by Cassie Wild
Suria
It had been nothing but the truth when I told Kian it had been easy to find him. He hadn’t realized how much he gave away in casual conversation, but then again, very few people did.
I felt like a heel as I cuddled up against his chest, listening to his heart pounding. With my ear pressed to that hard, muscled wall, I felt every beat, every stutter.
At some point, he shifted around so that his back was against the door, and I half lay, half sat in his lap.
I would have been fine to stay that way until…well, whenever we had to move. But that wasn’t really an option because I needed to get out of there. The longer I lay there with my skin plastered to his, the harder it was to think about what I had to do next.
My mind was sharp, but the information I’d gathered from him about his mother was slowly getting lost, and I had no doubt it was because of both guilt and afterglow. Talk about a mind-fuck there. A part of me wanted to curl against him like a cat in heat, while another part of me wanted to recoil and shout at him, tell him not to let me do what I had to do.
But that was the problem…I had to do it.
Unable to take the mental battle anymore, I got up, stretching my arms overhead and wincing as a few kinks made themselves known. “I need to get going,” I said, forcing myself to meet his eyes with a smile. “I’ve got work tomorrow.”
He hooked his hand around the back of my neck and tugged me in for a kiss. “So do I, but I’d rather you not go anywhere.” The last few words were spoken against my lips, and I sighed, tempted beyond all belief when he trailed his tongue against the seam of my mouth, teasing his way inside.
It wasn’t like he needed an invitation. I was already opening for him, willing and ready and waiting.
But as the kiss grew more heated, I slid my hands between us.
“I’ve got to go,” I said again. I pulled away from him and rose, letting my dress fall back into place. My panties were all twisted around my hips, and I turned away so I could adjust them. Behind me, I heard him making a few adjustments of his own.
When I turned back, he was on his feet, shoving a hand through tumbled blond hair, putting it back into a semblance of order. “It’s not fair, you know,” I said, striving for a light tone. “Guys can hitch up their jeans, finger comb their hair and look presentable. I need fifteen minutes in the bathroom to do the same. Right now, I look…” I gazed down at my wrinkled dress, reached up to touch my hair as I searched for the right word.
“You look beautiful,” Kian said.
I met his eyes, my cheeks flushing. He wasn’t the first man to tell me I was beautiful. But he was the only man who ever managed to heat my belly in such a manner when he told me so.
“Thank you.” I moved closer and got up on my tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “I’ll see you around.”
He went to reach for me, but I swayed out of his grasp. Bending to grab my purse, I headed out the door as he called my name.
I waggled my fingers at him in response.
If I didn’t leave now, I might stay the whole damn night.
Forget the job.
But forgetting the job meant forgetting Joelle.
The one thing I couldn’t do.
Back in my room, I made hurried notes, rushing to get things down while they were still solid in my mind.
Inherited money.
Single mom.
Had him young – although that was obvious by the way she looked.
Never married.
The list went on and on, and I began to form a picture of how I’d run things, although I needed more time with Tamara first, needed to get a better feel for her, who she was. Not on paper and through somebody else’s eyes, but her.
She was coming to see me again in a couple of days, so I’d have the chance then, but I was on a timetable. I had no idea when Papa meant to marry Joelle off. There was a clock in my head, ticking away the time and I just didn’t have enough of it, I knew it.
At some point, I’d stopped writing notes as I stared off into nothing, and when I started again, I realized I’d been doodling. The name Kian had been written front and center on my notepad. Then I’d decorated it, adding swirls to the K and N.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
I was in such a mess.
Why was it that the one guy to really catch my attention in months was the son of the woman who just might be the ticket Joelle, Trice, and I needed to get out of the prison that was our lives?
Sometimes, life just plain sucked.
Fourteen
Kian
It had been two days since Suria left me alone in the office with that sassy wave.
I was officially an idiot, because I still hadn’t gotten her phone number.
She had tracked me down, and I couldn’t so much as remember to ask her for a few digits to reach out and call her.
Dumbass, I thought, not for the first time.
I cursed myself every time I was in my office and caught the ever-fading scent of her perfume. Hell, chances were good that it was my imagination. The scent was more than likely completely gone by now, but I wanted to smell it, so my mind was going to play tricks on me.
“Knock, knock,” a husky voice said at the door of my office.
I looked up and saw a woman standing there, somebody I didn’t know.
“Can I help you?”
She slid inside and shut the door. “I was told you were good at handling…customer complaints,” she said with a sultry smile. At my blank look, she offered a name. “She’s a friend of mine. She told me you could…help me out.”
The name sparked a memory, and I thought of the woman who came by the week before I met Suria.
Then I glanced at the door and thought about how Suria had pushed her hands into my hair, kissing me like she never wanted to kiss anybody else or have anybody else kissing her.
“If there’s a complaint, we can fill out a form,” I said blandly. “But my office manager can assist you with that.”
“I…no,” she said after a pause. “You’re the one I want.”
I debated on whether or not to keep up with the charade and decided it wasn’t worth it. “I’m no longer helping with such…complaints, ma’am. I’m sorry you wasted your time coming down here.”
That got the message across. Her mouth folded into a tight line, and she turned on one spiked heel and stormed through the door, slamming it shut behind her.
I stared after her, but not out of any regret.
I kept seeing Suria, pressed to that door, her hair wild and free around her shoulders, her eyes big and dark and hungry.
I wanted to have that again, feel her again.
“Then why didn’t you get her number?” I muttered.
Shoving thoughts of her out of my head, I focused on the ordering that needed to be done for the repair jobs we had for the week. It was taking twice as long as it should because my mind kept straying, but finally, I finished inputting the rest of the materials we’d need and closed down the browser. As I was getting to my feet, there was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” I said.
Donut opened the door and came inside, brows arched. “That pretty chick who came in to…file a complaint actually stopped to talk to the office manager. She said she was going to post a review on Yelp about how unhelpful the owner is.”
I snorted. It figured. I didn’t say anything to Donut though.
I’d screwed more than a few women here in the garage, and the guys had to know it, but none of them had ever given me grief over it. Hopefully, this wouldn’t turn out to be something that screwed me – and the garage, therefore them.
“What is she going to complain about?” I asked, deciding not to worry about it. “She’s not a customer, hasn’t ever been one.”
Donut cocked a brow at me, clearly waiting to see if I was going to continue.
No. I was not.
When I didn’t, he shrugged and turned away. “Anyway, I figured you should know. If we have any more…c
omplaints of that nature, should I deal with them?”
“Just tell them the boss is out,” I said. “Indefinitely.”
Once the door closed behind him, I kicked my feet up on the desk and stared up at the ceiling. A good brood was forming, and it had a name. Suria.
I’d just turned down sex with a beautiful woman.
Why?
Because I had another beautiful woman on my brain.
I’d told my mother about her.
What man did that?
He did it because he had her on the brain.
What kind of messed up shit was this?
I still didn’t even know her number. I might be able to track her down. I had a cop friend who might do it for me. Maybe I wasn’t the whiz at Google that Suria was, and hell, I couldn’t remember anything she’d given me besides her name. I wasn’t even sure how she spelled it.
I could always plug the various variations that came to mind into a search engine and see what came up, but without a last name, in a city like LA? Who knew what I’d come up with.
I’d be better off asking my cop friend. He was a regular at the garage, and we sometimes ran into each other at a bar I liked to hit after work when I just wanted a quick meal and a quick drink. We talked and got along. He might do a favor for me, and it would be a lot better than a fruitless search on the internet.
But I didn’t know if I should go that route.
I could just see her face now.
Wow…how did you find me…you had a cop look me up? That’s…creepy.
Would it be creepy?
The fact that I couldn’t decide was problematic, which told me it would probably be a little on the side of creepy, but I wasn’t going to brush it off entirely. I’d hang out at the club where we’d met this weekend. She’d gone there looking for me already. Maybe she’d do so again. Maybe she was a regular, and we just kept missing each other.
My phone rang, and I picked it up, grateful for a distraction.
It was Eric out in the bay. “Need you out here, boss. Lennie cut himself, might need to go get some stitches.”
“It ain’t that bad,” somebody said in the background.
“I’m on my way,” I said, interjecting my voice into the argument before Eric could respond. He was hotheaded, to say the least, but if he was suspecting a trip to the hospital, then that was probably what would happen.
On my way to the door, I kicked something and out of habit, I bent to pick it up.
It looked like a business card. Without checking it out, I shoved it in my pocket and kept on walking.
A trip to the hospital was necessary.
Thirty minutes later, Lennie sat next to me grumbling while I filled out the paperwork as best as I could, asking him questions when I didn’t know the answer – which was a lot. I would have avoided talking to him at all, if I could. He was a bit of a chickenshit, it seemed, when it came to doctor and nurse types.
I made that decision based on the fine film of sweat that broke out on his forehead the minute we got inside the ER, and that sweat got profusely worse the longer we were there.
“Any allergies to medicine?” I asked, shifting in the hard chair. They were specifically designed to numb the ass and kill the back, I’d decided. An experiment in polite torture.
“No. Look, boss, we don’t need to be here. A few band-aids, I’ll be fine.”
In response, I pointed at the red still seeping through the rag that was wrapped around his hand. “It hasn’t stopped bleeding. It happened at work. You’ve got workman’s comp. Don’t worry. I’ll put in a good word to the boss for ya,” I said, reaching over to lightly punch his shoulder.
“Tell the boss he can suck my…” He stopped, both of us eying the kids in front of us. “Uh…tell him thanks,” Lennie finished.
I snorted.
His name was finally called, and I turned in the paperwork then went to slump back in the seat. My back didn’t much appreciate it so I straightened back up. My belly growled, reminding me I hadn’t gotten around to eating lunch. Spying a sign that said, Cafeteria, I got up and headed in that direction. Lennie wouldn’t be done for a good half-hour, if that.
I could grab a bag of chips and some soda, at least.
I found the card while digging for change to get that bag of chips.
Vaguely, I remembered pulling it from my pocket after picking it up from my office floor.
Art by Suria.
Running my thumb across the raised font, I felt a smile spreading across my face.
She must have dropped it when she swung by the other night, but for all I cared, it had fallen from the sky.
I had the damn thing, and it had an address on it, and a phone number.
Hot damn.
Fifteen
Suria
“I just want to know if…oh, I’m sorry…”
She sniffed and looked away. Reaching out, I covered Tamara’s hand with mine. A fat wad of money from her rested in my pocket, but I didn’t let myself think about it as I squeezed her fingers gently. “Just try to get it out. Okay?”
“I need to speak with him,” she said, the words coming out in a rush.
I nodded. “Of course. That’s very understandable.” I gave her hand another reassuring squeeze. “There are some things I need to know before I can tell you if it’s possible, though.”
“Yes, yes.” Eager, she leaned forward, looking ten years younger in her hopefulness.
“Doing this sort of…thing isn’t easy. Anybody who tells you that it is…well…” I rolled my eyes and forced a chuckle. “They are either lying, or they are a great deal more skilled than I am. And I’m pretty damned skilled.”
She echoed my laugh. “Trust me, I’ve noticed.”
“It takes a lot out of you. It will exhaust both of us, but it will put me down for a day or two, at least, just depending on how far we have to search.”
She blinked, looking confused. “What do you mean, how far?”
“Tamara,” I said gently. “It’s not like we’re given directions and coordinates and a GPS. We’ll have to search for him. And there are an awful lot of souls out there.”
“Of course.” Nodding now, she smiled. “That makes sense.”
“Now…I’ll need something that belonged to him,” I said, giving her hand one last brisk shake before letting go. “It doesn’t have to be anything important, but it does…”
Her face fell.
I’d hoped for that reaction.
“Oh,” I said softly. “You don’t have anything?”
“No.” Biting her lip, she smoothed her palms together. “Is that a problem?”
“It…very well may be. What we’re doing, it’s like…you know how the old landline telephones required the telephone lines to be operational in order to work?” I asked her. I’d used the explanation before. “This is the same sort of idea. I need a line. Anything of his is a line. Without it, I’m just shouting in the wind and hoping the right person hears the call.”
Crestfallen, she sagged in the chair. “Does that mean you can’t do anything?”
“I…” Closing my eyes, I averted my face. My gut was twisted into a hot, nasty lump of emotions. “Tamara, I don’t think you understand how trying a task this is. And without a line…”
“I’ll pay you anything,” she said anxiously. “Even if we have to try over and over. It’s worth it for me.”
With a pained smile, I glanced around, pretending reluctance.
Although it wasn’t entirely feigned.
But I’d kept waiting for a rich asshole to walk through the door and it hadn’t happened.
If Tamara was the ticket for Trice, Joelle, and me to get out of here, then I was taking that damn ticket.
“Okay,” I said on a heavy sigh. “I guess we can give it a try.”
She’d insisted I take a check for several thousand.
Even I’d been a little boggled by that. She’d already paid for today, and that had been several hu
ndred, including the tip.
But the several thousand she’d given me, combined with the money I had set aside…? If I could drag this out for maybe one or two ‘attempts’ to reach her brother, then it would be enough to get the three of us out of here. It wasn’t a lot of money, but we wouldn’t need that much to get us to the other side of the country and on to a new start.
All three of us were willing to work hard, and we could all share an apartment…I’d done the research, I’d done the work. We could make it if we just had enough money to tide us over and the money to get far enough away. We were going to find a small town, too, someplace the Rom didn’t like to go. They wouldn’t think to look for us there.
Still, as I lay on my couch, I had a bad taste in my mouth, and I knew it was because of the hope that had been shining in Tamara’s eyes when she left my place.
That hope would turn to ashes. And grief. I hated to add to a grief that was already still raw.
The sound of a car door slamming had me jumping up off the couch. I’d dropped down to brood for a bit after Tamara left. I hadn’t turned off the light, and I didn’t want another client right now.
But looking out the window had me freezing.
The familiar tall, lean-hipped blond striding up the busted sidewalk to my place sent my heart jumping up into my throat, and I thought I might be sick.
“Oh, shit,” I whispered.
It was Kian.
How had he found me here?
Did he know about his mother?
Had he called the cops?
With hands that shook, I fumbled the money and check out of my pocket and stashed it in the lockbox just as he knocked on the door. Even though there was an open sign, the place looked so much like what it really was – a house – that people still knocked before entering more often than not. I couldn’t say I minded, especially not right now.
“Just a minute,” I called out, my voice shakier than I liked. Turning the key to the lockbox, I turned around and looked at my face in the mirrored reflection on the far side of the wall.
