The cot?
Dad had stowed an old army surplus cot in a back corner of our eight-by-ten shed years ago. It sat there, folded up and collecting dust, for most of my childhood. I’d never had any cause to use the cot or even touch it – but now there it was, unfolded and laid out in the center of the shed, with a moth-eaten blanket thrown over it and a rolled-up bar t-shirt at one end for a pillow.
“Dave, are you living in my storage shed?”
“Well, like I was going to say, I had nowhere to go once the bar closed that first night – so I stood around back here trying to figure out what to do, and I noticed the shed was open. I was worried somebody might be in there stealing from my new boss, so I poked my head inside to look, saw that cot, and … well, um, yes. I moved into your shed.”
He lowered his hands, and ran one of them through his mop of blond hair. He looked down at the toes of Dad’s old work boots, sighed, and then glanced at the tire iron. He looked back up at me, raised one eyebrow, and did a good job of looking as hopeful and adorable as the kittens.
“So are you and your tire iron going to evict me?”
I should have sent his ass packing. I’d never seen this guy before two nights ago, he could be a thief or a rapist or a killer – and now here he was living in my shed, right next to the bar that served as my one and only means of support.
What if he felt like breaking into the bar one night and helping himself to some of the valuable and easily resold equipment and supplies in there? He’d as much as said he was on the run from something or somebody in Chicago – what if there was an arrest warrant out for him? What if the sheriff showed up here to take him away in handcuffs? What if I was tossed into jail right alongside him, charged with harboring a fugitive?
I knew nothing about him, not really. He could be anybody or anything, innocent or guilty as hell, and I’d have bet my rent that ‘Dave Carson’ wasn’t his real name. If he hadn’t done anything wrong, why would he give me a fake name?
I didn’t know.
I did know what it felt like to be evicted, though.
This wasn’t even close to what happened when the sheriff and the bank in Atchison put me out into the street – but somehow, it was.
I looked Dave up and down, I ordered myself to not notice all that sex appeal dripping off him, and my instincts told me that yes, like me, he was somebody who didn’t deserve to be homeless and adrift.
I had no idea how I knew it, but this guy deserved a safe corner of the world to stay in, at least until he came to terms with whatever he was running from – and I was going to give him that safe haven.
Why? Because my instincts told me to, that’s why – and if you can’t trust your instincts, then you’ve got no business running a bar, whether it’s in downtown Chicago or on the county road outside Eli Springs, Kansas.
“Dave?”
“Yes, ma’am?” His green eyes lit up and damn him, he knew right away I was going to let this slide.
“Not only are you my barely competent cook, but now you’re also the night watchman. You stay out here in my storage shed, at least until you can get a room in town, and you keep an eye on this place after closing time. If somebody wants to steal from me or trash my property, they’ll have to do it over your dead body – and since it’s probably kind of illegal for somebody to be living here, you also keep your mouth shut if anybody asks you about all this. Got it?”
He tossed off a mock salute. “Understood – I’m your guard dog, as of now. I will protect the Jayhawk Tavern to the last drop of my blood, no matter what deadly terror I may have to confront in my quest to –”
“You’re a drama major, aren’t you?”
“Nope, architectural engineering – but for you, fair maiden, I can be a drama major, or a cook, or a night watchman, or whatever you need me to be.”
“I would have worn my hip boots if I’d known the bullshit would get this deep – and my name is not ‘boss’ or ‘fair maiden,’ it’s Cassie. Call me that, or your employment here will come to a sudden end before you have time to commit even one more screw-up.”
“Cassie, you’re underestimating my ability to screw up by a country mile or –”
A loud thump and two startled squalls from the shed made us both jump. Dave turned around, I looked past him, and we saw that the enterprising leader of the kitty brigade had knocked the bag of cat food off the shelf, scoring a direct hit on his two loyal followers below. The cot was now covered with Friskies kibble and squabbling kittens, I swear the orange tom rolled his eyes in disgust, Dave sneezed like an incoming artillery round, and me?
I tried to choke it back, but a giggle burst out of me. Dave rubbed his watering eyes and I giggled again, and when one kitten swatted at the other two and then tumbled off the cot onto his furry little butt, I sat right down on the ground and laughed.
Laughing felt so good. Forgetting my bills and customers and problems, and collapsing into a giggling ball of silliness – how long had it been?
Looking up to see Dave laughing with me was even better.
He snorted laughter, he sneezed again two seconds later, and maybe he hadn’t known he was allergic to cats, but I could tell he liked them anyway. He knelt down, scooped up the fallen kitten and put the little guy back onto the cot – triggering a new flurry of sneezing – and then he glanced over his shoulder at me with a grin that told me I was doomed.
I liked this guy. He was little more than a stranger, he was on the run, he was lying about his name and who knew what else, but he made me laugh and I liked him.
Cassie, you are going to regret this. This is a mistake, you know it’s a mistake, and you will regret it right down to your bones. Never forget, you cannot afford to rely on anybody but Cassie Hamilton – take a chance on this man and he will let you down, as surely as the sun’s coming up tomorrow.
Sensible voice, you’re fired.
4
I decided on the spot that my cook and night watchman needed two things, and he needed them yesterday.
One, he needed more to wear than one pair of overalls and a single bar t-shirt. The Goodwill store over in Seven Pines could supply enough cast-off shirts and jeans to keep him decent, and I figured the Walmart on the outskirts of Falmouth was likely to have discounted multi-packs of men’s briefs and socks – but there was a problem with this plan, and it involved the other thing my new employee needed.
Two, he needed a bath. He needed to be scrubbed down and detoxified by a hazmat team, really, because dear God, the man stank. A weekend of wearing nothing but the same pair of overalls and the only bar t-shirt that would fit him, combined with lots of sweaty physical labor in a hot kitchen and no access to a shower, meant Dave was as ripe as marked-down bananas – as in nose-wrinkling stinky, to the point that something had to be done to jettison all that odor before I could even let him inside my truck, much less out and around other people.
“Dave, I’ll clean up this mess in the shed and get the cats fed – meanwhile, you get yourself cleaned up, and then we’ll go see about getting you some fresh clothes.” I nodded toward the faucet and hose mounted outside the bar’s back door. “Nothing personal, buddy, but you reek.”
He looked at the hose, he looked down at himself, and then he looked at me with one raised eyebrow. “So, you want me to strip right in front of you?”
I brushed the cat food scattered all over the cot into a plastic bowl, set that bowl down for the kittens, then filled another bowl for the orange tom. “I’ve already seen your naked ass and your naked everything, remember? And no offense, but I’ve seen better.”
That was a total lie, of course – I had never seen a better ass or a more spectacular display of male nakedness in general, but he didn’t need to know that.
“But seriously, I’m supposed to drop everything and hose myself off like a horse, right out here?”
“Yes, you are – you’re in the country now and we’re practical people out here, so hop to it.”
�
��Do I get a towel?”
I pulled the blanket off the cot, balled it up, and threw it at him. “That’s towel enough for you, college boy.” I filled a third bowl with Friskies and set it down near the tall grass, in case the white kitty got up the nerve to come back.
“How about soap?”
I located a wrapped bar of store-brand soap at the back of the shed next to a pack of toilet paper, and tossed it in his direction without looking. “Don’t make a habit of being all high-maintenance like this, or I might decide you’re too much trouble.”
“Will you help me lather up my back? My front?”
I turned to glare at him and he hit me with a wicked smile that I could feel all over my body. I planted my hands on my hips and tried so hard not to imagine holding his hips, pulling him closer while soapy water poured down our bodies and he ran a possessive hand over my curves …
Goddammit, Cassie.
“You’re a big boy and I’m sure you can handle getting clean all by yourself – just like I’m sure I can fire you if you keep getting on my nerves. So I’m going out front now, I’m starting up my truck, and if you’re not clean, dry, and sitting in the passenger seat of said truck in ten minutes, I’m leaving to go find a new cook. Got it?”
“Hey, I’m only saying it would save energy and water and be environmentally responsible if we got clean together –”
I walked to the back door, gathered up the coiled hose and threw it at him, then headed for the corner of the building. “Nine minutes and thirty seconds, Dave.”
I didn’t want to walk away from him, but I did. I marched to the corner of the building, I swung past the dumpster on my way to the parking lot, and I didn’t look back once.
But I felt his eyes on me every step of the way.
Three hours later, an assistant manager and two security guards escorted us out the front door of the Falmouth Walmart. They marched us straight to my truck, they informed us we were no longer welcome on the property and should leave immediately, and the gutless coward of an assistant manager hid behind the security guards as he yelled at us that we would be arrested if we ever returned.
I flipped the punk off and swerved way closer to him than necessary as we burned rubber peeling out of the parking lot, and I ran the red light at the next corner because I damn well felt like it.
Geez, you throw one punch at a whiny little bastard who totally had it coming and before you know it, your afternoon is shot all to hell.
Dave’s eyes were as big as dinner plates as I broke the speed limit because I felt like that too, and he didn’t say a word until we pulled into a McDonald’s six blocks away.
“Cassie?”
I slammed to a halt in the first parking spot I came to, threw the truck into park, and glared at him. “Do you have a problem, Dave?”
He chewed at his lip, and I saw caution percolating through his brain as he chose his next words like someone picking their way through a minefield.
“No, I’m wondering if you might want me to drive while you calm down, just a tiny bit?”
“No, I do not want you to drive and I do not feel the need to calm down or up or sideways.” I nodded at the golden arches. “What I need is to go in there and eat grease and fat and salt until I feel better about the world and my place in it. Are you with me?”
The man had the good sense to nod and not say a thing.
He kept his mouth shut while I ordered. He didn’t comment when I motioned for him to pick up our tray. He followed me as I led the way to one of the good tables across from the widescreen TV, and he kept his thoughts to himself.
When I started in on my fries and double quarter-pounder with cheese, Dave leaned back in his chair. He fiddled with the straw poking out of his Coke, he looked off to one side, and then he looked back at me.
“Cassie?”
I knew it – I was about to hear my 9,999th lecture from a guy about what I ate, how much I ate, and how I needed to make better dietary choices. I judged that Dave would at least try to be nice about it, but I still prepared to give him both barrels of my standard ‘mind your own business’ response. “Yes, Dave?”
“Promise you won’t hit me?”
“Look, if you think that –”
“Promise you won’t shoot me either?”
“Let’s cut to the chase, all right? I will eat whatever I want, whenever I want, and however much of it I want – food equals comfort in my book and I will take comfort wherever I can find it, because it’s in short supply in my world. So can we put this subject to rest, or are you walking home?”
I hit him with my best icy stare, deliberately taking in another mouthful of fries while never breaking eye contact.
His eyebrows shot up. He tilted his head to one side, he stared right back at me, and had I misread him yet again?
Yes. Yes, I had.
“I’m not sure what conversation we’re in right now, Cassie, but I was actually going to ask what happened back in Walmart – you know, why did you attack that guy in the check-out line? I was flipping through a magazine, I heard somebody make a nasty crack about –”
“About how my ass wouldn’t fit through the door?”
“Yep, and when I looked around, you were up in some stranger’s face calling him a … well, what you called him, and then you threw that punch, and the next thing I knew, we were kicked out. Do you normally react like that when random morons say stupid things?”
“Yes, if some guy makes a snotty remark about the dimensions of my ass while the two sniggering sluts with him cock their hips at me and laugh, I will indeed call that guy a “goat-loving abortion of a human being,” and I will also introduce him to my knuckles. Are you surprised?”
“I’m impressed, really. Most girls either ignore something like that or flip the jerk off, or maybe they’ll glare at their boyfriend like he needs to defend their honor from every Neanderthal with half a thought fizzling and popping through his tiny brain – but you never even glanced at me, you just tore right into the guy like you were the boxing champion of Kansas.”
“I have to stand up for myself – I have to survive, and you don’t survive by letting abuse like that slide. Maybe your girlfriend is used to having you around as protection, but all I have is me.”
“Now I am surprised – you’re saying you don’t have a boyfriend? Why not?”
He meant it, I saw that the instant the words were out of his mouth. He was sincere and he was puzzled. Was he also blind?
“Dave, look at me.”
He smiled and it was like the sun coming up on a summer morning. His green eyes looked me up and down, he glanced off to one side and shook his head, and when he looked back at me with that megawatt grin, I decided I hated his girlfriend, whoever she was.
“Cassie, if I look at you the way I want to, you’ll punch me out too.”
“I don’t need charity from you, okay? I know what I look like, and you need to know that –”
“I know that as of now, I have decided that I will take my chances on getting decked by a beautiful girl in the middle of McDonald’s – Cassie, that guy was blind, because you have an amazing ass. It’s round and luscious and perfect, and if you’re going to kill me for saying that, could you maybe wait until after I finish this?”
He held up his Big Mac, waggled it at me, then took a big, gulping bite out of the thing while keeping those spellbinding green eyes trained right on me.
I always have something to say. Whatever the occasion, whatever the mood of the moment, Cassie Hamilton is never at a loss for words.
I drew a blank. Nothing came to me, not one syllable. Did I even still speak English?
Dave kept chewing and grinning, the bastard. Then he swallowed and said, “But before you dump my body in a shallow grave, will you at least answer my first question? Why don’t you have a boyfriend?”
Play it cool, Cassie. Until you figure out what’s going on inside his head, act like muscular hunks with Hollywood good looks and killer s
miles compliment your ass every day, all right?
“What would your girlfriend think of you hitting on a chubby Kansas bartender, Dave?”
“You mean the girlfriend I don’t have?”
“Nice try, but I am not six kinds of velvet-wrapped fool. Guys like you either have a fleet of trained bimbos trailing along in their wake wherever they go –”
He twisted around in his bolted-down chair and made an elaborate show of looking up and down the wall behind him, past the TV, and around the tables on either side. He turned back to face me again, and that beaming smile belonged in a Crest commercial.
“Wow, bimbos? Real ones? When do they get here? Will they submit to my every sexual demand, no matter how sick or perverted it is? Why didn’t anybody tell me about the bimbos?”
I buried my face in my hands and sighed like a long-suffering saint, because otherwise I would have burst out laughing. When I looked up, I did my best to be all cross and aggravated and not one bit giggly.
“Whatever, loser – like I was saying, either it’s wall-to-wall bimbos with your kind of guy, or there’s a possessive and territorial girlfriend who will rip the throat out of anybody who even looks at her man. So where is your girlfriend? Who is she? Why are you with me, and not her?”
“So I am with you? Great, when does the sex start?”
I pelted him with fries, and then balled up the wrapper my burger came in and threw that at him too. “Do I need to remind you that I own a shotgun?”
He held up both hands. “I surrender – but do you want to tie me up, to be safe? Could you maybe throw in some whips and chains? How do you feel about tormenting me with pain and pleasure until my heart explodes, huh?”
When had I lost control of this conversation? “I’ll also remind you that I’m your boss and if this is some weird sort of sexual harassment scenario you’ve got going on here, I have to tell you it’s not going to work. You’re the cook, I’m the owner, and I do not, repeat, do NOT get all frisky with employees – I don’t have the time, I don’t have the energy, it would be bad for business and discipline, and it would just be unbearably weird.”
No Dreams Allowed: A Billionaire Romance Page 4