Wings of Love by Teresa Howard

Author:Teresa Howard [Howard, Teresa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2014-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

All the guests were gone.

Plates dotted with the remains of half-eaten sandwiches, crumbs of cakes, pies, and pastries, gnawed drumsticks, greasy bones of virtually every other part of a chicken’s body, globs of browning potato salad, melting jello—red, green, orange—and virtually every other funeral food that could be transported in a covered dish by a God-fearing Baptist female, littered Ash’s sunken living room.

Half-filled punch cups sat in, around, even under, the dirty plates. Crushed cigarettes and cold ashes added to the mess left by the Movers and Shakers of Richmond who had gathered at the home of Bettina Caroline Winston Foster to eulogize her.

Standing in the doorway in her stockinged feet, Charlie surveyed the room. It looked like a tornado had passed through, with no possibility of survivors.

Ash had dismissed the servants for the evening. Did he expect her to clean all this away alone? Was it his way of testing her, seeing what kind of wife she would make?

Did she have a surprise for him. She didn’t intend to become his wife, obedient or otherwise. The familiar sense of guilt reared its head. Arguing with herself about the appropriate time to break her engagement, she drew a deep breath, rolled up the sleeves of her teal silk blouse, and began stacking plates, cups, saucers, and silverware.

Ash was upstairs in the shower. Just needed a moment alone, he had claimed.

Well, he could have all the time he wanted as far as Charlie was concerned. Soon as she finished cleaning up, she was bound for home, a hot bath, a good book, and her four-poster feather bed. Alone.

She was expected in the operating room in the morning. Early in the morning. And today had been trying and tiring. She was dead on her feet.

Irritation at Ash for dismissing the servants and expecting her to do their job caused her to place a particularly delicate china cup on the counter a bit more forcefully than she ought. The egg-shell thin porcelain snapped with a delicate pop. A minuscule fissure, nonetheless hideous for its tiny size, made a jagged line through the delicate fleur-de-lis pattern, from the rim of the cup to the bottom.

“Careful!” a male voice thundered from behind her.

Startled, Charlie spun around. Her forearm swept the other dishes from the counter. She watched in horror as the china fell through the air in what seemed like slow motion, finally crashing and shattering into a thousand pieces on the Italian ceramic tile installed just six months earlier.

Charlie dropped to her knees, clutching the broken china, cutting her hands, though unaware. Her eyes were riveted to Ash’s face. He looked, quite frankly, as if he might murder her.

“That’s mother’s wedding china. It’s worth a fortune.” His voice was a growl, sounding almost inhuman.

Reflexively, Charlie tightened her grip on the shards of glass. Blood dripped onto the floor. She felt no pain as she stared into the face of a childhood friend who had become a stranger.

As soon as the monster within Ash surfaced, it vanished.

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