CRAVE - BAD BOY ROMANCE (5 page)

“If you think that'd be best.”

He shrugged. “Rachel, if I knew what
was best for me, I'd already be out of here.”

“Really?” I’d only met him three or
four minutes ago, and I already ached at the thought of him exiting my life.

“I've got a feeling that you're
trouble. But,” he said, the ghost of a smile flashing across his mouth. “So am
I.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

I
reached out and grabbed a slice of pizza without waiting for him to offer,
chewing slowly and giving myself as much time as I could to process everything
that had been said so far tonight.

Grandma was dead. Done away with, if Cade
could be believed, and in this very house. And, come to think of it, the house
we were sitting in was more than likely going to be in my name in a few days.

It was almost too much to take in.

“Cade?” I said at last.

“Yeah?”

“Will you...” I sighed. There was no
way to say it without simply coming off as foolish, but he had information I
needed and I was surprised to find that I wasn't too proud to ask. “Will you
tell me a little about her? Do you mind?”

A smile broke through his gruff
exterior and he dragged one of his broad thumbs absently along his jawline. “Sure
thing. What do you want to know?”

I shrugged. “Just anything, I guess.
I don't remember very much, to be perfectly honest. Looking around this house
even now, some things are coming back and some aren't. It's like the life I
lived when I was here was a dream, and I've been awake for far too long to ever
hope to really return to it.”

He frowned, and for the first time I
got the feeling that he was really listening to me. “She was the most gentle
woman I ever knew,” he said, “to a fault. I've seen her take in strays, cats
with injured paws, dogs that some asshole had cut the tail off of and left to
rot on the street. People too. She nursed them all back to health, and if there
ever wasn't enough to go around it was Marie that went without and no one else.
If you weren't watching for it, you wouldn't even know that she didn't make a
plate for herself, and if you asked her she'd give you some bullshit answer
about how she’d eaten earlier, or how the last time she'd made lasagna it
hadn't agreed with her so she was going to skip it, just this once.”

“Were you one of the strays she took
in?”

He winced, and I could tell that it
had probably been a mistake to call a rough, rugged man like him a 'stray',
regardless of how close to the truth I was. I could picture him, however long
ago it'd been before he'd crossed paths with my Grandmother. Skinnier. Dirtier.

And even meaner.

Cade cleared his throat, and if I
hadn't have been enthralled with is handsome face I would have missed the friendly
crinkle at the corners of his eyes when he spoke about her. “I guess you could
say that, Rachel. I came here for the voodoo, and she saw right off that I was
as useless to the world as I was to myself. I wanted the people that had hurt
me to hurt in return, and she taught me that wasn't always the way it had to
go.”

I shook my head in disbelief. The old
anger seeped into my blood, and I tightened my hands on the table into fists,
trying to flatten them out before he noticed once I saw what I was doing.

“Something you don't like about that?”
he asked.

You bet your ass there
is
, I wanted to
shout, but instead I bit my lip and stood up from the table. “Is it safe here?
If she was really murdered, I mean...”

“I think so. They won’t cross me, and
if you’re planning on staying, I’ll guard you until you sell the house.”

Was this the way it was going to be?
Had I somehow inherited a bodyguard along with the property? Maybe, but there
was too much crowding my head for me to worry about that right now. “In that
case, I'm going to bed. I think I remember the way. End of the hallway and on
the left, right? It’s probably full of crazy shit too, but I’ll make do.”

“Yes, but-“

Now it was my turn to cut
him
off. I wasn’t in the mood for any
more conversation tonight, and I was afraid if I was in the same room with him
for any longer that I’d blurt out the truth about where I’d first seen him. If
there was ever a list of ways to make a shitty first impression, telling a guy
you’d seen him in a vision was probably somewhere near the top. “Just leave the
box when you're through if you like and I'll clean up in the morning.”

“Rachel-”

I held up my hand to cut him off
again. He was obviously going to rush to my Grandmother’s defense again, and I
didn't need that. Neither did she, truth be told. He'd shared a kinship with
her that I never could, and no matter how much he thought he was doing the
right thing by sharing her memory with me, his words couldn't change the fact
that she'd abandoned me, only to apparently become the Voodoo matriarch of a
neighborhood just north of the Louisiana bayou.

“You asked me to tell you what she
was like,” he reminded me. “No good getting pissed off if you don't agree with
what you hear.

He was right, but that just made his
words get under my skin even more. “Good night, Cade. I'll get the address of
the lawyer from you when I wake up, if that's okay.”

He didn't answer and I didn't wait
for him to say anything else. Conversation over, I spun on my heel and headed
down the hallway, toward a bed I'd never slept in and a room I hardly remembered.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Sleep has never come easily for me.

Even as a girl, right after Mom and
Dad headed off to Heaven without me, I could remember laying on my back and
staring up at one of the many ceilings that made up the next decade of my life.
Sometimes the ceiling was slats of wood. Most times it was plaster, except for
a little while when it was bumpy and spotted and reminded me of what I imagined
the skin of a which would look like, even though I now knew it was just stucco.

Most of my foster families had tried
to help me with the insomnia, but counting sheep and sipping warm glasses of
milk didn't give me any more relief than the threats of violence when they
inevitably got sick of the scrawny girl who read books under her blanket or
used up battery after battery in her Walkman in a desperate attempt to make
herself tired.

I realized that my luggage was still
in the other room, just inside the front door where I'd left it when I'd gone
hunting for the useless light switch. There was no way I was going to feel my
way back down the dark hallway looking for it, not if it meant risking running
into Cade again. I didn’t want to see or speak to him anymore tonight. The mere
hint of his presence in the kitchen, rattling plates in the sink as he puttered
around doing God knows what was enough to set my teeth on edge.

No, I'd go to bed in the clothes I
was wearing if I had to.

Except, sadly, the very thought
disgusted me. I'd worn them on the airplane, and flying was always a sweaty,
cramped, uncomfortable thing that made me want to burn the clothes I was
wearing for the trip, not sleep in them. “You're being stupid,” I told myself,
stripping my shirt off over my head and wiggling out of my jeans defiantly. “You
can sleep in your underwear in your Grandmother's bed, you damn fool. It’s only
weird if you make it weird…”

I stumbled forward in the dark, trying
to find the mattress and feel for the covers, relieved to find that someone had
made the bed already. If I had to go hunting for sheets and blankets in the
dark, I'd probably give up and go sleep in the car instead of put myself
through the hassle.

And there was no way I was going to
paw through her drawers in the pitch black. I didn't feel exactly right even
being in the house without her actual permission, even though she’d sent me the
key. Sleeping in her bed, if sleep ever decided to come to me, would be as far
as I would push my luck tonight.

I pulled back the blanket and climbed
into bed, half expecting to feel the slither of snake skin or to have the tacky
pink tongue of a skink to greet my bare legs. Grandma certainly appeared to
have been voodoo through and through, even if I had my suspicions that she knew
as well as anyone that the spells or hexes or charms or whatever they were
amounted to nothing more than meaningless mumbo jumbo. She'd made the magic her
life as much as anyone could, and I wouldn't put it past her to have some of
that junk in her bedroom, too.

If there was some odd spell component
under the sheets, I sure didn't feel it. I pulled the blanket all the way up to
my chin despite the muggy heat that seemed to hang off of everything and closed
my eyes, trying to push myself into my dreams through nothing more than sheer
force of will.

For a moment or two, I thought it was
working. My mind's eye drifted along, and then caught something worth focusing
on in the random clutter of worries, paranoias and hang-ups that was my mind.

Until I saw that the thing I’s chosen
to focus on was Cade. Again…

As if summoned by the fact that I was
soon imagining his mouth drifting to my erect nipple, somewhere in the real
world I heard the back door bang shut as he went out to his shed. Up until now
I hadn't let myself wonder how I'd painted him without ever having seen him
before, but here alone in the dark in a house that may or may not somehow
belong to me, with sleep as far away as happiness, I didn't have any way of
running from the questions.

How? How had I made his form appear
on that canvas, and on the notebook on the plane? Was there more to it than I
was letting myself believe, or was it simply mere coincidence? One sexy bad boy
looked a lot like another, right?

There was every chance, after all,
that my celibacy had made me eager to draw
any
man, and that in my eagerness to fluke a chance encounter with a ‘soul mate’ I
was looking at every random occurrence as a sign of something greater.

Maybe. The way I was thinking about
him was dangerous, though. I wasn’t going to stay in Louisiana for an instant
longer than I had to, and a fling wouldn’t help me in the long run. I didn't
like the thought of him springing up in my mind whenever he wanted, so I rolled
over and closed my eyes even tighter than I had before.

I lay there, feeling sorry for
myself, drifting along in a haze of emotion I didn't quite understand. I hadn't
spoken to my Grandmother in so long, hadn't even really
thought
about her in years, except for the occasional passing wave
of anger at my lot in life or jealousy over the fact that other people I knew
had decent relationships with their grandparents and I was stuck basically having
to do without.

Had I really lost anything, now that
she was gone? Was I any more without the kindly, voodoo practicing woman that Cade
seemed to know so well
now
than I had
been a week ago? Five years ago?

The lump in my throat told me that I
already knew the answer to that question, if I was simply willing to be honest
with myself. Reconciliation had always been an option.

Always, that is, until now...

Now she was gone forever, and I'd
never taken the chances I had to, at the very least, say that I was doing okay.
She probably went to her grave thinking I hated her, and there wasn't anything
I could do to stop that now.

Her grave! With a twist in my gut
that felt like a physical force, I leapt out of bed and stood beside it in the
dark, near panic surely written on my face. Grandma’s funeral! Please, tell me
I hadn't missed it…

When was it scheduled?

Cade would know. I hurried to the
door, banging my shin on the sharp edge of a random piece of furniture in the pitch
black hard enough to make me swear under my breath. I don't think I'd ever be
able to forgive myself if my Grandmother didn't have any blood relatives at her
last earthly event.

I managed to reach the door and yank
it open. Cade had blown out the candles, probably a good thing unless I wanted
my new house to burn down to the foundations. It was dark out here too though,
and I felt my way back down the hall to the kitchen.

I thought about going back to the
nightstand to grab my phone so that I could use it to light my way, but thought
better of it. I was more than halfway to the back door, after all. The hinged screen
that led to the backyard had been clearly visible when I'd been sitting in the
kitchen with Cade, and now that I felt the cool linoleum on my bare feet I knew
I had to be near.

Yes, here was the countertop where
I'd seen the coffee maker, and here was the edge of the ancient fridge that
should have been humming along, were there still power coming into the house. I
followed the wall to where I'd seen the back door and smiled to myself in the
dark when I found the handle on the first attempt. Maybe I was already getting
used to the place, after all.

Don't be like that,
Rachel,
I told
myself.
Don't get attached. Your whole
life is waiting for you about nine states north of here, and there's no way
you'll be happy sweating the rest of your years away in the bayou.

I sighed, knowing my inner voice was
probably right. I'd sell the house, get whatever I could out of it and try to
put myself into a better position in Detroit. Hell, maybe I'd even move out of
the city and find a little farm, raise some chickens and a goat and take the
opportunity to focus on my painting.

I pushed the screen door open with a
creak that would have made any Foley artist working on a haunted house movie
green with jealousy and stepped outside.

At least, that was the plan. In
reality, I foolishly shifted my weight to a step in such a state of disrepair
that it wasn’t even able to support my weight. I almost went crashing to the
ground, and would certainly have face-planted if I hadn't been able to grab the
door and, with a metal-against-metal shriek of protest, force it to hold me up
while I recovered.

Cade's words echoed in my head.
They'll tell you she slipped and fell on the
back stairs...

I didn't have any problem believing
that was the most likely option, given how close I'd come to almost doing the
same thing just now. Sure, Grandma would have known that the step was as shoddy
as it obviously was, but still. An old woman, in a hurry or tired or not
feeling well for a million other reasons could certainly find herself in over
her head, and that didn't mean there was any reason to suspect foul play.

The moon lit up the night, and I had
more than enough light to find my way across the overgrown shrubs and through
the hanging ivy that crawled in every direction to the 'shed' Cade surely lived
in, even though I could tell just by looking at it that he probably had more
floor space in there than I did in my apartment back home. It was well kept up,
with not a scrap of peeling paint or a shingle out of place. If he did the
maintenance, he did a damn good job.

Except for the stairs that almost
killed me, of course…

The shed wasn’t elaborate, but I had
the feeling he liked it that way. Indeed, it seemed like more than enough for a
man like him. As I got closer I could hear the gentle lilt of an acoustic
guitar playing inside, and it wasn't until I heard him clear his throat and
start the song over that I realized he'd been playing the music himself.

I listened to him strum the strings
for a few seconds, feeling my body start to sway to the rhythm. It was
enchanting, and when I realized what I was doing I grit my teeth and pushed on.

At first I couldn't find the door.
There wasn't one in the back like I'd expected, leading to the yard the same
way Grandma's had. I went around the side of the building and found a wrought
iron fence. It was only when I peered through the dark bars that I saw light
seeping out from a long window set into the front door, which faced the street
and had a walkway leading up to it from the sidewalk just like any other house
on the block would have.

At least he had the electricity
turned on, which was more than I could say for Grandma’s house.

That explained the pizza, too. I'd
wondered, in the back of my mind, how he'd gotten the pizza guy to bring the food
to him if he lived in the backyard the way he'd insinuated, but this made
sense. Grandma had two houses on her property, and they both had street access.
It just so happened that the literal man of my dreams lived in one of them, and
there was every chance that I was pretty much legally his landlord, or would be
in a day or two...

Great
, I thought to myself.
Just perfect.
The last thing I needed
was an entanglement like this…

I went through the side gate and
picked my way through the moonlight to his front door. He’d quit the guitar
playing while I’d been looking for a way to get in. It was hot out here, and I
listened for the hum of an air conditioner to try and work out if he was still
awake and moving around in there. No luck, but my investigation was good enough
at least to let me know that the shower was running.

I sighed… I wasn't about to turn
around and head back to bed, not without finding out when Grandma's funeral
was. Instead, I reached for the doorbell and was surprised to discover that
there wasn't one. I knocked instead, and when the shower didn't stop I got
frustrated enough to just bite the bullet and try the door.

It wasn't locked. I knew it was
stupid, but there was something about Cade that made me feel… What? Not safe,
exactly. His edges were too sharp for something as normal as 'safety'. Still,
as rough and tumble as he may be to the rest of the world, my Grandmother had
trusted him, and I found myself being willing to as well.

So I turned the doorknob and went inside.
It's not trespassing if you pretty much own
the joint,
I reassured myself.
Right?

As soon as I stepped inside and shut
the door behind me as quietly as I could, I knew I was in trouble. This wasn't
a place for me. It wasn't a place for any woman. There were rumpled jeans
thrown in the corner, and I had a feeling that they were the very same pair
he'd been wearing an hour or so when we were together in the kitchen. There
were other clothes around too, but it looked far more like he thought they belonged
there than that he was a complete slob.

The room was long, and it had
everything from a kitchenette at one end to a bed at the other. I felt like I
was getting a candid peep into his entire life, and that was even
before
I saw with a start that the kitchen
table had a couple of handguns and a long rifle on it, not to mention a few
bullets or shells or cartridges or whatever they were technically called. I
thought I recognized one of them, and I shuddered at the thought of the gun
that had been pushed to my temple.