He kept talking. “And last time I left you on your own, you ended up with another guy.”
Oh no he didn’t. We’d talked about that. He didn’t get to throw that in my face.
“I’m hardly going to pick up a man in Indiana,” I snapped.
“Babe, you don’t pick ‘em up, those fuckin’ legs of yours, they pick you.”
“Tate –”
“Text.”
“Tate!”
“Askin’ you to give me peace of mind here,” he clipped, “text.”
“Oh all right,” I relented because we were talking about peace of mind. We’d talk about me being in his “control” later.
“We done?” he asked.
“You called me,” I reminded him.
“We’re done,” he muttered and then disconnected.
God, if he wasn’t so handsome, strong, sometimes sweet, didn’t have a Harley, that beard, a tendency to play with my hair, didn’t look so good in jeans and wasn’t so danged good in bed, he would seriously not be worth it.
Of course he was, or had, all those things. Therefore unfortunately he was worth it.
I barely settled my head on the pillow when my phone rang.
Quickly, hoping it didn’t wake up my mother, I touched the button under the screen that said “Captain Calling” and put it to my ear.
“Hey,” I whispered.
“Your Mom asleep?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“Your Dad?”
“Color’s back, moving around, got more energy, it’s all good.”
“Good,” he said softly.
“You?” I asked.
I had learned over the last several nights’ conversations that due to Tate’s past as a police officer and his present as a bounty hunter, he had relationships on Chantelle’s Police Force. One of the FBI agents working the case was also, luckily for Tate, a huge football fan and the icing on the cake was he was an alumnus of Penn State and remembered Tate. Because of these two, unusually, they were letting Tate in on the investigation in a “consultative capacity”. In other words, they were sharing information just as he was sharing what he knew with them.
The problem was neither side had much. In fact, nothing at all.
“Wind,” Tate answered my question.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“He’s in the wind. We got nothin’. No leads, no ideas and he’s off script, could strike at any time.”
“Yes, but you said all the victims were like Tonia,” I reminded him and he did say that. He’d told me that all the women were Tonia’s age and reportedly dressed like her and acted like her prior to their deaths. Four, including Tonia and the woman just murdered, were waitresses in bars. Three were strippers. One was a prostitute.
“Yeah, they got people camped everywhere, got more people warnin’ folks. But he wants the kill, he’ll find it.”
“Right,” I whispered because this was creepy and scary and both in equal measure.
“What’re your plans?” he asked and I sighed.
I was at a crossroads with my plans. I’d talked to Krystal and she said I could take all the time I needed.
This would have been very kind except she ended our conversation with, “No skin off my nose, not payin’ you to be home.” Thus informing me I was on unpaid leave.
This was okay. I needed to be here, see to things, weed Mom’s garden, mow the yard (it took me a whole day to do the front yard, the side yard across the lane by the grape arbor and weed whack everything including around the pond – Tyler should take his boot camp out on a field trip to Indiana and force them to do that, it was killer), clean the house, ferry Mom around, visit with Dad.
But Dad was getting better which meant he was getting antsy. He wanted out. He wasn’t a staying confined type of person. In a day or two he’d be up the wall.
And I also felt the need to be home in Carnal. I’d started a life, I liked it and I missed it. Betty and Ned, the pool, Bubba’s, Jim-Billy, my visits to Sunny and Shambles, their treats, Wendy, Holly at the flower shop – I even missed Tyler’s boot camps.
Then there was Tate.
I wanted to go home.
Mom wanted me to go home too.
“Need to get on with life, hon,” Mom had said. “So do you.”
“I can stay for awhile,” I’d told her.
“I know you can but that isn’t my life and it isn’t yours,” she’d replied.
“But, you need –”
“To learn how to cope with what I got and what’s happening next. You can’t stay here forever.”
This was true. I couldn’t. I loved Mom and Dad, Caroline and Mack, Indiana and our farm and I’d spent ten years missing them and wishing I was back.
But my life was now in Carnal.
Mom had taken my hand and given it a squeeze. “We’ll be fine, hon and you can go home to Tate and bring him back when we can have a good visit. At Christmas. I can make Tate my chicken ‘n’ noodles and you all can go ice skating on the pond.”
I tried to imagine Tate on ice skates. This vision didn’t form in my brain likely because Tate’s badassness reached across four states and halted such activity.
“Mom thinks I should go home,” I told Tate.
“She’d be right, Ace,” Tate told me.
“But I could stay awhile. I think they need –”
“To get on with their life, babe, and it’s a life you don’t share with them. They need to learn to lead it without you there mowin’ their lawn.”
“These are my parents,” I reminded him.
“You movin’ home?”
“No.”
“Then what good’s it gonna do them gettin’ used to you dealin’ with all their shit only for you to up and leave? Then they’ll have to learn to deal with all their shit. They might as well learn now.”
“My Dad just had a heart attack, Tate,” I said softly.
“Yeah, and he survived it, Laurie,” he said softly back. “And he’s gonna recover and you won’t be doin’ him favors by fussin’ over him. He needs to get back to life as it’s gonna be, your Mom too.”
I considered this.
My father didn’t like idle children and we had chores. We worked in Mom’s garden, we cleaned the house, we helped him with his many “projects”. But I’d never mowed the lawn that was man’s work (according to Dad). His head would explode if I tried to mow the lawn when he was in the house. Or do anything else that would even give a semblance of “fussin’ over him”. He’d rather the grass get hip high than one of his girls mowing it (of course he would never allow the grass to get hip high, he’d call one of his buddies to do it, of which there were a million).
Instead of telling Tate he was right, I remained silent.
Tate knew my ploy. I knew he did when he asked, “So when you comin’ home?”
“I’ll talk to Mom tomorrow.”
He was silent a moment then he said gently, “Good.”
It was good. Home meant Tate and me being in his vicinity when he talked like that.
Tate kept speaking. “Though, I’m gonna be gone for awhile.”
All thoughts of home meaning Tate fled my head.
“Gone?”
“Had two files come in. High bond skips, both of ‘em. I been bleedin’ money too long. I need to take ‘em.”
“Where are you going to be?” I asked.
“Wherever they lead me,” he answered.
“How long are you going to be gone?”
“No tellin’.”
Well this sucked!
“So I might as well stay here for awhile,” I decided.
“Babe, you ain’t comin’ back for me. You’re comin’ back because this is your life. Right?”
It was mostly that.
Okay, well, partly that.
“Though,” he went on and his voice got a hint growly but the good kind, “good to know you wanna get back to your old man.”
“Mostly I need t
o get back because I don’t want Krystal to scare all my high tipping customers away with her bad moods.”
“Right,” he said through a smile. I obviously couldn’t see he was smiling, I just knew it.
“Are we done talking?” I asked because it freaked me out a little that he knew I liked him. Though he couldn’t miss it, what with me snuggling up to him when he was awake and asleep, texting him constantly at his order and there was also the way I showed I liked him during our last night together and I did it with my mouth. Then again, he’d liked that too, a lot more than me and he’d proved it by using the part of him I was showing I liked and using it on me in a way that I loved.
“You tired?” he asked.
“Yes,” and it wasn’t a lie.
“Then sweet dreams, baby,” he whispered.
I felt my stomach pitch.
I got that every night too. Tate telling me to have sweet dreams proving he liked me too.
“You too, Captain,” I whispered back.
He waited to hear the words and then he disconnected. He didn’t say good-bye, he never said good-bye. He just said “sweet dreams, baby” then he waited for me to say “you too” and then he disconnected.
I touched a button, the screen went blank, I put the phone on my nightstand and stared at it in the shadows.
His voice came to me in my head.
Sweet dreams, baby.
I closed my eyes and, within minutes, I was asleep.
Chapter Thirteen
Buster
“What? Your brain in your boots? I said seven-fifty,” Twyla said to a customer.
Twyla was one of our two new waitresses. She was fifty-three, had the body of a pit bull, short, graying, very curly salt and pepper hair that was cut into a female mullet and she made Krystal look like she had the disposition of a happy fairy.
I heard her. Heck, everyone heard her and my eyes flew to Bubba behind the bar.
He was biting his lip and, being Bubba, this was because he was trying not to laugh out loud.
If it was Krystal, she’d be doing the same thing but only to stop herself from firing Twyla’s ass.
“I gave you eight dollars,” the tough guy, leather wearing, Harley boy customer returned.
Twyla’s eyes narrowed and she leaned into him so she was leaning over him as he sat in his chair. “You’re tellin’ me you’re givin’ me a fifty cent tip?”
He fidgeted in that chair. “Well, yeah.”
Her loud voice got louder. “You think I bust my hump schleppin’ drinks for fifty cents?”
“No, I think I’m givin’ you a dollar and then movin’ my ass to a table that other one waits on. The one who’s got a great ass and smiles when she brings out a fuckin’ beer,” the Harley guy shot back, ceasing his fidgeting and jerking his thumb at me.
“Uh… gorgeous,” Bubba stage-whispered to me where I was standing in front of him at the bar, “I think that’s your cue.”
I sighed.
I’d been home in Carnal for two weeks. After my conversation with Tate, I’d stayed in Indiana the three further days that it took to get Dad home and a nurse visiting morning and night.
Now I was back at the hotel with Ned and Betty. Back to my boot camps and the other camps I did, namely camping out by the pool or with a latte at La-La Land. And back at Bubba’s.
Amber, one of our new waitresses, was twenty-two, five foot two with lots of wavy blonde hair and she was a baby biker babe in the making. She confided to me that she was saving for a boob job, this and her scant wardrobe in the face of a crazed serial killer who targeted scantily-clad waitresses were my evidence Amber was a biker babe in the making but maybe not a very smart one.
Twyla, our other new waitress, was an ex-marine and the antithesis of Amber, of Wendy, of me and of most every female I knew.
I was on day shifts a lot considering that was what Twyla worked and both Bubba and Krystal were hoping I’d rub off on her.
So far, this hadn’t worked.
I gave Bubba a look and moseyed hesitantly toward Twyla’s table.
“Hey Twyla,” I called as I got close, she turned to me and her scowl was so ferocious it took a lot not to stop moving forward and start running backward.
“You gonna tell me that my tips’ll be more if I smile at ‘em and call ‘em by name again?” she snapped.
No, I wasn’t going to do that. I’d tried that one hundred and twelve times and it hadn’t sunk in.
I actually didn’t know what I was going to do, except try to stop her challenging the biker to an arm wrestling match, the winner gets fifty dollars, a tactic Twyla had utilized on more than one occasion. I was guessing this was because she normally walked away with the fifty dollars and the biker walked out because a woman beat him at arm wrestling. Still this meant she didn’t have to wait on them anymore and she had fifty dollars which meant it wasn’t exactly stupid. Then again, they didn’t come back which was bad for business.
“Um…” I replied.
“Common decency to give twenty percent,” she went on. “Fifty cents on seven-fifty ain’t no twenty percent.” Her eyes swung to the biker. “A buck fifty is twenty percent.”
The biker’s eyes came to me. “Can you wait our table?”
Twyla’s back straightened so fast it looked like a steel rod had been jammed into it.
“You got a problem with the way I wait tables?” she asked the biker loudly.
“Well, yeah,” he answered.
“What’s your problem?” she demanded to know.
“Woman,” he replied, “you’re in my face. She don’t get in a man’s face. She serves the drink, takes her tip and walks away, an added bonus because it’s a damn good view comin’ and goin’.”
Even though this was all unfolding in front of me, automatically I turned my head when the door opened. It was what I did in case someone I knew was coming in. I liked to greet them and they liked it too.
In this instance, I would have warned them.
Instead, when I saw who walked in I froze.
It was Tate, wearing a tight, wine-colored t-shirt, belt, jeans and boots. His hair was even longer and he still had his beard.
He looked beautiful.
I’d been doing the texting business for over three weeks. I’d been getting my sweet dreams phone calls every night for that same period of time. I got one last night and he didn’t tell me he was heading home. I was surprised to see him.
Surprised and ecstatic.
So ecstatic I didn’t even think. I just moved.
I darted across the bar, running full-tilt, my eyes locked to his. He had been moving into the bar but when he saw me running he stopped and, luckily, braced because I launched myself at him. Arms around his shoulders, I hopped up as he went back on a foot on impact and my legs went around his hips. I felt his hands move to hold me at my behind.
I stuffed my face in his neck and held on tight with all four of my limbs.
“You’re home,” I whispered.
“Yeah baby,” he whispered back.
I lifted my head and smiled down at him.
His eyes touched mine briefly before they dropped to my mouth. Then one of his hands left my bottom, went up my back and into my hair. He tipped my head down and then he was kissing me, a Tate out-of-mind, all-about-body kiss that tore straight through me in a good way.
I heard the catcalls and wolf whistles about two seconds after Tate released my mouth and started walking through the bar, holding me to him.
His head turned toward the bar as we got to its side.
“Laurie’s on break,” he said to a grinning Bubba.
“Guessed that,” Bubba replied as the catcalls and wolf whistles reached zenith and were joined by some very raunchy words of encouragement.
“I’d pay a five hundred percent tip for that,” I heard Twyla’s biker nemesis shout.
Tate and I ignored him. Tate was busy carrying me down the hall. I was busy kissing his neck and feeling his beard r
ough on my cheek. One of his hands left me as he unlocked the door and I lifted my head to flip the light switch on when we entered. The door closed behind us as I noticed Tate’s head tip back and then my mouth found his. We necked all the way across the office and my legs automatically accommodated a seating position, straddling him when he sat on the old, beat up couch that was situated diagonal across the middle of the big office, my lips never leaving his.
We kept making out for awhile stopping only when Tate pulled the string of my apron and we separated when he tugged it from between us and then we went back at it.
Finally, when his hands were roaming my skin under my t-shirt at the back and my hands were in his hair, his mouth disengaged from mine and his lips and beard trailed down my jaw to my neck as I shivered.
“Now that’s a welcome home,” he growled into my ear and I shivered again as I smiled against his hair. “Lot better than the last one, babe.”
That didn’t make me shiver. My head came up and my eyes went squinty when his head tipped back.
“How many times are you going to throw that in my face?” I asked when my squinty eyes caught his.
He grinned. “You strung out your grudge against me for nearly two weeks and I just said somethin’ stupid, so I figure I get at least a month of throwin’ that in your face since how you fucked up meant somethin’.”
I put my hands to his shoulders and tilted my head to the side. “And how long are you going to throw my grudge in my face?”
“Until I get that you get that it was stupid and don’t do it again.”
I pressed against his shoulders and leaned back. “Would you like me to perform an altogether different kind of welcome home? The kind where the ‘welcome’ part doesn’t factor into it?”
His grin turned into a smile, his hands flattened on my back and put pressure on, bringing me closer.
“No baby,” he murmured, one of his hands coming out of my t-shirt to slide into my hair and bring my face closer to his too. “I like the ‘welcome’ part the best.”
“Then maybe you’ll let that stuff go so we can move on,” I suggested but I didn’t mean it as a suggestion. I meant it as a delicately worded warning.
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