Single Dad’s Fake Fiancée: A Cowboy Romance

by King, Imani

  “Ash, her profession has nothing to do with anything,” Dustin butted in, cutting to the chase for me. “I’m sorry my brother is mentally thirteen.”

  “At least he isn’t hating on her for it. I can respect that at least,” I replied.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Ash continued. “It’s respect. Girl knows how to work it, how to get things done. That’s smart, that’s resourceful. The world’s just kinda fucked up man, that we hate on people for doing that sort of thing. They got a product people are willing to buy. In today’s society you do what ya need to put food on the table.”

  Dustin shook his head. I fell back into the seat. “While I appreciate your critique on the social stigma of sex workers, Ash, just drive. I’m not in the mood for philosophy.”

  “Right, right. Just trying to lighten the mood, okay?”

  “With that?” Dustin said.

  “Well it’s lighter than him panicking about his girl.” He focused on the road for a bit. “So the place is Xotica? What a trashy name.”

  “Yeah, this is why you’re my back up,” I said. “I believe I can take care of myself, but with places like this, you cant be sure what’s behind every corner.”

  “That sounds about right.”

  The car soon pulled up outside the strip club. It was a dive but the parking lot seemed popular enough. If there were girls inside like Destiny and I was someone who enjoyed such things, I supposed this would be quite the attraction.

  Before I went in I had to get psyched up. She would resent me barging in on her workplace. But I knew I wouldn’t rest until I was certain she was safe. She needed to know that I didn’t judge her.

  I still hadn’t told her how I truly felt.

  The thing about Corbett boys is that God had blessed us with some powerful frames. Tall, wide, if we needed to form a family football team, we’d likely do pretty well for ourselves.

  “Hey, you can’t cut in line!” The bouncer called out.

  The three of us approached him. Sure, he worked out, but it was three on one here.

  I smiled his way, pulled out a hundred dollar bill. “We’re on urgent business. I hope this doesn’t bring us any trouble.”

  He looked at the bill, studied it a bit to make sure it wasn’t fake, and then gestured right along.

  “Pleasure doing business with you,” Ash said, smirking as we entered.

  “In places like this,” I observed as we made our way through the club, “money talks a lot. The staff never feels they’re being paid enough for the stuff they have to put up with.”

  I watched as a drunk man lunged for a topless woman on the stage. Only he failed completely and fell face first on the floor. A bouncer stood over him, incredibly annoyed at what was in the way of his paycheck.

  “Are either of you patrons of establishments like this?” I said, looking around. I wanted to either find Destiny or someone who knew where she was. If she wasn’t working, the office was the next best bet. “Where would the administration be?”

  “You’re using a lot of big words to describe a trash can, Miles.” Ash said. “Come on. Usually it’s off from the kitchen.”

  We pushed through the crowd, my hand on a roll of hundreds to buy people off if they thought about stopping us. This seemed to attract more attention, but I didn’t care. It was a small price to pay to find Destiny.

  Soon enough, with enough interrogation and bribes to the right people, we found the bosses office.

  The door was locked.

  So first, I knocked nicely.

  I knew he was in there. The staff had told me as much, and when you’re cordial and share your buddy Benjamin Franklin, truth tends to get out.

  Of course, there was always the chance that someone tipped him off.

  “How we wanna do this?” Ash asked.

  “Rock paper scissors?” Dustin suggested.

  “I guess.”

  First round, Ash cut my paper then he smAshd Dustin’s scissors.

  “Awesome, I haven’t broken anything since the record company stopped saying they’d subsidize my guitar supply.”

  He stretched a bit, then used his cowboy boot to proceed to kick the door in.

  “God, I love doing that.”

  The three of us entered. Behind the desk, sitting silently was a lump of a man, already sweating despite the AC being on in this room full blast. I sniffed the air, as something had caught my... nose?

  “Wait... “ He said. “Oh shit, it’s you, that rich fuck with the ranch.”

  “Yes, I am a rich fuck with a ranch, what of it?” I said.

  Suddenly, he showed surprising speed for a man his size and dAshd past me.

  Only to be clotheslined down by the Corbett brothers flanking me. They knocked him silly, and I decided to kneel down, grab him by the shirt, and cut right to the chase. “I’m going to ask nicely. You answer nicely, and we’ll leave nicely, and all you have to deal with is a busted up door. If not, well, Ash here apparently really enjoys breaking things. Take that for what you will.”

  He nodded.

  “One name. Destiny Lowell. Where is she?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know!”

  “Can I break a finger, Miles?” Ash said.

  I took a whiff of the perfume, and took it in. Yeah. It was Destiny’s. She was here. “What’ll it be, boss?” I asked. “Broken finger or truth?”

  He winced, but didn’t respond.

  “Alright then,” I grabbed his hand and gently placed it on the ground next to Ash’s foot.

  Ash feigned excitement at the aspect. Or at least I hoped he was feigning.

  “An abandoned mine site on the outskirts of town!” He blurted out, without the remotest hint of context.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “They took Destiny there.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Um.... I’ve said too much.”

  “Ash?”

  He raised his foot.

  “Okay, okay! Please,” he spit out. “Jesus, you’re too well dressed to be doing this sort of thing.”

  “This is what happens when you mess with my family is all.”

  He shook his head. “I’m just a middleman. I’m hardly the top of the chain. I couldn’t even give you a real name, they just delegated something to me and I executed it.”

  “Execute? Now’s not the time to be using words like that.”

  “I’ll give you the address of the.... site they use. Um. Yeah.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because I wanted something to protect myself if they decided to get rid of me. You know, last minute blackmail.”

  This guy was a total slime-bag. The world would likely be a better place if I let Ash put a boot to his skull.

  One thing you can count on for a slime-bag to do though is preserve themselves. “Dustin, find a pen and paper.” He got right on it. “Asshole, you’re going to give us directions to this site. And if this is a lie,” I said, my teeth gritting.

  “What?”

  “Just rot in the implications of it.”

  “Alright, alright.”

  Dustin handed him the pad, and he started scribbling stuff down. It was chicken scratch, but I think I’d be able to figure it out.

  “Alright, take a picture of that, send it to the police.”

  “You can’t bring them into this!” Asshole protested.

  I punched him in the face. It was a cold-cocking knockout punch. He’d wake up with a headache, but he wasn’t the problem.

  Ash grabbed me by the hand. “I didn’t know you had it in you Miles. You ever think of going into the mob thing yourself?”

  “I am not a violent man. But these men are threatening to take my everything away from me, and I’m not going to accept that without a fight.”

  Dustin patted me on the shoulders. “We’re going to find her. I’ll get right on the police thing and explain the situation.”

  “I’ll go rev u
p the car,” Ash added. “Let’s get moving, I don’t like this any more than you guys do.”

  I nodded, and looked at the panicking slime-ball below me. “Although I may do something slightly different than just ride along with you two.”

  Chapter 25

  Destiny

  I never expected being knocked out to hurt so damned much. My head was throbbing. Was that a concussion? I knew it was bad to be unconscious.

  Odder still, I was waking up to the sounds of Molly Hatchet. Flirting with disaster seemed to be words that would echo my life if there were ever any at all.

  I was gagged and bound with what felt like a cheap rope. I wasn’t blindfolded and I was laid out in the back of a van.

  The moon was visible in a clear sky. The roughness of the road told me that I definitely wasn’t in the city anymore.

  “Are you fucking lost, Hank?” A voice said.

  I looked forward, and saw that two men seated in front.

  “How can I be lost? It’s literally a straight shot north out of Vegas.”

  “Yeah, well, it should have been five minutes ago.”

  “You just have no sense of distance, Hank.”

  Thankfully, they were too self-involved to notice me shuffling about.

  “If you keep going that direction you’re just going further and further off the path.”

  “What, you want to drive?”

  “Use a fucking GPS Hank, it’s the twenty-first century.”

  “Oh, I’m sure Google maps knows all about our dumping sites.”

  “They might. They tell you where all those nuke sites are and shit.”

  “Wonder what the reviews of our abandoned mine are.”

  Dumping sites? That didn’t sound good. Wait, I was in the back of a van, bound and gagged, driving in the middle of nowhere?

  I could connect the dots quite easily.

  I doubted I was going to convince them to let me go, especially when I was only capable of saying ‘mmph’.

  “Pull over Hank. We’re going to have to do some paper map bullshit because you can’t find something that’s literally a straight line out of town.”

  The van puttered out, and I felt them pull over to the side of the road. The two men climbed out of the vehicle and went over to the hood to use it as a makeshift table. They were thirty or forty somethings, looking like this sort of work had been their lifelong career at this point.

  I feigned still being out. I wasn’t a fighter by any stretch. Instead, I fiddled around. Part of my discomfort had to be that I was in the back of a utility van. It was a nondescript white van, the sort that goes everywhere without anyone noticing it at all.

  “Fucking hell, Leonard. We should have been done already. I’m going to miss the first inning.”

  “Stop complaining and make sure we’re on the right route. Like, look at the stars or something.”

  Wait, was that a screwdriver? It had a weird nub on the long narrow end. This can do something. I started to work on my shitty ropes, mentally thanking these assholes for being so cheap.

  Snap. Snap. Easy. I pulled the bandana gag off my mouth and let it hang around my neck. I took a deep breath. I wondered if they had guns.

  This is America. Of course they had guns.

  Still, my options were to sit still and wait for them to come back and shoot me before dumping me into a hole, or take a gamble that they were lousy shots and make a run for it.

  I pocketed the screwdriver, figuring it was the best weapon I was going to get. Then, as slowly as I could, I opened the back hatch door to the van.

  Unfortunately, no one had bothered to lube up the doors in decades, and a loud creak announced my intentions.

  This was my only chance.

  I started to run, thanking the Lord that I didn’t go to the club in heels.

  “Fuck, how the hell did she get out?”

  “You can’t tie a knot for shit, Hank!”

  “Stop belly aching and get the bitch!”

  I knew they were taking off behind me.

  I didn’t have a next step in my plan. It was the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere.

  Wait, was that the roar of an engine? Shit, I was about to head for the middle of nowhere in hopes of losing them, but if someone along the road saw me, maybe I’d have a chance.

  The headlights blinded me, but I kept going.

  I almost pissed myself when gunfire rang out behind me.

  Adrenaline quickly took me the next level. Bullets were after me. There was no way I could possibly outrun them, but that didn’t stop me from trying.

  A shiver hit my spine when the car passed me, going at full speed. A neon pink Cadillac? That was Bruce’s car. That wasn’t the good Samaritan I was looking for.

  “Hey, that’s the boss,” one of them shouted out.

  “Fuck, now he’s going to see we screwed up!”

  “Hank! Get out of the way!”

  The car rumbled down the road, then ran along shoulder of the road, heading right at the men chasing me. I had stopped running at this point and turned to watch the scene in absolute fascination.

  Bruce’s car never slowed down. In fact, it careened right into ‘Hank’ who... well, didn’t win this collision. He was face down right after.

  ‘Leonard’ though, was quickly nowhere to be seen.

  The Cadillac slowed down, and I watched it. Either he was incredibly drunk or that wasn’t Bruce.

  Tepidly, I went with the latter, and began to approach the scene. Another car roared up behind me, and this one was lime green.

  I think it was a Lamborghini.

  Why did people have such terrible taste in car colors?

  The door of the Cadillac opened, and out came a sight for sore eyes.

  Miles. He stood tall, slamming the door behind him.

  Step by step, I started to run toward him, not caring why he was here, just that he WAS here.

  That was until an arm pulled me back, and suddenly I felt cold steel pressed against my neck.

  All of a sudden, all the gusto of rushing to hug Miles suddenly deflated. Miles seemed further away than before.

  “Step back!” He called out.

  Miles wasn’t anywhere near close enough to him, but he did so anyway.

  The green car stopped, and he showed me to them too. Two Corbett brothers emerged, and they were as cautious as Miles.

  “Let’s calm down here,” Miles said, hands up, trying to approach.

  “I said step back!”

  “I’m just here for Destiny. I’m not here to be Batman and carry out some vendetta against criminals.”

  “What? You killed Hank!”

  Miles looked over at him. “He still seems to be breathing. If we just all end this, you can get him an ambulance, and I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

  “What, and go back with the job undone?”

  “Are you that faithful to your boss?”

  “When he’s going to kill me if I let a loose end get away? Yeah, I am!” He gestured the gun toward Miles before putting it back on me.

  I breathed slowly. The man holding me wasn’t exactly Nobel prize material in intelligence. He was scared, on edge, and desperately looking for a way out.

  Miles kept talking to him. “Come on. Your really think if you shoot Destiny any of us are going to let you escape?”

  “I’m the only one with the gun asshole!” He again randomly pointed the gun at Miles, and then the other two Corbett brothers, who stayed calm so this guy wouldn’t freak out. “The way I see it, I got enough bullets to take all you out!”

  “Really? You’re going to kill Ash & Dustin Corbett, international music superstars? And me, a multi-millionaire on the verge of being a billionaire?”

  He looked him the eye. Miles knew this as well. I could sense he was trying to play along.

  “It’s one thing to off a stripper no one’s ever heard of. You kill me and you have a nationwide manhunt going down. You’ll bring down Bruce’s whole o
rganization. If you kill her? You’ll have to kill me too because I won’t let you escape alive.”

  He had the gun fixed on Miles, but his grip was weak. His resolve was faltering. Was he listening to reason?

  My hand brushed over the bulge in my pocket. It reminded me I was prepared for the worst.

  “Just walk away, old man.” Miles was giving him a way out.

  My abductor swung his gun wildly at my rescuers. He was a shaky mess.

  When you’re that nervous, you can’t hit anything unless it’s right in front of you, and the only thing right in front of him was me.

  It was a panicked, desperate risk, but at least I decided to make it a calculated panicked, desperate risk.

  Slowly, I pulled out my screwdriver. He was so busy waving his gun at the others he didn’t even notice me. With a backhand, I drove it into his stomach.

  He screamed. Quite high pitched for a man his size. Pain made him loose his grip on me. I wiggled away from his arm and tried to knock his gun loose.

  The thing TV and movies never tell you about guns is just how loud they are. When one goes off near your ear, not only is it deafening but it hurts. In the chaos, I was randomly reaching for my head, wondering whether I had been shot.

  My ears were messed up but I faintly heard “You crazy bitch!” and then my assailant tackled me down.

  Then I heard the whispered shout of Miles saying, “Destiny!”

  Then Miles tackled him and pummeled his head repeatedly with his fist. Again and again. Most violently.

  I staggered away in shock at the situation.

  The ringing in my ears began to fade. I heard Miles’grunts and could distinguish them from the crook’s grunts of pain.

  Dustin and Ash ran over and pulled Miles off his face.

  “Chill dude, he’s out for the count,” Ash said.

  “The police will be here soon,” Dustin added. “We keep him alive, we see if the other guy is alive. They might definitely help in our case against Quinn NorthWest.”

  “They’re all in on it. All of them. Bruce and Vivian,” I was murmuring, trying to remember what got me in this nonsense in the first place.

  Miles pulled himself together and rushed over to me. Instead of tackling me like he did the other guy, he took me in his arms and spun me around, and laid a strong kiss on me.