by Lois Greiman
He grinned at my feeble courage and took another step. “But I gotta,” he said, “cuz she’s hungry.”
I narrowed my eyes and he laughed.
“Josephine,” he said, and chuckled as the donkey brayed again. “My ass…I come to feed her. Guess it’s just good fortune that I saw one, too.”
“Not quite so lucky that you are one,” I said, feeling my defenses wilt, but when I moved to sidle past him, he stepped into my path. Fear was cranking up inside of me again, but I did my best to contain it and tilted my chin up at a jaunty angle.
“Remus, isn’t it?” I asked.
He smiled. “Most folks can’t tell us apart. But you musta noticed that I’m the handsomest, huh?”
I looked up through my lashes at him. “Well, Rom and I already went clubbing together, so I figured he wouldn’t be stupid enough to try somethin’ again.” I tried to move around him, but he took one step to the right, effectively blocking my exit.
“Where you goin’ in such a hurry?”
“Somewhere with smarter company.” I smiled. “I thought I’d try the pasture.”
He grinned. “Them stallions is pretty bright. But I’m better hung. Wanna see?”
“I’d rather eat dirt.” Which, thanks to my idiot brothers, I had done on more than one occasion.
His grin was carnivorous. “Come on, sugar melon, all the gals round here want a piece of Remus.”
“I’d like a teeny piece, too,” I said, and fluttered my stubby lashes. “But ya might miss the part I’d hack off.”
“Now that’s not very nice,” he scolded, and stepped toward me.
I shuttled backward, bumping into the corner of a stall. It was then that I saw Hiro Danshov through the broad doorway. He stared at me, glanced at the behemoth blocking my exit, then strode on past like it was a fine Sunday in Mayberry.
Remus grinned. “Looks like it’s just you and me, firecracker.”
“Looks like it,” I rasped. Dropping my keys, I grabbed a nearby pitchfork and stabbed.
He screamed, high-pitched and energetic, then stumbled into the open, cradling his thigh with both hands. Dropping the fork, I snatched up my keys and darted past him. But I needn’t have hurried. He had fallen on the ground, still shrieking like Janet Leigh at the sight of a shower.
From the comparable safety of the Jeep, I saw that Danshov hadn’t even stopped to glance behind him.
By the time I had screwed up enough courage to return to the Home Place, the breakfast rush was in full swing. Bess growled an order and I hopped to, hoping she wouldn’t be offended by the fact that I had, possibly, killed her eldest-by-forty-three-minutes son.
When the last oddly hirsute patron departed, I dropped into the nearest chair with three slices of cinnamon-swirl French toast. Say what you will about Hiro the profoundly unheroic, he could really parlez vous toast.
“That comes out of your pay,” Bess said.
I was too tired to be pissy, so I nodded my listless agreement. She was gone in a moment, but I could still feel eyes on me and glanced up.
Danshov was watching me through the serving window.
Anger and sarcasm spurted up in equally caustic measures. “Thanks for your help this morning.”
One arched eyebrow rose a fraction of a millimeter. He was dressed in a loose-weave V-necked shirt and simple drawstring pants, and he was spooning up the contents of a ceramic bowl. It might have been oatmeal, but from my vantage point, it looked as appetizing as sawdust. Moron.
“He did not appear to need my assistance,” he said.
I snorted. As luck would have it, Remus took that precise opportunity to limp past the window. He spared me one accusatory glance before hiking laboriously across the porch to who knows where.
“I guess you were wrong,” I said, and found that, despite my usual maturity, I wasn’t entirely able to quell the spurt of happy pride that rushed through me at the evidence of my antagonist’s agony.
“Perhaps you might consider modesty.”
I shifted my attention to the cook. “What?”
“Modesty,” he said, and dragged his disparaging gaze over my scantily clad body. “You have heard of it?”
Catholic guilt rushed through me, but I had learned to squash that bug before my christening. Besides, it wasn’t as if I was wearing workout shorts and a lung-squeezing tank top because of my love affair with spandex. “Blaming the victim…some call it the coward’s means of justifying their own turpitude,” I said.
He narrowed his eyes, showing his first spark of interest in me. “Tell me, Miss…O’Tara.” The slightest curve of a smile lifted the corner of his lips. They resembled Cupid’s bow to a ridiculous degree. “Might you be a psychotherapist?”
I felt myself blanch as memories of gunshots and terror stormed through my head. I had vowed to remain incognita for a reason; I made a psfffting noise. “Like a shrink or somethin’? You leggin’ me?”
He set aside his bowl of sawdust. I yammered on.
“You think I’d be slummin’ out here in Nowheresville if I had a PhD or…” I waved a vacant hand. “Whatever? That’d make me dumber than a bag of balls. Stupid as a…” I tried to catch my breath, to find the perfect insult, but it was too late. He had already left the building.
Chapter 12
You have the right to remain stupid. Don’t abuse it.
—Lieutenant Jack Rivera
I found a discarded copy of the previous day’s L.A. Times that night. With shaking hands, I skimmed every story by the Jeep’s dome lights. But there was nothing about the death or injury of an LAPD officer. Relief sluiced through me, until I realized there was no story regarding any type of disturbance at Rivera’s house. Surely an attack on a police lieutenant’s home would be newsworthy even on the day following the incident. Unless I was losing my mind, the shootout had happened. So why hadn’t anything been written about it? Had dirty cops orchestrated some kind of police cover-up? Police could go bad; I had experienced that on a very personal level. Or were the Black Flames powerful enough to keep their nefarious deeds out of the news? Were they so powerful that even now they knew where to find a quivering psychologist who—
A bullet whizzed past my ear.
I shrieked and twisted to my left, only to see the missile materialize into Big Bess’s knuckles. She gave me a what-the-fuck look and made a cranking motion with her turkey-sized hand.
I fumbled the key twice before I was able to get it into the ignition, then powered down the window a miserly two inches.
She watched me like I was a couple cherries short of a cobbler. “Ya can’t sleep out here.”
“What? Why not?”
“My sons are good boys, but they ain’t no saints.”
I stared at her, nasty ripostes racing through my head like nasty little weasels. But Big Bess Hughes wasn’t exactly the type of woman I wanted to antagonize. Hell, she wasn’t even the type I wanted to meet.
“I’d check into a hotel,” I said. “But my employer hasn’t paid me yet.”
“Tell ya what. I’ll let you a room here…for a price.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Here?”
“In the big house.”
“Big house?” I was beginning to sound kind of brain damaged.
“Back behind them trees,” she said, and gave a Big Bird–type nod west.
“You’ve got a house?”
“You think we slept in a cave or somethin’?”
I didn’t answer, on account of it might have been a trick question. “How much you askin’?”
“Fifty dollars.”
“A night?”
“Maybe you’re used to payin’ by the hour?”
I was ungodly tempted to inform her that her sons were philandering perverts and she would make a mountain gorilla look like a prima ballerina, but I wasn’t that brave.
“Twenty,” I said, “if it’s got a good lock on the door.”
“Deadbolt and regular. But I won’t take less than forty,”
she countered.
“If it’s got a decent mattress I’ll give you twenty-five.”
“Double-sized Beautyrest. And you’ll pay thirty-five.”
“Twenty-seven with my own bathroom.”
“Pedestal sink and Waterpik showerhead. Thirty-two.”
“Twenty-nine,” I said. “With use of a washer and dryer.”
“Thirty, and you buy your own soap.”
“Twenty-nine fifty and access to the Internet.”
“Internet!” She spat the word. “I don’t allow none of that stuff ’round here. What do ya think I am, some sort of L.A. floozy?”
I raised my brows at her. “Floozy?”
“Immoral peddler of sexual…Hey!” She squinted at me, eyes as small as marbles. “Did you bang up my Remus?”
“Bang up…” Memories of our tussle in the barn assailed me. All semblance of the sassy me disappeared like banana peels down a garbage disposal. I don’t respect a lot of things, but I’m not one to fool with the maternal instinct. My own mother might have been mean enough to devour her young whole, but even she took offense when others offended us. “No! I don’t even…Whatever are you talking about?”
“He’s been walkin’ kinda funny.” She raised her chin, glaring at me from another angle. “You do the dirty with ’im, girl?”
“The dirty…” I managed to shake my head.
“Bandicootin’, swankie-swirlin’, grummettin’, wrasslin’ the—”
“No!” I said, afraid to hear any more.
“You sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“You know what I’m talkin’ ’bout?”
“Yeah, I think I…I think I get the picture.”
“And you promise you ain’t rode the monkey with my boy?”
Oh dear Lord! “Scout’s honor.”
“Huh.” She was still scowling, but she shrugged. “He musta had hisself another eating accident, then.”
“Eating…” Curiosity almost overwhelmed my sense of self-preservation, but she motioned me out of the Jeep before I could voice any potentially deadly questions.
“Come on.”
I did as ordered, following her down a rocky path through inhospitable vegetation until we came to a turn-of-the-century two-story surrounded by twisted sycamores. The porch was wide, the stairs steep, but I was steeped in fatigue and barely noticed my surroundings.
The room she put me in was pink on pink. Like the love child of Pepto Bismol and Barbie. The frothy décor wasn’t quite my style, but the Schlage on the door was right up my alley.
I slept like a cadaver that night. And in the morning, it all began again. I shed my old self like a snake slipping its skin. Flirting became second nature, teasing, an art form; the tips increased exponentially.
“I could use another glass of wine when you get a chance, Scarlet, love.”
The fact that the Home Place served wine was not the most surprising part of this dialogue. The real shocker was the speaker himself: A lean forty-something, William Holsten was dressed with neat conservatism, possessed all his incisors, and, judging from the tattered paperback beside his neatly refolded napkin, was literate. A veritable gem in these parts.
“Coming right up,” I said, and gave him a smile before heading for the kitchen.
“Whatcha doing?” Remus asked, stepping into the doorway behind me. My heart jumped like a skittish bunny, though he was still limping a little.
It was late. The restaurant was all but empty. Even Danshov had left for the night, probably to sit cross-legged by the lake and hum like an underfed Buddha. Poser. The fact that he did so alone in the dark and never spoke of it to anyone had no bearing whatsoever on my certainty that he was an outrageous showoff.
“My job,” I said, and poured a glass of red.
“It’s closing time.”
I didn’t bother glancing at the clock above the stove. “What about the Home’s mantra?”
“What ya talkin’ ’bout?”
“If people have money…take it,” I said, and sauntered back into the dining area to hand off the wine.
“Oh.” Holsten set To Kill a Mockingbird aside. “Thank you, my dear.”
The British in his voice called mournfully to the Christina I longed to be.
“Are you a teacher or is that just one of your favorites?” I nodded toward his paperback.
He shifted back in surprise. “Aren’t you the intuitive one? I am a professor, actually, but I’m frightfully unfamiliar with the American classics.”
Thing One was scowling at me from the kitchen. I took my time with Mr. Holsten, nevertheless. Or maybe because of.
“How do you like it?”
“It’s interesting, isn’t it?” he said, eyes alight, one palm lifting as if to grasp the dynamics of the novel. “The juxtaposition of good and evil captured against the backdrop of your country’s old South. Racism, hope, stereotyping, kindness, all enmeshed in such a simple…” He laughed and lowered his hand. “Listen to me rambling on like a right duffer just because you’re too much the peach to tell me to sod off. My apologies.” He lifted the glass and took a sip. “Please do go about your business, I’ll be gone in a jiff.”
“No hurry,” I assured him, and gathering up a few remaining dishes, returned to the kitchen.
“I don’t trust that guy,” Remus said.
I raised a brow at him. “Not puerile enough for you?”
“What?”
I shrugged and slunk back into my hillbilly act, a little happier for the use of my ten-dollar word. There’s nothing like a catty remark to put some bounce in a girl’s step. Well, that and a full rack of barbeque pork ribs, which I just happened to have set aside for my own consumption. After taking the plate from the fridge, I tugged a stool up to the counter and fell to. But I’d barely taste tested it before the Thing pulled a chair up beside mine.
“You got that good an appetite for other things, too?”
I ignored the insult, though I had seen him eat, and honest to God, it was not something to witness on an empty stomach.
“You can thank me later,” he said, and settling into the chair, propped it back on two legs.
I glanced up, barely taking time to swallow. “For what?”
“I’m gonna walk ya home.”
“No, yer not.”
“Gotta,” he said. “Don’t want nothin’ to happen to ya.”
I gave him a jaundiced stare over top of my bus-sized meal. “How do ya feel about somethin’ happening to you?”
His brows dipped into a scowl. “I was just bein’ friendly. I don’t know why ya have ta be so mean,” he said, and rubbed his thigh a little.
“And I don’t know why you can’t take a hint.”
He grinned. “You got some spark, I’ll give ya that, but I still can’t let you walk home unescorted.”
I masticated as I studied him.
“You musta heard about the Carver,” he said.
I stopped chewing. “The what?”
“The Carver. Guy’s been terrorizin’ the area for a month a Sundays now. Grabbin’ gals at oil stations, in parkin’ lots…on their way home from work…” He let the statement dangle and grinned at me.
I swallowed the pork. It seemed a little dry suddenly. “Why’s he called that?”
“The Carver? Well, it ain’t cuz of his prime rib recipe.”
I felt my gorge rising.
“Fact is, it could be more than one fella, cuz the descriptions have been kinda iffy. But you don’t need to worry, sweet cheeks. I’ll take care of you.”
I took another bite of pork and tried for nonchalant. “The Carver’s starting to sound more charming by the minute.”
He grinned. “If I wasn’t so discernin’ I might think you wasn’t interested in me.”
“No!” I tried to put a little disbelief into my tone.
“All I want’s a little air.”
I stared at him, then licked stray sauce off my fingers. “Air?”
“Some folks know it by other things.”
Ahh, a blow job. “Listen, Remus, if the planet was about to explode and I could save the entire world…” I paused as if considering. “Still wouldn’t do it.”
He tilted his head at me. “I been doing some thinkin’.”
“Soon as I’m done here, I’ll call the paramedics.”
He chuckled. “What’s a pretty little dewdrop like you doin’ out here in the boons, that’s what I’m wonderin’.”
“Just polishin’ up my social skills.”
He narrowed his eyes in sly consideration. “You got yourself a secret, honey buns.”
Fear had replaced my appetite, but I belched softly and refrained from wetting myself. “You’re right, I do have a secret.”
He grinned and rolled his hips, letting his knees fall apart a little. “Is it the fact that you got it bad for a good-lookin’ stud muffin that’s hung like an elephant?”
I leaned toward him and blinked like a dewy-eyed Bambi. It was a little something I had practiced in high school and perfected while trolling for tips. “I’m gay,” I said, and leaving the remains of my meal, turned sharply away. But he caught me by the wrist. I twisted back toward him.
“You’re lyin’,” he rasped.
I forced a smile. “If Hoover Dam busts open I can probably save the valley.”
He lowered his brows.
“Cuz I’m a dyke.” I ground my teeth and tugged at my arm. It was like trying to escape from a crocodile.
“You shittin’ me?”
“Not the tiniest turd.” I tugged again. Still nothing.
“Well, listen…” He snagged me a little closer. “I betcha I can help you with that, too.”
I had been trying to act cool, calm, and collected, but he was big, broad, and boorish. Plus, we were very close now, with me crammed between his sequoia-sized thighs.
“Thanks anyway,” I said.
“A little Remus will make you good as new.”
“I am as good as new.” I sounded breathless now. My mind was screaming for me to fight like a cornered wolverine. But he was far stronger than I. So I lurched forward instead. His chair teetered backward. I tried to pull free, but suddenly we were both falling. My boobs slapped his face. I hissed a curse and scrambled backward, but there was no need.
