Buried Secrets (New Adult Dark Suspense Romance) (10 page)

“You don’t want to work at the Starlite, Dusty.” Nellie shook her head, clucking like an old hen.

“I don’t know.” Shane grinned, eyes bright as he looked between the two of them. Dusty knew he was trying to get a reaction out of Nellie. “Lee pays great—cash, under the table. Tips are good too.”

“Are you trying to tempt me?” Dusty laughed.

He leaned over, another stage-whisper, but this time far closer, his voice low and husky, making her shiver. “Come over to the dark side, good girl.”

She smirked, making him laugh when she said, “Why, do you have cookies?”

“Don’t do it!” Nellie protested like Shane had just suggested she jump off a bridge with him.

“Oh come off it, Nellie.” Shane rolled his eyes. “You hire kids under sixteen without work permits all the time. If I remember right, little Joe Turner’s just thirteen, isn’t he? Wasn’t he working behind your counter all summer?”

“That’s different,” Nellie told him after a moment's hesitation. Dusty saw her jaw working. “And it's none of your business either.”

“Well Lee’s business is none of yours then,” he countered.

“You’re right.” She threw up her hands. “It’s none of my business if Buck Thompson’s got a gambling problem he can’t get a handle on. Never mind his wife’s left him and he lost his house.”

“Is that true?” Dusty stared at her as the older waitress walked away, going back into the kitchen. “And what in the heck does that have to do with anything?”

“Yeah. He spends all his money at the reservation up north—the casinos,” Shane explained, eating more fries. “He’s easy to buy off. Lee pays him to make all his liquor licensing problems go away.”

“I knew he was divorced,” Dusty mused. She’d met his wife, back when her mother was alive. They’d come over the house a few times. “But they never had any kids.”

“She did.” Shane dipped the last fry into ketchup, offering it to her. “But not with him. That’s why she left. Went to live with the baby’s daddy.”

“Whoa.” Dusty blinked at him, incredulous.

“You’ve lived a sheltered life.” Shane held the fry to her lips and she opened her mouth, biting it in half.

“I don’t pay attention to gossip,” she said, chewing.

“Such a good girl.” Shane popped the last half-fry into his mouth.

“I’m not
that
good.”

“I bet you are.” He raised his eyebrow. There it was—that annoying challenge again.

“I bet you I’m not.” She stuck out her tongue at him, digging through her purse for cash.

“Twenty bucks says you won’t apply for that job.” Shane pulled his wallet out, putting five bucks on the counter—more than enough to cover her root beer and fries.

“Do you even have twenty bucks?” She smirked, looking at the wrinkled five on the counter. “Or am I going to have to take it in rabbit skins?”

He laughed, getting up from the stool. “I’ll see you later, Dusty.”

“We got a bet?” she asked as he walked toward the door.

“Sure.” He called, turning briefly to face her as he pushed the door open with his back. He grinned. “As long as you don’t mind taking beaver pelts!”

✝
Chapter Nin
e
✝

Dusty guided the Jeep up into the driveway and cut the engine. She sighed as she pocketed the keys and looked up at the house. It was a typical two-story white farm house with black shutters. The paint was chipping and, in some places, co
ming off in long strips, as if someone had stood there and peeled it.

There was a barn farther back on the property. It had been red once, but it had gone gray, weathered by time. There were acres of unused land behind the house. It had once been for farming, but her father, unlike his father before him, was no farmer.

Jay Chandler had decided there was more money in business and had gone to Babson College in Boston, where he had met her real mother, Dustine—Dusty's namesake. Dustine had still been in high school, but after she’d graduated they were engaged, and when Jay had received his B.A. in business, they were married.

Dusty knew her father was ambitious. He went back for a second degree—his M.B.A.—and had jumped at the chance to spearhead Pharmatech near his hometown in Michigan, where his parents had left him the family farm. Her grandfather had been dead by then and her grandmother closed up the house and moved to Florida.

Dusty’s mother had never had a career and had been happy to move to rural Michigan like it had always been her home. Dusty could remember her always being there—until the cancer. Julia had come two years later and a lifetime too late. No one could ever fill their mother's place.

The house was surrounded by unused land, most of it wooded. Even the barn went unused, except for storage. Her father's black Range Rover was parked in front of the garage.

Dusty sighed again, taking in her surroundings, the place she and Nick had spent their childhood. How many years had she wished she was somewhere else? And now she didn’t want to go anywhere. This was where Nick lived now, always. He was in his room, he was sitting on the big wraparound porch on the swing at dusk watching fireflies and he was out back playing touch football with the gang while Dusty peeked at them from her bedroom window.

She didn’t want to leave here, not anymore.

From the time she learned to read, her mother had stressed how important it was they both go to college. She talked about doors of opportunity and different worlds—things Dusty suspected her mother didn’t know existed until she met Jay Chandler. He had given them a comfortable life, making them very big fish in a tiny little pond, and Dusty’s mother seemed to understand it was because he had worked so hard for it. He hadn’t been born a wealthy man—he had gone to college and earned his way up that corporate executive ladder.

Dusty smiled, remembering her mother’s love and admiration for him.

But I’m not my father.

She wasn’t her brother, either.

It had taken losing Nick for her to realize it. She’d spent her whole life planning to fill her mother’s wishes and plans for her. Had spent her adolescence in Nick’s shadow, defining herself in relation to him. He’d been her best friend—her only friend. That had happened without any thought. As twins, they had a connection she couldn’t explain. Sure, she’d had a few school friends, girls she’d been friendly with, had eaten lunch and chatted with, but none of it went beyond the superficial.

And when she’d started dating, in spite of her father
and
Nick’s objections, when she was fifteen—even that had happened in relation to her twin. Every boy had to be studied and dissected, most of them found wanting. The one she’d dated longest—Tom Richter, who had joined the air force when he turned eighteen last February, while they were in the middle of finishing their senior year—had still been found wanting. Nick didn’t like the way Dusty acted around him, he said, like she worshipped the ground he walked on, like she’d do anything for Tom.

She thought Nick didn’t like her feeling that way about anyone but him.

Of course, it was all a moot point. Tom had broken up with her before he left for Iraq—he didn’t think it was fair to make her wait, he said. And Nick was dead. None of it mattered anymore. Even her acceptance to U of M had become a burden rather than any sort of opportunity. She didn’t want to leave home, didn’t want to have to go to classes.

Didn’t want to think.

At one time, it was all she could dream about. She wanted to prove to everyone—her father, Julia, Shane, the whole damned town—that she was more than just…

Just Nick’s twin sister.

Stop! She snapped at the voice and it was gone. She didn’t even have to bite her tongue.

College had seemed so important at the time. It would get her out of Larkspur, allow her to build something, prove something. And now… Now nothing seemed to matter anymore. Not college, not getting out of Larkspur, not proving to this town and everyone in her family that she was more than just Nick’s other half.

Not anymore.

Quit! She told the voice, but the thought remained, just like the blinking light on her cell. The message was from her future roommate at U of M. The university had emailed them each other’s phone numbers so they could get to know each other before they went to school.

She took her phone out of her pocket, flipping it open and pressing buttons. A female voice came out of the speaker.

“Hi, this is Shannon Baker. Is this Dusty Chandler? I hope so. I’m going to be your roommate at U of M. I’m so excited! Please give me a call. I want to go buy bedding and I thought it would be super fun if we could coordinate. I’m pledging Alpha Phi—it was my mom’s sorority. I can’t wait! I hope you’ll pledge too. Anyway, give me a call. My number is—”

She cut off the message with a shudder, trying to shake off the over bright tone of her potential roommate’s words as she got out of the car, not bothering with the lock. She walked up the wooden stairs, avoiding the gaping hole on the third that was always getting a promise from someone about repair, and went into the house.

“Dad?” She hung up her coat in the closet in the kitchen. She was getting ready to do battle. “Julia?” She toed off her shoes. She put the bag she’d carried in from Cougar’s on the kitchen table.

“In here,” her father called from the living room. She took a deep breath, crossed her fingers, and kissed them.
We used to do that when we were kids, remember when—

She quickly cut it off, and her after-thought was that she was getting damned good with those mind-scissors. She headed in the direction of his voice.

Stopping in the doorway, she saw her father sitting in the armchair.

Papa bear’s chair. Remember—

SNIP

The thought was gone.

Her father was reading the paper. Her stepmother was on the couch, legs curled under her, reading glasses propped precariously on her pert nose, reading a Nicholas Sparks novel.

“I have something to tell you.” Dusty sat in a chair across from them—it was a neutral zone. She waited for her father to fold the paper and Julia to mark her place in her book, letting her reading glasses fall to hang on a thin silver chain around her neck.

“I’m not going to college.” Dusty said it out loud for the first time, trying not to hear the quaver in her own voice.

“What?” Julia blinked in surprise. “Until January you mean?”

“Not in January,” Dusty continued. “Not… ever.”

“What?” Her stepmother was much louder this time. “I'm not hearing right. I can’t be.”

“Julia—”

“Jay, talk to your daughter.” Julia’s eyes got even wider.

Her father sat up tall in his chair. “Dusty, what’s going on?”

“I’m not going to college,” she repeated flatly.

“We’re not deaf!” Julia’s mouth drew in tight and then she spoke again. “Don’t be a smart ass!”

It was Dusty's turn to stare with an open mouth. She had never heard Julia use profanity. Ever.

“
Why
don’t you want to go, Dusty?” Her father asked the obvious, trying, as always, to mediate.

“It’s complicated.” She swallowed hard, wondering just how she was going to explain it.

“Then you better start talking,” Julia snapped.

“Ryan isn’t going,” Dusty started, swallowing. “He was going to be Nick’s roommate—and he couldn’t bear the thought of going to MSU without Nick.”

Julia rolled her eyes. “And would you jump off a bridge if Ryan told you he was going to do it too?”

“It matters,” Dusty whispered. “It hurts. He needs time to grieve. So do I.”

She didn’t know how to tell them, how to let them down, how to disappoint them in a way that wouldn’t hurt so much. She looked at her father. He was watching her, but she couldn’t read his expression. She couldn’t stop the memory of his arms around her in the middle of the night, his voice choked with emotion, telling her everything was going to be okay
.

Do you ever cry?
She wondered, looking back at him. She couldn’t remember him crying. Not when her mother died. Not when Nick died.

“I’m afraid,” she finally confessed. “I’m afraid to leave. I’m afraid if I go, I’ll lose Nick. I’ll forget the way he used to sit on the counter and eat ice cream out of the carton with a spoon even though he wasn’t supposed to. I’m afraid I’ll forget how he used to whistle all the themes to our favorite shows. I’m afraid…”

“I understand that sweetheart.” Her father had that tone, that firm, no-nonsense tone that said he wasn’t going to back down. He used it when he was making them do something “for their own good,” like getting a shot at the doctor’s office.

“I’m afraid I’m going to wake up screaming in the middle of the night at my dorm,” she whispered, feeling tears stinging her eyes. She looked down at the Oriental rug.

Her father paled, sitting back in his chair. The silence was deafening, but she couldn’t look at them. She couldn’t face their pain any more than she could face her own.

“Okay,” her father finally said, his voice hoarse. He cleared his throat, picking up his paper and shaking it to a new page. “Okay.”

“Jay, this is ridiculous,” Julia protested, turning to her husband. “Remember the rule?”

“Julia, stop.” Her father held up his hand, looking at his daughter. “Dusty, you need to get a job. And we’ll reevaluate next year, see if you feel differently. I think you’ll reconsider.”

“Well I want her to pay rent,” her stepmother mumbled, arms crossed as she sat back in her chair.

“That’s fine.” Dusty agreed.

“No.” Her father sighed. “You don’t—”

“No, I want to,” Dusty insisted, glancing at her father. She didn’t look directly at Julia, but she could feel the heat of her gaze. “I’ll find a job.”

Her father’s eyes were sad, and she could barely stand the weight of disappointment in them. “I’m sorry, Dusty…”

She nodded, feeling a lump in her throat. “So am I.”

“It’s been a hell of a year.” Her father sighed as he picked up his paper. Julia sighed as well as she propped her glasses back on her nose and removed her bookmark.

The subject was clearly closed.

Dusty sat there for a moment, wondering at their reaction. She had expected the disappointment, but she’d also expected anger, questions, and a great big, giant protest. Instead, there was almost nothing. Just this silence.

They don't care anymore,
she realized, and the thought hurt.
Nick’s gone, and I’m all they have left… and I’m just not enough to get excited about.

She trimmed the rest of those thoughts neatly with her mind-scissors and her only after-thought was that she’d think about it later—a modern day Scarlett O'Hara.

The Starlite was much smaller than it looked from outside. There was a bar along one wall, backed by single, diamond-shaped mirrors. Like any bar, the place was filled with tables for patronage with several pool tables at the other end. The usual Strohs and Budweiser decorative mirrors hung on the walls. Lamps hung low above the pool tables. An old Wurlitzer jukebox stood in one corner gathering dust and was often frequented by Grady, Lee Walker’s cat.

Dusty stepped inside and was instantly nostalgic, missing Nick. She hadn’t been there often—a handful of times, really, because this was her brother’s haunt and he hated her tagging after him—but it was a place that, for her, was completely and utterly Nick.