Silver Falls - Anne Stuart [10]
The Glenfiddich was out on the counter, and she took down three cut-crystal glasses from the cupboard. Stephen Henry had already given her detailed instructions on how he liked his Scotch, and David drank it the same way. She could only assume the unwanted prodigal son would be satisfied with the same thing, and she splashed the whiskey and Perrier into each glass. And then she took out one more glass, poured two fingers of whiskey into it and downed it, neat, smothering the choking feeling. She’d never been much of a drinker—in her wild youth it had been weed, but she’d given that up when she’d gotten pregnant and had never been interested in finding something to take its place. But right then she needed a drink, and badly.
“You always let him treat you like a servant?”
Caleb had come through the swinging door, as silent as the grave, she thought, then shook herself. “I don’t think your brother is going to be happy to find you in here with me.”
“I have no intention of letting him find me. I told him I was going out for a smoke—David won’t even notice. The old man is busy reading him the riot act. He doesn’t understand why the two of us can’t be friends, and I’m not about to let him know exactly what kind of dark secrets lie between us. My father’s happier in his ignorance.”
“David doesn’t have dark secrets,” she said, putting her empty glass in the sink.
“Then why didn’t you know he had a brother?” Caleb reached past her for one of the glasses of whiskey, and his arm brushed hers, probably no more than the cloth of his denim shirt, but she felt it. “I’m sure he’ll fill you in on all the morbid details tonight. Just make sure you don’t have nightmares.”
“Nightmares?”
His smile was cool and wry. “No, I think you’re too practical to have nightmares. That’s why you married David, isn’t it? It was the practical thing to do.”
“Go to hell,” she said, picking the glass out of the sink and reaching for the whiskey bottle again.
He raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry, did I hit a little too close to the bone? My brother’s not one for passionate love matches…unless he’s changed in the last five years. He’s a very calculating fellow.”
“I’ll have you know that your brother is a very passionate man,” she said, pouring another generous dollop of the whiskey into her glass. Lying, of course. It was David’s calm, unemotional demeanor that had first drawn her to him in a time of emotional chaos, when Tessa had been killed. Passion was one thing she could happily do without.
“Really? I never would have imagined it. Why don’t you tell me all about it? We can go for a drive, get to know each other, and you can give me all the details about your sex life. Does he go down on you?”
She stared at him, shocked, the glass untouched in her hand.
“No? That’s a shame. I would.” He reached over and took the other two glasses. “Don’t worry about these—I can be a butler as well as you can be a maid. Why don’t you put that glass down and go home before you’re too sauced to drive? I’ll make sure David gets back eventually.”
“Eventually?” In fact, the thought of getting the hell out of there was incredibly powerful. She couldn’t think, not with that man watching her, not with her husband and father-in-law in the other room, arguing in soft voices.
“We have a lot of time to catch up on,” Caleb said. “I promise you we aren’t going to kill each other. At least, not tonight.”
She looked at him for a long moment. It was hard to believe the two of them were related. David was fair, with a pale complexion and soft blue eyes, and he was no more than average height with a slight tendency to thicken up around the middle. He exercised conscientiously, and lectured Rachel on nutrition and health. She hadn’t had a candy bar in four months.
Whereas Caleb Middleton was taller, around six feet, and lean, almost skinny. His hair was long and black, his eyes a shade of brown so dark they were almost black. And that narrow, clever, mocking face was a polar opposite of