All the Rules of Heaven (All That Heaven Will Allow #1) - Amy Lane Page 0,94

offered a sort of bench. A grown man would crush it to slivers, but Tucker and Angel both bowed and the women settled on it, no heavier than a thought.

Tucker sat down on the brittle crabgrass, folding his legs and looking up at Sophie and Bridget like they were his favorite grade school teachers, the gentle ones who read stories and played music.

Angel made himself comfortable next to him, their knees touching, and the two of them leaned their chins on their fists in classic listening pose.

Sophie dimpled at them. “Aren’t you sweet. Such lovely young men.” She cocked her head slyly. “Are you a couple?”

Angel waited for the negative Tucker had given Margie. He was unprepared for Tucker’s nakedly wistful look in his direction. “There’s some yearning,” he said, turning back to the women, “and a few obstacles as well.”

“Oh, isn’t that always the way.” Bridget’s sympathy spoke of experience—and it gave Angel some heart. Of course, these women would know about yearning.

And obstacles.

“Your story gave me hope,” Tucker told them. “But we didn’t see all of it. And I’m worried about James. He spends too much time at the hotel—and it’s not healthy there.”

“No.” Sophie’s hand visibly tightened over Bridget’s. “We couldn’t feel it back then, of course. It was new and bustling. People thought the place would boom, become a metropolis. Silly thought, of course. You don’t build a metropolis in the mountains. You build a sanctuary—or a prison.”

They both shuddered.

“Tell us what happened.” Tucker reached into the box and pulled out the brush, the pin, the broach, and the letter. “Perhaps….” He looked at the things in his hand. “Perhaps, once the story is all told, these things will just be things again.”

“Oh!” Sophie reached out her hand, but Bridget snatched it back.

“Not yet, Sophie luv,” she said, lacing their fingers firmly. “The boys need to hear the story.”

“Yes. Indeed they do.” Sophie turned to Tucker and Angel. “Come, take our hands, boys,” she said. “And hold tight to each other. It was a terrible, terrible night, that, and if you weren’t holding tight to someone you loved, you could find a part of yourself lost at Daisy Place. Indeed, I believe you’re right, and that’s where my brother has been all these years.”

Tucker put the objects back in the box and stood, reaching for Sophie’s hand. Angel did the same for Bridget’s, and the touch of her skin, dry and papery, with a few calluses, sent a shiver of longing coursing through him. Not for sex, but for sensation, for a grandmother’s hug or a hand held during a walk or a lipstick kiss against his temple. He’d never had these things—would have once said he’d never imagined these things—but they were running like a current under Bridget’s skin.

“You had children?” he said, perplexed.

“Henri and James had two boys,” Bridget said, squeezing his hand. “And their wives had three apiece. Those children are buried in a different place and grew to live different lives, but their childhoods—those are still in us.” She and Sophie smiled fondly at each other, and Tucker breathed deeply through his nose.

Angel turned to him just as he wiped his eyes on his shoulder. “Oh, Tucker….”

He reached out, and Tucker grabbed his hand like a shipwrecked man clung to a spar of wood to stay alive.

The circuit of the dead and the living, and those suspended between, was made complete, and the memory of their last night at Daisy Place rippled through the four of them like shock waves from a bomb.

“SOPHIE! SOPHIE!” Bridget knew her way around a corset, and her first order of business was to rip open the buttons of Sophie’s blouse and tug at the knots that held the corset tight. The thing exploded outward, and Sophie pulled in a great gasp of air.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she whispered, “James. James is coming.”

The door flew back, rebounding against the wall, and Thomas Conklin burst in.

“Get your hands off her,” he snarled. “Trollop, stealing my son’s wife and spiriting her to this ungodly place.”

Bridget stood and turned, facing Conklin and protecting Sophie with her body. “Ye keep yer bloody fuckin’ hands off ’er,” she snarled. “Yer not ’er husband, and ’e don’ care enough ter chase ’er ’ere.”

“Speak English, you filthy peasant.” Conklin smiled, chilling in his arrogance, and reached into his pocket for his little snuff tin of courage.

His pupils were already tiny pinpoints of madness.

“Snort some more,” Bridget urged, feeling ugly and murderous. “Snort until