“What kind of shit?” I asked, opening the bakery door. Joe walked in ahead of me, glancing around the bakery, like he was looking for Sofia.
“She asked if she was getting too fat.” I nodded. “So, naturally I told her I would love her no matter how fat she got.”
“I’m with you so far.”
“And somehow she thought I had a fat fetish, that I wanted her to be fat so I could…”
“Who has a fat fetish?” Mary Anne asked.
I jerked my thumb at Joe. “He does, apparently.”
“I do not.”
“That’s not what you just told me.”
“Really?” Mary Anne asked excitedly. “What about Sofia? She’s such a nice girl, even if she can’t bake worth a damn.”
“I never said I had a fat fetish,” Joe said irritatedly.
“Let me ask you this? Did you tell her to put on weight?”
Joe turned bright red. “Not in so many words.”
“But you implied it.”
“What kind of sicko are you?” Jenny Hamilton said from her seat with her aunt. “You want your wife to be fat? What is it with men nowadays that they can’t just have normal sex?”
“I don’t have kinky sex,” Joe snapped. “I was reassuring her that I would still want her if she was fat.”
“So, you told her to put on weight,” I grinned, pushing him a little further.
“No…well, yes, I guess I did. I told her the bigger the better, but that’s supposed to show my love for her,” he said, barely holding it together.
Gary, the town butcher, walked over with a funny look on his face. “Is it true what they say?” he asked Joe. “Do bigger women…” He glanced around the room to see who was listening and lowered his voice. “Do they give really good head?”
“I don’t know,” Joe shouted. “I wasn’t sleeping with a fat chick!”
Everyone in the bakery grew silent as Carrie, a slightly overweight woman, stood from her chair and glared at Joe. “You have a problem with fat women?”
I covered my laugh with my hand.
“No!” Joe said quickly. “I wasn’t saying there’s anything wrong with fat women. I love my wife. I would love her if she was as big as you.”
The woman turned absolutely molten red. “As big as me?”
Joe paled under her glacial stare. “Uh…” He glanced at me and I waved for him to take the floor. “Not that you’re not beautiful. You’re perfectly round. Some would say shapely,” he croaked.
“You’re getting this on camera, right?” I leaned over and whispered to Mary Anne.
“Of course. We’re live streaming now on the town page.”
“So, you describe women as round?” Carrie asked, taking a step out from behind the table.
“Not all women,” Joe stuttered. “You’re…totes on fleek,” he mumbled.
“You’re lying!” she hissed.
“No, if I wasn’t already married, I would totes ask you to be my bae.”
My shoulders started shaking as I imagined Sofia watching as her husband tried to talk someone out of hating him by asking him to be his bae, if he was single. It was almost painful to watch, so I decided to help the poor bastard out. Sort of.
“Now, Carrie. I’m sure Joe wasn’t implying at all that you were fat.”
“Thanks, man,” Joe muttered, obviously shaken by all the attention. Now he knew how his brothers felt.
“See, he’s feeling a little insecure after last night. He was supposed to seduce his wife,” I said, bulging my eyes slightly to show her how that went.
“I see,” Carrie nodded in understanding.
Carrie was a therapist. Granted, she wasn’t a very good one. Her own issues often got in the way of her actually helping others, from what people whispered around town. But I was just laying the groundwork for her, and she would do the rest.
“You see what?” Joe asked.
Carrie walked over and placed a hand on Joe’s arm. “I’ve seen it with a lot of men. When they have trouble…getting it up,” she whispered.
“I don’t have trouble getting it up,” Joe said, confused as to what she was saying.
“Overcompensation is very typical in men, especially young men that should still be able to perform.”
“I can still perform.”
“Oftentimes, when the penis isn’t performing as you want, it’s a medical condition that could be treatable.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my penis,” Joe shouted. “I can get an erection just like any other man, and when I’m with my wife, I can screw her all night long.”
Carrie nodded sympathetically, slipping her card to him. “I’m sure she would say the same thing.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why did you say it like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you don’t believe what she would say.”
“Would she say that it was good if it was just the two of us in the room?”
“Of course she would!”
“But would it be what she really felt, or would she be trying to protect you?”
“There is nothing wrong with my sex life, lady. I was nervous about…my mission, and I freaked out. I said some stupid shit. That’s it. End of story.”
“Right, you should call me,” she whispered, heading back to her table.
I winked at Mary Anne, who was still streaming the whole thing. This was better than anything on cable.
“Listen,” Joe shouted. “I’m not penis-challenged. I don’t have a fat fetish, and I don’t think my wife is fat.” He paused and then added. “Or that she spends too much money.”
I nodded, placing my hand on his shoulder in what seemed to be consolation. Giving a firm squeeze, I said, “Maybe it’s time to go. I think you’ve made your point.”
“Yeah,” Joe sighed.
We headed for the door, but before we left, I still needed to take care of the Carly situation.
“By the way, Carly Cortell had a seizure and she’s refusing to have anyone look after her. If you see her walking around, make sure she looks okay, and doesn’t look like she’s about to pass out. Oh, and if you do approach her, make sure you ask if she’s about to seize.”
We walked out of the bakery and Joe sighed. “Do you think they believed me?”
“I’m sure they did,” I said, patting him on the shoulder.
Whistling to myself in delight as I made my way back to the office, I couldn’t help but laugh at the way I manipulated Joe into that whole scene in the bakery. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Joe, but he’d somehow managed to escape the embarrassment that he caused all of his brothers at one point or another. It only seemed fair that he felt it too.
“Corduroy,” Chili Man nodded to me as he passed.
“Morning,” I nodded in return.
The screeching of tires brought me out of my pleasant thoughts. A car up ahead was swerving all over the road and then crashed into a light pole. I raced up the street, terrified for a moment that it was Carly, but the car wasn’t hers. Running up toward the car, I almost stopped when a woman leapt out of the car, tripping on her feet and falling to the ground.
She started army crawling away, screaming as she started rolling around on the ground like she was on fire. But when she started tearing at her clothes, trying to rip them from her body, I knew I had to intervene. Rushing over to her and kneeling beside her, I tried to get her to stop moving so damn much.
“Ma’am?” I asked, trying to hold her down.
“Get it off me! Get it off me!”
She threw her arms up in the air, almost slapping me across the face as she rolled out of my grasp. She had to be an insane person. The way she was rolling around and screaming, it was like she broke out of the psych ward. She started shivering and spasming, her whole body acting like it was having a seizure. What were the chances that two women had a seizure in this small town in a matter of days?
She tore open her shirt, buttons flying all around
us. I shouldn’t have really stopped to take notice of her perky tits, but they were right there, and they were fucking perfect. Shaking my head, I crawled over to her and pulled her shirt closed, fighting against her swinging arms.
“Ma’am, settle down or I’m going to have to detain you.”
“Just get it off me!”
“Get what off you?”
“The gigantic spider that attacked me!”
I stopped struggling with her and watched her for a moment. Was she serious? She crashed her car and army crawled out of it to escape a spider? She shuddered every few seconds, then tears slipped from her eyes. She was really fucking upset.
“Ma’am, are you okay?”
She covered her face with her arm while her body shook. “I almost died,” she whispered.
I rolled my eyes at the dramatics. “Ma’am, you were more likely to die from crashing your car into a pole than from a spider.”
“You don’t know what it was like,” she sniffled. “It was the most terrifying moment of my life.”
Sighing, I pried the woman’s arm from her face and was instantly struck by the gorgeous woman staring up at me. As she took a moment to compose herself, I glanced over her beautiful features. She had this petite frame, small face, small nose, but huge eyes that sucked me in. They were an amber color, with flecks that seemed to sparkle as she looked at me. Her long brown hair was twisted up on top of her hair in some messy way. She was chaotic and beautiful, and I already knew I was fucked.
“Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself in the crash?”
She shook her head slightly, tears still shining bright in her eyes. I don’t know what the hell possessed me to do it, but I pulled her up into my arms and held her for a minute, just rubbing her back. It was so unprofessional, but the woman was distressed and looked like she needed a hug. I also sniffed her for alcohol, taking advantage of how close we were. Luckily, I didn’t smell anything. Thank God. It would be really bad if I had the hots for a drunk driver.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” I asked as I pulled back. “No bumps on the head?”
She shook her head as she took a calming breath. “No, I think I’m okay. Just…terrified out of my mind.”
“What happened?” I asked again.
“I was just driving down the road, minding my own business when he came out of nowhere! I mean, I was trying to drive.”
I nodded, not really following along. “The spider?”
Her head bobbed up and down comically while her large eyes stared at me, pleading with me to believe her.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Abigail,” she murmured against my chest.
I nodded, thinking it suited her well. I pulled her into my body again and gave her another hug. Dammit, Jack was gonna kick my ass when he found out about me hugging a woman on the job not once, but twice. But I couldn’t help it. I wanted to hold her, to comfort her, to…touch her. God, I was fucked.
“You’re okay now, Abby. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
She pulled back and smiled at me. “Thank you for that…”
“Corduroy.”
She frowned. “I mean, Carter Roy. Everyone around town calls me Corduroy.”
She smiled up at me, so big and bright that I wanted to capture it and carry it around with me. “Carter is a great name.”
“I like it,” I grinned. “But I could be biased. So, what happened with this spider?”
“I was driving down the road and this gigantic, fuzzy black spider jumped on me. I swear to God, it had to be the size of my fist.”
My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “The spider was the size of your fist?”
“It was huge,” she said, her eyes big and wide.
“Okay, um…do you mind if I check your car?”
“Go ahead. And if you find that bastard, feel free to squish him. Just not in the car. I just had it detailed.”
I slowly released her, hating the feel of her not in my arms, and stood to check out the car. As I bent inside, I started to wonder if she actually was crazy. The idea that a spider as big as her fist jumped out at her was insane, but to crash a car over a spider was even weirder. Why didn’t she just pull over? And that made me think that alcohol wasn’t the only possible issue. Many drugs could act as hallucinogens. I may have to drag the gorgeous Abby in to be tested.
I bent over the seat and looked all around. “Did you see where the spider went?”
“Um…well, it dangled down from the rearview mirror. After that, I started swerving to keep it from swinging in my face, which only made it swing even closer to me,” she snorted. “Maybe it wasn’t my best idea.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the woman that was now standing beside me, leaning over my shoulder to peer inside the car. “Not to mention that you could have killed somebody.”
She frowned. “You heard the part about the gigantic, woman-eating spider, right?”
Shaking my head, I continued my search. I about gave up when I saw the little critter crawling out from underneath the seat. She had a box of tissues on the passenger seat, so I grabbed one and quickly snatched up the spider. It wasn’t nearly as big as she described, maybe the size of my thumbnail.
Crawling back out, I opened the tissue to show her. She screamed and darted backward, tripping over her own feet and falling on her ass. I squished it in the tissue and stepped forward.
“It’s dead now.”
She scooted back on all fours, trying to get away. “Keep that thing away from me.”
“Abby, it’s dead. I killed it.”
“I don’t care if you had the car fumigated! That thing almost killed me.”
I rolled my eyes at her dramatics. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“Do you see the size of it?”
Sighing, I stepped forward and held out my hand for her to take. She shook her head and stumbled to her feet. “You want me to hold your hand after you touched that vile thing?”
“Well, it wasn’t a date thing. I was just trying to help you up.”
“Not until you wash your hands. Who knows how many disgusting diseases that thing has.”
I frowned and looked down at the dead spider. “I’m not sure spiders carry diseases. And this isn’t a poisonous spider. It’s just a jumping spider.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better? Look at the size of it!”
I nodded, “Yeah, it’s not at all how you described it.”
“Are you kidding me? That thing is huge! It could have killed me.”
I showed her the spider again. “It’s barely the size of my thumbnail.”
She stood on her tiptoes to peer into the tissue I was holding. Shuddering, she stumbled back. “Well…maybe it’s the baby of the one that tried to attack me.”
“Or,” I said slowly, “it’s just a small spider that you freaked out over.”
She winced slightly. “Well, it was hanging from the mirror…”
“And?”
“Objects in mirror may appear larger than normal?”
I didn’t know what to say, but then the sheepish look on her face had me burst out laughing. I almost lifted the tissue to my eyes to wipe them, until I remembered there was a dead spider smashed up inside.
Striding over to the sidewalk, I stuck the tissue in the trash can, then headed back to her car. Looking at the light pole, I knew it wasn’t safe for her to drive off in the condition the car was in.
“I’ll call a friend and have him pick up your car and tow it to the garage. Can I give you a lift somewhere?”
“Um…well, I was just heading home.”
“Passing through town?”
“No, I just moved here. I’m a little turned around actually.”
“Okay, what’s your address?”
“Um…142 Elm.” I nodded, but she grabbed my arm suddenly. “Or is it 124 Oak?” She frowned, gnawing on her lip. “It’s something with a tree.”
“And the hous
e number?”
She sighed. “Something with 1,2,3, or 4.”
“How long ago did you move here?”
Maybe she had literally just moved in. Usually I knew when someone new moved to town, but it was highly unusual for someone to forget where they lived. Especially in a town this size, where you could blink and miss the town.
“Not that long. Maybe three or four…”
Please say hours.
“Three or four days? I’ve lost track of time already,” she laughed.
I laughed, but inside I was cringing. “Alright, how about we walk to the station and pick up my car. Then I can take you home. Do you need anything out of your car?”
“Oh, hell no. I’ll have to have the whole inside fumigated before I touch that.”
“What about your purse?”
“It’s tainted.”
“Tainted.”
She stared at me with her big eyes and nodded slowly. “A spider was in my car, probably spreading its little spider germs and eggs all over my car. I could have spider eggs in my purse now. I can’t believe I’m even still in these clothes. They’re making me all itchy.”
“Yeah, you can’t take your clothes off in public. It’s against the law.”
She snorted and started walking with me to the station. “Like that would stop me. If you hadn’t found that spider, I would be stripping right now to make sure it wasn’t on me.”
We made it to the station a few minutes later, and I grabbed my keys. “Well, let’s go find your house.”
She put up a hand to stop me. “Aren’t you going to wash your hands first?”
“Um…why?”
“Because you killed a spider.”
“With a tissue.”
“And there were guts and gross spider things all over it.”
“Again, on the tissue.”
She pursed her lips, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’m not getting in that car with you until you wash your hands.”
I almost told her she could find her own damn ride home, but I really wanted to spend more time with her. Crazy or not, she was hot. And a hot woman always overruled being right. I walked to the bathroom and washed my hands, then headed over to her for inspection.
“Satisfied?” I asked, holding my hands up.
Drawing Dead: A Small Town Romance (A Good Run Of Bad Luck) Page 7