by Lia Riley
She earned this.
Her body moved before her brain could register the fact. She slammed out of the Human Resources office, the door reverberating off the stopper with a satisfying thud. At the end of the hall, gold leaf calligraphy spelled out THE HONORABLE A. HOGG.
“Honorable?” she seethed. “Ha!” Judge Hogg didn’t know who he messed with. He was tangling with the person who came in top of the class in oral arguments.
“Miss? Miss!” Maryann shouted in the distance. “I wouldn’t go in—”
Pepper stepped into the waiting room. A middle-aged woman in a lavender twinset and pearls glanced up from a file open on her mahogany desk.
“I’m here to see the judge.”
The forthright demand garnered a lemon-sucking face. “He isn’t to be disturbed this morning.”
“Trust me.” Pepper clenched her hands into patriarchy-fighting fists, heart pounding like a war drum. “He hasn’t seen disturbing.”
That’s right. Time for justice to be served.
The assistant arched her overdrawn eyebrows in a “your funeral” gesture before shoving on a headset and hitting an intercom button. “Your Honor?” A pause. “Yes, I do, and I apologize. But there is someone out here insisting on speaking with you. A woman, sir.” Another pause. “Name?” she snapped.
“Pepper. Pepper Knight.” This woman wasn’t getting her vote for Employee of the Year.
The assistant repeated the name and nodded. “Yes, I see. Loud and clear, sir.”
“Well?” Pepper shouldered her laptop bag as the assistant hung up.
“I’m afraid Judge Hogg’s not in.”
Pepper refused to break eye contact. “You spoke to him thirty seconds ago.”
The other woman didn’t blink. “And he says he’s not here.”
“But—”
“Have yourself a good day.”
Unless she wanted to kick in the door, there wasn’t anywhere else she could take this. Not right now. “Tell him he’ll be hearing from me. I’ll write to the governor’s office.” That’s right. Bust out the big guns. She might be a lowly law grad, but she was scrappy.
“He and Governor Merriweather are playing at a charity golf event together next week down at Sea Island Golf Club.” The assistant opened up a stick of Juicy Fruit and bent it into her mouth.
“I see.” Pepper’s shoulders slumped. She was outgunned.
“Now if you don’t mind, I have things to do.” The assistant snapped her gum, clicking the mouse poised on her “Keep Calm and Carry On” pad.
Pepper pressed her lips into a white slash. How could anyone keep calm when job offers evaporated into thin air, or overused phrases got slapped on everything under the sun?
“Bless your heart.” The assistant glanced over again, her disdain dripping from every feature. “You’re still here.”
“I’m going, going…gone.” Pepper tried slamming this door, too, but it was on a hydraulic hinge. No satisfying bang. Instead it closed slower than a Toto toilet seat.
So much for moxie.
She paused at the top of the stairs, leaning heavily on the bannister, dizzier by the second. Shit. The Spanx cut off her circulation. She’d embrace any and all lumps and bumps to be free of this twenty-first-century corset.
The lobby was a blur, and her lungs clogged as she stumbled outside into the humidity. Drowning on air was an actual possibility. A row of ants marched down the sidewalk in regimental lines. They had somewhere to go. A job. Purpose.
Lucky jerks.
She chewed her lower lip, throat aching from all the curse words she stuffed down. The embarrassing-to-admit truth was that she’d harbored a secret fantasy where she’d turn up for this job and everyone would go “Hey, wow. This one’s special.” Exceptional even. They’d take one look and see all of her promise and the kind of legal pluck reserved for a John Grisham novel.
“On your left. Whoa there. Moving by, moving by, like it or not.”
Pepper swung around in time to see a tornado of tails, fur, and tongues. The woman in the middle of the chaos wore a Ruff Love Pet Walkers T-shirt and hurried past, her outstretched arms grappling four straining leashes.
Pepper’s blood pressure skyrocketed at the horrific sight. Okay, there were worse fates. She rubbed her temples in a calming circle. She needed to take a moment, have a good long shower cry, and form a new plan. She’d start by drafting a list. Yes, a list—very official thing, a list. Full of options.
She crossed the street and paused, bracing her hands on her knees, sucking in the thick hot air in great, greedy gulps.
Don’t vomit. Don’t vomit.
“You know this is what she wanted.” A deep voice boomed from behind the hedgerow framing the town green, not a shout per se, but hardly civil.
She heard another man snort. The thick branches blocked any view. “It would have broken her sweet heart seeing you abandon the family practice. Tradition meant everything to her.”
“The situation is not that cut and dried and you know it.”
“You presume to know my wife’s mind?”
“She was my mother.” The hedgerow shook, like someone kicked it.
Pepper backed away slowly. That argument sounded like not her problem. She had enough to worry about without—
Zzzzzt.
Her head snapped up. Thunderheads blotted out the sun. The air smelled like rain.
Zzzzzt.
A dark brown roach rocketed across her field of vision. What was worse than hallucinating? Not hallucinating a flying bug on steroids. Time to turn tail and flee. Except her beloved Miu Mius weren’t made for running. Strutting? Yep. Kicking ass and taking names. You better believe it. But not a fifty-meter dash across the plaza’s herringbone brick path.
It bombed her like a two-inch kamikaze, passing dangerously close to her earlobe, rustling her hair. Her heart raced, and not just from the unexpected exertion. Breathing was impossible.
No. Nuh-uh. Nope.
She swiveled her head up and down the quiet cross street, seeking safe harbor. Pointless. Scary Bug wasn’t going to honor any “Ollie Ollie in come free” code and go cavorting off to the nearest dung heap. Was that truck over there unlocked?
Zzzzzt.
Holy Joe. Cold dread seeped into her bones, freezing her marrow. Her skin tightened. Scary Bug was on her body. Her actual person. First the dogs and now this? Hello, God, it’s me, Pepper. Kill me and make it quick.
Thick antennae tickled her neck and the ice melted into hot terror. Her heel caught a concrete crack, holding her foot fast even as the rest of her body kept moving. The world tilted. Three Golden Retrievers, trailing leashes, tongues flapping in the breeze, barreled around the hedge.
“Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, I said stay, dammit! Faulkner, come on, man, not you, too.”
She turned toward the shout, arms flailing like a Gumby blowup from in front of a car dealership as the leader took to the air, paws landing square on her chest, sending her flat-backed in the gutter.
She curled into a ball, bracing for the moment when teeth bit down. Instead, no crevice remained unsniffed. The torturous waiting grew in intensity until someone—presumably the owner of these hellhounds—ordered them to back off. The commanding drawl was familiar.
The exasperated tone from behind the hedgerow.
The buzzing intensified. No time to put a face to the voice. She ripped her hand through her hair, and Scary Bug struck the concrete, bouncing twice before coming to a stunned stop. She scrambled to a half-sit. It would give her nothing but grim pleasure to drive a stiletto straight through its mother-loving exoskeleton. She raised her foot, took careful aim, and—
“Look out!”
She froze mid-stab, heel clattering off. Scary Bug took to the air with a final mocking Zzzzzt!
“Oh no, it escaped.”
“Word of advice”—now the deep voice sounded less wound up and more bemused—“step on a palmetto and you’ll be sorry. They stink something fierce.�
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She stared up. “A pal-mett-oh…” The question fizzled on her lips, doused by deep-set eyes framed by a pair of Clark Kent–style glasses. Dreamboat eyes. A shade reserved for tropical ocean photos touting Caribbean vacations, a deep marine blue that invited a person to sit back and float away.
“I don’t know what wild hair got into these guys,” he muttered. “I’ve never seen them act that way.”
She floated.
And panted. Wait, no, that wasn’t her. A wet nose snuffled against her ear and she was back standing barefoot in a gravel road puddle as the neighbor’s guard dog barreled toward her, trailing its broken chain.
She yelped, panic twisting her spine, leaving her cowering.
“That’s enough. I said back off, Faulkner.” He scooped the dog leashes and tugged them close to his side, tousling his messy shock of sandy brown hair. “Are you okay?”
“I—I—I…” She couldn’t breathe. Or think. But she wasn’t a child. And she hadn’t been bitten.
“Jesus. All right. Listen. Breathe. That’s it, take another one. Good. And another.”
If her fear was a storm, his voice was a life raft. She anchored her gaze on his face. Safer than the dogs at his side. Those fine lines around his striking eyes suggested he was thirtysomething, with a mouth a shade too wide for his angular jaw. But the lack of symmetry didn’t detract. If anything, the imperfection had a curious physiological effect, creating a delay in her brain’s language-processing center.
“…no idea what bee crawled up their butts,” he was saying. “Let me give you a hand.” He took hers with his free one and the rough calluses at the base of his fingers caused friction on her skin. It was a big hand, broad and tanned, with freckles smattering the knuckles. The wind picked up, carrying a hint of soap, a little spicy, a little woodsy, and a lot manly. She leaned in, as somehow the smell could wrap her in some sort of invisible shield, keep her safe and protected.
Except he’d turned his focus over her shoulder. She followed his ferocious gaze to an old man in a seersucker suit currently marching across the Main Street crosswalk, a Scrabble game tucked under one arm, and under the other, Fluffy, her lap dog nemesis from earlier in the morning.
“Sorry if I interrupted something.” She shuffled a few feet back from his closest animal, slipping her shoe back on like the world’s most awkward Cinderella. “I accidently overheard part of your conversation and—”
He snorted. “Way I see it, conversations are an exchange of ideas, not insults.”
Before she could make a hasty retreat, the largest dog lunged. No time to scream before a slick heat swiped her wrist. It was official, on this worst of days she was going to toss her cookies in front of a—if not traditionally handsome, incredibly boyishly cute—man.
His irises darkened to a concentrated indigo, and for a moment she could swear he saw her, really saw her. A person who’d had it up to there, but life went right on pouring. She wanted to linger, bask in the unapologetic stare, let the rest of the world blur into oblivion, as indistinct as an expressionist painting.
Except fraction by fraction his brows pulled closer together. His mouth twitched.
A crazy impulse set in to cry out, Stop! Don’t say anything! Don’t ruin it. Whatever it was.
She wanted to clutch it to her chest, kick and scream, but the moment was gone.
“You’re not a fan of dogs, are you?”
Chapter Four
Me? A dog fan?” The guy’s bemused question snapped Pepper from her floaty trance. “I wouldn’t say that. Not at all. Not even a little.” She shook her head three too many times, as if the moment required an extra lashing of awkward.
Spoiler: It didn’t.
“Wait,” she blurted as he cleared his throat. Some dim part of her brain registered she wasn’t about to stick her foot in her mouth, rather cram it in mid-calf. “Before you say anything, I know, okay? I know. Admitting to disliking dogs is like declaring ambivalence to bacon or a belief that Friends was a terrible show unworthy of ten seasons. But is that fair? I mean, if a dog person made a glancing remark about how they weren’t much of a feline fan, cat people would shrug it off as no big deal. To each their own. But not dog people. No, dog people find it impossible to tolerate canine aversion.”
Her pause for a breath was met with silence. He passed a hand over his mouth as if erasing a smile. “You’ve given this a lot of thought.”
“Actually no.” She pursed her lips. “That was all off the cuff.”
“Impressive.” It sounded like he meant “scary.” One of the dogs whined.
Frowning, she jabbed a hand to her hip. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?” His brows knit.
“You’ve got the same expression I did this one time a crazy lady tried selling me a bag of crickets on the subway. Look. I’m a stable—very stable—exceedingly sane person and—aaaaaaaargh!” The closest golden retriever slurped her hand. If a horror film score synched with a whale’s death song it might match the noise escaping her mouth.
“Faulkner. That’s the last time.” The guy yanked hard on the leash. “Quit now. The lady’s just not that into you.” Her not-so-secret admirer wagged his bushy tail, but retreated to a distance that made it possible for her to draw a shallow breath.
At least the dogs were obedient. That helped. Some.
“I’m sorry. Today’s been a nightmare. I was fired from a clerkship with the judge on day one. It takes a special sort of talent to lose a position you apparently didn’t even have.” Ixnay on the verbal vomit. This stranger hadn’t been selected at random to compete in the pain Olympics. And from the sound of his behind-the-hedge argument, he had his own personal Lifetime drama playing out.
“Judge?” His glare stilled her frantic gesticulating. “Judge Al Hogg?”
Her jaw twitched at the hated name. “Buddy of yours?” After all, it was a small town. They might be on the same bowling team.
He coughed in his fist. “Not exactly. But the way I see it, congratulations are in order.”
“Congratulations?” Her hands flopped helplessly to her sides, her exhale long and shuddering. “What for?” She didn’t have the fortitude to withstand him making fun of her. Her field of fucks was barren.
“Know how every village has an idiot? Well, turns out, the same principle holds true for assholes. Trust me, you’d be happier pumping gas at Payton’s Pump-N-Munch out on I-95 than spending a day sucking air with that man.”
“Are you honestly trying to put a positive spin on this situation?” She could throw sass or burst into tears. At least option A allowed her to retain a scrap of self-respect.
He shrugged.
“Cute. Too bad my funny bone’s as broken as my morale.” Overhead, raindrops fell, heavy and cool, and her lower lip trembled. No, no no, anything but this. Her tears weren’t for public consumption. The least her body could do is hold on until she reached her rental cottage and drew the light-canceling blinds.
Pressure mounted against her diaphragm. A flush crept in. Nothing pretty or delicate. Nope. This was a hippo-splashing-in-a-puddle-of-ketchup affair.
“Miss?” He sounded like he’d rather be anywhere else and she didn’t blame him one iota. In fact, she’d like to join him.
Hey here’s an idea, let’s ditch the weird crying chick and grab a pizza.
Instead she was trapped by an expected “the lady doth protest too much” role.
“It’s fine. I’m fine.” She shaded her eyes. Not that she had to—the sun was cloaked behind a thick blanket of cloud—but because like it or not, waterworks were fast approaching.
She was jobless and stranded in a town where the biggest store was the Piggly Wiggly. Talk about coming full circle. Georgia might be opposite from Maine in terms of geography, but it turned out that a small town was a small town was a small town. And the path that was supposed to keep her moving forward had led her to a place eerily similar to her original starting point.
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nbsp; She sniffled. Her nose had sprung a leak too. More tears welled. The charming street blurred. What more could happen—a giant meteor?
The first defeated sob shredded her throat. It was almost a relief to stand aside and allow the raw moan to expand into a wail.
“Awoooooo.” The dogs ceased lunging and howled off-key. “Awoooooo.”
Startled laughter bubbled from deep in her belly. Guess today had that little bit more suck to give.
Life. Hideous and yet hilarious.
* * *
The bawling woman collapsed forward, face-planting against Rhett’s chest. Her forceful sobs combined with hysterical cackling reverberated through his ribs. A damsel in distress was one thing, but a knockout in a soaked-through shirt quite another. Shit. His mouth was like sawdust as he went to encircle her rigid body, drawing her close, trying to keep every movement slow, deliberate, until, at last, she melted, gripping his shirtfront. Slow-boiling awareness spread through his middle. When was the last time he’d held another person?
She felt good. Incredible, really.
It took effort to dig out his arsenal and find the appropriate defense.
Sympathy.
Only a piece of shit would take advantage in this situation. His teeth fastened to his lower lip. He might be a man of faults, but hadn’t descended to scumbag depths. With a free hand, he surreptitiously hunted his back pockets for a handkerchief or Kleenex. Nothing but a crumpled—but clean—napkin from Smuggler’s Cove. Best he could come up with on short notice.
“Here.” He stuck it out.
“Stop!” Her hands warded him off. “Turn around. Don’t look. I mean it.”
“Excuse me?” The napkin edges disintegrated in the rain.
“Oh God, fine.” She snatched the sodden wad and dabbed her nose muttering something that sounded like “so embarrassing.” She heaved a heavy sigh. “What sort of bribe would entice you to pretend that I’m not here?”