CHAPTER TWELVE #2
“Did you sleep all right, dear?” Bernie asked, spearing a sausage patty and shaking it onto his plate. He smiled at Raina, waiting for her response.
“Uh, no. Why?” She took a hesitant sip of her coffee, completely oblivious to the smirks from Cynthia and Julian.
“I could have sworn I heard something last night. Sounded like you.” Bernie shrugged. “Maybe it was just the wind.”
Oh shit.
“Probably just the wind,” I echoed. “I heard it. Woke me too.”
Raina gave me a curious look, like I was making shit up. Because the wind definitely wasn’t loud last night.
I exhaled, brought my voice down low, and leaned in toward her. “Julian and Cynthia heard you last night. Act normal, or they’ll know something’s up and want to know more.”
Her eyes went wider than Frisbees as the color in her cheeks muted her cute freckles. “How do you know?” she whispered.
“They said so. And apparently Bernie heard you too.”
Burying her face in her hands, she mumbled a horrified, “Oh my god.”
“Be cool,” I said out the side of my mouth.
“I am cool,” she replied with a growl. Meanwhile her knee bounced under the table like it was attached to a paint mixer. The complete opposite of cool. A few cups and saucers on the table rattled, drawing attention from the other guests.
I scoffed, grabbing her thigh with my hand and giving it a squeeze until it stopped. “This is not being cool.”
She batted my hand away and shot me a pissed off look. “Don’t tell me how to be cool. This is me being cool. I’m like a frozen cucumber right here.”
“Right, and I’m not a lumber-snack that had all the ladies fanning themselves yesterday,” I said with a scoff, still whispering.
Her glare just turned more lethal.
Julian had his phone out, his reading glasses perched on the edge of his long nose. “Looks like they’re letting water taxis take people off Wayman back to San Camanez. The ferry from Wayman to Seattle is running as normal too.”
Collective sighs and smiles drifted around the dining room as we all tucked into breakfast.
“You two must be looking forward to getting home, huh?” Bernie asked, assembling his English muffin sandwich with a fried egg, cheese, and patty. “Got little ones at home?”
“I have a son,” Raina blurted out. “Marco. He’s nine.”
All eyes turned to me. “Uh, no kids. But I have six nieces and nephews who I live on the same chunk of property with, and I take care of them a lot. I’m eager to get back to them. Especially with Christmas so close.”
Lenora’s eyes bugged out, then turned sad. “Oh my god.”
“What?” we all asked at the same time.
“Christmas. I completely forgot.” Her cutlery landed on her plate with a clatter and her shoulders slumped until I thought they might reach the table.
“I normally have the tree and all the decorations up by now. But …” A hard look stole across her face.
“It’s a different year this year. I don’t have anybody to help me put them up.
Not that Walt was much good at it anyway,” she muttered that last bit and made a snarly face.
I glanced at Raina, and a soft, understanding smile pulled at her mouth. “Do you want to put the decorations up, Lenora?”
“I want to put up some,” our host said with a hollowness to her voice that caused a heavy sensation in my chest. “Not everything. But a few things. I have a smaller tree that might be easier.”
“Where are the decorations?” Raina asked before I could.
“In the crawl space under the stairs.”
“We have time before our water taxi,” Raina said, reaching over and patting Lenora’s hand. “We’ll help you.”
Lenora’s eye teared up enough that she had to remove her glasses and use the sleeve of her pink and purple floral blouse to blot away the moisture.
“For two people who showed up stinking like vomit and seawater and ready to kill each other, you sure have helped me remember not to judge a book by its cover. You saved us here. You saved me.”
Raina turned her head and caught my eye. A beautiful twinkle in the light-green of her irises made my heart thud hard against my ribs.
“To Raina and Jagger,” Julian said, lifting his coffee cup in the air. “A couple of …” He wrinkled his nose when he couldn’t come up with anything to say about us. Then he shrugged his boney shoulders. “To Raina and Jagger,” he repeated, “one heck of a couple.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
It was too late though. The rest of the guests raised their cups and toasted us, echoing Julian’s words. Raina’s leg started to bounce under the table again.
“You come back and visit, okay?” Lenora said to me as I hugged her tight, having to bend down a fair bit because she was just an itty-bitty thing. She kissed my cheek, then stepped away and patted my cheek with her cool hand as if to wipe away lipstick. “You’re a good boy.”
That made me smirk. I hadn’t been called a good boy in a very long time. “Thanks, Lenora. You’re sure you have enough wood for the woodstove? I can run back and see if there’s more in the shed.”
She swatted my chest. “There’s enough. You’ve both done more than enough.” She reached for Raina’s hand, then took mine in the other, holding both of us. “Be kind to each other, okay?”
Raina tensed up beside me, but nodded. While she helped Lenora drag out all the Christmas decorations from the crawl space, I made sure there was more firewood split and stored in a dry place so that if another storm hit and the power went out again, Lenora would have enough wood to keep herself warm.
When I came back inside, the house had been transformed into a magical Christmas village, complete with a train choo-chooing its way around the Christmas tree.
The other guests had already left, taking the regular ferry back to Seattle, since they were all from out of town.
Only Raina and I needed to hop on the water taxi, which meant we needed to leave her SUV and my cube truck on Wayman Island until we could arrange transport for them.
“Take care of yourself, Lenora,” I said, giving her hand a squeeze before letting it go. “And don’t be afraid to get a little dirty. If you see Walt’s truck parked somewhere, who’s saying a few well-placed nails behind a couple of tires won’t make you feel better about things?”
The little woman with white hair giggled as she wagged a chastising finger at me. “Oh, Jagger McEvoy, you are a devil, aren’t you?”
“You just called me a good boy!”
She swatted my chest again and released Raina’s hand. “Let me know when you get home safe, okay?”
“Yes, Nana,” I said, winking at her as I took both mine and Raina’s bags to her SUV. Lenora said I could leave the cube truck on her property and Raina was going to park her vehicle at the marina.
We piled into Raina’s vehicle, with Lenora standing in the doorway, clutching a tissue in her fist as she watched us drive away.
We waved, and she waved until we were out of sight.
Then when we reached the end of the long driveway, I did the first five notes of “Shave and a Haircut” on the horn, before pulling out onto the road and heading in the direction of the marina.
Raina leaned her elbow against the door, propping her head in her hand. She used the sleeve of her long-sleeve shirt to wipe at her eye. “I like Lenora. I feel bad for her not having anybody this Christmas.”
“Did she say where her kids are going to be?” I asked.
“Busy. One son is going to Mexico with his wife and kids, another son is with his in-laws on the East Coast, and the daughter is a cop in Vermont and has to work.”
I frowned as the sign for the marina appeared up ahead and I took the next left. “Does she at least have guests staying over Christmas?”
“She did say her reservation book is full over the holidays. So hopefully that helps.”
I slid my gaze to Raina as an idea started to take shape in my brain. “Did you get any more information out of her about her husband?”
“Who? Walt the Womanizer? Walt the Wanderer? Walt the Worst Man in the World?”
I snorted. “Yeah, that one.”
“Just that he’s a piece of shit who moved in with Little Miss New Hip on the other side of the island. She owns Sea Breeze Cabins.”
As if the fates were trying to tell us something, a sign for Sea Breeze Cabins appeared almost out of thin air, instructing us to turn right at the next fork in the road. “Well, Lenora did call me the devil. Maybe we should—”
“Do it,” she said, before I could even finish my sentence. “I don’t have any nails in here though. I have scissors. An X-Acto knife, and maybe a steak knife.”
“Damn, Elsa, I love how your twisted little mind works.” Then I glanced at her, grinning, but also confused. “Wait, why do you have a steak knife?”
“In case I randomly feel like a steak and the restaurant has dull knives, duh!”
Something about the way her eyes narrowed when she said it told me there was way more to why she had a singular steak knife in her vehicle, than in case she was overrun with a spontaneous hankering for a slab of beef and the knives at the restaurant weren’t up to par.
I hung a hard right at the next fork and followed all the signs until we reached the biggest sign of them all for Sea Breeze Cabins.
We parked on the road rather than drive onto the property, then we bailed out.
Raina opened up the hatch of her Honda and brought out the solitary steak knife—which yes, I will admit I checked for blood—not that I was a forensic specialist or anything—along with a pair of very sharp scissors and an X-Acto knife.
“We really doing this?” she asked as we both pulled up the hoods of our jackets even though the rain was more of a drizzle.
“For Lenora,” I said with an affirmative nod.
She met my gaze with conviction and nodded as well. “For Lenora.”
Keeping our eyes peeled for signs of life, as well as security cameras, we headed down onto the property, past the six A-frame cabins, to the main house at the bottom closest to the beach.
A champagne-colored Mercedes SUV and a red Dodge Ram pickup sat in front of the house.
The license plate on the Ram even said “WALT.” Once again, it seemed the fates were shining down on us, because all the drapes were shut.
There wasn’t any BEWARE OF DOG sign posted either.
Gripping the steak knife in my hand, I crouched down and snuck up behind the truck, stabbing the side of the left rear tire with the pointed end as hard as I could.
There was a bit of resistance at first, but eventually I got it in.
A satisfying slow hiss of air filled the otherwise quiet atmosphere around us.
Staying at a low crouch, I went around to the other rear tire and did the same thing, then went to go help Raina, but she surprised me.
“All right, I got the homewrecker’s tires. Let’s get out of here.” She jerked her head toward the road and started to book it back to where we came from.
“You got her tires?” I asked, chasing after her.
“Yeah, all four. Easy peasy with the scissors. Did you get his tires too?”
I blinked a few times through the raindrops on my glasses. “Uh, just the rear.”
She huffed and shook her head. “Oh well. It’s better than nothing, I suppose. Let’s go before they catch us.”
Chuckling, we ran the rest of the way to the road and climbed back into the car, grinning like idiots. Yanking off our hoods, we smiled across the CRV at each other.
“For Lenora,” I said.
“For Lenora.”
Damn, she looked fucking kissable right now.
With her spiked lashes from the misty rain, and the bright, expressive eyes, and that smile.
So fucking radiant and beautiful. My cold, stiff fingers ached to touch her.
To pull her to me. To hold her until I left finger marks on her skin and got the pleasure of kissing the bruises away in the morning.
I craved the feeling of her teeth on my skin. Biting me and leaving teeth marks.
What would she do if I just grabbed her by the back of the neck and kissed her?
Would she push me away? Remove our ceasefire?
Giving into my baser instincts would surely set us back to archrivals, if not put my name at the top of her hit list. And she definitely struck me as a woman who had a hit list. Just in case a real Purge ever came about, and given the current state of the country and politics, I wasn’t about to rule it out.
I cleared my throat and faced forward, hitting the button to turn on the car. Then we were back on the road, heading toward the marina. In no time, we’d be on our own island again, and could pretend—not that I wanted to—that none of this ever happened.
Only it did happen. And it had forever changed me.
It forever changed me and how I saw the sharp, spiky, delicious-smelling rosebush named Raina Aaronson.
My only hope was that she would allow me to be her friend when we got home.
Or maybe her acquaintance, at the very least.
Perhaps, an acquaintance who randomly went down on her from time to time.
Ah, fuck, my cock was hard again.