Fall Guy (A Youngblood Book)

by Reinhardt, Liz

  Fall Guy

  by

  Liz Reinhardt

  © 2012 by Liz Reinhardt

  All rights reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention.

  May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

  Cover Design by Stephanie Mooney.

  Evan 1

  My grandmother's pearls slide soft and cool against the skin of my neck as I twist them nervously.

  I always imagined myself fingering them just before I walked down the aisle on my wedding day, their gold hue complimenting a snow white wedding dress that showed a tasteful amount of skin and hugged me in all the right places.

  I had no idea I'd get a chance to wear them so much sooner, and for such an embarrassing reason.

  This morning she inserts the necklace’s little gold hook into the eye-shaped clasp and presses it tight, her dry fingertips light and gentle on my shoulders, the softly sweet, rich smell of her perfume reassuring in my nostrils.

  "Ninety percent of this entire ordeal is how you look, sugar. Keep that backbone straight, but don't you dare even think one solitary saucy thought. You don't have what it takes to keep your temper off your face."

  I glance up at her reflection in the gold-framed mirror of my vanity, and guilt gives a long, silent scream in the back of my brain. There are lines between her ash-blond eyebrows I can't recall being there before I became a permanent fixture in her daily life. Her smile strains across her face and her blue eyes, the same light, icy blue as mine, are dull with worry.

  Granddaddy stands in the doorway and clears his throat, too much of a marrow-deep gentleman to feel comfortable entering any lady's room while she is dressing. Gramma helps me slide my arms into the navy and white seersucker jacket that gives me an aura of demure sweetness.

  "I'm ready, Granddaddy. You can come in."

  All-encompassing shame shudders through me like a tiny tropical storm bashing underneath a bell jar. Granddaddy walks up to me, the sodden weight of his steps making guilt prick at my eyes, stinging as a relentless wind.

  "Well, darlin', you look a picture. No man in his right mind, judge or not, could see a young lady so beautiful and fail to realize this is all just a big misunderstanding."

  His breath wheezes from his mouth in labored gasps. August is an uncompromisingly hot month in Georgia, and the humidity makes his lungs constrict. It's painful for Gramma and I to see Granddaddy operating at less than his usual cyclone-riding-a-galloping-mustang energy level.

  "I'll be fine. No matter what the judge decides." I pressure my lips to curve in a perfect, patient smile that is an undeniable family heirloom, passed down from my grandmother like a birthright. Composure in the face of any obstacle is just how the women of our stock function.

  "I can't believe that boy's family wasn't willing to make peace over this whole...misunderstanding." Granddaddy's bright white mustache quivers with rage. "I understand a family's connection to their land, but it was just a bunch of damn nut trees."

  Gramma squeezes his elbow and runs her hand in relaxing circles on his forearm. "Come and let's have some sweet tea. Kailyn made a big batch before she left last night. Come on, now. Evan needs to get a move-on, or she'll be late."

  "Shouldn't we go with her?" Granddaddy demands for the hundredth time, and my heart squeezes with love for him.

  It’s beyond sweet that he’s so focused on me and my crazy dilemma, especially considering the fact that Kailyn's sweet tea is usually enough to tempt that man away from even golf, his primary obsession.

  "No, Granddaddy. This is my own mess, and I'm going to take care of it all by myself." Before he can protest, I hike up on my toes and pop a kiss on his cheek and my grandmother's, making a registered effort to avoid looking either of them directly in the eye. "Plus that, we have a strategy we need to stick with. I show up with you, and the judge assumes I think I can get myself out of this using my name."

  "You should be able to." He rubs the spot just over his heart with short, firm strokes of his fingers, a tic that always rears its head when he's particularly annoyed.

  I'd worry, but his doctor says he has the heart of an ox.

  "I'll be just fine," I reassure them both, turning away from their worried faces.

  I kept a firm hold on those breezy, confident words like they’re my life-jacket in a shipwreck, because I don't feel nearly as confident as I sound.

  I run my hand down the shiny, curved wood of the left staircase that leads into the gleam of our crystal-filled front foyer, my feet tripping over the marble tiles before I burst through to the heat, so stagnant the air feels heavy and dead. I slide into the mechanically cool interior of the car I pre-started as quickly as possible and head to court early.

  I manage to hang on to my cheery forced optimism all the way to the courthouse doors, in through the metal-detectors, and right up to the doorway of my assigned courtroom, but that's where I watch my confidence explode like a water balloon dropped to the cement from thirty stories up.

  I'm positive the splash of my shattered courage should be audible, but no one gives so much as a quarter glance my way.

  Lawyers with scuffed briefcases, a man with slicked-back hair and a clip-on tie, and a woman in saggy sweatpants rolled at the waist walk by, but no one notices me skulking in the corner.

  My gold watch flashes from the limp bend of my wrist, warning me not to be tardy, not to make a bigger, more complicated mess of this than I already have.

  I'm tempted to call my best friend, my life-line, Brenna, but what would she say? She'd make me go in, and I can't do that.

  So I sit on the chilly slate floor, not worried about the wrinkles setting in on the sheath dress Gramma pressed for me this morning. I bury my head in my clammy hands and resolve to stare at the tiles until I manage to convince them to open wide and ingest me whole.

  A voice punctures through my self-pity and fear. A smooth, obnoxiously confident voice with the undercurrent of an accent I've never heard before and can't place.

  "Are you nervous?"

  The words are overly familiar, like he's backstage with me before a big recital or at my shaking, heart-broken side at that second when I’ve realized my mother disappeared on another bender.

  I focus on the polished shine of his black boots and try not to admit that his voice is a sweet caress in my ears, despite my brain’s strong protests and warning bells.

  "I'm fine. I just...needed a second. To sit." It may be the most idiotic thing I've ever uttered, but I refuse to back down from my resolve to sit on this floor.

  For a second.

  Like I said.

  The boots shift slightly, and I realize he's leaned over to open the door of the courtroom. A woman thanks him in a high, nervous voice.

  "You're welcome, ma'am."

  My head whips up at the 'ma'am.'

  Not that I haven't heard that word spilled like sticky sweet syrup from a thousand mouths of a thousand boys who've been born and bred to use it every day.

  There’s something about this boy, the way that word slides off his tongue, buoyed with cautious respect and elegant pleasure.

  Like he loves saying the word.

  Like his lips weigh the worth of it.

  I crane my neck, and he's looking down at me with half a twisted smile, his hand extended. I put my freshly manicured hand into his, rough with calluses, and he coaxes me to stand up with a gentle tug, so I'm suddenly nestled too close to the lean, towering height of him.

  "Have you had long enough? To sit?" The questions are sweet, but his lips have a twisted curve that makes my heart double-beat to the tune of one word: wicked.

  I smell him, and it's a smell that's not part of the deep, salty musks
of this area. It's clean and fresh and sweet. Something foreign and intoxicating. It smells like clover, wet with a sheen of overnight dew.

  "I've had long enough." I pull my hand from his, reluctantly, and press my palms down the front of my skirt. For an instant, the wrinkles smooth out, but the second I take my hands away, they spring back. I can't keep the tsk of my tongue locked in my mouth.

  His laugh scatters a little too loud for this dim, serious court hallway.

  "Hey." He says it informally, like we've known each other forever, and I move a step back to keep him out of my physical territory while the imprint of his big laugh twines through my neurons. "You can get away with them."

  His eyes are blue, but not glacial frozen blue like mine. His are like sun-warmed blueberries, dark denim blue, well-deep and framed by overlong jet black lashes. He blinks slowly, and his lean, chiseled face is relaxed and calm despite its cut lines.

  "Get away with what?" I keep my voice coolly unaffected.

  His eyes train on me, he leans over, and his words weasel in my ears and prickle down my backbone.

  "Wrinkles. Stains. Tears. You're too pretty to bother worrying about any of that. The first thing people notice is your face. Once they notice that, there's really no noticing anything else. Trust me on this one."

  He tilts his head to the side, indicating that we should go into the courtroom, and I notice that his short, dark hair is newly cut, expertly done.

  "That's the worst pick-up line I've ever heard," I tell him, but a tiny shiver of appreciation bolts through me before it disappears, like that magical fragment of a second when a snowflake lands on your tongue, perfect and whole before it melts into oblivion.

  "I'm not trying to pick you up." His eyes are dancing, a jig, the robot, the macarena, and I work to keep my lips in a neat, straight line. "Judge Schwenzer is a stickler for being on time, and we're two minutes away from being late."

  He swings the door open, and I do my best not to be too obvious in my admiration of the clean lines of his muscles through the thin cotton of his button-down. I notice some skin is etched with tattoos I can barely make out.

  "After you, m'lady."

  Then he smiles, my nerves unfurl in a long, smooth spin, and I walk into the hushed courtroom with tiny sparks of silvery light flickering on the outsides of my eyes. It's probably from nerves. It's probably because I didn't eat breakfast. It's absolutely not because this irritatingly over-familiar hustler is trying to pick me up in the hallway of a courthouse.

  I clamp down hard and quick on my judgment. I'm here for trespassing and unintentional arson. He's probably here to argue a speeding ticket.

  I murmur a 'thank you' and panic petrifies my legs and leaves me blocked in the doorway. He nudges me in, takes my hand as if I'm some new kid he's been assigned to lead around on the first day of school, and pulls me to a long wooden pew-like bench, where we sit.

  I run my fingers over the red leather portfolio cover I’m holding onto for dear life. Other people have their court documents clutched in their fists or in cheap ten-cent folders, but I have fancy taste in my accessories.

  Mystery Guy has nothing in his hands. Unlike the other people in the courtroom, he's not sitting ram-rod straight or fidgeting. He looks perfectly relaxed.

  I bet it was a speeding ticket. He probably thinks just showing up will get him out of it.

  I flip my cover open, glance over all the damning evidence pitted against me in black and white, then snap it shut again.

  The judge enters the courtroom, and we jump to our feet as a solitary, slightly sheepish unit of criminals. Law breakers. Deviants. Sweat coats both my palms.

  When Judge Schwenzer finally sits and we settle back down, she attacks the files on her desk. From her shellacked bun to her sensibly hideous glasses, she's all business, and I feel my heart sink.

  This woman would never splurge on a red leather portfolio cover for her incriminating court documents. This woman will hate me on principle.

  I catch the guy looking at me. No sneaking a look, no flirty attempts to maybe establish eye contact; just plain, open looking. When I put all my efforts into staring him down, he gives me a clear, wide smile and winks, one slow, lazy flick of an eyelid laced with all those gorgeous lashes. My heart races again, and I turn my attention stubbornly to the front of the courtroom.

  Which is a mistake. Judge Schwenzer is chewing some poor girl apart over a DUI charge. Apparently this isn't her first. And just when she's finished reducing the girl to a blubbering mass of tears, she picks up the next file.

  "Winchester Tobar Youngblood."

  The guy stands and says, "Excuse me," before he flashes one more cocky smile and walks with sure confidence to the judge's bench.

  Judge Schwenzer's lips are already compressed flat and mean, a line she’s daring anyone to cross.

  "Winchester, the charges against you involve disturbing the peace and public intoxication. How do you plead?"

  Shock jars my eyeballs right to the front of the room, though it makes no sense at all for me to be shocked. I do not know him, no matter how strangely intimate our little court hallway rendezvous felt. Sweet manners, a few open smiles, and a wink aren't enough to establish a man's character. But maybe he's not--

  "Guilty, your honor."

  I'm admittedly a poor judge of guys, but the disappointment I feel over this particular guy at this particular moment is uncanny.

  Judge Schwenzer also seems...not so much disappointed, but disbelieving.

  "I don't buy it, Mr. Youngblood. The officer filing the report said the man he observed was shaggy, unkempt. In all the times you've come before the court, you've never looked that way."

  Winchester bows his head with deference. "My mother told me I should always get a haircut before an important court date, ma’am."

  That is a perfectly reasonable explanation. And, honestly, it makes no sense for the judge to question something so easily explained. Why didn't she think of it?

  "The officer also noted that the man he gave a citation to had a tattoo on his forearm. Very distinctive. A Pegasus." Her eyes are sharks-with-lasers-intense, and they're trained right on Winchester.

  He cuffs his sleeve back and holds his arm out for her to see, out of my line of sight. His words are low and even, almost meditative.

  "A pooka, ma'am, not a Pegasus. No wings."

  I need to see that tattoo. It's like a foil-wrapped birthday gift on the table in front of me that I’m not allowed to open.

  She closes her eyes behind those steel-framed glasses and lets out a sigh heavy with frustration.

  "That tattoo looks very fresh."

  "My skin takes a long time to heal, ma'am."

  His voice remains even-keeled and patient, and that just seems to dig like splinters into Judge Schwenzer's ass.

  She puckers her lips, shakes her head, and swipes her pen. "Five thousand dollars, probation, and community service." She glances up from her paperwork. “Winchester?”

  He turns to look at her, and there’s a long, silent exchange of facial tics and stares before she says, “This is me giving you one final chance. One. Don’t throw it away. The next time you’re in this courthouse, I will not exercise leniency.”

  Silence rocks between them for a few counts.

  "Thank you, ma'am," Winchester says and picks up the paperwork.

  I watch his confident swagger all the way to the back of the courtroom, but I never get to see him leave, because Judge Schwenzer, angry as a warthog that's been poked with a sharpened stick, calls my name next, venom practically dribbling over the syllables that fall out of her mouth.

  Winch 1

  With girls, it's all in the eyes.

  That's how you can tell, how you know if a girl's going to be some doe-eyed princess you have to tiptoe around until you can unlock what she wants you to find or an eye-rolling vixen ready to run just for the fun of having you chase her.

  Blue, green, brown, hazel, amber, gray: I can remember
the eyes of any girl who caught my attention, even after her name and number are long-forgotten memories.

  I asked her if she was nervous, and it was like a thousand icicles shot out of those eyes to murder my pickup attempts in cold blood.

  This is the weird thing about eyes, though. There’s a saying, 'cold hands, warm heart.' In my experience, a better indicator of a girl's heart is her eyes.

  This girl's are Arctic, but I read underneath them, and can see that the cool exterior is nothing but a cover for a hot temper that burns underneath. I've got a head for stakes and good luck with bets, and I'd be willing to bet everything I have that she gets emotional as hell, probably throws tantrums and lights things on fire.

  I've got warm eyes, but my family always talks about how I’m a cucumber, cool and collected even under pressure, never letting anything rattle me. That’s why I have the job I have. That’s why I do the things I do. I don’t buckle under pressure. Ever.

  I know she's watching me when I'm in front of the courtroom, and when Judge Schwenzer gives me another wrist-slap round of community service and a serious warning, I also know I have to get the hell out of Dodge.

  That girl with those eyes and those curves and that voice, like slow sex during a summer storm, runs way too hot for me to mess with. Especially now, when every damn thing in my world is spiraling out of control, and I'm the only one who can grab all the ends and hold it together.

  I have my hand on the doorknob when Judge Schwenzer calls a name.

  "Evan Williams Lennox."

  The judge's voice is tight and bland, like a puke-colored rubber band stretched until it's about to snap. But the name...there’s no way it can be that girl's, with her heirloom pearls and her little preppy court uniform.

  No girl that high class could be named after whiskey.

  I turn my head and catch her walking up, and I don't even remember taking a seat, but all of a sudden, my ass is back on one of those shiny benches, focusing on the front of the courtroom as old Schwenzer puts the girl through hell, spits her out, and drags her back for more.

  "Ms. Lennox, could you explain to me how exactly it was an accident that you wound up burning down some of the oldest trees in the entire state of Georgia?"