Wicked Burn(52)
Author: Beth Kery

She leaned forward, elbows on her desk, and caught Mac’s eye.

“I want you listen very carefully. I can’t wait to go downstate to teach those kids art history. It will be a challenge to work with teenagers, but a refreshing one, I think. And I’m going to be boarding at Meg’s farmhouse. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to breathing the clean air, taking long walks . . . looking into the sky at night and actually being able to see the stars.”

Mac relaxed a little in his chair when he saw her enthusiasm.

“You’re fired up about the whole thing, aren’t you?” he asked with a laugh.

Niall sighed. “You have no idea.”

Once again, Mac hesitated. “And . . . and your decision has nothing to do with . . . what’s going to happen in late June?”

Niall’s eyes flickered up to Mac’s in surprise. “How did you know about that, Mac?”

“I read a blurb in the Tribune that Manning’s execution had been rescheduled.”

Niall exhaled slowly during the silence that ensued.

“It’s been postponed twice now since they made him the exception for the moratorium on executions in Illinois. Chances are it won’t happen.”

“So your leaving town this summer has nothing to do with—”

“No,” Niall said abruptly, shaking her head. But even as she answered so surely, she wondered if some unconscious part of her brain hadn’t nudged her to plan events so that she could escape the horror that just seemed never to go away . . . if she secretly wished to be near Vic on the fateful day of Matthew Manning’s execution.

She was so nervous and excited about leaving for Vic’s farm tomorrow that she practically hadn’t slept in a week. She also was scared witless that Vic would be so furious about Meg and Niall’s little conspiracy that he’d shut her out as efficiently as he had Jennifer Atwood when he’d discovered her betrayal.

Meg still didn’t know all the details of Niall’s past, but Niall had told her about her son’s death, not revealing exactly how he’d died. She’d also told Meg about Stephen’s condition, her divorce, and how Vic had found out in such a shocking fashion that Niall had still been married during their affair.

Meg had been nothing but kind and sympathetic. But she was also baldly honest and had told Niall that every time she talked to her brother about Niall, he went cold as a frigid Chicago winter wind. Vic had never actually forbidden Meg to speak about Niall in front of him. But Meg explained to Niall just a few weeks ago that she got the impression he’d done just that, given the fact that he turned and walked away every time Meg tried to plead Niall’s case.

Niall had felt awful about that, of course. She didn’t want to cause any arguments between Meg and Vic. And she doubted that she was sowing much fraternal accord by showing up on Vic’s farm to live for two months when he knew nothing about it, either. But Meg and Anne had been so convincing. And Vic’s sister had implied that she was worried about Vic’s state of mental health, as well.

Niall had prepared herself to weather Vic’s initial storm of fury at her unexpected presence on his farm.

She had to do this. She just had to. When she considered the fact that she hadn’t seen Vic’s face or looked into his magnificent, soulful gray eyes now for over six months, it caused a sharp, nearly debilitating pain to go through her. Not to mention the fact that the last time he’d been staring at her, it had been with an expression of stark disbelief, as if he had been watching her face morph into a stranger’s right before his very eyes.

But no, she wouldn’t dwell on that now. If she did, she’d sink back into that morass of hopelessness and despair that had overwhelmed her when she spent last Christmas alone in her depressing beige and white Riverview apartment. Maybe she’d deserved his anger back then, but she hadn’t deserved to lose him forever. Which is precisely what she’d almost let happen due to her own guilt.

But that was all over now, Niall vowed to herself as she lifted the box from the floor. She glanced back at her office, poignantly aware that she was about to embark on a new chapter in her life. Satisfaction surged through her when she turned the lock on the door and shut it with a brisk bang.

She was going after Vic. If fate had determined that he wasn’t meant to be hers, at least Niall would know that it wasn’t because her grief and guilt had kept her from trying.

FIFTEEN

A determined glint shone in Missy Shane’s green eyes as she tossed her tray on the bar. The man she studied so intently didn’t look up at the loud noise. She frowned and began to fill her own draft orders. Alex, the owner and bartender of the El Paso Lounge, must be in the back getting another keg. The El Paso would close in two hours, which meant it would be reaching its peak of Saturday night rowdiness any minute now.

Not that you could have guessed that by looking at the silent, morose man sitting at the bar. His dark, shaggy hair was in desperate need of a cut, although Missy had to admit that the wildness of it was dead sexy. The unruly waves fell forward on his forehead and brushed his lean cheeks and collar, casting him further into shadow. His elbows rested on the bar and his broad shoulders hunched forward as though he protected a bone from all potential comers.

Missy grinned slightly at her mental comparison of Vic Savian to a big dog. She was going to do her damndest tonight to get her hands on that bone. Ellie Sheerer, another waitress at the El Paso who had been lucky enough to get in Vic’s pants one chilly night last April, had informed Missy with relish that the beast’s bone was worth any sacrifice to taste. Her nose wrinkled distastefully at the thought of buxom, boisterous Ellie getting the privilege of sucking off Vic Savian’s big, delicious cock in the parking lot of the El Paso when he’d never so much as glanced twice at Missy.

Missy was Halver County’s Corn Queen for two years running, after all. Sure, it was ten years ago that she’d won those titles, but Missy was every bit as tight and voluptuous at twenty-nine as she had been at nineteen. She might not have tits as big as Ellie’s but she’d been told by quite a few of her lovers that she gave head every bit as fine as her rival did, although she didn’t have the experience that Ellie’s thirty-eight years granted her.

Besides, Vic Savian had been so drunk on the night that he’d allowed Ellie to climb into his pickup truck with him he’d probably thought Ellie was Missy. Yeah, maybe that was it. They both had reddish hair and wore identical waitress uniforms. If that was the case, then Missy couldn’t wait to prove to Vic that he’d gotten the wrong woman to steam up the windows of his cab back in April.