She's No Angel. Leslie KellyЧитать онлайн книгу.
regularly bathed in some milky lotion that made her skin constantly feel like silk.
“I’m Jennifer Feeney. Jen. Your grandfather mentioned you were coming into town today. He seems like a…nice old man.”
Mike noted the hesitation. No doubt, Mortimer was a nice old man. But that obviously hadn’t been the first word that had come to the woman’s mind. No. People usually described Mortimer as many things other than nice—eccentric, wild, dashing.
Nutty.
Not that Mike or his brothers much cared what other people thought of their grandfather. They knew him; they’d lived with him, traveling around the world on one adventure after another. There wasn’t a single thing any of his grandsons wouldn’t do for the man. Including taking down anyone who ever hurt him.
Though now eighty-one years old, Mortimer was remarkably healthy, except for some arthritis that had limited his physical activities. Anyone who saw him would think he was a sturdy seventy-year-old, with his shoulder-length white hair, tall and lanky frame, and blazing blue eyes. Of course, if he was in one of his moods, and happened to be wearing a 1940s military uniform, an Arabic thobe or chaps and a holster, they might go right back to that nutty part.
“You’re the one who lives in New York?”
He nodded.
“Me, too. I’m just visiting.”
“Small world.” Only, not. Because New York was one big city and he was constantly amazed when traveling by how many people he ran into from there. “So does this mean we’re not strangers, and you’ll let me give you a ride into town?”
She hesitated, then glanced down at her bare feet. She didn’t have much choice—if she stayed on the gravel shoulder, her feet would be torn to shreds. If she moved to the hot blacktop, they’d be fried.
Turning her head to look over her shoulder at the long road winding toward Trouble, she finally nodded. “Okay.” Then she narrowed her eyes and stared at him, hard. “But be warned, I’m keeping the tire iron. I can defend myself.”
The fierce expression was such a contradiction to the soft, silky rest of her that Mike had that unfamiliar impulse to smile again. Instead, he merely murmured, “Consider me warned.”
JENNIFER FEENEY HAD NEVER liked the town of Trouble. Not since the first time she’d laid eyes on it as a little girl. Her parents had brought her here twenty years ago, to visit her father’s reclusive sisters. She’d heard stories about the town of Trouble, and her elderly aunts Ida Mae and Ivy, since she was small. They had come to visit once or twice, but nothing had prepared Jen to visit them in Trouble.
Even as a child, she’d felt the strangeness of the place. From the wary watchfulness of the residents to the tangled bramble where parks had once stood, the town laid out an Un-welcome mat that urged visitors to leave. It was hard to imagine her cheerful, teddy bear of a father had grown up here.
Worst of all had been the two shadowy buildings where the aunts resided. The old Victorian homes hovered over the north end of town, side by side, two dark birds of prey on vigilant watch for fresh meat. Though she’d only been eight during that visit, Jen had already had a good imagination. When she’d seen the two houses, with their sagging facades, shuttered windows and worn siding, she’d immediately thought of them as the sisters.
Ida Mae’s house was dour and forbidding, what was left of its paint the color of a stormy sky, angry and wet. Its jagged railings and the spiky bars over the windows had given it the appearance of a prison. The black front door seemed like an open mouth waiting to swallow anyone who ventured onto the crumbling porch. Unadorned, ghostly against the clouds, the place had perfectly matched its owner, the dark and stern Ida Mae.
Ivy’s was even worse.
It had apparently once been a gentle yellow, but any cheery gentility had long been eradicated. Tangled vines crawled like garden snakes up toward the roof. Cracks in the water-stained walls revealed odd shapes that had looked too much like spiders and monsters to her eight-year-old eyes. And the whole foundation had appeared slightly sunken on the right, as if the house were a stroke victim whose face hadn’t quite recovered.
Where Ida Mae’s house was merely dark and unwelcoming, Ivy’s was a freakish combination of lightness and rabid death. Garish and frightening. Much like the old lady herself.
Of the two of them, Ivy had scared her the most, because she was so terribly unpredictable. At times a charming hostess, then a raging shrew, she was the one Jen should have tried to avoid. But she’d also been the most interesting, so often talking to herself, or to invisible, long-dead friends.
The one-sided conversations and stories the woman told had fascinated Jen. She’d often sat unnoticed, listening, until Ivy snapped out of one of her trances long enough to shoo her away. Sometimes with a threat to sell her to the child catcher who, in Jen’s dreams, looked just like Ivy. Rail-thin, bony and menacing.
She supposed she ought to thank the aunts for one thing: they’d made finding out she was adopted a bit more bearable. She’d taken the news from her parents shortly after her twentieth birthday with surprising good grace. Surprising to them, she supposed. Considering she’d long wished she didn’t share the blood of the aunts, the news hadn’t been all that unwelcome.
Over the years, though she and her parents had lived in Connecticut—not too far away—the visits to Trouble had been few. Until a little over a year ago when her father, after having a massive heart attack, had elicited a promise from her to take over the care of his elderly sisters. She’d promised, of course. She would have promised him anything at that point.
Her father had, thankfully, survived and he and her mother had retired to North Carolina last fall. But because he’d been so weakened by the experience, Jen had insisted on keeping her promise. She loved him too much to allow him to deal with the old witches on a regular basis. That was exactly the kind of stress his doctor said could end up killing him.
Taking over the aunts’ mangled finances, she’d made sure their electricity remained on and their account at the grocery store was paid. Ida Mae and Ivy supposedly had money, each having been widowed by wealthy men—Ivy under suspicious circumstances.
But they were miserly and kept whatever they had well hidden. So it was a good thing Jen’s first two satirical advice books had exploded in popularity: she was supporting the pair.
She sensed her father wouldn’t be happy about that, but she didn’t want to bother him with it. Besides, what else did she have to spend her money on? It wasn’t as if she had a husband and kids. And though she liked nice clothes, she couldn’t see paying a fortune for them. She hadn’t wanted to give up the same rent-controlled apartment she’d been living in since she’d gotten her start as the “Single in the City” advice columnist at Her Life magazine fresh out of grad school. So her living expenses hadn’t gone up after her unexpected success.
And, the aunts lived in Trouble, Pennsylvania, which wasn’t exactly on the top-ten list of towns with a high cost of living. She wasn’t sure it would even hit the bottom ten, since it was a town only by the loosest definition of the word.
Still, she was paying the bills, which was why she’d come on this most recent trip. The aunts were both in their seventies, Ivy so frail she looked as if a falling leaf could knock her down. Jen wanted them to move out of their dangerous, death-trap old houses and into an assisted-living facility where they could torment professionals, rather than each other.
Preferably one far away from New York City.
The minute she’d mentioned the possibility, however, they’d made their position clear. They’d tricked her out of her shoes, out of her car, and stranded her in the middle of nowhere.
“Guess they didn’t like the idea,” she mumbled as she followed the dark, sexy stranger who’d come to her rescue.
“What?” asked the dark, sexy stranger in question as he came to an abrupt halt in front of her.
She