“I appreciate the offer, but I hadn’t realized how late it was, either. I need to hit the road. Another ninety minutes in the Impala won’t kill me.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to wait? I just can’t cancel on these kids.”
She gestured toward the towels and held out her hand for another. This one she wrapped around her hair. He watched it disappear out of sight and was left despondent by the gesture.
“Thank you. For rescuing me from the side of the road, and for last night. As much as I was looking forward to a repeat this morning, I understand. I like this side of you, Kenny. The way you are with the kids around here. You’re a good man.”
When she stood on her toes to kiss him, he pretended for a moment that it was true.
CHAPTER FOUR
Twenty miles left until she hit Miami, and Lia applied a little more gas, anxious to be home. She’d finally done it. She’d had a grown-up, no-strings fling and had walked away like it didn’t matter. So what if her stomach tilted slightly at the thought of never seeing him again? Never again would she confuse great sex, hot lust, and enduring love. It had taken her twenty-nine years to attempt to separate the three, and falling at the first hurdle for the first cute guy she met would totally mess with her plans.
Okay, so he was more than just a cute guy. When she’d stepped out of the building, suitcase in hand, and headed down the metal staircase toward where he was refereeing his pickup game, he’d called a timeout to help her to her car. Stealing one more kiss had been impossible given the number of little people watching them in the yard.
Just seeing the way he was with the boys, and his amazing bike designs, and his flirtatious nature made it impossible to relegate him to the no-emotions sex leagues, because she knew the truth. As always, she was leaving a small piece of her heart behind. Her heart had been chipped away at more times than a Michelangelo block of marble, and her chest ached as if someone had used a hammer and chisel on her rib cage.
She didn’t know the singer, but the song on the radio talked about loving someone when they didn’t love you. Lia thought about her mother. Granny Emmeline had been so certain that her mother hadn’t been mentally ill, that she was simply suffocating in the shade of her father. Lia herself knew firsthand just how painful that was. The marriage had been a match made in society wedding heaven. Grace Eva Wexford, of the Connecticut Wexfords, and a grad of Brown University, had been the perfect match on paper for Franklin Woodrow Carlisle. Important families, check. Wealthy, check. Attractive, check. Ambitious, check. Or at least her mother had been.
At one time, her mother had been determined to become a documentary filmmaker. Even now, though her involvement had declined over the years, her mother was still excited to support and occasionally fund the work of important documentaries. Granny Emmeline had told Lia that she had privately encouraged Grace to refuse the proposal from her son due to her concerns about their overwhelmingly polar personalities, but her mother had fallen head over heels. In the early seventies her mother had been working postproduction on a documentary regarding both sides of the Roe v. Wade debate. One of the terms of their engagement was that Grace was to extricate herself from the documentary, in case it was seen to fly in the face of the party line.
These days, the outline of any documentary Grace wanted to support financially had to be run by her husband first for approval. What Franklin failed to realize was that documentaries had become Grace’s window to the outside world . . . a very one-sided interaction. And every time he denied her, another piece of her withered like one of her plants would without sunshine. It simply didn’t occur to him to care for her anymore, while she still craved what they’d lost.
Lia leaned forward and turned up the radio. Her thoughts were starting to collide. The fear of ending up like her mother, stuck in a relationship devoid of emotion, scared her, yet the thought of ending up alone and unloved anyway was equally terrifying. There were days when she felt like one of those stupid competitors on The Amazing Race. It had run more than twenty seasons, with an episode every season where teams had to drive a stick shift. Yet every year, there was at least one couple who hadn’t figured out how to drive one before going on the show. They’d grind the gears, pull away too fast, stop too hard. The car would shudder as they attempted to find their way into second, and rarely did they make it to third. Their attempts were humorous yet pitiful.
Pulling off the highway at her exit, Lia made a decision to head to the studio. She wasn’t scheduled to work, but she needed to bury herself in something other than the melancholy she suddenly felt. If she remembered correctly, Trent was at the studio until closing, which was six P.M., after which he would lock up the studio, crack open a beer, and finish the books for the week. She had often encouraged him to hire somebody to help do those tasks, but she understood and admired his dedication to looking after his business himself. If she got there soon enough, perhaps he could make an early start on the accounting, so all they would have to do was deal with that day’s cash on closing.
She parked her rental car around the back of the studio. Trent’s Plymouth was parked in one of the two spaces, and Pixie’s bike was tied up against the railing. Warmth settled in her chest, soothing her frazzled soul.
In many ways Trent had been her saving grace. It had been a gloomy day when she met him. She was sketching in a coffee shop, having been going through a period of drawing Manga characters, and when he passed by her on the way to the counter, he said that with that kind of skill she could probably do any artistic job she wanted.
“Hell, come see me if you ever want to learn how to tattoo,” he said.
There were only four years separating the two of them, but nobody had ever complimented her artwork. In fact, her father usually criticized her lack of perspective and imagination. So to have someone, let alone an incredibly hot someone covered in tattoos, tell her he liked her work sent her into a tailspin. She’d never told him about the secret crush she had on him that summer, mainly because by the time she had figured out who she was, she wanted to be a tattoo artist more than she wanted him. All she wished for from then on was for him to teach her, and somewhere along the way they had become the very best of friends. Now she only thought of him in a purely brotherly way.
“Fuck!” she heard from the office.
She stepped inside and found Trent at his desk, staring at his cell phone. “Something wrong?” she asked, sliding her purse off her shoulder and placing it on the large light table they used for tracing.
“Hey, Lia,” he said, leaning back in the chair and putting his hands behind his head. “Nathan’s legal counsel are being assholes. They want to put Frankie’s kid on the stand, in a packed room, with the jury, so they can grill him during the trial. A fucking kid. And we all know what they are trying to do. It’s fucking mind-game psychology that they know will upset us. What kind of adult are you when you don’t want to work with somebody to try to find the best way to question a child?”
Lia’s heart sank a little. Trent’s fiancée, Harper, had been attacked by her ex-boyfriend six years before. It had been horrifyingly vicious, leaving Harper’s back a mess of scars that hurt Lia to even think about. When her ex had been released from prison after a criminally short period of time, he’d immediately broken parole and tracked her down to Miami, where he had abducted her as she walked a friend’s child home. Lia shivered at the memory of Trent receiving the call that Harper had been taken at knifepoint. Furniture had gone flying as he’d raced out of the door to try and find her.
She moved to the long gray sofa and sat down. “There are some real asshole lawyers. It sounds like the kind of thing my dad would try to do. He’d get all Art of War about it. It’s a head game. Don’t let them win.”
Trent picked up the picture of Harper that sat on his desk. “I wish I could go through this for her, Lia. She’s been through so much already. And I know she can get through it. She’s stronger than she’s ever been. I just wish she didn’t
have to.”
Trent’s words made her feel pathetic. Her problems with her father, or the state of her love life, were nothing compared to the scale of Harper’s.
It made her feel silly, and small.
And even more lost.
* * *
If there was one thing Reid wished he could tell every car owner, it was to not ignore his or her car’s “check engine” light. It had been a crappy day all around.
Dressed in workout clothes, Reid pulled the giant tire that he kept alongside of the building onto the main forecourt. The garage was finally and thankfully closed for the evening, and Reid needed to burn off the excess energy he had. They’d towed three vehicles off the highway and into the garage, the drivers of which had all ignored the check engine light—in some cases, for months. What would have been a relatively inexpensive check followed by a focused repair now required much more work. It drove him nuts.
Tire flipping was one of his favorite exercises. Sure, he looked a bit stupid turning it over and over, but he didn’t really care. His mind and body craved something hard.
He positioned the tire at the end of the long forecourt. Taking a deep breath, he squatted down at an angle, slid his fingers toward the front of the tire, and pressed upward to lift it before allowing it to fall down again on its opposite side. The muscles in his shoulders and arms grumbled in protest, but he repeated the action again, flipping the tire up and over. If he kept control of the tire, he should be able to flip it at least ten times before he had to turn back in the direction he had come. The exercise was mindless, but at least he was outside. It was hard to imagine that September was only a few days away. In Chicago, there would at least be some signs that fall was on its way. Perhaps the mornings would be cool and crisp and the days would start to seem a little shorter, with darkness falling a little sooner each evening. But Miami was still proudly wearing its summer hat. Upon returning to his starting point, he allowed himself a moment’s rest and took a quick swig of his water.
He repeated the back and forth several more times before his muscles started to scream for relief. Once upon a time, he’d been a gym rat, but now he preferred to exercise outside. With one last deep breath, he mentally committed to doing two more lengths of the forecourt.
“That looks like fun.”
Reid turned toward the sidewalk where his friend and fellow mentor at the boys’ club, Patrick, stood with three boxes of pizza in his arms.
“Throwing a party?” Reid asked before rubbing his face with his T-shirt.
“Couple of cousins in from out of town, so I decided to turn it into an impromptu poker night. You’re more than welcome to join us if you want to. Got plenty of pizza.”
“I see that,” Reid said with a laugh. The idea of a night away, having some laughs with the boys, was tempting. But he wasn’t real good company right now. At least according to Jarod he wasn’t. The phrase miserable bastard had been used at least once over the course of the afternoon. Usually Reid was perfectly capable of figuring out what was going on, but for the last couple of days he’d been stuck. Well, maybe not stuck so much, but resigned. Watching Lia, all color and sunshine, climb into that boring-as-fuck beige car, had been an unexpected kick in the balls. As she pulled away and headed back to the highway, the young boys had whistled and hollered. Stupidly, he wished he’d done the same, or had done anything to make some kind of impact instead of the lame one-arm wave.
And thinking of the boys brought him back to one in particular. “Hey, did you see the state of Tyrell’s lip?”
Patrick nodded. “Yeah. He fell off his bike, right?”
“That’s what he said, but he’s had a run of injuries lately. Is his dad still working for that painting company, do you know?” As much as his heart told him to go around and punch the motherfucker, his head understood what it was like to be overwhelmed, and exhausted, and ultimately make bad decisions. Didn’t make it right though.
“I heard he was pulling double shifts every chance he gets. You should call Donyell. Ask her.”
“Left her a voice mail already. The kid’s too fucking sweet to have to deal with heavy shit.”
“Agreed. But we can’t fix it tonight. You need to step away occasionally, and I gotta get this pizza home. So what do you think? You in?” Patrick asked.
“As much as I’d love to, I’ve got a whole bunch of work shit I need to deal with tonight. Just trying to burn off a little steam before I have to sit my ass back down at my desk.”
“Okay, man. Your loss, because I swear my cousins are the shittiest poker players ever. You change your mind, you gimme a call.”
“Sure thing. If not, see you on Thursday at the club.”
They said their good-byes and Reid resumed his workout. He put the tire away, and added on an eight-mile run. By the time he returned, his thighs burned, his lungs sucked in air, and his heart pounded, but most importantly, his mind was clearer. Lia had been a great distraction, but that was all she could ever be. And more importantly, it was all she wanted. It was now time to reset, to remember why he tried to keep things casual.
After spending fifteen minutes stretching out his tired limbs, his stomach growled, reminding him that it was past dinnertime and he needed food. He jogged gingerly up the stairs and let himself into his apartment.
Quickly, he threw together a stir-fry and some noodles, and the scent of garlic and Chinese five spice soon filled the air. Still sweating yet fiercely hungry, he stood to eat, devouring every last bit of food on his plate. He rinsed the dishes and placed them in the dishwasher.
As much as he really didn’t feel like it, there was a list of house chores that needed doing. He figured he might as well get some laundry going while he tackled the dishes, starting with his bedding. The pillowcase smelled of Lia as he pulled it off the pillow, and he had to resist the urge to bring it to his nose. At some point he was going to have to make a decision when it came to thinking about her. After his workout, he’d been ready to put her aside for good, but once he was back inside his apartment, the smell of her had him thinking about her all over again.
Still lost in thoughts of her scent, he peeled the comforter back and spotted something glittering on the sheet. He leaned over and picked it up. It was a thin bracelet, gold with a broken link and what appeared to be five red four-leaf clovers. Of course it would be red. It was most definitely Lia’s, and appeared to be broken, a link stretched open.
It was a fucking omen. There had to be a reason he couldn’t stop thinking about her, and then her bracelet appeared in his bed. He recalled the way it had hung loosely around her wrist. As she’d drawn the bike, she’d periodically raised her hand and shook it to jiggle the bracelet farther up her arm. Now he had a reason to call her, and that just made his fucking day.
He wandered over to his desk, bracelet wrapped around three of his fingers—fuck, her wrist was small—and studied the drawing Lia had done. The lines were incredible, and her sense of scale and proportion was even better than his own. Certainly, it wasn’t mechanically correct. Heck, it didn’t even have an exhaust. But that could be taught. Part of him thought she would make an excellent partner in the custom-bike side of his business. Talent like hers was natural, and difficult to find. He knew it firsthand because he had been looking for months for somebody to come on board and help them grow the business. It was incredible to think that this was her first try. Even he wasn’t that good.
He wondered if he could persuade her to join him one evening, even if it was under the pretense of talking about her bike designs. Hell, he’d get them back in the same room any way he could. From there, he could persuade her to spend another night. Then another. She could call it whatever she wanted, but he needed desperately to explore what they could be together, because his gut was telling him that it would be special.
Before he changed his mind, again, he hurried back to the kitchen and picked up his phone. He took a photograph of the bracelet still wrapped around his fingers and then pl
aced it down on the counter. She had given him her details so that he could call her about the car. Technically, what he was about to do was a breach of customer confidentiality, using her number for something other than professional business, but for once, he really didn’t give a shit. For all he knew, she was worried about the bracelet and didn’t know where she had lost it. And calling to let her know he had it would make him her knight in shining armor.
I have something of yours, more than willing to return it before Cherry is ready.
Like some fifteen-year-old high school kid, he read and reread the text over and over, until he realized he was acting like a pussy and hit send.
He wandered back to the bathroom and stripped naked before stepping under the steaming hot spray. What was the worst that could happen? Perhaps she’d respond right away, delighted that he’d found a long-lost family heirloom. Or perhaps it was nothing more than a carnival trinket, and he wouldn’t hear back from her until the day he told her that her car was ready.
Only one of those options was going to bring a smile to his face.
* * *
Gravel crunched beneath the wheels of the car as Lia pulled into the driveway of her parents’ home. She marched to the imposing front door, wanting this to be over with as quickly as possible. When she hadn’t been thinking about Kenny, she’d been stewing over her father’s plans, and she’d come to the conclusion that she needed to clear the air. He needed to understand that she wouldn’t be dragged into his political foray or publically pretend to agree with his beliefs for the sake of his campaign.
She let herself in. “Hello,” she called out in the vast atrium. The words echoed off all the marble. “Dad?”
Her heels clacked against the tiled floor as she made her way toward his office. She pushed the door open to find her father sitting in his tall leather chair at his ornate redwood desk.
The Darkest Link (Second Circle Tattoos) Page 8
