Murphy’s shoulder went up minutely. “Shit happens.”
“Shit does happen,” I agreed.
“And your girl?” he asked. “She okay?”
I was the one to do the shoulder shrug this time.
“My girl is no longer my girl,” I explained. “She was disgusted by the way I acted, killing a kid for her, and wanted nothing more to do with me after that.”
The words tasted bitter on my tongue.
Because that wasn’t the entire story.
It was only part of it.
“And you just got out of prison?” he asked, no sign of pity in his eyes, which was what enabled me not to shut down like I so often did when it came to talking about this particular subject.
“Yep,” I confirmed. “Working as a private physician, sans medical license, with a man out of Souls Chapel. I’m part of an MC, too. I’m renting a house off of Knotting Pines Road.”
Why was I telling him my life story?
Because you feel like he’s a kindred spirit. He knows how it feels. It feels like you’re talking to yourself.
“Ahh,” he said. “That’s where my granddaughter lives, too.”
Wonderful.
Like I needed her any closer.
“Nice area?” I asked, hoping to hide my reaction to his news.
“The best,” he confirmed. “I live in the back of the store still. Been there for going on thirty years now. But Knotting Pines is where all the rich bitches live. I bought Crockett a house when her parents kicked her out. Bought her one right next door to them that was bigger.”
My lips quirked.
“She was kicked out?” I asked.
He nodded, not elaborating on that one. Obviously, it was a more sensitive subject than the one we’d been talking about earlier. Noted.
“So what’s the condition that requires her to eat regularly?” I found myself asking the old man, unable to help my curiosity.
He grinned. “She gets all hangry. All that runnin’ and racin’ she does is my guess. Trust me when I say, she needs to eat regularly, or the girl literally will make your life a living hell and not even mean to.”
My lips twitched.
“Damn.” I shook my head. “That’s mean.”
“It’s the truth.” He shrugged. “I’m telling you what. When she was a kid, she was literally so fucking pissed off. Her sister touching her made her scream bloody murder. We were in the car for an hour. Her brother was beside her, trying to stay really far away from her so he didn’t get screamed at like her sister. And she was in just this really shit mood. I’m talking, look at her and she’s growling and biting your hand off. And then I see this great little Mexican food place called Nicky’s, and I’m like… this is good. She likes Mexican food. That’s the one food she’ll eat. So, I pull off, hoping that when I feed her, she’ll at least not go all asshole on her siblings for the entire trip home. We pull in, they put a bowl of queso in front of her, and she goes from growling and snapping to excited and dancing within the span of a few chips.”
My lips were twitching hard.
“Yeah?” I grinned. “That’s fucking great.”
He held out his hand to me and I reached forward and shook it. “Name’s Murphy Archer,” he said. “I used to own this place before I sold it to my granddaughter, Crockett. Crockett’s the brunette who went to start making you that burger.”
I introduced myself also.
“Zachariah Caruso. Call me Zach.” I shook his hand one more time.
“Order up!”
I looked over to see Crockett holding my burger and a bag of chips at the end of the counter.
I walked toward her and took my plate.
“Thank you,” I said quietly.
She smiled at me, “No problem.”
I went and sat down, then had the best damn burger that I’d had in years.
Hell, it might’ve been the best one I’d had in my life.
• • •
CROCKETT
“What the hell was that?” I breathed as the sexiest man I’d ever seen in my life walked back to his table after refilling his drink.
In my sweats.
That he hadn’t paid for.
That I’d willingly give to him, over and over again, as long as he graced me with his eyes.
Jesus, those eyes were to die for.
“That was us doing a favor to a man that could use it right now,” my grandfather said carefully.
I looked over at him.
“And you told him your story,” I said. “And you also told him I was a hangry person.”
He grinned. “You are a hangry person.”
“Still, you don’t tell the hot guy that!” I cried.
“Well, all it took for your attention to be grabbed was for a tall, dark and handsome ex-con to walk through the door?” he teased.
I rolled my eyes.
The man wasn’t just ‘tall, dark, and handsome.’ He was tall, sure. Way over my five-foot-four-inch frame. He had to be at least six-foot-three, if not more. Because my grandfather was six-foot-three. I knew what six-foot-three looked like. I’d been staring at it for most of my life.
But that was the least of what attracted me to him.
Because holy God, was I really attracted.
The man was sex personified.
If one of my book boyfriends had come out of the pages and stood before me, this was exactly what I would picture.
Honestly, if I was being one hundred percent truthful, I didn’t think that men like him existed.
I mean, he had it all.
The height.
The sexy beard that was just a tad too bushy, but still he worked it.
His dark brown hair was a bit overly long for my usual tastes, but for that man, I could definitely get used to it.
Then there were his eyes.
Not green.
Not blue.
A combination of both that started darker green in the middle nearest the iris and flowered out to sea glass around the edges.
And he had chest hair.
A lot of it if what I could see poking out of the top of his sweatshirt was anything to go by.
Again, usually I didn’t go for chest hair. But I had a feeling that anything that had to do with this tall, dark and obviously dangerous guy would do it for me.
As long as he had a somewhat semi-decent sized dick, I had a feeling I could live happily ever after with him.
He was just that hot.
“What’s that look for?” I heard said.
I jolted as I turned and looked at Murphy.
“What look?” I lied.
He grinned and rolled his eyes. “You know what I’m talking about, girl.”
I did.
I knew exactly what he was talking about.
Still…
“Can you deal with this while I go dump the oil out?” I asked, gesturing toward the now-dirty grill.
He looked at the grill, and when he didn’t immediately open his mouth to say ‘yes’ I knew that today was one of the days that he couldn’t clean the grill.
My grandfather had lived a hard life.
He’d had four back surgeries, multiple shoulder surgeries, a couple of hand surgeries, and just as many knee replacements. The man was falling apart at an accelerated rate of speed, and there were days that he physically just couldn’t handle doing what he was once able to do.
I patted his shoulder. “You just go sit back down, Murph. I’ll handle it. I’m refreshed.”
He snorted.
We both knew that was a big ass lie.
I wasn’t refreshed.
I was tired as fuck and I needed a damn vacation so bad that I could taste it.
I wanted to go to Disney World, and I wanted it so badly that I’d been planning it for years.
The only problem was, Murphy couldn’t man the store by himself, my brother would have to be off to handle it, which meant his own vacation from his job and I wasn’t doing t
hat to him.
And my sister would flat out say no way in hell. At least the one that was old enough to deal with my store.
My stepsister manning this place on her own? I’d come back to the place trashed.
Which meant I was on my own.
Like always.
Unless I finally hired someone to be a manager… which wasn’t likely to happen seeing as everyone considered the hours that I was asking for to be a little bit too much.
“We’ll look again at the applicants tomorrow,” he suggested.
I wished.
The applicants that we had were scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Those that didn’t care about the hours were desperate and the majority of the time, the reason they were looking for a job in the first place was due to the fact that they’d been fired from their last one.
“I’ll place another ad.” I shrugged.
The ads normally did well on all social media until my stepmother saw the ad—and I was convinced that she went out of her way to look for them—and sabotaged them in some way.
Last time it was to comment, every half hour on the hour, about how awful the store was. That the damn place had been held up at gunpoint no less than three times, and that it was a robber’s paradise due to the dark and questionable area.
“I think you should look into blocking your stepmother. Maybe that’ll keep her from seeing the ad,” he suggested.
He may be right.
Instead of talking any more on the subject, because honestly the number of hours that I worked were killing me and making me slightly depressed, I cleaned the grill.
Only when I was done did I gesture toward my grandfather that I was going to take the oil out.
Lugging the rather large bottle of oil outside to the designated spot, I’d just turned to head back inside when I saw a large shadowy figure holed up in the alley.
And he wasn’t the sexy one that I’d been admiring for the last half an hour.
Heart beating a hundred miles an hour, I wondered what I should do.
Normally, I would’ve gone back in the alley door, but in my haste to get outside, I’d forgotten the keys that would get me inside the back door.
Leaving me with no other choice but to go the front way.
Or beat on the back door and hope that my grandfather could make it in time.
I decided to go with the beating of the door.
The guy started to creep out of the shadows. For the first time, I thought I might actually see his face instead of his shape lurking just far enough back that I can’t identify who it is. Just as I gave one hefty beat of my hand, the door opened.
Right into my face.
“Oww,” I whined as I held my nose and headed inside without hesitation.
I did not want to be out there with whoever was stalking me.
Nope. No. Nuh-uh.
“Sorry.”
My breath hitched at the dark and dangerous tone.
“Oh,” I breathed. “Hi.”
He jerked his chin in my direction. “Felt bad for not payin’ for my clothes. I’ll clean up a bit.”
“Thank you for getting the door. There was someone out there,” I told him. “Creeped me out.”
His eyes narrowed. “You know who it was?”
If I knew who it was, I wouldn’t have been scared to death in my own restaurant for the last half a year.
“Nope,” I said. “I don’t.”
When I led him farther inside through Murph’s apartment and then the break room, I barely looked at where I was going.
The man, Zach, however, did.
He took everything in as he followed me to the store.
When we got there, I saw that he’d already cleaned up his trash and put up the chairs.
“Thank you,” I said softly. “I appreciate it.”
He grunted out something unintelligible and then headed for the front door.
“Thank you for the food and the clothes.”
Then he was gone, and I felt like he took a piece of me with him.
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Kitty Kitty Page 21
