Mother Trucker (Crownville Truckers Book 1)

by Moxie Darling

  “Now make me pretty,” Roxy said, drawing on her cigarette and talking around the smoke. “One of my regular dicks is coming in tonight, and he gets pissy if there’s so much as a hair out of place.”

  Mae rolled her eyes along with Roxy and set about tending to her makeup. Fifteen minutes later, Roxy had newly applied eyeliner, mascara, and lipstick, all of which took about a decade off her haggard face. Mae had also dabbed concealer beneath the woman’s tired eyes. It took a bit of manhandling to get Roxy’s blonde frizz under control, but Mae had been freshening Shifty’s working girls since she was a teenager. A few expertly placed bobby pins here and a spray of Aqua Net there, and Roxy was good to go. As they stood, Mae spritzed her with perfume for good measure. It would do little to combat the stench of stale cigarette smoke and exhaust fumes, but Mae was nothing if not thorough.

  “Thanks,” Roxy murmured around her cigarette while rummaging through her purse.

  “Sure,” Mae said, pulling her satchel’s strap back over her chest.

  Roxy pulled out several crumpled bills and shoved them into Mae’s hand, the harsh lights of a big rig rolling over them as it passed. “Looks like Crystal is finishing up. She’ll be looking for you.”

  Mae counted the bills and frowned, looking up at Roxy, who was already striding off, the swing of her hips signaling she was back on the clock. “Wait,” Mae called after her, holding up the money. “This is too much.” She charged five dollars per touchup. Roxy had given her twenty.

  Roxy paused, looking over her bony shoulder, her smile sad. “Remember what I said, kid. Get out of here while you still can.” With that, she walked off, flashing a smile at a potbellied trucker climbing down from his rig.

  Looking back at the money, tears blurred Mae’s vision once more. They were all just trying to survive. Some more than others. They both knew Roxy wasn’t ever leaving Shifty’s. She’d been here too long. Used too hard. She’d labor here on her hands and knees until she gave up the ghost. Just like Desiree had. For better or worse, it was who they were. The Devil only knew what Roxy had done to earn that money, and yet she’d given it to Mae with no expectation other than hope.

  “Thank you,” Mae whispered, staring after Roxy, who was leading the grinning trucker into the shadows, her gaze promising anything and everything.

  For a price.

  Tucking the money into the pocket of her cutoffs, Mae walked over and leaned against the ancient soda machine to wait on Crystal. Counting the twenty, Mae had four hundred and thirty-nine dollars to her name. There was a Ford Tempo at Billy’s Auto Sales off Route 2 for eighteen hundred dollars. Jerry had already looked it over and given it the “goat head,” as he called it. It was old and ugly as sin, but the engine was good, transmission sound, and tires decent. And, most importantly, it was her ticket out of Crownville.

  She could probably hitch a ride on one of the trucks, but she’d been around long enough to know that, while there were a lot of honest highwaymen, there were just as many who weren’t. No, Mae would make her own way.

  She only needed one thousand, three hundred and sixty-nine more dollars to do it.

  The crunch of gravel alerted her to Crystal’s approach, and Mae glanced up from her desperate calculations.

  Crystal, a petite brunette only a couple years older than Mae, grimaced as she tugged down her leopard-print Lycra miniskirt. Even as she spoke, she continued chewing her gum. “It’s hotter than Hell’s pepper patch tonight.” She held out her arms as if hoping the non-existent breeze would dry her sweat. “My face is getting oily. You got any powder? I lost my compact.”

  “I do,” Mae said, opening her satchel, thankful Crystal hadn’t offered condolences. It wasn’t that Mae didn’t appreciate them. She did. But every time someone told her how sorry they were, it reminded Mae that her ma was well and truly gone. It was easier to sink into her normal routine and pretend, just for a little while, that nothing had changed. “Got some deodorant, too, if you want.”

  “Praise Jesus,” Crystal breathed, wiggling a crinkled one into the soda machine’s money slot and slapping the Pepsi button. “Ran out this morning. You’re a lifesaver, Maybelline.”

  Smiling a little, Mae pulled out one of the neatly folded paper towels she’d stolen from the ladies’ room and handed it to Crystal. Maybelline wasn’t Mae’s real name. It wasn’t even a conglomeration of her first and middle names—Mae Belle. She’d picked it up not long after she’d started offering her services at the age of fourteen, armed with nothing but a tube of “fuchsia flash” Maybelline lipstick. Well, she’d also had one of Desiree’s half-empty Wet n Wild blushers, but thankfully Maybelline had stuck instead.

  After dabbing the sweat from her brow, Crystal took a swig of Pepsi, swished it around her mouth, then spit it out. “God, don’t you hate sucking dick?” she asked, taking an actual drink this time. “You taste it all night long.”

  Mae did not, in fact, know, but she cringed as if she did, then instructed, “Close.”

  Crystal obeyed, closing her glittering eyelids so Mae could dust a layer of powder across her face. When she was finished, she returned the cosmetics to her satchel and pulled out the deodorant. As Crystal started coating her armpits, Mae glanced to her left and saw Ted “Shifty” Seymour walking swiftly across the lot, ushering two kids ahead of him, his pudgy, unshaven face annoyed. Mae frowned. Why had he brought kids here on a Friday night? Through the back lot no less. The kids—a boy and girl—looked to be around eight or nine years old. They were skinny as rails, and both wore what were clearly hand-me-downs two sizes too big, and Mae could see how wide their eyes were even in the dark. The chaos and noise of big rigs coming and going were jarring even in the light of day, let alone at night. They were probably scared to death.

  “What’s he doing?” Mae murmured absently.

  Crystal clicked the cap back on the deodorant and followed Mae’s gaze with a shrug. “Who the hell knows with him. Probably grandkids or something.”

  As the trio disappeared through a side door, Mae shook her head, returning her attention to Crystal. “Probably,” Mae agreed, accepting the deodorant. If those two had the misfortune of being Ted’s grandkids, chances were he was pawning them off onto one of the cooks or waitresses so he could beat feet down to Jimbo’s Tavern and fill his gut with cheap beer. “Poor kids.”

  “No doubt,” Crystal said, swirling her Pepsi bottle. “Hey, you got wipes in there, too? My twat is swampy after that guy.”

  Mae cut her a look. “You’re a real lady, you know that?”

  Crystal grinned. “A lady in the streets but a freak in the bed.”

  “Pretty sure you’re a freak in the streets, too,” Mae said dryly. “Money first.”

  “Scared of a few cooch germs?” Crystal asked as if amused by the idea, then pulled five dollar bills out of the snug waistband of her skirt. “Fine. Here.”

  Mae produced a fresh wipe and exchanged it for the money, averting her gaze as Crystal unabashedly reached between her legs and proceeded to de-swamp herself. After tossing the used wipe on the ground, Crystal jimmied her skirt back into place and let out a satisfied breath. “Much better.”

  Shaking her head, Mae watched people pulling up to and away from the gas pumps. “Ted will dock your pay if he sees you leaving trash in the lot.” Ted not only owned Shifty’s and the attached trailer park, but he managed the working girls, too. Well, managed was probably too strong a word. He allowed them to do business on his lot and live in his trailers while taking the lion’s share of their profits. He was a pimp. A backwoods redneck pimp with a mullet, but a pimp nonetheless.

  “Fuck Ted,” Crystal said with a scowl, draining the dregs of her Pepsi before tossing the empty bottle with more force than necessary. It bounced and skittered across the gravel, coming to rest in front of a white Freightliner. “He can go choke on balls.”

  Mae smirked. That was Crystal. Obscenely crude and utterly unashamed by it. “So classy.”

  “Got all the cla
ss I need between my legs,” Crystal said and turned to leave, then hesitated. Glancing back, her colorful voice faded a few hues. “Sorry about your mom.”

  Mae’s heart skipped a sorrowful beat at the unwanted reminder. “Thanks.”

  As if uncomfortable with Mae’s sadness, Crystal hurried off without another word, her high-heeled knee boots crunching a staccato beat over the gravel.

  With Crystal’s inappropriately entertaining presence gone, Mae deflated once again, the humid night air suddenly heavier than it had been before. She swatted a hungry mosquito without much enthusiasm and sighed, walking over to pick up Crystal’s discarded Pepsi bottle. Crouched in the shadow of the big Freightliner, Mae wanted to sink down and let the tears come. Her grief was so damn heavy, and her shoulders trembled under the weight of it. She wanted to cry. To scream. To howl and mourn. But, mostly, she wanted her ma back. Her morally deficient, tragically misguided ma.

  Instead, though, Mae stood with her aching heart and faced the sweaty, sticky, sinful night.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Shifty’s Petro & Go

  Crownville, West Virginia

  Clyde Honeycutt sat in his rig, watching the redhead with a frown he was only vaguely aware of. She bothered him. Her sad eyes and sad mouth. What was someone like her doing in a place like this? If she was a lot lizard, she was doing it wrong in all the right ways. Her legs were long and toned beneath denim cutoffs, and though she wore a loose T-shirt, there was no hiding the perky, braless breasts beneath it. She was young and soft. Any man would willingly and eagerly open his wallet to crawl between her sweet thighs.

  But that wasn’t what had Clyde clenching his jaw as he watched her disappear around the front of his rig. No, it was her pain. It emanated off her like a goddamned beacon, and he couldn’t look away. And he hated her for it. Because it reminded him of his own pain. He didn’t like acknowledging what a shit storm his life had become. It was much easier to watch the miles and the towns and the shitty truck stops just like this one go by in a mindless blur. Point A to point B. No thinking. No remembering. No regretting. Just driving.

  Yet here he was, perv-eyeing a heartbroken girl that was entirely too damn young for him.

  Entirely too damn unnecessary.

  Cursing, he jerked his keys from the ignition, pocketed them, and got out. As he hopped down onto the gravel, the impact jarring his bones, the muggy air assaulted him, bringing with it the scent of fryer grease and exhaust fumes. A conservationist’s nightmare. Inside his rig’s cab, it had been cool and quiet, nothing but the occasional CB transmission to break the blessed silence. On the lot, however, it was a cacophony of Jake brakes, tires crunching, and country music twanging over a crackling loudspeaker. Closing his rig’s door, he adjusted the bill of his hat and started for the diner.

  And collided with the redhead.

  She came out of nowhere, and he walked right into her. She gasped and stumbled, dropping an empty pop bottle she’d been carrying. He grunted, grabbing her by the forearm before she busted her ass. “Watch it,” he growled.

  She stared at him with wide, green eyes and stammered, “I’m sorry. I … wasn’t paying attention.”

  For a moment, all he could do was stare back at her. Damn, but she was beautiful. It was the worst kind of beautiful, too. The love-me-don’t-fuck-me kind. The kind that gutted men and left them for dead. Though he wasn’t fond of paying for pussy, it was better than praying for it. He’d been that man once. So fucked-in-the-head in love he couldn’t see straight unless he was with her. Unless he was in her. But that was a long time ago and he wasn’t the same fool he’d been back then.

  Still, the startled look on the redhead’s face kicked him square in the balls and he felt like a jackass. He released her arm. “It’s okay. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  She seemed to collect herself and bent to retrieve the bottle, the satchel she wore around her chest swinging from its strap. “Technically, you also ran into me.”

  Against his will, his mouth twitched at the corners. Looking at her, he’d expected her to be soft-spoken and shy. Easily intimidated. That she wasn’t sparked his traitorous interest on a different level. He arched a brow. “And?”

  She straightened, bottle in hand, and met his gaze. “And you owe me an apology, too.”

  Momentarily distracted from his dinner, he leaned against the Freight Shaker’s fender and crossed his arms over his chest, staring at her from under the bill of his hat. “Do I.”

  She looked at him as if he were dense. “Yeah. You do.”

  “You weren’t paying attention to where you were going,” he reminded her.

  “Neither were you,” she countered.

  “Sure I was,” he said, studying her. Now that he was down out of the rig, he could see she was tall. Almost as tall as him. And her hair wasn’t so much red as it was strawberry blonde. It was a shame she had it confined in a ponytail. “I was paying attention to the diner. You know, where I was heading.”

  Her lips thinned. “Ever heard of peripheral vision?”

  “Ever heard of looking both ways before you walk out from behind something?”

  Even in the dark, he could see her cheeks redden. “Ever heard of not being a jerk?”

  Amusement slithered through him like an unfamiliar snake. “Tried it once. Wasn’t a fan.”

  She glared at him and then shook her head as if just realizing she didn’t have time for his bullshit. Turning on her heel, she said, “Enjoy your dinner.”

  He watched her go, annoyed at himself for provoking her. And for enjoying it.

  “Wait,” he said.

  She stopped and turned, her green eyes wary. Her right hand was inside the flap of her satchel, and he wondered what she had in there. A knife? Gun? Pepper spray? Had she ever had to use it on some grabby son of a bitch? And, more importantly, why the hell did he even care?

  “I’m sorry,” he said, the words sounding rusty. “It’s been a long day.”

  She held on to her anger a heartbeat longer and then sighed, “Yeah. No harm done.” Offering him a ghost of a smile, she turned away again.

  Before he could stop himself, he asked, “You hungry?”

  She paused once more and looked back at him with raised brows. “What?”

  He must have gone off the deep end. He didn’t know her. Didn’t want to know her. He had a trailer full of freight that needed to be in Cincinnati by tomorrow morning, and he still needed to snag a few hours of sleep. He was going on near twenty-four without any. He didn’t need to be doing … whatever he was doing.

  Still, as he stared at her, some part of him inexplicably hoped she’d say yes.

  She eyed him for a long moment, then said, “I … can’t. I’m working.”

  He stared at her. “On the lot.”

  She opened her mouth to reply but then seemed to decide against it, her irritation sparking once more. “Yeah, on the lot. That okay with you?”

  Her reaction knocked some ever-loving sense into him, and he nodded. “Like I said, been a long night.” Then, shoving his hands into his pockets, he strode past her. “Have a good one.”

  The bell above the diner’s glass door jingled as he opened it and went inside. He was greeted by the clink of dishes and sizzle of meat on heat. A jukebox played somewhere in the back, and waitresses in jeans and red Shifty’s—Let Us Fill You Up T-shirts hurried back and forth with platters of food. Truckers and townies filled the tables, sucking down fried everything, and through the grab-plate window, he could see short-order cooks in greasy aprons hustling, their brows sweaty.

  “Seat yourself,” a harried-looking waitress said on her way past, gesturing with her chin. “Table free in the corner.”

  He pulled off his hat and nodded before making his way over to said table. Feeling far more irritable than he had any right to be, he sat in the red-vinyl booth with a scowl, tossing his hat on the seat. Why did he care what some random woman did to put food on her table? He had no problem with prostitut
es. Hell, he’d partaken of their wares more than once. The highway was a lonely place, and he was just a man. But for whatever godforsaken reason, the idea of that sweet-faced, ponytailed redhead bending over the back of a big rig’s bumper while some sweat-stained trucker took her from behind set Clyde’s teeth on edge.

  Which was fucking absurd.

  She wasn’t his. He didn’t want her to be.

  What he wanted was chicken-fried steak and a pile of mashed potatoes so big he’d need a backhoe to shovel it in.

  “What can I do you for?” a plump waitress with pink cheeks and an honest-to-God bouffant asked with a toothy smile. “Special tonight is spaghetti and meatballs. Garlic bread on the side.”

  He didn’t have to look at the menu. Any truck stop worth its salt had his poison. “Chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Rolls, too, if you got ’em.”

  Eleanor, as her name tag proclaimed, nodded and scribbled. “To drink?”

  “Budweiser.”

  “Comin’ up,” she said and flipped closed her pad before heading off.

  He leaned back in the booth, his fingers tapping the table’s worn wood veneer, and found his gaze drifting outside. From his angle, he had a prime view of the gas pumps, the trio of rows brightly lit from the underside of the metal roof. The diesel pumps were out of his line of vision, which meant so was the overnight lot. Which meant so was she. He tore his gaze away and focused instead on the booths and heads in front of him and waited.

  And as he did, unwelcome memories crept up the back of his skull like fire ants. Though she looked nothing like the redhead outside, his ex-wife Lila Jane appeared in his mind like a blonde-haired, brown-eyed buzzard come to feast on his carcass. She hadn’t always been a scavenger. Once upon a time, she’d been the end all, be all. His wet-dream beauty queen. Back when they were young and love-drunk. In those days, all they’d needed was a set of cheap gold bands and a one-bedroom rental on the outskirts of town.

  Except that hadn’t been all they’d needed. At least, it hadn’t been all she’d needed.