Tangled: A New Adult Romance Boxed Set (12 Book Bundle of Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Royalty)

by Lakes, Krista

  Things were going about as well as they could go.

  Dinner appeared to be in full swing. Stella froze at the door, shocked at the din and clattering of ice and plates and scraping chairs and the ring ring ring of the cash register.

  “What are you looking at?” Cayenne shouted from behind the counter. “Put this on.” She tossed a heavy white apron. “You can get the rest of your uniform when things settle down.” Stella caught the apron but still stood there, watching the crazy blur of mouths, hands, and food.

  Three huge men in faded brown-stained overalls sat at the first table by the door, devouring plates of some mixed-up mash of green things, potatoes, gravy, and what might have once been a chicken-fried steak. The threesome worked almost in rhythm—knife cutting, fork stabbing, shoveling, wiping, gulping, then doing it all over again.

  “Hey, you, take some water and menus to the Randolfs over there,” Cayenne shouted again. She pointed at a group pushing tables together in the back. Dodging tables and tying the apron frantically, Stella hurried toward the family. Someone grabbed her arm.

  “What?” Stella asked.

  A burly man with “Butch” stenciled on his shirt pocket pointed to his glass. “I need some more tea, pretty miss.” Stella grabbed the glass and headed back to the waitressing station, a long, high counter piled up with menus and rolled silverware near the back. Cayenne was behind it, hastily pouring water into red plastic cups. She didn't even lift the pitcher as she moved around the circle of glasses, dumping water all over the tray and counter.

  Rennie hobbled past, her leg clearly giving her more trouble than a few days ago. “It’s a rough one. Picked a helluva day to start.”

  “It is always like this?”

  “Just on Fridays. We wouldn’t have brought you on at a time like this, but Corgie’s short a girl.”

  “I’ll manage,” Stella said, snatching up the pitcher of tea and filling the glass. “It’s not rocket science.”

  “That it ain’t,” Rennie said. “Just holler if you get in a bind.”

  “Where’s my tea?” shouted Butch. “A man’s got to have something to choke down this steak!”

  “Shut your trap!” Stella shouted. “It’s coming.”

  The room quieted, and Corgie stuck his head through the service window. “Who was that?”

  “The new girl,” Cayenne said.

  Stella set the tea in front of Butch, feeling chagrined. She should try harder. Rennie had been so nice to her, helping her find a place.

  But Corgie roared with laughter. “Guess she can handle herself after all.”

  Stella snatched a couple of menus from the stand and headed back to the corner and the big table. She was going to fit in here just fine.

  When the cafe settled down about nine, Rennie took Stella to the back to pick out a couple of the navy uniforms. She changed in the office, then stopped to look at a menu so she knew what the cafe served. For hours she had been writing down orders, assuming the customers knew what they were talking about. Rennie signed off for the evening. “I’m going to leave it to you and Cayenne. It’ll be a tough crowd from here on out, but not busy.”

  Cayenne turned out to be terminally lazy. As Stella started cleaning off tables, Cayenne leaned against the counter and chatted with Corgie through the window.

  An excruciatingly thin man with a fuzzy gray beard walked into the restaurant and sat at a booth piled high with dirty dishes. Stella looked at the rows of clean tables and sighed. Cayenne seemed to be ignoring him, so Stella headed for the station to get a menu and a glass of water.

  Corgie gestured for Stella to come closer. “You’d better tell her about Crazy Charlie,” he said. Cayenne laughed.

  “What?” Stella asked.

  Cayenne twisted a bit of scrunchy hair in her finger. “You’d better take him a big glass and an entire pitcher of water with lots of ice. And don’t bother with the menu. He’ll either order a ham-and-onion omelet with extra toast or a chili burger with ketchup.” Cayenne leaned her elbows back on the counter.

  Stella filled a pitcher with ice and water and headed to the table. There wasn't any room for the tray, so she set it on a clean table nearby.

  “I'm going to sit here,” Charlie said.

  “That’s fine. I just need to clean this off first.”

  His bushy eyebrows moved together. “Why isn't Cayenne waiting on me? She knows what to do.”

  “She’s on break.”

  He sat with his arms crossed over his narrow chest and frowned.

  Stella took the pitcher off the tray and piled the dirty dishes onto it. The load was heavy, though, and Stella’s arms were ready to give out after the long day. As she turned to take the tray away, she knocked over the pitcher of water. Cayenne, who was watching with Corgie from behind the counter, burst out with a piggish snort.

  Charlie sighed loudly. “I’m thirsty,” he said.

  Stella set down the tray and mopped at the water with her rag. “I’m sorry. I’ll get another pitcher.”

  “No, I’ll do it.” He stood up, picked up the plastic pitcher, and headed toward the waitress station. Stella scooped the ice onto her tray and carried the whole lot back into the kitchen.

  Corgie met her by the sinks. “You’d better be careful with Crazy Charlie. He’s gotten his driver’s license suspended three times for trying to run people over. They finally took it away last year. Keeps on driving, though.”

  Stella left the tray by the sink and turned to face him. “What are you talking about?”

  Corgie leaned against the doorframe, picking at his fingernails. “When Charlie gets mad, he tries to wipe out people with his truck. This one man wouldn’t buy one of his chairs—he makes chairs for a living—so he got in his truck, revved the motor, and headed right for him.”

  Cayenne blew through the swinging doors. “Did you tell her what Crazy Charlie did to you?”

  Corgie tipped his hat back and scratched his head. “Once I charged him ten cents for the extra piece of toast, and he tried to run me over in the parking lot on my way home.”

  “And you guys want me to wait on him?” Stella tucked a dry rag into her apron waist.

  Cayenne laughed. “He’s all yours.”

  Great. Stella slipped past Cayenne and went through the swinging doors to the tables.

  Charlie was already seated again, wiping off his table with Stella’s rag. She pulled the order pad from her apron, took the pen out from over her ear, and slid into the booth across from him.

  He was visibly startled. He stopped moving the towel and laced his fingers together, staring at his hands.

  These people thought they already had her beat. No way, no how. Stella leaned forward against the table. “OK, Charlie. Let’s get something straight. I’m your waitress today, and you’re going to tell me what you want. Then I’m going to give it to you. So what will it be—ham-and-onion omelet with extra toast or chili burger with ketchup?”

  When he didn’t answer right away, she tapped her finger on the table. “Did you drive over here, Charlie? I thought they wouldn’t let you drive anymore.”

  His head began to shake back and forth as he bent over. All she could see was the top of his gray hair.

  “So Charlie, what is it? Omelet or burger?”

  “Omelet.” Charlie kept his head down.

  “With extra toast,” Stella said.

  He glanced up. “Don’t forget three grape jellies.” Head down again.

  “OK.”

  “And an extra napkin.”

  “OK.”

  “And I like to have my jellies early so I can peel off the foil.”

  “Sure. I’m here to give you what you order.”

  He looked up again, and Stella saw that he had startling light-blue eyes, the sort that made young girls melt. She wondered about him, how he came to be Crazy Charlie and not just Charlie. She had a feeling there were a lot of damaged souls in this town.

  “Is that all?” Stella asked.


  “Yes.”

  She slid out of the booth and ripped the order off her pad. She waved it at Cayenne and marched to the window to stick it on the metal wheel.

  “You’re a dead woman,” said Corgie.

  “Amen,” said Cayenne.

  Stella crossed her arms and stood firm. “I am not. Where’s the grape jelly?”

  Cayenne snorted again. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We’re out.”

  *

  Stella sat in Grandma’s rocking chair at the end of her first day, carefully removing her shoes. She’d have to buy something more practical, and soon.

  Her feet were purple and red, squinched up at the toes. Even her most comfortable flats couldn’t hold up to eight hours of hustling.

  Her butt had been pinched, her waist had been squeezed, and her hair touched more times than she could count. The whole evening had been like playing dodgeball, but the missiles hurtling at her were all male appendages. Corgie had been right about rough. Charlie had ended up being the easiest part of the day, although the bellow he made when she’d told him about the jelly could have been heard across three states. He was long gone before she got off, so she didn’t have to worry about a collision with his unlicensed vehicle.

  The ones who’d scared her the most all had the same tattoo—a shamrock with “AB” on the leaves. She’d asked Cayenne about it, but she wouldn’t talk, saying some things should just stay unspoken. But Stella had understood from their talk that they had brothers on the inside, and they planned retaliations against other inmates, or went after people on the outside based on what was said at visits. The whole business made her fear all the more for Dane.

  She didn’t have a bed yet. It would be delivered the next day. Stella glanced through the door of her bedroom at the pile of blankets that would serve as her sleeping place yet another night and couldn’t make herself walk over to it. She rocked instead, a steady soothing movement that undoubtedly calmed ’most anybody who’d ever been held in one as a child.

  Stella heard the alarm and knew it came from the watchtower on the corner of a prison. Men scrambled inside the walls across dirt and cement, some falling. She ran among them and searched for Dane. Everywhere inmates piled up, sandbars in the sea of people. She called and called for Dane, but she couldn’t find him. All of the prisoners looked the same.

  Finally she startled awake and realized her phone was ringing. She hadn’t known the ring.

  She lunged for it. “Hello?”

  A whiny voice came on. “You have a collect call from inmate Dane Scuffield from the Missouri State Penitentiary. Do you accept the charges?”

  “Yes! Yes!” Stella gripped the phone tight now. He’d never called this early. She squinted at the clock. Actually, it wasn’t early. She’d slept on the rocking chair clear through lunch.

  “Stella?” Dane’s voice made her legs feel wobbly, so she sat on the floor by the little table that held the phone. “You there?”

  “I’m here.” Her words were rough with sleep.

  “You feeling okay?”

  “I worked the night shift. I was just getting up.”

  “You got a job?”

  “I did. I work at the Sinners’ Cafe.” She attempted a laugh. “It’s fitting.”

  “How is your new place? Beatrice said you found one.”

  Stella looked around the gray peeling walls and stained carpet. “It’s great. Sort of empty still, but there aren’t too many furnished places around.”

  “I miss you. It’s hard to imagine that I can’t touch you.”

  Stella was glad to already be on the floor. “I know. I don’t know how to do this.”

  “I don’t either. You got the forms, right?”

  “Yes, Beatrice brought them. I sent them in the minute I had an address here.”

  “It takes a couple weeks, but Maggie—the caseworker—she’s good. She might get it done faster.”

  Stella squeezed her eyes closed, trying to remember his face, the angle of his jaw. She only had the one set of pictures, and he had already begun to fade in her memory. They’d had so little time. “I hope she does.”

  A loud banging came through the line. Stella tensed. “You okay?”

  Dane’s voice was strained. “Just time to go to the yard.”

  “Okay. I’m glad you called.”

  “Bye, Stella.”

  By the time she choked out her own “Bye,” the line had gone dead. Stella set the phone back on its cradle. What was she doing here? Did she really intend to wait for him?

  She lay back on the floor, staring up at the popcorn ceiling streaked with dirt and stained from leaks. Life handed you all sorts of things. She wasn’t going to let her life go sour too. No way. No how.

  39

  Maggie Has News

  ––––––––

  THE guard slid the door open after the daily inmate count.

  Dane and Alex got up from their beds to head down for rec time. Dane hoped to call Stella again. The more he could talk to her, the better he felt. He still didn’t want her to wait for him, but he couldn’t let her go. Maybe when they saw each other in person it would help. He was getting the drill down. As long as he didn’t get into any fights or let Alex get him sucked into a scheme, he would get contact visits straight off, sitting across a table from Stella in a big room with dozens of other families. If he screwed up, he would have to stay in the room with phone booths and glass, or lose visitation privileges completely.

  This weighed on his mind every hour, with each approach of another inmate, every conversation with Alex where his cellmate planned some other attempt to move contraband. He withdrew into the smallest, darkest part of himself, hoping to attract no attention, forging no alliances, and keeping to the fringe. He saw others doing the same, looking furtively from corners of the rec room or along the walls of the yard, trying to become invisible.

  He got in line with the other men on the five walk, but the guard jerked him aside. “You got a meeting.” He kept Dane with him as the other white-shirted men crossed over the bridge away from the cells to go downstairs.

  A second guard led Dane out of the housing unit, through the metal cage, and back across to the administration buildings. Dane kept his head down, watching his own feet move across the concrete paths. He had no idea if what was happening was routine or something out of the ordinary.

  They went down a corridor he recognized from his first day. The guard pushed him through a door. Inside, Maggie waited for him at her desk. She still wore her coke-bottle glasses, and her hair still looked like taxidermy. But she had on a more normal dress, not the one with big shoulders. She smiled with light-pink lips and gestured to the gray chair. “I’m glad to see you, Mr. Scoffield. We have a matter to discuss.”

  He sat in the chair, and the guard moved to the door. Maggie got up and closed it. Dane kept his hands on the desk, folded together. When she came back around, she sat on the corner rather than in her chair.

  “You’ve been contacted by your father.”

  Dane’s head snapped up. “Who?”

  Maggie picked up an index card. “Bud Scoffield.”

  “I haven’t seen him in twenty years.” Nor did he want to. Ran off and left his mom with two rough boys. Married some other woman.

  “He said you two talked regular.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “When ex-cons try to get in for visitation, it gets noticed.” Maggie returned to her chair. “Did you know he did time?”

  “No. I haven’t heard from him much. Phone calls on Father’s Day. Sometimes he sent something on a birthday. Not often.”

  “Well, he spent five years in prison for armed robbery.”

  So much for Ryker being cut from the same cloth. Dane was looking more like his dad every minute. “When?”

  Maggie scanned the card. “Looks like 1966 to 1971.” She read on silently. “He wasn’t allowed to leave Florida for another three years of probation.” She looked
up at Dane. “That’s why he couldn’t see you all that time.”

  “Nobody ever told us.”

  “He probably didn’t want you to know.”

  “How did he find out about me?”

  “I’m not sure. But you got two requests for visitation at the same time. The first was your dad. The other was a Joe Fontaine. Your old boss?”

  Old Joe. He must have tracked down his dad. “So now what?”

  “Well, if you want a form to go to Joe, we can send that out. But your dad is a problem. We have to get special clearance to allow previous offenders to visit inmates.”

  “You think he’d do something?”

  “Just a formality. We have trouble with gangs sending messages to the inside. I’m sure you’ve seen some of that.”

  He hadn’t, but then he talked to no one but Alex. “So you won’t let him in?”

  “It’ll take some extra paperwork. I brought you here to ask if you even wanted it. You have to initiate the forms.”

  “Hell, I don’t know.”

  Maggie pushed a letter toward him. “He was straightforward about his record and included his discharge papers. That’s why we knew who he was. He seems like he’s got your interests at heart. Take this, read it. See how you feel. I’ll send the papers tomorrow, and you can fill them out or not.”

  Dane stood up with the letter, glancing cursorily at the words. The handwriting looked like his own, which bugged him. As he stepped out the door and the guard walked him down the corridor, he read a few lines.

  I know what you’re going through, son. I wasn’t there for you growing up, and now you’ll know why. But I’d like to see you now, if you’re willing. I know you’re keeping your head low and not talking to anyone, if you were like me. It can get mighty lonely. If you won’t see me, I get that. It’s what I deserve. But I hope you’ll consider it. I’m right sorry about your mom dying. She was a good woman. Too good for someone sorry like the man I was back then.