For All of Her Life (31 page)

He shook his head. “Not yet. They have a few leads on the tire slasher, but no one saw the guy who attacked you, so it’s going to be damned hard to go after him.”

“Jordan, I don’t want the girls to be alone.”

“They can bunk in together.”

“I want Angel with them.”

He arched a brow.

“On a couch!” she said with a sigh.

“You’re right,” he agreed. “Want me to arrange it?”

“I think I’d like to handle it,” she replied, just as a wave sluiced over her. She kicked the water hard, shooting out of it. Alex was now paddling near them, grinning with pleasure almost as if she were a small child again.

“Chicken fights!” she said.

“What?” Kathy echoed.

“Chicken fights!” Bren called. She was an incredibly graceful swimmer. She barely seemed to move to stay afloat, her amber eyes nearly gold as they reflected the house lights that now fell on the water as darkness approached. “Angel and Alex against you and Dad. I take on the winner by the shoulders of the loser.”

“Bren, Alex, we’re far too old for such—”

“A challenge?” Jordan interrupted her. “The hell we are. You’re on. Kathy, get over here. We used to be good at this.”

“Yeah! A million years ago!” Bren teased.

“You’re right. You guys are on!” Kathy laughed.

She was still laughing when, balanced upon Jordan’s shoulders, she was ready to face her eldest daughter, who was balanced atop Angel. Angel took a step forward. “Alex! You’re strangling me. No hands on my throat!” Angel begged.

“Don’t worry. She’ll be in the water in a split second. Her mother has always been tough as nails,” Jordan advised. “Ouch! Kathy, you’re sitting on my hair.”

“That will teach you to get a respectable haircut!” Kathy advised. She reached out to Alex in a taunting gesture. “Come on, come on! Chicken? Get over here. Let me take you on. I’m just a regular iron maiden.”

A second later, she and Alex clashed. Jordan and Angel, face to face, nearly tripping over one another, were laughing. Bren was calling out advice to all four of them, and Kathy was laughing so hard she could scarcely grapple with her daughter, but in the end, she called out to Jordan to take a step back at just the right time for Alex to be dislodged from Angel’s shoulders by her own weight. The two struggled to regain their balance, teetered precariously for a minute, then fell, splashing into the water together, only to rise again in a fit of giggling.

“Next!” Kathy demanded.

“Yeah, and hurry. These are old shoulders she’s sitting upon. The back may go at any minute.”

“Are you insinuating I’m heavy?” Kathy demanded.

“Would I do such a thing?” he demanded. He stared at Bren. “Get a move on. Your mother’s heavy—for a light little thing. I admitted they were old shoulders, right?”

Bren, giggling, crawled up on Angel’s shoulders. It was Alex’s turn to call out advice, which she did with gusto. Bren nearly dragged her mother down. But, her pride at stake, Kathy refused to fall, tightening her legs around Jordan’s shoulders and torso.

“Ouch!” he cried.

“Oh, hush, be a man!” Kathy taunted, tapping him on the head. “Are we going to let these children beat us?”

“If we don’t beat them soon we are!” Jordan assured her.

“To your left!” Kathy cried, drawing Bren in the opposite direction as she gave the command. She toppled her younger daughter in the same manner in which she had disposed of Alex, but at the end, Bren went down with Kathy’s wrist locked tenaciously within her fingers. So Kathy fell as well, dragging Jordan with her. They all surfaced, laughing, disentangling.

Alex sobered suddenly, staring at the end of the pool. Everyone’s gaze followed hers.

Tara stood at the end of the pool, clad in a short cotton dress with a flare skirt and white sandals. She looked very young, and very hurt. She offered them a smile. “Family fun time, huh?”

Then she burst into tears, and turned and ran away.

Jordan groaned.

“Dad, she’s just trying to get a rise out of you!” Alex said impatiently.

“You should go after her,” Kathy told him.

“I told her when this week began—”

“That you were going to exclude her while you played with your kids and your ex-wife?” Kathy asked softly. “Jordan, it really isn’t fair.”

“But she knows—”

“Maybe you’re not exactly ready for the kind of relationship she wants, but you really need to say something to her.”

“—I don’t—”

“Please, at least talk to her. I’d feel better,” Kathy said.

He stared at her as if he’d like to throttle her.

“Mom, you don’t have to be Mary Poppins or Glinda the Good Witch of the South!” Alex snapped.

She stared at the girls. “This doesn’t concern you.”

“Actually, Mom, it doesn’t concern
you?
Bren said. “If Dad doesn’t want to talk to—”

“Don’t talk to your mother that way!” Jordan snapped.

Angel cleared his throat, looking mortified.

“Sorry, Mom,” Bren said sullenly.

“Please...” Kathy said to Jordan.

He sighed, lifted himself from the pool with a hitch of his arms, and padded, wet and dripping, toward the house.

“Mom, we were having such a great evening,” Alex said.

“You can’t manipulate the two of us back together,” Kathy told her. “Right, Angel?”

“Oh, I, er...”

Kathy laughed. “Didn’t mean to put you on the spot. Bren, Alex, listen to me. Dad has to resolve his relationship with Tara, one way or the other, understand?”

Neither answered her.

“Understand.”

She got two sullen ummms in return.

Leaving them behind, Kathy swam down to the deep end of the pool and lifted herself from the water to perch on the tile rim. A second later, they followed her, quietly pulling themselves out one by one to join her.

“Well,” Kathy said, “now that Dad and Tara are settled, Angel, I want you to sleep with my daughters.”

Despite his dark tan, Angel managed to turn crimson while his jaw worked.

“What?” Alex gasped.

“Angel, don’t look at me like that!” Kathy told him. “Obviously something is going on between you and Alex, and if you were to ask my blessing, which you certainly don’t need, you’d have it. But what I’m saying is I don’t want the girls alone. You don’t need to tell anyone else in the house, but, Bren, I want you in with Alex—her room is bigger. And Angel, please, I want you keeping guard on the daybed.”

Alex and Bren gaped at her. Angel looked from Alex to Kathy. “I... I—” he began.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” Alex asked, concerned.

Kathy shook her head. “I don’t really know. But I was attacked last night, and Dad has never been happy about what happened here ten years ago. Will you all do what I asked? Angel?”

“Of course, Mrs. Treveryan.”

“Kathy. Connoly,” she said softly. “Thanks, Angel. And nothing kinky, huh?”

“Mom!” Bren said with horror.

But Alex was grinning. “She trusts us, Bren. She’s just teasing.”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Bren said, relieved. She giggled. “But what are we afraid of?”

“It’s who,” Kathy said. “And I don’t know.”

They all nodded. “I’m going to shower and
subtly
bring a few things to Alex’s room,” Bren said, starting from the pool area.

“I’ll go make room,” Alex said, rising to follow her sister.

“I’ll keep watch,” Angel said with a grin, rising. He started away, then turned back to where Kathy remained perched on the tile at the deep end of the pool.

“I love Alex very much. Bren, too, of course,” he said. “We’ve kind of grown up together. I mean, I only love Alex in... in a romantic way, but we’re all the best of friends. I mean... oh, God, I mean... nothing kinky.”

Kathy smiled. “I know, Angel.”

“You really don’t mind?”

She shook her head, hugging her knees to her chest. “You seem to be a very fine man. I’m glad for Alex.”

He smiled. “Thanks. Thank you very much.”

“I imagine Jordan knows all about this.”

He shrugged. “We’ve never really said anything, but he’s always known how much we’re together.”

“He knows,” Kathy said. “And trust me, if he didn’t think the world of you, he’d have said something by now.”

Angel nodded, pleased.

“Keep them safe.”

“By my life!” he swore with all the conviction and passion of youth. Then he gave her a wave and started after the girls. Kathy leaned back on the edge of the pool, closing her eyes. The night breeze was soft and beautiful. She could hear the subtle movement of the water. The night touched her with gentle, balmy fingers.

Why the hell had she sent Jordan after Tara?

“Ah, Kathy! All alone? I’ve been looking for you.” The voice was husky. Like a whisper.

Belonging to
the
whisperer—or one of them, at least?

She jerked up, seeing that Larry Haley had come to stand by her. He grinned, then took a seat next to her, dangling his feet in the water. She looked quickly around. She couldn’t see or hear anyone else, the patio was deserted. There might not have been another soul within miles of them.

“You know, Kathy, I think we really all missed you most,” Larry told her, sighing.

“Really? How... nice,” she said.

“I was anxious to see if you would come. But then I thought you would. Actually I was pretty damned sure we’d all show up.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Why not? None of us have been quite the same since Blue Heron ended. We had such glory days back then! Maybe we all had to recapture them. The good—and the bad.”

“Maybe.” She stared at him, drawn by curiosity, yet somewhat unnerved. “Didn’t you want to get back together just for the fun of doing it?”

“I did want to get back together, and I didn’t.”

“Why not?” she asked.

He moved closer to her again.

“Ah, indeed, why not?” He hesitated, then looked at her, narrowing his eyes. “Should I confess? Like our dear departed friend Keith was always prone to do? He always said nobody could listen the way you did. That you could make people see things in a new light. That you had heart and compassion. Of course, he did think you had much more. So much time has passed, but if I were to tell you the truth, how could I know you would keep my secrets as you kept his?”

Kathy was acutely uncomfortable. She was with Larry. Alone. At the pool. The deep end. Just across the water and a spit of grass from the place where Keith had died, perishing in flames...

Someone in the house had been whispering...

And Larry was talking about confessions.

Keith might have been murdered. She had been attacked by a man with a knife.

She could swim, of course, if Larry meant to push her into the water.

But what if he didn’t just mean to do that. He was in his swim trunks as well, and he was in good shape. Not a huge man, but a wiry one, strong, nicely muscled. If he wanted to, he could force her in, and then under...

She’d never thought she’d be
afraid
of Larry Haley. He could be offensive, but was usually so blunt she had always taken him with a grain of salt. He was just Larry. A little rough around the edges. Afraid of aging. A man who needed to be in some business where people flocked around him, where he could be the center of the attention.

He’d been in town last night. When the attacker had brought the knife to her throat.

“Larry, don’t feel that because we’re back together again you’re compelled to talk to me,” she told him. She smiled. She inched away.

He inched closer again.

His features had become tense. The look in his eyes was serious. He moved even closer. Her heart beat a thousand miles an hour. She wanted to jump up and run.

She wanted to hear what he had to say.

Her throat was clogging, and it might well be that she needed to scream. After all, he’d been looking for her. So very soon after she’d had that knife pressed against her throat, her jugular.

“Larry—”

“I did it.”

She nearly choked on dry air. Then she inhaled, desperate for air.

He reached for her shoulders. “Oh, God, Kathy, I’m the one. I did it! I did it, I did it, I did it!”

His fingers dug into her shoulders. Terror filled her. She opened her mouth to scream as his face kept coming closer to her own...

T
ARA HADN’T HEADED FOR
her own room—she’d apparently known that he’d follow her, eventually—but had made a beeline for the guest house. She must really want privacy, he thought, closing the door quietly behind him as he entered through the kitchen.

She was in the downstairs living room, looking out the window, frowning. She must have seen him leave, and she’d probably assumed he was coming after her, but then she’d lost sight of him somehow and she seemed worried.

He must have made a sound because she turned around and stared at him. To his surprise, her cheeks were really damp, which made him feel like a heel.

“You don’t need to do this,” she said accusingly. She inhaled on a sob, sounding dramatic.

“Do what?” he inquired carefully. Come after her?

“Play Mr. Dad with your ex. She’s a big girl, she’s got a new beau. Except the way you’re flirting with her, it’s as if you’re trying to tell her something—or me.”

He didn’t reply for a very long time. She stared at him, growing indignant. “Jordan!”

He shook his head. “Tara, I did warn you that this might not be a great weekend for you to be around.”

“You wanted a vacation from me so you could sleep with your ex-wife?” she inquired incredulously.

He folded his arms over his chest. “Tara, we—you and I—enjoy one another’s company. We’ve had a nice relationship. A great relationship. But I don’t remember making any commitment in which I’d have to ask for a
vacation
to sleep with someone else, if that was what I wanted.”

“So you haven’t slept with her?” Tara said, striding toward him like a cat about to pounce.

“I’ve had two children with her. They were not by immaculate conception.”

“Jordan, damn you!” she cried, throwing herself against him. Instinctively, he caught her. She sighed, leaning against his shoulder.

“I love you,” she said.