by Brent, Cora
And he wasn’t.
Naturally he looked fantastic in dark jeans and a light blue chambray shirt that could have been plucked from an Abercrombie rack this morning. And I don’t know how he maintained a look that managed to be somewhere between shaven and unshaven but it was crazy sexy.
“I hoped you were still here this morning,” he said. “I just wanted to stop by and see how you were doing.”
“Mortified. Tired.” I touched my head. “Lighter.”
Ryan was miserable. “Fuck, Leah. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
“It’s over. I survived.”
He stared at me. I got the feeling he was thinking about a lot more than my latest unfortunate haircut. I wished I hadn’t blurted out that story about my mother. I knew it only made me even more wretched.
“Listen,” he said. “I can handle managing the Cactus today.”
The offer surprised me. “What do you know about running a bar?”
“Everything I need to know,” he said with pure arrogance.
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“You wouldn’t doubt my abilities if you looked at my bank account.”
I snorted. “So what, you have money. Can you handle a dozen testosterone pumped bikers trying to elbow each other out of the way while howling that their drink needs to be served next before someone gets bloody?”
He considered. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that falls in my lane. And if I run into trouble Terry will help me out.”
I sighed, stabbed with guilt. I’d forgotten all about Terry. “I’m not sure Terry wants to work there anymore.”
“Sure he does. I talked to him this morning.”
“Oh Ryan, you did not.”
“I did too. I told you I knew his brother in high school. Terry wasn’t hard to track down. Despite the fact that his first instinct was to choke me in a headlock he calmed down.” Ryan paused. “I told him what happened. He’s awful busted up over it and he wants to help. I think he might even do it without trying to reorganize my anatomical structure.”
I was astonished. “You’re not making this up, are you?”
“No.” He was still standing in the doorway. He cocked his head and gazed at me searchingly. “Let the people who care about you help you today, Leah. Take the night off. I’ll make sure the Cactus doesn’t fall apart. Terry will be there. And I’ll call in that Misty girl because she seems like she’s good at keeping things in order.”
I chewed my lip. “It’s Friday. It’ll be busy.”
“Luckily I don’t have anything else to do.”
The idea was more than tempting. I couldn’t face going to the bar today, dealing with the inevitable questions about my hair, possibly confronting the horror of running into Gina Scarpetti. Plus I was tired. So very tired. I’d been tending the Dirty Cactus six days a week for more than six months straight. And as much as I loved that bar I couldn’t bear to be there today. Ryan was right. I needed to accept help when it was so generously offered.
“Okay,” I said.
Ryan still had the keys from when he’d locked up last night. He gave me his cell number and told me to call right away if there was anything I needed.
“What is it?” he wanted to know when I started giggling.
I shook my head, still laughing even though nothing was funny at all. “I’m just not used to this.”
“What?”
“Being taken care of by people.”
A strange expression crossed his face. “It doesn’t suck, does it?”
“No, it really doesn’t suck.” I reached up and gave him an impulsive hug.
How quickly we veered between extremes, he and I. One night we were screwing each other’s brains out. The next we were having a screaming argument. And now this morning we were embracing like BFFs.
He gently patted my back. “Take it easy today. Call me if you need anything.”
I released him. “I will. And thank you.”
Ryan didn’t budge immediately. He grabbed my right hand, pressed something into my palm, then turned away and walked back to his truck.
I’d just closed the door when Tristan appeared.
“Was someone in here just now?” he asked.
I opened my palm and stared at the silver medal in the center. I’d last seen it roll out of sight in Ryan’s entryway. I closed my hand and drew comfort from the feel of the small shape encased in my fist.
“Yes, someone was here,” I said, then added, “A friend.”
Chapter Sixteen
Ryan
I hadn’t lied to Leah about knowing my way around a bar. Shortly after I became Greg Holbrook my uncle found me a position bartending in a high end joint down in South Beach. Tips were off the wall and I was up to my elbows in hot suntanned ass. I stayed there for over a year while I was obtaining my GED and completing the first few semesters of community college. Granted, the clientele in South Beach was slightly dissimilar to the patrons in Emblem but people were people and drinks were drinks.
Terry arrived earlier than he was scheduled to work in order to give me a rundown of what was kept where. He was a little stiff at first, which was completely understandable. But a few apologies and a heartfelt handshake later he was all about setting our differences aside for the sake of helping Leah. I respected the hell out of the guy for that. If the situation was reversed I wasn’t convinced I would have been so nice to me.
Sharon was the Dirty Cactus employee I hadn’t officially met yet. She arrived at the same time as Misty and both were exceedingly concerned about Leah, although Sharon’s was more of the hand-wringing kind of concern while Misty’s level of concern probably wouldn’t mind breaking some bones. I didn’t give anyone a grisly description of how distraught Leah was last night and I didn’t share what I knew about who was responsible but Misty yanked me into the back office as soon as Terry and Sharon were busy doing something else.
Misty was irate. “It was a fucking woman,” she said. “The hair thing. No man would do that shit.”
“It was a woman,” I said because there was no point in lying.
“Who?” she demanded with a scowl, and then answered her own question. “Never mind, I fucking know who. That tacky bitch who got her ass thrown out of here last night. Leah told me who she was. They go way back to high school. I think her name was Jenny.”
“Gina,” I said.
“Gina.” Misty tapped a long fingernail against her rhinestone belt buckle. “Well all right then, let’s go find her.” She lurched toward the door, ready to initiate the brand new sport of Gina Hunting.
“Hold on.” I pulled her back. “Don’t go off and do something reckless. That won’t help Leah.”
“Oh, I’m not going to do something reckless, honey. I’m going to do something violent.”
“Okay.” I leveled with her. “Between you and me, I’m already working on it. This will get taken care of. I promise.”
Misty was slightly mollified. “You’ll deal with it yourself?”
“I wouldn’t trust anyone else.”
She smiled. “Neither would I. So count me in.”
In any other situation I wouldn’t have been so eager to do something that would threaten an encounter with the police, not when I’d spent so many years hiding from them. But this was different. Gina and her companion had to be sweating it out somewhere, wondering if there was going to be a knock on the door from the cops, so I had a hunch that they weren’t about to go dialing 911. I was willing to take the risk. For Leah.
Misty couldn’t be dissuaded from tagging along. The only way she’d agree to go back to work instead of launching a one woman crime spree is if I promised her I’d tell her when the time came and let her deal with Gina herself. That was actually preferable. As much as I despised Gina Scarpetti for what she’d done to Leah I knew I didn’t have the stomach to lay a hand on any woman. Misty had no such qualms. As for the boyfriend, he was all mine.
Misty sized me up before walking
away. “I thought you might be a lying sack of shit but you seem all right after all.”
“Thanks. I think.”
She sighed and stared down at her pink sandals. “I’m used to people looking at me like I’m trash. Leah doesn’t look at me that way. She’s the type who sticks by her friends so you bet your sweet ass I’m going to stick by her.”
I couldn’t argue with that logic. When Misty was gone I took a look around the office. A stack of invoices were neatly clipped together on the desk. Some of them were past due. The latest bank statements had already been filed, the balances pitifully low. A letter from the bank denied an extension of credit. Another one declined to reset the oppressive terms of the loan Eddie had taken out.
Guilt pierced me as I evaluated how deep in the hole the Dirty Cactus was and how hard Leah had labored to try and raise it from the ashes. I wished I could rewind the clock. I’d offer her a loan. Hell, I’d give her the money if she wasn’t too proud to take it. But that possibility was already lost. A few hours earlier I received a call from Rence Corsica. Eddie Brandeis had summoned the notary first thing this morning and signed the paperwork on the sale of the Dirty Cactus. Obviously he’d done so without speaking to his daughter. The wheels had been set irrevocably in motion. The bar belonged to me. And someone still had to tell Leah.
While I was returning everything back where it belonged I opened one of the desk drawers and found a picture frame that had been purposely set face down. The sight of Luanne Brandeis’s face made me snarl.
When I was a kid I was in awe of Luanne Brandeis. I thought she was the most gorgeous woman on earth. Then when I was a teenager and she beckoned me to her bed for the first time it was like every jerk off fantasy come true. Eventually I learned that beneath the artificial crust of all that beauty lived the most malicious of hearts.
All the repulsive emotions I harbored for Luanne threatened to overwhelm me and I shoved the picture back in the drawer hard enough to break a section off the frame. I’d never been truly happy that another human being was no longer living but now I was delighted that Luanne no longer walked the earth. I hoped her last moments had been painful. I hoped she had felt utterly alone. Not just for what she’d done to me, and to my mother. For what she’d done to Leah.
Emblem was a small town and gossip fans out like wildfire in places like this, yet people hadn’t heard what happened to Leah. They were puzzled as to why she wasn’t here but I lied and said she was taking a personal day to spend time with Eddie. The other Cactus employees had agreed to keep the details of Leah’s ordeal to themselves until she returned and decided what she wanted to tell the world.
Business was brisk but nothing outrageous. Nothing that couldn’t be handled between the four of us. I hadn’t really put much thought into what I’d do with the bar once I had it. I had no plans to close it, that was for sure. I’d take care of all the obvious repairs that needed to happen. But as far as the day to day management, I already had my hands in too many other projects to take that on. Leah loved running the bar. And she should be allowed to keep running the bar.
McGraw showed his face just after eleven p.m. and nodded at me to say he had some information. He’d offered to get me the answers I needed for free but when I handed over a stack of green he was glad to pocket it.
Gina was staying with Vance Mueller in the same crappy trailer park where Pike lived with his mother. Vance was supposed to participate in a card game tonight at the house of one of McGraw’s buddies but he hadn’t shown up, in all likelihood because he and Gina were hiding at home until they figured out whether Leah was able to identify them. They might even get the idea in their mutual thick skulls that Leah needed some convincing not to turn them in. I intended to get to them first and explain why bothering Leah was not an option.
None of this was clarified to McGraw. He was asked for a favor that entailed finding out about some people. So he found out about some people and that was it. I gave him a free shot of whiskey and then he went home to go motorboat Tina’s tits or something.
I caught up with Misty behind the bar and whispered a few sentences to her. She grinned at the prospect.
Last night I hadn’t been able to spare Leah the terror of her attack. I’d arrived too late to do anything but pick her up and listen to her cry. But today was a different matter. Today there was something I could do for her and I was damn well doing it.
Chapter Seventeen
Leah
Cadence wasn’t joking about a field trip. She breezed through the front door right on schedule at noon, paused only long enough to toss her tote bag and kiss Tristan, then she was towing me by the arm out to her car.
“I’m not really ready for the public eye yet,” I muttered, self-consciously smoothing down my hair.
“We’re not going into the public.”
“Where are we going?”
“My house.”
“We just left your house.”
“Forgive me, I should clarify. My parents’ house.”
“Don’t your parents live all the way up in Tempe?”
She beamed at me. “Why yes, they do.”
This felt strange, being out on a Friday instead of facing a long night at the bar. I kept checking my phone to see if anything earth shattering had occurred but aside from some supportive texts from Misty, Sharon and even Terry, there was nothing. It seemed the Dirty Cactus could survive without me. I hoped Ryan would be so busy serving drinks he wouldn’t have time to take a look at the bar’s finances. Admitting to Ryan Jedson that my dad had mismanaged the bar into a bad position would be embarrassing. On the other hand, he was obviously smart when it came to business matters. Perhaps he’d have some ideas.
“Why do you keep checking your phone?” Cadence asked. “You’re off the clock tonight, right?”
“Yeah, I just wanted to make sure Ryan didn’t have any questions I needed to answer.”
“Right, Ryan.” She smirked. “We haven’t talked about Ryan Jedson yet. I believe I was promised some tantalizing details about the other night and I am still waiting to receive them.”
“I went to his house. We fucked in his living room. Repeatedly. Then I ate a bowl of cereal and left.”
“Leah! You are a terrible storyteller.”
“There’s not much to the story.” That sentence was only about a hundred and eighty degrees from the truth.
“Not much to the story,” Cadence mocked. “So this really hot guy who you grew up with gets accused of murder, stays on the run for years, and when he’s finally cleared of all wrongdoing he returns to town with money mysteriously coming out of his ears. Then he buys the biggest house around and invites you over for an all nighter of mind blowing sex. Is that about right?”
“No. He didn’t invite me. I just came over. And then I came. A lot.”
“Filthy girl,” Cadence clucked. “I love it.”
I could write a mini series on what was left out of that summary. But Cadence had come from a good home, a good family and a good childhood. I shuddered to think how she would react to the truth about mine.
“So what happens now?” Cadence wanted to know. “There’s obviously some feelings happening between you two.”
“Yup. We’re getting married tomorrow.”
“Now I know you’re feeling better because you’re being a wiseass.”
“I don’t know what happens now,” I said and then uttered the most cliché relationship phrase ever generated. “It’s complicated.”
Cadence took her eyes off the road and smiled at me. “The best boys always are.”
“Speaking of boys, I get the feeling that Tristan and Ryan don’t like each other.”
“Meh.” Cadence wrinkled her nose. “That’s just the rules of the jungle on display.”
“Rules of the jungle?”
“Yeah, two alpha male predators circling each other in fear that one might attempt to piss on the other’s territory.”
I cracked up. “That’s qu
ite an image.”
There was little traffic and in mid autumn the air was pleasant even in the desert. We opened the windows, sang along to the radio very badly and for a little while I forgot that I owned a failing bar and had suffered a knife attack. Zooming down the freeway beside my friend I felt young and I hadn’t felt young since returning to Emblem.
When we pulled up to Cadence’s house there were a bunch of cars parked out front.
“Are your parents having a party?” I asked.
“Don’t think of it as a party. Think of it as a celebration of sisterhood.”
“What?”
She laughed. “Just come on. They’re waiting.”
‘They’ turned out to be Cadence’s mother, her sisters Cami and Cassie, her Aunt Truly, her Aunt Jenny, Cadence’s cousin Izzy and her cousin Derek’s girlfriend, Paige. There were apparently even more aunts and cousins in the Gentry family stable but they couldn’t make it on such short notice. As it was the explosion of women was overwhelming.
Saylor was Cadence’s mother and she hugged me as warmly as she hugged her daughter. They’d all obviously been told about my ordeal but instead of dwelling on the horror they received me with an almost embarrassing level of kindness, every one of them as eager to know me as if I was a celebrity and not some weird looking small town stray. I’d never been the center of attention in that way before. It was both daunting and enjoyable.
The dining room was the center of the gathering where I was led to a seat and immediately flanked by Cadence’s two sisters who offered me a plate of food. Cami held a beautiful baby girl in her arms while Cassie frequently patted her pregnant belly. The two of them were like the two sides of Cadence; Cami with a sharp witted and lively personality while Cassie was all sweetness and compassion. Truly was black-haired, gorgeous and distinctly southern. The redheaded mother/daughter pair of Jenny and Izzy broke into frequent peals of laughter and both kept trying to feed me more of the caramel cake they’d baked. The quietest one of the bunch was Paige, a cute college girl who smiled at me shyly and asked curious questions about what it was like to run a bar.
