Ryker (The Powers That Be Book 4)

by Harper Bentley

  Oh, my God. I actually dropped the box of tea on the floor and couldn’t help wanting to put my fingers in my ears and chant a little tune so I didn’t hear any more of what she had to say.

  She laughed. “I know I’m ‘grossing you out’ but I’m telling you, when Marco and I were younger, we sure had some good times in bed. You find yourself a dirty talker and you’ll never be bored. My first husband was—”

  “You were married before?” That was shocking because she’d always only talked about Marco. I picked up the box and set it on the counter, opening it to get the bags out to place in our cups while keeping an eye on her.

  She nodded. “Yes. To a very nice young man. We were eighteen, in love and couldn’t wait any longer. We were both each other’s first and it was… nice. But not steamy like it was with Marco.” She fanned herself and I chuckled.

  The teakettle whistled so I took it off the burner and poured the water into our cups. After setting it back on the stove, I carried both cups to the table as Mrs. B followed.

  “Now, I was in it for life with Joe,” she said as she sat. “I’d said those vows in front of God and everyone and I meant them.” She picked up her cup and saucer and after blowing on the tea, took a sip. “Joe didn’t take them as seriously as I did and ended up having several affairs.”

  “What?” It pissed me off that someone would treat sweet Mrs. B that way no matter how long ago it was.

  She nodded and took another sip. “Oh, we were quite the scandalous couple in town. One just didn’t get divorced back then, but I’m not one to put up with a cheating husband, so I went to my father and informed him what was going on. My father was a good man. Honest. Hardworking. He owned a lumber mill in town and people liked him. Respected him. Needless to say, they were quite shocked when he hunted Joe down after giving him a week to stop what he was doing, mind you, and beat the hell out of him.”

  “Good,” I declared before taking a sip.

  She chuckled. “And this is where it gets even better,” she said cryptically giving me a wink before taking a drink.

  “What happened?”

  “My father wasn’t a very big man, standing maybe five-foot-three. Momma barely cleared five feet which is why I’m short. Anyway, Joe was over six feet tall and was a fairly muscular man. People talked at first, but then assumed that Daddy had been just angry enough to best Joe. Oh! I forgot I have Nook pastries! They’d go well with the tea.”

  I got up and found the pastries in the cabinet, getting a knife out to split one between us. “Go on. I wanna know what happened!”

  She smiled then continued as I placed each half on the saucers I’d gotten out. “I’d been around the mill all my life. Daddy was always hiring what Momma called vagabonds, drifters. I’d seen the latest drifter he’d hired months before I learned of Joe’s infidelities, and if I hadn’t been married, I’d have been all over that.”

  I laughed at her lingo. I know she’d heard Sharee and me saying that very thing. I took a bite of my pastry half, closing my eyes for a moment at the deliciousness, then opened them to see her doing the same which made me chuckle before I prodded, “And?”

  She took another drink. “This drifter was as big as Joe, maybe a tad taller, but he was a Greek god compared. Oh, my, was he handsome. And Daddy liked him because he worked hard too. I’d moved back in with my parents and Momma invited this gorgeous man, Marco, to dinner several times a week since he was renting a room in the hotel and lived alone. I had the biggest crush on him but since I was newly divorced, it was inappropriate to even think of dating anyone at the time, so I waited. After seeing Marco up close, Joe became just a fleeting memory for me. A few months later, we learned Joe had gotten himself in trouble when he had an affair with a married woman whose husband didn’t take too kindly to that sort of behavior. That beating landed Joe in the hospital. I went to visit him only out of propriety but wished I hadn’t. He had a broken arm, his nose was smashed and it seemed he had bruises everywhere. When I walked into the room, he started crying, asking my forgiveness, begging me to take him back.”

  “You didn’t, though, right?”

  Another cryptic smile and more pastry eating and tea sipping was about to drive me to the brink.

  “Mrs. B! What happened?” I pleaded for her to continue.

  After dabbing her lips with her napkin, she said, “I told the son of a bitch to get lost.”

  I burst out laughing because she rarely used foul language. I think I’d heard her say damnation once but that was about as bad as it got. Through my giggles I asked, “And you and Marco got together after that?”

  “Oh, no, honey. It wasn’t that easy.”

  “Why?”

  “I was a divorcée after all and, well, you just didn’t hop into another relationship back then.”

  “So what happened next?”

  “Daddy had given me a job keeping the books at the mill so I saw Marco every day and we became friends. We flirted like crazy but nothing ever came of it. Until six months into my working there when he cornered me in the back one day.”

  Sounding like a broken record, I repeated, “What happened?”

  “It was the summer of 1953 and there wasn’t air conditioning at the mill. I’d gone to the back to cool off since there was a big fan back there. I’d also grabbed a cup of ice. Since it was so hot, I had on a pair of shorts and a button-up shirt. I untucked my shirt and had unbuttoned the top several buttons and was smoothing ice over my stomach and what would be called my décolletage when Marco happened to walk in and see me. We stared at each other for a moment before he stalked over backing me against the wall and in his slight Italian accent murmured in my ear that he could make me wet in other places.”

  I gasped again. “Whoa. That was pretty risqué for back then, right?”

  “Downright salacious,” she said with a smirk.

  “So you went out with him after that, right?” She shook her head. “What? Are you kidding me?”

  “Nope. We went another six months, casting surreptitious glances at each other, me blushing every time because I knew exactly what he wanted. When finally one night at dinner Marco was over, he looked at my father and said, ‘Mr. Williams, I’d like your blessing to date Sarah. Now, we can do this the easy way with you approving or we can go the difficult route with you telling me no and I’ll take her out anyway. It’s up to you, sir, which way things will go.’”

  “Holy shit.”

  She nodded. “Daddy squinted his eyes at Marco for several seconds, sizing him up, I suppose, then he looked at me. ‘What do you say, Sarah?’ he asked. I nodded slowly, still in awe that Marco had stood up to Daddy like that.”

  “Why did you need your dad’s permission? You’d already been married before. You were a grown woman, right?”

  “I was twenty at the time but still living under my parents’ roof.” At my questioning look she explained, “That’s just how things were back then.”

  “Weird.”

  She chuckled. “I guess it would seem weird to today’s twenty year olds.”

  I nodded in agreement. “Okay, go on.”

  “Marco and I dated for two months before he told me it was he who’d beaten up Joe and not my father. He said the first time he’d seen me he’d been smitten but had been disappointed to learn that I was married. When he found out that Joe was stepping out on me, it infuriated him that he’d do that to me. He approached Daddy, asked if he could take care of it and Daddy was more than happy to oblige.” She took a sip of tea. “I’m sure it sounds uncivilized, but in those days people took care of their problems and moved on. We didn’t worry about being sued over every little thing. The minute Marco told me he’d been the one to fight for my honor, well, I didn’t think it possible to fall more in love with him, but he proved me wrong. Two months later, he proposed, after having gotten Daddy’s permission to do so, of course. We married that spring, a simple ceremony since it was my second marriage, but my dress was still stunning. I rem
ember being so nervous on our wedding night.”

  I jerked my head back in surprise. “You hadn’t slept with him?”

  “No. Those were different times, remember? Oh, but we did plenty of other things.” At my raised eyebrows she actually giggled. Then she got a faraway look in her eyes. “We were together for fifty-four years before he passed.”

  I sat watching her get teary-eyed and had to join her. I pulled a paper napkin out of the holder at the center of the table and wiped under my eyes. “That’s a beautiful story.”

  She wiped at her own tears nodding in agreement and went back to her original point. “And let me tell you, the man knew how to talk in bed. So, honey, if you find that, you’d better grab on for dear life.”

  Now I was crying for real.

  “What is it, sweetheart?” She reached over and put her hand on mine, squeezing. I stared down at it while tears ran down my face. Her hand was worn and wrinkled, a few liver spots here and there, fingers crumpled permanently due to the arthritis with which she’d been afflicted. Yet at one point I knew those hands had been capable of creating the most amazing art. They were experienced, had once held babies, wiped runny little noses or blood from scraped knees. They’d comforted a husband when his parents had passed, framed his face when he doubted himself, held his hand as he’d taken his last breath.

  I looked up at her. “I love your hands. They’re beautiful.”

  She gave mine another squeeze then smiled waiting for me to talk.

  I squeezed her hand back before sliding it out from under hers so I could wipe my eyes again. “I—I don’t know if I’ll ever have that with someone, that connection,” was my choked confession.

  She looked affronted. “Honey, you already have a connection like that.”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t want it.”

  “He looked like he wanted it last night.”

  I let out a humorless laugh. “He wanted something all right just not that.” I looked at her through what I knew were puffy eyes. “He’s not interested in a long-term thing. He just wants a hookup.”

  She nodded knowingly. “A booty call.”

  I snorted out a real laugh this time. “Mrs. B, how do you know what a booty call is?”

  “I may be old but I’m not dead, Francesca.” She gave me a discerning look.

  “Well, it’s over between us anyway so it doesn’t do any good to talk about it.” The look on her face remained. “What?”

  “Remember what I told you the other night?”

  I nodded. “You said I needed to play it smart if I wanted his eyes to open.”

  “That’s right.”

  I sighed. “But what does that mean?”

  She shrugged. “That’s for you to find out.”

  I stood grabbing up both of our cups and saucers to take to the sink. I rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher then looked back at her. “I just don’t think we’re meant to be.”

  She tsk’d at me. “You remember what I said I did to catch Marco’s eye?”

  I thought for a second, leaning a hip against the counter. “You didn’t really do anything.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So I’m not supposed to do anything and he’ll come around?”

  “I didn’t say that.” She sighed. “You kids today just don’t get nuances anymore. Everything has to be spelled out for you.” I knew she was teasing but she needed to she needed to stop beating around the bush here. “I kept Marco engaged, intrigued. We became friends first but we also flirted a lot and it worked out.”

  “I’m supposed to become his friend?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “What’s wrong with that? If you’re not friends and you get married, what do you have to fall back on?”

  “So am I supposed to text him and stuff?”

  “Sure. You’re a smart girl. You’ll figure it out.”

  “But what if I become his friend and he starts talking to me about other women?” Yikes. That would suck big time.

  “Then you’ll know.” Her eyes twinkled at me when she said, “But I doubt he’s that stupid.”

  With a sigh I declared, “I’ll give it a go and see where it goes.”

  “Good for you!” she gave me a smile as she stood. “The grocery list is on the fridge. You’re a good girl, Francesca. Thank you. Now, all this talk has worn me out. I’m going to lie down. You’ve got a key, so let yourself in when you get back.”

  She turned to go to her room but I called her name, went to her and bending low gave her a hug. “Thank you.”

  When I pulled back, she gave my forearms a squeeze. “Any time, dear.”

  10—Major Decision

  Monday morning I was ready to start a new flirty friendship with Ryker but Coach G informed me he’d be gone all week for wrestling matches. Damn. The kids were out of school for MLK, Jr. Day, so we had a professional development day and I’d looked forward to getting to sit by Ryker and flirt a little. Maybe next time.

  Tuesday I’d resolved to text him. The Friday before, I’d started bringing a sack lunch and eating in Coach G’s office since I only got twenty-five minutes and the cafeteria was on the other side of campus. I’d gone there the first two days but by the time I stood in line then got my tray, I had five minutes to eat and get back. Coach G went home for lunch, so I had the office to myself and decided I’d text Ryker to get the friendship/flirting ball rolling. I’m not going to mention that my hands were shaking so badly that I almost dropped my phone in my cup of ramen instant lunch thingy.

  I scrolled through my contacts and found MFRyker which stood for “My Friend Ryker” to remind me what Mrs. B had told me. I also kind of got a kick out of the fact that it looked like something else especially since he’d been a jerk the last time I saw him.

  Text Message—Tues, Jan 20, 11:14 a.m.

  Me: Hi. It’s Frankie. I just wanted to wish you luck at your match. Also, you’d have been proud of Jack, the little third grader with brown hair who’s already got more muscles than I do, because this morning he asked Coach G if they could wrestle like Coach Powers does. Okay, well, take care

  Holy shit that was nerve-racking. I was sure he was busy and wouldn’t text back until later so I was surprised when my phone chimed right away.

  Text Message—Tues, Jan 20, 11:14 a.m.

  MFRyker: Hey Francesca. Thanks for the luck but it takes skill and strength to win, which I’ll be doing at the end of each match. Tell Jack he’s badass. You wearing that sweet little t-shirt today that makes your tits look so fucking good?

  Wow. Did I really want to be friends with this guy much less try to get into a relationship with him? I knew he was being an ass on purpose because his teammates were probably around and he was trying to be cool. Jerk.

  I tried maintaining a light and flirty disposition but I could feel it slipping because he riled me up more than any other person I’d ever known.

  Text Message—Tues, Jan 20, 11:16 a.m.

  Me: You’re definitely confident in yourself. I hope that works for you. I’ll be sure to tell Jack you approve.

  A couple seconds later he texted back.

  Text Message—Tues, Jan 20, 11:16 a.m.

  MFRyker: Shirt? Tits? Yeah? C’mon, sweetheart. I wanna know

  Flirty, flirty, flirty. Must maintain flirty attitude.

  Psh. Fuck that. I could sense the tone behind his sweetheart and it wasn’t nice.

  Text Message—Tues, Jan 20, 11:16 a.m.

  Me: I’ve got on the shirt. Do you have on the sweet little singlet that displays your package so nicely, SWEETHEART?

  Let’s see how he liked being objectified.

  Text Message—Tues, Jan 20, 11:16 a.m.

  MFRyker: Have you been checking out my package? If so, you’d know my singlet is not little because of the size of my package alone, SWEETHEART

  Dear God. I’d thought Mrs. B had something here, I mean, it’d been better advice than what Sharee and Gladys had given me, but still. I began to think I’d bitten
off more than I could chew.

  Text Message—Tues, Jan 20, 11:17 a.m.

  Me: Well, I need to go. The kids will be coming in soon

  Text Message—Tues, Jan 20, 11:17 a.m.

  MFRyker: Your lunch is over at 11:30. You’ve still got time. I want an answer

  Text Message—Tues, Jan 20, 11:17 a.m.

  Me: An answer to what?

  Playing dumb was my only out.

  Text Message—Tues, Jan 20, 11:17 a.m.

  MFRyker: You know, I’m not gonna make you answer because I know you’ve checked it out up close and personal. Fuck. I can’t wait to get up close and personal with you again

  God. I’d be willing to bet Mrs. B and her husband’s flirting never got this graphic. I sat staring at his message not knowing what to say. Did I say I couldn’t wait either only to find out I was still just a hookup? Did I tell him he’d have to work for it first?

  Man, I sucked at this so bad.

  Instead of answering, I let time run out before texting him back, coward that I was.

  Text Message—Tues, Jan 20, 11:27 a.m.

  Me: I’ve really got to go. Good luck! Let me know how you do! <3

  Text Message—Tues, Jan 20, 11:27 a.m.

  MFRyker: Coward… Gonna call tonight at 11. Be ready

  Be ready? What’d that mean? I was definitely afraid to find out.

  ~*~*~*~

  I hate when people give you a time for something because when the time passes, you get all nervous and jumpy wondering if they forgot or they were just joking or they were setting you up to make you look like an idiot, and then each minute past the time seems to take an hour to go by.

  All these things were running through my mind that night as I lay in bed when I looked at my phone for the thousandth time.

  11:08 p.m.

  Now to figure out which of the aforementioned Ryker was pulling. All three worked but I hoped it was option four: He’d been so tired from competing he’d fallen asleep.

  At 11:11 p.m. I decided I didn’t care anymore. There was no doubt in my mind that he’d played me and I was the fool who’d fallen for it.