Informed Consent Page 3

  She needed to make arrangements, today, to get the boys to school regularly. Meanwhile, she’d hope and pray Andrew didn’t discover William had missed class today. And she could cross her fingers the man didn’t make a habit of reading the police reports and no one he knew did either.

  Her chances there were pretty damn slim. Some busy body always read the police reports.

  Possessing an inheritance made it the transportation issue easy to solve. A few calls later and she’d hired someone to transport the boys to school. Hopefully the agency did background checks and wouldn’t assign a member of Sicko Man Loves Young Boys to drive her brothers. That problem solved, she moved upstairs only to discover that William was no longer in his room. Denise pulled her cell phone out of her jeans and punched in the speed dial for her oldest, younger brother. A blast of rap coming from under the bed told her wherever William was, his phone wasn’t. Why have a phone if you’re not going to carry it?Alternatively, why carry it if you don’t want people to reach you?

  She peered under the bed for the heck of it. The little shit wasn’t there.She stumped back downstairs and searched through all the nooks and crannies. No way would she check the barn. If William was out there he was doing something criminal and did she really want to know?

  Crap. Better check. She needed to get to him fast when he got home to give him the word -- if asked, he’d had a stellar day in school.

  Great. Her current plan involved encouraging her brothers to lie. That sucked. She knew she fell a little short in the moral department, but still…way to fall even shorter... On the other hand, she didn’t want another session of discipline with Andrew. A flush crept up her cheeks and her tummy did one of those weird flip things.

  At the kitchen door Denise paused and took another long look around as much of the property as was visible. Not like she’d know if anything was out of place. She stopped paying attention years ago.

  A huge, very sorry looking dog brushed by her and burst into the house. Denise sighed. It’d be great if she had the energy to chase after it and find the damn dog but she didn’t. She’d get out a hunk of steak and hopefully the smell would lure the beast back into the kitchen. Andrew’s expectations about dogs in the house seemed pretty clear. . Huge, matted and filthy was not on the acceptable list.

  She opened the refrigerator door. Of course there was no hunk of meat in the frig. So that plan was shot. Pulling out a chair, Denise sank down and put her head on her arms. What a day. What an awful day.

  Something snagged in her brain and she straightened, booting up the desktop computer that lived on the kitchen table along with tons of other crap. Who needed a clear table when the family never ate together? She typed Domestic Discipline into the Google bar and hit enter.

  ***

  “Yo, Denise!” Lucas swaggered into the kitchen, Zander close on his heels. He dropped an immense book bag on the floor next to the frig. “Like, where were you?”

  Crap. She groaned and shot a look at the time stamped on the top of her screen before quickly closing the page. She’d sat there for a very long time. Oohhh, the things she’d read. It left her squirming, annoyed, curious and uncomfortably aroused. Add horrified and pissed off.

  She began the steps to erase her browsing history. All she needed was for one of her brothers to find domestic discipline flash up as an option when he typed domestic disorder into a search engine.

  “Like I forgot,” she said, belatedly answering Lucas. “From now on a driver will drop you guys at school and pick you up. So it won’t matter if I forget you exist.”

  “’Great,’ mumbled the little orphan boy.” Lucas made his voice as pathetic as possible.

  Stricken, Denise looked up and shot death rays at Lucas before swiveling around to glance at her youngest brother. “I didn’t mean it Zander. I swear! Oh shit! Look at him!”

  Lucas shot his little brother a look and shook his head. “Cripes, Zander! Get a grip. I only said that to yank Denise’s chain.” He punched his brother lightly in the arm.

  Zander hunched one shoulder and scowled. “Well I am an orphan, dick head. It’s not fun.” He yanked open the frig, shoving his older brother out of his way.

  Lucas, in a moment of magnanimity brought on by horror at the thought he might really have upset the kid, allowed the shove to go unchallenged. “Yeah, well, I’m an orphan too. Heck! We all are. Group hug?”

  Denise ignored the offer. “Do either of you know where William is?”

  Both boys shook heads.

  “How come he got to stay home?” Lucas’s complaint was halfhearted. In general he enjoyed school and today he’d had a decent day. Most of the teachers had given him a wide berth. Several had laid hands on his shoulder and shaken their heads in mute expressions of support and sympathy. Megan Marie had given him her double chocolate chewy brownie. William had given him a joint the night before and he still had a goodly portion of it left.

  “He didn’t get to stay home, and I’m going to kill him when I get my hands on him. I need you guys to go to school, okay?”

  Lucas shrugged. “Fine. No biggie. Tell Will. Zander and I are cool.”

  “Don’t mention this to Andrew, ok?”

  Lucas shot his sister a sharp glance.

  Denise blushed.

  “You want us to LIE?” Zander paused, a wizened orange half way to his mouth.

  “No. Don’t bring it up,” Denise snapped.

  “But if he asks?”

  Lucas could be such a little shit.

  “We tell the truth?”

  “No,” Denise snapped. “Lie thru your teeth. Just this once.”

  There was never just once. She was going to hell.

  ***

  “You’re a flaming dickhead.” Samantha threw the words lightly but tinged with a certain note of rebuke toward her brother in law Andrew when she walked into her kitchen several hours later.

  Her husband, ten years older than Andrew, lounged against the sink. His long legs were stretched out, crossed at the ankles, and he held a beer in one large hand. The other hand was braced against the kitchen counter. He was laughing when Samantha walked in and her heart pounded the way it always did when she saw him for the first time after they’d been separated for too long. Like an eight hour work day.

  Andrew had asked his big brother the all important question – ‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’ Thereby eliciting Samantha’s opening comment.

  Sam moved to her husband and tilted her head up. A tall woman, she still had to reach to touch his lips. When she planted a kiss on his mouth heat surged through her the way it always did, even with the briefest kiss.

  “Aren’t you going to wallop her for that?” Andrew growled.

  “She didn’t call me a dick head.” Her husband laughed. He did slide a hand down his wife’s butt, only to press her more tightly against him.

  “What did I do?” Andrew had his own beer and took a long swig, never taking his eyes off his sister in law.

  “I stopped by to see your new wife today Andrew. I wanted to box your ears.”

  Samantha pushed herself away from her husband, but pressed her lips to his one more time and then turned to leave. Neil caught her by one arm and hauled her back to him. Andrew groaned. Neil grinned. “What’s wrong, bro? Little bride not taking care of your husbandly needs?”

  Andrew scowled, but wisely ignored the question.

  “How’d that come about, Sam? I mean the dropping by to see Denise part, not the wanting to box my ears part.”

  “I stopped by to meet her. I figured she might appreciate a visit. The poor woman’s parents only died a few weeks ago and you’ve forced her into a marriage she’s totally freaked by. If you ask me, she looks ready to lose it.”

  “She probably is,” Andrew muttered.

  Neil shook his head. “Well, then you get to help her put the pieces back together. I sure as hell don’t know why you decided to make this such a hard row to hoe.”

  Andrew sighed. “I
wanted to be up front. Not manipulative.”

  Neil pushed himself off the counter and yanked a chair out before straddling it.

  “Look Andrew. Think about deciding you want to convince a wild mustang to let you ride it.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake,” Samantha groaned. “A wild mustang?”

  “It’s a metaphor, woman,” Neil said with great dignity.

  He reached one long arm out across the table and snapped his fingers at his brother to get his attention. “Work with me here, bro. You have the mustang --beautiful, intelligent, strong…” He shot a look full of laughter at his wife.

  Samantha whacked him across the back of his head.

  Andrew wondered if he would ever have the relationship with Denise that Neil had with Samantha.

  “Beautiful, intelligent, strong…” he prompted his brother.

  “But wild,” Samantha reminded him. “Don’t forget wild.”

  “Here’s my point,” Neil said. “What do you do? Do you sit down on the rail of the corral and say ‘Listen here little lady, I am going to be your master. I will be in control of you. You will take my direction. Do you let her starve until she has no choice but to eat from your hand? No, dumb ass, you don’t.” He pounded his fist once on the table for emphasis.

  “If you’re smart you go out every day, a couple of times a day, and spend a few minutes where she can see you and get used to you being around. You work your way closer bit by bit. You let her get to know the sound of your voice. Eventually you get her to come to you because she’s curious, and no longer afraid. Someday she’s going to take an apple or carrot out of your hand. One day she’s going to let you touch her, slide your hand down her flank…”

  Samantha leaned over her husband and ran her hand through his hair. “Want to go upstairs, my Mustang Trainer?”

  Neil caught his wife with an arm around her hips and pulled her into his lap.

  Samantha settled there happily.

  “Seriously, Andrew. She’s a baby. A baby whose parents up and died without warning and she suddenly finds out she’s responsible for her brothers. She has no choice but to hand herself over to you, a guy who simply announces in no uncertain terms that he intends to treat her in a manner society has taught her is abusive. Of course she’ close to collapse.”

  “I have no intention of abusing her!”

  “She doesn’t know that, does she?” Neil was matter of fact. “I don’t know where you got your advice, bro, but it was bad. You made it a lot harder than it needed to be. You should have had a bridle on before you tossed the saddle on her back.”

  Samantha bristled. “A bridle?”

  Neil groaned. “This is what’s known as a EUPHEMISM. I guess it would be more correct to say he should have had her eating out of his hand first. Happy, Woman?”

  She kissed him.

  Andrew groaned again and lay his head down carefully on the table.

  Samantha leaned over from Neil’s lap and patted his head.

  “Stop it, woman!” Neil arched in the opposite direction, pulling his wife’s hand away from his brother. “Don’t try to make it better for him! He should feel miserable. He’s an ass and an idiot who should listen more to his big brother.”

  Andrew swore quietly and sat up. “I didn’t want to manipulate her.” He shoved himself away from the table. “We’d been dating for quite a while. I fell for her big time. She said she loved me. She knew I was wild about her. So I’d d already fed her the goddamn apples from my goddamn hand.”

  “Well when she balked, bro, you needed to back off. Not get out the twitch.”

  “The twitch?” Samantha shot up straight in the Neil’s lap.

  “Rope thingy on the end of a short club. You wrap it around the soft part of a horse’s nose and-”

  “You never did any such thing!”

  “Well, of course not,” Neil snapped. “I’m the ‘let her get used to the sound of your voice’ guy, remember? Andrew’s the twitch man.”

  “I have never used a twitch on a horse in my life.” Andrew snarled.

  Neil stood up and took his wife with him into his arms.

  “Metaphor, bro. Metaphor.”

  He paused in the doorway to the kitchen and looked back at his little brother.

  “Is the sex good?”

  Andrew gulped and nodded, without picking his head up.

  “Use it. Put your hands all over her. Whisper in her ear. Tell her you’re going to suck on her… I don’t know – choose your favorite body part, Drew.” He moved toward the door but threw back a last piece of advice. “Keep her aroused!”

  ***

  Overall, William’s day had been pretty damn fine. He’d slept in and while he’d been startled to find himself alone in the house, he didn’t mind one bit. He ate everything he could find in the kitchen --which wasn’t much if you didn’t go for liver pate in a can -- and when he saw Mrs. Murphy the cleaning lady heading up the walk from the courtyard, he escaped out the front. He wasn’t afraid of Mrs. Murphy. She liked to talk. He didn’t. At least, not to her, not today.

  William was an artist. He didn’t make a big noise out of it or anything, but he liked to go to the old carriage house. His mother used to have a studio there but she’d eventually moved into a much bigger, much fancier one in the main house. William’s father designed the new one for her as a surprise, stocked it chock full of everything, brand new, and when he presented it to her his mom never bothered to move any of her old supplies or even any of her paintings out of the carriage house. Being an artist was a thing for Moms, not a passion.

  Even her old kiln was still in working order. A small hoist stood in one corner, left over from the short lived Large Freestanding Sculpture Period. He jacked his music up loud enough to cause the ears of a lesser mortal to bleed and started building a huge canvas, his biggest yet. When he got bored with that he headed out to hook up with his buds.

  ***

  Andrew left his brother’s house. It would not be exaggerating to say his heart felt buoyant. Neil was right about some things and wrong about others. Last night had been good, very good and he was going to build on that. He grinned and stepped on the gas.

  The car shot forward and Andrew wove skillfully in and out of traffic before ducking down an alley he knew. Most people believed it dead ended. What they couldn’t see, thanks to an imposing brick and stone wall, was a sharp jog to the left that actually ran for another half mile, dumping a person in the know one block from the freeway entrance. Not shorter in miles, but definitely in time.

  He coasted through several stop signs without a problem, his hands beating a tattoo on the steering wheel, and then he spied a kid looking damn all like his little brother-in-law, William. Little was kind of a ridiculous word to use for the gangly kid. William the Wild. Andrew thought of the kid that way inside his head because if any of them was going to kick over the traces soon, it would be William.

  The kid was with a posse, all sagging and hoodie-ed, ear buds stuffed in their heads. They were laughing so hard some of them were doubled over. Yep, that was William, and he’d bet his best set of speakers that crew of his had been up to no good.

  Andrew’s foot almost hit the break. He changed his mind and found the gas again. He wanted to go home and see her, read her face for clues, not dick around with a bunch of rowdy teens.

  ***

  Once he managed to make it through the freaking, malfunctioning gates and park in the garage, Andrew grabbed his case from the back seat, opened the door that led into the kitchen and winced. Rap blared from somewhere deep within the recesses of the house. The walls were vibrating, for god’s sake. The kitchen resembled New Orleans after the hurricane. Smoke wafted around near the ceiling.

  Andrew looked around and clamped down hard on his temper. He liked to think he wasn’t a ridiculously fussy guy, but ok he enjoyed a clean house, and found it more than a little tough to relax amid squalor. But he got it too: Three boys, two of them full blown teenagers, lived
here. They’d come home from school and done what adolescent boys do -- seek food.

  Clearly, no one ever taught them how to clean up after themselves, and to be fair, what teenager did clean up their own mess? It would take an iron hand to bring about that kind of result and his wife was as far from an iron hand as you could get. If she even noticed the mess she probably thought the housekeeper would take care of it in the morning.He headed up stairs.

  This was the kind of thing a man and his wife needed to discuss. She had the money to pay a housekeeper, so why not? He’d been raised with household help, but his parents never would have stood for this level of thoughtlessness. The issue was a value judgment and they’d have to discuss it and decide what they wanted to, well, value.

  A small pit opened in his stomach. He was damn sure the issue had never caused even a minute blip in one neuron anywhere in her brain. He would have to bring it up. They would never agree. As Head of Household he’d have to make a decision. There’d be a brawl. He’d end up spanking her. Which, come to think of it--

  No. He wasn’t going there.

  Apparently another hurricane had blown through their bedroom. Clothes were strewn everywhere. The bed not only hadn’t been made but mud and debris decorated the linens.

  A large head poked from under a mound of duvet.

  Andrew stared.

  It was a very large head, and a very ugly one. What else remained hidden from view?

  He dropped his satchel in a chair and wandered around the room, assessing.

  Most of the clothes had been left there by his errant wife.