Damaged Beauties (Romanced by the Damaged Millionaire (Erotic Romance)) (2 page)

He says, “You visiting anyone here?”

“Well, sort of.” I’m hesitating to mention that I’m a reporter. Some people don’t like reporters. I opt for a half-truth. “There’s someone staying here that I’m looking for. His name is Ethan Greene.”

At the mention of that name, the cashier’s face visibly blanches.

“Uh, why would you want to meet with him?”

“I have some business with him that I would like to settle. No, I don’t know him. But it’s private business on behalf of a . . . corporation.”

It is true. My newspaper belongs to a Newscorp entity. My eyes drop down to the cashier’s nametag. It says ‘RICK’.

Rick says, “We don’t really have a hotel here, Miss, being a small town and all. We used to have some rooms above Hayley’s Eats, but since the factory got downsized and all, there haven’t been many folks coming here. Most of them stay out at Aberdeen. It’s just twenty miles down, right around the corner.”

I would never understand why so many Mid-Westerners consider a distance of twenty miles to be just ‘around the corner’, but maybe it’s all that wide open space that throws everything into abject perspective.

“So there’s nowhere here to stay at all? No boarding houses? No rooms for let, even if it’s just for a couple of days?” I flash him my most pleading, widest-eyed look, which used to cause considerable damage with the guys in college.

“Well, I stay with my Mom and Pop. We have a guestroom if you’re looking. My Mom is real generous. She won’t charge you a cent.” He’s looking me up and down in that elevator-style ‘check me out’ I’ve become used to.

“I’ll pay for it, thank you very much.” That way, I don’t have to be beholden to anybody. I have always been supremely independent and I intend to keep it that way.

Outside, large drops of rain begin to spatter upon the pavements and awnings. I turn to the glass windows in dismay.

“It happens,” Rick says apologetically. “Listen, I don’t get off until eleven. But I can call my Mom and ask her to expect you if you want to take me up on my offer.”

I figure that his offer will still stand at eleven o’ clock, seeing as I’m probably the only visitor in town.

“OK,” I say reluctantly. Especially as the rain is coming down now in torrents. I don’t think I want to drive all the way to Aberdeen in this downpour.

“Great.” He beams.

A customer comes to the counter and puts down a six pack of Budweiser. I wait as Rick totes up the till. I’m not finished here. I want to find out why the name ‘Ethan Greene’ evokes such a reaction. The customer, a sixty-something gentleman, eyes me up and down as well before going out into the awful weather.

“So what’s up with Ethan Greene?” I say casually.

Rick’s plain features grow dark. “I don’t really know,” he mutters. “It’s only what folks have said. I haven’t personally met him, seeing as he hardly ever comes out of that mansion of his.”

“He lives in a mansion?’

“Yeah, up the hill. The hill is called Pine’s Lookout and it’s private property.” He leans over and his voice drops an octave. “It’s a real creepy place. No one wants to go there. The house itself used to be haunted, my Mom says. When Ethan Greene bought it, he moved right in and locked himself up in there. Hardly anyone sees him. When he comes down the hill in that big black car of his with the blackout windows, he doesn’t stop here on Main Street. He goes right out of town. Where, nobody knows.”

“Maybe he’s gone to the nearest Kmart,” I say lightly. “You don’t have a Kmart here, do you?”

“Yeah,” he admits. “His butler or housekeeper or whatever you want to call him comes here a couple of times a month to pick things up. But he’s not real friendly like either. His name is Jeffrey. Doesn’t talk much.”

“Maybe Ethan Greene is secretly Batman,” I jest.

Rick doesn’t laugh. “Maybe. But he’s no caped crusader for justice, if you ask me. A couple of years ago, a trio of kids from Aberdeen went up to Pine’s Lookout on a dare.”

A tiny shudder creeps up my spine. OK, I know it’s the atmosphere, but still –

“They chugged up in their car, even though we warned them it was private property. Nobody really knows what happened that night, but those kids never came back here to Main Street. They fled back to Aberdeen faster than you could say ‘Halloween’. What happened up there, none of us here ever found out. Those kids weren’t telling.”

I make a mental note to check this story out in Aberdeen.

“But surely someone must have said something,” I say.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Then there was that funny incident four years back with the police.”

My ears prick up like antennae. “Police?”

“Yeah.” Rick is clearly enjoying himself, claiming my attention like this. “They came around to Main Street, asking about some hooker from St. Louis who had gone missing. Turns out her pimp says she went with someone who fit the description of Ethan Greene.”

“What happened?”

“The police went up the hill looking for him, but they came back empty-handed.” Rick sounds disappointed. “Hooker was never found.”

“Maybe she absconded with someone else.”

“Or maybe . . . just maybe . . . ” His eyes gleam.

I laugh uneasily, spooked despite myself. “Maybe you’re reading too much into all this.”

I don’t know, but for some reason, I have this awful image of the hooker’s dead body being buried in an unmarked grave behind the Pine’s Lookout mansion that I have yet to lay my eyes upon.

Come on, I tell myself. This is David Kinney we are talking about, or whatever name I think he goes by now. Ethan Greene might not even be David Kinney for all the clues in my sleuthing. I might have been kidding myself this whole trip. Ethan Greene might turn out to be some psychopath who is permanently holed up in his mansion, kind of like the mad scientist in Edward Scissorhands.

“Folks don’t talk without a reason,” Rick warns me. “Say, you hungry? I’ve got a break coming up in fifteen minutes. If you want to grab a quick bite – ”

“No thanks.”

He seems disappointed.

“I’ve already eaten,” I add.

“So . . . you wanna wait till eleven when I get off . . . or do you want to go find my Mom? I can call her right now.”

I make a swift decision. “Sure. Call her. I’ve been driving all day and I need to shower and stuff.” I’m sure I smell ripe, though Rick is too polite to say so. “Do you have an address? I can go find the place myself.”

“Sure.” Rick seems eager again.

He sketches some directions involving turning this way, and that way, and looking out for landmarks like ‘the old red barn’ and ‘the broken scarecrow’ on the back of a magazine. I’m beginning to feel more and more like Dorothy stepping out of Kansas.

“You got it?” he asks me, concerned.

“Yeah, I’ve got it. After all, I found Kelowna, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did.”

“See you later.” I take the magazine and straighten my hair. I’m in a simple red blouse which I wear over a comfortable pair of jeans. I’m dressed to drive long distance, not to impress guys.

Outside, the rain is screaming down as if the sky hasn’t opened since the days of Noah. I don’t have an umbrella. The magazine with the directions is too precious to use as a shade, and so I bolt to my car, very glad for the fact that I parked it curbside.

I drive off, putting my windscreen wipers on max, and even that is not enough to confer visibility of more than ten meters. I have my headlights on too. For once, I’m glad I’m in a small town and there isn’t a lot of traffic for me to contend with.

I’m good at following directions, and so I drive very slowly. It’s a bitch to peer through the rain. The houses and buildings look washed and semi-translucent, like someone has splashed a grey coat of paint all over them. The road is a winding mess.

I don’t know exactly how I wound up at this junction, but I think I’m lost. I stop the car in the middle of the road, aware than any moment, a blaring truck could crash into me from behind. But somehow, I don’t think there are many blaring trucks out here.

A weather-beaten signboard is lighted in front of my car by my headlamps. It has an arrow pointing upwards, and it says ‘PINE’S LOOKOUT’.

I’ll be damned.

It’s kismet.

I know I should be trawling out of this tangle of roads to head for Rick’s mother’s home. Possibly to a comfortable bed and a warm shower and some good, old-fashioned Key Lime pie. But the words ‘PINE’S LOOKOUT’ is calling impossibly to me, like some sort of siren. I’m a sixteen-year-old fan again in LA for the first time – in an open top bus, peering at the homes of celebrities in Beverly Hills.

David Kinney used to live in LA when he was still working there, and we kind of camped outside his modest Hollywood Hills house, hoping for a glimpse. Which, of course, we never got.

I should wait till tomorrow morning, really. I should wait till it’s bright and dry and cheery and more conducive to snooping.

I step on my gas pedal.

The car starts its cranking way up Pine’s Lookout.

Somehow, I think, even then . . . I wanted to be burned.

3

Visibility is really, really poor. The road up Pine’s Lookout is narrow and steep, made comfortably for a single vehicle, although there are expansions here and there to allow double traverse. The trees on either side of the road are dense. They whip around like frenzied marionettes.

I think I made a mistake.

I think I should turn back. Only there isn’t anywhere to make a U-turn.

The engine grinds and squeals as I step on the gas, practically inching upward. What an awful place to live in. No wonder Ethan Greene doesn’t get out much. It’s too much of a bother getting up and down. With his money, he should build a wider road . . . or a cable car. I wonder how the mailman gets up there, or maybe Ethan Greene doesn’t have any mail.

The road gets windier and windier, until I’m almost convinced I’m riding on the back of a tossing dragon. Trees would appear suddenly in my path, and I realize the road has made another sharp bend. And then another. Yup. I have got to turn back now. Only there’s no place. Everything is too narrow, as though I’m in a funnel.

Funneled by spooky trees.

Another copse of trees bar my path. I curse. I swear those trees can walk, the way they seem to be materializing at every inopportune moment.

And then it happens.

The reason why I shouldn’t be here in the first place – why I should have listened to that nagging voice inside of me, the one that insists upon that hot shower and that warm slice of pie.

One moment, I’m safely tucked in my vehicle, with its four wheels clinging to the slippery slope. The next, I’m flying –

Oh shit.

I’m really flying in the air. It’s so dark and stormy and I can’t really see where I’m flying to, or how I got to be airborne in the first place. I must have missed a turning and crashed over some divider. Fuck it, there’s probably no divider. Just a gap in the smug, betraying, extremely sneaky and sentient trees.

I’m scared now. I’m really scared. Somewhere between the seconds of floating in deep space, I think I peed in my pants. I’m going to die and I should have stayed home and listened to my mother and never gone to be a reporter and never grown up, come to think of it.

Oh how stupid, stupid, stupid I am.

But that’s the way with accidents, right? You never want to be in one, but when you’re in one, you analyze the shreds out of it.
I should have done this, I should have done that. OK, maybe that was a fucking stupid thing to do.

Provided you actually survive to analyze the hell out of it.

I’m not sure I’m going to survive.

The car lands with a resounding crash. Everything is pitch black, and I’m screaming so hard that I’m almost competing with the thunder out there.

That’s it.

I’m officially dead.

4

I wake up.

OK, maybe I’m not dead after all, but I can’t be sure. Though I am pretty sure the last time I was alive, I was in my rented Avis Chevy.

But not now.

I’m on a bed.

And what a bed. It’s gargantuan four poster one with a canopy on the top, and I feel like I’m in Kublai Khan’s pleasure dome. The sheets are pure silk, though I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between pure silk and unpure ones . . . meh.

My head is spinning and the posterior part of my skull hurts something wicked. Ow. I think I must have had a concussion. At least the pillows are geared to cushion that concussion. They are fluffy beyond fluffy, and soft as a baby’s bottom.

Despite my vertigo, I make myself peer around the bedroom. The ceiling is high and decorated with frescoes of lotus leaves. Where am I? India? The curtains are thick and double-layered, and the carpet smothers the floor like a blanket. The furniture is dark and rustic and polished to the hilt.

I don’t think I’m in a hospital room.

And I also don’t think I’m in Kansas anymore.