Running Scared (16 page)

“Refill?” Collin asked, gathering up her half-drunk glass.

“I’m fine.”

“Yes, Bibi, that you are,” he said softly before disappearing into the kitchen. The way he said her name made her tingle inside, though she mentally called herself a fool. He was her cousin and therefore off-limits, but ever since she’d been a little girl, when he’d carried her across a creek, keeping her party dress clean while his own trousers had become sodden and muddy, she’d looked up to him. They’d been playing where they shouldn’t have, down by the swollen waters of Bright Creek on their grandparents’ property.

They lost track of time laughing and throwing rocks into the stream, and Stuart, realizing they were late, had yelled at them to hurry back. He’d crossed the water easily, by hopping from one slippery rock to another and was racing up the bank to Grandmother’s big stone house on the hill. This was the day Bonnie was to be baptized into the church. Bibi had nearly fallen in the creek and knew she couldn’t make the leaps that Stuart had. She’d started to cry when Collin, tucking his shoes and socks into his pockets, had carried her across the rushing water. But as careful as he’d been, mud had splashed up his pant legs, and by the time they’d returned to Grandma’s house, Collin was in deep trouble. His mother nearly fainted at the dirt and water stains on his new suit pants, and Frank, loving father that he’d always been, was furious with his son.

“Good for nothing!” he roared, his face mottled red. “Why don’t you ever use that brain that God gave you? Huh?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry’s not good enough!” Frank spewed and Bibi was suddenly scared. Uncle Frank’s face was twisted evilly. He looked like a monster.

“I messed up.”

“Bend over.”

Everyone stopped talking. Only the wind sighing through Grandma’s lilac tree made any noise.

“I said—”

“No! Father, please—”

Frank lunged at his son and threw him down on the grass with such force the air rushed from Collin’s lungs. “You’ll do as I say! Now stand up, bend down, and grab your ankles.”

Collin fought tears of shame. “I—I can’t.”

“Be a man for once!”

Shaking, Collin struggled to his feet. “Now!” Frank bellowed.

Collin’s face drained of color. “But sir, I’m too old—”

“Not too old to go playing like a two-year-old in the mud. Well, if you’re gonna act like one, then you’re gonna have to be treated like one.”

“Frank,” Grandma admonished softly.

“It’s good for the boy,” Grandpapa had stated, his pipe clamped firmly between his yellow teeth. “Give him character.”

“It was my fault!” Bibi cried.

Frank cast his niece a harsh look. “No doubt, but it doesn’t matter. Collin can think for himself. He’s made us late, kept the priest waiting, made us all look like fools. This is just to make sure it won’t happen again. Now, boy, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll grab your ankles.”

“Please, Frank! Not here.” Grandma Sullivan intervened.

“Stay out of it, Bernice,” Grandpapa said, watching the display with grim determination. “Collin needs to learn his lesson.”

Aunt Maureen looked away and fiddled with a long strand of pearls. Bibi’s parents didn’t say a word; they made it a practice to stay out of other people’s business.

Face flaming in shame, Collin bent over. In front of all his family, Frank spanked him with a Ping-Pong paddle. He bit his lips and fought tears as his father, red-faced and smelling of brandy, whacked him ten times, each smack echoing in Bibi’s heart. Sweating from the effort, Frank finally dropped the paddle and took a long, triumphant swig from his glass. “Now, go upstairs and change and never…do you hear me, never, let some little girl talk you into disobeying me or your mother again.” Collin, swallowing hard, marched in silent mortification from the patio. “And say a hundred Hail Marys while you’re at it.”

The back door banged behind Collin. Frank, as if suddenly aware of the reproachful eyes cast in his direction, rolled his palms to the sky. “What?” When no one said anything, again he shouted, “What?”

“It was a little harsh,” Maureen said.

“It was wrong! Collin didn’t do anything but give me a piggyback ride!” Tears ran down Bibi’s face.

“You shouldn’t have put him in that position,” her father said. “Let’s get in the car.” Robert focused his gaze on Frank. “We’ll meet you at the church. Come on, Stuart.”

For the first time Bibi saw her brother, standing by the gazebo in Grandma’s rose garden. His face was white and he glared at his own father with hard eyes. “Don’t ever treat me that way,” he said to Robert.

“I won’t. Now, let’s get a move on.”

The children lagged behind their parents, and before climbing into the car, Stuart looked at Bibi with eyes that drilled into her soul. “I’d kill him,” he whispered, conviction edging every word. “If Frank were my father, I’d shoot him dead.”

“What can we do about Collin?” Bibi whispered.

“Nothing.” Stuart cast an angry look over his shoulder. “We can’t do anything yet. But someday—”

“Stuart. Bibi. Please! Get in the car.” Their mother Adele, was adjusting her hat in the front seat. “Let’s make sure our side of the family doesn’t look like Frank’s.” She shuddered and Bibi slid into the plush interior of the Mercedes. She knew her mother considered Frank to be a ruffian even though he’d been raised in the same family as her husband. “Sometimes there’s bad blood in the family,” she’d said often enough. “A throwback to some Neanderthal. That’s the problem with Frank. He’s filthy in mind and body!” For the most part, Adele kept her thoughts to herself and held her tongue. Family unity above all else was the motto she held dear to her heart. She’d been taught from an early age to bear incredible personal pain if it meant not compromising her social position or that of her family. But once in a while even she couldn’t hold her tongue.

They drove to the church, and Bibi, biting her lower lip, her head bent in feigned prayer, waited. Eventually Frank, Maureen, and their brood arrived, but Collin wouldn’t look at her, nor would he catch Stuart’s eye. He knelt at the pew, eyes cast downward in the centuries-old church and never so much as risked a glance in her direction.

It was later at Frank’s house as she was walking by the door to the den, looking for Stuart and Collin, that she overheard a conversation between her uncle and father. They were seated by the fire, swirling their drinks and smoking huge, smelly cigars.

“The boy needed to be taught a lesson,” Frank insisted, obviously defending himself.

“Not in front of the entire family.” Robert puffed angrily. His back was to her but Bibi saw the cloud of blue smoke he created. It rose to the ceiling like odoriferous mist.

“Look, Bobby, you do what you think best with your kids and I’ll handle mine.” Frank stood and walked to the mantel.

“The way you ‘handle’ the other boy?”

Bibi just stared at her uncle with wide eyes.
What
other boy? Frank had only one son.

“Let’s not talk about him now.”

There was another son? But where? Bibi’s mind was racing in circles.

“Why not? Don’t want the whole family to hear?” Robert said. “Think about it, Frank. Of course you don’t. Just like Collin didn’t need to be humiliated in front of his cousins.”

By this time Alicia, her white dress without so much as a spot, sneaked up behind Bibi. “What’re you doing?” she whispered, then looked through the crack between the door and the casing and saw the men inside. “Boy, you’re asking for it.”

Bibi inched away from the door. “Do you have a brother?” she asked. “I mean, besides Collin.”

“No.”

“But Daddy asked Uncle Frank about his other boy.”

“Oh.” Alicia tossed her long hair over a shoulder. “Him.”

“What—him?”

“It’s nothing,” Alicia said, her superior attitude back in place, though she avoided Bibi’s curious gaze. “Excuse me Mother wants me to practice my Mozart.” With that she scurried away in a rustle of white lace, her footsteps retreating to the parlor.

Later, Bibi caught up with her brother and demanded answers. She explained what she’d overheard and Stuart, curse him, didn’t seem the least bit surprised. He was forever keeping secrets from her.

“It’s about the bastard,” he finally revealed.

“The what?”

Stuart’s eyes gleamed. “What’ll you do for me if I tell you?”

“Just tell me!” she demanded, and after a little teasing he regaled her with the sordid tale of Frank’s whore and bastard son, Daegan O’Rourke, her other boy cousin who was scandalously illegitimate, not that she could be expected to understand everything this meant. From the look on Stuart’s face when he whispered the information to her in the attic of Frank’s house, Bibi understood that something wicked and nasty had gone on.

Now, years later in the pool house, as Collin returned with a refill of her drink, she gazed up at him and saw the young hero he’d been to her when he’d taken a beating that should have been hers. She ignored her half-smoked cigarette as he took a seat in the overstuffed chair and propped a foot on the matching ottoman. He seemed uncomfortable.

“Something’s bothering you,” she said.

“Something’s always bothering me.”

“Why?”

He lifted a shoulder, dismissing the subject, then took a long gulp of his fresh drink. If he wasn’t careful, she thought, he’d get himself drunk. Unlike Stuart, Collin couldn’t hold his liquor.

“Maybe I can help.”

“Oh, Bibi,” he said with a long sigh as he lolled his head back and she watched the glorious length of his throat. “If you only knew.”

“I’ll trade you my secret for yours.”

A blond eyebrow shot skyward and he skewered her with a look that made her want to squirm against the pillows. “You’ve got a secret?”

“More than one.”

“Interesting.” He glanced to the shadowed doorway on the other side of the bed, then, leaving his drink on a rattan end table, climbed to his feet. “Tell me, Cousin, what are they?” Walking slowly, he crossed to the bed and stopped, looming above her. His crotch was at eye level and she tried not to stare and wonder if he was getting hard. Something in his manner had changed and the air in the room seemed close and thick. She had trouble breathing. She thought she heard a door creak open, but couldn’t really tell over the hammering of her heart. “Do these secrets have anything to do with me?”

She swallowed hard, then took a long drink. “Maybe.”

“Don’t you know?” He reached down and tangled a finger in her hair, tugging a little. Deliciously painful.

She could barely breathe. “Collin—”

“Don’t.”

“I have to,” she admitted, knowing it was the time to unburden her heart.

“I don’t think—” It was as if he were struggling with himself, waging some inner battle. Because they were cousins—related—he had to deny any feelings he had for her. That was it!

“Just listen,” she pleaded.

He sank onto the bed and his face was barely inches from hers. “What, darling?”

Her heart was thudding like a jackhammer, her breathing raspy and shallow. Had he really called her darling? Did he, too, care more than he’d admitted. “I—um…” Oh, God, what could she say? She smelled the expensive Kentucky blend on his breath, felt his finger slide from her hair along her chin to rest at her lips.

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“I
want
to, don’t you understand. It’s something that I…that I’ve been thinking for a long, long time.”

“Oh, God.”

“Collin, I—”

“Just do what you want to, Bibi,” he said in a low voice that she barely recognized, a voiced filled with defeat.

She reached forward tentatively, her arms encircling his neck. “I want to kiss you.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said, closing his eyes.

“Just let me.” She pressed her lips to his and felt him shudder. Her fingers dug into the muscles between his shoulders and he groaned. He wanted her, she could feel it! As if the wall of doubt he’d erected had suddenly fallen into rubble, he kissed her back. Hotly. Hungrily. Fiercely.

“Is this all you want? Just to kiss?”

She could hardly think between the alcohol and the magic of his touch. “Yes…no.”

“Make up your mind, Bibi. It’s now or never.”

“I want to—to—”

“What, darling?”

“Love you,” she said weakly, saying the words that had hovered in her mind for a dozen years.

He groaned as if in agony, then twined his hands in her hair, jerked her face close to his, and kissed her so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. As if giving into a temptation he’d been denying for far too long, he slowly began unbuttoning his shirt, displaying a chest of raw muscle without any disturbance of hair.

She was suddenly frightened, but his skin, glistening in the light from that single bulb, beckoned her.

“We can do anything at all. We’re all alone.” He threw off his shirt and he was bare to the waist, all tight skin and corded muscles. With a half smile, he glanced to the open door and dark hallway that led to the kitchen.

“You think Stuart will be back—”

“Not for a while,” Collin said, though his voice was strangled. “Don’t think about him.” His dusky gaze found hers again and he circled her lips with a finger that smelled vaguely of smoke.

She touched the tip of her tongue to his skin and a soft moan escaped him. Inside she was turning hot and sticky and liquid, like honey warmed over open coals. She took more of his finger into her mouth, sucking loudly, making sensual noises that seemed to arouse him.

“That’s right, baby,” he whispered, one hand tangling in her hair as he pressed soft lips to hers. His mouth was open, his tongue quick.

Hot jets of passion spurted through her blood and she kissed him eagerly, tumbling back onto the bed as he pushed her down. His hands were strong, suddenly rough as he tore at the buttons of her blouse.

The first niggle of doubt pricked her cloudy mind. “Collin?”

“This is what you want, isn’t it?” he said. The fabric parted and her breasts, tucked into the demure cups of a cotton bra, were exposed. He rubbed her chest hard with the flat of his big hand and her nipples peaked.