by Amber Burns
My eyes settle on the skirt’s material stretching over her ass, exaggerating the cushiony-looking flesh, making my palms itching to reach out and confirm how soft I’m imagining it to be.
Suddenly I’m just as curious as to what she’d do if I pull her back into me, hold her prisoner against my chest and whisper the marriage proposal into her ear. But my feet seem to be stuck to the ground. I watch her walk to the door.
When I don’t follow her to the door Astra glances back, exasperation lacing both her expression and voice. “Mr. McBride, I have to lock up.”
“Of course,” I mutter, forcing my boots to march and I all but shuffle from her office, feeling a kicked dog…or a bratty kid who was just told he lost all his privilege to his phone and computer and whatever else technology hooking him to the world.
Grabbing her long, wool gray coat from the closet in the waiting room, she pulls it on and closes up the outer door too. Leading us to the school’s exit, I barely notice we’re outside until the white world’s glare forces me to squint.
Since last night the light snowfall hasn’t let up. It’s quickly blanketing the world in a deathly silence. I see my rental and only three other cars in the lot; Dr. Olsen isn’t the only one dedicated to her job.
She’s pointing her key fob at a shiny dark blue four-door parked a space from the SVU I picked up at the rental shop by the airport. The crunching snow under my boots alerts her. Astra looks back and I blurt, “I’m not following you.”
“I didn’t think you were, Mr. McBride. I just wanted to wish you a safe drive,” her eyes dance from the tulips to chocolate box back to my stare. “And I am sorry, again, for not being able to accept your…gifts.”
“No problem,” I wave the flowers in lieu of the smile I don’t have energy to fake. “And right back at you for the safe driving.”
She’s turning away and I have to pass her car to get to mine. I glimpse her over my rental’s roof, the flowers and chocolates settled up there as I watch Astra. She’s starting the car and then stepping out to brush the snow from her windows. I should be doing the same.
Which is why I can’t pinpoint exactly when my feet start moving, but all I remember seeing are her brilliant brown eyes and her glossy mouth popping open. “Mr. McBride?” there’s a breathless quality to my name.
I have one hand on her snow brush, stopping her from clearing her car, grabbing her attention for what I have to say. “What’s business do you have at Harry’s?”
Astra blinks. “I-I don’t understand.”
“I couldn’t help but overhear you have an errand at Gold Trades.”
“Y-Yes,” she stammers again; the doc losing her cool, professional façade gives her a whole new appeal.
It’s not too cold today, but the small chill has rushed blood to her cheeks. Twin spots of red over her baby-fat cheeks taunt me, almost as much as her red mouth does. “But I don’t understand why you’re asking me.”
She brushes her free hand over the flyaway strands settling over her vision, only to have a breeze push it back exactly where it was. Cheesy as it is, I reach out and do the honors for her.
My hand lingers against her ear and not-shockingly soft hair. Astra’s eyes are wide enough for me to note gold flecks around her irises. My, isn’t she full of all these little surprises?
Catapulting out of her shock as soon as my hand drops away, she shakes her head.
I use the moment to tug the brush out of her grasp completely, listening to her stuttered protests as I get to work on her car, clearing the snow that set back the work she’d already done.
“As I was saying, I know Harry doesn’t always play fair.”
“Mr. McBride,” Astra’s saying, the stammer gone. I need to strike before she sets about building her resolve.
“If you have a problem with Harry, I might be able to help. And if you’ll let me, I’d love to help.” I walk around the back, brushing off snow, rounding until the car is between us while I do the other side. The distance gives me room to breathe, to try less at feigning calm as she cocks her head and gnaws her lip.
I’m starting to realize it must be a habit of hers while she thinks.
At least she’s thinking this time, taking longer with her response. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
“Harry can be mean, but it’s a tactic to ward off any outsiders or newbies not familiar with his business style.”
She looks like she has questions to ask, but she says, “Thank you for the offer, yet I’m going to have to decline, Mr. McBride.”
“For the same reason you can’t accept the flowers?”
“Yes.”
I round from clearing the hood and meet Astra in front of the driver’s side. She cranes her head up, coming to my chin now she isn’t wearing those heels. We’re a pace apart. I can close the gap and I’d be right against her, and she’d feel the bulge riding my upper thigh.
My cock jerks when her soft sigh carries to my ears.
“Since you didn’t accept the flowers,” I hold out on the rest, watching the guilt gnaw at that plump bottom lip, her pupils dilating. She looks to be swaying, gaze hovering to my mouth. “I hope you’ll accept my help now.”
“Mr. McBride – ”
“I prefer Ryker, Dr. Olsen.”
“Mister, err, Ryker, I can’t… It wouldn’t be r-right.”
“I’m not asking anything from you, and you’re off hours. The school can’t, shouldn’t have any say in what you do outside.”
At the mention of St. B&J, Astra’s attention veers to the tall, dark, cheerless building. “It’s a small town.”
“It is.” I say, gravely.
If this is bothering her, I’m nowhere near to getting her to agree to my proposal. Rather than letting that deflate me, I’m torturing myself by asking her, begging her, “Let me come.”
Astra’s wavering is settled by her sigh.
I follow her instructions to toss the brush in the trunk after she pops it open. I kick off the snow from my boots and slide into the passenger’s seat of her Corvette, careful not to ruin the worn, but neat interior cushion with snow and slush.
Astra pulls out and finds Harry’s with only minimal instruction on my part. “These meters are off after five,” another town feature that hadn’t changed. I glance at her dashboard confirming the late hour. “We’re good.”
“You know a lot about Orange Compass,” she looks my way after she’s done parallel parking. “Did you live here before?”
“A long time ago, yes, and I do right now,” I point out the B&B across the street two doors down before leading the way to Harry’s front steps, holding the door for Astra and following her into a shouting match at the back of the building.
“What part of this being a horrible mistake don’t you understand?” the woman on the other side of the counter – although she looks ready to change that by climbing over to pommel old Harry, slaps both hands on the counter.
“All of it. I run a business here, lady,” he shakes a crooked finger at the petite blonde with her back to the front door. “I don’t need any trouble now, so if you aren’t going to be selling or buying then I’d like you to leave.”
“I’m not leaving here until I walk out with what rightfully belongs to me.”
Harry cackles. “Rightfully or lawfully? I don’t deal in scams, lady, I run an upstanding business and if your belongings ended up on this side,” he gestures to his end, “it’s because a fair trade went on.”
“Fair my ass!” The woman leans across the counter, lifting a hand to strike.
“Holly,” Astra peels from my side. She grabs the woman’s lowering arm and tugs her back. “What are you doing?”
“This cheating scumbag is trying to rip me out of my jewelry.”
“Cheating? Not you, Mr. Colbert, surely,” I come up at Astra and her friend’s rear. The feisty Holly turns her blue-eyed glare on me and I might have cowered if curiosity didn’t soften her stare.
Harry i
s even more suspicious.
“Do I know you?” he squints, the fleshy folds around his eyes sagging and giving the illusion of completely shutting. He’s looking meaner by the second. Astra’s friend Holly really pushed the old man’s numbers. He had to be ready to toss us all out on our asses.
“Well, speak up boy,” he snaps loudly. “And you,” he matches Holly’s glowering, “thought I told you to cough up some business or get out of my store. You got cotton in your ears, lady?”
“I’ll show you cotton,” Holly’s struggling with Astra keeps up until I clear touch her shoulder. Astra’s friend jerks to a still.
“And who are you?”
I smile, catching Astra’s head shake as if I’d divulge what – the fact that I gave her flowers and chocolates, or forced her to let me come along for the ride. “A friend of a friend,” is what I say, my smile growing at Astra’s palpable relief. “So, what’s the problem here?”
Holly’s speculating whether to trust me, but it’s short-lived. “Only that I want my jewelry back. My son came in here and sold some precious heirlooms and mementos without my knowledge,” her stressing is water down Harry’s back.
“I can’t referee who each and every seller. The kid came in here, said the stuff belonged to his mother and he was doing you a favor by cleaning out.”
“He’s seventeen!” Holly screams. “I’m sure that’s illegal and if I find out it is, I’ll make sure you pay big, old man.”
“What did you say you, you little bitch?”
Holly’s eyes bulge out and she is really now trying to climb over. Save Astra’s stopping her, her long, brightly colored nails would have reached old man Harry Colbert and he’d have more to worry about than the shrapnel facial scarring from the flash bomb that was supposed to have shattered on the rock he was hiding behind during the Vietnam War.
“I dare you to say that again, you sagging old scheming fart! Come on, come on! Think you’re a big, tough man using sexist terms, right? Let’s see what you got then,” Holly is taking Astra for a ride.
Lola’s counsellor tosses me a pleading look. I’m shocked enough she’s asking for my help it takes longer for me to react. I approach her friend’s other side and grab her stretched arm, pulling back her clawing hand.
“How about you ladies go get some fresh air?”
“Fresh air,” Holly jerks her head my way. “Who the hell did you say you were again?”
“Holly, please.” Astra gives a furious shake when she has her friend’s attention. “Let’s just go. For now,” she adds hastily, prompting Holly to open and close her mouth on a similar exclamation.
When I figure she isn’t going to launch herself at Harry again, I drop my hand and she lowers her arm, Astra pulling the irate Holly towards the exit. Not that she leaves quietly.
“I’m going to knock his fake-ass veneers out, Astra, I swear if I don’t get my stuff back from that old sexist bastard.” Holly’s grumbled threat and Astra’s soothing comments carry out with the merry jingle of the store bell. Then it’s me and Harry facing off.
“You just going to stand there and stare.” He sets his hands wider on the glass. “If you’re planning to start something too, I’ll call the cops, you hear me, boy. So buy something or get the hell out of my store.”
I throw my hands up. “No plans to rob you, Mr. Colbert.”
“Do I know you, boy?” he leans closer, the anger slightly leashed by his curiosity once more. His milky blue eyes widen just as I see the lightbulb going off in his severely balding head. “Well, well. If it isn’t the McBride boy…”
“Ryker, Mr. Colbert,” I supply, my smile tightening as Harry cackles, revealing the gold veneers replacing two bottom teeth.
“I know who you are, boy. Your mother didn’t go and make a reputation in this town with decent folk for no reason.” He drops to his elbows over the counter, his grin growing the longer the silence stretches on my part.
The first person other than the Lopezes to know of my return to Orange Compass, and he’s summing up all the reasons I’ve had to keep my trap shut about my arrival.
“What brings you to me?” Harry cocks his head at the door. “One of your lady friends out there?”
I follow his gaze to Astra trailing Holly back and forth across the store front, their mouths moving rapidly, clearly the process to calming Holly falling on Lola’s sexy counsellor.
“What if I’m interested in buying what the lady wants?”
“Oh?” He goes up onto his hands, frown deepening the groves bracketing his mouth. “You got big money now, boy.”
“Something like that,” I nod at the glass case to get him moving.
Harry pulls out a ring of keys, jolting a memory from two decades out of the most secreted drawers in my head. I clutch a hand to one of my pulsing temples and breathe through the process.
“Hardly worth its weight,” Harry’s mumbling helps to draw me to the present.
Rising slowly and dropping the box with a clatter on the counter, the ornery, old shop keeper gestures dramatically. “You want the whole enchilada then?”
“Woo me.” I bring my hands to the counter.
He opens the box and spreads out the goods. I count two necklaces, one a simpler choker, the other a gold chain carrying a large sapphire pendant, four matching gold bracelets and a white gold solitaire stunner.
Harry hooks his pinky in Holly’s ring and holds it up, the spotlighting above the front counter catching the diamond. “This was probably the only thing really worth the sale. The rest won’t pick up much. But I could sell this to some Benny passing through.
“Unless you can convince me otherwise,” he trails off, holding the ring close, but out of reach.
I hate the smarmy smile pulling his pock-marked cheeks. He tilts his pinky down and the ring slides off and into its box. He rustles up the other pieces and stores them in their hiding place.
“Well? You in, boy, or you going to leave me to mine?”
“You’re right about the jewels. They can’t be all that much. Two grand sounds about right,” I step back to avoid his spittle as he barks.
“Nice try. Three thousand or clear through to the door. I’m not bluffing when I say I’ll dial for back-up.”
Ignoring his threats to involve the police, I whistle for effect. “Three sounds a bit high, don’t you think? The kid didn’t talk you out of half of that, did he, Mr. Colbert?”
Harry is quiet. He has a petulant look about his curled lip. “That doesn’t sound like you,” I say, more of my award-winning acting.
“Like I said, it’s three thousand for the whole box.” He raps his knuckles over the glass casing around the jewelry box. “I can’t just hand out jewelry for every idiot mother and thieving spawn. I run a business here.”
Since he looks ready to burst, and I want out of the suffocating space, I reach for my wallet in my back pocket, keeping my eyes on him as I pull out all the bills I have in there, thirty two in total. I set it on the counter in the middle, tucking my wallet away as he hesitates to scoop up the bills and count them.
“That should be more than enough for what the lady gave you,” I’m reaching for the box, handling it carefully to keep its contents in place. At the door I pause. “You still have your clients fill out those pink and yellow receipt slips right?”
I take Harry’s silence as a ‘yes’. “Do yourself and that lady a favor next time and call her if her son tries to pull that crap again. Go a long way in saving your business.”
Pushing through to the world outside is bliss. I let the cool air wash over me, bathing my bundled nerves and uncoiling the oppressive heat under my collar in Harry’s shop.
Facing my direction, Astra is holding her friend by the forearms, her head is down and her lips are moving. I catch the end of what she’s saying.
“…and if not, I’ll help you buy it back,” her gaze shifts to meet mine and her friend notices, turning to glance at me as well. Regarded by both women, I finall
y breach their cozy circle with the package.
“I believe this is yours,” I say.
At first Astra’s friend, Holly blinks through her shock, her mouth falling open. She reaches out with both hands and I yield the jewelry box. Her velvety gloves skim the old leather case, fingers brushing the in-set false gems, and her smiling gaze blind to the missing gems in the diamond pattern encasing the box.
“Thank you,” she whispers, her eyes mysteriously watery. She coughs and clears the phlegm reining her voice in. “How did you manage to let the old Scrooge to see reason and all things good and sweet about the world?”
