Chaos series by Kristen Ashley

Three, he was with Tyra and me and—for whatever reason we were squabbling, gossiping or giggling—he was not going to get involved.

Luckily, my eyes went back to Tyra before hers came to me.

I tried to come up with an answer to anything she might say.

Surprisingly, she didn’t say anything. Not about the frame or my lie.

Instead, she said, “Nothing, honey,” as she walked to me, wrapped her arms around me, tighter than usual, and gave me a long hug. “Thanks for dinner,” she said in my ear.

“Yeah, babe, good food,” Tack called to me from his place at the door, and my eyes moved over Tyra’s shoulder to him.

I smiled.

Tack did not.

He tipped up his chin but his gaze stayed glued to mine, intense. Somewhat like how Hop looked at me, minus the admiration and, obviously, the sex or foreplay, but adding open contemplation I had a really bad feeling about.

Tyra let me go and I tore my eyes from Tack to smile into hers.

“Thanks for coming,” I said to her and I chanced looking back at her husband.

“Don’t have to thank me for sittin’ down at a table with two beautiful women and good, bona fide, Southern cooking,” Tack replied and, finally, I smiled a genuine smile.

One thing my mom didn’t try to leave behind in Tennessee was her cooking. She did it all the time and she taught me and Elissa how to do it like her momma did with her and Mamaw’s mom did with her and so on.

She did this because she often tried to be a good mom. She also did this because it was tradition. But it stunk because I knew she did this mostly because Dad loved her cooking. Or, more aptly, he loved that whenever they had dinner parties, people would shower him (yes, him) with glowing compliments about how he was smart enough to marry a woman who knew how to make honest-to-goodness, down-home meals.

Needless to say, learning to cook in the Southern tradition, I grew up in Connecticut but I didn’t know you could steam vegetables until I moved to Denver. As far as I knew, they were either fried in an iron skillet with butter or breaded or battered and dropped in hot fat.

Luckily, I had the metabolism of a sixteen-year-old high school point guard.

Also luckily, my cooking was good enough for Tack to mention it (again) and get everyone’s mind off the frame.

“Anytime, anything you want, Tack. Just call and your wish is my command,” I offered as Tyra and I walked to him at the door.

“Don’t offer that. He does most of the cooking. He’ll be over three times a week to get a break,” Tyra told me, a smile in her voice.

I kept my mouth shut mostly because having them come over three times a week would be fine by me, and I didn’t want them to know that. It would expose too much. But the truth was, I’d run an advertising agency and I’d rush home and fry chicken and make a pecan pie from scratch all the way down to the crust if it meant three nights of not being alone, watching TV or worse, what I’d been doing lately: listening to Bob Seger’s slow songs with candles burning and doing everything to ignore the gaping void in my belly, which meant I did nothing but think of the gaping void in my belly.

“Next time, my turn,” Tack rumbled, bending to touch his lips to my cheek.

His goatee tickled my skin.

At the feel of it, the memories it invoked, that gaping void I could never stop thinking about widened, consuming vast areas of my body, making me feel empty from throat to toes.

I hid this as his head came up and I smiled into his eyes.

He stared into mine even as his hand came out, and his fingers curled around mine tight before, just as quickly, they disappeared.

Tack Allen never missed anything.

Not anything.

Ever.

Damn.

I gave Tyra another hug and then stood on my front porch, lights on, another Southern tradition my mom taught me, and waved at them until they were out of sight.

This bugged Tack. I knew it because Tyra told me he wanted me to stop doing it. He wanted me in the house, door closed and locked before they rolled away.

That was sweet and I tried but I couldn’t do it. Years of training ingrained in me forbid it. I shared this with Tack; he roared with laughter and shut up about it.

I went into the house, turned off the porch light, closed the door, and locked it.

Then I went to the windows, opened the plantation shutters, and peeked out.

Long moments elapsed before I heard the roar of his bike then I saw them slide by.

Yes, Tack shut up about it.

He also rounded the block and came back to check all was quiet at Lanie’s house before he and Tyra headed up the mountain.

I watched them disappear and smiled at the street, happy I had good friends, and happy my best friend had found a good man.

Then I slid the shutters closed and headed to the bottle of wine.

Minutes later, glass of wine in hand, candles lit, I moved to the stereo.

* * *

I lay there bleeding, the phone I used to dial 911 several feet away.

Too far to reach. I could hear the voice of the 911 operator calling from the phone but I was too weak to reach for it.

All I could do was lie on the carpet and feel the warm, sickening rush of blood pooling around my body.

And all I could see was Elliott, five feet in front of me, on his back, his head turned to the side, his eyes open, wide and lifeless.

He was dead but he still looked surprised.

I put myself in front of bullets for him.

He didn’t put himself in front of me. I put myself in front of him.

I knew this was not why he was surprised.

I knew he was surprised I didn’t save him.

* * *

I came awake with a jerk, my torso swinging up, breaths coming in gasps, heart beating a mile a minute, the dream still having a hold of me.

No, not a dream.

A nightmare.

A memory.

I sucked in breaths. They came shallow so I forced them deep and I listened hard.

They weren’t out there. They were never out there. It was memory coming through as a dream. Just as it often did.

Tack had taken care of Gregori Lescheva. The Russian Mob was no longer interested in me. They had their revenge. It was lying in a grave fifteen miles away from my house.

I was safe.

I didn’t feel that way.

I jerked my head around and looked at the clock.

Twelve-oh-two. I’d been asleep about an hour.

I pulled in one last breath then threw the covers off me. I got up and went to the walk-in closet. I flipped the switch on the outside and walked in, looking around at the rails stuffed full of clothes.

Mom and Dad got me gift certificates for everything. If I took a breath, one would wing its way from Connecticut and land in my mailbox as a celebration.