The Southern Comfort Series Box Set

by Clark O'Neill, Lisa

  “I almost had sex with Justin tonight.”

  Bits of carrot/bran/sawdust sprayed across the table. Sadie swiped a napkin across her mouth and stared at Kathleen with bug eyes. “You… how…”

  Then her brows snapped together and she bent sideways to look beneath the table. When she resurfaced, she stabbed the air with her finger. “Ha! I knew those stockings were going to serve their purpose. Now.” She got up from the table, went to the cabinet which held cleaning supplies and rummaged around before bringing a plastic container back to the table. She pried off the lid, revealing something that looked suspiciously like chocolate chunk brownies with fudge frosting. After placing one on a napkin and sliding it toward Kathleen, she took two out for herself. “Okay. Spill it. And don’t be chintzy with the details.”

  Fascinated, Kathleen watched Sadie shove an enormous hunk of chocolate into her mouth.

  “That’s a brownie. A frosted brownie.”

  “Good call, Detective.”

  Kathleen watched another bite disappear. “Okay. Why are you hiding frosted brownies behind the dish soap?”

  Sadie fixed her with a look. “Why do you think? In case the Mistress of Gestational Nutrition – otherwise known as your sister – pays a visit. I try, okay? I really do. And most of the time I do great. But this is, you will recall, your brother’s offspring I am carrying. And I’m here to tell you, this kid demands fat and sugar. He insists upon empty calories. It’s like sharing a body with a peanut-sized pastry addict. Anyway, dishing about sex – or almost sex – calls for either alcohol or chocolate. Alcohol’s out, obviously, so… like I said.” She took another bite. “Spill.”

  “He?” Kathleen said, frowning over her friend’s choice of pronoun.

  “Kathleen.”

  “Alright, alright.” Kathleen took a bite of her own brownie. Delicious. And speaking of delicious…

  “I think it’s been brewing since the Christmas party. Or longer,” Kathleen admitted when she saw Sadie’s raised brow. “Tonight it sort of… boiled over. He, uh, pushed me up against the wall of his garage. If it hadn’t started raining, I’m pretty sure we would have done the deed right there.”

  “Wall sex.” Sadie licked frosting from her lips and shivered, though Kathleen wasn’t sure if it was from an overload of chocolate or an overload of hormones. “Better yet, outside wall sex. I always suspected Justin had it in him. What stopped you from finishing it inside?”

  “Justin did.” Kathleen ran her finger around the rim of her tea mug.

  “Ahhh,” Sadie said knowingly. “Of course.”

  “What do you mean ‘of course.’”

  “Well, he’s waited this long to make his move. You guys have a solid foundation of friendship. You’re still involved with Anthony. He probably wants to proceed with caution so that your relationship doesn’t get screwed up.”

  Kathleen frowned. “That’s pretty much what he said.”

  “Well, no offense, Kath, but you don’t exactly have a history of successful long term relationships.”

  “Hey, I’ve been dating Anthony for over a year.”

  “Because you know it’s not in danger of going anywhere.”

  Kathleen opened her mouth to protest, but realized Sadie was right. And sighed, because she wasn’t sure she wanted a relationship that was going somewhere. But was afraid that maybe she did.

  Then something Sadie said sank in. “You sneak,” she said, pointing an accusatory finger at her sister-in-law. “You took the Twinkies from my desk because you wanted to eat them.”

  “Your nephew wanted to eat them. I’m just an accessory to the crime.”

  “Nephew.”

  “Or niece.” Sadie waved a hand. “We don’t know yet.”

  “Crap.” Kathleen sank a little lower in her chair.

  “Eat your brownie,” Sadie suggested after studying Kathleen’s face.

  Kathleen looked at the brownie. Fat. Sugar. Empty calories.

  Endorphins.

  She pulled it toward her, because she obviously wasn’t going to be getting them from any other source tonight.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  JUSTIN stalked into his bedroom, hooking a towel around his hips. The forty-five minutes he’d just spent with his weight bench hadn’t fully knocked the edge off his tension, and the shower – despite the fact that he’d kept it only a notch or two above frigid – had only succeeded in reminding him of how it felt, standing in the icy rain, with Kathleen’s legs around his hips. He’d considered taking matters in his own hand, so to speak, until the image of her expression as she’d faced him across the table, advising him to file a police report, lay the groundwork for a restraining order for God’s sake, had shriveled his giant sequoia from earlier in the evening into a sapling. And maybe not a hardwood sapling. More like balsa. Or perhaps an ornamental flowering cherry.

  Damn James. Justin entertained a brief but vivid fantasy of smothering his brother in his sleep.

  And okay, he knew that he was probably overreacting. Kathleen was just being a cop, and James was simply concerned. Mandy had obviously become divorced from reality, but Justin didn’t have a pet bunny in danger of being boiled, and it was hard to picture a five and a half foot blonde cupcake as presenting a real threat. He knew, intellectually, that women could be just as dangerous as men. All you had to do was watch the news or read a few true crime novels to verify that. But a bigger, although perhaps less reasonable, part of himself, couldn’t help but scoff. And feel insulted. And pissed off.

  Whipping off the towel, he slung it over the back of a chair and snagged a pair of boxers from a drawer. As he was pulling them on, he caught sight of the box sitting in the highboy’s shadow.

  He stooped over to snatch it from the floor. He’d sat it there weeks ago and then essentially forgotten it.

  Frowning, Justin lifted the ornament from its careful packaging. Delicate, fragile-looking despite its bright colors, made from some kind of ceramic or maybe even porcelain, if the framework of fine cracks was any indication, it was hardly sinister. Hell, it was Mickey Mouse. Not exactly Hannibal Lecter. Justin nevertheless felt the little hairs begin to lift from the back of his neck. This had been the start of his troubles. Well, going out with Mandy in the first place had probably been the start. The installation, without his knowledge, of the flowered shower curtain had brought the curtain – pun intended – down on that particular act. But the ornament was the opening scene of what he guessed you could call The Folly of Dating Crazy Women: Act Two.

  Not that he’d known Mandy was crazy when he’d dated her. But then, he honestly hadn’t spent that much time getting to really know her in order to find out.

  Glancing sharply toward the bookcases which framed the double window on the back wall of his bedroom, Justin spotted the framed photo he sought. He snatched it up. The light from the open door of the master bath didn’t quite reach into this shadowy corner of the bedroom, but Justin knew the image well enough to make it out.

  It was a shot of his whole family – mom, dad, all four brothers – taken at Disney World when Justin was about twelve. It was the summer before his oldest brother, Jack, had left for college. They were all mugging for the camera, except for James, who was glancing over his shoulder to stare warily at Justin. Only five, James had harbored deep suspicion of the enormous, smiling but silent cartoon characters that roamed around the park. Mickey stood at the opposite end of the photo, next to their mom, but Justin had slipped his arm around Minnie in an attempt to convince his little brother that there was nothing abnormal or alarming about a giant, mutant, mime-like mouse wanting to hug you.

  In retrospect, James had been right. It was freaky as hell.

  Glancing from the photograph to the ornament which dangled on its ribbon from the tip of his finger, Justin made the connection for the first time. Maybe it didn’t mean anything. Maybe it did. The thing was, Mandy had never taken particular pains to captivate him by molding herself to fit his interests, or really
even noticing little details like that. She’d been more apt to blind him with… okay, with sex, he admitted, despite the fact that it made him feel about as deep as a petri dish. She’d blinded him with sex so that he didn’t notice when she started changing his stuff and his house and his life around to suit her.

  She’d also wrinkled her nose when – after being blinded with sex – he’d sometimes retreat to the living room with a novel instead of indulging her need for post-coital cuddling and meaningful conversation. Mandy wasn’t much on Koontz, referring to his work as “horror” despite Justin’s attempts to explain the careful balance of humor, suspense and more importantly, hope, which characterized his fiction. She was more inclined to favor magazines like Cosmo for her pleasure reading material. Justin was pretty sure she’d utilized quite a few of their How to Make a Man Lose All Sense tips for copulation, with great success.

  Of course, all the good – and it had been good – sex he’d had with Mandy couldn’t hold a candle to the brief interlude he’d shared with Kathleen earlier tonight.

  Shared. Justin thought that might be the difference. He and Mandy had been two separate individuals with seemingly separate agendas – her, to wield some sort of sexual power over him in order to insinuate herself into his life; him, well, basically, to get off – whereas with Kathleen…it wasn’t just about the sex. Not just a means to an end. He wanted to be with her because he wanted to be with her. On multiple levels.

  He understood with newfound clarity that while he had been sleeping with Mandy off and on over the past couple years, he’d been building a relationship with Kathleen. Which, in retrospect, wasn’t fair.

  But fair or not, he’d never led Mandy to believe otherwise. At least he didn’t think he had. And when she’d shown signs of taking things too seriously, he’d been up front and immediate about putting an end to it. She’d pouted, and then she’d tried, whenever given the opportunity, to tempt him back into her bed – or rather to invite herself into his – but he’d held firm.

  Justin wondered if these new tactics were an extremely misguided attempt to show him that their relationship had been about more than sex.

  Maybe his aggressive approach to calling her out hadn’t been the best method of handling the situation. Maybe he should sit down with her and have another polite, but very firm discussion regarding all the ways that they were finished. Dead on arrival. Do not resuscitate. Despite current evidence to the contrary, Justin found it difficult to believe that, once he’d made himself abundantly, unmistakably clear, Mandy was so batshit insane that she would continue to beat the proverbial dead horse.

  Or boil his metaphorical bunny.

  Something moved outside his window. A flash of light, just at the edge of the trees that comprised the back part of his property. Justin stepped closer, peered through the open plantation shutters. It was too early in the season for lightning bugs, which were few and far between along this area of the coast, anyway. He waited, watching closely for another sign of activity, but the night remained dark, thick clouds obscuring the moonlight, the rainwashed vegetation still in the silent aftermath of the storm.

  Probably nothing. Logic dictated that it was probably nothing. A reflection of some sort. A neighbor with a flashlight, looking for a lost pet. Any number of things. But the little hairs on the back of his neck, which stood at attention again, apparently weren’t governed by higher reasoning.

  His bedroom was all but dark, so there was no reason he should feel exposed, standing at the window. But he did.

  The solution to that was as simple as closing the shutters. Something in him rebelled against that idea. Probably the same something which viewed taking out a restraining order as akin to self-emasculation.

  If it was Mandy, then all attempts at diplomacy were off the table. They’d have a talk, but it wasn’t going to be polite.

  Heedless of his half naked state, Justin exited his bedroom, bypassed the living room doorway, where his brother was stretched out on the sofa, doing something on his laptop. He’d taken off his wet sneakers near the back door, when he and Kathleen had come in out of the rain. They squished unpleasantly when he shoved his feet into them.

  Hesitating, realizing he’d be backlit and totally visible if he opened the door, he considered dousing the kitchen light. Which, if someone were watching the back of the house, would also alert them to his presence. He needed to be stealthier if he wanted to catch them off guard.

  If anyone was even out there in the first place. Which he doubted. But his damn neck hairs still disagreed.

  Trekking back through the kitchen, into the hall, Justin returned to the small bedroom he’d turned into a home gym. Fortunately, he’d shut the light off after he’d finished his workout. He could move about undetected.

  Allowing his eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom, he eased around his treadmill toward the window. When he’d painted the exterior of the house over the summer, he’d accidentally torn the screen, and he still hadn’t gotten around to replacing it. He could ease the window up, climb through, and use the bushes along the side of the house to disguise his presence as he worked his way toward the trees. Where he’d probably scare the hell out of the neighbor who was looking for his lost pet. And end up feeling like an idiot.

  Justin shook his head, wondering what he was doing. He wasn’t built for intrigue. He was geared toward treating gunshot wounds and repairing severed limbs.

  Both of which he hoped to avoid while stumbling around in his darkened yard like a buffoon.

  Disengaging the latch, Justin congratulated himself for both not having painted the window shut, and for having oiled the tracks. The wood frame slid up with barely a whisper. Rain-cooled air crept in, its icy fingers brushing against Justin’s bare skin and making him consider returning to his bedroom for a sweatshirt. And pants. Hell, might as well grab a flashlight, a backpack and some protein bars if he was going to make an expedition of it.

  In the interest of not letting whomever it was – if indeed it was a person in his backyard with a flashlight and he hadn’t simply suffered a retinal detachment – get away while he was gearing himself up, Justin braced himself against the chill and climbed out the window. The drop was minimal, despite the fact that the house was elevated several feet, and luckily he was tall. He landed in the wet pine straw with a soft thump and a minimum of flailing around in the bushes.

  Stooping down – now his height was working against him – Justin concealed his movements as best as he could by staying below the level of the gardenias. Far too early for blooms, the dark green foliage bore the faint metallic scent of rain instead.

  Moving as stealthily as it was possible for a six-foot-plus, intrigue-challenged surgeon to move, he crept around the corner of the house. Justin crouched down behind a denuded crepe myrtle, squinting into the near-stygian gloom of the trees. Nothing moved. At least, not that he could see. A slight breeze, the last dying gasp of the storm, raised chill bumps on the exposed skin of his arms. Leaves rustled. Water dripped onto his head.

  “This is stupid.”

  No sooner had the words left his mouth than the light shone again. Just a brief flash. Tracing a sort of zig-zag pattern along the ground.

  Before the intruder had time to move, Justin shot forward like a sprinter off the mark. He dodged the low-hanging branch of a live oak, hurdled some saw palmettos. And found himself looking at the narrow beam of a flashlight, shining right in the eyes.

  Shit. Going with instinct, he dove toward the ground, grabbed the intruder around the lower legs. The person fell backward, the air forced from their lungs in an audible whoosh.

  Justin’s victory was short lived, however, as the intruder somehow spun around beneath him, their heel clipping Justin’s chin. His head shot back, his teeth coming together despite the obstacle presented by his tongue. Justin’s mouth filled with the warm, coppery taste of blood.

  He spat, but managed to grab the escapee by the ankle. He was just about to pull them back, pin
them down bodily with his weight, when a voice above his head wheezed out “Wellington. What the hell?”

  The voice was familiar. Winded, but familiar.

  Masculine. But familiar.

  The flashlight clicked back on, illuminating his face. “You’ve got blood dripping down your chin.”

  Justin swiped the back of his hand across it. “I bit my tongue.”

  “I would apologize, except for the fact that you tackled me. Add to that, you seem to be in your underwear. And you’re still holding my ankle.”

  Feeling like ten different kinds of fool, Justin released his grip. He pushed himself up, wet leaves and pine straw clinging to his bare chest. Brushing himself off, he noted that the front of his boxers was soaked. Super. Well, at least they weren’t white.

  “Sorry.” The light no longer shining in his eyes, Justin could just make out Anthony’s face in the backwash, though his expression was impossible to read. But mortification gradually gave way to suspicion. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

  Taking a deep breath, Anthony climbed to his feet. “Well, I was tracking the asshole kid – or one of them, anyway – with whom my client’s wife has been conducting her affair. I spotted him climbing out her bedroom window, but he dodged into the trees before I could get any photographic evidence. I was hoping to follow him, see if I could identify him more clearly.” His tone turned wry, with an edge of irritation. “Guess that plan’s shot.”

  They faced off, both of them breathing a little heavily, and Justin wondered if the tension he sensed in the air between them was real or a byproduct of his own conflicted emotions. Not that he had any intention whatsoever of backing off from Kathleen. But the fact that he liked the other man was an insistent thorn pricking his conscience. Although right now, fondness was taking a backseat to wariness.

  Justin glanced along the tree line, acknowledging that one could conceivably use it as a somewhat concealed escape route through the neighborhood, winding as it did through multiple backyards. But the fact that Anthony was in Justin’s backyard on this particular night struck Justin as coincidental. Or maybe just unfortunate timing.