“Ain’t nothing wrong with looking at pretty girls.”
Billy took in the one room apartment, sparsely furnished with a mismatch of thrift store finds and a beat up old refrigerator that rattled like it was on its last legs. An unfortunate reminder of his old apartment above the Bryson’s garage and all the nights he had held Lizzie in his arms with that old fridge humming in the background.
It made him remember that Lizzie still had all his belongings, even his Granny’s mugs that he loved so much. Maybe he could get Vlad to write to Elena to see about sending them up. Right now, he was just thankful for a roof over his head.
“My old roommate rigged this up.” Vlad pulled a dark sheet hooked to the ceiling like a shower curtain between the two twin beds. “It gives a little privacy if you want to entertain a lady friend.”
“Not a bad setup, except for the noise.” Music thudding up through the floorboards like the wood was humming.
“It’ll get quiet in about an hour when the bar shuts down.”
Billy followed him through a door on the other side of the room and down a small flight of stairs. “There’s the shower and toilet. Just be sure to knock first since the girls get changed in there.”
“Sharing a john with a bunch of strippers.” Billy grinned with approval. “Can’t beat that kind of amenities.”
He changed his mind when they went on in the bar and got a look at some of them girls. Let’s just say a couple of them looked like they had been beaten hard with the ugly stick. Maybe it was because he had spent the past week curled up with the likes of Odessa, but Billy didn’t see anything tempting. At least there wasn’t a redhead in sight. The last thing he needed was another one of those girls getting under his skin.
“Who’s this long tall drink of water?” The woman behind the bar eyed Billy like he was a huge slab of prime rib.
“This here’s Billy. Hope you don’t mind me letting him stay with me awhile.”
“Vlad, honey, you can bring in a whole house full of men if they look half as good as that kid.” She sat a mug of beer in front of Billy before he could even place an order. “Here you go, sweet thing.”
“Thank you ma’am,” Billy said, trying not to choke on the watered down, too warm beer.
“Name’s Kat, and I own this fine establishment,” she said with a grin so wide he could see her lack of dental work. “For you, drinks and the lap dance of your choice are on the house tonight.”
Most of them girls were so ugly, he would have been willing to pay them to keep their shirts on.
What the hell had Vlad gotten him into?
Billy looked around to find Vlad buying some horse faced girl a Coke, hopefully to keep her from trying to get a dance off him.
With all the women waiting around at the shows, Billy had never been much into going to the strip clubs with the boys. Why pay for it, when he always had pretty girls lined up waiting to do more than show him her titties, without him spending a dime to get to see them?
When that girl’s bra came off he thought her nipples were going to hit the floor faster than the black lace. Billy had never minded a girl with a little meat on her, but this one looked like she had devoured the whole cow. Then again, Vlad wasn’t exactly leading man material either. With his wild snarly hair and beer gut he looked like an unruly cave man on a hunt for big game.
Billy kept his head down and didn’t make eye contact in hopes of getting out of there without spending any money on these broads. If only he could have been that lucky.
He almost had the beer finished off when Kat hollered, “Wren, get on over here and show Billy what you’ve got.”
Before he could protest, she sat another beer down in front of him. “She’s the prettiest girl in the place, don’t you think?’
Preparing for the worse, Billy took a big swallow of that nasty beer and turned to face the girl. If he had seen her waiting out back at a show, he wouldn’t have given her a second look. She wasn’t anything more than a wisp of a woman. A washed out blond as pale as a ghost, with the saddest eyes he’d ever seen. The name fit her because she looked like a lost little bird.
Not his type at all, at least not until she closed her eyes and let her body go with the beat of the song blasting from the jukebox. Swaying and gyrating to the music, she transformed into an entirely different person.
Billy liked her unselfconsciousness over getting naked with a less than perfect body. Her tits weren’t round and pert or perfectly symmetrical, her legs were skinny, and she had a bit of a belly, but as long as she kept dancing it didn’t seem to matter.
When she finished, he tucked a dollar into her garter and she backed away without trying to con him into paying for another dance. He respected the fact that she didn’t try to work him.
***
By the end of his first week, Billy and Vlad fell into a regular routine of going to the shows together, putting up the ring, doing their regular match, tearing down the ring and going on back for a beer at Kat’s before heading off to bed. Most nights he pulled the curtain and laid there with his feet dangling off the end of the bed listening to Vlad and that horse faced girl get it on.
Billy could have had any girl in the place or any of the women that flirted with him at the shows, but he just wasn’t interested. Most nights he just nursed his beer and watched Wren. She didn’t hustle like the other girls and seemed to make most of her money from dancing on the narrow stage down the center of the bar.
Those sad eyes sometimes haunted his dreams, making him wonder why she was there and what made her so silent and impassive. He guessed it was better than always thinking about Lizzie since he felt like some kids of a sicko for still having those kinds of feelings for his own sister. At the rate he was going, he would never be able to be around her without wanting to love her in a non-brotherly way.
Chapter 31
“Hey Pumpkin, you ready to get going?” Daddy, as usual, burst into Lizzie's office completely unannounced.
“I guess so,” she sighed.
With almost no notice, her daddy had decided to turn Memorial Day weekend into his working “family vacation” and wedding. Just thinking about having to spend three nights in a beach house with him made her want to swallow a whole bottle of Valium.
“Come on, Sweetie.” He took the last of Elena’s brownies out of her hand and downed it with a satisfied smirk. “I don’t want to keep Carol Ann waiting seeing as it’s taken her this long decide to make an honest man out of me.”
It was going to take a lot more than a wedding band on his finger to keep her daddy honest. The wedding part she didn’t mind, it was the idea of having to put on a bathing suit that made her want to stay medicated. She just knew her daddy would give her a hard time about the weight she’d gained trying to fill the hole Billy had left in her heart.
At first it had been easy to pretend she was okay. Lizzie stayed busy with moving into the new house and getting in as many hours of work as possible. Now that things had settled down she was running out of excuses not to call Carol Ann back or go out on weekends with Elena.
“Carol Ann called me when they got in last night and she said the rental house is perfect, right on the ocean. I’ll drop you off there, grab PJ, and make the matches while you girls do some shopping.”
“What do you think?” he asked, popping the trunk open on a shiny red Corvette that looked like it had just been driven straight off a car dealership.
“You got a new car?”
“It’s a surprise for PJ. He finished the school year at the top of his class so I thought I’d get him something for adjusting so well to moving down here.” He slammed down the trunk and went around opening the passenger door. “He’s such a great kid and just think what a future he’s got. With Carol Ann’s brains and my good looks, there’s nothing going to stop my boy.”
“I’m proud of him too, but you can’t buy his love.”
“Now Pumpkin, don’t be jealous.” He revved up the engine and pulle
d into traffic. “I’ve gotten to spoil you from the day you were born and now I owe your brother for fifteen years of lost time.”
“It’s not that.” Jealousy didn’t have anything to do with him shelling out for such an extravagant gift. “I think it’s a little much for a kid that just got his license and sometimes your gifts seem more like bribes than acts of love.”
“Well, I guess that means you don’t want any spending money for your outing with Carol Ann tonight. I was going to treat you to a nice new outfit to wear to the wedding. With all the weight you’ve put on, I thought you might need a new dress.”
“So now you’re saying I’m fat?”
That’s all it took to have Lizzie reaching into her purse for the bottle of Valium that she had gotten from one of her mother’s doctors. They weren’t even all the way out of town yet and he was already trying her nerves.
“Just like your pill popping lousy excuse for a mother.” Before she could get the cap off the bottle, he grabbed it out of her hand and tossed it out the window. “You’re not going to wind up like Lois, choking down pills to get through the day. I raised you better than that.”
“You have no idea how hard these last few months have been on me,” Lizzie said, hating that stupid little girl voice that always came out around her daddy.
“It’s your own damn fault for screwing around with Billy.”
“If you hadn’t of ran him off, I would be married to Billy.”
“I had nothing to do with his decision to go work in Minnesota,” her daddy said all smug and righteous.
“That’s not what Elena thinks.”
“Did your so-called best friend happen to tell you we had an affair?”
“Yes,” Lizzie lied, now craving a Valium even more than ever.
“Really?” He actually laughed. “Every Wednesday afternoon she used to show up at my room just like clockwork and beg me to do her. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings so-”
“Since when have you ever taken anyone else’s feelings into consideration?”
He acted like he didn’t hear her and kept right on talking. “Finally I just had to tell her to stop coming to see me, that I just didn’t feel right about cheating on Carol Ann.”
“And mom, or are you forgetting you were married to my mother while you were fooling around with Carol Ann and Lord only knows who else.”
“That’s not the point.” He swerved into the other lane to pass a car creeping along on highway 74. “What I’m trying to tell you is that you should be cautious about trusting people outside of your family.”
“I trust exactly two people in this whole world. Elena and Gran.” Or at least she had trusted Elena until he dropped that bombshell on her.
“You’re too gullible.”
“Not anymore.”
She glanced at the speedometer. It was clear over the 100 mph mark and he didn’t show any signs of slowing down.
“I sincerely hope so,” he said, flashing that fake smile. “Nice girls don’t have sex outside of wedlock.”
“Then what does that make Carol Ann? You had a kid with her while you were still married to my mother.”
He didn’t take the bait, “Why are you still wearing Glenda’s ring?”
“She gave it to me.”
“Wear it on your other hand. How do you expect to meet a nice young man when you’re going around with that ring on your finger?”
“I’m not interested in meeting any men.”
“Sweetie, Billy was so beneath you.”
“Well, I don’t guess it matters anymore since you scared him off.”
“How many times do I have to tell you I had nothing to do with Billy leaving?”
How about forever?
There was nothing he could say or do to convince her otherwise.
***
“Rise and shine, Pumpkin!” Daddy yanked away the covers with an unnecessary flourish.
“Put on your running shoes and let’s hit the beach.”
Lizzie glanced at the clock beside the bed – 7:30 am. So much for getting to sleep in on her first day of vacation. When she was a kid she had loved those runs with her daddy. It was the only time she had him all to herself. That had all stopped with his whole getting caught fiasco and her going to stay with Gran. Too bad it was his marriage that kept going instead of their quality time together.
There wasn’t any arguing with him, so she threw on a t-shirt and shorts to meet him on the deck where he was already pumping out the Hindu squats.
“Where’s PJ?” She asked after taking a moment to admire the spectacular view of the Atlantic Ocean.
“Still sleeping in.” He kicked a leg up on the railing and bent into a hamstring stretch.
“Why doesn’t he have to run?”
“Because I said so and he’s not the one getting a fat ass from moping around eating sweets.”
“Paul, that’s not one bit nice.” Carol Ann came through the door still in her bathrobe and toting a cup of coffee. “Stop riding Lizzie about her weight. She’s still a lot smaller than I am and I don’t hear you bitching at me.”
“That’s cause I like your ass.” He swatted at her bottom. “You’ve got the height to carry a little more weight. Lizzie doesn’t.”
“Stop being a male chauvinist pig.”
“All I’m doing is looking out for my daughter.”
“Your daughter is a grown woman with a good head on her shoulders.”
“You know I love you, woman.” He kissed Carol Ann like Lizzie wasn’t sitting right there watching him grope her under the robe.
Unfortunately, they didn’t take it back to their bedroom to get her out of the run.
It only took about a mile for Lizzie’s lungs to start burning and a stitch to start aching on her side. Her daddy had been right. She was out of shape. He had to run circles around her and drop down for some pushups and then another round of those squats before she was able to catch up with him. He never slowed his pace. You either kept up or he left you in the sand gasping for breath.
By the time Lizzie made it back to the house she found him sitting on the balcony finishing off the last of his breakfast.
“What took you so long? He asked with that fake smile plastered all over his face.
“I stopped to admire the scenery.”
“You’ll get your wind back in a couple of days. By the time I get back from Puerto Rico, you’ll be up to our usual five miles.”
“I’ve missed our runs,” she admitted.
He kissed her sweaty forehead before taking his plate back into the house.
Before Lizzie could pull up off the top step, he returned with a plate. “Egg whites and wheat toast, breakfast of champions. This morning I’ll let you splurge with a glass of orange juice, but you really need to start watching your carbs."
That meant no more of Elena’s extravagant breakfasts of crepes and eggs Benedict. Lizzie was going to miss being Elena’s guinea pig for every new dish she whipped up at the restaurant where she worked as a morning chef.
“Did he wear you out?” Carol Ann sat down beside Paul on the other side of the table.
“I blew her up big time.”
“You’re so mean.” She nudged him playfully.
“And you love me for it.” He kissed her again before asking, “What do you ladies have planned for today?”
“I guess pigging out for a seafood lunch is out of the question,” Carol Ann said.
“Just lay off the butter sauce.” He laughed. “Lizzie loves fresh lobster, just another one of the little things that Billy wouldn’t have been able to provide you with.”
“I had lobster and filet mignon the last time he took me to dinner.”
“Then maybe it was your expensive tastes that scared him away. It will be years, if ever, before Billy starts making anywhere near the amount of money that I take in.”
“Stop beating a dead horse.” Thankfully Carol Ann put a stop to that topic of conversation.
&n
bsp; “If you ladies will excuse me, I’m going to shower and get dressed,” Daddy gave Carol Ann another kiss before stopping at the door. “PJ and I will need to leave in a couple of hours to make the next town. But don’t worry, I’ll leave y’all with plenty of spending money for your latest shopping trip.”
“From the way he talks, you would think I sit around all day watching soap operas and eating bon-bons,” Carol Ann said, shaking her head in bemusement.
“I guess mom did, when she wasn’t out spending his money or off having private lessons with that smarmy tennis pro.”
Carol Ann laughed. “You’re definitely Paul Bryson’s daughter.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Lizzie wasn’t sure she considered that a compliment.
“Try not to let your father’s voice taint your memories of your mother. I’m sure she loved you just as much as he does.”
Leave it to Carol Ann to try to defend the woman she was out to replace.
“Do you have a problem with me marrying Paul?” She asked after not getting any response from Lizzie.
“No, other than the fact that sometimes I think you’re too good for him. What made you think that?”
“He told me you got smart with him about coming to the wedding.”
“It wasn’t about you. It was the usual about you know who. Do you think Daddy is the reason Billy left?”
“Honestly, Lizzie I don’t really know. I thought Billy was a good kid, but he’s young and maybe he felt the pressure of rushing to get married so soon. You never really had a chance to properly date.”
“The wedding was his idea. He’s the one who asked me to marry him when Daddy caught us.”
“Your Daddy can be very intimidating.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What the hell is this?” Her daddy burst through the door waving a pack of birth control pills and slamming down the extra bottle of sleeping pills Lizzie had stashed in her makeup bag.
Desire Page 21
