Looking for Trouble

by Victoria Dahl

  “That’s awful!” she gasped.

  “Hopefully it’ll be settled by the insurance company if it comes to it. Though if it does put his land at risk, then I’ll get pissed and come looking for your brother.” He held up the cake. “This is really good,” he said before he popped the rest into his mouth.

  “Thanks,” she murmured. “But...your father’s memory. It shouldn’t be hurt like this. It’s not fair.”

  He dusted his hands off over the sink with a chuckle. “I’m not the least bit worried about my dad’s memory. Many years of effort have gone into making that man into a saint. He could use some tarnishing. Especially considering that we’re about to have a ceremony honoring his sleazy death.”

  When she winced, he muttered a curse.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I’m not used to talking to someone who was involved.”

  “No, it’s okay. It was sleazy, unfortunately. But there’s nothing wrong with honoring his memory.”

  He wasn’t sure about that, but it was too complicated to figure out tonight. “What about your mom? Did you have a ceremony?”

  She swallowed hard before she turned and busied herself with piling bowls and pans in the sink. “Not really.” Clearly, she wanted to discuss it as much as he did. Good.

  “You look awfully cute in that apron,” he said, eyeing the ribbons that curled over her ass.

  She flashed him a bright smile and dried her hands on a dainty towel embroidered with berries. “Thank you.”

  “You look awfully cute in everything. And nothing.”

  “Stop.” She giggled, her cheeks flushing with a much healthier color than she’d had a few seconds ago. A tiny meow broke the silence.

  Her eyes went wide.

  “Oh. Um... Listen. Can you do me a big favor?” He unzipped his jacket and pulled out the kitten.

  “Oh, my God,” she gasped, immediately taking it from his hands to cuddle against her chest.

  “I found her wandering outside. I can’t take her to the motel, but I didn’t want to leave her outside. I’ll check out shelters tomorrow, but if it’s not too much trouble for tonight...?”

  Sophie didn’t answer. She was too busy burying her nose in the kitten’s fur. The kitten purred like an engine. “Oh, my God,” Sophie breathed. “Yes, she can stay with me. How do you know she’s a girl?”

  He shrugged. “She’s pretty?”

  “I don’t think that’s how it works. But we’ll settle on ‘her’ for now.”

  She got a can of tuna from the cupboard and set it on the ground. The kitten quickly abandoned purring and began eating like a pro. Sophie set down a bowl of water, too. Within minutes, the kitten was curled up in a chair, asleep, her fat tummy rising and falling with each breath.

  “I’ll try to take her off your hands before the weekend.”

  “Sure. I’ll make up a litter box. She’ll be fine.” She wiped down the kitchen counter.

  “You said you wanted to talk.”

  “I did.”

  “What do you want to talk about? The lawsuit?”

  “God no.” She took off the apron and turned to leave the kitchen, but he snatched the apron off the counter.

  “Hey, no need to leave that behind. You might need it later.”

  “Oh, my God!” She laughed. “You’re naughty.”

  “Oh, I’m the naughty one?” he teased, loving the way she laughed until she collapsed into the couch.

  “Shut up. You’re not supposed to bring any of that up!”

  “So, just do it and never mention it after?”

  “Exactly. I’m shy.”

  That ridiculous lie was like a stroke of fingers down his belly. She wasn’t shy, she was a coy little vixen, and he had a sudden urge to make her admit it in the most breathless way possible. “That lie is even naughtier than what we did yesterday.”

  “Not even close to true. And I am shy. A little.”

  He shook his head and shot her a look that let her know he wasn’t fooled. “So no talk of last night? Or the lawsuit?”

  “Nope. Tell me more about Alaska. Or tell me where else you’ve been.”

  “Where else? Canada, California, Texas, Colorado, South Dakota, the Netherlands—”

  “The Netherlands!” she yelped. “That’s crazy! I don’t know anything about it. Tell me everything.”

  It was his turn to laugh. “I don’t know all that much. Some of the food was good. Some was really...fishy.”

  “Were you on the sea?”

  “No, strangely, their production is mostly on land. I only work on groundwater. Ocean hydrology is a whole different thing.”

  “Did you see a lot of windmills?”

  “Yep. It’s a beautiful country. Flat but really green. The people are fairly reserved, but friendly as hell when you get to know them.”

  “Did they speak English?”

  “Most of them.”

  “Wow,” she breathed.

  He suddenly remembered the pictures on his phone. “Here. This was my favorite place. The biggest town where I was working was a university town. Every single building is older than anything you could see here.” He called up the picture of the ancient row homes on the main canal and handed the phone over.

  “Oh.” Eyes wide, lips parted in wonder, she stared at the picture. “Oh, Alex, I can’t believe you were there. Can I...?” She gestured at the screen, and he nodded, giving her permission to scroll through.

  She slid through the photos slowly, pausing over each one to study it. Her eyes sparkled. Alex glanced at each picture, but his eyes always rose to her face again. Jesus, she was cute, with her little nose and black glasses and wide-eyed fake innocence.

  “Oh,” she said suddenly, and pushed the phone back at his hand. “Sorry.”

  She’d gotten past his pictures of the Netherlands and stumbled over a picture of a woman perched on his bike, her tank top dipping low over tan cleavage and her sunglasses hiding her almond-shaped eyes.

  “I probably should’ve asked before now,” Sophie said. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “No. She’s my ex.”

  “Ex-wife?”

  “No,” he answered. But then heard himself add, “We lived together for a while.” He wasn’t sure why he said it. It hardly mattered.

  “I’m sorry,” she said simply.

  “It just didn’t work out. It’s been six months now. It’s fine.”

  “That doesn’t seem very long.”

  “Well,” he added with a sardonic smile, “I hadn’t been home for three months before that. I’m not so good at settling down.”

  Sophie curled her legs under her and watched him for a moment. “I understand that.”

  “Really? I wouldn’t think you’d be sympathetic. Seems like you were born to settle down.”

  She winced as if he’d struck her, and Alex immediately regretted whatever he’d done to offend her. “Hey—” he started, but she spoke over him.

  “I’d like to travel. I’d like to move on. But I help with my dad’s ranch, and he needs me. He’s getting older. I wouldn’t walk away from that.”

  Now he was the one wincing. “Like I did, you mean.”

  Sophie shrugged. “I wouldn’t judge that. I grew up with the same scandal you did. You saw your chance to escape and you took it.”

  “And you didn’t.”

  “I haven’t seen my chance yet.”

  “You went to college, obviously.”

  Her smile wasn’t natural and wide this time. It was tight. “I took most of my degree work at the University of Wyoming online. I only spent a year in Laramie. Then I commuted to Salt Lake City for two years to get my master’s, but I only had to be there six or seven days a month. My brother...
” She paused for a long moment, but then just shook her head. “I don’t know. He’s always been a little lost. He was so young when she disappeared.”

  Alex’s mind cruelly flashed back to those first few weeks after his dad had left. Alex had been nine, his brain more than solid enough to record every moment. “I’d think maybe that would be a blessing,” he finally said.

  “I’ve thought the same thing. But I guess not.”

  “How old were you?” he asked.

  She smoothed a hand over her skirt, her gaze gone distant. “I was almost five. My birthday was three days later.”

  “Jesus,” he said, the hair on his nape rising in horror.

  “I wasn’t even that scared at first. I knew she’d be back for my birthday. She had to make a cake. She had to—” The words ended in a strange little hiccup. Sophie took a few breaths and then cleared her throat. “It feels like it was a hundred years ago, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” he said quietly.

  “And then sometimes it’s right there all of a sudden, with no warning. It must be easier when you’re not here.”

  “It is easier. No one knows about it, so after a while it’s almost like you don’t know about it anymore either. It’s almost like it didn’t happen. You should try it sometime. Get away.”

  “Run away,” she corrected, but he couldn’t tell if it was an admonition or a yearning.

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Her gaze stayed distant for a long time, but then she shook her head and smiled. “I can’t. Maybe someday.”

  Alex wasn’t sure why he felt a stab of disappointment. He’d be moving along in a few days, what she did or didn’t do with her life was none of his business. Maybe it was only that it felt like a judgment of his own life.

  Other people stayed. To take care of a mother. A father. Or the woman they loved. They stayed because normal people didn’t drift the way Alex did.

  He and Andrea had tried it that way for a while. She’d traveled with him on and off for a year. She’d thought it would be fun. He’d loved it for a while. But then it had been a disappointment for them both. She’d been homesick and lonely while he worked; he’d hated coming back to the hotel to an argument.

  So they’d tried it her way instead. They’d rented an apartment outside Seattle. Picked out furniture. He’d moved his few belongings in with hers. That had been happy for a while, but only a while. Then Alex had gotten a little too relieved when it was time to hit the road again, and Andrea had gotten a little too pissed about each successive trip.

  He wasn’t made to settle down, and nobody wanted a relationship with a man who couldn’t stay in one place for more than a few months.

  Or had his childhood made him so afraid of holding on tight that he just let everything go?

  “Tell me more about your travels,” she finally said.

  He shook his head. “Tell me about your dad’s ranch.”

  “Ha. Your family is in ranching. You know all about it. There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Cattle?” he pressed.

  She nodded.

  “South of here, right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “About forty minutes out. That’s all there is to tell. It’s beautiful, but I only stay to help my dad. He’s always been good to me.”

  “He sounds like a good guy.”

  “Yeah. He is. He’s my stepdad, you know. I mean, I assume you know everything.”

  He nodded. Of course he knew. Everybody knew. Greg Heyer had met a woman on a trip to Casper and brought her and her young daughter home to live with him just a month later. What had he expected from such a quick and dirty start? Nobody even knew her people.

  Yeah. He’d heard all about that. Many times.

  “Tell me where you’d go,” he said.

  She frowned in puzzlement.

  “If you left here, where’s the first place you’d go?”

  “Oh.” She kept frowning, but now he could see the thoughts turning in her eyes. “There are so many places. Alaska, for sure. But first?” She looked at him like he might have the answer, but he couldn’t help.

  Finally, she smiled. “I’ve never seen the ocean. I’d go to California. But not L.A. or San Francisco. Not to a city. I’d go to the coast and see the ocean and redwoods and... God,” she sighed. “Can you imagine?”

  Yes. He could. He’d seen that coast a dozen times. But he didn’t say that. “It’d be beautiful.”

  “Yes. Everybody always says you can smell the ocean. Is that true?”

  “Sure.”

  “What does it smell like?”

  Alex opened his mouth to answer, then realized he wasn’t sure how to put it. “It smells...humid, I guess. But cool.”

  “Like rain?”

  “No. More complicated. Sometimes a little fishy or a little green. And salty.”

  Her head tilted and a frown showed between her eyebrows. “Salt doesn’t have a smell.”

  Alex laughed in exasperation. “You’re right. I don’t know. It’s like trying to explain that aspen smells crisp.”

  “Okay, you got me there.” She watched him, her mouth soft with amusement, her eyes still bright.

  “What?” he finally asked.

  “You have a nice laugh.”

  He raised an eyebrow at that.

  “I like it. You look so dangerous and dark with your tattoos and your scruff.” Her hand rose to stroke his jaw, her fingers scraping softly over his stubble. His skin tingled. “And then you laugh.”

  “I’m glad you like it,” he said, his voice already rough with need for her. He curved his hand around her knee and felt the soft warmth of her stocking. God. “I like your laugh, too,” he said. “It sounds so sweet and innocent. Just the way you look.”

  Her eyes crinkled with mischief.

  “Tell me again how you’re shy,” he challenged, sliding his hand up her thigh.

  “I am,” she said, just as his hand touched bare skin. He pushed higher, bunching her skirt up until her stocking was revealed, half a shade darker than her skin, clipped to a pale pink ribbon that was decorated with swirls of tan. His skin looked impossibly dark against all that pale, and far too rough to touch such sweetness. They both watched his blunt fingers spread over her thigh. “I’m shy,” she repeated, her breath coming faster now. Something dangerous uncurled in Alex’s gut.

  “Right. You’re shy. You’re a nice girl.”

  “I am,” she insisted, but her words ended on a gasp when he tugged her leg closer, pulling her thighs apart. He pushed her skirt up into a crumpled pile, exposing pink panties. Lust spread through him like a drug as he slid his hands along the line of that delicate fabric until his fingertips slipped between her legs. Her plump lips were a sweet cushion under his touch. He stroked her through the fabric, tracing the seam of her body until she was panting.

  “I guess nice girls like this,” he growled.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “What else do they like?”

  “I don’t—” He brushed her clit and she drew in a quick breath. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, I bet you know. You just can’t say it. Because you’re shy.”

  “Yes.” He barely heard her this time. The delicate, innocent pink of the panties was getting darker under his touch as her wetness soaked through the fabric. That was getting to be one of his favorite sights.

  Alex reached for the row of tiny buttons that started at the collar of her dress. She didn’t stop him. She didn’t touch his arm. She just ducked her head and watched as he unbuttoned them one by one. Feigning patience, he made it all the way to the last button, just at her waist. Then, instead of shoving the dress off and fucking her right there against the arm of the couch, he very slowly spread one side of her dress open and
down her arm. The bra was pink, too. He wanted to see all of it together.

  “Stand up,” he ordered.

  She uncurled her legs and stood, the skirt of her dress falling to cover her thighs. Not for long. He opened the other side of her dress and tugged it farther down her arms. It caught for a moment, and he liked that, Sophie half undressed, arms restrained, and her nipples pushing against the scraps of fabric that covered them. But he only paused for a moment before tugging the dress all the way down. He let it fall to a heap on the floor, and he took her in. The bra, the panties, the garter belt, the stockings, and all of it still sweet and innocent. All of it cut modestly in muted colors of pink and tan. Like she was just a nice girl on her way home from school in the 1940s.

  He was so hard it hurt.

  “Do nice girls like to show off?” he asked.

  Her chest rose and fell with every nervous breath. She nodded.

  “Yes, they do,” he murmured, raising one hand to cup her breast. He flicked a thumb over her nipple and watched the muscles of her stomach jump.

  He dragged the fabric aside just enough to expose the hard nub of her nipple, then circled it slowly with his calloused thumb. It grew harder against his touch. “Take down your hair.”

  While she reached up, he leaned forward and caught her nipple between his teeth.

  “Uh,” she gasped, but her hands were occupied with the knot at her nape. He heard one pin fall to the floor as he scraped his teeth over her and made her jerk. Then her hair fell and brushed against his head. He leaned back and took her in.

  Now she looked violated and vulnerable. Hair wavy and tumbling, the bra shoved aside, her nipple wet and reddened. Alex hooked his fingers into the sides of her panties and slipped them down. They were quite conveniently put on over the ribbons of the garter belt, so once he let the panties fall, her sex was framed by pink ribbons and the tiny strip of tan lace that decorated the edge of the belt. Pale, plump flesh and the slightest hint of pink lips peeking from her slit. He could see how slick and wet she was already.

  “Yes.” He didn’t try to keep the violence from his voice. “You like showing off, don’t you, Sophie? You like walking around like this all day, knowing what a hot little piece you are if someone would just fucking look.”