Secrets Rising. Suzanne Mcminn

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СКАЧАТЬ “The people at the store sent you over here. You’re not going to hurt me unless you’re stupid. You’re not stupid, are you? Anything happens to me today, my friends’ll be looking for you, not to mention my family. Especially with your car sitting right out front.”

      His car that wasn’t going anywhere. She had a point, but it was unrelated to why he really didn’t want to go inside her house.

      “I’ll fix you something to drink,” she said cheerily. “I owe you anyway for all the trouble of driving out here to get the keys, and if you hadn’t had to do that, you wouldn’t be stuck out here now with a tree trunk on top of your car.”

      She was already walking into the house, leaving the screen door to bang behind her and the front door open. Her slim, sexy figure disappeared through the shadowed parlor even as she kept talking, seeming to simply expect him to follow. He opened the screen door and stepped inside in spite of himself.

      “You want water or tea?” she called back to him. “Or I’ve got some Coke.”

      He walked through the front room, a parlor with a slanted, scuffed hardwood floor. Rows of antique-looking photographs filled the room, solemn-faced eyes following him from the walls. The house smelled good, like cinnamon and sugar. Homey. Not that it was anything like the home he’d grown up in on the seedier streets of Charleston. Homey like…you saw on The Andy Griffith Show. He half expected to find Aunt Bea in the kitchen, pulling fresh-baked coffee cake out of the oven.

      He arrived in the open doorframe between the kitchen and the parlor. She’d gotten down an amber-colored glass from a cabinet and was pulling every beverage known to man out of the fridge. Coke, iced tea, lemonade, milk…She’d probably offer him a cookie next.

      And she was still talking.

      “I’ve got sweet tea made, but if you don’t like sweet, I can make some unsweetened. I don’t mind.”

      “I’ll just take some water.” He didn’t really care, truth be told. The whole scene suddenly felt terribly domestic. When was the last time he’d been in a kitchen with an attractive woman?

      He didn’t want to remember, but of course he could. Sheila had lived with him for two years in their nice, newly-constructed, cookie-cutter condo in South Charleston. She’d wanted to get married. He’d been in no hurry. Maybe he’d known all along it wasn’t going to work out.

      Sheila hadn’t wasted any time when things had gone bad. Sooner was better than later, he figured. He and Sheila would have never made it anyway. She’d just been…convenient, for a while. He’d scarcely looked at a woman since. He liked being alone, detached.

      And yet he found himself watching Keely Schiffer with a sort of odd and uneasy longing. Ghost pain, he thought wryly, like a patient who felt sensation in an amputated limb. He didn’t think he missed Sheila, or her constant pressure.

      He hadn’t realized till now that he’d been missing anything at all other than work.

      “Please sit down,” she said when she finally gave him the glass. “Well, I hate to say it, but this rain is a good thing because we’ve had an awfully dry spring. I’m just so sorry about your car. Some welcome to Haven for you, huh?”

      She pulled out a chair when he didn’t. He scooted it around a pile of broken pottery he noticed on the floor as he sat. He placed the glass on the table.

      “I was just about to clean that up.” She disappeared for a minute into the next room then came back with a broom and dustpan. She bent down, picked something up, and he saw what he’d missed at first—some sort of small package. It was wrapped in silver foil and he read the label.

      “Somebody’s birthday?” There, his contribution to chitchat.

      “Mine.”

      She glanced up from sweeping the shattered bits of cream and blue pottery. Her eyes looked huge in her slender face, and as he watched, she chewed on her full, unpainted lip. He looked away from her, to the box. Happy Birthday, Baby. She had a gift from somebody who called her Baby.

      He carefully returned his gaze to Keely. “It’s your birthday today?” he asked, and told himself he was not going to look or even think about her nibble-on-me lips. Maybe she was married. He didn’t know why he’d assumed she lived way out here in the sticks alone. It didn’t matter to him anyway.

      “Tomorrow. The present was inside the cookie jar. It fell down off the shelf.” She waved her hand vaguely toward the ledge over the cabinets. It was full of decorative glass items and various pieces of pottery. “I guess he was hiding it there. My husband, I mean. A branch must have hit the roof. I guess the jar was too close to the edge of the shelf. The house really shook and—” She stood, the pottery bits tidily swept into the dustpan in one hand. “I forgot. I need to get up in the attic and check it out. If rain’s coming in, I’m in real trouble.”

      So she was married.

      “You’ll be in trouble when your husband finds out you stumbled onto his surprise.” He was feeling suddenly much lighter, more in control.

      She propped the broom in the corner of the kitchen and dumped the shards of pottery in the trash before replying. “He’s not going to find out. He’s dead. And he left me plenty of surprises. Most of them weren’t good.”

      The look she gave him was flat and emotionless, then a shadow slid across her expression. She looked away quickly, as if afraid he had some kind of laser vision that would see something she didn’t want him to see. Jake felt more uneasy than ever, and he wasn’t certain if it was because she wasn’t married after all or because he wanted to know what her deceased husband had done to hurt her, and he shouldn’t want to know anything about her at all.

      The muted patter of raindrops on the roof filled the kitchen. The storm was slowing down. Or at least, the rain was slowing down. Wind gusted against the house, strong as ever. The clapboard farmhouse creaked a bit in the storm.

      “I’m sorry,” he said.

      She shook her head. “No, I am. I shouldn’t have said that. You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.” She grabbed the wrapped box off the table and turned away, pulled open a wide kitchen drawer, shoved it inside and slammed the drawer shut.

      He heard a noise like thunder and suddenly the house shook so hard, he felt the floor move under his feet. The drawers in the kitchen banged open and Keely stumbled on her feet. Automatically, he shot up, grabbing hold of her upper arms. Glass hit the floor around them from the shelves over the cabinets. He heard pictures fall in the parlor.

      “Oh, God, I knew I should have had that maple tree taken down.” She sounded panicked. “It’s too close to the house.”

      “I don’t think that was a tree.” He hadn’t heard anything strike the roof.

      There was no sound for a long beat, as if even the wind held its breath, and then came a roar. The house seemed to roll under them in waves. Jake fell against the table, still holding Keely, and together they crashed onto the floor. The sting of glass cut into his back. He could feel her breasts against his chest, her quivering belly and thighs, her breaths coming in shocky pants near his cheek. He stroked his hand down her spine, only meaning to soothe. She was soft—

      The floor rocked violently beneath them. “We have to get out of the house,” he grunted, pulling her СКАЧАТЬ