Sinning Again

by Heidi Lowe

  Sinning Again

  (Beautiful Sin Saga, Book 2)

  by Heidi Lowe

  Published by Heidi Lowe Books, 2016.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  SINNING AGAIN

  First edition. July 15, 2016

  Copyright © 2016 Heidi Lowe

  _________________________

  For exclusive content, discounts, and news of upcoming titles,

  visit www.hlowebooks.com

  _________________________

  CONTENTS

  TITLE

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  BOOKS BY HEIDI LOWE

  BLURB

  PROLOGUE

  "Are you guys ready to order some food now, or do you need more time? Can I get you another drink maybe?"

  I pulled my eyes away from her, from the woman who sat across the table from me, finally remembering that we were not alone. All the usual sounds, sights and smells of a busy diner invaded my senses once more.

  "You need a minute, hun?" the waitress added, chewing lazily on gum. Her hair was multicolored, her eye makeup dark and heavy. Did she know how much of a walking cliche she was?

  "The special sounds good," I said absently. I didn't know if it did, I just wanted her to go away again, to leave us alone, to allow me to think.

  "Good choice." She scribbled in her little notepad, then turned to Jean. "What can I get you?"

  Although I'd taken the time and had the courtesy to look at the woman when she'd addressed me, Jean's eyes remained fixed only on me, almost unblinkingly.

  "Nothing for me, thanks."

  I looked at her glass of water – barely touched. This late night trip to the diner wasn't about her thirst or my hunger, this was about trying to figure out where we went from here. And we were no closer to that than we had been when we'd left Lox Ridge three hours prior.

  "All right. One daily special coming up." The waitress took our menus. I could feel her eyes on us, watching, wondering what this setup was. The older, beautiful, dark-haired English maiden with her less elegant, younger companion. "You folks new in town or just passing through?"

  "We're still deciding," Jean jumped in, before I could.

  "All right." I could hear the uncertainty in the waitress's voice, could sense it even as she retreated from us and went to put in my order.

  And then we were alone again. Surrounded by noise, yet shrouded in silence. It was funny how that happened sometimes.

  "I visited this place the first week I moved to the States," Jean said after some time. When she brought the glass to her mouth, her hand was shaking. "I had the most divine cherry and coconut pie, with a rich treacle topping that just melted in my mouth. I think I wrote back home about it." She smiled, but her eyes were sad. Not because of the memory, or the fact that she could no longer enjoy the "magical" pie. But because of this forced conversation starter.

  I sipped my lemonade, said nothing, only waited for her to continue, to say something else irrelevant.

  "For years after that, every city or town I went to I inquired about it, searched obsessively over every menu, but I never did come across it again."

  I peered out the window, into the dark parking lot. There was something calming about staring into darkness, as though my soul felt at home.

  "Lissa, talk to me. Please."

  I was wondering how long it would take her to say it, to finally stop ignoring the elephant in the room.

  "You didn't speak the whole drive up here, and now...now this."

  I drank my drink without feeling or tasting it, my silence everlasting. I wasn't trying to punish her with it, though she might have thought otherwise; I simply didn't know what she wanted me to say. Was I supposed to tell her to be grateful that she had even this much, after everything she'd put me through? That my silence was more than she deserved? No, I couldn't say that, because sitting here with her, with the woman who had taken everything from me, and yet had given me so much, had been my choice. The first one I'd ever made without her intervention since the age of twelve.

  "Shout at me, say anything, I don't care. Just...just let me know that you're here with me."

  "I'm here." My voice was weak, quiet, but enough to make her sigh with relief. Enough that she didn't feel the need to fill the silence with trivial talk about pie, or anything else. Nothing more was said between us while we waited for the order.

  The daily special: a tasteless, oily concoction with unidentifiable meat, that I barely ate two mouthfuls of. A meal truly suitable for the occasion.

  I hung back as she twisted the key in the lock. The floodlights poured over us and the graveled driveway, making it seem as though it was 10 in the morning instead of the middle of the night. Moving house at such unsociable hours, however, was probably commonplace in this town.

  Once she'd wrested the door open, she turned back to me with a smile. "Would you like to go in first?"

  I shrugged and stepped past her. The shrug was more about me being tired than nonchalant. I'd been too on edge to sleep in the car on the drive up, and I had barely slept the night before.

  Light flooded the spacious hallway seconds later, from an automatic sensor trip or something. It was smaller than her old house, but equally as opulent: an imperial staircase that split off in two, leading to the second floor, and marble flooring to boot.

  Through my peripheral vision I saw her watching me, watching for my response. It didn't matter what she thought of the house; my opinion was the only one that mattered to her.

  "There's plenty of space for your studio."

  "This house, is it sufficient for your needs?"

  "Do you mean is there an underground?" She nodded. "The house used to belong to...to someone like me." She looked away when she said that, guiltily, as though she thought the mere mention, or reminder, of what she was would hurt me. As though her race was the thing I despised, and not her.

  "Spare rooms, more bathrooms than we'll ever be able to use..."

  There she went again, trying to fill the void of silence so that she wouldn't have to listen to me ignoring her.

  "Should we take a tour? I've only seen it in pictures. Robyn picked it."

  "I'm pretty beat. I think I'll just get some sleep."

  "Of course. What was I thinking?" She led the way upstairs and I followed languidly. My body felt heavy and lethargic; my bones seemed to creak much like the stairs. I knew that as soon as my head hit the pillow I would be out like a light.

  The first room she stumbled upon was a guest room, furnished with a single bed, closet and not much else.

  "The master bedroom must be down the hall," she said and started to leave.

  "I think I'll just stay in here..." It was such a simple sentence, but far from innocuous. And I knew precisely what effect my words would have.

  She opened her mouth to speak, to protest, to scream at me for pushing her away despite me promi
sing to give us a chance. And then she closed it again, nodded and turned away quickly, but not fast enough to prevent me from seeing those watery red tears I'd made her shed a thousand times already.

  I'd made it very clear. There was no place for her in this room, in my bed. And only time would tell if there would ever be a place for her in my heart again.

  "If that's what you want," she said. And her goodnight came out choked as she dashed from the room.

  Good. Now we were both in pain.

  ONE

  "You're such a good boy. Yes you are, you gorgeous little runt." I scratched playfully under the chin of the frisky golden retriever puppy, who I'd spent the past half hour grooming. This might have been the most affectionate I'd ever been with a male of any species since my father.

  He barked and yipped with joy, scrambled all over me as we rolled around on the floor, and he lavished my face with his yucky doggy saliva. You weren't supposed to have favorites at the shelter, but Knight, the puppy, seemed to be popular with just about everyone who worked here. He gave a whole new meaning to the term "puppy-dog eyes", and had us all eating out of the palm of his paws.

  Abandoned by the side of the road three weeks ago, in a litter with another just like him, who sadly didn't make it, he was a scrawny little thing. All bones, no meat. He shouldn't have survived, not in his condition. The miracle pup. Nursed back to health by the whole team, who'd taken one look at those doleful eyes and fallen in love with him.

  "Seeing as you're the newest member of the team, Lissa, you get to name him," my manager had said.

  "Knight," I'd responded without thinking. The name and all its connotations fit him like a glove. We'd been inseparable ever since.

  I saw myself in him. The abandonment. The constant need to be cared for, loved. In him, I found it adorable, but in myself, lately I saw it as a weakness. Almost pathetic. But Knight and I were not the same, not really. He was the April in that scenario. There were already several families interested in adopting him. He was still young enough and loveable enough to be attractive; still new enough to forget whatever ill-treatment had come before his rescue, and would thus never lead to later behavioral problems. In other words, he still had a shot at a normal life.

  I heard laughter behind me.

  "You've been off the clock for ten minutes, Lissa. You're making the rest of us look bad," my coworker Camille said.

  It was easy to get carried away and lose track of time, rolling around on the floor with Knight.

  "He won't let me leave," I said, giggling away as I got another helping of sloppy doggy saliva on my face.

  "Yeah, yeah, blame the dog."

  "I'll be out in a minute."

  "So that really means five. Just don't take too long. Every extra minute spent here is one less spent drinking."

  I met her halfway and wrapped it up minutes later, giving Knight the biggest kiss, telling him to be good for the night-workers, and that I would see him the next morning.

  I heard lively chatter in the staffroom on my way to the changing room. It was a sprint to freshen up and get out of my day clothes, which were covered in fur of all kinds. The smell of dog still clung to me though, no matter how many times I washed my face and hands. I imagined that the bar staff smelled us coming even before we got to the door.

  "There she is," my manager announced when I poked my head in the room. The three usual suspects were sitting around a table, nibbling on potato chips. "How many times do we have to tell you not to keep us waiting for drinks?" She spoke good-naturedly, wagging her finger at me as though I was one of the dogs.

  "I'm sorry, I know. First round's on me," I said.

  "You bet it is!" Camille said. We started out of the building merrily. "What are you going to do when someone adopts him?"

  I shrugged. For my own selfish reasons, I hoped that day would never come. That he would be there every day to greet me with his yips of joy. But I kept this sentiment to myself. As a shelter worker, we were always supposed to want adoption for the animals.

  The four of us bounded into the bar, our usual hangout, as it stood directly across the street from Greenfields Shelter For the Paw – an upmarket, privately-funded animal shelter. The bar staff knew the others by name, knew what they were drinking before they opened their mouths to order. They'd been singing the same tune long before I'd gotten there, and I'd slipped into the routine, assimilated as though I'd been one of the gang for years.

  "Two white Russians, a cosmopolitan, and a piña colada. She's paying," Raymond, one of only two male staff members in the company, said. He, like the others, was over thirty, and had worked and lived in Greenfields, Illinois all his life.

  I'd gotten the distinct impression, since my arrival six weeks prior, that this wasn't a town people wanted to leave. The people smiled at you as you walked down the street, some even said hello, or good day. Nothing like the false geniality of Lox Ridge, where beneath every smile lay something sinister. Greenfields was a haven, a real one, even with the higher concentration of vampires. No wonder Jean chose this place to start over.

  The third person was Diane, the manager, a vet in her mid-forties, and a mother of five. I'd gravitated towards her almost immediately, and let her take me under her wing. Her unofficial sixth child...one she liked to get wasted with.

  "Lissa should take Knight home. It makes sense." This came from Raymond, two hours later, once the drinks had been flowing, and we'd inevitably turned back to shop talk. They couldn't help it; the shelter and the animals were their life.

  I shook my head and hands fiercely. "No way. I wouldn't bring a dog into that situation..."

  "What situation? You're being cryptic again," Camille said. I recognized that sleepy heaviness in her eyes; she was slipping into full-on inebriation mode. She really couldn't hold her alcohol.

  "Yeah, you keep making these ambiguous statements. I love mysteries, Lissa, but you have to give us something," Raymond said.

  "Forget it. It's nothing. I just mean that the woman I live with doesn't like dogs..." I threw back what was left of my drink, praying they would move on, change the subject. The last thing I wanted to do was think about "my situation".

  Camille laughed. "The woman you live with? You mean your girlfriend? Wow, that bad, huh?"

  "We're fine. Everything's right as rain. Who wants another drink? On me."

  Before I could escape, Diane put a hand around my wrist. "Not so fast, little miss. Now you've made me really curious. And you can't possibly be able to afford these drinks. We don't pay you enough, and you only work part time. Sit down and spill."

  I looked over at Raymond and then Camille, both of whom shrugged helplessly whilst grinning mischievously.

  "She's the boss," Raymond said. "Besides, you've been with us five weeks now and we still know nothing about you."

  I plonked my butt back in my seat dejectedly. I'd managed to go two hours without them trying to get info out of me. Five weeks, in fact. Now they'd run out of patience.

  "There's nothing to know."

  "Whenever someone says that, you know they have something to hide," Camille said, eyes lighting up with intrigue.

  "Don't think we didn't do a Google Maps search on your address," Raymond said.

  My jaw dropped. "You looked me up?"

  "Just the address. Come on, don't act like you haven't done that before. Your house has a name, Lissa! Mine has a number. If my coworker lives in a place called Canterbury Manor, I'm gonna check it out."

  "I totally feel violated right now." I shook my head, both amused and astonished. "Isn't that, like, unethical, if not downright illegal?"

  "Nope," Diane said, grinning. "So what's the story behind the manor? Rich parents? Millionaire lover? All of the above?"

  "My...the woman I live with is well off, all right. She's renting it, I'm just living there. Now can we change the topic?"

  The less they knew about Jean the better.

  I'd made no secret of the fact that I was gay. No
sense in hiding that. But coming out only to then drop the bombshell that my adoring paramour was a fanger, was asking a bit too much of my new colleagues. Besides, I didn't want my relationship with her to define me, to be the thing people thought about when they looked at me.

  I needed a life outside of Jean.

  "Sweetie, you refer to your girlfriend as the woman you live with," Diane said. "I'd say you're anything but fine."

  "When did this become all about me and my relationship?" I whined, suddenly feeling ganged up on. And couldn't someone have at least gotten me a drink if they were forcing me to unload my baggage?

  "We care." Camille rested a mock-sympathetic hand on my arm. I would have believed her sincerity if she wasn't wearing a huge grin. "Has this got anything to do with why you keep asking for more hours, and why you always want to work the night shift?"

  "What? No." I shifted uneasily, as though my pants were on fire, like the liar that I was.

  "So, out with it. What's the problem? Because it sounds to me like you've got yourself a sugar-mama," Raymond said.

  Yes, to replace the mother she stole from me. How cruel fate was in its irony.

  A club tune I'd hated since the first time I'd heard it came on, and I jumped to my feet. "I don't know about you guys, but I feel like dancing. Who's coming?"

  Dancing was actually the last thing I felt like doing, and especially to that song. But with the alcohol flowing through my system, and the desperate need to curtail the current topic of conversation, I shimmied off to the dance floor. A middle-aged couple were the only other people on the floor, but I didn't care. I threw all my inhibitions out the window and let loose, dancing to a song I despised.

  It took a couple of minutes for Camille and Diane to join me, leaving Raymond to watch and laugh, and snap the odd picture he didn't think we noticed him taking.

  It was the most fun I'd had in a long time, even though still blighted. Everything I did nowadays was blighted by the harsh reality I knew I would have to return to once the fun and games were over.