Ever Tempted (14 page)

Unashamed, I sauntered into the bathroom.

“They are like all the other workers at that house. Helpless without my guidance.” I turned the faucet over to red and tested the water until it was just right. I poked my head out of the bathroom. “When I’m done, we’ll eat. I know you must be starving.”

Allie stood in the same spot, stuck in a blind stare at the bathroom door. She jumped when I caught her frozen in whatever little fantasy had begun inside her head. The shower spray drowned her thoughts to inaudible whispers. Probably a good thing.

“Are you okay?” I couldn’t help but smirk.

“I… It was dark last night. That was…” She shook her head, addled.

“I forget that you’re a little less accustomed to me than I am to you.” I stifled a laugh. “And for the record. When you came out of the bathroom in just a little towel, you’re lucky you made it across the room without being eaten alive.”

Allie’s flustered look drained to horror as she clutched her towel against her. As if it would protect her. Yeah.

When she caught my joke, she cocked her head. “It’s a good thing I used up almost all the hot water.”

After shutting the door on her smile, I forced myself into the shower. If I didn’t practice brutal self-control with that woman every second of the day, we’d never make it out of the bedroom.

* * * *

Refreshed but strangely exhausted, I stepped from the shower. I chose four incidents of Grace’s worst tricks to find a way into my arms over the years. There’d been the time in the woods when I was sleeping and she’d found a way to wake me out of a dead sleep. She’d made herself look like Allie. I’d kissed her and knew it wasn’t my beloved. Then there was the next time in the 1970s that in the likeness of Allie, she’d disappeared into a dressing room and lured me in. It didn’t take long at all to realize my mistake. Then, one time not too long before Allie had shown up on the property, I’d given in to a bottle of expensive whiskey I’d found in the basement to drown the pain. Grace had almost had me in the bed with her. That time had been the closest because she’d had so many years of practicing to look, sound, and act exactly like Allie.

The possibility that those situations might not be enough to convince Allie that I was innocent aimed right at my good mood and shot it down like a fighter jet with me in its sights.

In 1879, Grace Rollins dug me a pit so deep only a pinhole of light speared the darkness at the bottom. After spending a hundred years there and making no progress climbing up the wall of her prison, I’d given up until Ava had thrown me down a ladder.

Allie and the seemingly perfect tools to imprison Grace.

Even then, fate had a way of righting itself.

Allie and I weren’t supposed to be together.

This little getaway island fantasy would have to end, but I could see no way out. Every possible outcome was Allie’s devastation.

In trying to have her, I’d made our situation inordinately worse.

The house was quiet. No Allie sounds. No Allie thoughts. A note on the bar told me why.

I’ll be at the main house with Nelvi. She came down to ask what we wanted for dinner. I volunteered to help her heat something up. Love, Your Wife.

I reread the last line about ten times, then put the note down. When she called herself mine, I could only experience more joy in her embrace. But it was bittersweet. It would end.

Fighting the fatigue of the years, I yanked my phone from the kitchen drawer and stalked to the living room. I sat on the warm red sofa. The color was supposed to ease tension, but it would take more than aesthetically pleasing surroundings to ease my apprehension.

Flipping open the phone, I stared at it for a few long seconds.

I wasn’t in the mood to hear the argument the twins would put up.

They wouldn’t give up as easily as I had. They were fighters.

I used to be. In that first life.

Every time I thought life was going to give me lemonade, shit pie got slung in my face. So after years of the stench, I’d gotten used to it.

The phone rang twice when Shelby picked it up. “This had better be Cole.”

“And if it wasn’t?” I crossed my feet on the black marble coffee table.

“I’m glad you weren’t my twin brother. I would have eaten you in the womb.”

I played with the fringe on the pillow. “You sound troubled.”

“Troubled? Oh, you think you’re cute. Me and my sister are bending over backward to keep this skank pacified while you’re off in la-la land? She’s more psycho with skin on than she ever was in ghost form.” I was almost afraid Shelby’s hand would reach through the phone to strangle me.

“So Grace is being her normal sweet considerate self, I take it.” I sank back into the plush sofa.

“What in the Sam Hill were you thinking, leaving us here to contend with her. Do you know she’s already trying to redecorate the whole damn place? Apparently, she’s taken a liking to baby-shit green!” I held the phone back as she vented. My temple throbbed.

“Okay, calm down. This will be over before you know it. I know I’ve already piled an ass load of things on your plate, but I need you to do a few more things for me.”

“I already feel a hissy fit coming on.” A noise rustled on the other end. “Okay, I’m sitting down. I’ve got you on speaker so Kaitlyn is filled in too. Go ahead.”

“Do you remember the crate I moved from the fourth floor sitting room to the attic?”

“Yes. Another time you hid something from Allie.” Shelby was definitely a grudge-holder.

“I need you to look through it. It belonged to the witch that put the curse on Annabeth and me. It’s unlikely, but maybe it has something in it we can use against Grace while she’s in Sage’s body. If not, I know Allie would like to have all the pictures of me and my family. From that time period.” I paused. “Beyond that, I need someone to make my funeral arrangements if the week is up, and we don’t have a plan in place. I don’t think I want to be bothered with them if a week is all I have with Allie.”

I waited for Shelby to flip stupid. She would before Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn was always a little less hotheaded.

The phone rustled again. “You’ve just rendered Shelby speechless. Which never happens. We’ve sat back and watched how you groomed the statue’s flowerbeds, stared at the same spot every night for over a year because you knew it was where Allie had taken her last breath, and how you totally changed when she first arrived on the property. I’ve never met a man who lived his life around a woman the way you have. We think you’re amazing, and Shelby just has a very difficult time putting all that into words. You’re not just an employer. You’re a friend. And family.”

“Which is why I trust that when the time comes, you’ll do what you have to do. I know beating Grace is almost impossible. I don’t hold you two responsible for what she does. But I do appreciate all you’ve done. If we don’t make it through this, I… I’m forever indebted to you. Both of you. And I promise when I’m dead, in ghost form or whatever, the time I am forced to spend with Grace will not be vacationing under an umbrella in Tahiti. She knows nothing of torture.”

“I seriously don’t think you have to do this. Allie is stronger than you give her credit for. She can withstand more than you think she can. But your death is one thing she wouldn’t make it through.” Kaitlyn’s voice was wrought with worry.

From somewhere off in the room, Shelby said, “I’m Cole Kinsley, and I kill myself every time life doesn’t go my way.”

“She’s pacing a rut in the floor, isn’t she?” I planted my forehead in my hand, guilt knotting my stomach.

“Yup.” Kaitlyn made the P pop.

“Then I’ll ask you. Will you prepare the eulogy? I don’t think Allie will be in any condition.”

Shelby screamed, “Wait a minute. You don’t actually think we’re going to beat Grace. You think she’s already won, and you weren’t going to come home before you committed suicide. You would have let Allie find you there dead, wouldn’t you? Did you give us busy work that you were sure we couldn’t solve so we’d shut up while you lived out your last few days with Allie in peace? And all because you don’t want to take chances.”

I held the phone back a little.

“Are you completely out of your rabid-ass mind?” Anyone across the room could have heard her.

“You are so in trouble,” Allie said from behind me.

The three most important women in my life were pissed at me simultaneously.

I took my feet down as Allie rounded the sofa and stood with her arms crossed in front of the coffee table. “Allie just walked in. I need to go.”

Allie’s incensed glare bore into me.

“Maybe she can talk some sense into you. I’m done. I’ll be over here kicking this ghost bitch’s ass. When you get home, I might just do the same to you,” Shelby said.

“I’m going to hang up now. Please tell Allie we all love her and that our goal in hiding this situation was not to keep her out of the loop and devastate her simultaneously, but to try to give her a happy wedding. One she couldn’t have here. Good luck,” Kaitlyn said.

“I’ll tell her.” I said my good-byes and hung up.

Allie had turned to face the opened door where the breeze shook the emerald leaves of the trees.

I stood but didn’t dare approach her.

Not this time. She was too angry.

Her shoulders quivered. She sniffled.

“I swear on my life that I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just wanted to give you a dream wedding and keep you safe in the process.” I ached to go to her. I had threatened her life, killed her, then left her after she was brought back and none of those times had she ever been this mad. I could smell the rage in her blood.

“Is that what you thought you were doing? Keeping me safe? I call it lying.” Allie sniffled again and kept her back to me.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “It was lying, but I…”

Allie’s voice shook. “How would I have found you? Poisoned? Wrists slit? Hanging from the top bar at the tennis courts?”

After one hundred and forty some years, I’d heard enough husbands and wives argue to know the man was always wrong. We were. There was no getting around it. Women were inherently smarter than we were at working out problems.

I didn’t have an answer.

Allie walked around the sofa and into the recesses of the house without looking at me.

I followed her.

She jerked suitcases from the floor and tossed them on the bed.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to do what you do to me. I’m going to let you wonder.” She yanked one of the heavy drawers open. As she slapped wads of clothes into her suitcases, she left my clothes still neatly stacked. She rushed around the room, brushing past me without a glance. She tossed the last of her shoes in a carry-on bag and zipped it shut.

“You can’t go back there.” I stood helplessly in the doorway.

Allie spun around.

“If she finds out that you know who she is, she might kill you just for sport.” My heart lurched at the thought.

“I can and I will. I’m pretty sure you don’t own me. And you can’t make decisions for me. I don’t feel like talking. Right now, I’m not too sure I want to be married. Not to someone who only lets me be involved in snippets of his life.” Tears filled her beautiful eyes. “I can make this easy for Grace. You can have her. You already chose her. Again.”

I hit the doorframe.

Allie jumped.

“This is why I don’t want to tell you things. I can’t have you running straight at Grace without the ability to fight her. She killed you once, and she’d do it again.”

“So did you. But I made it through it.” Allie crossed her arms. “All these years of doing the same things over and over, and you haven’t learned anything. She won then. She’s going to keep winning until someone does something about her. Just think about it this way. She’s my sister. We came from the same place. I’m pretty sure the same devious, scheming nature lives somewhere inside of me.” Allie straightened with squared shoulders. “I can take her down with her own weapons.”

In danger of ripping it off, I gripped the doorframe. “I can’t let you get killed to protect me.”

“I’m not fighting her for you. I’m fighting her for me.” Allie shoved past me.

* * * *

Allie barely spoke more than three words on the plane.

She texted vigorously, stared out the window while she waited for return texts, and kept the phone angled so I couldn’t see.

I slapped my head back on the headrest. “Okay. I get it. You’re pissed.”

She stared straight ahead with her lips pursed. “Pissed is the understatement of a century and a half. I’ve never been this angry.”

“I need to know what you’re planning. You have virtually no idea what you’re up against. I’ve dealt with Grace for years. I know how she operates, how sneaky she can be.”

“And if I tell you, all you’ll do is undermine me, try to lock me in a room until the danger has passed, and probably make yourself a suicide toddy. I’m not helpless. Devious manipulation runs in my bloodline.” Allie looked out the window.

“There’s more I need to tell you. I figure I may as well get it all out in the open now while we’re on the subject of what a conniving bitch she is.”

She blinked, then stared at the back of the seat. Either she wanted me to go on or she was too pissed to handle anymore. This new mindreading block she’d unconsciously learned to do when she was irate was increasingly troubling. I’d have to go on what I’d learned about her over the last few weeks.

“While I was in Greenbrier at a restaurant near the motel, I spent all my time trying to learn how to love you without hurting you. It was excruciating. Being away from you and not hearing your voice for even a day killed me, but I knew if I heard your voice even once, I’d be back home right where I started. An animal that could kill you if I attempted to be the man you needed me to be. Well, near the end of my stay, a girl I thought was just some innocent waitress at the little hole in the wall grill near the hotel”—I searched for the right word— “approached me.”

“By approach, you mean…”

“She hit on me.”

“That probably happens a lot.” Allie tapped her fingers on the armrest.

“Not as much as you would guess. Anyway. Of course, I turned her down. My lies to keep you safe from something or someone I think will cause you harm may seem disloyal, but I’m not capable of being unfaithful. I would never think of breaking your heart with another woman. Not on purpose.” It was getting hotter on the plane. “So, when I left the restaurant, I went into the woods to hunt and practice controlling the animal. I’ve told you before that there’s a certain amount of time before and after I…you know…” I glanced nervously at the neighboring passengers.