Burn It Up

by Cara McKenna

  “You still up for a ride, Sunday?”

  She blew out a tired breath. “I don’t know. Show up and find out, I guess.”

  “Will do.” He took a couple steps back, paused with one foot still on the concrete. “Like I said—sorry.”

  She shut the door on him. A lock clicked and the lights came on, but the curtain swept shut before he could steal a peek at Kim’s bed—

  Kim. “Kim!” He went to the window, rapping the glass. “It’s Kim, right?”

  The curtain swished aside, framing her. She mouthed her muted reply clearly. “Too. Late.”

  “Shit.”

  She shut him out.

  He knew when he’d fucked his chances, and he also knew the line between flirtation and harassment. But as he started across the lot, blood pumping so much mischief, he couldn’t help himself. He turned on his heel and strode back toward room six, hopped onto the walkway and knocked.

  Her shadow darkened the curtain as she passed, and when she opened the door, she kept the chain lock on. “What?”

  “So, Kim.” He hooked his finger around the chain, toying. “You’ll tell me when it’s time, right?”

  She blinked wearily. “Time?”

  “Whenever it’s cool for me to try to fuck you again.”

  Her eyes rolled up. “Go away, Vince.”

  He smiled. “Whenever you’re ready, just say the word. Can’t wait for the chance. Till then . . .” He held his palms up, miming deference, and took a step backward.

  “Yes, you’ll be needing those,” she returned. “It’s going to be a long wait.”

  “See you Sunday. Five a.m.”

  “Five a.m.?”

  “Sunrise, sweetheart. Dress in layers. No heels. I’ll find you a helmet. Oh and wear that perfume—that shit drives me up a goddamn wall.”

  And off he went, giving her no chance to argue. He felt the heat of her glare on his back. It felt as good as a curious hand on his dick, and he smiled to himself. The door thumped shut, and he could hear her voice through the thin wood.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  The smile became a grin as he aimed himself downtown. “To be continued, sweetheart.”

  • • •

  Kim fell asleep in a foul and frustrated mood, and awoke in a matching one. Vince’s come-on echoed in her memory.

  Ask me in.

  The nerve. It hadn’t even been a question, had it? More a command.

  Fuck him.

  And fuck the part of her that had been half a breath from doing just as he’d suggested.

  She packed her camera bag gruffly, stuffing lens wipes and memory cards into the pockets as if they’d insulted her.

  Had it been an incidental come-on? Maybe King Roughneck hit on anything with breasts if it stood still long enough, his attention as impersonal as buckshot sprayed in the general vicinity of animate females. Or had he read something in her body language or eye contact, some chemical invitation . . . ? Read the far-too-personal truth in signals lost even to her. That she wanted him. In her body, if not her logical brain.

  Kim sighed, no clue which possibility annoyed her more.

  She’d slept like crap, restless to the last cell. Coffee was needed. Stat.

  At the energetically named Wild Horse Diner, kitty-corner from Benji’s on Station Street, she climbed out of her rental car. The formerly silver Jetta was dusted to the finish of a cinnamon doughnut. It locked with an obedient bloop, and she carried her purse and camera bag through the open front door.

  She had her pick of seats, snagging a booth at the end. When the waitress swung by, she ordered an omelet, and coffee was delivered as she was buffing her glasses on a napkin.

  “Thank you. God knows I need this.”

  “Sightseeing?” the young brunette asked.

  “Yeah, you could say that.” Kim smiled, not feeling like soliciting yet another stranger’s opinions about Sunnyside’s casino project, nor indeed feeling as though she were somehow their representative. She’d been grilled not only by Vince, but by the motel’s front desk woman, a drugstore clerk, the gas station attendant. People had questions about the development, probably good ones, but she had zero answers. Sunnyside was as tight-lipped as . . . as . . . as some gross, chauvinistic simile a man like Vince might come up with.

  Damn. There she went again, remembering him. Vince . . . Whoever. Gris . . . Grim . . . Grenier? Grossier. He’d probably forgotten her name already. Again. God help her if he actually showed up, the next morning. If he did, she’d go along for the photo ops, solely.

  The company was paying her for five days’ work and travel. In truth, way more time than she needed—she’d already have hundreds of usable shots by that evening. But she’d stay the full five, and not only for the money.

  She wasn’t in a rush to head home. Fortuity might be rough, the assignment not exactly a gold mine—she’d grossly underbid for it, desperate for a change of scenery, some breathing room—but at least here she didn’t have to confront the awkwardness waiting back home. Her stuff still in Ryan’s apartment, and the man himself. A man whom, on paper, she’d had no good reason to dump. But hearts weren’t made of paper, were they?

  Plus, when have I ever felt sure about a guy? She slumped at the thought. Maybe she was holding out for something that wasn’t ever coming, waiting to feel that mythical lightning strike, that sizzle. What if that glittery expectation was all bull, cooked up by the same sickos who’d invented Valentine’s Day and Brazilian waxing?

  She opened her camera bag and propped the Nikon against her thigh, turning it on. She cycled backward past the black night sky, the train tracks and station ghostly in the streetlight. Then came a punch in the stomach.

  That man. His flash-lit face was jarring and stark.

  He’d turned his head slightly, and she could see the tip of that ridiculous neck tattoo curling from behind his ear like an evil sideburn, black like all the other work he’d had done on his arms. None of it scandalized her. Sleeves were as common as eyeglasses in Portland, though Vince was no skinny hipster. His bike was no doubt the kind that came with excessive horsepower and earsplitting, look-at-me decibel levels.

  She clicked to the next image on the card. Studied that matchstick pinched between his full lips, the ones she’d managed to capture sans evil smirk, surely a rare sight. She’d surprised him on that first shot, his eyes still wide. The flash bleached his retinas pure white, hazel irises lit up—striated near-green, the color of lake water and rimmed in gray, a gold corona around his tight pupil. Nice lashes, dark as his hair and stubble. Nice brows, though one had a bald spot, the gully likely framing a scar the flash had blown out. The man probably had a hundred scars—and a dumb, macho story to explain each and every one.

  When a man came built like Vince Grossier, it told you one of two things: Either his job was backbreaking, or he made violent love to his weight bench every morning. She had her money on the former, given the local economy and those dusty jeans of his. But no matter the cause, the effect was the same. All that muscle added up to a man who lived through his body.

  The smart man will manipulate you, and the strong one will push you around. Either way, they knew where they wanted you. At least with the guileless, pushy ones, the Vince Grossiers of the world, you saw it coming. There was an honesty in that. It gave you a chance to put up a fight.

  She toyed with the camera’s DELETE button. One push of her thumb, and he’d be gone. She pressed and his image shrank, sucked off the screen forever. The second shot filled the void, those brows drawn in surprise and annoyance, eyes narrowed to match. Her thumb hovered.

  She jumped as a steaming plate was set before her, stammered her thanks to the waitress, and shut off the camera. Shut it in its bag, like she’d stuffed down her attraction and shut that motel door on him.

  Four more days, she reminded herself, spanking the ketchup bottle. Four days to do this job, four days to avoid heading home and facing the fallout with Ryan.

 
Four days in the desert of northernmost Nevada. In the New Wild West known as Fortuity.

  She eyed her camera bag.

  Four days to get real good at avoiding Vince Grossier. The rest of her life to get busy forgetting him.

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