“But . . . but that wasn’t my fault,” J.D. said to him what he’d been saying to himself since the accident. “She ran out in front of my truck.”
“Then why did you fucking run?”
“’Cause I . . .” Why had he told Jax about that? Why hadn’t he just kept his mouth shut?
“You were high, weren’t you?” Jax asked, sounding pissed. Though why he would be pissed was a mystery, he sold them their stashes at a discount.
“I had a few beers,” he lied, but yeah, he’d been a little high.
“If this comes back to bite the Black Blood on the ass, you’re gonna pay.”
“How could it bite the gang?”
“’Cause, you idiot, if they connect you to the hit and run, they’ll eventually connect you to Tommy’s death, and that will lead them back to Malcolm’s coward brother, who wouldn’t even stand up to avenge his brother’s death.”
“They haven’t put the two together,” J.D. said.
“Yet! Let me put it like this . . . we don’t like trouble. We get rid of trouble. And you are beginning to smell a lot like trouble. All I’m saying is if this brings shit on our doorstep, you are gonna pay. If I were you, I’d be figuring out how to make that bitch forget your face.”
His gut tightened. “You want me to kill her?” he asked, not wanting to believe Jax would want this.
“If that’s what it takes,” the gang leader said.
• • •
At ten o’clock that night, Chloe had convinced Sheri she didn’t need her to stay over. And she didn’t. Sheri had her out-of-town fiancé, Kevin, visiting, and had already missed the day with him because of her. But now, by herself for the first time since her accident, Chloe walked around her apartment, and it felt empty. Lonely.
Like her life.
As if to prove her wrong, Cupcake came slinking around the hall to greet her. The black cat, eyes barely open, had shown up on her apartment doorstep a few days after she’d found herself without Jerry. Chloe had stayed up nights feeding the feline in hopes of saving its life. But in some ways, Chloe wondered if the cat had done the same for her. The tiny cat had given Chloe something to live for.
Reaching down, she picked up the feline. “See, I’m not alone.” The cat rubbed its face against her chin, but the emptiness in her chest didn’t go away. And the melancholy reminded her of how she felt for months after her dad died.
“I’m fine,” she said. Her life was just what she made it. She had her mom, her aunt, and her grandmother in Florida. She had her bakery and her writing, which she was going to get back into. Oh, and her friends. So what if her friend list was short? The people who mattered the most to her were here to stay. She’d pretty much excused herself from the group of friends that she and Jerry had hung out with together.
She moved into the bedroom, set Cupcake on the floor, and pulled out a sleep shirt that said “angel” on it. After she slipped it on, she looked back at her bed. Then her gaze shifted to the two presents, all tied up with silver bows and ribbons, sitting on the bedroom chair.
One more day and she would give them to Goodwill. She’d drop them off wrapped up and all. She didn’t want to know what was inside. The cards might say “To Jerry and Chloe,” but that was the old Chloe. The one whose life had been perfectly planned out.
And that part of her, the one who should have opened those gifts, was as gone as Jerry.
She no longer knew what her life would entail. She didn’t trust anything well enough to make plans. She didn’t even trust herself enough to start another book. Day to day.
Curling up on the bed, she closed her eyes and tried to sleep. Sleep hovered right around the corner, that feeling of nothingness, and then she felt the mattress shift.
Too big of a shift to be Cupcake. Had Sheri returned, worried about her? It had to be. She was the only one with a key. “I told you to go home.”
“That’s not what I heard,” the deep male voice said.
She opened her eyes and let out a squeal when her gaze landed on the Johnny Depp lookalike leaning back on the other side of her bed and staring at her with a heavy hooded gaze.
“What are you doing here?” Chloe asked.
Her heart pounded, then it hit her. Another dream?
Chapter Four
She looked frightened and Cary knew exactly how she felt. He ran a hand over his face. Thankfully, he’d had a few minutes to push his own fear aside after he opened his eyes and found himself here in her bed. “Do you want the truth?”
“No, I want you to lie to me! Of course I want the truth!”
She started slapping the side of her face.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to wake up,” she said.
“I tried that, too.” He studied her and remembered what they’d been talking about. “Some women prefer lies,” he said teasingly.
She frowned, and suddenly he realized that might not have been the right thing to say.
“What kind of women prefer lies? Wait, never mind. It’s obviously the kind of women you hang out with.”
Now he frowned. First his sister attacks his choice of company, and now her. “There is nothing wrong with the women I hang out with. They know what they want. I know what I want. We make each other happy.” So why did saying that make him feel as if his skin didn’t fit right?
Probably the happy part of the statement. He couldn’t call himself happy, but he wasn’t miserable anymore. He knew what miserable was, too. That’s what he’d been for about six months after his sergeant had walked into his office and told him the news about his wife.
“Fine,” Chloe said. “I’m glad you’re happy. And since I don’t like being lied to, I’m obviously not your type. And you aren’t mine. So if you don’t mind would you leave my dream?”
Her comment stung. Probably because she was his type, or used to be. Before Korine, she’d fit his bill to a tee. He used to not like too much flash. He went for natural beauty.
“Okay, let’s go with the truth, then.” He stopped and looked at her and damn she was pretty. “What were we talking about?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.” She closed her eyes . . . tight. When she opened them and saw him she frowned. “I can’t seem to wake up. What’s happening?”
“I don’t have a clue.” He’d actually considered that he might be dead, but he didn’t feel dead. Not that he knew what that felt like.
“You disappeared and I was thinking about you. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to listen to Freda tell me all her medical conditions. And when I opened my eyes, I was here.”
“So you went to sleep. Great. Now wake up and get out of my bed and my dream.”
“But it’s a nice bed.” He looked around and tried not to get caught up in how good she looked stretched out beside him, in a soft nightshirt that looked so easy to remove. But he let himself glance at her one more time. Nope, this didn’t feel like dead. “I kind of like this better than Room Six.”
She pressed her palms against her eyes. “Room Six doesn’t exist,” she said.
He’d told himself that, too. It hadn’t changed anything.
“This is just a dream. I need to wake up. I’m closing my eyes, and when I open them, you’re not going to be here.”
He stood up and moved around the room, stopping in front of the chair holding two presents. The silver and white paper with bells on it told him they were wedding gifts.
Glancing back, he saw she still had her eyes closed and appeared to be concentrating really hard. Funny thing was, after she’d disappeared, he’d tried doing the very same thing to get her back. And here she was, trying to make him disappear. If he didn’t have the self-confidence of an ox, he might have been hurt.
He reached down and flipped open the card and read the tag: To Chloe and Jerry.
The memory of seeing the vision of Jerry proposing filled his head. She had loved that guy. He glanced back at her again. What was her story?
What had happened between her and her fiancé?
She opened her eyes and stared at the side of the bed. “It worked.” A smile appeared on her sweet lips and she looked totally relieved—so much so, that if he knew how, he’d wish himself away for her sake.
But he didn’t know how. Honestly didn’t know what the friggin’ hell was happening. He’d begun to believe Beatrice’s theory that Room Six was a waiting room and that Chloe had been called back. But that didn’t explain what he was doing here now.
He waited quietly for her to notice him. And when she did, she lurched back and hit her headboard.
“I don’t mean to scare you,” he said, aware again of how soft and sweet she looked in that bed. The nightshirt she wore wasn’t exactly tight-fitting, but it didn’t hide everything. And right then he realized he was right about her sports bra concealing a lot. She had enough upstairs to please any man. And when she jerked back, those soft swells of flesh had shimmied. So what she had was real. He’d missed real.
“Did I die again?” she asked.
“I . . .” He’d already told her he didn’t know anything. “I don’t think so.” He paused and realized he believed it. “We’re not in Room Six, so this must be something else.”
“This is my apartment,” she said, as if to clarify. “It had to just be a dream, right?”
“I don’t think it’s my dream.” He looked around her bedroom. There was a small desk. He moved over and saw a couple of children’s books. Then he noticed the author’s name written across the front. Chloe Sanders.
“Why isn’t it your dream?” she asked.
He shot her a charming smile. “Well, my dreams usually go a little different than this.”
She glared at him as if she knew exactly what he was talking about. Don’t ask him why he felt he had the liberty to joke with her like this, but he did. Then he knew why. In the vision, he’d heard her joking about her ‘Bob’ with her friend.
That was another thing he didn’t understand. Not her toy, but the visions. If he touched her now would he get another one?
“Of course, dreams do change directions sometimes.” He grinned.
“That’s alright, it’s my dream, not yours,” she insisted.
“Then you need some help with your dreams.” He chuckled. “Can I make some suggestions?”
“No. I don’t need help. I just need to wake up.” She tilted her chin up, and he saw a stubborn streak in her. Not so much that he disliked it. Just the opposite. He’d never appreciated a pushover.
She tried to sit up a little higher and he saw her wince. “Are you okay?”
“No, I got hit by a truck!”
“That’s why I’m asking. But you don’t look cut up or anything.”
“I’m bruised.”
“You’re lucky.”
“Lucky would have been not getting hit by a truck.”
He chuckled and then looked back to the desk and the books. “You’re an author?” he asked, picking up one of the books.
“I used to be,” she said.
“Why did you stop?”
She didn’t answer.
He glanced at the wedding gifts again, and for some reason he suspected the two things were connected. “What happened with Jerry?”
She frowned. “You’re just a dream.”
“Then what’s the harm in answering?”
“What’s the benefit?” she countered.
He shrugged. “Curiosity.”
“You’re the one asking questions. Not me,” she said.
“Yeah, but you want to ask them. I mean, if this is your dream, then you’ve created me. Aren’t you curious about what you created?”
He saw her consider it. And he knew he had her. “Ah, come on, you tell me and I’ll tell you.”
“Tell each other what?” she asked.
“Our secrets,” he said, shocked he’d offer this. He didn’t talk about stuff like this, but what the hell, he might not be dead, but he wasn’t exactly alive. The bell to bring him back hadn’t rung. And he didn’t know if it would. A crazy thought hit. He almost felt he was more alive—more present in the moment right now than he had before he’d been shot.
He wondered if dying—or almost dying if that was the case—always did that to a person.
“What secrets?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you why I refuse to have a real relationship and why women like you scare me, and you tell me why you’ll only allow yourself to have a relationship with a piece of battery-operated machinery.”
Her eyes grew round. “I do not have a relationship—”
“So it was just a one-night stand, huh?” He laughed again. “Come on. Talk to me.”
• • •
Chloe’s mind raced. Just a dream. Just a dream. It didn’t matter what he knew or what she told him. Heck, it didn’t even matter what they did. She could strip him naked and pour honey all over him and lick it off. She was going to wake up in a few minutes and none of this would matter.
Not that she would pour honey over him.
Maybe chocolate sauce.
Chasing those crazy thoughts away, she reheard his words, I’ll tell you why I refuse to have a real relationship and why women like you scare me. Damn it, he was right. She was curious. “You go first. Why do I scare you?” She leaned back on her headboard and waited.
He studied her as if suspicious. “Why do I get the feeling this is just like what happened with Mary Anne?”
“Who’s Mary Anne?” she asked confused.
“A girl in third grade. She proposed the ol’ you show me yours and I’ll show you mine. Let’s just say she’s the only one who got any sex education that day.”
“And because of her you don’t trust anyone.” She stared up at him.
“Well, it wasn’t just her, but you don’t have any room to talk. You’re dating a vibrator. You obviously don’t trust anyone either.
“I’m not . . . Okay, maybe I have trust issues, too, but we’re talking about you right now.”
“Fine.” He sat back down on the other side of the bed.
She thought about the chocolate sauce again. It’s not as if she’d done that before. But she’d read about it in a book: Recharging Your Sex Life. Sheri had loaned it to her. It had been one of those she read only in her bedroom. A book that had convinced her that she and Jerry needed some help in the sex department.
The book had made sex sound so exciting. And she realized that sex with Jerry hadn’t actually been exhilarating. It had been good. Comforting. But not . . . exciting.
“Spill it,” she said.
“Spill what?” he asked, as if he wasn’t the one who came up with this crazy idea.
“Don’t play stupid.”
He set his feet up on the end of her bed and then crossed his arms, even readjusted his pillow behind him to get comfortable.
Cupcake jumped up on the bed and stepped up on his abdomen. Meowing, the cat reached up with her paw and rested it on the tip of Cary’s nose.
Chloe started to grab him.
“No, it’s okay.” He gently ran his hand down the cat’s back. “I had a black cat when I was growing up.”
She got the strangest feeling he was trying to change the subject. That made her more curious. Why would her dream guy be nervous about telling her something? He was a dream, right?
He stared at the ceiling for a second. “We’d been married about a year. We’d been talking about having a baby. She wanted to make sure she was taken care of if anything happen to me. We took out some life insurance policies and then set out to work on having a baby. A couple of months later, my sergeant called me into his office. A guy was arrested on some drug charge and he wanted to make a deal. A lesser charge for some info on someone wanting to make a hit on an officer.” He inhaled and glanced down at the foot of the bed. “Here I was thinking babies, and she was thinking funerals.”
It took her a second to realize exactly what he meant. “Crap. Your wife was trying
to get you killed?”
“Yeah.” He still didn’t look at her.
“But you’re a police officer.”
“More importantly, I was her husband.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “But I guess my ego took a punch being a cop, too.”
“Are you making this up?” she asked.
He faced her then. “Why would I make something like that up?”
She tried to read him, but couldn’t. “I don’t know. Maybe because you see it as some kind of a competition.”
“What competition?” he asked.
“Who has the worst story.” She lifted an eyebrow and studied him accusingly.
He smiled. It was a nice smile, too.
“No,” he said. “I hadn’t looked at it like that, but if it was a competition, I’d win.”
When his smile faded, she saw it, the pain in his eyes. It reminded her of what she often saw when she looked in the mirror. That ‘done wrong’ look.
“You haven’t heard my story yet,” she said, not really wanting to win the competition, but for some reason she couldn’t explain, she wanted him to know he wasn’t alone. That he hadn’t been the only one done wrong.
“Oh, come on. No way in hell can you beat that story.”
Chapter Five
She sat up higher, it only hurt a little bit, and pulled a knee up to her chest and hugged it. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
“Try me,” he said and almost had a playful look in his eyes.
“But you haven’t finished.”
“Finished what?” he asked.
“Why do I scare you?”
He looked at her. “Because you aren’t the type a man can love and leave. And I’m not the staying kind anymore.”
She hesitated for one second. “Neither was my fiancé,” she said.
“What?” He seemed to mull over what she said. “What did he do? Bail out on the wedding day?”
“Not quite,” she said.
“Come on, don’t be Mary Anne. I showed you mine. Show me yours.” His tone had a bit of tease to it.
Divorced, Desperate and Dead Page 4