The House on Sandstone Read online

  The redhead shook her head in amazement. She'd never been all that good with spatial relations, but it was just ridiculous that she hadn't realized the proximity of the Griffins'

  house.

  "I guess I forgot that went up to Stony Ridge. The county just built that path a few years ago so people could take their kids over to the park. 'Course, my kids were too big for playgrounds by then."

  Carly presented her hostess with a bottle of red wine. "I hope you don't mind. I ordered the pizza before I walked out and they're supposed to deliver it here."

  "That's fine. Let me get a corkscrew. We can eat in the dining room…or in the kitchen…or if you want, we can eat on the floor in front of the fire. It's cold outside."

  "Tell me about it! They're calling for two inches of snow tonight." The flurries were just starting to stick.

  "Then let's sit in front of the fire."

  When they'd opened and poured the wine, the women went into the den and Justine pulled the coffee table back, dropping several pillows from the couch onto the floor.

  "This is very nice, Justine. You have a beautiful home."

  "Would you like to see the rest of it?"

  Carly followed her from room to room, impressed with the warmth and simplicity of the décor. Oak baseboards, window frames and wainscoting contrasted against the dark carpet to give the whole house a homey feel, but without the usual knick knacks that personalized an abode. Like JT's home, this one was smartly furnished, though the second Mrs. Sharpe seemed to have more formal tastes.

  "I'd show you the upstairs, but that's the kids' rooms and my office, and I wouldn't dare open the door to any of them."

  The guest laughed knowingly as she followed Justine to the basement, a recreation room that opened through sliding glass doors into the back yard. "This is where the kids spend most of their time."

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  They climbed the steps again and wound through a hallway to the back of the house.

  "And this is the master suite."

  Carly shivered as she recognized her own fascination with the room. This is where Justine sleeps…right there in that bed. The king-sized bed was covered in a rich comforter set of dark teal and gold; mirrored closets lined the far wall; and bedside lamps cast the room in a soft inviting glow. Inviting?

  Her prurient thoughts were vaporized by the sound of the doorbell.

  "That's our pizza. Let me get it," Justine insisted.

  "No! It's my treat. You bought dinner the other night." Carly was already pulling the cash from her hip pocket.

  "Okay, but you go on in the den. I'll get it and bring it in with some plates." Justine snatched the bills from her hand and took off for the foyer.

  Well that was weird.

  Moments later, the redhead deposited the pizza box on the coffee table, dashing back into the kitchen for the plates and the bottle of wine. She had polished off her first glass…her second glass actually, if you counted the one she drank before Carly had arrived.

  The pizza was tasty, and just as they'd expected, Carly ate the cheesy side while Justine avoided the extra fat and calories. Conversation was casual…Justine talking a little about her job, and Carly recounting her earlier back pain from lifting the mattress.

  "You should be more careful. Back pain's nothing to fool around with." A part of Justine was tempted to offer a backrub, but that was just asking for trouble.

  "Oh, and you'd never guess who we delivered a washer to today."

  "I have…no…idea."

  Carly was amused to notice that her hostess was mildly tipsy. From what Justine had said the other night, that might make this evening's conversations more revealing than when they'd gone to dinner.

  "We took it to a Justine Sharpe on Lakeside Drive."

  The redhead scrunched her lips dismissively. "J2."

  "Yeah, I get it now. The other night you said it was a long story."

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  "You know…I couldn't believe that old slime ball. I was sitting there with the lawyers signing papers, and I got to something that said…I'd return to the use of my maiden name…and I said ‘Uh-unh, JT.' I didn't care nothing about his stupid name, but my kids are Sharpes. I wasn't going to have my name be different, so I crossed it out." She smirked with annoyance as she told the tale. "And his lawyer got him on the cell phone and next thing I know, he's throwing in another twenty thousand dollars, and I wanna know why he thinks his name's so special. So I made his lawyer hand me the phone.

  That's when he told me about…her. I didn't care, but it's kind of tacky to go getting your girlfriend in the family way when you're still married to somebody else."

  "What a jerk!"

  "Nah, it turned out alright. I made him put up twenty thousand for each of the kids in a CD. And when he and J2 got married, I forwarded all my old junk mail to her." Justine snickered as she tipped her glass and drained it.

  "Then I guess it's handy that he just happens to like women named Justine."

  "I guess…but his first wife was a Pamela. She's the one that put him through law school."

  "Wow, he really is a slime ball."

  "Yeah, but he's not so bad if you aren't married to him."

  Despite the words, Carly heard the melancholy in her friend's voice. She wanted to ask about Trey and Emmy, and to say that she had see them today too, but she sensed that their absence in this home was probably the source of Justine's sadness. "I should have gotten another bottle of wine," she said as she poured the last few drops into her hostess's empty glass. Carly found herself taken in completely by the redhead's glowing cheeks.

  "I may have a teensy bit more…There might just be an open bottle in the pantry." Okay, she knew for a fact that there was an open bottle in the pantry, but it seemed more dignified to be coy about it. And after three and a half glasses, her words were slightly slurred.

  "Do you like cognac?"

  "I can't say as I've ever had the pleasure of…imbibing in cognac." Justine's tone was exceedingly formal.

  "It's a special brandy…a nice after dinner drink. Goes good with a cigarette."

  "A cigarette! Don't tell me you smoke cigarettes." Justine crinkled her nose.

  "I do. Isabel used to say that it made me very…sexy."

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  The word hung in the air as both women found themselves locked into a spontaneous stare down.

  "And what does cognac do?"

  "Cognac…makes me relax."

  Relaxing is good. Although Justine had to admit, she wasn't nearly as nervous as she'd been before Carly had arrived. There was that anxious moment when the pizza man came. Thank goodness she'd headed that off. What if that delivery boy had seen her here?

  What if she'd answered my door? It would be all over town tomorrow.

  "What do you say I run back over the hill to Stony Ridge…have a cigarette or two…and come back with a bottle of Hennessy's Very…Special…Old…Pale cognac?"

  Justine hung on every word, mesmerized by the pink lips from which they flowed. Her own mouth opened to answer, but nothing came out.

  "Okay?"

  The redhead could only nod.

  "So…I'll be right back…and when I get here, we'll decide if you've had enough wine to tell me any secrets…deal?"

  Justine scowled. Yep, she'd had enough wine to talk…and probably too much to know when to shut up. But Carly's been so nice…. "Okay, deal."

  Her guest was gone for about twenty minutes, during which Justine found it incredibly important to comb her hair and reapply a light coat of lip gloss. There was no need for the blush–the wine was doing wonders for her color, but her eyes had taken on a glassy shine. I better go easy on that cognac.

  Carly returned with her bottle of Hennessy's and two brandy snifters, the smoky aroma of her Dunhill faintly present. Justine helped her out of her snow-covered jacket and hung it on a hook behind the
door, leading her back into the kitchen.

  "Cognac is nice when it's slightly warm. That's why the glass is made this way, so you can hold the bottom of it." She filled both glasses with warm water, then wiped them dry.

  "Fascinating." Justine was beginning to find cognac quite sexy.

  Carly handed her a glass and led them back to the now roaring fire. "This is kind of strong at first, so you'll want to sip it."

  "Mmmm…it's nice. But you're right about it being strong."

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  "It just kind of creeps into your bones and turns you into jelly." Carly settled back against the pillows on the floor, stretching her legs out in front of the fire. Justine sat across from her, resting her back against a stuffed leather chair, their legs now side by side.

  God, she's sexy! Justine wanted to creep all over Carly's bones right now. The blonde woman looked so…so…irresistible sitting there with her hair damp and askew from the light snow, her tight black jeans, and that pullover. Too bad she hadn't worn something to show off a little of that cleavage. Justine had peeked at that cleavage back when they were in high school, and for a fleeting second, she remembered squeezing–

  "So tell me what you've been doing for twenty-five years. How has life treated you, my friend?"

  A typical flippant response came to mind, but since Carly's voice was so sincere, it made Justine want to open up a little. She hadn't talked much about important things with anyone other than Valerie. "Not so good sometimes. I'm…things are a little better than they were, but…." She shrugged, the words trailing off.

  "Do you want to tell me about it? You don't have to if you don't want to." The blonde woman reached over and laid her hand on Justine's knee. "I just want to know how you're doing, and how I can be your friend."

  Justine blew out a resigned breath through closed lips, the accompanying raspberry almost comical. "There really isn't all that much to tell. I moved back home when I finished up at Georgetown and went to work at the hospital." Georgetown was Georgetown College, a small liberal arts college about fifty miles from Leland. "When I first started there, I was in charge of raising money for the foundation…you know, for new equipment and all. And I met JT." She chuckled softly. "He was handsome, and funny…. He'd been at Cobb & Finger for a couple of years."

  "That's a law firm, right?"

  "Yeah. Now it's Cobb, Finger & Sharpe. Anyway, we got married and I got pregnant pretty soon after that. But then I miscarried after fourteen weeks. That was a really sad time for us. I don't think I realized until then just how much I wanted to be a mom." Even after twenty years, the memory of that loss was enough to evoke fresh tears. Justine wiped her eyes, smearing her mascara at the corners. "But then Trey came along, and he was healthy, and Emmy was born eighteen months later. I don't think I've ever been as happy as I was when they were little. JT doted on both of 'em. We built this house and settled in…it all should have been just perfect."

  Justine hated to sound so pathetic, but after hearing about Carly's exciting life, her own seemed so dismal.

  "So what happened?"

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  The redhead laughed cynically and shook her head. "What didn't happen? Let's see…to start with, I swelled up like a blimp when I was pregnant with Trey. And after I had him, all that extra weight just stayed there and then I got even bigger with Emmy. I looked awful. I'd show you a picture but I sat here one night and burned every dang one of them."

  "I can't imagine you not being beautiful, Justine…no matter what." Carly remembered that glimpse she'd gotten of Justine from afar when she was pregnant with her second child.

  "Aw, you're so sweet to say that, but I sure didn't feel beautiful." She smiled at her guest, reminded once again that Carly had always treated her with special kindness. "And I heard about it from everybody…my mom, my sister…even the kids said their friends teased them about their mother being so fat."

  Carly's heart went out at that. It must have been terrible to feel like her own children were against her. "What about JT?"

  "Not JT so much, but then he wasn't paying all that much attention to me by that time anyway. Right after Emmy was born, I found out from Aaron Cobb's wife that he was having an affair with some paralegal at work. She was about twenty…and JT was thirty-four. I lit into him, but the truth of the matter is that I really didn't care, at least not all that much. I mean, nobody wants their husband running around with somebody else in front of the whole town, but I didn't feel like being much of a lover myself when I looked the way I did."

  Carly took the empty snifters and poured another inch of the amber liquid into the bottom. The guilt she felt about getting her friend drunk was offset by her satisfaction that Justine was finally loosening up.

  "So that's how it was…for most of the fourteen years we were married. I went back to work when Emmy started school. Things started to look up there. We got a big campaign going to build the new wing. We were throwing parties at the country club, and people were getting behind it. I have to hand it to JT. He might have been a snake, but he was always right there with me when I needed him to be, coming to all the parties and helping to make sure his important clients were there."

  Justine closed her eyes and sipped her cognac. The next part of her story was going to be hard to tell. It was this that had cost her practically everything that was dear in her life.

  Everyone in Leland had passed judgment, but something told her that Carly Griffin wouldn't.

  "And then I…then I met Petra Yager."

  This was undoubtedly the woman Carly's mother had heard about.

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  "Petra was married to a surgeon who was doing a rotation here from the med school at UK. They were originally from Germany, but he was hoping to be able to stay in this country. They were a popular addition to the fundraising parties, on account of being from somewhere else and all, and one day Petra offered to help me out with one of the parties. So after that, we started spending a whole lot of time together, talking about fundraising ideas, and working on projects and such." The redhead took another sip of brandy and blew out a loud breath before continuing. "Petra was just about the most beguiling woman I'd ever met. She was exotic and captivating…and so, so sensuous. And she just found me fascinating. I knew–we know these things about ourselves–" she slurred, shaking her finger as though to admonish her guest, "that I was flat out playing with fire. But I couldn't stop…I didn't want to stop. So there we were one night at that party at the country club…must have been two hundred guests…and Petra just looked so…sexy! She had on a…," Justine shook her head in confusion, her words coming slower and slower, "I don't remember…but like I said, she was really sexy."

  Carly couldn't have moved if she'd wanted to. Her friend had leaned forward and practically pinned her against her pillows as she spoke, her voice a loud whisper as though the walls had ears. From the dreamy expression on Justine's face, it was apparent that she had taken herself back to that night.

  "I went in the kitchen to get the awards we were gonna give out, and she followed me. I'd been looking at her all night, and she'd been looking at me…like she could just…eat me up. ‘ Mein schatz.' That's what she said. It means sweetheart or something…I looked it up.

  And then she kisssssed me."

  "Kissed you?" Carly became vaguely aware that she was…aroused. And she was jealous as hell.

  "Kisssssed me. And you know exactly what I did when she did that." It was not a question.

  "What did you do?"

  "I–it was a blue dress with spaghetti straps, I remember now–I put my hand on her breast…and I squeezed it." Justine made a gripping motion with her free hand, using her other to raise her glass once again. Squinting as she leaned forward again, she added,

  "Just like that time I grabbed yours. It's like the nerves are all…connected." Because they are.

  Carly's mo
uth had gone dry as she found herself sitting up, now only inches from Justine's lips and that searching hand. In about two seconds, they were going to have a very similar experience. Nearly breathless, she asked, "And then what happened?"

  "And then JT walked in with Sara McCurry and Aaron Cobb."

  And tonight, six years later–and without even being present–the threesome had managed to shatter what might have been another electric moment for Justine. Instead, the blonde 54

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  woman's jaw dropped in disbelief as she slumped backward onto the pillows. "You mean Sara McCurry from high school?"

  "The same. You remember the three ways to spread gossip? Telephone, telegraph…."

  "And tele-Sara."

  Justine's slow, emphatic nod underscored her inebriated state. "And by the next day, everybody in town had heard about it…'cept by that time, the story had us with half our clothes off rolling around on the floor, and some people were even swearing up and down that they'd seen pictures."

  "What'd you do?"

  "I stayed in bed for a week with the blinds closed and the phone off the hook."

  "And JT?"

  "JT laughed his hind end off. But Aaron Cobb was his law partner, and after a while, Aaron thought all that gossip might be bad for business…what with one of the partner's wives practically scandalizing the whole community. So after a month or so…JT said he thought we ought to go ahead and get divorced. There weren't any hard feelings or anything. Heck, we got along better after all that than we did before. I guess the pressure was off, and it gave him an excuse to move on without looking like the sleaze bucket he was." The redhead polished off the last of her cognac and clumsily set the glass on the coffee table.

  "And what happened to Petra?"

  "Petra!" The accompanying laugh was decidedly insincere. "Petra was sent back to Germany to live until her husband got his green card. They couldn't afford to be seen as undesirables."