Mr. Sugar

by L. D. Fox

  “That he stole her from me.”

  She spun to Bryce, her fingers still by her nose as she tried to will away the sting in her nasal cavities. She barked out a laugh, ran both hands through her loose hair, and laughed again. “God, this shit must be good. I thought you said he stole her from you.”

  Bryce’s eyes became shadowed; the dark of a forest. The middle of a forest as a cloud crossed over the sun. Shadows lengthened. Animals retreated to their burrows. Cool, exploratory breezes fiddled between the leaves of creepers chasing away the insects and making the forest sigh and moan like it was morning its own death.

  “She was mine.” Bryce’s voice was quiet. “She was always mine. He turned her against me. Manipulated her. Made her think I was some kind of womanizing bastard who couldn’t hold a steady relationship if someone paid me to do it.”

  “But you are.” She sat on the edge of the bed, pulling her legs up a second later with another laugh. “You can’t.”

  “I’m not incapable,” Bryce said, his voice tight as he cast her a quick glare. “But I was fucking twenty years old when we met. She wasn’t supposed to be Mrs. Fucking Sugar. I was supposed to have a hundred and fifty thousand fucks between her and my wedding night.”

  Angel’s legs flopped down. Sitting cross-legged, she blinked as Bryce took a seat beside her, hands on either side of him, leaning forward so he could carry on staring at the floor.

  He hadn’t drawn open his curtains yet; the room was dim and gloomy; even the white bedspreads looked gray.

  “But she wasn’t, was she?”

  “No, she wasn’t.” Bryce sniffed, thumbed his nose, and twisted his head to look at her. “Back then, I didn’t know that. I was having too much fun to notice.”

  “But Drew noticed,” Angel whispered. Ephemeral fingers skimmed in a wavering line over her spine, making her shiver. “Didn’t he?”

  Bryce was quiet at this. “Fuck it. It doesn’t matter anymore. What’s done is done.”

  “But what happened?”

  “Nothing.” Bryce gave his head a hard shake, and that introspective darkness vanished from his eyes. He stretched his arms up, his back popping loudly. “God, I love this place. The air, the lake. Feel like a million bucks down here.”

  “You’ve been here before?”

  Bryce glanced at her, a suggestive smile spreading across his mouth. “Been here? Me and Juliet all but lived here last year.”

  She blinked a few times, trying to clear the spiderwebs from her mind. “But…”

  “Yeah?” Bryce’s smile became smug.

  “Weren’t… Drew and Juliet…”

  “And?”

  She swallowed, hard. Pushed herself to her feet. “Fuck. And you still want to get back at him? Don’t you think you’ve done enough? Her? Me? Kelly?”

  Her voice was almost a shout, but Bryce didn’t seem to notice. He reached out, grabbed hold of her wrist before she could pull away her hand, and tugged her closer.

  “Never, baby girl.” Bryce ran his hand up the back of her leg, skimming over her ass and lower back. He dug his fingertips into her shoulder blades as he leaned forward and nestled his face into her belly. “Nothing I can do will ever be enough.”

  A voice shouted up to them. “Angel? Breakfast isn’t going to make itself!”

  Bryce snorted, running his hands over her breasts and squeezing them hard through her jersey. “What you are you, his servant now?”

  “Coming!” She yelled, turning to face the doorway. “As if,” she said to him. Then she shrugged. “He seems to think I need all the fucking practice I can get.”

  “What, to be his wife?” Bryce’s fingers were sending lascivious tremors through her body.

  “Something like that.”

  “You could say no.”

  “And make him send me back?”

  “He won’t send you back. He needs you. Needs you here. You’re part of his plan.”

  Ice bloomed in her stomach. She pushed away from Bryce, her hands on his shoulders as she peered down at him through slitted eyes. “His plan?”

  “Drew always has a plan.” Bryce ran his tongue over his teeth, grinning up at her. “Problem is, he never thinks it all the way through.”

  “Bryce…” She shifted, tugging her hair into a ponytail at the back of her scalp before letting it fall down around her shoulder again. The man watched, seeming entranced.

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s it mean, if someone makes you their beneficiary?”

  “Of what, baby?” He asked, but there’d been a spark of recognition in his eyes when she’d said the word ‘beneficiary.’

  “Of… of a trust.”

  Bryce shrugged. “Depends. Every trust’s different. Stipulates what everyone gets. Usually down to the cent.”

  She gave a small nod. “There’s something…” She swallowed. “Thursday, Drew—“

  “Angel!”

  She jerked, her eyes flashing closed as she willed her heart to stop thumping. Bryce grabbed her hips in his hands and twisted her from side to side until she grabbed his shoulders.

  “I told you, baby girl.” Bryce’s eyes glittered when she looked down at him. “He’s always got a plan.”

  41

  Nothing Natural

  Drew hugged his chest hard, stamping his feet as Kelly put her key in the ignition of her red sedan and turned it. The car made a few pathetic whining noises before the motor spluttered out.

  “See?”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Ya think?” Kelly climbed out of the car and slammed the door. “Can you check if you have cellphone signal? Mine says it has one bar, but every call I make fails.”

  “Don’t have it on me,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”

  “Inside?” Kelly slapped the hood of her car. “I need to leave. I need to get this piece of shit—” she gave the tire a hesitant kick “—to start so I can get the fuck out of here.”

  “Well, lucky for you, I know my way around an engine.” Drew blew out a streamer of pale mist and shivered violently. “But it’s way too cold out here to crawl under a car. And, if it’s all right with you, I’d prefer to wait until there’s full light before I go tinkering around down there. I might break something.”

  Kelly’s shoulders drooped. She took her cellphone from the breast pocket of her jacket and stabbed at the screen a few times. Then she held the phone to her ear, tapping her boot on the gravel.

  “Shit.” She shoved her phone back in her pocket. “Please just check if you have signal. I can call a tow truck or something.”

  Drew stepped closer to her and rubbed the side of her arm. “Or you can give me two hours — which is less time than it would take someone to get here — and I can have a look for you.”

  “Two hours?”

  “I’d have had breakfast, the required amount of coffee to wake up, and there’ll be enough light so I can see what the hell I’m doing.”

  Kelly glanced back at the car, curled her hands into fists, and took a sharp breath. “I don’t get it. It was working fine yesterday.”

  “Could be anything. Which I’ll speculate about over coffee. Did I mention how breakfast would be swell? In there, where it’s warm?”

  “Fine,” she muttered, storming past him.

  He heard a lower, “Unbelievable,” as she started down the stairs.

  Glancing back at the car, Drew’s eyes moved up to the tree line and the distant rosy glow of breaking dawn. He patted the hood of the car, grimacing at the cold, and shoved his hand under his arm as he hurried into the lakehouse after Kelly.

  Angel and Bryce were still upstairs. He had a sudden — almost overwhelming — urge to go and see what they were getting up to. But then the thought of walking in on them screwing each other gave him pause.

  That was something he hoped never to see.

  He gave the stairs a glower and then went over to open the door.

  “Angel?” He waited for a few seconds
, but there was no response. “Breakfast isn’t going to make itself!” He paused, listened intently.

  He could feel Kelly’s disapproving glare on his back but ignored it. He heard a muffled shout back. Whether it was positive, or telling him to go fuck himself, he couldn’t make out.

  “The sooner you make it, the sooner Kelly can get out of here,” he called up the stairway.

  That should give her some motivation.

  “More coffee?” he asked, walking past a shivering Kelly on his way to the kitchen.

  “Thanks,” she said quietly, perching on the edge of the sofa.

  He was rinsing out his cup in the basin when he heard footsteps on the stairs.

  “Didn’t get very far, did you?” came Angel’s voice.

  “There’s something wrong with my car,” Kelly replied.

  “How convenient.” Angel’s voice was right behind him now, but he didn’t turn. He didn’t want to see the expression on her face, in case he didn’t like it.

  “Move over.”

  “Move over, Sir?”

  Angel snorted and jabbed her elbow in his side. He shuffled to the side, frowning at the girl as she began dragging ingredients from the fridge and fiddling with the range.

  “Everything all right?”

  “Fucking dandy.” Her fingertips tapped hard and fast on the counter as she waited for a knob of butter to melt in a pan. Then she spun to him, sucking in her bottom lip and staring at him through narrowed eyes. “You ever think, just maybe, that I wouldn’t want your shitty lakehouse?”

  “You don’t?” he murmured, pouring coffee into the pair of mugs he’d rinsed out.

  Her eyes fluttered at that, and she straightened, folding her arms over her chest. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you should think on it more, then.” He laughed then, taking a long swallow of coffee that was almost hot enough to scald his tongue.

  She pushed away from the counter and slid bread into the six-slice toaster neatly positioned beside the coffee machine.

  “Didn’t even get a chance to say good morning, future Mrs. Sugar,” he said, running his hand up her arm when it came within range.

  She pulled away, gave him a sidelong glance, and began cracking eggs into the pan. “Yeah… good fucking morning,” she said sourly.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” She began stirring the eggs with a vengeance, batting his arm out the way when he tried to grab her. “Go see to your damsel in distress. You’re getting in my way.”

  He left — coffee cups in hand — but not without frowning at Angel’s back. She moved with a nervous speed, her fingers tapping furiously against the counter whenever she paused to assess her next move.

  In the living room, Kelly had taken off her gloves and scarf and was leaning back in the sofa with her eyes closed.

  “You should be out of here soon.”

  Kelly’s eyes flared open. For a moment, luminous guilt flashed over her eyes. “Sure.”

  “Hey… you all right?”

  “Fine.” She nodded hard, wiping the palms of her hands over her eyes. “Didn’t get much sleep.”

  Drew glanced askance at her. “Right, you passed out. Guess it’s not—”

  Kelly glanced at the closed kitchen door and then back to him, that guilt blooming in her olive green eyes. “Angel woke me.”

  “She… she was in your room last night?” He’d had his reservations when he’d woken alone last night. Fire dead. Naked with just a blanket covering his thighs. The cold had woken him.

  But when he’d finished tinkering with Kelly’s car, a sullen, worming dread deep in his belly had driven him upstairs to Kelly’s room.

  Where he’d found her fast asleep.

  Then to Angel’s room.

  She, too, had been fast asleep.

  But the dread had remained, eating away at him while he’d tried to will his body back to sleep.

  “Why’d you bring her here, Drew?”

  His mouth twitched but managed to bring it back from a straight up sneer before Kelly could see. He was so fucking sick of everyone asking him that. It was as if every person here in this lakehouse knew that the arrangement was unnatural. Like a gathering of predator and prey around a watering during the dry season. They knew it was only a matter of time before that spanning tension snapped. Before a lion went for a buck’s throat. Before the crocodile surged from the muddy waters and took a drinking cheetah in its maws.

  They all knew. But they waited. Shivering with anticipation. Trembling with anxiety. Because they knew… but only like a bird knew to fly south for the winter. Something indefinable, unintelligible told them that this wasn’t right.

  There was nothing natural about any of this.

  *

  “Drew?”

  He turned to Kelly, blinking at her. Shrugged. But it wasn’t enough.

  “Why, Drew?”

  “She had nowhere else to go.”

  “She’s not your responsibility.”

  “Neither is world hunger,” he snapped. “But I send that check every single month, don’t I?” He slid his arms over the back of the couch, lacing his fingers in front of him and glaring at Kelly as she turned shocked eyes to him. “And you, sweetheart? What do you do for society?”

  “Society?” She murmured it as if she didn’t recognize the word.

  “Yeah. How do you go about being a good Samaritan?”

  She swallowed, hard enough that he could see her throat moving. Then she looked away, half shrugging, half shifting her shoulder in a non-committal way. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

  “See — told you you’d feel better if you hit me.”

  Kelly’s head darted up. They watched Bryce step from the stairwell, teeth flashing in a wide, disarming smile as he grabbed the door frame.

  “So you got Angel cooking up stuff for you now? Smells delicious.”

  Drew scowled at the man, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Hey, when you’re done with her, send her over to my place, would you? I got tons needs doing around the house. Cleaning. Cooking. Washing. I even got one of those little French maid outfits—”

  “Shut it,” Drew said, his voice low.

  Bryce threw up his arms, turning his smile to Kelly for a moment. “What? If you can do it, why can’t—”

  He got to his feet, and Bryce cut off with a deep-throated chuckle. “Relax, bro. I’m just kidding.” But when he winked at Kelly, his expression was serious. “Better watch out, peaches. Next, he’ll have you ironing his shirts.”

  Kelly let out a small snort and nursed the cup of coffee Drew had brought her. “Good luck with that.” She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “I last held an iron — what — ten years ago? I’d probably burn the house down before I got a crease out of your shirt.”

  Bryce straightened, pointing at Kelly’s coffee. “More of that after some coffee.”

  But if there was one thing Bryce didn’t look like he needed, it was coffee. His eyes shone with almost ecclesiastical zeal as he made for the kitchen. Drew watched him, frowning, a tiny worm of suspicion wriggling through his stomach as he did.

  Why did it look like Bryce was high?

  Surely — God, surely — the man hadn’t already hit a line at six in the fucking morning? He knew Bryce did coke, E sometimes, a lot of weed… but always on the weekends. His brother knew there wasn’t room for fucking around when you were dealing with millions in potential reinsurance claims. The smallest misstep and those governing bodies would err on the side of the client — costing the company and their re-insurers millions.

  If there was one thing Bryce held in the highest respect, it was his reputation as an adjuster.

  Then again… it was Saturday. He wouldn’t have driven here hopped up like that — the roads were too treacherous — so he might have argued to himself that it was perfectly fine to indulge when he arrived.

  Base.

  Home run.

 
He thought he was safe here, that nothing could touch him. No one.

  Except Drew.

  And, according to Bryce, Drew was an irritation more than a deterrent. He could handle Drew.

  A smile flitted onto his mouth as he watched his brother barge into the kitchen and demand Angel pour him a cup of coffee.

  He thought he could handle Drew. But, if this weekend was anything, it was going to prove that Bryce didn’t know him at all. That he’d been underestimating his bro for years. Possibly, since they’d been squeezed from the same contaminated womb, forty-six fucking years ago.

  He smiled, turning that same, vague smile onto Kelly when her fingers brushed his arm.

  “Can you look at my car now?”

  “After breakfast, sweetheart.” Drew grabbed her hand, twining his fingers through hers. “After breakfast.”

  *

  Breakfast was a sullen, quiet affair. They all sat around the dining table — pine, like the walls, but varnished a deep, golden brown — the only sound the clink and scrape of their cutlery on the crockery.

  Angel’s bacon and goat cheese frittata was astounding — even Bryce cleaned his plate — but it seemed incapable of permeating the fog-like introspection that clung to everyone seated at the table.

  Kelly finished before anyone else, and set her knife and fork down on the center of her plate, sitting with her hands crossed until Drew bumped her knee under the table.

  “Clearly, you’re itching to be out of here,” he said as he stood. “Let’s look at your car.”

  “What’s wrong with your car?” Bryce asked.

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t still be here,” Kelly snapped and then sighed. “I don’t know. Drew said he’d take a look.”

  “Yup.” Drew rose to his feet.

  Kelly glanced down at his plate. “But you’re still busy—”

  “Wouldn’t want you to think I’m holding you hostage,” he muttered.

  Going into the kitchen, he rummaged through one of the storage cupboards and got out his toolbox. Juliet had always insisted they keep one around — that and a first aid kit — for those unexpected emergencies.

  Like someone’s car unexpectedly breaking down.

  If he hadn’t been so concerned with someone spotting him last night, then he’d have had it up there instead of a mallet and a carving fork. It would have gone faster, for sure. Perhaps even avoided him putting a crick in his neck.