Slow Heat in Heaven

by Sandra Brown

  "Want to go by Jigger's and see his rattlesnake?"

  Jigger was the last topic she wanted to talk about. She still shuddered every time she recalled his leering grin. But what Cash had suggested was so out of context and so preposterous, she couldn't help asking an astonished, "What?"

  "His rattlesnake. Jigger's got a new pet rattler. I hear it's a helluva snake. He's even charging admission to look at it. Want to stop by on the way home?"

  "I hope you're joking. If you are, it's in very poor taste. I don't want to have anything to do with him, except maybe to bring charges against him for assaulting Gayla . . . and that only tops a very long list of offenses. I can't believe you'd go near him either. He might have been re­sponsible for sabotaging that rig this morning."

  "I thought of that."

  "And you still pander to him?" She spread her arms wide. "Oh, but I forgot. He's a customer of yours, isn't he?"

  "You mean the medicine?"

  "Yes, the medicine."

  "I was doing Gayla a favor, not Jigger."

  "But you took Jigger's money."

  "It's green. Same as anybody else's."

  "Money is money, is that it?"

  "Oui. To somebody who's never had it, that's it, Miss Schyler. You wouldn't know what poverty is like."

  "You grab at money no matter where it comes from?"

  "It matters. I didn't kill those pit bulls for you, re­member?"

  "So there are a few things you wouldn't do for money."

  "Very few, but some."

  What about making a hideous little doll and placing it on someone's pillow, Schyler wondered. Cash had at least a smattering knowledge of voodoo. Gayla had heard his name in connection with it, but surely he didn't know any­thing about that doll. He couldn't have treated Gayla so kindly the day they found her in the woods, only to later put a curse on her. On the other hand, could anyone count on Cash's loyalty? It seemed to extend only to himself.

  Schyler turned her head away and stared through the open window, letting the wind cool her down for the first time that day. Cash was practically inviting her to tell him about the doll. She didn't because she didn't trust him enough. That disturbed her deeply. There were no bounda­ries to their physical intimacy, but she couldn't trust him with her secrets. She didn't even want to mention Jigger's appearance at the site of the accident that morning.

  He pulled the truck to a stop while they were still a distance away from the mansion. "I don't want to give Cotton another heart attack by coming any closer," he said bitterly.

  "You drove right up to the front door this morning."

  "This morning there was an emergency. Even Cotton could understand and forgive that."

  "Better than he could understand and forgive you for delivering his inebriated teenaged daughter?"

  He laughed shortly. "I could deny it till kingdom come and he'll always believe that I was the one who got you drunk that night at the lake. He probably thinks I took sexual liberties, too."

  "But that's not what you argued about."

  His grin evaporated. His eyes homed in on her face as though it were the target and they were a laser weapon. "What did you say?"

  Obviously that night was a sore spot with him. She con­sidered dropping the subject then and there, but she was compelled to solve this riddle, to find the clue that had always been missing. "I said that's not what you and Daddy argued about that night."

  "How do you know what we argued about?"

  "I overheard you yelling at each other."

  He stared at her for a long moment. "Oh, really? Then you tell me. What did we argue about?"

  "I can't remember." A crease formed between her eye­brows as she strained her memory. "I was so woozy. But I remember you shouting at each other. It must have been an argument over something important. Was it Monique?"

  "That's been over ten years ago." He slumped down in the seat behind the steering wheel and cupped his hand over his mouth, staring out into the darkness. "I've forgot­ten what it was about."

  "You're lying," Schyler said softly. His head snapped around. "You remember. Whatever you argued with Daddy about still isn't resolved, is it?" Cash didn't answer her. He looked away again.

  "Ah, to hell with it," Schyler muttered. It was between the two of them. Let it fester. She was too tired to try to lance that ancient wound tonight. "Thanks for everything you did today. Bye."

  Schyler put her shoulder to the door. It was necessary for without that boost, she doubted she would have had the strength to open it. As soon as her feet hit the ground, she bent down and slipped off her shoes. The grass felt won­derfully cool and clean and soothing beneath her feet.

  Keeping within the shadows beneath the trees, she made her way toward the house. The purple twilight made the painted white bricks of Belle Terre look pink and ethereal, like the castle in Camelot. The windows shone with mel­low, golden light. The bougainvillea vine that garnished one comer column of the veranda was heavy with vivid blossoms.

  A pang of homesickness and love seized Schyler until it was painful to breathe. Physical and mental fatigue had brought her emotions to the surface. She braced herself against a chest-high live oak branch and stared through the balmy dusk at the home she loved, but which always seemed just beyond her grasp.

  She had lived there most of her life. The walls had heard her weeping and her laughter. The floorboards had borne her weight when she learned to crawl and when she learned to waltz. She'd watched the birth of a foal and received her first kiss in the stable. Her life was wrapped around the house as surely as the bougainvillea was wrapped around the column.

  But the spirit, the heart, of the house eluded her. She could never touch it. It was inexplicable, this feeling of being an interloper in her own home, yet it was undeniably there, a part of her she couldn't let rest. It was like being born without one of the senses. She couldn't miss it be­cause it had never belonged to her, but she knew she was supposed to have it and felt the loss keenly. A sense of loss that made her sad was perpetually in the back of her mind.

  She knew Cash was there before he actually touched her. He moved up behind her and folded his hands around her neck. "What's bothering you tonight, Miss Schyler?"

  "You're a bastard."

  "I always have been."

  "I'm not referring to the circumstance of your birth. I'm referring to you. How you behave. How you treat other people."

  "Namely you?"

  "What you did and said to me this morning was crude, unnecessary, and unconscionable."

  "I thought we settled this at the landing."

  She made an impatient gesture with her shoulders. "I don't want hearts and flowers from you, Cash, but I do expect a little kindness."

  "Don't."

  Her head dropped forward in defeat. "You don't give an inch, do you? Never. You never give anything."

  "No. Never."

  She should have walked away from him, but she couldn't coax her feet to move, not when he was a solid pillar to lean against. She needed a shoulder to cry on. He was available, and he, more than anyone except her father, would understand how she felt.

  "I'm afraid, Cash."

  "Of what?"

  "Of losing Belle Terre."

  His thumbs centered themselves at the back of her neck and began massaging the tension out of the vertebrae. "You're doing everything you possibly can to make sure you don't."

  "But I might. In spite of everything I do." She tilted her head to one side. He massaged the kinks out of her shoulder. "I take one step forward and get knocked back two."

  "You're about to cash in on the deal that'll put Crandall Logging in the black and free up Belie Terre. What are you afraid of?"

  "Of failing. If we don't get it all there, then the timber we've already shipped doesn't count. This last week is the most crucial. My saboteur knows that as well as I do." She breathed deeply and clenched her fist. "Who is it? And what does he have against me?"

  "Probably nothing. H
is quarrel might be with Cotton."

  "That's the same thing."

  "Hurt Cotton, hurt you?"

  "Yes. I love him. I couldn't love him any more if he were my natural father. Maybe because I understand why he loves this place so much. He came here an outsider, too. He had to prove himself worthy of Belle Terre."

  Cash said nothing, but his strong fingers continued to knead away her tension and distress. The massage loos­ened her tongue as well.

  "Macy was never a mother to me. She was just a lovely, but terribly unhappy, woman who inhabited the same house and laid down the rules of conduct. Cotton was my parent. My anchor." She sighed deeply. "But our roles have switched, haven't they? I feel like a mama bear fighting to protect her cub. I'm desperately inadequate to protect him."

  "Cotton doesn't need your protection. He'll have to pay for his mistakes. And there won't be a damn thing you can do about it when the time of reckoning comes."

  "Don't say that," she whispered fiercely. "That frightens me. I can't let him down." Cash had moved up close be­hind her. His lips found a vulnerable spot on the back of her neck beneath her braid. He lifted her hands to the branch of the tree and placed them there. "Cash, what are you doing?"

  "Giving you something to think about besides all your troubles." Now that her arms were out of the way and he had an open field, he slid his hands up and down her nar­row rib cage, grazing the sides of her breasts.

  "I don't want to think about anything else. Anyway, I'm still angry with you."

  "Anger's made for some of the best sex I've ever had."

  "Well I don't think of it as an aphrodisiac." She sucked in her breath sharply when he reached around her and cupped her breasts. "Don't." Responding to the feebleness in her voice and not to the protest itself, he pulled her blouse apart, unfastened her bra, and laid his hands over her bared breasts. "This is. . . no. Not here. Not now. Cash."

  Her objections fell on deaf ears. His open mouth was moving up and down her neck, taking love bites, while his fingers lightly twisted her nipples. He tilted his hips for­ward. Reflexively she pressed her bottom against his erec­tion.

  "You want me," he growled. "You know you do. I know you do."

  He slipped one hand beneath her skirt. He pushed down her panties and palmed the downy delta at the top of her thighs. She sighed his name, in remonstration, in desire. "No," she groaned, ashamed of the melting sensation that made her thighs weak and pliant.

  He hissed a yes into the darkness as his fingers sought and found the slipperiness that made her a liar. He raised her skirt and pulled her against him. The cloth of his jeans against her derriere was rough, soft, wonderful.

  Then his thumbs, stroking her cleft, down, down until they parted the swollen lips. She pressed her forehead into the hard wood of the branch and gripped it with her hands. "Cash." His name was a low, serrated moan of longing.

  He deftly unzipped his jeans. His entry was slow, delib­erate. He was ruthlessly stingy with himself until his own passions governed him and he sheathed himself within the moist, satiny fist of her sex. He ground against her. The hair on his belly tickled her smooth skin.

  Schyler flung her head back, seeking his lips with hers. Their open mouths clung together; tongues searched out each other. He fanned one tight, raised nipple with his fingers. His other hand covered her mound. His stroking middle finger quickly escalated her to an explosive climax.

  His coming was long and fierce and scalding. When it was over, he slumped forward and let her support him. Both might have collapsed to the carpet of grass had not Schyler been braced against the limb of the tree.

  Eventually he restored her clothing and his. Schyler let him. She was too physically drained to move. And too emotionally unstrung to speak.

  My God, what she had just done was unthinkable. Yet it had happened. She wasn't sorry, only deeply disturbed, because while he'd been holding her she'd been inundated with him. She had forgotten her problems. She had forgot­ten everything, including Belle Terre.

  She spun around when she heard the engine of his pickup being gunned to life, not realizing that he'd slipped away. It was just as well, she thought, as she watched the truck disappear down the lane. She wouldn't have known what to say to him anyway.

  Parked on the edge of the ditch, Cash waited until the last of Jigger's gawking customers left before he pulled up in front of the derelict house. Even over the noise of the pickup's motor, he could hear the rattlesnake in the drum.

  He cut the motor and got out. Through the screened back door, he could see Jigger hunched over the kitchen table counting the day's take. Cash knocked loudly. The old man whirled around. He was holding a pistol aimed directly at the door.

  "Calm down, Jigger. It's me."

  "I nearly blew your fool head off, don'tcha know." He dropped his money on the table and shuffled toward the door.

  "What do you do with all your money, Jigger? Stuff it in mayonnaise jars and bury it in your yard? Or maybe under your kennel?"

  The old man's eyes glittered. "You want to know, Bou­dreaux," he taunted, slowly waving the pistol back and forth just beneath Cash's nose, "you try to find out."

  Cash laughed. "Do I look stupid to you?" Then his smile disappeared altogether. "I assure you, I'm not."

  Jigger lowered his head and peered up at Cash from hooded eye sockets. "I should shoot you anyway. You helped my black bitch get away. You took her to Belle Terre."

  "You nearly killed her."

  "That's none of your business."

  "Oh, but it is. You didn't leave her alone after the mis­carriage like I told you to. I take that personally, Jigger."

  "It wasn't me. It was a customer."

  "It's still your fault."

  Jigger executed a Gallic shrug. "She's just a woman. I'll get me another one."

  "Fine with me," Cash said with deceptive nonchalance. "But if you ever work over another woman the way you did Gayla Frances, I'll come here, cut off your cock, and stuff it down your throat until you choke. Understand, mon ami?" Cash leaned against the door frame where the paint was chipped and peeling. His eyes didn't blink, but there was a trace of a smile on his lips.

  "You threaten me?"

  "Oui. And you know I don't threaten lightly."

  Jigger's face split into a parody of a grin. "You got the hots for the bitch, hey Boudreaux?" Then he shook his head. "No. You're fuckin' Schyler Cran-dall."

  "That's right, I'm fucking Schyler Crandall," Cash said tightly. "But I'm still looking out for Gayla."

  The two men eyed each other antagonistically. Finally Jigger threw back his head and cackled. Cash Boudreaux was perhaps the only man in the parish who intimidated him. Jigger was smart enough to know when retreat was prudent. He didn't want to test the other man's reputed temper and skill with the knife that always rode in the small of his back. If one were measuring meanness, they were equal, but Cash was twenty years younger, thirty pounds lighter, and much swifter. Physically, Jigger was no match for him.

  Cash relaxed his tense stance and eased himself away from the doorjamb. "Are you going to show me your rattler or did I drive out here for nothing?" He angled his head in the direction of the oil drum.

  Jigger shoved the pistol in the waistband of his trousers. He strutted across the yard toward the drum. A light cord had been strung from the house. A bare bulb dangled over the drum. Jigger switched it on. With a proud flourish he knocked the rock off the lid and pried it open with a tire tool.

  "Look at that son of a bitch, Boudreaux. Ever see such?"

  Unlike most spectators, Cash approached the oil drum with a casual, intrepid stride. He walked right up to it and peered over the rim. The rattler's tail was flicking, filling the still night air with its insidious racket. Even the noctur­nal birds and insects in the trees had fallen silent out of respect and fear. The pit bull bitch barked, then whined apprehensively.

  Jigger waited excitedly to hear Cash's reaction. He was sorely disappointed when Cash shrugged, un
impressed. "Fact is, I have seen such, lots of times, in the bayous."

  "Bloody hell."

  "I'm not lying. Once a flood washed up a whole colony of cottonmouths. Maman wouldn't let me play outdoors for days. The yard was working alive with those snakes. All sizes. Some as big or bigger than this. Could have swal­lowed a dog whole."

  He leaned over the barrel for a closer look and stayed a long time. Jigger peered over his shoulder. When Cash spun around abruptly, Jigger dropped his short crowbar and leaped backward.

  Cash smiled with sheer devilment. "Why, Jigger, I do believe this snake makes you nervous."

  "Bullshit." Angrily Jigger picked up the lid, tossed it back onto the drum and maneuvered it into place with the crowbar he'd retrieved from the ground. When he was done, he stuck out his hand. "One dollar."

  "Sure." Never breaking his stare, Cash fished in his tight jean pocket and came up with a crumpled one-dollar bill. "It was well worth a dollar just to see you jump like that." He strolled toward his parked track.

  "Boudreaux!" Cash turned around and faced the man standing in front of the dram. "You know who sent me this snake?"

  Cash only grinned through the darkness before disap­pearing into it.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Schyler slept late. When her alarm went off at the regu­lar time, she rolled over, shut if off, and promptly went back to sleep. Hours later she woke up. She glanced at the clock and discovered that it was closer to lunch than break­fast. She should feel ashamed; but after the hellish day she had had yesterday, she decided that she deserved to take a morning off. She showered and dressed quickly and was soon in the kitchen doing damage to a honeydew melon.

  "You can have chicken salad for lunch, if you'll wait an hour for it to chill," Mrs. Dunne told her.