Despite the disturbing circumstances, the sight of him filled her with joy, and tears filled her eyes. Oh, how she’d missed him. Straightening, she dried her mouth with the back of her hand. “Hey, Jerry.”
“This the guy?” Belvia demanded, her stance that of a grizzly ready to maul its prey.
“No,” Mae said quickly. “He’s a friend.”
Belvia relaxed but eyed Jerry warily.
Jerry shook his head, looking at Mae as if he couldn’t believe she stood before him. “You shouldn’t be here. I told you to go.”
“I know,” she said quietly. He’d risked a lot to make sure she got out of Crownville free and clear. “I’m sorry.”
He stared at her for a long time, then looked at Belvia.
“This is Belvia,” Mae told him. “She’s my friend.”
Belvia stepped forward as if not at all intimidated by the big, bald, unsmiling man and held out a hand. “Belvia Gruant.”
Jerry ignored her hand and only nodded at her. “Jerry.”
Belvia frowned but withdrew her hand, returning his nod. Mae could understand her suspicion. Jerry, with his crooked features, slow speech, and stained overalls, looked like he’d walked straight off a horror movie set where he’d played the token creepy janitor. He was a big man to boot. Taller even than Belvia, and that was saying something. But Belvia didn’t know him like Mae did. She didn’t know he was the kindest, gentlest man Mae knew. That he’d give you the shirt off his back if you asked him to. Or if you didn’t.
He was the kind of man that saved lives on muggy August nights.
Clyde is, too.
“Why’d you come back,” Jerry asked, looking her up and down as if making sure she was okay.
“We need to find Shifty,” she said, tying down her emotions. Right now, there were more important things to deal with than the possibility or impossibility of Clyde. “Do you know where he is?”
For the first time, Jerry noticed the busted door behind Mae and Belvia. He frowned at it. “What happened to Mr. Shifty’s office?”
Relief bled into Mae, and she realized she hadn’t even considered that Jerry might know about the pornography until that moment. That he would be oblivious to it didn’t surprise her. After all, she had been, too. And, while he looked out for the lot girls, he otherwise kept his head down and went about his job with a simpleton’s dedication. It wasn’t in Jerry’s nature to question his boss. She didn’t think for a minute that Jerry would ignore something as heinous as child molestation, but the idea of investigating what Shifty did behind closed doors likely hadn’t crossed the slow maintenance man’s mind.
“It’s not his office, Jerry,” Mae said and then hesitated. What did she say? It’s where the fat, greasy pervert takes pictures of naked kids? Instead, she asked, “Have you seen him?”
Still frowning, Jerry admitted, “Saw him going ’round collecting rent a few minutes ago.” He pointed toward the trailer park behind the truck stop. “Over yonder.”
Mae glanced at Belvia, who nodded once. The gesture said Let’s get this fucker. Mae steeled herself, nodded back, and turned to Jerry. “I’ll explain everything later,” she said, wanting to hug him but knowing he wouldn’t want her to. “I promise. For now, I want you to call the sheriff. Tell him to get here.” She passed Ken’s leash to him. “And take Kenny until I get back.”
Jerry’s frown deepened, but he took the leash. “What you doin’, Mae?”
She thought of the room behind her with its cameras and its horrors. “Righting a wrong.”
Then she walked away.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Interstate 109
Crownville, West Virginia
It took Clyde eight hours and sixteen truckers on the CB to track Mae down.
Fat Cat spotted the lady driver’s rig in Champaign, Illinois. Afternoon Delight passed them on I-70 E outside Terre Haute. Toe Tag saw ’em at Big Willy’s Travel Stop in Jackson, Ohio. And the list went on. By the time someone reported them in Ravenswood, West Virginia, he knew where they were headed, and he’d put the pedal to the metal in hot pursuit.
Mae was his. And, Lord have mercy, so was the baby she carried. A day’s worth of hard trucking had given him time to reconcile the way of things. What he had wanted no longer mattered. What he wanted now did. And he wanted Mae. He wanted the life they could have. The family they could have.
Family.
For as long as he could remember, the word had struck a chord of rage in him. Left him feeling cut open and scraped out inside. To him, family wasn’t a tightly woven braid. Family was loose strands blowing in the breeze, untethered and unconnected. Flapping from the same piece of fabric but forever separated. The only family who’d never turned their back on him was Rose, and he’d ruined her life. Hadn’t he? Wasn’t that what he believed? What he wanted to believe? Someone had to be blamed. Someone had to suffer. To remember. Or else what had happened to her would drift quietly into the past, forgotten like a grave nobody ever visited. His vow to never have kids of his own was both a memorial to her and an act of fear. Rose would never fall in love. Never get married. Never have children. And as the man who’d taken that from her, he deserved nothing himself. Not only that, but he’d failed at being a brother—how could he possibly succeed at being a father? That tragic day nearly two decades ago had taught him just how fragile kids were. How breakable. How one wrong move, one careless decision, one accident could be the end of them.
But maybe Mae was right. Maybe he wasn’t to blame. He’d fucked up, yes, and that fuckup had cost Rose everything. But he’d been a dumbass ten-year-old kid who’d made a mistake. A catastrophic, horrific mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. Part of him would always hate himself for going fishing that day, but losing Mae had made him realize that he wasn’t dead. Much as he’d sometimes wished he was. His life, full of regrets and miserable though it may be, hadn’t ended just because Rose’s had.
And, truth was, his life wasn’t miserable. Not anymore. Not since Mae.
Being with her had been the best thing that had ever happened to him. With her, his heart hadn’t felt like it was made of lead. His mouth had grown used to smiling. To laughing. To kissing.
What he wouldn’t give to kiss her now.
To undress her and worship her and apologize to her in the only way he knew how.
To punish her in the only way he knew how.
She’d left him, and she’d had every right to, but she’d left him. She was his, and she’d left him.
And, if she took his sorry ass back, he’d spend the rest of his life punishing her for what she’d done. He’d punish her lips and her throat and her shoulders. The curve of her breast and slope of her hip. He’d punish the sweet place between her legs until she begged for a reprieve. Until she loved him enough to never leave him again.
He glanced over at her empty seat and imagined her there, smiling at him, belly round beneath her faded T-shirt, auburn hair pulled into a messy bun atop her head. A distinct longing took root in him. His woman. His baby. A baby he’d put inside her when he’d made her his. It was the most primal way a man could claim a woman, and he’d damn sure claimed her. Over and over. Night after night.
He’d have her again. He’d have his baby again. He’d even have the damn cat again. They were all his, and, God help them, he was theirs.
When he saw the sign for Shifty’s Petro & Go looming up ahead, blurred in the back-and-forth of his wipers, his heart thundered as if to match the storm outside. Was she still there? Why had she come in the first place? Was it because, besides his rig, it was the only home she’d ever known? The idea that his stupidity had driven her back to this shithole town out of desperation shamed him. And made him even more determined to get her the hell out of here and back where she belonged.
With him.
Forever with him.
As he guided his rig off the highway, though, he saw the flash of red and blue, and his blood ran cold.
“No,” he b
reathed, a fear like he’d never known spearing him through the gut. He gunned the engine, the Freight Shaker growling across the lot. Had she been hurt? Was it the baby? Had she been wrong about the murder investigation? Was she being arrested? A thousand scenarios flashed through his mind and not a damn one of them good. Cursing, he parked the rig and jumped out, slamming the door behind him.
Though the police cruisers’ sirens were turned off, he could hear the crackle of muffled reports coming over their radios even through the rain. Red and blue ricocheted off the building like sickly Christmas lights, and people stood in the rain, gawking and murmuring to one another in hushed voices. Some were pointing, and some were just staring with wide eyes as if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
Heart two-stepping behind his ribs, Clyde strode past them, his boots splashing through puddles. He rounded the nose of a Mack and stopped, taking in the scene.
At first, all he saw was the disorienting flash of lights and officers milling about, carrying evidence bags and taking photos. He took it as a good sign that there were no ambulances, only police. As his eyes adjusted to the chaos, he realized there was someone sitting in the back of the nearest squad car.
A man.
Not Mae.
Relief spilled over Clyde. Though the gloom and glare made it difficult to see the man clearly, Clyde could tell he was fat, old, and sour-faced. And beat to shit. His left eye was a swollen purple mound, and blood leaked messily from his misshapen nose. Clyde didn’t recognize him. Who the hell was he? And where the hell was Mae?
What if the ambulances already left?
The thought was cold and sharp, and it split him from sternum to stomach. He turned to the nearest gawker—an ashen-faced waitress who stood gripping an umbrella with white knuckles while hotboxing a cigarette with her free hand.
“What happened here?” Clyde demanded.
She cast him a quick, wary glance. Gesturing with her cigarette, she indicated the man in the back of the cruiser. “Always knew that greasy bastard was doing something illegal. Never thought it’d be kids.”
Clyde frowned, studying the man’s shadowed face. “Kids?”
She clucked her tongue and mmm-hmmed. “Sure as shit. Pervert’s been making kiddy porn right here on the lot.” She pointed at an open door near the back of the building, careful to keep her cigarette beneath the shield of her umbrella. “Right there.” She shook her head. “All this time.”
Clyde followed her gaze. The door was off its hinges, hanging brokenly inside the room like a fractured jaw. He couldn’t see inside, but officers in slickers were coming and going with grim expressions as if they didn’t like what they saw.
Clenching his jaw, Clyde returned his gaze to the arrested man. “Who is he?”
“Ted Seymour,” she said, her voice thin. “My boss. Owns the place.”
Clyde recalled the stories Mae had told him about Ted “Shifty” Seymour, and his mouth hardened. If the fucker was molesting kids, had he done the same to Mae? She’d never mentioned it, but that didn’t mean much. It was the kind of thing people sometimes took to their graves. Just the thought made him want to tear the door off the cruiser and bloody the bastard more than he already was.
“Have you seen Mae Harrison?” Clyde asked the woman.
As if paying attention for the first time, the waitress glanced at him, her heavily penciled eyebrows rising. “You mean Maybelline?”
The nickname made his heart skip a beat. “Yes.”
Shaking her head, the waitress said, “Honey, that girl ain’t been around in weeks. Run off with some fella last I heard.” Her eyes narrowed as the thought caught up to her. “You’re the fella, ain’t you?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking over her head to scan the faces in the crowd. “I am.”
Her eyes took on an oh-reeeallly look as if he’d somehow become more interesting than the search and seizure taking place a few feet away. He could tell she wanted to ask why he was here and Mae wasn’t, but his expression must have dissuaded her.
“I ain’t seen her,” she said finally. “But I just got here for my shift not fifteen minutes ago.” She gazed at the building and murmured, “I’m not even sure if I have a job anymore.”
He didn’t bother consoling her. Instead, he left her to her worries and shoved through the crowd, heading for the restaurant. Maybe Mae had gone inside. Maybe she was fine.
Maybe.
He pushed open the diner’s door, the overhead bell announcing his arrival, and was greeted by the clink of forks on plates and the muted sound of country music wafting out of a nearby radio. Despite the excitement outside drawing the locals like buzzards to carrion, the midmorning truckers cared more about filling their bellies and tanks than they did about any small-town drama, and their hatted heads speckled the otherwise empty restaurant. Clyde’s gaze landed on the broad back of one such trucker, and his world slowed to a crawl. Though the shoulders were broad as any man’s, there was a distinctly female softness to them, and beneath the hat were a woman’s brunette curls.
The lady driver.
And sitting opposite her was Mae.
He was so relieved, he had to grip the edge of a booth to keep his knees from giving out. She looked tired and sad and so beautiful it hurt.
She wasn’t injured. She wasn’t in custody. She was safe and dry and eating goddamned pancakes.
He let out a long, rough breath and just stared. What the fuck had he been thinking? There, in an outdated vinyl booth, sat his entire world. And, within her, their future. Had he not tracked her down, had she gone a different direction, hitched with a different driver, Clyde might never have seen her again. Looking at her now, he’d never been more thankful for second chances. She smiled at something the lady driver said, and it might as well have been an arrow through Clyde’s heart. God, that mouth. He wanted to kiss it until she melted for him.
“Booth or table?” a voice interrupted his torrential thoughts.
He looked over to see a young waitress staring at him expectantly.
“Neither,” he said.
She nodded toward the bar, where a couple oldtimers sat shooting the shit over coffee. “A seat at the bar then?”
“No, I—”
“Clyde?”
This time, it was Mae’s voice that interrupted, and the sound of it tightened him up all over. He met her startled gaze. She had half risen out of her booth and was staring at him with an expression he couldn’t identify. Was she happy to see him? Relieved? Angry?
The waitress looked between them and took the hint, walking away with a shrug.
Clyde walked over to Mae, his heart pounding harder with each step. He’d almost lost her. And here she was within touching distance. Kissing distance.
And that’s just what he did.
He didn’t give her a chance to speak. To slap him. To hate him. He kissed her, pulling her out of the booth and into his arms. Where she belonged. “You’re mine,” he breathed, overwhelmed by the feel of her. The taste of her. All of her. “Both of you.”
For a moment, she was just as lost in the kiss as he was, but at his words, she pulled back, staring up at him with an unsteady hope. Tears filled her eyes as she searched his face. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m sorry, Mae,” he said, pulling his thumb across her bottom lip because he couldn’t help himself. “I’m saying I’m in for the long haul. I’m in.”
She closed her eyes briefly as if savoring his touch. “I won’t give up this baby, Clyde. I won’t do it. So, if you think you’ll change my mind and—”
“I know,” he interrupted. “When I saw those lights out there …” He swallowed hard. “Dammit, Mae, I thought you were hurt. Or the baby. And …” Unable to finish, he looked down at his boots, which were toe to toe with hers.
“And what?” she asked quietly. Hesitantly.
He looked at her. “And I fucking hated it. I know what I said. I know how I felt. But things are different now,
” he said, trying and failing to find the right words. “I ain’t gonna lie and tell you I wanted this, and I still think that baby drew the short end of the stick getting a daddy like me, but I’ll do my damnedest.” Gentling his voice, he repeated, “If you let me, I’ll do my damnedest, you hear?”
For the first time since he’d spoken, she smiled at him. “Yeah, I hear.”
His heart tripped and fell ass over head down a flight of stairs. “You’ll forgive me,” he said, and he wasn’t sure if it was a question or a demand, but he knew his future depended on her answer.
She stared at him a long moment—the longest of his life—and then nodded, the tears finally spilling over her cheeks. “I will.”
Letting out a breath, he pulled her to him, burying his face in her hair. She laughed, and it sounded breathless and reckless. “Damn you,” she said, her arms tight around him. “Damn you for the way you acted.”
“I know,” was all he said, and he kissed her damp cheek, uncaring that the entire diner was probably watching.
“Don’t ever do it again.”
“I won’t,” he promised. “Don’t ever leave me again.”
“I won’t,” she vowed.
He closed his eyes. They stood in the middle of a truck-stop diner with a scene from Cops going down outside, but everything was right in his world. It was right and good and as it should be.
Someone cleared their throat, and Mae’s face pinked as she pulled away.
“Belvia, this is Clyde,” Mae said to the lady driver. To Clyde, she added, “This is Belvia. And you’ve already met Roxy. Sort of.”
Clyde nodded first at Belvia, whose expression said she was happy he’d done the right thing but that she also had no problem breaking his face if need be. “Thanks,” he told her.
He wasn’t sure exactly what he was thanking her for, but she seemed to understand and held out a hand. “No problem.”
Clyde accepted her hand, and they shook. He then looked at Roxy and almost didn’t recognize her. To be fair, the one and only time they’d met, her face was a mask of red blotches and smeared eyeliner. Today, however, she wore no makeup, and her previously teased blonde hair was pulled into a simple ponytail. She’d exchanged the spandex miniskirt and tube top for a T-shirt and jeans. “Ma’am,” he said to her, tipping his hat.
Mother Trucker (Crownville Truckers Book 1) Page 18
