Cursing herself for not wearing more, Bianca snapped the catches on the back of her heavy diamond-studded earrings. Feeling a bit like an old-time stripper, she slipped gold bangles along her arm and onto the glass-topped counter. She plucked a trio of stacked rings from her fingers and, against her better judgment, she let the diamond tennis bracelet KPayne had given her to make up for an argument last month fall heavily beside them when she pulled it from her wrist.
The man behind the counter moved his unlit cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the other and looked down at the pile. “Got to test it first, then I can make you an offer. Go ahead and fill out the paperwork while I’m doing that,” he added, sliding the form and a cheap ballpoint pen across the counter. “Need to see your driver’s license, too.”
The forms were complete when he returned. Bianca noticed that he’d lit the cigarette and smoke from the burning tobacco made her cough. “Okay,” he said, pushing his shirtsleeves high on his thin arms. “I can take the earrings, the bangles, and the rings,” he said, pushing the bracelet toward her. “Not this, though.”
“But it’s a diamond bracelet.” She pushed it back toward him.
He pushed it back. “It’s cubic zirconium. Worthless to me, and if you need money, it’s worthless to you, too.”
“He told me it was real…”
“I’m sure he did, but the best I can do is give you three hundred, and that’s only because of the diamonds.”
That’s all? Bianca brought her hands to her face and made a sound she’d never heard before, something pained and strangled, between a whimper and a scream. The broker just watched. She dropped her hands and looked at the stupid bracelet.
Three hundred is enough cash to get through the immediate crisis, but what about next week? What about my store? Somehow, I have to find a way to hold out…
The pawnbroker came up with a suggestion. “Have you got a car? How about the title to the car?”
“No.” She was going to need transportation and, for all she knew, KPayne might have finagled a way to take it back.
Knowing that not even in desperation would he ever be her type, the pawnbroker pointed to her wrist and stuck to business. “How about that watch? Looks like a Rolex Lady Presidential, and if it’s real…”
“It’s real,” she snapped. “I can guarantee it.”
“I’m just saying, I can give you a good deal.”
Bianca looked down at her wrist and lightly touched the face of the watch. AJ had loved her when he’d given it to her. “No, I couldn’t. It was a gift…”
“If you really need the money, then…”
“I really need the money.”
The man shrugged and the deal was made. With tears in her eyes, Bianca reluctantly fumbled the catch on the watch and finally placed it on the counter.
Bianca jammed the cash and the pawn ticket into her purse as she turned from the counter. Walking the length of the shop, feeling the broker’s eyes on her back, she refused to dwell on whether or not he was betting that she would come back for any of her jewelry. Standing on the sidewalk in front of the pawnshop, she spared a single look back and made a promise. Never again.
CHAPTER 3
The annoying twittering pushed at her sleeping thoughts again, and Bianca’s fingers scrabbled against the sheet. Some part of her knew that the sound wouldn’t bring any good news. Her hand flapped again and she refused to open her eyes. Hunting for the noisy thing, her fingers caught a hard narrow edge. Grabbing it, she sat straight up in the middle of the double bed. Cellphone. The mostly blue and beige colored room was dark. Catching hold of the vibrating phone, she blinked hard and fast.
Motel, she remembered, beginning to piece things together. A sliver of light showed at the window, just at the edges where the heavy dull blue drapes didn’t quite meet. Cheap motel. What time is it? She turned her hand, looking to her wrist for her watch and remembered: I hocked it to pay for this.
Liking her life less and less by the minute, she let the vibrating phone die in her hand. Swinging her legs off the bed, she frowned. She had slept in her clothes, tennis shoes included. Her unwashed body and wrinkled clothes said as much about her predicament as anything else, but she could at least afford to take a shower. She pulled her blouse over her head and dropped it on the bed.
Sitting in her jeans and camisole, she pushed the tennis shoes off with her toes. Her eyes traced the path across the floor to the small bathroom. Debating the wisdom of walking across the carpet in bare feet, she pushed her toes back into the shoes and stayed where she was.
That left breakfast. Sniffing, she smelled grease, flour, and pepper from the drive-thru chicken dinner she’d half-eaten after checking in. The greasy bag rested on the laminated top of the dresser—just as she’d left it. The phone twittered and vibrated in her palm. Forgetting about breakfast, she flipped the phone open. “Hello?”
“You’ve got all the sense God gave a goose, you know that?” KPayne growled.
“I know you’re a mean, deceitful, son of an evil bitch.”
“Whatever,” he snarled. “I heard about the robbery on TV this morning. We came in, turned it on, and there you were. How could you not have enough insurance to cover yourself?”
“What are you talking about? They said that on television?” Bianca stood and went over to the closed drapes. She pulled the cord to let in the early light and looked out at the parking lot. A big-bellied trucker, heading for his rig, looked up to see her and waved. He smiled when she nodded back. “The robbery was on television?”
“Robbery,” KPayne snorted. “What was left of your little retail venture was all over television. Cops prowling all over everything and you standing in the middle of it, looking all dazed and confused. They said it was a total loss, that the insurance company wasn’t going to cover you. How did that happen? I gave you enough money to do everything you needed to do. How did you let something this stupid happen? My mother said you were a stupid cow, and you know what? She was right!”
“Kelvin, look, I tried to reach you yesterday. I had no way of knowing…”
“You didn’t have to know anything, it should have been a slam dunk! I got you a lawyer to set the damned business up and you not only overlooked vendors and consignments, you overlooked real property damage—money down the drain. My money down the drain. Stupid, stupid bitch. I don’t know what I was thinking when I trusted you with that much money.”
“Kelvin…”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said, and the coldness in his voice hardened into elemental iron. “You signed the loan documents; you need to get my money. You’ve got a payment deadline, and you’d better not miss it.”
The phone went dead in her hand.
* * *
KPayne cursed Bianca’s name. And as if his native language didn’t do justice to his fury, he used a word of the gutter French he’d picked up while following his mother around Europe.
“Grace!”
Alin looked up over the top of his rimless glasses— the venomous delivery pretty much spoke for itself. His long-fingered hands stilled on the cool neck of the champagne bottle he’d been fiddling with. “What did she say?”
“Just stuttered some mess about what she didn’t know, and had the nerve to sound like she was pissed with me.” Eyes glittering, lips peeled back in a sneer, KPayne slapped the phone from palm to palm. “Dumb as a bag of rocks.”
“She could be dumb as a bag of doorknobs, but she’s fine,” Alin said and grinned.
Payne looked out of the broad windows of his condo and ignored the comment. It was getting harder and harder for him to overlook the fact that the head of his posse didn’t mind being led around by his smaller head. At some point, he thought, a man had to think and move beyond the carnal, and Alin couldn’t seem to do it—mostly because he didn’t want to. He was fine just chasing women and drinking and partying. Alin and his kind were nothing like him. He, KPayne, was destined for The Big Time, and he needed m
oney to get there.
KPayne’s face tightened as he stared out the window, fixed on the problem at hand and the money involved. In front of him, stretching from floor to ceiling, the penthouse-level wall of glass led onto a narrow balcony and afforded him a long view of the city’s east side. In fact, if the day was clear and he had a mind to pay the vista any attention, he could see all the way to Stone Mountain from where he stood. But this morning the natural granite mass, swathed in pale lilac and pink fog, made no impression on him.
His concern was money. Who knew that a real robbery would disrupt his plans? Who knew that somebody willing to work harder to steal than to earn a living would step into the mix and that Bianca’s little business would take the hit? And now he had to find a way to pay it back because he knew that Buoy Mann didn’t play—unforeseen circumstances be damned. And that was going to be a problem because KPayne already knew that there was no undetectable way to slide more money out of the trust fund he’d been raiding for the past couple of years.
Payne ignored the thin line of sweat glazing his upper lip and watched a lithe, statuesque woman slip into the room. Barefoot and barely covered by the midnight-black lace teddy she’d worn under something he couldn’t recall from the night before, she padded close enough to brush her lips against his cheek. Fresh breath, he noted. She must travel ready-roll. Carries her own toothbrush and toiletries. If I’m going to pick ’em up, that’s the way I like ’em.
She turned gracefully and danced slowly toward the chair where Alin sprawled, still clutching the champagne bottle. KPayne admired the curves of her body and the suggestive hip-driven rhythm of her slinky strut—yeah, he liked that about her, too. Even if he couldn’t remember her name. Was it Mona? Maybe not, but Mona was the best he could come up with.
Reaching Alin’s chair, Mona planted her hands on the arms and bent to kiss him. KPayne’s lips tightened and thinned at the display, but he didn’t look away. No class, he thought. No class at all.
Mona dropped her sassy hip to the arm of Alin’s chair. Her finger traced the foil still wrapped around the bottle’s neck. “Is that champagne? Orange juice and glasses,” she murmured. Standing gracefully, she tipped across the parquet floor, toward the kitchen. “I’ll find something to eat, and then we’ll have mimosas. I love mimosas.”
“Mimosa is a sissy drink,” KPayne said flatly. “Bianca used to like mimosas.”
Alin sat up, holding the unopened champagne bottle between his knees. “Maybe orange juice and champagne is just the preferred drink of beautiful women.”
“Beautiful, stupid women.”
“True, that.” Alin raised the bottle in agreement, and then lowered it to swing between his knees. He sat silent for a minute, listening to Mona moving around the kitchen and the sound of the group they’d listened to last night pulsing through the room.
KPayne’s eyes had gone back to the window and his thoughts clearly beyond that. Alin knew that silence was the best thing, but he couldn’t help himself—inquiring minds, and all that. “What if she can’t, man?”
“Can’t what?”
“Pay it back.”
Alin felt the cold snap of Payne’s green eyes. “She doesn’t pay it back on her own, then I’ll have to get original.”
Alin watched his eyes move back to the window and wondered what might constitute originality. The pictures his mind drew weren’t pretty or pleasant and he hoped he was wrong. KPayne was a soft rich boy playing hard. On his own, he wouldn’t hurt her—not for real. “Did you ever love her?”
“What kind of question is that?” KPayne rolled his shoulders and shoved the phone into his pocket. “You want me to bitch up and whine about her? Ain’t gonna happen. What we had, we had for the moment. Now, the moment is gone.”
The wire snare holding the cork in place twisted and lifted, then the foil curled easily beneath Alin’s fingers. “That why you threw her out?”
“I don’t need her anymore. I’ve got the contracts, a way to clean the money, and a life that doesn’t include her.” KPayne shrugged indifferently. “All she was doing was blocking the right one.”
Alin’s head bobbed slowly. “So it’s just business. You never loved her.”
“Just business,” Payne agreed. “Besides, women are like busses; there’s one every five minutes. And as long as this one takes me to my money, she’ll be worth the ride.”
* * *
Anger burning low, Bianca sat on the foot of the bed because her legs wouldn’t hold her. Looking around, she figured that the room’s dusty blue drapes, green and blue tweed carpeting, and brown plastic laminated furniture was meant to be soothing, but they made her nervous.
This was the closest thing she had to a home, and when her money ran out, even this would be gone. KPayne was threatening her with a deadline she couldn’t possibly meet, and warning her that she’d better not miss it. Anger rippled hot and fast beneath her skin, sloughing self-pity in the process. And what could he do, if she did? Sue her?
Installment payments were going to have to do.
She blew out hard and lifted a hand to her hair. What am I going to do with this mess? She gathered the tangled tresses into a ponytail and looped stray locks around the bunched hair and tucked them under. Catching sight of herself in the dresser mirror, she added the beauty salon to the list of places she wouldn’t be going anytime soon.
I hate this! I hate that I put myself here, and I hate that I don’t know how to get out of it. But I can’t just sit here and cry. So that leaves me with…what?
A chance to call my sister…
Wishing for an alternative didn’t seem to help. No matter how she twisted it, calling Julia seemed to be the only answer—even if she wasn’t ready for it. Suddenly, a shower seemed like a good idea, and a way to postpone the inevitable.
Standing under the spray of hot water, it never occurred to Bianca to wonder when she had made the decision to call her sister—she only knew that she would. Scrubbing her skin with liquid motel soap and reflecting on her relationship to the sister she had forsaken in better times, she wondered if life could get any harder.
Not that their life had been all that hard, but…well, some folk would call it hard. Having your military father die in the Gulf War on your fifteenth birthday, and then having your mother marry another military man just after you’d blown out the candles on your sixteenth birthday cake was a lot. But then to have your mother die in a stupid boating accident less than a year after that, leaving you and your younger sister with a step-dad who wasn’t interested in expanding his fathering skills was enough to leave a girl with just a few abandonment issues.
Bianca admitted to having a few issues, but none of them was worth dwelling on.
After high school, smart enough to know when she was at the end of her resources, Bianca had taken her decent grades to NYU, modeled part-time, and snared the interest of an NFL player. Knowing big money when she smelled it, she figured out how to make him happy and quickly determined that her skills lay in shopping well and looking good.
Nine months younger, Julia, the smart sister, had packed up her issues and taken them to the University of Chicago. She’d buried them deep in her heart and pursued multiple business- and real estate-related degrees. It couldn’t have been as easy as Julia made it look, but she’d put in the work and excelled. Starting out smart and ambitious with no money, she’d secured an international fellowship that took her to Japan and then brought her back to Atlanta. Like her sister, she knew she wanted more, so it was in the city of their birth that Julia set about rebuilding communities and making money in the process.
Now, we’re all the family we have. Our parents were only children from small families, and her real father is gone. Julia and I are all that’s left. Bianca shivered. I should have stayed closer to her.
Maybe it was maturity that made Bianca think of her sister’s face when she’d tried to explain why she was going to Chicago. Finding her original birth certificate had changed th
e truth of everything Julia knew, and leaving her sister to find her own way, Bianca didn’t understand why. Not then, but now…
Years later, slinking out of New York on the heels of a failed design attempt, Bianca was left licking her wounds and counting pennies. Coming home, she’d told herself that Atlanta was the perfect place to start over. She’d called her sister and shared a mandatory lunch. Stiff and uneasy, the sisters had sat across from each other like polite strangers, nibbling at a meal that neither of them wanted.
Baffled by her sister’s willingness to trade on her looks and sex appeal, Julia had finally said what was on her mind and then pushed for answers. Wasn’t it bad enough, she insisted, that their mother had taken the same path? Why couldn’t Bianca see where her life was headed? Why was she so willing to take the road of least resistance?
Bianca had spent many sleepless nights wondering the same thing, but the words wouldn’t cross her lips, and Julia pushed harder.
Aggressive and heavy-handed, Julia had crossed another line by demanding to know her sister’s financial condition. Insulted, Bianca had slammed money onto the table and stalked from the restaurant, her spine straight, her feelings bruised. Then she had ignored Julia’s phone calls and investment advice when she cashed in the small retirement account she’d inherited from their stepfather and invested in her own designs.
Wishing that the motel towels were larger and thicker, Bianca stepped from the shower and onto the pad of thin white towels she’d placed on the floor. Working the bath-sized towel over her body, she tried again to think of the right words. Julia was no pushover, so how easy would it be to shut the door in the face of someone who hadn’t tried to cross her threshold for so many years?
Tipping her wrist to check the time, Bianca missed her watch, even as she remembered that she and Julia had not come from the perfect two-parent home, but they always had one. They had been the kids with the matching life, the kids with the peanut butter and jelly life. They always had the mother and father, the home and church, the school and the play clothes, the shoes and socks. The love and the laughter.
Wayward Dreams Page 4
