Sweet Revenge

pushed it aside. “We could go for some pansies, and what were those things Mom always loved? Morning glories.”
    “All right.” But her mind was on other things. “Grace, the meats going to burn.”
    Later, Kathleen closed herself in her office. Grace could hear the phone ring, the Fantasy phone, as she’d decided to term it. She counted ten calls before she went upstairs. Too restless to sleep, she turned on her computer. But she wasn’t thinking of work or of the murders she created.
    The contented feeling that had been with her the night before and most of the day was gone. Kathleen wasn’t all right. Her mood swings were too quick and too sharp. It had been on the tip of her tongue to mention therapy, but she’d been too aware of what the reaction would have been. Kathleen would have given her one of those hard, closed-in looks, and the discussion would have ended.
    Grace had mentioned Kevin only once. Kathleen had told her she didn’t want to discuss him or Jonathan. She knew her sister well enough to realize that Kathleen was regretting her visit. What was worse, Grace was regretting it herself. Kathleen always managed to point out the worst aspects of her, aspects that under other circumstances Grace herself managed to brush over.
    But she’d come to help. Somehow, despite both of them, she was going to. But it would take some time, she told herself for comfort, resting her chin on her arm. She could see lights in the windows next door.
    She couldn’t hear the phone ring now with the office door closed and her own pulled to. She wondered how many more calls her sister would take that night. How many more men would she sastisfy without ever having seen their faces? Did she grade papers between calls? It should have been funny. She wished it were funny, but she couldn’t stop seeing the tension on Kathleen’s face as she’d pushed her food around her plate.
    There was nothing she could do, Grace told herself as she rubbed her hands over her eyes. Kathleen was determined to handle things her way.
    It was wonderful to hear her voice again, to hear her make promises and give that quick, husky laugh. She was wearing black this time, something thin and filmy that a man could tear away on a whim. She’d like that, he thought. She’d like it if he were there with her, ripping off her clothes.
    The man she was talking to barely spoke at all. He was glad. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine she was talking to him. And only him. He’d been listening to her for hours, call after call. After a while, the words no longer mattered. Just her voice, the warm, teasing voice that poured through his earphones and into his head. From somewhere in the house a television was playing, but he didn’t hear it. He only heard Desiree.
    She wanted him.
    In his mind he sometimes heard her say his name. Jerald. She would say it with that half laugh she often had in her voice. When he went to her, she would open up her arms and say it again, slowly, breathlessly. Jerald.
    They would make love in all the ways she described.
    He would be the man to finally satisfy her. He would be the man she wanted above all others. It would be his name she said over and over again, on a whisper, on a moan, on a scream.
    Jerald, Jerald, Jerald.
    He shuddered, then lay back, spent, in the swivel chair in front of his computer.
    He was eighteen years old and had made love to women only in his dreams. Tonight his dreams were only of Desiree.
    And he was mad.

SWEET REVENGE
A Bantam Book
    PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam edition published January 1989
Bantam reissue / June 1997
Bantam reissue / December 2006
    Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
    All rights reserved
Copyright © 1988 by Nora Roberts
    Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.,
    eISBN: 978-0-307-56836-6
    www.bantamdell.com
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