Chapter 13
Kitt
I see him, making his way back over the hills, his black shirt soaked with sweat. I hope I’ve not gone too far. I have to say I was surprised at the panic on his face as he searched for me.
Almost made me feel guilty.
By the time he gets back to the front door, I’ve come out of my hiding place behind the shower curtain in his unused bathroom at the end of the hall.
Now, with my heart rate finally back to normal after shaking behind that curtain, listening to him call for me, his angry bootsteps, I’m sitting at the kitchen table. Innocently dressed in my everyday jeans and a gray sweater, my hair brushed back neatly in a ponytail.
My nose is stuck in my book. Turns out his mom appreciated a good bodice ripper just like Fiona, and I’ve found the plot very interesting. A porcelain blue pot of aromatic tea and a plate of bread I baked this morning slathered with fresh Irish butter sit waiting for us.
When he sees me, the color drains from his face. The way he doubles over, hands on his knees in relief, makes me feel terrible for my little game. I was just trying to hold my own, turning one of his captive games back on him.
He takes his time wiping his muddy boots off on the mat. He walks across the room, trying to gain his composure. He can’t even look at me.
He pulls out the chair opposite me, letting the ends of the legs thump on the floor so loudly, I give a little jump from nerves. He slides into the chair, crossing one long leg over the other, letting his ankle rest on his mid-thigh. Crossing his arms over his chest, he finally looks at me.
“Where have you been?” The ice in his voice freezes my heart.
I went too far. “I’ve been here the whole time. Waiting for you.”
“No, you haven’t. I searched every room in this house for you. I was about to call Eamon out here to look for you.”
“I still don’t know who Eamon is.”
“My baby brother. And your savior. Although now I’m really rethinking having listened to him.”
“I’d like to meet him,” I say. “Can he come for dinner?”
His response is an exasperated sigh.
“Does he like cookies?” I ask, keeping the subject off my prank. “Maybe I can send him something as a thank you.”
“No more kitchen for you. You’ll be on lockdown from here on out, chained to that bed of yours.”
Gaining free rein of the house was my best move in this whole game, baking in this glorious kitchen, curled up reading books on his cushy sofa, the gorgeous view of the sea just a turn of my head away—I can’t lose what little freedom I have!
“It was just a practical joke! You’ve been playing with me like a kid with a toy. I had to do something to stand up for myself.” Sheepishly, I nod toward the end of the hall. “I was only behind the shower curtain. Surely, we can come to some agreement.” I think quickly, something to appease him so I don’t lose access to his beautiful home. “What’s your favorite meal?—”
He holds up a massive palm to stop me.
“I’m too angry to talk right now.” His sea-colored eyes lock on mine, threats upon threats shining in his irises. “You have no idea the kind of men I almost called here to have a look for you. Or what they’d do to you when they found you.”
A shiver runs through me.
“Talk about something, anything, to calm me down.” He tears a piece of bread in half, shoving a massive amount into his mouth but somehow manages to chew politely. “Before I do something to you I might regret.”
Ice trips down my spine at his veiled threat. All the things he’s done to me up till now he hasn’t regretted. I’d hate for him to do something to me that he did. I think of the most mundane subject I can. Fiona pops in my mind, telling me to focus on something sexy.
Codfish.
“Well… do you have an issue with us at the research center trying to stop overfishing? Scotland used to have healthy populations of cod but due to fishermen netting the babies then letting them die instead of throwing them back, the population has been decimated.”
“You’re telling me that kids from around the world should be able to march onto this island, where my people have been living since the Vikings, do a bit of counting, then put laws on us to tell us how to live our lives? Put men out of jobs? Stop boys from providing for their mothers, feeding their siblings? Do you have any idea how those restrictions have impoverished our people? Next subject.”
“How’s the bread?” I ask.
“Delicious.” He nods. “Best I’ve had.”
A ping of feminine pride lights inside my chest. “Glad you like it.”
“The cookies were edible as well,” he adds.
“You should have taken some to your friends.”
He stares at me. “And just who would they have supposed had baked them? Me?”
The thought of him scraping cookies off a tray almost makes me smile till I remember how small my new life has become. “Oh yeah. I’m a secret.”
“A secret?” He grunts. “Secrets are easy to keep. You? Not so much. A troublemaker, more like.”
I change the subject, pushing for more information from this crime I’m the only witness to. “What did Clive have to do with the Kings, and what was in the research center you wanted destroyed?”
“You’re really not trying to help yourself, are you?” He grabs a second slice of bread.
He’s right. I seriously need someone to give me a lesson in self-preservation.
“Tell me about your family,” he says.
“What family?” I mutter the humiliating words before I can stop them from coming out.
I busy myself making us two cups of tea. I noticed this morning he takes his straight, so I leave the milk and sugar out of his. I push a hot mug across the table to him.
He lifts the cup to his lips, taking a scalding sip without even blowing on it first. “What do you mean?” His dark brows narrow at me. “You haven’t got any family?”
“You want a splash of milk?” I hold out the tiny matching blue pitcher I filled with milk. “That’s how Fiona cools it down. She puts too much in though. Makes it all white.”
“No thanks.” He shakes his head. “And don’t change the subject.”
The raise of a stern dark eyebrow makes me talk. “It was just me and Mom growing up. Dad took off when I was young. Mom wasn’t too thrilled about that. I think she thought he would have stayed if?—”
“If what?” he says.
“She hadn’t gotten pregnant with me.”
I’ve never said the words aloud before and now that I’ve released them into the world, tears spring up in my eyes. I dab them away with a napkin.
“That’s disturbing,” he says. “The day a man’s baby is born is the best of his life. Next to his wedding day, of course.”
I’ve never heard a man talk so openly about marriage and family. The boys in LA seem to be living the Peter Pan lifestyle, perpetually dating then moving on to the next, prettier thing.
I eye him cautiously. “Are you hoping to get married one day?”
“Aye.”
“Why hasn’t it happened?” I want to follow up my question with my own answer—because you killed the love of your life with your bare hands—but my self-preservation instinct finally kicks in and I hold my tongue, waiting for his answer.
He chews his bread slowly, thinking. He swallows his bite down with more tea. “It’s not a story I share very often.”
Disappointment prickles my nerves. I want to know the truth. I’m living with this man, after all.
“But I have to say. Your baking has a way of loosening my tongue.”
Hope abounds. “There’s plenty more where that came from. Just tell me what you like. I’ll make it for you.” I pop up, grabbing him a cookie from where I’ve hidden them in the cupboard. I plop it down on his plate and curl back up in my chair.
“And you shared something personal with me, so I owe ya.”
I lean in, listening, feeling a bit of nervous energy over what I’m about to hear. He takes his time, enjoying his cookie, washing it down with the rest of his tea. When he’s done, he brushes the crumbs from his fingers onto his empty plate. He pushes his chair back, patting his flat stomach.
“I just ate at the cookout. Don’t know why I was hungry.”
“All that running,” I tease with a giggle, still kinda happy with my game. He cuts an eye at me that’s so stern my laughter chokes off in the back of my throat. “Back to your story.”
“It’s not a story most choose to believe, but it’s the truth.”
He says it with so much authority, and he’s never lied to me before. He’s always been a straight shooter. Maybe it’s my poor self-preservation kicking in again?—
I say, “I’ll believe you. If you tell me that what you’re saying is true, I’ll believe you.”
At my words, a softness come over the angles of his face as he eyes me for a moment. The way he’s staring at me makes me shy. I have to look away.
“I got off early from work one day. Eamon and I were still living at my dad’s house at the time. Went home. My girl’s car was in the drive. I was excited, thinking she must have called the auto shop I was working at, found out I’d left early. Was even foolish enough to think she maybe was cooking for me or something.” He gives a snort. “Would have been the first time.”
I wait on the edge of my seat as he continues, his voice slow and steady.
“Was funny—I should have known something was up when I saw my dad’s truck was there too. He’d said he was up in Glasgow for the day, doing some business. I didn’t think anything of it, just went straight into the house.”
An uneasy feeling rests in the pit of my stomach.
“There they were. The two of them. Laid out over the couch. Going at it so hard they didn’t even hear me come in.” His hands come together at the memory, one a fist, the other rubbing his skin. One of his rings catches the light. It would hurt, to be beaten by him. I can imagine that ring cutting a man’s face. “I wanted to kill her. I wanted to kill them both.”
“What did you do?”
“I grabbed my dad, pulling him off her. Threw him across the room. She sat up, pulling down her skirt. I started screaming at them both, storming around the living room yelling nonsense in Gaelic, swearwords I’d learned from my mum.
My father just stood there, shame all over his face, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck. Couldn’t look at me. Wouldn’t meet my eye. Then I said something and the air in the room completely changed.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, Rose, how could you do this to me? Fuck my own father when we’ve been steady for nearly two years.”
“Then what happened?”
“My father comes up to me, grabbing my shoulder, finally meeting my eye. He says, ‘Hold on. Did you say steady, as in currently?’
“Yes. Nearly two years. Since we were sixteen, ya filthy old man,” I said. I spit on his boots as I left. “I knew I was going to kill someone and neither of them was worth going to jail over. I stormed out of the house, figuring the best thing I could do for myself was get in my truck and ride as far away as possible.”
“And then?”
“It was when I reached the handle of my car door that I heard Rosie scream.” He takes a moment before saying, “I run back to the house, but I’m too late. My old man has got his hands around her neck. Her face had gone purple. Her eyes.” He stares down at the table. “They had this strange, glassy look to them. Like a doll.
“I pulled him off of her, but I was too late.”
God. I can’t even imagine… “He didn’t know you two were still together?”
“No. They’d been fucking the last six months we’d been dating but he told her to break it off with me and she told him she had. The final three months of their affair, he thought she was all his.”
“And he went into a jealous rage and killed her.”
“Aye. He did.”
“And you were blamed.” I think about all that I read in the article on the computer at the Chronicle that day. “And what about your father’s death?”
“He died of a heart attack the next day.”
His eyes tell me it was anything but a natural death. “Did he?”
“He did.”
I know better than to ask the question that would clear up the hazy truth that hangs in the air between us. I’m learning enough about the ways of the island to know in their eyes, his father earned whatever he got.
“My father had gone into a rage, going straight for Rosie’s throat. I could have stopped him if I hadn’t left but I truly had no idea how long it’d been going on between them, what she’d told him.” He runs a finger through his hair. “To tell you the full truth, I was in some kind of shock from seeing them there like that.”
I’m going into some kind of shock just sitting here listening to the story. “That’s a heartbreaking scene to take in.”
“Fucked up as well.” He shakes his head. “Your folks are the last people on earth you expect to screw you over.”
I think of the lack of communication from my mom. “That’s the truth.”
I stare at his handsome face. The cheekbones. The thick dark hair, olive skin, the perfectly shaped beard. And the light, lively eyes that throw you for a loop in all his darkness.
I boldly press on for more information. “So, you have killed.”
He shrugs as if it’s nothing, but I see the weight that settles on his shoulders. “It’s not something I’m proud of, but sometimes, it’s got to be done.”
He stands from his seat, stretching the tension from his muscles. He pushes his chair back in under the table. “I tell you what. You want to leave so badly? I’ll give you this one opportunity to do it. A two-minute head start. You leave, run any direction you choose. I won’t watch.”
My heart hammers in my chest. Is he being serious? I couldn’t possibly get away from him. Could I? I have been walking these hills, I’m in the best shape of my life.
“What happens if I outrun you?”
He shrugs. “You’re free to go.”
Free to go… no more of his fingers teasing me, making me wonder if I’ve gone insane for liking it, madness? No more looking over my shoulder for his red truck each time I step foot outside the lodge. Being back with Fiona and Carol Ann and the other interns, doing the work that’s become so important to me?
I have to try.
But what is at stake? Something scandalous; his face says it all, that devilish half-cocked grin, the flash in his eyes, the color lost somewhere between blue and green, same stunning color the sea was this morning.
“And if you win?” I ask.
The look that comes over his face is enough to melt any woman’s panties right off. “I get to do anything I please to you. With your full consent.”
I think of last night, lying in my bed, dangerously close to calling him in to rub away the ache he’d left between my thighs.
If I do run and he catches me…
Have I really lost?