There was more to it than just Bobby Ray being dead. The tick only went haywire when
Quentin held back, which was almost all the time around her. Another terror bucked
through her and she sat up straight and gasped. She clasped her hand over the rail,
inadvertently touching his, and at once, her stomach clutched hard as it always did.
“You – you didn’t,” she trailed off, realizing in her horror that she didn’t want to
know if Quentin had done the job, had killed her husband, his only brother. What
scared her more than knowing was the reason he would’ve done it – for her. No one
should lose their lives for her.
“No,” he said, gravely. “I didn’t.”
“Oh, thank God.” She fell back to the pillows again. Her swollen eye ached, but
no tears came. She dug for sorrow and found only sadness rimmed with pity. Maybe
she was still in shock and once it registered, she’d cry, grieve, and behave like a good
wife who’d just lost her husband.
A husband she had been more than excited to wed. Three years ago, when she’d met Bobby Ray, no one could’ve told her this would
be her life. A life steeped in misery and constant struggles. She wore it, not proudly, but
with a sense of duty. She gave her vows before God, her momma, and her preacher. She
wasn’t going to back out of them just because her husband turned out to be an ass. A
sorry ass at that, but she couldn’t very well go back in time to change her fateful
decision when she had said, “I do.” Each day she kept hoping he’d return to that Bobby
Ray who swept her off her feet, who spoiled her with gifts, entertained her with jokes,
and won her heart and commitment with his sweet demeanor.
Each day she kept hoping that he would turn into Quentin. That somehow
they’d switch bodies or something magical like that. Bobby Ray had the same inky
black hair as Quentin and the same blue eyes, but Bobby Ray’s had been watered down
from the intense cerulean to a faded baby blue. That is where their similarities ended.
Each night when she closed her eyes, then and only then, did her wish come true.
Her marriage had soured the moment she walked across the threshold and into
their home. Her parents weren’t quitters and neither was she. How many times had her
mother told her marriage was like a war, you had to be in it to win it. Her father had
been no prize, but her mother had stayed, raising the children and being a good wife.
They were Catholic, there was no such thing as divorce. With determination, she put
her life with Bobby Ray together and smiled bravely when he tore it to pieces over and
over and over again. It took a lot to keep repairing it, but she did.
Until two nights ago when Bobby Ray came bursting through their house in a
furious rage. She shuddered just thinking about it. “You’re cold. Here, I’ll get another blanket.” Quentin walked over to the closet
and grabbed a blanket. She couldn’t keep her eyes off his tight buttocks that filled out
his pants so darn nicely.
Lord, help me! I’m going to hell, but I so want him to crawl in with me, hold me tight,
nestle me against that ripped chest and plant wonderful kisses across my hair, stroking my face.
He stalked back to her bed and tossed the blanket across her, tucking it in like a
father would. With swift, deliberate actions, he had the second blanket over her and she
felt warmer. From the blanket or Quentin’s actions, she didn’t know. Her cheeks felt
hot, and hastily grabbed the glass of water from her bedside. She sipped eagerly, trying
to ease her parched throat.
“I can handle the funeral arrangements, if you want,” he explained, leaning on
the bedrails again. In this position, his forearms rested on the rails, his hands were laced
together and his ass stuck out. “We can use the same place we used for mom and dad’s
funeral.”
His parents. Good people, may God rest their souls. Thankfully, they didn’t have
to hear about Bobby Ray’s death like this. She remembered the funeral arrangements
and how sensitive the funeral home had been to the family’s needs. She liked the staff.
They would do well for Bobby Ray.
“Okay. They were nice people.”
Truth be told, she couldn’t think around the words – Bobby Ray’s dead. Three
simple words that sent her world into a complete tailspin. Quentin walked over to her hospital room door and shut it. The private room
placed in a private room. He’d insisted on the cop outside her door too. If it was one
thing she’d learned about him in all those visits, holidays and cookouts, no one told
Quentin no. No one.
When he turned back to her, he walked over to the bed, closet to her and leaned
down again beside her.
“We’ve got to wait until the M.E. releases his body, but it shouldn’t be more than
a few days.”
“M.E.? An autopsy,” she shook her head. “What happened? How did he die?”
Quentin sighed. He hung his head, the silence stretched out, devouring her
patience, and she wanted to ask again – because maybe he didn’t hear her, but he
coughed, clearing his throat.
“Someone shot him,” he said, blowing out a huge sigh with it. “Murdered.”
What had Bobby Ray gotten himself into now? The phone calls, the threatening
letters, and the rogue’s gallery of uninvited guests to the house all hinted at something
illegal. He owed people money. Bad people. Vicious people who hurt and killed people.
She’d warned him and tried to tell him to go to his brother, to tell Quentin, but Bobby
Ray wasn’t having any of it.
If only she’d given him the money.
The trembling started at her feet and worked its way up to rattle her entire body.
“You all right?” Quentin asked again. She nodded, but all right wasn’t even in the ballpark of what she felt inside.
Confusion, fear, and most of all, a strange light feeling that expanded in her chest
swamped her. Where it came from, she didn’t know, and she wasn’t all together sure it
wasn’t from the morphine drip.
“Oh, God,” she sobbed, the guilt pressed impatiently against her throat, making
it close around the knot of emotions. “I did this.”
“What? Bri, listen…”
She waved him off with her good arm.
“I, I did this,” she stammered out, nodding to confirm it for him. “I should’ve
just given him the money. If I’d done that, he’d be alive.”
“You can’t be sure of that. No one can. Bri, BRI, stop, stop, shush, shush,” he
cooed, taking her hand into his and caressing the back of her palm with his thick
fingers. “Shush. You knew him, and you know that if it wasn’t today, it would’ve
happened eventually.”
Yes, maybe, but this she had a direct hand in. With the money, Bobby Ray
could’ve paid off whoever he owed and been alive. Not murdered.
“Listen, the people that came after Bobby Ray may come back,” he said,
standing ramrod straight beside her bed. “You can’t go back to the house.”
She lived there. It had been her home, and his parents’ home.
“I will need to get a couple of things from the--”
“No. I’ve got your stuff, clothes, and your cell phone
.” “Really, it’s no big deal, I can stop off at the house, grab a few things, and go to a
hotel–”
“Bri, it is a big deal,” Quentin breathed, hands clutching the bedrail so hard his
knuckles had turned white. “Someone killed Bobby Ray, and those bastards will come
looking for you. You and whatever the hell they couldn’t get from him. You’re not
going to a hotel.”
“I can…”
“No!” he roared, caught himself, and took several deep gulping breaths. When
he’d collected himself, he continued. “It’s a crime scene anyway and it’s sealed until the
forensics people have collected all they wanted to grab. You can’t go back there.
Period.”
“Quentin…”
“I won’t, Bri, I can’t – no. Damn it, Briony, I’ll not gonna–”
The door creaked opened, and a nurse came strutting in.
“Time to check you vitals, Mrs. Beauchamp.” She was whipping out the blood
pressure materials and a handful of gauze. “We’re going to have to redress that eye too.
Seeping through a little bit.”
Face flushed crimson, and those cerulean eyes burning, Quentin stood. Releasing
her hand, he stepped back as the nurse, who gave him an approving once over, scooted
and placed the items on the chair beside her bed.
With his hands in fist, his mouth a slash of fury, he stalked out of the room. Chapter Three
Briony left the hospital two weeks later. Quentin had been walking a razor’s
edge. Luckily, he had been cleared to work in concert with the local police on his
brother’s case. The downside was that there were no clear leads. Bobby Ray had been
into a lot of shit, none of it good. Meth dealing and gambling were the simple stuff.
Word on the street was he had gotten in with a motorcycle gang out of New Orleans.
The gang’s tentacles spread all the way west into Texas. Not much was known about
them because no one had been able to get a man inside, but they were into everything
from running guns and drugs to prostitutes.
So far, there had been no attempts on contacting Briony at the hospital, but the
uniform outside her door was one hell of a deterrent. There was no way in hell Quentin
was going to let her stay anywhere on her own. Not until he knew what they were
dealing with. Yeah, who the hell was he kidding? He doubted he would ever let her out
his sight again. As fucked up as it was, he knew once he had Briony in his home, he
wasn’t letting go. Three years was a long time to yearn for something he never thought
he could have. It was wrong, immoral, and twisted as all get out, but he craved his
brother’s widow, ached for her. While he should have been mourning, he was plotting
for ways to get her to stay.
He was a seriously fucked up individual, but knowing that and feeling bad
because of it were too entirely different things. Quentin didn’t feel bad at all. Bobby
Ray’s death was sad, but he had been prepared for it for some time. He was just sorry as
hell Briony had to be dragged into the mess his brother had made of his life. Yet, Quentin couldn’t deny the opportunity this whole mess had afforded him. As sorry and
cheerless as the whole thing was, he was taking that opportunity.
“You know, I can always go back to New Orleans, to my parents.”
He wondered if Briony knew she had winced when she said it. She had never
talked about her parents much, but from what he could gather, he suspected they didn’t
have a close relationship. Not that it mattered. Three years was a long time to watch the
woman that haunted his every waking second and bulldozed her way to his dreams. It
was bad enough she was taken, but being taken by his own brother – there had been a
special kind of hell in that.
“I don’t think so.” He didn’t try to cajole or order it. He didn’t really put much
inflection in his voice when he spoke. It was little more than a softly spoken statement
with a wealth of meaning that just couldn’t be expressed in a fit of anger or frustration.
Briony paused, her eyes flying to his face. Quentin couldn’t hide a slight
smirking grin at the shock recognition in her eyes. The nurse had helped her into a
delightful little summer dress that tied at her shoulders. She wasn’t wearing a bra, but
then, she didn’t need to. Her breasts were neither large nor small. To his way of
thinking, they were perfect; high and round, they would fit nicely in his hands. Her
nipples were long hard points, brushing against the light cotton fabric of her dress. He
could have been fooled to believe it was the cool air of the hospital room, if only that
pulse in her neck wasn’t jumping like crazy, or those plump, inviting lips hadn’t been
slightly parted, or those deep brown eyes hadn’t darkened until they looked almost
black. Good, she had understood him.
“Time to go,” he smiled broadly this time, pointing to the wheelchair. Quentin
had no intention of making his move today, or anytime soon, really. He did want to get
her out this place. Seeing her lying in that bed drove him out of his mind. He had
wanted to dig up the brother he had buried without a funeral, without any recognition
at all and kill him all over again.
At least Briony didn’t look as battered as she had when he had first seen her
here. The phone call from the emergency room had scared the living shit out of him. He
had broken all kinds of laws getting to the hospital. Thank God she had used him as her
next of kin! Richards had known him well enough to just stand silently by as Quentin
had raged. His partner had even waited around through the hours that Quentin had
spent by her bedside while she was still unconscious. Right now Richards was waiting
patiently to tail them home.
Quentin really didn’t like the situation. Members of the motorcycle gang Bobby
Ray had associated with appeared to have vanished. No one had seen them in Baton
Rouge since the murder. Most of the time, when a murder goes down, a payback
murder, a don’t try to fuck with us or this will happen murder, the bad asses are talking
about it, bragging about it, and spewing it all over the place like a dog marking
territory. Strange thing about it was that no one was saying anything – period. So damn
quiet, even the criminals were mute. While Quentin could travel to New Orleans, he
didn’t want to leave Briony just yet. Then there were several odd things about the
murder scene. The one thing that bothered him most was that some of Briony’s clothes had been missing from the house, along with toiletries women usually used. That
bugged the shit out of him. He didn’t like it one bit. Because of that, he was sending
some junior guys down to the Big Easy to shake some trees, hopefully something would
fall loose. This way, he could stick close to Briony at all times.
“I can walk,” Briony groused, but plopped down in the chair nonetheless. “I am
fine you know. They even took the cast off. Nothing was broken really, just a really bad
sprain. I was only here so long for observation – something about losing consciousness
once I was admitted.”
She said it like he didn’t know. Quentin had grilled her doctor every day, twice a
day. He’d even threatened the man when she hadn’t woken up after twenty-four hours.
Even if he
had never been able to touch her, hold her, love her openly, he needed to
know she was safe and alive. He would spend the rest of his life making sure of that.
And yeah, it was a fucked up thing to think, but Quentin couldn’t help but be glad
Bobby Ray was dead. The boy had brought nothing but pain to everyone who ever
loved him.
The thing that really had killed the last vestiges of sentiment toward his younger
brother was when Bobby Ray had looked him in the eye and told him point blank why
he had married Briony after it had become apparent to everyone Bobby Ray had
married far above himself.
“Yeah, she was hot,” Bobby Ray had sneered. “I was trying to get in her pants,
but the more I got to know her, the more I thought ‘Now here is a bitch Quentin would fall
head over heels for.’” For some reason that had struck Bobby Ray as tremendously funny. Quentin had never wanted to punch him in the face as much as he had at that moment.
But Bobby Ray wasn’t done. “And the funny thing is, all I had to do to get her to marry
me was pretend to be like you! She thought she was marrying my perfect big brother.
And she won’t cheat on me. I know she won’t! Too damn honorable for that.” Bobby
had snorted as if being honorable was something to disdain. “Now if it were me, I
would say fuck it and go for what I want. That’s the problem with you!”
Not even when Bobby Ray had stolen their mother’s heirloom pearls had
Quentin wanted to beat the shit out of Bobby as he had right then. The only thing that
had saved the little asshole was that Briony had come outside at that moment.
“Quent? Where did you go?”
Her voice snapped Quentin out of reminiscences of the brother dead and buried.
“Yeah, baby doll, I’m right here.”
He felt a slight shiver run through her at the little endearment. He had never
called her by one before. He had wanted to, but there was no way in hell he would give
her husband anything to use against her. And although he had regularly mowed the
lawn or fixed things around the house, he had been damn careful to never be alone
inside the home with her. Not only because he had never trusted himself, but because
he had never been too sure of what Bobby Ray would make of it. He could handle the