“Why don’t I think that ‘growing up’ and ‘seducing innocent girls in the bushes behind the pool house’ are synonymous?”
“It worked with you,” Ed teased. “Wouldn’t you say you grew up that night?”
Joni lifted an eyebrow. “Me?” she countered. “As I recall, exploring those bushes was my idea, not yours.” Glancing around to see if anyone was watching them, she licked her lips lasciviously. “And I wasn’t any more innocent then than I am now. Myra was always the religious one. Want to go back there again?” She reached out and stroked his chest, slipping her finger between the buttons to touch his bare flesh. “Just for old times’ sake? Let yourself be seduced by the poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks one more time?”
“I think we’d better leave it to the kids,” Ed replied. “Let’s go get a drink and see who’s here.” He’d started toward the bar when Joni put a hand on his arm, stopping him. When he turned back to her, the mischief of a moment ago had vanished.
“I know you didn’t really want to hire Marty,” she said quietly.
Ed shrugged. “Hey, I promised, didn’t I?” His expression clouded. “But if it doesn’t work out, I’m not promising to keep him on.”
“It’ll work out,” Joni said. “Myra’s the only family I have left, and…” Her voice trailed off, then she added, “I just want her closer to me, that’s all. Everything’s going to be perfect — I can just feel it.”
Ed turned away, but not quickly enough to keep his wife from seeing the doubt in his eyes.
Seth Baker saw Zack Fletcher coming out of the clubhouse, and in response he found himself moving toward the shelter of the pool house before he even realized it. Then, his skin prickling with the sensation of someone watching him, he stopped short. But when he turned around, Zack was talking to Heather Dunne and Chad Jackson, and most of the rest of the kids seemed to be gathering around them like iron filings drawn to a magnet. And no one was looking at him.
Then he spotted his father standing on the terrace about thirty yards away. Though he was talking to Mel Dunne, Seth knew that his father was also keeping an eye on him.
If he didn’t at least try to mix into the crowd around Zack and Heather, he didn’t even want to think about what his father might do to him when they got home.
Feeling his father watching every move he made — and feeling the sting on his backside — Seth edged closer to the group of teenagers. There were almost a dozen of them, all of whom he’d known all his life. But even when he was only a few feet away, not one of them spoke to him.
Not one of them even looked at him.
And they certainly didn’t make room for him in the circle around Zack and Heather. In fact, he thought Chad Jackson and Josh Harmon moved closer together so there would be no room for him, and once more he was seized by the urge to disappear into the pool house, where he could just sit by himself until it was time to go home. He stole a glance at the clubhouse, and his father was still there, still watching him. Then, as he saw his father finally turning away, he heard Heather Dunne say something that stopped him from slipping away to the sanctuary of the pool house.
“Get out! Your mom actually sold that awful house? To who?”
“My aunt and uncle,” Zack replied.
“And they’re actually going to live in it?” Heather asked, shaking her head when Zack nodded. “Oh, God — I could never do that! It creeps me out just thinking about it. I mean, isn’t there blood all over the place?”
“Jeez, Heather,” someone groaned. “They didn’t just leave it there.”
Heather Dunne shot the groaner a dirty look. “Well, even if they didn’t, it’s still too gross!” Then, abruptly, she changed the subject. “So what’s your cousin like?” she asked.
Zack rolled his eyes. “You won’t believe. She’s—” He hesitated a moment, and as he searched for the right words to describe Angel Sullivan, his eyes fell on Seth Baker and his lips twisted into a smirk. “She’s the kind of girl who’d go out with Seth,” he said.
Seth felt his face burning as the rest of the kids burst into laughter, and then, with his father mercifully gone from the terrace, he turned and fled into the pool house.
He was still there an hour later when his father came to find him.
“What the hell kind of kid are you?” Blake Baker demanded. “You think you’re going to get anywhere in this world by hiding?” Seth bit his lip, knowing better than to say anything. “You think I didn’t see what was going on earlier? You think I didn’t know what you were doing, pussy-footing around the rest of the kids? It was just a show, Seth. I knew it, and they knew it. You know why they didn’t let you into their little group? Because you didn’t make them, that’s why! And guess what? Your little show didn’t impress me any more than it did them. So here’s what’s going to happen: You and I are going to enter the father-son golf tournament, and we’re going to win.”
“I don’t even know how—” Seth began, but his father cut him off with a look so icy it made Seth’s blood run cold.
“You’re going to learn,” he said. “You’re going to play golf, or I’m going to know the reason why. Understand?”
Seth nodded, afraid to utter even a single syllable.
“Good,” Blake Baker said. “Now let’s go home.”
Seth could tell by both the tone of his father’s voice and the look in his eyes that when they got home he was going to be hurt even more by his father than Zack Fletcher’s words and Zack’s friends’ laughter had hurt.
Chapter 10
S IT REALLY OURS, MOM?” ANGEL SULLIVAN ASKED AS her mother pulled the Chevelle to a stop well behind the big yellow truck Marty had rented the day before. All three of them had been up until past midnight, packing everything into the truck except the blankets in which they caught a few hours of rest before getting up with the sun to make the drive to Roundtree.
“Why don’t we go right now?” Angel had suggested when the last box had been stuffed into the truck. “I’m not going to be able to sleep, anyway.”
“And do what when we get there?” her mother replied. “Haul everything inside in the middle of the night? What would people think?”
When her father had been no more enthusiastic than her mother, Angel wrapped herself up in a blanket and tried to go to sleep. But between the hardness of the floor and the excitement of moving in the morning, she hadn’t slept at all.
Or at least not for more than a few minutes.
But now the night was over, and the drive was finished, and the house at Black Creek Crossing was standing before her, looking even more wonderful than she remembered.
“It’s really ours,” Myra Sullivan replied, shutting off the engine. She got out of the car as Marty emerged from the cab of the truck. At least for now, she added silently to herself. She hadn’t slept much last night either, but it wasn’t out of excitement as much as worry. Until she got the closing papers, she hadn’t realized just how much the mortgage payments would be — almost twice what the rent on the duplex behind the rectory in Eastbury had been — and there were so many times over the last few years when she’d wondered how they were going to make the rent that the idea of a mortgage terrified her. Falling behind in the rent was one thing; falling behind on the mortgage could cost them the house.
“Will you for Christ’s sake stop worrying?” Marty had told her over and over again. “You think Ed Fletcher’s ever going to fire me? He’s family, for Christ’s sake!”