The Locket Read online

  “Okay,” he said, a thread of steel winding through his tone. “That’s enough.”

  “You’re right,” she wailed, breaking down completely. “This is more than enough! I’m going to my room. I’m going to put my nose in the corner and wait for you there. I’m not going to like what I’ve got coming and I’m sure not going to want it, but the next time I even think about doing something this outrageously, bone-headedly stupid, maybe I’ll remember this—” she thrust his belt into the air, “—and think again!”

  She took off running, up the hill through the tall grass, crying so hard that she could barely see the ground. She ignored Robert’s call to come back the same way she ignored Braden’s cheerful greeting when she raced past him up the front porch steps. Throwing herself into the house, Kylie ran all the way up to her room. She dropped that much-hated belt at the foot of her bed before falling down next to it, burying her face in her arms while she just fell apart.

  How could she have been so stupid?

  It was several long and ragged minutes before she managed to pull herself together enough to sit up. It was even longer—heavy, despairing minutes spent contemplating how much that worn length of leather was going to hurt—before she could summon the strength of will to stand. Swiping once at her wet cheeks, she removed her dress completely and then her underwear, folding each and stacking them neatly at the headboard of the bed before she shifted her pillow to the center edge of her mattress. Quietly, dressed in only her bra, as composed as she could make herself be, she went to her corner. Folding her hands behind her head, she wiped one last tear away and waited.

  It was amazing how time slowed down in the corner. Seconds turned into minutes, and minutes into a minor eternity before, through the partially-open window, she heard Braden say, “Robert! Something’s wrong with Kylie.”

  “I know,” Robert replied, the faint, rhythmic approach of his footsteps in the rock and dirt driveway only just heard from here. “Hey, can you give me a hand with something?”

  “Sure.” Together, they retreated from the house again, and the last thing she heard was Braden’s rueful: “Mama sent me for more apples. I dropped the bucket. Now they’ve all got yuck spots.”

  There was a commiserating slap as Robert no doubt clapped a hand to the bigger man’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, buddy. We dropped a car.”

  The soft whisper of a breeze rustling through the lace curtains swallowed whatever else followed, and then they were gone leaving Kylie to wallow in misery, alone. She didn’t know how they managed it. She heard the rattling cough as the Woody’s engine came sputtering back to life. Then Braden whooped and cheered as the source of that sputtering began to move. The rattling grew stronger and didn’t stop until the vehicle rolled to a stop right beneath her window and the engine shut back off again. Two doors opened, and then Robert’s voice, cheerful and strong, said, “Go on and take what you want from those buckets there. You can even take the bucket. Just bring it back tomorrow, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  A brief flurry of tromping footsteps went up and down the porch before Robert called out, “Don’t drop them.”

  Growing more distant by the syllable, Braden called right back, “Don’t drop any more cars!”

  She thought she heard Robert snort, and in her mind’s eyes she could all but see him standing on the porch, his hand braced against one post, with that crooked half-smile tugging at his lips. He must have waited there, watching until Braden was out of sight, because Kylie lost him after that. There were no more footsteps. No more talking or humming or any noise whatever to help her track his movements. He just stood there, probably dreading having to come upstairs and deal with her.

  Kylie sagged until her forehead touched the joining walls, hating herself because that was her fault, too. Her shoulders crumpled inward as she dissolved into tears all over again. She tried to be as quiet as possible, breathing through her open mouth, but that open window betrayed her every bit as easily as it had Robert’s conversation. Finally, from the porch below, she heard Robert move. Slow and heavy footsteps moved toward the front door. Into the house they came, climbing up the stairs, and then down the short hallway in slow and measured steps before stopping at her bedroom door.

  He didn’t knock; he simply opened the door. And Kylie remained where she was, her head against the wall until she heard him sit down on the edge of her bed. He sighed, a deeply heavy sound, and then softly called her name. “Come here.”

  Pushing from the wall, Kylie went. Without hesitation. More than ready for this to be over. From that day in the orchard when Robert first pinned her to the ground for the hardest, fiercest spanking of her life, she never in all her life would have guessed that she’d ever actually want to go across his knee for a dose of real discipline. But she went now. She wanted to feel his hand on her arm, pulling her to him and drawing her down into place. She wanted to feel his hard legs digging into her stomach, and the fire and bite of that belt, wrapping across her buttocks until the pain of it left her thrashing mindlessly, wailing and sobbing for that blessed relief that would only follow when Robert felt the scales of cause and consequence had come back into balance once more.

  But instead of laying her across his knees, when Robert took hold of her arm, he pulled her down to sit on his lap instead. His arms came around her, dragging her head to rest against his shoulder. He stroked her hair and her back. He kissed her on the forehead.

  “That was,” he said at last, “the most thorough and…backwards scolding I’ve ever given in my life.”

  Tears drying on her cheeks, Kylie could almost laugh at that. Almost. Her trembling smile soon faded though, and her bottom lip began to quiver. “Are you going to spank me now?”

  His hand rubbed up and down her back. “Yes, I am. Not because I think you deserve it, but because you think you do.”

  A wash of dread and relief swept her, suffusing the flesh beneath her skin with prickling trepidation. Her bottom tensed, clenching in as if already trying to tuck away from the first stinging blows. She tucked her face into his shoulder, accepting his comfort at last, and felt again as his hand caressed another pass up and down the slope of her back.

  “I am not, however, going to use my belt. For something like this, my hand will be more than enough.”

  His tone was firm, and she just didn’t have the will to argue.

  “Accidents happen,” he continued, resting his chin on the top of her head. His stroking hand moved continuously up and down, following her spine and caressing a warming path from ribs to bottom. “Even if it happens because you’ve done something you later realize is insanely, bone-headedly stupid.” He paused. “Like trying to drive a truck when you don’t know how—it’s still just an accident.” He stroked her back again, then patted it. A hint for her to lift her head and look at him. “I may not understand why you seem to think you deserve to be punished, however, I do understand this: I am going to spank you each and every time I think you deserve or need it. So while I may not agree with your reasons in this case, it would be a tad hypocritical of me not to spank you simply because it’s you who thinks you’ve earned it.”

  For some truly strange reason, that actually made her feel a little better. And yet that energizing static still sparked from his hand into her arm when he nudged her to stand before him. It lurked at the tip of her mind to wonder if he might stop if she asked him to. She could have. She could have sat here on his lap all night with his arms so tight around her, and probably awakened tomorrow morning and been just fine. But she didn’t ask and he didn’t stop. He guided her down to lay across his lap, and she grabbed onto the bedding with one hand and his leg with her other, bracing herself to endure what was coming as quietly as she knew how. The solid comfort of his arm stole around her waist, securely holding her down, anchoring her to him before he began to spank.

  He was right in that accidents should be treated as accidents, forgiven and forgotten. He was also right in tha
t he only needed his hand to make her embrace that philosophy wholeheartedly.

  “Keep your feet down and don’t reach back,” he said when she began to lose control. She kicked anyway, scraping the floor with clawing toes. It was the first time he’d spanked her without first pinning her hands behind her, and the struggle to keep from reaching back, palms flailing upward to ward away the rapid-fire crack! smack! slap! of his hand as he painted the summits of both buttocks a bright and rosy red, was almost impossible to resist. All attempts at quiet dissolved, giving way to whimpers, then to teeth-gritted squeaks, until she just couldn’t bite back her cries not one meaty slap more.

  She didn’t want him to stop, and yet she couldn’t bear for him to continue, especially when the stinging turned to burning and the discomfort into a deep-seated blaze of very real pain, permeating the muscles of her bottom and following the path of his hand as he spanked down onto the top of her thighs. That was what broke her self-restraint. That paddling of highly-sensitive flesh just below her buttocks, and without thinking, she slapped back, one-handed, trying to catch his arm. To stay it. Maybe not for forever, but at least long enough for her to catch her breath and recoup just a shred or two of whatever fantastically misplaced strength of will had induced her to ask for this in the first place.

  “Wait!” she wailed, instantly repeating that sentiment higher-pitched and with much more feeling when he wasted no time at all in showing her just how vast the differences could be between the ‘gentle’ slaps he had been giving her and the strong-armed swats she had just won for herself now. He wasn’t angry and he didn’t scold her, but this became face-down in the orchard on that first day all over again. This was stark and real and so far beyond anything that could ever be erotic, and all she could feel was the fury of his hand as it found her again and again and again.

  “I’m sorry! Please, ow! Ow!” she wailed, and then repeated the sound, only wordlessly. Holding still was what women in storybooks did, not real women. Eventually the heat and the hurt overwhelmed her and Kylie completely lost control. Probably because she had never been in control in the first place. She lost the fight to submit. She lost track of everything except the iron-hard breadth of his hand. She bucked and wept, but she also trusted and accepted that he would eventually, someday, maybe stop. Hopefully before he slapped all traces of a bottom clean off of her, but that was his choice to make. Not hers. Never hers.

  By the time Robert reached that heaven-sent conclusion that she had had enough, Kylie felt as if she’d spent the last three minutes sitting on a pancake griddle. Everything from the dimples at the top of her ass to almost midway down her knees sizzled and throbbed. And yet, surprisingly, when he shifted her to sit on his lap instead of over it—with her head once more cushioned against his broad shoulder, with the softness of his shirt absorbing her tears and with the severity of his hand shifting back into gentleness as he stroked her hair—she felt…better.

  CHAPTER TEN

  They drove down the road with his hand on her thigh and her hand resting on top of his. She couldn’t stop grinning. Even knowing it would take two good days of non-stop sanding to remove all the scratches on the driver’s side of the Woody wagon’s oak paneling, she still smiled. She felt great. A little tender perhaps. Particularly when the truck jostled in and out of the many dips and potholes in this long, flat stretch of farm-country highway, but that seemed like a fair exchange for alleviating all that guilt. It also helped that Robert didn’t brush her off when she said she wanted to confront Billy Owens about cleaning out their fruit stand.

  “He’s a decent guy,” Robert had told her as he’d handed her up into the truck. “I’ve known him for years, and he’s always been as good as his word. That’s why I wasn’t worried about that note.”

  “I’m not laboring over a hot stove in a house without air-conditioning for free, though.”

  “I understand,” he said easily. “More importantly, Billy Owens knows that. He’s a good man; I guarantee he won’t be expecting you to.”

  And so down the road they went, back into town where they turned right at the single four-way stop that dotted the corner of the grocery store. Another two miles back out of town, they found their first sign post for Billy’s Diner. It was almost three in the afternoon by the time they pulled into the gravel-strewn parking lot, and only four other vehicles were lined up along the front of the two-tone red and white building.

  Robert pulled to a gentle stop in the shade of one of the two maple trees. “Lock the doors,” he said cheerfully. As if completely oblivious to the fact that his truck had no windows.

  About to point that out, she caught his wink, and promptly shut her mouth without more than a half-smothered laugh. It wasn’t until she had climbed down to the ground herself than she noticed he’d left the keys in the ignition. She closed the door without bothering to lock it. “You’re just begging to get robbed.”

  Waiting for her at the tail of the truck, Robert snorted. “Come on, slow poke.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Indulging in a discrete rub to her lower half, Kylie was about to follow him when she spied movement out in the tall grass ahead of the truck. The dog was a purebred Heinz-57 with the long, thick, short-legged body of a basset house, the shaggy fur of a golden retriever and the head of a beagle. From the shade of the far side of the tree, it watched them cautiously, not moving until Kylie hunkered down to extend her hand and whistle. With head and tail both tucked, it slunk deeper into the tall grass and cowered there, averting its eyes and showing a very skinny and forlorn profile.

  “We don’t need a dog,” Robert said, beckoning to her.

  Kylie offered the dog another coaxing whistle, but when it made no effort to approach her, she got up and followed him. As he held open the door for her, he leaned down to murmur teasingly in her ear, “Try not to molest any of the old men in here.”

  She rapped his hard stomach with the back of her hand as she passed him, and he laughed.

  Billy’s Diner was like a soda shop straight out of Hollywood. Glenn Miller was crooning praise of the Chattanooga Choo Choo from the jukebox in the corner, and black and white pictures of movie stars decorated the red and white striped walls. Two lean and bent, gray-bearded men sipped coffee at one of the few booths, while a single waitress glanced up from behind the long bar that ran the length of the diner long enough to wave them on in before pulling twin, food-laden plates from the hot window. Behind that at the grill worked, Kylie presumed, Billy Owens. A plump man of at least fifty years, his face was pink from the heat of the kitchen and the front of his apron was stained from years of working around grease, yet he seemed cheerful enough when he glanced up and saw them.

  “Bobby Boy,” he called, grinning. “Sit down, sit down! I’ll be right out.”

  They slid into a booth near the door and Kylie scooted close to the window, craning her neck to see if she could glimpse the truck from here. She could, but only just barely.

  “No,” Robert said again, taking the hand-written menu card that the waitress brought them and looking at it.

  “What?” Kylie said, defensively.

  “You know what, and I mean it. No.”

  “I’m just checking on the truck.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  She frowned, but the chance to argue dissipated when Billy Owens came out from behind the bar. Wiping his hand on a towel, he plopped down onto the seat next to her.

  “Hi,” he said, smiling. He knocked twice upon the table, then swung his head around to beam at Robert. “How you folks doing?”

  “Good,” Robert said, reaching out to shake his meaty hand. “This is Kylie, my fiancé and the lady that’s been baking all the wonderful goodies taking up all the extra space on my fruit stand. Some of which you’ve probably had the chance to sample by now.”

  What could have been a statement Robert nevertheless ended questioningly, arching an eyebrow and taking the note from his pocket to lay on the table between them.

  “Y
ou bet I have.” Billy’s smile widened and he shifted slightly sideways on the booth to look at Kylie. He didn’t look at all offended when he said, “So all of a sudden you’re my cooking competition around these parts, eh? I was wondering if you might be interested in a little business arrangement.”

  A little surprised that he wasn’t saying that to Robert, Kylie glanced back and forth between them. “Sure.” She shifted her back toward the window to show she was listening.

  “I’d like to offer your pies and preserves to my customers. I hate baking. I used to have someone do it for me before the war started, but…” Billy flushed a little, and then let that go with a shrug of his big hands, resting as they were on the table before him. “Anyway, I bought one of your pies last week, and it was wonderful. Really. The best I’ve had since the Missus passed on. When I happened by your place yesterday and saw all that mouth-watering food you had for sale…well, I just couldn’t help myself. As much as I took, I thought for sure I’d have enough to last until Friday, but those pies went damn quick. I’ve only got two pieces left!” He held up as many fingers, his face emphasizing the disbelief echoed by his tone. “Two! And if I put a little dish of your marmalade on the table with some biscuits, I can just about bank on selling a bottle by the door. If you’re agreeable, what I want to do is this: I’ll take every pie you want to sell me. And I’d like to put up a rack for your preserves. We’ll put it right up front by the register, giving folks a chance to buy by the bottle what I’m giving them little tastes of at the table. You bring me your fresh deliveries every Friday, and I’ll pay you then for everything that’s sold the previous week. What do you say?”