Vonnie: Book Two of Broken Girls Series

by J. A. Hornbuckle

  He’d tried everything he knew to break down her empirical walls and talk to him, at least look at him, but for most of their shopping expedition she’d seemed coldly detached. Which wasn’t her (or the ‘her’ he was getting to know) at all. Normally she jumped in with both feet, giving her opinion even when he hadn’t asked, calling him out on his stuff when he pushed her too far and just basically giving him tit-for-tat. Something that delighted him and kept him on his toes.

  But not that day.

  Using his rechargeable drill he sunk the long wood screws in the new piece, securing it into existing frame tightly.

  And her questions about the food? For some reason, the fact she’d questioned him at all after they’d gone to the motel and removed his stuff niggled at him. Hadn’t she noticed he’d removed all his stuff from the room, and then gone to the office to turn in his key and pay his bill?

  Closing the door to make sure the latches of the locks aligned with the cut-outs he’d made, Rio had to admit maybe she hadn’t. No, she’d stayed in the car. Staring out the passenger window with a blank face and troubled eyes.

  And she’d kept that look even after they’d arrived back at her place.

  He shook his head in exasperation at his inability to understand the small woman even as he realized it was the very complexity of her which held his interest. Hell, what was going on in his head and heart was a fuck of a lot more than just ‘interest’ that was for damn sure.

  The fact was Rio was starting to care for her. And was a new one on him. Especially after he’d basically sworn off women except to keep the beast between his legs (the one currently twitching at just the thought of her) reasonably sane.

  So what’d crawled up her ass? Or more to the point, how did he remove it and get them back to being friends?

  A movement from the long walkway caught his attention and he watched as Ryker approached with a young woman. “Hey, dude.”

  Rio nodded and shot his eyes to the girl, taking in her long brown hair, wide eyes and generous smile. “Ryker. How’d you find me?”

  “Max asked me to check in with you about a security system for Vonnie’s place.”

  Since the kid obviously wasn’t gonna do the social niceties, Rio stuck out a hand towards the girl. “Saw you at the Surly when I met Vonnie but we weren’t introduced. I’m Rio.”

  Her smile got even bigger although Rio didn’t know how that was possible. “Nice to meet you. I’m Vonnie’s sister, Phoebe. Is she around?”

  Looking behind him, Rio was disappointed his spitfire hadn’t made an appearance when he knew the condo wasn’t so big she couldn’t hear them at the door. “In her office, I think.”

  “Thanks,” she mumbled and stepped sideways to move around him as she entered.

  Ryker growled and Rio’s attention went back to him. “Stop looking at her ass, dickhead.”

  Actually, Rio didn’t even realize his gaze shifted as the woman went inside. But it had. And the view had been totally worth it. Rather than offer an apology, Rio just grinned and shrugged in a how-could-I-help-it move.

  Luckily Ryker dropped the subject and took in Rio’s work. “They jimmied the door?”

  “Yeah. Cops said it looked like they used a crowbar and basically pulled the locks through the wooden portion of the jamb.”

  Ryker ran a thumb over the recently completed repairs. “Good job. But you need to add some metal to prevent them from doing it again.”

  Rio pointed to the next step of his project before reaching for his toolbox again. “Got it. Now just gotta attach it.”

  Ryker tucked his hands in his pockets and watched for a moment. “But you know a system would be better, right? One with contacts on every door and window would do a better job than just a couple of kick-ass locks and a reinforced doorframe.”

  “Yeah, but what about the wires?” Rio’s felt his face crease as he tried to make the custom cut steel plate fit with the pressure of his thumbs. “I’ve done that before but don’t think she’d like her walls crisscrossed in that stuff and I don’t know how to thread them inside without making a fuck-load of holes.”

  “Wireless,” Ryker replied with a snicker. “Get with the program, dude. The system is wireless and utilizes her router and the internet. Even sends an alert to whatever cellphones she designates, well, up to four anyway. Should’ve installed that kind on Phoebe’s place, but I will when we move.”

  “How soon can we get one?” Glancing down the hall, Rio could hear the murmur of feminine voices but couldn’t see either his or Ryker’s girl. “And get it installed?”

  “I brought one with and think we can have it up and running in about an hour.”

  Rio nodded after glancing at the clock on Vonnie’s microwave while amazed the kid had used the word ‘we’ indicating he was going help with the installation. “Would really like to have eyes on her when I’m not around but a system will go a long way in keeping her protected.”

  “You think this wasn’t just a simple B&E?”

  Rio shook his head. “Something about it doesn’t feel right, not like it was meth-heads looking for shit to pawn. Making me think it was personal, more like it had to do with her and her photography shit or something.”

  Looking stunned, Ryker gave off a soft whistle. “And why you want eyes on her.”

  “Yep. But until I hire my crew—”

  “I think Lance is back and might be willing to do it for a couple of days until you get someone else.” Pulling out his phone, Ryker started swiping at the screen. “Let’s see what Max thinks.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Phoebe walked down the hall towards what used to be her old room; the one Vonnie had turned into an office. As she moved, she noted the small changes her former roommate had made in her absence—a knickknack moved here, a different photo there—but it was basically the same. And had been recently scoured to within an inch of its life.

  Her best friend wasn’t just a neat freak with a phobic hatred of germs; Vonnie’s issues were more along the lines of earning an OCD label. Because there was no other way to describe the way the girl cleaned, as anything other than a compulsion. Which had worked for Phoebe (spoiled her, if she was being truthful) as long as she’d kept her bedroom door shut with her clutter and minor dishevelment out of Vonnie’s sight.

  Spying her friend in the office chair, facing away from the door, Phoebe grinned. For once, her friend’s hair remained the same color as the last time she’d seen her without a hat on, like the one Vonnie wore to Beta’s concert. And Phoebe had seen her with hair in every imaginable color, both the hits and the misses. “Hey, girl.”

  A sniff hit her ears and Vonnie moved, but didn’t turn around. No, it looked like she was wiping her face with the sleeve of her sweater. “Hey Phoebes,” was the lackluster response.

  Both the lack of emotion and Vonnie’s arm movement had Phoebe moving quickly to the chair, her heart accelerating while her stomach dropped to her knees.

  “What’s going on, honey?” Crouching down next to the black leather, office chair, Phoebe took in her tiny friend who wouldn’t look her way.

  Vonnie shook her head as the little dog on her lap aimed its face to Phoebe and then back at the trying-not-to-cry female. “N-nothing.”

  “My ass,” Phoebe whispered her mind racing. Her immediate reaction was to hug her friend who was obviously distressed, but Vonnie hated to be touched. Vonnie hated a lot of things and had a shitload of ‘can’ts’ and ‘won’ts’ as part of the highway she walked each day. And the biggest ones had to do with crying or touching. And forget about combining the two. So for Phoebe to find her in that state was not only jarring—it was downright scary.

  “Gonna have to call bullshit on that one, Vons.” Phoebe, more than probably any person on the planet knew how to handle the prickly little girl who’d shared her room at Diane’s place. The very one who’d grown up to be a bristly (almost, but not quite, in the ‘bitch’ arena) woman, the kind you had to treat and talk
to a certain way if you didn’t want her to yell, clam up or vacate the premises. “Talk to me, girlfriend.”

  Vonnie dropped her head before she shook it slowly.

  Phoebe could tell she was holding her breath too, probably to keep any sound of her tears from escaping—much like she’d done back when they were much, much younger.

  Feeling her legs beginning to protest her position, Phoebe stood and looked around the room for another chair or a stool she could sit on. And once found she dragged it over to the desk, placing it close (but not too close) to where her friend sat. “Okay. Here’s how were gonna play this. I’m gonna ask you again and you’re gonna use your words to tell me why the hell you’re sitting here crying into that pretty dog’s fur.”

  Phoebe could tell Vonnie was listening by how her fingers stilled on the little mutt’s coat. “Then you and I are gonna figure out a step-by-step solution for whatever the problem is. Okay?”

  There were a couple of heartbeats of silence, long enough for Phoebe to wonder if she’d pushed her friend too far. But finally Vonnie rallied enough to raise her head. “Mmph llph iph—”

  “I can’t understand you, honey.”

  Vonnie’s neck flexed as she swallowed thickly. “M-my life is out of control and I don’t know how to fix it.”

  Phoebe closed her eyes in relief and stretched out a hand to pat Vonnie’s shoulder, but quickly remembered who she was about to offer a consoling touch. “Whew…is that all? Here I was thinking you were gonna confess to mowing down eight people at a bus stop or that you just discovered Ansell Adam’s body of work was done by his brother or something.”

  “A bus stop?” Vonnie’s agate colored eyes looked like wet stones in the white of her face.

  “Girl,” Phoebe drawled the word out for more than a few syllables. “With the way you drive, it’s a definite possibility.”

  Using the sleeve swipe again, Vonnie’s mouth crooked up in a one-sided grin. “I don’t drive fast or careless.”

  “Jeff Gordon has nothing on you and you know it.” That was the way to play it when Vonnie got down in the dumps—light and breezy, with snark thrown in for good measure. “As for careful? Isn’t that your picture in the dictionary when anyone looks up the word ‘reckless’?”

  “Stop being a bitch, Pheebs.”

  “I will if you cease with the solo pity party.”

  The two of them shared a stare and a grin as the dark tension left the room.

  “Are you ready to talk yet?”

  Vonnie nodded and bumped her shoulder to Phoebe’s, the only gesture of affection she gave to her sisters. While Diane may’ve sometimes received a one-armed, sideways hug, the rest of them had to make do with a shoulder-to-shoulder nudge. “You heard about the break in?”

  “Yeah. Max called Ryker about a security system for your place. What’d the dickheads get?”

  “My laptop and the printer is all I can find so far.”

  Oh no! All her stuff was on the computer and Vonnie used her printer almost daily to put together photo packages to sell. “Sorry honey, but I see you’ve got replacements.”

  “Yeah.” Her eyes drifted to the two boxes stacked on the desk. “Since I save everything to the cloud and have my backups on memory cards and data sticks, I really didn’t lose anything. Except the time and money to replace them.”

  “You’re feeling out of control about being robbed? About them ripping you off? Even though you could replace the equipment and didn’t lose any of your work?” Phoebe could and did empathize with being pissed, but to cry over getting ripped off seemed a bit extreme. Especially for her former roommate.

  Vonnie went indignant. “There were strangers in my house, Phoebe. Touching my stuff. Covering my place with all their…germs…”

  Phoebe could’ve sworn her foster-sister was about to say ‘cooties’ instead of the more adult term she’d used. “But you’ve cleaned since then, gotten rid of all the different microbes and viruses they would’ve brought with them. So you’re back in control of those two particular points. What else?”

  Vonnie twisted around to glance at the door before turning back and dropping her voice. “He won’t leave me alone because he says I’m not safe.”

  “He, who?”

  “Him,” Vonnie shot back on an angry, stressed-out whisper, pointing a thumb over her shoulder.

  “Rio?” Phoebe sat back, never realizing she’d leaned closer when Vonnie began whispering. From the look on her gamine face, which was a combo of righteous-indignation meeting can-you-effing-believe-it, Phoebe knew they were getting closer to what really had her girl’s panties in a bunch. “He won’t leave or he won’t leave you alone?”

  A frown replaced the indignant portion although Phoebe was willing to concede there was confusion in it.

  Vonnie wasn’t the only one. Phoebe needed clarification too. “Are you saying you can’t get him to go home, as in he’s staying here until he thinks you don’t need his protection? Or is it along the lines of him chasing you around the condo demanding sex?”

  It was the blink that gave Vons away, a deep meeting of top and bottom lids that let Phoebe know at least a portion of the score in the game being played. And since Phoebe wasn’t much of a poker player herself, Vonnie started back-peddling. “Well, now that you mention it…”

  Ha!

  Yeah that’d make her girl cry and feel out of control. What the diminutive one lacked in size was more than made up for in her independent spirit. Jay-sus, back in the day Vonnie was the one who got grounded the most for not telling anyone where she was going and for breaking curfew. From a very early age, Vonnie did what she wanted, when she wanted and usually did it alone. When pressed for her penchant for privacy and solitude, she was the first to proclaim she preferred her own company over running with ‘the herd’, whatever the hell that meant.

  “Let me get this straight,” Phoebe started, watching her words so as not to piss her sister-friend right the hell off as well as to not burst out laughing. Thank God I’m not the only one with issues when it came to men. “You went to the concert with Rio and, because of the break-in, you can’t get him to leave, even though you two had a sexy romp sometime between last night and today. Do I have the right of it?”

  Vonnie nodded but wouldn’t look up from the cute little dog in her lap. “It wasn’t just once,” she muttered and Phoebe noticed a blush stealing over her friend’s lowered face.

  Leaning back, Phoebe thought about Vonnie’s confession, or rather what her girl hadn’t confessed. When they were living together, Vonnie hadn’t been a nun but brought a guy home occasionally. Short-term lovers who were sent on their way only minutes after Vonnie’s bedsprings stopped singing their sexy song.

  All done without the promise of a repeat performance.

  So for Rio to spend the night and get Vonnie to do the deed multiple times meant…

  “You like him and that scares the crap outta you, doesn’t it?” Phoebe’s deduction seemed to be right on target as Vonnie’s shoulders sagged and she went into bobble-head mode. Pressing her knuckles against her mouth so as not to give voice to the happy laughter that seemed hell-bent on escaping, Phoebe studied her friend and wondered at the best way to proceed. “Then there’s no help for it. You just gotta tell him to go, get him gone as fast and as soon as possible. To never darken your doorway again.”

  Vonnie head shot up and with pleading eyes, she countered with, “But I watch his Pookie while he’s at work or out of town.”

  Phoebe didn’t want to know or even ask who or what Rio’s Pookie was. But she got an idea when the little dog roused. Ah, the dog’s name was Pookie. “Guess you’ll have to give it up and take on someone else’s pet. Because you can’t watch an ex-lover’s dog after you show him the door. That’d just be mean.”

  “I guess,” Vonnie agreed on a low whiny note.

  Phoebe tried a different tact because her girl wasn’t rising to the bait as fast as usual. “But the thing about a guy like Rio�
��you know, one of those big, alpha kinds of men? Especially if they’ve been in the military—and you know I’ve seen enough of them come through the ER—is they’re kind of weird about loyalty and stuff. So if you tell him you want him gone, that you never want to see him again, be prepared for him to do just that. No begging, no second chances, nada.”

  Vonnie’s eyes went huge in her small face and Phoebe saw her friend was also biting her lower lip.

  Phoebe pushed on. “Safe to say, a girl can’t yo-yo a guy like Rio.”

  “Yo-yo?”

  “You know, send him away and then change your mind. Nope, you gotta be pretty damn sure that’s exactly what you want before you send him packing.”

  Vonnie’s eyes went to a large, green duffel bag in a far corner stenciled with the word ‘Ironcloud’ in dark black paint. She stayed that way for a while and Phoebe let her, knowing her friend needed to think things through.

  Beta was the one who told everyone in their circle that Vonnie had a man. A big, beautiful amazing guy who looked at their sister with his heart in his eyes, but Phoebe hadn’t believed a half of it. Mainly because Beta was the sort who put a romantic spin on each casual meeting, on simple shared glances between every unrelated male and female she saw. Although Phoebe’s disbelief might have been because Vonnie hadn’t seen fit to let Phoebe know she had a new guy in her life. Especially when everyone knew Vonnie and Phoebe shared a special bond from the first day they’d landed at Diane’s.

  Hearing the men’s voices getting louder as they moved down the hall to the bathroom and Vonnie’s bedroom, Phoebe decided to wrap it up. “If…on the other hand you like this guy and he treats you good, what do you have to lose by letting him hang around for a while?”

  If Phoebe wasn’t mistaken, the wonderment in Vonnie’s eyes also held a spark of hope. And sometimes hope was all a girl needed in order to reach for what her heart truly wanted.

  Figuring her work there was done, Phoebe stood, only realizing Vonnie’s hesitant touch on the back of her hand at the end of her girl’s movement. Raising her eyes in surprise, she saw the edge of chagrin in her friend’s face before hearing her soft, “thank you, Phoebe.”