Red-Blooded Heart Read online

  But he doesn’t kiss me and I’m relieved because I don’t need to get involved with this guy. He’ll only make things complicated. I’m up here for a reason. I have something I need to do, and it doesn’t involve him.

  “Would you really put new tires on my truck?” I suddenly say.

  His lips quirk into a smile. He’s laughing at me but not out loud. “Said I would, didn’t I?”

  I square my shoulders. “Well, like I said, you don’t have to do that.”

  “So, who’s going to do it, then?”

  “I can put on tires myself,” I say. And I can. I mean, admittedly, I’ve never changed all four tires on a car, and I feel like it would require a good bit of maneuvering the jack around and it wouldn’t be easy, but I could do that. If I’m going to be out here on my own, it seems like something I need to be able to figure out on my own.

  “Great,” he says, giving me an appraising look.

  We hold each other’s gaze for another set of long moments.

  And then he breaks away and gestures to the house. “You want to see what I’ve gotten done?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  And it’s amazing, how much he’s already accomplished. The foundation is laid and the house is framed out. He walks me through and shows me where the rooms will be, and I can almost picture it, even though now it’s nothing but bare, skeletal wood beams nailed together. The people who recommended him to me were right. He does good work that’s solid and quick. I’m impressed.

  I gush a little, going on about how amazing it is that he’s done this much work and how great it is. I tell him I’m grateful.

  He looks a little embarrassed. It doesn’t seem as though he’s used to being complimented. He leans against one of the framed-in walls and surveys me. “Where are you staying tonight?”

  “I’m not,” I say, too quickly. “I’m driving straight back to the city after I drop this stuff off.”

  * * *

  -deke-

  She shows up and she’s brash and says she can do everything on her own and I wonder who helped her load that truck and if she’s going to insist on showing me that she can unload it on her own.

  But she accepts my help, and I realize that she’s strong. Her sleeve rides up and I see her biceps, and they’re defined.

  Typically, I’d be turned off by muscles on a girl. I don’t mean to be. It’s not a political thing or whatever. Some things turn you on and other things turn you off and that’s just how it is. But her muscles don’t turn me off at all, and I wonder if I really am turned off by muscles on women or if I just thought that I would be. Maybe I’ve never really seen a woman with biceps before.

  Anyway, none of it’s exactly a good thing. I’m still thinking about her all the time, and she’s there, and I don’t know how to talk to her. I don’t talk much at all. I find myself unabashedly staring at her most of the time, but then she’s staring back, and there’s something going on with us. I don’t know what it is, but it’s there. I know it’s there.

  Maybe that’s why I built the crawlspace.

  Which I don’t show her, of course.

  She’s gone again too quickly. I wish she would have stayed. I was hoping she was staying in a hotel in Daviston or something and that we could go out and have dinner together. I was going to ask her out. I really was. And I’m usually too much of a chicken to even do stuff like that. Alice, for instance, the only other girl I could really be considered to have had a relationship with, I never asked on a date. We met up at a party and started hanging out after that.

  I don’t like thinking about Alice, though.

  Once Juniper’s gone, I head back to my place, and I feel antsy. I don’t know what to do with myself, so I start going through my books, looking for something to read.

  Yeah, I read.

  Maybe I don’t seem like the type who’d read a lot, but I was a big nerd growing up. I always had my nose stuck in a book, and I didn’t have much use for doing physical things. I didn’t want to be outside. I didn’t want to build things. It’s not as if this is what I always wanted to do, live the way that I do.

  Things changed for me when I got older. Things changed after college.

  I did go to college, not that I’m using anything that I studied. I didn’t graduate, but it doesn’t matter, because I was going for a bullshit degree, anyway, in English literature, and there’s nothing you can do with a degree like that except keep going to school and then become a professor. It’s pointless. I had intentions of doing something else with it, like maybe going to law school or something, but I never managed to do that. I ended up out here instead.

  One year, when I was in college, there wasn’t any room in the Jack Kerouac elective class that I wanted to take, and I ended up in this class about romantic fiction for women, which I thought was going to be really terrible, but was actually kind of good in the end. I think about that class a lot when I’m trying to get insight into the female mind.

  We were required to read stuff like Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice, but then we also read things like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey. They were all a lot the same. Those sorts of stories tend to center on a woman who is torn between two different kinds of men.

  There are differences, of course, but typically one would be the civilized, wealthy guy who had power because of his social status. He was Mr. Darcy, or Edgar Linton, or Christian Grey, or Edward Cullen. He would be cold a lot of the time, at least from first appearance. He would be arrogant, seeming to lord his lofty station over those beneath him.

  And then there would be the other guy, the wild man. There were levels of how wild and uncivilized this guy might be. In the case of Jacob Black, he was literally a werewolf. He might just be a charming rake, like Mr. Wickham, or he might be a full-on sociopath like Heathcliff, but whatever the case, the women in the story were drawn to him, and they could not explain why and they felt ashamed of how much they wanted those guys and they could not stop themselves from wanting them even though they knew it wasn’t proper.

  The teacher of that class had some stupid take on it, like women knew better than to be with men that were bad for them, which of course totally didn’t work in a lot of the books, because Christian Grey and Edward Cullen were controlling and borderline abusive. Christian Grey was sort of the beast and the civilized man all the same time, though.

  That’s what I started calling those guys—the beast. Like from the fairy tale, right? Except he doesn’t turn into a prince at the end, he’s just a full-on beast.

  That’s what women want deep down. They want something primitive and savage and sexual. They want the beast, because he calls to the beast inside them, and those men are the kinds of men that women daydream about, even though they’re the wrong kind of guy. Those kinds of men are the ones that women secretly fantasize about.

  But for whatever reason, most women are afraid to actually end up with the beast. In the end, most women take the safer choice and fall into Mr. Darcy’s arms, where they’ll have ten thousand a year and live at Pemberley. Most women are afraid to trust the beast.

  And, hell, he’s not trustworthy.

  But fear is feminine. Not that men don’t feel fear, because we do, but women are allowed to be afraid, and men have to learn to face our fears. And the only reason that men learn to face fear is for women. To protect her from whatever’s out in the dark. It’s the beast part of men that fulfills that protector role, and women want that for deep, primitive reasons. They want to strongest man to keep the big saber-tooth tigers away from their young.

  It’s hardwired into women to want it. They can’t turn it off.

  Fear makes them want the beast and fear makes them choose pansy-ass men who have checked their fucking masculinity at the door of their comfortable apartment buildings where they put on their three-piece suits and have soft hands that have never built anything. Fear makes women settle.

  The thing about Juniper, though, is that she isn’t like most women.
I can tell.

  With Juniper, there’s no telling what she might want.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next morning, I am getting ready to head back out to Juniper’s site in order to keep working on the house when a car pulls into my driveway.

  I don’t exactly get a lot of visitors out here, I have to admit.

  I’m not proud of myself, but I panic.

  I don’t recognize the car, and there’s no reason that anyone should be out here, none at all. There are very few people who know where I live, and those that do don’t tend to drop by unannounced. I try to tell myself that maybe it’s someone who couldn’t get in touch with me on my phone, because service is really spotty out here, and it’s very likely that someone could have been trying to call me for days and not gotten through. If I don’t have service, I don’t even get notifications of missed calls. I’ll get voicemails that are left (whenever I get service again), but a lot of people don’t bother to leave voicemails these days.

  I should just bite the bullet and get a land line phone, but that doubles the amount of money I have to pay to the phone company, and I’d rather just pay for internet.

  But I can count on one hand the number of people who know my number and who also know where I live and those people don’t have cars like this.

  People who live out here—even people who live in town, on the grid—do not drive little sporty vehicles with front-wheel drive. There are too many hills and the weather gets too bad in the winter for such things. People out here drive trucks or jeeps or even SUVS, but they don’t drive a car like this one, which is also silver. It looks like a little silver bullet.

  I stand in the window of my cabin, staring at this car, and I hold my breath while someone gets out.

  I’ve never seen this guy before in my life. He’s wearing a polo shirt and a pair of khakis and he looks like he works for a golf course or something. He turns in a circle outside the car, patting his pockets as if he’s forgotten something. Then he stops, stoops, and gets something out of the car. I think it’s a notepad and a pen.

  I debate for two seconds. I can hide and pretend not to be home, or I can face this guy.

  If he’s trouble, hiding isn’t going to solve anything, because trouble tends to try again when it doesn’t succeed. If it’s not trouble, then there’s no reason to avoid him.

  So, panic aside, I open the door when he knocks. But I don’t invite him in. Instead, I go out onto my deck and talk to him. My deck wraps around the cabin. I intend to put a roof on it at some point, so that I can sit out here and have some shade or some shelter from the rain, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

  “Hi there,” he says. “My name’s Darius Reed. I’m a private investigator. The Bailey family hired me.” He offers me his hand.

  I have no choice. I shake hands with him. But that panic I’m feeling is now in full-blown bloom. The Bailey family? Shit. Fucking shit.

  How did this guy find me? I’ve covered my tracks well. I haven’t even been paying taxes, because I have no income to speak of.

  Maybe property records? I knew I should have gotten someone else to buy the land for me. But I didn’t think I’d be easily found out here because they don’t have the property records online, and besides, who would come looking for me in West Virginia?

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  I smile at Darius Reed as I shake with him. A firm handshake. I grip his hand and look him straight in the eye.

  He looks away first.

  Good, I feel like I have the upper hand. “A private detective, huh?” I say. “Wow, I never met a real PI. Pretty crazy. What the hell are you doing all the way out here?”

  “I’m looking for Alice Bailey,” says Darius.

  I nod slowly. “Right. Her family hired you?”

  “Is she here?” says Darius.

  I actually laugh. That’s what he thinks? That Alice is here? Oh, Alice isn’t here. “It’s just me. I live here alone.”

  “Could I come in and look around?”

  “I’m not hiding her,” I say. “Maybe you didn’t hear when you were investigating this, but Alice and I broke up.”

  “Right,” he says. “She dumped you and then she disappeared.”

  “Dumped,” I say, and I grin wider. If he thinks that’s going to make me react emotionally, then he’s wrong. Okay, he’s not wrong. I have the urge to punch the fucker for saying it. It’s a hell of a thing to say to a guy. But I don’t let it show. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. Anyway, she sure as hell didn’t want to run away with me.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “You hear from her lately?”

  “No,” I say. “She made it pretty clear, the last time we spoke, that she didn’t want to keep in touch with me. Most women don’t feel the need to stay close to men they dump, after all.” I start walking. I walk on my deck, and I start to go around the house. I do this because I know that my twelve-gauge, single-shot shotgun is out on the back deck, near the hot tub. I left the gun out here after I was doing target practice a few nights ago. I don’t need the gun, but I feel irrationally safer if I can see it.

  Darius walks behind me. “Sure as hell wasn’t easy tracking you down, Mr. Rochester.”

  I look over my shoulder. “You can call me Deke.”

  “Deke,” he says. “So, why’d you disappear around the same time as Alice?”

  “I didn’t disappear,” I say. “I came out here.”

  “Yeah and didn’t tell anyone where you were going. And your own mother claims she doesn’t even know where you are.”

  “Does she?” I’m mild about the mention of my mother, too, even though thinking of her ties my stomach in knots.

  “Yeah, that’s what she claims. That true? You didn’t even bother to tell your mother where you were going?”

  “My mother and I aren’t that close,” I say. By now, we’re at the back of the house, and I spy the shotgun. I don’t go and pick it up. Instead, I smile at him. “You know, I don’t really think of it as disappearing, Darius. It’s more like I was never alive until I came to live out here.”

  He looks around, appraising my house. “I hear that you built this place yourself.”

  “With these two hands.” I hold them out to him, grinning. “That’s a satisfaction you can’t imagine, living in a house you built yourself.”

  He raises his eyebrows and then shoves his hands in his pockets. He’s appropriately cowed. In the manliness competition, I win. He’s a pussy with a silver fucking car. I’m a homesteader who lives off the land.

  He comes out with that notepad and pen he had before. He prepares to take notes. “Why don’t you tell me about the last time you saw Alice.”

  Sure. There were flames everywhere, and she was screaming, calling me a lot of really mean names. “Uh…” I rub my chin. “Well, like you said, she dumped me. That was pretty much it. But…” I pause and make a show of really thinking it over, as if I can’t recall what happened. “She dumped me over the phone, so I didn’t actually see her. I think the last time I saw her must have been a few days before at my dorm.”

  “At Keene College?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “What happened? What did she say to you?”

  “She had slept over. She said she needed to get home and shower for her next class.”

  “That was it?” he says. “Why’d she dump you?”

  I spread my hands. “Who knows why women do anything?”

  “So, that’s the last time you saw her.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “And did she ever indicate to you that she had a desire to get away from her life?”

  Sure, she did. Maybe I’ll tell him about it. It depends on what else he knows. I shrug. “I can’t really remember just now. It was a long time ago. I mean, she talked a lot. You know how women are. Sometimes I kind of tuned her out. Maybe that’s why she dumped me.”

  “You know anything about the fire?”

  “The fire,” I say.r />
  “Well, the house she was renting burned down.”

  “I heard that,” I say.

  “I figured it would have made more of an impression on you,” he says. “After all, there was that fire in your school when you were about thirteen? And then when you were older, a whole construction site that you were working on burned down? It seems like there are a lot of fires around you.”

  Inside, I am tense. I check the shotgun again. It’s there. I’m pretty sure it’s loaded too. To Darius, however, I am serene. “I never thought about it that way.” I shrug. “Is that a lot of fires?”

  He clears his throat. “Look, I’m not the police, you understand? I can’t arrest you. I can’t do anything to you. What I’m trying to do is help out a family. Now, maybe you could give them some closure. Maybe you could let them know that they can stop looking. Maybe you could indicate what you might have done with her body.”

  Oh, okay. He just went for that, didn’t he? I laugh, a surprised little laugh. “What did you just say, Darius?” And now I’m moving, over to my gun. But I don’t pick up the gun. I stand next to where it’s propped up against a chair on my deck, and I pat the side of my hot tub.

  “You didn’t hear me?”

  I laugh again. “No, I guess I did. I’m just…” I shake my head. “I don’t even know how to react to that sort of an accusation.”

  “Oh, you don’t? You have experience with arson, so you must have known that even if the fire killed her, it wouldn’t cover up the evidence. Or maybe you didn’t know. All the other times you committed arson, no one died.”

  I pat the hot tub. “You ever seen one of these?”

  He squints. “No, I haven’t. And I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about Alice.”

  “It’s a wood-burning hot tub,” I say. “It’s drained now. I keep it full in the winter. It’s easier to do then. I can just shovel snow in there and melt it, right? It’s a pretty nifty little contraption. It’s got a stove right here. This is the chimney.” I touch the chimney. “It’s amazingly relaxing, sitting out here, looking at this view. Can you believe this view?”