422
Sweet as Sin
“She grabbed tee shirts out of my drawer every night and I didn’t give her permission each time.
That would be stupid. They were there if she needed them.”
“Tee shirts don’t make her a profit. She’s making money off your ideas and you’re getting nothing for it. Is she accrediting them, using your pen name, the Jondi connection?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“What do you want me to do, Johnny? I’m still on medical leave, but I can have Carla file an injunc—”
“No, let it go. I owe her.”
It wasn’t about money, had never been about money. Hell, he’d offered her a loan and she’d refused. It was about using the sharpest blade in your arsenal to chop the one you loved the most into tiny shreds. He’d done it to her. Deliberately.
Then he’d turned around, lashed out and hit her where she was most vulnerable—her safe place, her business. Somewhere in the world, there was a meaner, more self-loathing motherfucker, but right now, John felt sure he held that prize.
“Let it go? You owe her?” Gina narrowed her eyes. “Okay, enough bullshit. That’s guilt talking.
What’d you do?”
He pulled then lit another cigarette, hand cupped around the lighter. The trembling of his fingers did nothing for his mood. His sister wasn’t Inez Kelley
423
helping much either and his anger rushed back.
Holding the smoke in his mouth, he sucked air through his teeth, feeling the burn flow through him. His body had been too long without nicotine and it rushed to his head with a dizzying force. He didn’t want to deal with this, with Gina’s nosiness.
In a flash, he realized he didn’t have to. He grabbed his jacket from beside her and headed for the driver’s side. “None of your fucking business.
I’m going home. Off the truck bed.”
“Coward.”
The word stopped him like a brake pedal and his head whipped around. Her thinned brows were slammed together and her lips pressed into a tight line. He pulled the cigarette from his mouth.
“What did you call me?”
“Didn’t catch it? Let me say it louder then.
You, John Flannigan Murphy, are a mean, self-absorbed coward running from a dead man.” The fast slam of his door made her jump but she didn’t look at him. She just shook her head. “I love you, Johnny, but you’re letting Daddy win. He’s got you whipped from the grave.”
He snorted. “Whatever, Gina. You want to
peck at me? Give it your best shot, but make it good because you’re really pissing me off.”
“What hurt the worst?” Dark hair slid over her back as she turned her face to his. He expected anger, but what he saw was pain, etched bone-424
Sweet as Sin
deep. “What did he do that hurt you the worst?
The burns? The broomstick? If I had to guess, I’d pick your jaw. That scared me to death. I thought he’d killed you.”
His muscles quivered around bones that locked tight. What had hurt worst? He couldn’t even begin to speculate. Grinding the half-smoked butt to the ground, he gripped the truck side and stayed silent. They didn’t talk about this anymore. It had been years since they had. He’d made sure she’d had thousands of insurance dollars’ worth of therapy growing up so it wouldn’t haunt her. Why now did she look horrified?
“Do you know what he did that hurt me the most?”
The soft question jerked his head up. Alan had only laid hands on her once that he knew. Had he hurt her before that? Fear tightened an already paralyzed chest. “What did he do to you?”
“He made me watch.” Silver drops lingered on her lashes, pooling until they slipped over her cheeks. “He would wake me up and drag me to the kitchen to make me watch while you got punished because I’d spilled milk six hours earlier.
He made me watch and listen while he force-fed hate to the only person who loved me, the only person I loved. You took the beating but I got the guilt. I still have it.”
Inez Kelley
425
Anger fled and he stepped to her, reaching for her hand. Her nails bit into his skin and she sobbed. “Do you know how hard it is to watch someone you love hurt and know you caused the pain? To see the tears and know you put them there? Hear cries that will ring in your ears forever, all because you loved? You took all the hurt for me, because you love me. And he knew it.
That was my punishment. My love brought you pain.”
John tried to draw breath but his lungs were stuck to his ribs. Did he know that pain? Yes, he knew. He’d shattered Livvy’s trust, broken her heart, killed her love. He knew the agonizing bitterness all too well. He’d just never known Gina suffered from it. He’d thought he had protected her.
The ache from his childhood suddenly seemed less and more at the same time. Less because she’d suffered with him. He hadn’t really been alone. And more, for the same reasons. His body, her spirit, both bore the echoed ghosts of abuse.
But they had each other, had always had each other.
“Gina, don’t do this. You’re what kept me alive. I love you, sister-mine. You never did anything wrong. Alan’s dead. Don’t let him hurt you anymore.”
426
Sweet as Sin
Her face lifted with a shaky smile. “Practice what you preach, brother-mine. Stop listening to him. Your blood is no more tainted than mine is.
Stop giving him power over you. Stop pushing people away. Stop protecting yourself from people who want to love you the way I do.”
Questions he’d prayed for answers to in the old church flooded back to him in his sister’s voice.
His lower lip shivered. Flattening it to his teeth, he focused on the truck roof. John knew what she said was true. He knew it in his head. But in his heart, his soul, it was hard to believe. It had been pounded there by hate and wood for far too long.
Demons were hard to kill.
“I know all that.”
“Then why did you push Livvy away?”
John scoffed. “You’re a ’gator, Gina. Once you get your teeth in something, you never let go, do you? You just wrestle it around until it gives up and dies.”
“I learned from the best.”
One last squeeze and he dropped her hand. He watched her feet swing above the asphalt. “I hurt her.”
“So go after her. Make it right.”
He pulled the last cigarette from the crumpled pack. Lighting it filled a second, allowing him to gather his thoughts. “Some hurts are too deep. I wanted her to leave and she wouldn’t. Nothing I Inez Kelley
427
said could make her leave me, so I…I got mean, meaner than I ever have before. It worked.”
He could have sworn guilt flashed in her gaze.
It was probably just the sun because once she wiped her wet eyes, the look she fixed him with was fierce. “What did you do?”
Smoke choked around stuck words and he blew out a slow stream. Guilt lowered his lids. “What’s the worst thing a man can do to the woman he loves?”
“I know you didn’t hit her. Please tell me you didn’t cheat on her.” He locked his gaze on hers and brought the cigarette to his lips. Gina gaped.
“Johnny, how could you?”
“I didn’t. But I let her think I did.”
“What? Why?”
“It doesn’t matter.” One hand raking through his hair, he snorted a self-deprecating laugh. “I lied, she believed me. I’m a very good liar.”
“You’re an excellent liar, Johnny. That’s why you’re a good storyteller. But why?”
Before he could take another drag, Gina
hopped off the tailgate and yanked the cigarette from his mouth. She pitched it into the road. Her stern jaw rang opposite her loving eyes. But some things, personal things, he could never share with his sister.
“Liv sold her house to get away from me, Gina.
It’s over.”
428
Sweet as Sin
She deflated in front of him. Sorrow turned her voice soft. “I’m so sorry.”
“Me, too. Now will you tell me what the doctor said?”
Her eyes fell on his loosened tie and he tensed for a blow. His stomach quivered and his head spun. Fear was more powerful than nicotine.
“I won’t gross you out—and trust me, I could, but I won’t. I’ll never nurse another baby from that side but…I don’t have breast cancer.”
John reached for her. He didn’t mind the single tear that finally leaked into her hair. All that mattered was, once more, his baby sister was safe.
Tow rubbed his forehead. “Tell me again, where was the trash can?”
“In the kitchen.” Livvy paced like a yo-yo in front of his desk, arms clamped around her stomach.
“And he clearly threw it away? It didn’t get knocked into th—”
“He picked it up, looked through it, then threw it away.”
“And you took it because…?”
“Because I was a love-struck fool with no brains?” She didn’t smile and neither did he. A breath puffed her cheeks and she ran her hands through her hair. “He drew me. I—I felt pretty. If Inez Kelley
429
he didn’t want it, I did. I never meant to… God, I am such an idiot.”
“You never got any permission or agreement in writing from him?”
“No. It was all verbal.”
“You had confirmed permission for how
many?”
“Two. I thought… I asked if I could use the others but…” Livvy scrubbed at her eyes. “I thought he agreed. He didn’t understand what I was asking.”
“So how many of his drawings did you end up using?”
“Fifty-six. But I didn’t use them exactly as they were. I had to change some things. What about those people who go around digging in dumpsters for old lamps and stuff and make sculptures out of them?”
“Outside trashcans are fair game usually, but this was
in
his house, so that won’t wash. You took fifty-four drawings without clear permission, altered them, and made a profit.”
“I am so screwed.”
Tow cocked his head and toyed with his pen.
“Probably, but it’s so far out of my field it might as well be written in Vulcan. The smartest move right now is to do what John said. Take all his stuff out of the line until I can get you set up with somebody who handles this stuff.”
430
Sweet as Sin
“I did before I came here.” Livvy sank into the chair in front of his desk and buried her face in her hands. “I can’t afford a big lawsuit. Could I really lose the Shack over this?”
Silence echoed. He didn’t have an answer, but she looked at him, begging for a reprieve. He wanted to lie but owed her the truth. “I don’t know, Liv, but you might want to prepare for that.
It depends on how much John wants to pursue this.”
“He’s pissed and loaded for bear. I repeat—I am so screwed.”
A tug of war growled in his gut. On one hand, he couldn’t believe Livvy was so naïve or so stupid that she hadn’t realized what she was doing.
On the other hand, John deserved to roast in hell for hurting her. If he had a third hand, he’d add to the battle in his belly and say that Andrea would expect him to have some magic legal Band-Aid for this mess. The last bit is what made him reach for the Rolaids.
“Karma is a real bitch.” Livvy hopped up to stare out his small window. She should have a lovely, inspiring view directly into Judge Wendell’s bathroom. He really hoped the judge had closed his blinds this time. “What was supposed to be a summer fling, a purely sexual, no-strings affair turned out to be the biggest mistake of my entire life.”
Inez Kelley
431
His head came up, the search for a lime-
flavored antacid forgotten.
Now there’s a
revealing statement.
Tow mulled a sudden suspicion around, poked it and decided to go with his spasming gut’s intuition. “Getting involved with John was the biggest mistake?”
Afternoon sun slanted through the glass turning her hair to fire-red, all the more vivid next to her colorless skin. She leaned her forehead on the window sash.
“No. My biggest mistake was doing to Murphy what everyone else in his life did. I abused his trust. He guards his monsters like most people guard their children and now I know why. They can’t hurt him.”
Her words stirred newly-emerging parental feelings and Tow frowned. Already the tiny bean inside Andrea meant more to him than he could ever have fathomed. He’d do anything to protect it, keep it safe from harm. Yet every day he watched parents use their kids as little more than an emotional bullet. People who’d promised to love, honor and cherish thought nothing of obliterating their partner a few years later over who got Aunt Mildred’s blender. It became a game of stick-it-to-them instead of stick-with-them.
Her wet, caustic snort pulled Tow from his thoughts.
432
Sweet as Sin
“I took the rest of the day off with the intention of trying to move forward, to get my life back on track. Now I’m barreling toward complete ruin and all I want to do is get drunk and forget.”
In nearly five years, Tow had known Livvy to have exactly two drinks. A diabolical plan sprouted in his head and he had to stop his hand from checking his brow for horns. Instead, he grabbed his jacket and stood. “Actually, that sounds like a plan.”
Livvy shook her head. “Yeah, like you’re
really going to risk pissing Andy the Pregnant Pressure-Cooker off right now by showing up drunk again.”
“Who says I’m drinking?” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and walked her toward the door. “This is your pity-party, Liv. I’ll play designated driver. First stop, liquor store. Second stop, grocery store. I better grab some more Popsicles. Damn, I wish they sold boxes of just the cherry.”
Andrea climbed from her car smelling of vomit and disinfectant. Fighting the wave of nausea, she noted John’s truck in his driveway and flipped it off. She wanted a cherry Popsicle, a bath and a foot rub. She opened the front door and all three of those things fled her mind.
Inez Kelley
433
The living and dining rooms were filled with cardboard boxes but not a single one was full.
Incongruous assortments poked out of each box.
Why would Livvy pack clothes in the same box as pots and pans? Was that the toilet plunger sticking out of a box of books? She wandered to the kitchen, her face twisted in confusion. At the table, Tow smiled until her gaze fell on the opened alcohol bottles. He shook his head.