by Sandra Hill
She stood and he noticed how kiss-swollen her lips still looked. Her nipples, even covered by an undergarment and the blouse, were evident to him, but maybe he was just remembering what he had actually seen when he had uncovered her body a short time ago.
No, no, no! He could not be distracted like this.
He would think later about what had happened betwixt them. And he might even feel guilty for his lustsome actions. Or mayhap not.
Miranda went through the sliding glass doors, and he heard the children cheering her arrival.
“You’re on my team. You’re on my team!” Larry yelled.
“I lost my ball,” Linda cried.
“Sam is cheating already,” Maggie said.
“Is Mordr coming out to play?” Ben wanted to know.
“Yeah, where’s Mordr?” Sam inquired of Maggie.
“Mordr, Mordr, Mordr,” all the children chanted before Miranda shushed them. The door slid shut, cutting off their words, but allowing them to still hear the sounds of shouting and laughter.
“Play? You?” Harek looked at him as if he had grown two heads.
“They want me to play croquet with them.”
“Crochet? Mordr! First, cooking. Now, knitting.” Cnut was genuinely concerned.
“What next? Will you be asking us if your butt is too big?” Harek, who should know better, was also concerned.
“Idiots! I said croquet, pronounced crow-kay, not crochet, as in crow-shay. Croquet is a game that involves hitting balls with mallets through wire hoops in the ground,” Mordr told them with disgust. Did they really think he was turning womanish? He should clobber the two of them to show how manly he still was.
Instead of just accepting what he had said, Cnut blathered on in another direction. “You didn’t play, even when you were a boyling. You were always so serious. Until you had your own . . .” Cnut’s words trailed off, but Mordr knew what he had been going to say. Until he had his own children. That was when he changed.
Mordr felt the blood rush to his head and his hands ball into fists. He wanted to hit something, hard. Only with the strongest willpower was Mordr able to control the urge to kill or do bodily harm. Just because his brother mentioned his children. Sadly, Mordr shook his head. He had thought he was past this rage.
Taking the opposite seat at the table from Harek, he asked, “What have you found out?”
Cnut was still standing by the counter, sniffing the fragrant loaves of bread and a dish of butter beside them. He reached for a knife, about to cut himself a slice.
“No!” Mordr said.
“Why not?” Cnut said.
“You’ll spoil your appetite.”
“You, making a jest?” Cnut put a hand over his heart, as if in shock. “Will wonders never cease?”
“Shut up, lackwit!” Mordr could tell Cnut felt bad for mentioning his children and was trying to distract him with this silliness. Mordr was getting an ache in his head from dealing with his brothers, or maybe it was from dealing with children.
“Did you really make that bread yourself?” Cnut was opening the refrigerator doors, taking out three more bottles of beer.
“For the love of an iceberg! You make a fuss over the littlest things. It was frozen dough. All I had to do was put it in the oven.”
“Really?” This from Harek, who was still tapping away at his little computer or iPad, or whatever the hell you called it.
“Well, I had to grease the pans and brush some melted butter on the top of the loaves to turn the crusts golden brown. Miranda’s servant told me how.”
“Servant? We no longer live in the Dark Ages,” Cnut chided Mordr.
“Her cleaning person,” Mordr amended. “As if it matters one whit who told me how!”
“Mordr, you are turning into a regular Mordr Lagasse,” Harek observed. “Remember when we were satisfied with unleavened manchet bread. Tasteless, it was, like modern pita bread.”
“Or pizza dough without the toppings,” Cnut added.
“By all the saints! Why are you two harping away about food? What have you found out, Harek?”
Harek took a long draw on his beer, then said, “Roger Jessup. Forty-two. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1972. Married Cassandra Hart in 2004. Five children: Margaret. Benjamin and Samuel, twins. Larry and Linda, twins. Convicted in 2011 of assault and battery, spousal rape, battery of a child, etc. Released from Ohio State Penitentiary on May 11. Currently resides at Heaven’s Gate Halfway House in Akron, Ohio, about to be released, one-year probation beginning on— Holy shit!” Harek looked up at him and Cnut before announcing, “Today.”
Mordr nodded. “Miranda was expecting this. Not the exact date, but her lawyer warned her that Roger would be released soon and to take precautions.”
“Which is why you were sent here,” Cnut guessed.
There was a light tapping on the sliding glass door, and the three of them glanced over to see a little girling with her nose pressed against the glass, watching. Linda. She gave Mordr a little wave.
Mordr sighed and took a long drink of the cold brew. “Let us go outside and face the horde.”
“Do you really think you should refer to children in that manner?” Harek asked.
“I will remind you of that question in an hour,” Mordr said.
The instant he opened the door, all eyes turned to them.
“Whoa! Who are they?” Sam said, pointing at Mordr’s brothers, who followed behind him.
Ruff’s head shot up and he galloped toward them. Mordr stepped aside and Ruff hit Harek full-on, almost knocking him to the ground. Standing on its hind legs, the dog proceeded to lick Harek’s lips.
“Yuck!” Harek said. “The beast must like the taste of beer.”
“Or else he just thinks you are a female dog,” Mordr commented.
“He better not hump my leg.” Harek laughed, trying to turn his face away from the slobbering tongue.
Ruff paused, as if considering Harek’s words.
“I hope this is not your guard dog,” Cnut remarked to an amused Miranda, who was sitting in a lounging chair where she had been trying to read a book.
Cnut’s voice drew Ruff’s attention. Giving up on Harek, he jumped on Cnut, and backed him up against the house where he began to give his mouth equal attention, accompanied by loud ruff-ruffs between licks.
“Do not dare laugh,” Cnut warned Mordr.
“Daddy never laughs,” Linda said, latching on to Mordr’s thigh with her usual pose of adoration.
“She thinks every man she meets is her father,” Mordr tried to explain to his disbelieving brothers.
“Yippee! Wait ’til I tell Johnny Severino we have three Viking nannies, not just one,” Larry chirped in and did a little dance that involved thrusting hips and pumping arms. He and Armod would get along well, sharing dance moves.
“I am not a nanny,” Mordr declared.
“House manager,” Maggie corrected with a rolling of her eyes at her brothers, implying that it didn’t make any difference but to appease Mordr’s feelings.
“You are not telling Johnny or anyone else about the doings in our house,” Miranda said, coming up to stand beside Mordr and his brothers.
Immediately, he was enveloped by the scent of lilies and cloves. He glanced at his brothers, but they didn’t seem to notice anything. At first.
But then Harek asked, “What?”
“Why do you look as if you swallowed a sour apple?” Cnut added Mordr.
“He always looks like he swallowed a sour apple,” Miranda contributed.
“Not always,” Mordr told her, thus getting in the last word.
Or so he thought.
“Would you like me to get an ice pack for your mouth, Mordr?” she asked sweetly. “Your lips are all swollen and bruised.”
Ben hitched up his short braies, which were hanging so low his arse crack was exposed. Undaunted, he sauntered toward them and asked Mordr’s brothers, “Are you going to help us dig a swimming pool?”
“Uh,” Cnut and Harek said.
“We are not digging our own swimming pool,” Miranda inserted quickly.
“A longboat then. They can help us build a longboat,” Sam suggested. “Mordr said he would.”
“I did not!” Mordr asserted.
“You didn’t say that you wouldn’t,” Sam asserted right back.
What kind of child logic was that?
“Tell us another story,” Linda urged, rubbing her cheek against Mordr’s thigh.
Ruff studied Linda’s action and came up on Mordr’s other side, using Mordr’s other thigh as a rubbing post, causing white fur to fly about.
“I’m hungry,” Larry said.
“Me too. Me too,” the other children chimed in.
“Pick me up.” Linda opened her arms and reached upward.
Mordr stared down at her, bleakly. He could not. He just could not. Wasn’t it enough that he was here, was surrounded by all these children? Did he have to bear their touch as well?
Sensing his discomfort, Cnut picked up Linda and swung her high in the air, causing her to giggle, and Mordr escaped into the house. He wasn’t hiding, exactly, but he needed some space to breathe.
From behind the closed door of the office, he heard everyone enter the kitchen. The sound of chairs scraping the floor. Water running. Child chatter. Cnut offering to slice the bread. Arguments over who sat where. Laughter.
Once Mordr was calmer, he was about to leave the office. He was embarrassed. Weak, he was, to let such little things affect him so much.
Just then, through the open doorway, he heard the phone sitting on Miranda’s desk ring. One, two, three times before the answering machine kicked on. A computer voice asking the caller to leave a short message with a name and number.
First, there was heavy breathing. Then, a male crooned, “Dad-dy’s coming!”
Even through the phone lines, over the miles, Mordr recognized the voice of evil and felt the berserkness he had tempered for so long begin to bubble to the surface. Like a volcano.
Would he be able to control it this time?
Ten
They could be Mickey Mantlessons . . .
A clearly distraught Mordr went into the house on hearing Linda once again call him Daddy, and his two brothers with deliberate care laid their cloaks carefully on a picnic table and moved nimbly about the yard in jeans and T-shirts, challenging the kids to a game of “killer croquet.” Considering their size, they were quick on their feet, dodging this way and that, jumping over hoops, bending to get just the right shot, making their own rules.
Miranda had started to go in after Mordr, but his brothers had held her back, telling her that Mordr just needed a little time to calm down. This was nothing unusual. He would be all right shortly.
So, Miranda watched with appreciation as the two men entertained the laughing children, taking their minds off concern for Mordr. There weren’t many men who came into her children’s lives, and she could see how much they were enjoying the male influence.
Cnut and Harek and Mordr were similar in appearance in terms of height and blue eyes, but had varying shades of hair and body types. Mordr was more bulked up than Cnut or Harek, although they all had muscles aplenty. Cnut’s hair was long and black, while Harek’s was more modern, the brown strands spiked into deliberate disarray. And, of course, all three had those slightly elongated incisors, more evident on these two brothers since they smiled so often, unlike the grim Mordr.
After Harek had taken his turn, Miranda asked him, “Do all seven of you brothers resemble each other?”
Harek shrugged. “Somewhat, I suppose, though we are half brothers.” At her arched brows, he explained. “Same father, different mothers.”
“Seven different mothers? Was your father married to all of them? I don’t mean all at once, of course.”
“You have no idea.” Harek laughed. “My father was a virile man, and, no, he did not wed all our mothers. He usually had two or more mistresses, in addition to his wife.”
Miranda was shocked, rather outraged, and did not try to hide her reaction.
“I know, I know, you want to say that my father was not so much virile as a horndog,” Harek observed.
Miranda didn’t even try to disagree. “And you don’t condemn your father for such actions?”
Harek shrugged. “My father is long dead. ’Twas a different time and culture.”
Miranda wanted to ask more questions, but just then Cnut hit the ball with his mallet so hard that it sailed over the back fence and into a neighbor’s yard. It just missed a picture window.
“Holy shit!” Ben exclaimed.
“Swear jar, swear jar!” the other children hooted.
“This is croquet, not baseball,” Harek scolded Cnut.
“ ’Tis boring the regular way,” Cnut contended. “Betimes a man must exercise his muscles.” He waggled his eyebrows at Miranda, who was scowling with disapproval.
Harek gave his ball a good whack, too, and it ricocheted off the top of the metal fence, almost hitting Ruff, who thought it was part of the game. The dog chased after the ball, picked it up in his big mouth, and refused to give it back.
“You’re right,” Harek said. “It is more fun this way.” He and Cnut fist-bumped each other.
They were like big children. “Not if you have to replace all the windows in the neighborhood,” Miranda pointed out.
“Wanna make a bet?” Sam, ever the gambler, asked then. “First person to knock out a window. I bet fifty cents on Nut.”
“Cnut,” Cnut corrected.
“Rhymes with toot,” Ben interjected.
“Or boot,” Sam suggested.
“Or Gut, like that guy at the Amish market says, ‘Gut Morning.’ ” Larry beamed at his own choice of rhyming word.
“Coot,” Linda suggested, jumping up and down with glee over her word.
“Coot is not a word,” Larry said, and stuck his tongue out at his twin.
“Is so! Is so!” Linda asserted. “Like cooties.”
“Jeesh! Don’t you guys know anything?” Maggie intervened. “Cnut is pronounced like the newt, an animal.”
“You were named for a salamander?” Ben asked with incredulity. “Cool!”
Cnut crossed his eyes, which looked funny on such a big man.
“I still call dibs on the bet that Cnut is first to knock out a window,” Sam said.
“There’s going to be no betting, Sam.” Miranda gave the boy a meaningful scowl. “You’ve been warned about that before.”
“Crap! It’s not like I’m takin’ anyone’s lunch money,” Sam complained.
“Swear jar, swear jar!” the other children jeered.
The kids thought baseball croquet was hilarious, and Miranda called a halt to the games before they all tried to whack their balls up into the air and not along the ground as they were supposed to do. Someone was going to get hurt, or there would be property damage, or both.
They helped Cnut and Harek put the game pieces back in the box. No one wanted to handle the one covered with Ruff’s slobber, but finally Cnut rubbed it on Ruff’s fur and added it to the others. He told the children, “A real soldier must not be squeamish about body fluids, like blood or spit. One time I had to clean the vomit off Harek when he hurled the contents of his stomach on seeing a huge Saxon hird rushing toward us.”
Five small jaws dropped. Not that they understood exactly what Cnut was telling them, but the mention of soldiers and blood was enough to impress them. Even Maggie.
Harek flashed Cnut a glance of disgust. “Believe that and I have a longship to sell you in the desert.”
The kids went into the kitchen to wash their hands in the sink, an enterprise that would result in more water on the floor and counters than on their hands and a dozen soiled paper towels. While she had a chance to speak in private, Miranda asked Mordr’s brothers why he reacted so strongly around the children.
“Mordr had children of his own at one time. P
recious to him, Jomar and Kata were. The two little ones were killed in a most heinous manner,” Harek explained.
“Oh my God! Was it recently?”
“ ’Twas a long, long time ago, but the memory lives with Mordr as if it were yesterday,” Harek said.
“Closure, that’s what Mordr needs.” Miranda was already thinking about the grief counseling group she led once a month. “How did they die?”
Cnut gave Harek a warning look.
Harek apparently agreed with Cnut’s warning. “I have said more than I should have. Anything else on the subject will have to come from Mordr.”
“Be forewarned, however, Mordr does not talk about his children,” Cnut told her. “He can go into a rage at mere mention of the tragedy that befell his family.”
“Just one more question.” Miranda couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to her before. “You mentioned children. How about their mother? Is Mordr married?”
“Not anymore. His wife was killed, too.” In an obvious attempt to change the subject, Harek asked Miranda, “Is there any more beer left in your refrigerator?”
“Sure. Stay here and relax until dinner.” She pointed to the patio chairs. “I’ll bring the beers out to you. First, I need to see how much damage my gremlins have done inside. Leave them alone for five minutes, and you never know what you’ll find.” Sure enough, there was water and dirt splattered everywhere, and their attempts to clean it up were making it worse. First things first. She took two beers out of the fridge.
Mordr walked in just then, emerging from the small guest bedroom she’d assigned him yesterday. He wore the same light blue Minnesota Vikings T-shirt as before, but he’d changed into a pair of navy-blue cargo shorts and leather flip-flops.
His eyes widened at the mess in the kitchen after he, or Mrs. Delgado, had gone to so much trouble to clean it so well earlier. Immediately, he took charge. “Miranda, take those beers outside to my brothers.” Through the sliding doors, they could be seen talking. Harek stretched out on the chaise lounge and Cnut at the patio table. “The children and I will get dinner ready.” Turning away, as if he expected her to obey his commands in her house, Mordr began ordering the children to various tasks.
