Edge (Gentry Boys #7)

by Cora Brent

  I tried not to sigh. “Yes.”

  He exhaled and rolled his glass of ice around. “Social work will never pay very well.”

  “I know, Dad. We’ve talked about this before.”

  And we had. Sort of. He had offered his grim speculations about life on a very average salary and I had avoided pointing out that money had never exactly solved all of his problems.

  He clucked his tongue. “Sure could use your help down at the office, Roslyn. Lost two of my best agents in the last few months.”

  “Come on, we both know that there’s no shortage of people with far better qualifications than I have. I wouldn’t be good at that kind of work. After all, I have poor aim when it comes to cutting throats.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” he said, my sarcasm wafting right over him. “You never know what you can accomplish until you try. I’d teach you everything I know and of course a handsome initial signing bonus would be on the table.”

  He kept making his sales pitch as I parked my car, gathered up the ham sandwich remains and extracted myself from the front seat. He meant well so I pretended to listen for another minute before politely turning the offer down. Again. We made plans to have dinner once he was back in the valley but I knew there was a good chance he’d forget all about it unless I called him.

  Emily wasn’t home yet. If I hurried I could change and be on my way before she appeared and tried to cajole me into doing something ridiculous, like calling Conway. I’d already made her swear up and down that she wouldn’t utter a word to Jackson. Conway was his buddy and buddies stuck together. I wouldn’t expect anything less.

  I decided a movie sounded nice. I had no idea what was playing in the theaters but I could figure that out along the way. I peeled off my work clothes and slid on a pair of yoga pants with a shapeless grey t-shirt that I usually wore to bed. After tying my long hair up into a messy bun I paused in front of the hallway mirror and concluded I looked perfectly unapproachable, which suited me just fine.

  Once I was back in my car and on the road again I headed toward the east valley with its collection of neat stucco subdivisions and sprawling shopping malls, finally pulling into a colorful retail palace a few miles from the university. There was a sizeable movie theater on the north end of the mall and by the time I got the car parked I was feeling pretty cheerful about spending an evening out on my own.

  As I waited on the short line to buy tickets I squinted at the red lettered menu of choices but nothing stood out. I decided to just chance it and told the cashier to give me a ticket for whatever was showing next. I’ve always loved going to the movies, ever since I was little. In high school I used to ditch class at least twice a month and sneak over to a tiny theater in central Scottsdale that showed obscure indie flicks where there would be maybe six people in the audience at any given time and several of those would be passed out. When I heard that the place had closed down a few years back I was unsurprised but sad.

  This was a big theater, the kind with stadium seating and several dozen screens that played the latest guns and superhero blockbusters. I glanced at my ticket, expecting that I’d scored entry to Razor Man’s Revenge or something but instead I was about to step into something called Love Wings.

  Now I regretted not making a choice at the ticket counter. Love stories were kind of a thing with me (oh, the angst, the tortured romance!) but I wasn’t in a very happily ever after frame of mind at the moment. For a minute I considered switching my ticket to something less emotional, more explosive, but then I thought I remembered hearing the movie was actually a romantic comedy so I figured maybe it would be all right.

  The ham sandwich hadn’t really hit the spot and my stomach growled so I paused at the refreshment counter where I managed to drop twenty bucks on empty calories and caffeine in eight seconds.

  Oh well. The tub of popcorn, giant soda and box of Junior Mints would just have to serve as dinner and I’d make up for it by waking up early tomorrow to work out. Back in my dancing days it had been so easy to stay in shape. After nearly a decade of dedication - five days a week plus Saturdays, recitals, events, endless practices - I’d quit a few months before my senior year of high school.

  Less than fifteen minutes of the movie passed before I realized I’d gotten the romantic comedy idea totally wrong. The main characters were college sweethearts who reconnected ten years later when the woman, now a no-nonsense career-driven doctor, wound up treating her old boyfriend who was afflicted with Hodgkin’s Disease.

  Oh, and he had a little girl whose mother died in a car accident two years earlier when she was sideswiped by a drunk driver on her way home from her kindergarten teaching job.

  Talk about a tearjerker. I was a mess by the time the credits rolled. There weren’t enough stiff napkins in the world to mop this mess up.

  After I stopped in the restroom and cleaned up a little I wandered outside the theater. A large courtyard separated the movie theater from the rest of the open air mall. The scenery had changed rather dramatically since I went indoors two hours earlier. It was now dark and a faint breeze tickled my neck. Plus the Friday night crowd had descended. The courtyard was crawling with groups of teenagers batting their phones around like weapons, hand holding couples wearing perpetual smiles and clusters of children being marched around by resolute parents.

  A group of teens eyeballed me when I plunked down on the ledge of a colorful tile fountain. I waved, realizing that I might seem like a virtual antique to them. I clearly remembered being their age, hanging out at the mall with Erin, talking about boys and life and nothing in particular.

  It wasn’t so long ago and yet it was. The sixteen year old me would have considered a twenty three year old woman as some exotic species filled with shadowy experiences. Since the kids were still just gawking at me I stopped waving but a striking young girl with long dark hair smiled and waved back.

  While I’d been weeping in the theater Emily had texted me a photo of her fondue plate, which appeared to be a variety of food items lavishly dipped in chocolate. I could see Jackson laughing on the other side of the table.

  Also, my ex-boyfriend had sent one of those annoying ‘What’s up?’ texts.

  Caleb was in the habit of doing that about once a month. The funny thing was that if you were to meet Caleb in person the words ‘What’s up?’ would seem outside his vocabulary. He was polished and carefully groomed and liked to show off his valuable prep school education, none of which made him a very ‘What’s up?’ kind of fellow.

  We were on polite terms so usually I called him back and talked civilly about things that didn’t matter until I found a reason to end the call. But the last time we talked things had gotten a little strange. Caleb had blurted out an offer to fly me to Asheville so I could be his date at his sister’s wedding. I never considered accepting. While Caleb was great to look at and okay in bed and would never ever use profanity in the company of a lady, I just didn’t feel much of a connection with him. I never had.

  I set my phone down on the ledge. The teenagers had already jumped up and were heading in the opposite direction. I saw the girl who had waved at me. She traveled piggy-back style on the back of boy about her age, a boy with dark blonde hair and a loud, distinctive laugh.

  Suddenly I felt lonely. That recent cinematic tragedy might have been partly to blame. My nose still felt stuffy from all the crying. Being that I was all lonely and stuffed up and sitting beside a mall fountain in my grey yoga pants I decided to call Caleb after all. He was a decent guy, he’d be glad to hear from me and we were still friends. Sort of.

  After two rings the call was picked up and a deep, amused voice said, “Hey you.”

  I paused. Caleb didn’t have a deep voice. More of a nasal whine than anything else, Caleb’s voice was perhaps his most unfortunate feature.

  “Caleb?” I ventured, wondering if he was just drunk.

  A chuckle. “Don’t tell me you forgot my name.”

  Oh. My. God.
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br />   What the hell? Did that sneaky bastard revise my contact list and erase Caleb’s number, replacing it with his own?

  No, that didn’t make any sense. I’d never even mentioned Caleb to him. At least I didn’t think I did.

  Slowly I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared in horror. Yes. There was his name, just as he’d entered it. Gentry. It proved my unfaithful fingers had actually done the work of pulling it up and pressing the call icon.

  There had to be some kind of psychological name for this, a Freudian slip or whatever.

  No, that had something to do with sex. This didn’t have anything to do with sex.

  “Roslyn?” Conway called as if from far away.

  I moved the phone back to my ear cautiously, like it might bite me.

  “Conway!” I said too brightly, too loudly. “Oh hi. I’m so sorry. I must have butt dialed you.” I winced over the lie.

  “Does that mean you don’t want to talk to me?”

  “Well I’m kind of busy right now.”

  “Yeah? What are you doing?”

  “I’m just busy.”

  He sighed on the other end. Not a soft sigh, a deep sigh of exasperation. I expected him to come back with some smart ass comment.

  “Look,” he said. “I kept meaning to call or stop by.”

  “How could you stop by?” I said, rather sharply. “You don’t know where I live.”

  “Roslyn,” he said and cleared his throat. “I’m just going to put it all on the table here. If you’re really busy I’ll let you go but if not, well, I’d really like to see you.”

  “Now?”

  “Or later. Or tomorrow. Whatever you want. But now’s good for me if it’s good for you.”

  “I’m not home. I’m at Desert Springs Mall in Tempe.”

  “Ah, well it’s practically a date with destiny in that case since I’m about five miles away.”

  I frowned. “Are you really?”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you, Roslyn.”

  There he goes again. Every time he says my name my heart flips over. I inhaled. I exhaled. I silently begged my voice to sound as nonchalant as humanly possible.

  “Okay, well if you’re just a few miles away I’ll wait. I’m sitting at the fountain by the theater.”

  “Perfect, I know exactly where it is.” He paused. “We’ll have fun, okay? I’ll take you out wherever you want to go. No games, I swear.”

  I smiled. “That might get expensive.”

  “I can cover it.”

  “If you insist.”

  “I do.”

  I glanced down at my ensemble. “I should warn you I’m not exactly all dolled up right now.”

  “I’ll forgive you.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Roslyn.”

  Another heart spasm. I closed my eyes. “What?”

  “I’m really glad you called.”

  “Great. I’ll see you soon.”

  “Yes, you will. Ten minutes.”

  I hung up the phone and exhaled shakily. What the hell does this guy do to me?

  Anything he wants.

  I thought about dashing to the restroom and doing what little could be done to fancy myself up a little. I wasn’t really date material at the moment. At least I could shake out my hair and rub some lip gloss on. But I didn’t. Instead I stubbornly stayed put with my purse in my lap, clutching the stone ledge as my mind tried to recall tai chi breathing methods.

  When Conway arrived he would find me perched here in in my pajamas, plain-faced and messy-haired and that was just going to have to be good enough.

  He had estimated accurately. Barely ten minutes had passed and I was busy trying not to examine distant male figures too closely when I saw him. He walked rapidly with his head down and as he drew closer I saw his hair was more heavily streaked with blonde than it had been two weeks ago. When he looked up an instant smile lit up his face magnificently.

  I folded my hands in my lap and waited while his long legs closed the distance between us. He’d done a splendid job of getting even hotter in the past two weeks. It took everything I had not to chuck my dignity into the fountain and run to him.

  He paused right in front of me and suddenly looked uncertain.

  “Hi,” he said.

  I swallowed. “Hi, Conway.”

  He cocked his head slightly and studied me. I couldn’t really read the look in his eyes but there didn’t seem to be any insults there. Maybe he was just surprised to find me so, well, understated.

  “I warned you,” I said defiantly.

  He raised his eyebrows. “What?”

  “On the phone. I warned you I wasn’t exactly a glamour queen tonight.”

  He didn’t reply immediately. He stared for another few seconds, then abruptly sat down right beside me, close enough to feel the heat of his right thigh.

  “Honestly,” he said quietly, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look better than you do right now.”

  I elbowed him, snorting. “Get real.”

  “Roslyn?”

  “What?”

  “Did I blow it? With you, I mean. With us. Did I?” He was completely serious, staring down at his lap with a solemn frown.

  Us?

  I was so stunned I couldn’t even answer right away. These last two weeks I’d been thinking he was just a callous player who’d gotten what he wanted and moved on. I didn’t quite know how to handle this new man, this bashful, earnest man who seemed afraid of my answer. His eyes searched mine like they were hoping to find what they were looking for. Slowly he reached over and touched my cheek and I swear to god every living cell in my body responded with an ardent plea for more, for all of it, for everything.

  “I’ll make it up to you,” he whispered but it wasn’t a sexy promise. It was an appeal for something else. Conway was asking me to see a side of him that he probably didn’t allow to surface very often.

  I reached up and pressed his hand against my cheek. I didn’t know what this was between us but it was powerful. When I pulled his hand away and kissed the open palm I heard his sharp intake of breath.

  “You didn’t blow it,” I told him and laced our fingers together. “But you can make it up to me anyway.”

  He smiled.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CONWAY

  The day had gotten off to a strange start.

  First thing this morning I found a kid picking through the trash bin in the lobby.

  Not a little kid – closer to a man than a kid – but still young enough that life hadn’t made him hard yet despite the wariness in his eyes.

  I’d been on my way out, thinking I’d drive up to Flagstaff or something and celebrate two weekends of lucrative race winnings but seeing that scared kid rooting around in a wire trash can in search of scraps made me change my mind. He jumped at the sound of my voice and cautiously said his name was Ranger. To me that sounded like a lie that he’d made up on the spot but it wasn’t important. Once I swore I wasn’t a pimp or a dealer or a secret government agent he loosened up and let me buy him breakfast. Even Kilt couldn’t shove food down as fast as this poor kid. I found myself really feeling sorry for him after a more thorough appraisal told me he wasn’t quite making it on the streets. He was skinny and nervous and plainly tired. When I mentioned that I knew of an extra room he could have if he would just help with some housekeeping work around the hotel because the tweakers were really making a mess of things he almost dropped his milk glass in shock. He recovered, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared at me with a little suspicion.

  “Why would you do that for me?”

  I shrugged. “I’m feeling generous today.”

  When he still seemed unconvinced I tried again, choosing my words carefully. “Look, Ranger, I’m not really doing you a favor. I’m just sick of living in a pigsty and anyway the owner’s been making noises about shoving the lot of us out and selling the place so it’s in my best interest to get it looking a little nicer.”r />
  He thought about it. “If it’s a pigsty why do you want to stay there so bad?”

  “I like it there.”

  He grinned. “I used to help my dad out when I was a kid so I know how to fix things.”

  “Yeah? Was he a handy man or something?”

  The grin fell away. “No. He was the janitor at a high school.”

  I didn’t miss the fact that he referred to his father in the past tense or that he didn’t seem to want to elaborate. Whatever his story was, he would fit right into the motley collection of humanity that ran around the San Gabriel.

  When we got to the sixth floor, Eli was hanging out in the lounge. He gave me a ‘What the fuck’ kind of look when I explained about Ranger but I flipped him off and showed the kid to the room at the end of the hall.

  Then I decided I’d had enough of babysitting today so I handed him a few hundred bucks and told him to go shopping and get what he needed. The smile he cracked was so full of gratitude I was afraid he was going to hug me.

  When I felt a twinge of guilt because I realized Ranger was rather young to be exposed to all the sleazy shit that went on around here, I brushed it off. If he’d been on the streets for more than a few weeks he’d probably already seen much worse.

  Once I was done being a Good Samaritan and had found my way outside again I no longer wanted to drive to Flagstaff. The morning was mostly gone anyway. As I got behind the wheel of my latest Mustang acquisition my thoughts turned to Roslyn.

  What would she be doing now?

  It was Friday so she’d probably be sitting behind her desk at that shelter she worked at and waiting for someone needy to walk through the door so she could help him.

  But hey, at least I had something to talk about with her now. I could call her and smoothly say, “Guess what? I just rescued this stray teenager and gave him money and a place to live. That’s pretty awesome, right? Don’t you want to get naked with me now and fall asleep on my chest all weekend?”

  Maybe not. That sounded bad enough in my head. I didn’t have much faith I could turn it into something better out loud.