Spin the Bottle

by Anne Conley

  “Zane!”

  He came running, maybe a Pavlovian throw back to his childhood. “Yeah, Mom?”

  “Lettie needs you to take her somewhere. We’ll be fine. If you don’t make dinner, call.” Her words were warm, her meddling subtle.

  Zane turned his eyes on Lettie. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know, but its Becca. She’s at The Beestro.” Thankful he was there because she was suddenly shaking and still had no idea why, she grabbed his arm. “Let’s go.”

  Zane drove her to the small eatery named for the owner’s wife, Bee, on the picturesque square. It was probably short for Beatrice or something, but she manned the front while her husband was in charge of the kitchen. Filled with tiny tables and chairs, and famous for their brunches in town, it was a lovely spot for Becca’s mental breakdown. At least they could have some quiche. Watching Zane’s mother make all those enchiladas had made Lettie hungry.

  Delicious feelings about last night got heavier in the car, but Becca’s voice cracking on the phone as she sobbed dissipated all the sexy feelings. Especially when Lettie saw her. A pang in her gut hit her hard. Becca was her friend. She didn’t have many, especially throughout her lifetime, but Becca was definitely one of them. As her friend looked up at her from the small table in the corner, her blue eyes pierced Lettie, and suddenly the red-rimmed orbs filled with relief.

  “What happened?” Lettie rushed over and sank into the chair opposite Becca, and Zane lowered himself gingerly into another tiny chair. Surprisingly, it held his bulk, but that didn’t stop him from looking funny in the dainty, wrought iron thing.

  Becca sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Zane reached into his pockets and came up with a rag he’d been working with. Sheepishly, he handed it to Becca. “You can keep it. Dad brought a whole bag of them. I haven’t used it for anything.” He looked at his hands. “Uh, I’ll go so y’all can do your thing.”

  Becca reached for him. “No, this concerns you too. I think.” Turning back to Lettie, she held out her hands after a very unladylike blowing of her nose, emptying its contents into the rag.

  “Hodge fired me because I wouldn’t give him a blowjob on the office desk. He just … whipped it out and actually expected me to suck it right there. He said there had been a lot of it going on between you and them, meaning the other firefighters doing the calendar,” she gestured toward Zane as if he encompassed all that was masculine and feral, which he sort of did. “And he said he wouldn’t be surprised if it was an after-hours prostitution ring. It was like he was suddenly delusional.”

  She wiped her nose once again before crumpling the rag up and stuffing it into the pocket of her jeans.

  “He told me if I wanted to keep my job, I had to blow him like I did the rest of y’all.” She looked back at Zane, giving him the once over. “As if.” She snorted a little, trying to bring a little humor back to the situation, but Lettie was livid.

  “He actually showed you his penis?”

  Zane was clenching his fists on the table, holding himself rigid. As soon as Becca nodded the affirmative, he rose. “Stay here. I’ll take care of this.”

  Lettie didn’t want him to. He looked like he was ready to kill Mr. Hodge, and she didn’t want him to go to jail. Or get hurt. Or anything.

  But he was gone before she could say anything.

  Zane’s mind was spinning. This douchebag had fired Lettie already. Wasn’t that enough? He felt guilty enough about that, even though she didn’t seem to be blaming him for it. Lettie had loved her job, even if this asshat was her boss, albeit a remote position. But to go around telling people she was a whore and using that rumor to try to get something out of the other women working there showed predatory tendencies. Zane didn’t know much about that, but it rattled around in his brain nonetheless.

  He made a quick call.

  “Did you get that stuff I asked if you could get?”

  “Absolutely. I even got some women to come forward and sue.” London’s voice was music to Zane’s ears.

  “Perfect. Can you have him served in twenty minutes or so?”

  “I’ll do you one better. See you.” She hung up. Zane and Logan didn’t get along super well, but Logan’s friend Elliot was married to London, and she was a fucking Godsend. Zane had given her a small fortune to hire a PI to investigate Hodge.

  When Zane got there, he forced a calm into his body he didn’t feel. He wasn’t planning on starting out beating the shit out of this guy, but he wasn’t taking that off the table either.

  Mr. Hodge was on the floor under the desk in the reception area, cursing under his breath. Ass in the air, his suit pants were dusty, and when Zane cleared his throat to get the man’s attention, he bumped his head on the way up. Zane got an insane amount of satisfaction from that.

  “Sorry. I don’t even know why we have an iguana here. We don’t take iguanas,” he muttered to himself, rubbing the back of his head when he recognized Zane. A slow smile spread across his face. “Hi there. Can I help you? I doubt it, but do you want to adopt a companion?” The snark in his voice was palpable.

  Again, Zane breathed deeply and counted backward from ten.

  “I wanted to come by and explain some things to you.” Okay, that sounded more threatening than he wanted it to, so he took another deep breath. “Two weeks ago, you walked in on me and Lettie making up from a fight we’d had. We needed to talk, and things went way further than either of us realized. That won’t happen again.”

  Hodge’s smile had turned to a smirk, and Zane really wanted to punch the fucker’s face in, but he continued.

  “The girls and volunteers here have worked hard for this shelter and the animals. Becca’s a good girl, and neither one of them deserve whatever it is you’re thinking about them. They deserve their jobs back.”

  Hodge yanked on his pants, straightening them, but he didn’t do anything to dust his dirty knees off. Zane enjoyed the fourteen-year-old boy inside his head’s reasonings for why the dirt was on his knees and didn’t point it out. Instead, he allowed the dude to look like he was doing exactly what he’d been accusing and expecting Becca and Lettie to have been doing.

  Hodge sat on the corner of his desk and leaned his elbows on his knees as if they were about to have a heart to heart. “Can I be frank?” Without waiting for a response, he continued. “After the inappropriateness of everything I walked in on, the first time anybody’s brought it up is now. That tells me it’s a pretty regular thing, am I right?” He tossed Zane a smarmy wink, and Zane was speechless. “I just want to get in on a little action, you know? There’s nothing wrong with that. What does a guy need to do?”

  Suddenly, Zane saw the guy as a caricature. He was the guy who could never make it in any crowd, so he pretended, became something he thought people would like, but it failed, so he ended up pretending to be what he thought people wanted. And clearly, he thought Zane wanted him to act like the used car salesman, frat boy he never was.

  “I don’t know, act like a human being?” Zane took a step closer, and Hodge’s demeanor dropped. “Do you even like animals, or did you just get some desk job out of college? Have the requests for sexual favors been going on long?” When he didn’t get an answer, Zane continued. “Let me tell you what you’re about to do. You’re about to call the corporate office you work for and get Lettie and Becca back their jobs, and then you’re going to quit. I’m going to stand here and watch you do it.” He bent down and got in the man’s spluttering face. “Got it?”

  “Why the hell would I do that? Why would I quit my job?”

  “Because, if you don’t, we’re going to start with me ripping your asshole out through your nose. After that, Lettie will be filing charges against you, as will Becca. Listening to us have sex while we’re in a relatively private situation? That could be some sex offender bullshit, but we w
on’t know until we give it a try. And the sexual harassment stuff with Becca? That goes on a permanent record. And if she comes forward, how many others are there? How many others will say you did the same to them? Do you really want to find out?” A sleek sedan pulled into the parking lot. “Oh, wait. Maybe we’re about to.”

  London stalked in wearing her city-slicker lawyer outfit, complete with heels, and smacked Hodge in the chest with a manila envelope. “I don’t get to do this very often, but it is with my pleasure to tell you, Mr. Hodge, you’ve been served.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lettie hadn’t yet had the time to actually visit the Gulch for which Pamona was named. Zane practically had a conniption fit when he found out about six weeks into her living with him, and he promptly bundled her into the car for a picnic.

  It was stunning. A wide, shallow feature on the side of a mountain, it held enough water to cool off. Although, for the Florida native, Lettie was accustomed to a humidity that made everything hotter than it actually was, and she totally reveled in the sunshine glittering across the water as she reclined between Zane’s legs. It was crowded, but not too much so.

  “In the winter, this is all full of snow, and it’s sort of a pipe for the snowboarders. We call this the casual side of the mountain.” Zane’s voice rumbled in her ear, lending the moment an air of intimacy. Or maybe that was his finger trailing along the skin just under her shirt.

  She and Zane were getting along surprisingly well after she’d moved in with him. Otis kept her company while he worked his two-day shifts, calming her down when she thought too much about the danger of his profession. Once, he’d worked a two-day shift and hadn’t gotten any sleep because he was constantly out on calls the entire time. The lackadaisical explanation, right before he fell across his bed and went to sleep, made her think it was a relatively regular occurrence.

  Of course, it wasn’t, but it happened. That particular shift hadn’t been inherently dangerous. No brush fires, no house conflagrations. No arson.

  His job was dangerous, no doubt about it. And she was coming to terms with it with the help of Otis. Lettie had always felt dogs provided a level of emotional support to their humans the owners didn’t even grasp. In the weeks she’s been living with Zane, Otis had helped her more than anybody could ever know.

  Lettie still didn’t have a job though. Zane had been supportive of that, promising sexual favors until she found the perfect job. The Austin job had been great, but she realized it wasn’t perfect. Zane’s willingness to move with her was sweet, but their relationship was too new, and she knew the stress would put strain on the love she felt.

  She never wanted to be the cause of Zane’s resentment.

  So, with a lot of soul searching, she’d managed to find some patience and wait it out. She hated it, but Zane never made her feel bad for not working. She was learning some new recipes, and his house was spotless. Otis was healthy and happy.

  It was working.

  They had a routine—a lovely routine that involved together time, apart time, and sex. Lettie had time to hang out with her friends at Mo’s, with and without Zane. She’d heard all the pregnancy stories she could handle in the last couple of weeks, with Annette starting to show signs and Vivian giving her advice and “I’ve been there” speeches.

  “I brought you something.” Zane was leaning back against a rock outcropping and reached behind him for his backpack. “I want you to see it.”

  Out of the backpack, where he had stowed Tupperware containers for their lunch, he brought out a packet of papers.

  She bit her tongue against the Mary Poppins comment she was about to make when Lettie saw the name of the Pamona Gulch Animal Shelter.

  Lettie stifled the sudden surge of emotions she felt. She had purposely put all thoughts of the place out of her head. There was a lawsuit in place against her former supervisor, but she hadn’t wanted her job back, even though it had been offered. One douchebag would only lead the way for a douchebag replacement, and she already had rotten memories ruining her time there.

  “What is this?” She was terrified she was about to read something else about the lawsuit. She really didn’t want to do that. Today was too perfect to ruin it.

  “Just read it.”

  Sitting up, she leaned away from Zane in case this was awful. He continued lazily trailing circles on her back, leaving behind goose bumps and erotic thoughts about his hands. But she focused.

  And then she dropped the papers.

  Zane smiled, his even teeth a stark contrast to his dark skin, as he stomped his foot on the papers to keep them from blowing in the breeze.

  “What is this?”

  “A surprise.”

  “Your parents bought the shelter?” Lettie was gobsmacked, still trying to process what the papers said.

  “Yes. They want to make it a no-kill facility, not beholden to state and national funding. And they want you to get it up and running. Manage it. Carte blanche.”

  “Really?” Words were failing her. Left stupid, she tried to control the thoughts railing around in her brain. She would be working for his parents. What would happen if they broke up? Did this make her a kept woman anyway? But wasn’t she a kept woman now? What the hell would she owe his parents if she took this job?

  Zane’s parents would be her bosses.

  “Really. Mom was truly taken with your idea about the no-kill shelter. We never could have pets growing up because the twins were allergic to dander or some shit. But she’s always been an animal lover. Since they’ve moved out of the house, she’s brought home every animal known to man as a rescue. I think this is just an excuse to make that ‘hobby’ into something professional.”

  “Zane … I don’t know what to say.” Would his mother be underfoot? Holy shit. She did not want that.

  But she didn’t know how to tell Zane that.

  “Think about it, but stop thinking too hard. This was something they wanted to do and they can do. Mom already promised not to be up your ass while you’re doing this.”

  “Holy shit.” It was like he was reading her damn mind.

  And kind of freaky.

  How bad could it be? It was a job. A good job. Her dream job. And with his parents being the boss, she already had an open line of communication and minimal red tape since it wasn’t a national organization. Lettie took a deep breath and closed her eyes, hoping she wasn’t fucking things up. Zane looked ridiculously hopeful.

  “Okay,” she breathed.

  “Okay?” His eyebrows raised, and that fucking grin lit up his face again.

  “Yeah. Okay. This can be good, right?”

  “Baby, this is gonna be great.”

  It had all the trappings of perfection. Hopefully, it would live up to expectations.

  Zane could see the wheels turning in her head, even with her back to him. It was almost like smoke was coming out of her ears. He would laugh at it, but he knew the seriousness of the situation.

  As it was, her back was stiff, and even as he urged her to relax into his body once more, he could still feel the tension in her shoulders.

  As with everything Lettie had resisted since they’d met, Zane knew she would love this if she would give it a chance. His parents had wanted to just buy the shelter for her, but he’d talked them out of that, knowing she would balk at it. As it stood, they would give it to her as a wedding present.

  A wedding present.

  His parents, his mom specifically, were convinced they would be married. But Zane saw the doubt and fear in Lettie’s eyes when she didn’t know he was looking. He knew if he rushed things, she would run back to Florida.

  But he had a plan. He’d said it before, and he’d say it again. Zane was gonna wife her. She was his. She just didn’t realize it yet. As soon as she did, he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Bu
t the timing wasn’t right.

  Wolf spiders had a thing. The female would build a nest, and the male entered it. Once he got inside, she was his, and they’d mate and do the spider thing. The only catch was, the male couldn’t do things too fast, or else she would kill and eat him.

  That’s where Zane was. He was at the entrance, trying not to move too fast. If he did, Lettie would eat him. Not literally.

  He didn’t think.

  Anyway, he had to bide his time. If she would agree to work at the shelter until he proposed, then his parents could give it to her, and she would have everything she wanted.

  And so would he.

  “You know how happy I am, right?” he whispered in her ear, feeling her relax incrementally against him.

  “I guess so.” She shrugged.

  Classic Lettie, not seeing what was clearly in front of her. That was okay. He didn’t mind spelling it out for her.

  “I am. You make me incredibly happy, Lettie. I didn’t know I could do this with someone.” He wasn’t going to explain what this was—back to that wolf spider thing—but he wanted to say the words anyway.

  Because she made his life perfect, and she would continue to, even when things got hard.

  And he couldn’t wait.

  Epilogue

  Two months later

  Lettie was officially declaring summertime over. It had been hotter than Hades, even though New Mexico’s arid heat was different from the mild temperatures she dealt with in her part of Florida. However, when the weather changed here, it changed.

  Overnight, it seemed, the temperature had plummeted, and everyone’s talk about an early autumn had her excited for actual seasons. And holy cow, were there seasons. Currently, it was almost as cold as winter in Gainesville, and it was only September.

  She was currently working on paperwork for adoptions. Since this was now a no-kill shelter, lots of things had to be implemented to help with overcrowding. Lettie was working on an expansion project and was trying to open up advertising adoptions to places out of the county. There was a lot involved with this: targeted home inspectors to make sure the animals were being cared for, veterinary partnerships for reduced cost shots and sterilizations, advertising, the list went on and on.