Chapter 10
Santiago jolted awake to the sound of loud music.
What the hell was St. James thinking? He knew how sound traveled on the water.
Despite his swim, Santiago had slept like shit last night.
He’d woken up hard; he’d woken up enraged; he’d woken up to desperate screams; he’d woken up drowning in blood…
He couldn’t remember the context of one dream, but he’d be damned if they’d allowed him to get more than three hours of sleep last night. Luckily it was his day off, which meant he didn’t have to go to the station, but there was plenty of work he could do at home.
The thumping music frayed his nerves.
Cursing, he hopped out of bed, put on a pair of long johns and stomped out the back door.
The waters had been rough last night, the currents sending him closer to Mrs. Willoby’s place.
Today the water was as still as glass. Trotting down his back porch he frowned as St. James approached, hands in the pockets of his gray slacks, a beige crocheted vest, and flip flops. A cigarette was tucked behind his ear.
The man just really didn’t fit in, yet always seemed to belong here.
“Hard night?” St. James asked, eyes crawling up Santiago’s body, his gaze rested on Santiago’s tousled hair with an arched brow.
“I expected to see you out here earlier, guns blazing. You wanna join me?” he asked continuing his trek toward old Mrs. Willoby’s house.
“What the fuck is going on over there,” Santiago growled, planning to wrap his hand around Edgar’s throat and drag him down to the bottom of the lake.
If Edgar thought he was going to move into his late momma’s house and cause unrest he’d be laid to rest right alongside her.
“Probably a construction crew or demolition crew depending on how the family chose to deal with a house that snatched the old woman’s life.”
The possibility of either took some of the heat out of Santiago’s anger. Exhaustion was making him reactive; reaching toward whatever violence that would allow him some rest.
Santiago moved to the other side of St. James, treading into the lake until the water was shin high as they continued the walk to Mrs. Willoby’s.
“Don’t you think it would be more courteous for you to go back home and put some clothes on?”
Santiago glared at him and kept walking.
When they were within fifty feet of the back porch St. James said, “Maybe we should just pool our money and by the house, at least then the Moors’ spirits wouldn’t have to be disturbed like they’ve been.”
Julian wasn’t born and raised on Shrouded Lake, but he knew it’s history, knew the blood ties that bound them to their land, and they’d both claimed their inheritance when the relative who’d passed it on to them died.
For Santiago, that was his grandmother; for St. James, it was his Aunt Ophelia.
Because neither her nor Julian had children to pass their homes to, they would each will it to a blood relative from the original blood line.
Maybe they could buy the Moor home and leave to it to either a Freemon or St. James relative that would care for the house and lands, if the spirits permitted.
“I’ll put in a call to Mrs. Willoby’s daughter, Sherry Lynn when I get home.”
St. James hung back at the bottom of the stairs as Santiago walked up the porch and banged on the door so hard the floorboards shook beneath him. After the second round of knocking the door flew open.
Santiago took a step back.
The evil before him felt inescapable as she smiled with dark pleasure. Her eyes sliding up and down his body like he was both something and nothing to look at.
“Well, hello there, neighbors,” Ms. Green drawled.
The shock and confusion on Santiago’s face turned to smothered anger.
It was fucking delicious. Better than beignets, better than bacon, and if she wasn’t immune to muscles with richly detailed tattoos over swarthy pale light brown skin…
heavy, thick black hair that fell in a tangled mess over his shoulders and fanned out, resting over his muscular chest, she would’ve craved him too.
But Derrick’s betrayal turned her stomach from men; soured it against virile masculinity that was willing to betray you just to screw your sister.
She looked behind Santiago to the man who was as disgustingly handsome as her enemy.
She knew this man was the internationally famous author Julian St. James.
“Would you like to come in? I was just making the guys some breakfast. I’ve got more than enough.”
“We don’t want your damn food. We want you to turn down the volume. Why is everything with you loud?” Santiago snapped.
“Sound travels on Shrouded Lake,” St. James amended. “Some days, if you speak loudly enough on your side of the water, I’d hear you as if you were ten feet away.”
“My apologies. I guess I’ll have to learn to live in accordance with the rules of nature.”
But the unintended bonus today was that she’d already gotten underneath Stillwater’s skin. “It’s good to know that if I screamed someone would hear me and come running.” She smiled at Julian.
“Didn’t I make it real clear that you needed to leave town by Monday?” the sheriff demanded. “Didn’t I say there would be consequences?”
“Oh, but I did exactly what you said. I left Lina’s and I bought this recently available house.
Without your ultimatum, I never would’ve been motivated to move on from Lina’s.
I guess now’s as good a time as any for you to realize that you don’t tell me shit and think I will blindly do it.
I’m not one of your little deputies and I’m definitely not your child—”
“But you act like one,” Stillwater shot back. “You act like a grown-assed child that needs her ass whooped. Maybe then you’d learn to control that mouth of yours.”
She stepped forward, fists on her hips, and didn’t stop until her breasts where close enough to graze his chest. “You’re confused about who I am, so let me tell you here and now, you smack my ass again and I’ll lay you out just like I did with your boss.”
His nostrils flared and he moved forward, pressing her back because it was either retreat or get mowed over.
She pressed her hands against his chest and tried to push him away but only succeeded in getting her hands stuck between them.
She didn’t understand how the situation escalated so quickly.
She wasn’t even mad. She just liked fucking with him.
Now she was put in a position of needing to defend herself because he obviously woke up not in the mood to be fucked with.
She positioned her foot to knee him in the balls if needed, but the foot that supported her weight was knocked from under her and she was lifted high up on the door, until they were looking at each other eye-to-eye.
She was so used to seeing him in his reflective glasses, she became distracted by the color of his eyes, as if chards of sunlight were reflected in the depths of a powerfully flowing river. And he smelled fresh like a river. Was that possible?
“I don’t know what kind of weak-willed men you’re used to dealing with in California, but as much as you run your mouth, you don’t run this town, Ms. Green.
You move up here hoping to turn my life into a war zone; well that’s the field I excel in, and I’m more than willing to engage.
” He looked behind her and released her.
Her knees almost buckled the movement was so unexpected.
“If I could bottle this sexual tension and pour it over the pages of my next novel I’d make millions,” Julian said from the bottom of the stairs. “More,” he emphasized. “I’d make millions more.”
The author’s words seemed to release Santiago from the violent emotions that had seized him, and he took a step back.
It was as if she’d blinked and the sheriff became an expressionless, emotional void of a man.
“You’re a woman who brings out the very worst in people, Ms. Green,” he said flatly, as if she was the one who was unsafe to be around.
“That’s not something to be proud of. You moved up here to teach me a lesson I’m sure, but here’s the thing, that house you bought will get you out of town faster than I ever could.
We’ll just have to see if it’s of your own volition or in a body bag. ”
He walked off her property without looking back.
“Welcome to Shrouded Lake, Ms. Green,” Julian called out before he turned to catch up with Stillwater.
Lauren smiled and waved at Julian, but all her attention was on the sheriff’s densely muscled back so wide she could easily imagine a red target on it.
It was easier to imagine that than acknowledge the spiked barb of words the sheriff had twisted deep into her heart.
Maybe he was right. Maybe she did bring out the worst in people.
Maybe she was to blame for the situation she now found herself in, and not just with the sheriff, but with Derrick and her family. Maybe she was just too hard to love.
One of the workers call out to her for assistance and she turned back to the house with a determined smile on her face. Yes, she was hurting but knew there was no point in showing it when no one gave a shit about her pain or how she managed it.
“Look, I get it,” Julian said. “If someone told me Ms. Green looked like Megan Thee Stallion’s darker skinned auntie, I would’ve instantly understood why you’ve been walking around here all irritable and out of sorts.
A woman like that is too much for the average man to handle, Stillwater. There’s no shame in admitting it.”
“Admit being average when I have never been? You’ve been existing in your twisted imagination for too long.”
“So then, where’s your finesse? Didn’t your granddaddy teach you it’s easier to catch flies with sugar than vinegar.”
“Why don’t you handle Roan with your proclaimed sugar then?”
“Man, I ain’t thinking about that rough-handed woman.”
Santiago laughed, then hazarded a glance behind him to see if Ms. Green was still on the porch. She wasn’t.