Page 8 of Halloween Town

Thom patted his thigh. “Here, Fel.”

The dog yawned, bored, and dragged his ass over to where Poppy stood. Sniffing her gown, he lifted his leg and peed on the fabric that was brushing the floor.

Okay, the dress was hideous, but Felony didn’t need to be such a shit. Actually, given his dog’s bad attitude, Thom was glad that peeing was all he did.

He grabbed his dog’s collar, shoved his nose into the small puddle of pee on the fabric, and dragged him over to the kitchen door, and opened it. He pointed to his outside kennel and, in his most authoritative voice, told Felony to go there. Felony simply lifted his nose in the air, turned his back to Thom, and farted.

Yeah, he wasn’t remotely in charge here.

When he walked back into the kitchen, his eyes watering, he looked at Poppy and couldn’t tell if she was about to laugh or cry. Her nose was scrunched up, and she stared down at the yellow stain on her dust-streaked dress. “Perfect. Honestly, I can’t blame him; it’s horrible. If I could, I’d pee on it, too.”

Thom’s eyes widened. “You don’t like your wedding dress?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “No, I have taste.”

“Then why would—” He pulled his question and shook his head. He didn’t care why she’d chosen to wear a dress she didn’t like or why she’d chosen to marry his brother or why she was here. He simply wanted her gone. He wanted his quiet life back, where his biggest problem was stripping the windowsills and dealing with his psychotic dog and dismissing the sound of footsteps coming from the floors above as the old house settling.

“I also need to get out of it, right damn now.”

Thom watched as Poppy placed the water bottle on the dining table and reached under her left arm, fiddling with the material on her dress. His eyes widened as the tight-fitting material slowly parted, revealing heavily embroidered lace. She kept pulling the zip down, and more of the lacy bra was revealed. No, it couldn’t be called a bra, it was more complicated than that. Strapless, its cups nestled her breasts, and the material covered her ribs and dipped into her waist. Did it reach her hips?

Judging by the way she pulled it down her waist, he was destined to find out. Completely entranced by the impromptu strip-show happening at 5.50 on a late Saturday afternoon, he watched as the heavy dress fell into a frothy pile of fabric and pooled around her feet. Thom swallowed, wondering what had happened to the moisture in his mouth. It turned out that her corset-thingy did reach her hips, stopping just a half-inch from her boy panties.

They shouldn’t be sexy, but, damn, they were, and somehow made her smooth, slim legs look more feminine … if that was at all possible. Clipped onto the hem of her panties were tiny hooks, and on one he saw the remnants of a stocking she’d obviously, at some point, ripped off. He wondered whether they were with her shoes. Or had she lost them later?

Coming back to himself, he was about to ask what the hell she thought she was doing stripping off in his kitchen—to be honest, it would be a memory that would live with him forever—when she shoved her hand into the left cup of her bra-thing. What now? He waited, hardly breathing, as she pulled her hand out, her fingers tightly clasping a pearl necklace…

He watched, fascinated, as one end of the string fell out of her hand. Then, in slow motion, the pearls slid down the string and—oh, shit—dropped into fresh air. As the pearls gained momentum, they flew off the string, bouncing on the slate tiles and skittering away. Looking down, Poppy let out a frustrated yell, tried to gather the rest of the necklace, but, somehow, simply made the situation worse, and the rest of the pearls fell and bounced.

Then she let out an ear-piercing scream and dropped to her knees and sobbed.

Thom, in turn, reached for an ibuprofen and a bottle of Scotch.

Chapter Three

Thom

The next morning, Thom dropped into one of the chairs in his kitchen and pushed his thumb and index finger into his eye sockets. What a shitshow. He tipped his head back and looked up at the ceiling, wondering why life had it in for him.

He looked at his half-empty bottle of whiskey and remembered the three—four?—shots he’d tipped down his throat last night. He normally stuck to beer if he wanted a drink, but yesterday’d been a three-shot day. In fact, it might even have been a slam-back-a-whole-bottle day.

After his ears had stopped ringing from Poppy’s banshee-like scream, he’d spent the next hour looking for the scattered pearls, while Poppy sat on his kitchen floor, her arms wrapped around her knees, sobbing. Thinking that a good cry would do her the world of good—truthfully, he hadn’t known how to comfort her or what to say—he’d used the flashlight on his phone to locate her missing pearls. When he thought he had all of them, he placed them in an empty screw jar, before gently pulling the string and what looked to be a diamond clasp from Poppy’s tight fist and dropping it into the jar as well.

He’d crouched on his haunches in front of her, noticing her eyes were fixed on something he couldn’t see. She’d stopped crying, but she seemed oblivious to the fact that she was sitting on his cold floor, in her wedding lingerie. The day had caught up to her, and when he suggested that she take a shower and she didn’t respond, he knew she’d checked out. All he could do was to scoop her up, carry her up the stairs to his bedroom, and slide her into his bed.

When her head—stiff hair and all—hit his pillow, she closed her eyes, sighed once, and slid straight into sleep. Out cold.

Thom showered. Watched a movie on the sofa. Told Hayes the whole sorry story. Opened and closed the bedroom door three times to let Felony in and out before deciding to leave the door open—those three Scotches had messed with his thinking. And through it all, Poppy didn’t move.

Eventually, after failing to fall asleep on the couch—too short, too narrow, deeply uncomfortable—he decided she wouldn’t notice if he took the other side of the bed. He lay down on top of the covers, hands on his stomach. Felony took that as an invitation, hopped up, wedged himself between them, and promptly licked Poppy’s face. Thom grinned. She already had so much crap on her face that a little dog spit wasn’t going to make a difference. Then Felony sprawled out between them, snoring loudly, a dog-shaped barrier.

When he’d woken up, an hour ago, he’d looked over Felony’s head and seen that she hadn’t moved. In fact, she was so still he checked whether her chest was rising and even placed his fingers under her nose to check her breathing. When he was certain she wasn’t dead, he got up.

Felony, the bastard, just stretched his legs out and rolled over into the space he’d recently occupied, tummy exposed, legs in the air.

Thom found a T-shirt and a pair of his boxers for Poppy to wear—there was a good chance they’d fall down, but maybe if she rolled the band a few times—and left the clothes, and a clean towel on the arm of the sofa, where she was sure to find them. After his own shower, he headed downstairs.

In his chair, he yawned, then stretched his spine. He had a dull headache from a combination of the Scotch and stress, and was nursing an extra-strong, double shot of espresso from his state-of-the-art coffee machine.