Stone Kissed (11 page)

“You met her once. How’s your fish?”

“I still liked her.” Randi smiled as if she saw right through him. “You’re going back to her. If not tonight, tomorrow.”

“I thought you’d want to see some of the local glass.”

“I do. But you’re going back to her.”

“Yeah, damn it. Yeah, I am.”

***

Whether it was that house or just the fresh air of the hills, Cecily was hungrier than usual, the buzz off her kill wearing away too quickly. She needed Grant sooner rather than later, but stalking a man in Stewardsville was difficult. Everyone knew where Wolverton was at any given minute of the day—but they knew where Cecily was as well. It wouldn’t do to have her car seen at the caretaker’s shed behind Steward House or parked outside the hospital when she had no people inside to visit. A couple men kept her apprised of Grant and Delia’s whereabouts, but messing with memory was tricky, and she’d gotten it wrong before. The locals got mighty upset when men went missing.

Grant was either being coy, or Delia had some talent in bed. He hadn’t returned any of Cecily’s phone calls, although some minimal resonance carried through her voice mail and he should have felt the compulsion to call her back. He hadn’t answered her e-mails or text messages. When he was at the job site,
she
was always there, lurking in a corner, glowering, with some power tool in her hand.

Tonight, however, a new redhead had shown up on his arm. If he was finished with Delia and back on the market, Cecily had no intention of letting someone else pick him up. June, which was still the best month for a wedding, was fast approaching. Or maybe the end of May—she was so very, very hungry.

Myrna glared from the bar as Cecily entered. She ignored the old cow.

“Mr. Wolverton,” she purred. “Long time no see!”

When she threaded a note of sex into her timbre, carrot top in the seat across from him flared her nostrils.

Good.

Cecily smiled brightly at the interloper. “Cecily Johnson at your service. And you, Miss…” She held out her hand. The bitch didn’t take it.

“I’m Grant’s sister.” The redhead lifted another forkful of fish to her own perfectly spaced, even white teeth.
Braces.
Hmph. Cecily had never needed them. “So nice to meet you, Cissy.”

“Cecily.” She took a deep breath. “Likewise, Miss Wolverton.”

She waited a beat for his sister to give her Christian name.

Nothing.

Cecily pressed on. “If you have time this week, Grant, I would be more than happy to meet with you and walk you through the history of your new…acquisition. I don’t know if I mentioned it in the messages I left, but we’re exploring having Steward House take its place on the National Historic Registry.” She had, in fact, mentioned it three times. It was a red herring, of course. She had no intention of letting such valuable land get tied up in the rules and regulations involved in maintaining an historic home.

“Who are you?”

She paused for a moment, taken aback by his blunt question. “Cecily…oh, yes. The Chamber of Commerce and the Stewardsville Historical Society.” She smiled brightly, pushing confidence through her voice. The Chamber had cancelled every monthly meeting so far this year, and the old guys were gathering in the barber shop instead. As for the Historical Society—those old biddies never spoke about anything of importance when she did attend the meetings, and they’d recently let their official charter lapse. She’d tried to fill the vacuum of leadership, but they weren’t interested in her suggestions, shoving her aside with handfuls of finger sandwiches and coffee in cheap foam cups.

“Where are you in the process?” His grin was gone.

“We’ve begun discussing possibilities. Mr. Forrest was so helpful before the tragedy.”

It was a lie. Forrest was an obstructive son of a bitch, but he wasn’t stupid. Historic homes had cachet but little else to offer their owner except increased restrictions and potential property value loss. In the wrong housing market, they could become major white elephants. Stewardsville was definitely the wrong housing market. In ten years, though, with the development she envisioned and the rebirth of the downtown as a chic culture center, the Steward estate would be primo property. “Since you own the land, we would be thrilled if you would participate in our talks.” His eyes narrowed at her, so she backpedaled. “Or a representative, like Miss Wolverton here.”

“Steward House is a private residence. My private residence.”

“So you are planning to stay with us?” She kept her eyes wide with effort. She’d heard the rumors but brushed them aside. Her plans to marry Grant involved only brief visits from the city to siphon off a little juice. She’d encourage him to stay up there as often as work demanded it. She had no intention of being a clingy wife—indeed, a long-distance marriage could make for a long-term marriage. Without him breathing down her neck, she could more easily implement her plans for some remodeling of her own.

He nodded without answering her question, and the silence grew.

“Stewardsville is a lovely, family-oriented hometown.” She poured honey into her voice and widened her smile to include Missy. Instead of smiling back, the little bitch smirked.

Cecily turned squarely to face Grant Wolverton, inhaling so the shadow of her lacy red silk cami rose up in the vee of her custom-fitted black suit jacket. Her breasts were full and flawless and usually achieved what her voice, rarely, couldn’t. “I know you’ve been busy at the house.” She poured smoky bourbon whiskey into her voice. “I’d like to give you some respite. May I take you to dinner this week?”

His nostrils flared, his pupils darkened, and she had him. He wasn’t tone-deaf after all.

“That would be delightful, Cecily.”

She leaned in closer, allowed her fingertip to graze the back of his palm as his hand rested on the base of his wineglass. Her finger tingled with the energy. Grant was a vodka martini, Manhattan and a Long Island iced tea all rolled up in one. Him she would take sip by sip, drawing out the pleasure for weeks, months, years.

“I’ll show you anything you want,” she promised, meaning it absolutely.

“I’m sure I’ll enjoy everything you show me.” His voice was deep and it reverberated in the drying shell of her womb. Cecily sucked in her breath. The end would come as it always did—decrepit, whining and messy. But she wouldn’t think about it now, while this sexy creature took her hand and tapped it with his index finger.

“Grant, I’m afraid you’ll be occupied with me for the next few days.”

Cecily didn’t bother to look at the little flea sitting to her right. She kept her eyes on the prize. He, unfortunately, released her hand, patting it gently as if he knew she felt bereft.

He shook once, like a wet dog, and then straightened. “There is that.”

Damn the bitch!

“I’m sure we can make plans for after you’re gone.” Cecily spoke directly to the redhead. She fed in a high tone of menace, at a wavelength particularly tuned to a younger woman’s ear. She was gratified to see Grant’s sister recoil.

Grant looked pained but resigned. “Fine, Miss Johnson. We’ll have dinner next week.”

She should have been elated but she wanted more. She wanted him to want to have dinner with her, to want to spend time with her as he so obviously enjoyed spending time with his sister, and with Delia. But this skirmish was not the war. She could wait a couple more days.

She wove slowly through the tables. The rough-hewn floorboards were hardly good for her black patent kitten heels, but she managed to keep her balance. Besides, he was watching her ass—he
had
to be—and she wanted to give him a good show.

“Who wears a suit to joint like this?” muttered Grant’s sister.

“Real estate agents,” he replied. “Never know when to quit.”

He was right. If there was one thing Cecily Johnson didn’t do, she didn’t quit. She always came out on top.

She imagined Grant Wolverton chained to the four posts of her big bed, begging her to ride him, begging her to let him go. It cheered her immeasurably.

“Don’t let the door hit your ass,” Myrna sniped.

Cecily turned back and sucked in through softly pursed lips.

Hah! The old broad blanched.

***

“Cecily, Carl Benson here.”

She shook her head as she peeled off her red cami. Like she didn’t recognize his voice?

The answering machine droned on,

“Got a missing person’s report from Texas. Wasn’t that handyman of yours last winter named Russ?”

The device exploded against the wall in a hail of plastic shards and glinting fragments of metal. She smashed the barstool into the couch, but that wasn’t very satisfying, so she slammed it on the counter too. Granite. Good old local stone. Only the
best
for her mother, Cecily thought, as she snapped the leg fragments into stakes and speared them into the shredded foam of the sofa cushions.

“It can’t be that bad, Delia,” Annabel soothed. “I’m sure it’s a lovely drawing.”

Delia sat between the twins, her hands over her face. It was her habit on Sunday mornings to celebrate sunrise in the cemetery, but she rather wished this morning she’d remained locked behind her bedroom door.

“Put your coffee on my side,” Isobel demanded.

“Whatever for?” Delia asked.

“So I can smell it.”

“You can’t smell, Isobel.”

“Actually…” Annabel began, but stopped when Grandmère made a sound.

“Actually, what?”

Annabel hesitated. “Actually, I rather think we can.”

“Hush, Annie,” Isobel chided.

Delia climbed down.

“Grandmère?” She asked in a small voice.

“Yes, Delia. It’s true. It’s quite delightful. I see why so many graves have roses.”

If she were smart, Delia would leave. She would walk down that hill and she wouldn’t come back for a good long while. If she were really, really smart, she wouldn’t come back at all. Instead, she would trade all the statues in her apartment—his, hers, all of them—for another one of Grant’s fat checks. But Delia, if anything, had become less intelligent in the last few weeks. She’d lost some brain cells in that first orgasm and they had been draining out her vagina ever since. She closed her eyes and forced the question out. “Do you move too?”

Silence. A long silence.

“Don’t be silly, Delia.”

For the love of all that was holy—Grandmère was lying.

“Are you real?”

Grandmère’s voice was dry as dust. “
Oui.
I am real.”

“Annabel and Isobel?”

“More and more so each day.”

“What do you mean by that?” Delia craned her neck to look up in the empty shadows beneath the veil.

“The world is larger, brighter. And we are more present in it.”

Delia stood and stretched her fingers up to touch the edge of the veil.

“Stop it. That tickles.”

Delia jerked her hand away.

“It was joke,
chère.
You take yourself too seriously. Every time you experience an existential crisis, you come running up the hill to reassure yourself we are real and you are sane.”

“‘Existential crisis’?” Delia glanced down the hill reflexively. “You prove my point.”

“Bah! Do you think you are the only person who uses the big words? I’ve been standing here for the better part of 160 years, Delia Forrest. I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever learn.”

Delia held her breath, waiting for the next onslaught, but Grandmère said nothing more. Indeed, the entire cemetery was silent. The Fullilove’s cherub had stopped humming. Heywood’s limestone lamb didn’t “baa.” Delia saw them as everyone else must see the statues—hard and immobile, ominous, distant, dead.

“How do other people stand this?” Delia asked, but nothing answered.

She walked among them, reaching her hand out to stroke an arm, a wing, a cheek. She returned to Grandmère and placed her fingers on the folds of her Grandmère’s sleeve.

“I believe in you,” Delia whispered. “I believe in me.”

The stone flowed, slow and viscous like mortar, and Grandmère’s fingers wrapped around Delia’s thin little wrist.

***

Even though her back was to the door, she knew the moment Grant’s foot landed on the lawn. She turned to watch him come up the front walk, his strides slow, fluid and as graceful as the flow of living stone. He wore a shirt and tie today, and he looked magnificent. She turned away as he stepped in the door so he wouldn’t see the longing on her face.

“You’re going to church?”

“Went to first service. Randi’s here. She wanted to see the sun travel through the stained glass.”

Delia nodded and rubbed her wrist. She’d come back to the house for the peace of quiet stones. Stones that stayed where they were stacked. She hadn’t come for this flutter in her chest. She hadn’t come to bury her face in a man’s clean white shirt and have him wrap his arms around her back. He smelled like fresh air.

“I dropped the reward.”

“What? Why?” She pushed back and looked up into his face.

“It didn’t work, and it doesn’t matter.”

“You still think my father did it.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does. The arsonist is still out there.”

“We won’t find him that way. No one in this town admits to knowing anything.”

Her wrist tingled. None of the sculptures knew anything either. She pulled her arms away from his waist, and he let her go but wrapped his hand around her wrist. That wrist. “Show me the house, Delia.”

She shook her head, afraid to speak, afraid that if she opened her mouth, her whole story would come rolling out in a tide of words.

“Show me the house as you see it,” he insisted. “Sweep away the dust. Hang the pictures. Place the sculptures. Show me what, or who belongs here.”

Why was he torturing her this way? It was hard enough to work here day in, day out, knowing Brogan could be happy for decades in Grant’s kitchen. Athena would be perfect atop the mahogany bookshelf in the back library.

Delia knew how this house would be in five years, in ten years—full of voices and laughter from children and statues alike. Sophie and the shepherdesses would sing in sweet harmonies while reedy blondes in chignons and cigar-wielding robber barons toasted Grant’s latest coup with their flutes of champagne. Steward House was meant for love, glamour and magic, and Delia could envision it all. She simply couldn’t have it.

He took her hand. Her palm burned gold. Instead of letting go, her fingers threaded through his, tightening.

The house. He wanted to hear about the house. She could do this.

“Fine.” She pointed to niche on the left of the staircase next to the aperture to the west parlor. “Put Bert—the hare—over there, where he can be seen by your guests as they walk in the door.”

“You mean, where he can see my guests, right?”

“That isn’t what I said.”

“But it’s what you mean. Are you a witch?”

“You will want smaller pieces in here.” Delia shouldered past him, pulling him into the parlor. “I suggest a single piece atop that mantel, flanked by florals.”

“Is that how your mother had it?”

“No. She had a row of family photos. If you have a collection you’d like to display, bring it to me and I’ll incorporate them into the design.”

His laugh was short, harsh. “No. I’ve got a painting of Randi and me, but it’ll stay in the city for the time being.”

“Why?”

“She says she doesn’t want to come. It’s a nice house, but she doesn’t want to move.”

She turned to look at him, but his face was blank. “Really? I mean your apartment’s gorgeous, but so…” she trailed off.

“So what, Delia?”

So cold. So glassy and sparkly. So empty.

“So large for one person.”

Grant’s eyes narrowed. “Myrna says you’re a witch.”

She closed her eyes and sucked in a breath. “It’s a stupid local legend. You’re in the backwoods, Grant. Can’t you hear the banjos?”

His hand, large and warm, covered the small of her back. She pressed back into the heat of his palm, feeling the melting begin at the base of her spine. He wanted the damned tour. They would take the damned tour and get out.

Despite herself, however, Delia gradually relaxed. Grant asked intelligent questions. He understood why she’d chosen reproduction papers in the piano room and radiant-heat subflooring in the baths. He’d agreed with her about using recycled decorative beams but modern low-VOC paints. In the restoration of Steward House, Grant and Delia were of one accord. They shared a single vision for the house.

The words and ideas bubbled and bounced between them while his hand wrapped around hers and he let her pull him from room to room. Grant Wolverton was the first and only man who’d held Delia’s hand. No big deal. It was absolutely no big deal whatsoever that they were holding hands. After all, he’d screwed her twice. She was a one. Another one.

As they climbed the last stair into the empty attic, Delia pulled free and crossed to the far end, opening the large dormer window to give herself something to do besides hurt. “These don’t stick,” she said, knowing she’d reached a new level of inanity. “The old ones always did.”

“Delia, do you think you’re a witch?”

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t react.
Shrug!
a voice inside her screamed.
Laugh it off, right now
.

He stood in the shadows on the opposite end of the attic, his eyes dark with…what? Glee? Anticipation? Any minute now his wings would flare open to split the roof off Steward House, and he’d swing forth his sword of lightning.

“Please. Please forget about it. It’s small-town mumbo-jumbo.”

“What do you call the Green Man?”

“Pardon me?” She bumped back against the window sill.

“The foliate mask. What’s his name?” He ambled toward her, ducking to avoid hitting the overhead beams. He closed in until he stood directly before her, his eyes focused out the window behind her. “What is his name?”

“Brogan,” Delia whispered. And it felt good to say it. She swallowed, took in a deep breath and said it again, “Brogan.”

He took her by the shoulders. She gave way willingly when he leaned her against a fresh raw strut beside the new window. She lifted her face into the glow that came from his own.

“I want him. In the kitchen. By the back door.”

Delia closed her eyes. How did he know Brogan belonged there?

Oh, yeah. The sketch pad.

Her soul dropped through her feet. This was what he wanted. What he’d wanted all along.

“You can get another mask, Wolverton. The old ones are rare, but if anyone has the contacts, you do.”

He turned his face, his breath caressing her forehead. She could smell the slightest hint of aftershave and she inhaled in spite of herself.

“I want to buy that one—buy Brogan—from you.”

“He’s not for sale.” She tried to pull back, but he had her pinned to the wall.

“One thousand.”

“No.”

“Three thousand?”

Delia shook her head, the curls on her forehead brushing his nose. It must have tickled, because he pulled his face back, ducking his head until she met his eyes.

“Six thousand.”

“I said he’s not for sale.”

“Ten thousand dollars, Delia.”

“Grant, even if I wanted to sell him, I couldn’t begin to set a price. This is ridiculous.”

“One hundred thousand dollars, Delia.” His voice was cold and his eyes held a feral light.

“You mean that, don’t you?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

Delia pushed his chest with both hands. He didn’t budge. She braced her heel against the wall, grounded down through both feet, and shoved as hard as she could. “He. Is. Not. For sale.”

“Why?”

She pulled her hands back and wrapped her arms around herself, refusing to answer.

“Why, Delia?” He bent over her bowed head. “Just say it. Say he’s family and this whole conversation is over.” He wrapped his hands gently around her wrists. “Tell me the truth.”

“He’s mine.” She put power into her voice. “He’s family.” She lifted her chin and looked Grant in the eye. “Brogan is my family.”

Grant nodded slowly and released her. And then he kissed her forehead and turned to leave. He lowered his arms to his sides as if he were retracting his wings.

“Grant?”

He stopped and looked back at her.

“Grant,” she said again, and it was all she could say. Every plea, every need she had must have been written on her face. She’d told him her truth and if he walked away from her now, he became just one more person who thought Delia Forrest was, at best, soft in the head.

He crossed the attic floor with the flash of a sword and lifted her into his arms. With a grateful sob, Delia wrapped her legs around his waist, took his head in her hands and sealed her mouth to his waiting lips. As his tongue speared its way into her mouth, she gave him all of it—the statues’ histories, the feel of Grandmère’s hand on her wrist. As she dueled with his tongue she gave him her pain at the loss of her mother and her father and home. He crushed her to his chest and she beat her fists against his back, sharing both her passionate desire that he take her, and her anger at being ignored, at being shoved aside.

“Grant? You up there?”

She heard the voice only dimly at first, but his mouth stilled and his palms spread slowly open. He pulled back, his eyes dark with desire and regret.

“Just a minute, Randi,” he growled. Delia dropped her face into his chest and willed her legs to open.

“Delia…”

She couldn’t speak. His eyes searched her face even as his hands relaxed and he stepped back from her. Her eyes were full of tears. Any minute now she would start crying, so she turned away, toward the sunshine and the view from the attic window.

“I didn’t see this last night. You could make a whole room up here! What a fun hideout!” Randi’s voice was warm and enthusiastic. “Hi, Delia. So that’s your car. Did you play up here as a child? I can just see it full of old furniture and bottles and ghosts.”

“Randi has a vivid imagination,” Grant said.

The silence behind her grew long, and awkward, punctuated only by the shuffle of feet. They were miming at each other, no doubt. Eyebrows rising, fingers pointing to the door.

“Would you like to join us for lunch?” Grant asked.

She shook her head, eyes focused on the trees.

“Well, see you then,” Randi’s voice was uncertain. Delia nodded at the bench in the side yard.

Only when she heard both car engines ignite did Delia allow herself to sink to the floor and press her face against the cool wooden paneling of her—no,
his
—attic.