Chapter 11
The car turned across the oncoming lane and hit the curb instead of the mouth of the driveway. The tires bumped and squealed up onto the sidewalk, the headlamps bobbing frantically over a woman walking with a man on each arm. The trio stumbled back, away from the nose of the car.
“Jesus H., Tink!” Rodney lurched forward and smacked the driver’s ear. “Watch what you’re fuckin’ doing, you maniac.”
The driver, Tink, rubbed his head before reversing the car, straightening out, and pulling forward again.
The driveway curved around the back to another lot.
Fern’s stomach lurched at the sight of Cal’s Roadster.
He was here. Somewhere inside. Her breaths came shallow and quick as Tink got out and opened her door.
This house. She’d wanted to forget it, put it behind her for good.
“If my father has been in contact,” she said as Tink nudged her to follow Rodney toward a back door, “does that mean he’s cooperating?”
If he wasn’t, and if those photographs appeared in the papers tomorrow, she’d probably willingly retreat to Zionsville and Young Acres, just as her mother wished.
Rodney winged the door open and propped it with his foot. “It means he’s been in contact,” he snapped.
He didn’t like Fern speaking, asking questions. She thought back to the other night, and the woman who’d been with him in his office. Bessy. Fern supposed she knew better than to ask questions.
They entered a dark back room, the shelving crammed with crates and racks of glasses, plates and linens.
Another door with a round window set into it, like at a diner, swung open when Rodney punted it.
They followed him down a flight of steps.
The door at the bottom took them straight into the bright, overwhelming glitter of the Lion’s Den.
It wasn’t nearly as boisterous and crowded as it had been the other night. Instead of a chaotic scene of lush intoxication and freedom, it was a sedate coupling of piano music and low murmuring from the half dozen or so people huddled around tables.
Fern spotted Cal immediately. He sat alone at the bar, his broad back and shoulders to them. He leaned his elbows on the glossy wood as he brought a drink to his lips.
“You lost your kitten, Cal,” Francis nearly purred as he passed behind him.
Cal swiveled in his seat and went still as his eyes locked on hers.
Fern slowed, but Tink nudged her arm, and she tripped forward again.
Rodney kept walking for the pair of Greek columns and black drapes, ignoring his brother completely.
Cal’s stare hardened as he set his drink down.
He looked at Fern the way he’d stared down Pretzel John the other night at the Pier.
The floor seemed to stick to the soles of her shoes, slowing her. Beneath the orchid silk of her dress, her skin went cold and damp.
“Keep moving,” Tink grumbled, giving Fern another nudge, this one less polite. She stumbled, and her right shoe popped off her foot. Her left foot wobbled on the remaining heel, and she slammed her hip into a chair before finally balancing herself.
Ahead, Francis swore with impatience as Fern turned to search for her lost shoe, eyes hot with unshed tears.
She wanted to slap at Tink’s hand as he grabbed her arm and ordered her to keep walking.
Before she could shout at him to wait, an arm slipped around her waist and tugged her back into a solid wall.
“You brought me my china doll.” Cal’s hot breath tunneled into her ear. Fern froze, her lost shoe forgotten. His arm was an iron bar around her waist.
“Rod wants her in the back.” Francis’s voice was now cautious instead of impatient.
A waft of whiskey-laced breath traveled up her nose. “This is a real treat,” Cal said, his lips nuzzling her earlobe. Fern gasped, but even fixed against him, his mouth on her skin, she felt an incomprehensible surge of relief. Of safety.
Francis glanced toward the black drapes. Rodney now sauntered toward them, a grin sliding over his mouth as he stuck his hands in his pockets.
“Brother,” Rodney said.
Cal’s fingers dug into her hip. Fern gripped his arm, her nails too short to claw at him. But then again, a part of her didn’t want him to release her.
“Rod,” he replied. “We haven’t talked about this yet.”
Rodney stared, still grinning, but his eyes were anything but friendly. His pupils widened, and the lids lowered infinitesimally. He resembled a cat in the moment between stalking its prey and pouncing.
“I gotta run every last thing by you now?” Rodney asked.
He doesn’t blink. That’s what was so unsettling about him. Fern hadn’t ever seen the man blink.
“Course not,” Cal said, placating his brother. Or at least, she thought he might be. Though she didn’t know either of them well, even a stranger could have felt the tension rolling like the surf between them.
“You’re welcome to join us if you’re feeling left out, big brother,” Rodney said.
Francis chuckled, his laughter high and girlish.
Cal’s forearm squeezed. Beneath Fern’s clenched hands, the muscles of his arm rippled.
“She was my responsibility. Mine,” Cal said. “And I clean up the messes around here.”
Rod’s black, calculating eyes shifted toward Fern. Instinct shouted to look away, but she was frozen. Trapped. He gave a barely perceptible nod, and Cal dragged her backward a few steps before swinging her to his side.
“Walk,” he hissed as soon as they’d turned their backs on his brother, Francis, and Tink.
She didn’t draw breath as he pulled her through the door from where she’d just come, then up the steps into the dark back room with the shelves, and back outside into the parking lot where a few cars were lined up.
For a moment, Fern thought he would take her to his Roadster.
Instead, Cal aimed for a closed-in set of exterior stairs.
“Where are we going?” she asked as her bare right foot stepped over the gravel outside. She’d never reclaimed her shoe.
Cal didn’t reply. Didn’t slow. He led Fern up the first flight of steps, then the next.
“Who was your responsibility? Me?”
They turned at each landing until they reached the third level, the stairs rattling under their feet, and her thighs burning.
“Cal,” she gasped, breathless as they entered a dark and stuffy hallway.
Fern’s vision spun. Her heartbeat drummed in her neck, and as he opened a door and hurled her inside his familiar room, her ears muffled.
The bed. The washstand. The green drapes.
Fern’s legs turned to jelly as she spun around.
Cal shut the door and slid a bolt into place.
“I told you never to go with him,” he seethed, his voice low and raspy. He was furious.
She kicked off her remaining shoe. She needed balance if she was going to put up a fight. “Let me out.”
“You don’t want that.”
“Don’t tell me what I want!” A knot of panic strangled the words at the base of her throat.
He went still again, the same way he had at the bar. Then he blinked. “You’re a fucking disaster.”
Cal took a step forward; Fern shuttled to the side out of his reach. He pulled up short again and stared at her. “You think you’re in trouble now? If I hadn’t been here, seen you come in… Jesus, I told you to never go with him. Your ears broken, princess? Or are you just a few beans short?”
“I didn’t have a choice!”
“Quiet down.”
She saw it then: Cal’s own frustration. He paced away from her toward the window. Once there, he tugged the curtains shut.
“I was out. With my cousin and her friends, and then he was just there…he sat down at our table, and Rodney, he… I couldn’t risk my cousin being hurt.”
Cal lips pressed thin. A thread of tension released from his shoulders. Only a thread. After a few seconds, he paced to the other side of the room.
“He said my father had been in contact.”
“Yeah.”
“Then why did Rodney bring me here?”
Cal ran a hand through his dark hair, glancing over his shoulder. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“Did my father agree to what you wanted?” Fern had no idea what that might be.
What did criminals do with judges in their pockets?
Maybe Rodney was in trouble with the law, and her father could exonerate him somehow.
Or did he only want a judge in his pocket to have more political power and protection?
“We’re talking,” Cal answered.
“So, the photographs won’t be released?”
When Cal shook his head, Fern leaned against the wall, feeling feather light. But her other question still hadn’t been answered. “Then why did he bring me back here?”
Cal paced to the foot of the bed, a narrow single, the drab green blanket neatly tucked. He freed the top buttons at his throat and loosened his collar. “I can’t tell you everything. It’s none of your business, anyway.”
She pushed off the wall. “I was forced to come here. I deserve an answer.”
Cal came at her so quickly, she didn’t have the chance to scuttle away. He crowded her against the wall until her shoulder blades were pressing hard into it.
“You want to know why he brought you here? To fuck, Fern. Whether you wanted it or not.”
Shock lifted the hair along her neck and arms. And then, just as suddenly, every nerve inside her deadened. Her mind went quiet as Cal yanked his black tie from around his neck.
“But…why?”
It had nothing to do with Rodney wanting her or being attracted to her. She knew that much, at least. He’d been brimming with suppressed anger, planning to hurt her all along. She couldn’t understand why.
Cal went back to the bed and tossed his tie onto the blanket. “He’s got his reason.”
“One that you hadn’t discussed yet,” she said, remembering what Cal had said in the bar. Remembering how he’d grabbed Fern from behind and held her close and tight. Away from his brother.
“He’s impulsive. He doesn’t think ahead to the consequences.” Cal released the next few buttons on his shirt.
“And he makes messes,” she said. “Messes you clean up.”