The Bourbon Thief(74)

“I know you,” she said.

“You better know me,” he said. “We’re married.”

“Didn’t I burn you?”

“You sure tried, Rotten.”

Rotten...as soon as he said the word she knew him.

“Levi.”

“That’s me. You know who you are?” he asked, raising a glass bottle to her lips again. She tried to take it from his hands but found her own hands shook too hard to hold it.

“Let me do it. You can’t even hold your hands up.”

“I can do it.” Her voice sounded faded and frayed to her ears. She held the bottle still just to prove she could and took long deep sips from it. Slowly she returned to herself, feeling like she’d been wrenched out of a dream and wasn’t quite sure yet what was real and what had been the dream.

“Levi,” she said, setting the bottle on the stone bench beside her. Except it wasn’t a bench, only a slab of rock.

“That’s my name. You know yours?”

“Tamara.”

“Tamara what?”

She met his eyes and saw anger in them, and behind the anger, fear.

“Maddox,” she said.

“Close enough.”

Tamara raised a hand to her head and made herself remember things she didn’t want to remember. Her name was Tamara Belle Maddox. She was seventeen years old. She was married to Levi Shelby. She wasn’t... No, she was definitely not married to Julien St. Croix. That had only been a dream.

“Tamara, do you have any idea how much you scared me?”

“I scared you? That’s funny.” She gave a little drunken laugh as if she’d been sucking down a bottle of bourbon instead of water.

“Do you know how long you’ve been gone?”

She shook her head.

“Two days, Tamara. Two entire days I’ve been out here with Bowen and White Dog trying to find you. Bowen went to get the police.”

“No. No police. They’ll call Momma.”

“I think that’s the least of our worries.”

“She’s the most of our worries.”

Tamara rubbed her forehead, where a knot of pain lived and throbbed behind her eyes.

“Two days, Tamara. Did you hear me? Two days you’ve been gone. You’re lucky you’re alive.”

She looked down at her body, her ankle, red and swollen, the cuts and scrapes on her legs from ankle to knee. Her hands were filthy, dirt under her fingernails and blood on her palms from catching her fall on a rock. Levi gently held a white handkerchief to her face and she saw it come away with blood.

“I am?”

“Tamara, are you all right?” Levi asked. He took her face in his hands and looked deep into her eyes as if seeking out signs of damage.

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. Come on, let’s get you to the hospital.”

“I don’t need a hospital.”

“You just said—”

“I don’t need a hospital. I don’t need a doctor. I need...”

“What do you need? Tell me. I’ll get it for you.”

“I need you to not hate me.”

Levi’s head jerked back, and he narrowed his eyes at her.

“Why do you think I hate you?”

“Because you don’t care about me. You said so yourself.”

Levi sighed—heavily—and stood up. She didn’t like to be sitting when he stood. His size scared her. He could hurt her so easily if he wanted to—especially here in the middle of nowhere. Where was she, anyway? She glanced around, saw a clearing edged with oak trees, saw a line of black bricks, the remnant of a stone path.

“I care about you,” he said. His arms were crossed over his chest—his big arms, his broad chest.

“You said you know about Granddaddy, about him trying to have a son.”

“Yeah, I know. Bowen told me. Listen, Tamara, what your grandfather did to your mother was awful. It was. But it’s no excuse to clear-cut this entire island. I’ve heard of temper tantrums, but that just takes the cake.”

“What do you mean what my grandfather did to my mother?”

“Just what I said he did two days ago.” His brow furrowed and he looked at her again like she had a screw or two loose. Maybe she did. She was certain he’d said he knew and didn’t care that Granddaddy had tried to rape her and get her pregnant. But he hadn’t meant her. He meant Momma?

“What did my grandfather do to Momma?”

“I thought you knew. You acted like it.” He shrugged, sighed again. “Bowen says that’s why your daddy killed himself. He came home from a business trip and found your mother in bed with his own father, with my father.”

“Momma and Granddaddy?” Her mind was spinning.

Levi slowly nodded his head. “He wanted a baby boy apparently. He had three sons at the time—one dead, one not interested in having children and one with a black mother. So he was sleeping with your mother, trying to get her to have his baby so everyone would think it was Nash’s baby. Considering the kind of woman your mother has proved herself to be, I imagine she went along with this for the sake of staying in your grandfather’s good graces. And probably for money, too.”