by Hope Ramsay
“I don’t wish to discuss this. I thought this was going to be, you know, kind of quick and anonymous.”
“Me, too. But then you decided to steal from me.”
“Look, I wasn’t stealing. I was just…” Her voice faded out as it occurred to her that if she had wanted something quick and anonymous she would never have looked through his wallet.
“Uh-huh. Like I said.”
“Why don’t you give me my purse, and I’ll leave, okay?”
He didn’t respond. Instead, he reached into her bag and pulled out her wallet. Then he placed the little necklace into the change section. He snapped the snap on the change purse and then dropped her wallet back into her handbag. She watched as his big, capable hands scooped up pennies and nickels and dimes and dropped them back into the bottom of her bag. He had almost completed the task when he stopped.
“Well lookit here, isn’t that lucky?” He picked up a tarnished coin and angled it toward the light.
“You know the only luck in the Universe is the luck we make for ourselves,” Jane said. If only she had believed that before she had come with this guy to a no-tell motel.
“Is that so?”
“Yeah.”
“So you don’t believe in rabbits’ feet?”
She shook her head. A girl with her unlucky track record couldn’t afford to believe in charms and such.
“Too bad, because this is a lucky penny,” he said.
“What’s lucky about it?” she asked.
“It’s a wheat penny.”
“A what?”
He handed the penny to her. “Look on the back. It doesn’t have the Lincoln Memorial on it.”
She turned the penny over, and sure enough, it had an unusual back with the words “One Cent” spelled out and encircled by a crossed sheaf of wheat.
She turned it over in her hand and read the date—1943. “So what’s lucky about it?”
He continued to scoop up change and return it to her purse. “Well, nothing, really. It’s just old. They haven’t made wheat pennies since the 1950s.”
“Is it valuable?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, it’s probably worth one hundred times its face value.”
Happiness swelled up inside her until she did the math in her head. “Right. A dollar.”
He shrugged. “That’s valuable for a penny.”
“Yeah, well, it won’t buy me a Coke at Dot’s Spot.”
“You know, the value of things can’t always be measured in their price.”
She blinked up at him. Was he trying to send a message? After all, if she wanted to be negative about things, he had purchased her for the sum of ten dollars plus the cost of this hotel room. The thought made her heart ache.
“By that look, you don’t agree with me.”
She shrugged and tried not to feel cheap and dirty. “I’m just blown away that a negative person such as yourself would even consider the possibility of luck as a force in the Universe,” she said in a breezy tone.
“Yeah, well, I guess you got that right. So it’s not a lucky penny. It’s just an old one. Don’t you think it’s cool that something sixty years old was hiding out in the bottom of your purse waiting to be found?”
Temptation tugged at her insides. Clayton P. Rhodes was a piece of work. But she was not about to let herself fall for his line—even if it was a good line. Maybe one of the best lines she had heard in her life.
“Look,” Jane said. “As a gesture of regret for having rifled through your wallet, I’ll let you have the penny if you think it’s so cool.”
“Uh, no thanks, you keep it, since you believe in luck.”
Well, that was predictable. “Right,” she said, as she slipped the penny into the pocket of her jeans. “So are you going to let me go, now that you’ve finished humiliating me?”
“I probably should turn you in to the police for attempted robbery.”
Fear settled into her belly. “Look, I wasn’t trying to steal from you, okay?”
“But then again, explaining stuff to the police might prove a little embarrassing.”
She stopped and thought about things for a moment. It would be embarrassing—for both of them—since she was new to town and they had spent the night with each other before exchanging names.
“So I’m not going to turn you in. I think I’m going to reform you instead,” Clayton P. continued.
“Reform me?” Her voice cracked.
“Not interested in following the straight and narrow, huh?”
She drew herself up and squared her shoulders. “I don’t need reforming. Maybe you’re the one who needs reforming.”
This earned her a little half smile. “You’re right on that score. So I guess I’ll buy you breakfast instead. And after that, we’ll talk about where you go next.”
Just who the hell did he think he was, anyway? “What is it, Clayton P., you want to run me out of town like I’m some kind of undesirable? Well, let me tell you one thing, buster, I—”
“Is that what you think?”
“Look, I don’t need you to reform me. I may have ended up in this shabby room with you, but that doesn’t make me a—”
“I wasn’t talking about what happened last night, girl. That was just runaway lust. And I’m sorry I got caught up in it. I was talking about you stealing my money.”
“I told you, I wasn’t going to steal your money. Why won’t you believe me?”
“Because I make it a habit not to believe girls with only five bucks in their pockets who are carrying two forms of identification, each bearing a different name.”
He threw his legs over the side of the bed and stood up, naked as the day he was born. The runaway lust made a second appearance.
He was big, and he was built. In every possible way a man could be big and built.
Oh, well, it didn’t matter, because Clayton P. Rhodes was not the man the Universe had made for her, even if he was a dead ringer for Michelangelo’s David from the neck down. Come to think of it, he was pretty good looking from the neck up, too.
He headed toward the bathroom, her purse still clasped in his hands. “I’m taking a shower. Don’t try to leave.”
Well, of course she couldn’t leave. He had taken all of her belongings hostage.
“I mean it,” he said, stopping at the door. “There’s a category-one hurricane blowing outside that door. You’ll be soaked to the bone inside of a minute.”
She cocked her head and heard the sound of rain beating at the windows.
Good grief. The Cosmos really was against her.
Clay wiped the condensation off the mirror and gave himself a hard look. He didn’t much like the reflection.
That little gal—Wanda Jane—needed something last night, and he’d pretty much failed her. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know she didn’t do illicit no-tell-motel sex on a regular basis. She had not been faking it.
And she was way too young.
God help him. He’d treated her like some kind of two-bit tramp last night, when it was obvious the girl was in some kind of trouble and on the run. She had only five dollars in her purse.
Instead of helping her out, he’d put her in the place where stealing had seemed justified.
He’d taken something from her last night. He had consumed her like a starving man, and he hadn’t given her anything in return, except maybe a momentary thrill. He’d needed the sexual release last night. He’d needed it to find the trigger point for the stuff he’d been holding inside for way too long.
God, how embarrassing. He surely did hope she hadn’t heard him when he’d gotten up in the middle of the night. He’d come into the bathroom, taken one look at himself in the mirror, and broken down into tears. He’d cried for Uncle Pete, who was probably dying, and for Ray, whose life he had screwed up so long ago, and for the career in Nashville that lay in ruins. He’d turned on the shower and tried real hard not to make too much noise while he’d cried himself out like some kind
of sissy.
He studied his puffy eyes. He surely did owe Jane a whole lot more than the eighty bucks she’d tried to steal from him. In a way, she’d been a kind of therapy.
Well, he’d make it as right as he could. He’d feed her breakfast and give her enough money to send her on her way once the storm blew itself out.
Then he needed to concentrate on making a change in his life. This encounter was a warning sign, pure and simple. He needed to put the past behind him and start making plans for the future.
He hung his head. He wanted a wife, not a one-night stand. He wanted commitment from a mature woman, not some stupid midlife tryst with a younger woman, even if she was hotter than a chili pepper. He needed to grow up. He needed to settle down. He needed meaning in his life.
He needed to refocus his music career, too, but maybe that was too much to ask. Right now, he just wanted an end to that hollow place in the middle of his chest.
“Today is the first day of the rest of your life,” he murmured, looking back up. “Today, you’re going to get serious about finding a sane, stable, mature woman to be your wife. You are going to start moving toward the future, instead of wallowing in the past.”
He gave himself a hard stare. “You hear me, boy. Needy women are a weakness.”
CHAPTER 3
The waitress at the Kountry Kitchen Dinette wore a salmon pink uniform with a white apron and a little plastic pin that identified her as Betty. She filled up Clayton P. Rhodes’s coffee cup and looked down at him with a sweet, unfocused gaze. He missed the look entirely.
Betty didn’t give Jane anything like an adoring look. In fact, Betty inspected her the way a narrow-minded, small-town waitress would inspect anyone new—with a look that was one part curiosity and three parts get out of town. Jane recognized this look. Small-town people were not as friendly as the Hallmark Channel or Garrison Keillor made them out to be.
“Meet Wanda Jane Coblentz,” Clay said as Betty poured coffee.
“That’s Jane for short,” she said. The fiddler had insisted on calling her by both her given names, instead of the name she had been using for the last seven years.
Jane had retaliated by calling him Clayton P. This annoyed him. And annoying the man was too much fun, especially since he had humiliated her this morning and proven himself to be a mule-headed weasel with a pessimistic streak.
Although he was resourceful, sort of like a Boy Scout, which was a troubling thought. He’d managed to find her a bright orange plastic poncho in his minivan. Clayton P. apparently took the Boy Scout motto, “Be Prepared,” very seriously, since he had a veritable warehouse of stuff in his van, from safety flares to fishing rods. Not the kind of collection of useful items she would expect from a guy who looked like he was bad to the bone.
“Howdy, Wanda Jane,” Betty said. “New in town?”
Well, duh. There were no more than a couple thousand souls living in Last Chance. What were the odds that a stranger walking into the Kountry Kitchen for the first time was actually new to town? Probably a dead certainty.
“Yes, I am.” She gave Betty a sweet, down-home smile, which the waitress didn’t exactly return. “I’m looking for work,” Jane added. “You wouldn’t happen to have a need for an experienced waitress?”
Clayton P. Rhodes put his coffee cup down hard enough to slosh the contents. The fiddler had already made it clear that he intended to run her out of town as soon as the storm ended. But Jane had other ideas.
“Sorry, we don’t have any job openings,” Betty said. “But, you know, Dottie is always looking for help.”
“Dottie? As in the proprietor of Dot’s Spot?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Betty did smile then, but it was phony enough to be featured on a piece of forged artwork.
“You’re not working for Dottie,” Clayton P. announced as if he had a say in the matter, which he did not. Jane had decided to stay in Last Chance for a little while, because it looked like the kind of small town where Woody and the thugs after him would never dream of looking for her.
“What can I get you, sugar?” Betty asked.
“I’ll have the two-egg breakfast,” she said, snapping closed the menu. It cost only four dollars. Her mouth watered in anticipation, which was fitting because when she paid the bill she would be officially flat broke.
No, check that, she would be officially in debt because she intended to pay Clayton P. back for the Cokes she drank last night and half of the motel, too. That way she could say she hadn’t sold her body for food and shelter. She wrapped her hands around her coffee mug and tried not to look up at him.
“I told you,” Clayton P. said in a low voice, once Betty had departed, “I’ll give you enough money to get you wherever you want to go.”
Well, of course, he didn’t mean that. She doubted if he would pay her passage on a cruise to Bermuda, although she was tempted to ask, just to prove her point.
“I want to stay here,” she said.
“For goodness’ sake, why? This is a dying town.”
Jane looked up at him as he frowned down at her. The fluorescent lights gleamed on his dark chestnut hair. He had nice hair, even when he wore it slicked back into a ponytail. But last night, with it falling down around his shoulders, he had looked hotter than Hades. She pushed the vision of him naked out of her head.
“If it’s so bad, why don’t you take your negatory attitude and leave?” she asked.
“Negatory attitude?” His brow lowered, and he looked sour. “What in the Sam Hill does that mean?”
“Dr. Goodbody says pessimism can become a habit, blinding you to the bright side of even the worst disaster. You might try to focus on the positive things about Last Chance instead of the negative ones. And you didn’t answer my question. If it’s such a terrible place, why do you stay?”
“You didn’t answer mine.” He didn’t stop frowning.
“I’m staying because I have to. It’s pretty simple. And I aim to make the best of this disaster, just like Dr. Goodbody says.”
“Little gal, you don’t—”
“I’m not little, and I’m not a girl, so would you please call me Jane?”
He gritted his teeth. She could tell by the way the muscles jumped in his oh-so-square jaw. “You don’t have to stay here, Jane. I’ll—”
“Forget it. I’m not taking your money, okay?”
He blinked at her for a couple of moments. “Look, if this is about what happened last night, I—”
“Well, of course it’s about what happened last night. And I think it would be best, all the way around, if we put all that behind us,” she said. “It was enjoyable so far as it went. But we both know it was a big mistake and dwelling on it will unleash lots of negative psychic energy. And at the moment, I’m trying to be positive about the future.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear that. So when the storm blows over, I’ll stake you to some cash so you can leave Last Chance behind. Trust me, this is not a positive place.”
“I’m not taking your money. I told you that already. Taking your money would make what happened last night even worse than it already is.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, you tried to roll me this morning.” He leaned back in the booth, a miserable look on his face.
“No, I didn’t. And it seems the only way to make that point clear is to get a job and pay you back for your expenses. That way I won’t have anything heavy weighing down my karma, you know?”
“Karma?”
“You know, like a spiritual scorecard. Last night, I slipped, and I—”
“Honey, I owe you something for last night. And I’m sorry about this morning.” He sat there looking unhappy. She pitied him, but not enough to take his money. Taking his money would be a big mistake. He would get the idea he owned her or something, and she most definitely didn’t want him thinking that. She was independent. She could fend for herself.
Jane reached out and touched his hand where it rested on the Formica tabletop. His skin
was warm and a little rough. Touching him reminded her of the way he’d touched her last night, and her stomach clutched.
She withdrew her hand. “Look, I heard you in the bathroom, and it’s okay. Whatever got to you last night, I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
“You heard me?” His voice cracked in alarm.
She shrugged. “I tried not to listen. Honest. But you weren’t exactly quiet about it. So anyway, the point is, you don’t owe me anything for last night, and you shouldn’t feel guilty about your feelings either. Like you said, it was just a case of runaway lust.”
His ears got red. It was kind of sexy the way he blushed like that. Clayton P. was kind of sweet for a negative person with lots of emotional baggage. He must have something heavy weighing him down, since he’d gone into the bathroom and cried.
Despite the zinging of her hormones, she could resist him. That was the important thing right now.
He lifted his coffee mug and took a sip, his gaze drifting away from her. They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes while Jane studied her surroundings. The Kountry Kitchen looked like something out of a 1950s family TV show set in some quaint little town where everyone was nice to everyone else. It had polished chrome everywhere, booths and stools covered in red vinyl, a linoleum checkerboard floor, and a gray Formica lunch counter. On this dark and windy Thursday morning, the place was empty, except for a table of old geezers wearing overalls and Country Pride Chicken hats.
That changed a moment later as the front door opened to the sound of an old-fashioned tinkling bell. A big man wearing a plastic-covered Stetson and a full-length, shiny black raincoat stepped across the threshold and shook himself. Rainwater poured off his shoulders and splattered in a big puddle on the floor.
He took off his hat, exposing close-cropped dark hair, graying at the temples. His face had fine, almost perfect features.
The guy took off his raincoat, and Jane realized he was a cop—a big cop, wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying about fifty pounds of weaponry and communications on his utility belt. Barney Fife this guy was not.