Blackwater (16 page)

"Lorelei…uhm…Miss Huntington…anyway…I don’t…uhm…what was I saying?" His accent is from Tennessee. It's adorable. He has dark-blue eyes and dark hair. His smile is sweet and I can't help but toy with him. Touching him makes me hungry.

I smile, "I think you were saying the original staircase is gonna have to go."

He wipes the sweat from his suddenly damp brow and nods, "Right. Yes ma'am. The whole staircase and all the window wells. There is almost nothing salvageable. That house is as ugly as homemade sin right now. But I can make her a real beauty again. I didn’t think anyone would want to fix that old place up, not after the…well…you…know?"

I shake my head, "I don’t really. Tessa is my…uhm great aunt. She is loony. She never spoke of it much."

His eyes grow wide as he leans in, like we're gonna share us a secret. "They say that back in the sixties, your family had this party. Your great aunt I guess?"

I nod, "I'm named after her." I should have chosen a different name. I'm a dummy.

"Well, she was marrying the governor's nephew. The party was huge and some bad voodoo priests came and sacrificed the family. The house is haunted as shit. My men ain't even gonna be happy about working there." He looks around and whispers even more quietly, "Some people say that the ones who died burned in the house in the west wing. It was an accident and all, but the others say it was voodoo. They say Mrs. Huntington never aged. She was a bad woman who never aged."

I want to tell him the damned story but I don’t. I nod along and smile, "Spooky."

He smiles, "I think it's a bunch of hooey. But you know people in the South, if they got something to chew on they ain't never letting it go."

I laugh and nod and remember the way it was, back when the hooey happened.

"Anyway, we can do this but you need to know it's gonna cost." His face is serious again.

I know the bad part is coming, the money part.

"So we are looking at…well, at least half a mil. At least."

I know Tessa has it. I try not to grip his hand that I'm still holding, awkwardly.

I nod along, "Okay. Well money ain't the reason someone restores an old haunted house. Y'all must know that. Only someone truly bat-shit crazy restores an old house."

He smiles and I feel mushy inside. He has dimples in his cheeks. I could eat him up.

Suddenly, I realize, literally I could eat him up. I pull my hands back and get up, "Well…now…you know where to reach me."

He looks uneasy at my sudden change in behavior. "Can you transfer me the first hundred tomorrow so I can start ordering the supplies?"

I nod.

"Okay good. Here is my card with the email address. The contract will be with your lawyer first thing in the morning."

He takes my hand and kisses the top of it. I smirk.

"Night, Luke."

He flashes his dimply smile and I melt into his hand. He has huge hands and the way they grip me makes me think naughty things. I remind myself the reason I'm a virgin, is that I have thus far eaten every boy I have ever tried to have relations with.

He smirks and gets lost in my face for a second, "You look awfully young to be in charge of such an undertaking."

I flash him my best grin, "Oh I am. But what can I do? Great Aunt Tessa is living there and it's condemnable."

He agrees and starts looking serious again, "Oh I agree. I agree completely. We need to get her out of there."

I know she won't leave. I've convinced her to sleep in the old hiding house and she will only agree to go there on certain nights.

I give him one more squeeze and leave the restaurant. I slip his card into my pocket and head for my truck.

My dead heart tries to come back to life when I see Whit sitting in my driver's seat. I almost stop walking but I don’t. I force myself to walk past and throw the keys in the window at him, "Keep it, asshole."

He climbs out and laughs at me. "Lorelei, wait." Almost fifty years and he wants to meet up like this? All nonchalant and shit. I don't think so.

I break into a run. I know he can't catch me. He never could.

What I don’t account for is the guy at the far side of the building. He grabs my arms as I fly by. He throws me to the ground and lies on top of me.

I know him instantly. I don’t fight. I'm stunned silent.

He is the valet. The valet at the Governor's and also the police officer who gave me a drink of sweet tea. He looks the same as he did forty-eight years ago. I knew him from somewhere then and now that he is holding me on the ground I know where from.

He was friends with Ramón. He was a close friend of Ramón. The kissing kind.

"You killed him?" I gasp.

He frowns at me, "Did you hit your head."

"Get off her." Whit pushes him off of me.

I stand and brush myself off and look at Whit, "You killed Ramón?" I can feel the tears starting. The black tears of the hate in my heart.

The man next to him looks sick. He shakes his head slowly, "I woulda walked through fire before I hurt him."

Whit grabs my arm and drags me away from the man.

"How come he was there? He was the cop and the valet and I know he dated Ramón." I look back, still stunned. Too stunned to ask about the millions of other things we need to talk about.

Whit's firm grip holds me tightly. He walks me to the side of the building talking in a low angry tone, "I have some things I need to show you."

"Yeah you already showed me that, Whit. I'm not interested in a repeat of that performance. Besides, you can't kill me and my family twice, so your show is sort of lame now." I knew coming home was a mistake. I wish I could leave, but I can't.

I shove him hard and break into a run. He and the other man chase me, I hear their footsteps for a minute, but they don’t stand a chance.

I run until I reach my land. I stop running and walk through the wheat field, letting the wheat tips scratch my hands. It sounds the way it used to. The hiding house is in better shape than the mansion. The front porch stairs seem to be the most weathered spot on the house. I open the front door. It sticks, but I push and it comes open. I step inside and remember. I can't do anything but remember. Every moment is attached to something.

My last moments with him were in this house. Not the way I woulda liked them to be. I open the cellar door and walk down the old stairs to the dank basement. I sit in the corner and try not to notice the bugs or the dirt. I close my eyes and I'm gone. I don’t dream anymore. I just fade into the black.

When I wake I don’t feel refreshed like I usually do. I feel sad. His face is still floating in my mind. He looked good, so good. My love is the same as it always was, unnatural.

His eyes are the same and his lazy grin. So many years have passed and he is the same. I need to hate him. I need to honor them and hate him. I stretch and think about getting the money to Luke and the lawyer's office. My lawyer will let me sign at night. I lied about having a shift work job.

"I love you." His voice breaks my silence.

I look up sharply. My heart grips tightly to my insides. It desperately wants to feel things. Fortunately my brain takes over and a sneer crosses my face. "Get out of my house." My chest almost explodes with the pain.

He grins, "This isn’t your land anymore."

My brow furrows, "Well, Tessa don't want you here either." I get up off the ground, dusting myself off.

He is leaning against the wall near the stairs. "I told you I would find you. I would always come for you." He pushes off the wall and takes a step toward me. I step toward the stairs and wonder if I can get up them before he grabs me. "Lorelei, we need to talk. I just need a couple minutes."

I take a small step toward the stairs. I'm not listening to him. I'm listening to the sounds of the house. Is anyone else with him or is he alone? I can outrun him but not if they grab me.

He takes a step toward me. "I have missed you. Every minute I have missed you. So many times I wanted to talk to you but I didn’t know how, but you came back."

My face is tense. I look around for another way out. He steps in front of the stairs in one of his huge steps. His long legs look the same. He looks the same. I want him. I can't fight it, the closer I get to him. I take a step back. The smell of him is in the air and doing weird things to the lower half of my belly.

He puts a hand out.

I swallow hard. I take a step back.

He crosses the space in two steps. I turn my back and cower into the wall and wait for his hands to come down on me or his fingers to bite into my flesh.

He grabs me and pulls me into him. He is warm, just like I remember. His body is hard. He presses against me and kisses the top of my head. "I have missed you my love."

I turtle. I'm powerless against him. I wait for it to end. For him to see just how dead I am and leave me alone.

He turns me and pulls my arms down. He tilts my chin up to him. My eyes dart to the side. I'm terrified of him.

He brushes a hand down my cheek, "You look so beautiful. Just the way I remember you."

My jaw trembles. My body fights a battle of the wills.

He looks worried, "Say something."

I look up into his dark eyes. "I hate you." He flinches but I continue, "You missed me because I ran. I have run for fifty years almost. I have stayed one day ahead of you everyday of my life. My horrid lonely life." My hand lashes out and slaps him hard.

He takes the shot but his eyes turn dark, stormy. " I saved you. I changed you because I love you. We're meant to be together. You believed that too."

I shove him away from me, "Yeah, I did. Course, that was before, when I thought you was a normal boy. Before you went and killed my family."

"You hated your family."

I shove him again, "I loved my sister."

He looks like he regrets his decisions, but what good does that do me now?

He takes my hands and kisses them. "I love you still. More than ever. I want to make things right between us."

I rip my hands away and turn away from him.

His fingers bite into my arm, "Don’t turn away from me." His Scottish accent comes out.

I rip my arm from him, "Don't manhandle me, Whit. I hate you. That’s it. There is no us. There is no fixing us. I hate you. I hated you forty-eight years ago and I hate you more now. We're done. END OF STORY!" I shout into his face.

He grabs me again but this time he drags me across the basement and up the stairs. He pulls me through the small house and pushes me through the front door. I stumble and fall in the dirt out front.

"You never just give me a minute to talk. You want to hate me, Lorelei? Let me give you an actual reason to hate me." His voice is savagely angry.

Terror pulses through my body. I look up from the dirt and watch him walk down the front steps. "I don’t need a reason, Whit. I have plenty."

I lunge at him and drive him into the front porch. The force breaks the woods and we crash into the siding of the house. He grabs my face and presses his lips into it.

I let him kiss me. Not because I want him to. I don’t. Not really. I let him kiss me so I can plot my escape.

His lips smother me, kissing, sucking, pulling at me. He needs me. I can feel it. His hands grab my butt and lift me into the air. My back crashes against the house. His body is pressed completely against mine. He rips my shirt open and plants kisses on the swell of my breasts. My legs are gripping him tightly. He side shuffles to the front door, dragging my back against the siding. I cry out. His lips are on mine again.

He drives his tongue into my mouth. I suck it and respond with my own. I moan against the hot wet kisses and firm hands that are massaging the back of my jeans.

He kneels on the hardwood floor in the front room and lays me back. He is crushing me into the floor, in a good way. I have lost the control I had and the plan to escape is gone.

We are sliding against each other. I roll him on his back and straddle him. I look at him like I'm gonna devour him. Only I don’t.

I run.

I run out the front door and I don’t stop until I'm sitting on the swing in the backyard of the Palatino family's house. My butt against the swing feels too big, it always did. Angie always had a tiny ass. I look up at the huge mansion. I imagine her screams were blended with my family's. The screams all sound the same. I can't differentiate who is who in my mind. It doesn’t matter. I know the chorus of the screams in my mind needs to be my constant reminder of why I need to steer clear of him.

My plan to stay away from him was easier to think about and plot than it was to execute. He has followed me everywhere, trying desperately to convince me of his innocence in my family's death. The murders I saw him commit. He hasn’t given me a second of breathing room. He doesn’t come in the house, it's the only peace I get. But he hangs out in the yard and follows me to the motel. He's all but kept my damned truck too.

I glance at him standing down the driveway beside my friggen truck.