The Good Fight (Time Served Book 3)

by Julianna Keyes

  Her laugh is humorless. “That’s it? You want to voice your concerns about the time?”

  “What do you want me to say? You’re not a booty call. You know you’re not. So what if I don’t want to talk about shit right now? When I’m ready I’ll tell you. Just deal with it. Fuck.” I rub a hand over my face. A week of stressing about the project plus running a business that actually earns me an income—I can’t take this right now.

  “I’ll ‘deal with it’ at home,” she says tersely.

  “You told me I run when things get hard.”

  “Well,” she says. “You set a great example.”

  I don’t say anything else, just stand in the driveway and watch until her taillights disappear.

  * * *

  My phone rings at six ten the following morning, and I make the mistake of answering without checking the display. “Hello?” I don’t even open my eyes, holding the phone to my ear and praying for a wrong number.

  “Hey. Oz?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Marco.”

  I wake up a little more. Marco and his crew are supposed to be working at the site in a few hours. “What’s going on?”

  “I’ve got half my guys calling in sick,” he says. “It’ll be a small crew today. You can wait for the full crew, but the work won’t get started until Monday.”

  I stifle a sigh. We both know “sick” is shorthand for “hungover.” Part of the plan was to get Marco’s guys to help bring the garden supplies up to the roof while my guys finished up the main level in time for the grand opening.

  What the fuck. “Come Monday,” I say. The gym guys only work weekends; at least this way they won’t run into each other.

  “All right. Will do.” He hangs up without saying goodbye, and I toss the phone on the nightstand and get out of bed. I’m tired. I’m tired of everything right now, but mostly I’m tired because I tossed and turned all night, having odd nightmares about Susan. Every time I woke up and reached for her and found the bed empty, the ball of nerves in my stomach grew a little bigger, a little more electric and unwieldy.

  Thirty minutes later I’m parking at the empty building, driving an SUV stuffed with thousands of dollars of garden supplies that need to be toted upstairs, and the guys who were supposed to help with the carrying are at home, sleeping off last night’s good time. Thirty minutes after that I’m sweating and breathing hard, having made four cumbersome trips from my car, through the building, and up two flights to the roof. The sun is up, the morning haze burned away, and it’s hot and miserable.

  I tense up when I return to the parking lot just in time to see someone duck out of sight behind the SUV. I’ve got about twenty-five more trips left, so there’s still lots to steal, and that’s not including the car. My heart rate increases and my palms itch, the argument with Susan and a night spent tossing and turning coiling together, antsy, eager aggression looking for an outlet.

  “Who’s there?” I say, taking a few steps forward, then halting when Wyatt rounds the trunk.

  “Hey,” he says, looking me over. “Morning.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  He nods at the SUV. “I was running past. Saw you out here and thought I could help. If you wanted.”

  I look at him suspiciously. He’s only been in town maybe three or four months, and I don’t know anything more about him than what he told me when he “applied” for the job. I’d even checked with Oreo after, and because the guy has no regard for the rules, he pulled out Wyatt’s gym application and showed me what he’d filled out. Twenty-five, born but not raised in Texas. He’s currently unemployed, doing odd jobs here and there for extra cash while he completes a welding course at Camden’s one and only community college.

  “I could come back,” he says, taking a step away when I don’t answer and my suspicions become obvious. “I was just getting some exercise. I know I’m not supposed to be here until ten.”

  From our limited interactions at the gym, I know Wyatt’s focused and committed. The sweaty white T-shirt he’s got on shows that he’s fit. And he’s here. And he’s willing. We have a winner.

  “No,” I say finally. “Stay. I could use a hand. The crew that was scheduled to be here bailed.”

  “That Marco’s crew?”

  “Yeah. You know them?”

  He offers a small smile as we collect the wooden sets we’ll use to build the planter boxes and start to lug them inside. “I know some of them had a lot of fun last night.”

  I look him over. He’s a good-looking kid, half white, half Latino, if I’m not mistaken. He’s got tan skin and dark hair, and light eyes I’ve heard Jade and the gymbos wax poetic over. What I haven’t heard is any of them talking about scoring with him, and that’s not exactly news they keep to themselves. “You don’t drink?” I ask.

  “From time to time.”

  “But you still get up at seven on Saturdays to run?” We reach the second floor and I point the way down the hall toward the fire door.

  From behind I see him shrug. “From time to time.”

  All right. Not much of a conversationalist. But beggars can’t be choosers. He is, after all, here.

  * * *

  Oh dear God.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I groan. It’s five after ten and I’ve spent the past hours up on the roof with Wyatt, nailing together half a billion planter boxes, sealing the bases with thick black liner, them filling them with soil and planting mix. I’m hot, I’m dirty and I thought I was tired until I came downstairs to find Jade standing in the middle of the room, surveying the men working. Rather, men who are supposed to have been working for a whopping five whole minutes, but have now paused to stare at Jade.

  “I’m here to help,” she says.

  I roll my eyes. She’s dressed to “help” in a pair of miniscule denim shorts, cowboy boots and a black tank top with the neckline cut low enough to show more cleavage than I’m comfortable seeing. Her dark hair is pulled up in a bun, and she’s toned down the makeup to what she probably deems “hard work appropriate.”

  “You’re not invited,” I tell her.

  “I know. And that’s offensive. I’m a good worker.”

  “You’re here to look for a hook up,” I snap. “And I need these guys to work. You’re going to be a distraction.”

  “That’s offensive too,” she says, giving me a glare I’d probably wither under if I weren’t already so fucking irritated. As it stands, I stare right back until she falters. “I just want to help, Oz!” she tries, taking a different tack. “What’s so wrong with that?”

  “What are you doing up at ten on a Saturday? Don’t you have anything better to do?”

  “I want to be here.”

  “Jade.”

  “What?”

  “Tell me the truth or get the hell out.”

  She does her best Bambi impression, huge dark eyes batting at me, but I’ve had a lot of experience with gorgeous eyes lately, and these ones have no impact. Finally her shoulders sag and she sighs dramatically, mumbling something unintelligible.

  “What was that?”

  More mumbling.

  “Jade. If you—”

  “Alex is in trouble again and some of the guys have been coming around the house and I don’t want to be there right now,” she says, the torrent of words so fast I can barely catch them.

  Alex is Jade’s older brother, one of the two who raised her, and he’s supposed to be in prison. He’s a couple years younger than me, but where I quit hotwiring cars when I turned eighteen, he made it a career that culminated in a fifteen-year sentence after he jacked an army jeep and led police on a two-hour chase across state lines.

  “I thought he had a couple years left,” I say.

  She scratches her temple.
“Good behavior, if you can believe it. I told him not to come back to the house when he got out, but it got willed to all of us, and he says if he wants to live there, he can. I mean, he’s not bothering me, in particular, but I know he didn’t learn anything in prison, and he’s already got people coming around who...shouldn’t be.”

  “What are they saying to you?”

  She shifts uncomfortably. “Nothing. I just have a bad feeling.”

  “Jade.”

  “Can I work here or not?” she says tightly. I know Jade well enough to know when she’s being manipulative, but this isn’t an act. She doesn’t ask for help often, and I’m not about to screw things up with the second woman in two days.

  “Fine.” I know this is a mistake. I’d feel better leaving Jade alone in the tannery over night than having her work alongside a bunch of horny, easily distracted men. “But you’ve gotta work, not flirt. I’m paying these guys from my own pocket.”

  “I get it, Oz. I’m seeing Ricky, anyway. He’s taking me on a trip this month.”

  Bullshit. “Yeah? Where?”

  “To Morrisburg.”

  Morrisburg’s a little lakeside town just over the border into Wisconsin. “What are you going to do in Morrisburg? Sell earphones?”

  “Ha ha. We’re going to stay in a yurt all weekend. It’ll be romantic.”

  “What the hell’s a yurt?”

  “You don’t know anything, Oz. I’ll take pictures for you.”

  “Please don’t. No pictures. No yurts. You should be hanging out at the library, then going to church.”

  She cracks a smile. “Every Sunday.”

  “Hey.”

  We both turn to see Wyatt approaching, the white of his T-shirt now almost completely obscured by sweat, dirt and grime, soccer shorts and sneakers fallen victim to the same fate.

  “Hey,” I say. “Sorry. I got sidetracked. I’ll grab the water.” I brought a small cooler with me this morning, and when I left Wyatt ten minutes ago it was with the promise to return with refreshments.

  “I can get it,” he says, turning toward the door.

  “I’ll help,” Jade offers.

  “You will not,” I interrupt. “You will grab a roller and a paint tray and get started on that end—” I point to the east side of the building, a good hundred feet from the next closest worker “—and Wyatt will come outside with me.” Where I can keep an eye on him. Or protect him, as needed.

  Jade shoots him a sexy smile. “Wyatt, huh?”

  “Jade!”

  She makes a face but stomps off to gather her supplies, every set of eyes except mine tracking her progress.

  “She works here?” Wyatt asks, leading the way to the SUV.

  “She works at my office,” I reply. “Today she just showed up. You haven’t seen her at the gym?” I grab the cooler from the passenger seat and hand Wyatt a bottle of semi-cool water, taking one for myself.

  “I’ve seen her,” he says. “Never talked to her.”

  “No, huh? She talks to everybody.”

  “I know.” He sips his water. “I heard.”

  I’m not sure how to interpret the statement. “I heard” as in, I overheard her conversations, or I heard she gets around? “She’s got a lot on her plate,” I say instead.

  He finishes the water and tosses the bottle in the last remaining dumpster. “Who doesn’t? You ready to head back up?”

  “Yeah.” My bottle follows his, then we make the slow slog to the roof, every step making me question this venture more and more. A rooftop garden is a romantic idea—if you have an elevator. Right now it’s a fucking chore.

  But Wyatt works tirelessly, opening up the longer we bake in the sun, telling me how he was an army brat, following his father around the country until his mother got tired of it and split, taking him back to Texas when he was fifteen. She had a huge garden and he’d been her apprentice, which is how he knows his way around up here.

  “It’s a good idea,” he says suddenly, surprising me.

  “What is?”

  He gestures around the not-so-green space. “This. I mean, I didn’t like weeding that much, and I really didn’t like having to go out and handpick beetles and larvae off the plants, but I liked eating the stuff we grew. It’s hard to get good food in Camden. I don’t know the last time I had, like, an orange.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” I say, pleased to have met a like-minded individual. “I keep driving into the city to get stuff. Everything out here is just castoffs from other stores, passing on things that aren’t good enough to sell to rich people.”

  “Yep.” He wipes his brow and squints out at the surrounding landscape, a sea of gray shimmering in the summer haze.

  “Let’s break for lunch,” I say, checking my watch. “It’s a little after twelve. Why don’t you come back around three when the worst of the sun’s passed?”

  “Sounds good.” He lifts the hem of his shirt to clean his face, then reconsiders when he sees how filthy it is. “Guess white wasn’t my best choice.”

  “Some things you learn the hard way.”

  He offers a short laugh as he disappears back down the stairs, and I slump onto the edge of one of the planters, surveying the scene. I bought thirty planter box sets, and we’ve got about a dozen set up and filled with soil, the seedlings stashed on the second floor until we can get them dug in and watered. I’m halfway tempted to curl up in the shade next to the electrical shed, but I drag myself to my feet and back downstairs, intending to head home to shower and eat.

  If I’m expecting to see Jade holding court when I get downstairs, I’m both pleasantly and horribly surprised to learn that I’m wrong. Because five steps from the bottom I hear not one, but two female voices.

  “...really don’t see the problem,” Jade is saying. “I mean, maybe it’s their problem, but it’s not my problem.”

  “‘Problem’ might not be the right word,” Susan replies. “But if you were going to run a race, would you tie your shoelaces together?”

  “These boots don’t even have laces.”

  “Why do you need two-inch heels to paint?”

  “Do you even own heels?”

  “One or two pairs, maybe.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I got them from my sister. Christian LeBleu or something?”

  A pause. “Louboutin?”

  “Oh, maybe.” Susan’s not even playing coy. She genuinely doesn’t know. Fuck—even I know the guy who makes the shoes with the red soles. But here she is, back to me, wearing a pair of practical black shorts, a gray T-shirt and her old sneakers, rolling paint on the left while Jade works on the right and they move in toward the center.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I know they’re not appropriate footwear for painting an old building. And I know if I get this shirt dirty, I’ll just throw it away. It cost like, five dollars.”

  “That explains why you look like a gym teacher, not a doctor.”

  Oh God. They must have been playing “getting to know you” for a while.

  “You know what you look like?”

  Jade pauses midroll, and turns her head slowly to look at Susan. “What?”

  “A Rorschach test.”

  “A what?”

  Susan points at Jade’s chest, and I see Jade look down, the front of her black top now plastered with a strangely symmetrical white smear. It kind of looks like a dead butterfly.

  “What does it mean if I see a seagull?” Jade asks.

  Susan resumes painting. “That you need glasses.”

  I wait for Jade to take offense or something, but instead she just laughs and bends to dip her roller in the paint, spotting me from the corner of her eye. “There you are,” she says, straightening. “You two finish
your powwow on the roof?”

  “Don’t be jealous,” I tell her. “It’s unattractive.”

  “You’re unattractive.”

  I ignore her and look at Susan, who’s stopped painting and turned to face me. There’s a tiny white fleck on her cheek, and I’m dying to cross the five feet that separate us to wipe it away, but I’m not sure how welcome the gesture would be right now. “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey.” She places her roller in the tray and swipes her palms across her shorts, leaving faint white smudges.

  People say they don’t understand why elephants are afraid of mice, but I get it. They might look small and harmless, but who knows what the fuck they’ll do. “You came.”

  “Of course she came,” Jade says. “She’s your girlfriend. The one you tried to keep a secret from me. You should have told me she sent the bees. Now I owe Lupo an apology.”

  “Stay away from Lupo.”

  “Too late.”

  I sigh. “Why don’t you take a lunch break?” I suggest.

  Jade rolls her shoulders, considering. “Okay, fine. But I’m coming back.”

  “I figured.” I check out the wall. “You’re doing a good job.”

  “It’s not exactly rocket science.” She waves to Susan. “See you later.”

  Susan lifts a hand in return. “Bye, Jade.”

  Finally we’re alone. Well, as alone as we can be with the attention of five guys who remember the scene from last weekend and are curious to see what today’s installment brings.

  I’m reluctant to move, and only part of the reason is because I smell like shit. I mean, every inch of me is covered in sweat and gunk, dirt caked under my nails, a couple of fresh blisters broken open on my palms. “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” I say finally, darting a warning glance over my shoulder. The guys pretend to get back to work, but nobody’s fooled.

  “I said I would.”

  I exhale and study my feet. I’d thought about this non-stop last night, and most of the morning. I don’t take back what I said about not wanting to open up to her right now, not when her entire personality is built like some sort of reservoir, odd bits and pieces trickling out unexpectedly. But I don’t want to fight with her, either, and I know she’s trying, so I just...Hell, I don’t know. I just don’t want to go to bed again not knowing when I’ll see her next. Or if.