Man in Black

by Melissa Shirley

Maybe he hadn’t asked to ravage her body, but simply offered her the benefit of transportation—after she’d all but drooled down her shirt over him. And stolen his car. And brought him to sleaze central. And maybe she’d ranted like a lunatic and left herself a three-mile walk back to the gas station. But, by God, what choice did she have?

  Maybe not to act like he’d offered her candy to climb into his van? Oh well. Too late now. With any luck, he’d drive right back onto the interstate and she’d never have to see him again. She shook her head.

  Strange day. Or maybe just a normal Sunday.

  Jesse Megalos skidded the car into his mother’s driveway and killed the engine. As he shook his head, his sigh made the Christmas tree shaped car freshener dance. Nothing ever changed here. Same offensively big brick house. Same ridiculous six-car garage for just the one tiny little hybrid. Same disturbing hedges trimmed to look like slightly deformed birds. His stomach clenched. He’d grimaced all the way to his toes at the idea of returning home to Rangers End, to people who’d all but struck up a parade with his mother acting as the grand marshal as they ran him out. Still, as soon as she’d asked him to come, and his father demanded he go, he’d bought a ticket, rented a car, and shown up.

  Then she happened to him. The little, gas station beauty with the messy, blond hair and those sexy blue coveralls with the oil stain on her left breast had slid her pretty ass in his driver’s seat and told him to get in. Something about her—that mouth, the determination in those sapphire-colored eyes, the fire in her voice—pulled him into the car, fastened his seatbelt, and forced him to grab the sissy handle as she risked their lives with her driving.

  And if all that sex appeal wasn’t enough to keep him hard for a couple weeks, she’d shoved that video under his nose. His entire body tightened and blood roared in his ears, drowning out her eager moans. Now, thanks to the hot little car thief, he could safely attest to the fact that spontaneous combustion wasn’t scientific but hormonal and a very real possibility.

  Before he had more time to reflect on his kidnapper’s ability to light his fire, Susan Megalos, his mother and elected mayor of Rangers End, stepped out onto the front porch. True to her half-harpy-half-mother-lion nature, she had one hand fisted at her side and the other toying with a diamond pendant he’d sent for Christmas in lieu of a visit. A perfect contradiction of frustrated and nervous.

  She frowned as soon as she caught a glimpse of the black mark left by his tires, and her hand dropped from the necklace to her side.

  After one of those maternal looks that preceded a hug and reminded him of his years in elementary school, her loving expression morphed into her more familiar one of disapproval. If he’d disappointed her before—enough so that she hadn’t acted to save him from the rumors and innuendo spread by the old bitches in her women’s groups—this deal might be the thing that knocked his mother off her pedestal and had the townspeople lining up to run her out of town.

  She’d turned her back on him when he’d needed her most, and he’d waited patiently to repay that courtesy. Now, thanks to his father’s carefully laid scheme—the one Jesse planned to use for his own gains—the time had come.

  She waved him over with an impatient hand, and he opened the door with an eye roll hidden behind the shield of his Ray-Bans.

  “I thought you said nine this morning, Jesse.” She lifted her chin for the required kiss on her cheek as her foot tapped a swing-time rhythm against the brick porch.

  His lips brushed the smooth skin of her face, and he stepped back, removing his glasses. “Something came up.”

  “Came up? What came up?”

  He shrugged. It wasn’t like he owed her an explanation. So he was late. He wasn’t punching a timeclock, and she wasn’t signing his paycheck. “A thing.”

  She frowned and turned on her heel. “Good Lord, Jesse. A thing? Already?”

  Ignoring the subtle reproach that said she’d not forgiven his past, he grinned in memory. “Yes, a thing.” He could have had a meeting with the Pope or the President or God himself, and it wouldn’t move that frown from her face, so he didn’t bother with an excuse.

  “Well.” She led him through the foyer, past the living and dining areas, into the library where a group of women sat chatting about the weather and all the latest town scandals. He’d heard it all before, over and over again. Every day of his childhood had brought a fresh round of committee meetings or bridge games that were little more than a way for the women of Rangers End to spread their gossip. Somehow, though, they’d become more petty than he remembered.

  The requisite tea steamed in dainty china cups, cookies and pastries lined the center of the table from one end to the other; and the smell of rose petal perfume tickled his nose.

  He listened as one of the women bitched about poor old Stanley Garta—the man who’d been like a hundred and ten before Jesse left town the first time. Stan hadn’t mowed his lawn in a few days, and in their horror at blades that dared to grow over the maximum one inch tall, the townsfolk edged toward revolt. Tickets would be written, fines assessed. Poor guy. The television soap opera lineup that formed the soundtrack of his youth didn’t drip with this much drama. Two minutes into Jesse’s visit home, and he’d already surpassed his record for eye rolling.

  “Ladies, you remember my son, Jesse? He’s here from Boston to help us gain ownership of the town square.” His mother turned and put a hand on his arm while Jesse contained a smirk behind tightly pressed lips. She beamed a false ray of pride up at him. “Jesse, this is the town planning commission.”

  More like the town knitters’ guild. Not one of them could have been less than sixty. He pasted a smile on his face, the one that worked on tipsy women in bars and little old ladies alike, and stepped around his mother. “Good afternoon, ladies. I’m sorry I’m late. Had I known such loveliness awaited me, I would have hurried along much faster.”

  He took the chair his mother nodded toward and, smile still in place, folded his hands on the table in front of him. “So, tell me how I can help you.” His mother’s cryptic message hadn’t told him much, just that she needed him.

  He didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about how quickly he’d packed to leave Boston to rush to his mother’s side. Maybe it was the little boy still seeking approval he’d always longed for and would never win. Or maybe it was the man who wanted her to know he’d managed fine even though she’d abandoned him at a time when she should have thrown her arms around him and protected him. Possibly, it was the need to permanently destroy their relationship just to prove he could hurt her the way she’d crushed him.

  In any case, he hadn’t spent much time considering why he’d come when she’d asked. He didn’t think he would appreciate the result of such an internal investigation. Instead, he’d hidden any ulterior motive behind his fake loyalty to his father. Some family tree.

  “Mr. Megalos.”

  His skin prickled at the dry, slightly nasal voice of his former high school principal.

  “I assume, young man, that you have cleaned up your act, and there will be no”—she twisted her mouth into an all too familiar scowl—“unintentional chemical fires while you’re here.”

  Fire? It had barely been a wisp of smoke and some orange coloring. And the last thing it had been was unintentional. But he kept that to himself. No need to stir that pot right then. Besides, hadn’t these people ever heard the phrase ‘let bygones be bygones?’ Didn’t matter now. He’d show them all. By the time he finished with this town, it would be little more than a barren wasteland surrounding an oil well the size of the Eiffel tower.

  In fairness, he hadn’t been the best kid. Or teenager. Or young adult. But since he’d left Rangers End, he’d learned a trade, took broken down houses and remodeled them to their former glory, made and lost a big fortune then amassed a smaller one. His angst had evaporated in the shadow of his success. Or so he thought. Until he crossed County Line Road into Rangers End.

  “I left all my combustibles back
in Boston.” An evil laugh sounded in his head. When all was said and done, they’d be wishing he’d only set this damned town on fire.

  His former principal sniffed and tore off pieces of the cherry danish on her plate, popping one in her mouth. Jane Carlin reached over to nab a bite of pastry for herself, and Mrs. Miller slapped her hand.

  Although there was enough food laid out to feed all of the town and most of the farm animals, Jane’s low-throat growl signaled a fight in the making over a crumb of donut. Jesse bit the inside of his cheek and swung his gaze away from the brewing catfight.

  Another one of his mother’s crones leaned back to look him up and down. “Your mother told us about all your successes out east. She swears you have an eye for turning distressed properties into masterpieces. Do you make a lot of money doing it?”

  “I do okay.” He’d done better than okay until the real estate market tanked and he’d made the mistake of going to his father for help. Now, though his name was on the building, he worked for his dad, his choices diminished by the economy and one know-it-all old man made bitter by a divorce he hadn’t wanted. His father went from semi-normal and supportive to hell-bent on asserting his power.

  After this deal, though, Jesse’s father wouldn’t know what hit him either. And before he had the chance to figure it out, the company would be Jesse’s again. That fact alone—okay, maybe the revenge against his mother had a little to do with it—was worth whatever these old broads had in store for him.

  “You must be really good at it.” She licked her lips and winked.

  “I’m a man of many talents.” His eye twitched in response to Mrs. Morelli’s tawdry wink. “That’s just one of them.”

  A woman who looked old enough to be his mother’s mother ran a hand along his arm. “You know, I have a daughter just your age,” she continued. “Maybe you remember her? Angelina?”

  Of course he remembered Angelina Jacobi—a cheerleader who’d wrapped her legs around any jock, metal head, or nerd she could lure into her bedroom after her momma passed out for the night from too many nips at the flask. He’d spent more than a few pleasurable evenings in Angelina’s room with her and the pilfered flask before climbing down the oak tree growing outside her window. Maybe reconnecting with an old friend like her would keep his mind off crazy gas station girl.

  He grinned, the picture of Angelina changing to one of gas station girl. Long legs, big—erm, eyes, and a set of lips suggestive of strawberry wine. Huddling up on cold winter nights in front of a roaring fire with nothing but their skin between them. But the little car thief wouldn’t advance his objective. He needed to remember that. “How’s Angelina doing?”

  “She’s back at home with me. It was a nasty divorce, but her kids are simply darling. I love having a full house again.” Mrs. Jacobi rummaged through her bag—one large enough the children were probably carried inside—before producing a framed photo she handed the opposite way around the table instead of simply looking left and awarding it to him. There were murmurs of pass it on as the picture made its way to his spot at the end. He glanced at the picture then grasped the wooden frame in his hands and brought it closer to his face.

  Whoa. Time and Angelina had not been friends. Maybe not even casual acquaintances. It had once been her body that controlled his fantasies, but in the last ten years, she’d gained more than what he would guess was a good hundred pounds. And six—no, wait—seven kids crowded around her.

  “She’s a vision.” His eyes widened, and his voice choked past his tongue.

  “Oh, yes.” Mrs. Jacobi’s lips twisted to one side. “She has certainly outgrown all her teenage awkwardness. And the children look just like her.”

  He gripped the picture and stared down. Did the weight make her look shorter or had she actually shrunk? And what was with the hair? Had the drug store run out of hairbrushes the day this photo was snapped?

  A round of scoffs circled the table like the wave at a pro baseball game as his mother extracted the picture from his hands and shoved it back to its owner.

  “Jesse, I didn’t ask you home so you can reconnect with the mistakes of your past.” His mother shot a glare at Angelina’s mother. “We need to focus on the matter at hand.” She finished in a tone that made him sit straighter and brought a new bout of tension to his shoulders.

  “You never told me what this mysterious matter is or how it possibly involves me.” He kept his voice serene, as though all the old resentments weren’t boiling their way through his veins.

  His mother fiddled with her wedding ring, rolling it around her finger before she looked up at him, all animosity absent from her gaze. “Honey,”—it didn’t escape Jesse that she used endearments only when it benefited her—“we need your help. The town square is up for bid.” She made it sound like a game show prize before she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Lucia is ninety-four now, and she wants to set up trusts for her grandchildren. Of course, she thinks the land is made of gold and wants us to pay her a small fortune to keep it out of the hands of some development company.”

  “Sleazy development company,” Mrs. Miller chimed in.

  “Sleazy development company that wants to make our town a tourist attraction.” Someone further down the table finished the story. Jesse suppressed another eye roll at the idea these people would shun outsiders spending their money within the city limits. Shunning was their thing though, like chicken was the Colonel’s thing.

  “And you don’t want the added income from tourists?” Even though they were wrong about the motives for his company buying the land on the down-low, he’d known their aversions to people. Planned to exploit those for profit too. This was as perfect an outcome as he could have ever hoped. Even if it was about a piddly little town where time came to a stop.

  “Frankly, no. We like the simplicity of Rangers End. There’s no call to make it bigger, and this development company could only ruin what we have worked our entire lives to maintain.”

  He nodded as though his name wasn’t front and center on the payroll of the company she mentioned. “Go on.”

  “Lucia promised a long time ago that she would give us the first option for purchase, and she has, for the most part, kept her word. She offered us the land first, but she put a ridiculous deadline on the deal, and we’re running out of time. Normally, we would simply write a check and buy the land.” She tapped a wrinkled finger against her lip.

  After a pause, during which no one at the table would meet his wandering gaze, he prodded, “But this isn’t a normal situation?” Of course it wasn’t, or his mother would never have lowered herself to call him.

  Confirmation came with a shake of his mother’s bowed head as she appeared to be reading the tea leaves in her cup. “We made quite a few purchases this year and spent some funds perhaps we should have saved.” Her voice lowered to a shamed whisper, and color rushed up her cheeks. “We’re a little short.”

  “How short?” He needed a number, one he would pump up, report by half to his father. If he could lowball Gilden for the land, he could get the drilling rights set up before these old broads even knew it was sold and before his dad had a chance to swoop in and make the deal himself. Then he could get the hell out of Rangers End and leave the legwork to his lackeys before the sun had a chance to set. The company would be his by nightfall. All of it hinged on how low Jesse was willing to sink to reach his goal. I’ll limbo so far under the ethical bar, they’ll think I belong to Cirque du Soleil.

  “Right now, all of it.” She held up her hand. “But we have a few ideas to raise some money. So, we’ll only need to borrow part of it from you.”

  At his mother’s nod, Sarah Webster hefted a recyclable grocery sack onto the table and pulled out a binder that looked about six inches thick and was stuffed with papers hanging out on all sides. After a thump that shook the hundred-year-old table and rattled the dishes on top, she spoke in a raspy whisper-like tone. “We’ve scheduled a calendar shoot this afternoon. We
’re using the men in town to promote the bachelor auction at the end of the week. And we’ve increased ticket prices.” She handed him rough sketches showing the ‘models’ and their themes for each month. Are those raisins?

  He handed the sketches back. Of course, he’d already heard all about that one. They must have been really desperate for participants this year. He hadn’t lived in Rangers End for more than ten years, and he’d received a letter asking him to participate. Then, as though guilting him for not jumping up to help, they’d sent out an email showing him who’d signed on as this year’s beefcake—quite the generous description in his opinion. Instead of offering his “services,” he’d paid for two first class tickets to Hawaii for the “best-looking” of the bachelors and his life partner.

  He checked his watch. They should be boarding a plane right about. . .now. Can’t have a calendar with only eleven bachelors. He turned his attention back to the slight bickering going on around him as the women discussed how they would make their auction a success.

  “But we’re also buying pricier food.” His mother, always one to throw her two-point-five cents worth in, spoke with the acid of dislike dripping from every word.

  When he was young, she’d found the auction—even with as much revenue as it had brought in at the height of its popularity—distasteful and exploitive. He didn’t disagree but didn’t care much for sharing an opinion with her, either.

  “And we sent out emails to every available male who has ever lived in Rangers End, hoping to generate more bachelors for the bidding, but”—she shot him the old one-cocked eyebrow glare—“no one answered. So we only have the men in town to rely on.” Sarah Webster continued to frown.

  “And a sad lot they are.” His mother’s muttered statement sparked a debate over who could bring in the most money and who would be laughed off the stage. And not one of the women could agree. They all had their favorites, and Jesse’s attention wandered to considering how much money he could get out of this old mansion if he flipped it into something more contemporary.