Vicious Carousel (Suncoast Society #25)(42)

What Betsy wanted to do was help out a little and start pulling her own weight. The men had spent a chunk of the weekend doing chores inside and out, and she felt badly that they’d gently refused her help doing any of them.

After putting on shorts and a T-shirt, she pulled her still-damp hair back in an elastic band and started working. The house wasn’t dirty, and the men were decent housekeepers. But there were always things to do. She dusted the living room, vacuumed and mopped the floors, wiped down all the kitchen counters and cleaned the fridge.

Then she cleaned all three bathrooms, did her laundry and theirs, and by the time Nolan got home from work, she had a roasted chicken and side dishes almost ready for dinner, and had brushed her hair out so she even looked halfway presentable.

Her heart nervously fluttered in her chest when Nolan walked in the door. “Oh, hey, that smells delicious.” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek before walking down to his bedroom.

Nervous tension ratcheted up inside her, tight, painfully so. She didn’t understand why and was trying to figure it out when Kenny walked in the door.

More painful tension.

“Hey, sweetie.” Another innocent peck on the cheek. “Mmm, yum. Let me go change.”

“Okay.”

As the minutes ticked past, she stifled the urge to scream, completely unsure why she felt that way, which disturbed her most of all.

She jumped when she heard the men’s bedroom door open, followed by the sound of them talking as they returned to the kitchen.

Then they stopped in the doorway and she froze.

Nolan looked concerned. “Bets, are you all right?”

“I…I cleaned the house today.”

He glanced around, looking confused. “Oookaaay?”

“And did laundry.”

Kenny’s brow furrowed. “Thank you?”





The hackles on the back of Kenny’s neck stood up, as if a huge lightning strike were about to hit in the middle of an afternoon storm.

And he was standing there holding a lightning rod.

In the pocket of his shorts, he had the small shark’s tooth necklace for Betsy that he’d picked up at lunch in Sarasota. He’d seen it in a store on Main Street as he was walking back to work, and he’d bought it for her on a whim. It wasn’t expensive, a cheap tourist souvenir, but considering the shark’s tooth she had in her dish, he thought maybe she’d like it.

She was acting terrified, frightened, her body language screaming fear with neon-bright energy.

“Did you want to check what I did?” she asked.

She didn’t even sound right, the low, tight tone to her voice sounding nothing like the woman he’d quickly grown more than a little fond of over the past week and a half she’d been living with them.

“Why?” Nolan asked.

Kenny quickly stepped forward, something instinctive in him welling up, protective. His hand slipped into his pocket to find the necklace. Nothing much, just a tooth and some beads strung on a black cord. His fingers closed around it, but he didn’t pull it out yet.

“Bets,” Kenny softly said, “we appreciate you helping out.” He deliberately kept his tone low, gentle, slow, afraid of spooking her in whatever this mental state was that she’d suddenly dropped into.

Tilly had warned them about PTSD. That Betsy might go through it, and that it might trigger in strange, unexpected, and baffling ways, but that they always had to be patient with her when or if it did.

She edged away from them. “If I did something wrong, I’ll do it again.”

He shook his head. “We don’t have any rules about how chores are done. We appreciate you volunteering to help.” He heard Nolan start to speak behind him and he held his other hand up to silence him.

“I…I just wanted to help,” she said, her eyes growing bright. Tears pooled there, spilling down her cheeks.

“We know, sweetie,” Kenny said, slowly bringing his hand out of his pocket, concealing the necklace. “And we appreciate it.”

She looked at him, to Nolan, back to him. He wasn’t even sure at this point if she realized what she was doing. She trembled, her color poor, pale. He was actually afraid she might be close to fainting, but he didn’t want to swoop in, instinctively sure any sudden moves would terrify her, even though he didn’t understand why.

“I swear, I’ll do it over if it’s not right.”

He took a risk and lapsed into what Nolan always teased him was Dom tone. “Bets, look me in the eye, sweetie.”

She finally did. It broke his heart that he couldn’t just fix this shit for her.

“Why are you scared, right now?” he asked.

Her mouth opened…closed…Then her gaze darted around.

“Bets,” he said. “Look at me.”

She did.

“I’m sorry we’re scaring you. What did we do to scare you, sweetie?” And that was the only word for it. Terrified. He didn’t know why, but she was.

“You…you didn’t.” She frowned, and he wasn’t sure if she was frowning at him, or at herself.

He tried a trick Tilly had taught them. “I’m going to ask you something, and you need to answer me without thinking about it first. The first thing that pops into your mind. Okay?”

She nodded.