"One of Elliot's...business partners...I'm still not sure what to call their relationship, anyway he came over to the trailer one night. It was kind of late and they got into a huge argument about money. Jayce was saying Elliot was snorting the profits and Elliot was denying everything. They were screaming at each other and throwing things. I was terrified. I was this big pregnant," I circled my arms in front of me to show how far my stomach protruded. "And they were going at each other like crazy. Well, Jayce had some parting words and left the trailer all pissed off and roughed up. Elliot though, he was enraged. I had never seen him like that in all the years I had known him. He followed Jayce out of the trailer, still screaming. I ran out after him, afraid of what he might do. I was hoping that Jayce would just get into his car and go, and it looked like he was trying to, it really did. But Elliot...he was crazy. I didn't even know he had a gun. I had never even seen anyone shoot a gun outside of the movies or tv. God, it was so bad. It was...ugh." My voice broke then, as the memories of all of the blood and bits of bone on the asphalt trailer park road came flooding back. "Elliot wasn't a crack shot, and I don't know where he was aiming, but he shot Jayce in the back of the head as he'd been walking to his car, parked in the vacant trailer lot across the road. It wasn't clean, and it wasn't quick. It took Jayce a few minutes to bleed out and die, and I'll never forget the screaming. Nor the hideous twisted lines of Elliot's face as he grabbed me by the shoulders and told me to call the police, and tell them there was an accident. That someone had driven by and shot his friend, that we needed an ambulance right away."
"That sounds like a difficult story to get the authorities to believe," this time it was Jeanette who commented, her finger delicately rubbing the center of her nose. Almost like she was pushing up a pair of glasses, but she wasn't wearing any glasses.
"Yeah, but he was freaking out and not thinking clearly, and turning to the only person that he had any control over. So the cops came and it was just a shit show. Of course, none of the neighbors saw or heard anything. In our neighborhood, you don't talk. Talking gets you shot. No one in that trailer park wanted to be the next Jayce."
“So what happened then?” Angel was so excited listening to the story, she was still leaning her butt on the table but her upper body was pitched forward as if she was trying to get as close as she could to the source of the words. “Did you roll on him?”
“Like a skateboard going downhill.” I forged ahead, the worst was out and the rest was simply a formality. Something anyone could look up with a little time and the correct search words. “I was still a ride or die woman,” I said as I rubbed my stomach subconsciously. “I just changed who I would ride or die for—and it wasn’t Elliot Palmer.”
Gabe glanced through the documents on his clipboard again, and I almost laughed. He had scripted this conversation from the very beginning—I knew that now. I was sure his next words had been planned from the start. “I see he received an involuntary manslaughter charge,” Gabe murmured. “He must’ve had a pretty good lawyer.”
“That and I was subpoenaed as a witness and messed everything up. I was pregnant and terrified and emotional. I couldn’t stop crying during my testimony and I think that was what swayed the judge in Elliott’s favor. She didn’t want to keep a father away from his child I guess. He got four years for that.”
“Wait, did he get out of prison then? Didn’t this happen over four years ago?” Jeanette did that nose pushing thing with her index finger again and her brows drew together as she frowned. Nope, he for sure was still in prison. At least the last I heard.
“I was in the courtroom the day he was sentenced. He’d been a model defendant through the entire trial and wasn’t even handcuffed during the proceedings. You know, when they handed down the sentence it only took him seconds to jump the row of seats he was in and make it to me. In fact, I think everyone was so shocked it took them longer to peel him off of me than it did for him to run across the aisle. He got four extra years for the assault on me. One for each punch to my abdomen.”
Angel gasped. Jeanette looked like she was going to throw up, but Gabe, his face showed something different. Something dark.
Rage. I’d never met this man before, but he was experiencing a depth of anger on my behalf that no one ever had before. I felt like I had to say something, anything to wipe that look off his face. “I had a partial placental abruption due to the assault, but other than being on bedrest on and off for the last couple of months I came through okay. It could have been much worse, and now I have a happy, healthy four-year-old son who is very excited to start Kindergarten next year. I am blessed. Elliott Palmer is not a part of my life and hasn’t been since that day in court. So, if you are worried about some sort of criminal behavior on my part because of my connection to him I can only tell you not to. It’s up to you if you believe me or not.”
Gabe maintained eye contact with me for what felt like an eternity before finally slapping his hand on the clipboard with a loud smack. "Well, okay then, now that that's out of the way, let's talk about when you start. This place is a dump and we need all hands on deck. Is Monday good?"
7
Harlow
Wait a minute. What?
Clearly, my ears were deceiving me because there was no way on the blessed green planet that we just had a conversation about the time my boyfriend killed a guy, then I was given a job without discussing my qualifications or educational background. Nope. Manna did not fall from heaven like that anymore, not in my lap anyway.
"So, it's not much tech work at the moment I'm afraid, mostly just demo and remodeling. I mean I'll have a crew coming in to do most of the structure work but we need at least a couple of the rooms ready for business so we can work while all of this is going on—"
"Hold up." I had to shout a little to get Gabe to stop talking, and he looked at me with wide eyes as Jeanette dipped her head and Angel snickered from her spot holding up the folding table. "I've been sitting here for a half hour talking about my connection to a convict and not one part of our conversation had anything to do with the job I'm interviewing for. As far as I know, you haven't even offered me a position, but you want me to start work on Monday?"
"Yeah. Harlow, I told you in the beginning I had specific requirements for my candidate—and you have them. So, what I would like to do, is get you in here and acclimated to our team. Dino isn't here yet, but he should be shortly, honestly the hardest part of the job is getting along with him. Oh, I guess I should have asked, how much notice do you need to give your current employer? What is it—Cozy's Italian? Is that local? I hadn't heard of it."
This guy was nuts. But since his crazy was falling into the answer to my prayers I figured I would just go with the flow. "Yeah, Cozies is local. They are a small dive place on the North end of town, and they call themselves Italian cuisine, but they use the term incredibly loosely if you know what I mean. And I don't have to give them notice as I am no longer employed by them." I took a deep breath and braced myself for the unavoidable question.
Gabe's eyebrows rose in surprise. "That was quick, did you leave on good terms?" Ugh, that was such an open question.
"No I did not."
"Dare I ask if they let you go or if you quit? It doesn't actually matter, you know, I've decided I want you for this position. You can speak freely like you normally would. Lord knows Angel's been on her best behavior so far, but you should know every other word out of her mouth is a swear."
"That's a damn lie," Angel grumbled, shooting Gabe the hairy eyeball. He ignored her, attention focused only on me. I sighed deeply, no sense hiding it. Gabe seemed to have a way of getting the information he wanted whether I gave it to him or not.
"It was a mutual parting of ways." That was the best way I could describe it anyway. "I defended myself against a customer who couldn't decide what he liked better—the handful of my ass that he grabbed or the handful of boob. When I told my boss I wouldn't serve the guy anymore I was told I had to because I
was the only server on staff. I took off my apron and congratulated him on having zero servers on staff. I left with just the tips in my pocket."
"Jesus, what a douche," Jeanette muttered, looking as disgusted as I felt.
"Ayyyye, speaking of douche—Dino's home," Angel sang the insult joyfully and we all turned to look at the door. Standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame was a dark haired, dark eyed man with an olive complexion. A very familiar looking man. His gaze drifted over to me and a lazy half smile spread on his face. For some reason it irritated me.
"You're the drug dealer!" I accused before I could stop myself. He couldn't be a drug dealer, not really. Not if he was walking into this office as pretty as you please, no way. His eyes widened and his eyebrows flew towards the ceiling.
"Am not," he said as he made his way towards the food, grabbed a donut and took a huge bite. Chewing three times he swallowed and grinned at me. "I'm a highly skilled gatherer of information."
"Wait a minute, you were spying? On me? What for?" Turning to Gabe I looked at him in open-mouthed shock. "You had him staking out my trailer park? Have you people never heard of a background check?"
"Lady I am your background check. You hire her yet?" he asked Gabe, breaking off another piece of his donut and popping it in his mouth. “The painters are coming on Monday and we need to have this room and two others ready for them plus bring the furniture in. We need the hands." Did everyone know I was being hired before I even came here?
"I'm sorry, I don't understand what's going on here. No offense, you guys are really nice and all, but this is the weirdest interview I've ever been in." I looked from face to face around the room. Angel and Jeanette regarded me with curiosity. Dino—he had a different look in his eyes...I couldn't put my finger on it. "You don't know me, you just know me on paper, and to be honest, that paper is not the best version of me. You can't tell me there weren't a ton of qualified applicants for this position. People with more experience or even better credentials. I don't even have a degree for God's sake. I had to quit school when I went on bedrest with JJ. Most of everything I know is self-taught. You seemed to have made up your mind before I even got here. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, because I very much need this job for my family, but what gives?"
Gabe grinned, and that simple action made him look so much younger than the mid-thirties I knew he was. "I'm a rich guy, Harlow," Gabe began. No shit. "I'm rich and I'm spoiled and I like to get my way. You're correct. There was a horde of eager young professionals sending in their resumes. So many, in fact, that I needed help going through them all." He looked around the room at Dino, Jeanette, and Angel, who all nodded. "Here's the thing though, Harlow. I may be rich, but I'm a rich fuckup. We are all fuckups in our own way with our own sordid pasts. I don't need a fresh-faced graduate with a degree in their fist who has learned textbook procedures. I need someone with grit on their soul who has had to make some tough decisions in their lives. Hell any decisions! How long did it take you to get in the door today?"
What kind of question was that? "I don't know," I answered slowly. "A few seconds? You guys answered right away when I buzzed the door."
Jeanette laughed, a low pleasant sound. "Yeah, because you noticed the speaker box. Do you know how many people we have that literally just stand outside the door knocking, waiting for someone to come to the door and let them in? They don't even notice the speaker box. It's not prominent, but it's not hidden either."
What she was saying didn't make a lot of sense, at least not to me. "Well no one answered when I knocked, and it's a huge building. I just assumed there was another way so I looked. It only took a couple of seconds. It wasn't a big deal."
"Not a big deal for you, because you are a quick thinker and a problem solver, Harlow. If the simple act of getting through a door is too tough for someone, imagine how hard of a time they would have dealing with the problems that come up in our office." Gabe was serious, there was no trace of humor on his face. "As far as your education goes, I don't need a degree here. I need the ability to learn. The things we do here are not anything they teach in those college classrooms anyway. We're a security firm. We help catch bad guys doing bad things, and I guarantee, your bad guys aren't using college-level IT either." Gabe stood up abruptly and started pacing, he looked very much like a professor about to give a lecture and I knew he needed me to listen and not interrupt.
"I don't need you to know everything right now, Harlow. I need someone with the ability to learn how we do things here. I already know what to do—I need that kind of backup here at the office. I'm not looking for someone to fix my email or debug our computer. I need someone to operate surveillance equipment and sometimes hack into other systems. I need someone ride or die, Harlow. Someone trustworthy, and I can tell that's you. I can tell because you sat in that chair and told me a story, in your own words, very much like what I had printed out on a paper in front of me. But you didn't use language to deflect from any personal involvement. You didn't whine, or complain about how life wasn't fair. You just told me the honest truth. I know you have a mission. And that mission is to provide a safe and stable home for your son. Safe and stable for you means safe and stable for us. Look around this room. This is Glass City Guard. This is all of us, minus Angel. She's not on the payroll but she's ours anyway."
"Um, just yours actually, and some days that's questionable," the blonde bombshell quipped.
"We are all we have, and our circle of trust is really small. When I say we need someone like you—please understand that I don't say that lightly."
"How are you so sure I'm the one?" I whispered, swallowing the suspicious lump in my throat over Gabe's speech.
"Jesse vouched for you. You probably don't know this having just met him, but Jesse is one of the best judges of character I know. Probably comes from working in the bar and being around all those people all the time. He went out on a limb to help you out—to vouch for you. He wouldn't just do that for anyone. He told me you hacked the software on his phone and fixed it for him in about a minute. They don't teach you that in class." Angel’s praise washed over me like a warm rain and I silently gave a prayer of thanks for JJ peeing on Jesse yesterday. Seems like he really was an angel.
"I watched you plug into a busted security gate yesterday and get that gate moving when it otherwise would have been shut until someone else came out to fix it. And from the look of that place I bet it wouldn't have been anytime soon." Dino took a drink of coffee from a cup on the table and grimaced as he forced it down. That coffee had been sitting there for longer than I had been in the room, it was probably ice cold. Gross.
"I just did what I had to do," I said, face heating up with embarrassment. “I don't want to dissuade you from hiring me, I'm grateful, I really am, I just don't want you to have this inflated sense of who I am. I'm really just a woman who's not very good at being one. I'm a mom, first and foremost. JJ is the only family I have at all.”
“Not anymore,” was Gabe’s reply. “You have us—whether you want us or not.” I didn’t have any words of argument for him. These people were offering me the spider’s thread I needed to climb out of hell and I grasped it with both hands, preparing to climb. I wasn’t a superwoman by any means, but apparently Glass City Guard didn’t need a superwoman. They just needed someone with integrity and the ability to adapt. Well hell—that was me in a nutshell.
8
Jesse
Dad must have really tied one on last night if he’s sleeping through this, I thought as I took in the scene in front of me. Beck, the owner of the tattoo shop next door, was standing in my kitchen, arms flexed and raised while JJ dangled helplessly from one of them, little legs kicking in the air. Laughing so hard he could barely breathe, he pulled on Beck’s arm with all of his might, trying to bring the giant man’s arm down but Beck just laughed and hoisted him higher.
Everyone liked Beck.
I would be jealous of how people automatically flocked to the big man, b
ut I liked Beck too. He was an awesome business neighbor and a pretty damn good friend. He may have looked a little scary to some, being as tall and as wide as he was, with tattoos covering just about all of him from the neck down, but no one could resist his easy charm for long. Panties seemed to drop with astonishing speed around Beck, but he remained ever oblivious. He’d found the love of his life in the now pregnant Regina, in my very bar actually, and could see no other woman but her ever since that moment.
He was smitten.
He was also at the end of his rope considering Regina was about eleventy months pregnant with twins and apparently getting a little difficult to deal with. I didn’t blame her. She was carrying two babies inside her and was almost as wide as she was tall now. I don’t know how women could do it, I would need to tap out as soon as my boobs got sore.
Apparently, my French macaroons helped.
Not with the boob soreness obviously, but she did like them, and was happy when she got to eat them. I made them for her as a little present to be nice a few months ago, and now when Beck is as stressed as he can get, he orders them from me so he can tame the pregnant beast. Sometimes I have to squeeze it into the bar kitchen when I don’t have time to work at home, but I really did love being able to bake for someone again. It was my real joy—not being a bartender. I hated tending bar, and I only came home to do it so my dad could get his shit together. Somehow, maybe due to the fact that he was drinking the profits away every night and passing out until noon most days, I didn’t think that was going to happen anytime soon.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, surprising me even though I should have known it was a text from Harlow.
Jesse (Glass City Hearts Book 3) Page 6