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Date Posted: 16:42:57 04/12/03 Sat
Author: dqfan
Subject: Ghosts - ch.28

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT


"Sully, I'm not sure we should be here." This time it was Michaela's turn to object. "We can't keep interfering."

"Who's interferin'?" Sully asked innocently. "We're just watchin'…"

With that, Sully tugged Michaela off into a quiet corner of Ivy's hotel room just as the door burst open.

"Get in here before someone sees you," Ivy snapped. Furious, she summoned all her strength and yanked the much taller and much heftier Sheriff Leroy Carter unceremoniously into the room.

"But, Sugar…" Leroy blustered, unsure of what he'd done wrong. "You called me and told me t'take care o' things… And I did."

"Leroy…Angel…" Ivy smoothed her hand up the length of LeRoy's tie and tugged slightly. Her every inclination was to strangle him to death there and then. "That was NOT what I had in mind."

"I thought you were going to finish the job you bungled and finally pull the plug on Ben Reardon," she pushed him away coldly, walking over to pour herself a drink.

"I know, Sugar, but they had him in an' out o' that room all day today, like some kinda Mexican jumpin' bean," Leroy shook his head in disgust.

"When the doctors weren't checkin' him, the nurses were, and then they kept wheelin' him out fer tests…"

"I just didn't have time, Sugar," Leroy defended himself meekly. "The old lady's bail hearing was startin,' so I figured why not pin Stanley's murder on her t'save time?" Leroy had thought his plan quite ingenious until he'd received Ivy's irate phone call advising him otherwise.

"Why not?" Ivy repeated his question incredulously. "Why not? Maybe because I need her husband dead? That's why not!"

"Leroy, I thought you understood this." Ivy spoke to him as if he were a child, since, in her estimation, most men were.

"It doesn't do me any good to see Charity rot and die in prison if her husband inherits everything." Ivy moved closer to Leroy, her voice suddenly low and alluring.

"And if I don't get anything, then you won't either," she sing-songed, pouting for dramatic effect. Leroy's intelligence level usually necessitated the use of visuals.

Running her hands up his rugged arms - arms that would and had killed for her - Ivy could barely conceal her anger. Yet, she kissed him with all the passion she could gather, stringing him along as she had all the other men she'd used and discarded over the years.

As always, Leroy melted under Ivy's caresses, totally oblivious to her revulsion at both his stupidity and his touch. "I'll have you, Sugar…"

"Of course you will, Angel," Ivy cooed, the lie practically sticking in her throat.

Oh, Leroy would have her all right. He'd have her when Hell froze over. Or, maybe, he'd meet with an unfortunate accident instead. Ivy's lips curled into a smile. She'd come too far to have Leroy Carter ruin everything now.

True, Ben Reardon had been an unexpected complication, but he'd been put to good use and soon Charity would be on her way to prison for life. Then, Ivy could rid herself of the insufferable Leroy Carter and marry Charity's legal - if not biological - heir: the incredibly handsome, and rich in his own right, Peter Scarbrow.

Finally, she'd have it all…revenge, money, and respectability - everything due her family and more.

Raised by her grandmother, Ivy's childhood had been fleeting, spent mostly over a saloon in Virginia City. Her most vivid memory was her Granny's oft-told story of her own Granny - a woman named Lila - whose life was ruined by the no-good gambler, Hank Lawson. Mother Goose it wasn't.

Disowned by her family, and then fired from a respectable nursing job in Denver when her bosses discovered she had an illegitimate child, poor Lila had scrounged for work until, finally, desperate, she became forced to rely on the company of men just to feed her baby daughter, Chava.

The company of men… That's how Granny used to refer to the way she spent her evenings after Ivy was asleep upstairs. It was how Granny's mama and her mama before her had spent their evenings, and it was how Ivy's mother had chosen to spend her evenings after her divorce from Steven Wilcox.

Ivy could still recall discovering at the tender age of nine that Steven Wilcox wasn't her real father. Her real daddy had been one of Mama's nameless customers from ten years and at least a half a dozen cities ago.

From Lila to Chava to Eve, Ivy descended from a line of weak women, unable to recover from a century-old legacy of illegitimacy and abandonment…women who couldn't see any other way out.

Well, Ivy made a promise to herself a long time ago. Men wouldn't use her. She'd use them - whenever and however she could. Marry for money - alimony laws were so very generous, after all. And, if she was ever lucky enough to come across anyone named Lawson, she'd find a way to make them pay - dearly.

So, she set off for the bright lights of Vegas when she was only seventeen, hitching rides and charming old men who couldn't even get their pants down before she'd be gone. Worked like a breeze, too, for almost three years, until she met a man she thought might, just might, be different.

But, he wasn't. He was just like the rest. And, as much as Ivy wished Peter Scarbrow could be different, she knew better. Love would never enter into her vocabulary again.

Distracted by her recollections, Ivy was startled by a forceful knock at her door.

"I'll get rid a' whoever it is," Leroy pulled his gun dramatically.

"Oh, you'll do no such thing!" Ivy hissed, shoving him into the closet. "Now, stay there and be quiet!"

Ivy opened the door, livid to discover her visitor's identity. "What do you want, Gus?" she seethed, placing her hands defiantly on her hips.

"I want out!" Gus barked, pushing her into the room and closing the door behind him, all in one motion.

"You didn't say anything about murder!" he snapped, lowering his voice at the last word.

"Here…" she rolled her eyes, pouring him a drink. "Calm down."

Gus swallowed the glass in one gulp and set it on the table. "You're out of your mind…" he surmised fearfully - and quite correctly.

"Gus, I know there have been a few little glitches along the way but everything will be fine, I promise," Ivy tried to mollify him.

"Promise?" Gus found the concept wryly amusing. "You?"

"And, murder is NOT a glitch!" he railed, furious.

"Look, Gus," Ivy reminded him harshly. "You agreed to pretend to buy the painting so I could lure Charity Lawson into my little web. I get what I want and, in return, you get what you want."

"Full ownership of my hotel," Gus nodded. "But you never said anything about murder."

"Ben Reardon is fine," Ivy skirted the issue. "He'll make a full recovery, I'm sure."

"And how's Stanley gonna recovery from that safe you shoved him into?" Gus barked, grabbing her by the wrist.

Ivy struggled to control her temper. "I was as shocked to hear about that as you were," she lied unconvincingly.

"Shocked that he was dead or shocked that his body was recovered?" Gus cut to the point.

Ivy grabbed her wrist back with fury in her eyes.

"I thought so…" Gus smirked. "What happened, Ivy?" he asked snidely. "Dupe-of-the-month screw up?"

"Get out!" she yelled, fearing Gus would say too much with Leroy close by.

"I won't take the fall for you, Ivy," Gus warned. "I told you that this morning on the Trail," he reminded her, Ivy's poorly timed cellphone summons at the spa still rankling him.

"I've worked too hard. This hotel is all I've got. I might've been desperate enough to go along with this stupid scheme just to get you off my back but I'm not gonna stand by while people get killed…"

"Don't threaten me, Gus," Ivy hissed. "You'll be sorry."

Gus stared Ivy up and down. For someone so incredibly beautiful, she was, undoubtedly, the most pathetic, wretched woman he had ever known.

He walked away with only three words.

"I already am…"

^^^^^^^^^^

"Ya shoulda just let me kill him, Sugar," Leroy pouted, after being set free from the closet.

Undeterred by Gus' "dupe-of-the-month" comment, Leroy felt certain he could convince Ivy of his capabilities both in and out of the bedroom.

"Patience, Angel," she mumbled, taking a moment to think.

Calculating her options, Ivy spied Gus' glass on the table and smiled.

"I have a better way to get rid of Gus Leighton…"

^^^^^^^^^^

Her late-night machinations at an end, Ivy finally drifted off to sleep, allowing Michaela and Sully to move freely about the room.

Michaela was visibly upset as she paced. "Sully, she's gone mad…"

"She's allowed what has happened to her family in the past to affect her judgment in the present. She's so filled with vengeance and hatred."

"She reminds me of…" Michaela stopped short but Sully instinctively knew.

"The man who shot ya at the clinic." He finished her thought, just as he always could.

Michaela shivered, somberly reliving that terrifying episode. "But this is worse than that, Sully," she concluded sadly. "At least, I didn't know him."

"Ivy is Hank's own flesh and blood," she sighed. "And I can't help her - any more than I could help Dorothy with Tom."

"Their illnesses have consumed them, Sully. Ivy is as addicted to revenge as Tom was to morphine. How can I fight that?" she asked hopelessly.

"Ya can't," Sully came up behind her and placed his arms tightly around her.

"Charity will be just devastated." Michaela absorbed his comfort.

"Hank, too," Sully nodded. He wouldn't wish this even on Hank.

"I remember what it was like before my Ma died," Sully spoke so softly that Michaela turned to make sure she'd heard him correctly. The look on his face instantly told her that she had.

"All she talked about was my brother…" he explained, still holding Michaela at the waist.

"What he was like as a baby…what she'd planned on makin' him fer Christmas that year. She'd spend days sometimes just sittin' there talkin' t'his empty bed. Nothin' I could do would snap her outta it," he recalled, thinking back to faraway times.

"Sully…" Lovingly, Michaela lifted her fingertips to his face, slowly caressing from his forehead, to his temple, and then downward, until she could cup his cheek with her hand.

Sully closed his eyes and pressed his lips against her palm, so grateful for her eternal devotion.

When his lids opened, Michaela saw the anguish that would never leave him. "She was on a path I just couldn't stop, Michaela…"

Michaela's heart broke for him as it had so many times before. Her husband had suffered so many losses in his lifetime. Thankfully, the one loss he could never bear - losing her - was the one he would never have to face.

"Sully, you were only a small boy," she soothed, hugging him close. "You couldn't possibly have stopped her."

With his wife in his arms, Sully's horrific memories subsided. "I know," he nodded, letting his head drop gently onto hers.

"And we can't stop Ivy either…"

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