Gray Wolf Security: Wyoming

by Glenna Sinclair

  “What did you do?” Eve demanded.

  “She’ll be okay.”

  “What did you do?” she demanded again, her hands moving protectively over her mother’s face as I carefully laid her head in Eve’s lap.

  “We have to get her back to the apartment, right? That’s the quickest and easiest way I know.”

  “If you’ve done something permanent… something that hurt her…”

  “Can things really get much worse than they already are for her?”

  Eve slapped me hard across the face, her small body packing more of a punch than I would have anticipated. It took everything I had not to hit her back. Instead, I slammed the door and climbed over the laid down passenger seat to the driver’s seat, pulling away from the side of the road with a spray of gravel flying out behind us. I really didn’t need this shit.

  Chapter 5

  Eve

  I sat behind the front desk and studied the paperwork that was laid out in front of me, paperwork that seemed less and less important the longer I looked at it. Momma was still out cold. Marko was sleeping in an empty guest room. Grainger was… well, I had no idea what Grainger was doing.

  This was a mistake. How could I have thought that having a stranger come here and pretend to be my husband would really make anything better? It wouldn’t. Nothing was going to make this better. We were going to lose the motel. Momma was going to continue to get worse. And my life was going to continue to spiral out of control.

  I seriously considered calling Sutherland and asking her to call the whole thing off. I mean, come on! The guy put my mother in a choke hold and knocked her unconscious! What if he did some sort of permanent damage? I couldn’t do this, couldn’t expose my mom to this sort of harm. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that he’d backed Jim Bob off earlier this afternoon. And Steve.

  I couldn’t imagine Steve would come sniffing around anymore now that he thought I was married. If that was the only thing this situation solved, it would be more than worth every penny I paid. I needed Steve to back off. His wife, Valerie, was the kindest, gentlest woman in the world, and she was friend. I couldn’t look her in the eye every Sunday at church knowing that her husband was… I don’t know what to call what he was. In heat? Lust? It wasn’t love. Even I could see that a man like him didn’t know what love was.

  Why was it so hard to find a good man? Why couldn’t some great guy just walk in here, sweep me off my feet, and make everything all better? Why couldn’t I find a good man who knew how to treat a woman, who knew what infidelity meant, and who was interested in just making my life a happy one?

  Men like that didn’t exist, that’s why.

  My mom had fallen in love with her prince charming. He ended up a country song, spending all his time following the rodeo circuit instead of making a life with his wife and daughter. And that life killed him when I was thirteen. He was thrown from the back of a bull and broke his neck. Momma always said it was exactly how he would have wanted to go.

  Didn’t do us much good. Momma worked harder than anyone I’ve ever known, kept this place running for eighteen years with just the help of those she paid. And her reward for all that? A disease that was stealing her mind. Life was cruel. There was no such thing as a happy ending. I might as well begin thinking about what my next step would be. I’d have to give in and sell, but they wouldn’t pay me half what the place was worth, not even a fraction of all the money Momma and I had invested in it. There would not be enough left for me to buy a house, let alone make a new start. And Momma would have to be cared for.

  I shoved the papers I’d been looking at, watched them float to the floor.

  “I don’t think that’s the most efficient way to deal with bills, boss,” Marko said as he came into the office, bending to pick the papers up.

  “Sorry. Got distracted.”

  He straightened them by tapping them on the top of the counter and they lay them down, his gaze coming up to mine.

  “You okay?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve had better days.”

  Marko’s dark eyes seemed to look through me right into my soul. He leaned his elbows on the counter so that we were almost eye to eye.

  “Talk to me. What’s going on with you?”

  I started to shake my head, but his little frown made me stop.

  “It’s all too much. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

  “Your mom?”

  “Am I making a mistake, insisting she stay here?”

  “It’s never a mistake, taking care of the people you love.”

  “Yeah, well, the doctor thinks she would be better off in a facility. He suggested I take her to this place in Denver where they specialize in Alzheimer’s.” I shuddered at the thought. “I can’t have her that far away from me.”

  “And I don’t think it would benefit her being so far from everyone she knows.”

  I nodded in agreement. “That’s what I think, too, but then I have these little doubts.”

  “Everyone doubts themselves from time to time, Eve. That doesn’t mean your choices are wrong.”

  “Maybe.”

  He straightened up and tilted his head as he continued to regard me. “So… who is this new man? And why are you wearing a wedding ring?”

  I blushed, wanting to tell him the lie I’d allowed Grainger to tell Steve. But this was Marko. This was the closest thing I had to a best friend. I couldn’t lie to him and believe he would fall for it.

  “He’s from Sutherland Knight’s new security firm. He’s here to protect the place from the developer’s goons.”

  Marko’s eyebrows rose. “Steve said you met him on Tinder.”

  “That’s our cover story. I thought it would be less likely to frighten the customers if we told everyone we were married.”

  “You certainly convinced Steve.”

  “I hope so.”

  “And now that Steve knows, it’ll be all over town.”

  “I know. I want people to believe it. Maybe the idiots working for the developers—like Jim Bob—will think twice about coming around if they think I have a big, dangerous husband out here.” A little hurt filled Marko’s eyes, but just for an instant. Then understanding slowly began to seep in.

  “That’s actually pretty smart.”

  “Thank you.”

  “With him being a stranger to the area… that’ll makes it even more brilliant.” Marko smiled. “I’m really impressed.”

  I couldn’t help the smile that burst from somewhere long buried. Pride and pleasure washed through me. No one had complimented me quite that generously in a long time. Marko touched my hand, his thumb moving over the wedding band that felt so foreign there. His eyes were big and warm when they met mine again.

  “I hope this works. You deserve a break or two, friend.”

  “Thank you,” I said again.

  He squeezed my hand. “Now go eat something and get some rest. I’ve got the desk.”

  I snapped a little salute. “Yes, boss!”

  I let myself into the apartment and found a chicken leg in the fridge. I wrapped it in a napkin and went to my mom’s room to check on her. She was curled up on her side, snoring softly when I walked in. I sat on the edge of the bed and picked at the meat on the chicken leg, thinking about all the times when I was a kid that my mom and I would sit in this room watching some bad chick flick on her small television, sharing a bowl of popcorn or some bad-for-us diner meal.

  “Do you remember when we watched When Harry Met Sally…? I kept making you answer all these questions until you finally told me to be quiet so you could enjoy it.”

  I smiled until I remembered that the same movie had come on just a couple of weeks ago, and she’d sat on the couch enrapt, having no memory of ever seeing it before.

  “You used to love to show me all these movies from the eighties, the same movies that you watched with your mother. Do you remember? You used to tell me stories about how your mother would bake cookies a
nd the two of you would sit in front of the television watching these movies until your father came home.”

  “Evie?”

  I nearly jumped when she said my name. She rolled onto her back and lay her hand on my thigh, her confused eyes moving to the television.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m sorry, Momma. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  She looked at me, her eyes narrowed into slits. “Did I miss the end of the movie?”

  “No, Momma.”

  She nodded, rolling back onto her side. “Did you brush your teeth?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You should probably go do that before you fall asleep.”

  “Yes, Momma.”

  I leaned close and kissed her cheek. She touched the side of my head, patting my temple lightly with her soft hand, just like she used to do. For a long second, I could convince myself that she was the same as she once was, that nothing had changed. I could almost believe that I was still a teenager whose biggest concern was who was going to escort me to the Future Farmer’s Association dance.

  But then I sat up and my shoulders ached from the tension that had been sitting there all afternoon, my thighs aching from sitting behind that damn desk all day. The floorboards creaked outside her door, reminding me that there was someone else in the apartment. I slipped out of the bed and tossed my chicken bone away in the trash hidden under the kitchen sink. Grainger was there, looking through the refrigerator for whatever he desired to eat tonight.

  “I could cook, if you’d like,” I suggested.

  “I don’t want to put you out.”

  “It’s my house and you’re my guest. I feel like I should at least try to be a little hospitable.”

  I stepped back and gestured for me to go for it. The problem was, there wasn’t much in the refrigerator to make a meal out of. I hadn’t been grocery shopping in several weeks, so we were down to the bare bones. After a few minutes, Grainger made this sound that was almost like laughter.

  “Why don’t we order a pizza? You do have a pizza place around here somewhere, don’t you?”

  I glanced at him. “Not really. We have the diner down the street and a Dairy Queen in town and that’s about it.”

  He whistled under his breath. “The little town where I grew up at least had one of those KFC-Pizza Hut places.”

  My eyebrows rose. “Yeah? You grew up in a small town?”

  “I told you, I grew up in a little town in Illinois.”

  “Yeah, well, when most people say they grew up in a small town, they don’t mean a town like Midnight.”

  “I did.”

  “What’s it like, your hometown?”

  He shrugged. “Most farmers. We had more churches than we had grocery stores. But there was this big manmade lake outside of town we called the Tank. I spent a lot of summers there, when I wasn’t helping my dad on the farm.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “And you? What was there to do around here?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I spent all my free time helping my mom around the motel.”

  “That must have sucked.”

  “Not really. I got to know a lot of interesting people from all over the country. Got my first kiss from a boy from Atlanta.”

  Grainger whistled softly. “That’s impressive.”

  I blushed, aware that he was teasing me. “I bet your first kiss was a budding supermodel or something.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  Look in a mirror, I wanted to say. Instead, I changed the subject.

  “We could call down to the diner. They have a passable bacon burger.”

  He just nodded, his eyes filled with something I wasn’t quite able to read. I made the call and he volunteered to go pick it up. I curled up on the couch while he was gone, wondering what he thought of me. Honestly. I couldn’t imagine he had the best impression. It wasn’t just his looks that made me suspicious of his opinions, but something about the way he looked at me. It was like he was trying to figure out how he’d gotten here, how he’d ended up in my spare bedroom, a matching wedding band on his finger. He seemed honestly befuddled by the situation. I almost felt sorry for him.

  I could imagine a man like him had women throw themselves at him constantly. In fact, I was surprised he didn’t have some girlfriend who looked like Bella Hadid following him around. Or, maybe he did. Maybe she just hadn’t arrived yet.

  When he returned, we ate in mutual silence. It should have been uncomfortable, but it wasn’t. Not really. He was clearly enjoying the food, though he made a face when he tasted the fries and then carefully avoided them as he finished his burger. I wanted to laugh, amused that he felt the same about the greasy, limp things as I did. I tossed him my pickles when I saw him pick one off his burger and eat it with great enjoyment. He smiled, nodding a polite thanks.

  “What did you miss most when you were deployed?”

  He looked up, his brow furrowing slightly as he considered the question. “Jeans,” he finally said, a slow smile coming over his handsome face.

  “Genes?”

  “Jeans.” He slapped his legs. “I missed wearing blue jeans. I grew up in these damn things, wore them all my life. Getting used to wearing fatigues all the time… I mean, they weren’t all that bad, but nothing fits as comfortably as jeans, you know?”

  I laughed, but I agreed with him. Wholeheartedly.

  “My junior high required us to wear uniforms. We had to wear slacks to school every day. I hated it.”

  He nodded. “Exactly.”

  “What about hamburgers? Don’t all soldiers miss a good hamburger? Or their mom’s green bean casserole?”

  He shook his head. “The truth? My mom was an awful cook. I very much preferred the mess hall to my mom’s cooking.”

  I laughed again. “It must have been tough, growing up like that.”

  “Oh, it was. My mom… I think my dad kept that KFC in business for the number of times he ran by there to get a sandwich before dinner.”

  I could imagine it and that made me fall sideways into a gale of giggles. Even he laughed, the first full belly laugh I’d heard him express since we met this morning.

  “Does your mom know you guys don’t like her cooking?”

  “Nope. Dad still sits there at the head of the table and tells her how wonderful each and every meal she makes is.”

  “Now that’s devotion.”

  He nodded. “He really adores her. And she’s not all bad. She was an awesome mom, always at all my school functions and parent-teacher conferences. And she could knit like crazy. I think I have a whole closet of hats and mittens back home that she made for me.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “She’s a really sweet lady. She just… I guess nobody can be perfect, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  He tilted his head slightly, watching me as I picked at the last of my burger.

  “I’m sorry about this afternoon. I realize I frightened you with what I did to your mom. But there shouldn’t be any lasting effects.”

  “I know. She was awake earlier. She thought it was ten years ago, that I was still twelve.”

  “It must be hard, never knowing what she remembers and what she doesn’t.”

  I nodded. “She used to just forget where her keys were, forget where she set down her coffee cup. And then she would turn on a burner and forget she’d done it, or she’d go to run a bath and forget to actually get in it.” I brushed a piece of hair back from my forehead. “I finally took her to the doctor when she got lost going from one of the guest rooms to the front office. She was still lucid enough then that she understood the diagnoses. She was devastated, more worried about the burden she was about to become on me than herself.”

  “Sounds like a loving mother.”

  I shrugged, the memory almost too heavy to bear. I stood up and gathered our trash, taking his to go box right out of his hands.

  “I need to get some rest. I relieve Marko
at seven.”

  He just nodded, watching as I threw the trash away and headed up the hall to my bedroom. I turned and regarded him for a moment.

  “In case I haven’t said it yet, I really appreciate you doing this. I know it’s a job and everything, but I do appreciate it.”

  He lowered his head in something like a gallant bow from a chivalrous time long gone. I walked way before he looked up again, not wanting him to see the tears I could no longer keep hidden.

  This was proving to be so much harder than I ever imagined it would be.

  Chapter 6

  Grainger

  Sleep was a long time coming, despite the exhaustion that lingered from my long drive. I lay in that strange, claustrophobic room, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about the two women down the hall. I never would have chosen on my own to be in this situation, but now that I was here, I couldn’t keep that neutral distance that I had no trouble creating around myself in the other cases I’d worked for Gray Wolf. This case was touching on things that were simply too close to home for me.

  It was like some cosmic twist of fate was trying to remind me what I was running away from.

  When sleep finally did settle, I dreamt of Misty. She was on a beach wearing very little, just a black string bikini that barely covered all those places I was taking my time getting to know. She was laughing, backing away from me each time I reached for her. Just when I thought I had her trapped, her wrist caught in my hand, she slipped away, laughing as she ran down by the water’s edge. A wave came and swallowed her up, leaving me there alone.

  Weird damn dream.

  It shifted, moving to a scene from my days in high school, to a night I spent with a couple of buddies, drinking beers on a narrow cliff that overlooked the Tank. We were talking about graduation, what our parents wanted us to do next, and what we wanted to do next. My two buddies, their fathers wanted them to stay home and help out on the farms. My dad, even though he needed the help, wanted me to go to college. He lectured me almost daily about the importance of an education. He wanted more for me than he had. It was a selfless thing that filled me with guilt.