He grimaced apologetically. “Sorry, Ettie. Marcus got the last one when he ran his billing last week. Supposedly, there’s more coming in on next week’s truck.”
“There’s an office supply store next door to Barry’s though, right?” She tried to think. It had been almost a year since she’d last gone through Brenton.
Brent turned to give her a stern look. “I’m sending runners for necessary items only, Ettie. We’re going to be racing this storm as it is without adding time for side errands.”
“Could I go with?” When he frowned, Ettie quickly added, “I can help lift and haul.” She struck a pose, flexing every muscle she owned. If he was fooled by that, then the joke was on him. It was mostly air trapped inside her coat. “I don’t take up much room. Come on, Brent. Please!”
A tick of irritation leapt along his clenching jaw as he looked at her, but Ettie wasn’t offended. She knew his attention needed to be focused on getting whatever necessary items the community might lack before the storm hit. He might not like the fact that she was preoccupied with her paper, but he had nothing personal against her and she was offering an extra pair of helping hands.
“Help load,” he told her grudgingly.
Ettie snapped to attention. “Yes, sir!”
“Don’t hold the driver up.”
“I’ll be quick as a bunny,” she assured him.
“Cause so much as one problem and I’ll put you over my knee myself, and that is not a bluff.”
Her whole stomach somersaulted and her bottom clenched, an involuntary reaction that sparked a flame of rising heat that had absolutely nothing to do with the winter coat she was wearing.
“You got it.” Ettie snapped off a brisk salute and quickly got her cart to the checkout line before that heat rose as high as her face and Brent spotted her tell-tale blush. There were so many people standing in line ahead of her, but that was a good thing. By the time she reached the register, her hands had stopped shaking and her blush had died back down to a manageable level—or at least a level that could be blamed on her coat.
“You’re going to need a heavier coat,” Lacey told her, taking her money. “Better winter gloves and a hat too if the weatherman can be believed.”
“What’s he saying?” Ettie asked, loading the water back into her cart.
“Knee deep at least and maybe more. As soon as everyone’s rung up, I get to go home early.” She grinned.
Ah, to still be young enough to look forward to snow days, Ettie thought.
“Make a snow angel or two for me,” she said, wheeling her cart for the door.
“If I was making them for you,” Lacey called after her, “they’d be snow devils!”
“Oh, someone’s cruising to get featured in my next issue.”
Lacey giggled, and Ettie took her water out to her car. Damn it was cold! It must have dropped another five degrees at least, just while she’d been inside. By the time she’d emptied her meager groceries into the car, Brent’s emergency supply runners were pulling into the store parking lot. She recognized Lelo in his cherry red jeep, Charles in his silver Outlander, and…crap in a hat…Vance, in his dark blue work truck. Ettie made a face, but she guessed it only stood to reason that a man-slut, unburdened by anything resembling a real job, would have plenty of time to answer Brent’s distress call.
She really hoped she didn’t have to ride with him. Anybody else would be fine, so long as it wasn’t Vance.
Locking her car, Ettie headed toward the circle of vehicles where the men were gathering and Brent was already passing out payment vouchers and a list of supplies.
“Lelo, I know you’re going to want to pick your mother up in Rose Hill, so you and Jon can head out to the Apple Mart. Charles, you and I will hit the Food Saver.” Turning to Vance, Brent handed him the last of the vouchers. “That leaves you and Ettie heading out to Barry’s in Brenton.”
Crap in a hat with a muffin on top, Ettie groaned inwardly. She glared at Vance and frowned.
Vance looked at her, and then at Brent. “Are you serious?” he asked, as if he had any reason to disapprove of her!
Ettie frowned again, even harder.
“I saw you the first time,” Vance drawled, giving her the most beautiful opening to let him know what she really thought of being cooped up in a vehicle with him, except that Brent nipped that argument in the bud before she could even get a blossom going.
“If you have any objections, I’m sure I can find someone else to help you, Vance.”
Damn it. Ettie shut her mouth. She looked at Vance, who looked back at her. Her shoulders drooped and in her most neutral tone, she said, “If it won’t be too much of a bother to you, Mr. Foster, I would really appreciate a lift to Brenton. There’s something I need from the store across from Barry’s.”
A corner of Vance’s—well okay, it wasn’t too much of a stretch of imagination to term it handsome—mouth curled upward. “Oh sweetheart, that must have galled like hell to have to ask so nicely.”
It took effort, but she bit her tongue and kept from saying what she really wanted to back at him. “May I please, Mr. Foster, ride with you to Barry’s?”
The other side of his mouth curled, rising up to form a full-on smile. “Why, yes, Miss Thomas. You may.”
Horn dog.
Chapter 4
With Ettie riding shotgun and Vance behind the wheel, they drove out of the grocery store parking lot behind the Jeep and Outlander. They didn’t even make it as far as Spanking Loop, the main thoroughfare through Corbin’s Bend and out to the highway, when the cellphone in Vance’s cup holder rang.
Checking the screen first, Vance answered. “Hey, Brent. What’s up?”
“Charles just called. He’s on his way home and they’ve already shut down the highway. We can still get where we’re going, but you can’t. Not unless you take the back way out, via the old forest service roads.”
“Got it.” Clicking his phone shut, Vance pulled into the first driveway he came to and turned the truck around.
“What are you doing?” Sitting up a little straighter, Ettie was trying very hard not to glare at him from the passenger seat, but suspicion lurked alive and well in the depths of her baby blue eyes. Funny, how you could live across the street from someone for so many years and never quite realize how short and slight they were, or how blue their eyes could be. Ettie was pretty. Of course, one had to look past all that suspicion, dislike and malcontent in order to see it.
He shook his head at himself. Eyes on the road, Romeo. Mind back on the matter at hand. “What’s the matter? Afraid I’m going to punt you out on the side of the road the minute Brent and the others pull out of sight?” He tossed her a smile to show he was joking, but she didn’t return it.
“Are you?” she countered instead.
“I hadn’t planned on it. Road’s closed. We have to take the back route.”
She hardly blinked. He hadn’t thought it possible, but the suspicion in her hard-as-nails stare doubled. “What back route?”
“The forestry division has roads in and out all over these mountains. Corbin’s Bend owns about thirty-thousand acres, but within those acres there are pockets of land that are private and government owned. Used to be, if you leased the land you could build a cabin and live there, paying only a nominal land fee each year. Instead of coming in on the main highway, those land pockets were accessed through the southern route just off the highway. It was quicker that way.”
“If it’s quicker, why don’t we use the southern route?”
“Quicker for them doesn’t mean quicker for us. Besides, those roads haven’t been maintained in years. Single lanes, unpaved, and probably overgrown in places. But, don’t worry.” He patted the dashboard. “She’s solid. She’ll get us there.”
If anything, Ettie became even more suspicious. “What makes you think I need reassuring?”
Oo, she was a prickly one.
“I’m not trying to offend. You look worried, that’
s all.”
“No, I don’t.”
Argumentative, too.
“Okay, I am trying really hard to make polite conversation here.”
“Silence is golden.” Folding her arms across her chest, Ettie turned her face to the side window. “I like silence. I think I prefer it, in fact.”
After a comment like that, silence is exactly what filled the cab of his truck. All the way through the small community streets, past the last smattering of houses and a small community garden where the local Boy and Girl Scouts held their meetings, until they reached a yet-to-be-developed dead-end street. The paved road ended at a smaller dirt one no wider than a driveway. Within twenty feet, he came to a gate and stopped, getting out just long enough to open it, drive through onto the service access road, and then shut the gate again. By the time he climbed back behind the wheel, he was ready to try again.
“You know what? I think we’re going about this wrong.” Vance offered up his most charming smile and stuck out his hand. “I’m Vance Foster, your neighbor across the street.”
As if it were diseased, she made no effort to take it. “Trust me, I know who you are.”
Strike one for the new start. The road ahead of him narrowed and began to descend, becoming rocky cliff-face on his left and nothing but sheer mountain drop-off on his right. He put both hands on the wheel again. “I run a little business called Whips and Chains, although I’ve shortened it to just W&C so I don’t freak out the kids or the vanillas. I make—”
“I know what you do, too.”
He almost laughed, except those notes of heavy disapproval in her voice made this anything but funny. He cast her a side-long glance. “All right, I’ll bite. What does that mean?”
She snorted and folded her arms across her chest. “As if you don’t know.”
It was a real struggle not to lose his sense of humor. “If I knew, Miss Thomas, I wouldn’t be asking.”
She glared out the window, muttering under her breath although not quite low enough to prevent his overhearing. “Horn dog.”
This really was anything but funny. He rubbed his eyebrow. “What did you just call me?”
She looked right at him. “I said—”
“I heard you,” he said, cutting her off before she could repeat it. “I just wanted to know if you had the nerve to say it to my face.”
“You think I wouldn’t?” For the first time, she offered a smug little smile of her own. “I have no problem, Mr. Foster, calling it like it is.”
“And you don’t approve?”
“Whether I approve or not doesn’t make any difference.”
He laughed again, but there was zero humor in it. “Apparently, that doesn’t stop you from judging, does it?”
“I’m not judging anything either.” She turned her face back to the window.
“The hell you’re not.” Tiny flecks of white began to fall outside the car, drifting down through the dense growth of evergreen forest growing up and down the mountainside to either side of them. If it got any heavier, it might be concerning, but for now he was far more interested in the problem sitting in the cab with him. “Is that why you keep writing me into your newspaper? Are you pissed because I’m darkening other people’s doorstep, or because I’m not darkening yours? Is that why you keep killing me off?”
“Oh, like I care whose doorstep you darken,” she snapped. “And I’ve only killed you once or twice.”
“Forty-seven times,” he corrected. “I’ve been stabbed, hanged, shot, poisoned…”
“You’re not a subscriber, how would you know?”
“I have a friend who brings me his copy when he’s done. Where was I? Poisoned…decapitated by space toilet—that was interesting, disgusting but interesting—electrocuted…”
“You forgot eaten by mountain shark, and who said you could read my paper?”
“I didn’t particularly like the shark issue. Or the bomb, for that matter. Picking pieces of me out of trees and bushes—not to mention teeth—doesn’t make for pleasant imagery.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she cheerfully agreed, “but it does sell subscriptions.”
“Well, so long as my many deaths serve a purpose. How many times have you killed me this week?”
“Does mutilation count?” Her smile then was as close to genuine as he’d yet seen.
He waved a hand. “Forget I asked. You know, if you need a spanking that badly, all you have to do is call me. I’m sure I can work you into my very busy death schedule.”
“Nobody needs a spanking that badly.”
“At this very moment, I’d say that’s a matter of personal opinion.” Was it his imagination, or were these flurrying flakes getting bigger and falling faster?
“Is that snow?” Ettie asked, suddenly seeming to notice the weather.
“Yeah.” They probably ought to drop the snippiness and just concentrate on the driving. They had at least two hours of lousy weather and steep mountain back roads to go. Either one by itself would make this journey hard enough without combining the two, and then adding in their apparent inability to be civil with one another… His jaw clenched. “You know, maybe you’re right. Silence is golden.”
Unfortunately, no sooner did those words pop out of his mouth than did he change his mind.
“So, is that the reason then?” he demanded, and she looked at him again. “You don’t like the fact that I have dominant/submissive relations with some of the people around the Bend, so you’ve set out to malign me in every possible way via your paper? And here, I thought I’d left that kind of small-minded mentality when I left Chicago. What happened to the acceptance of like-minded individuals? That’s supposed to be what Corbin’s Bend is founded on, right?”
Her blue eyes flashed, but at least she had the grace to blush. “Like-minded individuals? You’re a predator, Mr. Foster. You take advantage of the needs of desperate women—”
“Take advantage?” His eyes widened. “Oh, now hold it right there, lady! You have a lot of nerve—”
“I have a lot of nerve?” Her eyes widened even more. “How about you hold it, buster! The truth is hard to hear, I’m sure. You take advantage of women, getting your cheap thrills off while they are at the mercy of their submissive tendencies and too weak to tell you to go bugger off!”
“You don’t seem to have that difficulty.”
“Darn straight, I don’t!”
“I’m sure I’ll read all about it in your paper. In the meantime, you’re doing me an incredible disservice.”
“Personally, I don’t think I’m disserving you enough. If I was, you wouldn’t still be here.”
Vance shot her a startled look across the cab, one that quickly turned disgruntled and then annoyed. The flurries were accumulating on the hard-packed dirt, but it wasn’t icy yet by any means. Still, the narrowness of the road made him nervous, the company in his truck left a lot to be desired, and the weather was steadily worsening.
He swore under his breath. He wasn’t a masochist and he wasn’t going to do this to himself. Applying the brakes, he slowed to a gradual stop.
“What are you doing?” Ettie asked, frowning as she straightened to see out the front window. “Is there a problem with the road?”
“Nope. There’s a problem inside this truck.” He slung his arm over the back of the seat and craned to see out the back window. “I’m turning around.”
She startled, seeming honestly surprised. “Why?”
“Because you’re a bitch, Miss Thomas, and I’d just as soon go back than to go the rest of the way to Brenton with you.”
Her eyebrows shot all the way up to her hairline. “You think I’m a bitch?”
“I not only think you’re a bitch, Miss Thomas, I think you’re a judgmental, close-minded, snotty pain in the ass, and I’ll be damned if I let you be a pain in mine. So, thanks for clarifying exactly how I got to be on your shit list. Here I thought maybe we could get to know one another and maybe perhaps move beyond all
this unnecessary animosity, but apparently you’ve got other plans. So, oh fucking well.”
The road was really narrow, with trees and overgrowth all around, a mountain to his left and a wooded drop off to his right. He backed all the way into the bushes, cranking the wheel as much as he could, but there was no way this was going to be a three-point turn. He’d be lucky if he got his full-sized, extended cab truck turned around in six points.
Ettie waited until he was almost horizontal across the road and only inches of progress at a time—forget six, this was going to be eighteen or twenty points—before she offered a vaguely disgruntled, “I really need my toner.”
“Isn’t that just too damned bad?” He cranked the wheel and tried to back up again. He had a big tree in front of him and rock big enough to kill his bumper directly behind. Bushes and tree branches were scraping both ends of his truck with every few inches of movement he managed. This was embarrassing. He couldn’t help the denseness of the mountain terrain, but it was starting to look like he didn’t know how to drive.
Damn it. He couldn’t get fully turned around without pulling too far forward and that risked the drop off. He was stuck.
Unfolding her arms and dropping her hands to her knees, Ettie cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Mr…” she huffed, then caught herself. Trying again, this time she managed to wedge a smidgen of sincerity into her halfhearted apology. “Vance, I’m sorry.”
He looked at her, but didn’t believe it for a second.
Turning slightly toward him, she tried a little harder. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I am…I’m being a bitch. Judgmental. Close-minded. Maybe even snotty.”
Vance opened his mouth to say there was no ‘maybe’ about it, but he stopped himself. He could see no trace of sarcasm anywhere in her expression. She was being serious, and if she was willing to offer a branch of peace, then there was no reason to continue embarrassing the hell out of his driving abilities. “All right.”
“Can we start over?” she offered.
He knew she was saying it only because she needed him to take her to Brenton, but let it not be said that Vance ever held an unreasonable grudge. “Okay, we can do that.”
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