He would be soon.

She reached and encountered a muscular bare back, skin smooth and warm.  She wanted to purr.  This was going to be wonderful.

“Mmm.”

Melanie smiled.  She knew exactly what he meant.  “Hello there.”

“Ungh.”  He lifted and replaced his head on the pillow, drawing up his legs.

“Are you even awake yet?”  She stroked up the length of his back, following the bumps of his spine, the contours of his shoulder blades, up to—

He started.  “Whah th’—”

“Shhh.”  She curled around him.  “It’s Melanie, you dope.”

“Melanie.”  His hoarse whisper nearly made her giggle.  Poor guy must have been in a seriously deep sleep.  “What—  How—”

“Don’t talk, sleepy man . . .”  She put her lips to his skin, followed the taut muscle across the top of his shoulder.  Desire urged her up to straddle him, rolling him flat on his back and discovering in the process that he slept in the nude, and that one part of him was waking up faster than the rest.  She stroked the nicely developed planes of his chest through curling hair, wishing she could see his face, but enjoying the mysterious darkness around them too much to turn on a light.  “Just lie back . . . and enjoy.”

“Oh my—”

“Shhh.”  She leaned down, planted kisses, collarbone to throat, throat to chin, orienting herself on the landscape of his fine physique so she wouldn’t aim and miss that sexy mouth when she went for their first kiss.
Found it.

She lingered, lips hovering millimeters above his, making hers tingle and tremble with anticipation.  Nothing beat this moment, making him wait, making herself wait, too, her body going nuts with hormones and—

Strong arms came around her; his body heaved, and he was on top so fast she barely had time to react.

“Melanie.”  The whisper again, this time softer, sweeter, more tender.  She suddenly felt oddly disjointed, almost panicky.  Something wasn’t right.  Something was—

His lips found hers dead on target, as if he could see in the dark.  She lay still from shock—one, two, three—then her brain registered that she was being kissed as if she were his last hope of ever being kissed again, that his lips were warm and firm and that they matched hers absolutely perfectly.

She made a tiny whimpering sound of surrender that surprised her.  Her arms came up and around his neck and she hung on as if she’d otherwise drown.

The man could kiss.

But it wasn’t just his technique, the kissing was . . . different, somehow. Nothing like she’d experienced in recent memory.  It was . . .

It was . . .

It was as if he loved her.

Stoner was kissing her as if she was the greatest thing that had ever happened or that ever could happen to him.  And she was kissing him back that way because within a very short time it seemed that had become entirely true.

WOMEN ON THE EDGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKTHROUGH

“What I want to know is who watched the verdict yesterday?”

A cross between a sigh and a moan broke from between all the lips belonging to the members of the Kettle Social Club except Sarah’s which were pinched firmly together until she made herself loosen them.

“Wasn’t that awful?” Betty shook her head of dull blond curls that looked like a wig no matter what shade she tried. “That awful woman. O.J. all over again, is there no justice except in our Lord’s heaven?”

“It was terrible.” Nancy nodded again, reminding Sarah of those perpetually nodding animals people put in the backs of their cars. “I cried for him and for the Branson family. Losing a son, a brother, a father in such a violent way. I can’t imagine it.”

Erin jerked in her chair. Her mouth opened. Color actually rose in her cheek. “She was protecting herself.”

“From what?” Her mother-in-law Joan blew out a puff of air that very nearly sounded like a rude raspberry. “Him being able to spend any of his own money?”

Erin’s glance shot toward her mother-in-law, then down. “He hit her.”

“So she said.” Joan continued staring straight ahead, as if acknowledging Erin had spoken was effort enough. “She had to come up with some defense. Someone like her would never come out and admit she killed him. There was never any proof he hit her.”

“Lord no.” Betty slapped her generous thighs. “A handsome man like Ed Branson would never do anything like that.”

“Certainly not,” Joan snapped. “He was a gentleman.”

“He cheated on her.” Erin’s face was turning red.

“Men will be men,” Joan said. “She wasn’t worth staying faithful to for a man like Ed Branson.”

Sarah could feel Nancy’s eyes on her, waiting to see how Sarah reacted before uttering her own opinion. Sarah felt a prickle of irritation and had to consciously relax.

“Well.” She used her gentlest let’s-close-the-subject voice. “No doubt she’s sitting pretty now. Shall we—”

“She got nothing out of it.” Erin sat ramrod straight in her chair, hands clenched together, fingers straining at each other as if they wanted to fly free and attack someone or something. “The family got all his money.”

The women in the room shifted uneasily. Sarah couldn’t believe this many sentences were coming out of poor Erin’s mouth. Who knew if she was working up to one of her infamous screaming fits, the kind she’d had at school sometimes, a horrible tantrum from a child too old to have one.
Sarah would have to smooth this over quickly. “I’m sure Lorelei will find another man to prey on. Now, can we—”

“I heard . . .” Nancy moved her head nervously one side to another, making her hair swing again. She cleared her throat. “You can’t tell anyone. Fred would kill me if he knew I blabbed. Promise?”

The women promised solemnly, but of course Sarah knew the town would be buzzing by nightfall. No one would hear it from her lips, though. A promise was a promise.

“You know how it came out during the trial that Lorelei’s real name is Vivian Harcourt?” Nancy blinked eyes so large behind thick lenses they looked like holograms. “Well last night when I was cleaning up from dinner, Fred said Edna Sinclair is being told to leave the Harcourt house.”

“What?” Joan bellowed the syllable, her off-kilter body stiffening in her chair. “Edna’s been there for years. Estelle let her rent it, furnished, for as long as she needed it. What are you saying?”

Sarah turned her head back to Nancy so abruptly she got a burning twinge in her neck.

Lorelei Taylor. Née Vivian Harcourt. Broke after the trial. The Harcourt house.

Nancy opened her mouth to continue. Sarah held her breath, feeling as if her morning—no, as if her very life, was starting to teeter slowly out of control.

“It’s being kept quiet so the paparazzi don’t find out. Estelle Harcourt was Vivian Harcourt’s maternal grandmother. Mom says she remembers a little girl coming to visit once or maybe twice. Estelle called her Vi.” Nancy plunked her hands onto her hips, practically buzzed with power. “That little girl turned into Lorelei Taylor.”

Three loud gasps, Sarah’s probably the loudest, even though they all must have figured it out thirty seconds ago.

“And Lorelei—Vivian—wants to disappear for a while. And so . . . yes.” Nancy took in a long, shuddering breath, no doubt enjoying herself immensely while the rest of the room suffered. “That woman is moving to Kettle.”

###

Vivian yanked up the last corner of the baby blue shag carpet in her new living room, a viscerally satisfying popping and ripping sound as the rug came free. Damn hard work. Her hands were raw and covered with scrapes, her attempt at a manicure shot, and now she had about a million staples and blocks of wood nailed to the hardwood floor to pry up.

Some other time.

She’d been working all day, driven by demons anxious to waylay her the second she relaxed. She’d started in as soon as that Sarah woman left—and what was with her? My God, Vivian had never met anyone who needed to get laid more thoroughly. That husband of hers must not be getting the job done.

That kind of woman set off evil in Vivian. She’d met too many, mostly at parties with Ed. Inevitably, when the appeal of Vivian’s humble origins—and her youth—began to fade, Ed had started sneaking around, with twenty-something Abby whose Mayflower ancestors probably hired Vivian’s to shovel their stables.

Women like Abby and Sarah took such pleasure looking down their nose-jobs at Lorelei Taylor. She couldn’t help wanting to push at that perfect exterior and see if there was anything real inside—guts and organs and pulsing blood. Or whether they were completely hollow, implanted with chips programmed by House and Garden TV and the Home Shopping Network.

With the shit Vivian had just been through, and the bad-assed mood she woke up in, the simple fact of Sarah’s existence had provoked her. Life was too damn short to waste prissing around pretending a husband and child, a wagon full of chrysanthemums and perfect carrot cake defined happiness.
So Vivian had needled her and had been rewarded with the beginnings of a flareout Sarah couldn’t quite block. Vivian would absolutely love to see her lose her shit.

After Sarah left, Vivian had gone to what passed for a supermarket here. There had to be a strip with bigger stores somewhere—Stenkel’s General Store? Jesus. Campbell’s Soup and SpaghettiOs, and raincoats and fishing rods—everything a girl could want.

Then she’d come back here with cans of tomato and cream of chicken and boxes of macaroni and cheese, put them away in the duck-decorated cupboards and arranged the rest of her stuff in the old-lady house, cleared out too-precious knick knacks and girly frilly crap. Opened windows to try to air out the musty smell of aging. Then the carpet, there was no way she could stand that another day. And yes, thank goodness, there was gorgeous hardwood underneath.

Now at barely six-thirty, she was exhausted. She needed a drink. But if she stayed here and drank by herself, she was going to fall apart. Cry over everything that had ever been fucked up about her life, which was practically everything.

She had to do something to block the grief that was rumbling at her like the huge stone ball in the first Indiana Jones movie. Anything to stop the anticlimax release of stress from the trial. Anything to squirm out of facing that the man she loved had been stupid enough to fry his sorry ass in his bathtub, she hadn’t been there to prevent it, and now she was stuck without him. In bumfuck, Wisconsin.

A sob tried to come up into her throat—unbearable tightness. She sprang to her feet, breathing hard. Coming here had been a mistake. She should have taken off for Vegas, somewhere she could immerse herself in bright lights big city, exhaust herself with men and booze and partying and sex, and not feel.

In Kettle, there was nothing stopping her from feeling. Every last goddamned painful neurotic aspect. Not even shredding baby blue shag carpet could keep her safe. Finding Ed, losing Ed, which had been more screwed up? Fourteen years of her life, she gave all but the last few happily. And even then, when his cruelty worsened, his rejections became more frequent, his supposedly secret visits to Abby multiplied, she hadn’t stopped loving him. Which made her a masochistic idiot.