Курок Дуглас Пенелопа

Waving her hand to gauge the width, she climbed through, crawling up onto the floor and standing up carefully as I came through after her.

She stood there for a minute, getting her bearings, but then took a few careful steps, finding the railing. I kept my eye on her feet, making sure she didn’t step over. I’d put the boards in the fencing close enough together, we wouldn’t fall, but she could still slip and hurt herself.

I walked around, making sure everything was holding well and inspecting the pointed roof to see if any water had seeped through in the last rain. I’d thought about making it a full house, completely enclosed, but maybe that was better for kids. For now, I liked it open on the sides for the wind and the sound of the trees.

“So this is where you’ve been going?” she said, still facing out. “Not a hundred yards away from me.”

I came up behind her. “Never.”

All the nights I was away, I was still here.

I held her waist with one hand and leaned on the railing with the other, staring out at the house and thinking about where we were five years ago today.

It was Halloween, and I’d just been arrested.

“How are you?” she asked.

I knew she meant my father. If I was upset.

I still wasn’t sure. I was glad he was gone, but I was still trying to figure out what this meant and what the next step was.

The important thing was I wasn’t alone anymore, and that made a huge difference. We were going to be fine.

Unfortunately, not as fine as I wanted, though.

“I have no money, no home, a wife, and a probably pregnant girlfriend,” I said, trying to tease.

But even I knew the amount of shit that needed to be cleaned up when I woke up tomorrow. I had a lot to do.

She was quiet for a moment, but then said, “I wonder if it’s easier to get an annulment if the marriage was never consummated.” She let the words hang in the air a minute. “If it was never consummated.”

I looked down at her, knowing what she was worried about. Did I sleep with Ari…

I reached around and turned her chin toward me. “It’s called fraud,” I explained. “When you enter into a marriage with no intention of consummating it. I’m way ahead of you, Devil.”

An embarrassed little smile tugged at her lips, and I could see her shoulders relaxing.

Marrying Ari got me into the house and put them all under my thumb. I was a means to an end. It didn’t take long to face the fact, though, that I could barely tolerate eating a meal with that woman, let alone take her to bed. I knew who I wanted.

She lowered herself onto the floor, dangling her legs over the side just like we did when we were kids.

“Banks won’t want the inheritance,” she pointed out. “You can contest his will if you want.”

I let out a breath and sat down next to her, leaning back on my hands and looking out through the leaves in the tree that hid us from the world.

“Fuck it,” I said. “He was right. She’ll do better with it than I would have. And I don’t want anything of his anyway.”

She nodded, but no worry creased her brow. She almost looked happy, and with her hair blowing behind her and those same dark pink lips, she was eight again, and I was eleven, unable to stop looking at her.

She faced out toward the house, and I was glad she seemed to like it up here.

“What do you see?” I asked.

She inhaled a deep breath and then fell slowly back, lying down on the floor with her legs still hanging over the side.

A little smile played across her lips. “I see us spending the night up here.”

I came down on her, taking her face in my hands and heading for her mouth.

Hell yeah.

 

 

 

Damon

 

Present

 

Slamming the car door, I clicked the lock and walked around, jogging up onto the sidewalk as I shivered.

It was going to snow soon. I could feel it.

I yanked up the zipper of my pullover and stuffed my hands into my jean pockets as I opened the door to the theater and walked inside. Warmth hit me, and a couple of employees made eye contact, but looked away again when they realized it was me.

I’d been coming every day to drop Winter off and pick her up, so they knew why I was here.

Plus, the whole town knew what really happened at the tavern last week, and even though no one was crying about it, they still moved to the other side of the street when they saw me coming. They put their heads down, stayed out of my path, and answered extra polite with one- or two-word sentences when I ordered food or got gas in my car.

In fact, I’d noticed they were doing the same thing when they saw Will or Rika or Kai, too. All of us, in fact.

It was like the town had a changing of the guard or something and people weren’t sure if they should be scared.

I headed past the concessions and the stairs leading to the mezzanine and gallery levels, and opened the double doors, heading into the ground floor of the theater.

Music filled the room, while Winter moved about on stage, sliding and turning, her whole body in every move she made like it was all a single unit instead of individual parts.

I descended the small pathway toward the orchestra section, watching her, the long, gauzy gray costume flowing in layers around her legs and her hair flying around her as she spun and bent backward. There were no words to describe how beautiful she was.

But everyone was soon going to find out. Michael and Rika were sponsoring a small tour for her as an opening dance at other theaters and festivals, and if it went well, we’d go from there. Her twenty-minute show would take a couple more months to get ready, but she was already rehearsing and outlining the performance.

And while it was good, she deserved everything coming to her, and I wouldn’t stop anything or do anything to discourage her. I wondered what the hell I was going to do now, too. The only thing I was ever good at was basketball, and that ship had sailed. I didn’t have the temperament to work well with others, and I wanted absolutely nothing to do with my father’s money or his businesses. Banks had it, so it was staying in the family. That was all I cared about.

I wasn’t taking his money, and I wasn’t fucking asking my friends for anything. Everything Winter and I built would be ours.

“Damon, are you here?” I heard Winter call out.

I looked up at her, not realizing the music had ended.

“Coming,” I told her.

I climbed the few steps off to the side of the stage, and walked over to her, picking her up and wrapping her legs around me like I’d done every day the past week when I picked her up from rehearsal at five.

She smiled down at me, threading her fingers through my hair, and kissed me.

“Lookin’ good,” I said.

“Yeah, you’re prejudiced.”

“I don’t lie.”

She snorted, and I carried her backstage, toward the dressing rooms, so she could get her things.

She started kissing my cheek, leaving little butterflies across my face, to my ear, and down my neck. I wanted to get her home and in the shower with me. Right now.

“How was your day?” she asked, nibbling my ear.

“Fine,” I mumbled, enjoying her attention too much to think of more to say.

I’d dropped her off at eleven this morning and went to Kai’s house to collect my snakes that Banks had been taking care of, and then I went to my apartment at Delcour and my room at my father’s to clear out the rest of my things.

I should’ve been looking for work, but right now, I just wanted her home before the snow started, and then I’d keep her up all night trying to make a kid we definitely couldn’t support yet.

We reached her little dressing room, and I let her down, watching her go pack up her bag and pull out her change of clothes and strip right there. I took the bag, half-tempted to plant her ass on the vanity and go right now, but…it was cold. I’d wait for the hot shower.

“Ready?” she asked, dressed in jeans, flats, and a cable-knit sweater.

Giving her my arm, I led her out of the room, through the backstage area, and out the rear exit and into the alleyway.

“Can I drive?” she teased.

I laughed under my breath. “You know the rules.”

Late, dark, and no witnesses.

We walked around the corner of the building, coming to the street, and I dropped her bag in my trunk before unlocking the car. As I opened my door, though, she stopped at hers and spoke to me over the hood.

“You know,” she said. “There’s stuff in the house we can sell. Art, furniture, rugs…I have some jewelry, too.”

“No.”

“Damon—”

“I’ll handle it,” I cut her off but kept my voice as gentle as possible. “I’ll get a job. I’ll deal with it. Don’t worry.”

It wasn’t that I expected her to do nothing, or that she wasn’t a partner in this, but I exposed her father. It was my responsibility to fix this and give her back the life she was used to. A life she deserved.

And it was definitely not okay for me not to be doing something.

I’d find an income. A legit one.

She opened her door, and we both climbed in, Mikhail jumping from where he waited in the passenger’s seat to the backseat to make room for Winter.

I ruffled the fur on his head, but my phone rang in the console where I’d left it, and I picked it up, seeing a local number.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Damon Torrance?” a man asked.

“Yes.”

“This is Grady MacMiller,” he introduced himself. “From Hiberian Bank?”

It sounded vaguely familiar.

“Yes?” I stuck my key in the ignition and started the car.

“Listen,” he said. “I know this is going to sound extremely odd, but I have to try. I came by to appraise the Ashby house yesterday while you were gone.”

That’s why his name was familiar. Banks owned the house now as part of my father’s assets. She was trying to get the books in order, and she’d warned me someone was coming by.

It was also a reminder that Winter probably couldn’t sell anything inside the house. Banks owned every stitch. I rubbed my eyes in frustration.

“Well, I brought my children with me,” he continued. “Unfortunately, the nanny was sick, and my wife has been—”

“Yes?” I interrupted.

Jesus.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “Excuse me. Anyway, we saw the treehouse, and the fountain maze, and I inquired with the security at the house, and they told me you’re the designer. Is that true?”

“The designer?” I repeated, seeing Winter quietly listening beside me. “I—uh, no. I built them, if that’s what you mean. What’s this about?”

“Well, my children loved both features,” he burst out. “Absolutely adored them. It was like it was Christmas morning. I feel so weird asking, given who your father is—or was—I’m sorry for your loss, sir,” he added. “But I have to ask. You wouldn’t be willing to build another like it, would you? At my home? For my children?”

“Another what?”

“Treehouse and fountain maze.”

I scoffed. “Uh, no. Sorry.”

“Oh, I uh…”

“I have to go,” I told him, shaking my head.

I hung up, laughing under my breath. For Christ’s sake. What was I? Neighborhood dad, around to help with science projects, too? Maybe come by to help you move?

“What was that?” Winter asked.

I dumped my phone back in the console and shifted the car into gear. “Someone liked the shit I built at your house,” I replied. “Wanted me to make a treehouse and fountain for their property.”

“And you said no?”

“I don’t have time for that,” I shot back. “I need to get a job and figure out what we’re doing.” And then I paused, my back straightening and understanding dawning on me. “Ohhhhh.”

“Yeah, dumbass!” she screeched.

He was trying to hire me.

To design and build.

It had never occurred to me whether the features I built at Winter’s house were any good or not, but I’d had fun planning them out. I was completely focused on the job at hand, and I definitely enjoyed doing something where I could be left alone. To dive into all the little nooks and crannies I still kind of wanted to spend my life hiding in. Only with her now.

I wouldn’t mind doing that for work if I could. I just hadn’t thought of it. I had a dozen more blueprints of other designs when I was brainstorming the builds.

But...

“I can’t work for the people in my own town like I’m a servant.”

“Ugh.” She rolled her eyes. “First stop Thunder Bay, next stop world domination. How about that?”

Meaning it was a starting point. It could grow into a lot more.

A lot more.

But then I remembered.

“I went to jail for a sex crime,” I reminded her. “No one will want me working around their families.”

“And I don’t think your history has escaped Grady MacMiller’s notice, either,” she pointed out. “He still wanted to hire you, Damon.”

Yeah, I guess so. He knew the nature of the trial. Once I married Winter, people would know it was a lot more complicated than what happened in court.

And then maybe, with word of mouth…

“Dial him back and give me the phone,” she told me. “I’ll pretend to be your assistant who buffers between the client and the temperamental, asshole artist.”

I smiled, hooking my finger in her collar and pulling us together, face to face. “First, a shower.”

And I drove off, taking us home as quickly as possible.

 

 

Later that night, long after the sun had set, and I’d left Winter to work on some marketing ideas for the tour with Alex, I walked up to a front door I’d never knocked on and never thought I would.

There was so much I’d missed over the years, that when I pieced them together now, it all fit like a puzzle.

The ice cream she gave me when I was seven one day on the street, saying they gave her and Rika one too many.

The way she looked at me at graduation, and I wondered why she was even there at all, but then I just thought she showed up as a family friend, because Michael was graduating, too.

The way I heard through the grapevine my senior year that she’d told Rika to stay far away from me when she was an incoming freshman, because she knew we’d be at the same school. I’d thought it was because my reputation preceded me, but it was because she was afraid something would happen between us.

She was right to warn her off. To think how many times I taunted that line with Rika…

Jesus, fuck.

Oh, what the hell. In the long scheme of things, it was just another rung on the ladder of fucked-up shit I’d done that just made our little group a little more interesting. We’d get over it.

Ringing the doorbell, I slid a hand in my pants pocket, dressed in a black suit and black shirt, because it wasn’t Winter’s Damon I needed to be tonight.

The door opened, and I looked into her eyes, her smile fading and her chest caving deeper and deeper as she breathed.

I stared at her face, seeing it with new eyes and studying her features to try to detect any parts of me. Blonde hair, same as Rika’s, in a stylish, messy bun with strands of hair around her face. Thin, toned body—much healthier than a couple years ago when she was hopped up on pills and alcohol.

She wore a slender pair of black pants, a black, sleeveless blouse, and her makeup made her look so much younger than her mid-forties.

I didn’t see much of me, though. Or maybe my pulse was thundering in my ears so hard, I was just too impatient and distracted to think straight.

“Is it true?” I demanded.

She dropped her hand from the knob and stood there, as if in a trance.

“Is what true?” I heard someone say.

Rika came out from somewhere behind her mother, her fingers threaded through the handle of a coffee cup and looking at me.

They, on the other hand, looked a lot alike.

When no one said anything, her gaze shifted to her mother. “Mom?”

But Christiane’s eyes dropped, her lips trembled, and she knew it was over. There was no hiding this anymore.

“My grandfather would tell a story…” she finally said, still carrying a hint of her Afrikaner accent, “about an ancestor from Persia. Centuries ago. A woman named Mahin.” Her solemn eyes rose, meeting mine. “He said that’s where he got his black hair and raven eyes.”

My black hair and raven eyes.

“And he said,” she continued, “every few generations she shows herself again.”

Liquid heat charged through my blood, and I was so angry, but I wasn’t sure I should be, and even if I shouldn’t be, I wanted to be, because there had to be someone else I could take this out on.

How could anyone be that weak?

I tried to understand her position. My father was a dangerous man, and I knew he threatened her, killed her husband, and no doubt, threatened to hurt Rika, but…

How do you live like that? In this town, under his fucking nose, knowing your kid is a mile away, living every day without you? How do you not snatch him off the street when he was five or eight or eleven, and just run?

Schraeder Fane was wealthy. They had resources. Did she have any idea what that house was like for me?

But then I realized, too, if I hadn’t grown up in Gabriel’s house, I would never have been there for Banks.

Still, though…

Rika looked between us, a confused pinch to her brow.

“It was you at the hospital,” I said to Christiane, remembering the voice and the comforting touch of her hands on my face.

Tears welled in her eyes, and she sucked in a breath. She took a step toward me, but I backed away, keeping her at a distance.

“I have no use for a mother,” I warned. “Not anymore.” And then I gestured to Rika. “But I have plenty of use for her. This changes nothing, just don’t come between her and me.”

“What the hell is he talking about?” she asked her mom, concern hardening her voice. And then she turned to me, “Damon?”

I broke eye contact with Christiane—done with fucking parents—and locked eyes with Rika. “I told you you’d never escape me,” I reminded her. “I always felt it.”

She glanced at her mother, worry written all over her face. “Mom? Please? What is it? What’s going on?”

I started to back away, toward my car, but still looking at Rika. “We’re going to rule the world, Rika.” I held out my hands, grinning. “You, Banks, and me.”

I spun around and headed for my car, hearing Rika beg her mother to snap out of it.

But to no avail.

I drove off, Christiane Fane still standing in the doorway watching me.

That was all she ever did.

And hopefully she knew better than to try for more. She wasn’t welcome now that my father was dead and out of her way.

I didn’t respond well to bad parents. She’d do well to remember that.

 

 

 

Damon

 

I pulled my phone off the charger and held it up, the light hurting my tired eyes as I looked at all the notifications that had slowly woken me up over the last half hour.

Fuckin’ Will.

Missed calls, texts, pictures… He was having the time of his life in Rio.

Or Cartagena. I forgot.

Him on the beach. Him with what’s-her-name. Him in the sun and sand, not freezing his ass off back here in Thunder Bay in January. Eating good food and laughing.

In the nearly three months since Devil’s Night, we’d gotten him clean but not dry, and as Kai, Michael, and I settled into the holidays, our homes, our women, and our work, he broke away and did some traveling. He said he needed a change of scenery, but he’d been gone a while, and although the pictures looked great, and he looked happy, I knew he was spinning and spinning until he eventually lost his balance and fell.

And, at twenty-four, his family would only tolerate the self-destruction for so much longer before they cut him off and made him come home.

Throwing the sheet off, I grabbed some sleep pants and pulled them on, dialing Will.

No answer, though. I sent a text, letting him know I was awake, and he could call.

Walking over to the floor-to-ceiling window, I peered out at the master bedroom balcony, taking in the blanket of fresh snow falling, making it look like cake frosting on the stone railing as the wind howled outside, making the trees creak.

Picking up the cigarettes on the table, I pulled one out and slid it under my nose, smelling the tobacco and cloves. My lips burned, and I stuck it in my mouth, rolling it and feeling the comfort of its feel already.

Winter was trying to get me to quit. It was a non-option for much of the argument. I wasn’t a non-smoker.

But then she mentioned kids and it being on my clothes and how secondhand smoke kills, and do I really want the baby to smell like shit?

Ah, fuck it.

I walked over to the French doors, picking up my lighter off the table, and sparking it up as I put on my shoes and opened the door to go out, but then I heard her sleepy voice from across the room.

“Hey,” she said from the bed. “Anything wrong?”

I growled silently, tearing the cigarette out of my mouth and crushing it in my fist.

Dammit. She would’ve smelled it on me when I came in, but at least I would’ve gotten a smoke in.

I tossed the lighter and broken cigarette on the bureau, kicking off my shoes and heading over to her.

“Everything’s fine,” I soothed, sitting on the bed and leaning down to kiss her.

“You were trying to smoke, weren’t you?” she said, sitting up.

I sighed, setting my phone back on the bedside table. “I’m dying here, babe.”