Shades of Twilight

by Lind Howard

  “It’ll take me at least a week, maybe two, to get things squared away here,” he said abruptly. “I’m keeping my ranch, so I’ll be flying back and forth. Davencourt won’t be my sole concern.”

  She sipped her coffee to hide her relief. He was still coming home! He’d said he would if she’d sleep with him, but until now she hadn’t been certain he’d meant it. It wouldn’t have made any difference if she’d known for sure he was lying; no matter what the day had brought, last night had been a dream come true for her, and she had grabbed at it with both hands.

  “Lucinda wouldn’t expect you to sell the ranch,” she said.

  “Bullshit. She thinks the universe revolves around Davencourt. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do to safeguard it.” He leaned back and stretched out his long legs, carefully avoiding contact with hers. “Tell me what’s been going on there. Mother tells me some of the news, and so does Aunt Sandra, but neither of them know anything about the day-to-day operations. I do know that Gloria has managed to move her entire family into Davencourt.”

  “Not all of them. Baron and his family still live in Charlotte.”

  “Being under the same roof with Lanette and Corliss is enough to make me think about buying my own place in town.”

  Roanna didn’t voice her agreement, but she knew exactly what he meant.

  “What about you?” he continued. “I know you went to college in Tuscaloosa. What changed your mind? I thought you wanted to attend college locally.”

  She had gone away because for a long time that had been easier than staying home. Her sleeping problems hadn’t been as bad while she was away, the memories hadn’t been as acute. But it had been over a year after he’d left before she had started college, and it had been a year of hell.

  She didn’t tell him any of that. Instead she shrugged and said, “You know how it is. A person can get along without it, but to have all the right contacts you have to attend the university.” She didn’t have to elaborate on which university, because Webb had gone to the same one.

  “Did you do the sorority bit?”

  “It was expected.”

  A reluctant grin tugged at his mouth. “I can’t see you as a Greek. How did you get along with the little society snobs?”

  “Fine.” They had, in fact, been kind to her. It was they who had taught her how to dress, how to apply makeup, how to make social chitchat. She rather thought they had seen her as a challenge and taken her on as a makeover project.

  The waitress approached with three plates of steaming hot food. She slid two plates in front of Webb and the remaining one in front of Roanna. “Yell when you need a refill,” she said comfortably, and left them alone.

  Webb applied himself to his food, buttering the pancakes and soaking them in syrup, then liberally salting and peppering his eggs. The slab of ham covered half the plate. Roanna looked at the mountain of food, then at his steely body. She tried to imagine the amount of physical labor that required that many calories, and felt an even deeper sense of respect for him.

  “Eat,” he growled.

  She picked up her fork and obeyed. Once she couldn’t have managed it, but keeping her emotions controlled had allowed her stomach to settle down. The trick was to take her time and take tiny bites. Usually, by the time everyone else had finished their meal she had managed to eat half of hers, and that was enough.

  That was the case this time, too. When Webb leaned back, replete, Roanna laid her fork aside. He gave her plate a long, hard look as if calculating exactly how much she’d eaten, but to her relief he decided not to push it.

  Breakfast taken care of, he drove her to the bar. The rental car sat forlornly in the parking lot, looking abandoned and out of place. A CLOSED sign hung lopsidedly on the front door of the bar. In daylight, the building was even more ramshackle than it had appeared the night before.

  Dust flew around the truck as he braked to a stop, and Roanna allowed the gritty cloud to settle while she fished the ignition key out of her purse. “Thanks for breakfast,” she said as she opened the door and slid out. “I’ll tell Lucinda to expect you.”

  He got out of the truck and walked over to the rental car with her, standing right beside the door so she couldn’t open it. “About last night,” he said.

  Dread filled her. God, she couldn’t listen to this. She put the key in the lock and turned it, hoping he would take the hint and move. He didn’t.

  “What about it?” she managed to say without any expression in her voice.

  “It shouldn’t have happened.”

  She bent her head. It was the best thing that had ever happened to her, and he wished it hadn’t.

  “God damn it, look at me!” Just as he had the night before, he cupped her chin in his hand and lifted her head so that she faced him. His hat was pulled low on his forehead, shadowing his eyes, but she could still see the grimness in them and in the line of his mouth. Very gently, he touched her lips with his thumb. “I wasn’t exactly drunk, but I’d had too much to drink. You were a virgin. I shouldn’t have made that a condition to going back, and I regret what I did to you.”

  Roanna held her spine very straight and still. “It was as much my responsibility as yours.”

  “Not quite. You didn’t know exactly what you were getting into. On the other hand, I did know that you wouldn’t turn me down.”

  She couldn’t escape that hard, green gaze. This was very like the night before when she had stripped herself naked in front of him, except now she was emotionally naked. Her lower lip trembled, and she quickly controlled it. There was no point in denying what he’d said, because her actions had already proved him right. When he had given her the opportunity to call a stop to what was happening, she had begged him to continue.

  “It’s never been a secret how I feel about you,” she finally said. “All you had to do at any time was snap your fingers, and I’d have come running and let you do anything you wanted to me.” She managed a smile. It wasn’t much of one, but it was better than weeping. “That hasn’t changed.”

  He searched her face, trying to pierce the remoteness of her expression. A kind of angry frustration flashed in his eyes. “I just wanted you to know that my return doesn’t depend on your sleeping with me. You don’t have to turn yourself into a whore to make sure Lucinda gets what she wants.”

  This time she couldn’t control her flinch. She pulled away from him and gave him another smile, this one even more strained than the first one. “I understand,” she forced herself to say with fragile calm. “I won’t bother you.”

  “The hell you won’t,” he snapped. “You’ve been bothering me for most of your life.” He leaned forward, scowling at her. “You bother me by being in the same room. You bother me by breathing.” Furiously he pulled her against him and ground his mouth down on hers. Roanna was too startled to react. All she could do was hang there in his hard grasp and open her mouth to the demand of his. The kiss was deep and intimate, his tongue moving against hers, and down below she could feel the iron ridge of his erection pressing into her belly.

  He pushed her away as suddenly as he had grabbed her. “Now trot on back to Lucinda and tell her mission accomplished. Whether or not you tell her how you did it is up to you.” He opened the car door and ushered her inside, then stood for a moment looking down at her. “And you don’t understand a damn thing,” he said evenly, before closing the door and striding back to his truck.

  CHAPTER 11

  When Roanna reached the long driveway to Davencourt that night, as exhausted from the second day of hard travel as she had been from the first, she groaned aloud at the lights still shining like a beacon from the big house. She’d hoped everyone would have gone to bed, so she could regroup before having to face the inquisition she knew was coming. She’d even hoped she could manage to get as much sleep as she had the night before, though that was unlikely. If she couldn’t sleep, then at least she could relive those tumultuous hours, savor the memory of his naked body against he
rs, the kisses, the touches, the shattering, unending moments when he’d actually been inside her. And when she felt calmer, she would think about the rest of it, the hurtful things he’d said and the fact that he didn’t want her again … But then why had he kissed her? She was too tired to think straight, so the analysis could wait.

  She used the automatic opener for the garage, then braked when her headlights swept across a car already parked in her space. She sighed. Corliss again, taking advantage of Roanna’s absence to park her own car inside. The detached garage had only five bays, and those bays were allotted to Lucinda, though she no longer drove herself, Roanna, Gloria and Harlan, and Lanette and Greg, who each had a car. Brock and Corliss were supposed to park their cars outside, but Corliss had a habit of ignoring that and parking her car in any empty space.

  Roanna parked her car beside Brock’s and wearily climbed out, hauling her small overnight case with her. She thought about slipping up the outside stairway and around the balcony to her room on the back, but she had locked the French doors before leaving and couldn’t get in that way. Instead she would go in through the kitchen and hope she could make it to the stairs unnoticed.

  Luck wasn’t with her. When she unlocked the kitchen door and opened it, Harlan and Gloria were both sitting at the kitchen table, demolishing thick slices of Tansy’s coconut cake. Neither of them were in their nightclothes yet, which meant they had been watching television on the large set in the den.

  Gloria hastily swallowed. “You couldn’t find him!” she exclaimed, openly gleeful of the fact that Roanna was alone. Then she gave Roanna a sly, conspiratorial look. “Not that you tried very hard, did you? Well, I won’t say anything. I thought Lucinda had lost her mind anyway. Why on earth would she want to bring him back here? I know Booley didn’t arrest him, but everyone knew he was guilty, there was just no way to prove it—”

  “I found him,” Roanna interrupted. She felt fuzzy headed with fatigue, and wanted to cut the interrogation short. “He had some business to take care of, but he’ll be coming home within the next two weeks.”

  Gloria’s color faded, and she gaped openmouthed at Roanna. The cake crumbs thus revealed were unappetizing. Then she said, “Roanna, how could you be so stupid?” Each word rose until she was fairly shrieking. “Don’t you know what you stand to lose? All of this could have been yours, but Lucinda will give it back to him, you mark my words! And what about us? Why, we could all be murdered in our beds, the way poor Jessie—”

  “Jessie wasn’t murdered in her bed,” Roanna said tiredly.

  “Don’t split hairs with me, you know what I mean!”

  “Webb didn’t kill her.”

  “Well, the sheriff thought he did, and I’m sure he knows more about it than you do! We all heard him say he’d do anything to get rid of her.”

  “We all heard him tell her to get a divorce, too.”

  “Gloria’s right,” Harlan weighed in, knitting his bushy brows with concern. “There’s no telling what he’s capable of doing.”

  Normally Roanna didn’t argue, but she was exhausted, and every nerve in her body felt raw from her encounter with Webb. “What you’re really worried about,” she said in a colorless voice, “is that he’ll remember how you turned your backs on him when he needed our support, and tell you to find somewhere else to live.”

  “Roanna!” Gloria gasped, outraged. “How can you say such a thing to us? What were we supposed to do, shelter a killer from the law?”

  There was nothing she could say to alter their position, and she was too tired to try any longer. Let Webb handle it when he got back. She had just enough energy to feel a flicker of interest at the prospect. If they thought he’d been intimidating before, wait until they saw what they had to deal with now. He was much harder and more forceful.

  Leaving Gloria and Harlan still sputtering their rage into the coconut cake, Roanna dragged herself up the stairs. Lucinda was already in bed; she tired easily these days, another indication of her failing health, and was often asleep by nine. Morning would be plenty of time to tell her that Webb was coming home.

  Roanna hoped that she would be able to get some sleep herself.

  If wishes were horses … Several hours later, she glanced at the lighted dial of her clock and saw the hour hand creeping toward the two. Her eyes felt grainy from lack of sleep, and her mind was so dulled by fatigue she could barely think, but sleep was as far away as it had ever been.

  She’d endured a lot of nights like this, waiting through the endless darkness for morning to come. All of the books on insomnia advised the sufferer to get out of bed, not to make the bed the site of their frustration. Roanna had already developed that habit, so the book hadn’t helped any. Sometimes she read to pass the hours, sometimes she played endless card games for one, but for the most part she would sit in the darkness and wait.

  That was what she was doing now, because she was too tired for anything else. She sat curled in a huge, overstuffed easy chair, large enough for two. The chair had been a Christmas present to herself five years ago, and she didn’t know what she would do without it. When she did manage to doze off, as likely or not it was in the chair. In winter she would wrap up in her softest, thickest afghan and watch the night slowly creep past her windows, but this was summer and she wore only a thin, sleeveless nightgown, though the hem was tucked over her bare feet. She’d opened the French doors so she could hear the comforting sounds of the warm night. A thunderstorm was passing by in the distance; she could see the flashes of lightning, revealing dark purple clouds, but the storm was so far away that the thunder, when she heard it, was only a faint rumble.

  If she had to be awake, summer nights were the best. And between insomnia and the other, she preferred insomnia.

  When she slept, she never knew where she would wake up.

  She didn’t think she’d ever left the house. She’d always been inside, and her feet were never dirty, but still it frightened her to think of herself roaming around unknowing. She’d read about sleepwalkers, too. People could evidently negotiate stairs, drive, even carry on a conversation while still asleep. That wasn’t much comfort, because she didn’t want to do any of that. She wanted to wake up exactly where she’d been when she went to sleep.

  If anyone had ever seen her on her nocturnal strolls, they hadn’t mentioned it. She didn’t think she did it every time she slept, but of course she had no way of knowing and she didn’t want to alert the family to her problem. They did know she was troubled with insomnia, so perhaps if anyone did see her outside her room in the middle of the night, apparently perfectly awake, they assumed she was having trouble sleeping and forgot about it.

  If it became known that she walked in her sleep … She didn’t like to think ill of people without proof, but she didn’t think she would trust several members of the household if they knew she was so vulnerable. The possibility for mischief was too great, especially with Corliss. In some ways Corliss reminded Roanna a lot of Jessie, though the relationship was only that of second cousin, which meant they didn’t share a lot of genetic material. Jessie had been cooler of thought but hotter of temper. Corliss didn’t plan, she acted on impulse, and she wasn’t prone to temper tantrums. For the most part she seemed restless and unhappy, and liked to make other people unhappy. Whatever it was she wanted out of life, she hadn’t gotten it.

  Roanna didn’t think Webb would get along with Corliss at all.

  Thinking of Webb brought her back full circle to how she had begun the day, not that her thoughts had been off of him for long at any one time.

  She didn’t know what to think. She was no good at analyzing a man-woman relationship, because she’d never had one. All she knew was that Webb had been angry, and a little drunk. If he hadn’t been drinking he probably wouldn’t have put the pressure on her that he had, but the fact remained that she had fallen into bed with him without the slightest resistance. The circumstances had been humiliating, but that secret little part of her had revel
ed in the opportunity.

  She wasn’t sorry she’d done it. If nothing good ever happened to her for the rest of her life, at least she’d lain in Webb’s arms and known what it was like to make love with him. The pain had been more severe than she’d imagined, but it hadn’t been able to overshadow the joy she’d felt, and ultimately the satisfaction.

  The tequila might account for the first time, and maybe the second, but what about the other times? Surely he’d sobered by the third time he’d reached for her, in the middle of the night, and the fourth, just before dawn. She still ached from his lovemaking, with a tenderness deep inside her body that she cherished because it reminded her of those moments.

  He hadn’t been a selfish lover. He might have been angry, but still he had satisfied her, sometimes more than once, before allowing himself release. His hands and mouth had been tender on her body, careful not to add to the pain she’d already experienced just in accepting him.

  But then he’d slipped out of bed and left her alone in the cheap little motel, as if she were a coyote woman. Wasn’t that what the wild, drinking crowd called a woman who was so ugly that, when a man woke up and looked over at her asleep on his arm, he gnawed off his own arm rather than wake her up? At least Webb had left a note. At least he had come back, and she hadn’t been forced to get back to her rental car as best she could.

  He’d said she acted like a whore for Lucinda. He’d said that she’d been a bother to him all her life, and that hurt more than the other comment. No matter what, she had always managed to hold on to the thought of those years before Jessie’s death as the sweet years, because she’d had him as a friend and hero. The awful night Jessie had been killed, she’d realized that he felt sorry for her and that had nearly killed her, but still the sweet memories had been there. Now she was mortified to think she’d been fooling herself from the beginning. Kindness wasn’t the same as love, patience wasn’t the same as caring.