by Bonnie Dee
“Oh. You.”
“Car trouble again?” I asked the obvious. “Is it the thingie again?”
She shook her head. “No. It was running okay, and then the engine just went dead. It was all I could do to get it to glide off the road.”
“You have enough gas?” I joined her to stare down at the dead engine.
She clicked her tongue. “I’m not an idiot. It’s not that. It’s like the battery died, but that doesn’t make sense, because I bought a new one a few months ago.”
“Alternator,” I suggested.
“Um. Maybe.”
She stared helplessly at the engine, and I stared helplessly at her. She was so cute in that red coat with the fur-trimmed hood, like Little Red Riding Hood just trying to get to where she was going. Did that cast me as the Big Bad Wolf?
I reached for the dipstick in her hand. “May I?”
She surrendered it to me. I tested the oil and found it was low, but that wouldn’t cause the engine to completely die.
“Try to turn it on,” I ordered, and she went to turn the key in the ignition.
I messed with the engine a little but had no doubt the battery was drained.
Rianna joined me again. “So, what do you think?”
“The alternator keeps the battery charged. If it’s broken, even a brand-new battery will drain. You’re going to need some work done. Have you called a tow truck yet?”
“I can’t afford a tow. And I can’t be late for work.” Panic edged her voice. She ran her hands through her hair in a nervous gesture, frustrated and at the end of her rope.
I knew exactly how she felt. There’d been times when I was taking care of my brothers, trying to keep shit together so we could all eat and stay warm in the winter, when it seemed impossible. Something big would go wrong, just one more straw on a load that felt like a pile of bricks on my back, and I’d want to break down and give up. But I didn’t have the luxury, and neither did Rianna.
No one had been there to help me back then, but I could do something for her now. I pulled out my cell phone and called one of my employees who owned a tow truck.
“I can’t pay,” Rianna was saying before I’d even hung up the phone.
“Don’t worry about it. He’s a friend of mine.” I slammed the hood shut. “Give me the keys. I’ll leave ’em under the mat for Zack. Get in my car, and I’ll take you to work so you won’t be late.”
“Wait, I…” She pressed a hand to her forehead, trying to puzzle some other way out, but in the end she had to accept my help. “Thanks.”
A few seconds later I was in my car with Rianna beside me heading the opposite direction from my house. The radio I’d been singing along with blared way too loud when I turned on the car. I quickly dialed it down, glancing sideways at my passenger.
A frown etched between her eyebrows, and her lips were thin and tensed. Even upset and worried, she was about the cutest thing I’d ever seen.
She met my gaze. “Thank you for helping me. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem. I wasn’t going to leave you stranded on the side of the road.”
“Well, thanks,” she repeated, and then she reached into the purse she’d gotten out of her car before climbing into mine. I thought she was going to call Cock Teasers and tell Ernie she’d be late. Instead, she got something out of her wallet and offered it to me. A piece of paper. The check I’d written almost a week ago.
“Here. I meant to mail it to you or just rip it up, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet,” she said. “I can’t accept this money. And now I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything.” I frowned at the check. “I want you to have that. You could clearly use it, especially now. An alternator’s not cheap. I don’t know if that old car’s going to make it through the winter. You should think about finding something better.”
“I’m working on it. Not everybody can just go to a used-car lot with a down payment in hand, and I doubt the bank’s going to want to give me a loan.” She kept holding out the stupid check. “I don’t want this.”
“But you need it. Just use it.” I glanced at her face, and it looked carved from stone. Her lips were tighter than ever and her frown deeper.
“I don’t want to be in your debt.”
I got it at last. She thought the money came with expectations of sexual favors. I shook my head. “You wouldn’t be. Think of it as an apology. I made a mistake the other night. I’m sorry.”
She cocked her head and stared at me like a puzzled puppy. “For what? We made a deal. I crapped out on it. If anyone owes an apology, it’s me.”
This wasn’t going the way I wanted. I concentrated on the road before us, steering through a rocky cut in the hill where water trickled inexorably down the glistening stone. In winter, it would turn to an icy wall.
I released a frustrated breath. “Let’s not worry about who needs to apologize. Just take the damn check and use it for your kid or something. Don’t be too proud to accept help when you need it.”
Great advice that I’d never followed.
Before Rianna could continue arguing, I changed the subject. “You’re not from around here. Did you move to the area recently?”
She folded the check and set it in the change tray in the console. “Fairly recently.”
I waited for her to fill in the blanks, but that was all she offered. I was no good at making small talk or drawing people out with questions, so we rode on in silence, mile after mile humming beneath the tires of the Range Rover.
Pulling into the parking lot of the strip club, I stole another look at my passenger. Rianna’s fingers were tangled in the strap of her purse, nervously clutching the fake leather. All of a sudden, I wanted to do a donut and tear out of the parking lot. I didn’t want her going into that crappy place and taking off her clothes so a bunch of lowlifes could stare at her body. Anger surged through me at the idea of it.
But it was Rianna’s life, her choice of a way to make a living, so I pulled up in front of the door to let her out.
“Thanks again for helping me.” She paused with her hand on the door handle. “Your tow guy was taking my car to Handy’s, right?”
“Yeah.”
She got out and started to close the door.
“I’ll pick you up after your shift. What time do you finish?”
Rianna leaned to look in the car at me. “That’s okay. Thanks, but I’ll catch a ride with one of the girls. Libbie lives out my way—sort of.”
I caught the expression of doubt on her face and jumped on it. It sounded like she lived someplace inconvenient for her coworkers to drop her off. She needed a ride, like it or not. “What time?” I demanded, using the tone that ensured my employees got a job done right and quickly.
“Around midnight.”
“I’ll be here,” I promised and started to roll away before she could protest again.
I smiled to myself as I drove away, enjoying the triumph of winning. It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I questioned why I was troubling myself for her. What did I have to gain by it? I didn’t expect or want sex from her. That wasn’t why I felt compelled to see her safely home. So what was it?
Chapter Five
Rianna
Jonah Wyatt’s reappearance in my life was too coincidental to be natural. Had he been following me to turn up just at the right time in a situation where I’d be forced to accept his help? Paranoia warred with logic that told me it wasn’t at all likely. He couldn’t be that obsessed with me, and we lived in a relatively unpopulated area where you could bump into the same handful of people at least once a week.
As I moved around the tables delivering drinks, I couldn’t stop thinking about Wyatt and how he’d insisted on giving me a ride home at the end of my shift. I anticipated and dreaded seeing him again. It was like looking forward to performing, thrilled at the opportunity to be onstage and simultaneously terrified of facing the audience. And I don’t mean stripping. I’d once played Ado
Annie in a high school production of Oklahoma!—until my grandmother found out I was sneaking behind her back to act and yanked me out of the production after opening night.
My understudy went on in my place, and Grandma and I continued to battle until the day she finally banished me from her house for my slutty ways. In hindsight, I could see where she was coming from, trying to curb a headstrong girl, but she’d gone about it all the wrong way. Which brought me to where I was today, serving drinks with my boobs hanging out.
Topless waitressing is a pain in the ass. Avoiding drunken grabby hands is the worst, but when they’re tucking bills into your G-string, it’s hard to complain. Ernie’s “no touching the girls” policy was flexible to say the least. We all put up with our share of squeezes and rubs and did our best to ignore or avoid them.
That night, I was already on edge, freaking out as I wondered how much a new alternator would cost and whether it was time to give in to the inevitable and find another car. I’d hoped to save up for at least another month but that might not be possible. Financial worries paved the way to intense irritation. So when Barney Ritter, who’d been warned numerous times and banned from the club for a stretch, took hold of one of my tits as I leaned over to set his drink on the table, I slapped him right across the face. I miscalculated and struck him in the eye. He yelled and covered his face as if I’d blinded him, the big baby.
“That’ll teach you to keep your hands to yourself,” I snapped as I picked up empties from the table.
“Trouble here?” a deep voice growled.
The hair on my neck prickled as I looked up into eyes like black coals with a red ember glowing in their core. “Is he bothering you?” Jonah Wyatt asked.
“Just Barney being Barney.” I shrugged it off and started toward the next table.
I glanced back to see Wyatt looming over Ritter, one hand braced on the back of the man’s chair, the other on the table, boxing him in as he talked. I glimpsed Barney’s face in the frame made by Wyatt’s arm. His blotchy complexion was even redder than normal, and his head bobbed up and down. Yessir, yessir, whatever you say sir.
Wyatt straightened. Barney jumped up and practically ran out of the building. His best bud, Daryl, also sitting at the table, set down his beer and slunk after his friend. Jonah Wyatt had no business butting into my issues with a customer, but I had to admit it felt great watching him scare the crap out of Ritter and his pal. Wyatt turned, and our gazes met for a moment. I gave him a quick smile before delivering the next round of beers to table six.
I can’t lie. My feeling of dread was shifting more toward excited anticipation. I couldn’t wait for the last of my customers to close out their tabs, which might take till well after midnight. I didn’t want to keep my private chauffeur waiting. After begging Abbie to take over table six, I hurried to the back room to change into street clothes.
Out in the parking lot, I spotted Wyatt’s silver Range Rover, the engine rumbling softly as if it were a big jungle cat waiting to swallow me whole. I hurried toward the vehicle. Jonah Wyatt leaned against the frame, watching me approach. He could have been a panther too, the way he lounged so gracefully, then sprang to open the passenger door for me.
His manners weren’t what I was used to from the one man I’d had in my life. Clay had been the type to honk the horn impatiently if I kept him waiting. Jonah Wyatt was either a natural gentleman or working really hard to win me over in hopes we’d finish what we’d started the other night in the motel. If he thought he was coming in when he dropped me off at my trailer, he was dead wrong.
I nodded and thanked him politely before climbing into the luscious warmth. Even my ass was warm. Heated seats! God, how sweet it would be to drive a car like this in the winter.
Wyatt didn’t say much as he got in the driver’s seat, adjusted the temperature and the volume of the stereo, then put the car into gear.
“Thanks again. You really didn’t have to do this.”
“Not a problem. Where do you live?” He cleared the parking lot of Cock Teasers, leaving ugly neon behind.
I winced. He wasn’t going to be happy when he found how far he had to go to deliver me at home. “You know the trailer park up past Old Creek Road?”
He nodded. “Intimately.”
What the hell did that mean? But my driver didn’t volunteer anything more, and I was too shy to pry. We rode in silence for a few miles. The quiet was awkward but also kind of soothing after the deafening noise in the club. I liked the tune playing on the radio and listened to that as I stared out the window into darkness.
“You know the trail back along the creek?” His voice startled me from a trance.
“Uh-huh. Used to be some homes back in there, but nobody even uses the road anymore.”
“That’s where I grew up.”
I’d hiked that trail and seen the shacks that still stood barely upright, roofs caved, windows broken. They made the snug little trailers in my park look palatial.
“Our place isn’t there anymore. It collapsed a long time ago.” His big shoulders moved in a shrug. “I used to have friends who lived in your neighborhood. You know Gabe Chesney?”
“Yeah. He still lives there with his ma.” Living off her disability checks. I rarely saw Chesney move from his front porch, where he sat with a bottle clutched in his hand most of the day. “He was your friend?”
“In high school, yeah. Haven’t talked to him in years.”
I would never have guessed Wyatt and Chesney were near the same age. Gabe was so broken down and overweight, he looked about ten years older. But I knew from what his ma had said that he was a few years shy of thirty—which put Jonah Wyatt in the same ballpark. Damn, the man had accomplished a lot in a decade, going from tar-paper shack to heated car seats. Guess that was what raising weed could do for you.
I wanted to know more, but asking questions about his business would probably not be a smart move.
“It’s a pretty decent neighborhood, considering,” I said to make conversation. “I’ve lived in worse. My next-door neighbor has been a good babysitter to my boy.”
“How old is he?”
“Three. Almost four. Not a baby anymore. He’s starting to develop a real personality. And he talks a lot now. He’s smart, and so sweet. The other day—” I clamped down on my babbling. This guy probably didn’t want to hear my motherly pride, but I couldn’t help it. If the subject of Travis came up, I was going to gush.
“The other day what?”
“Aw, nothing, he was just playing with some of the neighborhood kids. This other little kid fell, and Travis got right in there and helped him up and asked if he was okay, before I even got a chance to get involved. He even gave the boy one of his favorite toys to make him feel better.” I laughed. “Of course, he wanted it back later, and threw a fit when I had to explain to him that giving something away means it’s gone for good. He didn’t quite get that.”
I kept chattering like I was talking to another mother, as if this guy would even care about playground negotiations, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. “That’s normal, though, for his age. I looked it up in my book. They’re still working to comprehend concepts like sharing and putting other’s needs before their own. Also making promises and sticking to them.”
“You have a book?”
I shrugged and wished I’d kept all the TMI to myself. “I don’t exactly have anyone to advise me on parenting, so, yeah, I have a dummies’ guide.”
I startled at the loud sound he made. It took a second to identify it as a bark of laughter.
“Glad you find my life amusing.” I folded my arms and tried to disappear into the warm seat, utterly embarrassed.
“I’m not laughing at you.” His voice was lighter than the grim growl I’d grown used to. “You sound like you’re a really good mother. I was just thinking I could really have used a book like that when I was raising my brothers.”
Hello. That was a twist I hadn’t seen coming. My interest was m
ore piqued than ever. I had to know the details, and even fear of prying wasn’t going to stop me.
“You raised your brothers?”
He shrugged again. “Raised is probably an exaggeration. We all kind of ran wild. But I did take care of them after my mom died. I provided for them and knocked their heads together when they needed it.”
“How old were you?”
“Twelve. My dad was around for a while, but he wasn’t any use.” He lifted his hand from the steering wheel and waved it as if he’d erase the information from the air. “Forget it. I don’t talk about that.”
Twelve? Another twist. I’d expected him to say he’d been in his twenties. Hell, his background was as messed up as mine. I felt a sudden kinship with another survivor. Maybe we weren’t as different as I’d first thought.
“My mom went in and out of my life like a meteor,” I said. “She’d streak in and leave a crater. Just when I got used to having her back, she’d leave me with a friend, or with my grandma, and take off again.”
From the corner of my eye, I could see Jonah watching me. “Where is she now?”
“She died of an overdose. After that I stayed with Gran till I was seventeen.” I recited the facts of my life without emotion. I used to feel each painful abandonment or rejection deeply. They tore me up. But now it was as if those events had happened to some other girl. I had my life with Travis. He was all that mattered to me.
“How about your brothers? Do they still live around here?” I asked.
“No. They got out of here as soon as they could. They’re both in Chicago now.”
“Do you miss them?” I used to dream about what it would be like to have a sister or brother, someone I’d share a real family bond with.
“I don’t really think about it,” Jonah said coolly. “They’re grown men. No reason to expect they’d stick around.”
“But you stayed.”
“I had a business to run.”
He turned onto Old Creek Road, beginning the final climb to the trailer park. The SUV’s high beams cut a swath of light through the pitch-black beneath a tunnel of tree branches. A pair of eyes shone at the side of the road. A deer from the height, but the animal was gone by the time we passed that spot.
