by Penny Wylder
She rests a hand on his forearm briefly with a seductive smirk. “As a matter of fact, I was just heading out. But I’m sure I’ll see more of you soon.” She winks, and then she strides toward the far doors, leaving me staring after her with my mouth open.
What the hell was that?
“Are you okay?” Jason asks, and I turn around to answer him. But he’s not talking to me. He’s bent over Angel with a hand on her shoulder, staring at her with what’s clearly deep, genuine concern.
Tears stand out in the girl’s eyes as she shakes her head, and he wraps his arm around her shoulders to lead her away, though not before he pauses to mouth over her head. Be right back.
But I don’t stick around to wait. Instead, I race back outside, after Mrs. Randall. She’s already halfway across the parking lot, walking quickly. But I hike up my skirt and chase after her, for once not caring what I must look like.
I reach her side just as she reaches her car. A car I recognize. I dart around to the front, and sure enough, there is the scrape along her front right bumper. Exactly where I knew it would be, because she hit me there when she ran me off the road. I plant both hands on her hood with a slam, stopping her in her tracks, her keys out and jangling in the door. We both freeze, eyes locked.
“You owe me an explanation,” I say, through gritted teeth.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” She opens her door.
“I’m not blind.” I gesture angrily at the scrapes on her car. “And what the hell was that in there? Who was that woman and why were you yelling at her? How do you know Dr. Robinson? I-I mean… Jason.”
Her smile widens, knowingly. I hate that. I hate the glimmer in her eyes, like she’s aware of something I’m not seeing here. “My dear,” she says, her voice a sympathetic purr that churns my stomach worse than anything else she’s said to me or anyone around me, all day. “Dr. Robinson—Jason, I should say—and I have been having a fling for quite some time. Surely you know, if you know him as… intimately as you seem to be implying, what he does on the side, don’t you?” Mrs. Randall’s eyebrows rise higher on her forehead, if possible. “Dating an escort isn’t for the faint of heart, my dear. If you’re going to get this jealous every time you run into me or another one of his clients, well…”
She waves a hand absently toward the hospital, and I wonder with a pang if she means the quiet girl, Angel, the one Jason went to comfort before he’d even say a word to me about anything that had just happened.
“Well then, I don’t know if you should continue getting involved in all this.” Mrs. Randall’s eyes sharpen, then, and she glances from me to her car and back again. “Is this why you’ve concocted this ridiculous fantasy about me trying to run you down? Do you think I would’ve done something like that out of jealousy, is that why?”
I pull back from her car, folding my arms over my chest. “Oh, hell, no. You aren’t going to twist this around on me. I’m calling the cops this time. I have proof now, you’re the one who hit me.”
“If you call the police, my dear, I’ll just have to inform them about your involvement with Dr. Robinson. I’m sure they’re much more eager to know who’s been writing his number on bathroom stalls all around the county, picking up clients in every which spot, than they are to chase up a report on a simple car accident.”
My fists ball at my sides. “Jason and I are just hooking up, like normal, consensual adults. I don’t pay him for anything. None of this is illegal.”
“Funny.” Mrs. Randall climbs into her car, ignoring me now. “I wonder if the police will see it that way. Heavens knows some money has been exchanged over this Angel.” With that, without explaining further what the hell she means, she slams her car door.
My heart thumps in my chest, loud enough to drown out the roaring rush of anger in my ears as she backs out of the spot and pulls away from me. I stare after her, still unable to believe what just happened. What was all that about? What does she mean, money being exchanged over Angel? What is going on?
My stomach sinks. I need to know. And I’m certainly not going to walk in there for a doctor’s appointment now, acting like everything is fine, until I know the truth. I take a deep, steadying breath, drinking in the fresh air of the parking lot. Then I stride toward my car. As I do, I pull my phone out of my pocket and dash off a new message to what has lately become the number I text and call most frequently.
We need to talk about what just happened in there, I write. I sit in my car, fists clenched around the steering wheel, trying to calm my clanging nerves, until my phone lights up with a reply.
Of course. Are you coming back in for your appointment?
I can’t. Not today. Meet me somewhere else when you can.
To his credit, he responds almost at once. The ice cream stand on Murray in 20 minutes work for you?
Sure, works for me. That gives me twenty minutes to steel myself. Twenty minutes to prepare for what I already am sure will be a bad revelation, no matter what it might turn out to be. My stomach churns as I switch on the car and drive out that way. Somehow, I already know twenty minutes isn’t enough time to get ready for this. But I also know, just as surely, that no amount of time would be.
13
I stare at the vanilla cone Jason bought for me, then over at his chocolate one. He’s halfway through eating his. I haven’t touched my own. “So…”
“So,” he agrees. “You met Angel.”
“Who is she?” I ask. I can’t help it. After all this time wondering, I need to know.
Still, nothing could have prepared me for his answer. “She’s my sister.”
I drop my ice cream into my lap and spring up, cursing. He hands me a stack of napkins. It takes me some time to wipe the worst of the cream off my skirt. When I finish, he hands me his own cone without a word. I take a few licks of the chocolatey goodness to calm my nerves before I slide onto the seat again. “Okay. So… you wrote your phone number up in a bathroom stall, asking people to call you for a good time, and then you wrote your sister’s name alongside it?”
He blows out a long, slow sigh. “Not exactly.” He runs a hand through his hair. “This is kind of a long story, Naomi. I hope you’re okay with that.”
“I’m all ears,” I tell him, and force myself to take another long lick of chocolate. It does help, somehow. The cold and the flavor both calm me.
“Angel, my sister, used to be a teacher. At the same preschool where Mrs. Randall works. In fact, who you just met.”
I purse my lips. “Oh, we didn’t just meet. I am more than familiar with her particular brand of unpleasantness.”
His smirk widens. “Good, that saves me some time.” We both laugh a little, but it’s weak. Then Jason shakes his head to carry on. “My sister used to… Well, she used to have another job, too. She made some, uh… racy videos. For extra cash, to put me through medical school. Our parents drank most of our college savings away, and then Dad died when we were in our teens, and Mom ran off with some new guy, so…”
“So it was just the two of you,” I supply, my chest easing a little as I remember what he said at my cousin’s party, his wry comments about family. “That must have been hard.”
“It was. Anyway, my sister thought she’d buried the videos, but one of the fathers of a student of hers uncovered them. He tried to blackmail her with the videos, threatened to go public with them unless she slept with him. She refused, so he sent the videos to everyone at their school. All the other teachers and parents. Well, that started a huge campaign, everyone protesting it wasn’t appropriate for someone like her to work with children. She got fired. But that wasn’t enough for him. He also went around town and started to write her name in bathroom stalls, along with her number.”
My eyebrows rise. What? But I keep my mouth shut tight and let Jason finish the story.
“Anyway, I tried to sue him, after all that happened, for defamation. But we lost in court. They said the video was real, and for all they knew the ba
throom graffiti could be too…” He shakes his head. “It took my sister years to recover. You saw her, she’s still pretty shy and jumpy around any new people. Or any old people involved in that whole mess, especially.”
I grimace. “I can’t blame her.”
“Anyway, I got her a new phone, so she wouldn’t have to listen to those stupid calls. But I kept her old one on me. Any time her number popped up again in a stall, I could answer and shame the kind of creepy assholes who call those numbers. But then, when you called…”
I tilt my head, watching him.
“Well. No woman had ever called before,” he admits, meeting my eye with a flush. “I was curious about you. And… well… One thing led to another…”
I blush too. I remember. But… I press my lips together. “Where does Mrs. Randall fit in, then?”
He grimaces, scowling. “Mr. Randall is the one who did all that to my sister.”
I gasp. “You mean, he’s the one who—”
“Spread the video around and wrote her number in the stalls. Yep. The very same. Mrs. Randall knew he was doing it, of course. She contacted me, via that number, and offered to testify in court against her husband. It would’ve made our case a whole lot stronger. But then when I met with her about it, she told me she’d only testify against Mr. Randall if I slept with her.” He scowls. “Birds of a feather, I guess. Somehow those two couldn’t be better matched if they tried.”
I snort, though I reach out to catch Jason’s hand too, feeling guilty.
“Anyway, without her testimony, our court case fell flat, like I said. Unfortunately, she hasn’t let up trying to pressure me into sex. Lately, in fact, I suspect she’s the one who’s been writing up Angel’s number, more often than her husband, as a way to get back at me.” He shakes his head. “It was stupid, but I couldn’t let anyone know the truth about all this. She’s talked about spreading news about me too, trying to get me fired just like she did to my sister. So I just did what I could… Kept answering that phone to scare away the creeps. Until you called.”
I bite the inside of my lip, watching him. My heart aches for him. For everything he’s been through. I curl my fingers through his and squeeze gently. After a moment, he squeezes my fingers back, offering a grateful half-smile.
“But, Naomi, I need you to know,” he adds, leaning in close. “I never, ever slept with anyone from those walls. I never did anything like that, not until I met you. You…” He shakes his head again, sighing. “I broke all my own personal rules for you, Naomi.”
I can’t help it. I break into a smile at that. “I broke mine for you too, Jason. Believe me.” I pull him closer and wrap my arms around him in a tight hug. “I’m so sorry you had to go through all of that. You and your sister.”
He curls his arms around me and buries his face in my hair, pulling me close. “If it led me to you, though…” He turns to kiss my neck, gently. “Naomi, I’ve never felt like this about anyone before. Not the way I feel about you.”
My stomach flips over, happily this time. All the nerves I’d felt earlier, all the worry and fear and upset, has started to transform into something else, something elated and wonderful. “Jason…”
He tips his head to one side. I follow his gaze, and he catches me in a slow, deep kiss. I can still taste the chocolate on his lips, in his mouth. His tongue parts my lips, and I let him claim my mouth, claim all of me, as he draws me into his lap. I drop the second ice cream cone too, letting it fall forgotten behind the picnic table. I don’t care anymore. I don’t care about anything but this man’s lips, his hands, his hot breath mingling with mine.
We break apart, and I gaze down at him, my eyes glittering. “I should have asked you about all this sooner,” I whisper. “I kept thinking…” I shake my head. “I didn’t know what to think, honestly. I mean, I’d never done anything like this; I’d never called a number like that right off of a bathroom stall before. Let alone for… for sex…” My cheeks flush.
He chuckles softly. “Relax, Naomi. I guessed you’d never done anything like this before right from the start.”
My face flames with embarrassment. “Really? How could you tell?”
His smirk widens. “Oh, I don’t know. Probably from how horrified and embarrassed you were about the entire thing?” He chuckles softly. Then he leans in to kiss me again, softer now. “That’s how I knew this was real. Think about it. Both of us did something crazy, something we’d never done before. We took a risk on one another. And why?”
I hold his gaze. “Because we sensed right from the start that this was real,” I whisper.
“Exactly.” His smile deepens. “Naomi, I…”
There’s a screech of tires, and a cloud of dust blows over the roadside ice cream stand. We both jerk apart, and I slide out of Jason’s lap, rising to turn and see what’s going on. But I recognize the car the second I do. Mrs. Randall climbs out from behind the steering wheel, scowling at both of us. “Stop right there, both of you,” she yells, and I shoot Jason a sideways glance, eyebrows raised.
What in the hell…?
14
“Mrs. Randall.” Jason looks less shocked by this than I am. Then again, I guess he’s had a lot longer to deal with this woman’s crazy than I have. He stands up and smooths the front of his doctor’s jacket, which he’s still wearing as he’s just on break from the hospital, before he steps over to her. “I’m going to ask you, one last time, to leave me and my family, as well as Naomi here, in peace.”
She bursts into laughter. “Why, so you can carry on your illicit sex ring under the good people of this town’s noses in peace?” She raises her voice. It’s starting to draw attention. People are drifting over from around the ice cream stand. I recognize a couple of people from our customers in the flower shop, and my cheeks heat up in embarrassment. Doesn’t this woman have any shame?
“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” I yell at her, my fists balled. I glance at the car, pointedly. But she doesn’t seem to catch my look. She’s got eyes only for Jason at the moment.
“The two of you are going to stop this… this fling,” she spits. “Or I’ll ruin you the same way I ruined your whore of a sister,” she finishes, crossing her arms over her chest.
I gape at her, in shock. So does Jason. I thought it was her husband who ruined Angel’s reputation.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Jason asks, his voice quiet yet restrained. Like he’s putting every ounce of effort he can into restraining himself from launching at her right now. I can’t blame him. I saw how scared and worried his sister was. And this woman is the person who did that to her, apparently.
“I caught my no-good cheating husband trying to hire your whore sister. So I did what any good and proper upstanding citizen of this town ought to do. I spread that evidence of her whoring all around. I sent her video to every single one of our coworkers.”
I stare. So do a good number of the people crowded around this ice cream stand. I spot a familiar face among them, the sweet older man who I sold the lilacs from my cousin’s graduation bouquet to. He’s staring at me in particular, head tilted, frowning, as though he’s trying to figure out how on earth I got myself embroiled in a crazy mess like this.
Believe me, man, so am I, I think to myself as I shoot him an embarrassed grimace.
But Mrs. Randall isn’t finished. “Now you’ve taken up in her place, whoring yourself out on bathroom stalls around town—”
“You wrote those numbers everywhere,” Jason says, realizing. His eyebrows shoot up his forehead. “You’ve been the one doing this to me, to my family.”
“I’m doing nothing but trying to protect this town!” Mrs. Randall yells back.
“Oh really?” I shout, finally unable to contain myself any longer. This is going to get even messier now, but I don’t even care. “Protect this town, how? By running people off the road? By speeding the wrong way up one-way streets?”
Mrs. Randall’s face blanches. I think she’d for
gotten in her haste to separate me and Jason, that I am still standing here. Or exactly what it is she did to me.
“If you want to talk about protecting the town,” I growl, advancing on her. From the corner of my eye, I notice the guy from the flower shop doing the same thing, inching closer into this fray. Poor guy. I wish I could warn him that he ought to stay back and out of this woman’s crosshairs. “Then let’s talk about the penalty for a hit and run,” I say. I reach her car and tap on the front bumper. “I’ll bet if forensics run the scratch here, they’ll find it matches the paint on my rear bumper. Not to mention, I bet the good samaritan who witnessed the accident where you forced me into a ditch, right before you drove away without so much as a word, would be willing to testify about the make and model of the car they saw hitting me.”
Mrs. Randall’s jaw drops.
Oh yeah. That’s right, I think with a smug little smile. Did I forget to mention sooner that I had a witness? “I didn’t call the police yet,” I tell her, “because I wanted to be sure it was you. I didn’t want to start a witch hunt, in case I was mistaken.”
“So… so you admit that you might be mistaken!” But she stammers as she says it. I’m pretty sure it’s just as clear to everyone else here as it is to me that she’s lying. “You hit your head in that crash, didn’t you? You’re misremembering. Imagining things.” Her voice rises with panic. “You want to pin this on me to distract everyone from your escort boyfriend over there. He’s the real criminal!”
The man from the flower shop appears at my elbow, suddenly. “Miss,” he asks, his voice pitched low, directed to me only. “Is that story true? Were you both involved in a car accident?”
“More like a hit and run,” I reply. “She didn’t stop. I had to go to the hospital…”
“She did,” Jason supplies from behind me. “I’m the doctor on call who treated her injuries when she arrived. The airbag knocked her unconscious, and she had bumps and bruising. Not to mention her car was seriously damaged. I think we were all just grateful, at the hospital, that the child in the car with Naomi wasn’t harmed.”
