Midnight Fantasy
Ann Major
www.millsandboon.co.uk
MILLS & BOON
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To Aaron Clark, my late cousin, and his widow, Glenda Clark. There are lessons in life, both dark and bright. Sometimes the dark ones teach us what we most need to know.
Aaron, you have blazed bright with love.
You have taught me about courage.
You have taught me that it is never too late
to begin anew. You have become
everything and more than you ever dreamed.
You are one of my real-life heroes.
To Glenda, who taught me more about real love than almost anyone I know.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue
Coming Next Month
Prologue
Get the hell out of here, you half-wild, no-good bastard!
The van swerved off the asphalt. A rumble of bumps and rattles jolted the prisoner on the floorboards back to queasy consciousness. Murky, gray light filtered through his blindfold.
He saw his fathers face, mottled with rage.
Youre damn sure no son of mine!
Hed turned away, knowing what hed always felt deep down, that he was nothing. Hed gotten his start in the gutter. Thats where he should have stayed.
The stench of dank air made him shudder.
God, he was scared. So scared.
They were in the swamp now, in that eerie, primeval kingdom of cypress trees, stagnant brown bayous, knobby-headed gators and mud deep enough to swallow a man whole.
Cajun music whined through bursts of static. He was bound hand and foot, sprawled on top of smelly fast-food boxes, Styrofoam cups and candy wrappers.
The waxy-faced driver with the spider tattoo was driving faster than he had in New Orleans. Youre gonna be gator food, boy.
A surge of fresh fear shook the captive.
Another voice. You know what gators do, dont you, no?
A boot nudged the prisoners hip. Theyll drag you to some underground hole, stuff you inside, yes, and tear off little bits of you for days.
A strange terror gripped the blindfolded man. When he shifted on top of the garbage, something squished against his clean-shaven face. Only yesterday hed sat with his father in the best restaurant in the French Quarter. He swallowed carefully against the gag, fighting not to choke on the oily rag in his mouth and the coppery flavor of his own blood. He tried not to breathe because every tortured breath made weird, gargling noises in his broken nose.
His assailants mood was quiet, tense, electric.
The road got bumpier, wetter; the pungent odor of still, dark waters and rotting vegetation stronger.
Big tires sloshed to a standstill.
Lets dump him. Sack him up, throw those concrete blocks in. Haul him out deep so he sinks.
The back doors were thrown open. His fine Italian loafers came off when they grasped him around the ankles and pulled him roughly over garbage, tools, and bits of wood. They flung him onto the muddy ground, and his head struck a rotten log. When he regained consciousness, they were waist deep, pushing him under.
He fought to stand up in the gummy mud, but a boot sent him reeling in the warm, soupy water. Panic surged through him when big hands clamped around his shoulders and pressed him deeper.
He fought. His lungs burned with the fierce will to breathe. He pushed harder and was stunned when their grip on his neck miraculously loosened. His head broke the surface, and he choked on watery breaths as a shell was racked into a chamber. A shotgun blast exploded. Then everything got quiet.
He reeled backwards, flopping helplessly as the weights pulled him under. Strangely, as he began to sink, dying, his terror subsided.
All was peace and darkness.
Was this how shed felt when her alarm went off and she couldnt get up?
Again he was a frightened, guilt-stricken boy shivering in wet pajamas. Bear tucked under his arm, hed padded into his mothers dark bedroom. Bright sunshine lit her black, tangled hair. Lost in shadows her body was a slovenly heap, half on, half off the bed.
Her alarm kept ringing. Hed lain for hours, listening to that ringing till it had become a roar in his head. She was mean most mornings. Mean every night. How he lived for those rare moments when she tried to be nice, when she read to him from the books Miss Ancil loaned him from the library.
As always her bedroom stank of booze and cigarettes.
Mommy! IIs sorry, so sorryI wet.
Hed called her name after this confession and promised the way he did every morning never ever to do it again.
Only she hadnt cussed him. Nor had she gathered him into her arms and clung to him as if he were very dear which she sometimes did. Shed just lain there.
Finally, hed gone to her and shaken her. Open your eyes. Please, Mommy. Hed touched her cheek. Shed felt so stiff and coldlike his frosted window-pane in winter. Her alarm clock kept ringing.
He hadnt thought of that morning in years. Then here it was, his last thought on earth.
After her funeral his aunts had marched him over to his fathers house. A man with black hair and blazing silver eyes had thrown open the door. His aunts had pushed him forward just as the door had slammed.
Hed been shuffled among distant kinfolk who had too many kids of their own. Hed done time in foster homes with other throwaways like himself, gotten in trouble at school. Then, miraculously, his father had had a change of heart and adopted him. Hed done everything in the world to please his father, eventually, even going into business with him.
Then one night hed worked late and without warning opened the wrong file on a computer.
A gush of water soaked his gag, slid down his throat, up his nostrils, burning, strangling. He was dying when brutal hands manacled his waist, maneuvered his head forcefully to the surface, dragged him out of the water and flung him onto the muddy bank.
A rough voice cursed him in Cajun French. Gnarled fingers tore off his soggy blindfold, ripped at the duct tape over his mouth, then yanked the gag out.
Jesus. His rescuers breath stank of gin and tobacco as he pounded his back. Water trickled out of the drowning mans lips in spurts.
Damn it, he pleaded.
The hard palm froze. Ha! So! Youre alive!
He was rolled over and a flashlight jammed under his chin. You dont look too good.
Damn it! He grabbed the light and shone it at his rescuer.
The stranger had wrinkled brown skin, white hair, and soulless black eyes. You dont look so good yourself.
Yellow teeth flashed in an irreverent grin. The names Frenchy. Frenchy seized his long black flashlight and turned it off. Frenchy LeBlanc. I was just helping my brother check his trotlines. We fell out. Hes kinda cranky.
Not like yousweet as sugarcane.
With a grin, Frenchy ripped off the tape at the prisoners ankles along with a wad of dark body hair.
Ouch!
You need a ride home? A hospital? Or the police station?
Im okay.
Youre beat up pretty bad When he said nothing, Frenchy held out his hand and helped him to his feet. You gotta name, boy?
He hesitated. Then, just like that, a name popped up from his childhood. But his voice sounded rusty when he used it. Tag
The older man eyed him. Tag. Tag what?
Right. Right. Last name. CampbellTagCampbell.
Like hell! The yellow grin brightened. You been to TexasTag?
Tag shook his head.
The older mans gaze appraised his tall, muscular body. You got soft hands for a big guyand a hard faceand eyes that dont quite match it. That suit, even trashed, looks like it set you back some.
Tag said nothing.
Real work might do you good
Damn itif youre going to insult me
I fish. I could use a deckhand.
Tag turned away helplessly, and stared at the lurid shadows the cypress trees with their draperies of moss made. A deckhand. Minimum wage. For years hed been on the fast track. His education. His career. His high-flying plans for his fathers company. Hed been good, really really good at one thing.
But he couldnt go back.
Ive always worked in an office, but I lift weights in my gym every afternoon. Ive never had time to fish, he said. Never wanted to. But he didnt say that.
Frenchy nodded, taking in more than was said. I dont blame you for saying no to such hard, thankless work.
I didnt say no, old man. Youd have to teach me.
Frenchy patted his shoulder. You gotta job.
Thanks. Tags voice was hoarse. He was disgusted that it might betray eagerness and gratitude. He knew better than to believe that this crude stranger or his casual offer and his kindness tonight meant anything.
He was through with ambition, through with dreams, through with false hopes that led nowhere. Again he was staring into his fathers cold gray eyes. He was through with family and dreams of real love, too.
A deckhand. A trashy job working for a crude, trashy guy.
Get the hell out of here, you half-wild, no-good bastard.
Thanks, Frenchy, Tag repeated in a colder, darker tone.
One
Five years later
Stay with me, Frenchy. I need you.
Thats as close as Tag had come to telling the best friend hed ever had, he loved him.
But maybe Frenchy had known.
Tag had clasped him in his arms long after Frenchys eyes had gone as glassy as the still bay, long after his skin had grown as cool as his dead mothers that awful morning when the alarm clock had kept ringing.
Stay with me, Frenchy.
Hed lashed the wheel of the shrimp boat to starboard with a nylon sheethis makeshift autopilotand headed home, cradling Frenchys limp, grizzled head in his lap.
Stay with me, Frenchy.
But Frenchys eyes had remained closed.
The deck had rolled under them.
It was midnight. The full moon shone through the twisted live oaks and tall grasses, casting eerie shadows across Frenchys tombstone. Tag was all alone in that small, picturesque, historical cemetery located on a mound of higher earth that overlooked Rockports moonwashed bay. Come morning, this time of year, the graves would be ablaze with wildflowers. Funny, how death could make you see the truth you didnt want to see. Tag had been living so hard and fast for so long, he hadnt admitted hed loved the old bastard, till hed held his friends limp body and begun to weep.
This wasnt supposed to happen! Damn your hide, Frenchy, for leaving me like everybody else. But most of all I damn you for making me give a damn. It should be me whos dead.
Theyd buried Frenchy beside his son, the son hed lost right before Frenchy had saved Tags life.
Tag was glad the cemetery was deserted. He didnt want anybody to see how profoundly Frenchys death had upset him.
Sunken black circles ringed Tags bloodshot eyes; his jaw was shadowed with several days of dark stubble. His stomach rumbled painfully from too much liquor and too little food.
The moon shone high in a cloudless, bright sky. The salt-laden sea air smelled of dry earth and newly mown grass. Frenchys favorite kind of night. The shrimp would be running. Not that Tag could bear the thought of shrimping under a full moon without Frenchy.
Tags big black bike was parked a little way from Frenchys tombstone under a live oak tree that had been sculpted by the southeasterly prevailing winds that blew off the gulf, cooling its protected bays and low-lying coastal prairies.
Tag was kneeling before the pink tombstone. Soft as a prayer, his deep voice whispered. Haunt me, Frenchy. Damn you, haunt me. Stay with me.
You dont need an old man past his prime. You need a woman, kids, Frenchy had pointed out, in that maddening know-it-all way of his, a few nights ago.
Strange advice coming from a man whos failed at marriage four times.
Nothing like a pretty woman to make a man old enough to know better hope for the best. Lifes a circle, constantly repeating itself.
God, I hope not.
Youre young. But youll get old. Youll die. Lifes short. You gotta fall in love, get married, spawn kids, repeat the circle.
Theres places in my circle I dont want to revisit.
Youre not the tough guy you pretend. Youre the marrying kind.
Whered you get a damn fool notion like that?
Youre either sulkin or ragin mad.
Which is why you think Id make a delightful husband.
You dont fit in here. Your hearts not in bars or fights or gamblingor even in fishing. Or even in getting laid by those rich, wild girls who come to Shortys looking for a fast tumble in the back seat of their car with a tough guy like you.
What if I said I like what they do to me? And what if I said I can do without a heart, old man?
Youre a liar. You got a heart, a big one, whether you want it or not. Its just busted all to pieces same as your pretty, sissy-boy face. Only the right woman can fix what ails you.
Youre getting mighty mushy, old man.
You think you can stay dead forever?
The wind drifting through moss and honeysuckle brought the scent of the sea, reminding him of the long hours of brutal work on a shrimp boat. The work numbed him. The beauty of the sea and its wildlife comforted him, made this hellish exile in an alien world somehow more endurable. Just as those women and what they did to him in their cars gave him a taste of what hed once had, so that he could endure this life. But always after the women left, he felt darker, as if everything that was good in him had been used up. Which was what he wanted. Maybe if they used him long enough, he wouldnt feel anything.