Sweetest Taboo Excerpt
Chapter 1 (scene 1)
“Hurry up, Mel! We have to go!” Christopher St. Clair shouted, hoping his daughter could hear him in her room on the other side of the house.
He grabbed a bag of ice from the freezer and dropped it on the floor to crush. The Commander of Keesler Air Force Base had ordered a mandatory evacuation for all active duty personnel as a category 4 hurricane approached the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Forecasters were predicting she’d hit Biloxi tomorrow. In the meantime, rain and heavy gusts of wind were clearing a path of destruction.
Chris dumped the ice into the cooler and set it on the floor by the door leading to the carport. He hadn’t planned to leave until noon but a neighbor had come by minutes ago to tell him the road outside base housing was already flooding, and he feared two more hours of the lashing rain would render it useless.
On his way through the living room, Chris glanced out the window and stopped. Struck by the majestic beauty of Mother Nature’s temper, Chris stared at the rain “dancing in the wind” as Kimmy would say. She loved rainy days and would be in her element.
Even now, he could picture his wife out there, twirling around with her arms outstretched, her face lifted toward the sky. All that vitality gone in one tragic, senseless moment.
No! He cut off the thought before it could lead him any further into despair. One year and he still missed her…so much.
Melana strolled into the living room carrying a pink and white duffle bag. She’d pulled her shoulder length black hair into its usual ponytail and was wearing blue jeans over her long legs.
“I’ve been ready for half an hour, Daddy,” she told him in her usual sedate manner.
He peered at the bag with a raised brow. “What do you have in there?”
She shrugged. “The usual stuff.”
Chris chuckled. “The usual stuff? We’ve never gone to a shelter before.”
“The usual girl stuff,” she informed him as if she were stating the obvious.
Why was he bothering? Melana was the most organized, practical nine-year-old he’d ever met. Everything in its place was her motto, and as a result, he never had to tell her to do…well…anything. She was always punctual, never in a hurry. It was funny because he and Kimmy were the total opposite.
Over the last few days, Melana had read every hurricane preparedness pamphlet and article she could find and had, if true to her nature, followed each to the letter. “Are you sure you want to go to a shelter? We—”
“Yeah, Daddy. I told you, Olivia’s going to be there.”
Chris stifled his disappointment. He wanted to take his 1967 Austin Healy on the road and thought it would be fun to drive north and stay in a hotel somewhere. But how could he stand in the way of Melana’s budding relationship with their neighbor Olivia? “Okay, then we’d better—”
The twisting sound of metal against metal exploded through the air, and he broke off.
“What was that?” Melana ran toward the front window.
Whatever it was, it sounded close. “Get away from the window, Mel.”
“Uh. Oh,” he heard her say.
Chris rushed over to the door and threw it open. His eyes immediately swerved toward the driveway where he’d parked his car and he stopped, absolutely still. His mint condition two-seater was squashed between a tan sedan rammed into the back of it and their brick house in front of it. He and Kimmy had spent two years restoring Righteous Red and in memory of her love for that car, he’d finished the project alone.
Now it was destroyed.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the passenger door of the tan car burst open. A black-haired woman tumbled out and, grabbing the door, pulled herself to her feet. He heard Melana gasp but barely registered it as he pushed the door handle. “Mel, come hold—”
The wind yanked the door out of his hand and into the brick wall. Seeing Melana behind him, he ran out to meet the woman. The cold, biting rain drenched him from every side, but he didn’t slow down. She stumbled into him and when she looked up, her fierce ebony eyes caught him up in their tumultuous depths. Suddenly, he couldn’t feel the rain or the wind. Good Lord, she was ravishing.
She said something but the words were carried away on the wind before they could reach him. He saw blood pouring from a wound in her left arm and realized she was hurt. Shaking her head, she pushed away from him and staggered toward the door where Melana was standing. When she reached the porch, she fell to her knees and then onto her hands. “Ashanti,” she moaned.
Then she collapsed.