Dream Lover

by Stacey Keith

  “Omigod, I am boring.” That seemed so tragic somehow. It reminded her that everyone else was normal except her. Of course, her sisters didn’t think she was boring, but her sisters weren’t in town as much as they used to be. Now she had to accept the truth about herself without Maggie telling her, April, you’re being ridiculous.

  “I wish I were somebody else,” April said, gazing morosely at Tessa, Susan and Patricia, who sat across from her, comparing manicures. “Where’s the adventure? Aren’t I supposed to do stupid things now while I’m young? I’ve never done anything stupid my whole life. Not really.”

  “You mean like getting naked with that hot biker dude who looked at you like he might eat you? Bet that would qualify as an adventure.”

  April was so shocked, she practically fell off the metal bench. “Are you insane? First of all, he hates me. Second of all, he’s a client. I can’t date clients. There are strict rules about that kind of thing. They’d fire me on the spot. I’d never be able to do social work again.”

  Jacey twisted open a tube of lipstick and then slid it over her lips. She smacked them together before pooching them out again in the mirror. “Yeah, but it would be plenty stupid, which means you’ll be having a fun adventure. Problem solved.”

  April couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Jacey knew better than to suggest such a thing, even if she were joking, which she clearly wasn’t.

  “He’s a total jerk, you know,” April said hotly. “I don’t even like him. I like nice men.”

  “Do you?” Jacey gave her an enigmatic smile and dropped the lipstick into her purse before Tessa recruited her for a debate about nail polish.

  Despite the mild nausea lurching around her stomach, April couldn’t stop worrying about what Jacey had said. What kind of friend was Jacey anyway, shooting her mouth off like that? Dating a client was a violation of every ethical standard April had, even if she wanted to date Brandon, which she didn’t.

  Years ago there’d been a caseworker who took up with the father of one of her own clients. The caseworker’s name was Cleo and she was still the subject of scandalized whispers, which was how April came to hear about her. Cleo had been humiliated. Fired. Run out of town.

  Rumor had it the man Cleo sacrificed her reputation for recently left her. And not just her reputation. All the work, the training, the opportunity to help others. She’d been stripped of her license and blacklisted in the field. Now, no one knew where she was. The story bothered April so much, she refused to let anyone in the office talk about it.

  The van came to a stop and Ryan rapped his knuckles on the window that separated the back from the front. Indignantly, April thought, I like nice men. She did. The boys she’d dated in college were nice. So what if she didn’t let those relationships “go all the way”? Maybe she just wasn’t ready.

  “Roxanne, this is your stop,” Ryan said once he’d opened the doors. Roxanne patted his cheek as she clambered out. “Thanks, Sheriff.”

  April didn’t like the face pat. She also didn’t like Roxanne, although she should feel sorry for her over the whole breakup thing.

  Ryan was decent and honorable and April knew that she hadn’t really given him a chance.

  Before he could close the doors, she slid out. The world merry-go-rounded a little, but not too bad. She felt daring and impulsive.

  “Hey,” she said.

  Ryan looked amused although she didn’t know why. “Hey yourself.”

  “I’d better sit up front,” she confessed. “I don’t feel so good.”

  He opened the passenger door and helped her inside. His hand was warm and reassuring. “If you’re going to hurl, lean out the window.”

  She watched him go around the front and then climb inside. He brought the smell of the night air with him along with a pleasing whiff of aftershave.

  I like nice men, she told herself again more forcefully. Ryan wasn’t asking her to marry him, just to go on a date. What if she ended up liking him? What if the only reason she got a little dizzy around Brandon wasn’t because of Brandon, but because Jacey was right and all she really needed was a boyfriend?

  Jacey was always right. It was kind of annoying.

  “Hey, do you still want to have dinner in San Antonio?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound too weird asking him that.

  Ryan looked at her carefully. Like maybe he was trying to decide if it was her talking or the beer. “Yes, I do.”

  I can do this, she thought. I just have to push myself. Underneath the warm haze, she might have been a little afraid, but that was silly, wasn’t it? Ryan wasn’t scary. He had nice hair and he smelled good. All she had to do was say yes.

  “Okay, so I thought about it,” she said. “Let’s do this thing.”

  Chapter 4

  Brandon rolled out of bed, pulled on his jeans, and slid the zipper up. He hunted around his bedroom for the black T-shirt he’d been wearing, but all he could find was a bra, a pair of pink lace panties and a Harley saddlebag latch he’d been looking for. He stuffed it in his back pocket and then kicked his boots out from under the bed.

  The woman from the bar turned on her side and gave him a look he recognized as claim staking.

  “You gotta go right this red-hot minute?” she asked. “I was hoping we could have dinner…or something.”

  He kept prowling around for the shirt, knowing what was probably coming next. Women might be unpredictable in bed—some quiet, some loud, some meek and some that clawed you up like tigresses—but out of bed, they tended to be the same. Brandon didn’t know if he had a groupie here, but sometimes the hard-to-read chicks were the ones you had to watch out for.

  “Got shit to do,” he said, flipping the bedcovers and spotting his T-shirt underneath.

  The woman made a sound of protest. She shifted to her back so he could see what he was missing out on, and frankly, there was a lot to miss. Brandon let himself drink her in before remembering that his buddy, Doc, was probably here already. Which meant no time to screw around.

  She gave him a lazy, sensual look. “You sure? Way I figure, we were just getting started.”

  That was his cue to go. “I told you before, there’s nothing to start. I was clear about that. We were a one-time only deal, remember?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “No ‘yes, but.’ I’m not looking for a relationship, and I’m not changing my mind.”

  He caught the sulky expression on her face before he pulled the T-shirt over his head. Her gaze swept his chest before making its way back up to his face again. “Can I call you?”

  “I don’t have a phone.” There was a house phone, but he rarely used it. If someone needed to talk to him, he made them call Matthew’s cell. Matthew was a genius at screening his calls.

  Speaking of which, where was the kid?

  “If I did call, would you remember my name?” she asked, eyes narrowing.

  Shit. “Of course.”

  “Yeah? What is it?”

  Silence. She looked pissed. Truth was, she had a right to be. When he grinned at her, she sat up and snatched her pink lace panties off the bed.

  “It’s Shayla, you asshole,” she muttered.

  “Got it.”

  “You’re a pig, you know that?”

  That hot little social worker had called him the same thing tonight. Brandon raked his fingers through his hair and felt a stirring of male pride. It showed that when it came to women, he was the same lone wolf he’d always been, accountable to no one.

  Or in his case, the same lone pig.

  “You can let yourself out,” he said, glad he’d made her drive her own car over. “Feel free to grab what you need out of the fridge.”

  She threw a pillow at him, which skidded harmlessly away. Funny how you could be straight up with a woman, even before the sex, and she would still try to corner you afte
rwards.

  Brandon strode through the kitchen and then down the back steps. He heard the brrrraaaappp of Matthew’s two-stroke dirt bike in the distance and guessed he was out night-riding, probably without his helmet.

  Damn the kid for not listening. Brandon felt a familiar surge of love and fear for him. They may have had different fathers, but that had never changed the way he felt about his brother. Family was family. Anybody who messed with Matthew had to go through him first.

  Brandon knew firsthand how many ways life could go wrong.

  The fields behind his house gleamed in the light of a full moon. A halo shone around that moon, casting a milky sheen over the rows of ripening corn and the hay bales that gave the wind its earthy sweetness. The land belonged to Bill Walsh, the farmer who’d called the cops a few weeks ago when Brandon had had some of his Harley-riding friends over.

  Turning the corner, Brandon saw the glowing tip of a cigarette and the silhouettes of two men leaning against a Chevy Camaro. He knew who they were: Doc Thompson, a war veteran who’d done two tours in Iraq. And Mike “Cutty” Davis, who got his nickname from downing a fifth of Cutty Sark in less than a minute. Brandon had met them both in prison.

  “Goddamn, McBride, what took you?” Doc said. His southern drawl seemed even thicker tonight. Maybe he’d been drinking. Doc liked to drink.

  “I was busy.” Brandon turned on the lights in his garage. His Harley-Davidson Fat Boy rested on its kickstand. A second Harley he’d won shooting pool at a dive bar outside New Orleans lay on a blue drop cloth. The bike had exhaust problems, which was probably why the guy had offered the hog as collateral.

  “Busy?” Cutty sneered. “I can guess what that looked like.”

  “I swear, that boy trims more bush than a buzz saw,” Doc said approvingly. He had a craggy, intelligent face that didn’t really go with the drawl. His gray hair was pulled back in a low ponytail. The sonofabitch could tell a story though, which had been a real blessing because there wasn’t a damn thing to do in prison except eat, lift weights, horde smokes and try not to get shanked in the laundry room.

  Brandon grabbed a pair of pliers off the bench. “You’ve got a dirty mind. I was at Bible camp.”

  Doc chuckled and ground his cigarette butt with the heel of his boot. “Praise the Lord.”

  Cutty got a beer out of the refrigerator and then pinged the cap at Brandon, which made Doc laugh again, although Brandon didn’t. He saw the aggression in it, but didn’t say anything. Not yet.

  “You had time to think over what we talked about?” Doc asked him. “If we’re going to move on this, we gotta do it soon.”

  Brandon picked up a length of tailpipe and inspected it for damage. Doc always had some game he was running. Most of the time it was bullshit, and this one sounded like bullshit, too. Trouble was, Brandon’s funds were dwindling, and now he had a whole new problem: April and the great state of Texas were about to crawl up his own tailpipe. If he didn’t lawyer up soon, they’d try to take Matthew away from him.

  It was the only thing that had the power to unnerve him. He felt that worry gnawing rat-like at his gut.

  But there was no point telling Doc that. Doc didn’t give a damn about family. To him, life was nothing but hot pussy and cold beer.

  “This idea you got,” Brandon said. “How carefully did you think it through? Nobody pulls bank jobs anymore. There’s never enough money in the till, cameras are everywhere, and dye packs are way too easy to slip inside a bag.”

  “That’s the beauty of it,” Cutty said excitedly. “Doc’s got that girl on the inside. She’s gonna make sure we maximize the score.”

  Brandon took the pipe over to his workbench and snapped on an overhead crane light. “Why don’t you two just do it?”

  “It’s going to take two men to cover the guards, the tellers and the customers,” Doc said. “And a third man to grab that cash.”

  Brandon shook his head. “If you’re going to risk getting tossed back in the cage, the money’s got to be juicy. But this isn’t juicy. It’s stupid.”

  Cutty bristled. As a short guy, he was always bristling. But the truth was the truth, and Brandon wasn’t someone who only saw what he wanted to see, no matter how badly he needed the money. Too much risk, too little reward.

  “I’m out,” Brandon said. “If the score’s not there, I’m not there.”

  “Maybe it’s your fucking balls that aren’t there,” Cutty muttered, putting the bottle to his lips.

  Brandon’s pulse rate went up. Cutty loved to shoot his mouth off. The smart thing to do would be to ignore his dumb ass, but since when had he, Brandon McBride, ever done the smart thing? One time he put a guy in the hospital for two weeks just for calling him half-breed.

  He knew Doc was watching now to see how he’d respond, not that he gave a fuck what Doc thought. But honor meant something. At the end of the day, it was pretty much all you had.

  He set down the tailpipe and turned toward Cutty, who was eyeing him warily over the bottle.

  “What do you know about balls, Cutty?” he asked softly.

  Cutty gave a nervous laugh. “You’re missing out is all. Business opportunity like that. Don’t know why you’d pass it up.”

  “Because it’s stupid.” Brandon slammed him backward on the hood of the car, one hand clenched around his throat. “Just like you.”

  The beer bottle rolled off the car and then clattered to the driveway. Brandon sent it flying with the toe of his boot. All his attention was focused on exerting just enough pressure on Cutty’s windpipe to make him remember how dangerous it was to run his mouth. Cutty clawed at his throat, eyes bulging. Brandon squeezed just a little bit harder.

  The state of Texas didn’t have a throat to choke, but Cutty did. It felt pretty good.

  Brandon heard footsteps behind him and saw Matthew standing there, looking horrified and confused. Matthew hated violence. His cheek was bleeding and his T-shirt was ripped up the front where a small gash showed.

  Brandon let go of Cutty and said, “Dammit, Matt, how many times I gotta tell you not to ride without your helmet?”

  Cutty sat up, still clutching his throat, and rasped, “What the hell, McBride?”

  Doc pushed away from the car. His eyes had a glint in their depths that Brandon recognized for what it was: a reckoning.

  You, too? Brandon thought. Bring it on, old man.

  “See you around,” Doc said before getting in the car. Cutty climbed inside the passenger seat, still holding his throat. They backed down the driveway and then took off, dust swirling in the red eyes of their taillights.

  Brandon took a closer look at his brother.

  Matt had red eyes, too, and they weren’t from riding without a helmet.

  “You’re stoned,” Brandon said accusingly.

  Matthew shrugged his shoulders. “Big deal.”

  Brandon advanced on him so angrily Matt backed up to the workbench and sat down hard. “I told you a thousand times to stay away from that shit,” Brandon said. “You gotta be on your game. Stay focused.”

  “Says who?”

  “Where’d you get it?” Two-stoplight towns like Cuervo didn’t have drugs in them. Brandon’s jaw was clenched so tight his teeth hurt. Matt had done some stupid things, but he knew better than this. He had a future in motocross and had already won a few races.

  “What the hell do you care?” Matt said. “You were in juvie when you were my age.”

  “Yeah, but not for drugs, you dumbass.” Brandon tilted Matt’s face to one side so he could get a better look at his scrapes and bruises. “Now who’d you get the shit from?”

  Matt glared up at him, but Brandon knew he’d spill. His kid brother may have been a pain in the ass, but he wasn’t crazy.

  “There’s a guy,” Matthew muttered. “Usually hangs out down by the corner store at the gas stat
ion. Sometimes he buys beer for the under-agers.”

  Brandon dragged out the first aid kit and popped it open. “This guy gotta name?”

  “I dunno. He’s got a tattoo on his arm about this big.” With his fingers, Matthew made a half circle about the size of a drink coaster. “It’s some weird Chinese symbol with a bunch of flowers underneath it.”

  Brandon smeared a line of antibiotic cream over both scrapes, the one on Matt’s cheek and the other along his ribcage. Then he cut strips of medical tape to go over the gauze. “Where’s the rest of your stash?”

  Matthew gave him a sulky glance.

  “I’m not going to ask you again.”

  “My room,” Matt said, which probably meant the cellar, the kitchen, or maybe the shed where he kept his skateboards.

  “This ends now,” Brandon told him. “You hear me? I got enough shit to deal with.”

  Brandon finished taping up his brother’s wounds and then mussed his hair to show that he loved him. It had been three years since Mom died and about that long since Matthew’s dad, Monroe, went upstate to Huntsville for beating a cop. That was when Brandon’s freewheeling ways had ground to a halt. Now he had more to worry about than keeping the lights on or getting laid. He had to think about Matthew.

  But goddamn he missed the old days and his life on the open road. He dreamed about them sometimes, that feeling of utter freedom. Yet Brandon couldn’t have lived with himself if Matthew had been sent to foster care. Not after what he himself had been through. His experience with foster care had made him what he was—tougher, sure, but with wounds that would probably never heal.

  And if Brandon didn’t get his hands on some money soon, that’s exactly where his brother was headed.

  “That girl you brought home was super pissed off,” Matthew told him with that tone he had when he didn’t approve of something Brandon was doing.

  “How do you know?”

  “She wrote ‘Thanks for nothing, asshole’ on your bathroom mirror. In lipstick. Looks like you’ve got another fan.”

  * * * *

  When April walked through the offices of Raymond County Child Protective Services, she was quaking inside. Her nerves were electric wires that had been stripped of their protective coating. She waved to the people she had to wave to, but then made a beeline for her office. It was safe in there, especially with the door closed. She didn’t even turn on the lights. Instead, she went straight to her desk chair and collapsed.