Heather Graham - Hurricane Bay

Dane started up his car but didn’t start moving until she did. She drove away with Dane just a short distance behind her.

In the rearview mirror, she could see that Latham was still standing in his doorway. Watching.

Andy Latham muttered as he watched the cars go. Then he walked back into his house, cursing his stepdaughter and her friends. In the kitchen, he reached into the refrigerator for another beer. There was a big fat palmetto bug, a winged cockroach, sitting right next to his beer, waving his antennae.

He cursed the cockroach and reached for the can, then splatted it down on the roach before the filthy creature had a chance to move.

He thought about cleaning the carcass out of the refrigerator, but it seemed like too much of a project for the moment. He hadn’t really wanted another beer; he’d wanted to get going. He liked nightlife. No, he loved nightlife. Nightlife took him away from his hell of an existence and made him feel like a man. He’d been ready to go when Sheila’s little buddy had shown up. Kelsey.

Drinking his beer, he decided to make a pit stop. In the mirror over the sink, he surveyed his features. Good. He was still looking pretty good. He really wasn’t old at all; those kids just didn’t realize it, because he had made the mistake of marrying an older woman.

Well, she’d had some money. A virtue. She’d had her faults, as well. A hell of a lot of them. Who would have thought that she considered herself a match for any man?

And worse, who would have thought she’d leave the money tied up in a trust that could only be accessed little by little, and then only by him and Sheila at the same time.

He picked up the comb sitting on the sink and ran it through his hair. The face that greeted him in the mirror pleased him. He had good features and fine eyes. His skin was tanned and creased, but women seemed to like the weathered look. He was built just fine. Not muscle-bound, but tight as piano wire. Sleek, hard-toned. He was in good physical shape. The whole package was still just fine.

Funny. Once upon a time he’d had a thing for older women.

Now he liked them younger.

Yep, that Kelsey was looking darned good. Too bad he’d been saddled with Sheila. The girl had poisoned everyone against him. Hell, if it hadn’t been for Sheila, he might not have known Kelsey at all as a kid. Who knows? She might have let him buy her a drink at a bar.

She might have let him do more.

He tensed, remembering the way she had looked around the house. As if he were lower than a pig.

Lower than the cockroach he had crushed in the refrigerator.

He shrugged. Imagine that. The damned thing had been in the refrigerator. Maybe that was why it had been so easy to kill. Maybe it had already been cold, shaking in its little cockroach boots, frozen right to the spot.

He looked around the bathroom.

Hell, maybe he should get a maid.

Of course, it would have to be someone who wasn’t afraid of cockroaches.

He exited the bathroom, humming to himself. He started to leave the house, then paused and looked around, damning Sheila once again, thinking of the way Kelsey Cunningham had looked around his house. Fuck them both. Fuck them all. Everyone knew that Sheila took off whenever the hell she felt like it. Everyone but Kelsey, coming back here as if she were something special, raising all kinds of trouble.

Still…

He looked around his domain. Strange, once it had been clean. Sheila’s mother had been good for something. She had cooked, too.

But he couldn’t really remember what the place had looked like back then. There had been food in the refrigerator, and not so many beer cans. The cockroach would have died a lot happier if he had come all those years ago.

Now the place was a dump. Nothing but fast-food wrappers and beer cans. So what if the police came? They would probably leave damn quick.

He left the house, not bothering to lock his door. No one ever came out this road. There were only two other houses, and a bunch of mangrove roots and water. Angus Grier lived in the closest house, and he was ninety if he was a day. And the kids who had rented the other place…they were stoned out of their minds most the time. There wasn’t much reason to lock up his place. If a thief came by…well, hell, he was welcome to steal anything in the place.

Because once he drove away from it, Andy Latham knew that he was a different man.

Dane followed Kelsey back to the duplex.

She was probably going to accuse him of stalking her, but he still wanted to see that she got home safely. Besides, he could just knock on Cindy’s door after he made sure Kelsey had gone on into Sheila’s side.

He knew Kelsey was aware that he was following her, but she pretended not to see him as she parked, exited her cranberry Volvo and entered the house. Dane parked the Land Rover and took the steps up to Cindy’s door. As he tapped on it, Cindy appeared at the door to the other half of the duplex, Sheila’s half, now Kelsey’s.

“Dane! Hey, we’re over here.”

“Hey, Cindy.”

He walked across the tiled concrete front porch and greeted Cindy with a quick peck on the cheek. She never changed. Sweet and smart, Cindy always expected the best from everyone. But then, she’d never met with much personal adversity. Both her folks were still living just down the highway. She had two younger sisters and a ten-year-old brother. Her father, a transplanted Yankee, owned one of the largest charter fishing boat companies in the area.

Cindy had called to tell him that Kelsey was on her way out to talk to Andy Latham. Dane hadn’t at all liked the idea of her being out there alone. Of course, he’d known that Kelsey wouldn’t be particularly glad to see him out there—she would hardly think of him as a knight in shining armor—but he’d made tracks to get out there as soon as possible anyway.

“Come on in,” Cindy said. “We were about to have quiche and beer.” She wrinkled her nose. “Reheated quiche and beer. But it’s still good. I can cook. Well, kind of, anyway.”

“Sounds great, Cindy, but I already ate.”

“Come in for a beer, at least. I mean, you’re here, aren’t you?” she demanded, blue eyes wide.

“Sure.” He needed to talk to Kelsey, and it was damn certain she was never going to invite him in.

He followed Cindy into Sheila’s side of the duplex. Kelsey was seated on a bar stool, a plate and a beer in front of her. Her shoes were off, one ankle curled around a leg of the stool. The sunglasses were gone, and he could see her eyes. Blue-green. Like a color that had been plucked right out of a shallow sea on a sunlit day.

He could see that she was surprised and definitely not pleased that Cindy had invited him in.

“Look who’s here,” Cindy said pleasantly.

“Surprise, surprise,” Kelsey murmured.

“You’re sure you don’t want some quiche, Dane?” Cindy asked.

“No, thanks.”

Cindy reached into the fridge and produced a bottle of beer. “But you’ll have a beer with us, right?”

“Sure.”

“Right. He hasn’t had enough to drink today,” Kelsey said.

For a moment Cindy looked as if she was going to try to ignore the obvious hostility between them, then she sighed, putting her hands on her hips. “Hey, kids, we’re all grown-ups here.”

“All right,” Kelsey said. “Hi, Dane. Have a beer. You are all grown up. If you want to spend your life drinking the days away, I guess that’s all right.”

He stared at her and took a long swig from the bottle, ready to tell her that she hadn’t seen him in years, she had no idea of what he did with his days, and she sure as hell had no right to judge him.

“That’s right, Kelsey. If I want to be a drunk, it’s my prerogative.”