Well didn’t that little gem go viral fast. “I didn’t say that.”
“Near enough, new girl.”
“My name is Rosie.”
“Your name is whatever Orrin wants to call you, if you know what’s good for you.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because you remind me of someone.”
“Oh yeah? Who?”
“None of your business.”
Beth had to be in her late fifties, which made her ancient by Abundance standards. “How long have you been here?”
“Since the beginning.” She put her mug down. “I was a damn fool back then, letting Orrin sweet-talk me into thinking this was a good idea and now it’s too late to do anything about it.”
“You don’t like it here?” The only one close in age to Beth was Orrin and then maybe Spencer and Mike, the head of Zeke’s crew. The smattering of older men in the population wasn’t well-matched by older women.
“Sure, I like it.” Beth picked her mug up and put it down again for emphasis. “All the world is going to hell in a handbasket, this is as good a place as any to go mad, but we’re not talking about me.”
Rory pushed her plate away. Her appetite had dissolved. “I’m just trying to make my way, you know.”
“I know you think that. But your education is making you question what you have no right to. Best thing to ever happen to you will be when Orrin claims you. I came over here to tell you not to screw that up.”
Rory crocheted her hands like Cadence had done. “I’m a little scared of him.”
Beth laughed. “You’re not scared of anyone. Orrin won’t appreciate you playing hard to get. That’s the kind of game we left in decay, but you look like you bathe in it.”
That observation was a little too sharp for Rory’s liking. “What will he appreciate?”
“How sweet you are to him. How good you are in bed. How quick you make a baby, and how well you run along down those stairs of his with a big old smile and no complaints when he’s tired of you.”
Down those stairs of his. That was oddly specific, and Beth had waggled two red-tipped fingers in a running motion to illustrate her point.
“That’s it?” Rory slapped her palms on the tabletop. “He doesn’t like conversation, or, I don’t know, playing tic-tac-toe?” There was only one place with stairs in Abundance. The second story of HQ wasn’t more offices. It was where Orrin lived.
“He likes conversation fine, but that’s not what he wants a woman for.”
“That’s hardly an enlightened view.”
“This is Abundance, new girl. Not utopia. Women have a natural role to play here. I’m doing you the favor of speaking plainly.” Now she caught the flavor of Beth’s emotion, a weary frayed kind of anger. “By all means, burn your light out thinking you’ve got a choice. I have known that man for twenty-five years. He likes pretty women in his bed and pretty children to his name and he gets what he wants, every time.”
“Do you have kids?”
Beth broke eye contact for the first time. “My insides were too slippery. Couldn’t get them to stick.” She grunted. “Try not to lose a baby. He won’t like it. You won’t get a second chance with him. He lost his tolerance for pain like that.”
Rory was betting he’d lost his tolerance for Beth. No wonder she spoke her mind when others were more guarded. Still, the fact she had the red polish indicated she was close to the sources of power here.
“I’m sorry for the trouble you had.”
“I don’t need your sympathy. Can’t tell if it’s real or you being a suck-up. Way I see it, isn’t nothing I didn’t bring on myself one way or another by expecting too much from a man and not listening enough to my own heart. You got brains behind that beauty, new girl, you won’t ever do that.”
She’d already done it. Expecting too much from Cal, shutting out her doubts about their relationship when they’d come knocking. This was a reminder not to make any mistakes with Zeke and wreck the friendship they had.
“I see.” Beth tipped her chin up with a grin. “Not a greenhorn then.”
Rory nodded her assent. “Can I ask you one more question?”
“I am not telling you what he likes to do in the sack.”
Rory mirrored Beth, tipping her chin up and grinning. That was the confirmation of her theory about Beth having once been Orrin’s lover. “How do I say no to him?”
Beth pushed away from the table and stood. “With a great deal of consideration as to how you want your life to turn out. Much as I could kick that man in a place that would make his brain fritz out, he is the only reason we will survive what’s coming, and it doesn’t hurt none to give a few fucks about that.”
The challenge was finding a way to do that—without literally doing it.
She had plenty of time to contemplate how. A whole new week to stand in her corner of the kitchen watching the shifts change and the meals come together and fidgeting foot to foot, craving the fleetest eye contact.
Her days were big on boredom, but her nights were full of action. By midweek she’d explored the school, the clinic, the meeting hall, the kids’ dorm and the nursery and come up empty. Cadence slept through her nocturnal exploits and apart from one very confused little boy who thought she was the tooth fairy, her break and enter activities were uneventful. They were also completely unfruitful. No signal jammer to be found.
It confirmed her suspicions. It had to be in Orrin’s top-floor apartment where he could keep an eye on it and where no one would venture uninvited. She couldn’t break in there and risk getting caught. Orrin wasn’t likely to believe in fairies, tooth or otherwise. But they still had time before they had to check in with Tresna or risk her busting in to pull them out before they were ready.
And this weekend there was a games night and plenty of opportunity for hide and seek, so long as it was signal jammers, not Zeke she was seeking.
Chapter Eleven
Zeke caught his foot in his hand and stretched his quad. They’d been running for an hour, and he was a mess of sweat. Rory looked nothing worse than shiny. And she’d just announced that tonight was games night as if it were a rare invitation to go crazy at Burning Man.
“I’d rather dance on a bar top and go out for pizza at 3.00 a.m., and sugar up my already sweetened caramel Frappuccino,” he said. After another week on the work site, he’d had enough of socializing. He wanted a bag of corn chips, guac, salsa and a movie at a minimum.
In response she put one hand on her hip, flung the other over her head in a side stretch that lifted her rib cage and turned her body into a C-curve, showing off the belt of her abs as she stabilized. Watching her did nothing for his own sense of stability, her body was insanely perfect.
He must’ve scowled at her because she hit him with, “Oh, so grouchy,” before she switched to the other side and then rotated forward, tucking her palms under her toes, face against her knees. Made of goddamn rubber and twice as bouncy.
He changed legs, stretched the other quad. “I miss my bed.” He was close to forgetting what memory foam and a silk topper felt like. Another week of sleeping on the ground had him dreaming up ways to have Tres airlift him a Grand Master. It would be a goddamn humanitarian effort. It was a good thing their tech had never been returned and they still had no way to phone home, because there was zero end to the way he could rationalize the need for a good night’s sleep.
“Poor baby.”
He didn’t need to see Rory’s face to hear the put-down in her voice. It wasn’t just lack of sleep and missing regular sugar hits. He was pissed off and not sure why, but irritation bubbled under his skin and he didn’t have time for that. He had to stay focused. Had to find a way to get nearly five-thousand people clear of Orrin Epcot’s influence and keep Rory safe without earning a swift kick to a soft private part for presuming she couldn’t handle herself. She could; the protective instinct was all about him and he couldn’t turn it off and she didn’t deserve his doubt. Another th
ing that gave him the shits.
“They have Clue and Battleship,” she said, hands clasped and raised above her head, saluting the sun with her glistening goddess body.
“I’m more a Chutes and Ladders man.”
She laughed and dropped her arms to her sides. “You have to get there early for the good games.”
The good game was bamboo cotton sheets, a decent cool gel-infused pillow. It was a morning lie-in and added fooling around with the beautiful diversion he’d taken to bed, followed by a leisurely brunch together.
He put his hands down on the grass and shaped a plank, ready for push-up. “There are no good board games. Drop and give me ten.”
She dropped beside him and he counted out ten and then when she didn’t falter, another ten. At the count of twenty-two, she sat cross-legged on his back. “Twenty-three,” she said.
“Are you trying to kill me?” He lowered his chest to the grass and pushed up, her added weight and the edge of her runners on his shoulder blades reminding him of his various aches and pains.
“Twenty-four. You love a challenge.”
He growled at the grass, sweat dripping from his nose. “Brat.” He lowered and lifted, staying rock steady so not to dislodge her.
“Why are you grumpy? Twenty-five.”
“Because I have to go to games night like it’s 1952 and clubbing and Netflix haven’t been invented.” He did the twenty-fifth push-up.
“That’s not it. Twenty-six. Did you know they all think there’s been a major measles epidemic? Killed millions. Wiped out whole cities.”
“Bizarre. Measles is out there but not at killer plague destruction level.”
“They also think radio waves from electronic equipment cause birth defects and too much medical intervention stops the body from repairing itself. Also, apple cider vinegar is better than antibiotics.”
“Did you know they think Hawaii sank?”
She flicked the back of his head. “Better not have. Twenty-six, or are you done?”
He gave her twenty-six and twenty-seven.
“Are you grumpy about Hawaii?”
He was tired, that was all this was. Found it impossible to sleep on the ground and difficult to sleep in a cabin shared with four other men. The snoring alone was a reason to contemplate murder. When he got back to town last night, he’d been looking forward to seeing Rory, but she was nowhere to be found.
He got Susan instead.
And she brought her A game without a single wasted hair flip or eyelash flicker. He was filthy and stank and was barely polite and still she’d straight-up proposed they bond and promised to be his baby momma no later than three months after they were down to fuck, as if that was the deal of the century.
They’d had an audience, most of the construction crew. Hadn’t stopped her. He stumbled over a response, as shocked in real life as he was wearing Zack’s skin. He played hard to get, sending Susan away with an offer to consider her proposal and an embarrassed flush on her cheeks. He’d hated doing that, but there were limited choices available in the moment. It was a relief it earned him a reprimand from Mike for being disrespectful and behaving like a decay dweller. He owed Susan an apology and he had to find a way to do it that didn’t involve his cock.
“That was thirty-seven,” Rory said, climbing off him.
He gave her three more to make forty and lowered to the ground, rolling to his back, throwing an arm over his face to block the sun.
She lay beside him. He could feel her waiting. He wasn’t in the mood to talk about this. Somewhere close by a goat bellowed and Rory followed with, “You’re pregnant and you don’t know how to tell the father?”
Close. “Fuck off.”
“You regret your life of crime and you’re going to turn yourself in and spend the rest of your years wearing an orange jumpsuit.”
“I look good in orange.”
“I’m not visiting you.” She pinched his thigh. Warm fingers, nasty sting.
“There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Zeke Venom Janvier Lucas Sherwood, you’re lying to me.”
The arm over his face masked his smile. She used to make up middle names for him from the books she was reading when they were kids. What did it mean that she was doing it again? Venom? The amusement didn’t mask his annoyance.
“Where were you last night?” he said. She’d have given him a foil, saved him from the situation with Susan at best, helped him defuse a tense situation with Mike and the crew.
“I was tired. I went to bed.”
“Tired from standing around doing nothing.”
“Yes, you shithead.”
He braced for a pinch or a kick and it didn’t come and that just pissed him off more. She wasn’t doing nothing, she was working double shifts looking for the signal jammer and evidence they could use to shut this place down. But she wasn’t there when he’d needed her last night and she’d avoided him until he’d cornered her after lunch.
“You need to check in with me when I get back into town. I haven’t seen you for a week and I’m only here two days and all you want to do is run till we drop and talk about fucking Monopoly night. We have a week to find that goddamn signal jammer and I need to know you have a strategy to keep Orrin at arm’s length.”
Rory was silent but somewhere close by a goat shrieked like it was being tortured.
After a while she said, “Are you done?” in a steely voice that prickled worse than the grass under his legs.
Nope, but he’d made his point. This wasn’t playtime, this was thousands of lives. She couldn’t just decide to avoid him. They had to stick together.
The goat screamed again; it sounded like it was calling for help. Fuck. She always avoided him when she was pissed with him. “What happened that you don’t want to tell me?”
She knocked the breath out of him when she straddled his chest, shoving his arm away from his face and digging her knees into his ribs. “Me? Nothing. What’s going on with you?”
He took hold of her arms as a precaution against further rough treatment. “I’m peachy.”
“Like hell you are.”
“You’re avoiding me.”
She squeezed his ribs with her thighs. “You have a funny way of understanding avoidance.”
“Last night you—”
“I was tired.”
He could see himself, side by side images in her sunglasses. “All morning you—”
“Not everyone gets exciting jobs building the new world. I had to stand around and do nothing this morning.”
“You knew I’d want to talk.”
She got an arm free and jabbed her knuckles into his ribs, making him grunt. “So talk.”
Yeah, that wasn’t happening. He had nothing to say that wasn’t full of anger for all the wrong reasons. He sat, lifted her off his hips and dumped her pert ass in the grass. Now the goat wasn’t the only one mouthing off.
“You could’ve come to me,” he said, cutting her tirade off, seconds before she left him for dead in a field in the middle of nowhere with a goat that was making more sense than he was.
She slapped her hands at her sides. “How was I supposed to know when you were going to get home? You just want me to wait around for you to show up like this is the ’50s and I don’t have better options.”
He pushed to his feet. Yes, that’s what he’d wanted. To see her lovely face after another week spent in the company of men whose motives he didn’t trust, who he’d just as soon abandon to their fate as rescue. To have her laughter and the comfort of her silence after another week spent building homes for fictional refugees who were meant to become real slaves. He’d worried about what stunt Orrin might pull, what mischief Rory might get into when he wasn’t around to have her back. He’d worried about her coping with being frozen out and broken down or withstanding the opposite pressures if the love bombing had begun. Her confidence had taken a knock when she broke with Cal and it was only sensible to be concerned.
&n
bsp; He’d missed her.
He could call it professional concern all he wanted but it wasn’t that. He’d missed her forever.
“Not yesterday. When you broke up with Cal.” The shocked expression on her face made him look away but it didn’t stop him verbally vomiting all over her. “You ran. I fucking worried about you when you went missing. We all did. And then when you came back you were different.” Withdrawn, easy to anger. Weighted down with sadness. “You never said a word and you were buttoned-up tight. You only wanted this assignment to punish yourself.”
“Zeke, that’s twelve months ago.” He couldn’t read her eyes behind her dark lenses but her lips, her tone told him how she felt about the ice water he’d just poured down her back. Shocked, confused. “Why didn’t you say something before?”
His brain must must’ve been knocked loose from its stem. He shouldn’t have said anything now. “I saved it up as a special present.”
“You think I don’t know you care,” she accused.
“I was there for you.” He pushed his hands through his hair. His mental stability pouring out the holes in his battered ego. He’d been there for her when she’d been free to choose him. “I’m always there for you.”
“I know that. You even took my side against Cal when it wasn’t smart to, but I was lost, the whole of this last year. Didn’t know who I was without being Cal’s partner, his lover, without being someone everyone could trust not to screw up a job. I didn’t have anything worth giving anyone. It was better I wasn’t around. But I don’t feel that way now.”
She took a step toward him and he almost pushed her away because what he most wanted to do was hold her tight enough to meld their skins together. She was worth the breath in his lungs and the light in his eyes but his own loss of cool was fueling his anger.
“I had to make my own peace with what I did. I couldn’t separate my professional relationship from my personal one with Cal. I exposed him and wrecked the con and lost the family a lot of money. I was ashamed. I still am. And yes, I wanted to take this job to make amends, to prove I can be trusted, relied on.”
“That’s not a good reason to—” That wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear.
The Mysterious Stranger (The Confidence Game Book 3) Page 10
