“Help!” I shouted just before a hand clamped over my mouth.
“Shut the fuck up, bitch,” a husky voice commanded. I didn’t. I continued to try to scream as I kicked and hit him. Biting. I raked my nails down his forearm, his face, his shoulder—wherever I could dig my nails. I wasn’t going with these men willingly.
People say your life flashes before your eyes in times of crisis, when what they mean is that you replay your life in slow motion.
In those brief moments, it seemed as if I relived that day when everything seemed to unravel.
Mama sitting at her sewing table as she looked up and hollered, “Close that door. You weren’t born in a barn.”
And I’d had it, she kept forgiving him. “Why do you stay married to him? All day long Billie Sue Werner ran around school telling the entire freshman class that her mama saw Daddy parked by the railroad tracks with Ms. Kinney, and they were ‘going at it.’ It’s the same thing Daddy does almost every night just with different women. You know it, I know it, the whole town knows it, Mama. And they’re laughing at us.”
I marched back through the house and slammed the door shut. This was just one of the many things I hated about living in a small town, everybody knew your business, and nothing ever changed.
“You go get your homework done, you hear me?”
“Yes, I hear you. But do you hear me? Mama, I’m serious. I’m leaving. I can take no more.”
That was when Mama’s face took on an ashen appearance and she collapsed.
I learned real fast how wrong I was, I could take more. In fact, it was shoved down my throat, heaped on my shoulders, and I was still taking it.
The brief flash from my past was shattered by the smell of days-old sweat on the man holding me. My body revolted, my mouth went watery, and my stomach lurched with the sour taste curdling on my tongue. I was going to vomit, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“Fucking watch it, man. We ain’t supposed to hurt her, just scare her.” The guy I nicknamed Crabbe had a Hispanic accent and seemed a bit uncomfortable about what they were doing.
I broke free from the Goyle-dude as he argued back.
Scare me? Scare me? What the fuck? “Help!” My shout rang out across the parking lot. “Fine. You scared me. Let me go!”
They came at me again, obviously not convinced that I was scared enough. They circled me, Crabbe in front and Goyle-dude at my back. The guy behind me wrapped his arms around my chest, restraining me and lifted me off the ground. The toes of my left shoe scraped the concrete, giving me just enough leverage to pull my leg back and aim for the fat guy’s nuts.
“Help!” I shouted again and again until my throat burned
Someone had to hear me. There had to be someone! I refused to cry, not yet, not there, I needed to get a grip on at least one of these men. Anything. Anywhere. These bastards, whoever they were, were not going to get away with what they were trying to do. I had to break free long enough to pull off their damn masks, at least one of their masks. If I survived, I wanted to be able to identify these sons of bitches. I didn’t get the chance, though.
Untrimmed nails bit into my ankles as the other thug grabbed my legs.
“Let’s go,” Goyle-dude ordered.
I bucked, twisted, and tried to get away as they carried me like a piece of furniture.
Then I heard it, a shout in the distance.
“Police! Freeze!”
In their haste to escape, the men dropped me, I scrambled to right myself and get my feet under me. My head snapped back, pain shot through my scalp as one of the men grabbed a fistful of my hair and slammed me forward. My face met the hood of a car with a sickening crack. The wet heat of my own blood and searing pain were the only things I registered before the man yanked back one more time. I didn’t have time to put my hands up as my face barreled toward a window and I hit the car again, this time with enough force to knock me out.
I awoke on the ground, the burning hot pavement seared through my skin and deep down to my bones. Tiny pieces of gravel and sand pressed into my skin. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been lying there, but I was hyperaware and could feel every single pebble and grain.
Gentle fingers wrapped around my wrist that rested at my side. I felt the brush of a watchband against my palm and scratch of calluses over my skin. Somehow, I was alert enough to process that this was a man’s hand. He pressed two fingers to the underside of my wrist. It took a few more seconds to realize that he was checking for a pulse, and then the fear set in that my attackers were back.
I tried to get up, but I couldn’t move, I ached too badly.
“Help,” I begged, but my voice sounded like a gurgle, a sound that even I didn’t recognize escaping my lips.
Lights flashed around me. I didn’t understand where all the lights were coming from. My mind too clouded with fear, it took me several seconds to realize that they were prisms dancing in tiny shards of glass that surrounded me.
The hand on my wrist was gone, and a moment later, a man’s face came into my field of vision.
“Can you hear me? I am Deputy Kayson Christakos; I’m here to rescue you. Paramedics are on the way. Don’t try to move. You’re safe.”
Blink.
Our eyes locked.
Blink.
I saw stars. No . . . a star. Then I passed out, again.
Stetson
Chapter One
London
Why were funeral home’s chairs so uncomfortable? Did they have a catalog of nothing but hardwood, straight-back chairs? Chairs that constantly reminded you that you were uncomfortable, the people around you were uncomfortable, and that you were going to be uncomfortable for another two hours.
Maybe they did it so that you wouldn’t be distracted from the people walking by and reminding you of how fabulous your father was or how every day since you learned about his lung cancer that you worried. Nope, they wouldn’t want you to miss a second of being reminded of how worried you were about not being able to fill his shoes.
Worried that you would let your sisters down.
Worried that despite everything—despite your father having raised you to believe that girls were just as great as boys—maybe the farm might have been better off in the hands of a son. That was if Samuel Kelly had had a son, but he didn’t. He’d been stuck with three daughters and a wife that had run off when the girls were little.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” I was pulled from my thoughts and self-doubt to accept more condolences.
“Your family is in our prayers.”
“Let us know if you girls need anything.”
“Your father was a good man.”
Were condolences like straws and everyone drew one; whatever was written on the straw was the platitude you had to repeat?
I looked at my sisters to make sure that they were holding up. Part of me felt relieved because I knew that Daddy wasn’t in pain anymore, but at the same time, I was pissed at him for leaving us. It didn’t matter that I was thirty—nothing made you feel like you were a little girl all over again than losing a parent.
The pastor finished the service, and my sisters and I followed the pallbearers, who carried my father’s casket out the doors of the church.
Sweat trickled down my back, and I found myself more focused on the riding lawn mower I could see in the distance than I was on what was being said as they lowered Daddy’s casket into the ground. Taking a deep breath, I inhaled the scent of fresh mowed grass and impending rain. It was going to rain, I could smell the saltiness in the air, and when I opened my mouth I could taste the saltiness on the tip of my tongue.
Who was I kidding? It always rained in Florida, especially this time of the year, and the rain was always salty thanks to being close to the ocean. But right then I needed the rain, I begged for it. I wanted it to pour and send all these people scurrying for cover so that I could sit here for a few moments and say goodbye to my hero.
I was on autopilot, my fo
cus was up toward the horizon and the rain rolling in, while people were kissing my cheek, saying goodbye, and then walking off. Person after person stopped, but I was moving out of natural reaction.
“You okay, London?” I looked at my sister Paris as she tucked a few loose strands of hair behind my ear. “You seem like you’re a million miles away.”
“I’m fine, just tired. Let’s go home.” I stood and held out one hand for each of my sisters. Being the oldest, I’d always felt a heavy amount of responsibility for them, and right then, I needed not to be the weak one.
The three of us headed to my truck. Jumping up into the seat, I paused for a second before pulling my legs in to kick off any excess dirt that still clung to my heels. Nothing about Geneva was fancy, not even the cemetery, where I had to walk through, dirt, sand, and stand in soft sod while I watched my father be lowered into the ground. After removing my hat—because in our little town you always wore a black hat to a funeral—I laid it on the console and started the engine. As I glanced into my rearview mirror, I met the eyes of my baby sister Holland, who hadn’t said a word, which was so strange since of the three of us, she was always the most outspoken one.
But I wanted to get this day over with, which was probably why we had bucked tradition and decided not to have a potluck after the funeral. People from the church had been bringing food by for the last month while Daddy was in hospice. I just didn’t want any more people traipsing in and out of the house telling us how sorry they were, which in the end ultimately led them to discussing the fact that none of us were married and someone was bound to offer up one of their relatives to help us out. As if we were so desperate to find a husband that we needed someone to give us their cousin’s son, who was probably still living in his mom’s basement and went by the name of Bubba. No thanks.
I drove the five miles to our home, the one that I grew up in, the one that still smelled of oiled leather. The smell was an ever-present reminder of when Dad would bring the saddles in and sit there with a polishing cloth, and I realized that I wasn’t ready to go in, not yet.
“You coming?” Holland stood in the doorway, front door ajar, waiting for me.
“Hey, I’ll be back later. I’m going up to Marcus’s.”
Or, more specifically, the Elbow Room, which was the bar he owned. Holland nodded, and I was back in my truck before the door even closed behind her.
Fifteen minutes later, I was pulling open the door and walking into the dimly lit space that smelled of old smoke. It had been a few years since people were allowed to smoke inside, but the scent that was imbedded into the structure assuaged me. That smell wasn’t ever leaving. I remember when the previous owner had the place and my daddy would bring me up here as a kid, there were nights that the smoke had been so thick you could practically cut it with a knife. There had been no hope for the air filtration system to keep up.
I waved at Marcus, who had already changed out of his dark suit and was wearing a T-shirt with the bar’s logo on the back, and slid into an empty stool. He and his brother had been two of Daddy’s pallbearers, but you wouldn’t have known it if you hadn’t been there. He looked as if today was just another day.
“Well, I do believe I have my passport ready,” he hollered. I knew that he was trying to lift my spirits.
“You may see London and you may see France, but you’ll never see my underpants.” I retorted, and I caught the beer he slid me down the well-worn pine top bar.
I was used to all the comments and jokes about my name, had to be. When you were raised with two sisters and you all had names of fancy destinations, people expected you to be well...fancy. They were always shocked to realize that the only thing fancy about the Kelly girls were their names. The fancy one had been our mama, which was why she ran off with the first guy who promised to show her the world when I was ten years old. She’d wanted more than farm life. But not me, I could spend my days running the fields on Madam Mim, my horse.
I downed my first beer, slammed the bottle onto the counter a bit too hard, and smiled when I realized that Marcus had been anticipating my mood and had the second one waiting. I started drinking as I scanned the room. The place was a cross between a dive bar and a honky-tonk. The walls were crowded with memorabilia from locals who had made it big or famous people who had visited. There were several photos from the movie The Waterboy with Adam Sandler since the bonfire party was actually filmed right here in Geneva, Florida. They also filmed a few episodes of ER with George Clooney here. That was when I was young and boys were still yucky, but I remembered all the moms and teachers going crazy.
M.J. Tucker, a guy I went to high school with, was sitting at one of the corner booths, and I shook my head. I seriously considered calling his wife since he was hitting on Etta Hill. She knew—hell, everyone knew that M.J. was married. Then again, we also knew that Etta’s last name suited her perfectly, she was still the easiest hill to climb. Some things never changed, no matter how long it had been since high school.
“Another one, please.” I turned to face Marcus to make sure that he’d heard me. He was standing behind the counter, lost in space.
I took a long swig, I hadn’t realized how thirsty I’d been, two beers in ten minutes was fast even for me. Shaking my head at my realization, I followed the direction of Marcus’s gaze and saw a couple of women wearing denim miniskirts and crop tops. I fought back my urge to laugh at their shiny new cowboy boots. They were wannabes. Wannabe cowgirls, wannabe older than they were, and wannabe someone’s one-night stand.
Rolling my eyes, I waved a hand in front of Marcus’s face to get his attention. The man always lost his shit around booty and breasts. Once again, some things never changed.
I cleared my throat and waited with a giant grin on my face.
“Holy shit, London, you just got here. You might want to slow down a bit.” He cleared away the bottle but still reached behind him and grabbed me another.
“Don’t judge, you know damn well that it’s been a hard day.”
“But you’re driving.” Marcus tried to argue before handing me the bottle. “Just promise me that you aren’t leaving until I say so.”
I chuckled dryly and nodded. Yeah, I had no intention of wrapping myself around some telephone pole.
“How you holding up?”
“Really? I’m in a bar, dressed all in black, and resembling a lost little girl. Worse yet, I feel like one. Can we talk about something else, anything?” I took a swig from the bottle and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Not the most ladylike action, but it was fitting for the way I was feeling.
“Have you checked out the latest Hustler magazine?”
“Holy shit, Marcus.” I laughed so hard I almost choked on my drink. “Don’t tell me you read that shit. Oh my god, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one.”
“That’s my girl, that’s the laugh I’ve been missing.” Marcus reached forward and wrapped his giant paw of a hand around mine.
“You know you wouldn’t have to resort to those types of magazines if you’d stop being such a commitment-phobe. I swear that I don’t know who is more sex depraved, you or the women you hook up with.”
I’d been ragging on him since high school when our world was divided into two groups: helmet head or fans of helmet heads. And group two was what the helmet heads called Future Fags of America, otherwise known as FFA. Marcus and I were FFA all because we grew up on farms. But both groups had their own set of popular kids, except for Marcus, he was the one that was determined to buck the system. He wanted to sample the goods on both sides of the fence.
“Look who’s talking. When was your last relationship? Oh wait, never because you are too damn committed to the ranch. You need to get out and have some fun, let loose. We need to go out sometime—you can be my wingman and help me find someone and I’ll help you.”
“God, I love you, Marcus, but the last thing I want to do is let you loose on my own species. You are what I like to call a man whore.”
>
Trying to feign injury, he threw his hands over his heart and acted as if my words were causing him to have a heart attack.
“You know that does not work on me, right?”
“If you disapprove of my love life so much, then maybe you should be my dating coach, tell me what I’m doing wrong and how to find, you know, the one.”
Whoosh, my beer spewed everywhere. “Fuck, warn a girl next time you’re going to say something like that, won’t you?”
“Is someone choking? I know mouth-to-mouth. Hey, Marcus, a bottle of beer, please.”
I turned at the familiar baritone voice and tried to ignore the way it sent shivers straight to all the right parts of me. I slowly moved my eyes from his boots up his jeans, to his black T-shirt, and then to the gorgeous face. Yep, speaking of man whore, it was Braden Fucking McManus.
“You okay there, London? I’m assuming that you really don’t need mouth-to-mouth.”
“That’s debatable, depends who’s asking. If you’re offering.” I threw my hands over my mouth. Oh shit, I said that aloud. It was supposed to stay in my head. Beer, I had beer tongue. That slippery thing that held nothing in.
Braden coughed, making me think that maybe he was the one that needed the mouth-to-mouth and I’d be willing to practice on him.
Embracing my alcohol-infused bravado, I dropped my hand and gave him a wink instead of cowering away from my slip-up.
“You’ll have to excuse her, Deputy, she’s had a bit much tonight.” Marcus laughed as he looked at me and tried to extract the bottle from my hands, but I held on for dear life.
“Shut up, this is only my third,” I mumbled to Marcus even though he wasn’t paying attention. Oh my God, this was Braden fucking McManus. I’d had a crush on him since we were in middle school. Of course, we never spoke because he was too busy being homecoming king, prom king, and the class president. He’d always been so out of my league.
Roadster (Iron Ladies Book 1) Page 18
