Beautiful Sinner

by Sophie Jordan

  Standing on the front porch, she knocked again until she could hear the steady thump of Nana’s walker accompanied by Coco’s high-pitched yips. “I’m coming!” she shouted. “Who is it?”

  “Nana, it’s me! Gabriella!”

  There was a scrabbling of the lock and then the door swung open. Nana peered out at her as Coco continued his infernal yips. The fifteen-pound mutant Chihuahua didn’t trust anyone except Nana. “Where’ve you been? I thought you were abducted and sold into some sex trafficking ring.”

  Well, at least someone had worried about her disappearance. “No, Nana. I’m fine. And you really watch too much Dateline.”

  “It’s a good show! And I told your sister to call the police, but she said you’d turn up.”

  As much as she hated to feel gratitude toward her sister, she was thankful she had stopped Nana from calling the police. Of course, if she was facedown in a ditch somewhere, the sentiment would be different.

  “I got locked in the school overnight.”

  Nana’s eyes widened. “You mean you spent the night in the school?”

  She nodded. “The custodian let me out this morning. Do you still have my purse?”

  “Yes. It’s on the kitchen table.” Nana turned and clattered down the hall to the kitchen.

  Gabriella followed her, sticking her tongue out at Coco when Nana’s back was turned. The dog narrowed its eyes and intensified its growls.

  “Coco, behave or I’ll have Gabby give you a bath. You’re due for one.”

  Gabriella immediately retracted her tongue and the little beast ceased its growling. Both of them apparently understood the threat and neither one relished it. Before joining Nana in the kitchen, she ducked into the hall bath. It had been a while since she visited the restroom. Or ate for that matter. Her stomach grumbled as she finished her business and washed her hands.

  “Did you eat breakfast already, Nana?” she asked as she joined her again. “Want me to make you something?” She poked her head into the fridge and grabbed some grapes from a bowl. She’d washed them and put them in a bowl for Nana a couple days ago. Otherwise, the contents of the refrigerator were getting low. She’d have to make a store run after her shift today.

  “I ate some oatmeal.”

  Shutting the fridge, she tossed a couple grapes into her mouth, already imagining the frothy latte she planned on making herself at work. One of the perks of working at a coffee shop.

  She picked up her purse from the table. “Do you need anything right now? I’m going to shower and get ready for my shift. How about I make you dinner tonight? I’ll go by the store and get groceries.”

  “It’s Saturday night. Sure you don’t have a date?” Nana let out a groan as she eased down into a kitchen chair.

  Immediately her mind tracked back to Cruz. He was hardly bring-boy-home-to-mom material, but he was the first guy to pop into her mind at the mention of date. She supposed it was natural to think about him since they had been making out like two adolescents no more than an hour ago. Any other day she wouldn’t instantly think about him. In a few days, she wouldn’t think about him at all.

  “No date.” She gave her grandmother an indulgent look. She was always prying into Gabriella’s love life—or lack of love life. “You just want me to marry someone here so I don’t move back to Austin.”

  “Plenty of nice fellas here in Sweet Hill.” She nodded.

  “And in Austin. If I want a fella at all, Austin is a much larger city. Stands to reason my odds would be better there.”

  “Too far away from Sweet Hill though.”

  Which was what Gabriella liked about it. Not that she would tell her grandmother that. She didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Nana, as far as she was concerned, was the best thing about Sweet Hill.

  And Cruz Walsh.

  She shoved that treacherous voice aside. He was not one of the best things about Sweet Hill. He was not a thing at all. Not to her, he wasn’t. “How about tacos for dinner?”

  Nana nodded. “The crunchy kind.”

  “Okay. Crunchy tacos, it is. I’ll stop off at the store.”

  “Don’t forget the sour cream. And no hot sauce unless it’s just for you.” She rubbed at the center of her chest. “It repeats on me.”

  “Yes, Nana.” She swung her purse over her shoulder and backed out of the kitchen, sidestepping Coco as he growled at her ankles. “Call me if you need anything.”

  Her grandmother flapped a hand in the air. “Go on. See you tonight. Unless you get a date! Get a date,” she shouted, her voice trailing after Gabriella.

  Rolling her eyes, she hurried outside, darting across the driveway to the garage. She took the side staircase up to her apartment. Digging out her key, she unlocked the door and fell into her own private little sanctuary with a sigh of relief.

  It was a simple apartment, on the small side, but it was home. It was a place where she could escape from the world. After the last twenty-four hours, she especially needed that.

  She locked the door to her apartment, breathing fully, perhaps for the first time since being trapped in the closet with Cruz. She leaned against the door and took several more deep breaths, filling her lungs and telling herself she was being silly. There were no monsters or bogeyman after her. She winced. No. Just the ghosts from her past. Not the actual embodiment of her past. She’d left him behind. He wasn’t after her. She didn’t need to feel like she had to keep looking over her shoulder.

  She felt safe here. Although that didn’t stop her from moving to the living room window to peek out the blinds. Nana Betty’s front yard stared back at her in the brightening day. Nana came into view, holding a watering can for the azaleas lining her walk. Coco trotted alongside her, eyeing the horizon for squirrels or other equally malevolent vermin.

  Turning away from the window, she started stripping off her clothes, letting them hit the floor where they fell. She’d pick them up later. Right now she just wanted the hot spray of water on her skin. Maybe it would do more than wash away the grime.

  Maybe it would wash away the last twenty-four hours, too.

  Ten

  Leaving this particular building behind with an aching cock wasn’t standard for him. When he had attended high school, he’d never suffered from lack of sex. He had been an adolescent living with zero parental involvement and girls liked him. They wanted to be with him.

  He’d spent his fair share of time making out behind the bleachers. In the theater box. In the boys’ bathroom. In the girls’ bathroom. In the dugout. Yeah, even in closets. Squeaky had caught him before, too. That’s probably why the old man recognized him all these years later.

  If there was a willing girl, Cruz was on her like a bee on honey. It didn’t matter when or where. He’d find a place for them to go. The memory made him wince. He wasn’t proud to have been such a manwhore back then. It’s just the way things had been.

  His home life had sucked. The only reason he stayed and didn’t run away was his sisters. He couldn’t leave them. Not even when things got bad. And life with Mom and her countless boyfriends all looking to beat the shit out of him in some perceived rite of fatherly devotion was pretty bad.

  He’d searched for something more outside their cramped home. Sex had fulfilled that need. Girls. They gave him something to feel besides anger, resentment and the ache of poverty. A few of his girlfriends would even bake him cookies and cakes, claiming he could use a little more meat on his bones. He would bring the food home to share with Piper and Malia, making sure they had something to eat, too.

  That night in the boathouse hadn’t been the first time he visited Natalie. He’d met her there a few times for feverish couplings. Once she even snuck out during her grandmother’s eightieth birthday party to meet him. He had no misconceptions about what they had been about. They’d used each other for empty, meaningless sex, for brief physical gratification.

  He pushed away the bitter memories of those years.

  He didn’t want to be that
kid again and he hated feeling like him now, horny and needy for sex.

  But you’re not that same kid anymore.

  Girls weren’t his drug of choice. These days he didn’t need a crutch like that. He didn’t need to numb himself. Prison had taught him to endure.

  Now he rarely felt anything at all.

  Except Gabriella Rossi made him feel.

  Fuck. It was problematic considering who she was, who he was . . . but it couldn’t be ignored. Piper had accused him of being an icicle more than once since he’d been released.

  Well, he didn’t feel like an icicle with Gabriella pressed up against him. No, he felt like a flame.

  Even though she persuaded the custodian to let him go without calling the authorities, Cruz planned to call the authorities himself. Specifically, his brother-in-law, the sheriff of Sweet Hill.

  As he didn’t own a cell phone, he had to drive across town to his house, a turn-of-the-century bungalow with an oversized front porch. He’d bought the place a couple months ago. It needed a lot of repairs, starting with a new roof, but he could do it. Before prison he worked in construction. He’d been on roofing crews, drywall, masonry. You name it.

  He enjoyed working with his hands and being out of doors. Freedom tasted especially good after years in a cage. The sun beating down on him as he worked on something that belonged to him was never a dream of his. He knew better than to dream big.

  But the settlement granted to him by the city for his wrongful imprisonment had changed that. He was free. He owned a house . . . something no one could take away. He had his own walls and roof and a front door he could open and close, letting the world in and shutting it out whenever he wanted.

  When he turned off the highway, it took him five minutes to reach the house. It sat on twenty acres. He felt a sense of peace every time he parked in the driveway, but today that peace eluded him. His skin buzzed and sparked. He felt as though he had been jerked awake from a decade-long sleep.

  She may have run away, but every instinct in him demanded he give chase. Chase her and catch her and pin her with his body . . .

  It was fucked up. He knew it. Since prison, women had ranked low on his priority list. Suddenly, however, she was at the top of the list.

  Unlocking his front door, he heard a train whistle in the distance. The tracks coiled between his house and the trailer park where he grew up. Back then, he remembered listening to that whistle as he lay awake at night. He imagined himself on a train. Imagined all the places it would take him far from Sweet Hill.

  And yet here he was.

  The cage door had been flung open, and he hadn’t left. He felt needed here. His sisters were here and so was a whole new generation of kids growing up on the wrong side of the tracks. Kids like him. Poor. Scorned. Searching for something. He knew what that felt like.

  He might have the money to start over somewhere else, but he couldn’t walk away.

  Snatching up the cordless phone from where it sat on the counter, he dialed—and wondered if maybe he did need to get a cell phone, after all.

  His sister answered on the third ring.

  He got right to the point. “Piper, is Hale there?”

  “Cruz, what’s wrong?”

  He didn’t want her to know where he spent the night . . . or with whom. It might give her ideas, and she already had ideas enough. She was determined to see him settled with a nice girl and he knew she would think Gabriella Rossi qualified as that, even if she was related to the woman he went to prison for killing.

  “Nothing. I just need to speak with Hale.”

  He felt her hesitation in the beat of silence. He’d never called Hale out of the blue and asked to speak with him. “Okay.” She pulled the phone away and he heard her muffled voice call for Hale.

  Moments later, Hale was on the line. “Hey there, Cruz. What can I do for you?”

  He didn’t hate the guy. If his sister had to be with anyone, he figured she could do a lot worse than Hale Walters. He was decent even if he was a lawman. He would take care of her. Not that Piper needed a man to take care of her. She’d managed the majority of the time he was in prison on her own, taking care of both herself and Malia. Knowing his sister was with a man that could care for her mattered though.

  Still. It wasn’t easy knowing that his little sister was married to the sheriff of Sweet Hill. The guy was the town’s golden boy. Former homecoming king and quarterback star. He was a walking cliché. A cliché who shared a bed with his baby sister now. It made him want to punch something when he thought about it—which was why he tried not to think about it.

  “I need the address of someone,” he explained.

  A pause met his declaration. He’d never asked Hale for anything before. And now here he was, asking for something that was probably illegal.

  To his credit, Hale didn’t automatically say no. “Whose address do you need?”

  This time, it was his turn to pause. Saying her name out loud would make it real. It would mean he really was going after her like some bloodhound. “Gabriella Rossi.”

  “Cruz,” he started in a warning voice. Of course, he knew the Rossi family. Her brother was the high school principal. Her sister had billboards all over town. Her cousin . . . well. They both knew who she was . . . who she had been.

  “Just give me her address, Hale. I’m not going to cause any trouble.”

  His brother-in-law sighed. “Should I even ask why you want her address?”

  “Because I want it.”

  Another sigh. “That’s what I thought,” he said as though Cruz had stated the words he had been thinking. Because I want her.

  “Look. I don’t mean her any harm.”

  “I know that. Just be careful, Cruz. She’s . . .” His voice faded away. Cruz could almost imagine Piper staring at her husband, worry knitting her forehead as she tried to figure out what they were talking about and whether Cruz was going to get himself into any trouble. He might have been exonerated, but that didn’t stop her from worrying.

  “I know who she is, Hale,” he reassured him.

  He knew. And he still wanted her.

  Gabriella was jumpy all through her shift, looking up every time the door chimed and a customer entered. One of the other baristas dropped a glass mug halfway through her shift and Gabriella actually yelped and jumped. She didn’t know what she expected. It wasn’t as though Cruz Walsh would walk through the door. He’d never done so before. This wasn’t exactly the type of place he frequented. Five-dollar coffees weren’t for everyone and she doubted they were for him. He’d been locked up for years without such luxuries. She doubted he even indulged in those types of frivolities before he had been locked up. She knew he’d worked in construction. With only a high school diploma, he couldn’t have been making very much money.

  “Skittish tonight, aren’t you?” Jabal asked as she bent to clean up the mess she made. Bianca, the manager, glared at her as she retrieved a chocolate croissant from behind the glass for a drive-through customer and then turned to glare at Gabriella as if she were somehow complicit in the mishap. She’d been ten minutes late today and Bianca was still annoyed with her for that.

  She made a point of looking industrious and forced a smile for Jabal. “Not really.”

  “Anything wrong?”

  She shook her head and rubbed at her forehead. “Just tired. Didn’t sleep well last night.” Because she slept on a hard floor in a closet . . . with Cruz.

  At least her shift was almost over. She’d eat dinner with Nana and go to bed early. Wake up new. Refreshed. With a plan to get out of town and on with her real life.

  “Have a hot date?”

  She flinched. Was Jabal reading her mind?

  “Um. Not exactly.”

  “Well, you gotta get your rest, girl. You’re thirty now. Use moisturizer.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  The door chimed. She looked up and spotted Mr. Brown entering the café.

  “Mr. B!” Jabal excla
imed. “You want your usual?” She moved to the extensive tea collection.

  “Yes, Earl Grey tea, please.”

  Jabal selected a tea bag while Gabriella moved to the cash register. “How are you doing today, Mr. Brown? Any exciting news in town?” Mr. Brown owned the local paper. Gabriella actually worked for him for two summers. He wrote her an excellent college recommendation.

  “Oh, busy with lots to cover! The county fair is fast approaching.” He leaned an elbow on the counter. “I could always use someone like you, Gabriella.”

  “Oh, Mr. Brown.” She forced a smile. He had made the offer before. He only had a few part-time staffers. He practically ran the town’s sole newspaper by himself. He’d offered her a full-time copy editor position, but working at the local paper and covering news like the country fair was not her idea of serious reporting. “You know I’m only here temporarily.”

  Jabal handed him his steaming cup of tea. He held it aloft in salute. “One can hope. You were my favorite protégé, Gabby.”

  “I’m the only high school kid who actually went into the business, Mr. Brown. Of course, I am.” Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Bianca glaring at her again. In Bianca’s opinion, there was being friendly to customers and then there was socializing.

  “My door is always open, Gabby.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Brown.” He waved and exited the café just as a group of noisy teens entered.

  Gabriella spent her remaining shift taking complicated orders from teenagers and then cleaning the bathrooms—Bianca relished assigning her that task.

  “See you later,” she said to Jabal as she hung up her apron in the back and grabbed her purse.

  “So let me just get this straight.” Jabal hung up her own apron. “You could work for that nice Mr. Brown, but you’d rather work here part-time taking drink orders from entitled little brats and cleaning bathrooms?”

  She shook her head. “It’s complicated.” She couldn’t explain it. Taking the job with Mr. Brown would mean she was accepting a life here. In Sweet Hill. That she was okay being Flabby Gabby for the rest of her life. It meant no Austin. No career as a reporter working for a serious newspaper. No redemption. No becoming the shining star she told herself she would be one day.