“You silly child.”
“You know it’s the truth. Who sent the roses in that blue vase right there on the bedside table?” Zyah asked wickedly.
Anat pressed her lips together, or tried to, in order to look stern. She’d never perfected the look, as hard as she’d tried. “Dwayne River is far too young for me. That would make me a cat woman or whatever you young people call an old woman who goes after a younger man.”
“He’s six years younger than you. That hardly qualifies you as a cougar, Mama Anat,” Zyah pointed out, turning away so her grandmother wouldn’t see her laughing.
Anat knew the term cougar. She’d called herself that more than once when they watched a movie and she saw her favorite movie star. For her movie star, she would forget her vow of living her life free of men and become a cougar. She’d made that statement each time she watched one of his films.
“I think both interviews went well today,” Zyah ventured, changing the subject. She sank into the armchair closest to her grandmother’s bed. “Your friend, Inez Nelson, was really nice. I think she’s going to put in a good word for me. There were three people sitting in on the interview for the grocery store manager position: Inez, a man they called Czar, and another one they called Absinthe. I think Absinthe could have been a lawyer.”
“I thought the position was a grocery store clerk.” Anat eased her body carefully to another position. “Why would they need a lawyer, and what kind of name is Czar? Or Absinthe, for that matter.”
Immediately, Zyah caught up the pillows that had been scattered around the bed and pushed them behind her grandmother’s back. “Czar and Absinthe belong to a club called Torpedo Ink. They own the grocery store with Inez. She wants to get back to her store in Sea Haven, and they need a manager to run the one in Caspar. I’m hoping they hire me so I can stay close to you. The pay is all right, nothing to get super excited about, but it really is the best for around here. I’m kind of looking forward to working there, so I really hope I get the job.”
Anat made another little trilling sound, but this time it signaled she thought her granddaughter wasn’t telling her the truth, and she wasn’t going to put up with it despite the fact that Zyah was all grown up. “You loved your job, Zyah. You traveled all over, which you love to do. You made good money, and you were very respected. Managing a grocery store in a little town is a far cry from what you went to school for,” she chided.
“I came home because I wanted to come home, Mama Anat,” Zyah said quietly and slipped back into the chair, crossing her arms and leveling her gaze at her grandmother.
“I love you, child, more than anything on this earth. You checked on me, and I appreciate that, but now you can go. I’m fine. I’ve got my friends here, and they’ll look after me. You may as well get that stubborn look off your face, Zyah.”
“I am telling the truth, whether you want to believe me or not. I’ve wanted an excuse to come and live with you for a long time, but how do I give up a job like that one and tell you I was lonely for you and wanted to stay here? Someone breaking in and . . .” Just trying to say it made her choke up.
She could barely look at her grandmother’s fading bruises. Some monsters had broken into Anat’s home—her sanctuary—and beaten her so that she fell and broke her leg and arm and cracked some ribs. They stole her husband’s jewelry and beat her more, trying to make her reveal where her hidden safe was. She told them she had no safe, but they didn’t believe her. Fortunately, hearing screams, neighbors called the sheriff, and the robbers had been run off before they killed her. They had threatened her with a knife and told her they were going to “string her up” if she didn’t tell them.
Zyah detested leaving her grandmother alone for even a few minutes, but Anat’s care cost money, and Zyah was determined that she was going to receive the best care possible. That meant she was getting a job or two jobs while she lived with her grandmother so she could keep an eye on her and oversee her recovery.
She shrugged her shoulders and looked her grandmother straight in the eye, bearing up under that scrutiny, refusing to look away. “I wasn’t happy with what happened to you, but I wanted to come. I gave my notice. I didn’t take a leave or vacation, both of which I could have done. I left because I wanted to come home and stay with you. If you don’t want me to live with you, I can rent my own place, but I’m staying close. I understand if, when you’re better, you prefer me to leave so you can be alone to entertain Dwayne.” She kept a straight face.
Anat feigned shock. “Zyah. That is not funny.” But she looked pleased. “Of course I want you to stay with me.” She paused a moment, her fingers plucking at the beautiful comforter that she had quilted. “Are you going to tell me about the man who upset you? He caused real unhappiness. You let him in.”
Her grandmother hadn’t changed in the time she’d been gone. That was a comfort too. She’d always been a good listener, and she’d never been judgmental. She’d taught Zyah to be the same way.
“I brought it on myself. I can’t even blame him as much as I want to. Your friend Lizz Johnson? Her lovely granddaughter, Francine Winters, the one you asked me as a favor to be the designated driver for, that granddaughter? You know, that one who has despised me my entire life?”
“That bad?”
“Francine Winters is a shark in the water, Mama Anat, circling men all the time. I don’t understand why she manages to get men to fall at her feet, but she does. She lies and cheats and wouldn’t be loyal to a man if his life depended on it. She’s ending marriage three, and she was bragging that she dated several married men while she was married. She wanted to sleep her way to the top of the Torpedo Ink club so she could be the ‘old lady’ to the president. She knew two chapters were going to be at the party, and she had her eyes on the president of the new chapter. I guess right away she zeroed in on some poor man she was going to seduce to start her journey upward.”
“Oh, dear, Zyah. I’m so sorry for putting you in such a position,” Anat said. She eased her body to the side again, running her hand gently over her thigh.
Zyah frowned. “Did you take your pain pills tonight like you were supposed to? The doctor said not to wait. You’re supposed to take them every six hours.”
Anat waved her hand. “We’ll discuss my problems after. You went with Francine, the shark, to the party. What happened?”
Zyah couldn’t help laughing. “There is no derailing the conversation, is there? The party definitely didn’t look like anything I was ready for, so I explained to one of the women that I needed to study for the interviews, and she seemed to understand and told me I could wait in a back room that was supposed to be empty for the night. I wanted to practice belly dancing. I haven’t done it for some time, although I was always very good at it.”
Anat nodded. “You’ve been excellent at belly dancing since you were a little girl. The job at the restaurant in Healdsburg?”
Zyah nodded. “Yes. All the waitresses know how to belly dance—it’s part of the entertainment there. It’s not that far to drive, and I can supplement my income if I get that job as well. I know I have an excellent education . . .”
“I loved that you spent so much time abroad at school and then working,” Anat said proudly. “But if you’re telling me the truth and you are really finished with traveling, I’m very glad to have you home. Please do get to the part where you meet your young man.”
“He’s definitely not my man, Mama Anat,” Zyah said, jumping up and pacing across the bedroom floor to the window to stare out, suddenly feeling like a caged tiger.
She was barefoot as usual. She always felt trapped in shoes. With the soles of her feet pressed to the floor, she felt like she was connected to the earth. She could feel its vibrations. She’d felt connected to Player. She should have known, just by the name he’d given her, but that connection to him had been so strong, and now she wasn’t sure she could e
ver trust her gift again.
“Zyah. Child.”
Her grandmother’s voice was very soft. Very loving. Zyah didn’t dare turn around, not with tears burning behind her eyes. She wasn’t shedding them, but her grandmother knew her too well, and she would know. This had cut deep, and it was silly when she didn’t even know his real name. He hadn’t told her. He’d given her the truth of him. Player. He played women, and he’d played her for an absolute fool.
“You don’t have to tell me if it hurts too much, but sometimes it feels better to share. I’m always here for you. Always on your side.”
“I don’t know why I liked him so fast. I just gave myself to him, Mama Anat. All in. Everything. I danced for him. Laughed with him. I felt as if I’d known him my entire life. Being with him was magical. I thought he felt the same way. From the moment he walked through the door, he took my breath away. I never got it back. I still can’t breathe when I think about him.” She couldn’t.
She tried not to let her mind go back to that night of pure bliss, of perfection. Everything about Player had been exactly what she’d wanted it to be. Her complete fantasy man. Their connection had been so strong, on such an intimate level, she hadn’t even considered holding back. She’d surrendered everything she was to him.
Zyah’s hand crept to her throat. She could barely admit the truth to herself let alone to her grandmother. She whispered it, stroking the faint marks of possession he’d left on her body. She had them everywhere. She’d thought they’d meant something to him when he put them there. He’d acted like they did, but she knew better now.
“Can you come and sit with me, child?” Anat patted the bed beside her.
Zyah’s heart clenched. “I might cry, and I cried so much after the interviews, I thought my eyes would burn out of my head. At least I had enough discipline to get through both before I broke down. He isn’t worth more tears.” But she knew she would shed more. When she was alone in her bed, craving him. He’d set up some kind of terrible addiction.
“Tell me about him.”
Zyah closed her eyes against the sudden wash of sensation pouring over her skin. She wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed at her skin as if she could rid herself of his touch. “He felt like fire every time he touched me. He could be so gentle and then turn rough and wild, like he couldn’t get close enough to me or get enough of me. I couldn’t get enough of him.” She made her confession in an even lower tone.
Her grandmother remained silent, something she often did to encourage Zyah to continue telling her something important. Zyah swung around to face her, a little defiantly, this time deliberately looking her straight in the eye. She knew there was no getting around what she was revealing. Anat would understand that she was talking about having been with her partner sexually when she barely knew him. There was no judgment, but then her grandmother wasn’t a judgmental person. Throughout her childhood and teenage years, that had always remained a constant trait in her—one Zyah counted on now.
“He was so beautiful. Everything about him was beautiful to me, Mama Anat. His body was covered in scars. So many they made me want to weep. I didn’t ask him about them, or the tattoos he had, which covered quite a few. The tattoos were intricate and intriguing. I just talked with him because he seemed to need to hear the sound of my voice. We laughed so much. He loves music the way I do. He loves working with wood. His voice . . .” She broke off again, waving her hands in the air in despair.
Looking straight into her grandmother’s eyes, she asked the question that mattered the most, the one that nagged at her continually. “How could I have been so wrong?”
Anat regarded her just as carefully, never breaking eye contact. “You were so certain he was the one for you?”
Zyah nodded without hesitation. There hadn’t been any doubt in her mind or heart. Player had connected with her on such a level she felt complete. Soul to soul. She’d been that certain of him.
“I felt his heartbeat. When I danced. I was barefoot. He was barefoot. Something was wrong with him when he came into the room. His heart was straining. His mind was chaotic. His rhythm was off, but we were in perfect harmony. Movements, and the pitch of my voice—we connected, I know we did.” She faltered. “I was wrong. I connected with him, but he failed to connect with me. He didn’t. Not at all.”
“Tell me about him before you tell me what happened.” Again, Anat patted the bed beside her.
Zyah couldn’t help herself. She accepted her grandmother’s comfort. Her grandmother had been through hell, beaten and then robbed by intruders, but it was so like her to think only of Zyah and her anguish over losing what really had only been in her mind—an illusion caused by her reckless behavior. She wasn’t like that with men. She was cautious as a rule. Her last relationship had been two years earlier, and it had been a disaster in spite of the fact that she’d entered into it very slowly, taking her time, waiting to be physical with her partner for weeks. She hadn’t been with another man since—until Player.
She eased her hips and legs onto the bed, careful not to bump her grandmother’s fragile body. She curled onto the bed like a child, her grandmother’s hand stroking her hair just the way she had when Zyah was a little girl. It felt the same, like love.
“I came home to take care of you, Mama Anat, but really, I think I came home because I needed this. You loving me. I needed to feel loved. Maybe I thought he was someone special because I needed him to be.”
Anat continued to gently stroke her granddaughter’s hair, humming softly, the sound filling the room. Zyah closed her eyes and allowed herself to feel her grandmother’s comfort surrounding her, holding her close, enfolding her in loving arms.
“I love you so much, Mama Anat,” she murmured. “I hope you always know that. I hope when I was away working, you always knew it.”
The gentle, loving strokes in her hair never stopped. “Of course I knew, Zyah. You sent me letters every week and far too much money every month.”
“I was so homesick. I wanted desperately to come home, but I wanted to make you proud of me. You were such a strong woman, and I wanted to be strong like you. You came here alone after you lost everyone, with me to raise. I didn’t want to let you down.”
“You could never let me down, Zyah,” Anat chided, making her little trilling noise, this time definitely a small but loving reprimand. “You should know that by now.”
“What’s wrong with me that I can’t find the right man? I was so certain. I felt him touch me inside, soul to soul, just the way you said would happen when I listened to the earth. I heard her talking to me. I felt her move through me to him.”
Anat continued to stroke Zyah’s hair gently. “Gifts are strange things, child. You think the fault lies with you, but perhaps the failing was his. Tell me about him. He must belong to this club. The same club that owns this store you want to work for.”
Zyah sat up slowly and pushed back her hair, facing her grandmother. “Yes, Torpedo Ink. He’s a member. He has the same tree tattooed on his back that’s on their jackets. I need the job, and hopefully he won’t come in and bother me. If he does, I’ll look for another job, but there just aren’t that many around, and they offered the best wages for this area.”
“You are procrastinating, and that’s unlike you.”
She was. Zyah traced one of the flowers in the quilt on her grandmother’s bed. “I don’t want to feel like I’m so shallow I fell for him because he’s so beautiful, but he truly is. He’s tall and has wide shoulders and a thick chest, with muscles that go on forever. His hair is longer than I ever thought I’d like, falling below his shoulders. It’s thick and very unruly, light brown with sun streaks going all through it. I loved his eyes. He has the most striking blue eyes. They’re an unusual shade of blue—icy blue and then dark royal blue, and very piercing, as if he can see right into your soul. He has a short beard and mustache, nicely trimm
ed. So yeah, gorgeous man physically.”
“You are not a shallow person, Zyah—I will never believe that.”
Zyah gave her grandmother a small smile of thanks. “He’s intelligent and loves music. He has an affinity for wood—for the earth. He’s compassionate. His voice changed whenever he talked about his fellow Torpedo Ink members. He called them his brothers or sisters. I loved the way he talked about them. He clearly loves Blythe. You know her. Everyone does. She’s a cousin to the Drake sisters, you know, Sea Haven’s royalty.”
Anat nodded. She’d lived in Sea Haven a long time. “Yes, I don’t run in the Drakes’ circles, but Inez and Lizz talk of them. Everyone does.”
“Blythe is married to Czar, the president of Torpedo Ink, and Player told me that Blythe is kind of like a mother hen to all of the club members. It was the way he said it, not making fun of her like you might expect; his tone held absolute love and respect. He talked like Blythe walked on water. You just can’t fake that.”
Zyah rubbed at her arms, once again trying to remove the sensation of Player running his hands over her skin. Touching her. Creating flames licking at her. A hundred tongues of fire. She couldn’t get him off her or out of her, no matter how hard she tried.
“I thought, when we talked all night and laughed together, we were building a solid foundation. When we fell all over each other, I thought it meant something.”
She shook her head, refusing to give in to the burn behind her eyes. This mistake was hers, and she always learned her lessons, accepted her responsibilities and didn’t make the same mistake again, no matter how hard it was to avoid that same blunder.
“We were both exhausted in the early morning hours. He lay on the bed, and I went to lie down, just to sleep for a short while next to him. I wanted him to hold me. I wanted to feel his body curled around mine, but he shoved me off the bed. Pushed me away. Hard. He actually said he was done with me. He told me he never slept with women like me and handed me a wad of money. Said I’d earned it. It was a lot of money. He even told me to leave my number on the end table so he could give me a call sometime. Wasn’t that just lovely?”
Reckless Road Page 6