Looking for Trouble

by Victoria Dahl

  Sophie laughed. “It was a genuine question! Coffee? Pants?” She wrapped her hands around his neck and leaned back to look up at him. “What’d you come out here for?”

  “I don’t remember,” he said. She felt him growing hard against her. “Jesus, you’re a witch. The kind that can raise the dead.”

  “Maybe you’re more of a man than you thought.”

  He groaned again. “I’ll punish you for that later.”

  “Promise?”

  “No. I probably won’t have the strength.”

  She laughed and kissed him as he closed his arms around her and lifted her a few inches off the ground. Yeah. He had plenty of strength.

  “Mmm,” he hummed into the kiss before setting her down. “I remembered. I came out to tell you that I parked the bike on the side of your house, but I’d better get going now that it’s light. I guess I really screwed up that quest for discretion.”

  “Well, you put on a nice show, at least.” She traced her fingers over the wide tattoo that covered most of his chest. This one was an ominous wave that covered nearly his whole torso. It looked like a Japanese woodblock print. Her own little ocean right here in Wyoming.

  “Will I see you later?” he asked.

  She bit her lip to keep from smiling triumphantly. This man was sex on a cycle, and he couldn’t wait to see her again. The feeling was nice and so very mutual. “The dedication is tomorrow. Won’t it be a busy day for you?”

  “Shit. I guess it might be.”

  “I’m working until seven tonight. I’ll get in touch later and see what’s going on.”

  “Deal.” He kissed her nose and retreated back into the bedroom. She touched the spot he’d kissed and tried not to feel warm inside. It was just sex, and it would be over within days. And if that made her stomach knot up, that was only the kind of affection you felt for a man who was that spectacular in bed.

  He was everything she’d always wanted. Things she’d touched on with other men, but the connection had never quite been there. She’d had intense, kinky sex before, but she’d never felt hollowed out by it afterward. And she’d never wanted to beg the guy to crawl back into bed and spend the day there, just talking.

  Okay, not just talking. But mostly.

  God. This wasn’t good.

  But it didn’t matter what she wanted. He needed to go before someone spotted his bike. Sophie was alarmed to realize she hadn’t even considered where he’d parked it. She was losing her discretion over this guy. That was probably worse than the prospect of losing her heart. At least that would still be private. No one would see it. Any heartache would belong to her.

  She watched him stop to look around the dim bedroom in confusion. “Your shirt is out here,” she said.

  He flashed a smile and picked up his boots. “Thanks. That part was a bit of a blur. I mean my clothes coming off. I remember every moment of taking yours off.”

  “Not many of yours came off,” she said drily.

  “Ah. Right. Not very gentlemanly of me.” His lazy smile let her know he wasn’t apologizing.

  “You made up for it later.”

  “Yeah.” His smile faltered a little as he sat down and pulled on his shirt. “That was really nice last night.”

  It had been nice. Having his whole big, naked body pressed against her, taking over all of her bed. It had been damn nice.

  She watched as he pulled on a boot and tugged the laces tight. The muscles of his back flexed and bunched beneath his T-shirt as he worked. She liked the way he moved. He was so self-assured. So easy with his body.

  She was confident enough about her body, but she was also conscious of it. Aware. Alex just existed. His body was his, to do what he wanted with. To use and mark.

  She smirked. Maybe that described her body, too.

  “All right,” he said as he scratched the kitten under the chin. “I’ll see you girls later.”

  She absolutely, unequivocally did not melt a little at those words. She melted a lot. But she somehow managed to stay where she was standing and say goodbye from there. She didn’t need a kiss. She didn’t need a scratch on the chin.

  But once he’d gone, she collapsed onto the couch and pulled the kitten close. “Why does he have to be so cute?” she whispered into the warm fur. The kitten purred in response. “I know. It’s terrible. We should stop seeing him.”

  His motorcycle roared to life from a comfortable distance. He must have rolled it down to the street before starting it. His caution reminded her that she had bigger problems than this little crush.

  She set down the kitten—who promptly curled up in the space where Alex had sat—and went out to grab the paper. Her brother had made the front page. Tweny-Five-Year-Old Mystery Revived by Brand-New Lawsuit.

  Well, they’d damn well summed it up perfectly, hadn’t they?

  Not much more was revealed about the lawsuit. It seemed that it was pretty straightforward. David Heyer was suing for a million dollars in actual and punitive damages for the untimely death of his mother due to the negligent or reckless driving of Wyatt Bishop. The lawsuit also mentioned that the accident had occurred on a private road on land owned by the Bishop family.

  But the worst part of the article was that the reporter had used the lawsuit as an excuse to rehash the entire scandal. Now even the youngest generations of Jackson could experience the deliciousness of the story.

  How Dorothy Heyer and Wyatt Bishop had disappeared on the same summer day twenty-five years ago after purchasing a camping trailer. How their months-long affair had come to light. The writer even listed some of the discarded rumors that had circulated over the ensuing years, though she failed to mention that every one of them had been perpetuated by Rose Bishop.

  Eventually Greg Heyer had petitioned for his wife to be declared dead. Thankfully the article didn’t mention that the petition had started the very worst rumor of all: that Greg Heyer had discovered the lovers together and killed them both. Sophie had been surprised by that one. It had been sprung on her during gym class. She could still remember standing in the locker room clutching her sweatshirt to her chest and pretending the awful words had meant nothing.

  The article then detailed the evening last summer when Shane Harcourt had found his father’s truck and the skeletal remains inside. There was even a picture of the crash site.

  Sophie had managed to avoid the picture last time around, but this time she found herself staring at the grainy black-and-white photo of the crumpled truck nearly hidden by tall grasses and trees.

  Had her mom died on impact? The truck had tumbled seventy-five feet before coming to rest nearly upright. Had she been unconscious, at least? Or had she lain there awake and dying for days?

  Goose bumps rose on Sophie’s arms and spread over her whole body, then deep inside until she shuddered.

  Sophie would never know. No one ever would. And no one would ever know what had caused it. Her brother had brought all this back to the surface for no goddamn reason at all, except money. Money. He didn’t even work for a living. He thought because of one tragedy in his life, he deserved to get everything easy.

  She scowled at the page. She’d pay a million dollars for it all to go away. How could he have done this?

  The article wrapped up with a paragraph about the dedication on Saturday at the Providence historical site. Sophie was skimming the ending when the bomb dropped, setting off an explosion in her chest. A quote from Rose Bishop. “After everything my sons and I have gone through, I finally thought we’d get some closure. This lawsuit is a violation of my family’s suffering. Clearly, no one in the Heyer family has any shame. They never have.”

  God, the reporter must have salivated over that. It wasn’t often that feuds were laid out so gleefully for public consumption. And this one had everything. Sex, death, one of the f
ounding families of Jackson, and now, money.

  Sophie looked at the photo one more time. Her mom had lain in that truck for over two decades. She’d been lost. Forgotten. She still was, her ashes sitting on a shelf in a closet of the funeral home. Sophie didn’t want to bring her home.

  She refolded the paper, carefully moving the front section to the back and stacking the lifestyle section on top. Then she went to the kitchen, plated two cinnamon rolls, and curled back up on the couch to eat them both. They stopped the burning in her stomach, but she still had to swipe tears off her cheeks while she ate. The kitten slept on, too wrapped up in the scent of Alex to care what Sophie was up to, but Sophie didn’t mind. She’d do the same if she could. In fact, she hoped to do exactly that tonight.

  She just didn’t want to think about this anymore. She didn’t want to go to work and be asked about it, and she didn’t want to be around people who were pretending not to know. She didn’t want people looking at her, recognizing her, watching to see what happened. She didn’t want to run into Rose again. She didn’t want to pick up her mom’s ashes. She didn’t want to grab her little brother and shake him until his ears rang. She just wanted it to stop.

  All of it.

  Alex was right. She should leave. Walk away from everything like he had. Let these damaged people fight it out amongst themselves for eternity while she flew free.

  But just the thought made her cry so hard she had to set the plate down and curl up into a pillow. She couldn’t walk away from her family like that. She was the only one her dad could depend on. If he were fifty, maybe that would be okay, but he was slowing down. He needed help, and her brother showed no signs of growing up and carrying part of the load. She couldn’t just leave.

  The only solution she could come up with in that moment was to lie there and feel sorry for herself, so that was what she did. She sniffled. She clenched her eyes shut. She cried a little more. When that got boring, she reached out and swiped some frosting off the plate and licked her fingers.

  It turned out that wallowing in self-pity was kind of boring. And there were so many people who had bigger problems than she did. Real problems. Sick kids. Foreclosed mortgages. Terrible injuries from wars. Really, she was just being a big baby.

  She sat up and stared blindly at the paper sitting in front of her. As her energy returned, she slipped the next section free of the paper to read the local advice column. Dear Veronica was her favorite part of the paper. It was selfish, maybe, but Sophie liked knowing that other people in town had secrets and problems, too.

  Still, she stared blindly for a moment at the advice section, too tired to even focus. Then her swollen eyes cleared, and unfortunately she wasn’t staring blindly anymore. Her eyes had focused right on the bolded headline: Vixen Has Her Claws in My Son.

  “Nope,” Sophie said aloud. It wasn’t about her. It was some other vixen with her claws in some woman’s poor, unsuspecting son. Sophie wasn’t the only slut in town, surely.

  Dear Veronica,

  My son just came back to town after many years away. As you can imagine, I’m overjoyed to be reconciled with him.

  Jackson has a fairly fluid population, Sophie told herself. People come and go.

  The problem is that as soon as he set foot in town, the neighborhood floozy set her sights on him.

  There were several neighborhoods in the Jackson area. And probably several floozies. It absolutely wasn’t her.

  He’s a man, so I can’t expect him to see past her harmless facade when she’s offering free sex.

  Harmless facade. She glanced down at her cardigan.

  How do I get rid of her? I just got him back and I don’t want to cause another rift, but this little tramp will ruin his life!

  Signed,

  There’s a Strumpet on My Street

  Yeah. Shit. It was definitely about Sophie.

  This crazy old woman was never going to leave Sophie alone.

  Maybe she should move back in with her dad. And maybe dye her hair. Sophie’s resemblance to her mom was just too much for Rose Bishop to deal with. It probably didn’t help that she actually was sleeping with the woman’s son.

  At least she hadn’t been named. Sure, people might be able to figure out that Alex was the prodigal son described in the letter, but no one knew he was hooking up with anyone, much less that it was Sophie. So this was more of a private jab than a public taunt. All right, it was both.

  Out of curiosity, Sophie read the answer, and it made her want to whoop with triumph.

  Dear Strumpet on My Street,

  First of all, men are fully capable of resisting free sex, no matter how it’s disguised, so please don’t excuse your son for his actions. Now, as far as I can tell, the transgression here is sex between two willing participants, so my advice to you is to get over it. People like sex. In fact, our bodies are designed to like it very much indeed, so if this so-called floozy has a merry sex life, then more power to her. Your slut shaming is far more embarrassing than anything she could ever do in the privacy of her home.

  If your son is actually in danger of throwing his life away for the sake of free sex with a stranger, then maybe you should’ve raised him to be a better man. Yet I somehow suspect you’re overreacting and he will emerge from this trap with nothing more than a few scratches for his trouble.

  If you want any chance of making this reconciliation with your son work, keep your mouth shut, look the other way and stop shaming women and coddling men.

  Well. That wrapped Rose up in a nutshell. But somehow Sophie didn’t think the woman would take the advice to heart.

  The outrage Rose was going to feel as she read that actually cheered Sophie up. She wasn’t the malicious one here. She didn’t have anything to be ashamed of.

  Okay, she had some things to be ashamed of, but not nearly as much as the woman wanted to pin on her. Sophie couldn’t spend her days hiding from every little rumor. If she were that much of a coward, she’d never have seen sunlight.

  She’d go to work and volunteer to deal with all of the kids’ programs today. She’d interact with the parents and sign people up for future programs and she’d look everyone straight in the eyes as she did it. This scandal wasn’t going to defeat her. Not that she’d let anyone know, at least.

  But first, she’d have one more cinnamon roll.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE SIGN SAID Providence—2 miles, but Alex wasn’t exactly hopeful that he’d find good fortune there. They were meeting to walk through the final plans for tomorrow’s dedication, and Alex couldn’t help but think it was an appropriate site for the ceremony. Dead buildings, dead town, all to commemorate their dead family.

  His dad’s disappearance had been the original injury, but it hadn’t been definitively fatal. They could have recovered. They could have survived.

  His mom had always been difficult. She’d always been dramatic. She’d been fond of declaring people her enemies and making sure they knew it. She’d collected friends easily and just as easily turned on them. Life had been chaotic, but it had been life.

  Their dad had been the calmer one. The steady one. But the less stable their mom had gotten, the more likely he’d been to walk away. To calm things down, maybe, but he hadn’t taken his sons with him. He’d just say, “I’ll be back,” and he’d leave them behind with a crying, raging mother. But he had always come back. An hour later. A day. He’d always come back until he hadn’t.

  But dads walked out all the time. In small towns and big towns, in Wyoming or anywhere else in the world. People lost parents to death or divorce or abandonment. Alex could’ve dealt with that as well as anyone else did. A little damage, a few dings, but he could’ve gotten up and ridden on.

  But he hadn’t lost his dad, he’d lost his entire family. First his father, and then, within days, his mother
had lost whatever balance she’d had. There was no way her husband would’ve left, and anyone who said otherwise was the enemy. They were evil, cruel, idiotic. Maybe they were even in on his disappearance. At first, she’d said he must have been hurt or killed, but that idea had quickly become too awful to tolerate. If he was dead, he was gone forever, and Rose Bishop knew he was coming back.

  He had to come back.

  For Alex, the worst loss of all had been his older brother. After all, his mother had always been unstable, and his dad had always been working. But Shane... He’d always been there. The smart, strong brother who was only one year older but had seemed so much bigger.

  Shane had been his friend, his brother, his protector, his hero. And then he’d been lost, too, sucked into their mother’s delusions. He’s coming back, Alex. Mom thinks she found him in New Mexico. He’s been living on an Indian reservation. We’re all driving down tomorrow.

  I don’t want him back, Alex had started thinking. Who wanted a dad who didn’t want you?

  It hadn’t taken him long to start saying exactly that out loud. And then worse things. That he hated his mom. That he hated Shane. That he hoped Dad was dead because that was what he deserved.

  His anger had only grown as he’d gotten older. As their mom had lost job after job. As they’d moved from house to duplex to cabin to apartment.

  Shane had been perpetually sympathetic, echoing things he’d heard from their mom. We have to help her. She can’t do it on her own. We have to be the men of the house.

  By fifteen, Alex had been determined not to be anything to anyone. At eighteen, he’d made sure of it by disappearing just like his dad had. It had felt cruel and empowering. It had felt right.