Page 17 of The Daring Times of Fern Adair
“You lied,” she cried, the razor starting to shake.
He took a deep breath. His chest, already broad, expanded. With the barest trace of guilt, he nodded. “I lied. I’m not George Black. I’m Calvin. Cal Rosetti.”
Clean Calvin.Even though her mind was foggy and panicked, that came to her clearly, quickly.Red Rodney.Her throat closed off.The Rosettis are cracked.
“Put the razor down. I said I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Why should I believe that? I woke up…I woke up undressed and in this room. In that bed. I don’t know what happened, but I think… I …” She sucked in a shaking breath. Blinding pops of light, rough tugging on her limbs, the face of a man hovering over her, her eyelids half shut.
“Stanny took some pictures, that’s all,” Cal said.
Her arm holding the razor sagged. “Pictures?”
He made another step forward, and Fern straightened her arm again. He pulled back, but with a look of bored annoyance rather than apprehension.
“I could take that from you in two heartbeats, and you wouldn’t even nick me. So put it down. For the last time, goddamn it, I’mnotgoing to hurt you.”
She didn’t doubt for a moment that he could wrest the straight razor from her hand. But he was wrong if he thought he’d come out unscathed.
“Pictures of me?” she asked. “Undressed?”
He ignored the razor and came across the small bedroom. Fern pressed herself against the washstand, but Cal only lowered himself into the green chair. He braced his elbows on his legs and nodded.
“But wh-why? What have I done to make you do something so despicable?”
He sat back. “You? Nothing. It isn’t about you.”
“But I was the one you undressed! I was the one you…you …”
Nausea curled through her stomach, threatening to cast up the fruity pink drink she’d so stupidly consumed. Panic drained all feeling from her face. Numb, cold, and sick, black dots scattered across her vision. He held up his hands again, as if in surrender.
“I only took off your dress, okay? And if you think I got off on posing the judge’s hermit daughter on my bedfor my brother’s goddamned pictures, you’re outta your mind.”
Hisbed? Fern blinked, trying to erase the image of this man positioning her undressed body in any number of crude positions while she was unconscious.
Cal scrubbed his hand through his already disheveled dark hair and got up to pace the floor at the foot of the bed.
“You didn’t do anything else?” she asked.
He stopped his pacing and glared at her, as if the question offended him. “Nothing. No one did, all right, princess?”
There had been others in the room, though. She’d woken up with the vague, distorted memory of men’s laughter. Underneath her gown, heat crawled along her scarred arm and leg. They had seen her. Laughed at her.
“You’re repulsive,” she whispered as her throat closed off. Not with nausea, but with shame. Tears threatened yet again, and Fern’s arm, so tired, released its tense hold on the straight razor.
“I know,” was all Cal replied.
She stared at him another few seconds before her trembling hand finally set the razor back into the shaving kit. “What is he going to do with them?”
Cal continued to pace, his hands now shoved in his pockets. “Blackmail the judge.”
“He’s going to show them to myfather?”
Cal stopped and looked at her. His eyes were empty of any emotion while her own pulse knocked in her throat.
“Just one picture,” he answered. “Probably the worstof them, with a promise that the others will hit theAmericanand every other rag in the city unless he does what Rod wants.”
Her lungs shriveled. “What does he want? Money?”
