grandmother made me feel.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’m the one who fell asleep.” He leaned across the seat and kissed me. “You’re beautiful when you sleep, by the way.”
I blushed. “So are you.”
“Guys aren’t beautiful. We’re . . . rugged or something.”
“Well, you’re especially rugged when you sleep, then.”
He grinned and opened the door, but then looked back at me. “We will figure this out. I promise. I’ll call Ethan this morning, and if he’s still not answering his phone, I’ll call Anna Mae.”
“Phase one?” The whole plan sounded idiotic and futile in the cold light of day, but it was the only plan we had.
“Phase one.”
I spent the entire drive to school worrying myself sick.
Chapter 50
Mickey
It took me until Friday to reach Ethan. Neither he nor Jeb would answer their phones. I didn’t have Anna Mae’s number, and when I drove out to the compound, the guards at the gate turned me away.
