by Cora Brent
After an hour of playing Warmonger’s Quest with Kel I tossed the controller on the coffee table.
“What’s up?” Kellan asked, eyes glued to the screen as his avatar tossed grenades at a three-headed green monster.
“I should find her,” I said. “Paige, I mean. She was so scared, Kel. I just want to see if she’s okay.”
He looked away from his game and his expression was serious now. “That’s not a bad idea,” he said. “If she wants you to get lost she’ll probably have no trouble telling you as much.”
“Okay.” I stood up, wondering where the hell I’d thrown my phone now. “So let’s look her up.”
He smiled. “Already conducted five minutes of online sleuthing and found out where she lives.”
“Don’t you think a phone call might be better?”
Kellan disagreed. “Nope.”
I thought about it. I really wanted to see her again. And Kellan was right. If she wanted to tell me to take a hike then of course I’d cooperate. But I felt drawn to this girl in a way I couldn’t explain.
“Give me the address,” I said. “I’ll go right now.”
Kellan spotted my phone between the couch cushions and dug it out.
“I’m sick of playing video games and everyone’s away on spring break,” he said, tossing the phone at me. “So I’m coming with you, bro.”
Chapter Five
Paige
My boss, the owner of Esposito’s Pizzeria, didn’t usually work on Sundays but the assistant manager was spending spring break at the beach in Santa Monica so today was an exception. Despite the fact that Dominic Esposito was an extremely successful restaurant owner he liked nothing better than to be in the thick of things, sliding pizzas in the wood fired ovens and hustling to get the next batch of dough mixed. That was why he was standing right next to me when I broke down sobbing less than an hour into my shift.
“Paige?” He was alarmed. I’d worked for him for nearly five years and never before had I started sobbing into the pepperoni while clenching my hands to keep them from shaking.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, trying to gulp back deep breaths.
Dominic stared at me. “Why don’t you go take a break? Feel free to sit in my office if you want some privacy.”
A few members of the staff were now looking at me with curious sympathy as I brushed past them. Word must have gotten around already. One of the servers, a ditzy redhead named Abbie, had cornered me the second I got here to ask if I was the girl in the Super Q Hero video that was all over the place today. I managed to nod but refused to answer any questions. In fact I hadn’t said a word to anyone. I was doing just fine until I spotted a pizza cutter on the counter and the memory of a dirty blade near my face knocked the air right out of my lungs.
I was pacing around Dominic’s office and trying to pull myself together when he walked in. Dominic Esposito looked grim. He was a good boss but he didn’t enjoy dealing with hysterical employees blubbering all over his tidy office and he was probably wishing his wife Melanie was around to handle this mess.
Dominic perched on the edge of his desk and sighed. But when he spoke his voice was so kind it almost made me cry harder.
“Abbie told me what happened to you last night,” he said. “I’d like you to take a few days off, with pay of course. If you need more time just say the word. And Paige, I know I speak for Melanie too when I say you’ve worked for us for a long time and that means you’re like family. We’re here for you.”
I was grateful. Really I was. But I would have liked to keep working in the hopes of distracting my mind from nearly getting knifed by a maniac last night.
“Candy.”
His raspy voice kept echoing in my head and I couldn’t make it stop. Last night I’d slept like shit, curled up in a living room armchair and bolting up to triple check the windows and doors every fifteen minutes. Once the cops gave me the green light to leave I didn’t have anywhere else to go except home, to the house that I’d always loved. But when I got there it only seemed like the emptiest place on earth. The times I managed to fall into a brief and fitful sleep it was only after I kept replaying the moment Derek Gentry wrapped his arms around me. It was the only part of the night I could stand to think about without suffering a panic attack.
This morning I’d tried to start the day as if nothing had happened. So far it wasn’t working.
Dominic told me to go home and assured me again that I could take as much time off as I needed. He left no room for argument. I promised I’d be back in a few days. I just needed some sleep, that’s all. He nodded and scrawled down the numbers of his cell phone and Melanie’s, saying that I shouldn’t hesitate to call if I needed anything. I thanked him and stuffed the numbers in my back pocket, knowing I’d never call. I avoided eye contact with everyone else on my way out.
Maybe it was true that all I needed was a little bit of rest. There was nothing to be afraid of. If I went home now I’d probably doze right off and sleep so soundly there’d be no nightmares.
As I turned down my street I tried to cheer up at the sight of my house. Seeing its distinctive outline always made me feel better. But my cheer faded as soon as I saw there was a car parked in the driveway.
The house wasn’t mine alone. My uncle legally owned fifty percent of it.
Uncle Ryan and I got along well enough. We never had a whole lot to say to each other but he’d always been kind, if a little distant.
Aunt Maddie was another story. She could irritate the ever loving piss out of anything with a pulse. And that was her car in the driveway.
My flight instinct told me to just keep driving but I’d only be putting off the inevitable. I crept into the house like someone entering a live minefield.
“Paige, is that you!”
Boom!
“Hi, Aunt Maddie.” I tossed my keys and purse on the entryway table and sought out the living room armchair. If I had to deal with an interrogation I might as well sit down.
Maddelin Morrissey’s heels clicked on the parquet floor and she emerged from the direction of the kitchen, where she was either keeping watch or counting the silver.
“You haven’t answered a single call today,” she accused with her hands on her hips. “We’ve been worried to death.”
It was true she’d left no less than six shrieking voicemails since daybreak. And it was also true that every time my phone buzzed with her name I’d cringed and shoved the thing back into my pocket. I had hoped that answering with a simple Everything’s fine text would end her efforts. I was wrong.
“I’m sorry,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I was at work.”
Aunt Maddie kept her hands on her hips and scowled at me. I could now see that Uncle Ryan had followed in her shadow. He edged around his sullen wife and took a seat on the sofa across from my armchair.
“Are you okay?” he asked with an unusual amount of anxiety in his voice, which made me feel a little sorry. I hadn’t realized he’d be worried.
“I’m really fine, Uncle Ryan,” I said and saw the lines in his face relax with relief. “If you saw the video you can see it was was scary but I didn’t get hurt.”
Aunt Maddie switched tactics. She sat down beside her husband and leaned forward, reaching for my hand with her manicured claw.
“Our poor baby,” she clucked with syrupy pity. She gave my limp hand one quick squeeze and let go as if my skin might infect her, but not before she managed to scratch me with one of her magenta talons. No one had made a move to hug me but that wasn’t surprising. We weren’t a hugging family.
Luckily I didn’t have to do much explaining because Aunt Maddie seized control of the conversation. She’d had a busy day; leaving voicemails, fielding calls from concerned friends after she spread the word that her niece had nearly been killed, canceling her hair appointment to deal with the shock of something terrible that had happened to someone else.
“And I called Jonathon,” she said, referring to her only child who
currently attended law school in Maine, a location likely selected because it was very far and very cold and thus very unlikely to be visited by his imperious mother.
“Jonathon was very concerned about you of course,” Maddie said and paused to wet her collagen-enhanced lips. “He was wondering if it might be healthier for you to get an apartment with some friends rather than rattling around this empty old house alone.”
Jonathon would have said no such thing. The last time I saw my cousin was when he came home for three days at Christmas and he’d pulled me aside to say, “Don’t let that vulture bulldoze you into selling the house.” Because that’s what the whole apartment suggestion was really about. Ever since my grandfather’s death Aunt Maddie had been obsessed with selling the house. A house like this would fetch a good price and my grandparents’ will had explicitly divided all the assets two ways, between me and my uncle.
“Maddelin.” My uncle was angry. He shot his wife a warning glare. “Don’t do this today.”
Uncle Ryan didn’t contradict his wife often but when he did she usually backed down. Her mouth twitched into a grimace but she looked away and didn’t argue.
Uncle Ryan cleared his throat. “Paige, we don’t want to bother you. We were just concerned and wanted to make sure you were all right.”
I tried out my acting abilities with a smile. “I’m great. Really. I’m not saying last night was fun but after I came home and had a good night’s sleep I woke up and didn’t even think about it.”
My uncle looked skeptical. His eyes strayed to a framed photograph on the end table by his right elbow. I watched the way his mouth drooped as he gazed at the smiling faces that had been frozen in time for thirty years. He’d graduated from high school on that beautiful spring day when he posed with his family in the front yard. His arm was draped over the shoulder of his kid sister, eleven-year-old Sara. She was all knees and elbows at that stage and crossed her arms over her chest self-consciously but her ecstatic grin was genuine and there was no sign of the troubled life to come. My grandparents, looking young and fit, posed proudly in front of their beautiful home, flanking their perfect children.
He noticed I was studying him as he stared at the old photo, lost in his thoughts. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d ever heard him utter his sister’s name. He hadn’t forgiven her. I might have told him that I understood how he felt. But we didn’t talk about such things.
“Well,” he said, rising from the couch and pulling Aunt Maddie up with him. “We don’t want to intrude on your day.”
“No, of course not,” Aunt Maddie said. She didn’t bother to smile.
Uncle Ryan took a tentative step toward me. “Paige, you can call me anytime. Or better yet, come over. No matter what happens, our home is always open to you.”
Aunt Maddie lit up and inserted herself between us. “That’s a great idea! Paige, honey, you can stay in Jonathon’s old bedroom. It would be good for you to be with family rather than sitting here in this big empty house all alone. You wouldn’t even need to worry about packing it up. I’d hire someone to take care of that before we put it on the market.”
Uncle Ryan issued an exasperated sigh and hustled his wife out the front door. I remained in the armchair and watched them through the window as they briefly argued in the front yard before driving away.
I tucked my legs underneath me and snuggled into the chair, trying to summon sleep. Every time I started to relax I saw Candy Man’s eyes, eyes that were full of insanity. I shivered and pulled an old pastel afghan over my body. My grandmother had crocheted it decades ago, before I was born. My own mother might have cuddled under this very blanket in this very chair.
Sleep was proving elusive just as it had last night. My eyelids kept popping open like window shades to stare at the room that been unchanged as far back as my memory reached. This was the only home I’d ever known. After running away at age seventeen, my mother had staggered back to her parents after three years of wild living. She was rail thin, suffering from wicked meth withdrawals and pregnant with the child of a stranger. She kept herself clean long enough to give birth. She could never stay that way though. She tried. She just couldn’t make it work and then one day she walked out and left me behind. But for better or for worse this was home, the only place I was ever part of a family. And I couldn’t bear let it go no matter what Aunt Maddie said.
My phone was buzzing where I’d left it on the entryway table so I eased out of the armchair to retrieve it. I half expected another harrowing message from Aunt Maddie but instead it was a text from Ric. She’d sent me a photo of a dozen shirtless, impressively muscled guys waving from the deck of a large boat.
See what you’re missing?
My best friends had left at dawn this morning and apparently the Super Q Hero wasn’t making the news among the giddy spring break crowd. Sam and Ric would be freaking out if they knew, not partying with a pack of random guys.
My thumb hovered over the phone and I almost called. Instead I chose to fire off a casual text.
Very nice. Help yourself to my share.
Ric was perceptive. If I called she would have heard in my voice that something was wrong and it wouldn’t have taken her long to investigate what it was. Sam and Ric wasted too much time fretting over me as it was. I didn’t want to ruin my friends’ vacation. There was nothing they could do anyway. It was over. Candy Man wasn’t out there stalking me. He’d be in prison for a long time. Everything would be okay.
My arms shifted into an automatic self-hug. I was thinking about Derek again. Derek catching me before I fell, Derek cradling me in his arms and holding me close. This might be reaching pathetic proportions. I couldn’t start pining after Derek Gentry. That would be a terrible idea. For all I knew he was holed up somewhere, getting trashed and fucking three different chicks. But even if he was I’d still be grateful to him. Not only had he put himself in danger to save me from getting cut up by some psycho, he’d reached out to me in a moment when I desperately needed human contact.
Remembering Derek’s legal troubles, I pulled up a search engine and started to type in his name but stopped. It felt disrespectful somehow, like I was digging up gossip on the guy who’d risked his life to help me.
With an unanticipated vacation from work, the fact that my only friends were out of town and the prospect of sleep proving elusive, I decided to take a long hot bath and reread the sexiest chapters of one of my favorite erotic novels, featuring a duke with the most impressive throbbing cock in the entire kingdom.
My grandmother’s old claw foot bathtub was the ideal venue for a bubble bath and a trashy book. I stayed there until my fingers started to prune and left with reluctance, changing into a simple dark blue cotton slip dress that I sometimes wore to bed.
I had no plans to run into anyone else today so I didn’t bother to put on a bra and stood in front of the bathroom vanity, running my hands down my body. It wasn’t a bad body. Perhaps a little thin. But I’d seen enough men look my way with hungry expressions to understand I had at least a few assets. I hadn’t treated this body as well as I should have but I was trying. I could keep trying, maybe start going to those group therapy sessions again. My hand strayed lower, my palm rolling over the flat expanse of my belly and grazing the place between my legs that trembled at the prospect of a touch, any touch. Then Derek’s face flashed in my mind and I jerked my hand away.
The doorbell rang only seconds later and I debated ignoring it but decided to go downstairs and take a peek in case it was the police or something.
“Oh shit,” I said as I blinked at the figures on the other side of the peephole.
It wasn’t the police.
I didn’t give myself a chance to think twice. I opened the door and gaped at the two people standing there.
“What are you doing here?”
Chapter Six
Derek
“What are you doing here?” she demanded to know and suddenly it seemed like a bad plan to
arrive on her doorstep with no warning.
Paige Morrissey stared at us with a flushed face, her brown hair falling in a damp cloud over her shoulders, her feet bare, and showing a lot more skin that I’d expected to see. In short, she looked crazy hot.
“Hiya, Paige,” Kellan said as if they were old pals.
She didn’t acknowledge him. Her eyes were now fixed on the bandage on my arm and she winced.
“It looks worse than it really is,” I told her because she looked like she might burst into tears over my damn arm.
Paige’s face was still mournful. “How many stitches did you need?”
“Forty six.”
She flinched again. “Ouch. I’m really sorry.”
“Why? Were you the one who stabbed me?”
She shook her head and bit her lip.
I cleared my throat and held out my hand. “We didn’t exactly have time for introductions last night but I’m Derek Gentry.”
She hesitated before slipping her hand into mine. “I know.”
“And I’m Kellan Gentry,” my brother added. “And you’re Paige Morrissey.”
Paige managed a slight smile. “Hello Kellan.” She took a step back. “You guys want to come in?”
Kellan followed me into the house.
“So this is what The Gingerbread House looks like on the inside,” he said, checking out the living room.
“The Gingerbread House,” she repeated softly.
She had to be aware that’s what everyone around here called it. There weren’t many houses in the Phoenix area that looked like this one.
“You didn’t know your house had a nickname?” I asked.
“I knew,” she said. “I just hadn’t heard the reference in a while.”
The place looked like an old fashioned dollhouse on the outside, complete with scalloped trim, a peaked tower and a third floor cupola, but so far seemed to be perfectly ordinary on the inside. It looked like just another house, maybe even a bit dated with the wood paneling and weirdly patterned furniture.
