1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Fourteen

by Kristen Ashley

  “About me?”

  “About your life.”

  I tipped my head to the side even as I dipped and twisted my chin, my eyes drifting away from him.

  “Please tell me it wasn’t all bad.”

  He sounded like he really wanted me to do that so I looked at him and shared, “Momma had a man once. He was called Stretch. He called me sweetheart. He had broad shoulders, and even if they were fightin’, any time his eyes came to me, he made them sweet. I thought it was like a superpower, him bein’ all kinds a’ mad at Momma, but bein’ able to hide that from me. He used to ask me to go to my room, or if I was in my room, he’d come and close the door so I wouldn’t see or hear them fightin’. It didn’t work. But it sure was nice.”

  “Yes, that was nice,” Marcus replied like it was but it wasn’t.

  The first part I knew was because at least Stretch had tried. The second was because there was fighting to shield me from.

  I looked to my martini. “When he left, he told me I could call him whenever I needed him.”

  “That’s nice too,” Marcus said softly.

  I looked to him. “He said it then kinda took it back ’cause Momma got up in his shit right while he was sayin’ it. I remember it like it was yesterday and I was ten. But she was screamin’ and carryin’ on and shovin’ him and he had no claim to me. I knew he wanted to try. I reckoned he liked me and he looked after me in his way when they were together, but he didn’t want her in his life. He was done with her and I didn’t blame him. She wasn’t nice to him. She wasn’t nice to anybody. She used him mostly to pay the cable bill and the electricity and whatever she could get outta him. I think he did it at first ’cause she was real pretty and he liked her coochie. Then he did it so I’d have cable and light because he just liked me. But to be done with her, I knew he knew, even if he didn’t like it, he had to be done with me. So he left. And I never saw him again.”

  “That’s not nice,” Marcus rumbled, not appearing real thrilled at my story.

  I shrugged, looked back to my martini, took in a deep breath and whispered my finish.

  “Only man a’ hers I missed when he was gone.”

  “That’s all you have that’s good?” he asked, not sounding real thrilled at that possibility.

  I drew in another breath, and as I let it out, I looked back at Marcus and shared the real good stuff.

  “For a spell, my momma worked as a daily girl for a lady named Miss Annamae. When I call her a lady, I mean she was a lady. A fine Southern woman who lived in a graceful mansion her beloved but sadly departed husband left to her after he died. A mansion he’d grown up in. So had his daddy and so on for a long while. He didn’t rock her world with this. She grew up in one herself, just a different one from a different fine Southern family.”

  “You liked her,” Marcus noted, still watching me closely.

  “She liked me,” I replied.

  “I’m not thinking that’s a good response,” he muttered like he wasn’t talking to me.

  I let the stem of my glass go, turned more fully to him too, and reached out, putting my hand to his thigh.

  When I did, I realized Marcus Sloan did not only take care of his grooming, he took care of other things too. The muscle beneath the fine material was solid.

  My.

  I tore my thoughts from what my hand was encountering, somehow found the strength to leave it right where it was, and told him, “She liked me. And she was kind to me. She gave me a tin of cookies she baked herself every Christmas my momma worked for her. And on my thirteenth birthday, she gave me an add-a-pearl necklace.”

  “That’s very sweet,” Marcus murmured.

  I nodded. “It was.”

  “Did she add more pearls after your thirteenth?” he asked.

  “She died three days after my birthday.”

  “Christ,” he bit out low.

  “And I hocked it for a bus ticket out of there when I was nineteen after I caught my boyfriend in the act, sleepin’ with my best friend who was my best friend only to get to my boyfriend. I went direct home and told my momma all about it. I barely got the story out before she slapped me across the face and told me to get over it. Life was shit and then you died so no purpose wastin’ it bitchin’ about men bein’ assholes when there wasn’t a being with a penis who wasn’t all asshole. And furthermore, I was a fool for havin’ any friends. Women were backstabbers and man-stealers. They talked behind your back more than they said anything to your face but when they said somethin’ straight to your face, if it was sweet, you could guarantee it was a lie.”

  “This isn’t something good, Daisy,” he informed me, not looking happy.

  “It’s all I got, Marcus,” I told him but I gave his thigh a quick squeeze. “And it sounds bad. But Miss Annamae knew. She might not have known exactly what was gonna cut it but she knew somethin’ would. And she knew I was a good girl. She knew I listened to her and she knew all the things she taught me I’d taken in. So she knew I’d need that necklace one day. Now, I think she mighta hoped that I’d wear it at my wedding to a wonderful man who’d help me fill my house with lots of babies. But I reckon she didn’t hold a lot of hope for that and knew I’d need it for what I needed it for and she’d be happy I had it when I needed it and that it was her who gave it to me.”

  He kept hold of my gaze for a moment after I quit talking then he looked down at his drink and twisted it side to side in his fingers.

  He looked reflective.

  And upset.

  And I didn’t like that.

  “Honey bunches of oats,” I whispered.

  His gaze came right back to mine.

  And doing so, he made my heart warm right up in a way I knew sure as certain it would never again be cold.

  Not ever.

  Not ever again.

  Not as long as Marcus was with me.

  “It don’t sound good but it was,” I told him, real quiet, moved by his look that I felt in my heart. “I lost her but even though she’d been gone for years, she was there for me in that moment when I needed her most. It wasn’t good for me there. And even with what happened to me in that parking lot, since I left that place, it’s never again been that bad. That’s how bad it was. She wanted me to have the means to escape when I’d had enough. It was the most precious gift anyone ever gave me. The time she gave it by handin’ me that box. And the time I hocked it and bought myself freedom.”

  “There’s no more good?” he asked.

  “Smithie,” I told him.

  “Other than him.”

  “LaTeesha,” I went on.

  “Daisy, you understand me.”

  I shook my head and gave his thigh a squeeze. “Sugar, you aren’t gettin’ it. I had her for a short while. But I had her. Do you know where I’d be if I didn’t?”

  “No. Where would you be?”

  “Back there in a place where every day was hell. I’d probably have a man who drank or gambled or shot up or beat me or all those. Or I’d have a string of ’em, none of ’em treatin’ me right. A job that I hated workin’, doin’ it with people who thought they were better than me. My momma alternately hittin’ me up for money or gettin’ in my face, bein’ ugly. Miss Annamae taught me to keep my head held high, darlin’, and I was strugglin’ with that.” I leaned into him. “Really struggling. They would have beaten me. She gave me the way out when without her doin’ that I’d have no way out, and here I am, in a fancy restaurant in a great town with a handsome man. It’d make her happy. Real happy, baby.”

  When I was done talking, his attention moved to my hair, as did his hand. He pulled some curls over my shoulder and stared at them resting there.

  “You know why it was,” he murmured to my hair.

  “Pardon?”

  His gaze came to mine and the hand he’d used to shift my hair he now used to sweep his fingertips across my cheekbone in a whisper of a touch that was there and gone.

  But the precious memory of that touch would re
main until the day I quit breathing.

  “People live lives they hate,” he said, resting his arm along the top of the booth beside me. “They see a patch of light, the only thing that drives them is to snuff it out.”

  I gave him a small smile and said, not mean, “That’s sweet, sugar, but that’s like tellin’ a homely girl all the other girls bully her ’cause they’re jealous.”

  “So what you’re telling me is that all that’s happened to you is just about predators preying on the weak?”

  My head twitched.

  “You aren’t weak, Daisy,” he stated.

  No, I wasn’t.

  I’d been knocked down. Again and again.

  I just kept getting up.

  And I was still standing, in platforms, with great hair.

  I swallowed.

  “And those other girls bully the homely girl for one reason only. They’re bitches. And that says a fuckuva lot more about them than that homely girl, and not one single bit of it is good.”

  My fingers tensed reflexively into his thigh.

  “You’re right, sugar,” I whispered.

  “I know,” he returned. “As for you, why would a rich woman in a graceful mansion give the girl you thought you were the time of day?”

  I felt the sting before I knew what was happening, and I blinked rapidly to keep them at bay.

  Marcus didn’t wait for me to answer.

  He gave me his answer.

  “Because she was old enough and lived enough life with enough abundance in that life to see you for what you were. Not a beautiful girl who would become a beautiful woman. Not a sweet girl who was strong and smart who would become so much more than her mother, it’s laughable. Not a bold woman a weak man has to beat down to make him feel strong. Or fuck around on before she realizes she could do better and scrapes him off. No, she saw all of that, just without the bad shit leaking in.”

  I was now breathing deep along with blinking a lot in order to stop myself from losing it.

  But even though Marcus saw it—I knew he even had to feel it—he was still far from done.

  “I bet if you went back to that place, all those people would still be in it, living lives they hate. And you’d sweep through looking like a movie star and they’d take one look at you and know they had every right to be jealous of you. To hate you. To beat you. Talk about you. Cheat on you. And they’re so entrenched in their bitterness because they only have themselves to blame that they didn’t make their lives better, the only regret they’d have is that they hadn’t been able to drag you right down to where they are, smother your light, make you go dark.”

  His fingers peeled mine from his thigh and curled around tight, holding my hand right there.

  And he kept going.

  “Miss Annamae didn’t give you those pearls because she thought for a second they’d get close to beating you down. She gave you those pearls because she knew without a doubt they never would.”

  “Please stop talking,” I whispered, seeing as he’d gone all fuzzy because my eyes were trembling with tears and I could take not one little bit more.

  For a second, he didn’t say anything and he didn’t move.

  Then he lifted my hand and touched his lips to my fingers. He put it right back, curling them around his thigh again, and he looked to his bourbon.

  He raised his glass and took a sip.

  I drew in a shaky breath.

  Then I removed my hand from his thigh and reached for my own drink.

  After I’d thrown back a slightly unladylike sip, I returned the glass to the table and my attention with it.

  “Daisy.”

  “Please, please,” I was still whispering, this time to my glass, “I can’t take more of your sweet.”

  “Baby, you need to move your glass. Your appetizer is here.”

  My head came up.

  The waiter smiled benignly at me.

  I moved my glass.

  Marcus moved his arm to around my back and pulled me to his side so I was tucked close.

  I picked up my fork in order to dive into my crab cake.

  I had the succulent-looking crab halfway to my mouth when Marcus asked, “Where did you grow up?”

  I braced but answered, deciding that was an innocent enough question, and if he pressed for more, I’d shut it down.

  He didn’t press for more.

  He scooped out some of his oysters Rockefeller.

  And we ate.

  * * * *

  Marcus

  Marcus got her drunk.

  He did this without remorse.

  It bought him a good deal of her amazing laughter.

  It also got him the bonus of her passing out in his car, this meaning he didn’t have to have words with her about where he fully intended to spend the night that night.

  He carried her to her apartment and took off her shoes, her necklace, her bracelets, and carefully slid out her earrings but left her in her dress when he tucked her into bed.

  He left her room, closing the door behind him at the same time sliding his phone out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

  He flipped it open and made the call.

  “Boss,” Brady answered, sounding mostly alert, somewhat drowsy.

  Within a minute, he’d issued his order.

  He finished with, “Hopefully that pawn shop will still be open. If it isn’t, maybe someone who ran it will be around and they kept records. But I don’t care what it takes, Brady. Even if you have to pull Nightingale into it. Find those pearls and get them to me.”

  “You got it, Mr. Sloan.”

  “Goodnight,” Marcus said and hung up.

  Then he took off his suit jacket, his tie, shirt, shoes, and socks and he stretched out on Daisy’s couch, tucking a toss pillow under his head and pulling one of her throws over his body.

  He closed his eyes, and within seconds, with Daisy resting safe in the next room, Marcus was asleep.

  Chapter Seven

  Deal

  Daisy

  I opened my eyes and saw daisies.

  Then I realized I was hungover.

  On this realization, and the others that bounded in after it, in a tizzy, I pushed the covers down and saw I was in my dress from last night.

  I touched my naked earlobe, felt my necklace gone, and looked back to the daisies to see my jewelry sitting at the base of the vase.

  Then I turned, saw the other side of the bed was empty, stared at the fluffed pillows I hadn’t slept on but grabbed one of them and pulled it to me to take a whiff.

  It still smelled of Marcus, but this morning, only faintly.

  He hadn’t slept like I assumed he slept the night before, holding me.

  He’d taken off.

  I dropped to my back and closed my eyes in despair.

  Wonderful.

  I’d had a date the night before with the classiest man I’d ever met, and I got drunk, passed out in his car, and he’d had to put me to bed.

  At least Marcus Sloan proved another way he was all class. He might have made sure I was comfortable, but he didn’t give himself a show by taking my clothes off.

  He also didn’t stick around.

  My hands balled into fists, my nails digging into the palms.

  Because I was me, in the back of my mind, I knew if I was stupid enough to take a shot at the something special that was a man like Marcus Sloan, I’d screw it up with him and there I did it. The first date. I got shitfaced and I remembered laughing too much, being way too nosy asking too many questions, and doing that staring at him like every word he spoke dropped a bar of gold in my lap.

  If drunken memory served, every time I laughed or touched his thigh, arm, or hand, he looked at me the same way.

  I still passed out in his car, just like white trash.

  And now he was gone.

  “Ugh,” I mumbled, the dull headache and subtle queasy feeling making it easier for me (just a touch) not to scream at my stupidity, find a way to ki
ck my own ass (even mentally), or burst into tears.

  Instead, since I was Daisy and from the moment I came out bawling I had no choice, I shoved the covers aside and got on with it.

  I pushed myself out of bed, pulled my dress off on the way to the bathroom, and did my morning bathroom routine, this time adding the complicated procedure of getting all my makeup off.

  My hair still rocked it since I rocked doing my hair, so I left it as is.

  I went back into my room, tugged on a pair of baby-pink, drawstring, fleece shorts (that had diamanté sprinkled along the curves of the seams of the pockets) and a skintight white tank top that had emblazoned all across the front in hot-pink and glittery diamond rhinestones Nothing a Little Sparkle Won’t Fix.

  My mantra.

  Though, that morning, post-fucking up my date with Marcus Sloan, I knew all the sparkle in the world wouldn’t fix the feeling I had sitting in the pit of my belly that had nothing to do with being hungover.

  I moved to my door in order to get water (for the aspirin I needed) and coffee (because every true red-white-and-blue American drank coffee), and find alternate ways to avoid the pain of a heart I refused to acknowledge I’d broken my damned self by acting like the white trash everyone thought I was.

  I opened my door and stopped dead.

  It was October, dead-on fall, and the sun hadn’t yet hit the sky like only sun in Denver could, washing the base of a glorious mountain range in bright.

  But the rising sun was doing its best lighting a room where every surface was covered with a spray of daisies. Some of them were pretty white ones with little yellow buttons in the middle. Others were white with green buttons. Some, a mixture of both. And others were pink. Or orange surrounding the black button blazing out to a startling yellow. Others were red. Then there were those that were coral. There were also those with color combinations.

  On a routine basis, I carefully clipped their ends, added fresh water with food, all in an effort to keep them alive as long as I could.

  Over the weeks, I’d had to throw some away.

  But they were of a quality that most of them were still going strong.

  And right then, in the midst of them, lying on his stomach on my couch, one long arm having fallen off the side, my throw having slid down to his waist, the delineation of the muscles of his tanned back on show, his head turned from me resting on a toss pillow, his thick dark hair disheveled, lay Marcus.