by Rin Daniels
He raised his fist to throw the items over the ridge, but his muscles seized.
She’d looked so happy when she dropped them off for him.
Looked so good in the outfit she’d picked out to match with his.
All part of her game.
Maybe he was the criminal, but she could teach him a thing or two about lying.
Even so, his arm lowered. He set the shirt and crumpled tie on the trunk of his car and rubbed at his eyes.
The phone in his back pocket buzzed.
Lucas hesitated. Every part of him screamed that he should let it go, but his hands moved by habit. He pulled out the clamshell, flipped it open. “What?”
His terse greeting sank into the hum of the silent line. When she took a breath, the sound speared through his skin. Left gaping, bloody holes behind. “You’re not at home.”
“Yeah,” he said tersely. He stared out over Sulla Valley as the lights slowly twinkled on in the growing dark. His voice sharpened. “Turns out, don’t really have a home.”
Nadine’s voice strained. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not?” He laughed, a harsh bark of humor that cut. “The damn place belongs to you and your family, or didn’t you realize that’s where my parents got the money?”
The muffled sound of a hard sniff ghosted through the line. His heart kicked.
He steeled himself.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’re done.”
“What?” Her voice shook. “Lucas, no.”
“Just tell your folks,” he said over her, gaze fixed on the lights that ran together. “I’m sure your parents will stop worrying about you. Not that you need the help,” he added, hating himself for all the scathing things he couldn’t stop himself from saying. “Go, be a virgin no more. Sleep with all the guys you want and make millions. I don’t care.”
“Stop it,” she whispered.
He couldn’t. “If you’re lucky,” he bit out, fingers aching around the phone, “you’ll find a guy who won’t mind getting wrapped around your little finger like some kind of cheap pinky ring.”
Another sniff.
Another fracture in his foundation.
Lucas pushed off the trunk of his car and turned his back on the city. “This is for the best. I’m bigger than a terrier.”
He couldn’t tell if she laughed or if she sobbed. “What about you?” she demanded, the line crackling. “When were you going to tell me about Wallace & Roane? Loan sharks, Lucas. You lied to me, you threatened Kat. You’re a felon.”
Yeah, he knew. “Oh, is that what that means?” he asked with too much interest. “Gosh, I wonder why I didn’t know that—oh, wait, no, that’s right,” he interjected into his own sarcasm. “I didn’t have parents to teach me. Now why was that?” Unfair, and he knew it.
“Oh, please,” she scoffed, a verbal slap. “You’re a smart man, Lucas. You had options.”
“Options, like…” His voice hardened. “Relying on you to bail me out? On your Daddy to give me a job in his firm, so he could continue the fine tradition of buying out the Bourdin failures?”
“Options like trusting me,” she replied flatly. “You know, your best friend.”
“Yeah, that would have ended well.”
“It sure as hell didn’t—”
“It’s over,” he said over her. His teeth locked, and he suddenly had to brace himself against his car. “It’s done. Don’t contact me again, Nadine.”
This time, she couldn’t muffle it. Her tears filled her voice, wrapped around the shredded remains of his heart and squeezed. “You said you loved me.”
“Yeah,” he said, hating himself with every drawled syllable. “Guess ‘I love you’ is damned easy to buy.”
He closed the old clamshell phone when she started sobbing.
In silence, he stared at the gleaming red paint of his pride and joy—the car he’d spent so many hours sweating over. Usually with Nadine nearby.
That was it. The dream was over.
Lucas knew it’d come someday. He just…hadn’t expected to learn the taste of her body, the sound of her cries when she came, or the way she curled up against him in bed before it all burned to the ground.
He’d gotten greedy. He’d allowed himself to actually believe in the fairy tale she’d handed him, and that made him the idiot.
The wind skimmed over his bare arms, but he couldn’t feel the chill. Not compared to the ice inside him.
Feeling numb, grateful for it, he got back into his car and started the engine. As he drove away, a checkered shirt and a narrow black tie rolled into the dusty road.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HAPPY HOUR AT MacKinnon’s was more like happy half a day. Anybody lucky enough to get the shift made good tips, but the endurance required to run it took its toll. When Nadine’s break finally rolled around, she stuck her notepad into her back pocket and dragged herself to one of the tall tables grouped around the bar.
Adam saw her first. With a sympathetic smile, he slid from the tall chair to hold one out for her, offering a hand like the gentleman he was.
Nadine took the help gratefully.
“Hey,” Kat said in rueful greeting. “You look exhausted.”
“Happy hour wins again,” she teased, flashing Adam a smile of thanks. “How bad was my service? Be honest.”
Kat leaned against the table. Two half-empty glasses sloshed a bit. “On a scale of one to ten?”
“How about one to a hundred,” Nadine replied, grimacing. “I feel like there’s room for nuance there.”
“Ninety-eight,” Kat said, as Adam said, “Ninety-nine.”
Nadine laughed. “A one point difference, huh?”
“You have a great rack,” Kat replied deadpan.
Adam spluttered into his drink—a gin and tonic Nadine hadn’t made, because she hadn’t yet worked her way into the bar yet. There was a hierarchy at MacKinnon’s. She’d escaped bus girl duty out of sheer luck, but she wasn’t anywhere close to bar tending yet. She’d only been working here for two weeks.
Three since she’d last spoken to Lucas.
It felt like forever.
It hurt like it would never stop.
Kat pushed her plate of kettle chips across the table. “Eat something, you look dead.”
“But pretty,” Adam countered. His dark brown eyes crinkled with his smile. “I never thought I’d see Nadine Sherwood in flat shoes.”
“I never thought I’d see Nadine Sherwood with a job,” Nadine replied wryly. Humor, she decided somewhere in the first week, felt better than raw pain. She couldn’t cry anymore.
Her nose was starting to peel from all the tissues.
She propped an elbow on the table, frowning down at the proffered chips. Her stomach growled, decidedly hungry, but her appetite hadn’t been great since she’d moved in with Kat.
She knew her friend noticed. She wasn’t unaware of the glances Kat and Adam exchanged when they thought she wasn’t looking. Nadine didn’t know how long Kat would put up with her in the cramped one-room apartment, but she hadn’t yet seized her courage to ask.
If Kat booted her now, she’d be in a world of hurt.
Nadine was a terrible waitress. As much as she tried, she messed up orders, had spilled her share and then some of plates, and she’d even gotten Kat’s drink order wrong today. She tried hard, she really did, but every shift felt like a struggle. Every day felt like a war with herself—to get out of bed, to eat, to smile.
A struggle she was determined to overcome.
She nibbled at the edge of a crinkled chip.
Kat flagged down the second waiter on shift. “Can we get her a sandwich?” she asked when Cole stopped.
He was a cool guy, nineteen or so, with long hair and thick framed glasses. An art major, Nadine had learned. Shy on the inside, but deft with customers. He flashed Nadine a grin that was sympathetic and knowing. “How about the cranberry turkey?”
Nadine glanced up at him, her mouth a
crooked line. “I thought we weren’t supposed to order on our fifteens.”
He winked, dark blue eyes sparkling. “Leave it to me.”
As he made his way back to the counter, Kat whistled. “Somebody’s got a cruuu-uuush,” she sing-songed.
Nadine flinched. “Oh, please.”
Adam set his gin and tonic down, then pushed it across the table. “Have a swallow,” he said. And when she grimaced and obeyed, added, “Totally a crush.”
She shouldn’t have snorted the drink. It burned all the way down. “Come on,” she rasped.
He shrugged.
Kat waggled her eyebrows. “He’s only, like, two years younger than you.”
“No way,” Nadine protested, but whether it was the alcohol or the warmth of her friends, a little of the ache sapped out of her spine. She tucked a complete chip into her mouth, rolling her eyes when Kat’s head shifted side to side in an encouraging gesture of ‘go get some’.
Maybe one day. When she woke up and Lucas wasn’t the first thing on her mind.
When she could take a breath without shaking from the pain of losing her foundation.
Right now, all she wanted to do was prove to her parents—to herself—that she could make it without them.
Not that they’d given her a choice. They’d cancelled the Centurion. Cut off her phone line. She wasn’t even sure they hadn’t changed the locks behind her—she was too scared to find out.
Too angry to subject herself to the hassle.
Without Kat’s patience, she never would have known what to do next. Nadine had never opened a bank account before. She’d never done her own finances.
There was so much she didn’t know.
It was no wonder Lucas hadn’t trusted her.
She didn’t realize that her eyes had welled until a tear dripped to the plate of kettle chips. Damn it, she’d promised herself she’d stop crying.
Wordlessly, Adam pushed his drink back into her hand.
“Oh, honey.” Kat reached across the table to grab her other hand. She held it between hers, but Nadine had no doubt she and Adam exchanged another one of those glances. “It’s okay,” her friend said softly. “It’s going to be okay.”
Nadine hiccuped. “I know. I know, I’m sorry.”
A plate settled to the table beside the chips. The sandwich was perfectly made, with sourdough bread, turkey slices, lettuce, no onions because she didn’t like them, cream cheese and cranberry. Cole touched her shoulder. “On the house,” he said, patted her gently, and went back to work.
She liked him. He’d already put two and two together to get ‘broken heart’. Good guy, really. Sweet, thoughtful. Earnest. Funny.
And not at all what she wanted.
Kat rubbed soothing circles into Nadine’s hand with her thumb. “You haven’t tried calling him?”
She shook her head. Every time she’d reached for the phone Kat had given her, she’d frozen in place, paralyzed by fear. She’d said terrible things.
And so had he.
Amazing what a little distance brought into sharp focus.
“He hasn’t called you?”
“He doesn’t have my new number.” Without her parents to sign off on it, Nadine couldn’t port her number over to Kat’s account. Her friend hadn’t even asked. She’d simply made the arrangement, and pushed the smartphone into Nadine’s hand.
Maybe it wasn’t twenty thousand dollars and interest, but Nadine would never, ever forget Kat’s help. She couldn’t have done this alone.
Her laugh fractured. “And why would he call, anyway? He’s better off without me.”
“Nobody’s better off without you,” Kat said fiercely.
She squeezed her friend’s hand. “Stop. I can’t pay you for your PR anymore.”
Adam folded his hands on the table, leaning over it. “I could, uh…”
“Adam,” Kat whispered.
“Come on, she deserves to know.”
Nadine glanced between them, hooking one foot on the chair rung by habit—then catching herself when the sole of her flats skidded off it. The table shuddered. “Oops.”
Adam’s lips twitched. “She’s a wreck,” he added, so obviously teasing that Nadine felt okay about kicking him under the table. “Ouch, hey!”
“No picking on the broken-hearted girl,” she replied primly. But then her humor faded. Dragging the sleeve of her thin cotton shirt under her eyes, relieved when the fabric didn’t stain with her waterproof mascara, she took a deep breath. “Tell me.”
Kat hummed a low note.
“What?” Nadine insisted.
When Kat shrugged, gesturing with a universal ‘go ahead’, Adam tapped his fingers on the table. “Eat first.”
“Dude.”
“Eat,” he replied, pointing a patrician finger at her plate with all the authority of the CEO he was. “Or no deal.”
Nadine glared at Kat, who shrugged. “Jerk,” she breathed, but grabbed half the sandwich. She shoved as much of it into her mouth as she could. Too much. The food caught in her throat. She coughed, grabbed Kat’s napkin and hid her mouth, eyes streaming—but at least not with tears of hurt.
Kat laughed. “God, you’re sexy.”
“Okay, okay,” Adam said hastily, raising his hands like he didn’t know whether to pound her on the back or flag for help. “Slow down. I’ll tell you.”
“Wicto’y,” Nadine cheered, muffled by food and napkin.
Kat laughed so hard, she had to cover her face with both hands.
Her boyfriend sighed with all the put-upon suffering of his billionaire boy-toy status. “Okay, look. So, word is that Lucas Bourdin has managed to acquire a new location.”
Nadine’s humor fled. Her chest ached sharply. Slowly, clearing her mouth of any sandwich, she asked, “He moved?”
“No, he bought a site for his autoshop.”
Her gaze flicked to her best friend—who, all things considered, was doing a remarkable job of looking innocent. “You knew?”
“I’d heard,” Kat hedged.
“From me,” Adam added, throwing himself under the bus with such aplomb that Nadine couldn’t really be mad. Of course Adam Laramie would know these things. He could probably Big Brother the crap out of Sulla Valley, what with his tech company and all.
Her fingers tightened on the bread, indenting it. “How?”
“How’d he get the money?” Adam’s eyebrows lifted. “He sold his car.”
“His car?”
Kat nodded slowly.
“His Cobra?” Nadine asked, her voice cracking. When her friend winced, she shook her head. “I’m fine. It’s just…” She laughed a little, looking down at her food. “He’d rather sell his pride and joy to a complete stranger than accept anything from me.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say a complete—”
Kat steamrolled over him with an emphatic, “Seriously. That guy is such a jerk.”
Her boyfriend sighed, leaning back in his chair to drape an arm over the back of Kat’s. “We’re shitheads like that,” he admitted. “Nadine, do you want some advice?”
She blinked at him. “I don’t know.” Her eyebrow climbed. “Is it, like, crazy person out of touch billionaire advice or is it real people advice?”
His lips curved into a wry, awkwardly touching smile. “It’s people in love advice.”
Kat’s cheeks colored. “Flirt.”
“Oh, get a room,” Nadine chuckled. She stuffed another corner of the sandwich into her mouth, because chewing on it gave her something else to do—something else to focus on than sheer, unadulterated jealousy for her friend’s happiness.
She was the worst.
Adam winked at Kat, but his gaze flicked back to Nadine and settled. “Serious moment, Nadine. Here’s what I say.” Again, he tapped the table between them. “Don’t let pride get in the way.”
Easy for him to say.
Nadine swallowed her food, opened her mouth, but Adam cut her off by raising a warding hand. “I k
now everything you want to say, every excuse, but I’m serious here. Don’t let pride get you. If you want him, tell him. The rest? It’s just money.”
When she looked at her friend, Kat’s head tipped. “What? I agree with him.”
“Traitor,” she muttered.
“In love,” Kat corrected. She snagged a chip from the plate in front of Nadine. “Like someone else I know.”
Her throat ached. She studied the brilliant color of the cranberry sauce as it oozed over the cream cheese and couldn’t help but think how much it looked like her heart.
She was just one big hot mess.
Adam reached into the inner pocket of his dark blue blazer and pulled out a card. A handwritten time on the back looked up at her as he set down beside her plate. “I have an appointment at his shop tomorrow. My, uh, car needs servicing.”
Kat coughed into her hand. “Perv.”
He ignored her with immense patience that made Nadine want to laugh. “Why don’t you go instead?” he finished firmly.
Maybe she would.
Maybe she couldn’t.
Nadine stared down at the card in silence as the crowd talked and laughed around them. 2:00pm, full-service. Lucas had such distinct handwriting.
Her fingers twitched.
“Oh, and when you go?” Kat snapped her fingers, forcing Nadine’s attention to her in surprise. Her smile edged ear to ear. “Put on your sexy unapproachable face.”
* * *
It wasn’t much, not yet, but it was start.
Lucas stomped down on the protective covering he’d cut and laid into place, ensuring the seal grabbed the floor and held. Echoes bandied through the three-car garage, and caught Johnny’s attention from the open doors where he finished a cigarette. “Done?” the man called, flicking ash into the driveway.
Beyond him, a steady stream of traffic filled the place with a thrum of constant activity.
It was a pretty good location for an autoshop, close to downtown but with a few extra parking spaces for that miraculous day when he had a waiting list. There were part places nearby, the driveway was easy to access, and a towing company just a block north.