by Alison Kent
“Looks like you keep busy.”
“That and then some,” Jarrell said, pulling into the only open bay, then stopping in the yard on the other side once the SUV was situated inside the building. “Delton and me have built up a clientele to go with our reputation. But you don’t have to worry about waiting for us to fit you in.”
Jarrell opened his door and climbed down. King did the same on his side of the truck, helping Cady out after him. When she gave him a questioning look, he shrugged, and called over the noise of the towing mechanism, “Why’s that?”
“The Statie. He told me this was a priority job with a bonus that depended on how fast and how good the job got done. We appreciate that a lot, Mr. Trahan. Extra money always comes in handy around here.”
King had no idea what Jarrell Bradley was talking about, but he wasn’t going to share that with the other man. “We don’t want to put anyone out.”
“You won’t be. No one else is in the same kind of hurry. We’ll be moving you to the front of the line, as soon as Delton finishes up with the new water pump on Buster Wind’s F150. Why don’t you two grab what you’re going to need from your things to hold you until tomorrow?”
Cady looked like she was about to explode from all the questions piling up inside. King acted like nothing was wrong and headed to the back of his truck. “You said you can give us a ride to the bed and breakfast?”
“Oh, sure. It’s not far, but it could be quite a walk if you’ve got a lot of luggage.”
“Not a lot, no, but I think we’re both a bit sore. We hit that ditch pretty hard.”
“I’d say you’re damn lucky you didn’t hit it any harder, else that limb would’ve kept going and we’d be needing a hearse alongside the tow truck.”
And that was enough to send King back to brooding again.
Twenty-three
“What was that about a bonus for getting your truck done fast and done right?” Cady asked, sitting across the table from King in a booth at McCluskey’s.
They’d left the garage three hours ago after Jarrell had unhooked the Hummer, returned five phone calls, and introduced them to everyone who just happened by after seeing King’s H3 roll through town.
As promised, Jarrell had eventually driven them the few blocks to May Wind’s Bed & Breakfast.
If not for needing their luggage and having no idea what McKie had packed—not to mention having no idea where anything was since things had gone flying when they’d sailed off the road—they would’ve walked the few blocks and enjoyed the early afternoon sun.
They had walked to McCluskey’s after they’d checked into their room. Neither one of them had eaten much at breakfast, and what they had managed to get down hadn’t stuck through the morning. Plus, the adrenaline from the accident and its aftermath had Cady starving.
Though the restaurant’s exterior was lacking in, well, anything inviting, the inside reminded her of the working-class homes of her childhood friends—and of her own before her parents forgot they weren’t the ones who had died.
The paneled walls were hung with framed photographs of children and parents, sporting events and picnics. Ribbons and certificates hung beside them, between them, on top and below. Trophies—baseball, gymnastics, soccer, debate—stood proudly inside the glass case beneath the check-out counter.
The decorative oil lamps on the tables sat on red and white doilies. The glass panels in the hanging lamps above were painted with scenes of country life. The tables and chairs were blocky, and glossy white, the booths covered with a vinyl fabric in the same red print as the tablecloths.
The whole place smelled like sugar cookies and hot rolls. The sense of nostalgia made her homesick, but Cady blamed the ache in her midsection on hunger. She opted out of the fresh fish and home fries Jarrell had recommended and ordered meatloaf and mashed potatoes instead.
She loved meatloaf. She loved mashed potatoes. If she never had to eat peanut butter crackers again, it would be too soon, and she hoped she never had to replace the case she’d lost in the explosion.
That thought brought her back to why they were here. “King? The bonus?”
“I don’t know anything more than you do. I sure as hell didn’t make that promise, and I can’t imagine the insurance company doing so.” King forked up a huge bite of pan-fried trout from the biggest serving of headless, tailless fish Cady had ever seen slapped on a plate.
He swallowed the food before going on. “Hell, I haven’t even called them yet. I was kinda waiting to see if Fitz had anything to say first. Then I figured I’d do it from the shop. Jarrell’s comment put a stop to those plans.”
It had put a stop to Cady’s certainty that Malling was behind the wreck, too. “You think Fitz talked to the Statie? Do you think he wasn’t a Statie at all? Maybe a fake Statie Fitz sent in to make sure we ended up where he wanted us to be, though why he’d want us here…”
King took a long draft from the longneck beer bottle he’d insisted he preferred over a mug. “At this point, your guess is as good as mine.”
She didn’t answer right away because she needed another bite of meatloaf. And of potatoes. Then potatoes again. Oh, and her roll. “Whoever he was, he must’ve been right behind us to show up that fast. We’re practically in the middle of nowheresville here…what’s so funny?”
“Nothing, chère. Just…nothing.” He nodded at her plate, then asked, “All that food giving you the energy to figure things out?”
“I’d say bite me but knowing you…” The look in his eyes reminded her that sex was a subject it wasn’t even safe for her to tease about.
She propped both wrists on the table’s edge, her fork in one hand, her buttered bread in the other. “You know, I almost feel like I’m living an episode of Alias instead of watching one.”
He stabbed up a fork full of home fries. “Better than living an episode of really bad Friends like you were doing in the city?”
“You goon. I don’t think there’s a show called Really Bad Friends,” she said, smothering a laugh with another bite of food. She was trying to be serious here, and he was too damn cute for his—or her—own good. “Though there should be one called Really Bad Sex and the City.”
He arched a brow, the look on his face nothing if not censorious. “Had a lot of that did you?”
“A lot of sex, no. A lot of bad sex, yes. Though I didn’t know how bad until…” She stuffed her roll in her mouth to shut herself up. Why was she going here? To that sex place? After telling herself how many times that it was not a good idea? And who was he to censor?
“Until me?”
The man was too cocky for his own good, making that a question best left unanswered. But, she admitted as she swallowed, she did owe him for what had happened. “I’m sorry about coming onto you in the truck. I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t been all over you then, we wouldn’t be here now.”
He shook his head, reached for the ketchup, and shot another pool on his plate for his fries. “We were blocked in, front and left both. The only place to go was off the road. But, yeah. If I hadn’t been so distracted, I might’ve found a way around the tree limb.”
So he didn’t blame her completely? But he did blame her? Or was he playing with her again? “Was it me climbing around that distracted you, or my question?”
He snapped the top to the ketchup, avoided her gaze. “I forgot I told you that.”
“The heat of passion. It fries the memory.”
“And,” he went on, brow arched, “I tried to forget that you asked me about it.”
“Ignoring things doesn’t make them go away. Trust me on that.”
“But you ignoring and me forgetting means I win and don’t have to answer.”
That didn’t make any sense at all. “Says who?”
“Says the man who is King.”
“The fact that it says Kingdom on your birth certificate does not make you royalty. Or in charge,” she added, remembering how she’d thought about being his serf. �
��We’re in no hurry, and I want more meatloaf, so you’ve got plenty of time to tell me all about your sperm.”
He sputtered beer everywhere. “Christ and a half on a llama, woman. The things that come out of your mouth.”
“Almost as good as the things I put into it,” she shot back, stuffing said orifice full of a hot roll slathered in real butter. “Now spill.”
He wagged his head as if accepting he was stuck, that he had no way out, that she was not letting him off this hook ever. “I found out a few years ago that I have a son, Calvin. Cal. He’s fourteen now. I probably would never have known except his mother needed money for his medical expenses and had exhausted every other avenue of help.”
“She came to you.”
“I don’t know why she did,” he said with a shrug. “We’d been lovers, obviously, but never in a relationship. I’d been pretty much a bum when Gina knew me, and things hadn’t changed since. If I made enough money to pay my electric bill and buy a six pack a day, I was doing good.”
Cady didn’t know why, but King’s self-portrait didn’t surprise her. It was very similar to how she’d imagined his former life. She knew he was a hard man, one for whom things had never been easy, part of that by circumstances, part by his own making.
But it was still hard to hear. “What did you do? Did you give her money?”
He nodded. “I borrowed a small fortune from my cousin. Told him it was for a workover of the well on the property. The one our fathers worked when we were kids.”
“An oil well?”
“It never produced a lot, which we learned a whole lotta years later was because our neighborly neighbor had slant drilled from his property to ours and was sucking us dry. But you should see that baby puttin’ out now.”
“First gold, and now oil. I’m impressed.”
“Like I said. It’s good to be King.”
“Do you see him? Your son?”
King shook his head. “I keep up with what he’s doing, but I don’t play Disneyland dad, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I was just asking. That’s all.”
“He’s a hell of a baseball player. Cracker jack shortstop with a batting average that’ll get him some notice if he keeps at it, stays in school, and doesn’t fuck up like his old man. But, no. I don’t send him birthday presents or Christmas cards or drop in with a new video game or crap like that. He had, he has, a good life. A good family. He doesn’t need a money bags ‘uncle’ hanging around.”
And King wouldn’t settle for being that. “He’s healthy then. Your money helped.”
“I guess.”
“Yes or no. No guessing.”
“Yeah. It helped. Kept me in hot water for years with my cousin, though.”
“Because you didn’t tell him the real reason you needed it?”
“I didn’t want him to find out that I’d had a kid all those years and didn’t even know.”
“How could you if Cal’s mother didn’t tell you? If you weren’t in a relationship and she didn’t bother to involve you, there’s no way you could’ve known.”
“Yeah, but it felt like one more mark on the loser board. That I couldn’t even bother with a condom.”
Ah. Things were coming into focus. “And that’s why you can’t have babies now.”
He held up an index and middle finger and made a snipping motion.
“A rather drastic reaction, wasn’t it?”
“Why? You thinking about a little Trahan prince? An heir to the throne?”
To his fortune, he meant. She ignored her gut reaction to carrying his child. “You’re afraid of gold diggers.”
“I was snipped long before I found the gold, chère.”
“Then I stand by what I said,” she lifted her chin and told him. “It was a drastic reaction.”
“Drastic revelations call for drastic reactions.”
“Sounds like your six pack a day was doing your thinking for you.”
“Back then? You bet it was.”
Was he angry? At her? For digging into his past? Or because her doing so had made him visit a place he’d put behind him? “Do you regret having that done? Now that your situation isn’t so dire?”
“Money changes everything.” That was all he said, leaving Cady to wonder if he meant the three words as a yes. But before she could figure him out, he added, “I’m too old to start a family. If I had a kid now, I’d be dead before he finished high school. And having my own folks die before I was out? I wouldn’t put any kid through that.”
He wasn’t that old, and they both knew it, but pressing him further wouldn’t get her anywhere, so she dropped the subject, sitting back while their server delivered her second plate of meatloaf.
“Is this going to be all? You sure you don’t want more potatoes?” the young girl asked.
“She’d have to put ’em in her pocket,” King answered, causing Cady—who preferred to think for herself—to spitefully respond, “Potatoes, no, but I’d love another hot roll. And more butter.”
After the girl had walked away, King gave Cady the eye. “You trying to die before your kids are out of school?”
“Kids, no. I’m just trying to get in all my last meals before Malling goes too far.”
“Cady,” King began, but she cut him off.
“I know what you’re going to say, so just stop. I heard you earlier. Tuzzi doesn’t want me dead. I got it. Truly, I do. But Malling is not Tuzzi. He’s following Nathan’s orders, but he’s still dumb as a stump.”
“Following Nathan’s orders means keeping you alive. He likes playing cat to your mouse. As obsessed with you as McKie says he is? You can bet Malling goes too far, he’s dead. He knows that. He’s not going to make a mistake that gets him killed.”
“That tree limb was a mistake. It could’ve easily happened. Accidents do easily happen.”
“That tree limb was my fault.”
No, that tree limb was her fault. And King could’ve been the one killed. “If I asked you for money, would you give it to me? I started to say lend, but I have no way of paying you back. Not now, anyway.”
“I might, if I knew why you wanted it.”
“So I can rent a car. You can wait here for the repairs to your truck, and I can rent a car and go…somewhere. I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. Let Malling follow me. Let McKie get the information he needs.”
“You’re ditching me?”
“I don’t want you to die because of being with me.” Gah, she was going to choke up. She did not want to choke up.
She wanted to get this out without crying. “You could’ve died in the explosion. Malling couldn’t know that you wouldn’t decide to make a burger run at the same time his timer was due to go off? See, dumb as a stump.
“And if that tree limb had been any longer, it could’ve pierced more than your hood.” When he started to speak, she waved a hand and stopped him. She had to finish first. While she still had the breath.
While she could still look at him without tears clouding her eyes. “So, yes. If you’ll give me the money to rent a car, I’m ditching you. You have a cousin, and even if you don’t see him, you have a son. I don’t have anyone, and I don’t want you to die.”
“You’re wrong, Cady,” he told her, his voice ragged and cracked. “You have me, chère. You have me.”
Twenty-four
Cushing Township wasn’t more than a mile from end to end, and King doubted it was any wider side to side. He and Cady had walked to McCluskey’s from May Wind’s B&B, and with Cady now full of meatloaf, they set out to walk back.
It was a slower trip than the first.
They were both carrying a lot more weight than earlier.
The idea of Cady wanting to strike out on her own hit King a lot harder than he would’ve thought possible. Especially the reason she wanted to go. That, in fact, even more so than her actually going.
Here he was wanting to make sure she stayed safe, and she was more concerned about him
getting hurt in the crossfire of her war with the man who had killed her brother.
That wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Her caring about him. Her putting him first. Her ditching him and his help to make sure he wasn’t harmed.
He didn’t know if it was the fish not sitting well on his stomach, or if the knot of rubber bands twisting his insides was tied into this other tangled mess and needed sorting out. Whatever it was, he felt like shit.
“You never did answer me, you know.”
He hadn’t answered her because their server had returned to refresh their drinks, and he’d asked for the ticket which he’d then taken to the counter near the door to pay while Cady finished her meal.
He couldn’t sit there with her fearing she would lose him. Or his fearing there was nothing he wouldn’t do to keep from losing her. Hell, all she’d had to do was ask and he’d spilled his guts like a cow strung up in a slaughterhouse.
Things between them had gone too far too fast, and he didn’t know what to do to stop the forward motion. Or if he wanted to. If he wanted Cady Kowalski more than he wanted to send her away.
“No,” he said, shading his eyes and wishing he knew what had happened to his sunglasses.
She stopped in front of him, looked up. “No? You won’t give me the money? Or even lend me the money?”
“It’s not about the money, boo,” he said, taking off down the sidewalk again, stepping down to negotiate the cross street, stepping up onto the sidewalk on the next block. “I’ll give you as much as you want, but I’m not going to let you go off to deal with Malling on your own.”
“You say that like you have any control over what I do.”
“I say it like I mean it.”
“I’m your favorite charity now, is that it? We had sex and now you—”
He spun and grabbed both of her arms, squeezing harder than he’d intended. He relaxed his grip when she winced. “We had sex, and it was amazing, and I hope we have it again. But this is about doing the right thing, the human thing, and keeping you out of harm’s way.”
