She frowned as she looked at the to-go box full of food.
“Yeah,” she said so quietly that I almost didn’t hear it. “How am I going to carry this on your bike? I didn’t think this through very well.”
“I’ll hold it on my lap. It’s not far,” I told her, voice husky.
She frowned hard, and that little pout around her mouth was almost my undoing.
Her head jerked up, and her attitude immediately changed.
Gone was the seeming sadness that I was winding up our day—and her subsequent kidnapping—and in its place was a cool, calm remoteness that made me think that she’d perfected this very act long ago.
Hooking two of her painted fingernails—one black, and one sparkly purple—into the loops of the to-go bag, she stared at me with distant eyes.
“Ready.”
And I found that I really, really didn’t like the way that she’d changed so completely.
Gone from open like a beautifully colored picture book to closed tight like a rarely used encyclopedia that was only meant for decoration on a bookshelf.
When we got onto my bike, her distance was felt there, too.
She didn’t wrap her arms around my waist, and by the time we were at her car, which was on a rarely used oil top road in the middle of my land and her father’s and Wyett’s, she’d distanced herself even further from me.
Pulling to the side next to her car, I all but felt her withdrawal as she got off and smiled quickly at me.
Reaching for the food, I held it out to her before she could reach over me.
“Thank you,” she said quietly as she turned for her car.
I looked at her SUV and frowned.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected her to drive, but a beat up looking Land Rover wasn’t it.
“You have a Land Rover,” I said. “Nice. Though, it’s got a lot of bumps and bruises.”
She opened the door with a key and placed the food onto the seat.
“My mom’s,” she said quietly, closing the door to look at me. “My dad stored it until I was old enough to drive. When I was sixteen, he told me that this was it for me.”
Anger burned in my stomach.
“But, I guess, at least he made sure that I had a car. It could be worse. I could’ve had to find my own ride, which would’ve been really shitty because at the girls’ school I went to, I wasn’t allowed to go off campus and work.”
I had a feeling that by the time this was all over and done with, I was going to seriously hate Ivan Broussard.
“Yeah, I guess that’s one way to see it,” I murmured, my eyes once again going to her vehicle. “Be careful on the way home.”
Six snorted.
“Can’t see how this day could get any weirder. I’ve already been kidnapped,” she grumbled under her breath as she walked away from me and to the other side of her car.
“I’m not quite sure how you think that I kidnapped you,” I said. “I just took you to my house and allowed you to shower.”
She looked at me over her shoulder just as she was rounding the hood of her vehicle.
“If that’s the way you choose to see it,” she said as she walked to the driver’s side door and got in.
I waited for her to leave, to turn around using a three-point turn, before I started my bike up.
And on the way home to my cold, empty, never been used house, I made a decision.
I’d done the honorable thing and allowed her to leave this time.
But if we ever ran into each other again, and she found her way into my business, I wouldn’t be making the same grand gesture.
The next time she stepped into my world, she was going to be mine. In all ways.
CHAPTER 9
Hobbies: tracking orders that I made three minutes ago.
-Six to Lynn
SIX
“Hey, did you read the paper?” Wyett asked the moment that I answered the phone.
“No,” I said. “I try to avoid all things news. Newspapers tend to have news.”
She snorted. “I think you might want to lift the ban on the paper for a while and check it out.”
“Okay, hold on. Be right back,” I said as I placed the phone onto the couch arm.
Pushing my naturally curly crazy locks over my shoulder, I stood up and walked outside and down the length of my driveway.
I rented a house in the middle of Nowhere, Texas. Or, more accurately, a house on the highway that led from Kilgore to Souls Chapel, Texas. I was smack dab in the middle, and I was one of eight houses in the same little area.
To my left was Mrs. Farmer, the baker and the neighborhood bitch.
And on my right was Mr. Farmer, newly remarried, also hateful, and Mrs. Farmer’s ex-husband.
In front of me was Mr. Farmer’s mistress, Ms. Cady’s house, who also happened to be a bitch but was cool to me. So that made her all right in my book, other than the adultery thing.
Turning to my left, I hurried toward Mrs. Farmer’s driveway and stealthily stole her newspaper before running my ass back inside in order not to be caught red-handed.
When I arrived back in the house, I nearly tripped over T-Rex.
“Son of a bitch,” I cursed as I had to do a high swan dive into the couch to avoid hurting her.
“What?” Wyett asked upon hearing my curse. “Did you see your man on the paper’s front page?”
I was too busy wiping my hand down the length of my nose where I’d hit it on the couch to answer her at first.
“What?” I asked when I reached for the phone that’d fallen in between the couch cushion and the arm of the couch. “What are you talking about?”
“What are you son of a bitching if you’re not son of a bitching at that?” Wyett countered.
I placed the phone onto the coffee table and pulled the paper from the protective plastic sleeve, then spread it out onto the table in front of me.
Sure enough, taking up half the front page was the man I couldn’t stop thinking about.
Lynnwood Thatcher Windsor.
He was standing in a suit and staring at something with hard eyes. It took me a while to peel my eyes away from Lynn’s photo to realize that there was another photo underneath his of someone being led away in handcuffs.
“What’s this?” I asked, knowing she’d read the article.
“You remember telling me about that guy that Lynn was beating the crap out of?” she whispered.
“Yes,” I replied hesitantly.
“That’s the guy he gave up,” she said. “I did some digging. That’s him.”
“Oh, boy,” I whispered.
When I’d delivered Wyett her hamburger, I’d told her everything that happened.
I didn’t keep secrets from Wyett, not ever. And although Lynn hadn’t told me not to share anything about what had happened that day, I knew the unspoken rule was there.
But this was my Wyett. My best friend. My go-to girl since Bruno had locked me out.
I’d tended to tell her everything.
“That’s the Tant guy that you told me about,” she said. “Him and some other guy were busted right outside of town meeting up. The guy had a whole list of names and addresses of children that were marked as ‘problem’ children.” She spoke quickly. “Children that wouldn’t be noticed missing because they were either uncared for by their parents, or they were in the system. They would’ve counted them as runaways and gone about their business.”
I felt bile creep up the back of my throat.
“Shit,” I said softly. “I knew that this was bad.”
“Very bad,” Wyett agreed. “I wasn’t expecting to actually see anything happen from this. This was at one of the mayor’s dinner parties that he attended. That guy was actually a lawyer for Mayes County.”
My stomach boiled. “That’s how he got the names,” I said quietly. “He probably had access to all kinds of information being at the county prosecutor’s office.”
“That’s what I was thinkin
g, too,” she said. “They arrested that guy right in the middle of the dinner. That photo of the mayor is from him standing up and walking out right along with the police.”
I shivered as I once again looked at the mayor’s photo.
God, he did it for me.
I had no clue how old he was—likely way older than he looked because men aged really well—but seriously. There was just something about the man’s sharp facial features, his salt and pepper hair, and the way he looked so dangerous that made me weak in the knees.
“Are you still going to that community outreach dinner tonight that your dad wants you to attend?” she asked. “The mayor may be there.”
I snorted. “He’s not going to be there. This is in Dallas. There’s no way a mayor from Kilgore will go to a dinner party for impoverished kids in Dallas.”
“Never say never,” she said. “What are you wearing?”
I thought about all the options that I had to wear and grimaced.
“I don’t know. I’ve worn all of my usuals lately and been photographed in them. I’ll have to come up with something else,” I admitted.
“You can borrow my strapless black dress,” she said.
I thought about the dress she was speaking of.
She’d bought it to wear to her graduation dinner as a big ‘fuck you’ to her aunt.
“That’s a little sexier than I was going to go for,” I admitted.
More accurately—a lot.
I didn’t do that kind of sexy.
Generally, neither did Wyett.
But, in order to really annoy her aunt, who was a super prude and hated it when Wyett wore anything that was overtly sexy, Wyett had picked it up at one of the best boutique’s in town that was owned by Rune Harlequin. The boutique, known as Harlequin’s Boutique, was expensive. But it was also worth it. When you bought shit at Harlequin’s, you knew that it would last.
Some of my sexiest underwear had come from there.
Then again, so had some of my most bland and normal.
“Well, it’s what I have on hand, and it’s free. You can’t complain with those two options,” she said.
I agreed with her, unfortunately.
“Fine,” I said, looking down at my unpainted toes. “I guess that I need to go visit the foot chick today and get my claws taken care of.”
“They’re not claws,” she laughed. “Though, if you paint them to look like claws, it’s not someone’s fault for asking if they’re claws.”
That was true.
Last time I’d gone to a function my father had wanted me to go to, I’d gone, but I’d also made sure that my toenails were painted a bright green fungus color. I couldn’t even begin to count how many women had cringed at the color, and how many men had looked at them and curled a lip up.
It’d been damn entertaining.
“I’ll bring it over in an hour or so,” she said. “Today I have a class online that I have to be present for, and then I have to take a test at the school. I’ll come in between those two things.”
After agreeing to wait for her, I hung up, then went ahead and took a long, hot shower where I shaved every single piece of hair that needed to be shaved on my body.
Though, on my nether regions, that was the only thing that I ever religiously took care of.
Every few weeks I had a Brazilian wax done that would take every single piece of hair from down there. I’d been keeping it up for so long that I now bought my waxing lady Christmas and birthday gifts.
After my shower was done, I went ahead and found some breakfast, and was just pouring cereal into the second bowl when Wyett rushed through my door.
“Your bitchy neighbor is outside,” she said. “Looking for her paper. She’s accusing the ex-husband of stealing it because he still pays for it. The new mistress is outside, too, looking rather pregnant. And the asshole’s new wife, who’s also heavily pregnant, is watching on from the porch steps with a beer in her hand.”
“Not a real beer, right?” I asked, suddenly alarmed.
Wyett shrugged. “It’s been a while since I’ve tasted a beer thanks to my schooling and not having time, but I’m fairly sure I haven’t forgotten what a beer bottle looks like.”
I snorted and went to the coffee table where Lynn’s photo still sat front and center.
“You should cut that out and hang it on your bedroom wall to masturbate to every night,” Wyett teased me.
I rolled my eyes but had a thought of ‘she’s right’ before I viciously shut that thought down.
That was weird.
I tried not to be too weird.
Some weird I couldn’t help, but extra weird? I tried to keep that under control.
She walked over to my bedroom door and hung the dress from the back of the door, then came back out to pick up the bowl of cereal that I’d poured her.
“Frosted Flakes?” she asked. “That’s it?”
I shrugged. “I was out of Lucky Charms.”
Sometimes I mixed my cereals. Usually it was Frosted Flakes and Lucky Charms. But sometimes I got really adventurous and combined my Fruity Pebbles with Captain Crunch.
I was out of three of the four cereals and really needed to get to the store.
“At least that combination I can handle,” she said, shivering.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not that bad of a combination. You combine fruit and peanut butter all the time. I saw you do it with apples last week.”
“You can tell yourself all you want that it’s normal to combine those two flavors, but it’s not. It’d be like combining Reese’s Pieces and Skittles. Those two do not, under any circumstances, go together,” she countered, taking a rather large bite and gesturing to the door. “I’m gonna take this with me. I’m running a bit later than I intended. I have to go talk to my teacher now, too.”
I waved her off. “I’ll see you tomorrow for lunch.”
She gestured to my hair. “Wear it curly. And forgo the contacts. You’ll rock it.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Love you. Thanks for the dress. Good luck on your final,” I called at her retreating back.
The door slammed behind her, and I went back to eating. But then I thought about the few comments that Lynn had made about my eyes, and how he’d liked the brown, and thought… maybe I would go contactless.
But doing things that would please Lynn wouldn’t matter. It wasn’t like I was going to see him anyway. Right?
CHAPTER 10
Hangover level: need sunglasses to open the fridge.
-Text from Six to Lynn
LYNN
“Tell me why you’re forcing me to go to this with you again?”
I looked down at my nephew’s wife, Mina.
“Because your man is out of town, he wants you watched, and the only way I can watch you tonight is by taking you with me,” I hedged. “Plus, you’ll get free food, get to meet some people, and you’ll get to hang out with me. You’ve been asking me out to lunch for three weeks now.”
“I think you mean protected.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s out of courtesy. It’s more of an ‘obligatory’ do you want to go out to lunch.”
I grinned at her. “Whatever.”
“You look like such a stuck-up in those suits,” she said. “I mean, you fill them out really well, Lynn, but I’m not used to seeing you in them.”
That was true.
I didn’t usually go so formal when I was dressing day to day. At least not before I’d gotten the title of mayor.
Now it seemed like my new normal.
“It looks good to attend other mayors’ functions. And this one is close to my heart,” I answered the rest of her previous question. “The community outreach function that he’s putting on is for adults in the area to get to know information about the children that are in foster care. Some people don’t even know that there are so many.”
“Why is foster care so close to your heart?” Mina asked as she swished her dress in her hands,
allowing the hem to dance along her feet. “I never get a straight answer out of you.”
She wouldn’t, either.
She didn’t need to know why this particular subject was so near and dear to my heart, because then I’d have to explain it all, and honestly, that wasn’t going to ever happen.
Not when Laric didn’t know that I was his father and didn’t want to know.
When I’d been fifteen, I’d slept with a girl that I thought was it for me. Only, the next morning, I’d woken up and she’d been as distant as the setting sun and hadn’t wanted anything to do with me.
The more I tried to get information out of her, the further she pushed me away until eventually, she went as far as moving out of the school that we attended.
It was at that point that I’d given up.
Only, I shouldn’t have.
I’d done the unthinkable and had backed away, written her off, and hadn’t realized that by doing so I was also writing off my kid.
Fast forward a year, and she’s accusing me of ruining her life, asking for cash from my asshole of a stepfather, and telling me that she gave away my kid and that there was nothing I could do about it.
The bad thing was, at that age, without my stepfather’s support, there was nothing I could do about it. To make matters worse, my stepfather agreed with the bitch and helped her hide him from me.
It took me half of my son’s life to figure out where he was, and by that time I was fully entrenched into things that I really shouldn’t be entrenched in.
Not and have a kid.
So, I’d left my kid to who I’d assumed were better parents since he’d been adopted. Only, Laric’s adoptive father, apparently, hadn’t liked him all that much and had abused him after the death of his adoptive mother. But Laric hid it so well that I hadn’t realized it was even happening until well past when I could fix it for him.
That’d partially been why I’d adopted Bruno the way I had. Bruno had been the same age as Laric was when I’d seen him, and I’d felt like I could help him even if I couldn’t help my own son.
“No reason,” I lied.
Mina looked at me skeptically. “Do you think I was born yesterday?”
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