by Reinke, Sara
“What we need is a nice, raw porterhouse,” Rene had remarked as he’d presented it to her. When she’d looked at him, puzzled, he’d told her that raw meat helped ease bruising and swelling, particularly black eyes. “And you, pischouette, are sporting one hell of a shiner.”
“That’s absolutely disgusting. Where do you come up with these things?”
“The school of hard knocks—literally,” he’d said with a shrug. “I used to get the shit beat out of me all the time as a kid.”
“By who?” she’d asked and he’d shrugged again.
“Lots of different people. Mostly this one asshole, Gordon Maddox.”
“But why?” she’d asked. “Didn’t you fight back?”
“I guess because I was poor. My mamère worked at the local Piggly Wiggly and that was all we had to live on besides the good graces of Uncle Sam, on account of the fact my grandpa hurt his back working a shrimp boat, gimped himself to where he couldn’t do much of anything except sit around and get drunk. And yeah, I fought back. But it doesn’t do you much good when the guy gunning for your ass is twice your size.”
It was one of the first times Rene had told her much about himself, outside of the occasions when he’d talked about his wife, Irene, and he’d said this last with a long, pointed look in her direction, as if he knew she was still berating herself for not fighting more against Martin.
“No,” she’d murmured, shaking her head, touched not only that he would confide in her, but try to empathize, too. “It doesn’t.”
“So what is Broughman and Associates?” Rene asked. He’d been sifting through the invoices and records Martin had tucked inside the mysterious ledger, a thoughtful pinch cleaving his brows.
Tessa shook her head. “I don’t know. But I think it must be something important.” She told him about how furious Martin had been with her for taking the ledger, how frantic he’d been to get it back, and about how his first wife, Monica, had apparently shared these sentiments based on the phone call she’d overheard. “He asked her something about keeping the status quo for chump change—that’s how he put it—or becoming the dominant family. But I don’t know what he meant. He has a credit card for them, too. I heard him mention that to Monica on the phone. He told her to use it if she needed.”
Rene’s pensive frown deepened as he scanned the papers again. “You said he’s an accountant or something for your grandfather?”
“At the Bloodhorse Distillery, yes,” she said. “For all of the Brethren, not just the Grandfather.”
“But your grandpa holds the Brethren purse strings, no?” Rene asked, and she nodded. “My guess, then, would be your husband’s been skimming off the top of the family till, so to speak. You know, stealing.”
“What?” Tessa blinked in surprise. “How could he do that? Those payments are to a company, that Broughman and Associates, not Martin.”
Rene dropped her a wink. “He can do that, pischouette, because Martin is Broughman and Associates.”
She must have looked like a fish, her mouth dropped open and gaping, her eyes suddenly flying wide, because he took one look at her and laughed. “It’s easy, really. All done on a computer.” He waggled his fingers demonstratively, as if at a keyboard. “He figured since he handles some of the bills, why not pay himself through one, too? So he sets up a bank account in the name of this pretend company, gets a couple of credit cards in its name—one for him, one for Monica—then mocks up invoices he processes himself and deposits the money electronically to the account every time. Nobody notices. Nobody knows. Bloodhorse Distillery probably gets bills left and right for all sorts of shit. Who’s going to pay attention to one extra?”
“He could get away with that?”
“Sure,” Rene said. “As long as no one goes snooping around too much, finds the financial records or double-checks his books. It happens all the time.”
Tessa couldn’t believe Martin had the balls to steal from the Brethren. From the Grandfather, no less. My God, he’d be killed if the Grandfather found out about it. What the hell would make him take that kind of risk?
But she knew.
Augustus sits at the head of the Brethren Elders, puts his sons in all of the choice positions with the farms and distillery, and what does he leave for the rest of you? she’d overheard Monica complain to Martin. Grunt work and mid-level management. Why doesn’t he put you out with the Kinsfolk or the laborers shoveling shit in the barns? It’s not fair.
For as much as she had hated Eleanor for her fine clothes and exquisite jewels, all of the elaborate gifts the Grandfather bestowed upon her, Monica had also coveted them. She was a spiteful bitch whose jealousy toward Eleanor had spilled over to Tessa, as well. Tessa could still remember the momentary bite of chain links against the back of her neck as Monica had snatched the green sapphire necklace from about her throat.
“I had an accountant try the same thing with me a couple of years ago,” Rene said. “Only I’m not nearly as fucking stupid as he thought. I like my money.” He tapped his brow with his fingertip. “I keep an eye on my money.”
“What did you do when you found out?” Tessa asked.
“I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chi-anti,” Rene replied solemnly, then laughed. “What the hell do you think I did, pischouette? I had the salaud arrested. He’s serving four years in prison now for embezzlement and fraud.”
He folded the records neatly together and tucked them back into the ledger. “What are you going to do with them?” she asked, and he laughed again.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to hang on to them, that’s for damn sure. I bet we can find ourselves a good use for them.”
He glanced over and caught her touching her stomach again. She’d been doing this almost nonstop, either pressing, stroking or rubbing her hand against the slight slope of her belly. She had also kept her mind open, a mental eye of sorts on the baby, with the irrational but unshakable fear that somehow, it wouldn’t be all right; that if she broke her mental connection with it, even for a fleeting moment, something might happen, some residual damage from where Martin had hurt her, and the baby would be lost.
I don’t know what I’d do if that happened. She’d suffered a maelstrom of emotions since learning that she was pregnant months earlier, a mixture of exuberance and trepidation; joy because of the promise of motherhood, and by that same promise, reservation and fear. But while she’d doubted her own abilities to be a good mother, and she’d been tormented by the idea of raising the baby under Martin and Monica’s roof, one thing had always been unquestioned in her mind and heart—she loved the baby. She dreamed of the baby, holding it in her arms, nestled against her breast. She imagined its warmth and softness, the sound of its voice, the fragrance of its skin.
In her mind, she’d imagine the child—a daughter sometimes, a son in others—walking with her on the farm in Kentucky, following the rutted roads that bisected the Grandfather’s land. “Do you know how much I love you?” she’d ask.
It was a game Eleanor used to play with her and Brandon, usually right before she would leave on one of her adventures beyond the farm with the Grandfather. While he’d wait, stern-faced and stoically impatient in the foyer, surrounded by luggage, Eleanor would scoop the twins up and kiss them, making them squeal with giggles. “Do you know how much I love you?” she’d say to them, and Brandon, like the son in Tessa’s dreams would answer: “To the moon and back again!”
Tessa, like her imaginary daughter would always cry, “More than all of the fishes in the sea!”
She’d daydream about these things, fond games with her child, but had never imagined a father because Martin wasn’t one, not like Tessa’s had been to her, someone nurturing, protective and caring. Martin had taken after his father, Allistair. She’d lived in the Davenant house; she’d seen Allistair with his children—the incident in which he’d grabbed Martin by the balls in the foyer being par for the course—and Martin had spared his own offspring no similar
disdain.
“Tessa?”
She looked up, Rene’s voice drawing her from her thoughts. His brows were lifted with concern, and he reached for her, draping his hand lightly against her wrist. “The bébé,” he said. “It’s all right still, no?”
She managed a feeble smile. “It’s fine. I just…I want to keep checking, that’s all. Just to be sure.”
Martin had never given a shit about her or, apparently, their baby. And while half the time, Rene seemed exasperated, pissed off or otherwise put out with her, he had still cared enough to take a gunshot to the hand to protect her, not to mention track her somehow across the breadth of New Mexico and come to her rescue. Rene cared about her, as well as the baby, even though he had no right to, and she sure as hell hadn’t given him much of a reason to.
I wish you were my baby’s father, Rene, she thought.
His expression softened, the worry fading. “You do what you need to, pischouette,” he told her with a smile. “Whatever makes you feel safe.”
He leaned across the bed and kissed her, pressing his lips gently against the corner of her mouth. It was a tender gesture, nothing sexual or passionate; just a gentle empathy that might have once surprised her coming from him. But no longer.
She closed her eyes as he pulled away, letting the scruff of his beard stubble rub coarsely against her cheek, drawing the light fragrance of him—warm, pleasant and familiar—fill her nose. You make me feel safe, she thought. You’re what I need, Rene.
Chapter Eighteen
Rene waited until Tessa was asleep before going out to the car. He popped the trunk and stood there, looking down at Martin, still hog-tied and gagged. The other man had roused at the rush of fresh air coming into the trunk, the dim orange glow from the light on the underside of the door. He moved feebly, uttering a low, muffled groan around the wadded up washcloth Rene had shoved between his teeth and fettered in place with a torn strip of bedsheet.
“Bon jour,” Rene said, closing his hand roughly in Martin’s hair. He jerked the man’s head up and pulled down the gag.
“You…son of a bitch…” Martin gasped hoarsely, squinting up at him. His face was a mess of oozing pockmarks and scab-lined scratches from where the birds had attacked and there was dried bird shit and feather down visible in his hair.
“Yeah. Fuck you, too,” Rene said. “Tell me, when you slap your wife around, does it make you feel like a man?”
He shoved a plastic bottle to Martin’s lips, spilling tainted water into his mouth again. “I mean, do you get off on it, hitting someone half your size? Does it make your dick hard to beat up on a woman, you sick, twisted fuck?”
After Martin’s initial gag reflex left some of the drink splashed and slopped, Rene managed to force the rest down his throat. “I really want to know, Davenant.” He wrenched Martin’s head back farther, forcing a strangled cry from him. “What does it feel like to hit a woman?”
He opened his hand, letting Martin’s head drop back to the floor of the trunk. He promptly folded his fingers in toward his palm and sent his knuckles careening brutally into Martin’s cheek. He punched the shit out of Martin, hard enough to rattle a tooth loose from the feel of things, the moist, sickening crunch he heard at impact.
“Oh,” he said, stepping back, shaking his hand out, his knuckles stinging. “That’s how.”
Martin choked and sputtered around the washcloth as Rene crammed it unceremoniously back between his teeth, cinching the scrap of sheet tightly against the back of Martin’s head. He slammed the trunk closed on Martin’s garbled protest, then went around to the backseat and pulled out his folding shower chair.
Birds had relatively short digestive tracts and no sphincters, which meant they pretty much shit anywhere and everywhere without really meaning to. And when you had more than two dozen of them flapping around in close confines, like Martin’s motel room, sooner or later, you were going to get dumped on, telepathic control over them or not. Rene had changed his shirt since finding Tessa, but he still felt decidedly grimy. He wasn’t a vain man by any stretch of the imagination, but bird shit was bird shit no matter how you looked at it. And since he didn’t feel like taking another accidental, graceless swan dive in the tub, it was time to swallow his pride and get out the chair.
Keeping a wary eye on Tessa, he brought it back into the motel room and carried it into the bathroom. He unfolded it, extending and locking the aluminum legs into proper place, along with the molded plastic backrest. The seat was wide and contoured, roomy enough to accommodate his ass while leaving plenty of elbow room to either side. It was comfortable enough, but Rene hated it; hated the way sitting in it made him feel old and crippled and goddamn useless.
But bird shit was bird shit, and so into the shower he went, leaving his prosthetic leg propped against the toilet, his clothes in a heap on the floor. He closed his eyes and reached blindly for the soap as hot water, nearly scalding, hit his head in a stinging spray.
Both his hands hurt now. But saint merde, he thought with a wicked little upturn of his mouth as he recalled the sound of his fist hitting the side of Martin’s head. It was worth it.
Every time he thought about that son of a bitch laying his hands on Tessa, it infuriated and pained him. After she’d fallen asleep, Rene had sat awake for a long time beside her in the bed, stroking his hand lightly against her dark hair, feeling something deep within him ache as he gazed at her bruised, battered face.
It’s my fault, he’d thought, anguished. Goddamn it, if I hadn’t been such an asshole to her…if I hadn’t let her walk away from me at the gas station…if I’d gone to look for her sooner instead of taking my goddamn sweet time in the store…if I hadn’t gone the wrong goddamn way on the interstate…
None of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for me.
“Je suis désolé, Tessa,” he’d whispered to her. I’m sorry.
More than just her injuries, her fear for her baby had broken Rene’s heart. He’d watched her touch her stomach time and again over the course of the evening, her face fraught with worry, her dark eyes anxious and afraid. Again and again, his mind had turned to Irene, the miscarriage she’d suffered. He had probably been the cause of it, the strain he’d put on their relationship, the stress that had finally destroyed it. He hadn’t been there to comfort or reassure her. He’d let her down—just like he’d let Tessa down. And it had damn near cost Tessa her child, too. Never again, he swore in his mind. Never again—by Christ and all that’s holy, Tessa, I’ll never let you down again.
He scrubbed his face, opening his eyes and watching water stream down, spattering against the floor of the tub. He sat hunched forward, relaxed and relatively comfortable, his elbows resting on his left knee and the stump of his right leg. His hair clung to his cheeks and forehead in drenched strands; water dripped from the sharp tip of his nose, his lips. Soap bubbles swirled, gathering in a frothy foam against the chrome drain plate while steam curled up, bathing him in misty tendrils.
More than just a bully, a sick, sadistic freak, Martin Davenant was a fool. The man had everything Rene had ever longed for—a bright, beautiful wife like Tessa, the amazing glow of life that was their baby growing inside of her. A family. Rene had been so lonely for so long, he would have given anything in the world for what Martin had thrown away with such seeming, callous ease.
I wish you were mine, Tessa, he thought. You and the bébé.
The shower curtain drew back, letting in a gust of sudden, cool breeze and he jerked in wide-eyed surprise; he hadn’t even heard the bathroom door open. When he saw Tessa standing there, holding the white fabric curtain aside with her hand, he jerked again, choked for breath, momentarily dumbstruck.
She was nude, her petite frame lean and strong, her small but shapely breasts crowned with rose-colored nipples, her flesh creamy and smooth, like a porcelain doll’s. She had a ballerina’s legs—slender and muscular—and elegant, graceful arms. The delta of her lovely thighs lay marked by a thatch of
dark, silky curls; just above these, the outward swell of her womb was slightly pronounced and visible.
“Tessa…” he whispered, a sort of stunned, breathless croak. He stared at her for a long, confused, mesmerized moment. And then it occurred to him that just as sure as she was naked, he was, too, his maimed body—the disfiguring absence of his right leg—laid bare and exposed for her to see, stark against the white backdrop of the shower walls and tub.
“Tessa…” he said, tearing his eyes away from her beautiful form, looking down in dismay at his own. Oh, God, oh, Jesus, oh, fuck me, Christ, his mind rattled, and where the fuck was that niggling little voice of reason when he needed it the most? He reached for his thigh, covering the stump with his hands, his face blazing with bright, humiliated color. “Tessa…I…I didn’t…I…what are you doing?”
He saw her step into the tub out of his peripheral vision, but couldn’t look up at her. He heard the soft rattle of the shower rings as she drew the curtain closed, then she stood in front of him under the heavy stream of hot water. He could see her feet. Her toenails were painted, he noticed with a detached, stricken sort of fascination. A sort of pearlesque shade of pink. Nearly the same color as her nipples, he realized, with a slight glance up.
“What…what are you doing?” He found his voice, ripping his eyes away again and oh, Christ, if the ground were to have opened up and swallowed him right the fuck whole, he wouldn’t have complained, not one goddamn bit.
“It’s all right,” Tessa said, her voice gentle and quiet. He felt her touch his face, tilting his gaze up toward her. When he tried to protest again, stammering and choked, she leaned down to kiss him sweetly, silencing him. “It’s all right, Rene,” she said, cradling his face in her hands, meeting his eyes.
Tessa kissed him once more, pressing her mouth against his, the tip of her tongue slipping between his lips, and Rene groaned softly, his body instantly responding.
