Lowdown Dirty

by Holley Trent

  “And you have a contact, I bet,” Heidi said.

  Judge snorted. “Y’all aren’t the only ones around here with deep roots. I’ve got a finger in every pot in six counties. Kevin chose the construction, so my cousin Frank is gonna be putting him to work out at Shora. New place. Have you heard of it?”

  Now it was Tim’s turn to groan.

  Shora? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

  It was like the universe was taunting him for his inability to reel Valerie in.

  “They’re about to dig the foundation for a house out there, and Frank’ll pick him up and drop him off every day until it’s done, starting tomorrow.

  World’s too small. I just can’t catch a damn break.

  And Frank hadn’t said a word.

  Maybe he doesn’t know his new employee is Kevin yet, Tim mused, rubbing his beard contemplatively. He would have called me otherwise, wouldn’t he?

  Or maybe not.

  Sometimes, the boys operated on a “we’ll catch up whenever I see ya” basis and held all their news to tell at once—whether or not any of it concerned their buddies. Some men did that on the golf course or at the country club. Tim hadn’t been to either place in months.

  “I’ll pick him up tomorrow after he’s done,” Tim said. “I’d like to chat with Frank and pass on some notes.”

  Judge shrugged. “Fine with me. As long as he’s back at your house or Heidi’s by six-thirty every night, neither his probation officer nor I will have any complaints.” Judge fixed his gaze on Kevin and grinned. “Now, we’re gonna make this a real good experience, you hear?”

  It wasn’t so much a question, but a threat—Southern style.

  Kevin bobbed his eyebrows and made a strangled grunting noise.

  Heidi poked his back. “Try that again, please, using human language.”

  “Yes, sir,” he murmured hostilely.

  “Better. Let’s go. Mind if I pick up some lunch before I lock him in my cellar, Judge?”

  “Nearby?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine with me.”

  Tim walked Heidi and Kevin as far as the drugstore when she waved Tim away, whispering, “Go! He doesn’t need both of us here, especially when he’s barely tolerating one of us at a time.”

  Tim gritted his teeth and took a deep breath through his nose. “Will I see you at work or should I swing by and drop yours off later?”

  “Bring it over.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “That’s my fuckin’ car!” Kevin shouted, wresting himself away from Heidi’s arm.

  A shiny red Camaro cruised past and braked at the light on the corner. The spoiler was familiar. The window tint was right. The license plate was wrong, but Tim imagined anyone would have gotten rid of a vanity plate that read “BALLUH” as soon as they conceivably could have.

  Heidi laughed. “Yes. It most certainly was your car, but now it’s my car and I can do with it whatever I see fit, including loaning it out to people. Isn’t that great?” Her smile fell away in a flash. “Now, let’s go inside and get you a sandwich and some grape juice. Maybe they’ll cut your crust off if you ask nicely.”

  “Mom!”

  “Enough.” She pulled the drugstore door open and pointed. “Go. Now. I am at my wit’s end with you. I’m not going to give up, but I’m going to stop being nice. If that’s what you wanted all along—fine. You’re going to get it. The mean mommy you always craved.”

  Kevin cut his gaze to Tim.

  Tim crossed his arms over his chest and raised his chin. “Just because we’re not married anymore doesn’t mean we don’t agree.”

  “Ugh!” Kevin stomped into the drugstore and Heidi followed on his heels.

  Letting out a ragged exhalation, Tim nudged his phone out of his shorts pocket. He input Valerie’s number, and like always, it went straight to voicemail. “I bet she’s got me blocked.”

  He stuffed the phone back into his pocket and headed for the back parking lot on the other side of the main street. If that were truly the case, pursuing her would feel like an unwelcome invasion into her privacy, but he was like Heidi in another way besides the parenting style one.

  Bossy dom or not, he would want to be pursued. He wanted confirmation just like anyone else that he was on the right track and that his efforts would be rewarded in the end.

  It seemed like courtship had been a much easier thing twenty years ago. But back then, nobody had quite as many complications. All they had was an abundance of hormones and empty bank accounts.

  ___

  The following evening as Tim waited in his truck for Kevin in the cul-de-sac in front of the Shora sales office, his phone vibrated with an incoming email notification.

  He turned his radio down and queued up the query, figuring the note was from Heidi, confirming his ETA at work. They had a late meeting at the factory to discuss management issues, including some pressing personnel concerns.

  The message wasn’t from her, though. It was from the airline.

  “Forgot all about that,” he muttered to himself as he scrolled through the message.

  He’d had his administrative assistant arrange an open-date plane ticket for Valerie to take her anywhere she wanted to go—no strings attached. The email was the confirmation that Valerie had redeemed it. The message didn’t say where she was going, but that was fine. He was just glad she was going to use it, wherever she was.

  Frank’s work crew trudged up the path toward their vehicles laughing and cutting up but looking so tired. The money was good in construction, but nobody could say the work was easy.

  And maybe that was what Kevin needed—hard work that would make him sweat.

  Tim spotted Kevin at the back of the pack between Frank and…

  Tim pushed up his sunglasses and squinted. He didn’t need to get his eyes checked. He knew that redhead.

  And he knew that architect with her, too.

  “Thought she was gone. What the fuck?”

  He got out of the truck, slammed the door, and jogged through the dispersing crew.

  “Hey, Timmy,” Frank said as he approached.

  “Frank. Carine.” Tim turned to the lady and nodded at her.

  “Good evening. Haven’t seen you in a while.” She smiled coyly at him. “What have you been up to?”

  She knew damn well what he’d been up to…or at least what he hadn’t been up to.

  “Nothing interesting.”

  “Well, I won’t hold y’all up. I need to…” She snickered. “Be somewhere in a couple of hours.”

  Tim knew exactly where that somewhere was, and he wasn’t going to be there. Not only did he have that meeting, but there was Kevin to deal with, and…

  He turned to Valerie and nodded to her as well, trying to keep his expression neutral, though given his frustration at the moment, he was probably unsuccessful in the attempt.

  “Good evening, Mr. Dowd,” she said blandly.

  If that’s what you want to call me, then fine.

  “Kevin, why don’t you wait for me in the truck?” Tim said. “I need to talk to Frank about some plans.”

  “You know I need to be home by six-thirty, right?”

  “I know exactly what time you need to be home. I’ve been keeping up with what you need to do better than you have, and maybe that should change. You’re a big boy, so maybe you don’t need your daddy helping you with your probation anymore.”

  Kevin rolled his eyes, muttered something vulgar under his breath, and stalked to the truck.

  As soon as he was out of earshot, Frank put up his hands. “I swear, he didn’t give me any problems today. He put his earbuds in and got to work. It was mindless work, hauling stuff and holding stuff up, but sometimes folks need that. That happens all the time with these kids.”

  “How long do you think that’ll keep up?”

  “Shit, in my experience it keeps up just fine for as long as they’re here, but I’ve never had one for longer than three months, so
I can’t speak on the long-term efficacy on this kind of experiment.”

  In Tim’s periphery, Valerie shifted her weight and moved the notebook she was holding to her other hand. “Frank, I’ll talk to you tomorrow about the revisions on that new zone and also the Phase Three house plans,” she said. “I’m heading home for the night.”

  “You still jet-lagged?”

  “A little. I was crisscrossing the country for most of last week, but I got a good night’s sleep last night. I just need decompression time.”

  “Hey, I don’t blame you. I’m just the guy who knows how to follow the instructions and delegate making stuff happen. You’re the one who gives me the instructions.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Which in the case of Shora are always heavily modified plans drawn by someone else who never spent more than a cursory few hours in the area and doesn’t understand it so I have to break every house to make it fit.”

  “Shitty that you don’t get credit for what you. It’s not fair and you’re not paid well enough.”

  She shrugged. “Hey, it’s like my boss said. I’ve got to pay my dues, right? And this is a great opportunity, right? I get to finish what I started.” She scoffed and followed Carine toward the office.

  When she was out of earshot, Tim sidled up to Frank and nudged him with his elbow. “Talk.”

  Frank cleared his throat, covered his mouth as if to disguise the movement of his lips, and said in an almost-whisper, “Lipton was supposed to install her at a new project in Florida, right?”

  “Did it fall through?”

  “No, it’s still happening. They assigned some don’t-give-a-damn architect on his way out of the biz whose name has got some clout to it. They paired him with some junior guy who doesn’t his elbow from his asshole.”

  “Nepotism.”

  “That’s what it seems like. The junior guy’s profile will rise because he’s on record for the project with the old guy.”

  “And he’ll be able to command better gigs afterward even if he isn’t technically qualified for them.”

  “Exactly. They asked Valerie to consult on the plans—”

  “I bet I know what that means.”

  “Yep. And I’m sure you know Valerie well enough to guess what she told them. So, she had two choices. Come back here, or pick up another project just like this one in some other state.”

  “Is that why she’s been crisscrossing the country? Shaking out her options?”

  “Yep.”

  “I guess she decided this was the least of the evils.” Bad news for her, maybe, but a silver lining for Tim. She’d had a damn good reason to ignore him for weeks. If his career had been on the rocks, he probably wouldn’t have been feeling especially social either. Dating? Out of the question.

  What a fucking mess.

  “Yep. I don’t imagine she’ll stay on long, though, if some other firm snaps her up,” Frank said. “She wasn’t open to being headhunted before, but she’s wide open now. She’s got two phones. The personal one won’t stop ringing. The other one, she only turns on a couple of times per day to check in with her bosses.”

  “Ah.” Tim was guessing that was the phone he had the number for. “Interesting.”

  “What are you gonna do about it?” Frank asked.

  “I don’t know. I was pissed. I still am, but now I don’t know who I’m pissed at anymore.” Tim started walking toward his truck, cutting his gaze over to the office as we went.

  “Well, it’s like you always tell me when you’re instructing me on dominance and submission stuff, right?” Frank asked. “You don’t need to know what every move is going to be as long as you have a general plan and an expectation that it could end whenever the lady likes.”

  “The plan is the easy part. Letting her end things without communicating with me what her adversities are is the problem we have.”

  “Maybe y’all need to have a talk.”

  “Yeah,” Tim snarled, angrier at the circumstances than at her. “Talking is the very least we can do.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Valerie was at her desk, quietly seething and practicing her new status quo of “doing just enough to get by” when a glint from the glass of Kevin Dowd’s phone yanked her attention for the third time in ten minutes.

  Growling, she pushed back her chair, shoved her feet into her sandals, and stomped to the glass door. She yanked it open as Carine strode up the walkway looking red-faced and aggrieved.

  Valerie held up a finger, commanding her to zip her lips on whatever she had in mind to say, and walked to the front of the overturned planter Kevin was sitting on. Gritting her teeth, she squatted in front of him.

  “What?” He pulled out one earbud and turned down the volume on his music.

  She wouldn’t have bet money on it, but it sounded like nineties West Coast rap.

  Seriously? You ain’t about that life, Kevin.

  “Do you need something?” she asked him. “You’ve been here a little while. Your pacing and flopping routine is getting distracting.”

  He cleared his throat and his nervous gaze flitted from Valerie to Carine back to Valerie again. “Um. Waiting on a ride,” he muttered. “Finished early. Dude’s supposed to take me home, but he won’t be here until, like, six.”

  “What dude?”

  “My father.”

  “You call your father dude?”

  Kevin shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Doesn’t matter to who? You or him?”

  “I dunno.”

  Valerie cut her gaze to Carine, who gave the slightest shake of her head in a Don’t ask me fashion.

  Valerie drummed her fingers along the sides of her thighs and really studied the kid. He might have been eighteen, going on nineteen, but she didn’t read him as an adult. Maybe that was by design on his part, or maybe…maybe he just wasn’t there yet.

  Leah had certainly needed a few extra years to get there. Maybe that wasn’t such an abnormal thing.

  “How about this,” Valerie said. “Tell me something you do know.”

  “Huh?”

  “I asked you a question. In response, you said you didn’t know. So. Tell me something you do know.”

  Furrowing his brow, he turned his music down a little more. “I…”

  “Quick. Tell me something quick.”

  “Fiberglass splinters hurt like a bitch,” he blurted, face flooding with rouge-red color. Obviously, he wasn’t so good at being put on the spot.

  Valerie pursed her lips and nodded. “Yeah, they do. I learned that in high school. I was in orchestra in the pit percussion section for a while and played timpani. The ones we had were made of fiberglass. I picked up a few splinters while moving them around.”

  Carine cackled. “You were a band geek?”

  “Shush,” Valerie said with a teasing grin, happy to see her friend in a better mood. Carine had been in a funk on and off for days because her mother was nagging her, and Lipton was yanking her around over commission percentages.

  “I did whatever I had to do to earn scholarships,” Valerie said. “I even got my ass out on the football field every Friday night for four years and twirled flaming batons.” Remembering the heft of them, Valerie gave the phantom pain on her temple a soothing rub. Those batons really packed a wallop when she lost her grip on them.

  “I was never that ambitious,” Carine said. “I guess I assumed my parents would cough up the money, and they did.”

  “Lucky you.”

  Carine rolled her eyes. “They only paid tuition and for lodging. I had to feed myself and buy all those ridiculously expensive textbooks that I couldn’t even sell back at the end of the term.”

  “Know that feeling. College textbooks are a scam and a racket.”

  Kevin nudged his earbuds back in and stared down at his dirty hands and picked at one particularly ragged nail.

  Valerie looked to Carine again, who shrugged and mouthed, “I have no idea,” behind his back. Then aloud, she sa
id, “I got a missed call from your sister. I’m going to go see what she wanted, but I suspect I know.”

  Valerie didn’t want to know. It was Friday night and Clay was probably already getting his kinky door prizes all lined up. She looked at Kevin again. “Weren’t interested in college this year, huh?”

  He shrugged. “Naw.”

  “How about next year?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  Huh. Rubbing her chin, Valerie suddenly had a thought. “Does…your dude know that?”

  “No.”

  “Does your dude know anything?”

  “He builds boats and makes money.”

  “He’s good at that. Successful.” Tim certainly didn’t need Valerie coming to his defense, but for some reason, she wanted to make sense of the kid. It was going to drive her nuts if she didn’t get to the bottom of his mystery.

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you good at, Kevin?”

  Kevin stared at the road silently for a few seconds before murmuring, “I dunno.”

  He sounded like he meant it, and that broke her heart a little. She knew pretty early on where her talents were. From there, it was just a matter of using them in something she could make a living at.

  She drummed her fingers against her thighs some more and stood up when a familiar loud pickup truck engine entered the circle.

  Kevin headed toward Tim’s truck, shoulders slumped and stuffing his phone into his pocket.

  She called after him, “Hey, dude?”

  He stopped. Turned. Both of his eyebrows crept upward. “Yeah?”

  “On Monday, if you’re gonna wait in front of my office door, could you tilt your phone away from the glass? The reflection creates a glare.”

  “Shit. Sorry. I can wait at the curb.”

  “You don’t have to wait at the curb. Sit in the shade if you want. Just don’t blind me with your phone.” She turned to go inside the office, but snapping her fingers, turned back, “Oh, and maybe you could try listening to some music from this decade. Maybe some Hozier or Little Big Town or something.”

  He made a face and then turned on the heel of his construction boot toward Tim’s truck.