At Peace (29 page)

Colt stared at her for several long seconds
like he didn’t know what to make of her but what he was coming up
with wasn’t much. Then he reached into his back jeans pocket,
pulled out his phone, flipped it open and hit some buttons.

Then he put it to his ear, his eyes on the
deck while it rang then he said, “Yeah, Cal, Colt. Everything’s
cool except Kenzie Elise is standing on Vi’s deck. She wants to
talk to you.” A second passed and then Colt grinned at the deck and
said, “Yeah, I’ll put her on,” then he offered Kenzie his
phone.

Kenzie didn’t look at either of us before she
took the phone and put it to her ear.

“
You let her call you
Joe?
” she snapped into it without saying hello which,
personally, I thought was a mistake.

I watched as she paused, listened, her face
grew even paler than her normal pale (there it was, proof her
snapping at Joe was a mistake) then it twisted before she said, “I
have another situation and only you can help me out,” again she
paused then, “I don’t want him, I want you.”

I thought this also was a mistake. Joe didn’t
like it much that Kenzie thought she could get what she wanted when
she wanted it.

I watched as she was silent for another
moment then she said, “No,” another pause then a hissed, “I can’t
believe you won’t help me!” Yet another pause while her eyes came
to me and she snapped, “I don’t think so!” She listened for about
two seconds then she took the phone from her ear, jerked it toward
me and bit out, “He wants to talk to you.”

I took Colt’s phone, glancing at her then at
Colt then I put it to my ear and announced, “She called me
fat.”

“Buddy –”

“
I have my own stalker, Joe. I don’t want
to have to deal with
yours
.”

He burst out laughing and I didn’t think
anything was funny.

“
I have your movie star stalker standin’ on
my deck, calling me fat and she’s callin’ my house and hangin’ up.
This is
not
funny.”

Joe’s laughter vanished, he was silent then
he said in a soft but scary voice, “What?”

“Your movie star stalker is the one doing the
hang ups.”

There was no silence before Joe demanded,
“Put Colt on the phone.”

“What?”

“Give the fuckin’ phone to Colt,” he
clipped.

I decided to give the phone to Colt seeing as
Joe sounded pretty freaking pissed so I sure didn’t want to talk to
him anymore.

Colt put it to his ear and said, “Yeah?” then
he listened for awhile and said, “Gotcha. Later.” He flipped his
phone shut, shoved it in his jeans and looked at Kenzie. “Cal says
you aren’t off Vi’s property in five minutes, he calls some guy
named Marco. He says you’d know what that means.”

I looked at Kenzie and I could tell straight
off she knew what that meant. Her face had bleached completely of
color, her eyes had gone wide, her lips had parted and she looked
scared.

Then quickly she flicked her cigarette butt
in my yard, snatched up her purse and stomped to the stairs.

“
Ms. Elise,” Colt called and she turned,
foot on the step, hand on the rail and looked at him. “Do I have
your assurance that you won’t be callin’ Vi anymore and there won’t
be any more visits?”

“Yeah, whatever,” she mumbled and kept
going.

“Ms. Elise,” Colt called again, turning fully
toward her and Kenzie, now standing in my grass, stopped and looked
up at him. “Not whatever. No more calls, no more visits. Yeah?”

“Yeah, right. Fine,” she said and looked at
me. “Fine, tell him I won’t bother him anymore or you. Okay?”

When it appeared she actually wanted an
answer from me, I said, “Okay.”

“Just make sure he doesn’t call Marco,” she
said to me, this seemed important to her so I nodded.

She started away but turned back and looked
at me and when she did, she’d changed. Everything about her
changed. She didn’t look scared anymore, she looked lost and
afraid, a different kind of afraid, a worse kind.

“He made me feel safe,” she said quietly, I
blinked at her honest, open admission and she kept talking. “I
don’t feel safe very much, ever, really. Cal made me feel
safe.”

When she seemed again to be waiting for an
answer, I answered, “He has that way about him.”

“He belonged to me, I’d always feel
safe.”

At that moment, I realized I knew exactly
what she meant.

I walked to the railing, looked down at her
and said, “I’m not sure Joe’s the kind of guy who could belong to
anyone, Kenzie.”

She stared at me a second and the way she did
it I actually felt sorry for her.

“You call him Joe, he belongs to you,” she
whispered and before I could say anything or have a reaction to her
words other than that feeling of being punched in the stomach, she
turned and gracefully ran on the toes of her fancy, shiny, platform
pumps across my lawn and around the house.

I watched the space where she used to be for
a few seconds before I felt Colt’s arm come around my shoulders and
I turned my head to look up at him.

“That was kinda sad,” I told him.

He looked to the side of the house then down
at me. “Woman who has everything but really has nothin’.”

I sighed then I nodded. Colt dropped his arm,
jogged down the steps and walked out into my yard to pick up the
cigarette butt.

He looked at me. “Shame this mars your yard,
babe. You do good flowers.”

I smiled at him. “Thanks.”

“I’ll toss this out,” he said, lifting the
butt. “You good now?”

“I’m good, Colt, thanks for comin’ over.”

“Anytime, Vi,” he said and turned to leave.
“Later.”

“Bye, Colt, tell Feb I said hi and tickle
Jack for me.”

“Will do,” he called as he turned the corner
of the house.

I stared after him for awhile too. Then I
went into the house and all the kids watched me walk to the
kitchen.

“She gone?” Kate asked.

“Yep,” I answered, pulling a bottle of cheap
white wine out of the fridge feeling this was the time that cheap
white wine was created for.

“What’d she want?” Keira asked.

“Joe,” I answered.

“And?” Keira prompted.

I found the corkscrew and looked at Keira
through the bar opening. “Joe doesn’t want her.”

“
Killer!
” Keira hissed, pumping her fisted hand in
the kind of gesture you’d use on a trucker to get him to honk his
horn.

I looked at Kate. “You think it’s something
in the water or is she just touched?”

“She’s just touched,” Kate said, Dane laughed
and they hit the play button to restart the movie.

I poured myself a glass of wine and went back
out to my deck with my phone in my hand.

I barely had my ass to the seat when it rang,
I looked at the display and it was Joe.

I slid it open and put it to my ear.
“Hi.”

“She gone?”

“Yeah, drama over.” He didn’t reply so I
asked, “Who’s Marco?”

“Her manager,” Joe answered.

“She seems pretty scared of him,” I
remarked.

“Reason to be.”

“What reason?”

“She’s where she is ‘cause of him. Her
problem is, she made a deal with the devil.”

“A deal with the devil?”

“Marco’s bad news,” Joe told me.

“Bad news how?” I asked.

“Bad news, she steps outta line, he yanks her
back and he isn’t nice about it.”

That didn’t sound good, that sounded face
pale, lips parted, eyes wide not good.

“What?” I whispered.

“He can get physical, buddy.”

“
Physical, as in, he
beats
her?”

“Yeah,” Joe answered. “She’s his cash cow. He
skims off the top of everything she does, lives a good life. She
does shit that might rock that boat, he doesn’t like it and makes
that known however he has to.”

“That’s awful.”

“Yeah, but it isn’t your problem and it isn’t
mine. It’s the deal she made.”

A thought occurred to me so I asked, “Why
didn’t you call Marco before when you were having problems with
her?”

“
It was just me, I could deal with it and I
didn’t want to be responsible for him gettin’ in her face. Fuckin’
with you and the girls, she wasn’t makin’ it about me, she was
draggin’ you into it. I thought I could make my point, fuck, I
thought I
did
. But I
didn’t. She fucks with you and the girls, she needs to know I’m
serious. Now she knows.”

I took a sip of my wine thinking that my
world, not too long ago, even when Tim would come home and talk
about some of the shit he’d seen, was a little bubble of goodness.
Now the stuff that kept pricking it without Tim to keep that bubble
strong and resilient was scary crazy.

“Buddy?”

“Yeah?”

“You all right? She say anything else to
you?”

Yes, she did. She told me Joe belonged to
me.

But I wasn’t going to tell him that.

“No, just flicked her cigarette butt in my
yard and left.”

“Fuck, what a bitch,” he muttered.

“That’s okay, Colt got it.”

He sighed then said, “Good man.”

“Joe?”

“Yeah, buddy?”

“Would you have called Marco?”

He didn’t hesitate before he answered,
“Yeah.”

This shocked me and it also disappointed me.
“Really?”

“Really.”

“But –”

“Baby, she was callin’ you and the girls were
pickin’ up, gettin’ freaked out. It had to be stopped, that was my
last option. She forced my hand.”

“Joe –”

“She forced my hand, Vi. She did it to
herself with this crazy shit. You back a man in a corner, you gotta
bear the consequences when he does what he has to do to fight his
way out.”

He was being a sage again.

And it hit me then that she didn’t back Joe
into a corner. She tossed the girls and me there. Joe hadn’t
threatened that Marco business when she was doing her thing to
catch his attention. He thought he could deal with it and he didn’t
want to scare her like he just did. But he pulled out the big guns
for me and the girls.

I didn’t want to make this into a big thing,
I didn’t want to make the same mistake and start to believe but he
was giving me no choice.

I took another sip of my wine then changed
the subject because this kind of subject you didn’t talk about over
the phone.

“Well, thanks for dealing with it all the way
from LA.”

“Don’t thank me, I’m the reason she was
there.”

“She was here because she has the hots for
you. It isn’t your fault you’re hot.”

I heard his soft laughter again, I decided I
liked it again then he said, “Baby, you’re killin’ me.”

“How am I killin’ you?”

“You can be sweet and hilarious when I’m
close enough to give payback.”

My stomach dipped and I pulled in breath to
control my fluttering heart.

“What’s payback?” I whispered.

“Be sweet and hilarious in my bed, I’ll show
you.”

“Joe –”

He cut me off. “What’re you doin’ now?”

“Drinking cheap white wine on my deck. What
are you doing?”

“I gotta go get food.”

“Oh, okay, I’ll let you go.”

“All right, buddy.”

“You’re back on Saturday?”

“Yeah.”

“See you then.”

“Absolutely.”

I sighed and it was a happy sigh because I
would see him, he wanted me to and Saturday was only one-ish day
away.

“Bye, Joe,” I said softly.

“Later, buddy,” he replied back softly.

I slid my phone closed and then tapped my
forehead with it.

I had, of course, called him to end things
but instead we talked, we had phone sex and he gave me about a
dozen reasons to believe in him. Then, through various other phone
calls, he gave me more reasons to believe.

I put the phone on the table and took another
sip of wine.

I needed to call Cheryl or I needed to talk
to Feb or I needed to call one of my friends in Chicago.

But it was late and it was rude to call late,
especially when the conversation I needed to have would likely take
hours.

So I put my feet up in the chair, looked at
my gorgeous grass and my pretty flower pots and, as I sipped my
wine, I decided to see what Saturday might bring.

Talks

Cal turned his truck into his drive but he’d
seen Vi as he drove down the street.

She was working in her front yard wearing a
pair of very short shorts that showed off her tanned legs, a dark
purple tank top that showed more tan skin and her hair was in a
ponytail at the back of her head. He’d have been pissed she was
working in her yard without him at home next door but he also saw
Colt mowing his lawn, so he knew she was safe.

After he pulled into his drive, he turned his
head to her and saw she’d straightened from whatever she was doing
and looked his way. She swiped the back of her arm against her
forehead, she had something in her hand and she was wearing garden
gloves.

He grabbed his bag and got out of the truck.
After he slammed the door, his eyes went back to her and she was
walking toward him. She’d made it across her drive, was in his yard
and she’d lost the garden tool and the gloves.

He headed to his front door and waited for
her to arrive.

She did, stopping not a foot away and tipping
her head back to look up at him, her hand up to shield her eyes
from the sun.

“Hi,” she said softly.

“Where’re the girls?” Cal asked.

“At the mall,” Vi answered.

Cal didn’t respond, he turned to his door,
unlocked it, opened it, stepped in and tossed his bag to the floor.
Then he reached back through the door and yanked her in, slamming
the door behind her and backing her against it, his head already
coming down to take her mouth, his arms moving around to crush her
to him.