After Dark (13 page)

    "Then, Johnny Mack is a bastard,
just like me."

    Lane gritted her teeth in an effort
to stop herself from loudly and vehemently correcting Will. Calmly, she
said, "Don't use that word to describe yourself. Not ever."

    "Sorry, Mama. Does illegitimate
sound better?" he asked sarcastically.

    "You have every right to be
angry and confused, and if I could spare you from the ugly truth, I would.
God knows, I've spent fourteen years trying to protect you."

    "So, my father really was a
white trash, high school dropout bastard who did yard work for a living
and screwed around?"

    "If you're trying to upset me
by using foul language, then you've succeeded," Lane told him.
"If you need to lash out at me, then go ahead. I think I'm strong enough
to take it."

    "I don't want to hurt you, Mama.
I just want you to level with me about my real father."

    "All right. Johnny Mack was
everything Kent told you he was, but… there was a lot more to Johnny Mack,
too. He was a very handsome young man, and practically every female in
the county found him fascinating. He'd grown up the hard way. Without a
father. With a mother who neglected him. And with no money. He wasn't a nice
boy from a good family. But he wasn't all bad either, despite what Kent would
have had you believe."

    "What kind of guy gets a girl
pregnant and walks out on her?" Will asked, his jaw tense, his dark
eyes narrowed as he sought an answer from his mother.

    "He never knew Sharon was
pregnant, and by the time she told me, none of us had any idea where he
was." There was no point in telling Will that several people-including
Miss Edith-had believed Johnny Mack dead.

    "So what's he doing back here
now?"

    "Lillie Mae has known for the
past ten years where he was. She sent for him. She thinks that you and I need
him."

    Will shot up off the stairs and bounded
down into the foyer. "Why would she think we need him? We don't want
him here, do we? If he'd wanted to help you, to repay you for saving his life,
why wasn't he around when Kent was treating you like dirt?"

    ''What do you know about my saving
Johnny Mack’s life?"

    "Lillie Mae told me about some
men beating him up and dumping him into the river and your bringing him
home and the two of you taking care of him. She told me tonight, when you
were in the living room talking to him."

    "I see."

    "You told him to go back to wherever
he came from, didn't you? You told him we didn't want him in our lives. Lillie
Mae was wrong. We've got each other. We don't need him."

    "Johnny Mack won't leave just
because you want him to. He's determined to help me, if I'm arrested for
Kent's murder. And he wants to meet you."

    "Well, I don't want to meet
him."

    "He invited himself for
lunch tomorrow."

    "And you told him it was all
right?"

    Lane shook her head. "No, of
course not. I didn't say it was all right. But you have to understand
that Johnny Mack isn't the type of man to take no for an answer. He never
was. If he wants something, he goes after it."

    "And what does he want, Mama?
Does he want you?"

    "He wants you, Will. He wants
his son."

    "He's a little late, don't
you think? I don't want him. And I will not sit down and share a meal with
him. Do you hear me? If he shows up here tomorrow, you tell him that I said
as far as I'm concerned, he can go straight to hell."

    James prepared his wife a whiskey
on the rocks and handed it to her. Edith stopped pacing the floor to accept
the liquor.

    "You saw him. You talked to
him. And you're sure he's really Johnny Mack Cahill?" Edith glared at
Buddy Lawler, who stood, hat in hand, in the center of the Persian rug in
the library.

    "Yes, ma'am, it's Johnny Mack
all right. He's the same-swaggering, cocky, belligerent-but he's different,
too. After what happened fifteen years ago, you'd think when I gave him
a warning, it would have at least scared him a little. But it didn't.
He's not scared."

    "What did you find out about
him?"

    "Not a damn thing from him, but
I'm having a check run on him, and we should have some answers by tomorrow,
if not sooner," Buddy said.

    'He's come back because of Lane,"
Edith said, then sipped on her drink. "There's no way he could have
found out about Will, not unless…Maybe he and Lane have kept in touch
all these years."

    ‘’Well, whatever his reasons for
being here are, he told me he was staying until he got good and ready to
leave. And he gave me a message to deliver to you, Miss Edith."

    "Why that cocky young son of a
bitch!" Edith downed the remainder of her drink, coughing when the
strong liquor burned a hot trail down her throat "What was the message?"

    "Tell Miss Edith that trouble
is back in town and there's a bad moon rising, so she'd better watch out.'’

    "He's threatening me! I want
you to arrest him and-"

    "You can't arrest the man for
sending you an unpleasant message," James said.

    Edith snapped her head around and
glowered al her husband. Her pipsqueak of a husband. What had she ever
seen in James Ware? "Of course Johnny Mack is going to be trouble.
That's all he ever was. If we don't find a way to get rid of him-"

    "Perhaps you'd better find out
more about exactly who Johnny Mack Cahill is now, my dear, before you make
plans for Buddy to eliminate him," James suggested. "Besides,
he didn't do such a good job of it the first time, did he?"

    "Damn it, I thought he was dead,"
Buddy said. "Kent thought he was dead. Hell, we all did. Me and the
boys had beaten the crap out of him before we tossed him into the river.
No normal, ordinary matt could have survived."

    Edith clutched the empty glass in
her hand. "Yes, well, we all know that Johnny Mack wasn't and no doubt
still isn't just an ordinary man."

    There had never been anything
ordinary about her first husband's bastard son. From childhood, the boy
had been extraordinarily good looking. But then John Graham had been
a handsome man.

    And despite the fact she had been
a trailer trash whore, Faith Cahill had been strikingly beautiful.
Edith had always known about her husband's philandering ways and had heard
rumors about Faith's child, that he hadn't belonged to Faith's husband,
who had been killed in a barroom brawl when her child was an infant. Then
the first time she had seen the boy, when he was six, on the street in town
with his mother, she had known Johnny Mack was John's son. As much his son as
Kent had been. Except that Kent bore the Graham name and was the heir apparent
to the Graham fortune.

    "Should I be jealous, my dear?"
James asked, a smirking grin on his round, ruddy face. "A man doesn't
like to know his wife considers another man extraordinary."

    Edith whirled around, rage in her
eyes, and threw her empty glass straight at her husband. He ducked just in
time to prevent contact with his head. The crystal tumbler hit the edge
of the marble hearth behind him and shattered into jagged shards.

    "You're a stupid fool,
James." Edith gave him a murderous glare, then turned back to Buddy.
"Find out everything you can about Johnny Mack and call me, even if
it's at two in the morning. I'm not going to allow that piece of trash to
come back into my town and threaten me. And if he thinks he's going to claim
Will as his son, then he'd better think again. He doesn't deserve to be a
father to that boy."

    ‘’I’ll go down to the station
right now,'' Buddy said. ‘’And I won't leave until I get some information
about Johnny Mack."

    ‘’Yes. Fine." Edith dismissed
him with a wave."See yourself out-"

    When Buddy left the room, James turned
to go out before he reached the door, Edith called after nun. "Where
are you going?"

    "I'm going upstairs, to my
room," he replied. "I'll see you in the morning, my dear."

    Edith watched her husband walk
away from her. Groaning, she ran a nervous hand over her sleek, short hair.
After John's death, James had been attentive and caring, and before
they had married the sex had been rather exciting. James had been, if
nothing else, an eager lover. The fact that he was nearly twenty years younger
than she and far from rich hadn't bothered her then. He had agreed to sign
a prenuptial agreement that protected her assets. As far as the age difference
was concerned, even her worst enemies would have to admit that Edith Graham
Ware didn't look her age.

    But if she had it to do over again,
she wouldn't have married James. She would have enjoyed an affair with
him and then moved on. Her husband was attentive, agreeable and often
reminded her of a lapdog. He tried his best to please her, but the subservience
which she demanded from him was the very thing that she hated most about
him. Although she had grown to hate John Graham, the man had never bored
her. In or out of the bedroom. And truth be told, she had found the fact
that she couldn't dominate him highly stimulating. They had been two
strong-willed people who, when they came together, exploded into flames.

    And it had been the same with his
son. Only more so. What Johnny Mack had lacked in skill as a young lover,
he had more than made up for in stamina and lustiness. A quiver of sexual
longing spiraled up inside Edith at the thought of Johnny Mack. What would
he be like now, as a man and as a lover?

    "You called James a fool,"
Edith said aloud, then huffed softly. "But you're the fool, Edith, for
entertaining thoughts about that man."

    Johnny Mack hadn't come back to Noble's
Crossing to renew his affair with her, of that she was certain. If he had
returned for any woman, it was Lane.

    Smiling softly, Edith glided across
the room, removed the lid from the whiskey and poured the liquor into a
glass. She lifted the tumbler to her mouth and took a sip.

    But Lane would soon be unavailable.
She was going to be arrested, tried and convicted of Kent's murder. It
was only a matter of time. A matter of giving Buddy and DA Wes Stevens their
orders. A matter of calling in a few favors. She wanted Lane punished.
She wanted Will and Mary Martha protected. And she wanted Johnny Mack to
learn that around here, she still ruled the roost.

    James Ware made kissing sounds
into the telephone and sighed contentedly when he heard Arlene's throaty
giggles. More than anything, he wished he were with her tonight. In her
bed, in her arms. Hell, just in her!

    "I miss you, Jimmy boy. I miss
you every minute we're apart."

    "I miss you, too, sugar. You
know how bad I want you right now, don't you?"

    "Not bad enough to leave that
big old mansion and come across the Chickasaw River to my house."

    "Now, you know I can't sneak
out at night. I can't take a chance that one of the servants might see me
and tell Edith. I know for a fact that your friend Jackie already suspects
something's going on between us."

    "She's just guessing. I haven't
told her a thing. I promise I haven't. I wouldn't do anything to make
problems for you. For us. It's just I'm so tired of waiting. I want us to
get married and have a real life together."

    "Try to be patient just a little
while longer, sugar. Just a few more transactions and I'll have enough
money for us to get away from Noble's Crossing forever."

    "You aren't doing anything
awfully illegal, are you?" There was genuine concern in Arlene's
voice. "You've told me that you're ciphering money out of Miss Edith's
accounts, but I don't understand how-"

    "Don't you worry your pretty
head about it," James assured her.

    Hell, yes, there was something illegal
about what he was doing, but he was counting on Edith being too damned embarrassed,
when she found out, to actually have him hunted down and prosecuted.
Besides, he planned to change his name. He had already arranged for
phony birth certificates and social security cards for himself, Arlene
and her kids. Those alone had cost him a pretty penny. He had a tidy little
sum in his Swiss bank account, but not quite enough.

    As long as Edith never learned
that her precious Kent had discovered the discrepancies in her accounts
and confronted him, then he was safe. How the hell that drunken lout's
brain had functioned well enough for him to have figured out what was
going on, James would never know. But Kent sure wasn't going to tell anybody.
Not now.

    James smiled. Nope. Kent Graham
wasn't ever going to cause anybody trouble again. Not him. Not Lane.
Not Will. Not poor Mary Martha.

    "I can't help worrying about
you," Arlene said. "You know how much I love you, how much I've
always loved you."

    "Not as much as I love
you."

    He grew hard and aching just talking
to Arlene. She had always had that effect on him. When they'd first gotten
back together, he had thought it was only lust, that he could have an affair
with his teenage sweetheart and remain unhappily married to his rich
wife. But eventually he had realized just how much he enjoyed being
with a woman who made him feel like a real man. And Arlene had that
knack-making him feel ten feet tall. For that alone, he loved her.