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Not that he’d stopped. She’d wanted it, begged for it—or had she?—seemed as determined as he about making it. At first she’d cried out, shifted away from him on the bed where he’d scored so often, but then she’d given into the hot-blooded animal she was.
Shooting a stream of smoke, he crushed his cigarette and rinsed his face. At times he wondered why his damned sex drive was always in fifth gear. He couldn’t look at a woman without fantasizing about bedding her and when it came to the Holland girls, it was worse. He didn’t want to think it was because of some twisted condition because he’d seen his mother’s treachery . . . No, that couldn’t be it. Nor was it because of the feud between the families, not really. It was the challenge of it all. Miranda, Claire, and Tessa were so damned arrogant and their better-than-thou attitude coupled with their beauty got to him. Big-time. So he’d scored with Tessa . . . one little virgin down, two to go, though he doubted the other two were innocents. Claire was doing it with Harley, Weston was sure of it, and Miranda, ice princess that she appeared, was surely all fire below the surface.
He wanted to bed all three Holland girls in the worst way. But those thoughts were normal, the quirk he dealt with was that he was forever acting on his impulses, even when he instinctively knew he should be more selective, probably because of all his mother’s sermons. As if she knew anything about virtue.
His jaw tightened, and as he frowned at his reflection the years rolled back and he was a boy again, no more than ten or eleven. He’d climbed his favorite oak tree and was on the lookout for squirrels, his slingshot ready while he wished that he had a BB gun like some of his friends. Settled onto his favorite branch, eyes trained on a hawthorn tree where a family of squirrels usually nested, he heard music coming from the second-story window of the guest house.
Mick Jagger—his mother’s favorite in recent years, she’d seen him in person, even gotten his autograph—was singing about brown sugar again. Jeez, Weston was sick of that song. He’d heard it for years, watched in stunned awe as his usually conservative mother would close her eyes, wag her head, and swing her hips to the music. He just didn’t get it. And he didn’t like the noise now. It was bound to drive the squirrels away.
He was about to shimmy down the tree when he heard laughter—his mother’s tinkling, and rare laughter—coming from the open window. Another voice, deeper and male, said something indiscernible, and Mikki Taggert giggled like a schoolgirl again. A sense that something was wrong settled over Weston, and though he knew he shouldn’t, he inched farther onto the branch that brushed against the guest house.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” Mikki said, whispering in delight again as the song ended.
“Couldn’t stay away.
”
“I’m glad.” Her voice had lowered an octave and Weston, his hands sweaty as he looked down toward the ground that looked so far away, closed in on the open window.
“Looks like you were ready for me.”
“No, silly, I was going to work on my tan.”
A rumble of laughter. “In September?”
“Why not?”
“I think we can work on something else.”
“You’re evil,” Mikki insisted, though she didn’t sound scared. Her voice was breathy and low; the tone made Weston’s skin crawl—like the sound of fingernails scraping against a chalkboard. Something in the back of his mind cautioned him to scramble back down the tree, to run as fast and as far away as his legs would carry him, but it was as if he were drawn by a magnet, pulled closer to that open window by an irresistible and probably malignant force.
“Evil?” the man repeated, and Weston thought he heard the sound of ice cubes tinkling in a glass. “I don’t think so.”
“What would Neal say?”
Yeah! What would Dad say?
Laughter. Deep and dark and dangerous. “Now that’s an interesting question, but let’s not think about him right now.”
“Shouldn’t we?” Mikki Taggert’s question hung in the late summer air. “I thought this was all about him, that he was the one really getting screwed, so to speak.”
The window and edge of the curtains were near. Weston craned his neck and squinted. As his eyes adjusted to the dark interior his stomach, already churning, turned over. His mother was standing on her tiptoes, her arms thrown around the thick neck of a big man, his fingers moving against her bare back, untying the string to the top of her bikini. Oil gleamed on her already-tanned skin.
The man kissed her, and with a quick movement, pulled the red bra down. Weston swallowed as he saw his mother’s breasts, white where the sun hadn’t touched them, dark huge disks for nipples, stretch marks marring their beauty. He squeezed his eyes shut and nearly fell off his perch. His brain thundered. What was his mother doing with this guy—this stranger with the thick neck and brown hair just starting to gray?
His stomach convulsed and it was all he could do not to retch and throw up. Sweat slid down his nose and he wished to God he’d never climbed the tree, never crawled near this damned window, but still he stared, unable to drag his gaze away, watching in morbid fascination as his mother, the woman he’d looked up to all his life tipped her head back and let the guy kiss her, his hands finding those big pillowy breasts as they tumbled onto the antique quilt Grandma had stitched. Mikki made deep, ugly sounds in the back of her throat and arched up against the man—rubbing his crotch.
Bile tickled Weston’s throat as the man stripped himself of his shirt. The slingshot in Weston’s back pocket pressed against his butt and he thought of aiming through the window and shooting a rock right at the guy’s head. Why not? The bastard deserved it. He reached for his weapon as his mother let out a long, low, “Ooooh, that’s it baby.”
Weston’s heart shriveled. How many lectures had his mother given him and his little brother about being good, playing fair, never cheating, always being loyal? He couldn’t count the times that Mikki had smoothed his cowlick with loving fingers, straightened his tie, and driven Harley, Baby Paige, and him into town to the Second Christian Church where from high in the pulpit Reverend Jones, the most boring minister in the world, went on and on about the wrath and power of God.
Mama had always told him to be true to himself, to his family, to God and Jesus. She’d told him over and over again that the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule were never to be broken, and yet there she was, stripping some guy of his clothes, humping him for God’s sake.
Still it was too dark to see the man’s face, but Weston had the sickening feeling that he should know him as he stared at his freckled hairy back. There was a mirror across the room, facing the bed, but the guy never looked up, and all Weston viewed was the top of his head as he straddled Mama, his back to the window. Weston heard the distinctive metallic hiss of a zipper being lowered. “You want me, baby?”
That voice! Weston had heard it before.
“Yes.”
