Night Moves: Dream Man/After the Night (3 page)

With a family like that, the kid was doomed. In another couple of years, she’d be following in her mother’s and sister’s footsteps, because she wouldn’t know any better. And even if she did know better, all the boys would come sniffing around her anyway, just because her name was Devlin, and she wouldn’t hold out for long.

The whole parish knew that his father was screwing Renee, had been for years. As much as Gray loved his mother, he figured he couldn’t blame Guy for going elsewhere; God knows, his mother didn’t. Noelle was the least physical person Gray had ever seen. At thirty-nine, she was still as cool and lovely as a Madonna, unfailingly composed and remote. She didn’t like to be touched, even by her children. The wonder was that she’d even
had
children. Of course Guy wasn’t faithful, had never been, much to Noelle’s relief. Guy Rouillard was hot-blooded and lusty, and he’d found his way into a lot of beds before settling, more or less, on Renee Devlin. But Guy was always gently courteous and protective with Noelle, and Gray knew he would never leave her, especially not for a cheap slut like Renee.

The only person upset by the arrangement, apparently, was his sister, Monica. Starved by Noelle’s emotional
distance, Monica doted on her father, and was fiercely jealous of Renee, both on behalf of her mother and because Guy spent so much time with Renee. It was a lot calmer around the house now that Monica had gone away to school and become involved with her friends there.

“Gray,
hurry,”
Lindsey begged frantically.

He shoved his arms into his shirtsleeves, but disdained to button the garment, leaving it hanging open. “I’m ready.” He kissed her, and patted her butt. “Don’t get your feathers ruffled,
chérie.
All you have to do is change clothes. The rest of you looks beautiful just as you are.”

She smiled, pleased by the compliment, and calmed down. “When can we do this again?” she asked as they left the summerhouse.

Gray laughed aloud. It had taken him most of the summer to get into her pants, but now she didn’t want to waste any more time. Perversely, now that he’d had her, much of his ruthless determination had faded. “I don’t know,” he said lazily. “I have to report back to school soon, for football practice.”

To her credit, she didn’t pout. Instead she tossed her head so the wind lifted her hair as the Corvette streaked down the private road toward the highway, and smiled at him. “Any time.” She was a year older than he was, and had her own share of confidence.

The Corvette skidded into the highway, the tires grabbing asphalt. Lindsey laughed as Gray handled the powerful car with ease. “I’ll have you home in five minutes,” he promised. He didn’t want anything to interfere with her engagement to Dewayne, either.

He thought of skinny little Faith Devlin, and wondered if she’d made it safely home. She shouldn’t be wandering around alone in the woods like that. She could get hurt, or lost. Worse, though this was private land, the lake drew the local high school boys like a magnet, and Gray had no illusions about teenage boys when they were in a pack. If they ran across Faith, they might not stop to think about how young she was, only that she was a Devlin. Little Red wouldn’t have a chance against the wolves.

Someone needed to keep a closer eye on the kid.

Two

“F
aith,” Renee said fretfully, “make Scottie stop. He’s driving me crazy with that whining.”

Faith put aside the potatoes she was peeling, wiped her hands, and went to the screen door, where Scottie was slapping at the screen and making the little snuffling sounds that meant he wanted to go outside. He was never allowed to go out by himself, because he didn’t understand what “stay in the yard” meant, and he would wander off and get lost. There was a latch high on the screen, where he couldn’t reach it, that was always kept fastened to prevent him from going out by himself. Faith was busy with supper, though likely only she and Scottie would be here to eat it, and couldn’t go out with him right now.

She pulled his hands away from the screen and said, “Do you want to play ball, Scottie? Where’s the ball?” Easily distracted, he trotted off in search of his dog-chewed red ball, but Faith knew that wouldn’t occupy him for long. With a sigh, she went back to the potatoes.

Renee drifted out of her bedroom. She was dressed fit to kill tonight, Faith noted, in a tight, short red dress that showed off her long, shapely legs and somehow didn’t clash with her hair. Renee had great legs; she had great everything,
and she knew it. Her thick red hair was brushed into a cloud, and her musky perfume clung to her in a deep, rich red scent. “How do I look?” she asked, whirling on her red high heels as she attached cheap rhinestone earrings to her earlobes.

“Beautiful,” Faith said, knowing it was what Renee expected, and it was nothing less than the truth. Renee was as amoral as a cat, but she was also a startlingly beautiful woman, with a perfectly formed, slightly exotic face.

“Well, I’m off.” She bent to brush a careless kiss over the top of Faith’s head.

“Have fun, Mama.”

“I will.” She gave a husky laugh. “Oh, I will.” She unlatched the screen and left the shack, long legs flashing.

Faith got up to latch the door again, and stood watching Renee get into her flashy little sports car and drive off. Her mother loved that car. She had driven up in it one day without a word of explanation about how she had gotten it, not that there was much doubt in anyone’s mind. Guy Rouillard had bought it for her.

Seeing her at the door, Scottie returned and began making his “go outside” noise again. “I can’t take you outside,” Faith explained, endlessly patient though he didn’t understand much. “I have to cook supper. Would you rather have fried potatoes or mashed ones?” It was a rhetorical question, because mashed potatoes were much easier for him to eat. She smoothed his dark hair and returned once again to the table and the bowl of potatoes.

Lately, Scottie wasn’t as energetic as usual, and more and more his lips took on a blue tinge when he played. His heart was failing, just like the doctors had said would likely happen. There wouldn’t be a miracle heart transplant for Scottie, even had the Devlins been able to afford it. The few available children’s hearts were too precious to be wasted on a little boy who would never be able to dress himself, or read, or manage more than a few garbled words no matter how long he lived. “Severely retarded” was how he was categorized. Though a hard little lump formed in Faith’s chest at the thought of Scottie dying, she wasn’t bitter that nothing would be done about his failing health. A new heart
wouldn’t help Scottie, not in any way that mattered. The doctors hadn’t expected him to live this long, and she would just take care of him for whatever time he had left.

For a while, she had wondered if he was Guy Rouillard’s son, and felt furious on his behalf that he wasn’t taken to live in the big white house, where he would have the best of care, and his few years would be happy. Because Scottie was retarded, she thought, Guy was happy to keep him out of sight.

The truth was, Scottie could just as easily be Pa’s son, and it was impossible to tell. Scottie didn’t look like either man; he simply looked like himself. He was six years old now, a placid little boy who was pleased by the smallest things, and whose security was rooted in his fourteen-year-old sister. Faith had taken care of him from the day Renee had brought him home from the hospital, protected him from Pa’s drunken rages, kept Russ and Nicky from teasing him unmercifully. Renee and Jodie mostly ignored him, which was okay with Scottie.

Jodie had asked Faith to “double date” with her that night, and shrugged when Faith refused because someone had to stay home and take care of Scottie. She wouldn’t have gone out with Jodie anyway; their ideas of fun were radically different. Jodie thought having fun was sneaking some illegal booze, since she was only sixteen, getting drunk, and having sex with the boy or group of boys who were hanging around her that night.

Everything in Faith shuddered in revulsion at the thought. She had seen Jodie come in, stinking of beer and sex, her clothes torn and stained, giggling at how much “fun” she had had. It never seemed to bother her that those same boys wouldn’t speak to her if they met her in public.

It bothered Faith. Her soul burned with humiliation at the contempt in people’s eyes whenever they looked at her, at anyone in her family. The trashy Devlins, that’s what they were called. Drunks and whores, the whole bunch.

But I’m not like that!
The silent cry sometimes welled up in Faith, but she always held it in. Why couldn’t folks see beneath the name? She didn’t paint herself up and wear too short, too tight clothes like Renee and Jodie. She didn’t
drink, didn’t hang around rough joints trying to pick up anything in pants. Her clothes were cheap and ill made, but she kept them clean. She never missed a day of school, if she could help it, and she had good grades. She hungered for respectability, wanted to be able to walk into a store and not have the clerks watch her like a hawk, because she was one of those trashy Devlins and everyone knew they’d steal you blind. She didn’t want people to make comments behind their hands whenever they saw her.

It didn’t help that she resembled Renee far more than did Jodie. Faith had the same thick, dark red hair, as vibrant as a flame, the same porcelain-grained skin, the same high cheekbones and exotic green eyes. Her face wasn’t perfectly proportioned like Renee’s; her face was thinner, her jaw more square, her mouth as wide but not as full. Renee was voluptuous; Faith was both taller and leaner, her body more delicately made. Her breasts had finally grown, firm and pert, but Jodie, at the same age, had been wearing a bra cup two sizes bigger.

Because she looked like Renee, people seemed to expect Faith to act like her, too, and then never looked beyond their own expectations. She was tarred with the same brush that had painted the rest of the family.

“But I’ll get out someday, Scottie,” she said softly. “See if I don’t.”

He didn’t react to the words, just kept patting the screen.

As always, when she needed to cheer herself, she thought of Gray. Her painful feelings for him hadn’t lessened in the three years since she had seen him making love to Lindsey Partain, but rather had intensified as she had matured. The awestruck joy with which she had watched him at eleven had grown and changed, as she had grown and changed. When she dreamed of him now, physical feelings mingled sharply with the romantic ones, and with her upbringing the details were far sharper and more explicit than other fourteen-year-old girls could have been expected to know.

Her dreams weren’t colored just by her own surroundings; that day at the summerhouse when she had seen Gray with Lindsey Partain—Lindsey Mouton now—had given her a great deal of knowledge about his body. She hadn’t actually
seen his genitals, because at first his back had been turned to her, and then when he had gotten on top, their legs had blocked her view. It didn’t much matter, though, because she knew what one looked like. Not only had she taken care of Scottie all of his life, but Pa and Russ and Nicky, when they were drunk, were just as likely as not to pull it out of their pants and take a pee off the front step as they were to use the toilet.

But Faith knew enough details about Gray’s body to heat her dreams. She knew how muscled those long legs were, and that black hair grew on them. She knew that his buttocks were small and round and tight, and that he had adorable twin dimples just above them. She knew that his shoulders were broad and powerful, that his back was long, with the groove of his spine deeply indented between the thick layers of muscle. There had been a light dusting of black hair on his wide chest.

She knew that he made love in French, his deep voice soft and dark and crooning.

She had followed his career at LSU with secret pride. He had just been graduated with a double major in finance and business administration, with an eye toward taking over the Rouillard holdings someday. As good as he had been at football, he hadn’t wanted a career in the pros, and instead had come home to begin helping Guy. She would be able to catch glimpses of him year round now, rather than just during the summer and holidays.