“Are you insane? The last thing Marcie needs this week is—”
Her phone started to ring again and she glanced down, saw the screen. This time her eyes flashed. “I don’t need to be handled.”
“I didn’t say you did. But I figured you’d feel better about it if you heard it from her lips.”
Celeste put the phone up to her ear. “Marcie, what an astounding surprise,” she said, caustically enough he had to school himself not to wince. “Let me guess. You got a call from one sexist asshole, who talked to another sexist asshole, and they came to the brilliant conclusion that your wedding plans needed to be disrupted to give me a place to stay that I don’t really need.”
He narrowed his gaze at her, temper flaring, but then he saw her mouth tighten. “Yes, but that’s beside the point. A hotel would serve the same purpose, and I wouldn’t have to worry about disrupting… Max and Dale? Yes, I’m sure I’ll be safe, but… You know I’m happy to help you with that, but you’re just making up stuff for me to do. If I came, I’d hide in a guestroom and you wouldn’t even know I’m there.” Her eyes sparked as she realized she’d walked neatly into that. He could almost hear Marcie saying in her practical way. “See? It’s all settled then.”
“Fine. I’m going to talk this over with Leland, though. I’ll call you when I get to New Orleans.”
She shoved the phone in her jeans pocket and whirled on him. “Really? You drag my friends into this, risk them? Make them think I can’t handle my own life? You and I have already been down this road. Yes, there may be things about me that respond to…things about you, but this,” she swept her hand around the room, “this is me. This is who I am and what I do. If you can’t handle that, then you need to step the hell back and let me get on with my life.”
“You really think I’d take you to them if I thought there was a significant risk?” He bumped toes with her. It made her have to tilt her head to look at him, which obviously irritated her more. Since she’d already found out that slapping her hands on his chest and shoving would be as effective as moving a brick wall, she stalked around him, put the kitchen table between them before she pivoted to face him again. He curled his large hands on the chair on his side and glared at her. “No one associated with Dogboy or the MoneyBoyz would expect you to be there. Max and Dale on the property is an added measure of security. You shouldn’t use your credit card or do anything that sets up a paper trail for the next few days. Staying with a friend can help with that.”
“But you didn’t ask me how I felt about that. You just set it up like I didn’t have a brain in my head.”
“I set it up because my first priority is keeping you safe,” he snapped. “I can’t drag you there by your hair, woman. It’s your choice to go or not to go, but if you don’t go, I will take personal days and fucking sleep on your doorstep. I will hound your every step until we find this guy. Because I’m not going to let something happen to you just because you think this is some fucking political statement about you being a woman. A bullet kills a big, strong man as easy as a sharp-tongued woman. Just ask Jai. And this particular bastard doesn’t just want to shoot you.” He stabbed his finger at her corkboard. “He strangles them, stabs them, rapes them. You really think I’m going to let you getting pissy stand in the way of doing whatever the hell I need to do to protect you from that?”
He didn’t raise his voice often, but she had him snarling. She’d taken a mirror stance during his diatribe, white-knuckling the chair on the other side. Her eyes were still angry, but he saw other things there, too. It had been a fucking stressful, crappy day, and now he was shouting at her.
“Damn it, Celeste,” he said, his voice softening, but she shook her head. Gazed down at her hands, the table, all those clippings she’d yet to pin onto her board.
“I’ll pack up a few of these notes to take with me. Other than that, I’m ready to go.”
She leaned over to pick up an empty tote off the arm of a chair. His height gave him the reach to place his hand over hers.
“No. It’s okay,” she said, drawing away. “Let’s just go.”
Chapter Eleven
They stopped at Leland’s house for him to change into his street clothes and to pick up his truck. Celeste didn’t want to come inside. Rather than argue with her about it, he settled her on his porch swing which was screened behind lattice. She suspected he was keeping an eye on her through the blinds of his front window. She told herself he was smothering her but she couldn’t stay worked up about it too much. She gazed at the mum plantings around the lawn jockey painted like a police officer. The lattice turned everything into small, manageable squares. Across the street, an elderly lady was sitting on her porch reading a paper, an ancient-looking, brindle-colored dog lying on her feet. She wondered if the woman was Gilly.
Leland stepped back out on the porch, dressed in blue jeans and a dark-green button-down, tucked in and belted. Dressing was so easy for men. A shirt shrugged over those broad shoulders, jeans pulled up over the fine ass, and he was good to go.
“Fast as Superman,” she muttered, and he slid a glance her way. He had a plastic container in one hand and a couple bottles of water tucked under his arm. He lifted the container.
“I have cookies. Better be nice to me.”
Charm was not going to work on her. Or cookies. But she took his offered hand and let him guide her back down the steps. “Is that Gilly?”
As he glanced across the street and saw the woman, she gave him a casual wave and a warm smile. Her speculative look at Celeste was far less friendly.
“Yeah, that’s Gilly. Don’t let the sweet little old lady act fool you. She’s sharp as a switchblade.”
“I got that from her look. I think she sees me as competition for her granddaughters.”
Leland opened the passenger door, helped her up into the seat. Celeste made herself let go of his hand though she wanted to keep holding it. She was pissed at him, she reminded herself.
“Yeah.” Leland rolled his eyes. “I’m in for the ‘What, colored girls aren’t good enough for you?’ speech. She’ll probably spit in the next batch of tea she makes me.”
He closed the door and circled around. When he slid into his seat, he asked her for her mother’s address. He’d probably expected her to fight him again about stopping there, and she’d thought about it, but she found she didn’t have the energy. She gave him the address. She didn’t know if he recognized the area as a run-down trailer park, but his expression didn’t change when she gave him the directions. He backed out, swerving around his parked police unit, waved to Gilly again, and they were on their way.
For the next ten minutes, they didn’t talk much. He asked her a few things about how giving the statement had gone, how Detective Allen had treated her. Another silence reigned. She thought of a hundred ways to renew her attack about him contacting Marcie, but she saw Jai bleeding in his arms again, and found herself struggling with a different set of emotions. A couple more miles, and she spoke.
“I’m not used to someone caring about me like you do.”
He glanced in the side mirror, changed lanes to pass a beat-up pickup. “I’m sorry I sprung it on you like that. You’re right, I probably should have told you first.”
“Before you went ahead and did it anyway.” She gave him a glimmer of a smile and received one back. It warmed her more than she should have allowed it to do, but when he laid his hand on the console, palm up, she put hers in it, felt that little easing inside when his fingers closed over hers. “This is going to suck,” she said bluntly. “There are story leads I can follow up in New Orleans, but I’m assuming you want me to stay incommunicado with everyone for the next few days so I don’t send up any alarms.”
“It would be wise. I’m sure the MoneyBoyz have some contacts in NOLA. I wouldn’t make any calls from your phone, either. We’ll pick up a burner phone you can use.”
She knew it would be suicide for her to go out and pursue face-to-face interviews
until it was resolved. But it still rankled to be prevented from doing her job.
“It’s too easy for them to put eyes in my neighborhood,” he continued. “Else I would have had you stay at my place. My bed or my couch,” he added, giving her a look. “Your choice.”
She wasn’t ready to tell him there was nowhere she’d ever felt as safe as when she was curled inside the curve of his body, in his bed. “You can stay in the car at my mom’s, if you want. It should only take a second.”
“I’ll come in and meet her, at least say hello. So it can chap her ass that you’re dating such a good-looking stud as myself.”
She managed a better smile this time. “You know, I’m a bitch all the time. It doesn’t really wear off, so the effort you put into buttering me up is kind of wasted.”
“It’s my time to waste,” he pointed out. Lifting her hand to his mouth, he kissed her fingers, squeezed as she considered the unexpected feelings such a courtly gesture sent through her. “And the bitch part may be skin-deep, but when I get down to your heart, I don’t see a trace of her there, Celeste. I think that’s why you need me to push you so hard as a sub. Because that heart is who you really are, and you need to pass a stress test to feel comfortable letting that show.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, so she let another, more comfortable silence prevail for another few miles before speaking again. “So I guess you’ll want me to meet your family at some point. Like your aunt, or brothers and sisters?”
“That’d be nice. My aunt and my sister live together in Raleigh. They might give me some of the ‘What, you couldn’t find a nice black girl?’ attitude, just like Gilly will, but I expect they’ll really like you once they get to know you.”
“Most people like me more when they don’t.”
He grinned. “Not me. The more I know, the more I think I want to keep you.”
“You make me sound like a stray cat.”
“I’m fond of your claws.”
“So you don’t date black women?”
“Didn’t say that. I just don’t choose my relationships based on the same criteria I’d use to match my drapes to my couch. And I don’t date, remember?” He kissed her hand and kept it, their fingers a loose tangled knot on his thigh, the worn denim against the side of her hand.
He had a good memory for directions. Before she had to cue him, he’d already flipped on his right signal to make the turn off the highway into a rural neighborhood. She watched the houses go by, small but neat homes with elderly long-term residents or working families who had ambitions for more. As they drew closer to their next turn, those houses gave way to less maintained structures, with algae-stained siding and buckled roofs, the occasional black trash bag duct-taped over a broken window. Rusty cars and old appliances sat in yards that never saw a mower, and suspicious-eyed inhabitants sitting on their porches didn’t smile as they went by. She lost count of the No Trespassing signs on mailboxes.
Mrs. Davidson still had chickens, she noted, the hens scratching and busy in her bare front yard. Leland made the turn at that corner. The bumpy road had been that way as long as she could remember, potholes from the rain making the truck rock, the weeds choking the roadsides. It was all fields on either side for about a mile, fields that had once been farmland. When they reached the place where the trailers were, the “Haven Trailer Park” sign that marked their location was faded and peeling, almost unreadable.
She clenched her hands in her lap. “Leland, maybe we should just keep going. I really can pick this up later.”
“Hey.” He touched her leg, met her gaze. “It’s okay, darlin’. I’m here. It’ll be all right.”
They pulled up to the trailer. About eight years ago, her mother had bought a new one, a double-wide. She’d had to replace the one that had become so rusted there were holes under the thin carpet. The new one was five years old when she bought it and her mother treated it no better, so it was already just as crappy-looking as the previous. There were two doors, one at either end of the front of the trailer. A cracked set of concrete steps led up to one, but at the other end, a small porch with a ramp had been built recently. The golden pine gleamed. An awning off the side rail protected a gleaming grill.
So the new guy had some money, but not enough to move her mother off to a fancy house, her mother’s lifelong ambition. The ramp made Celeste frown. She knew her mom hadn’t had an accident, let alone one serious enough to require a structural addition to the trailer. If she had, she would have immediately called Celeste to care for and help her.
Her mother opened the door then, confirming it. Ginny Lewis had always kept herself in good shape. She knew her figure was her best asset, whether for her many waitressing jobs or hooking a man with money. Her generous breasts and rounded hips were showcased in a snug T-shirt and jeans, her thick brown hair carefully dyed to conceal the gray pulled back in a ponytail. Though she had the calculating mind and narrow vision of a mean-spirited whore, she didn’t make herself up like one. She’d spent plenty of time at department store makeup counters, taking advantage of the free makeovers when she had a lucrative fish on the line.
She’d had a brief period of glory in high school as a cheerleader, before she got pregnant with Celeste. She’d seduced the high school principal and tried to pin a molestation charge on him when he refused to leave his wife. He was fired, and ended up working for an auto parts store. Since the wife forgave him and they left Baton Rouge, Ginny spent a few years living off of the dubious good will of acquaintances and temporary boyfriends, which was when Celeste had lived in the inner city apartments she’d mentioned to Leland.
When Ginny got pregnant again, her mother let her move back in with her at the trailer park. Celeste’s grandmother was a tight-lipped woman who always looked beaten down but never raised her voice. She died when Celeste was still a child and the trailer became her mother’s. Celeste’s three siblings had three different fathers, all of whom paid Ginny to go away and then disappeared themselves. One of the earliest pearls of wisdom Ginny shared was that men felt guilty when a woman’s belly swelled with child. “A smart woman can get something out of them for that. Before your piece of shit daddy skipped town, he paid me fifteen hundred dollars. In cash. If I’d gotten rid of you at the clinic, I wouldn’t have gotten that.”
Celeste knew the value of a healthy white baby on the black market would have been far more, but while Ginny had less than no morals, she didn’t have the guts to break the law. At least not in that way. Thankfully, she’d finally concluded that getting pregnant was no longer worth the aggravation to her.
When she saw Celeste wasn’t alone, Ginny’s practiced smile upped up in wattage. If Celeste landed a good catch, she might benefit, after all. Celeste felt vaguely nauseous, a feeling that grew when Leland stopped the truck and stepped out of it. Her mother took in his appearance, the color of his skin, and her smile became far less warm. He offered her a cordial nod, coming around the front of the vehicle to open Celeste’s door.
“This is a mistake,” she said.
Putting his hands to her waist, Leland slid her off the seat with easy strength so her feet didn’t touch the running board. They were screened by the tinted window as he leaned down, pressed his lips to her temple. “No matter how bad this goes, Jai and his family had a much worse day. When we get to New Orleans, I’ll take you out for a nice dinner and buy you a dessert that’ll make everything better.”
How could any woman avoid falling in love with this man? No wonder she’d let him insinuate himself into her life so deeply in a handful of days, when no one else had ever gotten halfway this close. Leland was right, of course. She was the one freaking out, not him. Time to pull it together.
“You should have called, Celly.” Her mother’s voice had a touch of shrillness. Nerves. That was odd.
If she’d called, and her mother didn’t want anything from her, she would have told Celeste she was busy and not to come by. Celeste pasted on a faint smile, the bes
t she could muster, and stepped away from the shelter of the door. “I’m just here to pick up Trice’s box, Mama. We’re on our way to New Orleans. This is Leland Keller.”
“Ma’am.” Leland put his hand on the small of Celeste’s back, a subtle but potent gesture of support as they moved toward the porch. “Pleasure to meet you.”
Celeste’s mother nodded, marking his size. She didn’t offer the same greeting back. Then Celeste heard a voice inside.
“Is that our little Celly?”
She stiffened, everything locking up. Her attention snapped to her mother’s face, and she saw a combination of emotions. Triumph, jealousy, worry. The first two increased the nausea in her stomach. God, she was so glad she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, even if the emotions that swamped her now made her light-headed. She forced herself to stay rigid, lift her chin, as her mother stepped aside on the porch to allow the man behind her to come out onto it.
He was in a small transport wheelchair, which explained the ramp. He was older looking and thinner, the tousled hair streaked with gray. He was still handsome though, the type of man most women would consider a harmless charmer.
She savagely told herself she was not going to squeak or rasp. “Don.”
“See, I told you she’d remember me, Gin. Even with this.” He smacked the arm of the chair. Celeste flinched. Though she thought she’d managed to internalize it, Leland’s fingers stroked that vulnerable dip in her spine, a reminder. He was here. He had her back. “Damn car accident, if you can believe it,” Don said. “Remember that sweet GTO I had? Tore it up and totaled it. Can’t feel nothing from the waist down, which sucks, but other guys have it worse, don’t they? Didn’t want to stay in California anymore after that, even after winning that big insurance settlement. So I remembered how good your mama and you all were to me, and thought I’d stop in. Just to say hi, that was the plan, nothing more than taking her out for a drink for old times’ sake. But wouldn’t you know it, we just seemed to pick up where we left off, like I’d never been away?”
Soul Rest: A Knights of the Board Room Novel Page 27
