LOW PRESSURE

by BROWN SANDRA

  Her closet smelled even better than the sachets he’d found in her chest of drawers. It smelled like perfume. He held one of her blouses to his face and breathed deeply. But he hadn’t wasted a lot of time on that indulgence, knowing that he must psyche himself up for what he had to do.

  To prep himself, he’d flexed and extended his fingers. He’d done some curls with his left arm and made wide circles with it to loosen his rotator cuff. He’d cracked his neck, stretched his spine, and rolled his shoulders. He’d gone through these exercises every twenty minutes to keep himself limber and alert.

  He’d left the closet only once when he’d had to pee. He’d gotten a kick out of unzipping and exposing himself in her bathroom. He’d watched himself in her mirror as he stroked and squeezed. “How do you like that monster, missy?” He thrust his hips toward the mirror. But as fun as it had been to imagine her reaction to such aggressiveness, he’d done the smart thing by zipping up and returning to his hiding place.

  Night had fallen, but his eyes had adjusted gradually to the deepening darkness, so he hadn’t minded staying in the closet with the door closed. Patiently he’d waited. Another hour passed. Then two. He’d routinely done his exercises to keep his body revved and his mind as sharp as the blade of his knife.

  He’d waited.

  And now, he heard a key turning in the front door latch.

  “The painter must have been here,” Bellamy said as she pushed open her front door and stepped inside. “I can smell the fumes.”

  Dent followed her in, carrying her suitcase, which he set just inside the front door. “Will the odor bother you?”

  “As tired as I am, nothing could keep me up tonight. But I do want to make a run at Haymaker first thing in the morning.”

  “I’ll check upstairs.”

  He started up, but she stopped him. “The painter’s been here. The locksmith secured the house. I’m sure it’s okay. Don’t bother. Thank you for seeing me in.”

  “I didn’t just see you in. With that knife freak on the loose, no way am I leaving you here alone tonight.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He studied her for several seconds, then came down the steps slowly. “You throwing me out?”

  “Spare me the wounded-puppy eyes.”

  “What kind of eyes would you prefer?”

  “Spare me that, too.”

  “What?”

  “The flirting. Sexy smile. Smoky eyes. Tone of voice.” She sighed. “Didn’t you understand what I was telling you today?”

  “Be more specific.”

  “What I told you on the flight back.”

  “You’re not having sex with me.”

  “That’s right. So you should just say good night and leave.”

  “You really want me to go?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Can’t?”

  “My car is locked inside your garage.”

  Chagrined, she tipped her head forward and let several moments elapse. Then, “Follow me.”

  She led him into the kitchen, where she unlocked the door that opened into the garage. Reaching around the jamb, she hit the button on the wall, and the motor for the overhead door engaged.

  When it was up, she turned back to him. “There. You’re free to go.” But he didn’t move. He waited her out until she stopped glancing about at anything and everything else before finally garnering the courage to look him in the eye. “We’ve already talked about this, Dent.”

  “We didn’t finish the talk.”

  “I did.”

  “Without giving me a chance to counter.”

  “You don’t get to counter, because it’s not an argument. I told you from the start that you and I . . . that it wasn’t going to happen. Ever.”

  “Using Susan as your excuse.”

  “Susan wasn’t an excuse, she—”

  “Was a slut. And out of some backward sense of obligation or balance or whatever, you’re denying your own sexual inclinations.”

  She placed her hands on her hips. “And you believe that my inclinations will just naturally lead me to you.”

  “They did last night.”

  She dropped her arms back to her sides. “That was—”

  “I know what it was, and it was too wet to have been faked.”

  She wished her blush wouldn’t give away her embarrassment. But she didn’t mind revealing her anger. “Are you waiting to be thanked? Congratulated? What? Is your ego—”

  “Don’t turn this around and make it about me,” he said, raising his voice to match hers. “My ego’s fine.”

  “How well I know. I’m sure your other women—”

  “This isn’t about them, either. This is about you. About why you have this sad and lonely thing going when—”

  “I?” she exclaimed. “I’m sad and lonely? Have you looked at your life lately? You have one friend. One,” she emphasized, holding up her index finger. “You sleep with women whose names you don’t know. You live in a shabby rathole. And you dare to describe my life as sad and lonely?”

  His head went back as though she’d struck him. “Oh, that’s good. Play that card.”

  “Card?”

  “That Lyston card. That rich-people card. That you’re-shit-on-my-shoes card. Maybe I should’ve driven around to the delivery entrance of your mansion.”

  She pushed him out of her way as she stormed past. “I’ll close the garage door later. Right now, I’m going upstairs. I want you out of here by the time I come back down.”

  She made it as far as the staircase before he overtook her and planted himself between her and the first step. He said, “Nice try, but it’s not going to work.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah, you do. You’re trying to piss me off so I’ll go away mad and we won’t continue talking about what we need to talk about.”

  “We don’t need to talk about anything. We’re not going to talk about anything. Will you please just go?”

  “Uh-uh. No soap. The subject is still you and your hang-ups.”

  “You don’t care about my hang-ups. You just want a warm body to sleep with tonight.”

  “Okay. I admit it. I want to sleep with your warm body. But whether or not you go to bed with me, this still needs to be said.”

  She folded her arms across her middle. “All right, what? The abridged version, please, so you can get out of here.” She hoped her stance, her tone, would either discourage or anger him enough to leave.

  Instead he stayed, moved a step closer in fact, and spoke softly. “Take it from a man who’s touched you inside and out, there’s nothing wrong with you, except that you won’t believe there isn’t.”

  She swallowed, but said nothing.

  “I don’t know what went on the mind of the twelve-year-old Bellamy Lyston, but you, the woman, need to scrub all that crap about not following the same path to destruction that Susan took.

  “If your marriage was boring and the sex needed CPR, your unimaginative husband has to bear at least fifty percent of the responsibility, because if he’d got you to respond the way you responded to me last night, he wouldn’t have been bored. Because it was a turn-on just to watch. To feel. And, frankly, I think he’s an asshole for allowing you to assume all the blame for the failure of the marriage.”

  She found enough voice to speak. “He didn’t know that I did.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. He knew. And in his mind, you’re also to blame for his affair.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I don’t think, I know. And the reason I know is because I’m a guy. And when we go out and do whatever we damn well please with our dick, we justify it by telling ourselves and anybody else who’ll listen that ‘She has only herself to blame. If only she’d done this, if only she’d done that. But she didn’t, so she left me with no choice except to get my jollies between another pair of thighs.’ A lot of women buy into that. Don’t. B
ecause it’s total horseshit. But that’s getting us off the track.”

  “There is no track.”

  “There’s a track. And it’s this: You buttoned yourself up at the age of twelve, and that’s a shame. Because the fact is that you’re beautiful, talented, and so damn smart it’s scary sometimes. You are also sexy as all get-out.”

  “Thank you for the outpouring of compliments, but I’m still not sleeping with you.” She turned her back on him. Or tried to. He kept her where she was by placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  “You’re sexy, mostly because you’re unaware of it. That thing you do with your teeth and lower lip?”

  “I don’t do anything—”

  “You do it all the time. You bite it. Right here.” He placed the pad of his thumb in the center of her lower lip, and it caused a tingle down low.

  “Oh, yeah, A.k.a. Sexy as hell. You never see it, but your ass turns heads. In those jeans, it’s practically given me whiplash. Don’t even get me started on your freckles.”

  “You can’t see them. I use concealer.”

  “And I like you.”

  The wooing didn’t surprise her. This was Dent Carter, after all. But that declaration stunned her, and, seeing her reaction, he laughed lightly.

  “Shocks the hell out of me, too. I didn’t expect to like you, because you’re a Lyston. But . . .” He paused as his gaze roved over her face, taking in the features of her face one at a time. “You’re okay,” he said in a low, throaty voice.

  For only a moment, she was susceptible to those eyes, his words, his face, which was never far from her mind and hadn’t been for years. Then she drew herself together and remembered why they were engaged in this conversation.

  “You’re just talking pretty to get me into bed.”

  “Well, sure.” He flashed his dirtiest grin, then sobered. “But I also happen to mean everything I said. I’m saying it more for your good than mine, and I rarely do anything unselfishly.”

  Maybe it was that admission that kept her there, still and expectant, when she should have moved away. But she didn’t. So he put his arms around her and drew her close, and, oh my God, it felt good.

  It felt even better when he slid his hands down over her bottom and applied enough pressure to mold her to him. The way their bodies meshed made her knees weak.

  “This is purely unselfish on your part?” she murmured.

  Laughing softly, he nuzzled her ear. “Not this, no. Feel how well we fit? Damn. No way in hell could you be a letdown.”

  He felt it immediately. She’d been molding herself to him, making adjustments that put his control in jeopardy.

  And in the next instant she went as rigid as a flagpole. Her hands pushed against his chest to break the embrace, and when she backed away, her eyes were as wide as saucers.

  “What did you say?” she asked in a hoarse voice.

  Dent couldn’t account for her sudden withdrawal, or for the way she was looking at him. At a loss, he held his arms out to his sides. “What?”

  “You said . . . you said . . . I couldn’t be a letdown. That’s what you said. Specifically. A letdown. Why did you use that particular word?”

  “Because that’s the word you used earlier today. I was merely repeating—”

  “No, wait!” She pressed the heels of her hands to her temples as though trying to squeeze out a thought. Or perhaps to keep an unwelcome one inside, and the possibility of that made him slightly queasy.

  “Bellamy . . .” He took a step toward her, but she stuck out her hand to halt him.

  “You used that word because Susan used it.” Her eyes were on him, but they were seeing something else, someone else. “She said it at the barbecue. At the boathouse. During your argument.”

  He hadn’t remembered the exact terminology Susan had used, but the memory that had just worked itself free of Bellamy’s subconscious was a bad one, one that he’d hoped she would never regain. His heartbeat spiked, but he played it calmly and coolly, played it dumb. “I don’t remember what she said.”

  “Yes you do!” she cried shrilly. “You remember. That’s why you refused to talk about it night before last at your apartment. I knew you were holding something back.” She covered her mouth with her hands and closed her eyes. “I remember. Oh God, I remember now what you wanted to keep from me.”

  Her breaths started coming in harsh gasps. “You and Susan were in the throes of your argument. You were trying to placate her, to kiss and make up, but Susan was furious. She said . . . she said that if you wanted to fuck a Lyston girl, you could go fuck . . . me.” She sucked in a breath so hard she winced with the pain of it. “Then she said, ‘Of course since you’ve had me, Bellamy will be a huge letdown.’”

  She’d used that word today, so for all these years it must have been there in the back of her mind just waiting to be triggered. He cursed himself for being the one to do it. He hoped to heaven her recollection would stop there. “Who gives a damn what Susan said?”

  But Bellamy seemed not to hear him. She was back at the boathouse, listening to her sister mocking her. “After saying that, she laughed. She smiled that smile that Steven remembers and described to us so well. That triumphant smile. That’s when you left her.”

  She focused on him, seeking verification. Reluctantly, he nodded. “I couldn’t stand the sight of her for one second longer. I wheeled my motorcycle around and was about to ride off. That’s when I spotted you crouching there in the bushes. I knew you must have overheard what she’d said, and my gut sank. She always treated you like dirt. And you were—”

  “Pathetic.”

  “I wasn’t going to say that, but you were an easy target for her ridicule. It was an awful thing for her to say, in any case. But it was especially mean because she knew you were there and would overhear it.”

  “Yes, I’m sure she got double pleasure out of taunting you and humiliating me.”

  He watched her eyes, noting the shifting emotions they revealed. One second she looked abject and lost, like the awkward and insecure pre-adolescent who had been so cruelly insulted. Next, her eyes reflected the bewilderment she felt over that cruelty and the heartless nature of a sister who could inflict it. Finally, her blue eyes began to shimmer with tears of fury.

  He’d watched from astride his motorcycle as the same transformation had taken place in the eyes of the twelve-year-old Bellamy.

  Quietly, he said, “You had every right to hate her.”

  “Oh, I did.” Her voice vibrated with the intensity of her hatred. Her hands closed into tight fists. “Knowing that I had a hopeless crush on you, she deliberately said the most hurtful thing possible. It was evil of her. I despised her. I wanted to claw her eyes out. I wanted to—”

  He knew the instant the thought struck her, because she looked stricken by it. “I wanted to kill her.” Moments ticked by while she gaped at him, breathing through slightly parted lips. “I wanted to kill her, and you thought I had. Didn’t you? That’s why you didn’t tell the police that I’d seen you leaving the state park. You would have had to recount what was said between you and Susan in the boathouse, which the police would have seen as a motive for me to murder my sister. But you didn’t tell. You protected me.”

  “Like hell. I was no hero, Bellamy. If it had come down to ratting you out or saving my own skin, I would have told. But when Moody came to my house the next morning and started questioning me, he never mentioned the quarrel at the boathouse, only the one Susan and I had had at your house that morning.

  “It became clear to me that he didn’t know about that second argument, didn’t know I’d been with her at the boathouse, and that definitely worked in my favor. So I kept quiet about it.” He took a step closer, but she took a corresponding step back, so he stayed where he was. “I couldn’t figure why you didn’t tell Moody about it.”

  “My memory of it was blocked.”

  “But I didn’t know that. I thought you were holding back because—”

&
nbsp; “Because I had killed her.”

  He hesitated, then reluctantly mumbled, “It crossed my mind.”

  “And now?”

  “Now?”

  “Do you still think I did?”

  “I’ve got better sense. You were a scrawny kid. Susan outweighed you fifteen, twenty pounds.”

  She folded her arms and hugged her elbows. “She was clouted over the back of her head, remember? In a fit of rage, I could have hit her with something hard enough to dull her senses.”

  “I don’t see that happening, do you? Seriously?”

  “With a surge of adrenaline, people can perform physical feats that would be impossible for them at other times.”

  “Only in the movies and Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”

  Furious over the quip, she cried, “This isn’t funny!”

  “You’re right, it’s not. It is, however, ridiculous to think that you—”

  “Answer my question, Dent.”

  “What was the question?”

  “You know the question!”

  “Do I think you killed your sister? No!”

  “How do you know? I was at the scene. I saw her before her purse was sucked into the tornado. How do you know I didn’t kill her?”

  “Why would you have taken her underwear?”

  “Maybe I didn’t. Maybe by the time I caught up with her in the woods, she wasn’t wearing any. She could have given her panties to you.”

  “She didn’t.”

  “To Steven. To Allen Strickland.” Squeezing her eyes closed, she asked in a frightened whisper, “Did I see her do that?”

  “Stop it, Bellamy. This is crazy. You can’t force yourself to remember things that didn’t happen.”

  She pulled her lower lip through her teeth, but now it didn’t look sexy. It was the gesture of someone in torment. “Rupe Collier thought it possible.”

  “He was only trying to get a rise out of you. You know that.”

  “I think Daddy suspects.”

  “What?”

  “It’s occurred to him. I know it has.”

  “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

  As she recounted their conversation of the day before, Dent became increasingly agitated. “Be reasonable. If he thought you’d done it, he sure as hell wouldn’t have asked you to grant his dying wish and expose the murderer.”