Wendy Etherington - After Dark

As they headed out of the kitchen, he asked, “Is this my official visit for the week?”

“I think this is about my third visit this week. I’m already breaking my word to not become a nuisance.”

He captured her hand and squeezed. “You’re not. I like having you here.”

She stopped and stared at him. “You do?”

He frowned, looking as surprised by his admittance as she felt. “Sure.”

“I thought you wanted to brood alone in your dark and scary castle.”

Tugging her hand, he led her into the foyer. “You’ll have me as the lead in a gothic novel pretty soon.”

“Pretty soon? I’m already there, Mr. Williams.”

“Williams?”

“As in Tennessee. If we’re going to talk gothic, we have to stay in the South.”

“Fine by me.” Standing in the doorway to the dining room, he smiled at her. “I figured it was time to let some light into my dark and scary castle.”

As he spoke, he flipped the wall switch, and the chandelier now dominating the center of the ceiling exploded with light.

She’d been distracted when she arrived, which was the only rational explanation for not noticing the fixture before. Dozens of candles with crystal tips simulating flames rested on curved pipes finished in burnished copper. The facets of light flickered so realistically, she wouldn’t have been surprised to hold her hand toward them and feel heat. The entire room glowed with soft, romantic light.

“Wow,” she managed to say.

“It would have been real candles or gas lights back then, of course,” Aidan said. “So I commissioned an artist in New Orleans to replicate the effect.”

Still staring up, Sloan walked around to look at the chandelier from other angles. “The detail is amazing.” It would look fantastic on the historical society brochures.

If Aidan ever let a photographer within fifty feet of it, of course.

“You’re impressed,” he said, sounding pleased.

“I am. A big-city guy with big-time corporate money buys the most historically significant house on the island, and you wonder whether it’s a whim or an investment.”

“It’s neither to me.”

Hearing the anger in his voice, she looked at him instead of the light fixture. “So what is it, Aidan? What brought you here?”

“Penance.”

If any man besides Father Dominick had said that word, she probably would have laughed.

But she had no desire to laugh at Aidan. He was deadly serious.

For a moment, she wondered if the ugly, speculative stories about him were true, but her father claimed it was likely Aidan’s parents had been killed by a mugger, a drug-addled nut who’d gunned down two people outside a restaurant simply for the cash in their wallets.

Walking toward him, keeping her tone as calm and measured as her steps, she asked, “Penance for what?” He turned his head, but she laid her hand against his cheek and brought him back to face her. “What have you done that you need to make up for?”

“Nothing. It’s—” He shook his head, and she was sure if he could he’d have taken back the revealing word. “This house is broken. I want to fix it. That’s it.”

That wasn’t nearly it.

“I needed a new challenge,” he added, bringing fuel to her blaze of certainty that whatever had hurt him was in no way simple. “Big-city executives—we need a thrill a minute to survive.”

Liar, she thought, though she nodded. “I’ll bet. Let’s eat. I’m starved.”

The relief in his eyes was obvious, but she said nothing about it and led the way to the kitchen. While waiting for the pasta to boil, she caught him up on the latest town gossip, involving a salesman from Chicago who’d come into Courtney’s beauty shop last month and, with a disgusting leer, insisted on having the “special hair and massage package.” No doubt, Aidan couldn’t have cared less about the silly story, but since the spotlight was off him, he seemed more relaxed.

“So, while Courtney’s flustered about how to tell the guy to jump in the lake without sounding rude—”

“A special talent among Southern women.”

“—Helen—she’s our local real-estate agent and happened to be in the shop having her hair highlighted—tells the guy that prostitution, with special massages or otherwise, isn’t legal in South Carolina and to get lost.”

“Helen is the agent my lawyer dealt with about this house?” Aidan asked.

“Yep.”

“I heard a lot about her. ‘A tough dame’ was my attorney’s exact quote.”

“Well, this guy hadn’t heard about Helen. He had the nerve to wink at her and say ‘I hear Realtors around here offer even more exclusive services than the beauty shops.’”

Aidan winced. “So, did she punch the guy?”

“Surprisingly, no. She suggested he find his way to I-75 and the topless cafés.”

“And he accepted that?”

“Unfortunately not. But Courtney threatened to call my dad if he didn’t move along. So, apparently, the threat of the cops and the intimidating factor of a fiery redhead salon owner in steel-tipped cowboy boots and an annoyed real-estate agent with her hair sticking out in foil highlight packets was more than he wanted to deal with. He ran out pretty quick.”

“A wise move.”

Sloan sighed. “If only somebody had been there to record the moment visually. You know, for posterity.”

“And the amusement of the townfolk.”

“Naturally.” She smiled, the picture in her mind giving her a pretty good feeling all on its own. “I haven’t laughed so hard since the last time a carload of tourists from Connecticut drove in looking for a tour of the alligator breeding farms.”

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