Serpent's Kiss Read online

  It’s raining men, she thought with a sudden bout of angst. How funny to find herself the object of two suitors. Norman wanted to talk. What was it that would be “truly terrific,” she wondered. It was hard to imagine stodgy old Norm excited about anything. He was so ensconced in academia, very much fulfilled by life in the ivory tower—although his small, monastic cell had elicited a twinge of sadness in her. Now here was Harold Atkins asking her out on a date. The truth was that Joanna had grown comfortable in her singlehood; she enjoyed being alone. Plus she had Tyler now, who took up much of her thoughts, although perhaps it was a way to assuage the longing she felt in her son’s absence. Joanna deleted both messages and replied to neither.

  It was all so overwhelming. But finally she had to admit hearing from the two men wasn’t what was troubling her. Something was not sitting right, and it had to do with the girls, Freya in particular. Freya was hiding something. Joanna could not exactly pinpoint how she knew, but she trusted her mother’s instinct that something was wrong.

  chapter four

  Girls, Girls, Girls

  There was someone skulking around the Dragon, and even asleep Freya heard it: creaking in the crew cabin starboard, then in the salon and kitchen galley. It wasn’t Killian. He was lying next to her with his arm looped around her waist. She needed to wake up but couldn’t quite push past the layers of sleep to the surface. There was the noise again. This time it was footsteps on the companionway. She forced her eyes open, her ears finely attuned, but now there was nothing. The night was still, and the only noise was Killian’s soft breathing.

  The glow from the lights on the dock shone through the portholes of the cabin. There was nobody in the room except the two of them. Freya slowly extricated herself from the blanket and sheets, dressing quickly and quietly, careful not to wake Killian. She was soon stepping onto the footbridge, where only the Dragon was moored. There was no one around, but she figured whoever it was had taken care not to get caught.

  Deciding to give up on going back to sleep, she walked against a strong gust along the path that traversed the darkened beach until she reached her car. Instead of taking the right toward Joanna’s, she swung the Mini Cooper in the opposite direction, driving west, taking the narrow sandy road, flanked by cattails, that ran along the shore. Not fifteen minutes later, Freya reached a dilapidated two-story beachside motel on the outskirts of town, half of which appeared sunk in the sand, perilously tilting sideways. The neon sign read UCKY STAR, the L permanently extinguished. The puke-pink and mint-green facade, as well as the rusty white railings along the upper story, had eroded in the briny air. Despite the motel’s appearance, about a dozen cars were parked out front, so Freya backed up, preferring to pull up in the shadows, lest her Mini be spotted by someone she knew.

  She got out and walked toward the motel’s front lot. It was so quiet this time of year without the constant thrum of cicadas and insects screeching in the grasses; only the sound of the wind as it whispered through the reeds and the waves crashing before slithering away.

  Just as Freya entered the lot, she heard heels clicking on the upper walkway of the motel. The stranger, a tall woman, tottered forward unsteadily, then seemed to sense Freya’s presence because she leaned against the railing and peered out to the lot. Her clothes were rumpled, and wayward strands of light blond hair had come loose from her bun. Freya hid, hunkering down behind a car, but one glimpse was all it took to know that Freya had just seen Ingrid, looking uncharacteristically disheveled. What the hell is she doing here?

  Perhaps Ingrid and that detective of hers had finally gotten around to getting it on? Freya smiled to herself. Being an expert in all matters love, especially when it came to other people’s romantic quests, Freya had not been unaware of the torch Ingrid carried for a certain Matt Noble. In this case, it hadn’t been images in her head but that sweet little kiss she had witnessed them exchange at the last annual library fund-raiser that confirmed it. However, when she had asked Ingrid about it, her sister shrugged it off, saying, “Oh, Matt, but he’s just a friend!” Yet Freya had seen the blush spread in Ingrid’s cheeks and decided that for now she would leave it alone and respect her sister’s privacy. Strange to think Ingrid and Matt would rendezvous at such a run-down hotel. Maybe it was a kink of theirs. Oh well, everyone had their little secrets.

  She heard one of the doors open then close, and when Freya rose from behind the car, Ingrid was gone. Freya sprinted across the lot to a door on the lower level, on the sinking side of the motel—the cheaper rooms. She tapped out the secret knock.

  “Will you get that, babe?” she heard from behind the paper-thin wall among sword-clanking sounds, muffled grunts, and blows coming from the TV.

  A young woman with a ponytail, the golden-brown mane swept onto a shoulder, cracked open the door. She wore a snug T-shirt that blared WRONG ISLAND UNIVERSITY, a skirt as big as a handkerchief, tights, and calf-hugging high-heeled boots. “What do you want?” she said, giving Freya the once-over.

  Freya stared back at her with equal disdain. “Uh … I’m here to see my brother?”

  “Let her in,” said Freddie from inside.

  The coed swung open the door, and Freya strode in. She stopped abruptly, taking in the sight: everything in the room—the floor, the beds, the desk strewn with leftover fast-food wrappers, the TV, the armchair where Freddie sat wielding a Wii remote at a video game on the TV screen—pitched slightly to the right. There was a pile of neatly folded clothes on one twin bed, while the other was unmade, covers and sheets spilling onto the floor. Freddie, in a tank and boxers, sat with one very long, muscular leg swung over the armchair’s side and the other foot, like that of an ancient Roman sculpture, resting on the floor among other discarded food wrappers. His lips broke into a huge grin as he turned to Freya. A dwarf boar, Freddie’s familiar, burst out from beneath the blankets on the floor, waddling over to root around in the wrappers as if he were taken with a sudden urge to hunt truffles.

  “Buster!” said Freya to the piglet.

  “So cute!” said Wrong Island University.

  “Buster or Freddie?” asked Freya, curious.

  The girl cocked her head to one side so that her ponytail flipped over. “Well, both, really.”

  “Ugh!” harrumphed Freya, annoyed that her twin continued to play his video game even when he knew she hated it—all that cartoon violence. After she had refused to play along with his revenge fantasies against Killian, Freddie devolved into a slug. Funny that: he lived with a pig and had become a slug. But at least he had done his laundry; that was a start.

  “Babe,” said the girl, “I did all your laundry, so now all you’ve got to do is put it away. I really should be getting back to the dorms. It’s late. Do you think you’ll be needing anything else?”

  Freya was amused at her twin’s resources. He had somehow managed to procure his very own personal assistant despite being holed up in self-imposed exile.

  “I’m great,” said Freddie, swinging his leg over onto the seat, getting up to rub his flat belly.

  While Freya watched, appalled, the coed pecked him on the lips, then stared at him a moment. “You’re such a god, Freddie!”

  “If you only knew,” he said, raising an eyebrow as he walked her to the door.

  “Okay, bye … um, Freddie’s sister, whatever your name is!” After the coed was gone, Freddie locked the door behind her.

  He swiveled around toward Freya, his arms open wide for a hug. She begrudgingly returned his affection even as she felt a twinge of guilt. She patted him on the back before she went over to one of the twin beds to sit. He returned to the armchair across from her.

  “Talk to me!” he said, clapping his hands together. “What’s up?”

  Freya couldn’t help but smile at her sleepy-eyed twin, recalling the little boy he had been, her best friend, who now made a valiant effort to sit at attention. She longed for that kind of closeness with him again, the intimacy of twins who shared their own secret
language, as they once had. But she held herself in check. There wasn’t going to be a truce, not yet, not until Freddie got these stupid ideas about Killian out of his head.

  “Gotta hand it to you, bro,” she said. “Little college girls doing your chores, getting you food? What is this, a harem?”

  “Whatevs,” said Freddie with a shrug. “They like doing stuff for me.”

  “I’m sure they do.” She smirked.

  “So, why are you here so late? Did you find it?”

  Freya shook her head and didn’t answer. “This is very unhealthy, you know, the video games, the laziness, this fixation on Killian, which has gotten way out of control. Why don’t you just let me take you home? This can all end right here, right now, but you’ve got to stop with these crazy, unfounded accusations.”

  “They’re not unfounded!” Freddie insisted. “How many times do I have to go over it with you? I remember it very clearly.”

  Freya put a hand up. “Please don’t! I remember what you said.”

  “Well, did you look for it even?” he asked.

  Freya stared wordlessly at him. Buster nosed his calf, and Freddie gave the pig a gentle squeeze, which made the little fatty roll onto his back. Freddie flicked his hair out of his eyes and glared at Freya. He was stubborn, sure, but he was also beautiful: dear Freddie, who’d always been a love. Freya understood exactly why a girl might do his laundry, then place it like an offering at his feet. Freddie’s features were a striking contrast of delicate and bold: creamy gold skin, large green eyes like hers, the sweet dimple in his strong chin. With that head of flaxen hair, he did exude a celestial kind of radiance. He was a ray of pure sunshine, beaming at her from the squalor of this run-down motel.

  “So?” he asked, the question still hanging between them.

  She sighed impatiently. “Freddie, I looked everywhere! Every freaking nook and cranny on that boat! Then I looked again. I found nothing. Nothing, Freddie!” She was annoyed to have given in. She was reluctant to let Freddie know that she had conceded to his request, because that meant she didn’t fully trust Killian; it was an acknowledgment that he could possibly be guilty. “You’ve been here all night?” she asked, thinking of the noises she heard on the boat earlier.

  “Right here,” he said.

  The toilet in the bathroom flushed, and Freya did a double take at the closed door. “Who else is here?”

  Freddie winced. “Uh … I forgot her name,” he mumbled as a long-legged, towel-wrapped maiden, another college girl most likely, they were obviously Freddie’s new weakness, emerged from the bathroom.

  “Oh, hi!” she said to Freya.

  Freddie smiled at her. “Hey …” he said.

  “Hey yourself,” the girl retorted. She’d obviously heard his confession about having forgotten who she was.

  “Well, you’re obviously busy,” Freya said. “I should be going.” She rolled her eyes at her incorrigible twin. Apparently, even cooped up in this motel, he had managed to meet plenty of young ladies—and she’d been worried that he was lonely.

  “Freya, if you don’t act, I will,” Freddie warned, following her to the doorway. “There are all kinds of hiding places you know, doors within doors. It’s got to be there. He’s keeping it nearby. You haven’t looked hard enough.”

  Freya turned to him, her arms crossed. “He didn’t take it. I know he didn’t.”

  “What did you lose?” the girl asked, confused. She was now wearing a lacy bra and Freddie’s boxers.

  “One of his video games. He thinks my boyfriend took it,” Freya said, rolling her eyes. “Bye, Freddie,” she said, then slipped out into the night.

  chapter five

  Here Comes Your Man

  Ingrid repaired to a back booth at the North Inn to wait for Matt Noble, safely hidden in one of the high-backed banquettes for now. While she wanted to go somewhere she was comfortable, she didn’t want to see Freya just yet. Her sister would tease her mercilessly about the detective and Ingrid wanted to avoid it as long as she could.

  It was hard to imagine that someone who had lived so long had so little experience with romance, but Ingrid had always preferred reading about love to getting involved in messy dramas herself. Love stories never ended well. Look at Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Anna Karenina, Lily Bart, Lady Chatterley, Emma Bovary; the list of tragic heroines went on and on. Love was frightening territory, and Ingrid had always steered clear. Now, of all things, she’d gone and fallen for a mortal, and she suddenly understood how one could be inexorably drawn to a person, no matter how wrong or ill-fated the circumstances.

  She sipped her water and looked up to see Freya standing in front of her, with a hand on her hip and a smug smile on her face.

  “Oh … hi,” she said.

  “You’re meeting him here, aren’t you?” her sister asked. “Nice of you to come by and say hello.”

  “I was going to, but …”

  Freya grinned. “I’m just busting your chops, Ingrid. I like the guy even if he did lock us up for a day.”

  “I’m nervous. It’s our first date,” confided Ingrid.

  “There’s nothing to be nervous about—wait—what do you mean this is your first date?” Freya demanded.

  But Ingrid didn’t have time to explain because Freya was called away to the other end of the bar. Ingrid sighed. Of course her sister wouldn’t understand. Freya always called Ingrid a tortoise, especially when it came to men.

  It had been a little over a month since Ingrid’s first spine-tingling kiss with Matt on Labor Day. Since then an investigation had taken him out of town for a couple of weeks, and every time they had tried to get together, something came up, like the library conference Ingrid had needed to attend in the city, or some other work commitment for Matt. They’d finally agreed on a couple of drinks at the North Inn, then dinner at that new French restaurant by the beach. She wondered if he still felt the same about her—and she alternately dreaded and longed for the moment she would glimpse his handsome freckled face when he walked into the bar. Every time a customer came in, she flinched, looking to the door, her spirit lifting and then falling with disappointment when it was someone else. Matt was usually prompt—at least when he’d been dating her ex-coworker, Caitlin. Ingrid tried not to be too miffed.

  She twirled the straw in her drink. The ice had nearly melted, and her nerves were too raw to take even one sip. It was eight minutes past the appointed time. She tugged at the scoop neck of the little black dress she’d bought in the city during the library conference.

  “Don’t worry. You don’t look like a floozy, Sis. That’s my department,” Freya said, coming back with a glass of champagne and setting it on the table.

  Ingrid glanced dubiously at the champagne flute, strings of pearly bubbles floating on the surface. “This isn’t one of your potions, is it?”

  “Um, you’ve got plenty of your own magic. You certainly don’t need mine. It’s champagne with a touch of cassis, a Kir Royal. I can sense your anxiety from all the way over at the bar, and it’s making me anxious. Relax, you look great!”

  It was true. With her hair down, in a tight black dress that showed a hint of cleavage, a thin red ribbon around her small waist, Ingrid looked ravishing, her arms and face shimmery, a flush in her cheeks. She followed orders and bravely downed most of the Kir Royal. “I’m not overdressed, am I?”

  “God, no! You look elegant, but not overstated,” said Freya, giving her sister a reassuring smile. “I’m sorry about before. It’s just that I thought—”

  But Matt was standing by Freya’s side, which made her instantly change the subject. “Ah, there he is, the Beauchamp family savior!” she teased fondly, for it had been Matt who had pressed his colleagues to drop the investigation. Even if he had hauled all three of them in for questioning originally, he was also the detective who had solved the murder cases that cleared the sisters and their mother of any wrongdoing. “What can I get you guys? On the house!”

  Matt wagged
his finger at Freya and craned his neck to catch a glimpse of Ingrid. Freya leaned over and took away Ingrid’s empty champagne glass. In a flash, the table was set with a bottle of the bubbly in an ice bucket and two full champagne glasses.

  Ingrid came out of the booth to greet Matt. They stood slightly apart, looking so shyly at each other with excited smiles that they didn’t even notice how quickly the drinks had arrived.

  “Hi,” Matt said.

  “Hi,” Ingrid returned. She gathered he had gone home, showered, and changed. His hair was still a tad wet, and he looked clean shaven, dapper in a dark suit with a crisp green shirt and blue tie. She liked him in his dress up civilian clothes, and admired his solid shoulders inside the suit.

  Matt moved toward her, putting a hand at her waist. It was all so natural, no fumbling for each other’s cheeks, just that same ease she felt when they had last stood face-to-face—and then the jolt that went straight to her heart as he touched her.

  “You look amazing,” he said. “I couldn’t wait to finally see you again.”

  “You, too. I mean me, too. I mean you look amazing as well and I was looking forward to seeing you, Matt.” Ingrid blushed, embarrassed for being so voluble.

  For a moment, Matt didn’t look sure whether to sit beside her or across from her, and finally decided on the latter. They sat. Ingrid stared into his clear blue eyes. “So, uh, that author of The Cobbler’s Daughter’s Elephants has a new one. Should I place it on hold for you?” she asked. He looked stricken for a moment, and then saw that she was teasing him and they laughed together.

  She took a sip of her drink, and when she placed a hand on the table, Matt stared at it as if he was contemplating whether to touch it or not. She sort of wished he would. “I really am sorry for making you read all those boring books. I’ll make it up to you. I have a bunch I think you’d really like,” she said.