Bounty (Colorado Mountain #7)

by Kristen Ashley

  Our communications yesterday afternoon and this morning were subdued.

  I needed subdued with Deke. I needed a giant step back.

  But I was learning something new about myself.

  Apparently, I had an iron will when it came to saying no to snorting coke, dropping acid, throwing back a variety of pills to speed me up, slow me down or make me unconscious, drowning myself in bourbon.

  But I had no willpower whatsoever when it came to Deke.

  In other words, I was done with subdued.

  “Pizza today,” I declared into the powder room and his attention came to me.

  “Again, you do not have to feed me,” Deke stated.

  “I think it’s been made pretty clear my hearing is functioning so this has been noted. I just don’t care.” I allowed my lips to quirk. “And you might not have had the briefing, but gypsy princesses tend to get their way. They do this by being stubborn and adorably annoying.”

  He rested the sheet of drywall he was wrassling against the wall so he could turn fully to me and plant his hands on his hips.

  I couldn’t tell if he was amused or annoyed.

  Or relieved.

  Though I was fascinated to note he looked all of those.

  However, he said nothing.

  “What do you like on your pizza, or you can answer the alternate question of what don’t you like?” I asked.

  “You goin’ all out on pizza, you gonna skip La-La Land?” he asked back.

  “Hell no,” I gave him the obvious answer.

  “No pineapple or peppers and I don’t mind anchovies.”

  “I do,” I told him.

  “So don’t get ’em,” he returned.

  I lifted my hand up to my forehead in a salute and executed my take of a precise military turn on my leopard-print-strapped, flat sandals that had feathers dangling.

  Deke was no longer in my vision so I couldn’t see the expression on his face when I heard his audible grunt that also sounded both amused and annoyed.

  On my way out to my truck that two of “Wood’s” men did, indeed, return to me last night at four thirty, I engaged my phone, hit the number to the pizza place in town I’d Safari’ed and ordered it on my way down.

  I hit up Sunny and Shambles. We had a short gab. I then grabbed the pizza and a six-pack of Coke and headed back.

  I’d thrown one of the mover’s blankets over the stack of drywall in the great room, the pizza down on it, put the Coke in the fridge with one out for Deke and a bottle of water for me, before I shouted on my way down the hall back to the pile of drywall, “Soup’s on!”

  I was cross-legged on the floor with another blanket under me, throwing open the pizza box when Deke strolled in.

  Yes, I was maneuvering having lunch with him, not just bringing lunch to him.

  Yes, I was fucked because he’d demonstrated that he could be a nice guy, somewhat forthcoming and definitely cool after he’d fucked up. This meant not only was he too attractive by half, cracking that nut that was him was something I was enjoying, even knowing I would never really be able to dig into that shell and get to the meat.

  He didn’t even hesitate to plant his ass on the drywall by the pizza I’d torn a wedge from and was now munching.

  He also didn’t hesitate to grab his own wedge.

  “Pepperoni, sausage, Canadian bacon with mushrooms thrown in for vitamin D,” I declared through a half-full mouth.

  “I approve,” he returned on a full mouth after taking a big bite.

  “Bubba tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he answered.

  “I thought Bubba worked at Bubba’s,” I remarked.

  “Bubba works for Max. He’s only at Bubba’s to help out and be with his woman.”

  Interesting.

  “You guys do your thing, should I take off?” I went on.

  “Yep,” he replied.

  I munched.

  Before I could lock on something that would crack deeper into Deke, my phone rang.

  I did a stretch, yanking up the lacy weave of my long sweater that hung over my battered khaki short-shorts to pull my phone out of my back pocket.

  I looked at the screen.

  It said, Joss.

  Mom had bad timing.

  But I hadn’t heard from her in a while, she’d been suffering from Dad’s loss too, and if she needed to connect, I needed to let her.

  I shifted to a hip in order to find my feet while muttering, “Gotta take this.”

  Deke just gave me one nod.

  I took the call. “Hey, Joss.”

  Side note, I’d never called my mom “Mom.” This was not because she was not a mom person. She was. She’d been a great mom.

  She was just a cool mom.

  And she also left her home to be a groupie at age seventeen. She further raised me to be grown-up enough to start the switch from mom to friend at age seventeen.

  So, since she’d been living for the day when she could set the mom part aside and go to concerts with me, she’d always been Joss.

  “You need to talk to your stepfather.”

  Right.

  I’ll provide added detail.

  She’d always been Joss until my stepfather did something stupid and then she became my mother only so she could order me to deal with her shit.

  “What’s going on?” I asked and did it not hiding the fact I didn’t want to know.

  I also did it lamentably leaving Deke behind so I could take my phone call and pizza slice out to the back deck in order that he not hear my conversation.

  “He wants to do a reality program,” she informed me.

  My blood heated.

  “And he wants me to sign to be on it with him,” she continued.

  That heat intensified.

  “And he wants me to talk to you to see if you’ll come to town and do a few walk-ons on the show,” she finished.

  I was on the deck, the door closed behind me, swiftly and angrily making my way to the railing, doing it asking loudly, “Is he high?”

  “He’s pissed I’m reacting to Johnny’s death so he’s pushing my buttons. But his tour didn’t sell great last year and he’s also taking advice from that shit-for-brains manager of his on how to increase his profile and get on the radar of younger fans.”

  My mother was not only a groupie who caught the eye of an up-and-coming legacy rock star who would eventually make it huge.

  She also was not only Johnny Lonesome’s first wife.

  She was a personality in her own right and this was not simply because, between Dad and Joss’s current husband, Roddy Rembrandt (a ridiculous name his handlers made Rod change to, also a name Rod couldn’t ditch later because it had become part of him to his legions of fans), she was girlfriend and muse to a number of big name rockers.

  She was a stylist. A rock stylist. A good one. She styled bands and singers for tours (hell, she styled tours). She styled bands and singers to attend events. Photo shoots. Anything and everything. And everyone wanted her.

  This was because she was good at it. And it helped she lived the life, walked the walk, talked the talk, but best, rocked the look herself.

  If Joss wasn’t so well known as my mother, someone could mistake her for my sister.

  These were all some of the reasons why she’d caught the eye and married Roddy Rembrandt, lead singer, lead guitar and just plain leader of the hair metal band The Chokers. A guy who was only nine years older than me, ten years younger than Joss, right in the very weird middle.

  The Chokers had been cool because they had an edge of alternative and punk that both dulled and amped the metal in a good way, their lyrics having more meaning, their songs more like short (but sometimes epic) stories, their vibe angrier than metal, less angry than punk, gliding the line of call-the-shit-of-life-as-you-see-it grunge. They were kind of a morph between Bon Jovi, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Nirvana and Green Day.

  They just didn’t hold that edge. Booze, bitches, dope and success ju
st straight up dulled the good right out of their music so now everything seemed a retread. But mostly, they didn’t often record anymore. Just toured and fed off the love and loyalty of their fans.

  This was not a bad thing.

  I just could not imagine doing it, not making music. Challenging myself to keep making it better. Even if I didn’t record my own stuff or perform anymore, I sold songs all the time which meant I wrote them all the time. Sometimes, for people I liked, I even went in to produce.

  I could never just coast.

  And it sounded like Rod was done coasting too.

  But it sounded more like Rod was done watching his wife grieve another man.

  “I am not going to be on a reality show,” I bit out.

  “I’m not either,” she told me. “But he’s up in my shit about it constantly, Jussy. He will not let it go.”

  “He can dog-with-a-bone it all he wants, Joss. It doesn’t matter. You don’t sign to be on camera, he can’t do anything about it. And I’m sure as hell not going to sign.”

  “I need you to call him and tell him to back off.”

  It was safe to say I was done with this. And this wasn’t about Dad dying.

  This was about Joss dealing.

  “He’s your husband,” I pointed out.

  “He listens to you,” she retorted.

  “Which is weird and it makes me uncomfortable. I’m not your marriage guru.”

  “He adores you. He knows you adore him. He respects your craft. He knows you dig his music in a way that’s meaningful. You guys have that connection and it’s a connection, Jussy, baby, you know I can’t have, no matter how much I dig the music. You can get through to him.”

  “You know, he died for me too.”

  It was out of left field at that juncture in our conversation, blunt and not nice.

  But I couldn’t take on her shit with all the rest.

  And it pissed me off she called to ask me to.

  Joss said nothing.

  I did not return that favor.

  “You need a break from Roddy. You need to get your shit together because Rod is your husband and as much as he’s not Dad, will never be Dad, you love him and he’s important to you. So you have got to get your head wrapped around the fact that this hurts. Rod’s a dude but he’s got feelings and watching his wife grieve the love of her life has got to suck. You either have more patience with him, Joss, or you take a break from him and get sorted then come back and give him back his wife.”

  “That isn’t cool, laying it out like that, Justice,” she said quietly, the hurt evident in her tone.

  I felt guilt.

  And I also didn’t.

  “Mav is contesting the will,” I shared.

  “Not a surprise,” she retorted. “And you know that. That fuckin’ cunt stole my husband. She tried to take Johnny to the cleaners when he got shot of her. And she’s been giving him and Dana shit for years. Her playing puppet master with that pissant of a son of hers is no shock.”

  This was all true, including the fact that Luna was a homewrecker.

  Of course, this meant Dad cheated, something unforgivable that Joss never forgave him for, no matter he paid the price in a lot of ways, including losing the only woman he ever truly, deep down to his own poet’s soul loved. A fact he was well aware of. Marrying Luna because she was knocked up with Maverick, dumping her not long after Mav was born because he could take no more, he tried to get Joss back.

  Joss was just so certain they were the only ones for each other and they were forever, Dad cheating had broken something in her and she just couldn’t trust him again.

  So she never went back.

  “Bianca’s disappeared and no one knows where she is or has heard from her, not even her mom and dad,” I declared.

  “Fuck,” Joss whispered. “Perry and Nova never did take good care of that girl.”

  She was right.

  Perry and Nova, Bianca’s lead guitar of a heavy metal band dad and B-movie bombshell mom, loved their daughter, to be certain.

  They’d just never taken good care of her.

  But the time wasn’t right to talk about that either. Not that there was anything to talk about. Joss and me had often lamented the fact Bianca’s folks were so into their dysfunction, they never really were about looking after their daughter.

  “And the man I met who inspired ‘Chain Link’ is working on my house.”

  Total silence. A void so deep, it felt like it’d suck me, my house and all the nature around me into it.

  Then, a loud, shrill, “What?”

  Suffice it to say, when your mom turns into your friend, with the kind of history you two share, she becomes your best friend.

  Lacey and Bianca knew everything about me.

  Joss did too.

  “Yep. Right now sitting on a stack of drywall in my house, eating the pizza I bought.”

  “Oh girl, you go. I cannot believe you found him again. That is so cool.”

  “Joss, he doesn’t remember me.”

  More silence before, “You’re shitting me.”

  “I wish I was.”

  And I totally did.

  “How could he not remember you?”

  “I don’t know, because it was seven years ago, we met in the wee hours of the morning, talked for ten minutes and I was rocking my biker vixen look. My hair wasn’t as long. I had on an inch of makeup. And it was seven years ago for ten minutes.”

  “Girl, man’s any man at all, he’d never forget your hair. Ever.”

  Mom wasn’t being conceited.

  I had my dad’s hair.

  And Deke had said back then I’d had pretty hair.

  And it wasn’t like he didn’t notice I was female. He did. I saw it when he did, like when we were standing in the wind and he was looking at my hair over my shoulder.

  It just didn’t do anything for him.

  “Well, all evidence suggests he has,” I told Joss. “He’s been working on my house for nearly a week and there’s nothing.”

  “Shit, baby. I’m so sorry. Totally sucks when the fates are feeling sassy and they’ve got you in their sights.”

  “You are not wrong about that.”

  “Maybe while he works on your house, you can come visit me and Rod. And before you say it,” she said the last swiftly, “this is not me trying to get you to come here and deal with Rod and my shit. I’ll tell him to back off, I’m not signing to be on any reality program and we got more problems if he or that shit-for-brains manager of his breathe a word of it to you. It’s me wanting to look after my girl.”

  I loved being with Joss. I also loved being with Roddy.

  But I didn’t want to leave. I liked it there. And that wasn’t all about Deke.

  “I’ll survive, Joss. It’s not that big of a deal. He’s just not into me.”

  “Jussy, darlin’, ‘Chain Link?’ Who you talkin’ to?”

  I drew in breath. Then I munched pizza.

  Joss let me.

  I swallowed pizza.

  “It sucks,” I whispered. “And I’m still loving every minute of getting to know him.”

  “Shit,” she muttered.

  “It’ll be okay.”

  “Only reason it will is that it’ll spawn a thousand songs, one of which will be sure to get you onstage, accepting a statue, which should have happened for ‘Chain Link,’ any other song on that vinyl or any song you’ve had recorded since.”

  That was the mom in Joss. Blind devotion, blind loyalty, no one was better than her kid.

  I decided to move us out of this, not the blind devotion and loyalty part, the talking about Deke part.

  “Was a bitch with a purpose, laying it out for you earlier, Joss. I was still a bitch. I’m sorry I got nasty.”

  “Sometimes you know you gotta smack me out of it, Jus. You didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. I’ll deal with my own crap and Rod’s. And you and me’ll plan some time together soon. No Roddy. Just us girls.”
<
br />   “I’d like that.”

  “Okay, baby. Now go back to the torture that’ll feed the Lonesome curse and make beautiful music.”

  I rolled my eyes but grinned, even if all she said was the damned truth.

  “Later, Joss.”

  “Love you, babe.”

  “You too.”

  She disconnected.

  I munched pizza on my way back to the door.

  I walked through to see Deke also walking through…his walking being the room to get back to the hall.

  “Good pizza, Jus. Thanks,” he said before he disappeared.

  I looked to the pizza to see it was half gone.

  Joss.

  Hell and damn.

  Bad timing.

  * * * * *

  That evening, I got a text from Krystal.

  Deke know about you?

  It was a good question that brought to mind he didn’t, she did, and Bubba was coming the next day. Bubba being her husband and baby daddy so no doubt she’d told him about me.

  No. And if you don’t mind, I’d rather keep with the peace, I texted back.

  Deke won’t care, she informed me.

  He might.

  He might not.

  My stepfather wants to do a reality program. He wants me on it. He comes to town, I might ask you to load your buckshot.

  I didn’t get a return text for a few minutes.

  Give you more peace.

  That meant Bubba would be cool.

  Grateful, I replied.

  And I was.

  * * * * *

  Bubba came with Deke the next day and he was friendly, but he was cool, calling me only Jus.

  I left so they could blow insulation. I hung with Sunny and Shambles and their Wi-Fi, dealing with business and interior design suggestions and doing online browsing, logging a bunch of favorites for the time when I had bathrooms, walls and a kitchen and could therefore indulge in some serious shopping, all the while gabbling with my new friends.

  Late afternoon, Deke texted, Done.

  It was monosyllabic but thoughtful and I didn’t need further proof Deke could be thoughtful.