Tangled in Tinsel: The Celebration Series, Book 1

He’s not married! He’s not married! I danced my way down the short hallway to my bedroom. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t figured that out. Tommy is his nephew, I giggled to myself as I changed clothes and got ready for bed.

I curled up under the covers with a grin on my face and lightness in my heart. Everything I’d gone through might just be worth it if things worked out between Thad and me.

I fell into a deep sleep as I realized I might have just found the light at the end of the tunnel.

The soft touch of a warm hand caressed my bare shoulder, and I shifted under it to get more contact. A hot wet tongue ran up the side of my neck and I moaned, “Thad.” Man, what a dream, he could keep doing this all night long.

“Who’s Thad?”

The voice that spoke was not the one I had been dreaming about, and my eyelids exploded open as I twisted in bed to look over my shoulder at the man sitting on my bed.

“Kevin?” I jumped as fear and adrenaline spiked through me.

“Miss me, baby?”

I could barely make out the smile on his lips in the dark room. Why the hell was he here? He was supposed to be serving his sentence locked up in his house.

“What are you doing here?” I croaked as I swallowed the bad taste in my mouth. This wasn’t good.

“Not going to throw your arms around me and welcome me home?” He cocked his head to the side which helped my anger combat the fear in my chest.

“This is not your home. What the hell are you doing here and how did you get in my house?”

He shrugged, completely unmoved by my anger. “Your front door was unlocked. You know, you should really lock that.” I almost groaned out loud. I’d been floating on cloud nine when Thad left and didn’t even think to make sure the door was locked.

“Who is Thad?” he asked me again.

My heart snapped to attention, “What do you mean, ‘Who is Thad’?”

“You said that name in your sleep. Who is it?”

Did I hear a touch of jealousy in his voice? This man did not have the right to be jealous. “You must have misheard me. I was about to say, ‘That feels good’.”

The whites of his eyes practically glowed as they stared my way. “Why did you move all the way up here? It took me a while to track you down.”

“Yeah, well you can forget you know where I am and leave. You’re not staying here, Kevin.”

His laugh was cold and hard. “Since when do you tell me what I’m going to do? You’re not my wife, Cassandra.”

“Yeah, no shit!” I threw back the covers and climbed out the opposite side of the bed. “You need to leave, Kevin. I don’t want you here.”

I faced him over the bed, deep shadows filled the room, making it hard to see him, but I could make out the outline of his body as he faced me. “I’m not going anywhere, Casey. You think I’d come all the way here to find you just to go back?” He barked a slightly demented laugh, “I have no intention of going back. I’m not going to be locked up in my house like some dog in a kennel.”

“You can’t stay here,” I reiterated as calmly as I could. “You need to leave, Kevin. I don’t want anything to do with you.”

Kevin began to prowl around the bed, and I was tempted to jump up into the middle of it and run out the door, but I stayed put. I needed to show him I wasn’t afraid of him and talk him into leaving.

“Of course you want me, Casey.” He reached the foot of the bed and kept coming. “You love me, and we made plans to spend our lives together.” He rounded the corner on my side and my heart beat faster. “It’s you and me together.”

The back of his hand smoothed down over my cheek, and I fought not to flinch.

“That was before you lied to me, back before I knew that you were married and a thief.”

I saw the whites of his teeth as his lips pulled back in a wide grin. “I wasn’t lying to you. I was trying to figure out how to get out of my marriage the best way.”

“Bullshit,” I replied and pulled back away from him. “You need to leave, Kevin, you can’t be here.”

His voice grew deeper as I felt the tension mount in him, “That’s where you’re wrong, Casey. I’m not going to leave, not without you.”

“What are you talking about?” A sliver of fear began to take root in my gut again.

“When I leave here, you and I are going to go over the border into Canada.” He came closer, taking my face between his hands. “I’ll be free and clear of the law there, and we can get married and have that family that we always talked about.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” I whispered.

“No, I haven’t, Casey, not by a long shot. It just took me a while to figure it all out.”

“Figure what out? How to become a fugitive? I’m not going anywhere with you, Kevin.” I tried to step back and ended up against the nightstand beside my bed.

The voice that came out from between his lips shot fear all the way into the tips of my toes, “You don’t have a choice, Cassandra.” He reached behind him and pulled out a gun, pointing it up at the ceiling as he displayed it for me. “You’re going to do as I say.”

“Or what? You’re going to kill me?” Would he do that? Had he completely lost all of his sense?

“I would have no problem putting a bullet in your head. It’s not like I haven’t done it before.” His voice was cold as ice and his eyes looked almost crazed as the words left his lips.

My body was paralyzed as his words filled my mind. He had killed someone before? How had he gotten away with it? Why hadn’t I known about it?

I didn’t know because he’d never told me, not about killing someone and not about stealing millions of dollars from innocent people.

“You wouldn’t,” I said more to calm myself than to fight with him.

“Don’t dare me, Casey. That’s what Bridget did, and now she’s dead.”

The tangent fear that had held me upright cracked, and I felt my knees buckle. “You killed your wife?”

Kevin turned away from me and took a few steps. “It was easier than divorcing her.”

If Kevin had killed his wife, he’d have no problem killing me. What the hell was I going to do? Could I somehow get a message to Thad?

“Get back in bed. I need to get some sleep,” he said as he set the gun on the nightstand and began to unbuckle his belt.

“I’m not sleeping with you!” I pulled my feet off the floor and rolled across the bed to get to the other side.

Kevin paused and looked down at the gun before he turned to me. “I have no intention of having sex with you, Casey. I need sleep, and you’re going to stay right here while I do. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

“Kevin, you can’t do this,” I pleaded. “Please, don’t do this.”

He sighed, “Shut up, Casey, and lay down.” He yanked his shirt over his head and pulled his pants down off his hips. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

I had never imagined Kevin as a physically-abusive man. In the two years I’d known him, I’d barely ever seen him angry, and he had never raised a hand to anyone. I slipped back under the covers, lying on my side facing away from him on the very edge of the bed.

Kevin had changed, that was obvious. He’d admitted to killing his wife, and now he was a fugitive. His cold demeanor gave me no doubt he would hurt me if he had to.

The bed dipped behind me as he climbed in. His hand reached out to me and pulled at my arm, “Come here, Casey, I want to hold you.”

Could I tell him no? Or would it be better to play along until I could find a way to get free?

With a deep breath, I allowed him to pull me to his side. The last thing I wanted to do was touch him, but he forced me to lie with my head on his shoulder, I had no place to put my hand except on his chest.

My eyes locked on to the dark shadow of the gun two feet from me on the nightstand. Could I reach it before him?

Probably not, but the harder question was: Could I use the gun against him if I needed to? That one I didn’t think I would be able to do.

Kevin ran his hand down my head and back a few times before the movement slowly stopped and his breathing deepened and evened out. Fear of waking him held me still, but there was no way I could relax enough to sleep. I spent the next several hours staring at the draped window as the darkness began to recede and light began to filter in through the edges.

When the sun had risen, the room was light enough that I could see better, but instead of looking around the room, my eyes stayed locked on the handle of the black gun sitting on the table.

I felt Kevin stir under me, and I tried to pull away. Several times while he slept, I had tried to get away from him, but his arm had been like a vice around my waist and if I tried to shift, it would tighten.

Once again, as I tried to lift off his chest, he pulled me tightly to him, but this time, his hand began to move over my hip slowly.

I clenched my teeth against the unwanted feeling of his hand caressing my hip and buttock. His other hand brushed against the side of my breast as he turned his head and kissed the top of my head. My stomach rolled.

His hands became more demanding.

“Kevin,” I pulled his hand off my chest, “Stop, I’m not having sex with you.”

His hands stilled and he sighed, “Fine, I guess you do have the right to be pissed at me for lying to you, and I’ll give you time to forgive me,” he opened his brown eyes and pierced me with a heated gaze, “but it won’t be long before you are begging me to take you again.” He gripped my hand and pushed it down over his rock-hard erection.

I was so tempted to twist and squeeze his balls, but what the hell was I going to do once I got away from him? Run outside in six inches of snow in bare feet and a camisole?

He shifted his hips up into my stiff hand, rubbing himself against me. “You sure you don’t want it, Casey? We were always good in bed together.”

“No,” I stated bluntly.

He arched again. “Come on, what a hell of a way to wake up and reunite.” I tried to yank my hand back, but he held it there while he kept rubbing against my palm. “Fine, if you don’t want to have sex, the least you could do is jack me off, or better yet, give me head.” He chuckled deeply in his chest.

“I think the last thing you would want is for me to have my teeth wrapped around you,” I growled and yanked my hand as hard as I could while I twisted away from him.

He let me go. “Yeah,” he laughed, “you’re probably right. That’s going to have to wait until you trust me again.”

Trust him? Like hell I would ever trust him. He lied to me and killed his wife!

“Where are you going?” He reached for the gun, and I froze as I looked over my shoulder at him.

“I’m going to the bathroom. Are you going to shoot me for having to urinate?” I glared at him.

He waved the muzzle of the gun sideways, “Fine, go ahead, but don’t do anything stupid.”

“No, I already did that when I got involved with you,” I muttered as I closed myself off in the bathroom.

I leaned back against the door and covered my face with my hands. What the hell was I going to do now? Could I talk him into leaving? Maybe tell him that I had a cop next door that might ask questions? Maybe that would get him to leave.

When I exited the bathroom ten minutes later, I had composed myself. I was going to do whatever I had to do to get Kevin out of here.

“What’s for breakfast?” he asked as he pulled his shirt over his head.

“What do you want?” I queried as I grabbed my robe and slipped my arms in it.

“Surprise me.” He grinned, and all I could do was stare. I had seen that same grin and heard those words so many times in the year we had been together. Back then, they used to make my chest feel warm, now they did the opposite.

I wandered out to the kitchen and glanced at the house phone sitting on the counter in its charger before turning to put on a pot of coffee.

“Don’t worry about making a phone call. I cut your phone line last night, so you have no service.”

I spun on him, “You did what?”

He shrugged as he pulled out a chair and sat down at my small table. “I wanted privacy.”

I shook my head as I turned away and finished pouring water into the coffeemaker. He might have cut my phone line, but I still had my cellphone. There was still hope.

“Are eggs alright?” I asked as I opened the fridge.

“Fine, make mine scrambled with toast.” I peered over at him and saw him glancing around my house. “Why the hell did you buy this place? It’s like being in a closet.”

I cracked the eggs into a bowl, “You seem to forget that my family lost all its money with the little stunt you and my father pulled. All of my funds are still being held until everything is squared away. This was all I could afford.”

I hit the last egg a bit too hard and had to dig out a few pieces of shell from the bowl.

“You’ll have your money soon enough,” he stated.

I snorted, “What makes you so sure of that? Besides, by the time it gets squared away, I’ll be rotting in jail for harboring a fugitive.”

He laughed. “Babe,” he came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist, “it won’t be long and we’ll both be free. We’ll be in Canada and there is nothing anyone can do to stop us. It’ll be just you and me like we always planned.”

His voice so close to my ear put me on edge and my eyes darted to my knife block. Could I grab one and stab him? Stab wounds could be messy, and if you didn’t hit something major the first time, the person could still come after you.

Kevin went back to sitting at the table and asked me question after question about my new job, the people I met, why I chose this place. After breakfast, we moved to the living room where he turned on the television and skimmed the news channels.

There was a knock on the door, and my heart galloped in my chest. That had to be Thad. What the hell was I going to do?

“Who the hell is that?” Kevin asked quietly.

“I don’t know, maybe my neighbor coming over to check on me.”

His eyes were slits in his face as he studied me, and he stood up and reached around to his back. Oh, please God, don’t let him hurt Thad.

“Well, we’ll just have to get rid of your neighbor.” He moved to the door as I stood up on shaking knees. Kevin opened it and asked Thad if he could help him. The whole time, my insides were screaming, No, he needs to help me!

The shock on Thad’s face was stark as he took in Kevin, and I feared something bad was going to happen.

I moved to Kevin’s side quickly, “Thad, what are you doing here? Is everything alright?”

I felt Kevin stiffen beside me a moment before he slung his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close.

I wasn’t surprised that Thad had seen the car. Over his shoulder, I could see the black SUV parked in the driveway behind mine.

Thad’s eyes grew large as Kevin told him he was my fiancé. I tried not to wince as he said the words. It would be safer for Thad and his family if they thought it was true and went about his business until I could figure out what to do.

Kevin was getting irritated. I heard it in his voice when he all but demanded to know who Thad was.

“Kevin, this is Thad, my neighbor. I babysat his son last night.” Would he pick up on the fact that I had called Tommy his son again? Would he get that there was something going on? Or would he think I had lied to him and was trying to save my own neck.

I thought that we were in the clear until Thad asked to talk to me privately. Kevin reached around his back, and I knew he was going for his gun, while he snuggled up to me and pretended to be the doting fiancé.

I barely got the words out around the bile in my throat, “Thanks for checking on me, Thad.”

As the door closed, I felt like a piece of my soul had gotten stuck on the other side.