Good, Bad…Better

by Cindi Myers

  Her eyes popped open. “You mean—nude?”

  “Why not?” He stroked the crease between her bottom and the top of her thigh.

  “I…I don’t know. It’s just…not something I’ve ever thought about doing.”

  “Then think about it.”

  Could she do it? Stand before him nude and let him draw her portrait? That was certainly more daring than Jen had ever been before. “What would—”

  His hand on her mouth silenced her. He raised his head and looked toward the door. “What was that?”

  She listened. At first, the only sounds were a passing car on the street and their own steady breathing. But then, she caught the slide of metal on metal and the creak of the door opening.

  Zach was up, reaching for his pants with one hand and the portable phone with the other. He shoved the phone at Jen as he stepped into his pants and pulled them up. “Someone’s trying to break in,” he hissed. “Call the police.”

  She could hear footsteps behind the screen now, and someone pounding on something. The cash drawer? With shaking hands, she pulled the blanket around her and punched in the numbers.

  While she listened to the phone ring, she watched Zach grab one of the tattoo machines and move, barefoot, toward the screen. “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  He shook his head and put a finger to his lips. Apparently the burglars didn’t realize the store was occupied. They were talking now, not loudly, but with the confidence of people sure they won’t be overheard. With a single electronic beep, the cash drawer popped open. “Give me that bag,” one burglar muttered.

  “I’ll go over here and see if there’s any equipment we can fence,” said the other.

  “Austin 9-1-1. What is your emergency?”

  Jen listened to the operator’s voice and froze, too terrified to speak. She clutched the blanket more tightly around her, her eyes locked to Zach.

  “Hello? Please state your emergency.”

  A shadow appeared on the other side of the screen, and then a dark figure moved into view. Before Jen had time to cry out, Zach shoved the tattoo machine into the burglar’s back and pinned him with a strong arm across his throat. “Don’t move,” he growled.

  “Hello? This is Austin 9-1-1. Do you have an emergency?”

  “I…I’m here.” Jen cleared her throat. “I want to report a break-in.”

  “Your name please?”

  Her stomach clenched. Here was the tricky part. If she identified herself as the police chief’s daughter, the whole department would be on alert. “It’s, uh, Theresa. Theresa Jacobs.”

  Zach glanced over his shoulder at her and gave her a quizzical look. She shrugged and turned her attention back to the phone. “I’m at Austin Body Art. I was, uh, working late and someone tried to break in. My brother, Zach, has one of the burglars.”

  “D.J., get the hell out of he—unh!” The burglar’s warning ended in a grunt as Zach tightened his hold on the man’s throat. They heard muttered curses from the front, followed by scrambling feet and the bells on the door jangling wildly as the second thief fled.

  “We have a car on the way.”

  “The other burglar got away, but we’re still here with the one.”

  “We have a car on the way right now.”

  “Thanks.” She hung up the phone and looked at Zach. “They said they have someone on the way.”

  “Maybe you’d better get dressed.”

  “Oh, yeah, right.” She flushed, imagining the line of questioning the cops might take when they heard her story about working late. Not to mention what they’d do when they found out she wasn’t Theresa Jacobs.

  Holding the blanket around her, she collected her clothes from the workbench and went into the back room to change. “There should be some clothesline back there,” he said. “Bring it to me.”

  By the time Zach had the burglar tied up, they heard sirens. A few seconds later, the red and blue of a police strobe bounced off the walls of the shop. While Zach kept an eye on his captive, she reluctantly went to open the door for the cops. Her heart sank when she saw a familiar unmarked sedan pull in behind the two police cruisers. Her father didn’t say anything when he saw her, just glared and walked past her, into the shop.

  7

  HEART IN HER THROAT, JEN followed her father to the back of the store. A uniformed officer was already questioning Zach. Trying to stay inconspicuous, she retreated to a corner in front of the workbench and watched him while her father conferred with a second officer.

  Zach had put on his vest, but hadn’t bothered to zip it. He stood at one end of the screen, arms folded across his chest, expression wary. Even barefoot and half-un-dressed, he looked powerful—even a little dangerous.

  “What were you doing when the break-in occurred?” the officer asked.

  Zach stared at the floor for a long moment before answering. “We were talking.”

  The officer’s gaze flickered to the tattoo chair and the blanket crumpled at its foot. “You were talking.”

  “When the break-in occurred, we were just talking.”

  The officer nodded and wrote something in his notebook. “Did you get a look at the second burglar?”

  “No. He was on the other side of the screen.”

  “Did he say anything? Could you tell if it was a man or a woman?”

  “A man, I think. The other guy called him D.J.”

  The officer wrote this down. “Anything missing?”

  “I can’t say exactly. I checked the register just now and it looked like maybe a couple hundred in cash and some checks are gone.”

  Jen’s father joined them. “Do you have an alarm system?” he asked. His expression was blank, as if he’d never seen Zach before in his life.

  Zach was just as distant. “Yeah, but I hadn’t turned it on yet.”

  The officer closed his notebook. “That’ll be all now. I may have some more questions later.” He turned to Jen’s father. “Do you want to add anything, Chief?”

  Chief Truitt shook his head. “I don’t have anything to say to this man.” Only the tightness around his jaw betrayed any emotion.

  The officer started to turn away, then glanced at Jen. “I need to question her, too.”

  The chief nodded. “Yes, you do.”

  She’d hoped her father would leave then. Instead, he came and stood beside her, though he refused to meet her gaze.

  She took a deep breath and wiped her palms down her sides. Fine. Obviously he was angry. She could live with that. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

  Aware of her father’s silent disapproval, she told the officer about hearing the break-in and watching Zach trick the one man with the tattoo machine.

  “What did you do while all this was going on?”

  “I called 9-1-1.”

  Frowning, he consulted his notes. “It says here a Theresa Jacobs reported the break-in.”

  She flushed and bit her lip. “Uh, yeah. That was me. I told the dispatcher my name was Theresa.”

  The officer and Jen’s father exchanged looks. “Why did you do that?” the officer asked.

  She glanced at her father. His lips were compressed into a thin line as he waited for her answer. She turned to the officer again. “I didn’t want my father to know I was here.”

  “Because you knew I wouldn’t approve?” He spoke at last.

  “Because I knew you’d show up and make a fuss.” She faced him. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was out looking for you. I spotted your car parked up the street, and then the call came in about the break-in here. I had to come and make sure you were all right.”

  “I’m fine.”

  The officer left them, but her father remained fixed in place, studying her, as if searching for some physical proof that she was not fine. Maybe he was trying to find some explanation for why his usually complacent daughter had suddenly developed a rebellious streak.

  He shook his head and started to turn away, then his ga
ze fell on Zach, who was going over the contents of the cash register with the second officer. He turned back to Jen. “Why are you doing this?”

  She blinked. “Doing what?”

  He leaned toward her. “Hanging out with a man like him. You don’t belong with someone like him.” He looked around the shop, at the flashes hanging on the wall, the tattoo paraphernalia on the workbench. “You don’t belong here.”

  “How can you say that when you don’t even know anything about Zach? He’s really a nice guy. And he’s a very talented artist.”

  His gaze dropped to her tattoo. “That’s not what I call art.”

  “You should see some of his other work. His drawings—”

  He dismissed this defense of Zach with a wave of his hand. “I’m not interested in that. I’m only interested in your welfare.” He gestured toward the door. “What if that burglar had had a gun? You could have been shot and killed.”

  She shook her head. “We didn’t plan on being here during a break-in. It just happened. It could have happened anywhere. With anyone.”

  “Not if you’d been home, where you belong.”

  “I can’t stay home for the rest of my life.”

  “If this is your idea of good judgment, maybe you should.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” She tried to push past him, but his hand on her shoulder stopped her.

  “Are you doing this to get back at me for refusing to allow you to go to Chicago?”

  “No, I’m doing this for me. I have to learn to live my own life, without you there to look after me.”

  “If these are the kinds of decisions you make on your own, you haven’t proved anything.”

  She shook her head. “You’re not even trying to understand.” Maybe her choices looked that way to him. But to her, she was taking a real risk having a relationship with Zach. Not a physical risk, but an emotional one. He was getting to her, making her feel things she’d never felt before. Beneath his tough exterior lay a different man entirely—one she wanted to know better.

  “If that’s the way you feel, then go ahead. Live your own life. You’ll find out how tough it is. But don’t come crying to me when you end up in trouble.”

  She caught her breath. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, if you want to live on your own, make your own decisions and your own mistakes, be my guest. You’ll find out how naive you really are. Then maybe you’ll be ready to listen to me. You’ll understand I have your best interests at heart.”

  She stared at him, stunned. Without looking back, he walked past her and out the door. The two officers followed soon after.

  She sat on the edge of the tattoo chair and stared at her clenched fists in her lap, trying to absorb what had just happened.

  “You okay?” Zach came to stand in front of her.

  She looked up at him. “I don’t know.”

  He looked toward the door, then back at her. “What did he say to you?”

  “I think…” She swallowed hard. “I think he just kicked me out.”

  Zach sat beside her. “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t been with me.”

  She shook her head. “No. It’s not that. I think it’s that I stood up to him for probably the first time in my life. He didn’t know how to handle that.” She took a deep breath, steadying herself. “I think he thinks if he forces my hand, I’ll fail, and then I’ll come back to him and admit that he was right all along. I’ll have learned my lesson.”

  Zach didn’t say anything for a long moment. He reached past her for the blanket and put it around her shoulders. “Or maybe this is his way of giving you a chance to succeed while he saves face.”

  She shook her head. “You’re giving him more credit than he deserves.”

  “I don’t know. I may not like your old man, but he’s not dumb. And he loves you. Maybe too much.”

  She frowned. “Can you love someone too much?”

  He looked at her for a long time. She tried to read the meaning in that look. “Maybe,” he said.

  When he didn’t add anything else, she shrugged off the blanket and stood. She was too exhausted to discuss this anymore. She retrieved her purse from the workbench. “Guess I’d better go.”

  He stood, also. “Where are you going to go?”

  “I’ll spend the night with Shelly.” She shrugged. “Tomorrow I’ll start looking for an apartment.”

  She waited for him to invite her to stay with him, but wasn’t too surprised when he didn’t. Zach wasn’t the type to invite too many people into his life, much less his home, on even a semipermanent basis. She could live with that. For now.

  She had almost two months to figure out what made him tick. Nearly two months to figure out what it was about him that drew her so.

  THE NEXT MORNING, JEN and Shelly studied the classified ads over frozen waffles and coffee. “You could stay here,” Shelly offered. “But you’d have to sleep on the sofa.”

  “Thanks, but I really want to find my own place. I need to get used to living on my own before I move to Chicago.”

  “Isn’t that a lot of trouble and expense to go to for just a couple of months? I mean, you have to put down deposits, find furniture….”

  Jen laid aside the paper, any excitement about getting a place of her own draining away in the face of Shelly’s logic. “Yeah, it is. But what else am I going to do? I can’t go home and admit my dad was right—that I couldn’t make it on my own. He’ll hassle me that much more about going to Chicago.”

  “I wish you weren’t leaving. I’ll miss you.”

  Jen reached across the table and squeezed Shelly’s hand. “We’ll keep in touch. Besides, you’ll be married before you know it, too busy to even think about me.”

  Shelly rolled her eyes. “I’m not so sure of that anymore.”

  “Is Aaron still busy at work?”

  She nodded. “I swear he’s avoiding me.” Her lip trembled and she bit it and swallowed hard. “I keep worrying he’s found someone else.”

  “Oh, Shelly! That’s so hard for me to believe. He’s always been crazy about you.” She sipped her coffee. “How did he like the new outfit you bought?”

  Shelly managed a wobbly smile. “Oh, he liked it. A lot. He said I should dress sexy more often.”

  “Well that’s good, right?”

  Shelly shrugged. “I guess. But then he said he couldn’t see me the next night because he had to spend time on a ‘special project’ at work.” She sighed. “Sometimes I wonder if my grandmother wasn’t right.”

  “About what?”

  “She always said a man won’t buy a cow if he’s getting the milk for free.”

  Jen made a face. “Now that’s flattering, comparing women to cows. Give me a break. Marriage is about more than just sex.”

  “I hope so. I’d like the chance to at least find out.” Shelly picked up the paper again. “Enough about me. Where do you want to start looking for your new place?”

  “It has to be a month-by-month rental, so that leaves out a lot of places.” She studied the columns of Apartments for Rent ads. The tough economy had left plenty of vacancies in the Austin area, but which one was right for her?

  “I can’t afford anyplace really expensive, and I don’t want to spend days driving all over town looking.” Jen looked up from the paper again. “I don’t suppose this building has any vacancies?”

  Shelly shook her head. “Not one-bedroom. And the bigger units are pricey.”

  Chin in hand, Jen contemplated her half-eaten waffles, as if she might find the answer to her dilemma written in the swirls of maple syrup. On the one hand, she was excited about the prospect of living on her own. On the other, the whole process of finding a place was daunting. She needed someone to help her. Some way to find a shortcut.

  “Who else do you know who already has an apartment?” Shelly asked. “You could call and ask if they know of any vacancies where they live. Or maybe you could find a sublet.”

/>   Jen sat up straighter. “A sublet! That’s a great idea. I think I might know somebody who could help me with that.”

  “Who?”

  “Analese Robbie, one of the other teachers at the dance studio. She’s leaving town for three months to tour with Annie, Get Your Gun.” Jen jumped up and retrieved her purse and dug out her pocket phone directory. “She was talking about just leaving her place empty, but this will be even better.”

  Jen was able to get in touch with Analese right away, and made arrangements to meet at the apartment before dance classes that day. Analese was thrilled with the idea of having Jen stay at her place for a couple of months. The apartment itself turned out to be a small, second-floor group of rooms with avocado-green carpeting and a balcony overlooking the Dumpsters. Definitely not glamorous, but it was furnished, affordable and reasonably clean, so Jen took a deep breath and nodded to her friend. “I’ll take it.” As she said the words, elation filled her. She was really going to do it. She was really going to make it on her own. Her father would see. She could handle this.

  Jen and Analese were leaving the apartment, both headed to work at the dance studio, when a familiar figure came toward them down the hall. “Theresa!” Jen exclaimed as she recognized the tall brunette. “What are you doing here?”

  “I live here. What are you doing here?”

  Jen grinned. This was too perfect. “I live here now, too.”

  “She’s subletting my place while I’m out on tour,” Analese said. She looked at Theresa. “You two know each other?”

  “Um, Theresa is Zach’s sister,” Jen said.

  “Zach?” Analese looked confused, then her expression cleared. “Oh, the guy on the motorcycle!” She laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Theresa asked.

  Analese shook her head. “Oh, it’s just interesting how things work out sometimes.” She looked at Jen. “The universe has a funny way of bringing people together.”

  “If that were true, Jen would be renting next to my brother, not me,” Theresa said.

  Analese shrugged. “Hey, I didn’t say I understood everything. Anyway, it’ll be nice that Jen knows somebody in the building.”