Whispers (24 page)

“
Be careful,” he said as she hurried up the walk. Mentally, he slapped himself on the forehead, hearing Zach’s annoying taunt in his head.
What are you, her dad?

Analise jumped out the back door and advanced on her mom without waiting for Brendan. As she followed Gracie to the porch, he heard her say, “God, Mom. Think you could have flirted with him any harder?”

Gracie glanced back, startled. Her eyes flew to Reilly and he realized she thought Analise was talking about him, though they’d barely exchanged a word. He thought he’d been the only one to feel the thick sexual tension between them. Maybe Gracie felt it too.

He looked away as she said to Analise, “I didn’t...”

“
He’s like, my age, Mom.”

“
Ah,” Gracie said pausing on the porch, and there was a wealth of understanding in the sound. Reilly stood aside for Brendan to step out and used the excuse to watch her again.

“
Zach’s not your age, Analise. He’s probably nineteen, maybe twenty.”

“
Too young for you.”

“
I’m not trying to date him,” Gracie said. “And even if I was, why is it your business? You’re going to be married and away in a few months anyway.”

A stricken look crossed Analise’s face, mirroring the expression on her mother’s. Instinctively, Reilly knew Gracie wanted to take the words back, wanted to apologize and comfort her daughter. But she couldn’t. She’d spoken the truth. And it hurt her as much as it had Analise.

Zach was the last to make it out. As he stepped into the rain, Reilly said, “Why don’t you help me with the sandbags?”

Zach looked incredulous. “I’ll get all wet.”

‘‘
So? You won’t melt.”

Zach looked like he was dying to make a smart-ass comeback, but something in the look on Reilly’s face made him reconsider. Silently, he followed Reilly to the hatch in the back and pulled a bag off the pile.

“
I told you to stay away from Gracie,” Reilly said, hefting two of the bags out.

“
I didn’t hear her complaining.”

“
Yeah? Well, I’m doing it for her. Are you hearing me?”

“
I hear you. I just don’t know why you think I’d care. She looks at you like she wiped you off her shoe. Me, she likes.”

Reilly stared at him, feeling like steam must surely be coming out of his ears. “She doesn’t like you, she’s just being nice. Christ, you’re not much older than her kid.”

“
I am too. I’m twenty-five.”

“
You look twelve so stay the hell away from her.”

“
Zach,” Gracie called from the porch. She looked from one to the other of them. A shadow passed across her eyes as if she guessed the essence of the tension between the two men. “If you think you have a fever, staying out in the rain is hardly the cure.”

Reilly would have punched him right then if Gracie hadn’t been watching. Zach started up the walkway and then glanced back. Reilly met his eyes, expecting him to be smug. But what he saw there wasn’t satisfaction. It was anger. Anger that seemed to match his own. It lit something in Reilly like a fire. He followed him up and dropped the sandbags on the porch. It was time to set the matter of Gracie Beck straight for once and for all. Zach dropped his bag too, made a little “bring it on” gesture with his fingers, and followed Gracie into the house. It was junior high immaturity, but somehow it still got to him.

They stepped through the front door to smells of cooking wafting from the kitchen. The strong aroma of roasting beef, fat crackling in the heat, spices baking until they released their perfume hung in the air. It distracted him for a moment and set off an alarm of unease.

“
Who’s cooking?” Analise asked.

“
I don’t know,” Gracie answered looking at the closed door. Instantly, Reilly knew what she was thinking.
Why weren’t the dogs barking ?

The rain had drenched them all and now Gracie’s T-shirt was nearly transparent. Scalloped lace. His imagination hadn’t done it justice. He looked away to find Zach staring at her too. Reilly brushed past him to follow Gracie to the kitchen.

The room seemed dimly lit without lights on, though it was still early afternoon. Reilly flipped a switch. Nothing happened. He tried again. He was about to say the power was out when the light flickered on, then off, then on again. It wasn’t out yet, but soon.

Gracie moved in, making a sound to call the dogs. He heard one whimper before he saw it cowering beneath the table. A second head popped up and then the little one jumped from behind his cowering girlfriends.

Gracie scooped Romeo up. “He’s shaking.” The two big dogs came out, tales tucked tight between their legs, eyes big and round. Gracie squatted down. “They’re all shaking.”

Reilly crossed the kitchen to the oven. With each step, his gut filled with a deep disquiet. He held a hand over the stove. Cold. He opened the oven door. “It’s empty.”

“
Of course it is,” Gracie whispered, holding the trembling dogs against her.

Reilly swallowed and moved to her side. The oven was empty, but the scent of meat was so strong that it made the air moist and heavy. He could smell onions and carrots simmering in the juices of beef.

“
Maybe the damp has brought out old smells,” Reilly suggested.

He knew that neither one of them really bought it, but what else could explain the smell of cooking in the cold, dark kitchen? And why were the dogs so frightened?

“
Hey,” he said, squatting down beside Gracie. For once the dogs didn’t growl. “It’ll be okay.”

She nodded, but didn’t look convinced.

“
The storm probably scared the dogs. Hell, it’s scaring me.”

She nodded again and rose to her feet. He did the same. In the dimness of the kitchen, her eyes looked huge and worried. It seemed that the weight of the world was on her shoulders and she was determined to carry it without faltering. Between her grandmother dying, Analise’s pregnancy, and having to deal with all the dark memories Reilly had stirred, it probably felt that heavy.

“
Gracie, you’ll get through this. We’ll get through it together.”

“
I wish I could believe that. But I don’t know what to do next. I mean, where do I start? How do I help my daughter bring a child into the world when every bone in my body is screaming mad about it? Her whole life is about to change, and she doesn’t have a clue. And what about all this stuff?” She spread her arms wide to encompass the kitchen and everything beyond. “I’m going to have to go through her things. I can’t just board it up and leave it, but what do I know about what she has? What she’d want kept? I don’t even know who those people are in all those pictures.”

Having started, she seemed unable to stop. Reilly did the only thing he could. Listened.

“
I don’t know where all this furniture came from or why she’s got this place set up like something out of a
Gunsmoke
set. It makes no sense. Nothing about it makes sense. What am I going to do with this stuff, Reilly? When all I want to do is pack up my kid and get the hell away from here?”

Tears glittered like crystal in her eyes, but she didn’t cry. She just stood stiff and angry as she looked around her. Reilly took a step closer, invading her space and bringing his body within touching distance.

The rain and heat brought the perfume off her skin, so it drifted light as a thought to him. He cupped her cheek with his palm and tilted her face up, looking down into the soft gray of her eyes. “One thing at a time, babe. You can’t do it all at once. Right now, we’re stuck here. Nothing we can do about it. We’ll find some candles. Light a fire in the fireplace and turn the house into a sauna. It’ll be fun.”

She smiled and he felt good knowing he’d done that. He stepped a little closer, bringing his other hand up so that he framed her face. “Then we’ll pick a chest or a closet or whatever, and we’ll start going through it. I’ll help you.”

She looked into his eyes. “Why?”

“
Because it means being near you and after seeing you in a wet T-shirt, I don’t want to let you out of my sight.”

He’d meant it to be light and teasing, but the raw truth of it was in his voice. Her eyes widened and then dropped down to her clinging wet shirt. She tried to step away, but he kept her face in his hands and his body close to hers. A hot flush climbed up her neck. He felt the heat of it beneath his palms before he saw it color her cheeks.

She looked at him like she might say something, but she didn’t. Reilly took that for a yes. He lowered his face until his mouth hovered just over hers and for a moment, their breath mingled and the anticipation of breathing her in, of tasting her, nearly made him groan. He closed the distance and kissed her. He tried for gentle, tentative. He wanted to give her the chance to set the pace. But the minute his mouth touched hers, he wanted more. A hell of a lot more. And he wanted it fast. He gathered her up hard against him, urging her mouth to open for him. Her soft gasp of surprise was all the invitation he needed to touch her tongue with his, to deepen the kiss. To deepen everything.

She made a small satisfied noise in her throat that set off a million reactions in his body. He pressed her tighter against him and she responded by twining her arms up to his neck. She couldn’t miss how happy he was to be holding her, but she didn’t back off. She came up on tiptoe so that the hard length of him nudged the softness of her belly. Was there a lock on the porch door? If he got her that far, could he lock out the rest of the world for an hour?

As if in answer to the thought, the porch door slowly swung open with a loud squeal. Surprised, they paused and looked at it. And then it slammed shut hard enough to rattle the window. They both jumped back and Gracie gave a small yelp.

“
What was—”

But before she could finish her sentence it swung open again and slammed even harder. And again, until it sounded like a machine gun firing into a rampant crowd. The windows rattled and the noise escalated like explosions rocking the house. The dogs barked in frightened high-pitched yips that contrasted with their bared teeth and massive bodies. Zach and Analise burst into the kitchen with Brendan a step behind. The porch door swung open one last time, the squeal of rusted hinges raising the hair on his body, and then slammed shut so hard that the glass inset shattered.

Analise screamed and ran to her mother. Gracie broke from Reilly’s arms and met her halfway, wrapping her in a protective hug as they stared with horrified eyes at the glittering shards on the floor.

“
What the fuck was that?” Brendan asked.

Zach stepped forward and circled gingerly around the door. He looked at Reilly and his eyes seemed like black coals against the pale of his face.

“
It was the storm,” Reilly said, ignoring him. “The door must not have been latched.” He reached for the knob and pulled the door open, looking out. The wind howled across the desert until it looked like the rain came sideways in huge, wet gusts. Lightning spackled the sky in a hundred directions and thunder added voice to the show.

Reilly stepped back in. “The storm. We should double-check all the windows and doors. Gracie, do you know where there’s a broom?”

The calm certainty in his voice didn’t match the blast of adrenaline in his blood or the sixth sense that had him feeling he should be armed and on guard. But it did what he intended. He saw some of the panic in Gracie’s eyes dim. Not vanish, but ease. Hell, he couldn’t blame her for being rattled. It had been too weird, like earlier. Freakish.

He took the broom from Gracie, and said, “Go. I’ll clean this up.”

She looked at him questioningly, but Analise still clung to her and he knew she wanted to get her daughter away from the mess and calm her down. She gave a nod and they all followed her out.

Alone in the kitchen, Reilly closed the porch door and threw the dead bolt testing it to make sure it was secure. He swept the glass, hunted down some tape and a cardboard box from the pantry to cover the hole. Finished, he stood back. The simple task had calmed him. It was stupid to let a slamming door bother him, no matter how weird it was. He took the broom back to the closet where Gracie had found it and put it away. From the kitchen, he heard a strange sound. It froze him momentarily as his brain clicked through the possibilities while his gut settled on a conclusion.

He felt the burst of damp air and his skin seemed to draw tight. Slowly he turned.

The porch door he’d bolted so carefully was open.

Chapter Twenty-One

REILLY stepped into the front room as Gracie shepherded Analise up the stairs. Brendan and the dogs followed. Zach looked pasty, and Reilly suspected that, before the night was over, he’d be hurling his insides out. He tried not to be happy about that as Zach dragged himself to his room. From upstairs he could hear raised voices drifting down every once in a while, words like
baby
and
married,
filled with frustration. He couldn’t get the image of Gracie’s eyes, round and weighted with the burden of her responsibilities from his mind.

The house still smelled like cooking meat. He wondered what Chloe would think about that. But he hadn’t seen Chloe or Bill since he’d left the Buckboard. He hadn’t seen the priest since last night. Where was he? Had he gone out in the storm? Or was he simply upstairs in his room? He’d check once it quieted down up there.