“They were watching.” She bit her lip.
“Yeah.” He smiled. It was actually quite perfect. The aftershock. He flexed inside her.
Lola’s lips curved. “It’s kind of hot. Like having sex out in the woods, not realizing anyone is watching, then not stopping when you catch a glimpse of movement.”
“So it’s okay out here, but not in there?”
She put a hand to his cheek. “They can’t see everything up close and personal. It takes the raunchy out of it and makes it simply sexy.”
The woman had some crazy limits. Being an exhibitionist was okay, but only at a distance. He could remember that. In fact, he was already planning a hike in the woods.
She’d taken his fantasy and made it ten times better than anything he’d imagined. That ability was another reason she was special. She always managed to give him more than he expected. She always surprised him. She always enhanced his wildest dreams.
* * *
LOLA WAS STILL SEEING STARS LONG AFTER GRAY DROPPED HER OFF at her car. Hard to believe, but it wasn’t even ten o’clock. She’d thought about begging him to let her go home with him for a while, but honestly that was way too needy. She’d already given enough away by letting him know she was jealous. That, however, could be written off as part of the sex-party fantasy, like she was supposed to be that way, an act.
So she’d let him kiss her sweetly in the front seat of his car, then climbed into her own. He’d waited until she’d turned on her lights, started the engine, and waggled her fingers at him. She’d checked her phone for messages from the twins. None, thank goodness, just as there’d been none when she’d looked right before getting into Gray’s car after dinner and heading out to the house in the hills.
She couldn’t categorize her emotions about that row of onlookers. It had been sexy. First that initial Oh my God, then the sweet little lick of heat through her body saying Wow. It was like sneaking a furtive sexual interlude in your office very late at night. Then realizing the trash can you’d left just outside the open door was now empty. Then you had to wonder how long the janitor had stood there watching.
Yes, that was hot. She could do it again. Plan a naughty assignation in an out-of-the-way place and hope someone stumbled across their hiding place. Or make sure they did. Who knew how, who cared? Gray would figure out how to make it work.
God, she was changing. He wasn’t forcing the changes; she was simply adapting to his will. It was terrifying. She was too needy. He could cut her off at any time. He might very well be planning for it to end the day football camp was over for the summer. The thought shot a spasm of fear through her belly. Yet she loved how he made her feel. She enjoyed every new test he gave her, even if she had to twist it slightly, like she had tonight. She had to stop worrying about tomorrow and enjoy everything he gave her today. Or she’d go crazy. As if she wasn’t already. It was Harry’s illusion analysis. She wanted this now. She wanted her illusion. And that meant not thinking about the end of football camp.
Her Bluetooth chirped just as she was pulling into her carport. Her phone was still in her purse so she immediately punched the answer button on the dash before shutting the engine off. Her heart beat faster, harder, and she was suddenly breathless. It was him, he needed more of her. Just the way she needed more of him.
“Hello?” Excitement threaded through her voice.
“Bitch. Whore. Slut.” Words flooded the car in a gravelly, indistinct voice.
It seemed so loud, coming at her from everywhere.
“Bitch. Whore,” shouted out at her in an eerie, subhuman drone.
Lola found her voice and her anger. “Who the hell is this?” The call had destroyed her high.
“Bitch” was the only answer.
“I’m not afraid of you. I’ve called the police. They have equipment that can trace calls even from blocked numbers.”
“Whore.”
“So now you’re screwed.”
“Slut.”
“Yeah, come on, stay on the line, give them all the time they need to find you.”
“Cunt.”
Ooh. That was a bad one. Then there was the dead air of a disconnected call. She grabbed her phone, checked the received list, but it was a private number. She’d lied to her anonymous caller, of course. She hadn’t phoned the police. She didn’t know if they could trace private calls. She got all her information from movies.
She was beeping the remote lock when a car sped by, far too fast for the relatively narrow lanes of the condo complex’s parking area. By the time she stepped from beneath the carport, there was nothing but distant taillights.
She’d barely put her key in the front door’s lock when she remembered she wasn’t wearing panties. She’d left them with Gray. Darn.
“Hello, I’m home,” she called out.
There was a scrambling in the living room, laptops slammed shut, then Harry dashed into the hall. His feet were bare. “Aunt Lola. You’re home early. Didn’t everything go well with your date?”
“My date was just fine.”
William was close behind at Harry’s shoulder. “But you look a little worried. Are you sure the date was okay?”
She eyed them both. Why were they so anxious about her date? “It was fine. But I didn’t plan on being very late.” Andrea would have had a fit. During the usual morning call, the boys would be sure to tell her that Lola had been out until all hours of the night. “What did you guys do?” Make any nasty phone calls, boys?
“Watched movies,” Harry was quick to say.
“Played video games,” William added before Harry completely got the words out.
She glanced at her watch. “It’s not terribly late. If you want, I can get out of these shoes and watch a movie with you.” Then she could watch them for any telltale signs of their real evening’s activities.
She still couldn’t be sure they’d made the call. It was just conjecture. A sixth sense.
“Okay, Aunt Lola. We’d really like that. And if you want to talk about your date or anything else that’s bothering, we’d be happy to listen.”
She stared at Harry. “You guys are totally weird. I told you I’m fine.” Oh yeah, her sixth sense was working overtime.
Then she backed down the bedroom hallway as if their heads might suddenly split open and some alien creature with a long, spiky tongue would shoot out to get her. Did she believe in the movies? Nah.
After closing the door, she sat on the bed, toed off her shoes, and kicked them at the closet. Ghost didn’t come out from under the bed to join her. She slipped into fresh underwear, then hung up the skirt, threw her top in the hamper, and pulled on a pair of capri pants and a T-shirt.
Ghost still hadn’t come out. “It’s just me out here,” she called softly.
No Ghost. On her hands and knees, she pulled up the bed skirt. No little eyes blinked at her. She checked the usual hiding places, then opened her bedroom door and checked the office, too. When Lola wasn’t home, Ghost limited herself to those two rooms. Then again, maybe the cat was starting to make friends with the interlopers.
“Have you guys seen Ghost?” she asked, standing at the edge of the living room.
They were slouched on opposite ends of the couch, laptops open again.
“No, we haven’t,” Harry said for both of them. “She’s always in your room, and we’d never go in there.”
Fifteen minutes later she’d checked every nook and cranny. Ghost wasn’t in any of the usual places. She wasn’t in any unusual ones. She wasn’t anywhere.
* * *
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU MIGHT HAVE ACCIDENTALLY LEFT THE screen door open?” Lola’s entire body vibrated with anger. The finger she was pointing at the offending porch screen was actually shaking.
“It was hot, and we went out on the deck for a little while,” Harry said rather plaintively. Cowering in his corner of the couch, William let his brother do all the talking.
“Why didn’t you close the door?”
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He didn’t answer that, made excuses instead. “But the cat never comes out of the bedroom. And we would have seen her anyway, if she wandered out on the deck.”
Lola closed the screen door behind her as she stepped out to stare into the darkness of the woods below, the muscles of her face tense. The deck hung out over the steeply sloping hill. At the far end it was four feet off the ground, but right next to the condo wall, the drop wasn’t more than a foot. A cat could easily slide out the door and jump off the edge.
“Gho-ost,” she called. “Here, kitty-kitty.” She held her breath, listening for a rustle or a soft mew. Nothing.
She turned back to the door, the boys’ faces oddly dissected with the closed screen between them. “Do you know what’s out there?” Her voice was shaky. “Coyotes and foxes and bobcats and—” She shuddered. “She doesn’t have any claws. She can’t fight back if something attacks her. How could you do that to a defenseless animal?” The same way they could pick on defenseless boys like Stinky Stu. The same way they could make nasty phone calls to her.
Harry came to the screen. “Are you sure she’s gone?”
“You saw me check everywhere. Were you making a lot of noise? Did you scare her?” If they’d gone back to her office or her bedroom, Ghost might have automatically run the other way, out to the living room.
“We were just”—Harry glanced back at William—“playing video games and stuff.”
She threw the door open so hard it banged loudly on the end of its track. Harry jumped back. She found the flashlights in a kitchen drawer. Marching back into the living room, she handed one each to Harry and William. “We are going outside and we are going to find her, do you hear me?”
They scrambled to follow her, right on her heels. She’d terrified them. And they damn well better be terrified. Because if—she couldn’t even let herself think it.
“William, you check the carports and along the front of the condos.” She pointed up the steps, and William took them two at a time to do her bidding. “Harry, you come with me.”
She led him around the wall of the condo, which was an end unit on her building, shining the flashlight and softly calling for Ghost. They came out from between the buildings right by the side of the deck. “You go that way”—she pointed to the right—“and I’ll go this way.”
“She’s gonna be okay, Aunt Lola.” His words were sure, but Harry’s voice actually shook as if he was truly worried.
“If you see her, call for me,” she told him. “Don’t try to get her yourself. You’ll only scare her off.”
Harry headed into the darkness, tracking slightly down the hill, then along the row of decks that would eventually lead him out to the street. In a few moments, all she could see was the beam of his flashlight weaving back and forth across the dense shrubbery.
Lola headed in the opposite direction. “Gho-ost.” Her flashlight showed nothing but bushes, shrubs, and greenery so thick, the light couldn’t truly penetrate it. The hill sloped all the way down to a ravine shrouded by oaks and pines. A coyote howled in the distance. Another answered, closer. Lola started to sweat. At least they weren’t chasing anything yet. You could always tell when they’d found something, the sound of their furious barking and yipping filling a quiet night with terror for small animals.
They searched for more than an hour. Her head throbbed and her eyes ached.
“I’m sure she’s inside, Aunt Lola,” Harry offered. “Cats always find new places you’d never think of.”
The anger was gone, nothing but a sense of helplessness was left. “She’ll be fine. She’ll be back in the morning when she’s hungry,” she said. But she didn’t believe it. Ghost didn’t have claws. She’d never been outside the condo. She was lost. She wouldn’t find her way back.
“We’re sorry. We didn’t mean to let her out.” Harry gazed at her, his eyes swimming. She could almost believe he was upset. No, he was upset; he wasn’t faking.
“We’ll find her in the morning,” William added, his gaze as stricken as Harry’s. “She’ll be all right, we promise.”
There was no movie. There were no computer games. Lola sent them to bed because she knew they couldn’t possibly keep that promise, and she couldn’t stand to talk about it a moment longer.
She didn’t sleep. She couldn’t even think about the sexy evening with Gray. She could only think about poor little Ghost lost in the woods.
Much later the coyotes started up with a frantic, ballistic cacophony of yips and barks somewhere down in the ravine. Lola covered her head with the pillow.
25
“AUNT LOLA.” A TINY WHISPER SEEPED UNDER THE BEDROOM DOOR.
Lola opened her eyes, blinked. Sunlight streamed through the window, reflecting in the bureau mirror. It would last fifteen minutes, then the sun would move into the shadow of the building next door. Which meant it was eight. The last time she’d looked at the clock it had been five in the morning.
“Aunt Lola,” the whisper hissed beneath the door.
She tossed aside the sheet and climbed out of the bed. Passing the mirror, her reflection scared her, wild-eyed, mascara-streaked, party-haired.
She threw open the door. Harry and William were down on their hands and knees, cheeks resting on the carpet. “What,” she snapped, “are you doing?”
Harry jerked up. William followed.
“She’s out on the deck, but when we open the door, she scampers away again.”
“Ghost?”
Their heads bobbed in tandem.
Lola jumped over them, ran down the hall, flew around the corner, and burst into the living room, then skidded to a stop. Ghost flashed across to the far edge of the deck and disappeared.
Seeing the cat, Lola simply wanted to cry, but she waved a hand behind her, warning the boys. They stopped. Silently she crept across the living room carpet, slid both the screen door and the glass door open, then backed up slowly to the edge of the living room again.
They waited. The wall clock ticktocked in the small dining area. She counted thirty ticks and tocks before Ghost appeared again. The cat closed in on the open door with stealthy steps, her whiskers twitching, then suddenly, she was a flurry of white fur across the blue carpet, dodging the three humans in her way like cones on a driving course, and disappearing down the hall.
Lola closed the screen and the sliding glass door and turned to glare at the boys. Inside, her heart was hammering, her eyes stinging with relief.
“Aunt Lola, before you say anything, let us explain.”
She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. Her only signal that Harry could speak was the fact that she didn’t start screaming at him.
But William started. “It wasn’t our fault. We didn’t do it.”
Lola ground her teeth.
Harry took over before she could jump on William and throttle him. “Arby stopped by.”
“Oh,” she snapped, “so you’re blaming your friend instead of taking responsibility yourselves. And I told you not to have anyone over.”
“Well . . . um . . .” Harry did some hemming and hawing, and just when Lola was about to yell, he blurted out, “He sent the flowers.”
She stopped, her finger up and ready to make a pointed stab at the air in front of his face. “The dead flowers?”
Harry nodded vigorously.
“We thought it was just a game,” William rushed on.
She forced herself to breathe evenly. “What else did he do?”
Harry shrugged, stared at the floor, very un-Harry-like. “A couple of text messages. Some voicemails.”
“And a phone call last night?” Her teeth clamped so hard she thought they’d chip.
“Yes. But you answered. So he left in a rush.”
The car speeding down the lane. Lola narrowed her eyes. “So you must have given him my email address and my cell phone number.”
Harry rolled his lips between his teeth and bit till the flesh turned white around his mouth. “We thought it
was just some harmless fun to pass the time.”
“Harmless fun.” She did not screech. “Stalking and harassment is harmless fun?” This was why they’d been so good to her face. Because they were stabbing her in the back. She’d suspected it, but now she knew it, and she was livid.
William fluttered his hands helplessly. “We thought it was fun until last night when he let Ghost out.”
“You saw him let Ghost out?” In a moment she’d be out of control. And they might need a trip to the hospital.
“No, no, no,” Harry jumped in. William was only making things worse. “We didn’t see him. We wouldn’t have let him do that, Aunt Lola, I swear it. But, well, we were in the kitchen making sandwiches, and he was out on the deck and the door was open and”—he shrugged again—“we didn’t know she was gone until you got home.”
Her fists clenched and unclenched, almost as if they had their very own brains controlling them.
“That’s when we decided Arby had gone too far,” William added. He probably thought that explanation was helping.
“So nasty messages and letters aren’t considered going too far?”
“Letters?” they echoed together.
She didn’t bother to say it was only one letter. “Yes. Threatening letters.”
“He didn’t say anything about letters, Aunt Lola, we swear.” Harry gazed at her earnestly. As if he was actually sorry for the whole thing.
It didn’t make a damn bit of difference whether it was a letter or a text or a phone call. “What did my sister teach you? Do you do this kind of thing to kids at school?”
“No, no, it was just that Arby was so upset.”
None of it made sense. She shook her head slowly. “What have I ever done to Arby? I don’t even know him.” Andrea was right. She should have insisted on meeting the kid.
And really, had she treated the twins so badly that they’d participate just for fun?
Harry gave her a look, one that was close to having his usual spunk. “Because of his dad, of course.”
“His dad? What does his dad have to do with this?” She didn’t know any dads. She only knew people from work. She only knew . . .
The Naughty Corner Page 22
