Tell No Lies (3 page)

“And miss the chance to find out what makes Augusta Aldridge tick? Fat chance,” he said, and chuckled low.

They walked down the boardwalk, through the shifting dunes and down onto the beach, which stretched nearly to mid-pier with the tide at its lowest point. A slash of moonlight reflected on the wet sand. There was just enough light to see that there was no one else on the beach, despite the sounds of revelry that filtered over the dunes. Her heart beating fiercely, Augusta made a left toward the pier, where it was darker and a little more private. She wasn’t in control right now. Some primeval part of her brain took over. All she could think about was kissing Ian . . . for starters.

He didn’t fail to note the direction she led him and laughed huskily. “You’re a real puzzle, Augusta.”

Augusta reached down, plucking off her sandals as they reached the pier, flashing him a mischievous grin. She threw the shoes up toward the dunes on a drier stretch of beach and leaned back against one of the piles, lifting her chin.

He stood a few feet away, reluctant to come to her, studying her, his gaze traveling the length of her despite his resolve not to flirt with her. “Feeling better, I take it?”

Augusta nodded, her smile as flirty as she knew how.

His blue eyes were pale, glittering dangerously under the moonlight. “You really enjoy playing with fire, don’t you?” he whispered hoarsely.

Augusta’s gaze fell to the bulge in his jeans. He was aroused . . . and she had never in her life been more turned on by a man. Her body craved him. Her nipples ached. She shrugged, her breath hitching on a sigh. “Looks to me like you’re the one who’s scared,” she taunted.

He ventured closer, seeming to wage a war with whatever thoughts were going through his head, and Augusta felt the moisture between her thighs. She dug her toes into the cool water and sand beneath her feet and beckoned him nearer. She’d worn a white V-neck T-shirt over an ankle-length skirt the color of ripe berries. Her breasts strained at the material, aching for his long fingers. Somewhere in the fog of her brain she realized how reckless this was, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She shuddered as he stared, hunger in his eyes.

He didn’t say anything as he approached and less when he reached her. There was no need to pretend coyness. It wasn’t Augusta’s style. She wanted him to kiss her—needed him to touch her—and she slid her arm around his neck as he bent to her mouth, welcoming the feel of his soft, warm lips over hers. He didn’t hold back. He gave her his tongue, sliding the fevered warmth of it into her mouth, tasting every corner greedily, nipping her tongue, kissing her hungrily, and they locked into a carnal embrace right there on the beach, under the cover of darkness.

Augusta met every exploration of his hands with her own hungry inspection of his body. She had lived thirty-four years and never experienced this aching need to be filled so deeply by a man’s body.

“Is this why you came to see me, Augusta?” he whispered, his voice raw against her cheek. He pressed his groin against her so she could feel the full evidence of his arousal, and her breath caught. She tasted the sweat from his upper lip and lapped it greedily from her lips. She was vaguely aware that one breast had escaped the confines of her T-shirt and her bare flesh was being caressed by cool night air. She wanted his mouth to warm her skin.

His eyes impaled her, those clear blue eyes that made her want to say anything to keep him right here in her arms. “Yes,” she said with a shivery sigh, and reached up to nip his lip.

“You sure?”

Would a killer ask permission to make love to her?

Augusta nodded.

He was innocent, she decided, but right now she felt anything but. Her lips were bruised by their kiss. Her heart pounded against her ribs. He leaned to kiss her nipple, taking it into his mouth and suckling hard, seeming to read her thoughts.

Augusta moaned deep in her throat.

Her head fell back against the pile as he slid a hand beneath her skirt, into her panties . . . between her thighs. He dipped his finger inside her and his eyes met hers over the rise of her breast. His mouth left her nipple long enough for him to whisper with a devious smile, “Looks like I found your sweet spot.”

Don’t stop, she begged silently.

Augusta spread her legs, and he slid his finger deeper inside her body. She adjusted to accommodate him, her head falling back, whatever will she might have summoned completely lost. He brought those fingers without shame to his lips to taste her as she watched.

“Sweet as honey,” he said huskily.

Augusta’s heart hammered. “I want you inside me,” she said desperately.

It wasn’t like her. She was not
that
girl, but she felt completely carnal and open in his presence, unjudged, uninhibited.

She didn’t have to ask again.

He dragged her under the pier where it was darkest—where they would be shielded from prying eyes—passing her shoes in the sand. Somehow he unzipped his pants before he had her on the ground. And he covered her, shoving himself inside her.

At the time it had felt so right.

She had never experienced such an overwhelming desire in all her life—never. Her body was like a puppet dancing to his every look, his every touch. She could no more have walked away in that moment than she could have said no.

Only right now it seemed so wrong.

Ian Patterson was behind bars for the attempted murder of her sister. He was suspected of having murdered two more women and was possibly responsible for the disappearances of at least three others, including a young reporter who worked for her sister.

Augusta struggled with her guilt.

After his arrest and her initial shock, she had fully expected them to let him go, saying it was a mistake. Her soul was dying a little with every day that passed without his release—not so much because she needed to see him, needed to confront him, or even because she had been so very, very wrong about him, but because she had been so willing to do battle with her own flesh and blood in defense of a stranger.

And because she craved his tongue between her legs . . . even now.

The memory of it made her yearn to slide her hand beneath the covers. Was it any wonder she couldn’t sleep? She felt like a traitor and a hussy.

With a miserable groan, she tugged the covers over her head to block the blinking red numbers on her alarm clock. Hopefully, everything would look better in morning.

 

 

Exhausted and cranky from a restless night, Augusta sat on the bed, drying her hair with a towel, staring at the woodpecker that was perched on her windowsill.

Three months into their sentence—as she’d come to regard the terms of their mother’s Last Will and Testament—she was more confused than ever. She hadn’t actually expected to inherit a dime of Flo’s money—especially since they had been estranged for years before her death. Sadly, she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d had a real conversation with her mother, and in fact, could no longer picture her face. She tried to determine how that made her feel, but couldn’t pin down a particular emotion. Behind the numbness, there was something distressing, but she pushed it away.

Although she wasn’t quite as unemotional as Caroline and Savannah seemed to believe, she also wasn’t given to fits of sentimentality. She came by that trait honestly; their mother had been a bit of a brick wall with very few chinks. Still it had surprised Augusta to learn that Caroline and Savannah had discovered box after box of mementos in the attic—all apparently tucked away by Flo. Evidently, their mom had a paper-thin sentimental streak that had never been evident.

Take the room Augusta was sleeping in, for example. It had been Augusta’s room growing up, but nothing in it resembled the place where she had suffered through teen angst. The walls were patched now and repainted in a pristine satin khaki. Her eclectic and haphazardly hung magazine covers and posters had been replaced with respectable paintings. Flo had remade this as her
guest room
. But if you were looking for the nostalgia, it was there—a single collection of photos that occupied the walnut dresser—appropriately, all of Augusta with her sisters and Josh Childres, who had been Augusta’s best friend and co-conspirator throughout their childhood.

Throwing the damp towel on the carpet, she wandered to the dresser, lifting up a photo of her and Josh. In this one, they were both probably about ten, wielding sledgehammers. Flo had ordered the demolition of the slave quarters. Knowing how much it meant to Augusta to destroy the relics of their Confederate sins, she’d let both Augusta and Josh hurl the first blows. Her sister Caroline hadn’t approved and had refused to participate. Her eldest sister felt that, right or wrong, the remnants of Charleston’s slave culture were part of their history and should be respected. Her sister Savannah, on the other hand, had been too young to be able to lift the heavy sledgehammers or to have an opinion. But Augusta and Josh had had a field day destroying anything and everything in sight—except that Augusta had limited herself to inanimate objects. Josh had gotten distracted by mosquitoes and flies, wielding his sledgehammer like a Viking murder weapon.

Their housekeeper Sadie’s only son had been a cocky little kid, full of piss and vinegar. Cherished both by Sadie and by Flo, he was probably the only male Florence Willodean Aldridge hadn’t despised—aside from Sammy, of course. Sammy she had worshipped above all. If not before his death, most especially after.

Her baby brother’s disappearance had been the turning point in their lives, changing everyone, and not for the better. Caroline had assumed the role of pleaser, taking it upon herself to try to make their morose mother happy and failing at every turn. Savannah had withdrawn into her head while their father had abandoned them less than two months later. He’d gotten himself a new girlfriend and died, all within six months of Sam’s death. And Augusta . . . well, she had become a bit of a hellion—angry and defiant.

She liked to think she had changed, but the truth was simmering somewhere beneath the surface, threatening to erupt at any moment. She was
still
angry, but defiance wasn’t an easy act to play these days. She was supposed to be an adult, not a rebellious teen.

Who the hell was she defying anyway? Flo had never given a crap about any of her daughters. If they all simply stayed out of her way and out of the press, their mother was a happy little clam buried deep in her palace by the sea.

With a sigh, Augusta set the photograph of her and Josh down on the dresser, scanning the rest. To look at all the pictures sitting there in a place of honor it was easy to believe Flo gave a damn. But they were probably all for show—so Flo’s guests would praise her undying devotion to her wayward, unappreciative children.

Or maybe Flo had truly wished to preserve a trace of Augusta here somewhere, as a memorial to the daughter who’d forsaken her. Who knew? All those answers were long gone now, buried along with their mother.

She eyed the photo of Josh.

Augusta hadn’t seen him much since Caroline had managed to piss him off by implicating him as a source in her article about the Secessionville murders—an article that, incidentally, also nearly got Caroline’s own fiancé fired from the police force. Much as Flo might have done, her sister had gone after Ian Patterson like a pit bull and Augusta couldn’t help but wonder how much her persistence had had to do with Ian’s arrest. She couldn’t shake the feeling that he was innocent. It clung to her more stubbornly than their retriever Tango’s dog hair.

Disgusted, she turned away from the dresser.

There were too many things on her mind right now—not the least of which had to do with the renovation of the house. Upon her mother’s death, Flo had left her daughters each with a task—a final distasteful chore to earn one last allowance. With Flo, nothing could ever be given freely. No hugs. No smiles. Everything had to be
earned
, and the price usually included a piece of one’s soul.

Caroline’s
job
was to revive the
Tribune—
one of Charleston’s oldest newspapers—from its painful death throes. Savannah—her youngest sister and their mother’s favorite—if indeed Flo had a favorite—had to face her writing demons and pen a new book. No doubt, Flo was hoping Savannah would immortalize her in ink. And Augusta, well, she got to restore the house they’d grown up in—this Civil War–era monstrosity she had come to hate. And the kicker . . . they had to do it all while living together under the same roof, without killing each other.

Whatever that was supposed to accomplish, Augusta didn’t know, but Flo had one helluva sense of humor and the joke was on them.

So far, Augusta had been living out of a single drawer, reluctant to get too comfortable, but she opened the dresser drawer now and stared at the empty bottom. A glance at the closet floor confirmed that her entire wardrobe was lying there waiting to be laundered, and a wry smile curved her lips. Apparently, a limited wardrobe only worked if you were willing to do laundry often.

Retrieving a pair of shorts from the dirty pile and plucking up the cleanest of the T-shirts, she decided another trip to New York was in order. Augusta had kept her apartment there, fully intending to return after their year’s sentence was over. She had brought only the most basic necessities. Caroline was going to flip out over her leaving again, she knew, but it couldn’t be helped. Although at this point, Caroline’s fits were the least of her worries, and even the house lagged far behind the situation with Ian.

Whether he was guilty or not, sleeping with him might have been the stupidest thing she had ever done in all her life. Not daring to explore last night’s dreams too closely, she made her way downstairs, passing the loose board that had sent her mother tumbling to her death. For the hundredth time, she stopped to inspect it, examining the warped wood. It looked a little like water damage, but a glance up revealed no telltale stain in the ceiling. Toeing the raised board, she resolved to begin the renovations of this mausoleum—this tribute to Southern aristocracy—as soon as possible. Christ, but if her mother thought she was going to leave the place as it was, she was dead wrong. If she was going to be forced to handle the restoration of this relic of the Old South, it was going to end up as something Augusta could look at and not feel shame over.

It was no secret to anyone that Augusta hated this house. For that matter, she hated Charleston and its genteel façade that hid a putrid soul—melodramatic perhaps, but the description suited her feelings just the same. Nope, give her New York and honest, straightforward people any day of the week.

At the bottom of the stairs, she checked the massive old mirror that had been hanging in the hall for literally a century and frowned at the dark circles forming under her eyes. The mirror had at one point belonged to Charles Pinckney, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. But that distinction hadn’t saved Pinckney’s plantation and he’d sold the estate—and the mirror—due to mismanagement. His loss was apparently the Aldridges’ gain, or rather her great-great-grandmother’s gain.

When they were younger, Sadie had had them all convinced the mirror bore the souls of the dead, and dead was exactly what she looked like this morning. The original silvered glass was hardly flattering, but her mother had gladly sacrificed her reflection for the cachet of owning a gilded glass that had once hung at Snee Farm.

All of it was straight-up bung as far as Augusta was concerned. She didn’t much care to stare at herself in any mirror, but if you were going to do it, it was better to actually be able to see yourself clearly.

Voices came from the direction of the kitchen. “Lordy, Caroline! You didn’t have to do this, eah!”

Augusta walked in as Sadie was inspecting a gift, apparently from Caroline, pulling the little dipper out and twirling the wand in her hand. Painted yellow, the small bowl was seated atop a base shaped like a miniature sunflower. Augusta walked over to inspect it, too, and then realizing what it was, her cheeks flamed and abruptly, she turned away, saying only, “Pretty.”

She settled at the kitchen bar, listening to her sister and their longtime housemaid and mother’s friend chatter away while she tried to block out all memories of last night’s dreams.

“Where on earth did you find it?” Sadie asked.

“A great little shop in Mount Pleasant. Jack and I had lunch on Shem Creek last week while we were shopping for a wedding dress.”

“Love it!” Sadie announced. “Have you two set the date yet?”

“Not yet,” Caroline said.

Augusta was betting they never would. Caroline’s fear of commitment bordered on paranoia. To her dismay, Sadie set the honey pot down on the island in front of her. Augusta eyed the ceramic gewgaw with no small amount of chagrin and tried not to think about Ian.

It wasn’t as though she didn’t have enough on her plate.

And today, before she even got started with the final inventory of the relics they were getting rid of at the auction she’d organized, she was going to have to call her office in New York and make her leave of absence permanent. She’d been kidding herself that none of them would last here more than three months, because here they were, each of them buried deep in her own task, and the truth was that, no matter how much she liked to think she was above bribery—because that’s all this inheritance really was—she wasn’t. There was no way she was going to walk away from her share of thirty-seven million dollars.

Neither would her sisters.

Maybe she would buy a calendar and hang it in her room so she could tick off the days like a forgotten prisoner in a stone cell. The thought made her smirk. Pinning up a calendar would infuriate her mother’s ghost—tacks in the walls—just like old times.

“I have just the thing to put into it!” Sadie said. “I bought some local honey from Bee City. But you girls will have to come over to my place to try it out ’cause I’m taking this lovely thing home with me.”

“I hoped you would,” Caroline said. “You do so much for us, Sadie. I just wanted you to know how much we appreciate you.” She pointed to the base of the object. “See, it’s signed.”

Sadie gasped with delight and gave Caroline a swift kiss on the cheek. “You know what I appreciate? I appreciate you did the dishes last night, baby girl.”

Caroline peered over at Augusta. “Actually . . . it was Augie’s idea. We figured if you can cook for us, we can pull together to clean up after.”

Sadie hurried to Augusta’s side and planted an unexpected kiss on her cheek.

Augusta’s face heated. “Cripes!” she said. “All this saccharine crap is making me ill.” But she smiled, warmed by Sadie’s heartfelt kiss.

Her heart gave a little kick of protest when Sadie pulled away. Hers was the only bit of warmth Augusta could really recall from their youth. She missed those loving arms.

As usual, the kitchen smelled delightful, with the aroma of freshly baked bread competing with apple-smoked bacon. The best she had ever managed in New York was the lingering scent from a box of H&H bagels or freshly roasted coffee—free trade, of course.

Okay, so maybe there were
some
things about Charleston that were better than up north. At least this prison sentence gave her the opportunity to get reacquainted with her sisters and Sadie, though it galled her that even from the grave their mother was still controlling their lives.

“Coffee, Augusta?”

Augusta gave Sadie a wide-eyed, exaggerated nod. “Please!” But she got up and went for a mug herself, hardly expecting Sadie to wait on her. She was just a little distracted this morning.

“Here you go,” Sadie said, bringing her a clean spoon as Caroline’s phone rang.

As she always did these days, Caroline dove for her cell phone, probably hoping it was Jack. The two of them had become inseparable after their reconciliation. Augusta was happy for her sister, even if, in her opinion, it was impossible to go back. Once something was broken, it was broken for good. Like a shattered teacup, you could piece it all back together, but the glue stains remained. Her mother had been right about that much.

A flash of memory accosted her, of handing Flo a repaired porcelain cup—a fine white teacup with hand-painted azaleas. Her mother had handed it back and told her to throw it away. It was ruined. Unusable. Worthless. Augusta shut out the memory.