She's All In: Club 3, Book 1

by Cathryn Cade

  Daisy repeated what had happened.

  “Oh my God,” Carlie said again. “Daise, honey, I know that sounds bad, but I just don’t think Sara would do that. I really don’t. I mean, you saw what you saw, but maybe…it meant something else.”

  “What?” Daisy asked, swiping at the tears that were flowing unnoticed down her cheeks. Her nose was running too. She swiped at it with the afghan. She was so cold.

  “Well, maybe he was helping her…with something,” Carlie said. “Oh hell. I wish I was there.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m out at Cannon Beach with my family.”

  “Oh. S-sorry to interrupt,” Daisy began, swiping at her face again with the afghan. All she did was smear tears and snot over her face.

  Carlie snorted. “Trust me, you’re not. My brother and his fiancée are making out in front of the only TV, and my parents are playing cards with the neighbors. You got me out of pinochle, for which I’d thank you if it wouldn’t be just…wrong, when you’re so upset.”

  Daisy choked on a laugh and then started to cry again.

  “Aww,” Carlie crooned. “Listen, Daise. I’m hanging up, and I’m calling Sara. I’ll call you right back, okay? Okay? Keep your phone handy.”

  “O-okay.”

  Daisy lay down, curled her feet up under the afghan and huddled there.

  Carlie called back after a while. Daisy was cried out and merely lying there, staring dully at her begonia. The creamy white blossoms were wilting, the edges turning brown. Some of them had fallen to the beige carpet.

  “I can’t get hold of Sara,” Carlie said briskly. “Now, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go wash your face and get your purse and drive over to her place. It’s not that far from yours. I want you to go and talk to her, Daise, and find out what’s going on.”

  “Okay,” Daisy agreed listlessly.

  “Good. Then call me when you get there, and talk things out.”

  “Okay.”

  “Um, Daise? You haven’t been sitting there drinking, have you? ‘Cause I can see how you might want to, but if so, you shouldn’t drive.”

  “No.” But she might, if the icy agony gnawing on her heart didn’t lessen.

  “Phew, good. Okay. Go on, girlfriend.”

  Daisy clambered off the couch and went and washed her face. She stared at her swollen eyes in the mirror. She’d cried more in the weeks she’d been with Dack than she had since she’d learned she had cancer. That didn’t say much about love.

  Oh God. She stood there, in her bathroom, shivering in her afghan. She was in love with him? Was that why she felt like the frozen icicle of misery?

  Oh crap. That was all she needed.

  But, love… It was powerful and strong, and so was Dack. Surely he wouldn’t do this to her, not with one of her best friends. A wavering tendril of hope threaded its way through her heart. Maybe…Carlie was right. She’d go talk to Sara and see what she had to say. Maybe this was all just a gigantic misunderstanding.

  But twenty minutes later, when she slowed in front of Sara’s tidy condo, Daisy hit the brakes. Her car stopped with a jolt in the middle of the street, rocking her forward in her seat.

  Dack’s big, shiny black pickup truck sat in Sara’s driveway. The streetlight picked out his construction logo perfectly, glimmering off the silver lettering.

  Daisy drove on and took the long way home.

  Dack leaned on Daisy’s doorbell again. He could hear it bonging inside her apartment, like a stuck video game. He knew she was home, because her Nissan sat in the parking lot, and it was only six a.m., so she probably wasn’t out walking.

  He peered through the window next to the door. He could make out the corner of a white sofa, with a soft blue afghan thrown over it, and a big green plant that looked like it would like to grab him and take a bite if he got too close. The mood he was in, he’d bite it back.

  Damn it, he was tired and he had a headache. He’d been up most of the night, dealing with the police and making sure Kevin was charged with attempted rape and not just drug use. He wanted breakfast and sleep. But most of all, he wanted to see Daisy and find out why the hell she wasn’t answering her phone, and why she hadn’t spoken to him when Mase told him she’d been at the club last night. Why had she run out without talking to him? Hell, he could have used her help with Sara. Nothing like another woman after a rape attempt, especially a best friend.

  Ten to one Daisy was fine and he shouldn’t be worrying, but he was. Especially after what had happened to Sara.

  Finally, he turned away from her door and started down the steps to the sidewalk. And that was when he saw her, sitting on the steps that led to the next apartment, in the shadow of the railing. She’d snuck in behind him, and he hadn’t even heard her.

  She wore a pair of sweats, a long-sleeved pink T-shirt and fuzzy slippers. Her hair was sticking up on one side, and she looked as tired as he felt. Worse, her green eyes held no welcome for him whatsoever. Damn, was she sick?

  “Daisy?” he asked cautiously. “Baby, what are you doing out here?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Went for a walk.”

  “I’ve been leaning on your doorbell for ten minutes.”

  “Why?” she asked listlessly.

  He blinked. “What do you mean, why?” She must be running a fever or something. “Because I wanted to see you. I was worried about you. You showed up at the club and didn’t even come and find me, you don’t answer your phone—”

  “I showed up all right.” Her eyes narrowed, her nostrils flaring. She wasn’t sick, she was pissed, glaring at him like his mom’s Siamese cat when he ruffled its fur the wrong way. “I…saw you.”

  “You saw me? Why didn’t you come and talk to me, let me know you were there? You could’ve—” He walked closer to stand at the foot of the stairs where she sat. Her seat placed her at eye level with him. The hair on the back of his neck stood up in foreboding. “Wait a minute—you saw what?”

  Her mouth quivered. “I saw you with her. That bitch I thought was my f-friend.” She shot to her feet and looked down at him, holding the railing with white knuckles. “How could you?” she demanded.

  Dack reeled back, stunned as if she’d slapped him. She’d seen him holding Sara, so what? “How could I what? Petal, I was just—”

  “Don’t you call me that,” she raged, her face white. “Don’t you ever call me that again. You made me think I was special to you, and then the minute I turn my back, you’re screwing one of my friends. Well, guess what? You can keep her, but not me, because I don’t share.”

  “Daisy, are you okay?” A head poked out of the door behind her, a wide-eyed college-age girl. “Do you want me to call the police?”

  Oh, for Chrissake. This was going from bad to worse, and Dack was in no mood. He’d go home and call her later, when she she’d calmed down. Hell, when he’d calmed down, because he was plenty pissed now himself. She actually thought he’d screw her best friend?

  This was his thanks for everything he’d done? This was what he got for actually deciding she was the woman for him. Slapped upside his head with accusations and tears she wouldn’t give him the chance to refute—his worst nightmare.

  “Don’t bother calling the cops,” he growled. “They have enough to do, and I’m leaving.”

  “You’d better be, young man, because I have 911 on speed dial,” quavered another voice from a lower window. “You can’t come around here causing trouble.”

  Humiliation and anger rose in a hot tide, flooding Dack’s face. He set his jaw, willing himself to hang on to his temper by the last shreds.

  He backed onto the sidewalk. Daisy might look like a wounded princess standing there with her big eyes full of tears, but she’d just done the thing he hated the most in the fucking universe—thrown a fit, attracted all the wrong kinds of attention. And no way in hell was he going to stick around and put up with that. He wasn’t making any goddamn phone call later either.

/>   “Whatever you think you saw with Sara and me, you’re wrong,” he told her, his voice booming off the walls of the quiet building. “I’ll be at the club when you’re ready to apologize, woman. ‘Course I might not listen, since you didn’t bother to listen to me.”

  He turned his back and strode away toward his pickup. Another one of her neighbors stood with one foot out of his baby blue Prius, eyes wide as if Dack was a rabid dog who might attack. Dack wanted to snarl at the plump little dude just to see how high he’d jump, but he refrained. Instead, he revved up his truck and gunned it out of the parking lot, away from her.

  He couldn’t believe this shit. Before his very eyes, his Petal had turned into a freaking drama queen. He shuddered to himself—and to think he’d been on the verge of making a fool out of himself and telling her he had feelings for her, strong feelings beyond lust.

  He’d had a narrow escape. He just wished it didn’t feel quite so much like he’d been cast out.

  He headed back to the club, where he strode behind the bar and grabbed the nearest bottle. Jack Daniels, fuckin’ perfect. He poured himself a double shot, and then on second thought made it a triple. He tossed it back in one gulp.

  When he slammed the empty glass down on the bar, the whiskey was already burning in his empty stomach, the alcohol shooting straight to his head. He shuddered at the burn, shook his head and started to pour another glass. On second thought, that was a waste of time. He grabbed the bottle and took it with him.

  By the time Jake walked in, Dack was sprawled on the leather sofa, on the very spot where he’d had her. Damn, that had been the ride of a lifetime. Before he discovered she was his worst nightmare, a suspicious, accusing little bitch.

  “Hummer. What the hell are you doing?” Jake asked him.

  Dack roused himself from his stupor. He squinted at his partner, who kept morphing into two of himself. “Jus’ having a drink,” he said with dignity. “I’nt that what a man’s s’posed to do when he gets s-s-sc…fucked over by a woman?”

  Jake sighed, hands on his hips. “Oh hell, is this about Daisy?” He sat down on the ottoman and took the bottle from Dack’s wavering hand. He looked at it and then took a swig himself before setting it out of Dack’s reach. “What happened?”

  Dack blinked woefully at the bottle, which might as well have been on the moon instead of three feet away. His arms were leaden. Even his neck wouldn’t hold his heavy head up. He let it fall back against the padded leather. “She thinks I s-s-sc…fucked ’nother woman.”

  “Aw shit.”

  “Jake? Dack? Where are you guys?” It was Trace’s voice coming from far away, echoing through the fog in Dack’s head.

  “Back here,” Jake called.

  “What the hell…?” Trace’s voice trailed off, and then a warm hand settled on Dack’s shoulder. “Uh-oh. This is about Daisy, isn’t it, Hummer?”

  “Hell, no,” Dack protested, scowling. He would have gotten the hell away from their prying questions, but he didn’t have the energy. “Can’t a guy jus’ have a drink or three?”

  “Yeah, but since you don’t usually hole up with a bottle at nine o’clock in the morning, I’m guessing there’s a lot more to it than that.” Trace sank onto the sofa beside him.

  “Will somebody tell me what the hell happened?” Jake demanded. “I miss one damn night at the club, and all hell breaks loose.”

  Trace started talking, but Dack was really tired, so he closed his eyes to rest.

  The next thing he knew, his friends were hauling him to his feet and into the nearest bedroom.

  “You’re gonna feel like shit when you wake up,” Jake told him.

  “Feel like shit now,” Dack mumbled. Tears of self-pity filled his eyes. “Want my Petal…”

  “I know, man. Sleep it off, and then you can start digging your way out of the deep manure pile you’re in. Since there’s a woman involved, it’s gonna take a while.”

  The bed came up to meet him. Dack sank face-first into the comforter, and everything faded to black.

  The first thing Dack did when he woke was stagger into the bathroom, where he did his best to throw up everything he’d even thought about eating for the last week.

  When he could finally get on his feet without heaving again, he flushed the toilet without looking, stuck his head in the sink and splashed water over his face, then grabbed a paper cup from the dispenser and downed some. He squinted at his reflection in the small mirror. Yup, he looked as bad as he felt—like death warmed over.

  His head was hammering, his stomach still rolling, and he felt like he was dying of a rare tropical disease. Class A hangover, courtesy of his buddy Jack. He shuddered. He hoped he never had to smell, taste or even look at another bottle of that devil’s brew as long as he lived.

  “You alive in there?” It was Trace, poking his head into the bedroom. He handed Dack a tall glass. “Here, some of my old man’s hangover remedy.”

  Dack sank onto the side of the bed and sniffed the murky contents cautiously. “What is it?”

  “Don’t ask. Just drink it. If it stays down, it’ll help.”

  Dack took a drink. Didn’t taste any worse than the inside of his mouth, so he glugged it down and then belched. Trace took the empty glass.

  “What time is it?” Dack asked, holding his skull in both hands, hoping that would keep it from splitting open. “No, wait. What day is it?”

  Trace chuckled. “Nine o’clock on a beautiful Sunday evening. You’ve been out since this morning.”

  Why the hell had he been drinking? Oh yeah. Memory flooded back, and he leaned forward, his elbows braced on his knees. “Shit. I am so screwed.”

  “Yeah. Kinda sounds that way. Listen, since you’re back among the living, I’m gonna take off, man.”

  Dack nodded. “Sorry I kept you from your day off.”

  Trace patted his shoulder, his hand warm and solid. “No worries, bro. Jake and I took shifts. You’d do it for us.”

  He walked to the door and paused. “You wanna talk, I’ll be around.”

  Dack nodded without looking up. He sat there for a while and then slowly heaved himself to his feet. His footsteps echoed as he walked out through the empty club. No place as lonely as one that was meant to be full of people having fun.

  He stopped in the office to get his spare sunglasses and got the hell out of there.

  He went home, showered and changed into clean shorts and a T-shirt. When he pulled open the drawer of his big bureau, the first shirt he saw was the pink one he’d been given at the breast cancer walk-a-thon. He scowled, chucking it across the room toward his wastebasket. He chose a yellow one with a Rogue Brewery beer label and pulled it on.

  His stomach growled as he walked back out into the main living area. He opened the refrigerator, found yogurt and orange juice, grabbed a banana from the basket on the counter and threw them in the blender with some protein powder. He took some aspirin with his smoothie and then wandered in to his living room and turned on his big-screen TV to the sports channel. He sure as hell didn’t want to think.

  He fell asleep in his recliner, woke with a start when his phone burred in his pocket. He grabbed it and squinted at the clock. Jesus, six a.m. He’d spent the entire night in the recliner. The TV was still flickering, a soccer match from Australia. He hit the remote to switch it off and then finally remembered to answer his phone.

  It was his crew boss, wondering where he was. “I’ll be late,” Dack said. “You guys get started on those trusses, and I’ll see you in about an hour.”

  No good being the boss if he couldn’t be late once in a while without having to make an excuse.

  He made it through the long, hot day somehow. After work, he got supper from a drive-through, something he tried not to do very often because it wasn’t real healthy, but he hadn’t remembered to get any groceries over the weekend.

  After he ate, he just drove. The thought of going to his silent condo, or to the gym where he’d have to face people h
e knew, answer questions, gave him heartburn.

  He wasn’t really sure where he was going until he found himself idling in the street in front of his mother’s house. The street was quiet, just a kid shooting hoops a few houses down and an aging golden retriever ambling along the sidewalk with a skinny, preteen girl.

  Dack pulled over and shut off his truck. He was here; might as well go in.

  His mother answered the door with an exclamation of pleased surprise and then immediately went into full mother-hen mode.

  “Oh, sonny, you look so tired. Come and sit on the porch, and just relax.”

  He followed her through the tidy little house, past the bad-tempered Siamese who blinked her Daisy-eyes and gave him a warning growl from her perch on the back of the sofa. He didn’t even have the heart to snarl back at the cat.

  Dack sank down in the comfortable deck chair in the evening sun and let his mother fuss over him, bringing him ice water and some fresh lemon cookies.

  She sat down in her glider rocker and gazed out at her flower garden. Dack munched his way through a couple of cookies and drank his ice water. “These are good, thanks.”

  She leaned her chin on her hand on the arm of her chair. “You want to tell me about it?”

  “What?” He looked away, scowling.

  His mother sighed. “Sonny, I can see you’re hurting. But you’re being all stoic, just like your dad.”

  “Yeah, I could throw a hissy fit,” he shot back. “That would be so much better.”

  She shot out of her chair, going to stand on the edge of her deck, with her back to him.

  Self-disgust rose in a bitter tide. He grimaced. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  He planted his hands on the arms of his chair to rise, but she turned on him.

  “You sit,” she said fiercely, her soft mouth in a straight line, tears standing in her eyes. “Dack Humboldt, it is high time we had a talk.”

  Oh shit, he was in for it now. Both the women in his life had it in for him. Might as well man up and take it. Wasn’t much else a guy could do. At least his mom wasn’t threatening to call the cops on him.