Thirty-one
Rex Buchanan was alone in the house. He finished one drink and carried a second upstairs, where he paused at the door of Angie’s room. Biting his lip, he hesitated.
Go on. You’re alone. Who’s going to find out? It’s your house, damn it. All of it.
Slowly he opened the door and stepped over the threshold. A guilty thought pierced his brain, but he ignored it. Dena had driven into town to visit Chase and run a few errands; she wouldn’t be back for hours. His wife would never know.
The room hadn’t changed in seventeen years—he wouldn’t allow it. Though Dena had insisted it would make a wonderful guest room, Rex had refused. Forever it would belong to Angie. He stared longingly at the picture of Lucretia and their little girl, then set his drink on the nightstand and stretched out on Angie’s bed. The room still smelled of her; he paid the maid a little extra in cash to sprinkle her favorite perfume, which he also bought on the sly, over the bed.
Tears filled his eyes. God, he missed them both. His fingers curled in the bedclothes, and his mind was filled with images of his daughter and his wife. Sometimes the images blurred, their blue eyes, shimmering dark hair, full lips were nearly identical, and even now thinking of Lucretia—he felt an erection begin and he touched himself, imagining her hands, light and feathery, her mouth moist, her breasts—he fought the image for a second, then gave in to it. In his mind’s eye she was always playful and sexy—more like their daughter. He rewrote his own history and gave it a delicious, sensual spin where Lucretia was eager for him, anxious to make love to him, wet and warm and ready, writhing and bucking beneath him.
His hips moved reflexively. Sweat made his skin clammy.
“Rex?” A voice, a soft feminine voice that was good and kind. Lucretia’s voice…
“Rex?”
Again she called. His eyes flew open and he realized where he was. Alone. On Angie’s bed. Half-drunk and humping an imaginary wife—a woman who had been dead for decades. He scrambled off the mattress, hitting the nightstand with his knee. Crash! Glass shattered against the floor. Aged Kentucky whiskey splashed onto the wall, the bed, the nightstand.
He was on his knees, trying to right himself, wondering how he could explain himself, when he saw her. “Oh, God,” he whispered, lifting his head. Somehow Sunny had broken into his house, into his private life, and was standing in the doorway. She was plumper than he remembered, her face beginning to sag, her hair gray, but she still had the uncanny ability to see into the darkest reaches of his soul. “What’re you doing here?” he whispered, still kneeling.
“I came to see you.”
“Why?”
She stood proudly in the doorway. “I told Cassidy all about Buddy—who he is and how he’s related to her.”
“Oh, my God, Sunny, why?” he nearly yelled, startled, his hand scraping across the floor. Glass sliced into his palm. “Are you crazy?”
Dark, bold eyes held his. “You, of all people, know how sane I am.”
“But you promised—”
“Cassidy guessed the truth anyway, from what you’d already told her.” She let out a slow breath. “She’s searching, Rex, searching for answers to her life, to her marriage, to the fires. It was time.”
“And Dena,” he said, his lies falling apart one by one. Blood dripped to the floor, mingling with the whiskey and dust motes that collected near the skirt of the bed.
“Dena knew about us.”
“But she doesn’t know that Willie is Buddy.”
“It will be all right, Rex,” Sunny assured him. Leaving her cane at the door, she walked stiffly into the room and gathered tissues from a box on the night table. Taking his hand in hers, she cleaned the jagged wound, deftly plucking shards of glass from the heel of his palm. “I think we’ve lived with lies long enough.” Slowly she lifted his hand to her lips and pressed a kiss into his palm, tasting his blood. A kiss of old passion, of new trust, of reassurance. “Don’t be afraid, Rex,” she said in her soothing voice. She glanced at the rumpled bedcovers, and pain shadowed her eyes before she looked at him again. “It’s going to be all right. But you have to help me…”
“All I’m saying is that it looks bad.” Felicity clasped her gold bracelet over her wrist and surveyed herself in the mirror. The first hint of wrinkles showed near her eyes, and she had to touch up her hair every other week. If the tiny webbing of crow’s-feet got much worse, she’d call a plastic surgeon. She worked hard to keep her body in shape, her face perfect, though she thought it might be a futile battle. Her husband, smelling of brandy and leaning insolently against the doorjamb, barely noticed her anymore.
“I don’t care how it looks,” Derrick grumbled. “I’ve never given a rat’s ass about Chase McKenzie so why should I start pretending now?” He fished into his pocket for his pack of Marlboros and lit up. Smoke curled lazily over his eyes.
“He’s your brother-in-law.”
“My half-brother-in-law or some such crap. The family’s so fucked up I can’t keep it straight.”
“Watch your mouth. Linnie’s just down the hall.”
“You used to like it when I talked dirty.”
“In bed. Whispered, not shouted like a drunken sailor.”
“You knew how I was when you married me. No, I take that back”—he lifted his drink and cigarette in one hand—“when you tricked me into marrying you.”
“I didn’t—”
“Sure you did, Felicity. You didn’t have to get pregnant. Remember? You had before and we took care of it. But not this time, no way, you went running to Daddy.”
“I wanted a baby,” she said, her back stiffening with pride.
“You wanted to be Mrs. Derrick Buchanan.”
“And it worked out, didn’t it? We both love the girls.”
He didn’t respond, and Felicity experienced the dull ache she always felt when it came to her daughters. She loved them both desperately, wildly. They were beautiful, clever, witty and smart enough to know that their father didn’t love them. She tamped down the old pain. Angela had turned bitter toward Derrick, her sarcasm as cutting as his own. With no respect for her father, she had begun disobeying and become outwardly defiant. Just like her aunt and namesake at sixteen. But Belinda—sweet Linnie—still adored Derrick and believed that he loved her. She’d created her own fantasy family, enhanced by Felicity’s lies—and couldn’t understand Angela’s sarcasm. Linnie had a good but fragile heart. One that Derrick was certain to break. “You…you need to show the girls some attention.”
Derrick snorted. “Attention?”
“You know, take them to a movie, or to a play, or just sit down and talk with them, act interested.”
His nostrils flared. “I’m not, okay? And I never will be. I saw the kind of ‘attention’ my father gave to my sister and it made me sick.” He shot a stream of smoke into the direction of the master bath.
“Just because your father was a…”
“Is, Felicity, he is a sicko. A pervert. He’s never gotten over Angie’s death and you know why.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Shit.” He drew on his cigarette hard, then shook his head in a cloud of smoke. “I need a drink.”
“You’ve had enough.”
“So who appointed you my mother—” As soon as he’d said the words, he paled. He rarely mentioned his mother, didn’t allow Felicity to bring up Lucretia’s name.
Felicity grabbed her sweater, a cardigan woven in strands of cream and gold, off the foot of the bed. Her bed. Derrick rarely slept with her anymore. “You’re too drunk to drive and we have to be at the Alonzos’ in ten minutes.”
“I don’t give a shit. Isn’t it enough we live together and work together, do we have to go out to see a bunch of fuckin’ bores? I can’t figure out why you drag me to these stupid little get-togethers.”
“Because they’re necessary,” she snapped back, tired of her husband’s lack of ambition. Both she and Derrick had been born privileged, but she was also fired with a competitive streak that wouldn’t quit. When she saw something she wanted, she put it squarely in her sights and went after it. She’d grown up as the only child of The Judge, and as such, she’d been given anything she wanted. Except for Derrick; she’d had to work to nail him. She’d gotten pregnant once and he’d insisted she have an abortion. Agreeing in order to appease him, thinking that he’d love her more, she’d had the procedure, then regretted it as he’d lost his respect for her. So she’d kept up their affair, gotten pregnant again, and this time insisted he marry her. He still hadn’t respected her, but she’d married him, which had been, at the time, her primary objective.
Now, she still did whatever was necessary, including working a couple of days a week at the office, just to check up on her husband and Chase. God, he was slippery. She also made sure that she and Derrick were included in all the right social circles in Prosperity and Portland. Her father’s connections didn’t hurt.
“Bobby Alonzo’s an asshole.” Derrick dropped his cigarette into his empty drink glass. It sizzled before dying.
“But a banker; his father owns one of the few independent banks in the region.”
“He was also Jed Baker’s best friend.” Derrick left his glass on the bureau.
“Jed’s dead.”
“Yeah, well, tell it to Bobby. He still brings him up. Like he’s some kind of god because he died screwing Angie. Christ I need a drink.”
Felicity’s patience snapped. “You don’t know what they were doing together. We’ve gone over this a dozen times, so what’s gotten into you tonight?”
“Everything. Hell, Chase is going home tomorrow, probably planning to start in with the company again.”
“You could stop him.”
“He’s like a damned freight train once he gets rolling.”
“Buy him out.” She was tired of the argument. Tired of Derrick’s incompetence. Tired of being the one who held things together.
“He won’t sell, at least not to me.” He scratched his jaw and swayed a little as he reached for his jacket. “You know they’ve never found his mother. She just walked out of the hospital on the day the John Doe died, and no one’s seen her since. Weird, isn’t it?”
“That’s nothing new. Sunny McKenzie’s always been weird. Now, come on, we’re late.”
Derrick snorted in disgust, but followed her out of the bedroom they barely shared. Hers had been a hollow victory, Felicity thought as Derrick reached into his pocket and had trouble retrieving his keys. His drinking was worse than ever, and she suspected he was cheating on her again. Oh, if she could only turn back the clock…
But she couldn’t. And she had the girls to think about. And damn it, she loved Derrick Buchanan, loved being his wife. But it would be a helluva lot better if he’d return the favor someday.