Blood & Rust (Lock & Key Book 4) Read online

  My specialty ranged from contemporary young artists to almost any kind of collectible from antique American pottery to vintage furniture and thingamabobs. I wasn’t choosy. Good finds were good finds to me, and I was constantly learning. I loved that. My insides buzzed the same, be it over a rusty gas station sign from the fifties or a Mapplethorpe photograph of Patti Smith or a Gustav Klimt painting.

  The Alden Merrick Gallery was breaking into the contemporary art business. My good friend Neil had set up the interview. Neil had risen high in the ranks of the Chicago art world where we had both started out as lowly assistants at the same gallery, fresh out of college, learning from one of the best eyes in the business.

  Ever the restless Bohemian, I had eventually dropped out to do my own thing, but Neil had stayed the course, moved up the ranks, and become an assistant director as well as a sought-after freelance curator. Now, he had his own gallery. Over the years, he had directed work my way, invited me to all the right parties and events, and I had recommended artists and unusual finds his way.

  I knew this job was an opportunity. A step in The Game. Consistent, good income. A stab at some sort of prestige.

  Someone else would pay my cell phone bill and my health insurance. I would have regular mani-pedi appointments, and I would be able to afford a whole new wardrobe from Nordstrom or Neiman Marcus even—and not only one or two pieces a year—and more than the occasional new lipstick or eye shadow from my favorite designer makeup brands. That would be a kick for a change. I would be polished all the time and comfortable in that polish, like the women at Kyle’s dinner party last night.

  Kyle had certainly been excited about this job and had encouraged me to go for it. The plan was to leave Racine and move back to Chicago, back to where we had begun, the big city. According to Kyle, my getting a job there as well—a solid permanent job—would only make it perfect. Kyle hated my gypsy-picking ways. My on-the-fly/off-the-cuff way of thinking and doing business, taking off on my little field trips all over the country to hunt down finds or check out artists’ studios and go through their works in progress.

  “It’s called inspiration! Passion!” I had argued once.

  When things melded together—the business aspect and the art—it was magic. If they didn’t, you would ride it out, riding it over every road you knew available. Kyle had never understood that, and he considered the lengths I went to—not to mention, the eccentric people I mixed with—ludicrous. He’d get irritated with the whole scene and avoid it. But I loved it, and I couldn’t give it up.

  Over two months ago, on my way to South Dakota to visit my mother, Rae, after she’d fallen down in her house and broken her hip, I’d stopped in Chicago for the interview. It had gone smoothly, and I’d promptly put it out of my head. Later, Neil had told me that they had hired someone else. But, now, since I’d returned to Racine, it seemed that had fallen through.

  Now, they had sent me a letter.

  I unsealed the envelope. I took in a tiny breath, my eyes flying over the printed words.

  We are very pleased…

  I’d been crowned homecoming queen. I’d won the lotto. Confetti rained down over me.

  I’d gotten the job I knew deep, deep down inside that I didn’t want.

  My hold on the paper tightened.

  So many things had changed since I’d first agreed to apply for this job months ago.

  Mom had been officially diagnosed with multiple sclerosis after ten years of wondering why she was prone to tripping and falling, why her hands were numb off and on, why her vision was blurry for no apparent reason. There were so many other symptoms that no doctor had been able to connect their dots all this time. But, finally, one young resident at Rapid City Regional had decided to take the time to go through a two-hour consultation where my mother had to answer all sorts of questions along with having her umpteenth MRI, and voilà, we’d gotten the bitter diagnosis.

  My sister, Penny, and I had felt so relieved and grateful that we finally had a diagnosis and could take a specific course of action. But then the grief and the anxiety from the unknown had set in.

  Mom could no longer live at home alone. My sister couldn’t take care of her full-time, as she was married and a mother to two young boys. Our baby brother was a biker with an outlaw motorcycle club down in Nebraska, and he had stopped communicating with us, except for a phone call on major holidays—God bless him. So, any help from Drew Catch was highly unlikely at this point in time.

  Then, fate had introduced me to my brother’s ex-girlfriend, Jill, who needed a way out and a place to land, and she had her own child—my niece—to consider. Something had uncoiled in my chest as I watched her bitch at my brother in front of his entire club about starting over and not putting up with his shit any longer.

  I like this girl, I’d thought.

  She had been determined to end the bullshit and start again. No matter what. She had been absolute in that belief, in her sense of purpose.

  Would it ever be absolute for me? Why did I keep vacillating?

  I’d taken Jill and her daughter, Becca, home with me and set them up with my mom at the house. A spur-of-the-moment crazy idea, but I had flown with it. Jill was a temporary solution but a good one. She would have a job as a general caregiver, my mother would be looked after, and my mother’s only granddaughter would be under the same roof. Jill had ended up becoming a gestational surrogate mother for my best friend, Grace, in Meager, and I knew that, during the last couple of months of her pregnancy, I would have to be there to watch out for Grace, Jill, my mom, and Becca.

  And the thing was, I really wanted to be there.

  Kyle entered the kitchen, and I lowered the letter in my lap, almost under the dining table. He busied himself with his greens powder and the blender.

  Kyle had a daughter from his first marriage, a daughter who lived in Chicago, so moving back there was right for him. Fortunately, I didn’t have children to consider in my ongoing to-divorce-or-not-to-divorce years long inner debate.

  “Why is there a mug in the sink again?” Kyle asked, my stomach tensing as it always did at his sharp tone. “No matter how many times I say it, it doesn’t seem to make a bit of difference. You leave this unwashed crap here, and the sink starts to smell.”

  I wasn’t going to acknowledge another rant yet again. Not this time.

  When we’d first married, my eyes would water at the cutting tone in Kyle’s voice, the dismissal in his eyes, the derision in his remarks whenever he expressed his disapproval.

  The blender whirred loudly. I folded the elegant gray stationery back into the envelope and shoved it down into my bag.

  Kyle poured his green shake into a glass and drank it. He rinsed out his blender pitcher. “Where are you going this early?”

  I knew where. I just had to stand up and finally do it. No going back. If I didn’t do this now, I would regret it for the rest of my life. All signs were leading me home to South Dakota.

  Right now.

  I braced myself. “I’m going to Meager.”

  Kyle stilled, water sloshing out of the pitcher in his grip from his sudden movement. “What?”

  I met his bitter gaze. “I’m taking the last of my things from the storage unit, and I’m going back to South Dakota. Today.”

  He slammed the blender pitcher in the sink. “You’re leaving? Again?”

  “Here are the house keys.” I tapped the keys on the table.

  “You’re being ridiculous. I thought we were trying here.”

  “We did try. It’s not working. We need to be realistic and let it go, to move on.”

  He made a face. “Is this about the sex?”

  I let out a heavy exhale. “No, Kyle, it’s not about the sex.”

  “Right.”

  “Don’t you see? Sex is not an isolated activity. The lack of sex between us is a symptom of how we don’t work.”

  “There’s been sex,” he said, his voice raised.

  I let out a control
led sigh. Kyle’s form of sex was doing it and getting it done. There was no savoring, no delight, and that hadn’t changed really. Yes, the other night, he’d gotten aroused, and as he usually did, right after, he’d pulled out, tossed himself back onto the mattress, slung an arm over his eyes, let out a sigh, and drifted asleep.

  He glared at me now, his jaw tight. I still found him attractive, his dark hair and eyes and lean physique still appealed to me. If I didn’t know him, I’d want to go for him. But there was no palpable connection between us, and we disagreed on most subjects more often than we agreed. When we did actually have a sexual experience of any sort, he wouldn’t even look at me. He certainly never said my name or kissed me with any kind of heat afterward. Maybe a peck but not an oh-babe-you-fucking-light-my-fire sort of post-sex kiss. Our sex, whenever we had it, lacked color; it lacked need.

  Kyle had never been an affectionate person to begin with. In the beginning of our relationship he’d held my hand while we walked together, pulled me close on the sofa while we watched television, but after the first few years, that had withered away. I’d had to catch up with his long strides on the sidewalk.

  Our chemistry, our way of being together, was not really together at all. Shit, I didn’t even know how to describe it anymore, but I knew with certainty that it wasn’t the kind of husband-wife relationship that I wanted.

  I had chosen him though. What did that say about me?

  “Kyle, sex is a form of communication, of intimacy, neither of which we share. Not for a long time now. It might not be important to you, but I need that.” I sucked in a breath, my face heating. “It’s taken me a long time to realize it, but I can’t live without it. It makes you uncomfortable, and that’s fine, but I can’t go on like this. We’ve lived together as husband and wife for over ten years, and I’ve never felt lonelier in my life.”

  The silence between us was thick and prickly.

  “Tania, I have a new job now, and it’s just what I’ve been looking for all this time. We’re moving back to Chicago. Have you heard back from the gallery yet?”

  If I told Kyle that I’d gotten the job, he’d flip. He’d argue how it would be ludicrous for me to turn such an opportunity down, that we were meant to be back in Chicago, and that I should wipe the thought of starting my own business out of my head at long last. He would accuse me of running away.

  “Kyle, moving back to Chicago is not a new start for me. With my mom sick now and Jill having the baby in a few months, I’ve decided to move back to Meager.”

  His brown eyes narrowed, and my insides chilled.

  “I don’t understand. You’re being totally unfair. You want everything the way you want it, when you want it.”

  “That would be you, Kyle. You want the housekeeping done a certain way, your food cooked a certain way. To go out only when you want to. And when we do actually go out, you don’t relax; you just want to eat and leave. You don’t seem to have that issue with your friends or your basketball league buddies or your sister. You talk to them.”

  “What are you complaining about? We talk. And you know I can’t live disorganized.”

  There it was again. Another insulting insinuation.

  “I’m not disorganized. I don’t like being disorganized either. You just don’t like my kind of organized. I get to it when I get to it. And, after all these years together, you still can’t trust that I have it all under control, that what I need to get done will get done. Your attitude is insulting.”

  His back stiffened. “Did you sleep with someone else when you were in South Dakota those two months?”

  “What? No.”

  “You haven’t been wearing your wedding ring.”

  “We’re officially separated, Kyle, even though I came back and stayed.”

  “Officially?” His face tightened. “Right.”

  I stared at him. Was it that zipped tone in his voice, the way his lips pressed together?

  “Did you have sex with someone else while I was in South Dakota?” I asked.

  He planted his hands on the counter, his gaze averted, his shoulders tightening.

  My pulse wrenched with a jolt. “Oh, shit. You did?”

  His jaw twisted. “Yes.”

  My head jerked back, as if I’d been physically pushed. My mind blanked.

  I’d let him talk me into trying again when I returned from South Dakota, my sentimentality getting the best of me. My never-give-up creed bolstering me on. I mean, I had to be sure. Triple sure. Ending a marriage was a big deal.

  And he had found some other woman to fuck.

  My blood jelled in my veins. I stared at Kyle, imagining him diving into someone else’s body. Kyle groaning, kissing, pillow-talking, teasing, laughing, feeling satisfied, satiated, self-righteous.

  Fuck my duck.

  “It wasn’t—it was just—”

  I held up a hand. “Okay.”

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  The tide broke, and a flotilla of debris banked over me.

  Unbelievable.

  Unfair.

  Fucking insane.

  I rose from my chair. “The irony here is, I was the one complaining that there wasn’t enough sex, any sex. And, at the first chance you got, you went out and got yourself laid?” I dragged out the words for a facetious effect for my own benefit, more than his.

  “You left, Tania! You left me!” His face reddened.

  “Yes, yes, I did.” I curled my fingers into fists to steady the trembling. “So, tell me. Did you like it? Did it feel good? Was your dick happy?”

  He only stared at me, his arms folded across his chest.

  A wave of dizziness overtook me as I grabbed my bag and my car keys. “I have to get out of here.”

  “Sure! What the hell? That’s what you do best, taking off.”

  “Holy shit, Kyle! Why didn’t you tell me?” I charged toward him. “I came back here and stayed, and you touched me. You should’ve told me.” I stepped back against the table. “Did you use protection with her at least?”

  “Yes,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “Good job. Very organized of you.”

  I shoved myself out the screen door, and it slammed behind me as I charged toward my car, gulping in air against the rising tide of nausea.

  “I want to live, not just exist. Not just shuffle along,” I had said to him in a well-rehearsed, polite speech before I’d left for Meager the last time. I’d said it to give him something to think about.

  He’d done more than think on it. He’d taken action, a step that said, I’m alive! This is what I want! That was for sure. He’d broken out, made a move. He had done it.

  I was pathetic.

  Fortunately, we lived in the no-fault divorce state of Wisconsin. In typical fashion, I’d jumped the gun and spoken to a lawyer about how to proceed. My enthusiasm always got the best of me—one of the things about me that, after a while, had annoyed Kyle—because I’d often retrace my steps and pull back. Now, I’d call that lawyer and put the process into fifth gear.

  “Tania!” Kyle’s voice rose from inside the house.

  I climbed into the Yukon, slammed my door, and gunned my engine.

  No, the waiting was finally over.

  I swung out onto the road, but by the time I hit I-94 West, the anger had turned to a flood of hurt and regret and tears.

  “THANK YOU FOR THE DRINK, but I can’t accept it.”

  “Why not, honey?” The older man peered at me from under his ratty baseball cap advertising a local car dealership. I’d lay down money that his seat at the cafe counter was his second home.

  I had stopped for a quick bite at a small restaurant about half an hour outside of Sioux Falls, eager to get back on the road toward Meager.

  “I do appreciate it, but I’ve got a lot of driving ahead of me, and I’m staying away from booze.”

  “Ah, naw, you can’t leave.”

  A bony hand clamped around my arm, and my back stiffened.
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br />   “You should stay, pretty lady.”

  “I’m not staying. Now, get your goddamn hand off me.”

  He only laughed. “You gots attitude, huh?”

  I picked up his bottle of beer. “Maybe you’d like this Bud all over your crotch to cool you down?”

  “Let go of the lady,” came a stern deep voice from behind me.

  The older man’s lax gaze suddenly tightened, training on someone over my shoulder, someone much taller than me. He released his hold on me, and I jerked my arm away.

  A warm hand landed on my lower back. My body flinched at the contact, and I swiveled.

  Pale blue eyes leveled at me, and a sculpted full mouth pressed into a firm line with wavy blond hair passing his angular jawline and gold scruff delineating the abrupt lines of a familiar face.

  “Butler?”

  “We’ll leave you to your beer,” Butler muttered to the man, his hand wrapping around my elbow.

  “Don’t git your hopes up,” sneered the old man.

  “She was waiting for me, buddy. No contest here.” Butler led me to a table at the other end of the cafe.

  “Thanks for the save. You didn’t have to.”

  “I didn’t have to, but I didn’t think it would be wise to have him suffer at your hands.” The edges of his lips tipped up, and he pulled out a chair, slanting his head.

  Butler’s aimed that cocky you-know-it’s-true-sure-as-hell-can’t-fool-me smirk of his. But that smirk was a more relaxed version from the acidic ones I remembered him constantly shooting my way years ago. I let out a small laugh and settled into the chair he’d gestured at, hanging my messenger bag around the back.

  “Oh, so he was the victim?” I asked. “That’s who you were saving?”

  His smirk broke into a dazzling grin, and I pressed back into my chair, absorbing its potency like a shot of espresso.

  “What are you drinking, Tania?”

  “Nothing, thanks. I’ve got to get back on the road.”