Wrecked (Crystal Book Billionaires)

by Jessica Blake

  “No. And I don’t expect to.”

  “Geez,” I breathed. “He sounds like an awful person. I mean, no offense. I’m sorry. I know he’s your husband and all.”

  “Was,” she corrected, shaking her head. “We’re still officially married, of course… but I’ve heard about where he is and what he’s doing and, trust me, he’s moved on. He’s not coming back.”

  I wondered if what he was “doing” involved being with another woman. The very idea of a guy walking out on his three kids was sickening. I clenched my coffee cup tighter and took a deep breath.

  “What’s your story?” Tracey asked. “You said you’re from L.A., but you’re working at a food pantry here for just a while?”

  “Yeah, I don’t really know what’s going on in my life.”

  She guffawed. “Join the club.”

  “This was all supposed to be temporary,” I told the black liquid. “But it’s turning out to be pretty prolonged.”

  “Do you miss L.A.?”

  I opened my mouth to say yes but then paused. “I miss my old life,” I responded. “But it’s not there anymore… so I don’t know.” I sighed. “I don’t feel like I really belong anywhere right now.”

  “Hm.”

  “Hm indeed,” I slowly said. Part of me wanted to go on about how much it sucked, but the other part of me knew I really didn’t have that much to complain about. Not when you compared my situation to that of the woman sitting right next to me. At least I wasn’t struggling to take care of and feed three kids all by myself.

  “Is there anything else you need?” I asked. “I mean, there’s plenty here. I can give you some more from the garden or even loan you some money.”

  Just offering my help felt awkward, but I couldn’t very well let her leave the house without me at least bringing it up.

  “No,” she said. “But thank you. We’re going to be all right. Social services is open tomorrow, and I’m going there first thing to see if I can get emergency assistance.”

  I mentally crossed my fingers for her. “Okay.”

  “So why are you staying here longer than you expected to?”

  “Oh.” I waved my hand dismissively. “My dad is traveling because of work and he thought it would be good for me to come to Crystal Brook for a while. But now it looks like he won’t be headed home any time soon.”

  Tracey cocked her head and looked at me. “You can’t just go back yourself? I’m sorry, I just assumed you were in your twenties. Are you not over eighteen?”

  “Uh…” I didn’t know what to say. Admitting the truth was embarrassing, even to a woman who was in much more dire straits than me.

  I was kind of tired of always skirting around the truth though, so I took a breath and went for it.

  “He sold our house… because he had to. His, uh, company went bankrupt.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  I shrugged. “I freaked out at first. But at least I’m not…” I stopped myself right before shoving my foot in my mouth.

  “At least you’re not in my situation?”

  I slapped a hand over my face. “I wasn’t really thinking that,” I muttered, feeling miserably lame.

  “It’s all right.” She pursed her lips and looked down at Henry. “It sucks,” she said, the words thick. “To wake up in the morning and not know how you’re going to be able to feed your children… I don’t wish that feeling on anyone.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. She looked so fragile, sitting there in the corner of a couch with one arm around her baby. I tried to imagine her with two more children, taking care of them all by herself. A shudder went through me.

  “My job helped some,” she said. “I’ve been bringing food home from work a lot the last couple weeks. I didn’t think we’d have to get on aid, though. I was working as much as I could and thought I’d be able to meet the month’s bills. And then Mackenzie got a stomach bug and had to stay home for three days, and those were the days I was scheduled to work the most hours. And then Owen got it too…” Tracey shook her head. “It’s always something.”

  “So you had to miss work and couldn’t pay your bills?”

  “Right.”

  “Damn,” I muttered.

  She took a gulp of coffee and then set the mug down. “I should be going. Thank you for the coffee.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She looped her purse strap over her shoulder and stood. The keys dangled from Henry’s chubby palm, and I reached out to snatch them just as he dropped them.

  “I guess I’ll see you around,” I told Tracey, handing her the keys.

  “Yeah. See you around.”

  I followed her across the room. As she opened the door, a spur of the moment thought occurred to me. With no time to think it over, I spoke. “Hey.”

  She turned around and looked back at me.

  “If you ever need your kids watched,” I said. “You know, because they’re sick or something, and you have to go to work… I could do it. You wouldn’t have to pay me.”

  She studied my face. “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  A little spark lit in her eye. “Thanks, Grace.”

  Emotion burned behind my nose, and I sniffed it back. “Of course.”

  I watched Tracey as she trekked across the grass, and Henry watched me, his little face peeking around his mother’s shoulder.

  Going back inside, I shut the door and immediately started biting a fingernail. Realizing what I was doing, I dropped my hand. I was broke as fuck and didn’t have the money to splurge on a manicure just because I couldn’t stop biting my nails.

  But that wasn’t the real thing bothering me. The offer to babysit had literally just flown out of my mouth. Truth be told, I didn’t have any real experience with children. I thought they were cute, but they also had a tendency to make me nervous. Maybe I just hadn’t spent a lot of time around them, but it seemed like they were always doing unpredictable things and that kind of freaked me out.

  All you would have to do is keep them alive, I reminded myself.

  “Keep them alive,” I whispered. “Just keep them alive.”

  Grace Wells. Baby sitter. Dog walker. Food pantry volunteer.

  A person I definitely didn’t recognize.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Luke

  “Luke? Are you listening?”

  I jerked to attention and turned my gaze to Brie. “Sorry. What?”

  She stared back at me. “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes. Thank you. Everything is fine.”

  “You seem so distracted.”

  “I’m fine,” I insisted. “What were you saying?”

  She turned back to the papers on the desk. “I was just saying that Mr. Edwards moved. He went to Wilmington to live with his daughter. So he’s off the list.”

  “Ah. That’s good.”

  She handed me a sheet of paper.

  “What’s this?”

  “The addresses for today.”

  I laughed. “Brie, I know all the addresses. Don’t worry. I’ve been doing this for long enough now.”

  She gave me an odd look. “They’re not for you. They’re for Grace.”

  A shiver went through me at the name.

  “Grace?” I repeated, hating how much I loved to hear that one syllable.

  “That’s right. Remember? You told me a couple weeks ago that when we got a new volunteer, you would teach them the drop-off route.”

  A low hiss escaped from between my clenched teeth. “Right. That’s right.”

  I’d been prepared — somewhat — to see Grace that morning, but I definitely wasn’t prepared to spend two hours driving around Crystal Brook with her in my car.

  Her. Grace. In my car.

  The edges of the paper crinkled as my hand tightened on it. “Are you sure you don’t want to go in my place?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why would I do that?”

  I leaned against the co
unter, trying to make my voice sound nonchalant. “I don’t know. I just thought it might be a nice change of pace for you.”

  “What, lugging those boxes around in this heat?”

  I pursed my lips. “When you put it that way, you make me sound like the bad guy here.”

  She smiled and swatted my shoulder. “I’ll do it if you want me to…”

  “No,” I said, straightening up. “You’re right. It’s not easy work. You stay here. People are expecting to see you when they stop in, anyway.”

  The doorbell tinkled and in walked Grace. She was dressed the most casual I’d ever seen, with a black shirt with a peace sign on it and shorts so tiny they could have passed for a bathing suit bottom. A folded bandanna served as a headband to keep her hair back from her face.

  I’d spent all of Sunday trying not to think of her and failing miserably. What happened between us on the porch had been baffling… even though I was the one to initiate.

  Simply put, I didn’t know why I’d done what I’d done. Certainly I had a perverse need to break her down and make her admit just what her game was. And on top of that, I had a feverish desire to claim her body in a way only a caveman could.

  My efforts at strutting had only resulted in failure though. She’d told me off and, man, had she done a good job at it. No, she wasn’t stupid, just like she said. In fact, I was starting to suspect Grace could be one of the cleverest people I’d ever met. She just knew the power in keeping her intelligence a secret. She only brought the big guns out when she needed them.

  She headed towards the counter, and I noticed she wore the yellow Converse I’d seen her in at Freddy’s. I couldn’t help but smile. Was it coincidence, a kind of show of peace, or were her feet just exhausted from high heels?

  She stopped on the other side of the counter, her gaze trained on Brie. “Hello.”

  I dropped my eyes, pretending to read the list of names and addresses on the paper in my hands.

  “Hello Gracie,” Brie responded. “How are you?”

  “Good.”

  A short silence followed. I glanced up and saw two pairs of eyes on me. With a start, I realized they were both waiting for me to speak.

  I cleared my throat. “Grace, uh, we’re going to be doing something a little different today. Once a month, we drive around to the houses of people who aren’t able to come in to pick up food.”

  “Okay,” she answered, her face blank.

  My mouth went dry. Was she playing hard to get or had she really been that turned off by what happened Saturday night?

  No one said anything, so apparently it was still my turn.

  “I usually do the drop offs, but we take new volunteers on the route at least once, just so they can get a feel for it in case they need to do it themselves sometime.”

  She nodded, her expression still silky smooth.

  I cleared my throat again. “All right. I’ll pull my car around to the back, and you can help me load up.”

  Before she could answer, I headed for the front door. My car was parked in its usual spot, and I navigated it to the back of the building. Grace had already opened one of the doors and was bending down to shove a door stopper underneath it as I pulled up. Her shorts rode up slightly, stretching across her rear end like a second skin.

  I sucked in a sharp breath. Get it together, Anderson.

  The boxes were all labeled and waiting by the door, right where I’d left them on Friday. We loaded them up in no time at all and then climbed into the car, the whole task being accomplished without so much as a word uttered.

  Grace stared out the window as I took a left onto the highway, heading towards the direction of the town we both lived in.

  When the silence had started to become too much to bear, she spoke.

  “Who are the people who can’t make it to the pantry?” she asked. “Elderly people?”

  “Most of them, yes.” I glanced at her and caught her eye. Quickly, I looked back at the road. “And sometimes it’s people who are sick or home bound for some other reason. One of them is in a wheelchair.”

  “Oh,” she said in a small voice. “That sucks.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. Eager to do something, I hit the knob on the radio. The DJ’s voice filled the car, babbling on annoyingly loud about some reality TV show. I hit the knob again, turning it off. I couldn’t take it anymore. Something needed to be said.

  “I’m sorry about the other night,” I began.

  She only looked at me, her expression still passive when I risked a glance.

  “Not only was it not right,” I continued. “It was also inappropriate. We work together. I’m your volunteer coordinator.” I shook my head, feeling truly disgusted with myself.

  “That’s funny,” she replied. “I thought you kissed all your volunteers.”

  I looked at her again and saw a slight smile playing at one corner of her mouth. Relieved, I laughed out loud.

  “It’s okay,” she continued.

  I shook my head. “No, it wasn’t.”

  She twisted her lips but didn’t look upset with me. “Then how about this: I forgive you… although it’s not like I pushed you away or anything. I wanted to kiss you too.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath, trying to keep my body temperature from rising. “What’s the first address on that sheet?” I asked her, knowing very well what the address was but needing some sort of topic change.

  The fact that Grace and I worked together was a small issue in comparison to the larger one. After all, there was no boss to crack down on the food pantry manager dating volunteers simply because I was the boss. The real conundrum was due to everything I knew about Grace.

  When I added it all up — her past, her self-involved and righteous attitudes — it was clear that Grace wasn’t the girl for me.

  And yet I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Half of Sunday, I’d been lost in fantasies of her; daydreams that seemed to go on and on no matter how I tried to distract myself.

  You need to get laid, I told myself. That’s probably all it is.

  “Got that?” Grace was asking.

  “Huh?”

  “The address. 144 Kingsley. Apartment 12.”

  I cleared my throat. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Luckily we were less than a minute away from Mr. Cooper’s one-bedroom abode. I pulled into the parking spot right in front of his building and went around to open the SUV’s back door to get the box labeled with his name. Grace watched, following as I went up the short walkway.

  Mr. Cooper lived on social security, getting around with a walker and — as far as I knew — not doing much more than watching television and sitting out on his tiny porch feeding the birds. Like a few of the people on the drop off list, he was undeniably lonely. He’d told me before that he had a daughter, but she lived in Atlanta and only came to see him a couple times a year. Why he wasn’t in an assisted living home was beyond me. Perhaps his daughter couldn’t afford it or had no clue just how lonely he was.

  I always tried to get to his place a little early, so I could spend some extra time chatting with him. On the weeks he didn’t get a box, I stopped by to see if he needed any help with anything.

  I knocked on the door and waited. Next to me, Grace kicked at a little pebble and looked at the ground. Something about her personality was off. She seemed so much more… demure than she usually was.

  I almost opened my mouth and asked what was up. I stopped myself just in time. There were too many reasons as to why I did not need to be getting personal with her. We’d gone way over the line Saturday night, and who knew if we’d ever get back to a place of real propriety.

  Maybe it’s something with that guy…

  Irritation pricked at my chest then rose into full blown jealousy. Just like I didn’t need to be thinking about Grace in a romantic way, I didn’t need to be thinking about her entangled with some other dude.

  “Is he home?” she asked after we’d been waiting for a couple minutes.

>   I knocked again. “He can take a while. He uses a walker.”

  After another minute passed, I knocked one more time. The morning was heating up fast, causing sweat to drip down the back of my neck and below my shirt. I set the box down and flapped the bottom of my shirt to try and get some air flow going.

  “Maybe he’s not home,” Grace suggested.

  “No. He should be. He gets his box the same time every month.” I paused. “Unless he forgot.”

  Stepping forward, I pressed my ear against the door to try and pick up any noises from inside. The apartment was quiet as a tomb.

  “Mr. Cooper!” I called. Even though I knew it would probably be locked, I tried the doorknob. It didn’t budge.

  I turned and looked at Grace, who looked nothing short of grumpy.

  “It’s hot,” she sullenly said.

  I thought about snapping at her — asking something like, Aren’t you from Southern California, but decided it wasn’t worth it. I was becoming genuinely worried about Mr. Cooper and had bigger things to deal with than Grace’s princess attitude.

  I glanced left and right to see if there were any neighbors about. Maybe one of them had seen Mr. Cooper lately, or even knew where he was. With no one in sight, I came up with another plan. There was a window a few feet to the left of the door, and I went to it and pushed on the screen.

  Behind me, Grace gasped. “What are you doing?”

  I didn’t look at her. “I’m going in to see if he’s all right.”

  “That’s breaking and entering.”

  That time, I didn’t even bother to answer. With another push, the screen gave and came off. I set it down on the grass and then tried the window. It lifted effortlessly.

  I wondered whether or not I needed to chastise Mr. Cooper for keeping his window unlocked. An elderly person living alone was a prime target for break ins. Then again, if he hadn’t kept the window open, I wouldn’t be climbing through it to see if he was all right.

  The corner light in the living room was on. I straightened myself up and looked around the small space. A hallway went off to the right, leading to the bathroom and bedroom, and the doorway right in front of me opened into the kitchen.

  The blinds crinkled, and I turned around to see Grace poking her head through the window. “Someone’s going to call the cops,” she hissed.