by Tanya Holmes
Petroleum-scented heat and a musical mash-up of Christian Bale’s profanity-laced tirade hit me once I stepped inside. The techno-ripped dance track blared from hidden speakers. I couldn’t be sure, but I suspected Cholly’s dreadful song choices were his way of telling the town what he thought of their boycott.
The air was hothouse humid, and beads of condensation wept down the row of windows on the bay doors. After I hung my coat on a peg, I glanced around. The garage was larger than it appeared from the outside. What looked like kitty litter blanketed the concrete floor. My boots made a crunching sound as I ambled along.
Toward the rear, right above a shelf crammed with tires and hubcaps, a circular fan spewed hot air from a corner perch. Three orange strings were tied to the fan’s silver cage. They waved furiously while the powerful head rotated back and forth.
“Trace?” I called, but the music drowned out my voice.
My chest constricted when I finally found him. He was in the third bay, bent over the mouth of a vintage Porsche. A metal toolbox lay next to his booted feet. His broad back eclipsed the car’s tiny engine, and like the other mechanics, he was dressed in a gray uniform shirt and black jeans. Razor-sharp creases that ran the length of his shoulders vanished under sleeves he’d rolled to just above his elbows. His shirt stretched taut across his V-shaped torso while he twisted a screwdriver. Sweat darkened the fabric beneath his underarms and a thin horizontal line of it shot down the center of his back.
Heat coiled in my belly as I watched him. “Hi.”
Trace jackknifed up and the tool bounced across the floor. He whirled around, jammed his knuckles into his mouth, and his brows pinched into a frown that flatlined once our eyes met. Blood dripped from his hand.
“Oh, my God,” I breathed. “Are you okay?”
With a scowl, he strode past me and punched a button on a console, bringing the noise to a blessed end. A first aid kit was tacked to the wall right next to him. The tinny sound of the metal lid smacking the cinder block echoed after he tore it open. Gauze and aspirin packs spilled out as he rifled through its contents. Finally, he found a bandage, but it fell in his haste to strap it on.
The profanity flew after that.
I approached him with caution. “Here. Let me.”
He quirked a brow as if surprised by my moxie. That was a good thing. Any reprieve from his colorful vocabulary and that dreadful music was a blessing. I examined the wound, dabbed it with gauze, but blood welled again within seconds. Grease-stained and callused, his skin felt hot, and the veined back of his hand was sprinkled with a silken down of sun-bronzed hair.
I opened an alcohol pad. “This might sting.” But he didn’t flinch, just glared at me while his blood trickled into my palm. His life essence dripping into my hand, staining my skin, felt oddly personal. Intimate.
“Damn near every time I’m around you, I bleed,” he said.
I studied him in tongue-tied silence, noting the subtle changes the years had etched in his face. While his eyes looked the same light amber shade of hazel, the sparkle was gone, giving them a dull, cynical cast. Fine creases bracketed the corners. I suspected they hadn’t come from smiling.
Adrenaline sluiced through me when I glanced at his chin. What was once a nasty slash now looked like a bee sting with whiskers. A purple smudge underscored his left eye, and a thin, red line centered his bottom lip.
I pulled my gaze from his, pressed a pad over his knuckles and secured the bandage with surgical tape. “All done.”
“Thanks.”
He looked me over one last time before snatching a tool from the floor; then he bent over the Porsche again as I cleaned my hands.
A minute later, he glanced at me. “Get me that wrench, will you?”
“Wrench?”
“On the table. Looks like a crab claw.”
I handed him the tool and stared past him. Next to a row of gray lockers sat an old Harley—Trace’s old Harley. I went to make a closer inspection as a vivid mental picture bobbed to the surface: the two of us roaring around Miller’s Pond with me at his back, the wind in my hair, and the sun kissing my skin. Another lost memory found. I tucked it away for safekeeping.
“You’re restoring your bike.”
He didn’t look. “Yeah.”
I stroked the seat. The worn leather was cracked in spots. Blue lightning bolts with gilded edges adorned either side of the faded black metal. His initials were scrawled in fancy gold cursive. T.P.D. Tracemore Phillip Dawson.
“Does it run?” I asked.
“It got me here.” He tossed the wrench and faced me. “What do you want? I said all I had to say at Home Depot.”
The room stilled. Even the droning fan faded as I approached him. His iron gaze, the hard set of his jaw, these I ignored. Instead, I unzipped my purse and gave him the envelope with the photocopy.
He eyed it with suspicion. “What’s this?”
“Just read.”
He dragged a stool over and sat, one foot hitched on a spoke, the other anchored to the floor. As he examined the pages, his expression morphed from bewilderment, to disbelief, to full-blown rage…and finally to something in between. When he finished, he lowered the paper and swung a hard look in my direction.
“You got ten seconds to explain this shit.”
I felt like a schoolgirl in the principal’s office. “If I could I would, but I haven’t the slightest idea who—”
His murderous look cut my words short. He tore through the pages, searching for a particular passage and read aloud. His sharp gaze arrowed to mine whenever he found something scathing.
“‘My mother also had sex with Trace in front of me,” he read, his voice spiked with bitterness. “Sometimes she held orgies where he serviced multiple male partners, all at her bidding. On one occasion, she got so inebriated she passed out on the floor while he sodomized her. When I threatened to tell—’”
“Trace—”
“Shut up! ‘…to tell someone, he promised to skin my dog alive if I ever breathed a word. Days later, he cornered me and said he was tired of my mother, and that he couldn’t wait until I turned eighteen so he could take my virginity. None of these facts came out during the trial since my family wanted to protect me. I’m not interested in filing charges. Frankly, I’m just afraid for my safety. I’ve had nightmares since the murder and have had difficulty with relationships—’”
“Please, put it away….” I begged.
Whether mercy or disgust stopped him, I wasn’t sure. “So this is what my mama saw?” He crushed part of the papers in his hands. “She wouldn’t tell me what was in it. Neither would Cholly or Bev. Now I know why.”
Desperation sharpened my voice. “Whoever wrote this…this filth sent it to your mother for a reason. Stop rolling your eyes! They wanted to inflict as much pain as they could. That’s why they went for her. They knew how much she meant to you. I could never have written those lies. I loved Miss Dottie, too.”
“Sure you loved her. Loved the way she scrubbed your mama’s toilets and polished her floors. Yeah, y’all loved the hell out of her.” He snorted. “Love.”
Spitting in my face would have been kinder. “That is so unfair and—” I blinked and jumped back when he bolted up and flung the pages. Then he kicked the stool hard. It smacked the wall and wobbled until it shuddered still.
Cholly burst into the garage like a herd of buffalo. “What the hell’s going on in here? I can hear y’all out at the pumps.”
Trace swung his head in Cholly’s direction, then looked back at me. “Nothin’. Miz Bradford was just fixing to leave.”
My muscles were petrified. I was grateful when Cholly didn’t offer to escort me. He just shook his head and disappeared behind the metal door, closing it soundly.
Trace sighed, braced the worktable. “I said, get out.”
Frozen with fear and anger, I stared at the floor. “No.”
“No?”
I elevated my chin a fraction. “That’s ri
ght…no.”
He twisted around. His expression made a gradual shift from vengeful to predatory. Our eyes battled in silence, then, like a prowling lion, he advanced, and I, his prey, retreated until I’d backed into a wall. When his shadow engulfed me, I had to tilt my head all the way back to stare up at him. The ice had thawed in his eyes, leaving twin pools of lava.
I looked at his mouth and the time I kissed him on his seventeenth birthday came to mind. Thirteen-years-old and smitten with a desperate case of puppy love, I’d snuck up on him as he’d sat asleep in the carriage house.
The second my lips bumped into his, he’d startled awake and promptly put me away from him. He’d delivered a hasty, but genial grin, then wagged a finger.
Instead of giving me the brutal truth—that I was a pathetic little girl—the boy they’d ranked with Satan took pity on me. I was too good for him, he’d said.
But there was no pity in his eyes now as his gaze wandered my body. He may have killed my mother, may have even taken another life in prison, but I wasn’t afraid—not in the least. Dear God, had I become like those wretched women who got turned on by bad boys with blood-splattered pasts?
Fighting it, I looked away. “Please…stop.”
“Stop what?”
I drew a shallow breath. “This. What you’re doing.”
“What am I doin’, Shannon?” He anchored a forearm to the wall above my head. His left arm hung at his side.
I swallowed. “You’re trying to scare me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” He looked me over again, and when he spoke, his voice came out deep and gravelly. “Right now, scaring you is the furthest thing from my mind.” He snagged a whiff of my perfume and inched closer. “Way I see it, I’ve politely asked you to leave, but you refused. So I’m left wondering what’s keeping you here. Can’t be my sunny disposition.”
His gaze traveled down my neck, to my chest, a chest that rose and fell in frantic succession. He spent a long time looking there…at my breasts.
I felt my nipples bead, felt my face burn. Embarrassed, I lowered my eyes, but that was a mistake. A full arousal tented his zipper.
He smiled. “See, I think you’re still here ‘cause somethin’s missing.”
“What?” I all but squeaked.
“Oh, I dunno. Maybe lover boy’s not cutting it in bed?”
Fury burned my cheeks. “How dare you.”
“Just an honest question. I’m curious.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“What? Your sex life?” He cocked his head and frowned. “Hell, do y’all even have one?” Before I could tell him to kiss my ass, he added, “Trust me. If he’s not getting it from you, he’s getting it somewhere.”
I seared him with a glare. “Your crudity is astounding.”
“I’m just giving you my humble opinion. Nothin’ more.”
“You don’t know the first thing about humility.”
“Really.”
“Yes, ‘really.’ You’re too full of yourself.”
A slow, wicked grin eased across his lips. “Maybe so. But I’d bet the farm you wouldn’t mind being full of me too.”
Scandalized, I shoved at him, but he just studied me with those piercing hazel eyes. He raised his hand to touch a wayward lock of hair that lay wilted against my neck. A bizarre mesh of outrage and longing stilled my heart while he twined the curl around his fingers. He examined it possessively, as if it were his right, as if he’d done it a million times.
I seized his hand to peel it away, but couldn’t. His electric touch stunned me, just as it had at the hospital and Home Depot. I’d shoved both episodes from my mind, hadn’t even allowed myself to ponder them till now.
Our attention drifted to our entwined flesh; to the golden hair coiled around his fingers; and to the small, slender fingers wrapped around his big hand. I noted the contrast of our skin tones—his dark, mine fair—and the heady sensation the contact elicited. In an instant, our eyes embraced.
Thoughts telegraphed and his Adam’s apple rode his throat. He worked his jaw as he expelled a breath through flared nostrils. I trembled once he licked his lips because there was no question of what had crossed his mind.
It had crossed mine too.
With our hands still linked, he stroked my cheek, then his bandaged knuckles slid from below my ear to my chin. He tilted my face to his and the heat from our mouths meshed together. His lips were millimeters away—so close I could taste the mint of his breath as it beckoned me nearer.
He anchored his free hand on the small of my back, and tugged me closer, causing me to gasp. We fit together like two halves of a torn piece of paper. The concrete bulge between his powerful legs stabbed into my stomach and his thighs were hard against my softness. There was fire in his eyes. Electricity in his touch. Heat in his breath. I was dying.
What are you doing? my mind screamed. Darien, remember?
Sanity returned. I propped a palm on his chest and exerted pressure. He blinked slowly after his gaze fell on my ring, pulling him as if from a trance. The gem caught the light spearing down from the ceiling. Once he untangled my hair from his fingers, I ducked beneath his arm and backed away.
“Damn,” he muttered, attention glued to the wall.
I shoved my bangs off my face. “I don’t like games.”
“You saying you didn’t want me to kiss you just now?”
I wasn’t sure what I’d wanted him to do, and that scared me the most. “You tried to use sex to—”
“Didn’t work though.”
I blinked several times. “So you admit it?”
“That I was seconds away from taking you up against this wall?” He gave a sharp nod. “Hell yeah, I admit it. Are you brave enough to admit you wanted me to?”
The power of speech left me. I didn’t know whose behavior disgusted me more, his or my own. Finally, I said, “Give this some thought. If Mother’s murder and twelve years couldn’t keep me away, why would your pathetic machinations?”
When his shoulders fell, I knew I had him. He hung his head and sighed. “What the hell do you want from me, Shannon?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Pearly Gates
SHANNON
____________________________
The fan’s soft buzz echoed in the background for several heartbeats. It would take a while for the sensual haze to ebb, a while before my pulse stopped racing. I could still smell Trace’s minty breath, and his warm touch lingered on my skin. No doubt, these memories would have a long shelf life.
I wandered to the worktable and set my purse down. Gathering my thoughts wasn’t easy. My body still craved what my mind had forbidden. Even so, I forced myself to speak. “Ah….” I began, my voice annoyingly unsteady. I cleared my throat and tried again. “The first time I saw that…that wretched letter was a week ago. Someone sent it to the parole board right before your first hearing, but no one followed up with me. They assumed it was authentic.”
Trace pushed away from the wall and hopped on a stool. Dust trickled down while he rummaged through the row of tires above his head. He didn’t hide his arousal, as if traipsing around with an erection was commonplace.
I wouldn’t look south again.
My heart raced as I waited for him to speak, yet he said nothing, just continued to fiddle with those stupid tires. One unnerving minute passed, then another, with no acknowledgment from him, so I opened my mouth and decided to go for the jugular.
Thankfully, he cut me off.
“Okay,” he finally said, shouldering his eye as he tugged at two Dunlop tires. “Here’s my problem. Your deposition was pretty damn persuasive.” He tucked a tire under his arm. “You didn’t blink when you said I could’ve done it. Hell, you even had me going for a while.”
This wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind. Jeez. The day I’d made that tape was little more than a blur. All I remembered was the fear. Fear of the camera. Fear of everything.
“I thought w
e were talking about the letter,” I said. “Now you’re bringing this up? Why?”
“I’d be a fool not to.” He stepped down, set the tires by the Porsche, and went back for two more. When he finished, he grabbed a bandana to mop the grit from his hands. “You know what? I don’t even feel like dealing with this shit.” He balled the bandana up and stalked past me. The heat from his body fanned my face. “Just get out. I got work to do.”
“I never figured you for a coward.”
Trace stopped like an invisible wall had crashed in front of him. “What did you say?”
“If you heard coward somewhere in there, then your ears are working fine.”
He did a slow one-eighty and faced me. “Best be careful.”
“Careful doesn’t work with you, but bluntness does. This resistance isn’t about the letter. You think I ruined your life—you, the man who said you’d never hate me. But if you admit it, you’d also have to admit you lied to that girl twelve years ago.” I pressed a fist to my chest. “That you lied to me.”
He stared back in silence for a long moment with a bemused expression, then he started nodding as a cruel smile shaped his lips. “Oh, you’re good. Almost sucked me right in, but I see what this is. Shine the spotlight on me so I’ll stop blazing it on you. The fact remains that you believed a lie. Swore to it in court. So like I told you at Home Depot, maybe you wrote the letter and blocked it out. Maybe guilt got the best of you, and your brain did an info dump. Hell, if it happened once, it could happen again. That’s all I’m saying.”
He’d left me no choice. It was time to play hardball. “Your father beat you bloody when you were a boy, but you denied it. I read the transcripts. You lied.” He’d already drawn first blood, but I’d drawn a close second. I tucked my hair behind my ear and said with sincerity, “Look, perhaps I was like you. Maybe deep down, I was trying to protect myself.”
He glanced off.
“I’m going to say something,” I continued. “And I don’t want you to take it the wrong way, because it comes from my heart.” I pooled my courage and forged ahead. “Bitterness—no, rage—is eating you alive. You guard it like a treasure and I understand that. It’s the one thing they couldn’t take from you. Now I’m asking you to give it up. That has to be terrifying.”
