The Great Escape

He glanced out the window. Temple was down on the dock again. It had been so long since she’d made a snarky remark that he was starting to worry about her. She wasn’t working out as much these days, and she barely spoke. He needed Lucy here to talk to her. To talk to him. For all Lucy’s complaining that he never told her anything, she could read his mind better than anyone.

What if she wasn’t taking care of that cut on her heel? And for all he knew, she might have a concussion. A dozen things could be happening to her over there, none of them good. Bree knew who Lucy was, and he suspected Mike Moody did, too. All either of them had to do was make one phone call and the press would be swarming. He wanted Lucy where he could watch her, damn it. And take her to bed.

He’d always been a serial monogamist. He was used to going long periods without a woman, and sooner or later he’d get used to this. But he didn’t want to. He wanted to feel her moving under him, over him, hear the catch of her breath, the soft moans, the entreaties. He wanted to hold her. Taste her. Make her laugh. He wanted to talk to her, really talk.

That brought him up short. She was too damned softhearted. If he really talked to her, she might start thinking about his well-being instead of her own. He couldn’t allow that to happen.

BREE HEADED BACK TO THE cottage from the farm stand. Lucy had disappeared, and Toby was on duty. He complained bitterly about being overworked, but Bree had turned mean lately, and she’d told him she liked making kids suffer.

“Make sure you don’t get shortchanged,” she’d reminded him.

He’d given her one of his looks, since they both knew he was quicker with numbers, and she was far more likely to have that happen to her.

She’d been halfway down the drive when something had made her stop and call back to him. “Hey, punk!”

“What do you want now?”

“Your mom was really good at math, too,” she’d said.

He’d stood completely still before he turned away. “Whatever.”

Despite his phony nonchalance, Bree knew he loved hearing about his parents, and she’d been dredging up every story she could remember.

She couldn’t recall exactly when she’d stopped wanting to reach for her cigarettes whenever she thought about David. The pain and that aching sense of regret had faded so gradually she’d barely noticed.

Just before she reached the honey house, she heard a rustle. Branches moved in one of the clump maples that bordered the woods. There was no breeze this afternoon, so it could have been a squirrel, but—

The branches swayed again, and she caught a glimpse of a woman—a tourist who’d lost her way? She went to investigate.

A particularly foul stream of curses assailed her ears as she pushed through the weeds. She came upon a dark-haired woman trying to disentangle her purple yoga pants from the blackberry brambles. As soon as the woman looked up, Bree experienced a jolt of recognition. First Lucy Jorik had popped up and now Temple Renshaw? What was going on? She hurried over to help.

The woman tugged at the knit fabric of her pants. “Why would you keep something this vicious around?”

Bree descended to teen-speak. “Uh, like for the blackberries?”

Renshaw snorted, then cursed again and sucked a scratch on the back of her hand.

Bree knew her from Fat Island, a show she hated but that Scott had loved. He’d taken pleasure in the way Temple tormented the contestants, boasted about his own fitness, and drooled over the vapid, bikini-clad psychiatrist who supposedly counseled them. “That is one hot shrink,” he’d said more than once. “If you had tits like hers, I’d be a happy man.”

Instead of telling him that if he had a shred of decency, she’d be a happy woman, she’d nursed her hurt in silence.

Finally free of the brambles, Temple gazed past Bree toward the cottage. “I’m looking for a friend.”

Bree was immediately on guard. “Friend?”

“Black hair. Tattoos. Chubby thighs.”

Temple could only be talking about Lucy—although Lucy had great legs—but Bree wasn’t giving out any information. “Chubby thighs?”

Temple climbed through the weeds toward the cottage, not waiting for an invitation. “A lot of women carry weight there. It’s so unnecessary.”

Bree followed her, both put off by her high-handed manner and curious. As Temple reached the yard, she took in the hives and the ripening tomatoes in the garden. She wore no makeup to hide the hollows under her eyes, and her hair, long and lustrous on-screen, was pulled into a haphazard ponytail. The muscles and tendons in her upper torso were too gristly for Bree’s taste, and her tight-fitting workout clothes clung to an unnaturally rippled abdomen. She looked better on television.

Temple examined the scratch on her hand. “She left a note at the house saying she was coming here. I have to talk to her.”