Page 42 of It Happened on the Lake

He wondered what exactly went on inside and cast one last look to the attic door. It hadn’t opened again.

Time to head home.

He stepped onto the street, hands deep in his jacket pockets.

As he was almost past the cabin, a girl slipped out the front door only to close it behind her. Her red hair was wild, held in place by a headband, a fringed vest barely covering her breasts as she sat on the steps.

“Hey!” She waved to him and smiled. “Whatcha doin’?” she asked, standing near a macramé hanger where a near-dead plant hung from a hook screwed into the roof’s overhang. “Want a hit?”

He paused as she lit a joint and sucked hard.

When he stepped closer, she froze, a small stream of smoke exiting her parted lips. Sensual lips. “Oh. I. Uh.” Her eyebrows drew together and she was clearly confused. “I, um, I thought you were Chase.”

Levi wasn’t surprised. Aside from their differences in hair and eye color, he and Chase resembled each other. A lot. Chase was bigger, an inch taller, but even that might change as Levi grew older.

“Yeah, I’m his brother,” he said.

“Really? Uh. Yeah. I’ve seen you.” Nodding, she got to her feet. Approached. “The offer still stands. Wanna toke?” She smiled, more broadly to show off white teeth.

“Sure.” He took the joint and acted as if he smoked pot all the time, which he didn’t, but he needed something to distract him from her massive breasts, swinging freely beneath the scrap of a suede vest with its long fringe.

Somehow he avoided coughing and asked her name.

“Moonbeam.”

“Moon—?”

“Moonbeam. Everyone calls me that.” At his skeptical look, she said, “Yeah, I know,” and rolled her big expressive eyes. “It’s kinda crazy but it’s waaaay cooler than Janet.”

“If you say so.”

“For sure!” she said with a tinkling laugh, her eyes twinkling in the porch light.

“Okay. Moon, er, Moonbeam.”

Giggling, she said, “I think I like you, Chase’s brother, even if you are jail bait.”

“Jail—?”

The front door opened and the strains of “White Rabbit” wafted out on the woody scent of patchouli.

A muscle-bound guy with a huge Afro nearly filled the doorway, his big frame silhouetted by shifting light from lava lamps that were visible just beyond his shoulders. “Who’re you?” he demanded gruffly.

Janet/Moonbeam hurried up the steps and placed a hand on the guy’s bare chest. “He’s cool,” she assured him. “He’s Chase’s brother.”

“Shit. A kid?” His dark gaze landed on Levi. “What’re you doin’ here?”

“Just walking.”

“It’s late. Ain’t it past your bedtime?”

“Hey, Ronnie, don’t,” Moonbeam said in a soft voice. “I said, he’s cool. No need to give him a bad time.”

“I don’t like kids hanging out. Isn’t he the son of a cop or somethin’?”

“So is Chase and”—she shrugged—“the cops don’t bother us.”

“Yet,” he said, skewering Levi with a suspicious glare.

“You worry too much.” She kissed one of his bare pectoral muscles, and he let out a sigh. “Someone’s got to.”

“Give it a rest.”

“Okay. This time. But I don’t like kids hanging out here.

” To Levi he said, “You’d best be gettin’ home.

” Then to Moonbeam, “What’re you thinkin’?

Now, come on.” With a possessive arm around Moonbeam’s slim waist, he drew her inside and shut the door.

A second later Levi heard the distinctive sound of a dead bolt slamming into place.

But the shade wasn’t completely drawn.

He took a chance, peeking beneath it. Inside the black dude and Moonbeam finished the joint, then started kissing and touching. He pushed her onto an orange couch, his big hands working upward, past that tantalizing fringe to squeeze a suddenly exposed nipple.

She arched her back, and he took the nipple into his mouth.

And damn it, Levi felt himself get hard.

He pulled away, disgusted with himself and more disgusted with Chase, who had mentioned the chicks and free love at this little house more than once.

Levi wanted no part of it.

He walked quietly home, then slipped inside the house, which was much quieter now. Just the furnace rumbling and rain on the roof.

Was it odd that Moonbeam knew Chase? Was she always so free with her body? Had Chase been down there and actually screwed her?

Their mother was always ranting and raving about “that awful place filled with free love and who knows what else?” But despite the rumors of drugs at the small house, the cops, including his father and Rand’s dad, had pretty much turned a blind eye to the comings and goings.

As Moonbeam had alluded to.

The cops don’t bother us.

What was that all about?

Not that he really cared.

Suddenly bone-tired, he kicked off his clothes and slipped wearily between the sheets. He was closing his eyes when he heard the sound of bedsprings beginning to squeak. Rhythmically and slow, and then faster and faster. Shit. His parents were doing it! His father, all hyped up on anger, was . . .

He wouldn’t think about it!

Nor would he think about Moonbeam’s supple body.

He felt an erection swelling again and tried to ignore it when he heard movement.

Over the squeaking mattress and his mother’s stifled moans, he heard Chase leaving the room next to his. Quick, light footsteps hurrying toward the basement stairs.

Man, Chase was pushing it.

He strained to hear the sound of the slider opening downstairs and thought he heard the click of the lock, but he couldn’t be certain. Nonetheless, Chase didn’t return to his room.

He must’ve made it out.

Within seconds, the dog two doors down began to bark ferociously. Old Man Sievers’s shepherd. Forever on patrol.

The dog probably caught wind of Chase.

Overhead, the squeaking suddenly ended. For a second Levi expected his father to come racing down the stairs after Chase.

Levi waited, counting off the seconds.

It didn’t happen.

Good.

As at odds as Levi was with his older brother, he didn’t go along with some of Dad’s rules. It was stupid that Chase, almost twenty with over a year of college under his belt, was forced to skulk around like a pre-teen.

But that’s the way it was in Thomas Hunt’s house.

As Dad had said earlier: his house, his rules.

Well, fuck that!

Levi reached under his mattress again and pulled out the flask. He’d get drunk. Why the hell not?

He downed what was left in the flask, and then exhaustion overtook him. He closed his eyes and within seconds slept the sleep of the dead.