Ain't She Sweet?

  Winnie watched numbly as Sugar Beth strode away from them, moving with her familiar long-limbed grace. Panic welled inside her. What if Sugar Beth stole it all? Her husband and her daughter?

  “If we hadn’t left the reception early—” Ryan broke off. “I’d bet this was Gigi’s doing. She’s been curious about Sugar Beth for weeks.”

  He was going to defend his old lover. Heartsick, Winnie turned away and headed back into the house.

  Upstairs, they had the predictable scene with Gigi, who stood in the corner of her room, an ink-stained Laura Ashley pillow clutched to her chest, and proceeded to blame Winnie for everything. “I needed somebody I could really talk to. Sugar Beth listens to me. She understands me.”

  “I’m your mother, Gigi. I understand you. And you can talk to me whenever you want.”

  “No, I can’t! You just want me to do everything your way.”

  Winnie found herself wondering who this demon child was living inside her precious daughter’s body. “That’s not true.”

  “At least Dad listens sometimes!”

  Ryan stepped in. “This isn’t about your mother. This is about you. And you gave away something precious today. You gave away our trust.”

  Gigi tucked the pillow under her chin.

  “Why don’t you think about that?” he said, curling his fingers around Winnie’s arm. “And about how long it’s going to take you to get it back.”

  He drew Winnie from the room and closed the door behind them. They heard the mattress squawk and Gigi’s sobs. She was Daddy’s little girl, and Ryan hesitated for a moment.

  “Leave her,” Winnie said. “She needs time to think.”

  They walked downstairs together and into the family room. Winnie felt sick to her stomach. Ryan tossed aside his sports coat and loosened his tie. “Sooner or later we’ll have our daughter back.” But he didn’t sound convinced.

  Upstairs, rap began blaring from Gigi’s room. Winnie snatched up the sections of the Sunday paper he’d left everywhere. “When did I turn into the enemy? I have no idea. One morning I woke up, and there it was.”

  “This isn’t about you. It’s about her.”

  “It doesn’t feel that way.”

  He unbuttoned his collar and slumped into the burgundy leather chair she’d bought at an estate auction. “I should have known she’d find a way to meet Sugar Beth. She gave me enough clues.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She asked a lot of questions. I forbid Gigi to contact her, but she’s so damned hardheaded. I might as well have waved a green flag in front of her.”

  “You didn’t say anything about this to me.”

  “You’re not exactly rational where Sugar Beth is concerned.”

  “And you are?”

  He came out of the chair. “Don’t start this again.”

  “Why not? Shoving it under the rug isn’t working.”

  “You’re so completely out of line.”

  “I don’t care. I’m sick of it.”

  His lips thinned. “You know what I’m sick of? I’m sick of having to walk on eggs around you, afraid I’ll say the wrong thing and hurt your delicate feelings.”

  “Then stop doing it.”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw. He reached for the remote. “You need to get hold of yourself.”

  She knocked the remote from his hands and sent it skidding across the carpet. His eyes widened in shock. She turned on him. “You need to be honest! If you want Sugar Beth so badly, go get her!”

  He looked stunned. “Is that what you think of me?”

  “I’m tired of pretending.”

  “I’ve been faithful to you for fourteen years.”

  “Let me find a medal.”

  “I married you, goddammit! I knew you’d gotten pregnant on purpose, but I never once threw it in your face.”

  “You wouldn’t. You’re too decent for that. I was the liar.”

  “You said it, not me.”

  “Because you’ve never had the guts to.”

  “You are not turning this back on me. It’s your guilt that’s making you overreact to everything. This is your problem, Winnie, not mine.”

  Her fury turned to despair. She sank down on the edge of the couch. “I saw the way you looked at her last night.”

  “You saw what your imagination created. You’re paranoid.”

  An eerie sense of calm came over her. Her hands fell limply in her lap, and she pressed her fingers together. “I’m jealous. I’m so jealous I can’t see straight. But I’m not paranoid. After all these years, you still haven’t gotten over her.”

  “That’s bullshit. For God’s sake, I married you.”

  “You wouldn’t have if I hadn’t gotten pregnant.”

  He hesitated for a moment too long. “Of course I would have.”

  The pain cut deep.

  “I would have,” he said, as if repeating the words would make them true.

  She drew a deep, unsteady breath. “I don’t know who I am anymore. Maybe I never did. All I know is that I’ve worn myself out trying to be worthy of you.”

  “That’s garbage.”

  “I don’t think so.” She stood up, gazed around at the antiques she’d collected. She loved this room, this house. She loved being surrounded by objects that spoke of the past. “I’m going to move into the apartment over the shop for a while.” Her voice came from far away. She hadn’t planned this, hadn’t even thought of it until that very moment. But the idea beckoned like a shady grove.

  His voice hit a low, dangerous note she’d never heard. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “We need some time.”

  “You need counseling, not time.”

  “I know you’re angry.”

  “Anger doesn’t begin to describe what I’m feeling right now. What do you expect me to tell Gigi? That her mother has up and left her?”

  “I don’t know what you’re going to tell her.”

  “Just dump the whole thing on me, is that right?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, that’s right. For once, I’m dumping everything on you.” She rose from the couch, walked to the door.

  “Don’t you leave this house, Winnie! I mean it. If you leave, you’re not going to like the consequences.”

  She pretended she didn’t hear him.

  “…she had ample time to observe her sister’s lover.”

  GEORGETTE HEYER, Devil’s Cub

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Colin answered the door. Ryan stood on the other side, which wouldn’t have been unusual except it was ten o’clock on Monday morning, and he looked like hell. “You look like hell.”

  “Thanks.”

  Colin hadn’t spoken with Ryan since Saturday night. The lapse had been deliberate, since he’d had a fairly good idea of what direction their next conversation would take. Ryan was Colin’s best friend. Their old relationship of teacher and student had happened so long ago that neither of them thought much about it anymore. They played in a basketball league together, occasionally jogged on weekends, and Ryan helped him coach the boys’ soccer team.

  “Has the plant burned down?” Colin said. “I can think of no other reason you’d abandon your customary workaholic habits.”

  “The plant’s fine. We need to talk.”

  Colin wished he could avoid this particular tête-à-tête. Sugar Beth had appeared on schedule this morning, predictably ignoring the fact that he’d fired her, and then she’d made herself scarce while he’d holed up in his office, staring at his computer screen. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. Making love with her yesterday had been better than anything he could have imagined, which, considering what he’d been reading lately, was fairly astonishing. She’d been bawdy, spontaneous, thrilling, and unpredictable. Afterward, she’d shown no interest in engaging in a postcoital examination of their relationship, which should have relieved him. Instead, he’d experienced this unhealthy compulsion to make her spill her secrets. Althou
gh he knew who she’d been, he didn’t entirely understand who she’d become, and the mystery enticed him. Maybe this was why so many men had fallen under her spell. She issued a subtle, irresistible challenge that lured them to their deaths.

  But the image of Sugar Beth as a cold-blooded man-killer wouldn’t take hold.

  Ryan gazed down at Gordon. “Where did the dog come from?”

  “Just showed up one day.” He gave in to the inevitable. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Why not? I might as well make the hole in my stomach even bigger.”

  “You should switch to a low-acid organic coffee.”

  “And give up all that stomach pain? No, thanks.”

  Gordon followed them into the kitchen, then waddled over to the sunroom and lay on the rug. Ryan pulled out one of the counter stools, only to push it back and begin to pace. “Look, Colin, you deserved some payback, no question about it, but this situation with Sugar Beth is out of hand. Now other people are being hurt, and you have to get rid of her.”

  The faint sound of water running overhead pressed home the need to get rid of Ryan, and Colin only filled the mug halfway before passing it over. “Winnie’s upset, is she?”

  “Winnie’s way past upset. Sugar Beth’s been seeing Gigi.”

  News, indeed. Still, nothing Sugar Beth did could surprise him.

  “Yesterday while we were at the concert, Gigi sneaked out of the house to meet her. Sugar Beth probably encouraged it. I don’t know how it happened. Gigi won’t talk about it.”

  Colin silently cursed Sugar Beth. Did she go out of her way to create trouble? “I suppose it’s only natural for them to be curious about each other.”

  “I can’t believe she’s involved Gigi in all this.”

  “What do you think Sugar Beth will do to her?”

  “You know what she’s capable of.”

  “Sugar Beth isn’t eighteen any longer.”

  “Let’s get real,” Ryan retorted angrily. “She’s floated through three marriages—the last one made her a certified gold digger. Now she’s broke. Desperate, too, or she’d have told everybody to go to hell on Saturday night and stormed off. Call me overprotective, but I don’t want a woman like that around my daughter.”

  Colin hated being dragged into other people’s messes, but he couldn’t see a way to sidestep this one. “Things aren’t always what they seem where Sugar Beth is concerned.”

  “You’re defending her?”

  “I’m being objective.” Now there was a laugh. Even before yesterday, he’d lost his objectivity where Sugar Beth was concerned.

  Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve gotten suckered in by her, haven’t you?”

  “I haven’t gotten suckered in by anybody.”

  “Then fire her.”

  “I already did.”

  “You did?” Ryan looked surprised, then relieved. “The first good news I’ve heard this weekend. Sorry, pal, I underestimated you. Do you know if she’s left town yet?”

  “As to that…”

  “I should have trusted you. But…I’m a little keyed up right now.” He gazed into his coffee mug. “The truth is…Winnie’s moved out of the house.”

  “What?”

  “She’s left. Moved into the apartment over the store.”

  Colin was stunned. Ryan and Winnie had the best marriage he’d ever seen. If they couldn’t make a go of it, no one could. “I’m sure it’s only temporary. You and Winnie are the genuine article.”

  “Apparently not. It’s like Winnie’s possessed. You know how rational she always is, but lately…She thinks I’m still hung up on Sugar Beth. After all these years. And she started talking about not knowing who she was, all that Oprah bullshit. I feel like I don’t know my own wife anymore.”

  Colin remembered the way Ryan’s eyes kept straying to Sugar Beth on Saturday night. By making it possible for her to stay in Parrish, Colin had inadvertently hurt the two people whose friendship he most cherished.

  “I’ve tried to reason with Winnie, but she won’t listen. She didn’t even talk to Gigi before she drove off. She left that little task up to me.”

  “How did Gigi take it?” Colin asked, not really wanting to know.

  “Oh, she’s taking it fine. I said that her mother was stressed out because she had so much work to do at the shop, and she’d decided to settle in there for a few days to get things cleared up without any distractions. Gigi bought it, but she’s a smart kid, and it won’t take her long to figure out what’s really going on.”

  “I’m sure Winnie will come to her senses before then.”

  “It’ll happen a lot quicker if Sugar Beth is gone. I’ve never believed in throwing my weight around, but if I find out somebody else has hired her—”

  “Hey, Ryan…” Sugar Beth waltzed into the kitchen, a bottle of drain opener in her hand. Colin wanted to strangle her. She couldn’t have stayed upstairs until Ryan left. Oh, no. In her screwed-up head, that would have been a sign of cowardice, and how could she let a day pass without giving a hard time to as many people as possible?

  “Your shower’s running great now, Colin. Add the sixty bucks a plumber would have charged you to my paycheck.”

  Coffee slopped over the edge of Ryan’s mug as he slammed it on the counter. “You said you fired her!”

  “I did. Unfortunately, Sugar Beth still doesn’t listen well.”

  “It gets in the way of my self-serving lifestyle.” She headed for the sink, where she bent down to put the drain opener away.

  Colin tore his eyes from her bottom, clad this morning in a pair of deep purple cigarette pants. “Exactly the sort of remark that makes people line up to hate you, Sugar Beth. But then you know that very well.”

  “You think?”

  He refused to play her game. “Ryan stopped by to tell me that Winnie’s moved out. Because of you.”

  She straightened and smiled. “No kidding. Now that just about makes my day.”

  Ryan’s mouth hardened. “That’s low, even coming from you.”

  Colin wouldn’t let her weasel out of this with wisecracks. “Sugar Beth doesn’t mean it. She’s deliberately antagonizing you.”

  “I sort of mean it,” Sugar Beth said. “You and Winnie pissed me off royally yesterday with Gigi.”

  “You were way out of line,” Ryan said.

  “In my humble opinion, you both need to lighten up with her.”

  Colin cut in before there was blood. “I’m sure Ryan isn’t interested in hearing any of your opinions on child rearing.”

  “His loss. I know a hell of a lot more about headstrong teenage girls than he does.”

  Colin gave her his most quelling look. “You’re baiting him again.”

  Ryan studied first one of them and then the other. “What’s going on with you two?”

  “Nothing.”

  Unfortunately, they spoke together, automatically making them look like liars. Sugar Beth recovered first and handled the situation in her own way. “Relax, Ryan. Colin’s done his best to get rid of me, but I’m blackmailing him with some unsavory facts I’ve unearthed about his past, which may or may not involve the ritual deaths of small animals, so if my body ends up in a ditch somewhere, tell the police to start their interrogations with him. Plus you might warn everybody to be careful with their cats.”

  Amazing. Sometimes her cheek surprised even him. Ryan, however, had lost his sense of humor. “You still don’t care how many people you hurt as long as you get what you want.”

  Sugar Beth liked to sting, but she didn’t have much appetite for genuine hurt, and all the amusement vanished from her eyes. “I don’t like being the bearer of bad news,” she said quietly, almost gently, “but your marriage was already in trouble or my showing up wouldn’t have sent your wife out the door.”

  “You don’t know a thing about my marriage.”

  “I know that Winnie’s moved out.” She regarded him sympathetically. “And you seem to think all you have to do to
get her back is see the last of me. But I doubt it’s going to be that easy. Now if you’ll both excuse me, I have some errands to run.”

  Sixty seconds later, she was out the door.

  By the time Colin got rid of Ryan, the house had closed in on him. How had a man who cherished his privacy let everything get so far out of hand? Nothing he’d written so far that morning was worth keeping, so he grabbed a jacket and headed out the back door.

  He’d thought about this long enough. It was time for action.

  Everybody in the lunchroom was watching her, or at least it felt that way. Gigi’s clammy hands gripped the plastic tray as she gazed around for somebody—anybody!—she could sit with. She should have spent lunch period in the library, but she’d told herself she was claiming her power today, no matter how scary it was and no matter how much her parents hated her. Now, though, she decided she was too young to claim her power. She should have waited till ninth grade. Or maybe tenth.

  Until now, she’d been feeling pretty good about her first day back in school. Nobody’d said too much about her getting suspended, and Jake Higgins told her she looked cool. Jake had acne and was like four feet tall, but still…Before she’d gone to bed last night she’d painted her fingernails with black polish and borrowed this black T-shirt her mom never wore because she said it was too small. This morning, she’d put on an old pair of black jeans that were tight and too short, but, with black socks, she didn’t think anybody noticed, and she’d found a choker necklace she’d strung in seventh grade with brown beads. It wasn’t the best Goth look she’d ever seen—she needed a cool belt with silver rivets or a black skirt with black-and-white tights—but it made her feel sort of strong and reckless.

  Win-i-fred had spent the night at the store so she could get an early start on her inventory, and her dad had been in a crappy mood, so Gigi’d waited till she got to school before she ducked into the rest room and put on some really dark eye makeup. It made her light eyes look spooky and mysterious, which was cool. Her parents couldn’t get any madder at her than they already were, so tonight she intended to cut some choppy layers in her hair around her face and maybe put red streaks in if she could find a red marker. It felt good getting rid of her old baggy clothes.