Compulsion (13 page)

She didn’t want to be glad to see him. And yet she was.

He came over to meet her. His gaze dropped to the bows on Barrie’s red-and-white peep-toe slingbacks, the ones that resembled high-heeled Sperry’s, then slid up past her jeans and blouse to linger on her lips. “Very nice,” he said. “The Resurrection won’t know what hit it.”

“Thank you.” Barrie tried to hide her blush-warmed cheeks while he held the front door open for her. Tried not to feel the heat coming off him when she stepped past.

But of course he had to spoil it. “You might need to rethink the heels, if you ever want to come sailing with me. They’re not actually practical as boat shoes.”

Barrie gave him her best withering glance and walked faster down the steps. There was no chance of her going sailing, with him or anyone else.

“Why do you want to be mad at me?” He easily kept pace.

“I don’t want to be mad.”

“You may not think you do. . . .”

Suddenly Barrie remembered exactly why she shouldn’t be glad to see him. Because he was infuriating. “So now you’re telling me what I think? What is it with you? You order my food. You tell me who I want to go out with. You tell Pru to let
you
fix the shutter, tell random people who they need to call, you even tell me what kind of shoes to wear.”

“Wait. I
like
your shoes. I’ve liked all your shoes so far.”

“You’re pushy.” Barrie shoved him in the chest. “Stop pushing me. And get out of my head. I know what I want.”

“That’s just it. You don’t
listen
to what you want. You think you don’t want to be mad at me, but you do. You thought you should want to go to dinner with Cassie, so you told her you would. And now you’re going because you think you have to—”

“Stop doing that!” It made Barrie even madder not to be able to deny it. He was right, damn him, but it had nothing to do with Cassie. She pushed the car door out of his hand and dropped into the passenger seat.

He tapped the roof, once, twice. “Could we call a truce for tonight, Bear? Neither one of us needs to be upset when we get where we’re going.”

They drove in silence until Eight turned on the stereo again. With the convertible top up, the car had shrunk. Or Eight and all the things they weren’t saying had grown too big for the space. The tension built between them, ratcheting higher so that by the time they left Watson’s Landing, Barrie’s headache was back again, as intense and sudden as if it had been outside the gate waiting for her all along.

Eight stopped the car before turning out onto the road. Leaning across her, he opened the glove box and tossed a new bottle of Tylenol into her lap. “Here. You’ll be miserable at the Resurrection with a headache.”

Barrie took it without comment. She had probably winced or rubbed her temple without realizing it—she was beyond questioning how Eight always knew what she was thinking. He didn’t even need to be clairvoyant to know the Resurrection would be hard for her.

When they got there, music vibrated through the flame-painted walls. Barrie got out of the car in the parking lot, and
with her mouth dry and her head pounding, she mumbled a thank-you and a good-bye and walked toward the entrance. She expected Eight to drive away.

Instead he followed her inside. Laughter, music, and the clack of pool balls knocking into one another bounced off the floor and ceiling, but conversation hushed and heads turned as she paused inside. Eight scanned the room. After catching her hand, he led her past the bar area and a dance floor where a graying grizzly of a man danced with a woman in a ruffled denim skirt, fishnet tights, and combat boots.

Barrie heard Cassie’s laugh before she saw her. Flanked by two pretty girls, her cousin leaned against the pool table closest to the wall, but she might as well have been dead-center in the room. She commanded attention as if it were hers by right. In a white shirt with the collar flipped up, tight fawn-colored pants, and sky-high black suede heels, Barrie’s cousin missed being a
Vogue
cover model by ten pounds in all the right places.

The bottom of her own cue stick resting on the floor, Cassie watched a muscled twentysomething wearing a camouflage cap turned backward line up the two ball with the corner pocket. She bent to speak into his ear, but her voice was loud enough to carry above the music. “You might as well quit, Grady. You’re going to overthink that shot. You know you are. Any second now, you’re going to wonder if it isn’t a hair to the left, and knock it too hard.”

The guy straightened and gave her a pleading look. “Have a heart, Cassie. Would you just let me play?”

“Am I holding you back?” Cassie looked around for support, her expression innocent except for the smile playing around her lips. “Do you see my hands on the boy, y’all? Or am I simply telling him what we all know is the gospel truth?”

Laughter rippled across the room, and a woman from the next table over called: “She’s got you there, Grady. Course, she’s got you in all kinds of different of ways.”

Cassie raised her head to laugh and caught sight of Barrie. She straightened away from the table. “Well, there she is. Hey, y’all”—she waved and glanced around with a smile—“come and meet my pretty little cousin, Barrie Watson.”

Every eye in the room turned toward Barrie, and she wished she could head right back out the door. Most of the kids in Barrie’s junior class at Creswell Prep had been together since the first day of middle school. They might not have been her best friends, but they knew her.

She didn’t know anyone here, but after Cassie’s introduction, every soul in the poolroom gathered around. Cassie’s friends, Grady and
his
friends, other kids, older guys who reeked of beer. The crowd itself attracted attention, and soon the waitress and the hostess from the dining room came in, along with older people from the bar.

“Hold on,” Eight whispered to her. “It’ll be over soon.”

It was. Maybe because the crowd was younger, they hadn’t known her mother, and so Barrie wasn’t as much of a curiosity. She breathed easier when it was only Cassie, Grady, and the two pretty blondes, Beth and Gilly, left standing with her. And Eight, the solid bulk of him forming a foundation at her back.

Both Beth and Gilly seemed more interested in him than Barrie. “So when do you have to leave for school?” Beth asked.

Eight cut a glance at Barrie. “Not sure yet.”

“You have to be excited, I’ll bet. Imagine being out in the middle of
everything
. Hollywood. The beach.”

“We’ve got plenty of beaches around here,” Eight said.

“That’s right.” Cassie threaded her arm through the crook of Barrie’s elbow. “Beaches and cookouts and all sorts of things.” She gestured to include Beth and Gilly. “We are going to have so much fun! And the best part? Summer’s barely started. We’ll have loads of time to hang out before school starts.”

“I don’t know.” Beth looked Barrie up and down. She was taller than Gilly and less round, and she looked both elegant and casual, dressed all in white. “Barrie doesn’t look like she gets to the beach much. We’ll have to get some color on her first.”

Barrie glanced at Eight. She couldn’t help thinking of his cheek against hers while he’d pointed out turtles in the water. He wasn’t always aggravating.

“I like the beach,” she said. “I’ve just never been one for lying out.”

In the background the jukebox had clicked over to Lady Gaga’s “The Edge of Glory,” the heartbeat opener with its simple voice building up to sax and soaring hooks. The song was one of Mark’s favorites. Barrie had sung it with him so many times, karaoke style, hamming it up and laughing like crazy by the end. The notes flowed through her, loosening her shoulders. The plastic smile she’d been wearing started to feel more like her own.

Beside her Eight stepped closer, his breath hot and chill-inducing against her skin. “I’ve got to get going, but you’re okay now, aren’t you? You’ll be fine on your own.” He leaned in even more. “Just don’t let Cassie bully you.”

He pulled away, and Barrie felt it like a loss.

Cassie’s lips slid into a potent curve aimed dead at him. “You sure you can’t stay, love? Come on. Cancel your dinner or whatever. Get out of that jacket, and stay. I promise we’re a whole lot more fun than whatever you have planned.”

“I can’t. Sorry,” Eight said, not sounding it. He caught Barrie’s gaze, and hesitated, then leaned in as if—

As if
what
? What was Barrie even thinking?

“Say hello to your father for me,” she said sweetly.

A muscle worked along Eight’s jaw. He opened his mouth, but Cassie tugged Barrie toward the dining room before he could speak. “His loss, right, Barrie? We won’t worry about him. You’re going to be fine with us. We’ll go eat, and then
maybe we’ll dance. Or shoot some pool. You play, don’t you?”

Barrie pretended she didn’t care as Cassie led her and the other two girls away, but she was aware of Eight standing and watching them go.

Beth waited until he was out of earshot before catching Barrie’s shoulder. “What
is
the matter with you, girl? Eight Beaufort was about to kiss you, and you sent him away looking like a dog without its supper.”

“I’ll be happy to take him off your hands, if you don’t want him,” Gilly said.

Beth frowned at Gilly with an ugly little twist of her lips. “As if.”

“You want him, you can have him,” Barrie said, but the thought carved a small pit of emptiness inside her. She studied the scratched wood floor. “Not that he’s mine to hand over.”

Not that she wanted him to be.

Cassie led them to an empty booth and gestured for Barrie and Gilly to slide in first on either side. Gilly gave Barrie a slight eye roll as she wedged herself in against the wall. Despite being plump, she was beautiful. Like Cassie, she had the magical kind of beauty that had little to do with individual features. Technically, proportionally, Gilly’s mouth was too far from her nose, and her eyes were too wide apart. Studying her across the booth though, Barrie wished she had brought her
sketchbook. Taken as a whole, Gilly’s features transformed into a paintable and intriguing face. Had Cassie not been in the room, it would have been Gilly turning heads.

Gilly was pleasantly unself-conscious too. Leaning over the table, she shouted to be heard above the music spilling from the bar. “You have to try the barbecue, Barrie!”

Barrie nodded, her head throbbing in time to the beat. “The Edge of Glory” had faded into a set of Springsteen songs, as if someone had a thing for saxophone. Cassie plucked four menus from the stand at the edge of the table and passed them around. “They make a mustard sauce here that’ll make your mouth want to dance.”

“Is it spicy?” Barrie asked as a song ended. The words came out too loud.

Cassie smiled broadly. “You can use a little spice, sugar. Heat to bring out some color on that porcelain skin.”

“Seems to me she’s doing fine in the heat department.” Beth tipped her head at Gilly. “Better than
some
of us, and she’s barely been in town a day.”

“Well, it wasn’t like either of
us
was ever going to have him.” Gilly buried her face behind a menu.

“Stop it, you two. It’s not like the boy can help himself. It’s the Beaufort-Watson thing pulling them together. Watsons and Beauforts are always together,” Cassie said.

Beth turned to gape at her. “What are you talking about?
I’ve never so much as seen a Watson and a Beaufort in the same building.”

“Not now, maybe. But that’s not the way it’s always been—Watsons and Beauforts used to run this town together and to hell with anyone else.” The waitress had come to take their order, and Cassie glanced around the table. “Y’all are ready, aren’t you?” She lowered her menu but didn’t wait for anyone to answer. “I’ll have the Boil and my cousin will have the Barbecue and—” She broke off and let the menu fall to the table, her expression wary and at the same time closed-off, as if the shutters had slammed on a house, hiding whatever lived within. “Daddy?”

“Hello there.” Wyatt ignored his daughter and focused in on Barrie. “You’ve got to be my niece.”

Wyatt Colesworth was a big, forbidding man, and his dark hair and dark clothing melted into the shadows of the dim restaurant lighting. “Don’t get mad,” he said to Cassie. “I’m not going to crash your girls’ night out, but I had to come by and say hello to Wade’s little girl.” He stopped beside the booth, and his slack skin and craggy features turned warmer as he smiled at Barrie. “Come here and give your uncle Wyatt a big old hug. Get up now, Beth. Let her out.”

Barrie rose, but even from a yard away Cassie’s father smelled of fish, with undertones of some beverage stronger than beer. His teeth were stained and all the same size, like little squares of yellow gum. Barrie wanted to stay right where she was, but Beth slid off the seat and left her without a choice. In the booths around them, people had turned to watch as if
this were part of the evening’s entertainment. Barrie gave Wyatt a quick squeeze and pulled away.

“It’s nice to meet you—”

“You call me Uncle Wyatt, you hear? We’re family, aren’t we? Your mama and Wade and me went back a long way together. I imagine she probably mentioned me to you?” His eyes were hooded, but beneath the heavy lids he watched her sharply. “She probably talked about me a lot. She always liked telling stories.”